Harris is too far to the center right and too donored up by elites to be progressive
“recent calls from some allies …”
Who? What allies? Could this be any more vague. The article gives no hints as to who these mysterious unnamed “allies” are and no evidence of anyone, donor or not, calling for her removal. Nor has Harris or anyone from her campaign so much as hinted of any plans or feelings of wanting to oust Khan. Other than Mark Cuban, all the tech bro/oligarch types are Trump allies, not Harris donors.
Sounds like just another piece trying to stoke rumors and stir up division.
Dems Rally to Save Lina Khan After Mark Cuban Puts Target on Her Back
https://newrepublic.com/post/186971/bernie-sanders-aoc-lina-khan-mark-cuban
Thanks for the additional info. I’d call this “anticipatory worry/outrage” as a parallel to how the oligarchs ceding to Trump is called “anticipatory obedience”.
Just because Cuban supports her and may expect obedience in return, I seriously doubt Harris would do it, especially as she is running as a previous DA/AG who went after lenders and others to protect the consumer, and has campaigned on going after ‘price gougers’ and others who harm the middle class. For her to turn around and get rid of Khan would fly in the face of all that and wreck her credibility right off the bat. I can’t see why she would consider doing that.
Having seen her progressive voting record I wouldn’t have expected her to campaign as a “moderate” and go back on every progressive stance she ever held either. In short, I don’t trust her to be consistent.
There’s no way she’d have even a chance of winning if she hadn’t campaigned that way.
I disagree, I think if she had campaigned as the most progressive Democrat in history that would have sparked a massive wave of new support, but it would have put her campaign up against a lot of wealthy and powerful people. She chose the easy path by cozying up to capital interests, and this strategy gets us nowhere. At best it staves off the worst of the growing fascist movement for a time, but at the same time moves the needle further to the right. I think it’s shortsighted.
Wow, you have a very unrealistic understanding of where the American electorate is if you think running as “the most progressive Democrat in history” could get anywhere close to a majority, If someone could win that way, they’d certainly be trying it. Enjoy living in that bubble!
I believe a large portion of the electorate that vote Democrat are liberals who weren’t fans of Biden but hated Trump, and intended to vote for Biden only to prevent Trump from winning. Kamala would not lose this contingency of voters even if they think Kamala is too progressive, but she would gain new voters who previously felt unrepresented. Only anti-Trump conservatives (a tiny but admittedly growing voting bloc) might jump ship.
Kamala chose to appeal to conservatives to steal votes from Trump and because it gets her more wealthy donors. It’s possibly a winning strategy, but it is not the only one, and this one abandons the progressive voting bloc in favor of conservatives in a time where younger people are trending leftwards. This is a move that will have long-term consequences.
Lina Khan has probably been the best and most effective bureaucrat in my lifetime.
My impression has been that Harris is indicating that her economic policy will move in the opposite direction with her talk of “price-gouging”. Is there a reason to think she will do what this article suggests, other than the fact that some donors are asking her to?
Well, to start, politicians will say anything to get elected, so their words mean absolutely nothing, regardless of party affiliation.
This article was the first I’d even heard about Harris potentially ousting Kahn, so that’s potentially a good sign. However, Kahn and the FTC have been taking swings at the oligarchs via their Google monopoly lawsuits, going after Apple, etc.
Harris (and Walz) are centrist Democrats, they are not progressive. A progressive candidate would be calling for the minimum wage to match where it’d be if it was tied with inflation, around $26/hr, not bringing up the $15/hr debate that should’ve been done a decade ago. She hasn’t signalled support for Medicare for All as far as I remember, she went back on her promise not to expand fracking, and she’s made no mention of enshrining LGBTQ+ rights into law or stopping weapons sales to Israel (she has said their would be contingencies, so she still agrees to help the guy actively working against her with her opponent), all progressive ideas.
So, she likely doesn’t support these things because her party, and more importantly, the donors who line their pockets, don’t want her to. She’s a career Democrat, she’s not that much younger than Biden in comparison to someone considered progressive, like AOC, so her policies are going to closer align with the Status-Quo centrist Democrats versus the We-Need-Change-Now progressive Democrats.
Tl:dr: Harris is a centrist Democrat whose party (and by extension, her party’s wealthy donors) do not want progress made, they want a return to the status quo, as their policies have shown (Palestine, M4A, Fracking, etc). Her donors likely don’t like that the FTC chair actually has a backbone, and since the status quo is more important to the Democrat Party (look at how they treated Bernie) than progress. So, the donors are likely pressuring her behind the scenes to put a Garland-esque Chair in charge of the FTC: someone with no backbone.
She is 21 years younger than Biden, and I’m not sure you have actually read her voting record. It’s quite progressive for a us democrat
Progressives need to start finding a primary challenger for 2028 as soon as the polls close. Democrats will feel no leftward pressure otherwise and we’ll be unprepared if we wait.
We were frankly cheated out of a primary this year. The last primary without a preordained winner was 2008. We cannot let this become any more normal than it already has.
finding a primary challenger for 2028
I love how “switching the incumbent is traditionally suicidal but it may work this time; so let’s try to fail next time” is how the conservative moles try to influence the next election.
When are you guys going to start calling yourselves Marxists/Communists, instead of hiding behind some newspeak label?
Yeah, Hillary “the annointed” went over swell and the DNC has apparently learned exactly zip from the experience. They’re never going to serve the interests of people, only of Capital.
In before “But… but… whatabout Trump!”
Valid fucking questions though, he’s worse in every meaningful way.
Of course he is.
He’s not the bar we need to rate everybody against, though. Being better than Trump is not enough. Let’s hold our government to reasonable standards.
That’s the problem with the first-past-the-post voting system. It necessarily limits you to two choices, which frequently means you’re merely picking the one you dislike least.
That requires a bar to hold the democrats too, and right now that bar is dolled up in orange spray paint and lieing on the floor somewhere. The issue for the modern america is to resolve the spoiler effect. Without a third party there is no “voting in favor” of someone there is “voting against” someone else.
Frankly she’s already gone. Harris is way too many billionaire Tech Bros who are worried about being regulated in any way for her to keep what has been the best part of the Biden Administration by far.
If she ends up replacing Lina Khan I’ll lose all hope for this administration.
It’s worth acknowledging that Kamala Harris’ 12th largest campaign donor is Alphabet inc according to opensecrets.org
