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The Joe Biden and Kamala Harris Partnership
Academia Letters, 2020
Just after the ballot when it was clear that Joe Biden won his bid for the president of the United States, he addressed Americans as well as people in the rest of the world. He claimed that the clear majority of at least four million votes and a majority of the electoral college "made it clear they [the voters] want the country to come together -not to continue to pull apart." He continued: "we have to remember: the purpose of our politics isn't total, unrelenting, unending warfare. No. The purpose of our politics, the work of the nation, isn't to fan the flames of conflict, but to solve problems, to guarantee justice, to give everybody a fair shot, to improve the lives of our people. We may be opponents -but we are not enemies. [my italics] We are Americans."
London School of Economics and Political Science, 2020
Late yesterday, the Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, announced that California Senator Kamala Harris would be his running mate in the November election. Amy Tatum writes that while Harris is a strong choice for the ticket, she is likely to face significant misogyny, and the framing of her as the 'first' woman of color to be chosen for the position, and 'first' woman to potentially hold the office, could mark her out as 'other' among some voters.
Why I Liked the Harris-Walz CNN Interview
[This article first appeared on the LA Progressive website on 8/31/2024.] Although recognizing some of the legitimate Gaza points made by Norman Solomon in his recent LAP article, I liked the CNN Harris-Walz Interview with Dana Bash on August 29, 2024 for several reasons. Most importantly was Harris’s insistence, at least several times, that her “values have not changed.” Also positive were her pragmatic remarks concerning the need for consensus. Although generally pleased with Harris and Walz’s answers, I did think several of the Democratic replies could have been better, especially by Walz. Yet compared with any Trump interviews, where lies, untruths, and insults tumble after one another from beginning to end, the responses of Harris and Walz were favorable.
Biden's Misguided Middle East Policy
On December 5, 2023, three Ivy League university presidents (Liz Magill of my alma mater the University of Pennsylvania, Claudine Gray of Harvard, and Sally Kornbluth of MIT) were called to testify before the House Committee on Education about alleged incidents of anti-Semitism on their campuses. Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik of New York, who is an alumna of Harvard, asked President Magill “Does calling for the genocide of Jews violates Penn’s rules of conduct, yes or no?” Ms. Magill gave a nuanced response. “If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment” and “It is a context-dependent decision.” Congresswomen asked presidents Gray and Kornbluth a similar question and got similar answers. Dr. Kornbluth said “I have not heard calling for the genocide of Jews on our campus,” to which Representative Stefanik replied, “But you’ve heard chants for intifada.” Dr. Kornbluth responded, “I’ve heard chants which can be antisemitic depending on the context when calling for the eliminations of the Jewish people.” The response to their testimony by both some Democratic and Republicans were for all their presidents to resign, and on December 9th Penn president Magill did resign under pressure by Penn alumni to withdraw financial support. But context does matter, as The New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg notes. Prior to the exchange with President Gay of Harvard, Ms. Stefanik defined intifada as follows; “You understand that the use of the term ‘intifada’ in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict is indeed a call for violent armed resistance against the state of Israel, including violence against civilians and the genocide of Jews.” Actually, that is not what intifada means in Arabic. It means “shaking off.” Even the slogan that students protestors chanted for a free Palestine from “river [Jordan] to sea [the Mediterranean]” is not a call for genocide, especially when Netanyahu and far-right members of his own party are in favor of a permanent occupation of the West Bank rather than a two-state solution. President Biden ignored the festering situation on the West Bank and Gaza, and concentrated instead on withdrawing American troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, supporting the Ukrainians against the Russian invasion, and countering Chinese incursions into the South China Sea. But even more problematic, he endorsed the Trump-Netanyahu Abraham Accords that sought to create an alliance of Sunni nations (including Saud Arabia) against the Shi’ite coalition Iran and its proxies. This was part of Netanyahu’s master plan to divide the Arab nations at the expense of the Palestinians. The result was October 7, 2023. Netanyahu’s stated war aim is to destroy Hamas, but he has also stated that he is opposed to the return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza. He stated that it is “a civil authorized that educates its children to hate Israel, to kill Israelis, to eliminate the State of Israel. . . an authority that pays families of murderers based on the number they murdered . . . an authority whose leader still has not condemned the terrible massacre [on October 7].” Instead, he says he wants to demilitarize Gaza. It is a mistake for Biden to provide additional funds to aid Israel in its invasion of Hamas as well as his support for the so-called Abraham Accords negotiated by Benjamin Netanyahu and Jared Kushner, two corrupt individuals. It was the brainchild of Netanyahu who wanted to divide the Sunni versus the Shi’a Muslims by supporting the Sunni autocratic Saudi Arabian regime of Crown Prince Mohammed ben Salam against the equally autocratic Shi’ite Islamic Republic of Iran. By sending American carrier strike forces to the eastern Mediterranean and the Red Sea, this deployment instead of protecting against a widening of the Israeli-Hamas war, increasing its possibility by involving the