The Opposition Party
Progress, one maddeningly slow and contentious step at a time.
Let’s talk about two pieces of news from yesterday. Both of them concern the Democratic Party.
First and foremost, Kamala Harris is Joe Biden’s running mate.
The news is shocking to exactly nobody for about a billion reasons. Biden promised to select a woman. Harris was a notable force on the debate stages during the Democratic primary, even though she failed to garner much support. Her time in the Senate has been productive and her dressings-down of witnesses at committee hearings have been impressive. On paper, she’s everything you could look for in a VP nominee and presumptive Democratic Presidential frontrunner for the first non-Biden election, whether that be in four or eight years’ time.
She is also the first woman of color to appear on a major party’s ticket. Her mother is from India, her father from Jamaica. She is the first Asian-American on either party’s ticket, the first Black woman. That is significant and absolutely worth celebrating. Harris is a historic nominee in an election that will determine whether or not a racist demagogue keeps his seat.
She is also extremely emblematic of where the Democratic establishment is right now. Harris served as San Francisco’s district attorney and then California’s attorney general before coming to Washington. The policies she pursued including threatening parents of truant children with jail time, something she laughed about. Harris worked to deny gender-affirming surgery to trans inmates, who were part of a carceral system Harris worked hard to build. Here’s a video of her taking issue with protestors who demanded better educational systems. The whole thing is worth watching, but the sequence in question starts at about 11:20:
Harris belittles the idea of protest, and then argues that schools don’t solve violent crime. She blatantly ignores that better education can lead to lowered rates of crime. She discusses the need for better treatment for non-violent offenders immediately before that soliloquy, but then goes on to act as if everyone advocating for prison reform wants to set child rapists free on the streets, and not the countless people in prison for non-violent drug offenses.
The talk in that video happened in 2013. It’s fully possible that Harris has evolved on these positions. But it is a bit too on-the-nose that in a year that has featured massive protests against racism and the power of the police, the Democrats have chosen a man who authored the infamous crime bill and was friends with Strom Thurmond, and a tough-on-crime former attorney general. Harris called Biden out on that friendship at one of the debates this year.
She is probably the most progressive member of a presidential ticket since Barack Obama himself. She represents a step forward. But it is hard to shake the feeling that she is not the right nominee for this moment, especially given that whoever was chosen would have a very good chance at being at the top of the ticket the next time around. A more progressive choice like Karen Bass, who was by all accounts a candidate for the VP slot, would have been heartening to see.
Harris is a safer and less challenging choice. She is undoubtedly qualified and fit to assume the office of the Presidency should she need to. But again, the progressive wing of the party is being told to settle for less, that it’s time to be adults and gratefully chew on what has been given to them. Any consternation about Harris’ record has been met with venom and some variation of “Don’t you want to see Trump go?”
The goal of ousting Donald Trump is obviously supremely important, but it is in fact possible for one to both wish Trump would strapped to a rocket and shot into space, and to wish that the powers that be within the party were actually willing to go the extra mile to help those who need it most. Democrats have spent recent months saying that using their oversight powers isn’t worth it and feebly whimpering at the Republicans to stop being mean and let people, you know, live.
Better things are possible. You’re just not supposed to want them in an election year.
That brings me to the other piece of news from yesterday that I wanted to discuss. Ilhan Omar won her primary, which means that she’s almost surely going to be reelected to the House. There had been a lot of unfounded speculation that her challenger, Antone Melton-Meaux, was a real threat to win. Omar defeated him by more than 15 points.
Melton-Meaux raised six times as much money as Omar, largely from out-of-state benefactors who were desperate to see her beaten. The voters of Minneapolis soundly rejected the moderate. They rejected the Minnesota Star Tribune’s endorsement of Melton-Meaux.
Omar is the third member of The Squad to easily dispatch of her primary challenger, following Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tliab’s wins. Ayanna Pressley will surely win too. Primary wins from new faces like Jamaal Bowman and Mondaire Jones are only bolstering the progressive wing’s strength in Congress. Moreover, Joe Kennedy is starting to take on serious water in his challenge to progressive Senator Ed Markey, given that the start and end of his platform seems to be “my last name is Kennedy.”
There is a taste for progressive politics in the electorate. There is strong support for Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. The Democrats, as always, are fleeing for the safety of the middle, firing off boring potshots that play well on the Facebook feeds of suburban parents, and showing their bellies to the Republicans.
The selection of Kamala Harris as the vice presidential nominee represents the shifting nature of the Democratic Party. Harris is both unlike anyone ever seen before in the position, and also more of the same. She is a trailblazer.
She is also someone who may represent an obstacle to the radical changes being demanded by so many in this country. She is not someone who is as afraid of speaking too loudly or running too fast as Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are, but she’s not the sprinter that many are clamoring for. She is the next step. She is a symbol of once-unimaginable progress, but also a symbol of the work that remains ahead of us. For the party establishment, she’s what was expected.