DEMOCRATS

 Eyal Press, New Yorker -   By the time Kamala Harris delivered her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention this past summer, the risk that Trump might once again exploit the grievances of working-class voters to win the Presidency was clear. In a Gallup poll conducted in August, sixty-three per cent of respondents said that the economy was getting worse, more than double the number that said it was improving. Although the stock market was booming, a few years of high inflation had caused President Biden’s approval numbers to plummet and left many voters dissatisfied with the status quo. The fact that Harris had served in the Administration that presided over this period put her at a distinct disadvantage. Her race and gender were additional impediments, exposing her to the racism and misogyny that Trump rarely missed an opportunity to stoke.

Overcoming these factors would have been a daunting challenge even if Harris had run a flawless campaign. Yet she also made some decisions that did little to help her cause. To defeat Trump, she needed to present a compelling alternative to his economic agenda. No such alternative emerged. Instead, Harris promoted an incoherent mix of progressive policy measures—an expanded child tax credit, grants of twenty-five thousand dollars for people seeking to buy their first homes—and ideas favored by Wall Street, such as a much gentler increase in taxes on long-term capital gains for millionaires than Biden had proposed. At campaign rallies, her running mate, Governor Tim Walz, portrayed her as a principled crusader who had “stood up against powerful corporate interests” since her days as a district attorney in California. In her speeches and interviews, Harris struck a more business-friendly tone, vetting ideas with executives including her brother-in-law Tony West, who advised her, having taken leave as Uber’s chief legal officer. She ran on “joy,” even as a Pew survey conducted last year found that just four per cent of Americans felt excited when they thought about politics. Among the tens of millions of workers whose wages have not kept pace with the cost of living in recent years, there has been far more frustration than joy.