TO A corporate media all too often obsessed with easy headlines and tempting clickbait, Donald Trump is the gift that keeps on giving. And during the course of the ninety-minute presidential debate on Tuesday, he provided enough baseless claims and bizarre allegations for the media to dine out on for the rest of the week. None of what Trump had to say though should have come as any surprise, he was playing to his base support after all. They seem prepared to believe just about anything he says. But for the rest of America and most of the world, Trump has well and truly outstayed his welcome. If the Trump presidency was peak Trump, his only real reason to exist these days is to provide material for the late night talkshow hosts.
Kamala Harris and her team understand this well. During the course of the debate, Harris helpfully assisted Trump into making a fool of himself. And, throughout, she painted Trump as yesterday's man. She talked of America 'moving forward' and 'turning the page' on Trumpism. In response, Trump's claim that Harris was a 'Marxist' just sounded desperate.
But the media's fixation with Trump meant that the politics and policies of Harris Kamala Harris have largely escaped serious attention. While Harris might have talked of ushering in a new chapter in America's history, there was nothing in what she said that suggested that she has anything new to offer. It's little wonder that the corporate money has flowed into the Harris campaign; she represents no threat to the continued rule of capital.
In keeping with the Democratic Party's traditional risk-averse approach to everything, Kamalanomics is closer to Obama and the Clintons than to the Green New Deal of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. While this may be argued to be an effective electoral approach, it is a far cry from embracing a democratic socialist alternative to the Democratic Party’s centrist past.
And some views Kamala Harris expressed during the debate were thoroughly reactionary. She failed, for example, to address the existential challenge of climate change. But, at the same time, she boasted of increased oil production under the Biden presidency and said that she supported continued fracking in the United States, after previously opposing it.
Harris also said that she wanted to see a ceasefire of Gaza but also said that she supported Israel 'defending itself'. She made it clear that, under her presidency, the United States would continue to send the Zionist ethnostate the weapons it demanded. And while she was more than ready to condemn Hamas, and repeated Israeli lies about Hamas, she refused to discuss Israel's mass slaughter of Palestinians in besieged Gaza. While she smirked at Trump's baseless claim that babies were being killed in the United States, she had nothing to say about the over 17,000 children Israel has killed in Gaza.
In some left wing quarters, a vote for Harris is being encouraged in order to stop Donald Trump and his cronies returning to the White House. That's the view of Democratic Party congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. And, yes, a Harris presidency would be preferable to another four years of Trump. But the timid centrist policies of Kamala Harris will not be enough to finally defeat the far right. Something far more ambitious is needed to create lasting change.
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