The Cautious Case For Harris

A Kamala Harris presidency will not fundamentally change the neo-liberal status quo, but what wins can we get?

To lay the backdrop, I’d like to express just how exhausting this topic is to discuss. As the months go on and the election gets closer, the idea of who to vote for and who not to vote for is constantly being rehashed. I personally do not judge anyone left of center for how they vote, I simply want to offer a unique perspective. In online spaces, there is very little room for nuance which leads to tribalism and thoughtlessly choosing sides which distracts from real issues. This year has already been such a wild ride due to many compounding circumstances which make this election somehow even more chaotic and emotionally charged than the last two. With this in mind, I seek to discuss this in a balanced manner; neither endorsing the idea that ‘any vote that isn’t for Harris is a vote for Trump’ nor the idea that ‘both parties are fascist’. It turns out, reality is always more complex than the raw talking point.

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People fail to realize there is almost no nuance to a ballot, but discourse always devolves into who should be voted for. Everyone must realize that change happens first outside the ballot box; in protests, strikes, mobilizing, solidarity, and organizing. For anyone on the left⁺ or those disillusioned with the two-party system, it is infinitely more useful to mobilize for actual issues than discussing who to vote for. If you care about the genocide⁺ in Palestine for example, being cynical is not going to solve it. The little nuance that can be had when voting is simple: if you live in a swing state, vote for Harris, and in every other solid-colored state, vote for a third-party progressive whether it be Jill Stein of the Green party, Cornel West the independent or Claudia de la Cruz of the PSL. The simple reasoning behind this is that third parties are not running to win this election, they are there to pressure the establishment, raise class consciousness, and advocate for necessary change. Due to the antiquated electoral college system, only one candidate wins, so it is beneficial for democrats to appeal to populism and centrism, that is why they will never support radical-but-necessary⁺ policies. Each state is won by popular vote and only about five swing states end up close enough to determine the outcome. This is why in those states, voting for ‘the lesser evil’ is necessary. To that point; Kamala Harris winning is at worst a net neutral or net benefit for the left⁺ compared to Biden or Trump, and that is what I’d like to explore. We should both: not be diluted to believe that Harris will shift from the same neo-liberal status quo but acknowledge that her win will prevent Trump’s fascist⁺ takeover. As leftists, the last thing we wish to be fighting against is the far-right. A Trump presidency would without a doubt mean regressive policies that harm the working class, minorities, queer people, immigrants, and women. We would much rather be fighting against and protesting a liberal than a fascist⁺. 

For leftists, I think many frustrations are combining to create a personality crisis. First, there was a slow-building progressive movement last election where people began realizing the contradictions of capitalism. Granted, this was within the democratic party, but many democratic candidates were either forced into or genuinely supported pretty robust progressive positions. Then, this energy was suddenly flattened by the establishment rallying around Biden to win the nomination. Biden led a centrist campaign that almost exclusively relied on the threat of Trump as its only legitimate stance which barely won the white house and a slim majority in Congress. Biden, now the leader of the party, backed the genocide in Gaza because of his stubborn fifty-year-old view of foreign affairs. This, along with the inevitable presidential rematch, contributed to a sense of powerlessness within the left. With political anxiety at all-time highs, Biden collapsed under his age and incompetence in a historically bad debate. Luckily, the democratic establishment gathered enough congresspeople and donors to make the smart decision to pressure Biden out of the race. Now, we have Kamala Harris as the nominee; someone who ran on a slightly progressive campaign, who had the most liberal voting record in the Senate, and who has a concerning past as a district attorney. Much of the excitement is a release of that pent-up anxiety and for me, the change was a relief. I expressed before how Harris actually has a real shot at beating Trump, and it seems that prediction is coming true. In the first 24 hours after the decision, over $81 million in grassroots donations came pouring in and pretty much every democrat representative got behind her. It was quickly pointed out by the revolutionary left and cynical online leftists that Harris will not fundamentally break the neo-liberal status quo and will back Israel in their assault on the Gaza strip. While this is true, I think it’s necessary to drop the cynicism and recognize that a non-Trump presidency means we have an opportunity to make gains on the ground and through pressuring the establishment. I’d like to suggest a principle we should use going forward; take what we can get from electoral politics and fight for what we can’t. 

