Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) may be courting Hillary Clinton’s donors and drawing comparisons to Barack Obama in the mainstream media as she aims for a possible presidential run in 2020. But the “Berniecrats,” the left wing of the Democratic party, are skeptical of her prospects.
RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United, a union that supported Bernie Sanders in 2016 and is often to be seen at left-wing protests in the state, told the New York Times last month: “She’s not on our radar. … In terms of where the progressives live, I don’t think there’s any ‘there’ there.”
Others, according to Mic.com, are skeptical of the fact that Harris has courted Wall Street donors — including Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin, who donated to her 2016 campaign for U.S. Senate. They cite Harris’s decision not to pursue a civil enforcement action against Mnuchin’s OneWest bank when she was California’s attorney general.
Mic.com quotes Winnie Wong, co-founder of People for Bernie, dismissing Harris’s claims to be “progressive”: “She is the preferred candidate of extremely wealthy and out-of-touch Democratic party donors. … Her recent anointing is extremely telling. These donors will line her coffers ahead of 2020 and she will have the next two years to craft a message of broad appeal to a rapidly changing electorate.”
Wong said that Harris could gain left-wing favor if she supports single-payer health care and a $15-per-hour federal minimum wage, among other “progressive” policies.
Thus far, Harris has made a name for herself in Washington — and raised money — by interrupting witnesses at key Senate committee hearings, then being disciplined by the Republican chairs of those committees, which she and her supporters have portrayed as being “silenced.”
And as Breitbart News has noted, whether she runs for president or not, Harris has already become a fundraising force for Democrats nationwide, who are badly in need of new leadership.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. He is the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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