Kamala Harris ended her presidential campaign and I’m wondering if Americans are really ready for change?

photo taken Lorie Shaull

After logging onto Twitter for the first time in over two weeks, I was shocked to see the announcement that California senator Kamala Harris is dropping out of the presidential race. Per usual, Twitter is a war zone of tweets both gloating and despairing over her campaign ending after such a promising start, debating what went wrong, and what this means for the race going forward. Senator Harris had already qualified for the December debate, the only candidate of color to do so. Which means that on December 19 the presidential debate stage will likely be all-white—a disturbing image in 2019 for a party where black women are the backbone, and because if whoever comes out of the primary is to win the presidency, he or she will need massive turnout from non-white voters.

What is shocking about her campaign’s collapse is that she was a top-tier candidate almost from the moment she began, until a few weeks ago. I myself was curious how she would perform in the early primaries and caucuses. Now we’ll never know. On pure imagery, a black-South Asian woman who won multiple statewide elections in the nation’s most populous state suspending her campaign, while multiple white men with far less support or qualifications stay in feels wrong. Then you remember (if you watch mainstream news media coverage of the Democratic primary, I don’t) that Vice President Joe Biden receives more mentions and positive coverage in the news media, even compared to Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. The image is more unsettling when you look at Senator Harris’ campaign’s struggling finances and then remember that billionaire Mike Bloomberg entered the race not two weeks ago and has overspent nearly every other candidate in the race for the Democratic nomination save one, fellow billionaire Tom Steyer. Senator Harris has not spent money on TV ads since September and she blames the end of her campaign on the lack of funds.

Until the final weeks, Senator Harris, perhaps misguidedly concentrated on getting to Super Tuesday in March 2020 by winning South Carolina, only to discover that voters there, mostly African American, gravitate towards Biden. By contrast, Mike Bloomberg will not be on the primary ballots for New Hampshire, Nevada or South Carolina, nor will he participate in the Iowa caucus. From his ad spending, he’s focusing on California, Texas and New York, states with the largest amounts of delegates. Polls would indicate this is working—he either matches or is just above Senator Harris’ level of support as of last week. Suddenly her departure from the presidential race looks less like a campaign that ran its course, and more like a casualty of a political system designed to benefit white, wealthy, centrist men, at a time when the Democratic electorate leans toward the black/brown and female, and when the country needs drastic change away from the center.

Senator Harris was under an intense amount of scrutiny compared to other candidates simply for being a woman of color. As has happened with Meghan Markle, now the Duchess of Sussex, black women know all too well that we are held to a racial double standard by the white mainstream. A standard that former Housing Secretary and presidential candidate Julian Castro called the media out for, when asked about Senator Harris’ departure. He said the media held her to “a different standard, a double standard…” that was “grossly unfair.” On the other hand, Senator Harris’s connection to the black community was questioned constantly, perhaps to overcompensate for what in hindsight, many black voters wished they did with former president Barack Obama, a topic worthy of its own discussion. Black voters did not flock to Senator Harris, just like we haven’t flocked to Senator Cory Booker, nor former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick simply because they’re black. Older black voters prefer Biden because they think he can get enough white voters to switch back to the Democrats to remove Mr. Trump; and younger black voters want a candidate who will directly challenge and change the system at a basic level.

Senator Harris also dealt with internal issues. Her campaign was torn between two factions—one led by her sister Maya Harris and the other by the campaign manager for her 2016 Senate campaign, Mr. Rodriguez. Aides and advisors struggled to see where her presidential campaign was going. Winning a statewide election in California is different from winning a nationwide general election, and the infighting in Senator Harris’ campaign closed her off to experienced advisors and consultants who could’ve helped her develop a coherent message and platform. She struggled on the critical issue of health care, despite co-sponsoring Senator Sanders’ Medicare-For-All bill in 2017 then backtracked this past summer, and she failed in addressing her record as a prosecutor. She rebuffed questions and criticisms about her record as District Attorney and state Attorney General rather than address them. A catastrophic mistake at a time when activists and young voters demand candidates address racism in the criminal justice system.

