As Kamala Harris made her way back to a rainy and thunderstruck Washington on Thursday night, she could have been forgiven had she found herself whistling the old Ray Charles staple about Georgia.
Her heavily scrutinised two-day bus tour through the Peach State was a continuation of the Democratic National Convention in that it was a highly crafted and orchestrated piece of political theatre disguised as something more naturalistic: in this case a folksy return to a simpler era of politics, with the candidate’s bus chugging along country lanes of Jimmy Carter country, with impromptu stops at cafes and barbecue joints.
It was an exuberant success even as the Trump campaign endured a miserable week, becoming embroiled in a row with the custodians of Arlington cemetery. A Bloomberg poll released on Thursday night showed that the Republicans now trail the Harris-Walz ticket in six of the seven battleground states and are level in Arizona. It has Harris ahead in Georgia by 49 per cent to 47 per cent.
It was the first Democratic campaign visit to the state since Bill Clinton in 1992 and a large crowd stood in the rain for hours in the afternoon outside the Enmarket Arena in advance of her rally in Savannah, the unrivalled and gorgeous dreamscape of antebellum architecture. By then, they had already stopped in at Dottie Markes, at the Sandfly Bar-b-q and at the Liberty County high school. They’d done about everything apart from pose at the old Forrest Gump movie sites. And Georgia was enjoying the attention.
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“The road to the White House goes through Georgia and the lane to that road goes through Savannah and coastal Georgia,” said mayor Van Johnson, who noted that Harris had visited the state as recently as February. “I don’t think ever in our history and we’re 291 years old, have we ever had a president of or vice-president twice in the same year, let alone six months.”
Earlier on Thursday, Harris and her running mate Tim Walz sat down – in Kim’s Café – to film their first interview of substance since Harris replaced Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee. The broadcast went out live at nine in the evening.
Predictably, there were no disasters and no surprises. CNN, the host network, counted down the hour long interview with Dana Bash as though it were an unprecedented space launch rather than a standard media appearance. The most obvious criticism that could be levelled is that Harris chose to have Walz as part of the interview. But there was a pragmatic element to this: the Democrats need to familiarise voters with him as much as they do her.
Harris’s main job was to avoid, in her remarks, leaving any live sparks of contention which the Republican strategists can fan into flames during the weeks ahead. She performed ably but the conversation, while agreeable and fairly uneventful, did hold a few intimations of where the sparring points of future battles may well occur.
She promised that day one of her administration will open the “opportunity economy” – bringing down the cost of everyday goods, investing in America’s small businesses, extending a tax credit to families for the first six years of a child’s life for $6,000 and delivering affordable housing. This was all well and good, but it doesn’t fully divest her of the obvious charge that a Harris presidency will guarantee a continuation of “Bidenomics” and the stark inflation and staggering costs which are punishing everyday household economies.
Asked if she was against fracking – a crucial industry in the vital state of Pennsylvania – Harris was unequivocal that she “learned” it was possible to persist with the practice.
“Let’s be clear. My values have not changed. I believe it is very important we take seriously what we must do to guard against what is a very clear crisis in terms of the climate. Investing in a clean energy economy – 300,000 new clean energy jobs tells me we can do it without banning fracking. In fact, I cast the tie-breaking vote that increased leases for fracking as vice-president. So, I am clear where I stand.”
In defending her record on immigration, she simply reminded the audience that Republican congressional representatives had voted against the comprehensive bipartisan bill which would have brought 1,500 new agents to the border because Donald Trump instructed them to do so.
The Israel-Palestine conflict got scarce mention but while she again stated that “we have got to get a deal done” Harris didn’t elaborate on how, or when that will happen and wouldn’t allow for any stalling in the supply of ammunition to the Israeli government: it remains to be seen how her stance will harm her with conscientious objectors among the Democratic electorate and the college students returning to campuses this week.
Perhaps her strongest, most “presidential” moment was in response to a general conversation about the tone of American politics.
“I’m talking about an era that started about a decade ago where there is some suggestion – warped I believe it to be – where the measure of a strength of a leader depends on who you beat down instead of where I believe most Americans are, which is to believe that the true measure of a strength of a leader is who you lift up.”
In tone and language, it was a world away from the kind of West Coast yoga-retreat vacuity that has been levelled at Harris by her critics. In the frantic six weeks since she assumed the nomination from Biden – and she was steadfast in her loyalty to her president throughout here – Harris is acquiring a kind of solemnity. She’s been nimble in avoiding presenting herself as the first woman president of the United States or as a candidate with Caribbean and Indian parents. Instead, she is making the case for being the best candidate.
But all of her answers will be parsed and repackaged as charges before the debate against Donald Trump in Philadelphia on September 10th. It is thought that Harris will spend much of this weekend preparing for that event in Howard University. But right now, her campaign team and the Democratic grandees must be asking themselves the oldest conundrum: where did it all go right?
Of course, the Republicans were asking themselves that very question in mid-July. That must seem like a distant time and Georgia, a Republican stronghold for almost 30 years until Biden narrowly won it four years ago, must now hold the same place in the imagination of Donald Trump as Fermanagh and Tyrone did for Winston Churchill. It just won’t give him an inch. Right now. That may change.
Savannah and the other fringe cities beyond Atlanta may be in for a bout of furious courting from both candidates in the months ahead in an election which is heading towards a bitterly fought conclusion. The observation of Flannery O’Connor, whose preserved childhood home is one of the many gems of Savannah, is more apt than ever: No matter how you slice it, grace is hard.
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