When Kamala Harris emerged as the Democratic presidential nominee, I expressed cautious optimism that she had learned from her disastrous 2020 campaign, which revolved around placating left-wing activists by adopting highly unpopular issue positions. The data point that seemed most compelling was her rumored slate of vice-presidential selections, which consisted of Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Roy Cooper of North Carolina, and Andy Beshear of Kentucky — the three most moderate governors in the party. “What this leak indicates,” I wrote, “is that Harris understands the assignment.”
But … does she? Her decision to pick Tim Walz, while not completely irrational, makes me much more cautious and less optimistic that Harris does understand the assignment.
The assignment, to be clear, is to win over voters who don’t like Donald Trump but worry Harris is too liberal.
Harris brings important strengths as a candidate. Polling has indicated that the perception she is too far left is Harris’s greatest vulnerability.
Intelligent Republicans recognize this and have tried to focus the Trump campaign on the left-wing positions Harris endorsed in her previous campaign. Of course, “intelligent Republicans” is a category that excludes the Republican presidential nominee, who has instead trained his message on a series of personal attacks and racist tropes.
So, clearly, Harris does not need to run a perfect campaign to beat Trump. But at the moment, she is in a toss-up environment, and every inch counts.
Does Walz help her gain those inches? I don’t believe he does. Rather than being one of the most moderate governors in America, he is one of the most liberal, and possibly the most liberal, which is why he became a hero to the far left in recent days. Walz is not a leftist, but he has adopted some unpopular positions, like providing free health care to unauthorized immigrants.
Progressive activists hold a view that the key to winning elections is to energize the base by taking ideologically pure positions. Without devoting the space necessary to litigate this belief, I’d note that it is deeply at odds with the evidence I’ve seen and also reflects a mirror-image belief held by right-wing activists.
Political activists always insist that the party they’re affiliated with will be hurt by moving to the center on policy. They need to claim this in order to have political leverage. It’s tempting to believe because it means you don’t have to worry about trade-offs between your preferences and winning. (To be clear, many of my own political preferences, which are well to the left of the median voter, are also unpopular.)
But it is easy to see how silly these base-mobilization arguments look when you view them from the opposing side. Before the Republican National Convention, Marjorie Dannenfelser, an anti-abortion activist, warned, “If the Trump campaign decides to remove national protections for the unborn in the GOP platform, it would be a miscalculation that would hurt party unity and destroy pro-life enthusiasm between now and the election.”
Trump ignored this warning and softened the abortion plank. Does anybody believe the party became disunified? Has the enthusiasm of the conservative base dimmed? No, it was a smart move to reduce the party’s exposure to unpopular positions.
A somewhat modified version of the left’s belief that moving left can increase political viability is that personal style can make up for a deficit in substance. Rather than move to the center on policy, they hope nominating candidates with a reassuring personal affect and personal biography can reassure moderate voters.
Walz generates so much enthusiasm on the left in part because he represents the apotheosis of this strategy. He is jolly, fun, a rural veteran and former football coach with a personal comfort with white rural voters.
There is probably something to this theory. If Harris had nominated a pink-haired professor from Brooklyn with a centrist voting record, that candidate probably would not provide a huge political heft.
But at the end of the day, issue positioning matters a lot. There is a reason Walz is less popular in a light-blue state than Josh Shapiro is in a purple state — indeed, when Walz shared a ballot in his own state with the moderate Amy Klobuchar, her victory margin (24 points) was more than double his (11.4 points). It’s not because Walz is less likable than Shapiro or Klobuchar. It’s because he’s less moderate.
Walz had a fairly conservative voting record in Congress, where he represented a red district. He used that record to win the governorship, and then moved sharply left. The lesson he seems to have taken from this experience is that there is no cost in adopting progressive positions across the board. “Don’t ever shy away from our progressive values,” Walz said on a recent call. “One person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness.”
I can’t emphasize enough what a bad idea this is. On issues where progressive values are unpopular, and there are several, Democrats should definitely shy away from progressive values. For example, their stance on socialism, which is an extremely unpopular concept, should not be to liken it to neighborliness, but to say it’s bad and promise not to do it.
The good news in all this is that vice-presidential candidates generally have little effect on election outcomes. Walz probably won’t hurt Harris much, if at all.
What the selection does, however, is forfeit her best opportunity to send a message that she is a moderate. She needs to take every possible opportunity between now and November to make up for that. Harris needs to adopt positions that will upset progressive activists. She needs to specifically understand that the likelihood a given action or statement will create complaints on the left is a reason to do something, rather than a reason not to.
Harris has a ton of momentum, but she is currently in a toss-up election. I don’t want to bet the future of this country on a coin toss. I want to build a political coalition with a clear majority. There’s still work to be done here, and I can only hope that Harris sees it clearly.
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