If Kamala Harris really wants to show she is ready to turn a new page in the campaign against Donald Trump, it’s obvious who her choice as running mate should be: Bernie Sanders.
Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris at the fifth Democratic primary debate of the 2020 presidential campaign season in Atlanta, Georgia, on November 20, 2019.
(Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images)
Vice President Kamala Harris has reminded us all of a key insight into social and political analysis. In what has become a signature catchphrase, none of us just “fell out of a coconut tree.” We “exist in the context of everything that has come before us.” Karl Marx himself couldn’t have said it better.
In Harris’s case, that context includes serving as number two to President Joe Biden and thus being tarnished by his disastrous foreign policy. Biden has given a blank check of support to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, offering massive material assistance and diplomatic cover to Netanyahu’s government as it has engaged in genocidal crimes. Millions of Gazans have been displaced. The Israel Defense Forces has indiscriminately bombed schools, hospitals, churches, mosques, schools, universities, and apartment blocks full of children. There are credible reports of mass executions of unarmed Palestinian civilians during house-to-house raids. According to a “conservative estimate” published in the Lancet, 186,000 people have died as a direct or indirect result of the carnage.
The policy of assistance for these crimes has disgusted much of the Biden-Harris base. In one poll, only 20 percent of the voters who elected Biden in 2020 were confident that what was happening in Gaza wasn’t a genocide. Crucial swing states like Michigan may have been lost to Biden because of the fury over Gaza felt by crucial elements of his base.
Key to Harris beating Donald Trump is winning these voters back by decisively breaking with Biden’s policy and promising, as Sen. Bernie Sanders told the New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner last week, “not one more nickel” of aid for Netanyahu’s war if she becomes president this January.
On the domestic front, the best way to counter the pseudo-populist siren song of Trump and his running mate J. D. Vance would be with a full-throated embrace of actually populist economic policies.
She could pivot back to her previous support for Medicare for All, for example. Once upon a time, Harris was a Senate cosponsor of Medicare for All. Then she ran for president in 2020 and triangulated herself into absurdity on the issue. But millions of Americans are still suffering from crushing medical costs, forgoing care to avoid those costs, and seeing their health deteriorate as a result. Harris likes to emphasize that we can dream of “what can be, unburdened by what has been.” It’s not too late for Harris to unburden herself from what her position on Medicare for All has been.
She could also take a page from Bernie’s 2020 platform and start to think about a bundle of policies like a national rent-control standard that could get us closer to achieving “Housing for All.” At the very least, Harris could emphasize a national policy of capping rents, which Biden got on board with in the twilight of his reelection campaign in response to reported demands from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Harris could revive the PRO Act, which would make it much easier to organize and strengthen unions. The Biden-Harris administration theoretically supports the act, but it’s long been consigned to the back burner; now is the time to make it a centerpiece of her campaign. Every speech could include talk of the vital importance of rebuilding the labor movement for the future of American workers — not to mention that promoting the PRO Act would be an excellent opportunity to slam Vance for his transparently fake pro-worker stance by highlighting the incoherent excuses he’s given for refusing to support the PRO Act in the Senate.
In one interview, pressed about why he wouldn’t support it despite his alleged economic populism, Vance argued that “as it is, the existing, mainstream labor movement is irreconcilably hostile to Republicans and that more trust-building is needed before a comprehensive rapprochement can take place.” Translation: we won’t support workers’ rights because labor doesn’t like the GOP. (Perhaps because of the GOP’s steadfast facilitation of billionaire rapaciousness and attacks on workers?)
But as I noted earlier this week, this populist message might not land if people don’t find the messenger credible. Lip service to good policies might not sound very convincing coming from as establishment-coded a figure as Harris, whose record on progressive policymaking is decidedly checkered, as my colleague Branko Marcetic has laid out.
Again though, Harris still has room to pivot — including in who she chooses to be her running mate.
She should choose Senator Bernie Sanders as her vice president.
07.24.2024
JACOBIN
Vice President Kamala Harris has reminded us all of a key insight into social and political analysis. In what has become a signature catchphrase, none of us just “fell out of a coconut tree.” We “exist in the context of everything that has come before us.” Karl Marx himself couldn’t have said it better.
In Harris’s case, that context includes serving as number two to President Joe Biden and thus being tarnished by his disastrous foreign policy. Biden has given a blank check of support to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, offering massive material assistance and diplomatic cover to Netanyahu’s government as it has engaged in genocidal crimes. Millions of Gazans have been displaced. The Israel Defense Forces has indiscriminately bombed schools, hospitals, churches, mosques, schools, universities, and apartment blocks full of children. There are credible reports of mass executions of unarmed Palestinian civilians during house-to-house raids. According to a “conservative estimate” published in the Lancet, 186,000 people have died as a direct or indirect result of the carnage.
