President Joe Biden’s historic exit from the White House race and endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him marks a thrilling turn of events for many Democrats. Biden’s re-election prospects had been looking terrible. Harris has injected an air of new possibility into the race, and she instantly benefits from not being dogged by questions about her mental acuity.
Harris is taking control of Biden’s campaign operation, garnering endorsements from across the party and positioning herself as the favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination. But it is imperative that she not allow her candidacy to be defined purely in negative terms as a generic alternative to someone undesirable: It is not enough to not be Joe Biden. It is not enough to not be Donald Trump. If Harris wants to make a splash, re-introduce herself to the public and have a decent shot at beating the former president, then she must embrace a compelling policy vision and sell it with gusto. This is an arena in which Biden largely failed. Harris needs to avoid making the same mistake.
It would be negligence of the highest order for Harris to not adopt the language and policy vision of economic populism.
The Biden-Harris campaign had focused mostly on selling re-election as a way to protect democracy and abortion rights. Those are deeply important ideas that can fire up the Democratic base. But most American voters are not the Democratic base, and Democrats need to get their attention and secure trust their trust by unveiling policies that pique their interest. This is a realm in which Harris can improve upon Biden’s platform and shore up her potential weaknesses against Trump. The Democratic Party must not just stand against things. It must stand for things.
Less politically engaged voters and swing voters have an outsize interest in economic issues, and polling data indicates that Trump tends to poll better than Biden on the economy. A set of recent surveys from The New York Times, Siena College and The Philadelphia Inquirer found that a large majority of voters in five battleground states want sweeping change in our economic and political systems. And even though inflation has subsided, Americans persistently believe that the cost of living is too high. Big, bold proposals that acknowledge that there are big structural problems in the way our economy distributes wages, wealth and freedom can engage and excite people. It would be negligence of the highest order for Harris to not adopt the language and policy vision of economic populism as a focal point of her campaign.
Big policy swings can help Harris renew and build coalitions on the left, as well. Buzzy policy commitments and rhetorical emphasis on issues such as increasing the minimum wage, expanding the child tax credit, creating a public option for health insurance, universal child care, free higher education options, tackling skyrocketing housing prices and cracking down on tax cheats, among countless others, would allow Harris to engage activists and specific constituencies and motivate them to work to elect her. Biden unveiled some eye-catching policies on banning medical debt, controlling rental costs and reforming the Supreme Court in the final weeks of his campaign. But his pivot was too little, too late. Those policy announcements mostly came about as concessions to the left wing of the party as Biden scrambled to secure support from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and the progressive House members known as “the squad” as his support fell after his debate against Trump. It remains to be seen how Harris will approach those policies, but one hopes she considers them alongside other potential headline-generating policies.
A bold economic populism can also serve as a shield for Harris. Unfortunately Trump, his running mate, JD Vance, and their GOP allies are likely to use the kinds of racist and sexist tropes to try to tear her down just as they have done in the past. Even more unfortunately, those lines of attack could persuade voters even outside the MAGA camp who are amenable to bigoted messaging. But if Harris hammers home social and economic policies that would benefit all people regardless of background, then she can help keep the conversation grounded in universal terms and help ensure that she sounds grounded in the struggles that working people face across all demographic backgrounds. Additionally, Harris can use economic populism to help rebuff the MAGA world’s increasingly sophisticated courtship of unions and call out the ruse of right-wing populism, which claims to champion working-class people even as it prioritizes the desires of corporations and the rich.
Harris is an experienced, energetic and competent candidate suited to take the torch from Biden in an emergency. But with Trump looking unusually strong in polls this year, Democrats must remember that fear of Trump is not a strong enough strategy for winning the election. Harris can shut down shallow theorizing about whether she is “electable” by getting to work and doing what Biden failed to do: making a bold case for how to make America better for everyone.