Yves here. Lambert promises he will still produce a detailed look at Kamala’s acceptance at the Democratic National Convention. In the meantime, others are kicking its tires. And at least some on what passes for the left are finding it wanting.
By Sonali Kolhatkar, an award-winning multimedia journalist. She is the founder, host, and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a weekly television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. Her most recent book is Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (City Lights Books, 2023). She is a writing fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute and the racial justice and civil liberties editor at Yes! Magazine. She serves as the co-director of the nonprofit solidarity organization the Afghan Women’s Mission and is a co-author of Bleeding Afghanistan. She also sits on the board of directors of Justice Action Center, an immigrant rights organization. Produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute
During her nearly 40-minute-long speech on the final day of the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Vice President Kamala Harris laid out her economic plan for the nation as “an opportunity economy where everyone has the chance to compete and a chance to succeed.”
I deliberately chose not to watch her speech, preferring instead to read it. The ebullience at this year’s DNC was infectious. The Democratic Party is leaning into some of the language of progressive economic populism and is energized by a younger, more enthusiastic nominee. But reading Harris’s speech rather than watching it, helped bring some distance from the joy and clarified that the party is still not embracing the language of progressive economic populism and continues to use the destructive language of the right.
The term “opportunity economy” is itself the problem. It’s a phrase that former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell used to defend Donald Trump’s economic agenda in 2019. Florida’s Chamber of Commerce, a staunchly pro-business outfit, has used it as well.
The word “opportunity” means a chance, the creation of circumstances to make something possible. We live in a nation where racial segregation is technically illegal, which means people of color have the “opportunity” to attend elite schools, apply for jobs, build wealth, retire comfortably, and pass their wealth to their children. Those opportunities have existed for decades. But data shows over and over that they don’t translate into reality, especially for Black and Brown people in the U.S. The racial wealth gap, for example, remains high. There are structural barriers that remain firmly in place, and that require very specific government intervention to dismantle. Will Harris embrace such a dismantling?
Harris proudly related during her DNC speech that she “took on the big banks, delivered $20 billion for middle-class families who faced foreclosure, and helped pass a homeowner bill of rights, one of the first of its kind in the nation.”
But she took on banks as a prosecutor, not as a legislator or executive. And her homeowner bill of rights was, once more, based on the ideas of “opportunity.” In a 2017 op-ed she explained that the bill of rights was based on “six bills designed to give Californians a fair opportunity to work with their banks, modify their loans, and keep their homes.”
Harris pointed out at the DNC that she “stood up for veterans and students being scammed by big, for-profit colleges. For workers who were being cheated out of their wages, the wages they were due. For seniors facing elder abuse.” Again, all were commendable achievements made during her role as a prosecutor and Attorney General of California. Will she stand up for the rights of veterans, students, workers, and seniors, or simply afford them opportunities for justice?
There is a huge difference between “opportunities” and “rights.” The former is a pro-corporate, pro-business term that is perfectly consistent with an individualist capitalist economy that has “winners” who make use of opportunities for wealth-building and “losers” who fail to do so. But “rights” is a word that insists on basic standards of fairness that everyone deserves. It encompasses an idea that capitalism hates: that people have the right to healthcare, childcare, education, homes, good wages, union jobs, and a stable climate. There are no winners and losers.
There was little talk of such rights at the Convention. In fact, even the New York Times noticed that Democrats avoided bringing up Medicare-for-All and the idea that everyone—not just a subsection of the population—has the right to taxpayer-funded healthcare. The Times’s Noah Weiland pointed out, “Her avoidance of a policy that had been central to progressive Democratic aspirations underscores how quickly she has sought to define her candidacy while appealing to more moderate voters, and how Medicare-for-All proposals have effectively left the Democratic mainstream for now.”
Instead of asserting that everyone has the right to taxpayer-funded healthcare Harris said, “We are not going back to when Donald Trump tried to cut Social Security and Medicare. We are not going back to when he tried to get rid of the Affordable Care Act when insurance companies could deny people with pre-existing conditions.”
It sounds as though she and her party have given up on expanding government healthcare to all and instead gone on the defense against the Republican Party’s attacks on Medicare and the ACA.
Harris’s second favorite word, after “opportunity” was “freedom.” She used it a dozen times in her speech, recasting “rights” as “freedoms.” She referenced the “The freedom to live safe from gun violence in our schools, communities, and places of worship. The freedom to love who you love openly and with pride.” She also touted, “The freedom to breathe clean air, and drink clean water, and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis. And the freedom that unlocks all the others: the freedom to vote.”
