One very central dynamic in the recent saga of Democratic anxiety over Joe Biden’s chances against Donald Trump, given the weaknesses he displayed in his first 2024 debate, has been the role of his understudy, Vice-President Kamala Harris. My colleague Gabriel Debenedetti explained the problem nearly two years ago as the “Kamala Harris conundrum”:
“Top party donors have privately worried to close Obama allies that they’re skeptical of Harris’s prospects as a presidential candidate, citing the implosion of her 2020 campaign and her struggles as VP. Jockeying from other potential competitors, like frenemy Gavin Newsom, suggests that few would defer to her if Biden retired. Yet Harris’s strength among the party’s most influential voters nonetheless puts her in clear pole position.”
The perception that Harris is too unpopular to pick up the party banner if Biden dropped it, but too well-positioned to be pushed aside without huge collateral damage, was a major part of the mindset of political observers when evaluating Democratic options after the debate. But now fresher evidence of Harris’s public standing shows she’s just as viable as many of the candidates floated in fantasy scenarios about an “open convention,” “mini-primary,” or smoke-filled room that would sweep away both parts of the Biden-Harris ticket.
For a good while now, Harris’s job-approval numbers have been converging with Biden’s after trailing them initially. These indicate dismal popularity among voters generally, but not in a way that makes her an unacceptable replacement candidate should she be pressed into service in an emergency. As of now, her job-approval ratio in the FiveThirtyEight averages is 37.1 percent approve to 51.2 percent disapprove. Biden’s is 37.4 percent approve to 56.8 percent disapprove. In the favorability ratios tracked by RealClearPolitics, Harris is at 38.3 favorable to 54.6 percent unfavorable, while Biden is at 39.4 percent favorable to 56.9 percent unfavorable. There’s just not a great deal of difference other than slightly lower disapproval/unfavorable numbers for the veep.
On the crucial measurement of viability as a general-election candidate against Trump, there wasn’t much credible polling prior to the post-debate crisis. An Emerson survey in February 2024 showed Harris trailing Trump by 3 percent (43 percent to 46 percent), which was a better showing than Gavin Newsom (down ten points, 36 percent to 46 percent) or Gretchen Whitmer (down 12 points, 33 percent to 45 percent).
After the debate, though, there was a sudden cascade of polling matching Democratic alternatives against Trump, and while Harris’s strength varied, she consistently did as well as or better than the fantasy alternatives. The first cookie on the plate was a one-day June 28 survey from Data for Progress, which showed virtually indistinguishable polling against Trump by Biden, Harris, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Gavin Newsom, J.B. Pritzker, Josh Shapiro, and Gretchen Whitmer. All of them trailed Trump by 2 to 3 percent among likely voters.
Then two national polls released on July 2 showed Harris doing better than other feasible Biden alternatives. Reuters/Ipsos (which showed Biden and Trump tied) had Harris within a point of Trump, while Newsom trailed by three points, Andy Beshear by four, Whitmer by five, and Pritzker by six points. Similarly, CNN showed Harris trailing Trump by just two points; Pete Buttigieg trailing by four points; and Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer trailing him by five points.
Emerson came back with a new poll on July 9 that wasn’t as sunny as some for Democrats generally (every tested name trailed Trump, with Biden down by three points). But again, Harris (down by six points) did better than Newsom (down eight points); Buttigieg and Whitmer (down ten points); and Shapiro (down 12 points).
There’s been some talk that Harris might help Democrats with base constituencies that are sour about Biden. There’s not much publicly available evidence testing that hypothesis, though the crosstabs in the latest CNN poll do show Harris doing modestly better than Biden among people of color, voters under the age of 35, and women.
The bottom line is that one element of the “Kamala Harris conundrum” needs to be reconsidered. There should be no real drop-off in support if Biden (against current expectations) steps aside in favor of his vice-president (the only really feasible “replacement” scenario at this point). She probably has a higher ceiling of support than Biden as well, but in any event, she would have a fresh opportunity to make a strong first or second impression on many Americans who otherwise know little about her.
My memory of Rubinomics associates it with bringing down the interest rate and reducing the deficit, rather than free trade. This apparently has changed in the post-election discussion.
The benefits of free trade have not been shared, no doubt. The “free” part has been taken by opportunists to mean free from the need to share gains or mitigate pains. Populists are right to shut down the store until accounts are set up correctly.
But the other side of Rubinomics is no less difficult. Getting the budget under control. Debt service and the retiring baby boomers are going to set up an impossible situation. Remember, off-the-books borrowing from Social Security and Medicare funds is not only going to stop, but will need to be reversed simultaneous with the ballooning debt service.
Clearly fiscal responsibility means revenue increases. Tax increases? Not on the middle class. That is the Democrats bargain with the voter in the past election. And we’d better not renege on that. The 1994 election, if you’ll recall, was demagogued by the Gingrich and the Republicans using very meagre tax increases.
Where then? I’d like to see somebody else’s ideas. I would first end the cap on payroll taxes. This would have the effect of increasing the top marginal rate by 16% or so for earned income, earmarked for the entitlements that will be needing it.
Symbolically, it might be neat to institute a new top marginal rate of 80 or 90 percent on income over $3 million.
An idea that is not mine, but I forget where I saw it, was to get rid of all the income tax deductions and credits and bells and whistles in favor of five: children, pensions, health care, education, mortgages. This might net the most, while holding the middle class harmless.
“Taxes” won’t be such a dirty word if it is applied to the other guy.
“Free” vs. “Fair” Trade
As the Rubinites and the economic populists square off on a number of issues which includes the free versus fair trade debate, the narrow use of the term “fair” trade by some Democrats borders on a disguised and thus disquieting form of rank economic nationalism.
Free trade is not fair trade when our government, thanks to powerful and well-heeled lobbies, refuses to couple “free” trade with the abolition of the patently inefficient subsidization of cotton, wheat, and sugar production in this country, among other such supports. These subsidies underwrite a monied elite while increasing the price of these products for consumers, not to mention the denial of economic opportunities for foreign workers. (Here in Florida, for example, we not only subsidize “big sugar” and thus pay more for our sugar, but we also subsidize their cost of doing business by using tax dollars to clean up their despoilment of the Everglades.)
An example of this “fairness” is reflected in the draft free trade agreement with Peru. As drafted, its implementation would demolish the Peruvian wheat, cotton, and sugar industries, for even with their lower wage rates, they cannot compete with the artificially supported low prices for these products.
Some Democrats are calling for better labor and environmental laws and their enforcement, which in Peru’s case could be strengthened, but this call is being made without any discussion whatsoever of the “unfair” destruction of three Peruvian industries.
The money we waste on welfare for industries that don’t need protection could be better spent on the social nets necessary for a fair trade driven economy.
In short, if the economic populists are going to argue for fair trade then they should use that term consistently to apply not only to our trading partners but to ourselves as well.