My purpose: to claim all possibilities for radicalizing Kamala Harris’s campaign to demand a ceasefire and not one more bomb, while making sure that Trump does not win. And to recognize how unique it is to see this band of warriors organizing around Harris as her campaign progresses alongside newly picked running mate Tim Walz.
There is a huge diverse coalition supporting Kamala.
Do not homogenize it or think you know all its dimensions.
There is massive new energized camaraderie in play.
It is more radical than Kamala herself.
No one knows if it will diminish, or grow, or be lasting.
For so many of us the election was: anybody but Trump. Then Biden bowed out and Kamala was in. For many, it is still anybody but Trump, but maybe it can be something more with Kamala. So much is unknown as we enter the last stages of the 2024 Presidential campaign. July was wild. Who knows what August holds. We will see how adding Tim Walz to the ticket affects the coalitions rallying for Kamala.
There are so many unanswered questions right now.
Questions that do not have answers in this moment might just be the right questions to ask and not forget.
The disastrous Biden debate happened on June 27.
It took 27 painful and chaotic days for Biden to finally step aside, and, to endorse Kamala Harris as the new Presidential candidate.
Then came the next (first) week and a half of joy, jubilance, energy, and determination to defeat Trump.
What really happened here? Why did the Democrats allow Biden to debate Trump knowing what they already knew? Critics pressed hard for Biden to step aside with devastating critique and condemnation, and he said no. And, then he finally said yes, supposedly for the good of the Party and democracy. But what changed? Why?
I am not thinking there is a conspiracy to uncover but rather a factional politics that will reveal the new and newest interests of the Democratic party, and/or the U.S. itself.
Biden will not be president, but what of his policies, especially on the genocide in Gaza? And what of his uncomfortable positioning on abortion rights?
Before the doomed debate people were already despondent with the two candidates at hand. What does it mean that so many people were disenchanted and broken that we did not go into the streets and demand new candidates in both parties? Why were we so beaten down that we allowed this non-choice of two old white men? Biden was showing his age. But more importantly, his brain is rigid and unimaginative. He is stuck in a unipolar world with its old factions and divisions. His outdated loyalty to Zionism is murderous. He does not look to find the new unknowns.
And, then there is Trump. He too is not a thinker, but a manipulator. He is openly misogynist and racist and denigrates people. He is a known felon and criminal — he steals, and abuses, and rapes. How is it possible that he is a candidate for President again? Why does the mainstream media give Trump a pass on being old and incoherent? And incompetent?
A crucial question for so many is what kind of policies will Kamala Harris imagine and endorse in this newer world we wish to inhabit? How do you understand immigration in a world of climate disaster and global capital and global labor where national borders are disregarded? What are the creative new understandings that must be recognized for a free Palestine and an end to Israel’s genocidal war that the U.S. enables and subsidizes? What of Ukraine? How to liberate abortion politics?
Who should the U.S. be in a world almost freed from unipolar U.S. domination and neo-liberalism? The guard rails are gone for us at home. Neoliberalism is at war with a neofascism where the Supreme Court has enabled lawless rule. How do you function in neo liberal/fascist democracy when there is little liberal democracy left?
Democracy always was built on top of a racial discriminatory order and patriarchy and its misogyny. But the old formations no longer exist with a reordering of public and private life, family and economy, nation and globe, and last, but not least gender binaries themselves. We are having a presidential election in all this chaos. So, let all this disarray open new possibilities rather than fear.
The Hopefulness of the New
A wealth of political energy has been jumpstarted by Kamala’s campaign.
We have yet to find out what the new will be here. And will it be new enough for those of us who want and end to guns, and genocide in Gaza, and wars, and climate disaster and full reproductive justice? We will need to press and push to find out.
For the moment I am hopeful and ready to work to defeat Donald Trump and JD Vance by supporting and pushing Kamala Harris to hear our progressive voices.
