Kamala Harris's Problem of Definition

Can she be unburdened by what has been without explicitly casting off that burden?

In 2012, Mitt Romney ran as a sensible, mainstream Republican: an obviously decent family man, who believed in God but wasn’t trying to push his religion down anyone’s throat; a successful businessman, philanthropic leader and conservative governor of a liberal state who could be trusted to manage the economy and national security in line with traditional Republican understandings of how that should be done. He lost. The next time around, Republicans decided to nominate a television personality and failed casino-owner with no government or military experience, no discernible religious convictions, who had multiple wives and multiple affairs, including one with a porn performer, who had previously been a Democrat and donated to his opponent, and who ran explicitly against multiple traditional Republican positions. Donald Trump won, of course, and over the past eight years has remade the GOP in his image.

There are a variety of stories one could tell about this sequence of events. One could tell a story about Barack Obama’s extraordinary political talent and Hillary Clinton’s ineptitude. One could tell a story about anti-Mormonism on the one hand and sexism on the other. One could tell a story about the bipartisan discontents of the 2010s and how they busted out in the form of the Tea Party on the one hand and the Sanders campaign on the other. One could even tell a story about policy, and say that by promising to protect Medicare and Social Security while restricting immigration, Trump found a new policy sweet spot that had eluded his predecessors.

One story I like to tell, though—not because it’s the only true one but because I feel it is under-recognized and highly relevant to the current presidential contest—is that Trump won in part because he won.

By that I mean: from the very beginning Trump was and appeared to be in charge of his own campaign, ran it the way he wanted to and on the issues he wanted to, won the nomination that way, and continued to operate thereafter as if he were in charge. By contrast, Romney had run in 2008 by pandering to the right wing of the party, characterizing himself as a “severe conservative,” and then, trying to run a more mainstream campaign in 2012, had difficulty convincing much of the primary electorate that he was anything in particular. He did win, but without generating much enthusiasm, and still needed to convince his own party of who he was. In consequence, he wound up picking Paul Ryan as his running mate not so much as a sop to a defeated faction (as Ronald Reagan did with George H. W. Bush in 1980) or as a way of assuring a key faction that they had a voice in the White House (as Bush did with Dan Quayle in 1988 and Trump did with Mike Pence in 2016), but as a signal to a skeptical party that he had convictions—ones they shared. They happened to be convictions that were extremely unpopular, and the Obama campaign merrily wrapped them around Romney’s neck—but my point is that the mere fact that Romney had to make a move like that was an indication of fundamental weakness.

Kamala Harris is in a somewhat similar position to Romney’s right now. Her biggest problem is that much of the electorate holds one of two opinions about her. Either they think she is too left-wing, and that Trump is the more ideologically moderate choice, or they don’t know who she is and what she stands for, if anything. And the problem with that problem is that Harris missed the normal way that candidates define themselves: by running in a seriously contested primary and winning.

Like Romney in 2012, Harris has the specter of her previous presidential campaign, in which she ran to the extremes, hanging over her head. If she’s asked in the debate tonight whether she still favors taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries for detained migrants, any answer she gives is going to be a bad one. She’ll either sound like she was lying in 2019 to placate activists—which makes her seem weak—or like she’s lying now, or like she’s an extremist. (By the way, I’m not sure her answer to the questionnaire was wrong; I have no idea what kind of medical care is provided to people in detention or in prison already, so I don’t know whether the question meant “would you expand coverage in this way” or “would you maintain coverage in this way.”) That, of course, is just one example; there are numerous others. This would be a problem for any candidate—but if she changed her views for a 2024 primary run, and won that primary, then the problem would be largely solved. In the general election, she could not only reiterate that she had changed her views but demonstrate that Democrats were behind her in her changed views. And that is crucial for convincing the general election electorate that she means it.

Voters are pretty forgiving, after all, of a candidate who changes her views to suit what the electorate wants—provided they believe that she actually means it. They don’t necessarily care if she means it deep in her heart; it can be a purely transactional matter. But they have to believe she can and will deliver. And that speaks to the question of whether the candidate is actually in charge, with her party behind her substantively, something that, again, is best demonstrated by winning against real opposition.

So, since she didn’t win a contested primary battle, what other opportunities does Harris still have to clearly define herself as her own person in ways that will stick? She had one in her choice of running mate, which she could have used to make a statement about her own confidence and the campaign’s overall direction. Instead she chose someone perfectly acceptable but who doesn’t help define her in any particular way—someone no Democrat has any real reason to object to, and which therefore reinforces the perception that she isn’t really in command. Her best remaining opportunity to define herself is by explicit contrast with the unpopular administration that she has been a part of—demonstrating that she’s her own boss by breaking with the man who has been her boss. The only problem is: what break is she going to make?

