Washington, DC – Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to the Democratic National Convention next week on the tailwinds of endorsements from major progressive organisations — a nod to the party unity she has inspired.

But that marks a shift for Harris, who has not always enjoyed a cosy relationship with the progressive wing of her party.

Still, many progressives see Harris’s candidacy in the 2024 presidential race as an opportunity to chart a more leftward course for the White House.

“Vice President Kamala Harris has a unique relationship with the progressive movement,” said William Walter, the executive director of Our Wisconsin Revolution, a battleground state organisation that pledges to “stand for progressive principles”.

Walter told Al Jazeera that Harris is no progressive dreamboat: She has struggled to convey the same authenticity and clarity of message as progressive icons like Bernie Sanders.

“But a lot of progressives recognise that democracy is quite literally on the ballot this November,” he said, referencing the threat he perceives in Harris’s Republican rival, former President Donald Trump.

The first step, Walter explained, is to stop Trump from retaking the White House.

“Once we prevent that, I think that’s when the real work begins. That’s when we need to start pressuring the Democratic Party to expand into the working-class-centred party that we have been in the past.”

‘People-first presidency’

Harris’s meteoric rise as the Democratic nominee has been unorthodox, to say the least.

In late July, her boss, President Joe Biden, abruptly withdrew from the presidential race and threw his support behind Harris instead.

Biden — seen as a centrist — had been courting middle-ground voters in the months before his exit. But when Harris took over the Democratic ticket, her campaign went in a different direction, embracing a distinctly populist angle.

On Friday, for instance, she unveiled a sweeping economic plan aimed at “lowering costs for American families”, including through the elimination of medical debt for many Americans and bans on “price gouging” for groceries.

The policy proposals also featured subsidies for first-time homebuyers and a $6,000 tax credit for families of newborns, covering the first year of a child’s life.

Harris also adopted Trump’s proposal to eliminate the federal tax on tips, an idea popular with service industry workers. Her campaign has played up her history working at the fast-food chain McDonald’s, as a symbol of her middle-class roots.

In her first campaign speech, Harris flashed a populist streak. “Because we are a people-powered campaign,” she said, “that is how you know we will be a people-first presidency.”

She has pledged to champion progressive priorities, including affordable housing, increased access to childcare and paid family leave.

But even as she has been embraced by progressive leaders, Harris has moved to the centre on other issues.

For example, when she first ran for the presidency in 2019, she supported Sanders’s Medicare for All legislation, which would have established a “single-payer system” and done away with private insurers.

This year, however, her campaign has said she will not support a single-payer system and will focus instead on other mechanisms for lowering healthcare costs.

And despite plans to address climate change — another progressive priority — Harris has baulked at supporting a ban on fracking, a controversial method of extracting oil and natural gas.