Why House progressives were so quick to rally around Kamala Harris
By Michael Jones
It all happened so fast.
Within four hours of President Joe Biden announcing the end of his reelection campaign last Sunday, then publicly backing Kamala Harris as his successor and the vice president declaring her candidacy for the Democratic nomination, Harris has received a major vote of confidence: An endorsement by the Congressional Progressive Caucus’s campaign arm.
The seal of approval was one of several that Harris received from individual members and Hill caucuses that day. But it offered a signal that progressives see in the vice president the type of governing partner they’ve had with President Biden as he’s signed or acted on many of the movement’s legislative priorities since taking office almost four years ago.
Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) told reporters this week that there were many private conversations about the path forward if President Biden decided to step aside.
“I had a spreadsheet of where everyone was and I knew that there was going to be quick support,” Jayapal said. “So we called a quick vote from the CPC PAC and within two hours, we had more than sufficient votes to be able to endorse her.”
Jayapal suggested Harris represents the best of two worlds: She helped the president usher in historic legislation into law during the first two years of his term and can run on those successes while putting her own stamp on the items that have yet to be passed.
“I think we’ll be able to continue that in part because we’ve seen her commitment over the last four years,” she said. “So I don’t foresee her stepping away from that agenda. Perhaps there are additions, subtractions—there’s more work that we’ll need to do with her for sure.”
For Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), that work includes picking up the pieces left of the Build Back Better Act that Sens. Joe Manchin (I-W.V.) and Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) left on the cutting room floor in 2022, namely generational investments in child care and elder care and other forms of invisible work.
“I’m sure we’re going to be hearing a lot from her,” Ocasio-Cortez told me earlier this week. “We’ve already heard some early things from her in terms of care economy work. And a lot of those kinds of unresolved issues from Build Back Better, including social infrastructure like child care, expanded social safety nets, and more.”
AOC added that her support for Harris is tied to the expectation the vice president will continue to expand health care in America.
“I’ve had conversations with Democratic leadership in the House, the Senate, and the White House about the fact that we’re really taking concrete steps forward in what our vision for healthcare should be, whether that’s lowering the age of Medicare—I, of course, want that lowered to zero. I’d like to see everyone be able to have the option of buying into it, she said. “But even some of the changes that President Biden already committed to in 2020, like lowering it down to 55 [years old] or then-candidate Clinton talking about lowering it down to 50. That to me, just in and of itself, is transformative to millions of Americans.”
Maxwell Frost, the Gen Z congressman from Orlando, Florida, said his support for Harris stems from his interactions with her and how she’s led on issues that matter to young people—a critical constituency that’s been reenergized by the vice president’s coconut-themed candidacy.
“The president put her in charge of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention,” Frost told me not too long after Harris declared her intent to pursue the nomination. “And I encourage people to look at the fact that this office has been responsible for sending hundreds of millions of dollars, federal dollars, across the entire country to help curb gun violence, to help put mental health resources in our community, and to help make sure that our students, our children, our kids are safe.”
He said that Harris has been one of the administration’s leaders who listens to young voices on climate justice and ensures that they’re heard and centered as they fight to defeat the climate crisis and fight for a more livable world, a more livable future, and present.
“Not only that, but she’s someone who really values young voices in general. She did a national tour going to colleges and listening to students, bringing them in and understanding their value in this system,” Frost added. “And I think that’s something she and the president have in common that they really value young voices, not to just have an advisory committee that meets every once in a while not implementing it, but actually implementing our wants and our needs and our vision of the future into legislation.”
Although the vibes have soared to heights unseen since the Obama campaign, there are still some hurt feelings among Biden supporters on Capitol Hill and at the grassroots. They feel as though Democratic Party elites forced Biden to step down and coronated Harris as the presumptive nominee without an open process to select the best candidate to defeat Trump in November.
But senior Democrats like former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) each pointed to the hundreds of millions of dollars in grassroots donations, the packed Zoom calls organized across communities and the shifting polls as proof of an organic, bottom-up movement that was facilitated in part due to President Biden’s decision to choose democracy over personal ambition.
With roughly 100 days until the election, Republicans will harden their attacks against Harris. Not only will the broadsides focus on her record as a former county prosecutor, state attorney general, US senator, and the second-highest executive branch official, but they’ll also concentrate on the quirks that have endeared her to voters across the country instead of alienating her.
Frost was confident Trump had met his match in the vice president and told me her work speaks for itself.
“[Trump] doesn’t have much on her and so he’s calling Laughing Kamala or something like it’s bad to laugh. I think what we’re gonna see over the next several weeks… are a ton of baseless attacks on the vice president that I think will, number one, come across in poor taste to most Americans, but that most Americans will understand—it won’t land for most of them,” he said. “The important thing to understand is that the record of the president is also her record. And that’s a good record that she can run on and she can paint a path for the future…People want to know what they’re getting with their next vote. And now here’s like a fresh, new, younger candidate who can talk about her vision for the future.”
Michael Jones is an independent Capitol Hill correspondent and contributor for COURIER. He is the author of Once Upon a Hill, a newsletter about Congressional politics.
