Why Harris might well be the least bad option (at least, in political terms)

Harris has her weaknesses as a candidate, but as the primaries are long behind us, any other possible alternative will face a crisis of legitimacy

As I suggested in a previous article, Kamala Harris may well be the least-bad option for Biden to have endorsed as his successor - at least, in political terms. This is because she at least has some credentials as a legitimate Democratic Party candidate for President, whatever other considerable shortcomings and problems she has as a candidate.

To be clear, Kamala Harris’s politics are not mine. Bernie Sanders is to my right politically speaking, and Harris’s policy platform will no doubt be far less ambitious than anything I would recommend (and I do not doubt most of that policy platform would be dropped in office anyhow, as is standard for Democrats and Republicans alike). Yet perfect policy is a low priority for questions of partisan legitimacy, which must be the central question considering the strategic dilemmas the Democratic delegates face in the convention.

Consider the problem at stake. Joe Biden was the only real candidate in the primaries, which were effectively a stitch-up for Biden. The other candidates like Dean Phillips, Robert Kennedy Junior, and Marianne Williamson were all but ignored by the media and treated as jokes by Democratic politicians. Even though some of these candidates polled competitively against Biden, the Democrats did their best to snuff out any competitive primary, which largely helped to conceal Biden’s age-related challenges until he began seriously running against Donald Trump.

Now that the primaries are over, the only candidate who the Democratic electorate had any chance to select was Joe Biden. Though rigging a party primary in favor of the incumbent is hardly democratic, it is the norm in the United States in both parties. Thus, any candidate which delegates at the convention is someone selected by the party elites and not the wider primary electorate. This will make any other candidate an imposition by party power brokers and donor oligarchs.

The only exception to this is Kamala Harris. She did not win a primary as a democratic candidate, but did win the democratic primary as the vice presidential candidate. More significantly, she won the wider 2020 election as the vice presidential candidate. This means that she is the only candidate with any kind of democratic legitimacy to succeed Biden.

In my last post on this topic, I discussed Max Weber’s notion of legitimacy to identify the problem. In his 1919 lecture Politics as Vocation, Max Weber identifies three sources of legitimacy in politics: tradition; charisma; and law. Tradition consists of the long-established norms which everyone is habituated within. An example would be the way that men are granted more legitimacy as political figures within patriarchal societies, or the way that religiously disciplined individuals have an easier time taking power in religiously conservative polities. Charisma consists of the ability for a candidate to connect with people and unite people behind them. An example would be the way that both Barack Obama and Donald Trump excited significant portions of the American electorate behind them. Finally, law consists of explicit statutes within the state, party, and other important institutions. Examples of this would be the way Obama and Trump were legitimately chosen by their delegates at their conventions. As Weber states:

First, the authority of the 'eternal yesterday,' i.e. of the mores sanctified through the unimaginably ancient recognition and habitual orientation to conform. This is 'traditional' domination exercised by the patriarch and the patrimonial prince of yore.

There is the authority of the extraordinary and personal gift of grace (charisma), the absolutely personal devotion and personal confidence in revelation, heroism, or other qualities of individual leadership. This is 'charismatic' domination, as exercised by the prophet or--in the field of politics--by the elected war lord, the plebiscitarian ruler, the great demagogue, or the political party leader.

Finally, there is domination by virtue of 'legality,' by virtue of the belief in the validity of legal statute and functional 'competence' based on rationally created rules. In this case, obedience is expected in discharging statutory obligations. This is domination as exercised by the modern 'servant of the state' and by all those bearers of power who in this respect resemble him.

Importantly, Weber’s account here is descriptive, not prescriptive. He is not saying how a political figure should gain legitimacy, but how they do in practice. We could imagine a monarchy where the prince is an unqualified moron while his younger sister is brilliant. Due to the patriarchal nature inherent to most traditional monarchies, the prince will be more legitimate than the princess. We might think that this ought not be the case, but its a simple fact that it is the case. It will mean that if the princess takes power in the end, she will face struggles and challenges which the prince will need to worry about.