As soon as Kamala became the candidate there was an amazing response and mobilization. It was as though a public, or many publics were awoken from their despondence. People of all sorts answered the call to be present. In about a week’s time I and so many others were on #Kamala4President zooms and phone calls. #BlackWomenLead jump-started it all and then it was #WhiteWomen4Harris and #BlackMen, then #WhiteDudes, then #Latinas, and #NativeAmericans … and … and …. It is so interesting that although the initial calls utilized and mobilized differing identities, these identities shared and coalesced together to unite behind Harris — different and connected.
This early strategy for mobilizing huge numbers of people created exhilaration. This feels new. Be careful with outdated modes that make it hard to see the new. I am trained as a political scientist, so I know about outdated thinking. I wrote a book about Obama’s election, “The Audacity of Races and Genders, A Personal and Global Story of the Obama Election” (New York, Zed Press, 2009). I went to South Africa to speak in Cape Town to answer the host’s query: Is the U.S. ready for a Black president? So, what does it mean to ask if Kamala can win? She says herself, she’s been a first in repeatedly winning jobs never held by a Black/Indian/woman. Yes, she can.
Her very multiple and intersectional identities mean she has many groups who are supporting her, more than a white man does. Her training in law and the rule of law is particularly pertinent, running against the man who is lawless. She has chosen freedom as her campaign theme and the Beyoncé song is perfect. She makes clear that at the top of her freedom agenda is the freedom to make choices about our bodies, especially about abortion. More than 75% of the American public believes in the right to abortion.
Women — bi, trans, non-binary, gay, queer, every color and class — today are fired up because many of us were part of the civil rights struggle and the movement to legalize abortion and have enjoyed this right for the past 50 years. Once you have had freedom, you do not give it up easily. Who are these people who tell us that abortion is not a voting issue? And keep sidelining it as a crucial issue for democracy?
Understand that the mobilized publics right now might not elicit your usual idea of who matters when it comes to voting. And I do not think polls clarify or recognize these new interested people/voters even though she is gaining in the polls with incredible speed. Polls are not polling many of the people who I think will be voting for Kamala. They ignore Twitter and Instagram and TikTok. They ignore young people. I am not sure that categories like undecideds and independents resonate.
The voters are ahead of the people who are assessing the voting. And, it would be great if the New York Times and CNN and all our media started revealing Trump for what he is. Stop covering him and reporting about him as though there is anything normal here. I will say more about the Republican convention shortly.
Maybe, stop thinking that the core to winning in this country is the so-called white working class that is so often equated with Make America Great Again (MAGA) loyalty. There is a huge working class in our country, but it is not predominantly white or male. Recognize the women of color of the working class and many of them are with Kamala. Stop looking backwards. I’m not even asking you to look forward. Just look at what is now.
Multiple identities and shared intersectionality creates a new voting map. This is why there is such incredible energy, and excitement, and hope for Kamala. The downside of this is what it says about how bad things have gotten. Biden was out of touch on abortion and most significantly Gaza and the war against Palestinians. Campus protests spoke a new truth of at least many young people, and our Zionist government came down hard on them. I assume the pushback will resume very soon, as classes start again. But I am hoping Kamala will create a different political climate. And progressives will have to push for this. I think Biden would still be in the running if not for the pro-Palestinian movement among young people and anti-Zionists in this country. We need to make sure Harris knows this.
New publics are forming right now. A new politics is in process. New locations of giving and receiving political information are emerging. What the outcome of this all will be is unknown. But 2024 needs new imaginative thinking and activism and assessing to embolden these new realities. Recognize the new so it might flourish. It just might be that the extraordinariness of this moment is the movement of movements, so to speak, that has coalesced around and for Kamala, more than Kamala herself, especially if it can radicalize her.
The MAGA Convention
I listened and watched the daily coverage of the Republican convention to see what I might learn about Trump and MAGA now. I wondered: who are these people?
Trump was wearing his large white bandage on his ear and the failed shooting is called an assassination attempt. A quick aside: after days of investigating there are no clear political commitments or fetishes revealed. The only thing that has been somewhat established is that the shooter was a troubled youth who suffered terrible bullying. His friends said the bullying was relentless. And I thought, Trump is a known bully. Maybe he shot him because he is a bully. But in this scenario, we would have to talk about bullies and the millions of guns that exist in the hands of white boy bullies in this country. This would be a very different conversation.
