Rulers Promote Kamala Harris as Their Champion

Since Kamala Harris was nominated at the Democratic National Convention in August, there has been a big effort by her backers and their media to promote her and give her national standing. This includes a recent blitz on major news and talk shows. During the week of October 7, she was on CBS's 60 Minutes, ABC's The View, The Late Show With Stephen Colbert on NBC, Howard Stern's SiriusXM radio show, the podcast Call Her Daddy, and a town hall with Univision. This involved at least 25 million viewers altogether. This continuous kind of promotion has been given priority since then. Trump, on the other hand, is not getting the free daily coverage he did in the 2016 election.

Earlier in September, Oprah Winfrey hosted an hour-and-a-half long show with Harris, elected officials and Hollywood celebrities. That show was live-streamed and said to be "electrifying."

This is all free publicity and reinforces the profile Harris has adopted of being confident and joyful, yet "concerned" about "the people." Photos of her are nearly always of her smiling or laughing. Speaking in North Carolina, ravaged by Hurricane Helene, she used Biblical phrasing such as "while 'weeping may endure for a night, joy cometh in the morning.'" This follows similar promotion of joy at the Democratic National Convention by Harris, Barack Obama and others. Obama said there is joy because Harris is going to write a "new chapter" that shows democracy "can deliver." The joy is also part of looking to a better future, a "better American story."

There are many indications that the narrow private interests that brought Barack Obama and Bill Clinton to power are now firmly behind Harris. The two have recorded more than a dozen videos for her. Obama is actively campaigning for her and will be on the campaign trail every week until the election. Bill Clinton has joined in as well. They are promoting her as experienced and able to lead on foreign and domestic policy. She is said to be the best choice to occupy the post of Commander-in-Chief and avert civil war.

In this regard, major retired military and cabinet members also continue to promote her as the only viable commander-in-chief. Retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Mike Smith of the organization National Security Leaders for America which endorsed Harris said: "This election is a choice between serious leadership and vengeful impulsiveness. It is a choice between democracy and authoritarianism."

Harris is seen as the one able to quell the anger with and rejection by a growing number of people across the U.S. of the existing electoral set up. People are demanding a say in setting the agenda and choosing candidates. She is to divert the resistance to the U.S./Zionist genocide in Gaza with hope about a "new way forward," and joy that a minority woman of immigrant parents is running for president. Here too she is having difficulty as many are sticking with the stand of No Votes for Genocide.

The concern among the rulers in the U.S. to avert civil war is referred to repeatedly in this presidential campaign and Harris is also seen as the one most able to prevent, or at least forestall, open violent civil war. On October 4, President Joe Biden said of the November election that "I'm confident it will be free and fair. I don't know whether it will be peaceful." It is an expression of the concern about this issue among the rulers, who as a class are desperate to avoid open violent civil war but whose dysfunctional institutions no longer provide the means to lessen the intense conflicts among them as the mafia-like factions vie for presidential power.

Harris is also seen as more predictable than Trump. Predictability is needed by the rulers in conditions where they cannot predict the outcome of their wars and repression, as evident in Palestine and Ukraine. The section of the ruling class in the U.S. which desires predictability wants to make sure they can control the world order as they want it to be. They are expressing that with stronger backing from the military and policing agencies at this time, and increasing standing in foreign affairs, Harris will emerge as the victor in this election.

The rulers need a force that can preserve the Union, keep the people down and provide the means to keep in place their "rules-based international order," even as it crumbles before their very eyes as the peoples of the Middle East and worldwide rise as one against U.S. dictate and genocide.

Greatly concerned about losing control over the world order, they are boosting Harris as a champion able to maintain order, including maintaining the connection between the federal and state powers linked to law and order.

Her success remains in doubt, tied in part to the Biden effort to pull off some kind of truce in the Middle East as part of securing her election and the U.S.'s ability to dominate in the region.

Chicago demonstration on the occasion of one year of U.S./Israeli genocide and one year of resistance, October 5, 2024.

Harris Campaign's Slogan Country Over Party

At a recent rally in Wisconsin, Vice President Kamala Harris appeared with supporter Liz Cheney, a long-time conservative Republican whose father Dick Cheney also endorsed Harris. Dick Cheney served as Secretary of Defense for George H.W. Bush, headed oil and military giant Halliburton from 1995 until 2000 when he left to become vice president under Bush Jr., then returned to head Halliburton once again. He is notorious for being an architect of U.S. wars and torture. The Cheney's endorsement reflects strong backing from military and intelligence forces. This is significant for the ability of Harris to rally the military bureaucracy to her side as part of uniting the bureaucracy and preventing violent civil war which is the feat the ruling class needs her to accomplish.

The main banner at the rally was Country Over Party, a slogan now being promoted. It is also a main slogan of military forces, putting forward that patriotism, whether for the military or the people, means loyalty to the country, not a political party.

At the rally Liz Cheney emphasized, "Vice President Harris is standing in the breach at a critical moment in our nation's history. She is working to unite reasonable people from all across the political spectrum." She added, "I know that she loves our country, and I know that she will be a president for all Americans."

The slogan has two main aims. One is to unite the military and civilian bureaucracy behind Harris. This includes the Harris campaign promoting the military oath for soldiers to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic."

Military forces backing Harris promote that Trump openly talks about "termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution." They emphasize, "you cannot claim to be a patriot while seeking to curtail all that makes America unique," and that "the United States is the vanguard of democracy, and a nation of laws grounded in the Constitution." Loyalty to country then means opposing Trump.

Secondly, it is also to rally "all Americans" to love the country, that "unique America" represented by Harris, Obama, Clinton, the Bushes, the military and intelligence forces. The anger with the existing set up is directed at political parties and away from the existing institutions, said to be the "vanguard of democracy" for the world. People are to ignore that the failure of these institutions includes the destruction of political parties, which have been replaced by mafia-like cartels beholden not to the public and political solutions, but to the narrow private interests that have usurped power.

While putting forward Country Over Party as a unifying slogan, it is directed at diverting and dividing the current resistance and its drive for self-determination — for political empowerment of the people themselves to govern and decide. It reflects the chauvinism of the U.S. rulers who consider themselves uniquely able to lead the world and their demand that, at home and abroad, all must submit to their "order" because theirs is the "vanguard of democracy" (which has failed beyond repair).

The peoples are demanding and taking up the building of what they see as "their America" by which they mean a country that defends the rights of all at home and abroad with a government that is anti-war and pro-social. A U.S. that represents the working class and people and not the likes of Halliburton or Goldman Sachs. Far from joining with Harris or Trump, organized forces are pursuing this independent political path. Many are working out a starting point not determined by the rulers, their campaigns, and their chauvinism but by themselves, one in their own interests which stands as one with the worldwide resistance.

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