Kamala Harris has had a powerful begin to her presidential marketing campaign, however the remaining weeks main as much as the Nov. 5 election might be intently contested and Harris faces actual obstacles.
She should articulate her personal positions to separate her candidacy from among the much less in style insurance policies and outcomes seen throughout the Biden-Harris administration. And as she fills within the particulars, her plans might be picked aside, diminishing her possibilities to sway voters within the swing states that may resolve the 2024 election.
In vital coverage areas, Harris has undergone an nearly full transformation, switching from unabashed progressive to cautious centrist. Some voters will query the authenticity of her revised views. However for others, inconsistency gained’t be the issue. It’s the insurance policies themselves — interesting at first however ineffective, difficult to implement or extra progressive than most People are snug with. It’s coverage, due to this fact, that might show to be the Achilles’ heel in Harris’ efforts to maintain Trump from a second time period.
In her first in depth media interview since changing into the Democrats’ 2024 standard-bearer, Harris argued that voters must be snug together with her reversals as a result of her “values” haven’t modified. Possibly so, however voters will marvel what her values might trigger her to do as soon as elected.
On home vitality exploration, Harris has gone from saying in 2019 that she opposed fracking and offshore oil drilling to noting that she would not search to ban fracking in any case. On healthcare that very same 12 months, the then-presidential major candidate was an ardent supporter of Medicare for All, a reform to institute a government-run system that may considerably disrupt current protection preparations. However a marketing campaign spokesman just lately mentioned that she no longer favors this plan.
Equally, on immigration coverage — a subject that voters earlier this 12 months in a Wall Road Journal survey recognized as their 2024 prime concern — Harris has struck an aggressive tone and altered positions on the Trump border wall, embracing the latest bipartisan border safety invoice that features $650 million in funding for the wall, whereas strolling away from her earlier help for decriminalizing unlawful border crossings.
In different concern areas, it’s merely the weaknesses within the concepts she’s proposed that may canine her. That is notably the case with a few of her financial coverage proposals.
Her housing plans, for instance, embrace an idea that sounds interesting at first: offering $25,000 in down-payment help to first-time residence consumers, in addition to a further $10,000 tax credit score for buying a house. Such a plan would improve demand for brand spanking new houses however, with out vital further provide, would additionally possible improve residence costs for these it intends to assist and probably others available in the market for a brand new residence as effectively. (It’s value noting that Harris has additionally proposed incentives for builders who construct starter houses, in addition to making it attainable to construct new inexpensive housing on federal lands. However in supply-constrained states like California, these proposals alone could not create ample stock to decrease costs.)
Harris has conceded that meals costs nonetheless stay far too excessive for too many People, however her resolution — a federal ban on price-gouging — has been panned by even some progressive economists as counterproductive to encouraging the macroeconomic developments that may deliver down costs. Her plan would do nothing to alter the elements that drive up meals costs — provide chain challenges, geopolitical conflicts and excessive vitality prices to call a number of — and it’s unclear {that a} president would have the ability to do a lot, if something, to deal with these root causes, in any case.
Then there’s the truth that lawmakers from her own party have said that Harris’ price-gouging concept wouldn’t move Congress, even when Democrats win a majority in each chambers, and can be troublesome to implement as effectively. It’s additionally a lightning rod for opposition from conservatives who can simply equate it to the worth controls seen in some economies world wide.
Lastly, there are Harris’ proposed $5 trillion in tax will increase.
She’s known as for raising the company tax charge from 21% to twenty-eight%, after Congress enacted the decrease charge and Trump signed it into regulation in 2017. However this might solely serve to revive incentives for firms to find elsewhere to avoid paying the upper charges.
Maybe most controversial is the Harris plan to create a brand new wealth tax, which might require some excessive net-worth households to pay taxes every year on the worth of their property, even when they continue to be unsold. The taxation of what are generally known as unrealized capital positive factors is problematic for a lot of causes, not the least of that are the executive challenges in accumulating the tax and the problems created by attempting to precisely worth property that fluctuate over time or aren’t publicly traded.
For many voters in most states, the coverage proposals of both presidential candidate gained’t matter. They’ve made up their minds. However for the few remaining undecided voters in swing states, what Harris has proposed and the way she defends and explains her future insurance policies could very effectively be dispositive. To safe their help, she’ll need to hope that these People forgive the inconsistencies in her report and the deficiencies in what she’s proposed to this point.
Lanhee J. Chen is the David and Diane Steffy Fellow in American Public Coverage Research on the Hoover Establishment. He was a candidate for California state controller in 2022 and served as coverage director of Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential marketing campaign.
