For decades Arlen Specter served as a U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania. He was at best a centrist, often a Leftist who among other apostasies voted against confirming Ronald Reagan’s appointment of Judge Robert Bork to the Supreme Court of the United States.
Specter voted that way for the first four years of each six year senate term, but tacked back to the middle in the two years leading up to his re-election campaign. This happened repeatedly with the maneuver facetiously being referred to as the “Specter Shuffle.”
It was not, however, a tactic employed only by Specter. Candidates in the Republican primary typically emphasize their conservative credentials, then move to the middle to attract independent voters in the General Election. Democrat candidates tilt Left in the primary then likewise usually moderate in the General Election to broaden their constituency.
The party nominating conventions are behind us and the legacy news media would have us believe that Kamala Harris is indeed moving to the middle, dismissing as history the many radical positions she took in her aborted 2020 presidential campaign and espoused thereafter – until the coup against Joe Biden installed her as the new Democrat nominee.
Harris has not moved to the middle; in fact, she has moved even further to the Left. Her first major decision was to pick Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her vice presidential running mate. Walz is one of the most progressive – read radical Left – governors in the nation. In picking Walz Harris by-passed both Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, who fancies himself as a moderate, and U.S. Senator Mark Kelly from Arizona.
The decision is politically questionable. Not only is the Walz choice an ideological double down, but unlike Shapiro or Kelly who could have made a difference in battleground states Walz’ Minnesota is safely in the Democrat column. In short, Walz brings neither ideological diversity nor electoral votes to the table.
Harris has cocooned herself behind staff and teleprompters avoiding unscripted moments. Her one policy speech was a disaster. She uncorked the historically discredited concept of price controls, offered up a $25,000 payoff to prospective home buyers at taxpayer expense, and generally put forth a socialist agenda. Her ideas were so bad even reliably Left wing media outlets like the Washington Post panned her proposals.
Despite the spin Harris has in fact not only failed to move to the middle, she has moved further to the Left seemingly abandoning the shrinking, but critical block of moderate voters. Setting forth an economic agenda straight out of her Marxist father’s playbook is not a path toward easing the economic pain caused by the already statist policies of the Biden-Harris regime.
I was having difficulty understanding what appears to be political malpractice, but former State Representative Frank Ryan put it into perspective: California is the only state where Kamala Harris has ever been on the ballot. California has a “jungle primary” in which the top two vote getters, regardless of party, advance to the General Election. In the Golden state that usually is two Democrats. Therefore there is no need for General Election moderation. In fact General Election candidates in California often move even further Left to out Left flank their opponents.
Her abrupt promotion to the top of the Democrat ticket seems to have left Harris unprepared for the vastly different landscape of a national election. Worse, the battleground states tend to be relatively moderate. Penn’s Woods in particular has a history of generally (but not always) awarding the General Election victory to the more moderate candidate.
Harris cannot dodge unscripted moments forever. Her penchant for word salads that make Joe Biden look coherent are bound to surface as she attempts to explain complex economic concepts. The debates will be problematic for her as she is captive of extreme socialist economic positions required by her base, but unappealing to moderates.
As Harris’s summer of joy runs into the reality of a presidential election campaign, she will be forced to both defend the failed policies of the last three years and her own economic extremism.
As iconic political consultant James Carville once famously said: “It’s the economy, stupid.” This election is not about either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. The real choice is between the proven prosperity of capitalism and an accelerated path toward socialistic ruin.
(Lowman S. Henry is Chairman & CEO of the Lincoln Institute and host of the weekly Lincoln Radio Journal and American Radio Journal. His e-mail address is [email protected].)
Permission to reprint is granted provided author and affiliation are cited.