Progressives Believe They Have Harris’ Ear as She Moderates Rhetoric
As Vice President Kamala Harris tacks toward the center and abandons liberal policy positions on everything from immigration to guns to climate change, the same progressives who once prided themselves on how Democrats had a plan for everything now whisper in the ear of her campaign, “vibes, vibes, vibes.”
Whether or not Harris is reading directly from the policy memos prepared by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, the strategy her team is following closely mirrors the approach outlined by the group before she accepted the nomination. And it appears to be working. Harris has made up the ground lost by President Biden by delivering a message of empathy, not a wonky presentation about the economy.
“Below are a few recommendations on language we’ve discussed with you, based on our weekly polling with Data for Progress,” reads an Aug. 16 PCCC memo sent to the Harris campaign and obtained by RealClearPolitics.
At the Republican National Convention the month before, none of the GOP speakers walked on stage with a slide deck. They painted a picture of an ugly economy instead, punctuating their arguments about inflation by reminding voters of the pain they felt in their everyday lives. The first suggested response from the progressive group: Go ahead and talk about groceries. “It’s the number one pain point to acknowledge,” the memo states before recommending that Harris block Republican attacks by pointing to the years of work the White House has done to lower grocery prices.
But that doesn’t mean simply regurgitating the policy presentation that Biden delivered while on the stump. The president could never quite quit “Bidenomics,” even as polling showed it fell flat with voters. Instead, the progressives urged Harris to focus on “siding-with-family vibes, not boring macro weeds.”
The group that once described itself as “the Elizabeth Warren wing” of the party urged Harris to focus on groceries, fighting corporate price gouging, bolstering Social Security by taxing billionaires, and talking up “the care economy.” Every policy, the memo argued, forced the contrast with Trump and the question of “whose side are you on?”
In her first major policy speech since Biden withdrew from the race, Harris hit all but one of those points; the vice president did not touch on Social Security. The president had already adopted the group’s recommendation during his State of the Union, calling for taxes on billionaires to protect the entitlement, after top aides in his inner circle sat down with PCCC late last year.
“The battle for direction is over,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the group who also previously helped shape the White House messaging on junk fees. In an interview with RealClearPolitics, he described how the Harris campaign had “already decided to be very economic populist, very pro little guy, and with Kamala, much more focused on the family budget.”
That vibes approach was front-and-center during the Philadelphia debate when the ABC News moderators asked the vice president if Americans are better off now than they were four years ago.
“I was raised as a middle-class kid,” Harris replied before adding that she was “the only person on this stage” who had a plan to help the working class and believed in “the ambition, the aspirations, the dreams of the American people.”
Republicans were annoyed then, as they are now, that Harris offered little in the way of details and mostly sidestepped the fact that, as the only incumbent currently running, she oversaw the policies they say led to lingering inflation. Her GOP critics also noted that she didn’t answer the question.
But Harris did talk about her plans for the care economy, specifically expanding the child tax credit, protecting Social Security, dealing with groceries, and taking on corporations. Progressives like Green were delighted from both a policy and strategy perspective. They thought the vibes were immaculate.
Of course, campaigns are always bombarded with plenty of advice. Some of it is often unsolicited. Spokesmen for Harris did not respond on the record when asked about ties to the progressive group. But perhaps just as importantly, the left feels that their voice is being heard. Many Democrats, including prominent allies of the progressive group, have looked past the candidate’s policy flip-flops precisely because they expect her to move left once inside the Oval Office.
“No, I don’t think she’s abandoning her ideals,” Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders told Meet the Press. The Democratic nominee, explained the Democratic socialist, was just trying “to be pragmatic and doing what she thinks is right in order to win the election.” And he is not the only one.
“I’m from Massachusetts, she’s from California. On climate, on abortion, on racial, LGBTQ issues, we are absolutely in agreement on her agenda,” Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, a co-sponsor of Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and other more liberal policies told the Hill last week.
“That’s why Elizabeth Warren and I are so passionately campaigning for her and supporting her,” he added, referring to fellow Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who ran against Harris in the previous Democratic primary and who was formally endorsed by the group that year.
Warren has gone all-in for Harris since the switch with Biden. “Kamala will run as her own person, which she always has been,” the Massachusetts progressive said in a July interview with WBUR. “But her issues are the core values that we share as Democrats.”
During a call with Progressives for Harris last month, Warren vowed to grassroots voters, “give us the skinniest of majorities” in Congress and Democrats would codify abortion rights. Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal went further, saying that if Democrats controlled “the trifecta” of government under Harris, they would put in place “reforms that make our democracy real” from ending the Senate filibuster and reforming the Supreme Court to comprehensive immigration reform.
When Republicans accuse Harris and progressives of hiding the ball, Adam Green rolls his eyes. “This is very much a top-versus-bottom argument, not a left-versus-right argument,” he replied. “And if she governed the way that she’s talking right now, it would actually be a very consensus agenda for the public.”
Harris continues to take that agenda on the road, even as the Trump campaign complains that she offers “zero specifics.” At the Economic Club in Pittsburgh Wednesday, the vice president spoke at length about her plans for the economy and proclaimed herself “a capitalist.” The speech was long, and the vision broad, but even the New York Times admitted afterward that the candidate offered little that was new.
All the same, by design or coincidence, Harris is delivering the kind of vibes progressives are hoping for.
This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.
