Progressives gear up for their first big fight if Harris wins: Protecting Lina Khan
Progressives gear up for their first big fight if Harris wins: Protecting Lina Khan
While liberals have held their tongues as Kamala Harris tacked to the center, they're preparing for a major battle over the future of the party, with personnel emerging as a flashpoint.
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My impression has been that Harris is indicating that her economic policy will move in the opposite direction with her talk of "price-gouging". Is there a reason to think she will do what this article suggests, other than the fact that some donors are asking her to?
Well, to start, politicians will say anything to get elected, so their words mean absolutely nothing, regardless of party affiliation.
This article was the first I'd even heard about Harris potentially ousting Kahn, so that's potentially a good sign. However, Kahn and the FTC have been taking swings at the oligarchs via their Google monopoly lawsuits, going after Apple, etc.
Harris (and Walz) are centrist Democrats, they are not progressive. A progressive candidate would be calling for the minimum wage to match where it'd be if it was tied with inflation, around $26/hr, not bringing up the $15/hr debate that should've been done a decade ago. She hasn't signalled support for Medicare for All as far as I remember, she went back on her promise not to expand fracking, and she's made no mention of enshrining LGBTQ+ rights into law or stopping weapons sales to Israel (she has said their would be contingencies, so she still agrees to help the guy actively working against her with her opponent), all progressive ideas.
So, she likely doesn't support these things because her party, and more importantly, the donors who line their pockets, don't want her to. She's a career Democrat, she's not that much younger than Biden in comparison to someone considered progressive, like AOC, so her policies are going to closer align with the Status-Quo centrist Democrats versus the We-Need-Change-Now progressive Democrats.
Tl:dr: Harris is a centrist Democrat whose party (and by extension, her party's wealthy donors) do not want progress made, they want a return to the status quo, as their policies have shown (Palestine, M4A, Fracking, etc). Her donors likely don't like that the FTC chair actually has a backbone, and since the status quo is more important to the Democrat Party (look at how they treated Bernie) than progress. So, the donors are likely pressuring her behind the scenes to put a Garland-esque Chair in charge of the FTC: someone with no backbone.
She is 21 years younger than Biden, and I'm not sure you have actually read her voting record. It's quite progressive for a us democrat
The examples I gave have been from her campaign this year, I'm glad she's voted progressively compared to most US Democrats, but she is campaigning as a moderate.
As for her age, yeah, I'm glad we don't have someone who's an octogenarian running, but she's closer to Biden's age than she is AOC's, an actual progressive Democrat.