Kamala Harris accepting the Democratic Party nomination, August 22, 2024. Screenshot, YouTube.
For Hannah
You never know
We all assume the polls understate Trump’s strength. Wouldn’t you too be ashamed to admit on the phone or online, that you’ll be voting for a prevaricator and pathological narcissist? But maybe this time, the script has been flipped? Maybe out of fear of MAGA blowback, people are more afraid to say they support a Black woman with a loud laugh, than former President Trump? With that in mind, I pose a question few commentators have: What if Harris wins?
Fear of a Trump-led insurrection is overblown
Many people are worried about the immediate aftermath of a Harris victory on November 5. Trump has indicated he won’t accept the legitimacy of electoral defeat and will once again rally his followers to challenge the results. But just as the effort to prevent congressional certification of Biden’s victory failed, so it will with Harris – only more decisively.
Unlike 2020, Democrats control the levers of federal government. The Justice Department is run by Biden; the National Guard is controlled by the president, and so is the U.S. military. While the Posse Comitatus Act forbids deployment of the military on U.S. soil, there’s an exception. The Insurrection Act, the original provisions of which date to 1792, was invoked by presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy to deploy federal troops to enforce school desegregation in the South, and Lyndon Johnson in 1965 to protect civil rights activists marching from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. George H.W. Bush used it in 1992 to quell rioting in Los Angeles after the acquittal of police officers charged with beating Rodney King.
Biden is renowned for vacillation, but I have little doubt he has on his desk a sheaf of papers outlining the procedures for calling out the National Guard or invoking the Insurrection Act if post-election protests threaten the integrity of the transition. Indeed, his prerogatives have grown since the recent Supreme Court decision, Trump v. United States, granting presidents absolute legal immunity for acts taken within the scope of their official duties. The ruling was awful, and tailored to protect the felonious ex-president, but turnabout is fair play. If fascist paramilitaries like the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, or AP3 storm the capital, they will be stopped – and it won’t be pretty.
What about a mass, or general uprising of Trump supporters? MAGA voters skew white, male and over 50; many are in their ‘60s and older. Unless they can ride to the revolution on golf carts or lawn tractors, they won’t show up. An uprising led by residents of The Villages? I don’t think so.
The first two years of a Harris presidency
The days when presidents enjoyed a honeymoon period are long gone. For the most part, that’s to the good. I remember the obsequiousness of Democrats when President Ronald Reagan in his first months in office in 1981, slashed spending for social programs and cut taxes on the rich. In the same year, he busted PATCO, the air traffic controllers’ union, setting the stage for a generational assault on American labor. Even two years later, in 1983, Reagan was supported by Democratic Speaker of the House, Tip O’Neil in “reforming” Social Security by cutting benefits, increasing the regressive Payroll Tax, and raising the age of retirement from 65 to 67. Seniors are still paying for the treachery of Democratic Party quislings from a generation ago.
Today, the two main political parties in the U.S. stay in their lanes. But with control of the House and Senate seesawing with nearly every election, U.S. presidents have little scope for legislative action. Trump briefly enjoyed majorities in the House and Senate when he passed his Tax Cut and Jobs Act (2017), slashing taxes for the richest Americans and undercutting parts of the Affordable Care Act. Biden controlled both houses of congress, (barely) when he passed the American Rescue Plan in 2021, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal the same year, and the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022. Had Biden’s majority been just a little bigger – or his political teeth a little sharper – his presidency could have been truly consequential. As it is, he will be remembered mostly for holding the Trumpian fascists at bay, maintaining slow, unsteady momentum on limiting climate change, facilitating a genocide against Palestine, and bowing out of a re-election campaign long after it was clear he had to.
There is little likelihood that President Harris will be able to pass significant legislation in her first two years in office. Unless there is a major surprise, Republicans this November will regain control of the U.S. Senate. Losses in Montana and West Virginia are a near certainty, and there are no Republican senators who will buck their leadership and side with Democrats on any significant bill unless it’s one – like Biden’s anti-immigration bill (stalled after Trump balked at it) – co-written by Republicans. And even then, the focus of Senate Republican leaders will be to prevent any Harris victories; they will want to make sure she fails so they can campaign in 2028 against a failed president.
The only arena in which Harris may get her way, alas, is defense. She seems disinclined to make any significant cuts in military spending. Democrats and Republicans alike are addicted to the campaign contributions, stock rises, and constituent jobs tied to the trillion-dollar defense budget. That the U.S. military is the biggest global contributor to CO2 rise and the greatest source of global, political instability is obscured by the fog of American exceptionalism and myth of the “indispensable nation.” That U.S. military spending crowds out investment in housing, public health, transportation, environmental protection, and everything else, is the greatest, known but unaddressed scandal in U.S. politics.
Could Harris buck trends and reduce U.S. military engagements around the world? (The U.S. has 128 overseas bases. Russia has 14 and China five.) Could she stop funding Israel’s scorched earth policy in Gaza, the West Bank and now Lebanon? Could she press Ukraine to accept a deal now, before the terms for a settlement get even worse? Could she make a rapprochement with China (an essential partner for action on climate change), forge new, anti-nuke treaties with Russia, and end senseless embargoes or sanctions on Cuba, Iran, Venezuela and a dozen other countries? It’s possible, but she has given no indications so far that she will. The political consensus in favor of a “muscular” U.S. foreign policy (read: military hegemony and where possible, economic domination) remains unchallenged by the political classes, except on the marginalized left.
