When VP KAMALA HARRIS endorsed the notion of exempting tip income from federal taxation at a Las Vegas rally on Saturday, most people took note of the fact that she hijacked the policy from DONALD TRUMP (including, as we noted yesterday, Trump himself). What caught our eye was that she had endorsed any policy proposal at all. Now three weeks into her campaign, and with the Democratic National Convention just a week away, Harris has ridden a wave of base enthusiasm and swing-voter relief to put the presidency back into play. What she hasn’t done yet is settle on a plan for governing, except in the broadest of strokes. Her stump speech has framed the campaign as a “fight for the future” without saying much about what precisely that future would entail. There’s no 100-day agenda, let alone a detailed tax policy white paper.
Say what you will about Trump’s, um, uneven interest in policymaking, his Republican allies have been laying the groundwork for a return to power for months. Top congressional leaders have plotted their first moves, including how they might use the fast-track reconciliation process to pass tax cuts, regulation rollbacks and more. (That’s to say nothing of the now-renounced Project 2025.) On one hand, the lack of clarity from Harris is understandable. A month ago, anyone talking about a 2025 Democratic agenda would have been laughed out of a room given the concerns over JOE BIDEN’s vitality. And it’s tricky, of course, running to succeed a sitting president as VP. But the pressure is mounting on Harris to say more, and it’s not just about persuading voters, as a new WaPo editorial argues, it’s about governing: “Elections aren’t just about winning. They’re about accumulating political capital for a particular agenda, which Ms. Harris can’t do unless she articulates one,” they write. “The more substance Ms. Harris can offer before the election … the more of a mandate she would have to govern should she prevail in November.”
Over the weekend, we saw hints that more details are coming. In Arizona on Friday, she sketched out the bare bones of a border agenda, promising to sign the bipartisan border security bill that Trump killed earlier this year. On Saturday, before making her tax-free-tips endorsement, she told reporters she would roll out a more comprehensive economic agenda this week. That’s a political necessity, as Myah Ward points out this morning in a piece on the five major questions facing Harris right now: “Voters are still deeply worried about the economy and inflation,” she writes, and “public perception of the economy is a weak spot for Democrats.” What remains to be seen is how she will distinguish herself from Biden. We’ll note that the only public event on Harris’s schedule this week so far is a joint appearance with the incumbent in Maryland on Thursday to discuss “the progress they are making to lower costs for the American people.” So far, with the exception of the tips proposal, she has mostly adopted Biden’s economic agenda in her remarks as a presidential candidate — promising to tackle “junk fees,” prescription drug prices and high housing costs. She has kept Biden’s no-tax-hikes pledge for those making under $400,000 but hasn’t weighed on thorny particulars as the expiration of the 2017 Trump tax cuts approaches next year — such as whether she wants to, say, restore the full state and local tax deduction or send out the monthly child tax credit checks families enjoyed during the pandemic.
Most Democratic insiders we spoke to, however, are totally fine keeping things vague. There’s a sense that Harris should continue to ride the wave of enthusiasm rather than change the conversation by offering up specifics. “Values unite and specific policies divide, so I don’t think there is a desire to spend the next 80 days litigating Medicare for All, for example,” one senior Democratic congressional aide told Playbook. Added a frontline Democratic lawmaker: “Why would we start talking about policy? ... We’re actually better off just running on this real wave of enthusiasm and energy. … It’s the best thing [Harris] can do.” Top Hill leaders appear happy to stick to the basics. During a virtual Democratic caucus meeting last week, for example, deputies of House Minority Leader HAKEEM JEFFRIES gave a PowerPoint presentation that outlined a big-picture “People Over Politics” message to run on: “Lowering housing and health care costs”; “Tax relief for hardworking American families”; “Make corporations pay their fair share” and so forth.
Asked what Senate Democrats might do if they keep their majority, Senate Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER last month was similarly fuzzy: “Things like democracy … tax bills we’re looking at that help families and the child tax credit … doing more for clean energy, doing more for transportation and education,” he said. “There are many different things we will do.” The risk of ambiguity is that Republicans stand ready to fill the void by reminding voters of the many policies Harris backed during the 2020 presidential primary (and since repudiated), including eliminating private health insurance, decriminalizing border crossings and banning fracking. But the Democrats we spoke to said they are comfortable nonetheless. “It’s fair to expect that she will continue to spotlight issues that will be top priorities for her and also drive contrasts between her and Donald Trump,” one person close to the Harris campaign told Playbook last night. “Getting into the legislative mechanics of how you will pass those things is a conversation for later.”
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The "vibe" won't last, being the "not Trump candidate" won't win the election, HRC tried that in 2016.
The party holding the White House always talks up how great things are and all the great things they've done. The party out of power always talks up the problems in the country and what they'd do to solve them. In 2020 when Biden ran against Trump he talked of all the chaos and problems caused by Trump, now Trump talks of all the problems caused by Biden.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan
