Vice President Harris Crosses the Delaware

It is Time for Us to Follow Her Into a Less Cynical Future

There have always been partisan divides in the United States. We might feel as though the polarization of today dwarfs earlier periods, but it does not. Acrimony, underhanded tactics and much worse separated the Federalists of Hamilton and the Democratic-Republicans of Jefferson. The divide between the pro-slavery South and abolitionists in the North was so deep it triggered the bloodiest war in modern history. Red scares in the 20th Century produced ugliness every bit the match for what we see today.

Nonetheless, there have been periods during which the tensions between factions that the founders feared have abated somewhat. Periodically, in times of war or national emergency or just when we have leaders of special skill, bipartisanship has produced real benefits for the American people.

One of the reasons I was drawn to foreign policy was that it was a field in which there was, at least theoretically, a non-partisan, patriotic ideal, a discipline in which national interests and not special interests were supposed to drive decisions. Clearly, that’s not always the way things played out. And we have certainly seen times when bipartisan agreement served just a slice of Americans—take the push for unfettered, don’t-you-dare-question-it free trade, for example.

But that was just an ideal. And clearly we live in a moment in which the leaders of the MAGA movement don’t even take national interests into consideration and they consider scorched earth tactics the only approach worthy of their time. Yes, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were able to persuade a handful of Republicans to support some of their legislation, but it was hardly bipartisanship in any real sense even if it did produce significant results for which we should be grateful.

Even within our political parties the tensions are intense. Centrist Democrats vilify progressives—and vice versa—almost as often as they condemn the Trumpists.

That is why many people look askance at even suggestions that bipartisanship is a reasonable objective. It seems unlikely. It seems hard. And it seems like it would require compromises on things that one side or the other feels are inviolable matters of principle. All too often the ideological perfect becomes the enemy of a more realistic good.

As a progressive Democrat at heart—disillusioned by the policy compromises of Democratic centrists, notably Reagan-lite neoliberals during the Clinton Era when I served in the government—I have been drawn in recent years to candidates with strong values like mine, candidates who I felt who could offer an antidote to the most poisonous prescriptions of the far right and who would not sell their souls for a vote.

As an active critic and opponent of Trump since the moment he entered politics, I have felt that a special responsibility fell on the Democrats to pick someone strong who would not give into pressure to accept any of the worst ideas of the former president and his ilk.

In 2019, that meant that I was drawn to two strong, progressive candidates, both of whom happened to be women. First and foremost, I responded to the message and admired the career of the Junior Senator from California, Kamala Harris. When her campaign faltered, I switched my support to Elizabeth Warren. I was deeply distrustful of Joe Biden who I saw as bland and a creature of the back room deal-making culture of the Senate in which he served since Harris was 9 years old.

I was often public with my criticisms of Biden and then one day I had a conversation with a friend of mine that changed my view. His name was Ron Klain and he made the argument to me that while Warren had good ideas as did other candidates, it wouldn’t matter if they lost. To realize your vision you have to have power first. And he persuasively made the case that only Biden could win.