Slow Posting

Between meeting deadlines at work and the rapid and unusual developments in politics over the last week or so, I have been reluctant to post. I simply didn’t know what to say. The Democrats, who have been whinging about saving democracy for the last couple of years, have resorted to anything but democratic strategies for removing President Biden from the campaign and anointing Vice President Harris as his successor.

As it turns out I’m not the only one. At the Wall Street Journal Jon Kamp, Richard Rubin, and Justin Lahart struggle to figure out what VP Harris’s economic views might be:

Kamala Harris is well known for her forceful defense of abortion rights, her role within the Biden administration on immigration and border security, and her legacy as a prosecutor and attorney general of California.

But the economy is a central election issue, and there, her positions and policy goals haven’t yet been as clearly defined.

Her record does reveal, however, some clues about her priorities, including a focus on low-income workers, women, small businesses and middle-class families.

As vice president, Harris has largely moved in lockstep with President Biden on economic issues, and some analysts see this record as a road map. “In general, we think she’ll pick up the Biden-Harris mantle,” policy analysts at Evercore ISI said in a note Tuesday.

Before her time in the administration, she sometimes differed with Biden—specifically in trade and climate-related policy—often by favoring bigger governmental interventions in the economy.

For nearly 50 years Joe Biden has striven to characterize himself as a moderate by positioning himself in the center of the Democratic Party, wherever that might have been at the time. VP Harris has made no such effort. Her four years in the Senate were notable for her striking a position as the farthest left member of the Senate. Under the circumstances it seems unlikely to me that she will veer to the center of the Democratic Party let alone the center of the country should she be elected president.

The Economist struggles similarly to decode her foreign policy views:

Ms Harris did not mention foreign policy in her first campaign rally as her party’s presumptive nominee, in Wisconsin on July 23rd. Her cv on foreign affairs was thin at first, and the subject of controversy about her role in trying to deal with the “root causes” of migration from Central America. Indeed Republicans have renewed attacks on her for failing to secure the southern border.

That said, Ms Harris has become somewhat more assured lately, having visited Europe, Asia and Africa, among other regions. Her national security adviser, Philip Gordon, is a veteran of European and Middle Eastern affairs at the State Department and the White House under Democratic administrations. More than 350 former national-security officials, including Democratic Party heavyweights, described Ms Harris as “the best qualified person to lead our nation as Commander in Chief”, with more experience of foreign affairs than most recent incoming presidents.

Ms Harris shares Mr Biden’s internationalism. In February at the Munich Security Conference, an annual talkfest, she warned against American retrenchment under Mr Trump. “Isolation is not insulation. In fact, when America has isolated herself, threats have only grown.”

But just as she may lack Mr Biden’s love of Israel, she may also not fully share his generation’s instinctive transatlanticism. Unlike Mr Trump, she would not threaten to abandon European allies. But American politicians of all persuasions are increasingly preoccupied with the growing rivalry with China.

I find the attempts to characterize her efforts over the last several years as becoming some sort of foreign policy guru not just far-fetched but rather pathetic. What is far more likely is that the Department of State will continue its preferred role of dictating its preferred foreign policy direction rather than paying any attention whatever to the “temporary help”, as insiders refer to the White House.