It's Not Clear What Kamala Harris Believes. Does it Matter?

On the joys and perils of a substance-free campaign.

After an August break, it’s good to be back. If you missed it, check out my conversation with Damir from Friday on the role of “vibes” and ideas in the presidential race. This was one of those examples of an episode that pushed me to rethink and clarify my own positions. Do check it out here.

Embrace the Vibes!

This isn’t to say I’m “embracing” vibes. The horror! But it is to say that thinking about vibes need not be a superficial exercise. Just as substance can illuminate, so too can the lack of substance.

—Shadi Hamid

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Substance is overrated — at least when it comes to elections. We know by now that voters don’t really vote on policy. Can you think of anyone in 2016 who did a side-by-side comparison of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s policy proposals and then made a choice? Probably not. And that’s for the best. It’s simply not an efficient use of one’s time, and in any case you already know which party you align with more on the things that you care about. If you don’t, you probably don’t care about those things enough, which would suggest you’re not a very policy-oriented person to start with.

Particularly in a two-party system, what matters most when we’re voting is the sense of being on a team. Which team makes us more comfortable? Which team makes us feel like we belong? Which team has our back when things get tough? A growing body of empirical evidence points to the sticky, overarching importance of group identities, whether they be ethnic, religious, or narrowly partisan. As the political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels write, “The most important factor in voters’ judgments [is] their social and psychological attachments to groups.”

I’m not sure there’s a compelling reason to vote (or to really do much of anything) on strictly rational terms. We are a rationally irrational species, after all — we experience emotional depth and moral confusion and internal struggle in a way that no other life form does. We do things that don’t serve our material self-interest all the time. Sometimes we take pleasure in it. We are responsible for these choices. This is why we can be held accountable for our choices: because we make them. For those who believe in God, the whole structure of divine reward and punishment relies on premise of free will and moral agency. If we had no such agency, then it would make little sense for God to punish us for the things that we did or didn’t do. (For more on free will and divine justice, see my 2022 essay.)

Okay, so we’re irrational. That’s not exactly news. But what’s interesting — in light of this odd, even exuberant campaign season (at least for Democrats) — is how so quickly and readily one party and its supporters can change their beliefs. But even this is overstating matters, because they’re not changing as much as they are seemingly indifferent to substance. Very few Democrats have expressed much interest in Kamala Harris’ core beliefs, policy proposals, or even plans for governing, something that became all to clear when Harris struggled to respond to the most obvious of softball questions in her lone interview so far: What did she plan to do on Day 1? If you’re not prepared for that question, then what are you prepared for?

Who cares? The vibes are good. And if the vibes are good (and victory is at hand), then ideas and plans are secondary. I sort of get it. Ideas, plans, and proposals are invitations to conflict and disagreement. If you propose something and make the mistake of being clear about it, other people might not like it. It might fracture your base if you delve into specifics on whether or how to pressure Israel to accept a ceasefire plan. Why go into any detail on when exactly a late abortion might be too late for comfort? The devil, as they say, is indeed in the details. To use what might seem like a radically different example, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was a master at this. Everyone knew that they wanted sharia to play a more central role in public life, but no one really knew what they meant by that, and I spent years interviewing their leaders and activists and finding out that they didn’t really know either. But it didn’t matter — or, at least, it didn’t matter until it did.

When Harris was asked why her views have changed on various issues, her response was both a bit absurd but entirely understandable. She said: “I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed.” There’s actually an important take-away here: If your values are constant, then the specifics matter less. If you know what Democrats stand for, then it’s less important what they actually stand for.

In a weird way, then, a discourse that puts a premium on moral, ideological, and values-related divides is one that is more likely to be substance-free. The primary difference between Republicans and Democrats isn’t around policy — say, marginal tax rates — as much as it is about foundational questions of “who we are.” If who we are is what matters most, then what we actually do comes to matter less.

If the vibes are good, then ideas are secondary.

This post is part of our collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Governance and Markets.

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