At the presidential debate and on the campaign trail, Kamala Harris has hardly sounded like the Marxist or the Communist that Donald Trump has accused her of being. She hasn’t even sounded particularly progressive. At various times, she has said that she backs fracking, taunted Mr. Trump for his weakness in the face of dictators and bragged about owning a gun — going so far as to tell Oprah Winfrey, “if someone breaks in my house, they’re getting shot.”
What she has been doing is a ruthlessly effective example of vice signaling from the left: deviating in memorable ways from the “virtue signaling” that has come to define Democrats in the eyes of many Americans. “Virtue” and “vice” here are not to be taken literally. Rather, they refer to the world as seen through the rigid beliefs and commitments of college-educated whites, a narrow yet influential slice of the Democratic coalition whose views of what constitutes virtue are not necessarily shared by most Americans and who police any deviations as vice. Yet it is precisely those breaks from the fold that signal something powerful to the average voter.
Vice signaling is not just a tactic, but a way to resolve a paradox that has dogged Democrats for a decade: Many Democratic policy positions are popular, but when it comes to ideology, most American voters feel closer to Republicans. President Biden pursued and enacted popular policies, yet his approval ratings have been historically low. Asked to place themselves on an ideological scale, more Americans see Mr. Biden as too liberal than see Mr. Trump as too conservative. Nor is this tendency isolated to Mr. Biden: More Americans place themselves closer to Mr. Trump than to Ms. Harris on ideology, and in 2016, voters saw Mr. Trump as more moderate than Hillary Clinton.
The reason is that despite embracing many popular policies, Democrats have fallen out of step with the American people on something larger: their approach to the world. Americans are mavericks, yet Democrats have come to be seen as rigid, a party defined by lawn signs that tell passers-by not to bother approaching unless they agree on a litany of issues — the orthodox party in a heterodox country. To win, Ms. Harris will need to ignore calls to return to the orthodox fold and continue signaling strategic breaks from it.
Vice signaling means courting healthy public controversy with the enforcers of orthodoxy — the members of interest groups who on many critical issues have let themselves off the hook for accurately representing the views and interests of those they claim to speak for. This tack is not to be confused with what is known in politics as a “Sister Souljah moment,” a repudiation of a part of one’s own coalition. Vice signaling is more flexible because the goal is not to put down any specific interest or cause but rather to show that you are someone whom people can talk to and not worry about feeling judged.
The version Ms. Harris should embrace is distinct from the one some on the right have developed, which embraces cruelty and disdain toward liberal social norms and provokes outrage pell-mell for the sole purpose of “owning the libs.” It shows that someone will govern for all Americans, not just the hypereducated. It doesn’t even have to be about issues — it can be about drinking, popping a nicotine pouch or letting your kids have too much screen time and eat McDonald’s.
