Kamala Harris, long considered a “rising star” among the far-left, has been abruptly stripped of an endorsement by The Nation, the storied leftist news outlet with deep historical ties to progressive causes.
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. It was founded on July 6, 1865, making it one of the longest-running publications in American history.
On September 23, The Nation endorsed Kamala, hailing her as a “visionary” leader with an admirable domestic agenda. But the endorsement’s optimistic tone quickly turned sour.
The leftist publication wrote at the time:
We also endorse Harris in her own right, as an experienced and capable leader with a vision for America’s future that—while not as progressive as we might prefer, particularly when it comes to foreign policy—represents a clear advance on the Democratic presidential nominees of the past half-century.
In her selection of a progressive governor, Minnesota’s Tim Walz, Harris also demonstrates an awareness of the need not merely to build on the many successes of the Biden-Harris administration but to go farther in the pursuit of economic, social, and racial justice—and the preservation of our planet.
Just weeks later, discontented editorial interns —yes, interns—at the magazine published an open letter in a blistering article.
“The Biden administration’s action, and inaction, in Gaza—and her support for those policies—should have been enough to disqualify her,” according to the website.
The Nation interns have penned a searing critique of Kamala, accusing her of complicity in policies that they claim “promote genocide.”
They slam her domestic agenda as hypocritical, insisting her talk of healthcare and housing rings hollow as crises escalate abroad.
Kamala’s so-called “sunny domestic proposals,” they say, are smoke and mirrors, ignoring the international devastation they believe her policies support.
The Nation reported:
We, The Nation’s current interns, find this endorsement unearned and disappointing. We have a different interpretation of the magazine’s abolitionist legacy, one that says a publication committed to justice must refrain from endorsing a person signing off on genocide.
We do not support Donald Trump, but to champion Harris at this moment is to ignore the atrocities that are being carried out with weapons supplied by the Biden-Harris administration.
The Nation’s endorsement notes that on foreign policy the “positive case [for Harris] is harder to make,” adding that “she has failed so far to offer anything more substantive to the millions of Americans…desperate for an end to America’s unconditional support for Israel’s brutal war on Gaza.” Yet it goes on to endorse her anyway—implying that domestic concerns are somehow more important. We disagree. On the grounds of Gaza alone, Harris should not have received The Nation’s endorsement.
In the 12 weeks since she effectively became the Democratic nominee, Harris has failed to differentiate her policies from Joe Biden’s blank-check support for genocide. Instead, she repeats the same bland pronouncements about the need for a ceasefire and uses the same passive-voice support for the idea of Palestinian “freedom and self-determination.”
Again and again, she has been asked by Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim voters, along with a broad coalition of Democrats of conscience, to offer an alternative, and again and again she has refused. She would not even allow a pre-vetted Palestinian supporter of hers to speak at theDemocratic National Convention.
We also struggle with the idea that Harris’s domestic agenda can offset the suffering her policies will inflict abroad. As we map even her sunniest domestic proposals against the contours of her foreign-policy program, we remember James Baldwin, a Nation Editorial Board member, who said, “Every bombed village is my hometown.”
The Nation’s retraction adds to a growing list of left-leaning publications expressing dissatisfaction with Harris.
Earlier, outlets like The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times declined to endorse her candidacy.
The backlash is real, and with polls slipping, Harris’s path to the White House might just be hitting the ultimate detour.