In the case of Kamala Harris, it is not that she has a particularly strong claim to legitimacy. She has not won according to the democratic traditions of party primaries in the United States. She has not had an opportunity to build a charismatic link to the electorate since 2020 (where she struggled to do so - she was never that popular during the 2020 primary). At least, she will have the chance to become the legitimate legal candidate at the convention, but the same could be said for any potential rivals.

The problem is that any candidate would have even less legitimacy according to the norms of her party specifically and the United States at large. At least, Harris was endorsed by the American electorate as Vice President in 2020. This means at least the American voters have endorsed her as a potential successor to Biden in the case of a health emergency, death, or some other form of incapacitation. Moreover, she was the Vice President of a septuagenarian candidate who was likely to die in office, meaning the voters at large knew full well that she was likely enough to become President between 2020-2024.

Consider any other candidate. Like Harris 2024, Whitmer 2024 or Newsom 2024 would likewise not have won the Democratic primary. However, they never faced any kind of legitimization by the American electorate outside of their own state, let alone for the leader of the federal government. Thus, their candidacy would simply be a matter of raw power - they convinced some handful of delegates at the convention and imposed on their party and the American people at large.

It gets worse if we look at the candidate who has hinted he might thrown his hat in the ring - Joe Manchin (though he seems to have since walked that back). He is a rightwing ex-democrat (in fact, he has been an independent for some time now). If the party went with him, they would need to convince the many Democratic voters to his left that they should vote for him despite the fact that they never had an opportunity to challenge his pro-fossil fuel, pro-corporate politics in a primary. At least Joe Biden defeated Bernie Sanders in the 2020 primary, even if this victory was obtained through dubious means. This made it easier for Biden to convince reluctant leftwing voters to make it to the polls and vote for him despite the fact that Biden was unlikely to do much if anything to implement any of their policies (something that has largely been confirmed in the past 4 years). Manchin would have none of that rhetorical space and would be viewed understandably as an illegitimate imposition by donors and party elites.

None of this is to say that Kamala Harris is a particularly strong or ideal candidate, both in terms of her political prospects and in terms of her ability to solve America’s problems. Her policy platform in 2020 was not strong, and her record as a California prosecutor is going to be controversial to different parts of the electorate for different reasons. Despite being a half-black half-south Asian woman, she has struggled to capitalize on her identity for various reasons. She does not seem much concerned with the fate of the weak and marginalized, at least when there is no immediate political advantage for her. Recall when she went to Guatemala to hector people fleeing the country to seek asylum in the United States. She was utterly unconcerned with the way US interventions in Guatemala have caused the various political and economic crises in that country, or the social and political violence faced by impoverished indigenous Mayans. Her approach seemed to be based not on the suffering of people in Guatemala but on the problems which Latin American migration are causing for her party, and the way the Republicans are weaponizing this issue against the Democrats.

Nor is it clear that Kamala Harris’s policy platform will do anything to fix the deep systemic problems facing the United States, from international policy to domestic problems. It is unlikely she will fix the increasingly catastrophic health care system, an increasingly degenerate university system, growing wealth inequality, skyrocketing housing prices, or debates over abortion access. Nor is there any signal that she could convincingly resolve the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. At least her opponent has no platform to fix these issues either (Trump may well accelerate the crisis in the Middle East in spite of his purported stance against wars of choice), but it is also these issues which makes Trump’s candidacy plausible in the first place. If she wins, will she be able to defeat an 82-year old Trump in 2028? Or a JD Vance candidacy?

Lastly, even if Harris has some claim to legitimacy, her grasp on it is not as secure as it otherwise would be due to the lack of a primary. Her Republican opponents are already alleging that her candidacy is some form of “coup”, although this would be even more the case for anyone else as I have already shown.

Yet in strictly political terms, she might be the least bad candidate for the Democrats to go with. The worst possible thing the Democrats could do now for themselves is to fall into infighting or let big donors select the candidate of their own preference. Uniting behind Harris may well be the most prudent move the Democrats could take.