‘They aren’t going to accept empty promises’: progressives back Harris with cautious enthusiasm

Progressive lawmakers have presented a united front at the Democratic national convention this week, as they throw their full support behind Kamala Harris as the new presidential nominee.

But even as those lawmakers talked up the genuine enthusiasm surrounding Harris’s campaign, they made clear they expect her to deliver policy wins for her progressive coalition if she is elected in November. When she addresses the convention on Thursday to formally accept the presidential nomination, Harris will have a chance to show that she intends to follow through on her promises.

Prominent progressives like Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had expressed doubts about the wisdom of abandoning Joe Biden with less than four months left before election day, but lawmakers said they had seen firsthand how Harris’s campaign has reinvigorated once-disengaged voters.

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“In Kamala Harris we have a chance to elect a president who is for the middle class because she is from the middle class,” Ocasio-Cortez said in her speech on Monday. “She understands the urgency of rent checks and groceries and prescriptions. She is as committed to our reproductive and civil rights as she is to taking on corporate greed.”

Ocasio-Cortez issued a wholehearted endorsement of the new nominee, and she promised that, if elected, Harris would serve as a champion of the middle class. In his own convention speech, Sanders pledged that Democrats would use their governing power to “tax the rich”, “take on price gouging” and “expand Medicare”.

The possibility of that change has animated progressives.

“The energy is electrifying and it’s a lot of young folks,” Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive caucus, told the Guardian. “If you have young people, if you have progressives, Black, brown, Indigenous folks, working-class folks, that is actually the base that helps us to win because they are the ones that go door to door. They’re the ones that mobilize voters.”

To deliver on the promises that progressives are seeking, Harris may have to distance herself from Biden in certain areas, especially climate and the war on Gaza.

During his 2020 campaign, Biden embraced a sweeping climate agenda as he looked to reassure the millions of progressive voters who had not backed him in the primary. While Biden signed the most significant federal climate bill in history, the Inflation Reduction Act, however, failed to follow through on his campaign pledge of “no more drilling on federal lands”.

Progressives hope Harris will stick to some of the promises that Biden made as a candidate but then walked back.

“We cannot have that happen again,” Jeff Merkley, a senator, told the Guardian. “We, as climate truth-tellers, have to be very present, very loud, very determined to say, ‘We will back you 1,000%, but you can’t keep expanding the fossil infrastructure.’”

If she cannot draw that contrast, Harris risks alienating young voters, Merkley argued. “She knows that the politics of this election involve young folks, and they aren’t going to accept empty promises. There has to be performance,” he said.

The demands for action are arguably the loudest when it comes to Biden’s weakest issue with progressives: the war on Gaza. Biden has attracted severe criticism over his handling of the war, particularly among young progressive voters, and polls show an overwhelming majority of Democrats support a ceasefire in Gaza.

Ceasefire supporters, some of whom have taken to the streets of Chicago this week to protest against the war, hope that Harris can turn the page and set a new tone on the US-Israel relationship. In a rather telling pattern, Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders received some of the loudest applause from the convention audience when they called for a ceasefire.

Ocasio-Cortez commended Harris for “working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and bringing hostages home”, but a fellow House progressive appeared to challenge that language.

Speaking at a press conference hosted by the pro-ceasefire Uncommitted Movement in Chicago on Wednesday, the Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar condemned Biden administration officials for “refusing to recognize the genocidal war that is taking place in Gaza”. She pointedly added: “Working tirelessly for a ceasefire is really not a thing, and they should be ashamed of themselves for saying such things because we supply these weapons. So if you really wanted a ceasefire, you just stop sending the weapons.”

Asked about the message that Harris needs to send on Gaza with her convention speech on Thursday, Jayapal said she believed the vice-president had an opportunity to prosecute the case against the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister.

“Right now we’re not applying our own domestic laws,” Jayapal said. “She has prosecuted a lot of people for not complying with our laws. I think we need to really look at this situation in terms of our own domestic law and international humanitarian law.”

But Jayapal simultaneously acknowledged that Harris may struggle to put distance between herself and Biden when she still needs to serve alongside him for another five months.

“She’s still the vice-president. He’s still the president,” Jayapal said. “So she can’t get out in front of him.”

If Harris cannot deliver on her policy promises, she may struggle to keep her coalition united beyond inauguration day. But as of now progressives largely appear ready and energized about the prospect of electing Harris in November and are hopeful she will adopt some of their agenda.

The Democratic congresswoman Becca Balint shared an anecdote about a young woman working at a coffee shop in her home state of Vermont who said she did not feel like she could organize her friends on Biden’s behalf because they weren’t excited about his re-election. Now, with Harris as the nominee, the woman feels like she has a new outlook on the election, Balint recounted.

“I’m so fired up,” Balint said, “because I know – I hear directly from the young people in my district – that they’re really fired up.”