Judge Glock: Kamalanomics The presumptive presidential nominee is no moderate.

While Joe Biden campaigned as a moderate, he has governed as one of the most progressive presidents in modern American history. In 2020, Biden sought to distance himself from self-declared socialist Bernie Sanders; after Biden as president pursued massive stimulus and spending programs, Sanders became one of his biggest supporters.

Now that Biden has announced that he will not pursue reelection, the Democratic nomination will likely fall to his vice president, Kamala Harris. While Harris may campaign as a moderate, analysis of her economic record does not support that label.

In her time in the Senate, Harris positioned herself on the far left of a Democratic Party already moving sharply to the left. According to DW-NOMINATE, a measure that compares the votes of senators and representatives and ranks members from -1 (most liberal) to 1 (most conservative) Harris was the second-most liberal member of the Senate when she served from 2017 to 2021, behind only Elizabeth Warren. In fact, her overall voting record is more liberal than that of Bernie Sanders. Though it is difficult to compare members across time, Harris’s score (-0.709), which is based largely on economic votes, ranks among the more left-wing in American history.

Harris’s senatorial record differs starkly from that of her boss. While Biden shifted left on entering the White House, he remained a moderate across his nearly four-decade Senate career. His approximate -0.3 DW-NOMINATE score put him close to the middle of his party throughout his time in the upper chamber.