Harris vs. the Hecklers

Plus: The symbolism and psychology of the Kursk offensive.

Last day before JVL gets back.

Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign rally at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport in Romulus, Michigan, August 7, 2024. (Photo by Amy Lemus/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

1. All Politics Is Domestic

Kamala Harris got heckled in the middle of a speech in Detroit Wednesday by pro-Palestinian protesters shouting, “Kamala, Kamala, you can’t hide. We won’t vote for genocide.”

If you haven’t seen the video of Harris’s reaction, watch this short clip.

This moment bears a close reading, because Harris is working on three levels here. Let’s start at the most minute and then progress toward the most obvious.

Harris doesn’t address the substance of the protesters’ chants. She clearly knows what they’re saying, because she tells them, “If you want Donald Trump to win, say that.” But she doesn’t say, Allegations that Israel is committing genocide are baseless and allegations that the United States government is abetting genocide are scurrilous.

Harris remains something of a cypher on foreign policy, including Israel/Gaza, which probably helps her. As with most issues, the more people can project their hopes and preferences onto her, the more likely she is to win. Getting into specifics means getting into complications, and there’s no reason to interrupt her stump speech to talk about a thorny issue that few Americans care that much about but which divides her supporters. Plus, the less she says on the campaign trail, the more room for maneuver she will have if she becomes president. Vagueness is her friend.

But while Harris isn’t willing to contradict the protesters outright, she does rebuke them on their tactics. Again: “If you want Donald Trump to win, say that.” In nine words, she reframed an issue that divides her base in terms of the issue that most unifies it. It’s impressive rhetorical jiu-jitsu.

And on the broadest, most obvious level, Harris tells the protesters to shut up. This rally was just a day after she announced Tim Walz as her running mate in a move many interpreted as a sop to the progressive base. (Imagine how much larger and louder the protest might have been if Harris had chosen Josh Shapiro, who one did volunteer work at an IDF base, to fill out the ticket.)

A weaker Kamala Harris—say, the Harris of 2019, who was willing to take whatever left-progressive position was needed to win the primary—might not have been so willing to accept the protesters’ adversarial posture and respond in kind. But she did. And this is the most obvious and important part of her response: She told some far-left progressives to pound sand.

It looked like a Sister Souljah moment, even if she never actually rebutted the protesters.

I would have preferred if Harris had told the protesters she disagrees with them on the substance of genocide allegations. I would also not complain if the person who might soon inhabit the world’s most powerful office, with her finger on the proverbial nuclear button, would say a little more about how she sees America’s place in the world.

But as a matter of pure electoral politics, she did what she needed to do to defuse allegations that she’s a radical leftist and to maximize her coalition.

What’s weird is that we still don’t know anything more about whether and how her Israel/Palestine policy would be different from Biden’s. That’s because all politics are domestic, so her actual policy about Israel and Palestine doesn’t matter nearly as much as her policy toward pro-Palestinian protesters. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Discuss in the comments.

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2. Kursk

The sentiment is growing in Ukraine that the United States wants to give Ukraine just enough support to keep fighting but not enough to win.¹ But the Ukrainians apparently aren’t getting the message, because they keep fighting like they’re trying to win.

Cast your mind back to the winter of 2021–2022. More than 100,000 Russian troops are massed on the Ukrainian border. The consensus is that if Russia invades, Ukraine will collapse in days. When the missiles start falling in Kyiv, the United States offers Volodymyr Zelensky an emergency evacuation.

Well, this week, Ukraine invaded Russia. Yeah, you read that right.

The Ukrainian incursion about 10km into Russia’s Kursk region isn’t militarily or geographically that significant. They’re not going to drive to Moscow. The Russians aren’t going to retreat from Ukrainian territory. We’ve probably passed the point where dashing attacks can make a big difference. What matters more now is suffocating the Russian war machine, expanding the Ukrainian one, and keeping Ukrainian cities lit and heated.

But that’s not to say the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk doesn’t matter at all. It does. As a psychological weapon, the Kursk incursion matters a great deal.