The policy of assistance for these crimes has disgusted much of the Biden-Harris base. In one poll, only 20 percent of the voters who elected Biden in 2020 were confident that what was happening in Gaza wasn’t a genocide. Crucial swing states like Michigan may have been lost to Biden because of the fury over Gaza felt by crucial elements of his base.
Key to Harris beating Donald Trump is winning these voters back by decisively breaking with Biden’s policy and promising, as Sen. Bernie Sanders told the New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner last week, “not one more nickel” of aid for Netanyahu’s war if she becomes president this January.
On the domestic front, the best way to counter the pseudo-populist siren song of Trump and his running mate J. D. Vance would be with a full-throated embrace of actually populist economic policies.
She could pivot back to her previous support for Medicare for All, for example. Once upon a time, Harris was a Senate cosponsor of Medicare for All. Then she ran for president in 2020 and triangulated herself into absurdity on the issue. But millions of Americans are still suffering from crushing medical costs, forgoing care to avoid those costs, and seeing their health deteriorate as a result. Harris likes to emphasize that we can dream of “what can be, unburdened by what has been.” It’s not too late for Harris to unburden herself from what her position on Medicare for All has been.
She could also take a page from Bernie’s 2020 platform and start to think about a bundle of policies like a national rent-control standard that could get us closer to achieving “Housing for All.” At the very least, Harris could emphasize a national policy of capping rents, which Biden got on board with in the twilight of his reelection campaign in response to reported demands from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Harris could revive the PRO Act, which would make it much easier to organize and strengthen unions. The Biden-Harris administration theoretically supports the act, but it’s long been consigned to the back burner; now is the time to make it a centerpiece of her campaign. Every speech could include talk of the vital importance of rebuilding the labor movement for the future of American workers — not to mention that promoting the PRO Act would be an excellent opportunity to slam Vance for his transparently fake pro-worker stance by highlighting the incoherent excuses he’s given for refusing to support the PRO Act in the Senate.
In one interview, pressed about why he wouldn’t support it despite his alleged economic populism, Vance argued that “as it is, the existing, mainstream labor movement is irreconcilably hostile to Republicans and that more trust-building is needed before a comprehensive rapprochement can take place.” Translation: we won’t support workers’ rights because labor doesn’t like the GOP. (Perhaps because of the GOP’s steadfast facilitation of billionaire rapaciousness and attacks on workers?)
But as I noted earlier this week, this populist message might not land if people don’t find the messenger credible. Lip service to good policies might not sound very convincing coming from as establishment-coded a figure as Harris, whose record on progressive policymaking is decidedly checkered, as my colleague Branko Marcetic has laid out.
Again though, Harris still has room to pivot — including in who she chooses to be her running mate.
She should choose Senator Bernie Sanders as her vice president.
Bernie Sanders would bring to the Harris candidacy exactly the kind of antiwar and economic-populist energy it needs to counter the cheap counterfeit of those stances offered by Donald Trump’s running mate, J. D. Vance. (Phil Roeder / Flickr)
Perhaps you’re rolling your eyes here, but hear me out. No politician in the United States has been more steadfast an advocate for the working class than Sanders, who speaks about the challenges facing the American working class — and the desperate need for the Democratic Party to fight for that class if it wants to win — constantly.
Bernie is more thoroughly associated with Medicare for All than any major politician has been with a single policy proposal in my lifetime. He has a long history of siding with working-class tenants and homeowners and speaking to the realities of enormous housing costs that are crushing to so many millions of Americans.
Sanders is the strongest advocate for the labor movement in Congress. He never stops talking about workers’ declining wages while the rich get richer, and he constantly advocates for rebuilding unions as an essential solution to workers’ woes. Just this month, in an interview with Jacobin founder Bhaskar Sunkara in the Nation, Sanders said his advice to young people was, “If your first impulse is to run for office, rethink it. . . . Sometimes you can have more of an impact organizing your brothers and sisters on the job in a union than you can have for running for office.”
Sanders has not been perfect on Palestine over the years. It took him far too long, for example, to call for a cease-fire in Gaza. But he has also been the Senate’s strongest voice in defense of Palestinians over the years and against the most recent atrocities in Gaza. He has called over and over again to end US military aid for Netanyahu’s genocidal war.