As a young black voter who hails from her hometown of Oakland, who met her as a college student when she was District Attorney of San Francisco county, I found myself less than enthused about her policies. The prospect of a black woman being President of the United States is a powerful one, but not enough for me to ignore other, yes, white candidates with strong policies directly addressing the issues that affect my life—climate change, health care, student loan debt, racial inequality and others. And that’s just on domestic issues. Her foreign policy, in particular on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, her lack of support for the Palestinians, at a time when Democrats, especially young Democrats are more critical of the state of Israel was going to be a liability for her and given her financial ties to AIPAC, any hope that she would re-evaluate her stance was misplaced.

Senator Harris could never figure out whether she was grassroots or establishment, she could never find a consistent political message, except when talking about Mr. Trump, how dangerous he is in the White House and for democracy. This is where she shines—as a prosecutor. One of my favorite moments of her in the US Senate is questioning Attorney General William Barr, with Senator Booker sitting right beside her, giving AG Barr looks that expressed the contempt many Americans feel about his actions. I’ve believed for months that she would make an excellent attorney general in a Democratic presidential administration—or continuing to serve as U.S. Senator for California. Others say she should be considered as a running mate for whoever becomes the nominee.

Senator Harris’ policies didn’t excite me but neither do those of Joe Biden, Senator Amy Klobouchar, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and the other white men running that I’ve lost track of. That is why Senator Harris ending her campaign so soon is disheartening. But it’s what this country was founded on. American politics, governance, media, the economy, our socialization is designed to give mediocre white men (and some white women too) more faith and credence than a black or brown woman with qualifications, simply for being white. It’s the reason Biden commands so much support from older black voters. And it says something about who we are as a nation; if we are really ready to progress and make changes to create a better future.

The silver lining is that replacing Mr. Trump with a Democratic president is only the first step in doing that and reversing the damage he’s caused. It’s far from a one-person show, there is plenty of room for others. I personally would love to watch Senator Harris as Attorney General completely destroy Mr. Trump and his administration in court.

What the G7 summit says about the future of international security

Mr. Trump in a bilateral meeting with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison at the G7 2019 summit;

The G7 summit ended two days ago and if it wasn’t clear before, it should be now, that the post-1945/WWII era is over. The world order that most of humanity today grew up with and know nothing else, the order that has lived up to its main objective to prevent a Third World War, for the last nearly quarter of a century is dissolving. Less clear is what replaces it. World leaders are in unfamiliar territory in that they did not anticipate the institutions, and alliances that have defined the era diminishing. Nor did they anticipate the era ending in the way it’s ending.

Major news media describe the G7 summit as one ‘fraught with division’, that the parties disagree with each other. That’s accurate, but there’s only one real source of division–the United States and everyone else. Yes there might be some side disagreements over Britain’s exit from the European Union (aka Brexit), and others but the United States’ inability to come to consensus with the other G7 powers in Biarritz, France was the main storyline of the three-day summit.

The President of the United States disagreed with its closest leaders on climate change, free trade, what to do about Iran and North Korea and others, even as the host nation’s leader, President Emmanuel Macron tried his best to bring the world’s most great powers together and avoid last year’s calamity when Mr. Trump did not sign the joint communique on climate change, left the summit early, and then proceeded to attack the host nation’s prime minister on Twitter, which happened to be Canada’s Justin Trudeau.

To avoid a repeat, President Macron announced there would be no communique, the first time in the G7’s history, which meant the focus was on bilateral meetings between countries. In a sense, President Macron played right into Mr. Trump’s hands. This is what he wants. Mr. Trump ran in 2016 on blowing up the system, and that extends internationally. It’s why he loves Brexit, calls the European Union a foe and did not join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). He does not like multilateralism, where aberrant American Foreign Policy is more easily exposed. He prefers bilateralism, which becomes ‘divide and conquer’ in that he can use United States’ economic and military might to pressure foreign leaders. President Macron wanted to bring countries together without a public quarrel, including Iran’s foreign minister Javad Zarif, in a surprise visit.

