Brynn Anderson/AP Photo
Kamala Harris now has the opportunity to join the fight for social and economic justice.
What could prove the most intriguing counterfactual in 21st-century U.S. politics involves flipping 74,000 votes, out of 9.6 million cast, to former Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley in the 2010 California attorney general’s race. Cooley was leading on election night and didn’t concede defeat until three weeks after the vote count began.
The winner in that race was Kamala Harris, beginning a ten-year stretch that included re-election, election to the U.S. Senate, a presidential run, and Joe Biden’s selection of her as his vice-presidential nominee. What happens if she narrowly lost that 2010 race instead of narrowly winning it? (My pet theory is that she, not Loretta Lynch, would have become Obama’s second attorney general, and would now be wherever it is Loretta Lynch finds herself nowadays, i.e., not Joe Biden’s VP.)
In the here and now, Harris is the first woman of color on a major-party ticket, with an even-money opportunity to become the first female, Black, and Asian American vice president ever. The Democratic Party hasn’t put two white men on its ticket since 2004 and may not again for a long time, given the representational realities of party demographics. Harris was the conventional pick in this field; that a woman of Indian-Jamaican descent is the boring, safe choice reflects a societal advance.
But diversity is broader than race and gender, of course. Diversity of experience, mindset, and priorities also matters. And you may know where Kamala Harris sits along this continuum by polling the constituency groups that put up the money for establishment Democratic campaigns. They are enthusiastically supportive of Harris, who comforts their fears of a more aggressive posture against those in seats of power in America. They relish her being one step from the Oval Office, and maybe in four years, in it.
As my colleague Bob Kuttner pointed out yesterday, Wall Street was positively jubilant upon hearing the news of Harris’s ascendancy. Silicon Valley is similarly excited that someone with close friendships with top tech leaders could find herself a heartbeat away from the presidency. Hollywood sung from the rooftops as well. Trial lawyers are thrilled.
This is made all the more problematic by the continued introduction of Harris as a fighter against the very forces now rising up in unified approval of her. Biden, in his introductory comments on Harris, led by pointing out she “took on the big banks” during the foreclosure crisis. I don’t know how many times I can say that this is an insult to the ten million American families that lost their homes in that period.
Nobody in a position of power at the big banks saw the inside of a jail cell, nobody had to give up their bonus, and no bank suffered greatly from the wrist slap, largely paid with other people’s money, for mass-producing false evidence to kick people out of their homes. Nothing pains me more than having to retread this old ground. You can read here for the details and here for some more. But the cries of pleasure from the very banks that Harris allegedly pushed around should settle the argument.
Big-money approval leads to, well, big money. Biden and Harris took in $26 million in the first 24 hours as running mates, helped along by a preplanned blitz plotted by his bundlers that will take the candidates on a tour of each one of the interest groups that nodded in assent at the ticket’s formation.
This circumstance is actually revealing about both parties. The fact that Republicans are struggling with a “muddled message” on Harris when any populist worth their salt can point to the Wall Street and Big Tech backing and set that against the “forgotten” Americans confirms that there are, in fact, no actual conservative populists in the White House. That, plus the utter failure of Trump’s crisis response, should cement the determination of anyone marginally situated on the left of center to work their tail off to separate him from power, and hand it over to Biden-Harris.
But turning back to the Democrats, you could certainly take this guilt-by-association argument and what else we know about Harris’s record and assume that a Biden-Harris victory will signal the same light touch against power, the same official impunity, the same incremental steps that cause little consternation from moneyed elites. But the instincts of the rich and influential are not always correct.
Maybe she will choose to be an ally, a politician wise enough to get in front of the parade of policy boldness that ultimately is the only way to forestall the next, more competent Trump.
As I pointed out earlier this year, Biden is given to positioning himself in the party’s center, no matter where that center lies. Harris exhibits many of these same qualities, as evidenced by her generally progressive record in Congress. While some of her policy ideas in the presidential campaign were risible (the “student loan debt forgiveness program for Pell Grant recipients who start a business that operates for three years in disadvantaged communities” was a highlight), others emphasized the power of giving poor people money, an obvious concept with sudden resonance, or marijuana legalization, something Biden has resisted.
During the pandemic, Harris has endorsed giving $2,000 checks every month to most Americans, and called for an expansive ban on evictions and foreclosures. She vowed to eliminate the filibuster to pass the Green New Deal, and just released a climate equity plan with AOC.
You could absolutely view these as lip-service gestures on bills without hope of passing now, and her backers and statements like “I’m not trying to restructure society” reflect her true colors. You could see the selection as an attempt to imprint a safe, cautious politics on the next generation.
But that generation has a say in the matter. The story of the past few months of pandemic politics is one of a grassroots progressive rise, as the virus—and the response—exposes the failures of the technocracy of the recent past. The Squad all survived their first re-elections easily, and have reinforcements joining them. The left has used street action and concerted organizing to make social and economic gains, and forced the political system to listen. It wasn’t a big enough faction to win the presidential race, though that power is building and will continue to do so in fights for social and economic justice.
In another counterfactual, one where Biden decides his days in politics are over and chooses not to run in 2020, Harris perhaps benefits from the institutional support, gets the boost in South Carolina, and consolidates the field. Maybe she would serve then as the adversary to the progressive populist movement. Maybe she serves that role now.
Or maybe she will choose to be an ally, a politician wise enough to get in front of the parade of policy boldness that ultimately is the only way to forestall the next, more competent Trump. Maybe she recognizes a restless population battered by decades of disappointment and disparity, and a policy bankruptcy exposed by pandemic, and will position herself thusly.
Maybe or maybe not. The choice is hers.
