Jul.23

electoral-vote.com

Dem 51

   

GOP 49

Harris' Platform Could Differ from Biden's

Many Democrats who were feeling dismayed as Joe Biden's campaign was in freefall have been revived. They have hope now for the first time in weeks, maybe months. Progressive Democrats have an extra reason to be hopeful. Up until now, Harris has been required to parrot Biden's thinking on all issues. Now she is a free agent and her thinking is different from his in some ways. Here are some issues on which Harris and Biden have different views and which her views will now dominate:

• Abortion: Biden, a Catholic, wants to restore Roe v. Wade but still let states put some limits on abortion. Harris wants to restore Roe but also put more limits on what states could do. In particular, she wants federal law to require states with a history of restricting abortion to get preclearance from the Department of Justice before passing any new laws affecting abortion. This is similar to what the Voting Rights Act did about changes to voting laws. One problem is that the Supreme Court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act that dealt with preclearance (albeit not because preclearance was inherently unconstitutional, but because they decided the guidelines were out of date). Making this happen might involve Supreme Court reform in one way or another. Expanding the Court is one way, but not the only one. Congress has the explicit power to limit the areas where the Supreme Court has jurisdiction and could pass a law stripping the Court of jurisdiction in cases involving abortion.
  
  
• Gaza: Biden has expressed solidarity with Israel after Hamas terrorists killed over 1,000 Israelis, raped a number of women, and took hundreds of people as hostages. He regrets the deaths among Gaza civilians but keeps supplying Israel with most weapons it wants. Harris agrees with Biden but has expressed sympathy for the plight of Palestinian civilians caught in the crossfire. She has also put more focus on long-term peace in the region. She supports a two-state solution. PM Benjamin Netanyahu will be addressing a joint session of Congress tomorrow, and she has decided that this is not the right time to be pictured sitting behind him, so she's taking a pass and says she will meet with him privately.
  
  
• Climate Change: Biden got $369 billion to fight climate change through Congress. However, he doesn't support the Green New Deal and doesn't want to ban fracking. Harris wants to spend $10 trillion fighting climate change and is a cosponsor of the Green New Deal. She wants to ban fracking. He is leery of abolishing the filibuster and she is not. Fracking is important to the economy of Pennsylvania, so if Harris wants to ban it, that could hurt her in the western part of the Keystone state.
  
  
• Student debt: Both of them support some debt relief for college students. However, Biden questioned whether he had the authority to do this by XO. Later the Supreme Court told him, that no, he didn't have that authority. Only Congress could do it. Harris has focused on eliminating debt for students who went to for-profit commercial colleges that were basically scams. This might be stronger legally, but ultimately, only Congress could really do the job completely and Republicans are wildly against this.
  
  
• Free college: Biden originally proposed making 4-year public colleges free for students whose families make under $125,000 per year. Later he focused on making 2-year colleges free, but Congress balked. Harris wants to make 2-year colleges free for everyone and 4-year public colleges free for all middle-class students. The difference between their plans is relatively minor and is about exactly who would qualify for free 4-year college.
  
  
• Trade: Biden backed the US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement after House Democrats got Donald Trump to make some changes. He also supported Barack Obama's Trans-Pacific Partnership, which was designed to build a trade wall around China in Asia. Harris voted against the USMCA agreement due to environmental concerns and opposed the TPP because it would move jobs to Asia. Harris has said she is against any trade deals that would outsource American jobs anywhere. This position would probably be popular with blue-collar workers who support Trump.
  
  
• Artificial intelligence: Biden wants the AI industry to regulate itself. Harris doesn't believe the industry would ever do that and wants the government to regulate it. She strongly opposes deepfakes, biased algorithms, and disinformation, and wants to make them illegal. This would align her with labor, civil rights, and consumer protection groups but would make enemies of tech barons who don't want any government regulations at all.
  
  
• Data privacy: Biden has urged Congress to do something but it hasn't. Harris has been on data privacy for more than a decade and enforced California's strict privacy laws when she was AG there. She has said that she is against having to give up your privacy as the price of using apps. One issue that has come up here is companies selling location data or turning it over to state governments. For example, in states where visiting an out-of-state abortion clinic is an in-state crime, getting local data for a woman and discovering that she was at an out-of-state abortion clinic might be grounds for indicting the woman. Harris wants to make it illegal to disclose anyone's location data. Some venture capitalists who want to capture and sell this data, such as Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, are so angry about such limits that they are now supporting Trump.
  
  
• Animal welfare: Biden has tried to block a California law requiring farm animals to be treated humanely (animaly?) Harris has defended California's animal-protection laws, including those banning foie gras and confined hens.
  

On these and other issues, Harris is considerably to the left of Biden. Republicans are going to portray her as way to the left of Leon Trotsky. That could be counterproductive, though, because with many young people, that would be a selling point and might encourage them to register and vote. (V)