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The ‘Killer Kamala’ Convention
Will the thousands of anti-Israel protesters in Chicago ruin it for the Democrats?
By William McGurn, WSJ
Aug. 12, 2024 5:13 pm ET
A protest group in San Francisco, Aug. 11. Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez/Associated Press
While Kamala Harris spoke to campaign donors inside San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel on Sunday, protesters expressed their displeasure outside: “Killer Kamala, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide,” they chanted. Variations of the same jingle dogged her at rallies last week, from Las Vegas to Detroit.
The San Francisco Chronicle estimated the crowd at roughly 250. That’s only a fraction of what awaits her next week in Chicago, where tens of thousands of activists will be in town for the Democratic National Convention. They are showing up to hold Ms. Harris to account for the Biden administration’s policy in Gaza, where they accuse Israel of “genocide” against the Palestinian people.
“Democratic Party leadership switching out their presidential nominee does not wash the blood of over 50,000 Palestinians off their hands,” reads a statement from the March on the DNC 2024, one of the coalitions behind the planned protests. All that has changed is the groups’ target. With President Biden’s withdrawal from the race, “Genocide Joe” has given way to “Killer Kamala.”
At a rally in Detroit last Wednesday, Ms. Harris took on protesters after they interrupted her with genocide accusations. “You know what?” she said. “If you want Donald Trump to win, say that. Otherwise I am speaking.”
There’s her dilemma. Ms. Harris is trying to quiet protesters on her left flank who would probably vote for her if it weren’t for Gaza. The problem is that the protesters don’t believe deflecting to Donald Trump is any kind of answer to their concerns about the vice president’s complicity in “genocide.” Zainab Hakim, one of the activists who interrupted Ms. Harris in Detroit, put it this way in an interview with Mother Jones: “What people seem to be forgetting is that she’s not just like some random person who decided to run for president. She has been the vice president for all 300-plus days of this genocide, and could have said something in all of that time. She deliberately chose not to do that.”
Such protesters intend to make Ms. Harris pay for it at the convention. While party leaders hope for a show of unity, protests—especially if they are accompanied by chaos and violence—would paint a different picture for millions of Americans watching from their living rooms. Meanwhile, although Ms. Harris has taken a harsher tone toward Israel than Mr. Biden, her policy is largely the same, including rejecting the protestors’ demand for an arms embargo against the Jewish state.
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Meanwhile, a virtual who’s who of the far left is planning for Chicago. Those groups range from Code Pink, the Democratic Socialists of America and the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, who have rallied under the March on the DNC coalition, to the Poor Peoples Army, Thank God for Abortion and Jewish Voice for Peace Chicago, which are part of the Bodies Outside of Unjust Laws coalition. The latter has been given a permit for its own march. These groups have different priorities and don’t operate in lockstep, but almost all have included Gaza in their protest messaging. Many have been haggling with the city over permits.
In a February ruling by an administrative judge upholding the city’s denial of one permit, an activist is quoted as saying that organizers are determined to have a “family friendly” protest. If so it would be one of the first. From Columbia University to Washington’s Union Station, anti-Israel protests have often been accompanied by vandalism, intimidation and, sometimes, clashes with police.
With less than a week before the DNC begins, it all ties back to an issue the Harris campaign thought it had put to rest by selecting Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. Mr. Walz has explicitly rejected the centrist label and, in the recent “White Dudes for Kamala” Zoom call, said Democrats shouldn’t “shy away from our progressive values.”
Unfortunately for Democrats, the cause that most excites progressives this election is Gaza. For them Ms. Harris’s choice of Mr. Walz, not to mention her own progressive past, only highlights her hypocrisy. Even worse for her, at least some protesters see the Democrats’ 1968 Chicago convention as their model. That was the year a Democratic Party divided by the Vietnam War nominated Hubert Humphrey while outside the convention television cameras captured images of cops beating protesters.
Before Ms. Harris announced Mr. Walz as her running mate, the odds-on favorite was Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. He seemed a moderate from a swing state who could temper Ms. Harris’s image as a San Francisco liberal. Yet she went with Mr. Walz, apparently believing it was more important to avoid angering the party’s left-wing base than to appeal to moderate working-class Democrats and independents in Midwestern battleground states.
In Chicago next week, we’ll see how protesters reward her for it.
Write to mcgurn@wsj.com.
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