Kamala’s Unlikely Coalition: Can NeverTrumpers And Progressive Skeptics Unite?

Another Battle For The Democratic Party's Soul

"The Dream" by Nancy Ohanian

Yesterday, Trump’s nephew Fred Trump, was on The View, where he said he believes in “policy over politics and without question, Kamala Harris’ policies are what I get behind. So I will be voting for Kamala Harris, and if I’m asked, I will campaign for her without hesitation.” This was being broadcast as more national and swing state polls rolled in, all going in Kamala’s direction.

Writing for Puck yesterday, Peter Hamby was another in a long line of political observers to note that the enthusiasm for Kamala is real and it is strong, reminding “Democrats of something important they might have forgotten over the past decade: Enthusiasm is a one helluva drug… Democrats haven’t been this fired up for a presidential nominee since Barack Obama exploded onto the national scene in 2008. That was 16 years ago! Sixteen years since a Democrat has inspired authentic passion, spawning merch, memes, volunteer sign-ups, voter registration, and a tsunami of small-donor cash. The $200 million that Harris has raised since taking charge of the Biden campaign operation— a number that could reach $300 million by the end of the month— is impressive enough. But the standout statistic is how much of that money came from first-time donors: 66 percent. Put another way, a couple million Americans woke up last week, looked at their phones, and said, Holy shit, we can actually win this thing. Instead of preparing for a living wake, or a week of protests, I’m told that Democrats and their donors are now hastily planning new parties, activities, and concerts in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention in a few weeks.” 

And it isn’t only Democrats. Charlie Sykes penned an interesting piece for The Atlantic on Monday noting that NeverTrump Republicans aren’t just against Trump; they’re strongly enough against Trump that they're voting for Kamala this time. “For some observers,” he wrote, “the idea of conservative-leaning Americans voting for Harris is unthinkable. ‘For Never Trump or Trump reluctant conservatives the Harris nomination is a catastrophic development,’ the American Enterprise Institute fellow and Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen declared in a Tweet. ‘At least Biden pretended to be a moderate,’ he wrote. But now, he argued, Never Trump Republicans have to choose between Trump and Harris, whom Thiessen described as the ‘most left wing Democratic presidential nominee in modern times,’ adding, bizarrely, that she was ‘a Democratic Socialist who is to the left of Bernie Sanders.’ Thiessen’s assessment of Harris is wholly exaggerated. The caricature is useful for the group that I have called anti-anti-Trumpers: those who claim to be Trump skeptics but find ways to rationalize his behavior by attacking his critics or those he’s up against. But at the core of Thiessen’s argument is the perception that Harris poses an impossible dilemma for Never Trump conservatives. On paper, Thiessen might once have had a point. Before Trump, the ideological divide between Harris and conservative Republicans might have been too large to bridge. But this is not a normal campaign. For most Never Trump Republicans, the 2024 election is not primarily about the divide between the left and the right; it’s about preserving our liberal constitutional order. For years, Never Trumpers have been split between those who have remained conservative at the policy level and those who more or less transformed themselves into progressives. There were also differences of opinion within the movement about whether Joe Biden should step aside, but there was never any doubt about the existential threat Trump posed to the body politic.”

Georgia’s former Lt Gov Geoff Duncan, like many conservative Republicans, is so freaked out by Trump that “he wrote, his ‘current north star is ridding’ the GOP of Trump, and Harris is ‘the best vehicle toward preventing another stained Trump presidency.’” With Kamala rising in the polls “the relief,” wrote Sykes, “is staggering— for Never Trumpers too... We’ll find out soon whether Never Trumpers can truly align around Harris, or if policy-related infighting will get in the way. Some Republicans may sit out the race in a cloud of above-it-all righteous irrelevance. But at least the staunchest members of the movement seem to be cohering around support for Harris. For Never Trumpers who have been in the political wilderness for nearly a decade now, this is not the time to quibble over tax rates, the Green New Deal, fracking, or pronouns. Harris is far from their first choice, but when your kitchen is in flames, you reach for whatever extinguisher is at hand. You can worry later about washing the dishes or whether you need a new garbage disposal. Put the fire out now.”