Where President Harris could have an impact
Simply holding the office of the presidency confers significant power. While Congress has the power of the purse, the president, as chief executive, has authority over federal agencies and their state satellites. The president also controls a variety of contingency funds, and can declare a national emergency without congressional authorization. Trump did it to build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico (or, parts of a wall); Harris could do it (with greater legitimacy) to establish a national power grid for renewable energy, create barrier islands, marshes and swamps to protect coastlines against sea-level rise, end homelessness, ensure universal health insurance, or even nationalize the assets of fossil fuel companies. Such boldness is admittedly unlikely. Here are some more plausible future accomplishments by a Harris administration, numbered 1-4, from most to least likely:
1.) Continue the fight (however halting) against global warming: Harris has described climate change as a “crisis,” while Trump and Vance have called it a hoax. Though she could not, without Congress, pass new legislation to speed the transition to all-renewable energy, she can facilitate the spending of already allocated money. Biden’s EPA for example, with funds from the Inflation Reduction Act, has established an Environmental and Climate Justice Program to support communities – poor, non-white or otherwise marginalized – from the worst impacts of pollution and climate change. These billions would be cancelled, and funds rescinded under a Trump presidency.
Biden also established goals to cut greenhouse gas emissions 50% by 2030, launched programs to reduce methane and hydrofluorocarbon leaks (which increase global warming faster than CO2), accelerate the conversion of gasoline to electric powered cars, establish clean electricity standards, and begin the process of mandating clean energy in the manufacture of steel, cement and plastic. These initiatives, however limited, would be derailed by Trump’s election. Harris is likely to extend Biden’s (court challenged) moratorium on new, natural gas export terminals, and be more aggressive than the current president in preventing drilling on federal lands and halting the building of new oil and gas pipelines.
If Harris were just a little bit bold, she could appoint ardent environmentalists to leadership positions at EPA, the Commerce Department, and Department of the Interior. These are the key agencies involved in protecting species, habitats and federal lands. (The latter comprises 28% of total U.S. territory.) She could declare large swaths of territory off-limits for grazing, road-building, timber harvesting, mining and hunting. She could once again oppose fracking and establish huge new national parks.
Harris will also have the power to hire progressives to the National Labor Relations Board which certifies unions, and agencies that deal with food, drug and transportation safety, civil rights, educational policy, farm standards, drinking water quality, domestic policing (FBI), and foreign intelligence (CIA). These appointments are highly impactful, but rarely make headlines.
2) Stop the demonizing of immigrants: Harris is the daughter of two immigrants. Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was an esteemed cancer researcher from Chenai, Tamil Nadu, India. Her father, Donald J. Harris, is a retired Stanford economist from Saint Ann Parish, Jamaica. In the 2020 election, Harris decried ICE and spoke with passion about the contribution of immigrants. Though she has been much less vocal during the campaign, she will not, as Trump has promised, order mass deportations. Instead, she will likely seek to defuse the issue with window dressing legislation and toothless enforcement. That would be progress! The only immigrant crisis in the U.S. is the lack of them to fill essential jobs, spur economic growth, and shake Americans out of their parochialism. To paraphrase Che: “Two, three, many Springfield, Ohios!”
3) Progressive economic initiatives: When Harris announced, early in her campaign, that she would propose legislation to stop “price gouging” and reduce inflated consumer prices, the mainstream media — liberal and conservative alike — pounced. They said the laws of supply and demand are sacrosanct, and that any interference in the price of groceries would cause famine. In fact, food prices are not determined by supply and demand but by monopolist producers such as Pepsi, Kellogg, and Tyson, and grocery chains such as Walmart and Kroger who charge whatever they want – and have boasted about doing so!
Harris quickly dropped the anti-gouging proposal from her stump speech, but in any case, she’s unlikely to be able to pass such a law as president. However she can by herself impose price controls if levels once again rise. She can also encourage her Federal Trade Commission to aggressively pursue anti-trust violators. An increasing numbers of corporations — airlines, apartment conglomerates, hotels, car rental agencies and big agriculture — now deploy opaque algorithms to fix prices. Even the threat of anti-trust suits can have a salutary effect on prices.
Harris could also act unilaterally to limit education and medical debt, impose or remove protective tariffs, mobilize essential national resources, and nationalize banks, insurance companies, or other key industries. All of this has been done by previous presidents but would require a level of courage and confidence Harris has not yet exhibited.
4.) Think big! Perhaps the best thing Harris could do as president is reset the Democratic Party agenda in the wake of the collapse of Trumpism and in anticipation of the congressional election of ’26: She can propose populist, progressive policies including government paid childcare and family leave; guaranteed right to abortion; new public housing; a Civilian Conservation Corps to install solar panels, batteries and windmills everywhere; restoration of child subsidies; a dramatic rise in the minimum wage; expanded access to Medicare; increased taxes on the rich (including a wealth tax and a stock-transfer fee); a carbon tax with proceeds going to the poorest Americans; a new nuclear reduction treaty with Russia; a green-partnership deal with China; and a moratorium on arms shipment to Israel until there is agreement on sharing land, resources and power with Palestinians. Counterpunch readers – jaded by long experience – must by now think I’m drunk. But a few nips never hurt anybody. See you after election day!