Clearly, Harris was attempting to reclaim the word “freedom” from the GOP, a formation that has been pulled toward the extreme right by Republican lawmakers who label themselves as members of the “Freedom Caucus.” Freedom is akin to opportunity.
Indeed, Harris’s failure to make a full-throated embrace of progressive economic populism was a failed “opportunity.” The conditions were ripe for her to lean in to language centered on the rights of people given that we have witnessed a cultural sea change on the failures of capitalism.
This change was apparent at the 2024 DNC as well. One need only examine how Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was received this year compared to the last two conventions. When Sanders spoke at the 2016 DNC in Philadelphia, his role was to placate progressives in the party who had supported his candidacy for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. He urged his voters to back Hillary Clinton, the centrist candidate who would go on to lose the electoral college vote to Donald Trump in spite of winning the popular vote. Only months earlier, leaked internal emails from the Democratic National Committee revealed just what the party’s insiders thought of Sanders—and it wasn’t pretty.
Then, four years ago, his role at the 2020 DNC in Wisconsin was to defend Joe Biden’s candidacy against Trump. He remarked, “Many of the ideas we fought for, that just a few years ago were considered ‘radical,’ are now mainstream.”
But this year, even though his role was once more to convince his supporters to back a mainstream Democratic candidate, Sanders’s prime-time address at the 2024 DNC in Chicago sounded remarkably mainstream. The New York Times recognized him as an insider, saying that he seemed to have “a sense of vindication that the Democratic Party, as he sees it, has finally recognized that many progressive causes are broadly popular with Americans.”
Sanders hasn’t changed, but the party’s rhetoric has. Slate’s Alexander Sammon pointed out that, “There were very few themes in Sanders’s speech that other Democratic speakers hadn’t already covered on Monday and Tuesday.” Although the DNC’s tenor was markedly different from four and eight years ago—Sanders now sounded like he fit in, largely because the tenor, if not the substance, of his political leanings have become mainstream.
Meanwhile, Harris’s language of “opportunity agenda” leans right. She shared at the DNC, “My mother kept a strict budget. We lived within our means. Yet, we wanted for little and she expected us to make the most of the opportunities that were available to us, and to be grateful for them.” Such words could easily have been said by a Republican and reflect the party’s ideas about “fiscal responsibility.”
Harris also touted a “middle-class tax cut” in attempting to distinguish herself from Trump’s tax cuts for the rich. But tax cuts for the middle class is a core GOP talking point—even if the party usually delivers for the already-rich in spite of its promises to the not-so-rich.
In truth, Harris is likely more economically progressive than she let on. She has backed the Child Tax Credit, a program that was popular and remarkably effective. But she made no mention of it at the DNC. Her running mate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is known for his economically progressive policies.
Granted, party conventions these days appear to be tailored to appease a sliver of the American public: the undecided voters in swing states whose all-important ballots will help determine who wins the electoral college, and thus, the presidency. In the context of such an undemocratic system, politicians will always feel pressure to tack toward the center, as winning the popular vote does not guarantee victory.
But we live at a time when momentum is building for fulfilling the economic “rights” of people via such ideas as universal basic income plans, and reparations for Black people. A broad movement of progressives has for years demanded that the Democratic Party distinguish itself from the GOP by making a full-throated defense of the values it claimed to stand for. Rather than leaning rightward by using the Republican-style language of “opportunity” and “freedom,” the Democratic Party could lean left and center the “rights” of people.
If her speech were an album, it would be called “Bland on Bland”. At least I remembered Sarah Palin’s speech for a whole ten minutes after she delivered it. Not even 10 seconds for Ms Harris.
Thank you for remembering my speech, albeit for ten minutes. I completely forgot it immediately.
The couple minutes of the Dem convention that I saw terrified me. Harris or her handlers want to start a war.
Their homage to W, who
lusted afterwanted to burnish his record as a wartime president? That was just one step on his road to perdition, where so many thousands of others were hurt or killed.Thousands? The US killed millions.
I’m reminded of your item a few years ago
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/02/revenge-places-dont-matter.html
“The Revenge of the Places That Don’t Matter”
I think that a key part of Kamala’s speech was where she said-
‘I will make sure that we lead the world into the future on space and Artificial Intelligence, that America — not China — wins the competition for the 21st century, and that we strengthen — not abdicate — our global leadership.’
