In the next few weeks, millions of anxious and angry Americans will tune in to watch a senate proceeding— the confirmation of a Supreme Court nominee. Trump’s court-packing plan, i.e to create a right-wing Supreme Court, will run into the dragon’s teeth of opposition from the Democrats. One Democrat, in particular, is supposed to spearhead the attack – Senator Kamala Harris.
She rose to national prominence because of her stellar role in the senate, questioning Trump’s previous nominees. In the past, even shoo-in candidates to the post have been dropped by previous administrations, when opposition to them was credible and sustained. This time around, much will depend on the campaign which Senator Harris and her colleagues organize to block the nominee.
This coming battle will be particularly ferocious and bitter as it comes at a tipping point in American politics. One hand is Senator Harris, a poster child for the American dream and immigrant aspirations. She is a representative of the progressive, post-racial America that the Obama Presidency was supposed to herald.
On the other side, the legions of the Republican Party, who are marshalling all their resources for the coming battle. They want to appoint their standard-bearer on the court, creating a more right-wing court for decades to come. Indeed this clash which is taking part under the overhang of the November 2020 Presidential election, is a battle for the soul of America.
Yet, regardless of the outcome of these feverish campaigns, Senator Harris, a political paladin will remain a cardinal figure in American politics. The junior senator from California has journeyed far and has stormed many a bastion in the treacherous realm of American politics. An Amazonian figure, as her opponents have discovered, she is heavily armoured and well-armed. As in war, a greater part of politics is about choosing one’s ground. In this, Kamala Harris has always displayed an unerring sense of terrain and manoeuvres adroitly. She chooses her target with great care and then engages it with the right mix of lethality and objectivity. She has finely honed instincts borne of a veteran of California politics and the acumen and judgement of ace prosecutor. Her career so far has been characterized by caution and few missteps, even as she nimbly ascends the political ladder.
The republicans have had a hard time attacking. So far there have been no revelations of skeletons in her closet, no shady business dealings or anything to taint her with. On the character and fitness score, she has a perfect grade. Her prosecutorial record is suggestive of a tough law and order politician, a plus in American politics. She has been accused of pandering and oscillating on key issues. But these are necessary traits in mainstream politics. All in all, she is a powerful centrist politician who is poised to occupy the commanding heights of US politics.
Yet she is politically handicapped! Handicapped in a way that a white, male, conservative politician would not be. That is because, beyond her strengths and prowess, lies the great American divide. A political and cultural chasm so wide and so unbridgeable that it will always impose certain extreme constraints on what she can achieve politically. It is a fissure that lies in history and has widened since the great recession of 2008.
It is a time tested truth that America while more accepting of immigrants than most countries embraces their capital, talent and labour while vehemently rejecting their social or political values. More so, because politics is oligarchical whilst populist, assimilative whilst nativist. These paradoxes are at the heart of what the American Historian, Richard Hofstadter called the ‘paranoid style of politics’.
As old as the founding fathers and the Declaration of Independence, the paranoid style of politics has always been an integral part of American political life. American politics, according to Hofstadter, has always been a theatre of angry minds with a pronounced tilt towards conspiratorial fantasizing and nativism. Its force of expression is high-pressure coercive campaigns and they aim to root out suspected subversives and traitors. It is characterized by attacks on the free press and editors.
Only the villains have changed. If it was Catholics, freemasons and Jews in the past, the victims of this right-wing vitriol currently are Socialists, Muslims and liberals. At particular times in American history, the influences of this brand of politics have waxed and waned. Yet whenever it reared its head, it signified a campaign of witch hunts, inquisitorial trials and lynch mob rallies. Throughout the 20th century, any political figure who acted to check on plutocratic dominance and entrenched racial hierarchies have been the victims of such sulphurous politics.
The Age of Obama was supposed to have signalled the end of such politics. Many naively believed that race-baiting, xenophobia, white nativism and other perennial demons haunting American public life, had finally been exorcised. Yet those malign beasts had only been pushed out of the centre by the crisis of the era. They found a ready home in the subterranean caverns of American life, far beyond the glare of beltway politics and mainstream media.
The Tea party movement and the Birther movement were the revitalizations of the paranoid style of US politics. The great betrayal and rage that the US middle class experienced by the great recession of 2008 towards Washington elites, was successfully channelized toward Obama and his administration. Trump, who was an early cheerleader of the movement, was able to convince millions of Americans that shyster elites were conspiring to hand over the country to ‘Un-American’ people like refugees and immigrants. America, he claimed would be hollowed out, by a disloyal government and its henchmen. This is the minefield through which Senator Harris is negotiating. No one, least of all the crores of Indians following her, should be puzzled by her future caution and circumspection concerning American domestic and foreign policy.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of THE WEEK
