NEW YORK — Progressive Democrats warn Kamala Harris risks losing the support of a small but significant portion of her political base unless she changes her campaign’s closing message — and its messengers — immediately.
Specifically, several progressive leaders believe that the Democratic nominee has been too focused on winning over moderate Republicans in recent days at the expense of her own party’s passionate liberals. And they say that Harris’ closing message, which is increasingly centered on Republican Donald Trump and the threat he poses to U.S. democracy, ignores the economic struggles of the nation’s working class.
Some far-left leaders are also irked that Harris has shared the stage in recent days with former House Republican leader Liz Cheney and billionaire businessman Mark Cuban while progressive icons like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been relegated to low-profile roles.
“The truth of the matter is that there are a hell of a lot more working-class people who could vote for Kamala Harris than there are conservative Republicans,” Sanders told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday.
Sanders noted that he’s been doing whatever he’s asked to help Harris win. He has participated in two dozen Harris campaign related-events this month alone, although they’re largely in rural areas. None have been with Harris.
“She has to start talking more to the needs of working-class people,” Sanders said. “I wish this had taken place two months ago. It is what it is.”
Less than two weeks before Election Day, Harris is trying to assemble a sprawling coalition featuring voting groups with conflicting priorities.
She’s relying on the traditional Democratic base — African Americans, Latinos and young people who overwhelmingly lean left. Harris’ team is aware that some liberals are frustrated by her approach, especially on her support for Israel’s war against Hamas. But the campaign sees a major opportunity to expand her coalition by winning over disaffected Republicans, especially college-educated voters in the nation’s suburbs, who are uneasy about Trump.
From the Harris campaign’s perspective, the focus on moderate Republicans at this moment is simply a matter of math.
The Democrat’s campaign assesses that 10% of swing-state voters are still undecided or persuadable, according to an aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategy. Of that 10%, some 7% are considered “Cheney Republicans” who are receptive to messages attacking Trump, the aide said.
At the same time, the Harris campaign believes her chief political liability is the perception that she’s too far left. Trump’s allies are pounding the airwaves accusing the former California senator of being a “radical-left liberal.” Therefore, she has been reluctant to appear with progressive icons like Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist.
Harris instead made three swing-state appearances this week with Cheney, a stalwart conservative who was a Trump ally before turning sharply against him after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
Harris is scheduled to deliver a major address next week, a formal closing argument of sorts, focused on the danger Trump poses to U.S. democracy. She will deliver the speech on Tuesday at the Ellipse in Washington, the same location where Trump hosted the rally that preceded the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Frustrated progressives do not discount the need to warn voters of Trump’s authoritarian leanings, but some wish her closing message was more focused on addressing voters’ overwhelming pessimism about the state of the economy and the direction of the country.
Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, praised Harris’ advertising team for “smartly” investing hundreds of millions of dollars behind ads focusing on grocery prices, taxing billionaires and Social Security — “things that both win swing voters and pump up the base.”
But, Green said, “there’s been an odd disconnect between the campaign’s economic populist ad strategy and the event strategy that focuses almost exclusively on Liz Cheney kumbaya optics that depress the base right as voting begins and don’t provably win more swing voters than bread-and-butter issues.”
Other are frustrated that the Harris campaign hasn’t featured progressive leaders like Sanders or Ocasio-Cortez in higher-profile spots.
Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of the progressive group Our Revolution, suggested that as many as 10% of progressives may not vote for Harris because of their frustrations. Some may not cast a ballot at all, he said, while some may even support Trump. The former president has called Cheney, a backer of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a “stupid war hawk” as he tries to win over Arab Americans in Michigan angry about the more than 42,000 Palestinians killed in Israel’s Gaza offensive.
“We just want to raise a red flag. Don’t take the progressive movement for granted,” Geevarghese said. “There’s got to be an economic argument at the end of the day. That’s the No. 1 thing that matters to voters.”
Indeed, about 4 in 10 likely voters in a recent CNN poll said the economy was their most important issue when deciding how to vote, and about 2 in 10 said protecting democracy was. About 1 in 10 named either immigration or abortion and reproductive rights.
To be sure, Harris is not ignoring the economy or other progressive priorities.
She has outlined plans to crack down on price gouging by corporations to help reduce the cost of groceries in addition to reducing the cost of prescription drugs, cutting taxes on the middle class while raising taxes on billionaires, offering a $25,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers to help lower housing costs, and expanding Medicare to cover vision and hearing coverage, among other things.
Ocasio-Cortez made three stops in swing-state Pennsylvania last week on Harris’ behalf. United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain, a key Harris ally, has also been a steady presence on the campaign trail.
Former President Barack Obama, still beloved by many progressive voters, has been active in the campaign’s closing days. He headlined an event with Harris for the first time on Thursday night in Georgia.
Meanwhile, Trump is continuing to lean in on the issues that his campaign sees as his strongest: the economy and inflation, immigration, crime and foreign policy.
The Republican nominee is set to outline his formal closing message Sunday at Madison Square Garden in New York City that’s expected to focus on average Americans’ displeasure with the direction of the country. He begins virtually every rally with a variation of: Are you better off now than you were four years ago?
“Kamala Harris broke the economy. She broke the border. President Trump very clearly is going to fix the economy and fix the border,” said Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller, who argued Harris, with her focus on Trump, wasn’t talking about how she will make life better for the vast majority of Americans.
Harris acknowledged during a CNN town hall this week that some progressives may be unhappy with her leadership, particularly on Israel.
“But I also do know that for many people who care about this issue, they also care about bringing down the price of groceries,” she said. “They also care about our democracy and not having a president of the United States who admires dictators and is a fascist.”
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Associated Press writers Will Weissert and Zeke Miller in Washington and Jill Colvin in Tempe, Arizona, contributed to this report.