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In today's Guardian, Mehdi Hassan said the quiet part out loud and called on Kamala Harris to support an arms embargo against Israel.
Given Harris's recent (small) polling bump, her campaign's mixed messaging with regards to a possible arms embargo with Israel, and details leaked from the Democratic Party's 92 page platform paper (which was apparently written before Joe Biden stepped down) I suspect Hassan's words will fall on deaf ears - but from my perspective Mehdi definitely has a point. The right time for Harris to agree to at least threaten Israel with an arms embargo if it doesn't end the genocide in Gaza is right now, and if she follows the unsuccessful path walked by Hubert Humphrey in 1968 with regards to denouncing an unpopular outgoing President's war at the last minute, any posture change she makes on this subject later may be too little, too late:
Biden’s Gaza policy is a liability for Kamala Harris. She must break with Biden now
"What does she have to lose? As the Financial Times pointed out last month, the polling suggests there is “less downside” on Gaza than one might expect: “a Democrat who is soft on Israel (as Biden is seen as having been) loses support on the left, but a candidate who takes a more critical line wins those voters back without losing votes among moderates.” A poll last week from YouGov and the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) showed over a third of voters in three swing states say they are more likely to vote for the Democratic nominee if they pledge to withhold weapons to Israel, while only 5 to 7% said they would be less likely to do so.
So what is Harris waiting for? More anti-war hecklers at her rallies? Even more civilian deaths caused by Biden administration-supplied munitions?
Some might say that it is impossible for a serving vice-president to go against the sitting president, even a deeply unpopular sitting president, on a major foreign policy issue. They would be wrong. Humphrey did it – he just did it too late in the campaign to reap an electoral advantage."
Of course, and as Hassan notes, there are some key differences between this race and the 1968 election Humphrey ran against Nixon; Gaza isn't Vietnam, there's no draft, and Harris is currently leading Trump ever so slightly in national polling. Despite this however, the similarities between these two election campaigns *far* outweigh the differences, and it's not hard to imagine Harris losing a tight contest to Trump, as Humphrey did to Nixon, if she insists on maintaining the status quo of an, again, *deeply* unpopular Biden administration.
Given the current polling, there is a cynical realpolitik argument to be made that Kamala Harris doesn't *have* to change anything to beat Trump, but that argument ignores at least two key factors. First of all, Harris's lead is by no means large, and she's still running a neck and neck race in Michigan - the state I've been saying will define this election for the past year, even more so given how unpopular Biden's genocidal Gaza policy is there. Secondly, Harris's bump in the polls may not be entirely caused by a pervasive belief that she'll be better on Israel and Gaza than Biden was, but if you think it has no bearing at all you haven't been listening to likely Dem voters under the age of 45. Will Harris retain her momentum if, as expected, she announces things will be business as usual at the Democratic National Convention this week? Can Antony Blinken secure the ceasefire Biden has been promising for months in the final hours before this election hits the home stretch? Will a temporary ceasefire even move the needle for voters rightfully angry that their government is enabling a genocide in Gaza? Frankly, nobody can answer these questions, which is why betting "the most important election in American history," against an extremely dangerous fascist, on everything breaking just right for Harris for the rest of the campaign, is reckless and foolhardy.
The objective truth is that all of the polling says Harris should put an arms embargo against Israel on the table this week at the DNC; waiting is risky, and refusing to do so at all may still be entirely fatal. There is no electoral reason whatsoever for her to delay this decision, and a great deal of evidence that doing so will help Trump climb back into the lead. If ultimately Harris decides to ignore the polls, and stick with Biden's failed Gaza policy, there can be no argument that she did so to win an election - the only logical conclusion would then be that she simply didn't care what the Dem Party's base thinks. And that would be an objectively terrible message for any would-be president to send to voters, just when they were on the cusp of victory in an election most people feel will decide not just the next four years in America, but our collective future as a nation.
@AnarchoNinaAnalyzes yes! Yes! Yes! I will remind myself here that imo there are more powerful people at the top than the figurehead & they may not allow it. I think you’re absolutely correct about it being necessary to pull ahead in any meaningful way. I’d like to see dems not attacking people voting for their guy. It’s taken me 50 years to vote. The GOP makes me want to vote (to foil them). The dems make me want to pull my hair out & never vote again!