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Pete Babendreier's avatar

I'm all about Harris beating Trump. Can't say I'm enthused about the loss leaders the dems are promoting to get the votes. If they come to fruition. Seems Harris vs. Biden isn't enough.

I'm in the fiscally conservative socially liberal camp. I'd like to know and see more about who (exactly) is providing this 'free chicken.' It's not the dems. It's who they're going to tax.

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David Dickson's avatar

Meh. Depends on what one heard in her policy rollout.

The big part of the "free chicken" is likely to be funded by ending a goodly amount of Donald Trump's tax cuts. That was attempted during Biden, and blocked largely by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ). You can chalk up a lot of Democratic sourness on Biden, over his presidency, to that well-meaning, introverted, socially-liberal champion of capital and finance.

(Also, to a lesser extent, Sen. Joe Manchin (then D-, now I-WV), who was more opposed to Biden's social spending plans than his proposed tax policy, per se.)

Kamala, by nature of simply being Not Biden, has the street cred to propose succeeding where Biden failed on this issue--but she also has a golden opportunity to act on it. Much of the Trump tax cuts sunset in 2025; like Obama in 2013, she has a window to cut a deal. Likely the top 5% of taxpayers and corporate America would be the ones sacrificing in that deal.

As far as the rest goes:

Some corners of punditry believe (on the grocery thing, for example) she just promised to appoint certain people to the FTC and use existing antitrust law to promulgate regulations there--then framed it as a brand spankin' new "price gouging ban" to make voters happy and bait Donald Trump into coming out against it.

If so, it would also almost be certainly consonant with the roadblock a razor-thin margin in Congress would pose to any big new legislation she'd propose--and further, it would be limited by a Supreme Court that has declared itself (wrongly, IMO) the High Mullah Council Of All Things Regulatory.

"After all the tweets, I'm pretty sure Harris did not in fact propose price controls on groceries тАФ just kind of vaguely said that antitrust enforcement is good (it is good)", according to Matt Yglesias. He's got more time and energy to analyze these things than I do.

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CatsRule's avatar

Who pays for the republicans free chicken? This is a binary choice.

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