When Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday finally addressed the most divisive issue of the Democratic convention — the war in Gaza — she signaled she would pick up almost exactly where President Biden left off.
At the end of her acceptance speech, a hall of supporters who had cheered her calls for reproductive rights and her denunciations of Donald Trump suddenly quieted as she uttered the words: “With respect to the war in Gaza …”
“Let me be clear,” she said, twice, knowing that just beyond the convention hall hundreds of protesters had been calling for the United States to cut off weapons to Israel, as a way of forcing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to cease bombing densely packed neighborhoods in his effort to kill Hamas leaders.
“I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself,” she said, adding “because the people of Israel must never again face the horror that a terrorist organization called Hamas caused on Oct. 7.” She went on to describe the massacre at a music festival that Saturday morning, 10 months ago, specifically noting the “unspeakable sexual violence” that morning, an accusation Hamas continues to deny.
She then went on to talk anew about the “devastating” damage and “innocent lives lost” as the Israelis retaliated. “The scale of the suffering is heartbreaking.” But, like Mr. Biden, she gave no indication that, if elected, she would use the leverage of America’s military support for Israel to pressure it to change tactics. She offered no hint of the tension in the relationship with Mr. Netanyahu, which she has witnessed firsthand, as a listener-in, and sometimes participant, in the tense phone calls with the Israeli leader.
It was a striking moment in a convention that, until its last hours on Thursday night, had put a world on fire on the back burner. The convention organizers had declined a demand from pro-Palestinian groups, including a handful of uncommitted delegates, to let a pro-Palestinian voice speak from the stage. It would have been the sole discordant note in what was otherwise designed to be a dissent-free four days.
Acutely aware that the Gaza issue and the protests it spurred on college campuses had left the administration caught between two powerful constituencies — pro-Israel Democrats and younger progressives — she was looking for a way to quiet the issue for the next three months. In the end, Ms. Harris relied on a forceful tone to address the protesters in the party, rather than a change in policy.
Only after hostages are released and a cease-fire takes hold, she said, can Palestinians “realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination.” But she said nothing about concessions Israel would have to make if those conditions — essentially the two-state solution — were to come to pass.
“Conventions are rarely about foreign policy, and presidential elections aren’t, either,” Ivo Daalder, the chief executive of the Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs, said on Thursday, as he moved between a few side sessions intended to remind the Democratic delegates that there was a bigger world out there, and the next president will have to manage perhaps the most volatile international landscape in decades.
“But this election in particular isn’t, because of how Harris became the candidate,” said Mr. Daalder, who served as American ambassador to NATO under President Obama. “It’s about youth, vigor, tomorrow and economic anxieties. And the past few days have reflected that.”
They certainly did. Mr. Biden’s proudest accomplishment — rallying the NATO allies to save Ukraine from being run over — got some brief mentions, most prominently from Mr. Biden himself. The administration’s biggest challenge, managing an expansionist and fast-arming China, with designs on Taiwan, got only the most fleeting reference, a vow that the United States would win the race for dominance in artificial intelligence. The result was that the foreign policy issue with the greatest salience to America’s economic future got no airing.
But the question of whether hours in the Situation Room and at Mr. Biden’s side had prepared Ms. Harris to be commander in chief could not be ignored, especially at a moment that Mr. Trump was denouncing her as weak. In rambling and unsupported assertions, Mr. Trump has declared that Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, would not have invaded if he was still president because the Russian leader “respected” him so much. He has said he would bring the war in Ukraine to an end “in 24 hours” without saying how, and asserted, without evidence, that Hamas would never have dared to attack Israel if he was still president.
Ms. Harris had to find a way to turn the issue back on Mr. Trump, to focus on the chaos and recklessness of his decision making, and foreign adventures gone bad. And so with Thursday’s speech the campaign finally settled on an approach that her advisers say will become a theme of the next 74 days: that it is the former president who proved himself a pawn of Mr. Putin and an easy mark for dictators like Kim Jong-un of North Korea, because he is so “easy to manipulate with flattery and favors.”
“They know Trump won’t hold autocrats accountable because he wants to be an autocrat himself,” Ms. Harris said at the end of her acceptance speech, a line that brought the Democrats in the hall to their feet.
Ms. Harris also called on longtime members of the Democratic national security establishment to vouch for her credibility as the future commander in chief. Most notable among them was Leon Panetta, the jovial former director of the C.I.A. and defense secretary under President Obama. Conveniently, he is also a Democrat who was at the center of the hunt for Osama bin Laden, and he told the story of sending off Special Operations Forces who flew across Pakistan. “By the time the sun rose, Osama bin Laden was dead,” he said, to cheers in the room — an interesting moment because that hunt happened before Ms. Harris had even come to Washington as a senator.
But Mr. Panetta’s role was to explain the odd reversal that has taken place in how the two major parties see America’s role in the world. The Republicans, once known for internationalism and opposition to the Soviet Union and then Russia, had flipped under Mr. Trump. And the Democrats, traditionally the party of protectionism and spend-the-money-at-home instincts, turned into Russia hawks after Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 election, and then its invasion of Ukraine 30 months ago.
Today, polls show Democrats significantly more comfortable with the idea of America intervening in the world in defense of democracy than the new crop of MAGA Republicans. That could explain why Ronald Reagan’s name was invoked several times on Thursday night, with his characterization of America as a “shining city on a hill,” combined with Cold War steeliness.
Ms. Harris’s speech made clear she planned to ride that inversion of the curve of American politics.
“She knows the tyrants when she sees one,” Mr. Panetta said. “She has looked our allies in the eyes and said America has your back. Trump would abandon our allies and isolate America. We tried that it the 1930s. It was foolish and dangerous then, and it is foolish and dangerous now.”
Read More: On Gaza, Democrats’ Most Divisive Issue, Harris Embraces Biden’s Balancing Act
