As Vice President Kamala Harris makes a broad play to the political center, some Democrats worry that she is going too far in her bid to win over moderates who are skeptical of former President Donald J. Trump. In private — and increasingly in public as Election Day fast approaches — they say she risks chilling Democratic enthusiasm by alienating progressives and working-class voters.
In making her closing argument this month, Ms. Harris has campaigned four times with Liz Cheney, the Republican former congresswoman, stumping with her more than with any other ally. She has appeared more in October with the billionaire Mark Cuban than with Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers and one of the nation’s most visible labor leaders.
She has centered her economic platform on middle-class issues like small businesses and entrepreneurship rather than raising the minimum wage, a deeply held goal of many Democrats that polls well across the board. She has taken a harder-line stance on the border than has any member of her party in a generation and has talked more prominently about owning a Glock than about combating climate change. She has not broken from President Biden on the war Israel is waging in Gaza.
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, for many Americans the avatar of the progressive movement, has campaigned aggressively for Ms. Harris across several battleground states. But he said in an interview that he had been alarmed by the number of working-class voters who were asking what Ms. Harris would do for them on issues like raising wages or allowing Medicare to cover dental care.
“They want to hear her to be more aggressive in making it clear that she’s going to stand up for the working class of this country,” Mr. Sanders said. “You lose the working class, I don’t know how you win an election.”
At a town-hall-style event with Mr. Sanders in Milwaukee this month, one woman spoke up with a direct criticism of Ms. Harris. “Kamala has been talking about the middle class,” she said to applause. “But she has not addressed the poor or the working poor.”
Part of Ms. Harris’s approach is tactical. As she battles accusations from Mr. Trump that she is dangerously liberal, progressive voices have been less visible alongside her at campaign events. Moving to the center in a general election is a standard tactic in politics — and the left has long voiced frustration when Democrats do it.
The Harris campaign says it is running a big-tent operation that has appeal across party and class lines. Her aides hope to pick up voters in the suburbs, especially women, who are driven by abortion rights and have grown tired of Mr. Trump’s divisiveness and chaos, and the Harris team says polling shows its approach is working. Ms. Harris also picked as her running mate Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, a liberal grass-roots favorite.
But keeping Democrats unified and energized is especially important for Ms. Harris in a race polls suggest is tied, and the consequences for the party could be severe if even a few left-wing voters in battleground states stay home or vote for Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate.
Some progressives point to the vice president’s soft support among Black and Latino voters as evidence that her message is not breaking through to enough workers. Sensing an opportunity with blue-collar voters who were already shifting toward Republicans, Mr. Trump has laid out the welcome mat for them in his advertisements and messaging.
And they worry that Ms. Harris — like Hillary Clinton in 2016 — is falling into a trap of banking on liberal voters without offering significant policy change.
Elise Joshi, the executive director of the progressive group Gen-Z for Change — which has endorsed Ms. Harris and is knocking on doors to support her — said she was concerned that the excitement among many young voters for the vice president’s candidacy had faded.
“The tent is big enough for a guy who got us into a war with Iraq, and then the tent is not big enough for a Palestinian to speak for two minutes on the D.N.C. stage,” said Ms. Joshi, contrasting the endorsement of Ms. Harris by Ms. Cheney’s father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, with the Democratic Party’s decision not to invite a Palestinian American to speak at its national convention.
“The vibes really peaked when she chose Tim Walz to be the V.P. candidate,” Ms. Joshi added. “That time feels like it was so long ago.”
The calculations of a move to the center
The Harris campaign’s move to the center is meant especially to target college-educated, wealthier, white voters who may have voted Republican in the past.
That group is more likely to cast ballots than poorer Black and Latino Americans. Mr. Trump has given Democrats an opening to recruit those more reliable voters with a series of bizarre rants, including a menacing threat to use the military against “the enemy within” and an extended riff about a deceased professional golfer that ended with praise for his genitalia. Ms. Harris’s team is also investing heavily in winning over undecided voters of color.
“America is ready for a new and optimistic generation of leadership, which is why Democrats, Republicans, independents are supporting our campaign,” Ms. Harris said last week in Erie County, Pa., a crucial bellwether region of the battleground state.
Polls show that Ms. Harris’s economic message — which leans on tax breaks for the middle class and on creating opportunities for small businesses — is resonating more with voters than Mr. Biden’s did. She has significantly narrowed Mr. Trump’s lead as the candidate more trusted to handle the economy. And she has rolled out policies with wide appeal like an expanded child tax credit and having Medicare cover in-home health care, as well as vision and hearing benefits.
On Tuesday, she said in an interview with NBC News that she supported raising the minimum wage to at least $15 per hour, a question that Mr. Trump has sidestepped.
Many of Ms. Harris’s progressive and union allies believe she can motivate younger people, the left and working-class voters while also reaching out to Republicans. They are less focused on ideological purity than on beating Mr. Trump.
“I do think she’s a progressive,” said Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “I think she is also pragmatic about her beliefs and what it’s going to take to win, and what the polling says it’s going to take to win. I do think that the most important thing for progressives and for the country is that she wins.”
Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers — one of six national union leaders who appeared alongside Ms. Harris last week in Detroit — said the vice president’s economic policies were focused on “creating wealth for working people.”
“Working-class voters want to be middle-class voters,” Ms. Weingarten said.
‘Will she fight for the things that we believe in?’
Still, Ms. Harris has made a major turnaround from how she ran for president in the Democratic primary race in 2019, when she supported “Medicare for all,” called for decriminalizing illegal border crossings and opposed fracking.
Progressives from across the constellation of left-wing interest groups say they worry about energy.
“We’ve contacted nearly a million young voters in swing states,” said Stevie O’Hanlon, the communications director for the Sunrise Movement, a progressive climate change group. “And we are hearing that there isn’t the level of enthusiasm that there could be, given the contrast being so clear, and given how dangerous a Trump presidency would be.”
Maurice Mitchell, the national director of the Working Families Party, said he had knocked on doors in Pennsylvania and Georgia and said many working-class voters still seemed unsure whether Ms. Harris would “fight for them.”
“That requires her campaign focusing with a lot of intensity on the base,” he said.
And Our Revolution, the progressive group founded by Mr. Sanders, conducted a survey of left-wing voters that found a significant enthusiasm deficit about Ms. Harris, according to Joseph Geevarghese, its executive director.
“Will she fight for the things that we believe in?” Mr. Geevarghese said. “I think people aren’t sure. Most will bite their tongue and vote to defeat Donald Trump, and others just won’t be able to overcome their primary objections.”
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