Harris and Walz are winning the economic policy argument
They're turning a Democratic weakness into a strength.
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For months, Trump campaign operatives have said they want their candidate to “stick to his economic policies.” Trump supporters have repeated that shibboleth even more lately as their candidate continues to shed the GOP’s typically large and reliable large polling advantage on economic issues.
Trump held a 12 point polling advantage over Biden on “the economy” in 2020 and had a lead of as high as 22 percent only months ago, but his lead over Harris on the economy may now only be five or six points and is likely still shrinking.
Contrary to the received wisdom, Trump’s problem is not that he speaks too little about his economic policies — it’s that his policies would be undeniably bad for the economy and for working Americans. And the more voters learn about what Trump is planning to do, the worse it is for him.
This intractable problem stands to become even more serious for Trump as voters learn more about Vice President Harris’s policies, which actually speak to the concerns and needs of working people and families.
Trump has been a clear and constant exponent of his economic program, which can be boiled down to three proposals. First, impose massive, and hugely inflationary, tariffs on imported goods, which will hit consumers directly in the pocketbook. Second, massively cut taxes, again, for the wealthy. And, finally, the mass round up of and deportation of immigrants, including those playing crucial roles in the growing economy.
Trump never hesitates to advocate this three pronged “economic policy” during his rallies, and as he did (over and over) yesterday during a two hour “speech” before the Detroit Economic Club. The problem is that — outside of the xenophobes who constitute his hardcore base and the mega-wealthy bankrolling his super PACs — Trump’s proposals hardly resonate as a prescription for making the American economy better for most Americans.
These are not new ideas, and they have already been political failures. Trump’s sole major economic legislative “success” during his presidency was passing a historically regressive tax cut bill that increased income inequality while ballooning the deficit. To the chagrin of the GOP, which was used to reaping political benefits from tax cuts, the public smelled a rat and punished Republicans at the polls in the 2018 midterms for Trump’s giveaway to the rich.
For many months of the current campaign, the politically problematic nature of Trump’s economic “program” was obscured by the focus on inflation. But as inflation has receded, Republicans increasingly have had to face the question of whether an economic policy that is substantially comprised of strategies that have failed politically before can be made into a winner by the “populist” Trump ticket.
While it may have escaped the notice of the mainstream press, the weakness of Trump’s economic policy proposals was on full display during the recent vice presidential debate between Tim Walz and JD Vance. Instead of defending the actual MAGA agenda during the debate, Vance sounded more like the champion of government intervention on behalf of the disenfranchised he claimed to be before his cynical conversion to the Trump cult.
Walz makes Vance sound like a Democrat
As detailed in an “opposition research” memo on JD Vance, during his prior life as a Never Trumper, Vance was a harsh critic of the tax bill and Trump’s nearly successful effort to gut the Affordable Care Act, both of which he described as betrayals of the working class. Vance predicted the GOP stood to pay a political price among the white working class voters whose support Trump has long assiduously cultivated.
While Tim Walz’s debate performance was derided by some pundits, they largely ignored the fact that the encounter between the candidates — which was actually highly on focused on policy, and particularly economic policy — was conducted almost entirely on Democratic policy turf.
The debate demonstrated that Vance still well understands how politically perilous Trump’s regressive economic program is, and his answer to the problem was to sound as much like a Democrat as possible. Vance’s “smooth” performance was largely focused on misleadingly suggesting that the GOP favors many of the same policy priorities as Kamala Harris.
For example, a large portion of the debate was devoted to the shortage and high cost of housing, a particular concern for younger and middle income Americans, and a problem Harris has placed at the center of her campaign agenda. Walz focused on Harris’s proposals, including providing targeted tax incentives for building affordable housing and mortgage assistance to first time buyers.
Vance wholly agreed with Walz about the problems of the high cost and unaffordability of housing, seeming to express a bleeding heart’s sympathy for the working class. But he then absurdly suggested that the nation’s housing problem can be solved by kicking immigrants out of their homes, deporting them, and building housing in “national parks.”
Vance also repeatedly talked about the need to “double down and invest in American workers,” again sounding rhetorically very much like a New Deal Democrat. But he offered no strategy for achieving that goal other than tariffs, drilling for more oil, tax cuts and, of course, mass deportation, as he had to, given that’s the only thing Trump is selling.
Walz, for his part, highlighted the bipartisan infrastructure bill that’s funding the rebuilding of roads and bridges throughout the Midwest — legislation that Trump and Vance vociferously opposed. He also discussed jobs being created by initiatives spurred by the Inflation Reduction and CHIPS and Science Acts. That put Vance in a box, as Trump favored deep cuts in science funding while he was in the White House and Vance himself opposed capital assistance for rebuilding the steel plant that his employed his grandfather, apparently because it involved cleaner technology.
