When Kamala Harris took over from Joe Biden as the leading Democratic candidate, there was more than a little anxiety within her own party.
The only basis on which to judge Harris is her performance as vice president – which was shaky before she hit her stride a few years into her term – and her 2020 presidential campaign, which fizzled out long before any votes were cast.
Ms. Harris quickly allayed those concerns, at least among Democrats. Her charismatic campaign style shone through at sold-out rallies, she headlined a lavish political convention in August and, earlier this month, handily defeated Donald Trump in his one and likely only debate.
Still, the fallout from Harris’ failed 2020 campaign remains lingering, due in part to her left-leaning leanings and her positions on issues like health care and immigration. Trump and other Republicans have been busy using Harris’ left-leaning leanings and her positions on issues like health care and immigration to paint “Comrade Kamala” as the ideological stepchild of Karl Marx and Chairman Mao.
Polls suggest one of Harris’ biggest weaknesses in this presidential race is the perception that she is “too liberal,” as almost half of respondents in a recent ABC/Ipsos poll said.
What’s surprising is that Harris is not the ardent leftist that her 2020 campaign positions would suggest, or that the progressive culture of San Francisco, where she launched her political career and won election as district attorney, would suggest.
“She’s left of center,” said Dan Morain, a former Times reporter and author of the biography “Kamala’s Way: An American Life.”
“That’s who she is in San Francisco, that’s who she was when she ran for attorney general. She’s a prosecutor,” Morain said, adding that while prosecutors are not necessarily conservative, “by and large, they are more conservative than your run-of-the-mill Democrat.”
She took a left-leaning stance out of political expediency or, as some close to Harris prefer to say, necessity.
One longtime adviser to Vice President Harris described the 2020 Democratic primary as a series of ideological litmus tests, a competition to see how well a crowded field of candidates met liberal standards, said the adviser, who agreed to speak candidly on the condition of anonymity to preserve his relationship with the Democratic candidate.
“If you meet these conditions, you might survive to see another day,” he said.
A longtime member of Ms. Harris’ political circle, who was similarly cautious about the 2020 campaign, said there was a recognition that her only path to the nomination was to run on the left and “beat Bernie and Warren” her competitors (presumably referring to progressivist icons Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren).
The move was not only a strategic miscalculation as pandemic-panicked voters turned to the more centrist Biden, but also a ploy by Harris, who was trying to become something she wasn’t, this longtime observer said. Worse, “Harris ended up adopting a set of positions that will end up being a drag four years down the line.”
It’s funny how that works.
As part of her image makeover, Harris has said she supports abolishing the nation’s private health insurance system, supports a ban on fracking, calls for significant cuts to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and is open to “discussions” about allowing violent criminals to vote in their jail cells. Recently, CNN reporter Andrew Kaczynski uncovered a 2019 ACLU poll in which Harris supported taxpayer funding for sex reassignment surgery for immigrants in custody and federal prison inmates.
Harris long ago abandoned those positions on health care, immigration and fracking, and the next day on voting in prisons. In response to Kaczynski’s inquiry, the Harris campaign offered a masterpiece of opacity: “The Vice President’s position was shaped by three years of effective governance of the Biden-Harris Administration.”
Harris acknowledges that some of her positions have changed, but insists that “my values have not changed.”
But her political image has certainly shifted: She has fled her image as a tenacious prosecutor to make law and order the centerpiece of her presidential campaign, even as criminal justice reform was a key issue for many Democrats in the 2020 election.
There are clearly big differences between running in a primary, where the party’s most ideological voters hold sway, and campaigning in a general election, where you need to appeal to a broader range of Americans. Harris has benefited greatly from being sworn in overnight as the Democratic nominee, which has meant she hasn’t had to kowtow so obviously to the political left.
But given her willingness to do so in the last presidential election, even if it meant going against her centrist leanings, voters are right to wonder where Harris stands and how committed she will be to the values she professes to cherish.
In 2002, as a senator from New York, Hillary Clinton voted to authorize President George W. Bush to invade Iraq. At the time, it seemed like a politically shrewd move for someone considering a future presidential run and wanting to avoid the image of weakness that had dogged the Democratic Party since the Vietnam War era.
After all, Clinton’s vote was a major reason she lost the Democratic nomination in 2008 to Senator Barack Obama, who was then a staunch opponent of the Iraq War.
All these potential twists call to mind the line from Hamlet: “Be true to thy own heart.”
That’s a good recipe for life, and for politics too.
