A Harris victory means a fourth Obama term
At home, she’s no centrist. Abroad, she seems unprepared for the dangers ahead. If she does win, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping will quickly test her mettle.
Editor’s note: The Wall Street Journal hasn’t endorsed a presidential candidate since 1928. Our tradition is to sum up the candidacies of the major party candidates in separate editorials. We’ll start with Kamala Harris.
You have to admire Democrats for their audacity. They claimed for more than a year that the clearly declining Joe Biden was mentally fit enough to serve another four years. When the June debate made that untenable, they did a 180-degree turn and anointed his Vice President as their nominee while claiming, without so much as a nod of embarrassment, that she somehow represents “a new way forward.”
Republicans could never pull off that one. And in the end neither has Ms. Harris, if you take her at her word. Asked on “The View” on Oct. 8 what she might do differently from the last four years, Mr. Biden’s loyal number two said, “There is not a thing that comes to mind.” That was the truest line spoken in what has been a notably dishonest and dispiriting election campaign on both sides.
Ms. Harris has presented herself as new based largely on her biography. But as far as policies and coalition go, she represents more of the same, and not merely of the last four years. Her candidacy is best understood as an attempt to continue the progressive political wave that began in 2006 with the GOP defeat in Congress and rolled ashore as a tsunami amid the financial panic of 2008. She is running for what essentially would be Barack Obama’s fourth progressive term.
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This doesn’t mean she lacks political appeal. She has run a capable enough campaign on short notice, and she routed Donald Trump in their lone debate. If elected, she would bring more energy to the Presidency than Mr. Biden. She also sounds optimistic, even patriotic, notes about America.
But we have been searching in vain for signs that she would break from, or even temper, the progressive excess that defines the current Democratic Party. Her endorsement by anti-Trump Republicans isn’t that sign because it’s based solely on loathing for Mr. Trump. A token GOP appointment to her cabinet would mean little unless it’s a major post.
On domestic policy, she is offering more Bidenomics without the label. She wants to expand the entitlement state beyond even what Mr. Biden has — for elder and child care, housing, a larger Affordable Care Act, and more. Her proposed tax increases are nearly as extensive as Mr. Biden’s, running past $4 trillion over 10 years. She shows every sign of wanting to expand and accelerate the climate corporate welfare and mandates that distort investment at enormous taxpayer cost but no benefit to global temperatures.
This might be tolerable if Ms. Harris showed evidence on foreign affairs that she understands the world’s current dangerous moment. Yet she defends the last four years as a security success, despite two wars, adversaries on the march, and the U.S. Navy playing whack-a-missile in the Red Sea.
She talks about having a strong military but has failed to propose anything to rebuild it as threats proliferate. If she nurtures an inner Harry Truman that would explain to the public the need for better defences, we haven’t seen the evidence. If she does win, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping will quickly test her mettle. She seems unprepared for those tests.
All of this reflects the progressive advisers and the coalition she’d bring to the Oval Office. We wrote last week about her climate adviser’s desire to eliminate all fossil fuels, and her foreign policy aides are on board for appeasing Iran and putting restraints on Israel.
There are no Scoop Jacksons or Joe Liebermans in today’s Democratic Party. Ms. Harris would have to reach out to GOP hawks the way FDR made Republicans Henry Stimson and Frank Knox his Secretary of War and the Navy, respectively, in 1940. She has shown no such historical memory or the political courage to do it.
A Harris Presidency with a GOP Senate would check some of her worst policy instincts, at least until 2026 when the Senate map favours Democrats. But most Democrats would read her victory as a political vindication of the last four years. The Sanders-Warren wing of the party would pressure her for more.
The worst result would be a Harris victory with a Democratic sweep of Congress. Then it’s Kamala bar the door. She is on record as wanting to break the 60-vote Senate filibuster rule and to restructure the Supreme Court. This would make for an unbridled progressive agenda that would rig voting rules, augment union power, control more of the private economy, and add D.C. and Puerto Rico as states.
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Many Americans see all this and will still vote for Ms. Harris because they think four more years of Mr. Trump is a bigger risk. We have no illusions about Mr. Trump’s flaws and the risk they pose. But voters also have cause to fear the bloody-mindedness of the modern left, with its regulatory coercion, cultural imperialism, economic statism, and desire to strip judicial independence. If Ms. Harris loses, this will be the reason.
The Wall Street Journal
