Explained.
The Pragmatist vs The Progressive.
The Pragmatist:
Ms. Harris staked her campaign on winning over black voters in the key primary state of South Carolina. But as Astead Herndon and Susan Chira have reported in The Times, many older black voters there have thrown their weight behind Joe Biden, partly out of a sense of political pragmatism about what white swing voters will accept.
“Within South Carolina, within the African-American community, we don’t want to take a chance on someone that doesn’t have a chance of beating Trump,” a 58-year-old voter told Mr. Herndon last month. (To what extent “electability" coverage has worked not just to describe but also produce such attitudes, it’s difficult to say.)
The Progressive.
For many younger black South Carolinians, Ms. Harris’s identity was not a deciding factor. Rather, Mr. Herndon reported, “black voters have largely flocked to Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren over the race’s black candidates, because their left-wing promises to upend systemic racism and radically reform the economy are much more in line with the language of activism that emerged after the Black Lives Matter movement during Mr. Obama’s presidency.”
In The Guardian, Derecka Purnell explained:
Progressive people of color rejected the idea that Harris could secure their hearts and votes solely because she is a woman of color. Running for office while at the intersection of many identities is not salvific. The activist generation that “voted for President Obama twice and still got tear gassed” during protests for black freedom felt viscerally the failures of identity politics in the streets, courts, and classrooms.
In The Guardian, Derecka Purnell explained:
Progressive people of color rejected the idea that Harris could secure their hearts and votes solely because she is a woman of color. Running for office while at the intersection of many identities is not salvific. The activist generation that “voted for President Obama twice and still got tear gassed” during protests for black freedom felt viscerally the failures of identity politics in the streets, courts, and classrooms.
Sen. Harris found herself caught between a rock and hard place in the space occupied by these two factions in the black block of the Democratic Party - a most important block that could determine the winner of the primary and the presidency.
