Democrats Avoid Gaza Debate in Convention Push to Unify Behind Harris

(Bloomberg) -- Kamala Harris’ campaign strategy for confronting the politically charged issue of the war in Gaza at the Democratic National Convention has been mostly to avoid confronting it at all.

Wary of alienating supporters in key swing states — including progressives and pro-Palestinian voters in Michigan and Minnesota, and Jewish voters in Pennsylvania — Democrats on the convention’s main stage have kept mention of the war to a minimum.

That’s despite rising pressure from pro-Palestinian voters who want to see Harris push harder for a cease-fire and to let a Palestinian-American address the crowd Thursday on its final night. So far, the only extended discussion of the war came when the parents of an American-Israeli hostage seized by Hamas spoke to the convention but stuck to calls for their son and the others who were taken to be freed.

The balancing act reflects a broader campaign strategy by Harris, whose team is focused on spurring enthusiasm for her candidacy for now and leaving policy positions for later. That’s included maintaining support for Israel in the Gaza war — the most divisive foreign-policy issue of the moment — while declining to contradict speculation that she might, if elected, put more pressure on Israeli leaders to come to a cease-fire than President Joe Biden has.

“This idea that she’s going to get out there and somehow renounce one side or the other and make a hard policy decision — no,” said Joel Rubin, a former deputy assistant secretary of State and a Democratic political strategist. “The Democratic political convention is about mobilizing votes for the nominee, not subtracting them.”

Earlier: Harris Doesn’t Support Halting Arms Flow to Israel, Aide Says

Before Democrats nominated Harris, the 2024 election looked to be the rare instance in which foreign policy might play a key role. The party was bracing for pro-Palestinian protests in Chicago, scenes they feared would turn off swing state voters and usher in a second term for former President Donald Trump.

Criticism of Biden’s handling of the war has garnered so much attention that a group from the Uncommitted Movement, representing more than 730,000 voters who selected or wrote in “uncommitted” during the presidential primaries, sent 30 delegates — of about 4,700 total — to the convention in Chicago.

Trump and Republicans were eager to play up the internal divisions, accusing Harris of antisemitism for passing over Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro as her vice presidential pick, a notion Shapiro has rejected. The GOP dedicated one of its convention’s four nights in Milwaukee to national-security themes and portraying the Biden-Harris administration as undermining US leadership in the world.

But Harris’ campaign has declined to join that fight, and foreign policy has barely featured at all in the first three nights of the DNC. Harris’ team has engaged the Uncommitted Movement behind the scenes, hoping that the outreach will appeal to pro-Palestinian voters while publicly pledging continued support for Israel.

“We will continue to and have unwaveringly stood with Israel,” campaign adviser Brian Nelson told a Bloomberg News roundtable. “She will continue to talk about those things, a lot of those communications will come in the form of her day job, the thing that she is doing every day. So I’m sure it will be a topic she’ll have the opportunity to talk about over the course of the campaign.”

That strategy threatened to backfire on the final day of the convention, with prominent Democrats and their supporters boosting calls for a Palestinian-American speaker on the convention’s main stage in the hours before Harris addresses the crowd in her acceptance speech later Thursday.

They made the demand after the parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was taken hostage in the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, spoke on Wednesday night and called for peace in the region. His father, Jon Polin, said there’s a “surplus of agony on all sides of the tragic conflict in the Middle East.”

Ocasio-Cortez, UAW

In a social media post after Goldberg-Polin’s parents spoke, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the “humanity of the 40,000 Palestinians killed under Israeli bombardment” must be a focus “just as we must honor the humanity of hostages.”

In her own speech to the convention on Monday, the progressive lawmaker said Harris “is working tirelessly to ensure a cease-fire in Gaza and bringing the hostages home.”

Margaret DeReus, the executive director of Middle East Understanding, said that a speaker on the main stage would show that the party takes the issue seriously.

“I know that the Uncommitted Movement has given multiple names to the campaign,” DeReus said in a phone interview. “Frankly, even that would be a gesture, but it would be a more meaningful one and would signal that the campaign takes this issue seriously.”

For the time being, the campaign was able to point to signs its strategy might be working. The protests that Democratic leaders worried would disrupt the convention have remained mostly calm. Activist groups had promised that tens of thousands of people would show up outside to protest the war in Gaza and disrupt the event, evoking memories of 1968 when Chicago hosted a convention during the Vietnam war. So far the numbers have been fewer than expected and mostly peaceful.

Inside the hall, some convention-goers walked the floor wearing keffiyehs and holding signs in support of Palestinians, but there have been few disruptions.

Young Democrats said the priority was getting Harris into office, and worrying about the Palestinian question later.

“What I was noticing a lot online is there are people who are like — ‘After the election, I’m back to protesting, but until then I’m coconut-pilled, I will do what I can to stop Trump,” said Michelle Amor, a 31-year-old from New York who works with Filipinos for Harris, referring to the Internet meme linked to support for the vice president’s candidacy.

--With assistance from Josh Wingrove, Hadriana Lowenkron, Simone Foxman, Natalia Drozdiak and Akayla Gardner.

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