Progressive Democrats are grappling with similar thoughts. She’s far from the “Democratic Socialist who is to the left of Bernie Sanders” that that imbecile Marc Thiessen imagines she is. It’s what conservatives say about every Democratic candidate anyway. Kamala is a garden variety California establishment Democrat who endorsed, for example, Medicare-for-All, are stepped back as soon as some of her donors said “Boo!”

I have a little hope that she might actually get something worthwhile accomplished but I’m not talking myself into anything like “to the left of Bernie Sanders.” Note there’s not a single progressive on her short list— or even long list— for potential running mates. As the sun was coming up on Tuesday, Hailey Fuchs and Jessica Piper reported that the party’s big money donors were all getting back on board— and that includes some the worst of the worst, like hysterically anti-progressive, predator venture capitalist Reid Hoffman.

It’s still early days, but so far the stream of money has been so strong that one donor adviser has even cautioned some donors to slow down until the dynamics of the race make it clearer where money is most needed.

Venture capitalist Bradley Tusk had decided not to donate significantly to Biden’s reelection campaign— but with Harris as the Democratic candidate, he said, he planned to give at least $100,000 to back her. With Biden at the top of the ticket, he reasoned, the funding would not have paid off, but Harris’ chances were markedly better than Biden’s. And unlike the president, Harris wasn’t “falling asleep” or giving “crazy answers.”

“I understand why people might grumble, and she might not be their first choice,” Tusk said. “But in reality, it comes down to this, which is: Do you want Trump back or not? And if the answer is no, there’s now a candidate that is viable.”

…Even after she assumed the vice presidency, donors remained skeptical of Harris. Some discussed replacing her, with one unlikely suggestion that Biden should nominate Harris to the Supreme Court so that she had an off-ramp from the 2024 ticket.

But in the beginning stages of the current race, her team appears to have elevated her standing with the party’s funders, scheduling opportunities to schmooze with donors at events. One Democratic donor, a longtime Harris supporter, emphasized that she had “materially enhanced her brand in a short period of time.” The person, who was granted anonymity to discuss private conversations among the donor class, said that even those who had initially wanted an open convention had quickly come around to Harris’ candidacy.

Still, there were some donors who did not think she could win, the person said, adding that it was a small group.

The tension between Harris and the donor class highlights how much of the party’s fundraisers are, like the ticket’s former principal, older white men. Among those who cast doubt on Harris’ fundraising abilities, “The skepticism was universally from white men,” said donor adviser Alexandra Acker-Lyons.

And while Harris’ identity as a Black and South Asian woman may have at one time caused doubts among that traditional donor base, her candidacy also brings in money from new corners of the party. Among South Asian donors, enthusiasm for Harris’ rise to the top of the ticket has been “off the charts,” said Raj Goyle, a former Kansas state representative who bundled for Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign and co-founded Indian American Impact, a voter mobilization nonprofit.

“I think people have tried for years to use her biracial identity and her multi-ethnic background as a criticism, whereas I think many of us view it as a strength,” Goyle said.

…Biotech venture capitalist Neil Exter conceded that Harris probably would not have been his first choice to lead the ticket. Nobody knows “whether she will be a good candidate for the next 100 days or not,” he said. Still, if need be, he would give money to support the ticket because at this point, he said, Democrats do not have a choice.

“I wouldn’t be giving her money because of who she is— it’s rather, I’m giving money because I really don’t want Trump to be president,” he said.

“We are not going back” is the campaign slogan— and the first big ad— but will it be more than that when she has to face down the big donors? Jeet Heer: “[S]ome wealthy donors are trying to pressure her and the Democrats at large to abandon some of Joe Biden’s economic populism, particularly in the areas of antitrust regulation and the regulation of cryptocurrency. As Reuters reported on Friday, ‘Billionaire Democratic donors Barry Diller and Reid Hoffman said in interviews this week they hope Kamala Harris will replace Federal Trade Commission [FTC] Chair Lina Khan if she becomes U.S. president, openly rejecting a pillar of President Joe Biden’s antitrust policy.’ In her tenure as FTC Chair, Khan has been among the most effective and polarizing Biden appointees, using long-standing but neglected laws to go after corporate monopolies, earning along the way the enmity of Wall Street and Silicon Valley. The following day, the Financial Times suggested that this new attitude of aversion to regulating big business was finding adherents in Harris’s inner circle, reporting that ‘Kamala Harris’s advisers have approached top crypto companies to reset relations between her Democratic party and a sector that has come out as an important backer of Donald Trump, her rival for the US presidency.’ The newspaper added, ‘People advising the Harris campaign on business matters said the decision to reconnect with the crypto industry had little to do with attracting new electoral contributions. They said the objective was instead to build a constructive relationship that would ultimately set a smart regulatory framework that would help the growth of the entire asset class.’”

