It’s Not About Harris “Moving to the Center”

The kickoff of Kamala Harris presidential campaign has been a stunning success. The Democratic Party base has been reenergized; young people are engaged. Raucous crowds greet the ticket across the swing states. Money and volunteers are pouring in. Harris’s relative youth and energy contrasts sharply with Trump’s cankered venom. The selection of Minnesota Governor “Coach” Tim Walz—a Midwestern white guy from central casting—turbocharged the takeoff. Everyone from Joe Manchin to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is applauding. Democrats, as AOC posted, are demonstrating “ disconcerting levels of array.”

Despite having served as a senator and vice president, Harris has only begun to introduce herself to the American people. The opening stage will culminate in her speech accepting the nomination at the Democratic Convention in Chicago next week—and that will lead to the final two-month sprint to the election.

For all the early unity, Harris is already getting pressure from conservative Democrats, big-money interests, and the carriers of conventional wisdom to “move to the center.” The choice of Walz is presented as “caving” to progressives, a “missed opportunity,” the New York Times political analyst Nate Cohn says, to define herself as more centrist. Early polls suggest many see her as very liberal. Trump and Republicans paint her as an extreme radical, a female Trotsky.

The conventional commentariat echoes the refrain. The Washington Post editorialized that the addition of Walz “gives her opponents a clearly defined target: a ticket that leans toward out of touch liberalism…. With Mr. Walz on the ticket, she should feel freer to reach to the center, rather than keeping a wary eye trained on her left.”

New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait, the relentless Javert on the hunt for any progressive stirring, argues that to make up for Walz, Harris needs to adopt positions “that will upset progressive activists” and “understand that the likelihood a given action or statement will create complaints on the left is a reason to do something, rather than a reason not to.”

Chait doesn’t deign to reveal how Harris should rile her base. Instead, he invokes Trump as a model, arguing that the Donald’s “softening” of the abortion plank at the Republican convention “was a smart move to reduce the party’s exposure to unpopular positions” and didn’t cause a fracturing of the party despite grousing from anti-abortion zealots.

Really? It takes a fervid imagination to believe that Trump’s cynical repositioning on abortion makes a whit of difference to voters concerned about the reversal of Roe v. Wade. The only thing Trump gained was the admiration of pundits like Chait who consider such political posturing to be sophisticated.

When commentators urge Harris to “move to the center,” they seldom detail how she should do that without sacrificing integrity. She is a mixed race, pro-choice, feminist, socially liberal presidential candidate from California. She can’t attempt to mask that without looking utterly disingenuous.

Moreover, this is a deeply polarized country. Over the past wink of time, we’ve suffered a catastrophic presidential debate, an attempted assassination, a president withdrawing from the race, the debut of Harris and her new running mate—and the polls have barely budged. In this context, mobilization and energy of the base are first priorities, not something to be trifled with. If there is any lesson to be drawn from Trump’s campaigns, it is his discipline in feeding red meat to his MAGA base to keep them aroused.

Ironically, Harris has never been a progressive leader in the mode of Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. She’s already jettisoned the signature progressive policies that she donned in her brief, ill-defined 2020 presidential run. Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, opposition to fracking are all on the cutting-room floor. As major donors push her to back away from Biden’s anti-trust offensive, her ally Maryland Governor Wes Moore suggests that she’s not averse. She’s already reached out to the gimmietarians in the cryptocurrency crowd.