With President Joe Biden’s shock exit from the presidential race, the doors have opened up to an array of ambitious Democratic politicians who thought their time was four years from now. Already, large segments of party bigwigs, the media, donors, and Biden himself are, unsurprisingly, coalescing around one name in particular: Kamala Harris, Biden’s vice president.
As the country faces the real prospect of a Harris nomination on the Democratic ticket and even a Harris presidency, the obvious question is, who exactly is Kamala Harris? That’s a question she herself may have trouble answering.
Like many Democratic politicians who have lived through the changeover from the Barack Obama years to Bernie Sanders’s ascent to national prominence, Harris has undergone a sometimes awkward metamorphosis, transforming from tough-on-crime prosecutor to progressive firebrand to whatever this latest iteration is. Along the way, she has notched notable progressive victories, like bringing successful legal action against rapacious corporate profiteers and advancing some policing reforms.
But there is plenty of reason for disquiet about Harris’s career, not least of all over her time as a prosecutor, the bulk of her career and which she now reportedly plans to lean on as she prepares to take the fight against Donald Trump. Over the course of that career, Harris, who famously spent her 2020 presidential run flip-flopping on Medicare for All and busing to end racial segregation, has not often marked herself as a politician with the courage of her convictions, or of someone willing to take meaningful steps to challenge the structures that bedevil working Americans. The question for Democratic voters ahead is, which Harris will they be getting this…
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Auteur: Branko Marcetic
