The Week: The Kamala Surge

• Katie Ledecky’s Friday newsletters arrive on Thursdays.

• Having worried for years that Kamala Harris’s political radicalism would make her a poor candidate for office should she be obliged to replace Joe Biden, the Democrats have hit upon a clever way of getting around the problem: They are simply not going to tell the public what she stands for. While in the Senate, Harris built up a voting record that put her to the left of Bernie Sanders. Among the positions that Harris endorsed in her failed 2020 primary campaign were the abolition of private health insurance, the prohibition of fracking, the confiscation of modern sporting rifles, the expansion of Medicaid to cover illegal immigrants, and a “jobs guarantee” program. Simultaneously, she endorsed reparations, talked approvingly of defunding the police, and was comfortable enough with devastating riots to have encouraged donations to a bail fund for their perpetrators. Now, all that is gone. In a series of terse statements, Harris’s campaign has summarily confirmed that she no longer believes any of that. Why not? Because she doesn’t, that’s why. What is this, the Spanish Inquisition?

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• Katie Ledecky’s Friday newsletters arrive on Thursdays.

• Having worried for years that Kamala Harris’s political radicalism would make her a poor candidate for office should she be obliged to replace Joe Biden, the Democrats have hit upon a clever way of getting around the problem: They are simply not going to tell the public what she stands for. While in the Senate, Harris built up a voting record that put her to the left of Bernie Sanders. Among the positions that Harris endorsed in her failed 2020 primary campaign were the abolition of private health insurance, the prohibition of fracking, the confiscation of modern sporting rifles, the expansion of Medicaid to cover illegal immigrants, and a “jobs guarantee” program. Simultaneously, she endorsed reparations, talked approvingly of defunding the police, and was comfortable enough with devastating riots to have encouraged donations to a bail fund for their perpetrators. Now, all that is gone. In a series of terse statements, Harris’s campaign has summarily confirmed that she no longer believes any of that. Why not? Because she doesn’t, that’s why. What is this, the Spanish Inquisition?