The former VP Kamala Harris spoke before a crowd this past Friday at a convention organized by the Rev Al Sharpton, a post Tawana Brawley mainstay of the Democratic Party. At Mr Sharpton’s Black Action Network Kamala Harris commented that she was “thinking about” running again for the presidency in 2028. Among the howlers Ms Harris told was the sentence that follows, which I quote from the New York Times. Said Ms. Harris: “He [Donald Trump] told the American people on Day 1 he was going to bring down prices and costs,” Ms. Harris said. “He lied.”
Ms. Harris is, of course, correct. President Trump is a dedicated liar. And not a very good one at that.
From her remark it would not be unreasonable to suppose that Ms. Harris has a problem with liars and lying. But she doesn’t. She, like the overwhelming majority of politicians, is a liar herself. But the rationale (such as it is) is that she lies for supposedly good causes. For instance the good cause she lied for was getting herself re-elected Vice President, and then getting elected President.
Who can ever forget her slashing attack on Robert Hur, the special counsel who investigated then President Joe Biden’s holding of classified documents from when he was the VP? In explaining why he didn’t charge Vice President Biden with any crimes, Mr Hur described Mr Biden as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”. That was an indubitably accurate description.
However, in Ms Harris’s description and I quote “The way that the presidents demeanor in that report was characterized could not be more wrong on the facts and clearly politically motivated”. And let us not forget that Ms Harris insisted on describing Mr Biden, senile old man with his finger in the nuclear trigger, as capable and competent.
Later Ms. Harris also went on to say that she would not have done anything differently from Biden had she been President at the time. And finally, at the same conference where she excoriated Trump for not lowering costs and prices, JD Pritzker (a fellow Democrat) said “[We] need to be about lowering costs for people.” Ms Harris was silent for that.
Now, it remains a truism that modern politicians are utterly incapable of lowering costs and prices (or budget deficits) given their fatuous belief in Keynesian macro-economics. “We are all Keynesians now” to quote Richard Nixon. Something they all too conveniently believe.
But we did have constantly falling prices from 1865 (when noticeable economic growth took off) until 1900. A basket of consumer goods fell from about $100 to $51 during that time. But that was before we all became Keynesians.
We do have a structural problem. That problem has been brought about by the welfare state. The problem is not, repeat, not about polarization. Instead the problem is that the great middle class wants something for nothing, while all the while convincing itself that it is put upon by others, especially “the rich”.
The great majority of Social Security and Medicare benefits go to the middle class which collectively takes out way more than it contributed. That comes close to the definition of living off the welfare state. The fact that they are unaware of it is testament to the ignorance of the population about economics and finance, not to the policy stance. If anything, the most leftward politicians are making a heroic contribution to that ignorance. Think Bernie Sanders and “Medicare for all”. Or to “free” child care and buses in Mayor Mamdani’s New York City.
We have met the enemy as Walt Kelly in his comic strip Pogo said. And the enemy is us.
JFB