Shi’a Houthi rebels supported by Iran against the Sunni government forces supported by Saudi Arabia in the war. There is an argument to be made that the only long-term solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict is for Israel to withdraw all its troops and its settlers in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza. There needs to be a provisional, self-governing Palestinian state, but its borders cannot be policed by Israel. That would only continue the present-day occupation. There needs to be an international military force, probably under NATO, because the current policies of Israel not only threatens the security of the United States, but also the security of Europe. It cannot be the UN, because it was created by the victorious countries after World War II (Britain, France, the United States, and China) that as permanent members of the Security Council each has a veto power. If anything, the UN legally solidified the boundaries of countries at the end of the war. Nevertheless, Jerusalem should become an international city as recommended by the United Nations with holy sites administered by independent Jewish, Muslim and Christian authorities and policed by NATO forces until such time that it becomes the capital of a unified, secular Israel. The United States should embrace the principle of self-determination that was one of the founding principles of the American Revolution (See, The War on Terrorism). No state has survived after being divided into two parts (Gaza and the West Bank) separated by another state (in this case Israel). It didn’t work after World War I when the Weimar Republic and Prussia were divided by a sliver of Poland or after World War Two when Berlin was separated from West Germany by East Germany(See, The German Question) or after the British left India and East and West Pakistan (Bangladesh today) were created divided by India (See, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh). That is why the ultimate aim should be establishing within a generation of a single, secular state of Israel that is a homeland to both Palestinians and Jews. Israel security requires the state to extend from the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, and any Palestinian state divided into two separate sections is unsustainable. The matter of the return of displaced Palestinians would have to be settled by Israel compensating Palestinians for their lost property.
Trump, Harris and the Future of US Foreign Policy
Rome, IAI, October 2024, 4 p. (IAI Commentaries ; 24|63), 2024
The foreign policy approaches of Trump and Harris show similarities and contrasts. Trump’s Ukraine strategy would involve pressuring both Kyiv and Moscow into a hypothetical peace agreement without much consultation of the Europeans, while Harris would favour continued support for Ukraine with a multilateral negotiation stance. In the Middle East, Trump would support Israel’s actions in Lebanon and Gaza, promote Israeli-Saudi normalisation and exert maximum pressure on Iran; Harris would similarly support Israel and seek normalisation but would advocate for Palestinian concessions and back regional détente efforts. Trump would use aggressive economic decoupling to weaken China’s global influence, while Harris would maintain Biden’s containment approach through targeted alliances and technology restrictions. Trump’s unilateralism and transactionalism would promote American dominance through a clientele-based alliance system but risk inconsistency, while Harris aims for stability within the alliance framework, though this may necessitate deeper US engagement in global crises.
Democrats' Attitudes to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Middle East Policy, 2020
Since 2015, there has been a sharp turnaround in Democrats' sympathies for Israel and the Palestinians. The percentage of Democrats with a preference for Israel is more or less tied with those preferring the Palestinians, wiping out Israel's historic advantage. Long-term processes of liberalization and secularization have generated a more difficult environment for Israel and a more favorable one for the Palestinians, but they alone do not account for the shift. Rather, the
Pragmatic and value-based argumentation in the 2015 Israeli elections
Israel Affairs, 2016
A discursive and argumentative analysis of the Israeli 2015 elections reveals how electoral strategies displayed unexpected similarities between rival parties such as the Likud and the Zionist Union, on the one hand, and the Jewish Home and Meretz, on the other hand, in their respective approaches to foreign policy and to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While the mainstream Right and Left mainly emphasized security motives, used consequence-based arguments, and appealed to fear, the practical reasoning of the two smaller parties (Jewish Home and Meretz) competing with the Likud and the Zionist Union applied a value-based rather than a merely instrumental argumentation. This reconfiguration of the political map enlightens the peculiar dynamics of the 2015 elections.
Social Science Quarterly, 2022
In 2020, for the first time, a VP candidate was a Black woman of immigrant parentage. This article asks whether Kamala Harris's Vice Presidential candidacy may have motivated some white voters and especially those scoring high on racial resentment, anti-immigrant attitudes, or sexism to vote for Trump instead of Biden. Methods We conducted an online priming experiment with non-Hispanic white voters in August of 2020, shortly after Harris was announced as the Democratic vice-presidential nominee. Half of the sample were asked about their support for the president-vice presidential tickets, while the other half were only asked about support for a presidential candidate. Results Our results show that the Harris selection may have affected vote choice by pushing many whites, especially among the most racially conservative whites into the Trump column. We find mixed results for anti-immigrant attitudes and sexism. Conclusion We conclude that one aspect of Harris' identity-race-dominated the minds of voters relative to other aspects of her identity.