Will Harris be elected as the U.S. president?

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Will Harris be elected as the U.S. president?

Published: 28 Aug. 2024, 20:17

Shang E. Ha
The author is a professor of political science at Sogang University.

Many people still remember the historic moment when Barack Obama was elected as the first Black president of the United States in November 2008. At that time, Democratic supporters wished for the election of Hillary Clinton as the first female U.S. president next time. The Democratic Party’s hope for writing a new history in the United States was dashed by Donald Trump’s election victory in 2016.

The Democrats swiftly rallied around Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris after President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race in July, suggesting their desperation to defeat Trump this time.

Harris, who was nominated as the Democratic presidential candidate in Chicago last week, is a Black — and Asian — American born between her Jamaican father and Indian mother. Starting her career as a prosecutor in 1990, she was elected as attorney general of California in 2011 — and as Senator of the state in 2016 — signaling her national debut as a mainstream politician.

Harris entered the Democratic primary for the 2020 presidential election, but quit the race. Her savior was Biden who chose her as his running mate for the presidential election that year and brought her to the White House after his election triumph. Despite her long career as a prosecutor, you can’t criticize her for a lack of political career, given her considerable experience of elections.

If Harris wins the November election, she will be the first female and Asian American president. If you put her Asian identity aside, the election scene looks quite similar to the 2016 election when a female candidate — Hillary Clinton — competed with Trump. Can the United States have its first-ever woman president in November? That question demands we pay attention to two keywords: memories and expandability.

The memories revolve around the Democratic Party’s surprising defeat in the 2016 election, which are painful for the party which lost to Trump, an expert in shaming women and minorities. That factor will encourage women voters to rally behind Harris this time. Coincidently, current circumstances surrounding abortion rights fuel the move.

In 2016, Clinton campaigned when the historic Roe v. Wade ruling was still effective across the country. In 2024, Harris is campaigning when all 50 states are adjusting their rules on abortion after the Supreme Court overruled the 1973 decision through the Dobbs v. Jackson ruling in 2022.

The United States are sharply split over abortion rights between Blue and Red states. A number of states already enacted laws banning women from getting an abortion even if they got pregnant after rape or incest. To many female voters, “freedom” — a word frequently mentioned during the four-day national convention — also means the freedom to defend “my body from the government.”

The second factor is the expandability of support base. Polls show that while Trump’s base cannot expand, Harris’s can. The assassination attempt at Trump in July didn’t help lift voters’ support for him. In the 2016 election, Trump won with 46.1 percent of all the votes, and in 2020, he lost to Biden after taking 46.8 percent of all the votes. A poll conducted shortly after the assassination attempt showed Trump’s support rate at 47 percent — no big difference from the last election.

Despite the strong need to expand his voter base, Trump picked Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate, who can’t offset his egocentric image, which points to a critical lack of freshness in his campaign.

But Harris leads Trump in expandability, as seen in the noticeable rise in the support from young voters and people of color. Harris chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate to attract the votes of the white working class in the Rust Belt. Walz successfully compensates Harris’s weaknesses thanks to his folksy image. But it’s too early to predict the results of the Nov. 5 election. We must watch the first TV debate between Harris and Trump on Sept. 10 and another one between their running mates.

Even if Harris becomes the first female U.S. president, she won’t change her policy, as it will most likely be an extension of the Biden administration. She would first focus on completing Biden’s campaign promises on education, child care and health. Foreign policy won’t change, either, as succinctly implied by the absence of diplomatic expert groups for the Biden and Obama campaigns in the past.

If a Black president appears in the United States, we cannot rule out the possibility of violent clashes erupting in the country, given a considerable number of Republican voters who still believe the 2020 election was stolen. In that case, foreign policy will take a back seat in the White House.

Translation by the Korea JoongAng Daily staff.