2020 race: In Kamala Harris, Joe Biden has picked naked ambition over principles

Kamala Harris is politically and ideologically flexible, dropping passionately held positions the moment they become inconvenient.

It must surely count as something of a rebuttal to the endless, tedious assertions that the US is an irredeemably racist and sexist nation that the choice of a woman of South Asian-Caribbean descent is seen as the electorally safe choice by a candidate for president to be his running mate. For that is what the decision to pick Kamala Harris, the California senator and former attorney-general of that state, represents for Joe Biden.

Ms Harris, the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father, has, like many women (and men) of colour in the US, risen rapidly to the highest positions in her chosen career through talent, hard work and an iron willingness to seize opportunity when it comes knocking.

But what made her the winner in the competition to be Mr Biden’s running mate, in a wide field of similarly talented women from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds, was a risk-aversion on the part of the Democratic candidate, a firm conviction that Ms Harris will best bolster his chances of maintaining his lead over Donald Trump and Mike Pence in November’s presidential election.

Let's get to work, @KamalaHarris. pic.twitter.com/EjtUpgaieI

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) August 12, 2020

Mr Biden picked Ms Harris because she is seen as a reassuring figure to voters, a pragmatic moderate, as the media have widely dubbed her. In this year of unrest fuelling a rising radicalism within the Democratic Party, her mildly left-of centre position made her the most likely to reinforce his message that he can be trusted not to be a captive of the radicals.

That could come to be seen as a well-founded electoral judgment, but perhaps a flawed human one. Because from what we know about Ms Harris, she may be among the most politically flexible and ideologically mobile figures in American public life. In her relatively short political career, she has demonstrated a rarely matched facility for dropping passionately held positions the moment they become politically inconvenient faster than you can assemble a focus group.

There are tennis balls that have travelled less frequently between different positions than Ms Harris. And before the cries of “sexism” go up, it should be said that the recent American politicians whom Ms Harris closely resembles in this regard are Bill Clinton and Mitt Romney, two talented and mostly successful men who were also smilingly brilliant exponents of that old Groucho Marx line: “These are my principles. If you don’t like them, I have others.”

We are in a battle for the soul of this nation. But together, it's a battle we can win.@JoeBiden—I'm ready to get to work. pic.twitter.com/3PJcUTYBGU

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) August 12, 2020

For all the drama they induce and the effort that goes into making them, vice-presidential choices are largely electorally inconsequential events. They can hurt a candidate, it’s true, but even then they rarely make a difference to the result.

But if vice-presidential choices typically have only a glancing impact on the immediate election result, they can have enormous consequences further down the road. The office of the vice-presidency has been the most successful route to becoming a party’s candidate for the top job in a future election.

And if it mattered for this reason in the past, it matters even more this time around. If he wins, Mr Biden will be 78 at the time he takes office in January, older than any newly elected president in the nation’s history. That will leave Ms Harris the clear favourite to be the party’s nominee in 2024. Which is why a number of Democrats are especially troubled by the choice of Senator Harris.

Joe Biden and his Kamala Harris at their first joint event in Wilmington, Delaware. Picture; AFP.

Her political nimbleness has been unusual even by today’s cynical political standards. As California’s top prosecutor until just a few years ago, she developed a reputation for an unusual toughness in fighting crime, even in relatively mild offences such as parents’ negligence in permitting truancy or marijuana possession, a popular stance that won her re-election to the statewide office.

But as the political winds have shifted in the last year the former prosecutor has become much more sympathetic to the plight of inner-city youth who find themselves in trouble with the law for looting, rioting and committing violent crimes, blaming systemic racism for the problems.

During the early stages of the Democratic primary last year, when she was a leading candidate, she was a strong supporter of “Medicare for All”, the plan favoured by the left for a tax-funded universal healthcare system. But as that plan came under withering attack amid evidence it was increasingly unpopular, Ms Harris had something of an epiphany and decided it wasn’t a good idea after all.

Joe Biden looks on as Kamala Harris speaks. Picture; AFP.

She told a TV interviewer in 2019 that she was in favour of permitting illegal immigrants to have access to publicly-funded healthcare, at a time when that kind of radicalism seemed popular with Democratic voters. As it became clear it would be hard to run a national campaign on such a ticket, Ms Harris went diplomatically quiet on the topic.

And then there’s Mr Biden himself, whom she accused, to great public applause on a live TV debate, of being a friend of racists and of supporting policies that had hurt black children – such as her – in his career. Now Mr Biden is the party’s nominee, it seems, he’s a passionate advocate of racial justice.

There’s much more. There is almost no topic on which Ms Harris has not at one point occupied a position designed to gain her maximum support with a particular constituency, only to reverse herself when a different and larger constituency hove into view.

This may well not do the Democrats much harm in the age of President Trump, a man not known for unbending consistency in his political views. But it’s unlikely to do much for those claiming their post-Trump world is one where authenticity and principle triumph over naked cynical ambition.

The Times