Kamala’s coronation is a blow for US democracy

 

This week, the Democratic Party will nominate for president a woman who hasn’t won a single primary. I’ve elected not to attend the convention in Chicago. Since Joe Biden pulled out, it’s become a toothless coronation – and if there are protests, I can’t report on them. To do that, one needs pre-approved press credentials from the terrifying Chicago Police Department, which seems to regard half a dozen kids with placards and a camera as a nascent riot.

The diminution of American democracy continues. Three months ago, we were told Joe was fit and well: anyone who said otherwise was a liar. Then he bombed at the debate. The elite realised Trump might win, so now we were told Biden was gravely ill – and horribly selfish for refusing to stand aside. A coalition of hacks and politicians humiliated the poor man off the ticket, a surrender they quickly labelled “historic” and “brave.”

It was Kamala Harris’ turn for a makeover. Yesterday, she was an idiot; today she is the second coming of Lincoln, with quirks that once made her absurd – that crazy laugh, her random use of unrelated words – rebranded as a breath of fresh air. And it seems to be working. She’s climbing fast through the polls. If Trump was crafted by Twitter, Harris has been remade by TikTok – a living meme whose every slap-down and side-eye is greeted by the press with “oh no, she didn’t!”

Of course, one thing she absolutely will not do is talk to reporters. There’s been no formal press conference since she stole Joe’s mantle, not a single sit-down interview. She declined even to speak with Time magazine, despite it comparing the candidate to Obama and putting a pencil portrait of Kamala on the cover that Trump admitted made her look “beautiful”.

The message is that Kamala is “normal” while her opponents are “weird”, an impression reinforced by tapping Governor Tim Walz for her vice president. He served in the military. He taught in a school. Tim – a name that evokes decency and trust – has been crowned “America’s dad”, albeit a dad who takes a weirdo position on trans rights, abortion and illegal immigration.

The one interesting task Biden gave Kamala was reducing people-flow to the border via Central America. Today, the border is a mess; conservatives call her a failed “border czar”. Democrats insist that the term never applied to her because it doesn’t exist, and by implication is a Right-wing smear. Yet contributors to CNN, CBS and ABC called her a “border czar” in the past, and Lester Holt famously put it to her that “You haven’t been to the border”, as if it were part of her job. She replied with characteristic absurdity: “And I haven’t been to Europe.”

It’s rumoured that Harris worried that her brief was being mischaracterised; some speculated at the time that she was being set up by Biden’s staff to take the wrap for an impossible task. The “border czar” controversy is a reminder that until very recently, she was regarded by the people now promoting her as the weak link in a frail administration.

At least her name was familiar. With Biden apparently so sick he can’t run for re-election, the US media ought to be asking: “who is running this country?” – and the list of potential answers is very short.

A fun game to play in the car is, “name a member of the Biden cabinet”. I bet you can get Harris, maybe Antony Blinken, but that’s it. Yet, think back to George W Bush and the names trip off the tongue – Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice – because US politics used to be dominated by substantial, accomplished people (a few of them, contra the myth about Republicans, female and black).

Today, if the Republicans are held hostage by their base, the Democrats are run by a dwindling, ageing elite – and Kamala, who at 59 is older than you think, was granted her party’s nomination not because she’s a “diversity hire” but because they didn’t want an open contest and she happened to be next in line.

America, after years of messing about, has reverted to monarchy. Welcome home, cousins.

Story by Tim Stanley