Sanders would bring to the Harris candidacy exactly the kind of antiwar and economic-populist energy it needs to counter the cheap counterfeit of those stances offered by Trump’s running mate.
Perhaps you think Bernie is too old — just like Joe Biden was. And if his policies are popular, why did he lose two elections?
The reality is that he came remarkably close in 2016, winning almost as many states as Hillary Clinton, and in some ways he came even closer during the opening phase of the 2020 primaries before the establishment candidates consolidated in an unprecedented way to stop him. And we have years of polling to show that Bernie is actually more popular with the public at large than he is with the slice of it that identifies with the Democratic Party’s “brand.” Numerous polls over the years have found him one of the most popular senators in America, or even the most popular.
Most head-to-head matchup polls over the years had him slaughtering Trump. Not for nothing did people like me spend years reminding anyone who’d listen that “Bernie would have won.”
And hey, when it comes to the age issue, think of it like this: What better way to prove to elderly voters that Biden was pressured to drop out not because of his age but because of his incapacity than to nominate a vice-presidential candidate who’s a full year older than the president, but whose brain is universally acknowledged to still be in working order?
Will Harris pick her 2016 Democratic presidential primary opponent for veep? I doubt it. But it actually would be a good idea. Just imagine watching him obliterating a man less than half his age, J. D. Vance, on the debate stage this fall without breaking a sweat.
CONTRIBUTOR
Ben Burgis is a Jacobin columnist, an adjunct philosophy professor at Rutgers University, and the host of the YouTube show and podcast Give Them An Argument. He’s the author of several books, most recently Christopher Hitchens: What He Got Right, How He Went Wrong, and Why He Still Matters.
Perhaps you’re rolling your eyes here, but hear me out. No politician in the United States has been more steadfast an advocate for the working class than Sanders, who speaks about the challenges facing the American working class — and the desperate need for the Democratic Party to fight for that class if it wants to win — constantly.
Bernie is more thoroughly associated with Medicare for All than any major politician has been with a single policy proposal in my lifetime. He has a long history of siding with working-class tenants and homeowners and speaking to the realities of enormous housing costs that are crushing to so many millions of Americans.
Sanders is the strongest advocate for the labor movement in Congress. He never stops talking about workers’ declining wages while the rich get richer, and he constantly advocates for rebuilding unions as an essential solution to workers’ woes. Just this month, in an interview with Jacobin founder Bhaskar Sunkara in the Nation, Sanders said his advice to young people was, “If your first impulse is to run for office, rethink it. . . . Sometimes you can have more of an impact organizing your brothers and sisters on the job in a union than you can have for running for office.”
Sanders has not been perfect on Palestine over the years. It took him far too long, for example, to call for a cease-fire in Gaza. But he has also been the Senate’s strongest voice in defense of Palestinians over the years and against the most recent atrocities in Gaza. He has called over and over again to end US military aid for Netanyahu’s genocidal war.
Sanders would bring to the Harris candidacy exactly the kind of antiwar and economic-populist energy it needs to counter the cheap counterfeit of those stances offered by Trump’s running mate.
Perhaps you think Bernie is too old — just like Joe Biden was. And if his policies are popular, why did he lose two elections?
The reality is that he came remarkably close in 2016, winning almost as many states as Hillary Clinton, and in some ways he came even closer during the opening phase of the 2020 primaries before the establishment candidates consolidated in an unprecedented way to stop him. And we have years of polling to show that Bernie is actually more popular with the public at large than he is with the slice of it that identifies with the Democratic Party’s “brand.” Numerous polls over the years have found him one of the most popular senators in America, or even the most popular.
Most head-to-head matchup polls over the years had him slaughtering Trump. Not for nothing did people like me spend years reminding anyone who’d listen that “Bernie would have won.”
And hey, when it comes to the age issue, think of it like this: What better way to prove to elderly voters that Biden was pressured to drop out not because of his age but because of his incapacity than to nominate a vice-presidential candidate who’s a full year older than the president, but whose brain is universally acknowledged to still be in working order?
Will Harris pick her 2016 Democratic presidential primary opponent for veep? I doubt it. But it actually would be a good idea. Just imagine watching him obliterating a man less than half his age, J. D. Vance, on the debate stage this fall without breaking a sweat.
CONTRIBUTOR
Ben Burgis is a Jacobin columnist, an adjunct philosophy professor at Rutgers University, and the host of the YouTube show and podcast Give Them An Argument. He’s the author of several books, most recently Christopher Hitchens: What He Got Right, How He Went Wrong, and Why He Still Matters.
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