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Vance’s rhetoric rang especially hollow on the issue he has been most holier than thou about: the economic challenges facing parents. When asked about the problem of childcare, Vance lamented the “incredible burden” placed on American families.
“We’re the only country that does it,” he said, before conceding that “we could do a heck of a lot better.”
Vance went on to celebrate the fact that his wife had paid family leave (she was a hugely compensated partner in a large law firm), but he then served up word salad when attempting to explain why Trump opposes requiring all workers to receive the same benefit.
“We want to promote choice in how we deliver family care and how we promote childcare because, look, it is unacceptable,” he said. “And, you know, of course, Tim and I have been on the campaign trail a lot the past seven or eight weeks. And one of the biggest complaints I hear from young families is people who feel like they don't have options, like they're choosing between going to work or taking care for their kids.”
Vance offered similar obfuscation when asked if Trump favors financial support for childcare or the expanded child tax credit Vance himself has been touting (the campaign has been unclear on Trump’s position).
Walz, by contrast, addressed the issue by speaking to what Harris and her party are for. He explained that Minnesota provided a child tax credit after the GOP allowed the expanded federal credit to expire, thereby helping to prevent children from falling back into poverty. He noted that Harris supports reinstituting the expanded federal tax credit (and indeed increasing it for low income families) and stressed that business leaders favor federal action to make childcare more available, which Harris is advocating. (Watch Walz’s full debate comments about paid leave below.)
After the debate, many pundits — most of whom clearly have little experience with college debate — said Vance “won on points,” presumably because he managed to sound sympathetic to the economic concerns of working Americans. But in fact, the opposite was true. Vance lost nearly every economic policy point in the debate and his “smooth” performance was largely devoted to making it appear that Trump supports popular policies to help working families that he and his party have consistently opposed.
In short, Vance’s success in making himself sound like a Democrat actually served only to highlight the emptiness of Trump’s economic prescriptions.
Trump wants to peddle hate, not discuss economic policy
The economic policy problem for the Trump campaign made evident by Vance’s debate performance is only becoming more obvious as we approach the final weeks of the campaign and the candidates spend more and more time in the industrial Midwest, which has been a singular focus of the Biden administration’s infrastructure and industrial development initiatives.
As Greg Sargent has detailed, Vance and Trump have been doubling down on their opposition to the hundreds of billions of dollars in tax credits, loans, and grants resulting from Biden/Harris initiatives, including the Inflation Reduction Act. Large portions of those funds are headed to the industrial Midwest, where thousands of new jobs are being created in clean energy manufacturing. Economic development of this sort is particularly crucial to the future of the Michigan-centered US automotive industry, which — as Trump himself acknowledges — is at risk of ceding electric automobile manufacturing (the undisputed future of the industry) to China.
The Detroit News revealed that some people seen wearing “Auto Workers for Trump” shirts behind Vance at a recent Michigan rally were not autoworkers. That episode served as a reminder of when Trump — a staunch opponent of organized labor who has boasted during recent speeches about stiffing employees who worked for him — held an event at a non-union plant during the UAW strike before non-union workers holding signs reading “union members for Trump.”
During the final weeks of the campaign, Harris reportedly plans to focus heavily on her economic policy agenda, including her opposition to oligopolistic price gouging, her plans for housing development and mortgage assistance, a new plan for Medicare coverage of home care, and plans to build on the industrial (and with them job) development initiatives of the past several years.
Harris may actually find herself pushing through an open door, as the public increasingly comes to recognize that Trump is selling policies they rejected years ago, while she offers plans that actually speak to the problems and opportunities presented by the nation’s economy.
That’s it for this week
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Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend.
Harris-Walz may finally be managing to correct the false narrative that republicans are better on the economy. It boggles the mind that republicans and corporate media have been able to create and sell the big lie that democrats are bad for the economy. It has become an established fact in the minds of the majority. The indisputable reality is that the economy performs better under democrats and has for a very long time. But corp media continues to push the big lie e.g., they continue suppress and distort the phenomenal economic success of the Biden Harris administration. Even so, we may finally be seeing a reset with the Harris-Walz campaign. With these two phenomenal candidates, the truth may finally be breaking through. It's long overdue.
Excellent analysis, especially on Vance who’s been part of the problem since elected to the Senate. Imagine if Senators and Representatives voted for their constituents rather than plotting the way for Trump to declare that Biden’s term of office wasn’t successful. In fact, Trump’s meddling over the immigration bill was symptomatic of the power plays of the past four years to derail progress in our country, the tip of the iceberg. Thus the need to elect Kamala Harris, who played a key role in passage of important legislation when her tie-breaking votes kept us going. We must elect and keep a blue majority until Republicans shed their “dear leader(s)” and come to their senses and protect society from the current reverse gear Republicans who blindly sell themselves to the Devil named Donald Trump.