The Anointing of Kamala Harris
Some of you have asked my thoughts on what I will call “the anointing” of Kamala Harris. Because we took off on a five-day rafting trip on the Salmon River on Monday (more on that in a future blog), I’ve been neither sending or receiving this week. Frankly, kind of relief!
Now, since getting off the river, I’ve caught up some. Three pieces that offer three different perspectives stood out for me. One is negative, a second positive and the third, cautiously optimistic. The mostly negative was Andrew Sullivan’s, followed by Lydia Polgreen’s interesting positive, and, third, Michael Sandel being cautiously optimistic.
My initial reaction was pretty much in line with Sullivan who termed Harris “the weakest and the wokest,” of the possible Democratic nominees. I was not enthused. Part of that was because I thought it would be very exciting for the Dem’s to have a truly open convention, instead of the boring coronation’s, a.k.a. “conventions,” to which we have become accustomed. The Democrats, it seemed to me, had missed a golden opportunity by consolidating so quickly around Harris.
Harris had not impressed, either as a candidate in 2020 nor as Veep. Sullivan said embracing Harris now will require some amnesia. Noting that (with Biden’s endorsement of Harris), “the mainstream media pivoted instantly to hype, hope, excitement and … amnesia. Yes, amnesia. With Harris, amnesia is essential. We all have to become unburdened by what we — and, more specifically she — have been.
“And beneath the enthusiasm linger some obvious, loud, unanswered questions. Why did Biden so quickly put his weight behind a vice president he had previously ignored, sidelined, and regarded — according to almost every media outlet — as something of a burden? Why has Obama taken his sweet time to endorse her, after calling for an open nominating process? And why did no other viable candidate come forward to challenge her?”
At this point, it seemed to me that both parties have embraced a “playing to the base” strategy, leaving some of us politically homeless. But perhaps the Democrats needed, and were even wise, to excite their base first with a candidate who was a woman and person of color.
I moved on then to NYT columnist Lydia Polgreen who was a Harris skeptic but has become a supporter. Here’s Polgreen:
“Looking anew at Harris, I see something different from what I once did: a person who stumbled as a candidate and vice president but who kept fighting anyway. I see a woman who struggled to compete for power against her peers, buried under an array of vague and unstated expectations about whether she gave the right answers, had the right ideas, was smart or specific enough. Like any woman of ambition, I deeply relate to these experiences. As strange as it might seem, I have come to think these experiences could make her the ideal candidate in a surreal campaign against a man who is so certain of himself, who admits to no mistakes, who has no humility and who, for many of us, is utterly unrelatable.”
Read more for Polgreen’s good reporting about Harris on the campaign trail. She convinced me to keep an open mind.
The optimistic, if cautious, perspective came from Michael Sandel, a political philosopher whose writing I have long admired. Sandel argued that Harris and her party still face a crucial choice. They can content themselves with Trump/Vance bashing, going after them as racists and misogynists who threaten American democracy. Or they can pay attention to what has driven many into the arms of Trump, namely the failures of neoliberalism and globalization and its severely adverse impact on working class people.
Here’s Sandel:
“Standing up to Mr. Trump and defending reproductive rights is not enough. To defeat him, Ms. Harris needs to address the legitimate grievances he exploits — the sense among many Americans, especially those without a college degree, that their voices aren’t heard, that their work isn’t respected and that elites look down on them. She needs a message that reconnects the Democratic Party with the working-class voters it has alienated in recent decades.”
Sandel suggests focusing on the dignity of work and offered a menu of proposals to make that more than a slogan. For example, eliminate entirely the payroll tax on worker’s checks and bump up the quite nominal taxes on capital gains and interest income. In other words, reward work more and accumulation less.
But the larger point, with which I wholly agree, is that only attacking Trump as a felon, a creep and a threat to democracy, while red-meat for her base, is not enough to bring over independents and at least some of the working class she needs to give her party a chance in November. Nor will it put us on track to overcoming our stupefying culture wars and relentless polarization. You have to take people seriously and not simply label them “deplorable.”
Here’s a key, but often unnoticed, point: American democracy is imperiled not just by Trump and his contempt for the rule of law. It is also imperiled by the vast gap between the super-rich and ordinary Americans. The concentration of wealth in the very few is as also a threat to democracy, if not so obviously as Trump. Moreover, it is as much a product of the neoliberalism of the Democratic Party (think, sorry, Clinton and Obama) as it is of the Republican Party.
Both Polgreen and Sandel say that Harris failed in her foreshortened run in 2020 because she didn’t seem to have or convey a clear message on what that election was about. What was at stake? So she came off as merely an ambitious, even opportunistic, pol who wanted to be President. It wasn’t enough then and won’t be enough now.
Polgreen moved me to having an open mind on Kamala Harris. Sandel gives me something to look for her as she campaigns. Time will tell.