First, there’s the symbolism. In 1943, Kursk was the site of the largest tank battle in history; the Red Army overwhelmed the German Army there and ended any hope of stabilizing the front. After Kursk, the war on the Eastern Front was just one long march to Berlin. For the Putin regime, which bases so much of its legitimacy on the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany (don’t ask too many questions), Kursk is a neuralgic spot to have to defend.

“Kursk” was also the name of the Russian submarine that suffered a catastrophic explosion and sank in August 2000, killing all 118 crew. The response of the Russian government was to cover up, lie, deceive, reject offers of help, and then move on. Putin had been president of Russia for less than a year, and he panicked, unable to make a decision and unsure what to do. Oh, and just before the Ukrainians invaded Kursk, they apparently sank a Russian submarine.

This has been a hard year for Ukraine and Ukrainians. It will get harder as the weather gets colder and the country’s energy grid, crippled by Russian air attacks, struggles to keep people warm. But there’s reason to hope 2025 might be better. Even if the geography of Kursk isn’t militarily important, the psychology of it might be.

A historical comparison: In April 1942, just a few months after Pearl Harbor, some swashbuckling American bomber pilots led by James Doolittle decided to do a crazy thing. They put their bombers on an aircraft carrier that was way too small for them, flew them over Japan to bomb the home islands, and then tried to land in China. Many of them crashed. Three men died during the mission; eight men were taken prisoner, and four of them died.

The Doolittle raid was designed as a psychological operation first and foremost. Twenty-five medium bombers weren’t nearly enough to make a significant impact on Japan’s war production. But it sent a signal to both the government of Japan and the people of the United States: We can and will hit back.

The full effects of the Doolittle raid wouldn’t become clear until much later. The shock of a direct attack on the home islands was so acute for the Japanese high command that it significantly exacerbated tensions between the Army (responsible for air defense of the home islands) and the Navy (which had failed to sink the American aircraft carriers or shoot down the planes before they reached Japan). The Army relocated a significant number of fighter planes back to the home islands—away from the places American forces would actually attack.

Maybe the Russians, who have long been almost obsessed with air defense, will make the same mistake.

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3. Where Does Walz Go to Get His Apology?

Over at his Substack,

Adam Kinzinger

has some great, short thoughts on the attacks on Walz for “stolen valor.”

As anyone who has served in the military knows, there are often good-spirited jokes about other branches and jobs. The Air Force gets called the “Chair Force” (we love this, actually), the Marines get called dumb, and so on. While not true, these jokes keep interservice rivalries lively and everyone on their toes. In general, we all respect each other and understand that whether you are kicking down doors, flying planes, gassing vehicles, or cooking food, you are willing to do what 98 percent of the country isn’t: serve for a cause above all others. This makes the attacks on Tim Walz, particularly from JD Vance, especially sickening.

JD Vance was an enlisted Marine who served honorably. While he didn’t see combat (he was in public affairs), he still deployed and served his nation as expected. He got out at the end of his service commitment and did not make it a 20-year career. Tim Walz joined the Army Guard and served honorably for 24 years, achieving the highest enlisted rank offered. That is quite an accomplishment. The nation should be proud, and JD Vance should be respectful of his fellow warrior.

The attacks on Walz have proven to be not only false but also disgusting. I will debunk the attacks that have been floating around. But first and foremost, keep one thing in mind: Donald Trump not only didn’t serve in the military, he actively avoided service by claiming he had “bone spurs.” With him, everything is a projection, and he’s projecting his cowardice onto others, in this case, Gov. Walz.

Read the whole thing.

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Correction, August 9, 2024, 3:30 p.m.: An earlier version of this newsletter mischaracterized Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as a “former IDF volunteer.” While Shapiro did make this claim about himself in an op-ed he wrote in college, and he did perform some volunteer work on an IDF base in high school, he had no direct relationship with the IDF at that time.

1. Back at the very beginning of the war, there was a nasty slander that those in favor of arming Ukraine to the teeth were just Russophobe chicken-hawks who were willing to fight to the last Ukrainian. That wasn’t true then and isn’t true now, but American policy over the last two and a half years hasn’t helped repudiate the accusation.