I could detail what happened at the G7 such as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson pushing back on Mr. Trump’s tariffs, expressing hope that Mr. Trump will back down from his trade war with China before it pulls the global economy into recession; Mr. Trump saying he wants Russia invited back next year, making this a G8 summit again; Mr. Trump essentially ignoring Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s concerns about North Korea’s short-range missile tests, saying that these test do not violate any agreement; or Mr. Trump saying he wants next year’s summit, when the United States is the host, to be at one of his resorts in Florida, a clear violation of the Emoluments Clause in the United States constitution.

The purpose of the G7 summit, also known as the Group of Seven, is to allow the world’s wealthiest and most advanced countries to discuss the most pressing international issues. The joint communique symbolizes global consensus on addressing these problems. There’s legitimate criticism of the G7, in that China’s absence as the world’s second largest economy, along with other emerging powers, weakens its legitimacy, or that concrete action hardly if ever comes from this yearly summit. Those are perfectly valid criticisms. However the fact that world leaders have to handle Mr. Trump “with kid gloves” is an ominous sign of things to come, considering that the entire global system is itself a creation of the United States. Until Mr. Trump, American presidents rallied the rest of the world to hold this system up. Now the current American president is one of the biggest threats to it. Meanwhile the rest of the world tries to move on, deal with their national problems, without agitating the leader of the world’s largest economy and most powerful military.

It’s a fragile and precarious balance to strike. But it’s where we are at in the 21st century. And the question is, will other countries lose patience with the United States, and allow their disagreements to cause a real falling out?

The United States as we know it, is dying… and that might be a good thing

The past nine days have seen one political rollercoaster after another. From FBI director James Comey’s firing, to the revelation that Trump revealed classified information received from Israel to the Russians, and now James Comey’s memo saying that President Trump pressured him to stop the FBI investigation against former NSA chief Michael Flynn. Wednesday saw encouraging news that Comey’s predecessor, Robert Mueller was named as special counsel/prosecutor to oversee the FBI investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia but no matter how this turns out, things are going to get ugly. As dramatic and stress-inducing this very young presidency has been, this is only the beginning–whether something substantial comes of these investigations or not.

Things aren’t much better outside of the White House either. Education Secretary Betty DeVos announced a possible raise of interest rates on student loans by 20% and a proposal to end the public service loan forgiveness program. In Oklahoma late Wednesday night, white police officer Betty Shelby was acquitted of first-degree manslaughter of unarmed black man Terrence Crutcher. On all fronts it seems like the United States is crumbling, from the inside out. From the health care debate, to climate change, to the changing world economy, our government is seemingly doing the absolute wrong thing.

Unfortunately, removing or fixing one thing will not cure what ultimately ails us. Removing Attorney General Jeff Sessions will not stop police officers killing unarmed black and brown civilians with impunity nor will it correct the racial disparity in the criminal justice system. Removing Betty DeVos as Secretary of Education will not resolve the massive problem with student loan debt in this country. Removing Donald Trump from the presidency of the United States will not undo the damage he’s done, either in re-energizing white supremacy and xenophobia, which we thought were behind us nor in repairing the economic and societal divisions in this country that allowed him to rise to power in the first place.

One might ask why? In our 241-year history, our structures are fundamentally unchanged. Despite experiencing a civil war early in our history, a Great Depression, fighting in two world wars, incorporating protections for civil rights and equality, and balancing a cold war for 40 years, the United States as it has existed since 1776 remains in tact. Precisely, and that is precisely the problem.

