When I initially saw this article, my first thought was surprise — surprise that Democrat lawmakers would publicly admit they want presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris to hide from voters the policy agenda she plans to pursue if she wins in November. Desperation? Sure sounds like it.
It also sounds like Democrats are afraid they could lose both Senate and House votes, and the presidential election itself, if Harris is transparent about the radical “solutions” she has in mind to reverse the miserable failure of four years of the Biden Administration.
Rep. Ann McLane Kuster (D-NH), chair of the centrist New Democrats, unwittingly admitted as much to Politico:
She doesn’t need to negotiate against herself. We’ve got the biggest possible tent right now. I don’t think there’s a real strong reason for her to try to weed out any points of view right now.
Translation: “She doesn’t need to be specific, yet. It’s in our best interest for her to be as vague as possible so as not to alienate moderate voters. If she reveals her real intentions, moderates and independents will run away from her faster than Michael Moore running away from a Weight Watchers representative.”
One battleground district Democrat lawmaker told Politico:
They [voters] have very little knowledge about who she is, what her job has actually been. They know Trump. They know what his policies are. They don’t know Kamala. And so Kamala has a ton of room right now to define herself.
You’re damn right they don’t know her, and that’s exactly the way you people want to keep it — until it’s too late.
RELATED READING: POLL: Most Registered Democrats, Independents Are Clueless About Kamala Harris’ Radicalism
Warnings about revealing “too much, too soon” appear to be resonating with Team Harris.
Several people familiar with the situation told the Washington Journal that campaign advisers worry about publicly releasing “thorny details” of their economic plan because the specifics might backfire on the campaign.
“Instead, they expect small shifts in emphasis that highlight her résumé and priorities” to hide the details of her agenda “amid concerns from some Democrats that releasing a lengthy plan could open the vice president up to criticism from Republicans and members of her party,” the Journal reported.
On the other hand…
“Kamala needs to stop insulting the intelligence of voters and speak for herself to explain why she is running from every liberal policy she has ever supported,” the Trump campaign’s national press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said in a statement, ripping Harris. “The mainstream media needs to stop being complicit in her lies and demand answers,” as Breitbart News reported in the story linked above.
Memo to Karoline: That is not going to happen.
Here’s more from Politico:
Most Democrats acknowledge that Harris will need to round out her platform as the campaign continues, even if she doesn’t need to release an issue-by-issue plan. Former Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), who lost a Senate bid to GOP vice-presidential nominee JD Vance in 2022 and ran against Harris in the 2020 presidential primary, said that “at some point” Harris will need to lay out more policy priorities but shouldn’t feel pressure to do so yet.
“She’ll probably need to do something on inflation and getting costs down, but she has the re-industrialization already,” he said, referencing Biden administration accomplishments like the Inflation Reduction Act and bipartisan legislation aimed at boosting the domestic semiconductor industry.
Surprisingly, even Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) is pushing Harris to flesh out her economic policy platform to win over working-class voters. Sanders told Politico that the presumptive Democrat nominee should be “proud to run on” the Biden administration’s economic record, adding:
As we have seen in poll after poll, running on policies that benefit working-class voters is also good politics.
Bernie, Bernie, Bernie. You don’t get it. Of course Harris is proud to run on the miserable failure of Bidenomics. Look, when you proudly roll out “communist”-style price controls, how could you not be?
