Thoughts on the Kamala Harris Selection

 

The choice of Kamala Harris as Biden’s running mate was not at all a surprise and was largely expected for several reasons. It was decided that it had to be a woman of color and, among those woman considered, Harris had the greatest name recognition, had run as a candidate in the Democratic primary, had participated in the debates, and is a Senator from a major US state. In terms of conventional political calculation, this was clearly the obvious and safest choice.

In terms of electoral value, I am not sure it will make much difference. If the assumption is that women of color will more likely support a ticket that includes a fellow woman of color, the Democrats pretty much had that demographic wrapped up anyway. Geographically, California is a solid blue state, so there is no gain there either.

While the Harris announcement does provide some level of enthusiasm and resuscitation to Biden’s moribund campaign, which has benefited over the past few months less from Biden’s actions than Trump’s abject failure on every level, there is a distinction between enthusiasm and mobilization. People already planning to vote for Biden may now be more enthusiastic about the ticket. Whether the addition of a woman of color, alone, will now mobilize new voters and expand Democratic support is another matter.

Take, for example, those largely younger voters who actively supported the Sanders campaign. For that population, partisan attachment and/or the identity representation of the candidates are far less important than substantive policy positions and proposals. After all, Bernie Sanders is a 78-year old white male – not the age/race/gender identity characteristics one would expect to galvanize a multi-racial political youth movement – and yet he was able to mobilize and energize this segment of the electorate. What mattered was not identity or partisanship, but an unswerving commitment to social democratic policies from Medicare For All to the Green New Deal to the cancellation of student debt to an economic bill of rights.

But sadly, with the Biden/Harris ticket, the party is squarely in the hands of the centrist establishment and the corporate donors. For this wing of the party, “progressivism” is largely a matter of identity representation and recognition rather than substantive policy positions, with the former serving as a substitute for the latter; what Nancy Fraser has aptly described as “progressive neoliberalism”.

This was clearly the case with Barack Obama in 2008 who, as the first black president, was assumed automatically to be a progressive Democrat. It did not quite work out that way.

Likewise, Harris, as the first black female member of a presidential ticket, is simply assumed to be, by virtue of ascribed characteristics, also possessing a progressive worldview. But in the many media accounts of this historic VP candidate that I have reviewed, there is virtually no mention of what Harris brings to the ticket in terms of a political ideology, value convictions, or coherent public policy preferences. None of that seems to matter.

This does not mean Biden/Harris do not possess, or can’t develop, a policy program, even one that includes some of the progressive policy positions that emerged from the unity task force process, but right now this seems the least significant factor in how the Democratic ticket is currently being promoted.

This void is particularly conspicuous given the fact that the country is facing an unprecedented and monumental depression-level socio-economic crisis begging for a bold progressive and transformative policy agenda. In fact, it requires it. But instead, this is what we are hearing: “fighting for the best we are as a nation”; "rebuild this country"; “fix the mess created in the U.S. and abroad by Trump and Pence”; “Joe has empathy”; “Kamala Harris is smart, tough and a proven fighter for the country’s middle class”; “a president who understands who the people are, sees them where they are, and has a genuine desire to help and knows how to fight to get us where we need to be”. But nothing about the means or the ends.

Maybe simply rejecting, and not being, Trump, will be enough to win the election.

But for those who desire something more, in the sage words of Naomi Klein: “No is not enough!”