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The stories that matter on money and politics in the race for the White House
It’s hard to overstate the transformation in Democratic politics since Kamala Harris became the party’s presumptive presidential nominee. Poll numbers against Donald Trump are way up since July 21, political donations have soared and younger voters who had been on the sidelines are suddenly engaged. Harris’s first stump speeches have been energetic and impressive. So what, if anything, could slow her momentum? Answer: her stance on corporate power.
Tackling corporate power has been at the centre of Bidenomics. But Harris is much closer to big business than Joe Biden, who is a true populist. Money and endorsements from Wall Street, Hollywood and Silicon Valley have been pouring into her campaign in recent days. That’s not a bad thing — every successful candidate needs to raise funds, and economic growth is driven by business at all levels. But Harris’s relationships with corporate leaders and Big Tech in particular open up vulnerabilities that she must manage carefully.
Consider that billionaire Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, who has donated $7mn to the leading pro-Biden and Harris super Pac, went on television and accused Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan of “waging war” on American business and said he hoped Harris would replace her. Democratic donor Barry Diller called Khan a “dope” (she’s not). No big surprise there, since Khan, along with Department of Justice antitrust chair Jonathan Kanter, has been both creative and aggressive about combating Big Tech’s monopoly power.
But the visuals aren’t good, evoking the Obama-era lovefest between Democrats and Big Tech at a time when Trump’s running mate JD Vance has actually praised Khan’s efforts, as have some other Republicans.
Of course, Vance himself is a cynical, opportunistic disciple of tech libertarian Peter Thiel. But that’s not what matters here politically. What matters is that if the Democrats want to win in November, they can’t afford to let the Republicans paint Harris — as they did Hillary Clinton in 2016 — as belonging to a coastal elite beholden to big money interests rather than working people in states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, which is where the election is likely to be won or lost.
Harris is less vulnerable here than Clinton, who had to answer for her husband’s support for the Nafta trade deal and rustbelt job losses to China. Harris stood by Biden as he passed his signature legislation to support US re-industrialisation, and she’s also been a big proponent of the “care economy” agenda, including expanded tax credits for parents, paid leave, more federal funding for childcare and so on. But that’s basic progressive politics, not something that would swing the needle for undecided voters in the Midwest.
Meanwhile, Harris’s record for taking on big business is mixed. As a prosecutor, she was tough on hospital conglomerates, but also backed Barack Obama’s approach of putting most of the burden of the financial crisis on homeowners rather than banks. In California, she pushed for tougher laws on cyberbullying and privacy for children online. But she’s been non-committal about antitrust policy.
To the extent that she does address corporate misbehaviour, it might be through the lens of gender and racial equity. She’s already pushing a $2tn plan to establish universal pre-kindergarten education and improve childcare and elder care (where many workers are minority women). She would like to make permanent tax cuts for working-class families.
But again, that’s Democratic politics as usual. I think Harris understands how far the political and economic pendulum has swung from the neoliberal paradigm that reigned for decades. But she may need to engage more deeply with why markets don’t always work, and how large corporate actors use economic and political power to distort them.
That requires an interest in economics that Harris may not have. While Biden spent time reading academic papers on corporate governance, financial market short-termism and labour policy, Harris’s passions are women’s rights, civil rights, the Supreme Court and protecting democracy.
Those are wonderful strengths, particularly at this moment in history and given her opponent. But to win, she also needs to reaffirm her commitment to the core principles of Bidenomics, which is really about combating concentrations of power, whether in companies or countries (such as China), to ensure a truly fair market. Otherwise, she is at risk of losing working-class voters in places that will matter in November.
There are some initial easy tasks here. Harris should distance herself from billionaire donors trying to dictate policy. She should acknowledge the bipartisan realignment around antitrust policy in the US and praise the work that Khan and Kanter have done to fight monopoly power. She should talk up the fact that she chaired the president’s workers’ rights task force, and lay out what she would do to support not just investment and tax cuts, but jobs and unions.
Harris’s candidacy has shifted the terms of the presidential election in important ways, and she has the wind at her back. But November is a long time away. She shouldn’t leave herself vulnerable to own goals.