Let Me Ask a Question We Never Had to Ask Before

As the contest for the White House draws to a close, I asked a wide range of scholars and political strategists where they think the blame will go, whether it is Kamala Harris or Donald Trump who wins.

Their answers varied widely.

William Galston is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Harris, he wrote in an email,

has run a surprisingly centrist presidential campaign while the party’s progressive wing has bitten its tongue. If she wins, the gloves will come off, and progressives will probably repeat what they did during the first two years of the Biden administration — pressure the new president to support their agenda.

But, Galston noted, even if Harris wins,

Republicans are likely to take control of the Senate. If so, Harris would be forced to negotiate with a Senate Republican leadership to get anything done, reducing the influence of the left on her administration, and House Democrats would face a choice between gridlock and accepting whatever the administration could get from a Republican-led Senate.

How would Harris exercise presidential executive authority?

Galston:

The answer to this question depends on who she really is — a former progressive mugged by reality and transformed into a Biden Democrat, or an actual progressive who is trimming her sails to close the deal with moderate voters.

If it’s the latter, expect the rule-making process to tilt left, especially on cultural issues. If it’s the former, the Harris administration will disappoint the left on immigration, crime and education, among other issues.

Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy at Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank, also replied to my queries by email:

If Harris wins it will be because she successfully jettisoned the progressive dogma that doomed Democratic primary candidates in the 2020 cycle and made a convincing case to mainstream voters that she is a Democratic centrist.

Her decisive move to the center began on the day Joe Biden stepped back from the race and culminated in her convention speech, which was the most centrist of any Democratic nominee in memory, including Bill Clinton in 1992.

Harris’s embrace, Kessler continued, of

“opportunity economics” and capitalism helped her close the economy gap with Donald Trump. Her “tough on the border” policies have closed some of the border gap with Trump. Her accountability and prevention framing and touting her personal gun ownership has helped her on crime. All of these are tier one issues for voters and issues in which Democrats suffered huge deficits.

What if Trump wins?

Kessler:

If Harris loses, progressives will argue publicly that her moving to the center was the cause. Frankly, I don’t think even they will believe it. If you watch the swing state ads against Harris or congressional Democrats like Sherrod Brown, they are devastating frontal assaults on progressive liturgy. Every ad is about chaos at the border, out-of-control city streets, runaway inflation and mischaracterizations on transgender issues.

How will Republicans react to a Trump defeat?

“Let’s be realistic,” Kessler wrote:

There are only two outcomes in the minds of the Trump people — he wins or it was stolen from him. What happens to Republicans after a Trump loss will depend on whether enough Republicans tell Trump that they have lost patience with his stolen election charade. If you’re counting on courage from congressional Republicans, don’t bet the house on it.

Ruy Teixeira, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a co-author of “The Emerging Democratic Majority,” contended that even before the votes have been counted, the progressive movement in the Democratic Party is dead in its tracks. His views of the cultural left are unrelentingly hostile.

In an Oct. 24 essay, “The Progressive Moment Is Over,” Teixeira wrote:

It wasn’t so long ago progressives were riding high. They had a moment; they really did. Their radical views set the agenda and tone for the Democratic Party and, especially in cultural areas, were hegemonic in the nation’s discourse.

Building in the teens and cresting in the early ’20s with the Black Lives Matter protests and heady early days of the Biden administration, very few of their ideas seemed off the table. Defund the police and empty the jails? Sure! Abolish ICE and decriminalize the border? Absolutely! Get rid of fossil fuels and have a “Green New Deal”? Definitely! Demand trillions of dollars for a “transformational” Build Back Better bill? We’re just getting started! Promote DEI and the struggle for “equity” (not equal opportunity) everywhere? It’s the only way to fight privilege! Insist that a new ideology around race and gender should be accepted by everyone? Of course, only a bigot would resist!

Each of these policies in fact was opposed by majorities of the electorate, Teixeira contends, and “now the backlash against these ideas is strong enough that it can’t be ignored.” As a result, “the progressive moment is well and truly over.”

Many on the Democratic Party’s progressive left adamantly reject the analyses of Galston, Kessler and Teixeira.