This text is a part of HuffPost’s biweekly politics e-newsletter. Click on right here to subscribe.
Vice President Kamala Harris has been getting loads of scrutiny and greater than little grief over the lack of specificity in her coverage agenda.
It’s not onerous to see why, although some context is perhaps good too.
On the one hand, Harris hasn’t sat for interviews or held formal press conferences, and even posted an in depth agenda on her marketing campaign web site. Till late final week, when her marketing campaign printed a sequence of proposals to “lower costs for American families,” she hadn’t launched or defended any main initiatives.
And whereas Harris had made clear in her speeches that she is generally working on the identical mainstream liberal agenda that President Joe Biden had embraced in his price range proposals, that dedication leaves loads of room for ambiguity ― which, fact be advised, her marketing campaign has appeared in no rush to clear up. Final week, one nameless adviser advised The Atlantic’s Ron Brownstein that Harris’ crew wasn’t particularly apprehensive about critics demanding “five-prong coverage agenda” gadgets.
However Harris has really gotten extra particular since then, beginning with that initiative on price for American households she launched Friday.
Along with its (controversial) name for a federal regulation in opposition to price-gouging, the initiative included proposals to present the federal authorities extra leverage over prescription drug costs, to increase further monetary help now obtainable to individuals shopping for medical insurance on their very own, to subsidize each the development and buy of housing, and to reinstate a COVID-era money stipend for households with youngsters.
One, two, three … hey, take a look at that. 5 prongs.
And though the press launch accompanying the announcement didn’t handle the all-important query of how Harris intends to fund these initiatives — which, based on the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, may require as much as $2 trillion in new federal spending over the subsequent decade — her aides subsequently made clear their intentions to boost company taxes to twenty-eight%. The income from that alone would seemingly cowl about half the brand new initiative’s price.
That’s not the identical as committing brazenly to that tax hike, or to filling out the remainder of her presumably bold agenda as her marketing campaign has mentioned she’ll do. Holding her to that vow (as HuffPost’s Jonathan Nicholson does as we speak) appears fully truthful, and downright vital on subjects like immigration, commerce and Gaza the place even modest deviations from Biden insurance policies may make an enormous distinction.
However (as Jonathan additionally notes) a little bit understanding about timing additionally appears so as.
A lot has occurred, so shortly, that it’s straightforward to overlook Harris has been campaigning on her personal for just a bit greater than 4 weeks — and that, throughout that interval, she’s needed to take over the Biden marketing campaign equipment, decide a working mate after which plan the conference she’s at present staging. Growing and presenting its coverage agenda is one thing that usually takes a presidential marketing campaign many months.
After all, that raises a complete different query, principally and oddly lacking from this debate: What on earth has Donald Trump been doing this complete time?
The Thriller Of Trump’s Marketing campaign Agenda
Not like Harris, he had a full main marketing campaign to develop an agenda. He is also within the distinctive place of getting run two full presidential campaigns earlier than, plus he presided over the chief department for 4 years. In concept, he ought to have all of the information, info and workers it takes to place collectively a marketing campaign agenda clearly, confidently and with element.
In apply, he has finished no such factor.
The Trump marketing campaign doesn’t usually publish the sort of press releases spelling out coverage proposals that Harris did final week, not to mention the sort of critical white papers with particulars and consultants to again them up as campaigns have historically finished. And if HuffPost’s expertise is indicative, it doesn’t usually reply coverage questions with substantive solutions. (A number of e mail and telephone queries for this text yielded no response.)
As for publicly obtainable info, the official Trump web site has an “Agenda 47” web page that’s extra about sloganeering than specifying, with numerous one-sentence gadgets like “Finish inflation, and make America inexpensive once more” and “Unite our nation by bringing it to new and report ranges of success.”
You possibly can then click on by means of to the official Trump-Republican 2024 platform, which has 16 pages of verbiage however not far more in the way in which of element. The doc has actually no greenback figures connected to its proposals.
The Trump web site really had a bit extra info earlier within the marketing campaign, when a few of these coverage commitments had hyperlinks to brief descriptions — amongst them, the across-the-board 10% tariff on all imports that’s the one coverage concept Trump has totally, unambiguously embraced.
However lots of these coverage descriptions, which in some instances are nonetheless accessible by means of on-line archives, raised as many questions as they answered.
On pages that addressed the auto business and electrical automobiles, for instance, Trump vowed to finish the “EV mandate” with out specifying whether or not he meant he would merely roll again new emissions guidelines on automakers (as he has ceaselessly promised to do in speeches) or whether or not he would additionally finish subsidies on EV manufacturing and purchases (which he mentioned final week he might do).
These subsidies are underwriting a huge increase in manufacturing facility development, a lot of it in pink states and districts, which is why Republicans have been quietly urging their leaders in Congress to not repeal them. Readability on Trump’s intentions right here matter rather a lot to them, and to their constituents too.
However fudging positions on politically troublesome points is nothing new for Trump, who has at varied factors steered he would or wouldn’t endorse some sort of national ban on abortion, or would or wouldn’t strive as soon as once more to repeal the Inexpensive Care Act. He ceaselessly expresses his views of the day not by means of speeches or official statements however by means of inscrutable, grammatically challenged, late-night Fact Social posts.
The “Obamacare” instance is especially instructive, as a result of it’s a reminder that Trump’s imprecise, ceaselessly contradictory and basically unserious method to coverage has been a throughline of his political profession.
Trump spent years promising to repeal the landmark well being care regulation whereas concurrently promising “insurance coverage for everyone” and that “Everyone’s going to be taken care of a lot better than they’re taken care of now.” He by no means offered another plan and as soon as in workplace he merely embraced proposals on the proverbial Republican shelf — which, as critics had warned all alongside, would have really resulted in thousands and thousands shedding their protection.
There’s a little bit of a parallel right here to how Trump may lean on Undertaking 2025, the book-length agenda from the Heritage Basis whose specific goal is to supply a newly elected, philosophically sympathetic president with a governing blueprint. It has the sort of element that Trump’s marketing campaign materials and rhetoric lacks, with requires the whole lot from regulatory bans on abortion tablets to huge cuts in Medicaid to a purging of the federal paperwork.
Many of those positions are extremely unpopular, which most likely helps clarify Trump’s efforts to distance himself from the doc. However its authors embody present and former aides. The top of the mission has dismissed Trump’s denials as political posturing, claiming in personal that Trump has “blessed” the hassle and is “very supportive of what we do.”
Trump may make clear his intentions by committing extra firmly to a full, distinct agenda of his personal. He has chosen not to try this, in a approach that appears all too acquainted — and indicative of how he thinks about coverage.
