I’ve been reading reviews from both sides about the 2024 Democratic National Convention. The best analysis I’ve seen so far comes from Peter Savodnik of The Free Press. He observed that the content has been about how great Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are and how awful Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are, but little about what they would do if elected. He calls it an extremely entertaining informercial. Well put.
While the Dems have tried to hang the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 on Trump, neither he nor Vance have endorsed it. The Dem ticket is campaigning that they are going to protect Americans from this evil platform, but they misrepresent much of what is on the Project 2025 wishlist. Ryan McBeth, who tries to be apolitical, does a fantastic job of breaking down some of the exaggerations and misinformation circulating by those on the left about Project 2025 in this video. The Republican ticket hasn’t endorsed Project 2025, but it does have its own published platform. As of the date of this article, the Democrats do not. This seems odd at this point in the campaign, but there may be a logical reason.
The Dems label themselves the party of freedom, but they are really only talking about abortion. They are not the party of free speech or freedom from government overreach. I’ve written many posts about how Republicans have ceded the high ground on being the party of “freedom” with this one issue. Savodnik points out that, they insist they won’t “turn back,” but no one says where we’re going. Or what they want beyond the blandest of platitudes about “freedom” and “choice” and “identity.” The Democrats have occupied the White House for 12 of the past 16 years including the past four, but they are running a similar campaign to Obama’s in 2008. That we need change. Maybe we do, but they haven’t articulated what that looks like to policy wonks like me.
But this may be the plan. Kamala Harris wants people voting for her because of her race/gender identity and because she’s not Trump. Won’t it be historic to have a black female president? Getting into a debate on the real substance of her policy positions does not benefit her. A) I’m not sure she exactly knows what they are and B) the only thing keeping Trump in the race is her occasional dripping out a policy proposal. Her best idea yet was to eliminate taxing tips for service workers. A proposal Trump released a couple of months prior.
Some of Harris’ proposals that give me pause include allowing the Trump tax cuts to expire. While it is true that the Trump tax cuts of 2017 were the first shoe to drop in what eventually resulted in the inflation spike we saw in 2021-23, they did provide a needed stimulus that resulted in rapidly increasing demand for labor and an increase in wages for hourly workers. They were having the desired effect, pre-COVID. The Dems always say that tax cuts favor the rich, but that’s really like saying anti-biotics mostly help sick people. Tax cuts don’t help the 40% who don’t pay taxes anyway, but they do help job creators.
It was the piling on of the CARES Act and the Families First Act COVID stimulus signed by Trump in 2020 followed by Biden’s American Rescue Plan and his Infrastructure and Jobs Act that proved too much for the economy. The Republicans are wrong to blame it all on Biden. Both parties over-stimulated the economy during COVID and the Federal Reserve was way too late recognizing what was happening. But rolling back the tax cuts will create an unnecessary braking effect on economic growth.
Another concerning policy is Harris’ proposal to raise the corporate income tax from 21% to 28%. We reduced corporate taxes in 2017 to make America more competitive globally. The European Union, for example, averages a 21% corporate tax rate. At the time, companies were moving their headquarters to countries with more favorable tax policies. Harris’ proposal will restore the incentive to relocate and it will have an inflationary effect at a time that we’re still trying to bring inflation down. The myth surrounding “corporations should pay their fair share” is that they will be forced to raise prices, cut expenses (labor) in order to cover the increased government nut. The population in general thinks about Microsoft, Apple and GM, but they don’t realize how this affects the dozens or hundreds of locally owned small businesses in their home towns.
And finally, Harris’ proposal for long term capital gains taxes, and especially unrealized capital gains, is particularly concerning. While it is currently targeted only at the wealthiest, the concept is untenable. If you have an investment that has increased in value, but you haven’t “realized” those gains by selling the asset, where is the cash supposed to come from to pay the taxes on the gain? It’s clearly just a cash grab to satisfy redistributionists, but it’s bad policy. Apart from some statements about wage and price controls that will never happen, that’s about it on the policy front from the Harris campaign.
Lots of thinking people are going to vote for Harris because her policy positions on abortion and the environment align with their own values. Lots of thinking people are going to vote for Trump because his policy positions on the economy and the border align with their values. Unfortunately, there are a lot more non-thinking people than thinkers. And they are going to vote based on some other criteria, like “likability.” While Donald Trump has sizeable chunk of non-thinker support, himself, the Democrats are counting on winning (or keeping) a larger share of them. It appears they believe that a convention about nothing (except emotion) and a campaign about nothing (except we’re not him) is the key to winning. They may be right.