So what can we gain from a Harris presidency? As the new leader of the democratic party, she will likely break with some of Biden’s policies. Kamala will inherit the Biden campaign, meaning she will likely use a similar center-populism strategy. Since she can actually articulate the issues, she will be a bit more assertive with the big issues like abortion and Supreme Court reform. Once in office, we have no idea whether she will take the Biden approach of quietly using the bureaucracy, the Obama approach of cooperating with the right while making marginal progress, or an aggressive agenda that makes tangible gains. In her time behind Biden, she expectedly fell into line, but her campaign for president in 2020 should better explain where her heart is. She co-sponsored the Green New Deal which was considered a very progressive policy at the time and she accurately considered climate change to be an existential threat. Her position on healthcare hasn’t been entirely consistent. She backed Sanders’ Medicare-for-all in 2017, during her candidacy she initially reiterated that support, but then slowly backpedaled into a 10-year transition to healthcare-for-all and then into allowing a role for private insurance. On labor, she has a decent record but it seems unions have already embraced her and she would be smart to continue Biden’s positive efforts in their favor. On campaign finance, she discouraged super-PAC donations and specified that “we must reform our broken campaign finance system”. On foreign policy, she is essentially (surprise, surprise) a standard democrat. She is certainly not hawkish but is not opposed to American imperialism in any significant way. She once expressed a desire to cut military spending and instead supports “redirecting funding to communities in need”. On Israel-Palestine, she generally supports Israel’s ‘right to defense’, supports a two-state-solution, and has spoken to AIPAC at least twice. Under Biden, she stayed mostly silent but was the first person in the administration to call for a ceasefire and expressed her sympathy for what she called a “​​humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza. When speaking to The Nation in early July, she said regarding student protestors: “They are showing exactly what the human emotion should be, as a response to Gaza. There are things some of the protesters are saying that I absolutely reject, so I don’t mean to wholesale endorse their points. But we have to navigate it. I understand the emotion behind it”. After Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Washington, she met with him privately and said to the press she “will not be silent” regarding the tragedies in Gaza. She issued a statement condemning the protests in Washington that day but never made any statement criticizing Netanyahu. It should be acknowledged that it was posted from her @VP account in an administrative statement rather than a personal one. At the same time, recognize how the term ‘ceasefire’ has been slowly co-opted by democrats in recent months to avoid taking an assertive stance. We should be cautious with her statements as she is still operating under Biden and running a campaign where she has to play both sides. By the time she takes office, the conflict will be in a much different place; it will be in a reconciliation phase where the future of the two states will be established while the UN Security Council and ICJ will be closing in on sanctioning and prosecuting Israeli leaders. It is up to Kamala to take a firm stance against this abhorrent genocide⁺ and push for an equitable future for Palestinians.

What do we want out of a Harris presidency? We want the most progressive policy possible and a return to where politics were in the 2020 democratic primary. Given she can secure Congress, she has a real opportunity to make good on the promises she made four years ago. This starts with picking a vice president with a progressive record like Tim Walz. In office, she has no reason to kneel to corporations; she must pass the Green New Deal, reverse the Trump-era tax cuts, and get even stronger than Biden on corporate greed. She must take aggressive action to reform the Supreme Court, implementing democratic checks and balances, not just expansion. She must slash military spending and begin to publicize necessary industries like healthcare and university education. In a historic and symbolic move, abortion rights must be encoded into law on day one. And finally, Kamala needs to treat Netanyahu like the far-right war criminal that he is. 

If she can get even some of this done, she will guarantee a 2028 victory by finally offering the American people tangible change. With this, it leaves more opportunity to move people and politicians left next election. It also could allow unions to take back power from corporations and for left organizers, move people left from the new democratic stance. If she doesn’t move left from Biden, it’s up to us to push her. During the next four years, we have a lot of work to do especially with unifying left parties to compete electorally. The left needs a unique political platform that advocates for the working people and understands the class dynamics. There is a swelling desire to break with the system, it's just up to us to offer that break.

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