Wake up with the Washington Examiner: Harris has big ‘liberal’ energy, patching things up with progressives, and Bob Good puts his money on the line – Washington Examiner
The late stages of the 2024 presidential campaign see both Democrats and Republicans positioning themselves to define Vice President Kamala Harris, who has emerged as a key contender following President Biden’s exit. Former President Donald Trump is reportedly crafting political attacks against Harris, labeling her as a “radical Left lunatic” among other derogatory terms. This effort aligns with a broader Republican strategy to emphasize her past policy positions as a senator.
As part of their campaign, Republicans highlight Harris’s past support for progressive initiatives like Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and gun control measures, which they believe they can leverage against her. In her current campaign strategy, Harris has attempted to moderate her previous stances, such as walking back her support for forced gun buyback programs and fracking. These shifts could be pivotal in states like Pennsylvania, where energy policies are crucial.
Republicans believe they can capitalize on her flip-flopping by emphasizing her liberal voting record while suggesting she is more accurately characterized as a leftist. GOP strategist Ron Nehring argues that the term “liberal” has traditionally been more indicative of Republican principles, which he feels often embody being free and open, contrasting with what he describes as a divided and intolerant “woke Left.”
Despite her moderate adjustments, Harris has secured the backing of many in the Democratic Party’s left wing, including prominent figures like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. While Sanders was cautious to endorse her initially, both he and Warren have signaled their support, though this comes with expectations for her to commit to progressive policy goals. The left’s acceptance of Harris’s candidacy highlights the balancing act she must navigate as she attempts to appeal to a broad electorate while not alienating her party’s progressive base.
In the context of recent primaries, other races have also demanded attention, notably the surprising ousting of Rep. Jamaal Bowman and a closely contested primary for Rep. Bob Good in Virginia, which is currently under recount. both parties are preparing for a critical election season, with the struggle over defining candidates and their positions likely to influence voter perception and election outcomes.
Wake up with the Washington Examiner: Harris has big ‘liberal’ energy, patching things up with progressives, and Bob Good puts his money on the line
Big ‘liberal’ energy
Defining presidential candidate Kamala Harris is taking a few different forms. Harris herself and Democrats are mostly working to make her campaign about the future. Republicans, on the other hand, are working very hard to make it all about her past.
In the handful of campaign stops Harris has made since taking the mantle from President Joe Biden, she has begun to pry herself apart from the current administration to paint a picture of what a future United States under her leadership can look like.
“We share a vision for the future of our nation,” Harris said at a convention of the historically black sorority Zeta Phi Beta last week. “A future where every person has the opportunity not just to get by but to get ahead. A future of social justice, health justice, economic justice. Ours is a vision of a future in which we realize the promise of America.”
Harris is trying to outrun her liberal past, something that White House Reporter Naomi Lim pointed out in the third part of our series examining the ways Democrats and Republicans use the waning days of the 2024 presidential campaign to define the late entrant.
“Former President Donald Trump has been workshopping political attacks on a new Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, and one that he’d like to see stick is ‘radical Left lunatic,’” Naomi wrote.
“But as other Republicans criticize her as a ‘San Francisco liberal,’ more traditional political nomenclature, the strategy is clear: caricature Harris for her past policy positions,” she wrote.
There is a long state and strong national record of Harris running and acting as a quintessential liberal. Naomi laid out a laundry list of items Republicans are gleefully pointing out Harris said she supported, including but not limited to “her past support of Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and Black Lives Matter, to her backing an assault weapons buyback program and the reconstruction of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement federal agency from ‘scratch.’”
In the early days of her 2024 campaign, Harris has tried tacking to the center, walking back her support for a forced gun buyback program and her opposition to fracking — a vital energy matter that could single-handedly lose her the support of Pennsylvania.
So, Republicans are confident they have the upper hand. They can either remind voters about Harris’s liberal voting record — she was one of the most left-leaning senators in Congress, and that ranking has been pulled from the GovTrack platform, sending critics into fits of simultaneous rage and joy — or they can let the presumptive Democratic nominee appear to flip-flop on her central campaign issues.
While they pummel Harris for her voting and prosecutorial record, one GOP strategist told Naomi that Republicans would do themselves good by updating the language they use for voters. Portraying Harris as a “leftist” rather than a “liberal” would come across as a stronger line of attack — and would go some way in recovering the traditional meaning of “liberal,” which strategist Ron Nehring said is often more descriptive of Republicans than Democrats.
“The traditional meaning of the term ‘liberal’ refers to being free and open, which more accurately describes conservatives today than the woke Left, which won’t even tolerate pronouns they don’t like, and labels as a ‘hater’ anyone who believes women’s sports should be for … women,” Nehring told Naomi. “In today’s polarized society, activists in both parties easily fall into the trap of just echoing terms which work well for people in their camp but don’t work for appealing beyond it. Labeling Harris a ‘liberal,’ as opposed to other, more persuasive terms, is an example.”