Our structures have remained in tact, and unchanged. Our politicians claim that a testament to our exceptionalist strength and morality. It also feeds a refusal to change even when the times necessitate it. And it is that inflexibility, the resistance to transformation, that is causing our problems now. No country is perfect or has a perfect history. But the United States has been a world power for much of its history. Like much of the West, it has come at the expense of others. However unlike western nations like France, Spain or even Russia it has not had a moment of transformation. We have not had a Revolution of 1789 or a Civil War of 1936 or a Revolution of 1917. We have not had a moment of truth where we can no longer ignore the reality about being American that is staring us right in the face. The truth that this is a nation founded on white supremacy and economic inequality, and it has not changed. Social mobility is not as present as we are socialized to believe. If we are born in poverty, chances are we will die in poverty. Chances of success for African-Americans, Latinos, Asians and Native Americans are hindered by racial and cultural biases that restrict us to peripheral roles in American life.

The more we deny this the more it becomes obvious to all, both inside and outside the United States. And ultimately the more disastrous the collapse will be. But with death comes transformation and the ability to become greater than what was before. If we allow it.

 

Black Millennials & America’s Choice 2016

On Monday morning I read a very good article on the New York Times that sums up my indifference to the Democratic party going into 2016. As a black Millennial, I feel that neither Bernie Sanders or Hilary Clinton is really speaking to me as a part of that voting bloc–one that the Democrats cannot afford to lose, whether they realize it or not.

 

If 2012 proved anything, it is that when black Americans vote, our vote can make a difference. After Obama was re-elected, article after article talked about how critical the black vote was to his re-election. But what those articles did not point out (of if they did, I did not see them) was that it was younger voters that were so critical to the Democrats keeping the White House. Obama’s rise to political prominence brought a new wave of engaged black voters to the polls. In 2008, 20% of first-time voters were black and of those, 70% were under 30. Four years later black voters proved critical for Obama winning seven key states, including Ohio, Florida and Virgina. Of the black voters who cast a ballot, nearly half were under 45 years old.

Now, in the first post-Obama presidential election, the Democrats are in serious danger of losing this bloc. Not to the Republicans but to indifference, and historically a higher voter turnout favors the Democrats. I do not want a Republican to become the next President of the United States, but I also don’t feel either Bernie nor Hilary deserve my vote. If the election were held today I would likely stay home.

What Bernie and Hilary do not understand is, the old tactics of wooing black voters does not work anymore. Mentioning your marches with Martin Luther Kind Jr., meeting with Civil Rights leaders of his era or photo ops with black celebrities will not work. Black millennials realize the Civil Rights movement did not do what we were taught in elementary school to believe it did. If it did, we would not be where we are now. We want real, concrete solutions to stop black men and women being gunned down by the police like animals, to reduce the racial gap between unemployed black and white millennials, particularly the educated and real criminal justice reform. But neither Hilary nor Bernie are responding to this at all.

My problem with Hilary is she’s relying on the Clinton name to win her black support. Famously touted as the “first black president” before Barack Obama entered the presidential race in 2008, now his policies during his presidency have come under criticism, particularly the “three-strikes law” that the former president admits regret signing into law because it made the problem of mass incarceration worse, especially for African-American males. Apologizing now frankly is too little, too late and doesn’t illustrate why black Millennials should trust her as Chief Executive.

Aside from his concerning stance on gun control, my problem with Bernie is he thinks his record automatically earns him black support. Let’s look at his record shall we? Bernie Sanders is known for being a champion of economic justice. Makes sense since that he’s a socialist. But socialism does not preclude racism, look at Adolf Hitler. Now I don’t believe that Bernie Sanders is racist but I think he fundamentally misunderstands racism at its core and always has. For African-Americans, Native Americans, Latinos and Asians, racial injustice is the root of economic injustice, not the inverse. Racism cannot be cured by making the pot bigger for everybody. The United States was literally conceived in racism. When the country became the largest economy in the world, black people (and Native Americans) were still economically marginalized, something ignored to this day. In refusing to acknowledge this, Bernie Sanders is not much better than the Republicans in black Millennials’ eyes.

With both Hilary and Bernie the disconnect is clear. Neither candidate understands that what brought African-Americans to the polls come Election Day will not work in 2016. We’ll just stay home which makes it more likely that a Republican will win the White House.