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Kamala Harris is belatedly courting progressives. Is it too little, too late? | Arwa Mahdawi

Does Donald Trump secretly want Republicans to get annihilated in the midterms? Because he’s certainly acting that way. He continues to brush off concerns about the cost of living, saying last week that high gas prices are a very “inexpensive price to pay” for the war on Iran.

And, of course, the president seems to have no plans to end that disastrous war, apart from making vague threats about blowing the entire country up. Trust me, he keeps saying, everything will get better after the midterms. But by the looks of his dismal polling numbers, not many people are swallowing his empty promises anymore.

Still, despite the mess the Republicans have made of the country, I wouldn’t feel too optimistic about the Democrats returning to power: the party is famous for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Instead of evolving, it has a tendency to do the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.

See, for example, the fact that there are once again loud murmurings that Kamala Harris plans to run for president in 2028. The former vice-president hasn’t made any sort of official announcement yet – she told voters in Detroit this week that she’s still deciding what to do – but she seems to be testing the political waters through midterm campaigning.

This week she flew to Michigan, one of the states she lost to Trump in 2024, to join the Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed at a roundtable focused on Black maternal health. Harris will also be campaigning with the senator Jon Ossoff in Georgia next month and attending an event in Las Vegas with the Nevada attorney general, Aaron Ford, for his gubernatorial bid.

Harris’s appearance in Michigan wasn’t some spur-of-the-moment attempt to be helpful; it was a highly calculated move designed to put her back on the national political stage.

The New York Times reported this week that Harris’s aides had circulated a donor prospectus in July “that showed how she would try to maintain her influence atop the Democratic Party as she considered another run for president in 2028”. The document, which solicited funds for campaign travel, explained how Harris could boost midterm candidates. It also asserted that the current moment is “uniquely suited to Vice President Harris and a broad coalition already in motion”.

But not everyone agrees it’s Harris’s time to shine. Numerous Democratic candidates have publicly stated that they don’t want Harris’s toxic brand anywhere near their elections.

El-Sayed, meanwhile, seems to have decided that an alliance with Harris is mutually beneficial. It gives the progressive candidate an inroad into the establishment and might help him win more support with Black voters.

Harris, who alienated many progressives and Arab Americans by her stance on Gaza, clearly thinks that associating with El-Sayed might improve her reputation among that cohort of voters. El-Sayed has said he opposes military aid to Israel and termed the situation in Gaza a genocide – as have numerous human rights groups and genocide experts.

El-Sayed isn’t the only progressive that Harris appears to be trying to build bridges with. Last year, Harris offered only the most lukewarm of endorsements for Zohran Mamdani, stating: “He’s the Democratic nominee, and he should be supported.” Now that it’s clear that Mamdani embodies the political zeitgeist, she’s a lot more keen to be besties. In early July, Axios reported that Harris called up the New York mayor a couple of days after three leftwing candidates he’d endorsed won their primaries over establishment-backed candidates.

In fact, Harris has been working the phones pretty hard. The same Axios piece noted that she’d reached out to a number of pro-Palestinian activists and Arab American leaders including James Zogby, founder and president of the Arab American Institute. He told Slate this week that the two had had a “long talk”, which he felt good about.

In 2024, the Democrats took progressives for granted. They assumed that young progressives would show up to vote blue no matter who, even when the party treated them with disdain. Instead many of these voters stayed home.

The Democrats are still loath to admit that Gaza was a factor in their defeat: a 2024 autopsy report released by the Democratic National Committee did not mention the issue once. However, it looks like Harris is waking up to the realization that her almost unconditional support for Israel hurt her in the previous election and is something she will have to rectify if she wants to run again. Particularly since polls show a record 60% of US adults now have an unfavourable view of Israel and the vast majority of Democrats support an arms embargo.

Is all this too little too late for the former nominee’s brand? I don’t know. But it’s certainly too late for the tens of thousands of Palestinians the Biden-Harris administration were complicit in killing.

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