Click here to read more about the fine line Harris has to walk that Republicans are happy to play up in the race to define her before Election Day.
Progress with progressives
The tightrope act just mentioned hasn’t deterred the Democratic Party’s left wing from getting on board with Harris’s candidacy, even if some of the most important figures weren’t the first in line to back her.
Congress and Campaigns Editor David Sivak took a look at the steady march of the party’s most prominent left-wingers standing behind Harris despite her going soft on some of their most cherished hard-line ideas.
“Harris has attempted to reverse or clarify many of the liberal views she espoused five years ago, during her run in the 2020 presidential primary,” David wrote. “On Friday, her campaign disavowed her previous support for a ban on fracking, while a campaign spokesperson told the Washington Examiner she would not pursue the forced buyback of military-style assault weapons or single-payer healthcare, an issue she has waffled on for years.”
The party’s left wing is typified by the Northeast stalwart who, ironically, isn’t a Democrat. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has arguably done as much to pull the Democratic Party leftward in the last decade as Trump has done to move the Republican Party farther to the right. Sanders ran an insurgent 2016 campaign that mainstreamed ideas about a “Green New Deal” and popularized talking about single-payer healthcare.
Sanders was slow to endorse Harris, opting to wait until she had the delegate count sewn up to put her in the driver’s seat and giving her a chance to offer “specificity” on her views about a range of liberal programs.
“His wish list items include expanding Medicare to include dental and vision as well as a nationwide cap on rent,” David wrote. “It is not clear what commitments, if any, Harris made to earn Sanders’s support.”
Besides flipping her support for fracking, a move then-candidate John Fetterman also made when he was running for the Pennsylvania Senate seat in 2022, the primary progressive betrayal from Harris has been her walking back support for Sanders’s Medicare for All plan that included eliminating private insurance plans.
The Senate’s other most prominent progressive member, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), told David she still supports the healthcare overhaul but acknowledged that “it’s not where we are right now.”
“Instead, Warren, who supports the bill to this day, espoused an incrementalist approach focused on preserving the gains Democrats made under Biden and, before him, President Barack Obama,” David wrote.
With the nomination all but locked in ahead of the virtual roll call vote set to begin this week that will cement her place as the nominee ahead of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month, the support of progressives in Congress is less important than if she had a bitter convention floor fight ahead of her. But it will be important to watch how the Sanders-Warren wing approaches a Harris administration. Their support now could come with progressive policy strings attached next year when the vice president has more space to flex her political muscle as the occupant of the White House rather than the Naval Observatory on the other side of town.
Click here to read more about Harris’s winning ways with her party’s progressive wing.
Not looking Good, Bob
We had several exciting, interesting, if not pivotal, primary contests last month. Few, if any, of them will have massive knock-on effects for the general election contests in November, but one of the two incumbent-ousting shockers is still getting litigated.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) was the first “Squad” member to lose his seat in the House when his Capitol Hill antics and fierce opposition to and criticism of Israel came back to bite him. Westchester County Executive George Latimer easily dispatched Bowman in their June 25 primary contest.
A week earlier, Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) made history as the first House Freedom Caucus chairman to lose his seat. That race, against former Navy SEAL John McGuire, was much closer at just 374 votes and is going to a recount today, Congressional Reporter Rachel Schilke wrote for us this morning.
The quick rundown of what today means for both candidates is simple — “If McGuire wins the recount, Good will become the first House Republican incumbent to lose a primary challenge this election cycle.”
“If the recount reaffirms McGuire’s victory, then there is no challenge that either campaign can make,” she wrote.
And Good has more than just his job on the line today. Because the margin is so small, Good is footing the bill for the recount process himself. The recount is estimated to cost $96,500, though that price could fluctuate up or down depending on how long the process takes. If nothing changes and Good still comes out as the loser, he’ll have to pay the tab. However, he’ll be reimbursed if the recount reverses the contest.
Click here to read more about the recount process, and stay tuned to the Washington Examiner for the latest updates on the process.
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For your radar
Biden has no public events scheduled, but he will receive his daily brief at 10 a.m. He will receive a briefing on the implementation of important provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act at 11 a.m.
Biden and Harris will have lunch at 12:45 p.m.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will brief reporters at 1:30 p.m.
Biden will be briefed on actions his administration is taking to crack down on drug smuggling at 2:30 p.m.
Biden will meet with U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine’s Economic Recovery Penny Pritzker at 3:45 p.m.
Harris will fly to Houston, Texas, where she will speak at a “political event” at 7:15 p.m. She will deliver remarks at the Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority’s 60th International Biennial Boule at 8:15 p.m.
Trump is attending the National Association of Black Journalists conference in Chicago, where he will speak with a panel before he hosts a rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, at 6 p.m.
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) is in California and will hold a rally in Arizona at 8 p.m.
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