Is Harris Centrist or Progressive?
Is Harris Centrist or Progressive?
Leading Democrats appear to disagree
Aug. 26: Dems debate Harris’s ness … Powell signals rate cut … GOP raids homes of TX elderly … Harris catching up to Deadpool …
Democratic Party leaders have had a month now to assess Vice President Kamala Harris as a presidential candidate and the nature of the policy plans she’s proposed so far.
Taken together, it allowed Democratic leaders to weigh in this weekend on whether Harris is a centrist or a progressive. And the answer is yes.
She is definitely a centrist or a progressive. Democratic leaders just disagree about which.
Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA) was asked by CBS’s Margaret Brennan yesterday about former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) saying that Harris will “have to govern from the center, because that’s where the public is.”
Lee disagreed.
Brennan: …This past week, former Speaker Pelosi stated Vice President Harris will, quote, “have to govern from the center because that’s where the public is.”
I know you are a progressive Democrat. Do you think that this pivot to the center, particularly on issues like the border and immigration and crime, are they going to hurt support for the Harris-Walz ticket or is it what’s required?
Lee: Yes. So, I have to say — and I like to hope that we’re able to do this — I have to disagree a bit. I think that we have data, we have polling, we have anecdotal evidence from Americans all over the country, but especially out in Pennsylvania, in a swing state, where we’re not actually asking for our candidates to run away from progressive ideals. We’re asking them for them to run to them.
You know, there’s this idea that to say that, you know, having health care or an equitable education or even talking about, you know, immigration reform and the border in a humane way is somehow to the left. But I think that that’s what the average American wants.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), the nation’s most prominent progressive leader1, yesterday reiterated his support for Harris — who he declined to endorse right away until determining her policies were “progressive,” as he did just before last week’s Democratic National Convention (DNC).
Reportedly, Sanders held off on endorsing in part to try to sway Harris toward progressive policies. But it’s not clear which policy positions he secured.
Harris’s economic plan includes massive commitments to creating new, affordable housing, and something close to a declaration of war on big companies charging high prices.
It’s a far cry from the top marginal tax rates of the 1960s, but apparently enough for Sanders to deem the plan “progressive.”
But Pelosi has a point about Harris and the center. Harris has, after all, dropped her progressive positions on Medicare For All and fracking, and settled for restoring Roe v. Wade abortion protections in lieu of more robust federal legislation codifying abortion rights.
But that Pelosi quote didn’t include the full context, which will likely be an essential element of the real question at stake here: Whether Harris will be centrist or progressive.
If you watch the full exchange with Pelosi and Politico’s Jonathan Martin, she’s claiming (falsely) that any president has to govern from the center:
Pelosi: Politically, she’s very astute.
Martin: Is she a moderate or a progressive?
Pelosi: Well, I think of her as a Democrat. And Democrats are part moderate and part progressive. It depends on what the issue is. But I think that no one has anything to be concerned about, about where you govern from. Where you run from in a primary may not be where you govern from.
Martin: Will she govern from the center next year?
Pelosi: You have to.
Martin: Yeah.2
Pelosi: I mean, you have to.
Martin: Why?
Pelosi: Because that’s where the public is.
So, that’s a ton of bullshit packed into a Politico-pound bag. First of all, note Martin nudging toward the center.
But also catch Pelosi copping that Democrats “may not” govern from the same place they run from in primaries. Um, so, lying?
But my biggest beef is with blaming it on the public. “The public” isn’t in the center. They’re watching videos. The only question is whether the public is on Netflix or TikTok.3 The vast majority do not think about tariffs. Or tax credits.
But if you lead the public instead of following it, even a crappy politician ought to be able to sell “the public” on free college and free health care and not boiling the planet. The people are ready to authorize the use of military force against Exxon.
Pelosi is right, though, about what she says after that, which amounts to the fact that what a president actually does has a lot less to do with who they secretly, really, essentially are than it does with Congress and the people.
