How Kamala Harris Can Beat MAGA

Like many I am excited to see the energy surrounding Vice President Kamala Harris. I have every confidence that she can defeat Donald Trump, and when she does so (knock on wood) she will have saved the American experiment from self-destruction. She has a strong record on which to run, she is a capable and conscientious public servant, and she will make an excellent President of the United States. 

But I worry that exuberance can turn so easily to disappointment, then despair. We are in for a long, hard campaign. The polls are going to move slowly, if they move at all. Defeating Trump is possible, but it will not be much easier for Kamala Harris than it would have been for Joe Biden. Her youth, her energy, her experience, her intellect, and her passion are all wonderful, but they will not be enough. 

What has frustrated me most in the last eight years is the seeming inability of the punditocracy and the political class more generally to recognize the ways in which Trumpism is unique. If Trump is not violating the law (which he does so frequently) he is violating the norms of our political system and the values on which it is founded. The movement he leads is dedicated to the destruction of our democracy. Yet the "serious minds" in print journalism and on cable news seem determined to treat Democratic presidential campaigns (whether that of Clinton and Biden in the past or Harris now) as if they were running against Bob Dole or Mitt Romney rather than Donald Trump. It makes me angry enough to spit. 

Exhibit A: the recent spate of head-shaking and chin stroking concerning the "difficulty" that Kamala Harris will have reconciling the difference between the positions she has adopted as a member of the Biden administration and the positions she advocated in the 2020 presidential campaign, when she ran "to the left" of Biden. Are these people serious? Harris is running against a man who on any given day would find it impossible to reconcile what he said at 5:00 PM with what he said at 4:45. If the Republicans can nominate a toxic warthog from the fever dream of a cartoon character, the Democratic candidate does not come under the onus that would normally fall on any conscientious seeker of higher office. Harris can look any camera or interviewer in the eye and say with firm conviction, "If the voters are looking for anything approaching consistency, I am the only choice in this election." No further comment needed.

The same obtuseness can be seen in the "sober and pious" commentary concerning Harris's choice of a running mate. She needs balance! She can't pick anyone controversial! Such sentiments might make sense if she was facing a traditional Republican opponent who was running from the center-right. But in the last three election cycles the Republicans have been running from Cancerous Cloud-Cuckooland. Harris is free to choose whomever she wants. The idea that she must pander to MAGA sensibilities by steering clear of another woman, an LGBTQ politician, or a person of color is ridiculous. 

Take, for example, Gretchen Whitmer, who alas seems to have dropped off of the VP short list. If she and Harris were both straight white men and this were 1992, a Harris/Whitmer ticket would be praised by pundits near and far as "balanced." A midwestern governor with 25 years of experience in two branches of government with a former prosecutor, senator, and vice president from California? Balanced! Powerhouse! Treating a Harris/Whitmer ticket as "narrow" or "unbalanced" because it has two woman on it is to capitulate to toxic MAGA thinking, and that is the last thing we need right now.

To win, Kamala Harris will have to KISS- Keep it Simple, Superstar. Long lists of policy accomplishments and explanations of the "inconsistencies" in her record are simply not necessary. Accomplishments and policy aspirations can be mentioned, but two narratives will carry Harris to victory:

1)She is the only candidate in the race who believes in democracy. This narrative has the simple merit of being the gospel truth, and is easy to demonstrate in lots of different ways. Trump's lethal hostility to democracy is a gift that can be made to keep on giving. Any time Trump or one of his surrogates asks about Harris's supposed "flip flops" Harris may demand that Trump concede the 2020 election...or provide proof that the last election was rigged...or explain why we cannot see his tax returns...or ask what he meant when he asked Brad Ratzenberger to "find 11,000 votes"...or why he has promised to pardon criminals who helped gouge out the eye of a police officer...or why he told the world that he trusts Vladimir Putin more than he trusts the FBI...etc. etc. ad infinitum. Trump is so clearly unfit for office that the burden of proof is continuously on him to explain why he has not quit the race and let a real Republican campaign for the presidency. Harris's fitness for the office is self-evident, anyone who doubts it can review her record and see for themselves.

It would not hurt, in this regard, to run this campaign as if this election were different from other elections, because it is. The choice of an "unconventional" running mate is one such tactic. The other would be to deploy unconventional allies. Republicans like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger have very courageously come out and spoken the truth about Donald Trump and the threat he poses to our democracy. The stakes in this election are too high to leave such assets on the table, if they can be utilized. Nothing would demonstrate to voters better that our democracy is under threat than some joint campaign appearances between the Democratic nominee and some staunch Republican partisans who are willing to stand up and be counted. 

Such moments would be difficult to engineer. It would require that Democrats defuse their reflexive penchant for virtue signalling about the moral failings of the right and that Republicans lay down their common talking points about the "left agenda," and that both parties, for the space of a rally or two, confine themselves to the one message that matters in this election: all people of good faith who believe in our constitution must rally to defeat Donald Trump at the polls. A single picture of Kamala Harris, AOC, and Liz Cheney all standing on a stage holding one-another's hands in the air would be worth about a million words about policy.

The last thing to note about framing Kamala Harris as the only candidate in this race who will preserve democracy is that this would be the best context in which to discuss reproductive freedom. The Republicans' war on women is so heinous precisely because it is so anti-democratic. It has nothing to do with the ethics of abortion anymore, and is all about using the power of the government to control women- to deprive them of the choice of career, of access to healthcare, and of freedom of movement more generally. Using government power to control women puts Trump halfway along the goal to using government power to control everyone.

2)She is the only candidate in this race who cares about wealth inequality. This narrative can basically subsume any and all discussion of policy. Trumpism is about channeling people's anger, and what people are most angry about (whether they know it or not- and this campaign is an opportunity to make them aware of it) is the fact that the rich keep on grabbing more of the nation's wealth and leaving the rest of us squabbling over a pie that, from our perspective, paradoxically keeps shrinking even as the nation as a whole gets wealthier and wealthier. Trump is easy to expose as a phony populist. His tax cuts, his tariffs, his lack of interest in infrastructure spending unless it enriches him and his cronies, his spiteful  desire to do away with Obamacare- all mark him as the candidate of , by, and for the fatcat corporate oligarchs. Even inflation works for Harris in this regard: she can remind people that most of the inflation since 2020 has stemmed from corporate price-gouging. The best cure for inflation are policies that shift economic power to workers and consumers, like those of Biden and Harris, rather than the crony capitalism of Trump that only ever serves the rich.

Harris can win. It won't depend on her running mate, or her age, or her ability to "explain her record." It will require her to drive a simple message that reminds people of the stakes of this election and that treats Trump as the uniquely toxic threat to our democracy that he is. It will be a tough campaign, and it will probably be a close race going down to the wire. But Democrats should not be gloomy. We should be happy strugglers, sustained by the thought of what a Harris victory over Donald Trump would mean to young people in this country. How much more hopeful will the future look in an America where Kamala Harris had defeated Donald Trump? Let's keep that vision before our eyes, and let it carry us across the finish line.