Would a Harris/Walz Administration be Economically Progressive?

By Chris Green

August 27, 2024

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

Image by Chsdrummajor07, Creative Commons 4.0

My answer to the question posed in this article’s headline is: probably not to a significant extent. I will explain further below.

As a presidential candidate, Kamala Harris has been forced to contend with the conflicting interests of different factions of the Democratic Party. On the one hand much of the Democratic base–and the American population in general–supports such social democratic policies as Medicare for All and a guarantee by the federal government of a job for every American. On the other hand, Harris and the Democratic Party in general are funded by big business. Democrat Party business donors want to see economic policies that will enhance their control over the American economy; they want the government to minimize, if not entirely eliminate any policy that might redistribute wealth toward the working class or regulate business in the public interest.

The contradictions inherent in attempting to appeal to both business interests and poor, working class and environmentally conscious voters is the most likely explanation for the oft-repeated criticism that Harris has been vague, silent or incoherent in her public policy stances. During her time in the US Senate (which coincided with her first run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2019), she supported Medicare for All, a federal job guarantee and a ban on fracking. In the face of pushback from powerful business interests and concerns about potentially alienating certain sections of “moderate” voters, she has reversed herself on all three issues.

For her presidential platform, there have been indications of support for building upon the Keynesian measures implemented by the Biden administration to stabilize the American economy after the Covid pandemic. Often many aspects of her platform have lacked specific details. Harris’s supporters have framed her policy positions as aiming to create a “care economy”: the spurring of federal government investment in securing greater housing, educational, child care, elder care and health care access for ordinary Americans. She has called for raising the national minimum wage–but has not suggested by how much. She has called for federal government subsidies for new homebuyers; an expansion of the earned income and child tax credits; and called for action to fight price gouging on groceries. She has said she supports passing the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would make it easier for workers to form unions.

One barrier in passing Harris’s proposals remains the US Senate’s filibuster. Since the Obama era the Republicans have repeatedly abused the filibuster, making it necessary for a 60 vote supermajority to pass many Democrat backed bills. One way to avoid the filibuster is the budget reconciliation process whereby legislation related to the federal budget can pass the US Senate with a simple 50 vote majority. The budget reconciliation process was used in early 2021 to pass the Biden Administration’s American Rescue Plan Act. To the latter, Democrats attempted to attach a measure instituting a national $15/hr minimum wage (the federal government raised it to its current rate of $7.25/hr in 2009). However, the Senate parliamentarian advised that a minimum wage measure did not belong in a budgetary bill–contradicting the argument of other experts that minimum wage legislation did affect the federal budget and thus was not improper to include in a spending bill. Harris, acting as president of the Senate in her position as Biden’s vice-president, agreed to drop the minimum wage provision based on the parliamentarian’s recommendation.

The Senate parliamentarian has no legal authority. US Senators have no obligation to comply with the parliamentarian’s recommendations. When the Senate parliamentarian objected to tax related legislation early in the administration of George W. Bush, Senate Republicans simply fired him. But as representatives of the “left” party in the American political system, Harris and her Democratic colleagues are in a special predicament. They are in a forever struggle to show the business community that American capitalism is safe in their hands. In trying to pass even the most mildly redistributive measures like the aborted minimum wage hike, it has been common for Democrats to try to demonstrate to the business community that they are proceeding with the utmost caution, that they are not moving “too far to the left.” For Democrats, demonstrating that caution includes respecting the conservative guardrails of American politics like the Senate parliamentarian and the filibuster.

When American Prospect executive editor David Dayen brought up the possibility of eliminating the filibuster with multiple Democratic US Senators at the recent Democratic National Convention(DNC), almost all seemed reluctant to talk about the subject. Democrats have indicated that if they retain their 50 seat Senate majority in November’s election, they will enact rules to eliminate the filibuster for two areas of legislation: to expand voting protections and to encode abortion rights. Apart from those exceptions, Democrats will continue to refrain from exercising their ability as the majority party to completely eliminate the filibuster, thus allowing Republicans to continue to derail Democrat backed legislation. By doing so, Democrats are attempting to show the business community that as they advocate for mildly redistributive measures like an expanded child tax credit, they are fully respectful of all the conservative guardrails of American politics.

Should Democrats retain their simple 50 seat Senate majority in November’s election, the Republican abuse of the filibuster will provide them with a convenient excuse to shelve legislation which they formally support but for which they hold little real enthusiasm: for example the PRO Act.

Democrats and Corporate Power

As Michelle Goldberg recently observed in a New York Times piece cheerleading calls by Harris and speakers at the DNC to fight price gouging and other abuses by corporate monopolies, a perfect ally in that fight would be Lina Khan, the Biden appointed chair of the Federal Trade Commission. Khan has used her position to pursue vigorous antitrust enforcement against corporate monopolies. Khan has faced strong opposition from many Republicans but has also gained notable support among them as well. Republicans who view themselves as representing medium sized and small business against corporate behemoths like Google–such as Donald Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance–have expressed support for Khan.

