Kamala Harris takes on the economy by speaking directly to voters' concerns!

August 17, 2024

For the first seven months of 2024, the Biden-Harris administration made steady progress against inflation, boosted employment to record levels, and invested hundreds of billions in state and local infrastructure, manufacturing, and clean energy production. The US economy was the envy of the world. The World Bank credited the “exceptional recovery” in the US for “powering” a global recovery after the Covid pandemic. See, e.g., The Hill (6/11/24), World Bank: ‘Impressive’ US economy is powering the world.

The chart below shows that the Biden-Harris administration was more successful than any other country in taming inflation after Covid:

Although the above chart cuts off in June 2023, US inflation continued to decrease in the ensuing year.

Despite the US economy's strong performance, voters “felt bad” about the state of the economy. Indeed, a sizable portion of the electorate incorrectly believed that the US was in a recession. (It was not and is not.)

Efforts by Biden supporters (like me) to promote the successes of the Biden-Harris administration resulted in rebukes ranging from, “Don’t tell voters how to feel . . . .” and “But the price of groceries . . . .”

I heard the latter phrase so many times from readers that I gave up engaging in discussions about the economy. I surrendered to the zeitgeist that the economy is a “feeling” that cannot be changed by pointing to traditional performance metrics.

On Friday, Kamala Harris demonstrated that she understands the frustration among voters that I (and others) failed to grasp. Rather than pointing to charts (like the above), she came out swinging with a populist economic agenda greeted with rave reviews from voters.

First, if you have time, please listen to Kamala Harris unveil her plan during a speech in Raleigh, North Carolina. See YouTube, Campaign Event in Raleigh, North Carolina with Vice President Kamala Harris. With each appearance, she is becoming more confident, more at ease, and more positive in her delivery. It will be 30 minutes well-spent over the weekend.

Kamala Harris proposed a series of initiatives to do the following:

• Increase the child tax credit.

• Increase the earned income tax credit for wage earners without children.

• Prohibit price gouging in food supplies.

• Subsidize down payments for first-time buyers.

• Decrease the cost of prescription drugs.

As she has for the first three weeks of her campaign, Kamala Harris circumvented the consulting class, pundits, and the media—all of whom howled in protest at her swing-for-the-fences proposals that speak directly to voters’ concerns about how the “economy” affects them.

Your weekend assignment is to understand what Kamala Harris did—and DID NOT—propose. The blogosphere immediately went into overdrive, mischaracterizing V.P. Harris’s proposals. Let’s get this out of the way: She did not propose “price controls.” She did not propose to give every homebuyer a $25,000 subsidy. She did not propose a “Soviet-style economy.”

The Harris-Walz press release with the proposals is here: Vice President Harris Lays Out Agenda To Lower Costs for American Families. I strongly urge you to read this four-page document so that you can inoculate yourself and others to the disinformation being circulated on the internet.

Here are some of the high points:

Cutting taxes on the middle class

• Grant a $6,000 tax credit to parents of newborns in their first year and increase the child tax credit to $3,600 per child (two through five) and $3,000 thereafter.

• Increase the earned income tax credit to $1,500.

• The above provisions would cut taxes for 100 million Americans!

Grocery prices

• Advance the first-ever federal ban on price gouging on food and groceries. (Because there is no federal ban on price gouging, Trump issued an executive order prohibiting price gouging during the Covid pandemic. See below.)

• Set clear rules of the road to ensure that big corporations can’t unfairly exploit consumers to make excessive profits on food and groceries.

• Secure new authority for the FTC and state attorneys general to investigate and impose strict new penalties on companies that break the rules.

• NOTE: Missing from the above is any proposal to “set prices” or “establish price controls.” The proposal would set guidelines against “price gouging” and then empower the FTC and state attorneys general to enforce that ban. Bans against price gouging are not uncommon and were enforced during the Covid pandemic by the federal government—and the economy not only survived but thrived. See Trump’s bloviating executive order issued in March, 2020: President Donald J. Trump Will Not Tolerate the Price Gouging and Hoarding of Critical Supplies Needed to Combat the Coronavirus – The White House (archives.gov)

• NOTE ALSO: Thirty-seven states already have statutes prohibiting price gouging (many are limited to times of emergency, others are not.) See National Conference of State Legislatures, Price Gouging State Statutes. The states with anti-price gouging statutes include Florida and Ohio—the respective residences of Trump and JD Vance.

Lowering the Costs of Prescription Drugs and Relieving Medical Debt

• Cap the cost of insulin at $35 and out-of-pocket expenses for prescription drugs at $2,000 for everyone, not just seniors.

• Accelerate the speed of Medicare negotiations over prescription drugs.

• Remove medical debt from credit reports.

• Use American Rescue Plan funds to cancel $7 billion of medical debt for up to 3 million Americans.

Home ownership and building new homes and rental units

• Provide $25,000 assistance to first-time home buyers who have paid rent on-time for the previous two years.

• Provide tax incentives to builders to build “starter homes” rather than McMansions

• Stop Wall Street Investors from Buying Up and Marking Up Homes in Bulk.

There is a lot more in Kamala Harris’s proposals, so I again urge you to read the four-page summary for yourself.

