WASHINGTON: Risking an embrace of the “socialist” label Donald Trump has sought to stick on her, vice-president Kamala Harris is rolling out a raft of populist proposals including the “first-ever” federal ban on “price gouging” for groceries and food, a $25,000 subsidy for first-time home buyers, and child tax credits of $3000 per child, after $6,000 per child to families for the first year of a baby’s life.
The Democratic nominee’s campaign said she will announce the proposals on Friday at a rally in North Carolina, a battleground state that Trump won by only one per cent in 2020. Details of the proposals, which include a cap on prescription drug costs, reducing the cost of health insurance, and eliminating medical debt for millions of Americans, are sketchy. But they are ostensibly aimed at addressing a major campaign issue that Republicans are attacking her with: the rising cost of living during the Biden-Harris administration.
The proposals, coming ahead of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago starting Monday, are also aimed at countering criticism that Harris has not addressed policy issues and has no roadmap for her prospective presidency aside from continuing the so-called “Bidenomics.” While many of the proposals outline Harris vision of the economy by expanding on the Biden policies, they appear to signal a move further to the left, daring more attacks from Trump, who has branded her a “lunatic socialist” and even communist.
In fact, some Trump surrogates have dredged out the work of her Jamaican father Donald Harris’ — a one-time colleague and friend of Indian Nobel laureate Amartya Sen — to describe him as a “Marxist economist.” A recent article in the conservative journal National Review said “Harris isn’t a carbon copy of her leftist academic dad. But it’d be a stretch to deny at least some similarities.”
The proposals outlined by her campaign suggest Kamala Harris is not afraid to go left of the more centrist Biden to counter Trump attacks on the cost of living issue. The former President, clearly clueless about quotidian kitchen table matters, has sought to underscore rising prices during the Biden presidency with clumsy examples, including producing big and small containers of tic-tac mouth fresheners to illustrate inflation, which polls show is the top issue for Americans in this election.
At a small campaign rally misrepresented as a press conference at his New Jersey estate on Thursday, Trump also laid out a table of everyday groceries to make the point about rising cost of living, evidently at the urging of his campaign advisors to attack Harris on economic issues on which they feel she is vulnerable,, But Trump spent much of his time rambling about unrelated issues and insulting her crudely, while insisting, “I think I’m entitled to personal attacks. I don’t have a lot of respect for her.”
The former president said he was “very angry at her that she weaponized the justice system against me,” and accused Democrats of wanting to “put me in prison” in a rigged judicial system, lending weight to critics who say he is in the Presidential race not so much to win the White House for Republicans but to ensure he does not go to prison.
Harris, who has framed the election in “Prosecutor v Felon” terms, has surged ahead so spectacularly — and unexpectedly — in polls that some Democratic stalwarts are worried that she may be peaking too soon. They expect another bump up from the party convention in Chicago next week where she is expected to outline her vision of and for America.
The Democratic nominee’s campaign said she will announce the proposals on Friday at a rally in North Carolina, a battleground state that Trump won by only one per cent in 2020. Details of the proposals, which include a cap on prescription drug costs, reducing the cost of health insurance, and eliminating medical debt for millions of Americans, are sketchy. But they are ostensibly aimed at addressing a major campaign issue that Republicans are attacking her with: the rising cost of living during the Biden-Harris administration.
The proposals, coming ahead of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago starting Monday, are also aimed at countering criticism that Harris has not addressed policy issues and has no roadmap for her prospective presidency aside from continuing the so-called “Bidenomics.” While many of the proposals outline Harris vision of the economy by expanding on the Biden policies, they appear to signal a move further to the left, daring more attacks from Trump, who has branded her a “lunatic socialist” and even communist.
In fact, some Trump surrogates have dredged out the work of her Jamaican father Donald Harris’ — a one-time colleague and friend of Indian Nobel laureate Amartya Sen — to describe him as a “Marxist economist.” A recent article in the conservative journal National Review said “Harris isn’t a carbon copy of her leftist academic dad. But it’d be a stretch to deny at least some similarities.”
The proposals outlined by her campaign suggest Kamala Harris is not afraid to go left of the more centrist Biden to counter Trump attacks on the cost of living issue. The former President, clearly clueless about quotidian kitchen table matters, has sought to underscore rising prices during the Biden presidency with clumsy examples, including producing big and small containers of tic-tac mouth fresheners to illustrate inflation, which polls show is the top issue for Americans in this election.
At a small campaign rally misrepresented as a press conference at his New Jersey estate on Thursday, Trump also laid out a table of everyday groceries to make the point about rising cost of living, evidently at the urging of his campaign advisors to attack Harris on economic issues on which they feel she is vulnerable,, But Trump spent much of his time rambling about unrelated issues and insulting her crudely, while insisting, “I think I’m entitled to personal attacks. I don’t have a lot of respect for her.”
The former president said he was “very angry at her that she weaponized the justice system against me,” and accused Democrats of wanting to “put me in prison” in a rigged judicial system, lending weight to critics who say he is in the Presidential race not so much to win the White House for Republicans but to ensure he does not go to prison.
Harris, who has framed the election in “Prosecutor v Felon” terms, has surged ahead so spectacularly — and unexpectedly — in polls that some Democratic stalwarts are worried that she may be peaking too soon. They expect another bump up from the party convention in Chicago next week where she is expected to outline her vision of and for America.
Source : Times of India
