Even by the standards of pure partisan spin, this is brazenly delusional.
Jonathan Last at the Bulwark argues (in an essay written before Joe Biden’s withdrawal) that Kamala Harris is the candidate who can turn the page on the politics of the past eight years:
The Harris campaign should be insurgent, not incumbent. She should run against everything from the recent past: Against the fractions, broken promises, and lingering hatreds of the Obama years. Against the revanchism of the Trump years. And against the weariness of the Biden years. Her rationale is that she is the candidate to turn the page on all of it. If you are sick and tired of the last decade of politics, Harris is the candidate to wipe the slate and begin anew.
“The Future Is Now” implicitly acknowledges the break-glass-in-case-of-emergency nature of her nomination. It aggressively puts COVID and January 6th and inflation in the rearview mirror. Kamala Harris is the candidate who can say, “We are tired of fighting about vaccines and the insurrection and Trump’s crimes. Together, we will make a clean break from all of that and start a wholly new era.”
Even by the standards of pure partisan spin, this is brazenly delusional. American political parties have certainly been known to solve their problems by offering a sharp break with their own past (think of populist rebellions such as Donald Trump against George W. Bush or William Jennings Bryan against Grover Cleveland). In general, if you want a turn-the-page candidate, that person should fit three requirements:
- Someone who was not involved in the events or policies on which you’re trying to turn the page.
- Someone who does not much care to talk about those events or policies.
- Someone who wishes to let the matter drop and not pursue a continuation of existing policies.
We have an excellent recent example of what this could look like: George W. Bush in 2000. By the time of the 2000 election, the American people were well and truly sick of the Clinton scandals, in particular the sex scandals. They were disgusted by Clinton’s immoral and predatory behavior. But they were also vexed at Republicans for trying to impeach Clinton or have him prosecuted for things they didn’t regard as matters of state.
One of the candidates on offer to replace Clinton was Al Gore, his vice president of eight years who had gleefully defended his boss. Another was John McCain, a zealous campaign-finance reform advocate who had voted to convict Clinton. The page-turning candidate was Bush, who had remained safely removed from the Beltway feeding frenzy; at the time, I described him as a “conscientious objector” from the Clinton scandal wars. (Being in my twenties and full of zeal myself, I preferred McCain to Bush on that basis).
By the time the vice presidential choices rolled around, both parties had figured out that Bush had the winning move, so the Democrats picked Joe Lieberman (who had resisted impeachment but offered stern moral condemnation and a proposed censure of Clinton), while Republicans picked Dick Cheney, who had been in the private sector the whole time. Bush won, the Independent Counsel statute was allowed by bipartisan consensus to expire, no action was taken against Clinton except for a temporary suspension of his law license, and the politics of the next decade moved on. A similar dynamic drove Jimmy Carter’s victory over Gerald Ford.
What would lead any sentient adult to associate Kamala Harris with anything resembling this?
Put inflation in the rearview mirror? Sure, every Democrat wants to do that, but after four years of “Biden-Harris administration” branding and nary a peep of dissent from Harris on this administration’s runaway spending and other economic policies, she’s supposed to do that just by getting media hacks to insist to us that it is so.
COVID and vaccines? Even in strictly visual terms, consider how much of the footage of Harris during her tenure in office shows her conspicuously wearing a mask, even outdoors. Where was Harris the past four years except with the rest of this administration — such as when it gave cover to teachers’ unions in resisting the reopening of schools by denying the mounting scientific evidence that reopening was safe, or when it tried to jam a national vaccine mandate through OSHA. Before there was an anti-vaccine movement on the right, it was Harris, in her 2020 debate with Mike Pence, who declared, “If Donald Trump tells us to take it, I’m not taking it.” This isn’t about moving on, it’s just about avoiding responsibility.
Turn the page on January 6th and “the insurrection and Trump’s crimes”? Since when has Harris shown the slightest inclination to stop talking about any of this? Since when is she pledging to change course in what the administration is doing to prosecute those cases? To the contrary, outside of her obsessive advocacy of abortion, nearly the entirety of her message is “I’m a prosecutor, he’s a felon” and “democracy is on the ballot.” It would be wholly out of character for Harris to pledge to drop the Trump prosecutions.
After all of this sleight of hand, consider the supposedly unifying and novel positive agenda Last proposes:
What does “The Future” mean policy-wise? That’s the least important aspect of a campaign’s rationale, but it’s not hard to sketch one out for Harris:
- With Trump out of the way, pass the border security bill that Republicans and Democrats both voted for.
- Enshrine Roe in federal law and put the unpopular Dobbs decision in the past.
- Extend the 2017 tax cuts for people—but not for corporations.
- Expand on the Affordable Care Act and continue to bring coverage to more Americans while pushing down prescription drug prices.
- Stand firm against Russia and China.
How is this different from what the Biden-Harris administration is either currently doing, or currently claims to be doing? A border-security bill won’t solve the actual problem, which is that Biden (with the eager support of Harris) has refused to enforce the laws we already have. Raising corporate taxes is about as new an idea for Democrats as the WPA. I’m also not sure how you’re supposed to turn the page on the controversies of the Obama era by focusing on . . . Obamacare.
As for passing federal pro-abortion legislation, Last once claimed, when it was convenient to his career, to be a pro-lifer, but he has won the final victory over himself. So, of course he now argues that “moving on” means that the opposing party must unconditionally surrender and do what it has opposed for half a century. It’s easy to envision a future in which politics are different if you can’t imagine that other people’s beliefs are less malleable and transactional than your own.