To Win, Harris Will Need to Follow Starmer’s Example

When Democratic primary voters selected Joe Biden to be the Party’s standard bearer in 2020, the faithful made their choice in a very specific context: the Trump administration. Like with Labour facing a Tory government gone off the rails, progressive in the U.S. were determined to nominate a candidate who would appeal to the electorate as a whole—who would, namely, be capable of drawing together the anti-Trump vote. Joe Biden was, without a doubt, perfectly suited to play that role. The man from Scranton—a figure with bipartisan sensibilities rooted in his experience growing up as a working-class kid in Pennsylvania—met the moment and succeeded. He vanquished the incumbent populist.

But then things changed. In an odd twist ostensibly fueled by a moderate’s determination to unite progressives, the man who ran most notably as a beacon of the center chose to govern as a paragon of the left. There’s no mystery to why Sen. Bernie Sanders, the self-described socialist who competed against Biden in the 2020 primaries, was among the most vociferous figures hoping to keep the incumbent atop the ticket. The rationale was clear: Biden had allowed himself to become a vehicle for Sanders’ leftist agenda. Ironically, it was the party’s centrists, figures who had originally propelled Biden’s candidacy, who now wanted him to exit.  They wanted the change not only based on the debate debacle but based on defending an agenda they did not sign up for.

Whatever the reason for Biden’s transformation—whatever impetus he had to campaign as a moderate and then govern as a leftist—the result was obvious. Even if there had not been concerns about his age or mental acuity, he’d alienated many among the core of voters who had fueled his first campaign. Among working class voters of all stripes, he looked increasingly like an out-of-touch, coastal elitist. And that was reflected in all sorts of polling showing not only that he was losing the race, but that support among minority communities, many of which are more predominantly working class, had shifted dramatically toward Trump. By abandoning the central promise of his candidacy, the president had winnowed away his path to re-election.

With Biden’s withdrawal, Democrats now have an opportunity to redefine themselves. But Kamala Harris will succeed only if she learns the lesson that spurred Keir Starmer to steer Labour toward reasonableness. Joe Biden may not be anything like Jeremy Corbyn, but his agenda defined his party in much the same way. And so Harris will need to prove in the coming weeks that she will follow in the progressive path Starmer has already beaten, namely defining the party she now leads with an agenda that appeals to swing voters, working class voters, non-college grad voters.  A tough task that she is capable of achieving.

The similarities between Starmer and Harris reach beyond the fact that they have both been tasked with leading their parties on the same directional journeys—namely from left to center. The two leaders also both cut their teeth as prosecutors. And while each should be able to reach into their coalition’s ideological fringe—former New Republic editor Andrew Sullivan, a boyhood friend of Starmer’s, frequently notes that his old buddy Keir was once a raging leftist—both emerged into leadership by embracing the wisdom of their parties’ moderate working-class bases.

In the end, Harris’s immediate challenge will be much the same as Starmer’s was while leading the opposition: Many of the figures who hold sway within the cliques that determine the Democratic Party’s Washington agenda are utterly out-of-touch with the sensibilities of swing voters around the country. Social media, which was supposed to pierce the subtle barriers that separate people from different walks of life, has instead trapped them in filter bubbles that leave them blind to political reality. Harris will need to tune those voices out, even as she witnessed them take over the Biden White House.

This is something she’s proven she can do. When emerging to become California’s attorney general, and then senator, Harris appealed not only to her neighbors in San Francisco, but to Californians living in more conservative places like the Central Valley and the Inland Empire. To the degree that Starmer is prime minister today because he managed to connect to voters in all the places where Labour had been washed out in the previous campaign, this year’s Democratic nominee will need to do much the same thing. The most effective antidote to MAGA-style populism is a platform that appeals to voters we have lost.  Vice President Harris has a chance to prosecute that argument.

What a difference a week makes.  The enthusiasm of the Harris for President moment has ignited energy Democrats have not had since Obama in 2008.  The coalition of working-class, left wing, moderates, pragmatic voters have been desperate for hope and they are giving Vice President Harris the opportunity to win them over.  I think she will.

Here’s to hoping that, this November, Democrats can celebrate much as Labour did earlier this month.