The Harris agenda is freedom for this time

Pamela Herd, a professor of Public Policy at Georgetown University, has taken a stab at laying out what our new Democratic presidential candidate offers as a positive vision for the country. I found her observations a helpful summary:

“Weird” might be effective political messaging, but it tells us little about what a Harris presidency would look like. ...

Harris promotes a different vision of freedom, a version that evokes, but updates, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s definition of freedom, where people are free from want and fear and have freedom of speech and religion. With Beyonce in the background, Harris calls for:

• The freedom not just to get by, but to get ahead.

• The freedom to be safe from gun violence.

• The freedom to make decisions about your own body.

• We choose a future where no child lives in poverty.

• Where we can all afford health care.

• We believe in the promise of America and we are ready to fight for it.

This isn’t just a laundry list of policy goals. It’s a coherent vision of what government should, and should not, do. ...

... In her stump speech, a key line is that “we’re not going back.” Audiences have responded by chanting “not going back” in response. ...

I can live with this -- even thrill to this.

It seems to me that Joe Biden offered a vision suitable to his age and experience. As the last of our politicians formed in the before-Reagan times, he harked back to a New Deal-influenced vision of using the state to grow an economy which spread its benefits more equitably and broadly. And we should be more grateful than we are for his leadership.

Harris came up in a different time, with politically active immigrant parents of color, influenced by the liberation movements of the '50s,'60's, and early '70s. An optimistic vision of freedom for all, unbounded by old verities, was the fruit of those heady days. Harris's themes seem to me to derive from that moment -- and I love it!

The civil rights struggle of Black Americans for full citizenship made her candidacy possible. The struggle for women's liberation underpins her constituency and appeal. And the LGBT+ struggle for liberation has unleashed the potential to re-imagine society in novel configurations.

I doubt very much that Harris can fulfill all the hopes her vision of freedom offers. But I can enthusiastically get behind a leader from a new generation whose person was impossible under the old rules -- and who looks forward to new rules. Bring on the Harris campaign. I'm on board.