So in the same way that Biden said that he was running the world, Kamala will seek to do the same though “global leadership” i.e. telling other countries what to do. And certainly China will be in her gun-sights. Actually if will be all those different factions in Washington that will be setting the real agenda. Kamala will just be the public face and do the pr spin so that it all looks better.
Who around the world would take Kamala Harris seriously?
She has the opposite of gravitas, and her principles seem to change with the wind.
An empty pantsuit who was asked to leave the Situation Room. Insiders knew.
One of these days I’d like to see a prominent politician say the word “cooperate” instead of “competition” when it comes to other countries. I like competing in games I will, even now at my advanced age, go full-out in sports or whatever as a game and shake hands with my opponent, or if it’s martial arts (too old for that now) bow to them.
Humanity need cooperation and not competition which, for the US, always leads to war and more cowbell (money for the MIC).
opportunity to compete (for a limited number of opportunities to experience success) seems to be the vision of domestic as well as international affairs.
Life’s a competition. Then you die.
(which perhaps helps to make the warlike rhetoric more intelligible; maybe the pandemic policy, too)
I’m not sure whether this needs an “end snark” tag. It might be a plausible interpretation of elite thinking.
Genocide 2.0, WAR to save FRACKING & crush AGW-mitigating competition (EU & China; but basically: renewable, efficient, sustainable & regenerative) surveillance & authoritarian kleptocracy, controlled by international finance, Atlantic Council, WTO, Likud, CFR… Oilgarch’s. It reminded me far more of Fannie Lou Hamer’s MS delegates, than poor draft-age protests of Daley’s fascist kleptocracy? She’s like a really poorly thrown together RoboCop, spewing debunked hasbara we never believed, but we’re expected to buy into, being affluent white yuppies (since, that’s ALL they’ve EVER even pretended to acknowledge?) It’s Hillary’s DEAD eyes & Biden’s slavering zombie sneer portrayed by yet another hammerhead thug, eagerly anticipating unleashing MAGA Sturmabteilung on all us PASC indentured untermenschen?
I watched the speech, partly because I have never seen Harris speak.
It struck me, that if you close your eyes and change up the voice a little – and adjust certain biographical details – the exact same speech might have been given by Hillary Clinton back during her 2016 campaign. The same emphasis on identity over specifics; the same pitch of “vote for me because Trump is evil”; the same right-wing corporate dog whistles (my ears especially perked up when she gave the “my family lived on a budget…but wanted for nothing” line; here, it is useful to stress that her mother wasn’t a random dishwasher, but a not-quite-lowly scientist at the Berkeley National Laboratory); the same emphasis on “opportunity” over “rights”; the same tough-sounding language on boosting defence spending and “fighting against authoritarianism” or whatnot.
Oddly enough, virtually no mention of China and very little of Russia. Iran is now the Big Bad we are going to defend the world against, apparently.
Even some of the verbal tics were the same – whenever she tries to emote, she ends up shouting instead. Somewhat less of the Clinton monotone delivery, however, from a purely auditory standpoint it was like a bizarre mix of Clinton, Liz Warren’s oddly drawn out syllables, and that automatic help desk voice reading through menu options. Clearly the woman needs a lot of practice in public speaking, though unless she wins Pennsylvania OR both Arizona and Nevada (looking at the RCP map), that might not really be an issue for her past November.
But if she does win, then I am guessing we will finally get to see a Hillary Clinton presidency – followed by a Republican victory in 2028.
“Taxpayer funded healthcare” – not understanding why Sonali Kolhatkar used that term. Good points, otherwise, and a much-needed exposure of how Democrats have adopted Republican lingo.
One term that I’ve detested for years is “access to”, even prior to Sen. Bernie Sanders calling it out as a meaningless term. And I have pointed this out to candidates and the elected to no avail or reply except for once, years ago. A local SC Congressional candidate (who lost) finally switched from “access to affordable healthcare” to “Healthcare is a human right”. Maybe it was because I linked to the GOP platform at that time which had the same exact “access to affordable healthcare” and questioned whether the candidate was running on the correct ticket.
It’s my understanding from reading about fiat currencies and currency issuers like the USA (thanks to Naked Capitalism originally) that federal taxes are not required as revenue and do not actually ever fund anything. So, reading or hearing “taxpayer-funded” for any federal spending initiative causes my brain to freeze.
The problem is their definition of success and the near total corruption of every institution people are supposed to be clamoring to succeed within.