However in July, two billionaire Harris donors–the media mogul Barry Diller and Silicon Valley venture capitalist Reid Hoffman–publicly called for Khan to be fired. One of Harris’s spokespeople, Maryland governor Wes Moore, indicated in a CNBC interview that the Harris camp was ambivalent if not in outright disagreement with Khan’s antitrust approach. Moore suggested that a Harris administration would have friendlier antitrust policies for “large industries.”

The broad outlines of Harris’s economic policy have been formulated by figures from the corporate world. Two such leading figures are Brian Deese and Mike Pyle, both former Biden White House officials and top executives at Blackrock, the global asset management giant. Another leading advisor is Deanne Millison, until 2023 Vice-President Harris’s chief economic advisor and currently a lobbyist for the Ford Motor Company. Harris has particularly strong links to figures from Silicon Valley. Her brother-in-law Tony West, recently took unpaid leave from his position as Uber’s chief legal officer to serve as an advisor to her presidential campaign. Prominent Google lawyer Karen Dunn has also been advising Harris in her presidential run–after the Biden/Harris administration successfully sued Google for having an illegal search engine monopoly and is potentially weighing the option of breaking Google up into smaller companies.

Tim Walz

For many in the Democrats’ left-liberal base, Kamala Harris’s strong corporate connections have been more than offset by the appointment of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate. As Minnesota governor, Walz signed into law a bevy of progressive reforms: enhanced abortion rights protections; 12 weeks of paid medical and family leave for Minnesota workers; universal, free breakfast and lunch provision for the state’s public school students; a program to assist low income Minnesotans to obtain insulin; crackdowns on safety violations at Amazon warehouses in the state; a 20 percent wage boost for Uber and Lyft drivers in the state.

Left-liberal commentators gushed over Walz. Robert Borosage, in The Nation, declared that the Walz nomination was yet another sign that Democrats were moving back towards Keynesian policies since Joe Biden assumed the presidency: “waving goodbye to the neoliberal consensus”–deregulation, job killing free trade deals and fiscal austerity–that constituted the Party’s priorities under Barack Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton. In Jacobin, Branko Marcetic celebrated the nomination of the “unabashedly progressive” Walz as evidence of the growing influence of Bernie Sander supporters on the Democratic Party. The Democratic Socialists of America took credit for exerting its influence to have Walz picked as Harris’s running mate over the arch-zionist neoliberal Pennsylvania Democratic governor Josh Shapiro. Meanwhile labor sociologist Barry Eidlin told Jacobin’s Alex N. Press that “Walz is a clear example of a middle-of-the-road politician who is open to listening to movements.” According to Eidlin, with Walz as vice-president and his track record of dialoguing with social movements, such movements would be able to influence the Democratic Party.

Tim Walz: A Darker Side

Some progressive Minnesotans have views of Tim Walz different from those held by the likes of Marcetic and Borosage. Minneapolis/St. Paul African American American community organizer Rod Adams told Sarah Jaffe of In These Times that Walz as governor was “super beholden to corporations.” In 2023, Mary Turner, president of the Minnesota Nurses Association, accused Walz of “siding with the profits and power of corporate executives over the rights and needs of patients and workers.” She added that “Governor Walz has made clear to Minnesotans that their democratic process does not work for them, but for the wealthy and powerful few.”

Turner’s denunciations were inspired by Walz’s succumbing to pressure from the Mayo Clinic and other hospitals and derailing legislation requiring hospitals in Minnesota to form committees (with nurses given a leading voice) to determine appropriate nursing staffing levels at their respective worksites. Mayo had threatened to withdraw billions in planned new investments from Minnesota if the legislation went into effect.

Then there are the views of indigenous and environmental activists who see Walz as a tool of fossil fuel industries with his backing of the Line 3 tar sands pipeline in Minnesota. After running for governor in 2018 as an opponent of the pipeline, once assuming office he gradually transitioned into supporting the project, appointing oil industry friendly persons to key state regulatory agencies and deploying law enforcement to violently repress activists peacefully protesting the pipeline.

The Minnesota Model: A Blueprint for National Action?

The suite of progressive reforms signed into law by Walz has been lauded by progressives as the “Minnesota Model,” providing a potential blueprint for Kamala Harris to implement her vision of the “care economy”at the national level. What gets lost in celebration of this model is that in passing progressive reforms, Walz was responding to pressure from numerous social justice movements in the Minneapolis/St. Paul region. These movements have been built up over the course of years through patient and arduous effort by working class activists. The movements–focusing on labor issues, police brutality, immigrant rights, housing, education and health care–are the real embodiment of the Minnesota model, not Tim Walz himself (as some progressives seem to think). Walz has been described as a progressive firebrand; however he doesn’t have a long track record of being so. Representing a Republican leaning rural district in Congress for 12 years (2007-19), he mainly showed himself to be a relatively cautious centrist.

