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In Madison, Wisconsin, fifteen thousand people gathered for America’s nationwide “No Kings” protest against President Trump’s government-funded birthday parade. Classic makeshift cardboard signs with various taglines crowded the air. Amidst the fray, one stood out:
“If Kamala were president, we’d be at brunch.”
Many of us held witness to this pervasive motto, whether heralded on the street or in a social media post. And for some, it might be true. But a Harris Administration would’ve brought another minor adaptation of the 21st century Democratic Party’s history of caving to the right. So it raises the question: who, exactly, would be attending brunch?
According to the ACLU, under the Biden administration, ICE went from detaining an average of 15,000 to almost 30,000 people per day between January 2021 and July 2023. Biden funded various private detention centers for said detainees, including infamous CoreCivic, with billions of dollars. During her run in late 2024, Harris planned to maintain and even strengthen ICE further, a stark contrast to her 2019 campaign in which she pledged that these detention centers would be closed “on day one.”
ACA International states that 65% of American adults were living paycheck-to-paycheck during Harris’s short campaign. She had proposed a somewhat developed plan to fund small businesses and cut costs for working-class Americans. She had endorsed a 28% corporate tax for the ultra-wealthy. A great step forward for the 99%, but Harris’ little acknowledgement of her and Biden’s contributions to inflation severed the left’s dwindling connection with the working class.
Kamala Harris has acknowledged the overpoweringly colonialist system of the US, stating that “There is no denying that we have, in our history as a nation, racism.” In 2019, she called for “some sort” of reparations for the crimes America has (and continues to) commit against its black citizens. Many had yet to hear her repeat this as a policy for her second campaign.
As Attorney General in California from 2011 to 2017, Harris took on multiple cases (including Auburn v. Newsom, RBLI v. California) as a defendant, keeping indigenous land or artifacts in the government’s hands. The Biden-Harris administration brought hope for many indigenous citizens. Harris later proposed a clean energy transition which would require a good amount of native peoples’ land and resources, risking alienation of the Indigenous vote.
And what could American politics be without Israel’s colonial grip? The Biden Administration approved an entire $20 billion in arms to the state. Although Harris has claimed that the “...war [in Gaza] has to end,” it is hard to view her beliefs as anything but performative when considering that sum could’ve provided the unhoused with supplemental income for a good year. Remember: at the time of her saying this, physicians estimated more than 62,000 Palestinian deaths since the October 7th attack. Her call for a ceasefire came after tens of thousands of deaths, long after U.S. endorsement, could’ve made a drastic change to the genocide.
So while the majority of white Americans would certainly find a seat at the brunch table, a good part of the nation, and the world, were failed by Kamala’s campaign. American citizens have this vision that as soon as someone from the blue party is elected, any sort of prejudiced legislation is suddenly a thing of the past, or suddenly something so difficult to abolish with someone like the president’s power.
Malcom X derided this sort of tendency as mere “white liberalism:” rather than actively fight for equity, these liberals derive a somewhat performative satisfaction with anything the Democratic party has endorsed. There is a refusal to acknowledge the increasingly marginal difference between America’s left and right. And the metaphorical “brunch” embodies this to a tee. Many white liberals again and again fail the minority groups they claim to fight for by blatantly ignoring or becoming passive with how much systemic racism, war, and imperialism America has invested in and gained from.
While “going blue no matter who” is better than acceding to Trump, the people demand more. Democrats market themselves as supporting justice and freedom — yet at the ballot box last year, many failed to see how voting for Harris would bring about either.
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