Kamala Harris’ defeat and lost cause of liberal agenda in America

“Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby”, 

Karl Marx

Presumably, Vice-President Mrs. Kamala Harris went into the elections believing that being a woman, she had an equal right to clinch the Presidency of the United States of America as any man would have. She never imagined that in bourgeois politics, she needed much more than the display of her gender and the rousing of biological sentiments to win her the presidency. What she forgot or didn’t know was that the forces of victory are mobilised in the conclaves of patricians and men of substance controlling the economy, industry, finance and the media, who also set the agenda for the rest of the country to follow. The decisions reached at golf courses and club houses in smoke filled rooms with the sounds of clinking glasses from which expensive wines and spirits are drunk, form the foundations of bourgeois democracy.

The only thing Kamala Harris seemed to do effortlessly were waving at the crowd and nodding her head after every sentence. So, on November 6, 2024, she waved her final goodbye to the Presidency of the United States of America and nodded her head for the last time in utter disbelief and dismay at her resounding defeat at the polls. She did not stand a chance at all and she knew it from the bottom of her heart. She was an outsider, a long shot and a featherweight in the political boxing arena of America. Despite the array of monied men and women who rallied behind her and helped her raise a staggering one billion dollars in just three months, she could not hit the tape ahead of that seasoned campaigner and political pugilist, Mr. Donald J. Trump, in the 100 meters dash to the White House.

There is no civility or chivalry in bourgeois politics. The stakes are just too high to observe niceties while fighting for the office of the president even if the opposing candidate is a woman. Being a woman does not render the circumstances of the combat any less deadly or dramatic. No secrets will be left unrevealed or weaknesses left not exploited on account of the opponent being of the “fair sex”. Every antic, every tactic, every means and method will be used fairly and squarely to incapacitate the opponent and destroy her chances of success. All available resources will be deployed and used to bring her down and destroy any chances of her winning the election. What matters is the end result, which is to defeat the opponent. That was exactly what happened to Kamala Harris in the just concluded United States presidential election. That was also the fate that overtook Mrs. Hillary Clinton when she encountered Donald Trump in 2016. Both women shared the same fate at the hands of this inelegant and not so gallant and chivalrous crusader.

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The tempting and tantalising prospects of becoming the most powerful woman in modern history of the world was dangled before Kamala Harris, only to be snatched away at the very moment when that dream seemed just within her grasp. She was exposed to the exercise of unbridled power and responsibility beyond the imagination of a West Coast barrister, only to be denied the chance to sit behind the most sought-after desk in the whole world in the Oval Office of the White House. She tested partially the perquisites of presidential office but never to fully savour the delights and glittering accoutrements of that office. She came so near and yet remained so far from clinching the ultimate prize in the world’s greatest political domino game.

The entitlements and laurels of victory beckoned to her but disappeared before her very eyes like the early morning mist or dew that evaporates at the first ray of the Sun hitting the earth. That victory, that fate, that chance and that opportunity, was to be given to her rival and arch foe, the indomitable Mr. Donald J. Trump, who is now set to become the 47th president of the United States of America after being the 45th. He came in from the cold and warmed and dazzled the American electorate with the bombastic utterances of the accomplished showman. He promised them everything that they wanted to hear and told them how great he would make their country again. He did not issue proclamations or utter words of philosophical significance. He merely repeated ad nauseum the elements of discontent felt by Americans about foreigners taking over their country and jobs, and how big corporations were ripping them off. He did not shy away from controversies but seemed to court and relish them.

His opponent on the other hand maintained a middle course and spoke to the issues but did so feebly and unconvincingly as it proved. She could not defend her public service record as a district attorney or her record in fighting crime in her state. She could not explain to Americans what she could do differently from President Joe Biden whom she wanted to succeed. “There is not a thing that comes to mind”, was all that she could say! She did not have a convincing economic policy or any social programme other than to make sanctimonious declarations about abortion rights, transgender rights and other fringe concerns that had no bearing on the outcome of the election. The liberal establishment represented by the Democratic Party was demoralised and could not rally the country behind its candidate. Its members presented a pitiful picture of indecisiveness and disunity right from the commencement of the campaign.

Kamala Harris was thus led to thealter and offered up as a sacrifice to the god of liberalism. She suffered a crushing defeat from which there cannot be a recovery. It was so crushing and total, that there can be no appeal to any design or exigency to disguise the extent and magnitude of the calamity. How did Mrs. Harris meet such a fate worse than death? Because, this is actually an obliteration of her purpose of being and the entire record of her public service in America. If by any presentiment or prescience she was to know what was awaiting her in the elections, she would have sensibly retreated from the arena and attributed her decision to pressing family matters or health concerns in order to avoid the ignominy that was waiting for her. Alas, ambition and the unknown pushed her to the edge of the precipice from where she was propelled head long into the dark abyss of nothingness.

She did not inspire any large following across America as her opponent did. She did not have a ready base or constituency within the Democratic Party that could have served as a springboard to fulfill her political ambition. She had no substantial connection with either the Black American or Hispanic voters to warrant her victory. She had no contact with the working classes and the rural people or the rising generation of youngsters. She stood alone and forlorn to be brought down so easily by the practiced political sharpshooter Donald Trump. That wily old politician, President Joe Biden, knew what was in store for the Democratic Party. He knew that the end would be a resounding defeat for the Democrats and he tactfully retreated from the race which he knew he would lose and allowed Kamala Harris to carry the can of ignominy and stigma of defeat.

The Democratic Party, that bastion of the American liberal establishment, today titters between the loss of significance and irretrievable ignominy. The beginning of its troubles started half a world away in Afghanistan, when President Joe Biden decided to withdraw American troops from that crisis-ridden country. That obvious and undisguised sign of defeat of a superpower, riled Americans and left them disconsolate and stupefied. That coming after the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic and the toll that it took on Americans’ sense of invincibility, reduced them to a state of uncertainty that was not known to them since the collapse of the former Soviet Union after 1989. A resurgent China plus other irritants like North Korea, Iran and global terrorism which America could not contain or defeat, added to the sense of vulnerability of the population, who must now look for an alternative leadership to guarantee their safety and meet their existential needs.

Turning against the ruling party and blaming the incumbent president was the natural thing to do under the circumstances. Looking for a strong figure and personality to replace the apparently aged, jaded and dated Joe Biden was the only thing that mattered to most Americans. The fact that he could not obtain the ticket for his second term in office on the platform of his own party to which he devoted a better part of his life, spoke volumes about the disenchantment with him and his times in the White House. The final disenchantment with the liberal agenda took place with the defeat of the Democrats in America. Their agenda of social libertarianism, economic liberalism and environmental ambiguity all served to send them packing from the White House and most of the American Congress. Today, liberal ideas and policies are on the retreat and rapidly becoming subjects of contemplation in universities and television talk shows only. Perhaps, as time goes on which it inevitably does, liberalism might be able to reassert its prerogative in America as it does from time to time, when the occasion arises and when the circumstance demands the coming of a new order, such as the country experienced during the Great Depression and the prelude to its entry into the Second World War, to fight for “liberty and democracy”.