And in some cases it’s not “corruption of”. The institutions are inherently corrupt.
It’s the shit people turn a blind eye to or participate in – like thinking and going along with PE shenanigans as if any of it is making things worthy of a society.
People involved in US foreign pokicy consider themselves “successes”- no matter how vile or ineffective their policies.
And it’s often because they care most about “opportunities”.
“My mother kept a strict budget. We lived within our means.”
Keeping the Thatcher narrative and ceding the debate for more ruinous austerity for the huddled masses all the while pouring billions to the war machine, the MIC, and subsidies for the oligarchs.
I did not listen to the speech. I have not, and shall not, read the speech. The entire exercise in PR that was the convention and is Harris’s candidacy comes to this: Nothing Will Fundamentally Change.
Just need to catch her saying that on video like Biden was…
I didn’t watch the speech but sounds like the now bog standard third way nostrum: “learn to code.” Don’t bitterly cling to guns and religion but accept this offered equal opportunity to fit into a world where the wealthy have all the power and you can get ahead–like me–by playing ball with them.
But then the wealthy literally selected her to be candidate and are now donating hundreds of millions to make sure she won’t deviate from their agenda. So what else could one expect?
Neither candidate is of course out to challenge this power structure but Trump at least seems willing to be less internationalist about it. And his opposition to open borders acknowledges that the current border policy further reduces the power of the lowers by introducing still more competition for the jobs that they don’t have.
The one power that the masses do still have in this country is the power to vote and by voting out the current crowd of plutocrats the public can at least give them pause.
Well, I would say we are eff’d, again. I must say, after reading the article here about RFK Jr’s withdrawl- and comments, and observing and reading and experiencing more than enough of and about Trump, I am stumped at folks expressing support and a vote for Trump. I must have a huge blind spot, and need at least several more of those Red Pills from the Matrix.
I think Jill Stein comes the closest to representing my world view, and I am fully and dishearteningly aware that view isn’t even a minority view- it’s a blipy rounding error.
Regardless of all the kabuki, the Uniparty, and Empirical America, the Military/ Industrial state, and BAU will continue.
The one takeaway after watching four nights run dnc — yes I watched all four, whereas I couldn’t engage for 10 minutes of RNC Trump one-ring circus— the one takeaway we had at our hearth of the TeeVee, was,
Isn’t it nice that Harris’ dog and pony show is so abbreviated? 75 days is plenty long!
We need less two-year election runups.
The ‘information’ and promises is all horse-apples and empty promises: truncate it. Congress is where the action is, and they are all bought and busy nest-feathering carrying legislation and priorities for the monied financial class.
Publicly funded, three month election cycle, ranked- choice voting might help.
Having what congress and the executive branch and military get as employee benefits extended to all Americans might help( Medical care, vision, dental, etc.)
Term limits.
No more electoral college.
Tax reform over a ten year period– where each year the percentage increases- the individual tax payer gets to have an increasing percentage say in where she wants her tax dollars allocated. Let Americans point the direction they want the country to proceed. After 10 years, 50% of every dollar in tax is directed by taxpayer, 50% by congress to their general fund.
Anyway, I need better coffee — low energy after all last weeks Noose.
May all you NC’ers have a great low – smoke end of summer weekend!
First, Jill Stein is not on the ballot in quite a few large-ish states, such as New York, Georgia, and Virginia, so your implicit hectoring of readers for not saying they will vote for Stein seems misplaced. https://monthlyreview.org/product/beyond-leviathan/
Second, some people have been indoctrinated to believe that third parties in the act as spoilers. For Stein, it would be for Team D. So they would argue that your enthusiasm for Stein amount to support for Trump, Mind you, I have always voted for third parties. and think this charge is overblown.
Third, you seem to ignore the motivations of many of the readers here. Do you see pro-Trump tribalism? What you see is antipathy for the Democrats, and a refusal to support them when they squeal “Orange Man bad!” instead of presenting serious policies to help ordinary people, particularly after they stomped on and pissed all over Sanders twice.
The hearing for Georgia Green Party ballot access for the Stein campaign was last Thursday. I was there as an elector whose credentials were challenged, and it looks like the three points that were brought against us were sufficiently responded to that they will not be an issue. The last minute Hail Mary of disaffiliation is something that is being looked into right now, but it also shouldn’t be much of an issue.
