The Trump marketing campaign says that Kamala Harris is a radical leftist. The far left fears that she’s a neoliberal cop. They’ll’t each be proper.
However pinning down precisely the place the vice chairman and Democratic nominee for president sits on the political spectrum isn’t really easy. She has gone from her first state-level election to the highest of the presidential ticket in 14 years, far sooner than Joe Biden, and he or she spent a lot of that point in positions that don’t present an intensive file on a variety of coverage points. Throughout her 2020 presidential bid, she took some positions to the left of her prior file—a number of of which she’s now walked again in her present bid for president.
Robert L. Borosage, a progressive strategist and author, instructed me that Harris’s profession gives an excellent sense of her views on some discrete points, however much less of her general imaginative and prescient.
“What she hasn’t needed to do, and what she did not do in 2020, was outline a coherent, compelling message about the place she wished to take the nation and the way that was genuine to her,” he mentioned. “That’s a giant deal. And that continues to be to be seen.” This ambiguity is one thing that Donald Trump’s supporters have seized upon, pointing to the absence of an in depth platform on her marketing campaign website (although Trump’s personal platform isn’t precisely heavy on coverage particulars both).
Thus far, most Democrats are enthusiastic about Harris: A latest ballot discovered that 79 p.c of them help her as nominee. (She can be operating higher with independents than Biden was.) Harris’s continued success might rely on the extent to which she is ready to persuade voters that she is a principled pragmatist, reasonably than a climate vane. To an excellent extent, these are merely alternative ways to explain the identical political selections—one constructive, the opposite pejorative. Whether or not a politician is seen as pragmatic or craven tends to be decided, in good half, by their charisma. Through the 2012 presidential race, Mitt Romney—who had vacillated on varied points through the years—got here to be seen as missing conviction. In 2008, nevertheless, Barack Obama’s lofty rhetoric and private attraction allowed Democrats throughout the spectrum to see their politics mirrored in him, enabling him to unite the social gathering.
As I spoke with figures hailing from totally different elements of the Democratic continuum, I used to be struck by what number of of them had excessive hopes for Harris—if not confidence that she was completely aligned with them, then a perception that she could possibly be molded to suit their preferences. That echoes the strategy taken by Biden, who has managed to stay close to the middle of the Democratic Celebration over a number of a long time. Progressives see a Biden who has been nudged left and imagine Harris could be too. (Her number of Tim Walz as operating mate, reasonably than the extra average Josh Shapiro, has delighted them.) Moderates and centrists see her as persevering with Biden’s custom of versatile and efficient coverage making unbeholden to ideology.
For many of her profession, Harris’s political persona has been based mostly not on an allegiance to any explicit wing of the social gathering however on her identification as a prosecutor. As a district lawyer and later as a state lawyer normal in California, she generally refused to weigh in on issues that she believed weren’t in her purview. When she did, she was not doctrinaire. Her first marketing campaign was a 2003 run for San Francisco district lawyer in opposition to the incumbent, Terence Hallinan—her former boss. Hallinan positioned himself as a “progressive prosecutor” earlier than that label existed, and Harris ran in opposition to him much less as a law-and-order candidate than as an avatar of excellent governance and technocratic reform. She did take one notable left-leaning stance: She mentioned she would by no means search the dying penalty.
That pledge was examined nearly instantly after Harris defeated Hallinan and took workplace, when a San Francisco police officer was shot and killed on obligation. Harris confronted intense stress to attempt for the dying penalty for the killer. On the officer’s funeral, with Harris current, Senator Dianne Feinstein known as the homicide “the particular circumstance known as for by the death-penalty regulation.” Different main Democrats agreed. Harris, nevertheless, held agency on her marketing campaign dedication. (The killer was ultimately convicted and sentenced to life with out parole.) Even so, when she later turned lawyer normal, she defended California’s prerogative to execute individuals in a lawsuit.
The place Harris’s detractors see callow triangulation, her defenders see earnest trying to find options. These defenders level to an extended historical past of Harris making what they view as strategic, savvy selections with out getting slowed down by ideological constancy. In a 2016 profile, the journalist Emily Bazelon famous that Harris was fond of claiming she rejected false selections. In a 2010 guide, Sensible on Crime, Harris and her co-author tried to sidestep a tough-on-crime–versus–progressive-reformist binary, arguing that coverage makers might enhance security with out draconian ways. Corey Prepare dinner, a political scientist at Saint Mary’s Faculty of California, instructed me that in Harris he sees an individual who has an unchanging set of ideas however is agnostic about easy methods to enact them.
“She has a powerful perception in human rights. She has a powerful dedication round range and fairness, proper? She has a powerful justice orientation,” he mentioned. “However she’s very clearly a pragmatist. She’s any individual who seems to be for center floor. She’s any individual who seems to be for, type of, how do you make progress in smaller steps?”
When Harris ran for state lawyer normal, in 2010, she was thought of the underdog. California is now regarded as the last word blue state, however the governor on the time was a Republican, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and that yr was dangerous for Democrats broadly. Her GOP opponent, Steve Cooley, was a well-respected district lawyer in Los Angeles County, a metro space that dwarfs San Francisco. Harris beat Cooley not due to her ideological positioning, observers instructed me, however just by outhustling him. She gained by lower than 1 p.c of the vote.
Some members of each events have used state-attorney-general workplaces as platforms for ideological warfare, however Harris didn’t, choosing a buttoned-up, much less political strategy. Her signature second got here when she rejected a nationwide settlement with large banks over foreclosures, deeming it too small; she later settled for 4 occasions the quantity California would have obtained.
