Harris should take the divisions over Gaza seriously
The Faintest Candidates: Kamala Harris in Michigan, Missing Obama’s 2020, and the Case for Israel Against Hamas
Authenticity is a mirage. Americans crave the performance of authenticity as a sign that our values are in safe hands — hands just like ours. People who study this stuff for a living do not agree on what authenticity is. It’s a “you know it when you see it” situation. Candidates need to work with audience expectations of who they should be in power. A tall white guy with a healthy head of hair simply looks presidential.
The candidate who underwhelmed in 2020 is gone, despite me not being the biggest fan of him. The candidate Harris has appeared in public many times since becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee and I have been watching her to see how she plans to run and govern. The Harris- Walz ticket made its first official appearance at the Philadelphia rally during the convention of the National Federation of Teachers, but the annual conclave of the Chi Alpha chapter of the sorority, and the National Federation of Teachers convention have vastly different audiences.
For weeks, the signs did not look good for Kamala Harris in Michigan. Literally. There is a digital billboard on the side of a barn that states Willie Brown Endorses Kamala, which I saw while driving to Grayling.
There was no sign of such skepticism at the Harris rally near the Detroit airport last Wednesday, where roughly 15,000 excited people waited hours to see her. The crowd included recovering Republicans who had never been to a political rally before, United Autoworkers members in matching red shirts and Black sorority sisters dressed head to manicured toe in pink and green. Some of them mentioned experiencing the same magic they’d felt during Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential run, as they pondered the possibility of breaking another barrier — this time, the first female president. According to Sigro, she missed out on Obama. I did not want to miss out on history again.
The comparisons are both inspiring and worrying. Inspiring because it does matter that such barriers are broken, and worrying because it can tempt Democrats to focus on style and symbolism over substance. This risk is most evident, and most significant, on the issue of Gaza. There is no issue within the Democratic Party that is more divided than the U.S. government’s support for Israel after it was attacked by Hamas. If the Harris campaign is unable to address this thorny issue in a way that feels like substance, then Democrats may not get the unity they’ll need to win in November.