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August 16, 2024 - 7:30pm
Today Kamala Harris released her plan to, in the words of her campaign, “bring down costs for American families”. The campaign claims that it will alleviate the “sharpest pain points” of an economy that has been running too hot for too long but could now be cooling into a damaging recession.
The plan is strategically inoffensive; it is a signal to the bipartisan establishment, which spans from Mitt Romney to Elizabeth Warren, that there is nothing to fear. And although her Republican rival Donald Trump said that Harris was a “communist”, her proposals — tax incentives for homebuilders, down payment assistance, cheaper medicine — are hardly radical.
Harris has enjoyed a stretch of uncommonly good luck since President Joe Biden announced that he was no longer planning to seek re-election, with a Democratic challenger never materialising. Memes deployed to torment Harris — the coconut tree, the Venn diagrams, “unburdened by what has been” — flipped instantly into fandom. Her husband, Doug Emhoff, emerged as “the internet’s newest boyfriend”. Meanwhile, Tim Walz, the Minnesota Governor whom she picked as her running mate, became an unlikely Gen Z darling.
That is why Harris does not feel the need to take any risks with her policy platform. When she was a candidate in 2019, she proposed a Medicare-for-all policy that was, the pundits declared, too radical for many moderate Americans. She was eventually forced to moderate her position on healthcare, but the political damage had been done. And a lesson had been learned.
Something deeper is at work, too, which signals a shrinkage of our political imagination. Universal healthcare was proposed by Richard Nixon and, later, by the Heritage Foundation, whose plans were put into place by Romney, then the Republican Governor of Massachusetts. But now, Democratic fears of a second Trump term have put all major policy questions to the side. If the future of American democracy is on the line, as this way of thinking goes, who could possibly care what Harris thinks about the estate tax? One could argue that if the US postwar economy had not dispossessed so many Americans, there would have been no rationale for Trump in the first place, but that’s another conversation.
The most meaningful criticism of Harris’s economic plans came from Catherine Rampell, the economics columnist for the Washington Post, who compared the Vice President’s proposal to lower grocery costs by cracking down on price-gouging to the worst excesses of “communist” central planning. “It’s hard to exaggerate how bad Kamala Harris’s price-gouging proposal is,” Rampell wrote.
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SubscribeDescribing Kamala Harris as a communist clearly demonstrates just how ignorant Donald Trump is.
I’m not surprised that the far right has chosen a personality-cult demagogue to be their god king. I’m just a bit surprised that you chose one as ridiculous as Trump.
He could have just called her a 12 yr old whose been given 10 grand in cash and no control on how she spends it
Brentwood branch of CPUSA.
“chosen a personality-cult demagogue”
I could make a dozen different Trump policy items that Trump voters support – lack of aggressive wars, sensible energy policy and proper border controls to name a few.
What do you support? Someone who flipped her “race” for convenience, slept with someone to rise to the top, bungled the southern border, and whose main “policy” bullet points are abortion till birth, DEI, “global warming” and pride month?
I like Harris’ policy of not taxing hospitality workers’ tips. That is a good one.
Do you know she copied the idea after Trump proposed it?
Oh, did she? Well, I don’t like the policy any more then!
The liberal media chose Trump in the lead-up to the 2016 elections because they thought he was least likely of all the Republican candidates to defeat the old hag Hillary Clinton. They saw him as a gift, gave his ridiculous antics massive non-stop free coverage, and conspicuously ignored the other far more reasonable Republican candidates who they perceived as the true threats. It back fired massively leaving moderate and centrist Americans as political orphans for three election cycles now. He exasperates liberals like you because, as a foolish straw man, he should be easy to beat; however, he keeps defying their best efforts in and out of elections. The Democratic alternatives put forward are so horrid that this cartoon character Trump gives them a run for the money. Harris will likely be spun into office on no merits greater than being “not Trump” but God help the Democrats when Trump gives up or dies.
BTW you, who characterizes people who disagree with you so harshly, are reliably one of the least informed posters on this outlet. Are you even sober when you “compose” this stuff?
Sobriety is hardly a requirement to appear well informed in this company, slick.
I’m not sure that Trump has defied anyone’s expectations. He won in 2016 due to the vagaries of the ludicrous US electoral system – the “hag” Clinton won several million more votes than him. He lost in a historic landslide to Joe Biden in 2020 and god bless him but Biden is no-one’s idea of a particularly strong candidate. The two mid-terms when Trump was nominal leader of the Republicans were disasters for the GOP. And he is about to lose in another landslide which is why you guys are all wigging out right now.
Republicans have only won the majority in one presidential election since 1988. Demographics are against you as you age out and are replaced by a younger population, more diverse and liberal.
Face it, old timer, you guys are done. Trump will be a punchline in the future – well, he already is – and people like you will be in the seniors home wondering when dinner is going to be served!
I am not a Trump supporter and nothing I wrote indicates that I am, which demonstrates to me that you are an idiot. Do us all a favor, grab your lotion, Kleenex and Cialis, log onto your favorite porn site and do what you do best. Commentary is not your strong point.
