Vice President Kamala Harris’ plan to avoid the media because her team laughably thinks that no one pays attention to significant networks or prominent newspapers isn’t going to last. Yes, media is an ever-changing landscape, but solely focusing on TikTok and social media is a surefire way to lose an election. People need to hear ideas and policies that will help them, and Kamala hasn’t offered much. What she has provided is a throwback to Soviet Russia.
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It’s a window into why her team keeps her from press conferences. The latest pitch to curb inflation is to stomp out price-gouging, which is such pie-in-the-sky nonsense that it almost makes you wonder if Harris qualifies for this office. She’s not—you know that, but that’s not the point: what the hell is this campaign other than showing that Democrats have a black woman running after wresting the nomination from Joe Biden? Catherine Rampell trashed Harris, and now the editorial board writ large is body-slamming her, calling her candidacy gimmicky:
Americans are clearly still anxious and angry about the high cost of groceries, housing and even $5.29 Big Macs. While the inflation rate has cooled substantially since the 2022 peak, an ostensible Biden-Harris administration accomplishment, prices remain elevated relative to the Trump years. So it’s a real political issue for Ms. Harris. One way to handle it might be to level with voters, telling them that inflation spiked in 2021 mainly because the pandemic snarled supply chains, and that the Federal Reserve’s policies, which the Biden-Harris administration supported, are working to slow it. The vice president instead opted for a less forthright route: Blaming big business. She vowed to go after “price gouging” by grocery stores, landlords, pharmaceutical companies and other supposed corporate perpetrators by having the Federal Trade Commission enforce a vaguely defined “federal ban on price gouging.”
Never mind that many stores are currently slashing prices in response to renewed consumer bargain hunting. Ms. Harris says she’ll target companies that make “excessive” profits, whatever that means…
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Her ideas would cost money, yet she insisted in her speech that she would hold to President Joe Biden’s pledge not to raise taxes on any household earning $400,000 or less annually. That excludes 80 percent of taxable income, and does not take into account the recent surge in families earning over $400,000. The Harris campaign says it plans to raise revenue to cover these costs but did not provide specific offsets in its economic plan rollout. Without them, Ms. Harris’s full plan would add $1.7 trillion to federal deficits over a decade, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan budget watchdog.
To be sure, every campaign makes expensive promises that will never come to pass, especially with a divided Congress. Remember Mr. Biden’s pledge to make community college free? Even adjusted for the pandering standards of campaign economics, however, Ms. Harris’s speech Friday ranks as a disappointment.
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In short, the paper said her speech sucked, and it did.
“Ms. Harris is on firmest ground when she advocates increasing the child tax credit from the current level of $2,000 per kid up to $3,600 per kid for middle-class and low-income families, and for making it easier for those lower on the income scale to access the benefit,” wrote the editorial board. Are they aware that JD Vance is proposing raising the child tax credit to $5,000?
Up until this cockamamie price-gouging plan, along with making housing more expensive, Harris has been stealing Trump’s ideas, starting with the no tax on tips.
Harris hasn’t gotten smarter since she took the president’s nomination away. She’s still a vapid, uneven, and awkward political creature who got her because the Democratic Party is engulfed in identity politics. That addiction has led to this entire administration selecting unqualified and sub-par administrators and cabinet secretaries, wrecking the country.