But that means that if Harris wins a landslide it will be due in large part to progressives turning out for her. Which means they’ve earned progressive policies.
But it will also mean that Americans overwhelmingly chose a candidate who was not only called a Communist by the opposing party, but has an actual real history of pushing progressive positions. In other words, if Harris wins, that means voters took the risk that she would NOT govern from the center. If some voters want you to be progressive, and the rest are willing to risk it, then that’s what you do. Not just because it’s your mandate, but because those are the policies that will actually make things better.
And another Pelosi wrongness worth flagging that Politico didn’t flag despite all their savvy insider-ness: Presidents do not have to govern from the center. Which presidents don’t? Republicans, obvi!
Then-Pres. George W. Bush narrowly won both times and presided as if he’d won a mandate. The reason Republicans can do that is that Democrats help them and so do the media. The reason it never works is because they pass right-wing or centrist bullshit.
If there’s one reliable maxim about modern politics it’s that our worst outcomes almost always arise from bipartisan consensus. The militarization of American life after 9/11. The militarization of Iraq after 9/11. The 2007/2008 global economic crisis. The “Hillbilly Elegy” movie.
All fruits of centrism. All devastating to humanity.
So, where does that leave us with Harris? Pelosi was right: Harris is politically astute. If progressives give her a progressive mandate, and frame her candidacy as a crusade for progressive policies and progressive outcomes, Harris is more likely to honor those progressive ideals.
If Harris believes she owes her victory to memes, we’ll get memes. And policies primarily serving rich donors.
OTOH Politico reports that one big constituency has decided to leave policy on the sidelines for now. That’s the environmental movement — including even some groups that actively protested Biden’s climate policies and/or lack thereof.
These groups are keeping their powder dry and sustainable because their base is excited and engaged about Harris’s campaign. But also because, Politico reports:
“Harris’ campaign also moved quickly to build trust with several progressive environmental groups that had not endorsed Biden’s reelection bid, officials from several of those organizations said, starting with a meeting July 28 just a week after Biden dropped out of the race.
“That communication left the activists feeling heard in a way they had not always felt with Biden, environmentalists said afterward — they endorsed Harris three days later.”
And the flip side to making noise now is that maybejustmaybe the Harris campaign has given assurances that activist support now — with little time for the campaign to assemble fully fleshed policy plans that won’t survive the new Congress anyway — will buy those activists a place at the policy table or even be rewarded with Harris’s support later for progressive policies.
And even, in theory, negate the alleged need for Republican appointees.
To Wit
Pres. Joe Biden gets a lot of some praise for passing landmark progressive legislation. What’s less often noted is how often his political struggles arise from areas where he permitted Republican fiefdoms.
Think how differently things might have gone with a law-and-order attorney general instead of one politically calculated to win over Republicans, which worked approximately zero minus infinity.
Amazingly, given that then-Pres. Donald Trump was an existential threat to democracy, Biden kept at least two of people whose most recent résumé entries involved helping Trump existentially threatify democracy: FBI Director Chris Wray and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.
On Friday, Powell finally confirmed that finally “the time has come” for the Fed finally to lower interest rates, possibly as soon as next month.
But as Jacobin’s Dominik A. Leusder writes, the Fed’s insistence on keeping rates high for so long may already have done some damage. Including to Earth. That’s because green energy is so new it’s much more reliant on loans to build new green shit — and those loans have been expensiver than they had to be.
Powell’s also fueled — for reasons either beyond my early-morning understanding or explaining — instability in economies around the world.
And never let it be forgot that early this year Trump warned Powell not to raise lower rates until after the election, because helping the American people would be politically bad for Trump. Any questions?
Texas Republicans Raid Elderly for Voting Crimes
The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) is holding a news conference today outside the office of Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, claiming harassment and voter intimidation.
LULAC is also asking U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to open a Justice Department probe of what Texas prosecutors are doing. Which is harassing Democratic candidates and organizers for trying to vote and help people vote and otherwise democrize.