Point of order: it is possible to do those things AND comment on UnHerd if you have dual screens.
Especially, taking into consideration that we all have two hands. Or is this ableism?
The one-handed typing is the challenge.
Point taken 🙂
The beauty about the 2020 election is that Biden won by exactly the same electoral college margin as Trump did in 2016. Given that Trump described 2016 as a “landslide”, 2020 must have been too.
He certainly defied Clinton’s expectations. She was so stunned by her loss she ignored her supporters and went home.
“The two mid-terms when Trump was nominal leader of the Republicans were disasters for the GOP.”
You mean, the 2022 midterms when the Dems funded wacko Republican candidates that they could then turn around and easily defeat?
It was a clever Dem strategy, to be sure, but not exactly a resounding referendum on Trump *policies*.
(At five o’clock.)
We shall see in November. So we have a bad streak since H.W. Bush. Except you need to check your facts. G.W. Bush won the popular vote in 2004. Can you imagine if Gore was elected in 2000?
The funny thing with the 2016 election is that had the Democrats chosen a candidate who was even remotely plausible (namely anyone but Hillary), they would have won. In that sense, I think the Democrats created “Trump as Politician”.
I guess god kings are in short supply, and you have to take who you can get.
So much for climate change being greatest existential threat of our time. She doesn’t care. We know Trump doesn’t.
As a Democrat, she has to pay lip service to climate change, but she doesn’t actually have to do anything about it beyond a bit of greenwashing.
Stage 1 price controls on food. Stage 2 bread lines.
To anyone paying attention since 2008, Democratic U.S. presidents are not “leaders” in any sense except ceremonial. They do not bring personally-curated policy blueprints to office in the style of Andrew Jackson, James Madison, either of the Roosevelts, or even Reagan. Their agenda is always and only personal advancement and access; access not to power but to its trappings, to those who truly wield it, and to the exclusive world they inhabit. They are only the malleable face of the powerful and wealthy liberal establishment that puts them in office. They all show up as candidates with meager assets and all leave office miraculously transformed into multimillionaires with mansions in DC, vacation estates on Marth’s Vineyard, and foundations endowed by global billionaires. The Biden dementia that confirmed this was like the little dog, Toto, who pulled back the curtain on The Great and Powerful Oz. Kamala Harris will ride a half a billion dollar sophisticated PR spin job into office and make history for being the first woman president of the U.S., but that’s it. What you see is just illusion; what you’ll get is what the liberal establishment (academia, media, globalist business) wants.
I blame television.
My mother always called it the b**b tube. The last time I went to the mall (I had no choice) I saw strollers with little screens built right into them.
Very damn true, took the words out of my mouth.
Succinct and well-stated.
Two parties, representing two sets of oligarchs, need only one thing: 270 electoral votes. By any means necessary. With an electorate split about 50/50 (THAT is what needs explaining!) the smart moves are risk-averse sops to the possibly undecided, so as to augment respective bases toward that 270.
It is a big change since Ronald Reagan won 44 States in 1980, and 49 States in 1984.
As much as I despise Kamala Harris, It’s a somewhat reasonable strategy, because Trumps repellent personality and self-destructive nature never makes it easy for himself and always makes things harder even when it’s avoidable. Trump is own worst enemy. Reason why she’s probably taking this approach because Kamala herself is not very charismatic and also very repellent In her passive aggressive and disingenuous middle manager kind of way. Both sides are trying to make the other side look worse than themselves because they can’t make themselves look better than each other. Neither of them are worthy of being president let alone have any substantial of any sort sort.
The “Why should you vote for me? Because I’m not Donald Trump, that’s why!” line seems to be working for Harris.
Why are YOU such a virtuous individual, that you sit in judgement with such ease and spew vitriol against your fellow man?
Policy is thin because conviction is absolutely lacking. She comes across as a middle manager in HR, keen to avoid debate, fearful of conflict, even thought. Maybe that’s what everyone wants but don’t expect anything at all from her administration and pray to God there isn’t a crisis while she holds the office of leader of 330 million souls.
The more Progressive the candidate, the less of their actual agenda you are permitted to hear.
Of course is WaPo critical. It is owned by Jeff Bezos. Price controls on groceries can easily be extended to clothing, books, laptops and Christmas decorations. Economic growth will be dazzling by the growth of public functionaries who set the rules for the economic production and the chocolate rations. So much opportunities for a true DEI hiring policy. Go for it, Kamala. Xi just wetted his pants again.
Like Biden, no news is good news for voters. Take no risks, provide no new information to voters and the media. I would rather have Trump, at least I know what he is thinking.
Doesn’t that last bit worry you? I mean, he seems to spend a bit of time thinking about Hannibal Lecter.
The Harris campaign is giving no interviews for an infinitely more obvious of reasons: Harris can’t suffer an interview and win at the same time. Her only hope is to cross her fingers and hide.
She is having quite large rallies. That is not really “hiding”. Plus, she has been in the national public domain for almost four years as VP.
“Uncertainty” of a second Trump term? The first Trump term had a booming economy, no foreign wars, and a secure border. If this is “uncertainty”, I’ll have seconds, please! 🙂