Walz has benefited as governor from a relatively strong Minnesota economy and a large state budget surplus: in the neoliberal era, under such conditions, political and business elites have often been willing to tolerate greater social spending and other modest concessions to ordinary people.

It will be considerably harder to implement any parallel to the Minnesota Model at the national level. For one, the US president and Congress are particularly vulnerable to pressure from Wall Street to rein in fiscal deficits; thus any increases in social spending by a potential Harris/Walz administration will probably be modest, at best.

The administration of Bill Clinton provides an instructive example as to how a Harris/Walz administration might evolve if elected. Clinton campaigned for the presidency in 1992 on a proposal for federal government spending on infrastructure as a way to stimulate the economy and provide jobs. According to Bob Woodward’s 1994 book The Agenda, after winning the presidency Clinton was subjected to a series of lectures from US Federal Reserve Bank officials about the need to discard his infrastructure spending proposal and instead concentrate his entire presidential agenda on implementing Wall Street friendly budget deficit slashing policies. Clinton reacted with dismay according to Woodward: “You mean to tell me that the success of the program and my reelection hinges on the Federal Reserve and a bunch of fucking bond traders?” Subsequently, Clinton’s infrastructure plan was forgotten; he significantly expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit for America’s low income population but otherwise spent nearly his entire presidency cooperating with Republicans to significantly slash budget deficits (in the interests of Wall Street).

Woodward portrayed Clinton entering the presidency as a starry eyed progressive idealist, looking to harness the power of the federal government to benefit ordinary people. According to this portrait, it was only after becoming president that Clinton realized he would be forced to orient his entire presidency around bowing down to Wall Street’s power. Alexander Cockburn, writing in the Los Angeles Times in 1994, argued that Clinton was probably nowhere near as naive as Woodward portrayed him. Clinton’s campaign in 1992 showed plenty of signs that he was aligned with Wall Street. His proposal for infrastructure spending during the campaign was paired with caveats about such new spending being contingent on cutting spending elsewhere in the federal budget. Like many of the noises today emanating from the Harris/Walz campaign in support of the “care economy,” Clinton’s infrastructure proposal was substantially vague–it was probably offered not with the intention of seriously trying to implement it but only as rhetorical fluff during the campaign to mobilize progressive voters. The Clinton team’s probable intention all along–from the 1992 campaign to the assumption of the presidency–was to serve Wall Street. As Christopher Hitchens wrote in his 1999 book No One Left to Lie To: “the essence of American politics” is “the manipulation of populism by elitism.” Rhetorically–especially during election campaigns–politicians present themselves as populists operating on behalf of ordinary people; meanwhile, behind the scenes, their actual policies are molded to enhance the power of economic elites.

But then again Harris/Walz face somewhat different conditions in 2024 than those faced by Bill Clinton and Al Gore in 1992. In current times (as during the 1990’s) one hears frequent warnings from Wall Street elites, politicians and media commentators about the urgent need to rein in federal budget deficits. However, at the same time, the Covid pandemic and the evolving geopolitical and economic rivalry with China has encouraged sections of elite policymakers and business leaders to support considerably greater federal government spending and economic intervention in order to strengthen the domestic American economy. Both the Biden and Trump administrations significantly expanded tariffs to protect American manufacturers against Chinese competition. A visible portion of congressional Republicans supported the Biden administration’s $1 trillion infrastructure bill in 2021 as well as Biden’s $280 billion CHIPS Act of 2022; Republican governor Gregg Abbott of Texas indicated support for the CHIPS Act’s underlying principle by signing into law Texas’s own $1.4 billion investment into semiconductors. Also recent Democratic legislation to expand the Child Tax Credit passed the US House with a strong majority of the body’s Republicans supporting it.; however the measure failed in the Senate with heavy Republican opposition.

Many Republican politicians and media commentators have denounced the increased spending policies of the Biden administration as evidence of the latter being communist. However, beneath the surface of such stupid demagoguery, it is clear that there is a modicum of symmetry between both parties about the need for an industrial policy to strengthen domestic American business (especially in the context of rivalry with China). It is within that context that one expects the greatest chance for elements of Minnesota Model type policies to be passed at the national level: greater government investments in health care, education, child care, expanded child tax credits, a higher minimum wage and similar measures justified to make American workers more productive in economic competition with China.

Robert Borsage was wrong to write that the nomination of Tim Walz represents the Democratic Party “waving goodbye” to neoliberalism. Democrats are still fundamentally neoliberal even if they have taken a slightly Keynesian turn in recent years. It will be up to social movements of the type which successfully pressured Governor Tim Walz to sign Minnesota model policies into law to keep up the pressure on Democrats if there is any chance of them moving further away from neoliberalism.