>To their credit, I do think the Harris team is running a smart, broadly popularist version of a progressive campaign, one where she is emphasizing progressives’ most popular ideas (largely on health care) while ruthlessly jettisoning weak points on crime and immigration. Still, I think it is somewhat risky to pass up the opportunity to break with the Biden record on economics and turn in a more Clintonite direction of deficit reduction rather than new spending. And I don’t really understand what she would be giving up by dialing back her policy ambitions. The only way to pass any kind of progressive legislation in 2025 is for Democrats to recapture the House (hard) and hang on to the Senate (very hard), so Harris ought to be asking what kind of agenda maximizes the odds that Jon Tester and Sherrod Brown and Jared Golden and Mary Peltola and John Avlon can win. What puts Senate races in Texas and Florida in play? On the one hand, yes, a campaign like that would look more moderate. But on the other hand, a campaign like that would stand a better chance of getting (progressive) things done.
1 Comment
>To their credit, I do think the Harris team is running a smart, broadly popularist version of a progressive campaign, one where she is emphasizing progressives’ most popular ideas (largely on health care) while ruthlessly jettisoning weak points on crime and immigration. Still, I think it is somewhat risky to pass up the opportunity to break with the Biden record on economics and turn in a more Clintonite direction of deficit reduction rather than new spending. And I don’t really understand what she would be giving up by dialing back her policy ambitions. The only way to pass any kind of progressive legislation in 2025 is for Democrats to recapture the House (hard) and hang on to the Senate (very hard), so Harris ought to be asking what kind of agenda maximizes the odds that Jon Tester and Sherrod Brown and Jared Golden and Mary Peltola and John Avlon can win. What puts Senate races in Texas and Florida in play? On the one hand, yes, a campaign like that would look more moderate. But on the other hand, a campaign like that would stand a better chance of getting (progressive) things done.