Democrat Presidential Candidates

Candidate

Platform

Summary

Climate: Ms Harris has long advocated for tough laws to protect the environment. As a prosecutor, Ms Harris defended California’s climate laws and sued oil companies for environmental damage. She also called for climate change policies via a “Green New Deal” during her 2020 presidential campaign – some of which has come to fruition under the current administration. During a CNN presidential debate in 2019, she said that “there is no question I’m in favor of banning fracking”, which is a technique for recovering gas and oil from shale rock. She has reversed her position since throwing her hat into the 2024 presidential race. As vice-president, she helped pass the Inflation Reduction Act, which has funneled hundreds of billions of dollars to renewable energy and electric vehicle tax credit and rebate programs. (BBC 8/23/2024) Crime: Ms Harris started her legal career prosecuting child abusers and sex traffickers before being elected district attorney of San Francisco, then California’s attorney general. Her offices increased conviction rates, particularly of violent criminals, though that history led to criticism from the progressive left, which at times labelled her “a cop”. (BBC 8/23/2024)
Health Care: As California’s attorney general, Ms Harris and her office often used anti-trust laws to keep insurers, hospitals and drug companies from raising customer costs. When she became a US senator and later a 2020 candidate for president, she held more progressive views than Mr Biden, supporting expanding Medicare and publicly-funded health-care programs. Ms Harris has long supported women’s right to an abortion. She played a key role in the Biden campaign’s effort to make abortion rights central to the 2024 election, and she has long advocated for legislation that would enshrine reproductive rights nationwide. (BBC 8/23/2024)
Immigration: Ms Harris’s position on the border has changed over time. In 2020, while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, she held fairly progressive positions – such as promising to close down immigration detention centers. In 2021, Mr Biden asked Ms Harris as vice-president to oversee the diplomatic effort around immigration issues on the US southern border. (BBC 8/23/2024)
Economy: As a senator, Ms Harris championed a number of progressive policies, including paid family leave, affordable housing and free tuition for low-and-middle income families. In 2017, while a senator, Ms Harris supported a number of progressive tax programs, co-sponsoring a bill with Bernie Sanders to expand social security for the elderly by increasing the tax rate on investments. As a presidential candidate in 2019, she supported a corporate tax rate of 35%, up from 21%. This was more aggressive than President Biden’s proposal, which she also supported, of an increase to 28%. Ms Harris said during her DNC acceptance speech that she would “pass a middle class tax cut that will benefit more than 100 million Americans”, though details on that plan remain fairly sparse. (BBC 8/23/2024)

Vice President Kamala Harris accepted the nomination as the Democratic candidate for President of the United States August 23, 2024. 

As the daughter of parents who brought her to civil rights marches in a stroller, she was inspired to tackle injustice from an early age. She took that mission to county courtrooms, the California Attorney General’s office, the United States Senate, and the White House.

Now she is running for President of the United States to continue protecting our freedoms, delivering justice, and expanding opportunity so that every American can not just get by, but get ahead.

Climate Action: Our biggest crisis regarding the climate emergency is humanity’s massive state of denial that it exists on the scale it does. Yet willingness to recognize the depth of the problem is prerequisite to our solving it.
Crime Prevention: Among all industrialized nations, the United States ranks at the top in violent crime. We have the highest homicide rates, seven times higher than the average for other nations. For much of the neighborhoods and communities throughout the country, our local governments have failed to supply effective crime prevention solutions.
Criminal Justice: America’s criminal justice system creates just results for some people, but it is terribly unjust for far too many others. Research has shown that Our history of “tough on crime” laws have been directly responsible for America becoming the most incarcerated nation in the industrialized world.
Economy: A system that does not feel, which has no sense of ethical responsibility to people or planet, is a dangerous guide to America’s future. Living for our principles will provide more economic security than living for short-term corporate interests can ever provide. Our government should not be run like a business; it should be run like a family, where taking care of each other, and taking care of our home, are the values that guide us. America can create a care economy.
Education: Education is more than a pathway to a better job; it is a gateway to a more empowered life. Good universal education is essential to a democracy because it gives the tools to all citizens to think, and to act, with the power that is necessary for self-governance.
Government and Democracy: At the deepest level, what we think of as “issues” aren’t always the issue. What politicians normally refer to as “issues” are mere symptoms, all of which share an underlying cause: a disconnection between our politics and our democratic principles, as our government has become subservient to the governing principle of short-term profit maximization for huge multinational corporations.
Immigration: Immigrants are not our enemies. I don’t know any progressive who is arguing for open borders, but we are arguing for open hearts. This is so important to remember today as immigrants are often viciously scapegoated. Scapegoating immigrants, particularly Mexicans and Central Americans, is a deliberate dehumanization technique.
Labor: All Americans deserve a job, no matter their education. Every employee should be able to thrive in their workplace, no matter the work. All work should have respect, and all workers should have dignity.
Social Security: Social Security has worked well for generations to reduce poverty among seniors and the disabled. It is under attack today by Wall Street banks and related financial “service” entities who want to privatize it for no other reason than to tap into another new and huge source of income and bonuses. Under no circumstances should we put Social Security at risk.

Dear Friends,

I want to take a moment to express my gratitude and respect to President Biden. He reached what had to have been an extremely difficult decision, but he did what is best for his party and his country. Clearly in his heart he shares the goal of the many millions of Americans who wish to see Democrats defeat Donald Trump in November.

The nomination of a new Democratic candidate must be opened to a genuinely democratic process at an open convention. No one should simply be anointed to the position of nominee; all candidates must be heard and their agendas explored. Our party’s basic first principle is democracy. We cannot save our democracy without practicing it ourselves.

I look forward to taking my message to the American people, and convincing Democratic delegates, that I am the best candidate to take us to victory in November. Donald Trump has broken the mold, and we must break it too. He has introduced an age of political theater that cannot be successfully countered by a status quo politician, however good they might be, for we are living in a different kind of moment.

We will inspire the American people with a compelling vision of their improved material conditions should they elect Democrats in November. My proposed policy prescriptions dismantle the matrix of corporate tyranny that now limits the economic opportunities of a majority of Americans.The Democratic party must recommit to our most important first principle: an unequivocal advocacy for the working people of the United States.

We will not bend to the economic royalists who have ripped apart America’s social safety net and caused such suffering to so many people.

That is my message, and with it we will win.

In order to mount a serious opposition to the institutional insistence that Kamala Harris be shoehorned into the nomination, I need your help. Please do everything you can do financially to support the campaign at this moment, including reaching out to your friends. That, more than any other element, will make the difference.

Our time is right this very minute.

With profound gratitude that you have carried me to this moment,