Jonathan Chait has a recent piece encouraging Harris to throw Biden under the bus that I found perplexing in the extreme—because he never identifies the bus. Biden is unpopular for many reasons, some of them personal: he’s really old, he’s uninspiring, he’s never been a very good public speaker, etc. But in policy terms, Biden is unpopular for, broadly speaking, four things. Inflation is the biggest one: prices rose dramatically, stayed high too long, and still piss people off. Immigration is another big one: Biden arguably helped trigger the migration surge by signaling a different approach from Trump, then ignored the problem for two years before finally and effectively cracking down. Foreign policy is a third: the withdrawal from Afghanistan embarrassed Americans, the war in Ukraine seems to be going badly, and the war in Gaza is a running humanitarian sore. Finally, Biden is likely also unpopular in part because his party is viewed as too left-wing on a variety of cultural matters, and he is viewed as having not adequately reined in his party’s left. (The GOP is likely viewed as even more right-wing on some of these issues than the Democrats are viewed as left, but Trump is actively positioning himself as moderating influence on his party on some of the cultural issues—like abortion—where the Democrats have the clear upper hand.)

So if Harris is supposed to break from Biden, what exactly is she supposed to break from him on?

Is she supposed to say she wouldn’t have allowed inflation to get so high? But how would she have done so? By not passing the big Democratic COVID relief bill? But that bill was popular at the time—because it gave people money. By hassling the Fed to raise interest rates faster? But high interest rates are also deeply unpopular. Ditto with raising taxes or cutting spending, both of which are now crucial as we leave the free-lunch years of the 2010s behind. Ordinary people don’t have strong views on how to prevent inflation—that’s why they can opine that the answer to the problem of inflation is to cut interest rates and taxes, because those things would put more money in their pockets to buy stuff. But the way to actually beat inflation is to reduce demand, which nobody actually likes. So what exactly is Harris supposed to say here?

Well, she could say that she’d boost domestic oil and gas production to lower energy prices, or that she’d encourage the reshoring of manufacturing to protect supply chains, or that she’d encourage homebuilding by cutting red tape—and she is saying all of these things to one or another degree. Whether any of these efforts would have made a material difference on inflation back in 2022 is highly debatable, but they’re all popular ideas. But of course, Biden has taken positive action on all of these fronts. Taking these positions is not teeing up a break with the administration—it’s teeing up a defense of an administration that often hasn’t touted its own accomplishments.

Is Harris supposed to break with Biden on immigration, or at least the pre-2024 version of Biden? The problems here are first, she was the border czar (or whatever you want to call it) back when the migration surge happened, second she staked out a position far to Biden’s left on the issue in 2019, and third, what Biden has done more recently is move toward Trump’s position. How does it help Harris to say Trump was right in a debate with Trump? Unless she could demonstrate that she was quietly advocating a tougher policy behind the scenes, and couldn’t get Biden to agree, I don’t see how she can define herself by “breaking” with Biden on this issue. Her best hope is to muddy the waters.

What about foreign policy? Is Harris supposed to say she would have handled the withdrawal from Afghanistan better? Or not withdrawn at all? Done more to help Ukraine win the war with Russia? Or prevented the war entirely? Handled the war in Gaza or relations with Netanyahu better? Trump can posture that he would have prevented or solved all of these crises with a wave of his hand, and she can mock him for that glib insouciance, but I can’t see anything she can say on these issues to “break” with Biden that wouldn’t come off simultaneously as ridiculous sounding and counterproductive.

That leaves breaking with Biden on cultural left issues, making it clear that she thinks Democrats went a little nuts from 2014 to 2022, and that she intends to steer a course back toward normie-ism. At the level of vibes, she’s already doing that—but how is she supposed to “break” with Biden on any of these issues? On many matters, Biden himself never actually tacked way to the left—he never defunded the police, for example, but rather re-funded them. So what, then?

Harris would like to be what she can be unburdened by what has been, and while I understand that preference on her part, unless she can actually cast off that burden I don’t know how she actually demonstrates who she is in a convincing way. She shouldn’t have any trouble articulating a set of policies that she believes are both popular and sensible. She can give a good speech—much better than she did in 2019. But I worry that none of that is enough to get the electorate to trust her to deliver, either on the particular policies she’s running on or, better, on whatever policies turn out to be what in retrospect they decide they wanted.

And I worry that it’s not enough to be able to govern effectively either, because that’s another job that requires one to operate from a position of strength.