KAMALA AND THE COMMUNISTS. There are reports former vice president and 2024 losing presidential candidate Kamala Harris has been touching base with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and other leaders of the socialist/communist vanguard making deep inroads inside the Democratic Party. It makes sense. Harris appears to believe she can be the 2028 Democratic nominee, and in the unlikely event that were to happen, she would need good relations, or at least some relations, with the party’s furthest-left wing.
Mamdani didn’t sound particularly thrilled by Harris’s attention. “The vice president reached out to have a conversation, and we’ve had a brief conversation,” he said on a podcast this week. “We’ve been in touch over the last few months, and I really do appreciate her outreach.” Just say Mamdani seemed polite but underwhelmed.
Axios, which first reported the contacts, said that Harris has also “been holding lengthy, closed-door meetings with other prominent progressives.” She is apparently focusing on pro-Palestinian activists, trying to forge some sort of bond with them after she remained mostly quiet when President Joe Biden expressed support for Israel in the war in Gaza that followed the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack. Harris is no doubt telling the pro-Palestinian types that she was secretly with them all along.
The former vice president has her work cut out for her. To give just one example, when Darializa Avila Chevalier, the star of the new socialist/communist team, deleted many of her inflammatory social media posts, one of those posts, from June 2021, read, “F*** Kamala Harris.” Another pro-Palestinian voice told Axios, “Why should we trust her now?”
It’s probably safe to say Avila Chevalier and her friends won’t be cozying up to Harris anytime soon. But Harris’s effort is more evidence, as if any more is needed, of the energy behind the socialist/communist wave in the Democratic world. If the party’s most recent presidential nominee craves their support, then everyone who wants to prosper in Democratic politics will need it, too.
Of course one question is whether Mamdani and his comrades, no matter what they think of Harris, will have to pay attention to her. After all, she is leading the polls for the 2028 Democratic nomination. According to the RealClearPolitics average of polls, Harris is 10 points ahead of Gavin Newsom, 15 points ahead of Pete Buttigieg, 16 points ahead of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 21 points ahead of Josh Shapiro, 22 points ahead of Mark Kelly, 24 points ahead of Andy Beshear, and 24 points ahead of JB Pritzker.
That’s the good news for Harris. On the other hand, she has three big problems. First, the polls today, when the public is not even fully tuned into the 2026 midterm elections, much less the 2028 presidential race, don’t mean much. Second, she was a terrible candidate when she had the chance to be the party’s standard-bearer. And third, the Democratic Party has no interest in giving its presidential losers another shot.
When Al Gore lost in 2000 and made noises about running again in 2004, the party said no. When John Kerry lost in 2004 and made noises about running again in 2008, the party said forget about it. And when Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 and made (a few subtle) noises about running again in 2020, the party quickly indicated that it was not interested.
To find a Democratic nominee who got another chance after losing the big one, you have to go back to Adlai Stevenson, the Democrat who lost to Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952. Due to some odd circumstances of the time, the party renominated Stevenson to run against Eisenhower again in 1956. Stevenson lost again. That’s not a very good argument for repeat nominees.
Nevertheless, Harris is plugging away. So of course she’s trying to make connections with the energy center of the party right now. But if Harris’s record and the history of the Democratic Party are any guide, her new effort won’t amount to much.