On the final, and most anticipated, night of the four-day Chicago convention, Harris, 59, promised to chart a “New Way Forward” as she and Trump, 78, enter the final 11 weeks of the razor-close campaign.
After days of protests from Palestinian supporters who were disappointed at not getting a speaking spot at the convention, Harris delivered a pledge to secure Israel, bring the hostages home from Gaza and end the war in the Palestinian enclave.
“Now is the time to get a hostage deal and a ceasefire deal done,” she said to cheers. “And let me be clear, I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself.”
“What has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating. So many innocent lives lost, desperate hungry people fleeing for safety over and over again. The scale of suffering is heartbreaking,” she said.
This description of what she said last night is undeservedly charitable. There was a tone shift about half way through, where all the joyful, salt of the earth family shit shifted into Emperor Palpatine territory. It happens right around when she invoked the word “lethal”. I heard nothing, absolutely nothing, to indicate that her administration will veer in any way from Biden’s actively genocidal policies. There were platitudes about Palestinians, but honestly she deserves no benefit of the doubt on this given how vague she is being and what has occurred this last year. It’s ironic that DO SOMETHING was a theme for her since she communicated that she’s not really doing much but supporting Israel and providing cover for their atrocities all while wrapping herself in a fuzzy veneer of joyful neighborliness.
As a whole, the speech was incredibly disheartening and has evaporated any active excitement I had for her campaign. It sounds like her plan is to GO BACK to to triangulation strategies that made both the Clinton and Obama administrations so middling and ineffective. I thought we might be on the precipice of an actual change in Democratic politics, but I guess that was fanciful hope.