As part of a two-year investigation inquiry probe coordinated strategic vote-suppression campaign, Paxton and Republican prosecutors have been conducting raids and other intimidation tactics against Democratic leaders and volunteers, many of them elderly.
To justify their efforts, which were launched to justify Donald Trump’s stolen-election lies, which were launched to justify his humiliating loss, Republican prosecutors are pressing felony charges for individual screwups that in the past have been treated as innocent mistakes — because when millions of people engage in a less-than-annual bureaucratic exercise, some of them will upfuck.
LULAC’s Texas director, Gabriel Rosales, told the New York Times that last week officers raided the home of Cecilia Castellano (campaign site here), a Democratic state House candidate running against the Republican former mayor of Uvalde and took her cellphone — an important tool to have three months before an election.
They also raided the home of one of Castellano’s consultants, breaking down the door. Where are the arrests? Fuck, what are the crimes? Who knows. Who cares. Mission accomplished.
Also last week, nine officers, some of them armed, knocked on the door4 of 87-year-old retired educator Lidia Martinez before 6am. In other words, they interrupted her lunch!
They pushed open the door and told her they had a warrant to search her home. How come? She filled out a form saying some seniors weren’t getting mail ballots. They took her laptop and phone.
And, no, this isn’t a Trump thing. It’s a Republican thing. Pres. George W. Bush fired federal prosecutors who refused to do exactly this kind of bullshit. Why? To “prove” bullshit election fraud in order to justify voter-suppression measures as election integrity.
(Y’know those Never Trump Republicans everyone loves? Yeah, Google how loudly they complained back then.)
Harris on Track to Beat Deadpool and Wolverine
Vice President Kamala Harris has already raised more than half a billion dollars for her campaign, almost as much as “Deadpool and Wolverine,” latest estimates show.
Harris launched her campaign on July 21, while “Deadpool and Wolverine” was released on July 26. To date, “Deadpool and Wolverine” has pulled in $577 million compared to Harris’s $540 million.
That doesn’t include international grosses, which total $634 million for the latest Marvel hit and would be absolutely fucking illegal for the latest Democratic candidate.
Harris is on track to outpace the world’s top-grossing R-rated movie thanks to an outpouring of enthusiasm for her campaign against the top grossest, R-for-rapist candidate.
Harris was boosted, her campaign says, by last week’s Democratic National Convention, despite its lack of themed popcorn buckets. Campaign Chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said yesterday that fundraising topped half a billion just before Harris took the stage on Thursday. “Immediately after her speech, we saw our best fundraising hour since launch day,” Dillon said.
The campaign of Donald Trump, meanwhile, is languishing in the number-two spot, having taken in only $138.7 million in all of July, less than Harris took in during her first week.
While “Deadpool and Wolverine” was boosted by cameos from Channing Tatum, Wesley Snipes, and Jennifer Garner, Harris got a hand from (SPOILERS!) Stevie Wonder and Sean Astin. Trump has also been dragged down by his co-star, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), whose many iterations and on-screen deaths have exacerbated viewer fatigue with the Trump Cinematic Multiverse.
One Thing This Week
Reportedly, we’re getting that big, consequential, focused-on-shit-that-really-matters corporate media interview with Vice Pres. Kamala Harris this week. It will be all that matters. For 24 hours. Then we’ll forget about it.
TCB
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Go get ‘em, kids.
Unless Harris is progressive.
Objective journalism as observed in the wild.
JK, obviously it’s porn.
Okay, probably only one knocked.
I do so wish people would masturbate in the privacy of their own homes and not spray his ridiculous jizz over the air-pixels.
The elephant in the room, BIG DONORS, they expect a return on their investment. Already one donor contributed $7 million to fire Lina Khan. If Harris elected and she does not fire Lina Khan, that is a sign of direction she is headed. Will Corporate Democrats in Congress, the majority, be willing to wash their hands of donor money? Possibly their constituents can help them see the light. If we want good things we need to fight for it, real change does not end after voting.