Picking Harris, Biden puts centrist stamp on party future
WASHINGTON – In picking Kamala Harris as his running mate, Joe Biden set a marker for how he believes Democrats can win – both in this election and in the future – with a multiracial coalition that can excite voters, but a center-left brand that steers clear of the most far-reaching progressive demands.
Harris, like Biden, but unlike some of the other women who were considered, has rebuffed some demands of the party’s rising progressive wing. That’s a profile that could help Biden appeal to moderate swing voters he needs to win in states like Michigan and Wisconsin.
The two emphasized those themes in their first joint appearance Wednesday in
Wilmington, Delaware, with Biden and Harris each pointing to the historic nature of her presence on the ticket, while ticking through a set of policy proposals, such as expanding the Affordable Care Act and creating new jobs through investments in renewable energy, that have broad political acceptability.
That political stance, at least in the early going, has complicated the Trump White House’s efforts to portray the ticket as “dangerous radicals.” On one hand, President Donald Trump has portrayed Harris as a hardleft socialist; on the other hand, he’s attacked her for her record as a prosecutor.
Ideological attacks by Republicans on the Biden
Harris ticket won’t stick, predicted Susan Rice, the former Obama national security adviser who was one of the women Biden considered.
“They have been set up to position their assault on whoever was to be the vice president-elect as left and socialist. It’s not true. That is not who Kamala Harris is. And it’s not who Joe Biden is,” Rice said during an interview Wednesday on NBC’S “Today” show.
Biden, who is 77, has said that he considers himself a transitional leader for the party. Harris, 55, represents what may be a long-overdue generational change for Democrats. In picking her, Biden is asserting his own influence on how that generational change will play out.
The risk for Biden is that passing up more strongly progressive choices puts him further out of step with the political energy that has fueled street protests across the country. Energy on the left has played out in primary victories by people of color who have challenged establishment incumbents in several House races this year as well as in the campaign of Biden’s most durable primary opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
Briahna Joy Gray, Sanders’ former campaign press secretary, objected to the Harris pick on Twitter:
“We are in the midst of the largest protest movement in American history, the subject of which is excessive policing, and the Democratic Party chose a ‘top cop’ and the author of the Joe Biden crime bill to save us from Trump. The contempt for the base is, wow.”
For Biden, however, the choice involves a calculated risk based on the belief that most of the party’s progressive activists are so motivated to oust Trump that they will not flag in support for the ticket, even if he didn’t reach for an ideological complement to his centrist brand like Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
So far, the early reactions suggest that bet is sound.
“We will all enthusiastically support Biden-harris to beat Trump-pence; there is no comparison,” said Larry Cohen, chairman of the board of Our Revolution, a Sanders-affiliated political group.
If the Democrats win, Cohen added, they would be under heavy pressure to support progressive causes in Congress, including new limits on the Senate filibuster to curb GOP obstructionism.
Sanders himself put aside any policy differences with Harris to praise her selection: “She understands what it takes to stand up for working people, fight for health care for all, and take down the most corrupt administration in history. Let’s get to work and win,” he wrote on Twitter.
Like Biden, Harris has been viewed skeptically by some on the party’s left because she has not given full-throated support to “Medicare for All,” a litmus test issue for the Sanders camp.