Facing setbacks, progressives focus on pragmatic goals for a Harris presidency
Hoping for a Kamala Harris presidency, progressives are focusing on pragmatic economic ideas like raising the minimum wage and child care funding over sky-high ambitions like the Green New Deal.
WASHINGTON — In early 2020, Bernie Sanders had just won two back-to-back primaries and progressives appeared on the cusp of conquering the Democratic Party. But after losing that contest to Joe Biden and facing recent setbacks, the movement is recalibrating its ambitions in anticipation of a Kamala Harris victory this fall.
Gone are the skyscraping demands for Medicare for All and a Green New Deal to transform the health care and energy sectors, which Harris endorsed in her failed 2020 bid and is now backtracking from. Progressives are instead homing in on a more pragmatic and economy-focused agenda that includes a minimum wage hike, child care funding and new Medicare benefits for seniors.
Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., who has endorsed Harris, said progressives are playing the cards they’ve been dealt.
“I don’t think that perfection is ever on the ballot. But real progress is,” Jayapal told NBC News in an interview. “Unless Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren were elected president, we still have work to do to get those full things to be mainstream.”
“So much of our … Progressive Caucus agenda is stuff that we know she is for, just as the Biden-Harris administration was for, and I believe the Harris-Walz administration will be for,” she said.
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