We should be hearing about the judgements for the De la Cruz, West and RFK Jr. (now irrelevant) campaigns ballot access issues, along with our own, sometime next week.
https://www.ajc.com/politics/georgias-green-party-scrambles-for-ballot-access-as-challengers-attempt-to-bar-the-way/VIZUA6O4VVA4LDXO4O2L5BNTYE/?utm_cohort=evening_campaign_1-evening_cohort_1-d91ae7d9d52ac3cbb554fa3c0038439a4993b5eb7dcb78cfa1914add46625349&utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=EveningRead&utm_content=10858081
My better half had her speech on in the kitchen and I heard that part about the “chance to compete” which made me run from the room before I started breaking things. Few minutes later I came back in to get something from the fridge and she was yammering on about how everybody would be lifted up, up some such stale platitude.
Well competition implies that some will lose and be left behind, and as noted, is some pretty Republican rhetoric. I much prefer her second sentiment. So which is it? Does she even know? Does she even see the contradictions in her own speech? Did she even skim through it before reading it off the teleprompter?
And if she truly believes the rhetoric about making everyone’s life better, why aren’t we hearing any specific policies that will provide concrete material benefits for everyone?
Once again, a pox on all their houses.
It is surely not surprising that politicians deliver platitudes when they are not lying. What is much, much more surprising is that their audiences cheer, and more surprising still, that people think that platitudes and lies are worth voting for.
“But reading Harris’s speech rather than watching it, helped bring some distance from the joy and clarified that the party is still not embracing the language of progressive economic populism and continues to use the destructive language of the right.”
I don’t think both parties can break the big money bind and, both are Corpos as described in Sinclair Lewis’ It Cant Happen Here
Brings to mind some speech where Theodore Roosevelt was mocking the other party ‘Oh let us handle the storm’
“Anything You Can Do” by Irving Berlin
Anything you can do, I can do better than You can do,
I can do, we can do, I can do, much much better than You.
Anything you can do, I can do better.
I can do anything better than you.
No you can’t.
Yes I can.
No you can’t.
Yes I can.
No you can’t.
Yes I can, yes I can.
Anything You can be I can be greater.
Sooner or later, I’m greater than you.
No, you’re not.
Yes I am.
No you’re not.
Yes I am.
No you’re not.
Yes I am, yes I am.
I can shoot a partridge with a single cartridge.
I can get a sparrow with a bow and arrow.
We can do most anything.
Can you bake a pie?
No.
Well Neither can I.
Anything you can sing I can sing louder.
I can sing anything louder than you.
No you can’t.
Yes I can.
No you can’t.
Sure I can.
No you can’t.
Yes I can
I’m superior, no you’re inferior.
I’m the big attraction, oh no you are the small.
I’m the major one, oh no you’re the minor one,
I can beat you at anything’, and that’s not all.
Anything you can buy, I can buy cheaper.
I can buy anything cheaper than you.
Fifty cents.
Forty cents.
Thirty cents.
Twenty cents.
No you can’t.
Yes I can, yes I can.
Anything you can dig, I can dig deeper.
I can dig anything deeper than you.
Thirty feet.
Forty feet.
Fifty feet.
I can drink my liquor faster than a flicker.
I can do it quicker and get even sicker.
I can live on bread and cheese.
And only on that?
Yep.
So can a rat.
Any note you can reach, I can go higher.
I can sing anything higher than you.
No you can’t.
Yes I can.
No you can’t.
Yes I can.
Anyone you can lick, I can lick faster.
I can lick anyone faster than you.
With your fist?
With my feet.
With your feet?
With an axe.
Anything you can do, I can do better.
I can do anything better than you.
No you can’t.
Yes We can.
No you can’t.
Yes We can.
No you can’t.
Yes We can, yes We can.
I wonder if Kamala has obtained a copy of the questions that will be asked during the upcoming debate?
So in this context, “opportunity” serves the same symbolic purpose as “access”, or “fighting for.” Empty slogans devoid of material benefits. Joyful noises from the Dems.
We can’t have ” progressive economic populism”, cannot pay for it and “protect” Israel’s right to clear Palestine of Palestinians and Kiev’s right to de-Russify novoroosiye and store US nukes 600 km from Moscow.
Harris/Walz is PNAC front and center!
Hope and change…. got us US troops in Syria forever.
What wil Harris/walz give US?
“This is what she has to say in order to be elected.”
—ALL my Dem friends. They will not admit that what she says is quite possibly what she means. Ahh…the pleasures of JOY. Looking forward to the first post-election comment about now having to hold her feet to the fire, etc.