It is said that ‘one swallow doth not a summer make’ but if the recent dramatic rise in the poll numbers continues for Kamala Harris, her ‘eternal summer ‘ will not only extend to nomination by the Democratic Party but take her all the way to the White House.
In the months preceding the first Democratic debates in June it seemed that the Harris campaign had begun to run out of steam and had lost much of its early traction, even as the polls showed Joe Biden moving inexorably to certain Democratic Party nomination outpacing his closest rivals by double-digit points. Ms. Harris was not even his closest rival being relegated to a distant third behind Bernie Saunders and even fourth behind Elizabeth Warren according to some polls.
THE POLLS
Then in the space of a week it all changed with the first Democratic Primary debate in which Ms Harris took aim at Joe Biden for comments he had made several days earlier about working with segregationists senators a decade earlier. Although Biden’s comments had already earned him widespread public criticism and opprobrium from Democratic party supporters, Kamala Harris cleverly elevated it to the national stage and at once made it a campaign issue, placing herself front and centre as a victim of racial segregation. Telling the story of a little girl who was in an early wave of children bused to integrate schools in California, she dramatically declared “That little girl was me.” That declaration quickly, if temporarily, became the mantra for the Harris campaign.
USA Today, described her performance as a ‘campaign defining moment’ and the polls have been there to substantiate it. By months end Ms Harris’ popularity among Democratic voters had shot up from 7% to 20% a 13% jump placing her in a virtual tie with Biden at 22% (there is a 2% +/- margin of error)while his previous commanding lead a month earlier had virtually evaporated. Equally significant for Ms Harris is the fact that she had also gained traction with black voters which is a crucial bloc for Democrats as was shown by the mid-term elections last November in which many of the victories were driven by black votes particularly women. The most recent poll numbers tell the tale. Biden’s support among black Democratic voters shrank to 31% down from 48% a month earlier while Kamala Harris’ grew to 27% up from a mere 11% over the same period.
It is of course, early days yet. Another five debates are scheduled for the rest of the year starting at the end of July and the first Primary is not due until February in Iowa. But there are already some hopeful signs that Kamala’s resurgence is not a nine-day wonder. She has already hit the ground in Iowa where the most recent CNN polls show her to be in second place. Another positive sign for the Harris campaign is the increase in approaches it has received from potential donors. In the immediate aftermath of her positive showing in the first debates her camp raised $2 million online from 63,000 plus, of which more than half was from first time donors.
FIGHTING AND BEATING BACK RIGHT WING RACISM
Kamala Harris’ grit became even more evident days later when there were malicious attempts to undermine her racial identity – something which had been festering for months earlier. This time a vulgar post by a conservative commentator was re-tweeted by Donald Trump Jr which accused Ms Harris of not being black, claiming she was half Indian and half Jamaican – a heritage she has never denied. However, the real implication of the post was that she was not eligible to run for president of the United States. Ms Harris did not herself even react or respond; she didn’t have to as the tweet caused so great a backlash even from her 2020 Democratic rivals that Trump Jr. had to quickly withdraw the tweet claiming it was a “misunderstanding”. No misunderstanding and maybe a bit of panic if one were to place weight on a comment by Newt Gingrich, Fox News contributor and former Republican House speaker who on July 3 declared “ I think she [Kamala] is probably the most dangerous of the Democrats.”
VALUING HER JAMAICAN HERITAGE
As the campaign moves closer to the actual Primaries and later on to the Presidential campaign if she wins the nomination, there will inevitably be deeper probes into her personal life and her family connections and it is here that Jamaicans in the US and their transnational families across the Atlantic and here at home will have an interest and should be prepared to stand up for her. Ms Harris may not often make references to Donald Harris her distinguished Jamaican father but observers have noted that she unwittingly displays some of his qualities and have perhaps unconsciously internalized some of his ideas and his deep social consciousness. A February 10, 2019 article in the Mercury News quotes Tracy Mott, a former student of Donald Harris who is now a professor at the University of Denver as saying that watching Kamala Harris grill Trump appointees on TV made him think of the way her father asked his students tough questions in the classroom. “She always is very analytical and really can figure out what’s the insightful thing to ask” said Mott, “just like him”
Father Donald has stayed far away from the campaign and has refused to give any interviews to US media or shed light on his relationship with Kamala and her sister Maya. The one exception is his heartwarming account published here on Jamaica Global Online last September of imbuing in his daughters the best qualities of their Jamaican heritage and culture.
Donald Harris is not without distinction. Noted sociologist and public intellectual Orlando Patterson the John Cowles Professor of Sociology at Harvard University remembers Don as a classmate in the first batch of Social Science students at the University of the West Indies Mona Jamaica. He recalls that Don was a classicist who opted for Economics and was the first and only black professor in the economics department at Stanford University in the early 1970s.
Jamaica’s Export Economy: Towards a Strategy of Export – led Growth – published by Ian Randle Publishers
Casey Tolan the author of that February 10 article in Mercury News referred to earlier, wrote that at Stanford, Don was said to be popular among students and was seen as something of a radical, developing programmes of alternative approaches to economic analysis where students explored theories that went against the dominant views of the time. He wrote about uneven economic development, explaining how difficult it was for poor countries to catch up with rich countries and the impact of income inequality for Black Americans – ideas that seem to echo in Kamala Harris’ policy agenda today.
Kamala Harris may have unknowingly inherited and internalized much of that deep social awareness and strong sense of identity handed down from her paternal great grandparents’ Jamaican grassroots philosophy about which her father has written. She may not even be aware of how much it has influenced her world view but she would do well to take as much of that Jamaican creativity and fighting spirit with her on the long journey to the White House. Those who belittle or undervalue it do so at their own peril.