Now, before we turn to the criticisms by pundits, the media, and Trump, let’s compare the above plans to Trump’s only two proposals to “fix” the economy:

• Extend existing Trump tax cuts that disproportionately favor the top 5% of taxpayers. See Trump tax cuts: Top 5% of taxpayers would get nearly half the benefit if extended | CNN Politics

• Impose a 10% tariff on imports—that would immediately raise the prices of many consumer goods by 10% (at least). Economists are universally aghast at this proposal. See Fortune, Trump’s promised tariffs could spark trade war, inflation, expert warns.

Here is the summary of the reaction from the pundit class, media, and Trump: They didn’t like it. But because the proposals are populist without being reactionary, the chattering class was forced to make up silly, easily disprovable reasons for not liking her proposals. Here are some of those reasons:

• “They are lacking in detail.” (Give me a break! The level of detail is completely consistent with campaign proposals. Looking at you, NYT and WaPo.)

• “The down-payment subsidy will raise home prices by $25,000 across the board.” Wrong! This argument is so silly it hardly deserves a response. However, the proposal would only subsidize a small subset of homebuyers. Home prices are set in a competitive market; sellers have to compete for buyers; other factors such as housing supply, interest rates, and foreign wealth funds purchasing all available housing have a much more significant impact.

• The proposal calls for “price controls.” It does not. It prohibits price gouging, which thirty-seven states already prohibit.

• “The proposal will provide $25,000 down payments to “illegal aliens”—per JD Vance.” Wrong! JD Vance hasn’t read the proposal. It says no such thing.

• “Kamala Harris is a socialist or a communist—we are just not sure which one she is or why communists are different than socialists.” Ignorance and stupidity.

Do you disagree with some or all of Kamala Harris’s proposal? No worries! Every provision will need legislation to make it happen. There will be plenty of time to negotiate the details.

But here is the most important point about Kamala Harris’s proposals: She is speaking directly to the voters. And she isn’t pointing to charts or talking about the past. She is talking about “charting a new way forward” for America. We should expect to see that slogan featured prominently at the Democratic National Convention.

Indeed, she closed her speech with the phrase— “Now is the time to chart a new way forward.” She is looking forward to a better future for Americans. That is a winning message—especially when her competitor predicts “American carnage” and a global recession.

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Opportunities for Reader Engagement

New date for the event with Jessica Morse!

The date for the event with Jessica Morse (which was August 20) conflicted with the Democratic National Convention. So, the event will be rescheduled to the following week. Please stand by for further details!

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Force for Democracy this Sunday!

I frequently recommend events sponsored by Force for Democracy—and readers frequently give me rave reviews of those events. If you have a free moment on Sunday, check out the latest information session:

Join Focus for Democracy this Sunday to discover how your political contributions can drive real change and boost voter turnout. We’ll showcase two innovative programs that use data and testing to increase voter registration. 

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how your support can make an effective impact.

Sunday, August 18th

5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern

Registration link: https://bit.ly/F4D18Aug

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Trump’s comments on the Medal of Honor

One note about Trump’s speech in which he appeared to diminish and demean the Medal of Honor compared to the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Trump said, that the Presidential Medal of Freedom is

“actually much better because everyone gets the congressional Medal of Honor, that’s soldiers, they’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead. She gets it, and she’s a healthy beautiful woman. And they’re rated equal. But she got the Presidential Medal of Freedom.”

Veterans’ groups have roundly condemned Trump’s comments as “asinine” and “crass.” Trump’s apologists have already started claiming that he didn’t say what he said, but if he did, he didn’t mean what he said, but even if he meant what he said, Kamala Harris is a communist.

The real scandal began before Trump made his asinine, crass statement. The scandal began when Trump gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Miriam Adelson (in 2018) merely because her late husband donated more than $100 million to Trump’s 2016 campaign. Whatever the Presidential Medal of Freedom represents, it shouldn’t be a “Thank you” gift to political donors. That’s the scandal.

President Biden awarded Medals of Freedom to 17 recipients, including:

• Sandra Lindsay, the first American to receive the Covid vaccine outside of a clinal trial;

• Simone Biles, Olympic champion gymnast;

• Diane Nash, civil rights activist who worked with Martin Luther King and is a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee;

• John McCain, (posthumously), US Senator, military pilot, prisoner of war in Vietnam.

Concluding Thoughts

Kamala Harris and her campaign team “get it.” Even if you don’t agree with everything she has proposed, she directly addresses voters' feelings about the economy's unfairness to working Americans. After being on the defensive for more than a year on economic issues, Kamala Harris is playing offense. She is running a great campaign (so far)—to the irritation of the media and the befuddlement of the Trump campaign. Keep up the good work, Kamala Harris!

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The photograph below is of the Bubble Nebula, which is estimated to be 11,000 light years from Earth and has a diameter of 5 light-years. The “bubble” is created by a young, hot star in the center of a gas cloud. Stellar winds from the star blow outward, creating a “bubble” around the star.

Although the image is pleasing, it is a “fail” in my view. Standard references and photographs by other astronomers show the central bubble as blue. My photo did not pick up any blue. Oh, well! Add another observing session to my list for a second attempt at the Bubble Nebula.