Why Kamala Harris Sometimes Sounds like Reagan
The Republican Party has been transformed under Donald Trump, and not all Republicans are happy about it. In 2020, about 6% of Republican voters pulled the lever for Joe Biden; about 5% of Democrats did the same for Donald Trump.
To put this in context, according to data at Cornell University’s Roper Center, from 1980 to 2020, Republicans routinely won a much higher percentage of Democrats than they lost. For instance, in 1980, 27% of Democrats voted for Ronald Reagan; 11% of Republicans voted for Jimmy Carter. In 1996, Bill Clinton beat that trend.
The Harris-Walz campaign seeks to improve on Joe Biden’s numbers and has made a concerted effort to recruit disaffected Republicans. Her campaign has attracted an unusually large number of endorsements from high-level Republican politicians or office holders. This includes a former Republican Vice President, a U.S. Attorney General, CIA Directors, an FBI director, congressmen, and several hundred staff from the administrations of Reagan, both Bushes, and even Trump himself. Many hold their noses at many aspects of Harris’ policies but point out that she respects the will of the people, the rule of law, and our international obligations. By contrast, they argue that Trump represents an existential threat to the American republic.
The Harris-Walz campaign has featured three Republicans for Harris Zoom calls. The first attracted more than 70,000 members. These calls, and the high-level endorsements, provide rank-and-file voters with permission to turn Lincoln’s portrait to the wall and vote Democratic. One woman on the call argued that Trump represents an overreaching federal government: "I don't want the government in my backyard, my bedroom, my bank account, and certainly not in the medical exam room.” Elected officials on the Zoom call talked about the emotional turmoil, loss of identity, and social isolation that often accompanies publicly refusing to back a Republican.
Will it work? Turnout at Harris’ Central Pennsylvania events have been considerably smaller, ranging from between sixty to 100 attendees. These events may be small, but it’s highly likely that Republican voters who are pro-choice, or emphasize a pre-America First view of national security, or remain horrified by January 6th, will receive targeted ads on their phones or computers. The Harris campaign is engaged in the politics of addition and is building a political coalition that stretches from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the left to Dick Cheney on the right.
By contrast, the Trump campaign seems engaged in the politics of purity. In response to Republicans for Harris, one of Trump’s spokespersons told the Pennsylvania Capital-Star that “if so-called ‘Republicans’ are campaigning for another four years of unfettered illegal immigration and rising prices under Kamala Harris, they’re neither Republicans nor worth listening to.” Certainly, the Trump campaign has its own Democratic acolytes, such as Tulsi Gabbard, but it’s nothing on the scale of what Democrats have done.
Harris has claimed some key rhetorical and policy ground that the MAGA movement has ceded. First and foremost is framing access to reproductive rights, or gay marriage, as freedom for individuals to make fundamental decisions about their lives and bodies without government dictates. For decades, freedom was a Republican trope. It found resonance with whites dissatisfied with civil rights laws, or distrusted Democrats to protect the U.S. and our allies from international threats, notably Russia. Ronald Reagan appealed to those who wanted free markets, freedom from government rules and taxes, and a strong military defense against tyrannies abroad.
Thus, when Kamala Harris talks about national security, like the importance of NATO, she sounds more like Ronald Reagan than Donald Trump does. Trump’s recent comments on the war blamed Ukraine and the Biden administration for Russia’s invasion. That a former Republican president refuses to criticize a Russian dictator would have been unthinkable to Reagan-era Republicans. Certainly, national security voters are a declining force within the party, but in a tight election, Trump can ill afford to lose those who revere military service and the ideal that America is the leader of the free world.
Harris can call herself a capitalist, and extol small businesses, but unlike Reagan, she calls for higher taxes on the rich and promotes unions. Like Reagan-era Republicans, she routinely invokes the importance of character in those who would hold high office, and that we should remain a country of the rule of law, not the whims of men.
Some of the Republicans backing Harris imagine that after Trump is repudiated at the polls, they can return to the conservative party that they remember. But unfortunately for them, MAGA has fundamentally remade the GOP and its voters, and they aren’t going back. If this is the case, then those Republicans for Harris will have to decide where to make their political home starting on this Election Day.
