Has Kamala Harris Been Hijacked by the DSA or Has the Progressive Mask Finally Slipped?

Former Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Nashville this week for the National Urban League’s annual conference and, in a discussion that was supposed to focus on racial justice, economic opportunity, and “defending democracy,” delivered a remarkably candid preview of the institutional wrecking ball she is prepared to swing if Democrats regain power.

Speaking to the civil-rights organization on July 31, Harris declared it was time to “revisit” the Electoral College, expand the Supreme Court to 13 justices “like we have 13 district courts,” and pursue statehood for both Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico—positions she framed as merely “controversial coming from me, in particular.” 

She paired the radical laundry list with a call for Democrats to match their opponents’ “ruthlessness” (while carefully disclaiming cruelty or law-breaking) and to use Senate Judiciary Committee rules to sidestep the filibuster once they retake the chamber:

They are ruthless. We need to be ruthless, too. And by that, I do not mean cruel. That is not our nature. By that I do not mean breaking the law. That is not what we do. But I do mean we must be uncompromising. And we must allow for a real conversation about revisiting certain things. For example, and I know this is going to be controversial coming from me, in particular, we need to revisit the Electoral College. We need to revisit the point of expanding the court to 13 justices like we have 13 district courts. We need to revisit, if they so want, statehood for Puerto Rico and D.C. … If we regain control of the Senate … the Senate Judiciary Committee has the power to create rules for its committee that don’t have to go to the whole Senate for a vote and worry about filibuster and all of that.

The mask did not so much slip as fall clean off—or was it never firmly in place?

These are not the moderate, “unity”-branded talking points of the 2024 Harris campaign that lost both the popular vote and the Electoral College. They are the precise structural demands long championed by the Democratic Socialists of America and the party’s activist left: scrap the constitutional mechanism that forces presidential candidates to build broad geographic coalitions, pack the nation’s highest court to guarantee preferred outcomes, and create two new reliably Democratic states that would satiate their lust for absolute power. 

Socialist ideas have deep roots in the modern Democratic Party, but they were long disguised under the gentler banner of “progressivism”—a term that functioned as little more than a euphemism for socialism when the S-word itself was still politically toxic. 

That camouflage covered major expansions of government power, including the push for nationalized healthcare that culminated in Obamacare. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor was an outright lie, as was the affordability of the Affordable Care Act. 

Only the recent rise of the Democratic Socialists of America has given progressive candidates and elected officials the confidence to speak the language of socialism without apology.

Harris’s willingness to float abolishing or gutting the Electoral College after her own defeat is especially revealing. The system she now wants to “revisit” is the same one that has, for more than two centuries, prevented pure coastal majoritarianism from dictating national leadership. 

DSA’s platform is explicit on the point: replace the Electoral College with a national popular vote. Court expansion to 13 has been a progressive hobbyhorse for years precisely because it would allow a future Democratic president and Senate to dilute the current 6-3 conservative majority. Statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico has always been about cementing power, not abstract self-determination.

Should Democrats ever again wield the full levers of power, they would waste no time abolishing the Senate filibuster itself to force through this constitutional overhaul. That stands in sharp contrast to Republican leaders such as Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who have steadfastly refused to eliminate the filibuster even to pass the SAVE Act to safeguard the Republic.

California voters who watched Harris’s rapid rise and equally rapid collapse in 2024 should take note. The same political class that gave us one-party dominance, runaway housing costs, rampant crime, increasing homeless encampments, massive fraud, and an endless array of failed progressive experiments is now watching its national “Black” figurehead openly endorse the dismantling of constitutional guardrails. 

When Harris tells an Urban League audience that Democrats must be “uncompromising,” “ruthless,”and creative about rewriting the rules of the game, she is not speaking as a caretaker of institutions. As she weighs a 2028 run, she is either being hijacked by the DSA—or simply revealing that the progressive mask has finally slipped.

The full video of the remarks is circulating; the quotes are not in dispute. Harris can claim she is merely opening a “conversation.” Voters should treat the conversation as a warning.