In human experience, there is often a gap between what used to be and what is in reality, confronting us. How we think and strategize about electoral politics in the United States and in other constitutional democracies is a case in point. The elite mainstream media and polling industry, heavily partisan, corporate controlled by older whites, mostly males, in the United States and in other democratic nations, are having a tough time interpreting and predicting anything accurately about 2024 Head of State leadership elections since the presumptions of their 20th century formal paradigms of reasoning are becoming largely obsolete.

We have seen such problems in predicting 2024 Head of State leadership elections in France, India, South Africa, the UK and USA as well the case in this crystallizing norm in the study of Head of State elections in mature and developing democracies. The recent convention among political talking heads has been to predict the growing success of the right wing let alone white nationalist parties in Western Europe and in the Western Hemisphere nations of Brazil, Canada, and now in process, the US. But like in Brazil in 2022, France, voters were filled with surprises in their different ways in blocking or diluting the continued success of right wing parties in capturing Head of States through building center-left – radical left firewall or in India and UK building effective moderate coalitions. And the same sort of expectations are ripe to occur in the United States if probable Democratic Party Presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris plays her cards right – if she dares to in selecting the right Presidential candidate. What I call the unspeakable dream team..

It would take guts much more than Obama in 2008 to do what conventional pundits predicted could not happen. Namely, to be a black man running for President of the United States and win. The time now is even more ready for a woman, for a campaigning skilled black woman to win if she is aware of the era this is and goes for it .

Yet the insidious sexism of the whiteness of mainstream American media has yet to come to terms with the possibility of even a white woman becoming President. We saw what happened to Hilary Clinton in 2016. Sure she was a poor campaigner where she needed to be in the rural Midwest and was not appealing to younger white women as she anticipated but it was the rock bottom sexism of America which sunk her. After all, the American corporate elite remains predominantly white male and so does the US Supreme Court, which has yet to appoint a woman Chief and the Senate, a woman Majority Leader. A right leaning Supreme Court was smug enough to strike down Roe vs Wade and the Me Too Movement is dead enough to allow Republican MAGAs to nominate a President candidate who is a convicted felon known for his abuse of women with a novice politician for a Vice President who shares his negative views on women human rights.

But with all this said, women now hold the keys to American electorate power. They register more than men and vote more than men. The galvanization of women voters after the US Supreme Court striking down Roe vs Wade was enough to swing elections in the 2022 midterm election. As much as this is the case, the media has a hard time admitting the obvious. Namely, the electorate has very much been captured by women. This is especially seen in the dominance of the black women electorate in the Democratic Party; the backbone of Harris being propelled from Vice President to Presidential candidate. The rapid groundswell of bipartisan multiracial women and men support for Harris in the first week following President Biden stepping down as candidate and nominating his Vice President to take his place has been as amazing as unexpected.

The racist sexist ploys of the Republican Party and media gurus to paint Harris as an incompetent radical lefty politician domestically and abroad has failed and will continue to fail during the campaign season since that is obsolete Cold War rhetoric meaningless to most younger American voters. This is because of the human rights though tough law enforcement policy stances she takes as a former prosecutor in a society where the majority are suffering deeply, especially younger and older voters whose futures are so bleak. And this observation leads to looping back to the earlier point about the growth and now growing collapse of right wing white nationalism in Western Europe and in the Western Hemisphere, let alone in Australia and India. Turning right in listening to right wing populists with all the simple, at times bigoted, solutions to mass white suffering going on the past several years simply has not been panning out well as expected. This is especially the case as critical progressive social media platforms, in particular, have been exposing the too often right wing wealthy behind right wing white nationalist parties with their authoritarian and exploitative agendas to social media savvy younger and older generations.

Besides the winnability of a woman President, even a black one in rock bottom conservative USA, another problem with crystallizing obsolete thinking in electoral political thinking and research is holding on to old labels which just don’t fit anymore. Forty one percent of Americans are independent and a good number of Democrats and Republicans actually are too. The labels of being liberal or conservative or moderate just don’t fit anymore. Being pro-choice or pro-life in reproduction rights is much more complicated than either or. In a recent Newsweek article, an author’s attempt to chronicle the racist views of MAGA supporters about JD Vance’s Indian wife failed and backfired as seen in the comments claiming being MAGA was not to be equated with being a racist.

Just like being right wing or conservative should not be equated with being racist or pro-life, being moderate liberal or left wing does not necessarily mean being anti-racist and pro-choice. Indeed some of the biggest racists around are liberals, moderates, and leftists. But more than the error in aligning covert and overt racist attitudes and behaviors with political ideological choices, there are numerous other illustrations regarding the growing tendency for Americans and others in other nations to have paradoxical and contradictory attitudes and behaviors which are not aligned and aligned with their political party memberships and ideologies. And let us not forget the forty-one percent of the American electorate who are Independents as a firm indication of the growing slippage of traditional political identity ideologies in the US.

