What Kamala Harris offers
Joe Biden’s selection of Kamala Harris as his running mate signals an all-out effort by Democrats to reverse the mistakes of four years ago and attempt to rebuild the so-called Obama coalition of Blacks and Latinos, young Americans and suburban swing voters.
An exhaustive amount of political science research suggests that vice-presidential candidates don’t reliably deliver a particular state or region. In modern campaigns, the role of the vice-presidential candidate is less about supplying geographic balance and more about helping to manage the rivalries, jealousies and ideological divisions within the major parties — and, most importantly, getting base voters excited and eager to vote.
Republican John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin in 2008 was a way to fire up the evangelical, anti-abortion and progun base voters of the Republican Party. In 2012, Mitt Romney selected a hardright, anti-tax running mate, Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, to shore up his bona fides among Tea Party conservatives.
And in 2016, candidate Donald Trump — a notorious former casino owner, reality show host and womanizer from liberal
New York City — made peace with evangelical Republicans by picking Mike Pence, a born-again, fervently anti-abortion running mate from the Midwest.
Harris’s place on the Biden ticket is all about increasing Black voter turnout for Democrats.
In 2016, Black voter turnout fell by 7% after 20 years of steadily increasing turnout. According to the Pew Research Center, “the number of Black voters also declined, falling by about 765,000 to 16.4 million in 2016, representing a sharp reversal from 2012.”
The falloff in Black voters helped doom the Hillary Clinton-Tim Kaine ticket. Dems famously lost Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — three traditionally Democratic states — by a combined total of less than 80,000 votes. This was part of a general phenomenon of Dems staying home: an estimated 4.4 million voters who had supported Obama didn’t come out in 2016, and a third of them were Black.
Democratic strategists are keenly aware that a more robust showing by Black voters in Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia might have won those states for the Democrats in 2016, and the White House with it.
To make sure Black voter turnout is strong in these must-win Midwestern states, Harris will need to fire up enthusiasm among Black millennials. As Pew notes: “Millennials (those ages 20 to 35 in 2016) generally had a higher voter turnout rate in 2016” — with the notable exception of Black millennials, whose turnout level fell to 50.6%, down sharply from 55.0% in 2012.
Harris will need to persuade this slice of the electorate to come to the polls. That will require, among other things, defending her record as a former prosecutor, which critics say wasn’t progressive enough.
Harris has plenty to be proud of: At least one online post summarizes 50 solid criminal justice reforms she championed during her days as a prosecutor and state attorney general.
She should make an effort to educate younger voters about her record — and make ample use of a line that Biden often quotes: “Don’t compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative.” The election on Nov. 3 isn’t a purity test, it’s a choice between parties and candidates.
Attacks from leftist activists on Harris’s record as a tough prosecutor will likely fall flat. She comes across in public as pleasant, earnest, energetic and fair. Trying to accuse her of being pro-incarceration will sound petty or irrelevant to most voters.
Rather than relitigate Harris’s past as a law-and-order candidate for district attorney in 2003, Democratic activists should focus on what the Biden-Harris ticket, if successful, proposes to do about criminal justice reform starting in January 2021.
This is a golden opportunity for hard bargaining around federal sentencing guidelines, programs to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline, rewriting of the drug laws, prison-reentry programs and other tangible benefits. Harris will be willing to make a deal with activist Democrats. As the vice-presidential candidate, that is her job.
Louis is political anchor of NY1 News.