“I feel she was nicely within the mainstream, each of California and America,” former Governor Grey Davis, a average Democrat, instructed me.
When Barbara Boxer retired, in 2016, Harris simply gained her U.S. Senate seat. For the primary time, she was in a job the place she had purview over a variety of coverage questions. Her voting file, in keeping with DW-NOMINATE, a way developed by political scientists for scoring the votes of members of Congress, made her one of many very furthest left members of the Senate whereas she was there, exceeded solely by Elizabeth Warren. Harris co-sponsored the Inexperienced New Deal and Senator Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All Act. She additionally voted in opposition to the USMCA, Trump’s substitute for NAFTA.
It’s an attention-grabbing knowledge level, as a result of few progressives declare her as one in all their very own and plenty of of them mistrust her; the social gathering’s leftmost members of Congress have been amongst these most looking forward to President Joe Biden to stay within the presidential race, after he gained their belief throughout his administration. Specialists I talked with mentioned that Harris’s DW-NOMINATE rating far overstated her precise progressivism. (As soon as once more, individuals are capable of see her file in a number of believable lights.) “Harris wouldn’t qualify as a member of the Squad,” the congressional scholar Norm Ornstein instructed me drily. “She’s definitely a liberal. She has no points with a powerful and assertive function for presidency. However she is way from being any individual who desires to destroy the personal sector.” Matt Bennett, the chief vice chairman for public affairs on the centrist Democratic group Third Approach, argued that Harris was simply faithfully representing her constituents. “She was a senator from California and so she took senator-from-California positions on stuff,” he instructed me.
Harris made her greatest splash not with laws however on the Judiciary Committee, the place she grilled Donald Trump’s nominees for the federal bench. On the 2018 affirmation hearings for Justice Brett Kavanaugh, she introduced the nominee up quick with a reproductive-rights query: “Are you able to consider any legal guidelines that give the federal government the ability to make selections in regards to the male physique?” she requested, a pointed reference to abortion restrictions. The truth that her sharp questioning, reasonably than any payments, are what made Harris’s title exemplifies how the main focus for Democratic legislators through the Trump presidency was, above all, about resistance.
Her robust questioning of officers and nominees made her sufficient of a star that she determined to run for president in 2020. That’s the place she obtained into the best hassle of her political profession. In a big discipline of Democrats, her ideology (or absence of 1) didn’t stick out. She was clearly not probably the most average candidate within the discipline (that was Biden), nor the youngest (Pete Buttigieg), nor probably the most liberal (Warren and Sanders). And the motion for criminal-justice reform after the homicide of George Floyd additional difficult Harris’s marketing campaign. In each prior race, her résumé as a prosecutor had been an electoral asset. Now, for the primary time, it was a legal responsibility.
Harris took up a sequence of positions that positioned her on the left of the sphere, however they did not win over left-wing main voters, lots of whom have been already followers of Sanders, Warren, or Julián Castro, and who considered a few of her plans as ludicrously overengineered. Her large second within the main got here when she attacked Biden’s file on college busing—however reasonably than push her benefit, she appeared unable to articulate what it was she supported and the way it differed from Biden’s place. “One of many points along with her 2020 marketing campaign was that she was making an attempt to be every thing to everybody,” Waleed Shahid, a strategist and former spokesperson for the Squad-aligned Justice Democrats, instructed me.
Harris withdrew from the race earlier than any primaries, however Biden chosen her as his operating mate and he or she turned the vice chairman. The Naval Observatory isn’t an excellent perch from which to outline your self politically. The White Home units coverage, and the veep is obligated to help it. Her advisers grumbled early on that she was being given thankless portfolios, equivalent to border safety, that created political vulnerabilities however not alternatives. (Harris’s time as “border czar” has supplied fodder for one in all Republicans’ main assaults on her to this point.)
“I don’t even know the place Vice President Harris’s most passionate views are held. I can’t let you know what her signature coverage proposal was,” Shahid instructed me. “In loads of methods, it’s symbolic of the bigger development within the Democratic Celebration of ideological confusion.”
But serving as vice chairman within the Biden administration has additionally in some methods solved this downside for her. First, it has handed her the Democratic nomination with out her having to combat by means of a crowded main just like the 2020 one. The early weeks of her marketing campaign counsel that she is likely to be a more practical general-election candidate than main candidate.
Second, it has given her a broad coverage platform with which to determine. One of many paradoxes of the Biden administration, and a supply of evident frustration for Biden himself, was that lots of his insurance policies have been fashionable however voters evinced little belief in him or his potential to deal with large points. It gained’t be easy, however Harris has an opportunity to capitalize on the favored elements of the agenda whereas shedding the negatives.
“She is the Biden administration proper now, and she will be able to’t be anything, and I feel individuals perceive that,” Elaine Kamarck, a scholar of political events on the Brookings Establishment and a former Democratic staffer, instructed me. “The Republicans will attempt to dredge up every thing she mentioned previous to that, however the reality of the matter is her identification is now Biden.”
Sustaining broad attraction to totally different factions of Democrats and independents is not going to be simple, although the truncated marketing campaign might make it simpler. Apart from, ideology is probably not the paramount issue for many Democrats. Harris’s time as a prosecutor as soon as once more looks as if an asset, as she guarantees to go after the convicted felon Trump, one thing that unites each faction of the social gathering.
“Some individuals on the left and proper need some ideological purity take a look at. We don’t have time for that. We now have our nominee,” Grey Davis instructed me. “She’s gonna give Trump a run for his cash. He has no thought what he’s in for.”
If Democrats imagine Harris can beat Trump, they could not care about a lot else, a minimum of for now. The battles over coverage can wait till after she wins.
