US ruling party focuses on threat from opposition at grand convention

This week the ruling Democratic Party in the oil-rich North American republic of the United States, one of the world’s top banana exporters, held a convention in the country’s third largest city, Chicago, to nominate its candidate in forthcoming presidential elections due to be held in November. The convention is being held months after ageing ruler, Joe Biden, who heads the country’s internationally recognised regime, was forced to drop out of the race following a disastrous debate with opposition leader and former President Donald Trump, who is three years his junior.
Biden’s attempts to cling to power despite his growing unpopularity had left many in the ruling party worried that the white-wing Christianist opposition – which already controls the House of Representatives, and has packed the Supreme Court with hardline religious extremists – could win back control of the country and implement draconian laws that would place further limits on the rights of women and non-white asylum seekers.
Biden, a white, has already named his Vice President Kamala Harris, a Black, as his preferred successor to lead the former British colony, which is riven by ancient ethnic and racial hatreds. It was therefore a foregone conclusion that she would win the nomination. Still, the convention presented opportunities for Harris to win back the support of groups that Biden had alienated, including those who object to the country’s policy of arming the extremist regime in Israel which is conducting a brutal genocide in Gaza. (Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been designated a terrorist by Pakistan, and is accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity by the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court.)
As international media have shown a spotlight on the convention, the regime has been forced to allow protests by hundreds of anti-genocide activists demanding an arms embargo against Israel. However, the demonstrators were confined to specific areas outside of the convention venue and were intimidated by a heavy police presence. Inside the arena, party delegates who unfurled a banner demanding the same as Biden spoke were physically attacked and had their banner confiscated. It is reminiscent of the violent crackdown on students who had set up encampments in universities across the country earlier in the year demanding divestment from Israel.
Further, while for the first time ever, the convention acknowledged that Palestinians have human rights, and even allowed a panel to discuss the same, ethnic Palestinians were nonetheless not allowed to address the main event, leading some to stage a sit-in.
However, the Gaza genocide was overshadowed by panic over the possibility of a Trump win in November which many convention speakers warned could see the destruction of the country’s fragile democracy. Once considered an island of democratic stability in a troubled region, the US is still trying to recover from the disputed and shambolic presidential elections in 2020 which finally ended Trump’s blood-soaked four-year reign of error that had left hundreds of thousands dead. Many Americans are still traumatised by the storming, on January 6, 2021, of the country’s parliament, or Capitol Building, by an extremist mob that included members of the gun-strewn country’s many armed white-wing Christianist militias, in an attempt to keep Trump in power.
In the last four years, the Biden regime has enacted little reform to enhance the credibility of the country’s violence-plagued elections, which are routinely stolen through gerrymandering and voter suppression. This has led to fears of a repeat of the 2021 post-election violence and ensuing political instability, with some even openly talking about civil war.
So terrified are Americans of a Trump return to power that even some prominent members of the opposition Republican Party addressed the convention and pledged loyalty to Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz. Further, several former presidents including Barack Obama, a Black, as well as other local celebrities, including musicians and TV personalities, were also on hand to appeal to voters to unite to prevent a Trump presidency.
Beyond concerns about democracy, many were also eager to downplay problems in the highly indebted country’s economy, including the fact that inflation is 18 percent higher than when Biden took power with many weekly household expenses going up by far more. This has seen many Americans, nearly 40 million of whom live below the poverty line, lose faith in the Biden regime despite his attempts to blame Trump for the economic disarray. The country’s gross inequality and corruption are reflected in the organisation of the convention, with donors paying up to $5m for a seat in luxury suites at the venue. The event’s $85m budget is almost fully funded by the uber-wealthy and influential big-money groups in what one prominent journalist has described as a “pay-to-play” scheme.
Although at 59, Harris is two decades older than the median age of the US population, her supporters have tried to paint her nomination as a passing of the torch to a new generation. However, it is unclear whether this will fundamentally change the country’s gerontocratic politics, where youth find it hard to break through as their elders cling to office well into old age. The median age in the US Senate is over 65 years old and concerns about senescence have dogged several senior politicians prior to Biden. Only half of Americans 18-29 voted in the 2020 elections, though that was up 11 percent from 2016.  However, the country will need to do more than simply get rid of an octogenarian incumbent if its politicians are to reflect the demographic of the nation.
In fact, in her speech accepting the nomination on Thursday, Harris proclaimed the coming election as “a chance to chart a new way forward” but had little to say about how her policies would differ from those of Biden. The convention’s theme has been “For the People, For Our Future,” but she offered few concrete proposals for consolidating democracy, healing the country’s ethnic and racial rifts, addressing issues of poverty, police brutality and gross inequality, and bringing the country into compliance with international law. Instead, her speech was dominated by vague promises and appeals to unity, as well as dire warnings of what would happen if Trump were re-elected. She led the crowd in declaring, “We will not go back.”
Throughout the convention, Harris was branded the candidate of “joy” and there have been attempts to distinguish her platform from the more authoritarian Trump. It however appears that regardless of who wins in November, the political instability and economic uncertainty that have racked the troubled country are set to continue.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.