You’ve got to hand it to the Democrats; they have a knack for messing things up. First, it took them until June to see the obvious, that their presumptive 2024 candidate for president, Joe Biden, was running on empty. Then, instead of an open selection process to choose a successor, they opted for an easy out: standing pat until a closed process became inevitable.
As a result, the party is saddled with a standard-bearer who is not its strongest candidate. The Democrats’ best would have undoubtedly been Governor Gavin Newsom of California, but they managed to sideline him for the duration. Possibly, Newsom didn’t want the nod; he would have had to take on a fellow Californian, Vice President Kamala Harris, an awkward undertaking to say the least. It’s also possible Newsom lacked the requisite fire in the belly for a turbulent, unpleasant nomination struggle.
Whatever the case, the Democratic National Committee quickly foreclosed all options by setting up rules and regulations that made a successful primary challenge to Harris virtually impossible in the time allowed. And the president, ever the party organization man, loyally sealed the deal with an almost immediate endorsement of his v.p. Word has it that ex-President Obama, among others, favored a more open selection process, but his influence has evidently waned.
The succession, in short, was rigged from the start. After calling the GOP a threat to democracy, Democrats themselves engaged in a completely undemocratic nominating process, anointing their candidate after a backroom deal arranged by party pros, who went so far as to transfer previously cast Biden primary votes wholesale to Kamala Harris. That was cute. If the perceived threat (scary Donald Trump) is big enough, the appearance of impropriety apparently doesn’t matter.
So the party establishment now has the choice it wanted all along. In truth, any other selection would have outraged the Black and feminist contingents that now have a lock on present and future Democratic nominations; the former, in particular, regard themselves as the “base” of the party and entitled to special consideration. It’s forward with Kamala, then, and we’ll see where that leads.
For the moment, it’s producing mindless excitement. Harris is the new thing, and Americans always love the new thing (at least for a while). Trump is suddenly the old thing. Sorry, Donald. Despite the initial euphoria — David Axelrod calls it “irrational exuberance” — the veep’s poll numbers actually provide scant comfort for Democrats.
Polls taken after June’s Biden-Trump debate showed her trailing the Republican nominee by 3% to 4% on average. Some taken more recently in several “battleground” states show a wash, a point or two difference either way. Nationally, the race seems to be a 50-50 contest. But the structure of our Electoral College system means a Democrat must lead by around 5% in the popular vote to win electorally. Harris is not yet close to that margin.
Furthermore, Harris’ disastrous record as a presidential candidate in 2020 — the first to drop out of the Democratic race with support only in the single digits — is a cautionary tale. Part of that record was developing a reputation as a flip-flopper on issues, such as reparations and antitrust policy. The worst example was Harris’ vacillation on healthcare — from initially backing the single-payer or Medicare for All position of Sen. Bernie Sanders to eventually opposing it as the chance to become Joe Biden’s running mate on an anti-single-payer platform became available. Sanders has not forgotten, as his rather tepid and unenthusiastic endorsement of Harris indicated.
In 2019-20, Harris attempted to straddle the Biden-Sanders gap on healthcare, reserving a major role for private insurers in any systemic reform. She finally settled on something akin to Medicare Advantage for those over and under age 65, disingenuously calling it Medicare for All, a label Sanders rightly characterized as bogus.
This is typical of Harris’ slickly calculated approach to politics — with one exception. She’s been unambiguously out-front in favor of legalized abortion, polling better than Trump on who’s best equipped to handle the issue. The problem: Abortion is a primary concern for only a minority of voters, mostly Democratic-leaning women, despite attempts by feminists and liberal activists to create the impression that it’s of overwhelming importance to the general public. Some Democrats think they can win on this issue alone; they can’t. Most voters do favor reproductive rights and oppose the Dobbs decision, but not to the exclusion of more basic issues that concern them.
Chief of these is the economy, specifically inflation and the cost of living, the priority for 73% of voters in a January Pew Research survey. Harris can’t effectively address those concerns because she’s been part of an administration that had four years to solve the problem and didn’t do so.
Biden, Harris and company left it to the Federal Reserve Board to deal with inflation, but the Fed, which above all represents business interests, took minimal action, allowing conditions to fester. It tinkered around the edges, assuming capitalism would rectify the situation capitalists themselves created; we’re still waiting.
In essence, Kamala Harris accurately reflects a centrist Democratic Party that believes wholeheartedly in the existing system and is dedicated to small fixes and incrementalism. This has especially been the case over the last two years, following the party’s brief, progressive-inspired, post-Trump activist phase.
The Democrats of 2024 are not the Democrats of 1933 or 1965 or even 2021. Demographically, they represent an odd mix of affluent, socially liberal White suburbanites and poor urban minorities. Notwithstanding Joe Biden’s personal, nostalgic courting of labor unions (something that may well lapse under Harris), they are no longer predominantly a workingman’s party. Economically, they increasingly represent the priorities of corporate management and the political donor class, with an emerging emphasis on Big Tech and jobs-killing “AI” development. To compensate, Harris will attempt to resuscitate previously rejected social spending incuded in the Build Back Better agenda, an inadequate approach at best.
Modern Democrats have become a party laser-focused on issues of race and gender, with an overriding concern about identity politics — to the exclusion of the strain of serious interventionist economic populism that influenced its policies from the 1930s through the 1960s. The choice of Kamala Harris as presidential candidate — she checks several requisite current-day boxes — will do nothing to reverse the trend.
Wayne O’Leary is a writer in Orono, Maine, specializing in political economy. He holds a doctorate in American history and is the author of two prizewinning books.
From The Progressive Populist, September 15, 2024
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