Kamala Harris Exposes the Superficiality of Liberal Politics

By Jacob Weindling  |  August 8, 2024 | 11:10am
Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Elections Democratic Party
Kamala Harris Exposes the Superficiality of Liberal Politics

Last night at a campaign rally, Kamala Harris was interrupted by a group of protesters demanding a ceasefire and an arms embargo in Gaza. Her initial response was to smile through it like so many other politicians have done as they have come into contact with protesters since October 7th, but as it carried on, she chose a retort that evoked memories of Hillary Clinton in 2016 equating any kind of resistance to Democratic policy as support for Donald Trump. Partial clips have been floating around online but it’s helpful to watch the entire moment play out in full.

It’s instructive to think about how partisan Democrats would react if Israel was committing a genocide with Donald Trump’s blessing, instead of the Biden-Harris administration’s.

Do you think that there would be similar calls for patience and appeals to understand the supposed complexity of the situation? Would Democrats cheer Trump charging protesters with baseless attacks? As someone who lived through the #Resistance years in the online content world, I would bet every last cent I have and will ever earn that partisan liberals would sound a lot more like us leftists if Trump was massacring thousands of children in Gaza instead of Joe Biden.

You certainly wouldn’t see posts like this from Illinois’ Lieutenant Governor fawning over Trump shouting down people protesting a genocide. This is but one of many takes like it floating around today from partisan liberals placing all their focus on the superficiality of this moment while wholly ignoring the actual substance of it.

A “conservative estimate” by The Lancet from a month ago pegged the Gaza death toll at around 186,000 people. This moment is frankly, a litmus test for your politics. Do you see a performance to be graded? Or do you see the outcomes of the administration’s policies being protested? Whether you naturally sympathize with the person in power or the people protesting power is a window into how you view politics.

If you are so dedicated to sustaining the so-called vibes of the moment where the Democrats didn’t make the worst possible choice for once (twice!) that you are willing to overlook a genocide, then I seriously question what kind of vibes you actually want to surround yourself with. Women and children are being massacred while prisoners are raped and tortured with the aid of your tax dollars, likely as you read this, and sticking your head in the sand and pretending that changing the candidate without altering the policy will fix this issue is the picture of denial.

Kamala Harris is the Vice President of the United States, and she has the power to affect change right now. That’s what the protest was about. The classic braindead liberal identity politics angle to this incident doesn’t really work when the people protesting a Black woman are representing another historically marginalized group.

Not to mention that doing this in Michigan is electorally damaging, as Dearborn is home to America’s largest Arab American community. If Kamala Harris wants to be president, she probably has to win this state, and getting on the wrong side of people like Michigan House Majority Floor Leader Abraham Aiyash is just bad politics.

Calls for patience and all this other empty liberal pablum that downplays the urgency of the situation in order to create a common ground that does not exist are luxuries that people suffering in Gaza cannot afford. Yes, the vice president indicated before the speech she was open to meeting with protesters calling for an arms embargo, and speaking  as someone who has a source in the Uncommitted movement, I can report that she has been light years better than Joe Biden has with this group of voters telling the Democrats they want to vote Democrat in November, but this is an urgent matter. If Harris wins in November, she won’t be president until January.

She’s the vice president right now.

Are the partisan Democrats shouting down the protesters OK with a lot more people dying in the intervening period just so their vibes Queen can keep up the façade?

People making excuses for Kamala’s retort should compare it to Joe Biden’s response to protesters in March. Which one do you think evokes more sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians?

That said, it is not a personal failing if you do find yourself on the superficial side of the coin today. America’s poisonous individualistic ideology is isolating, and it tries to convince us that every mistake is a reflection of our supposed unchanging personal values. “We live in a society” is more meme than explanation at this point, but it is an explanation! No one comes to their political conclusions on their own, and we are all moved by outside forces.

The media is the most superficial actor in politics, and how they cover it influences how a lot of people view it, especially those who don’t pay much attention to policy and only experience the media’s bird-brained coverage of political spectacle. Add in the fact that the Democratic Party is constitutionally incapable of accepting responsibility for its mistakes, and you have a toxic stew where partisans are cheering for one of the most powerful people in America asserting that folks protesting a genocide are Trump voters. I’m not so sure that’s a logical route Democrats want to travel down.

This is a key moment for Kamala Harris. Personally, I don’t have a problem with anything she did other than equating protesting her with supporting Trump. Protesters have a right to interrupt her and she has a right to respond, but the way she did evokes vibes of Hillary in 2016, where people demanding a better future were painted as Trump supporters in sheep’s clothing. I was 100% certain I was going to vote for Kamala Harris after she chose Tim Walz as her running mate. After last night, I am 99% certain and am willing to let that number drop further should her policy response not focus on ending the suffering in Gaza.

How she reacted in the moment last night is frankly, not all that important, and lefties should be cautious to not put too much stock in it. The only thing that matters is whether she drastically changes U.S. policy in Gaza, and she has indicated she may be more amenable to doing so than the administration she currently works for. Getting too caught up in her Hillary-brained response is authoring the same superficial mistake so many partisan liberals are making today.

If the policy Harris winds up producing matches this extremely condescending moment, then yeah, this was a harbinger of doom and we’re stuck in 2016 forever, but if anything, this kerfuffle is a great thing for the left. It reminded everyone that she is still a major player in an administration that has been aiding and abetting a genocide and refusing to do standard things that presidents like Ronald Reagan did to rein in America’s chief client state. It has now placed pressure on her to respond to the protests in a substantive manner, and should she do so, then perhaps lefties would be willing to rejoin the vibes caucus. Until she has a plan to stop the genocide, the substantive and superficial wings of the Democratic Party will remain separated and in conflict, because they both have entirely different views of the very nature of politics.

 
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