Not since 2008 when the first Black man was nominated and elected as president, Barack Obama, was it considered possible again.

There was great excitement at the convention. It was genuine, even if it was orchestrated like a Hollywood movie. Dissent was not allowed on the floor. When it did, ushers quickly shut it down.

The mainstream media propagandists saw what they wanted to see : excitement and a united voice for change.

Yet, there was a second reality in the streets and by a few delegates. There were thousands of antiwar and pro Palestine protesters in the streets outside the convention hall. There were some thirty delegates opposed to Biden’s support for Israel’s war inside the convention which were elected in the primaries by party voters as “uncommitted” — not voting for Bidden. They voted “present” during the official roll call vote for Harris.
President Joe Biden (“Genocide Joe”) stepped aside under pressure one month ago. He turned over his delegates to Harris, his vice president, without any primary or time for challengers to emerge. The party apparatus arranged for Harris’ smooth selection.
Biden spoke the first night then left for vacation.

Two weeks after Biden chose her, Harris picked the governor of Minnesota,Tim Walz, as her running mate. Walz is a Midwest liberal who sent in the National Guard during the George Floyd anti-police protests in 2020. He was praised by then president Donald Trump for doing so.

 The Republican Party convention

In July the other ruling class party, the Republicans, met in Milwaukee to confirm Donald Trump as its presidential candidate. The convention delegates were mostly white, and speeches focused on racist fears among whites and targeted “illegal” migrants at the southern border.

Trump selected as his running mate an extreme right-wing Senator from Ohio, JD Vance. Vance is a former hedge fund capitalist and hostile to women’s rights. He has said that women who do not have children are “a bunch of childless cat ladies” and parents should receive extra votes in elections.

The ruling class supports both parties and candidates that serve its policy of world domination under the rubric of “national security”and its domestic interest. US foreign policy is bipartisan.

And for the most part both parties oppose the demands raised by the Black Lives Matter movement and are for increased funding of the police as the force protecting their interests against working people, and protection of Wall Street. Their voting bases are different, which is why some rhetoric and policies differ.

Both parties claim they represent all Americans and use the same rhetoric and spin about “democracy” and “freedom.”

Despite some talk by Democrats and even the far left, there is no threat of fascism in the country since there is no mass working class or socialist revolutionary movement to suppress with that extreme variant of capitalist rule. Fascism in the US would be more extreme than the Nazis were.

When Trump was president we didn’t have fascism.

Trump is the leader of the Republican Party, whose base is white racists of all classes.
Since the mid twentieth century, the power of the presidency has grown. Presently this has reached the point of ability for this one man or woman to wage perpetual war in the name of “peace”, and to unilaterally start a nuclear war. Presidents have increasingly used presidential powers to impose policies by presidential rulings.

 Who is Kamala Harris ?

Her mother immigrated to California with a college scholarship to the University of California Berkeley in 1958 at the age of nineteen from India. It was a time when Federal immigration law made it almost impossible for Asians to legally come to the United States. The racist quota system favored immigrants from European countries. It was not changed until 1965. So she was one of a few who got through.

Her father also attended the same university as an immigrant from the island of Jamaica. They fell in love and married at a time when most states made it a crime for inter-racial marriages. Harris referred to her mother’s decision as “self-determination” at a time when it was rare for an Indian woman to reject an arranged marriage.

While Harris referred to her working-class (she called it middle class) upbringing, her upbringing was not uncommon. Her single mother, after an early divorce, was raised by her mother and what she called a family friend as her mother worked long hours as a scientist. Harris was born in Oakland and raised in Berkeley.

Her story is the opposite of the other ruling class party nominee, Donald Trump, who grew up as a privileged son of a real estate mogul in New York City.

Harris has made women’s equality and reproductive rights central to winning. She knows most women support it including many Republican women. As a Black and South Asian she hopes to appeal to Blacks and other people of color and immigrants.

The Republicans have already begun to use racism and the fact she is a woman to attack her. Trump openly appeals to whites’ racist fears they are being replaced by Blacks and other people of color, and Black and brown immigrants. His misogyny is well known. Vance takes up the slack.

Who will be the best commander in chief to defend US capitalism imperialism ? The rulers are divided. But none believe Harris is a leftist threat. Obama expanded US wars and was known as the Deporter in Chief of undocumented immigrants—more than Trump.

Both parties defend the interest of the super-rich and the military industrial complex that runs the country. Harris made that clear in her acceptance speech.

Both major parties support the criminal justice legal and prison system. Kamala Harris served as a California prosecutor. She is pro the policing system and rejects attacks on that system.

She is pro imperialist. In her speech of acceptance of her nomination as candidate, she promised to sign Biden’s inhumane, militarized bipartisan border bill and is ready to prosecute US wars abroad, and to “Ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.”