I am also wondering as I watch the (make-believe) convention, how is it possible that this criminal pretends to not be one? Trump is a convicted rapist and sexual molester. How does a man like this get to do anything that affects public life? The Republican convention was a celebration of Trump. It seemed like a mania.
This is a cult. He is surrounded by sycophants. Every speaker was either part of the family or part of the right-wing fringes of this country. Hulk Hogan, really? UFC (Ultimate Fight Club) persona Dana White? It really was not a convention, or a convening. It was a family affair and was only open to those who promise their fealty. There was no sign of a former Republican President, or other established members of the Party or even former members of his cabinet. Only those who bow down to MAGA were in attendance.
This is a party of (mainly white) men, for men, that parades women — preferably white and blonde and botoxed — as metaphor for misogyny. And, in case this isn’t clear enough, Trump doubles down with his choice of Vance to mobilize working class men, ignoring the fact that in 2024 women are a majority of the workforce and a large presence in labor unions.
The whole time I am watching and listening I was thinking you, Trump, destroyed Roe V. Wade with your anti-abortion supreme court appointments. And now you do not have the courage or honesty to even mention abortion in your tirades. And, as I watch I think women will remember it was you and your party that disrespected us so deeply, and you will not win.
Pro-abortion/reproductive justice people outweigh MAGA right-wingers by a lot. I have written and researched the right in this country since 1980 and the election of Ronald Reagan and even when it was said that he won by a landslide, that landslide was 26% of the voting population. In the decades since that I have tracked the right wing in this country, it never exceeds 26%, and is often lower.
Abortion is about everything — our choices about how many children to have and when to have them. It is about being able to organize our jobs and work-life. It is about planning our dreams. It is about choice and choosing. It is about respect. It is about love. So, this single issue is multiple, and it will defeat Trump. Biden did not get this. I think Kamala does. She sees women in their varieties and colors. Abortion will be the downfall of Trump and his acolytes. If Kamala takes women, in all our variety, seriously, she will win.
About Patriarchy and Fascism
This election is about misogyny, racism, fascism, and democracy. Maybe MAGA men and some of their women are so angry because the last vestiges of racist patriarchy have been exposed and are teetering. MAYBE if Kamala wins it finally means that angry white men, whatever their class, do not get to run the country anymore — either as President or their surrogate.
In this borderless world everything is exposed from one’s country to one’s gender choice. It is in part why this new fascism is particularly patriarchal in its roots/routes. It uses macho power systems to enforce its new rules and laws. This is not Hitler’s fascism. This is U.S. Trump fascism — designed with masculinist privileges and structures. Marriage, at least according to Vance, is to be endured even if there is domestic violence. He would also like there to be a national abortion ban including rape and incest.
Patriarchy precedes fascism. Crises in patriarchy and racism elicit fascist responses. As patriarchal racism cracks, and shifts, and morphs, fascism responds. It tries to plug the holes and fissures in the sexual/gender/racial hierarchy and order. Gender and racial boundaries alongside each other undermine and expose the emperor. It is why right-wing bullies are always anti-transgender people.
Illiberal and fascist and misogynistic trends feed each other. Challenges and cracks in patriarchal racism elicits fascist responses that further undermine feminisms of all kinds. So, this is a crucial moment for Kamala, her just-announced running mate Tim Walz, and the many of us with her. Women and their supporters — of all colors, gender choices, sexual identities united are bigger than any one person.
Zillah Eisenstein is a noted international feminist writer and activist and Professor Emerita, Political Theory, Ithaca College. She is the author of many books, including “The Female Body and the Law” (UC Press, 1988), which won the Victoria Schuck Book Prize for the best book on women and politics; “Hatreds” (Routledge., 1996), “Global Obscenities” (NYU Press, 1998), “Against Empire” (Zed Press, 2004), and most recently, “Abolitionist Socialist Feminism” (Monthly Review Press, 2019).
Header photo by Gage Skidmore on Wikimedia Commons.