But what does Harris mean by “freedom”? She has elaborated on it in some campaign speeches. (It should be noted that Harris hasn’t actually given many campaign speeches, even though the campaign is now in its final stretch, because she started so late, after a secretive group of Democratic power brokers pushed President Joe Biden out of the race.) By “freedom,” Harris does not mean the basic rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights, such as freedom of speech, religion, the press, and assembly. When Harris says “freedom,” she means the freedom for people to experience the priority items on the Democratic Party agenda. 

The first freedom on Harris’s list is what she calls “reproductive freedom,” by which she means the freedom for women to have an abortion. Abortion, which Democrats view as perhaps their strongest issue in the 2024 election, is always at the top of Harris’s definition of freedom. In her speeches, she combines that with four other freedoms she seeks to achieve, or impose, if she becomes president of the United States. “In this election, many other fundamental freedoms are at stake,” Harris said in her speech accepting the nomination at the Democratic National Convention. They are, in Harris’s words:

1. “The freedom to live safe from gun violence in our schools, communities, and places of worship.”
   
2. “The freedom to love who you love openly and with pride.”
   
3. “The freedom to breathe clean air and drink clean water and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis.”
   
4. “The freedom that unlocks all the others, the freedom to vote.”

“As generations of Americans before us who led the fight for freedom, the baton is now in our hands,” Harris said at an Aug. 19 campaign appearance in Milwaukee. “We carry the baton. We carry the baton.”

What to make of Harris’s list of freedoms? Making abortion the first freedom is clearly in line with the Democratic Party’s 2024 electoral strategy. It’s an issue that has an almost sacred place in the party, and it is also an issue on which Harris has been entirely consistent over the years. 

By citing freedom from gun violence, Harris signals her approval of a list of Democratic gun control measures, including mandatory gun buybacks, which Republicans call gun confiscation. The next freedom, “to love who you love openly and with pride,” is another Democratic shibboleth, although it is not a freedom denied to anyone in the U.S. today. Then, the environmental freedom pledge includes the freedom to “live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis,” which could mean anything. And that leads to Harris’s final freedom, the freedom to vote.

When Harris mentions the freedom to vote, which is certainly a cherished freedom in the U.S., what she means is this: “With this election, we finally have the opportunity to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the Freedom to Vote Act.” Those are two bills Democrats have long been trying to pass that would federalize and restructure elections under terms favorable to Democratic candidates. Passing the two bills is the current Democratic definition of “the freedom to vote.”

So that is the Harris “freedom” platform. With the exception of abortion, in which Democrats seek to allow any woman to have an abortion at any time in a pregnancy, the listed freedoms don’t add any freedom at all. Indeed, some, such as the freedom to “live free from the pollution fuels the climate crisis,” could lead to the curtailment of freedoms people enjoy.

In the end, when Harris talks about “freedom,” she means giving people the freedom to live under the Democratic policy agenda. Of course, millions of voters would choose otherwise. That is what the election is about.