To drive this point home Harris restated her unflinching support for the state of Israel and its criminal war on Palestine. While acknowledging some suffering of civilians in Gaza she emphasized, like Biden, she stands on the side of Israel and its patently false claim of “self-defense.”

In response, the morning of her speech a Muslim group for Harris disbanded after the Democratic Party and Harris team made clear it turns its back on Palestinian suffering.
As a headline in an article in the Guardian said, “Muslim Women for Harris disbands and withdraws support for candidate.”

It continued : “[T]he group Muslim Women for Harris released a statement announcing that it was disbanding in response to the Harris-Walz campaign’s refusal to allow a Palestinian person to speak on the main stage.

“The statement was released as members of the Uncommitted National Movement, which won 30 delegates to the convention, and their supporters held a sit-in outside of the convention. . .

“During the sit-in, Muslim Women for Harris pulled their support for the Democratic nominee.

“In the group’s statement, ‘We cannot in good conscience continue Muslim Women for Harris-Walz, in light of this new information from the Uncommitted movement, that VP Harris’ team declined their request to have a Palestinian American speaker take the stage at the DNC.’

“ ‘Kamala Harris’s campaign,’ it continued, ‘notably invited the family of Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin to speak on Wednesday which Uncommitted supported. The group called for a similar platform for a Palestinian.’ ’’

Jill Stein, the Green Party presidential candidate explained in an email to her supporters what the Democratic Party official platform says showing their treatment in Chicago was no surprise. She wrote :

“The Democrats’ official platform promises Israel :

• Ongoing, unconditional military aid and an official reassertion of “Israel’s right to defend itself” (a right they don’t extend to Palestinians).

• Vague support for ceasefire conditions that are entirely at Israel’s discretion, allowing them to continue the slaughter in Gaza (and the West Bank) until THEY decide they’ve killed enough.

• Continued diplomatic cover for Israel’s apartheid regime with a pledge to “oppose any effort” to criticize or “delegitimize Israel,” including UN sanctions and the BDS movement.

“The Democrats don’t stop with giving Israel everything they could dream of. The platform also recklessly stokes the flames of a broader regional war by legitimizing Israel’s attacks against Iran, Lebanon, and Yemen – one that could easily set off a third world war.

“This isn’t a platform. It’s a time bomb”

Every day there were mass pro Palestine protesters and others outside the convention. The main demands were recognition of Palestinians as human beings with rights, a call for an immediate arms embargo for Israel and a permanent cease fire.

It is easy to be confused by the hype around the Harris campaign as the first Black/South Asian woman to receive a major ruling party’s nomination. That obscured that the two ruling parties (it is impossible for third parties to get press and equal time) reflect the interests of the capitalist class.

Superficially it seems they are different parties with different interests. That’s a mistake. They have tactical differences on how to rule. Trump mainly appeals to white men and women as his base. He overwhelmingly won the white men’s vote in his previous runs for president.

Harris speaks up for the inclusion of minorities and women in institutions that has occurred.

Trump is critical of NATO and wars abroad but supports tariffs and sanctions against declared US enemies. Continued expansion of NATO, a military alliance aimed against Russia, under Trump occurred despite his criticisms of NATO countries.

Biden and Harris also support the expansion of NATO.

In her speech to the convention she gave a war mongering defense of US foreign policy, threatening war with US enemies including Russia, Iran, and China.

 Working class needs its own party

Neither party represents the interests of the working class and oppressed here or abroad.

As historic as is the nomination and possibly electing of the first woman as commander in chief, it means little to the working masses including the poor, and oppressed.

The most serious voice is coming from one third party, the Green Party’s presidential candidate, Jill Stein.

Who one votes for of the two parties, if one votes, is almost meaningless. Nearly half the population doesn’t even bother to vote. The key to winning fundamental change is what you do the other days in the year.

The only reason the issue of Palestine was even seen at all at the Democratic national convention is because of the mass pro-cease fire, pro Palestine movement.

That was a victory for the broad-ethnic and racial movement that began ten months ago, as was the fact that the mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johson, elected in 2023, himself of a veteran of many streets protest in the Black community, and former teacher, allowed the protests nearby the convention even after the Democratic National Committee and police sought to have them five miles away.

A participant in the 1968 Democratic convention and anti-Vietnam war protests, brutally attacked by police, Juan Gonzalez of Democracy Now, said after the end of the Democratic convention, “we saw the two faces of capitalism this summer at the Republican and Democratic Party conventions.” Both conventions, he said, were choreographed. Two faces of the capitalism state.

However, the protests against the genocidal war in Gaza occurred and were seen on social media if scarcely in the mainstream media.

To win and defeat the US backed Israeli aggressors will require an even bigger mass movement here and abroad. It can happen.

Malik Miah and Barry Sheppard

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