A ripple of relief is spreading over most European capitals and a few others at the astonishing rise of Kamala Harris but the undertow is still an anxious groan at Donald Trump’s seduction of acolytes to “Fight, fight, fight” and “Win, Win, Win”.
Harris, too, exhorted her admirers at the Democratic National Convention, “When we fight, we win.” To her running mate Tim Walz’s shout, “When we fight, we…”, the crowd roared, “Win, win, win”!
Apparently, where fighting is concerned Harris and Trump agree although their reasons for fighting may be different.
Since both sides have declared America’s presidential election to be a fight, the rest of the world will wait to see with bated breath who wins the war. It may be more consequential than the Ukraine and Gaza wars for the world’s billions who are battered by pandemics, hunger, poverty, displacement and climate turmoil.
Most friends of America would celebrate a Harris victory in November but few are convinced that the Democrats can hold together for long enough as she struggles to overcome Joe Biden’s shadow.
There is deep doubt that she can separate from his policies, which she applied as Vice President, even though she did not mention him in her acceptance speech. The 74 remaining days may not be enough to imprint Harris’s independent leadership in voters’ minds, rather than just not being Biden or Trump.
For outsiders, it is far from convincing for Harris, reveling in rapturous applause from the converted, to joyfully bill herself as a change-agent for a “new way forward”. Branding Trump as a retrograde leftover hankering to be an autocrat like North Korea’s Kim Jong Un may look too clever by half.
Staid Europeans look askance at the made- for-TV glitter of America’s national political conventions and the tar and feathering of opponents.
To them, the presidential ticket’s adulation at conventions seems over-the-top. They watch with trepidation the orchestrated showiness that endorses the candidate who could rule America and, importantly, their world as well.
Biden sees things differently. “Now it’s summer, the winter has passed, and with a grateful heart, I stand before you now on this August night to report that democracy has prevailed, democracy has delivered and now democracy must be preserved,” he told the DNC.
But, both Harris and Trump are pounding the drums of political war indicating that there is no middle ground where their own and their core disciples’ current beliefs could take a breather to shake hands.
This was underlined by her fierce attacks on Trump’s character and policies while he unleashed over 40 irate retorts on Truth Social even as she spoke.
A crusty warrior filled with resentment, Trump has branded Harris as being so far left of Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders that her victory would be lethally destructive of American greatness. There is a scary no-holds-barred bitterness and disdain between them..
Harris’s performance at the DNC did too little to separate her from the lineage of the Clintons, the Obamas, Sanders and Biden to convince European and other US allies that she is capable of hacking her own peace-friendly path in the jungles of geopolitical turmoil.
That is cause for anxiety since all of them depend heavily on America for their prosperity and military security. The thought of a President without enough dexterity to tame the turbulence of American politics gives them the jitters.
In particular, the parochial blinkers of American elections are very disturbing for the world’s weakest peoples. Often they have to bear the adverse impacts of choices in which they had no voice made by warring American factions fattened by years of intolerance of the political other. They feel like the neglected grass trampled by foraging elephants.
Apart from eloquent repetition of boiler plate rhetoric, Harris said almost nothing original on ending the Ukrainian and Israeli wars. So, she could not offer the world’s downtrodden — almost 5 billion people — even a slightly hopeful vision of a peaceful and prosperous future for them.
The world’s humanitarian community is also losing hope as it pleads for a few crumbs from the high table for those suffering in Sudan, West Africa and elsewhere. The costs of helping Ukraine and Israel are so huge that almost nothing remains for other helpless peoples.