This new push against antitrust action and regulating cryptocurrency represents a reversal of hard-won gains under Joe Biden that had been achieved due to the activism of progressives such as Senator Elizabeth Warren; it is also a politically risky move that threatens to blur the distinction between Democrats and Republicans.

Democrats already have egg on their faces from their earlier willingness to take money from a major figure in the world of cryptocurrency who turned out to be a fraud: the now-convicted Sam Bankman-Fried (whose cryptocurrency exchange FTX went bankrupt in 2022 and turned out to have engaged in massive scam). The only saving grace of the Bankman-Fried fiasco was that it turned out he had covertly donated to Republicans while also being a big bankroller of the Democratic Party.

As with Bankman-Fried, the current surge of political support for cryptocurrency is turning out to be a bipartisan affair—indeed, even transpartisan, since independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is also in on the game. Over the last few days both Kennedy and Republican nominee Donald Trump lavished praise on cryptocurrency at a Bitcoin conference in Nashville. In the past, when he was president, Trump had been a crypto skeptic, describing Bitcoin as a “scam” and a “disaster waiting to happen.”

Speaking in Nashville, Trump had become a born-again crypto superfan, saying he wanted the United States to be “the crypto capital of the world.” He endorsed a scheme to create a Bitcoin “strategic reserve.” This is a plan that would help bolster the speculative currency but makes no economic sense. The United States already has a currency and there is no reason to fear a Bitcoin shortage. Trump also added, “We will have regulations, but from now on the rules will be written by people who love your industry, not hate your industry.” This is in effect the same position some wealthy Democratic donors want Harris to adopt.

…If the Democrats were smart, they’re realize how vulnerable Trump is on these issues that give the lie to his claim to be a populist. The FTX meltdown of 2022 already shows how unregulated tech can harm ordinary investors. Letting the crypto gamblers set the rules for their own casino is a sure path to future economic crashes. Further, a figure like Ulbricht embodies lawless capitalism at its worst. Trump could easily be attacked on these issues, but only if Democrats themselves avoid becoming crypto shills.

Polls show that antitrust laws are very popular, having the support of more than two-thirds of Americans. Similarly, most Americans are wary of cryptocurrency. “Among the vast majority of Americans who say they have heard at least a little about cryptocurrency (88%),” a Pew poll in 2023 found that “three-quarters say they are not confident that current ways to invest in, trade or use cryptocurrencies are reliable and safe.”

In other words, the antitrust and pro-regulation position that was championed by progressives such as Elizabeth Warren and taken up by Joe Biden are very popular. Kamala Harris needs to reject the bad advice she’s getting from wealthy donors. In the current war within the party, she could also be bolstered by Bernie Sanders and Warren’s taking center stage to pressure her to remain true to economic progressivism (a role Sanders seems to have already adopted).

Democratic politicians are often encouraged to engineer a “Sister Souljah moment”— to attack portions of their left-wing base for allegedly extreme positions (named for Bill Clinton’s lambasting the civil rights activist and rapper Sister Souljah in 1992). The idea is to earn centrist clout by going after easy targets— people who have no alternative but to vote for the Democrats. But in the current moment, the smartest Sister Souljah moment Harris could pull off would be to denounce the centrist plutocrats who are giving her money but also trying to hijack the party. Harris is very well positioned to assert her independence right now, because she’s setting fundraising records with a surge of support from small donors. In other words, she can well afford to offend a few big donors who would make very convenient foils. If Harris denounces these false friends, she’ll solidify her path to victory.