The major driving force behind the complexities and contradictions in American political identities and the growth of Independents is the deepening misery index in the nation. Unless one is of the rare few inherited or earned wealth, you are suffering greatly economically and socially as an American no matter your socioeconomic or otherwise demographic status. And it gets worse as you get younger or older. The economic and educational future of younger American generations is not looking too promising and older Americans live under the continued threat of Medicare and Social Security cuts with all generations experiencing housing and medical affordability crises. In 2020 with his populist message to the white rural ignored, and whites in general fearful of the great demographic replacement accelerating, Trump tapped this discontent enough to win, assisted by Clinton being such a poor campaigner in the Midwest, insidious sexism, and the black non-vote in key Midwest and Southeast states.

What is different now is the women electorate is on fire now due to the reversal of Roe vs. Wade, Trump’s felony conviction, and his selection of JD Vance. As a political novice, Vance is a misogynist worse than Trump who is viewed as a disliked opportunist in his own state of Ohio. Even his wife has told friends she is appalled by Trump but now her husband is behind him.

The consolidation of the women vote is like a match ready to be set aflame with the greatest number of registered voters ready to cross parties to protect their interests. For that reason it would be a grave error for Harris to pick a white male Vice President candidate since he would add no significant value to the coalition she needs to continue to electrify and convince to go to the polls: non-whites and white women. Obama won in 2012 without the white vote; especially white males. Harris could do even better if she continued to solidify her non-white and white women constituency and chose Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as her running mate. That has yet to be even whispered but it would be an unspeakable dream team. Harris needs the youth vote and AOC could deliver that: four years younger than Vance and has much more respect and connectivity with her generation and younger and older ones than what Vance can only fantasize about. She would bring in the Latino vote, a high voting constituency both parties have been at a loss to attract.

AOC would also be appealing to the American mass suffering since much of the Biden efforts to promote policies to assist the poor and the fragile middle class come from the Bernie Sanders left wing of which AOC is an active part. AOC , incidentally,has been shifting to left-center, which overlaps with the more cautious center-left Harris but again such labels are dissolving.AOC thus also aligns well with Harris’ more peacemaking stance in the tragic Israel-Gaza situation.

Indeed , as a team , given their synchronized human rights values perspectives,Harris-AOC could vastly improve American damaged reputation abroad through promoting innovative multicultural restorative justice oriented collaborative diplomacy strategies rather than peddling obsolete American hierarchical and patronizing exceptionalism ideologies and practices which simply don’t work anymore in the 21st century global multipolar world order.

Most of us Americans are hurting in one way or another in desperate need of a more humane multiracial democracy with national multicultural restorative justice engagement measures effectively designed and implemented domestically as well as globally.

A Harris- AOC ticket more than a Harris-Whitmer ticket or one with a white male running mate would provide a greater push forward towards such a more humane multiracial democracy. As well, frankly, none of the white males being touted as Harris’ Vice President running mates are all that interesting or charismatic, and would put a drag on the ticket especially for younger voters prone to sit home. The racist/ sexist media and both main parties will probably not see this since obsolete white supremacy thinking in electoral politics is still very much alive.

But someone needs to bring in a new paradigm of America as a much more just multiracial democracy and this is the moment that Harris’ emerging Democratic Party can and should stand up and do it. It would restart the 2008- especially 2012 Obama trend, recovered in the 2020 Biden win of doing the coalition work for suffering voters to vote their interest rather than against it for policies which address their quality-of-life needs rather than those of the super wealthy under the guise of populist rhetoric with its real disinterest in the plight of the suffering.

Probably Harris is too much of a moderate seeped in or/and controlled by party gatekeepers seeped in old fashioned electoral politics to select AOC. She will probably select a white male Governor or Senator in a needed swing state as a running mate just to do unnecessary balancing to appear not to be a threat which is actually no longer there, in terms of always needing a white male as a non-white in power to appear harmless and thinking regionally only. Rather than, that is, a more dynamic winnable strategy of region and swing states embedded in aggressive demographic coalition actions and social media marketing.

This is 2024. There is a need for Harris to be courageous and behave like it and win with AOC on her side. It is time. Take it Democratic Party Presidential “nominee to be” and run with it with AOC with younger generations who don’t think in bigoted ways like too many of us older folks about race and gender and with non-white and white women and male constituencies intoned to the need to end the suffering of most of us. No more labels just run women Harris and AOC and win for all of us domestically and globally.

Professor John Huston Stanfield

Director ASARPI