The Patriot Post® · The Word for Harris's Economic Vision Isn't 'Capitalist'
“We just need to move past the failed policies that we have proven don’t work,” said Kamala Harris in her highly touted economic speech yesterday in Pittsburgh. She was criticizing the policies of Donald Trump, of course, but those policies worked immensely well, so her comment fits better as a Trump campaign ad.
New Trump ad just dropped. 🤣
— Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) September 26, 2024
Kamala’s right, let’s move past policies that don’t work… aka vote her out.
SHARE THIS EVERYWHERE! pic.twitter.com/LdBDkPQNPf
It also sounded a lot like Tim Walz’s supposed slam of Trump: “We can’t afford four more years of this!” That, too, worked better as a Trump ad.
As does this comment from Joe Biden, who made an appearance on “The View” yesterday: “As vice president, there wasn’t a single thing that I did that she couldn’t do, and so I was able to delegate her responsibility on everything from foreign policy to domestic policy.”
So much for being the candidate of change!
Unfortunately, many voters do view her that way, largely because of the power and influence of the Leftmedia to give her a makeover as the Democrat presidential nominee appointee. She’s not Trump or (technically) Biden; ergo, she represents change.
The reason for her economic speech was simple: To reinforce the “fact-checker” rebuttals of Trump’s claims that Harris is a Marxist. “Vice President Kamala Harris wants voters to know that she is not a socialist,” The New York Times helpfully reported in the first sentence of its story in-kind campaign commercial about her speech. Politico adds, “Harris seeks to chip away at Trump’s advantage with voters on the economy.”
Trump wants voters to know he’s not an insurrectionist or a racist or any other “ist” the Left falsely labels him. He hopes to chip away at Harris’s advantage on abortion. But he doesn’t get those kinds of fawning ledes from The New York Times or Politico.
“Look, I am a capitalist,” Harris unconvincingly protested, which is probably why she couched her decidedly un-capitalist idea of price controls as a federal ban on “gouging” (to be defined later by unelected bureaucrats). There was the predictable word salad, too. “I promise you I will be pragmatic in my approach,” she said. “I will engage in what Franklin Roosevelt called bold, persistent experimentation. Because I believe we shouldn’t be constrained by ideology and instead should seek practical solutions to problems, realistic assessments of what is working and what is not, applying metrics to our analysis, applying facts to our analysis, and stay focused, then, not only on the crises at hand but on our big goals, on what’s best for America over the long term.”
What?
FDR, for what it’s worth, brought a lot of socialism by massively expanding the federal government, so appealing to him to prove capitalist dedication should ring hollow. Alas, for the public school-educated population, it won’t.
Speaking of big government, Harris also said, “I also know the limitations of government.” Yet she never outlined those limits, and nothing she ever says implies she sees any.
In another line that would work better for Trump, she said, “The cost of living in America is still just too high. You know it, and I know it.” Yes, we do, and we also know she’s been vice president for nearly four years, casting tiebreaking Senate votes on major legislation that caused inflation to soar — legislation that inserted government ever further into the economy.
Yesterday was a big day for Harris. Not only did she give this speech, but she conducted a second solo interview with a national media reporter. Her first one didn’t go so well.
This time, the interlocutor was MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle, who has previously defended Harris’s strategy to hide from voters with this rationale: “She’s running against Trump.”
The interview featured a few softballs — like the one about flipping burgers — that set up Harris’s usual talking points or reinforced her questionable autobiography. To be fair, though, Ruhle did ask Harris a couple of tough questions and later criticized her for not giving “a clear and direct answer” to them.
Why do voters still think Trump is better on the economy? Harris could only respond with lies about Trump’s record, and though Ruhle meant her question as a slam of Trump, even she had to challenge Harris on her dodge. How would Harris pay for her new or expanded income redistribution schemes, especially if Republicans control Congress? A confounded Harris merely stuttered about how we’re “going to have to” do it anyway. Why didn’t the Teamsters endorse Harris? Again, no answer. How would Harris “go after price gouging without implementing price controls?” Harris deflected by saying, “I am never going to apologize for going after companies and corporations that take advantage of the desperation of the American people.”
To paraphrase the old Holiday Inn Express commercials, she doesn’t have a limited government or capitalist plan for economic success, but she did “grow up a middle-class kid.” And just look at that fantastically “middle class” interview set.
Harris is never going to say, “I’m a Marxist.” That doesn’t win a majority even in today’s America. But when all you have is a government hammer, everything looks like a nail. Harris’s only “solutions” to any and every problem are government programs funded by taking from some Americans and giving to other Americans (or non-Americans, as the case may be). That’s not a constitutional republic. It’s not even “democracy.” It’s authoritarian, fascist, and socialist — and, yes, Marxist.