Harris’s Economic Pitch: Capitalism for the Middle Class

Vice President Kamala Harris wants voters to know that she is not a socialist.

That was the clear, unspoken theme of Harris’ nearly 40-minute economic policy speech in Pittsburgh on Wednesday. It was why she paraphrased Warren Buffett, cited a survey of top economists and praised entrepreneurs in language that echoed Republican Sen. Mitt Romney’s presidential run a dozen years earlier.

Harris is locked in a tight presidential race with former President Donald Trump. Polls show that the economy remains the biggest issue in the race and that many undecided voters have concerns about Harris’ ability to make things better. Trump has tried to deride Harris as a socialist, if not a communist. Polls suggest those attacks have raised doubts in some swing voters’ minds about how Harris would wield government power to manage the economy.

And so, in what was billed as a major economic address with only weeks to go in the campaign, Harris sought to put those doubts to rest. In muted and technical language that seemed designed to court on-the-fence voters skeptical of the government’s ability to solve major economic problems, Harris embraced capitalism and called herself a pragmatist who would not govern by ideology.

In front of an audience filled with business owners and entrepreneurs at the Economic Club of Pittsburgh, Harris promised to build an economy that gains strength from a growing middle class, grounded in “fairness, dignity and opportunity.”

“I promise you I will be pragmatic in my approach,” she said. “I will engage in what Franklin Roosevelt called bold, persistent experimentation. Because I believe we shouldn’t be constrained by ideology, and instead should seek practical solutions to problems, realistic assessments of what is working and what is not, applying metrics to our analysis, applying facts to our analysis and stay focused, then, not only on the crises at hand but on our big goals, on what’s best for America over the long term.”

A moment later, she added: “Look, I am a capitalist.”

Harris could have chosen a different path — one that many progressives have urged her to take. She could have more clearly delineated who she sees as the villains of the economy — namely big corporations.

Calling out economic villains is an approach that many Democrats begrudgingly credit Trump for taking, even as they disagree sharply with the groups he has chosen to cast as the bad guys, most notably immigrants. It is an approach that appears to resonate with some groups of swing voters, particularly men. Harris tried a version of it early in her campaign, blaming corporations for the elevated cost of groceries and proposing a federal ban on price gouging.

The vice president mentioned that ban Wednesday, but she did not linger on it. It was one of a scattered selection of details from her campaign policy plans that she chose to highlight in her address.

Other plans seemed chosen to support her case that the best way to help Americans get ahead in the economy is by government empowering private companies. She reiterated plans to incentivize contractors to build more housing units to bring down the cost of rent. She proposed an expansion of a tax deduction for startup companies to encourage more business formation. She frequently sought to contrast her approach with Trump’s, and to cast his policy proposals as detrimental to workers and companies alike.

Harris is running to succeed President Joe Biden, whose approval ratings on economic issues plummeted after a surge of inflation early in his term. Her speech, and her overall economic platform, made few overt breaks from Biden’s agenda — a combination of robust public investment and other government intervention, meant to revitalize American industry and with it the middle class.

But while Biden’s speeches are built around empowering workers — particularly union workers — Harris focused more on removing what she calls the obstacles that people and companies face to get ahead in the economy. She has emphasized buying a home or starting a business as a way to build generational wealth. She makes clear concessions to industry concerns, like a line tucked into Wednesday’s speech praising blockchain innovation, which seemed tailored for cryptocurrency entrepreneurs.

“She’s an evolution of Bidenomics, in a lot of ways,” said Ernie Tedeschi, a former chief economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers under Biden. “Somebody summed it up as: middle-class capitalism,” he added.

The key word there, as Harris’ speech emphasized, is “capitalism.” It’s a word Biden uses, too. But it has become more urgent for Harris. She has tacked to the middle on economic issues since her short-lived campaign for the 2020 Democratic nomination, having disavowed support for her Medicare for All proposal in that race.

She did not propose any “for all” programs in her speech Wednesday. She did say she wanted to help Americans afford vacations, and to buy Christmas presents without worry.

She drew a line between noble companies and the ones that rip people off, without exactly saying where that line was.

“I am a devout public servant,” she said early on. “I also know the limitations of government.”

She did not linger on those limitations, either.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .