How the Economic Policies of Kamala Harris Will Hurt Those She is Claiming to Want to Help

Kamala Harris

By Lee Ohanian

US senator Kamala Harris, who announced her candidacy for president last week, immediately moves to the top of the Democratic party’s list for the 2020 election. Her background—a UC Berkeley law school graduate, a former California attorney general, the author of a children’s book, and a prominent US senator who serves on the Judiciary Committee—appeals widely to those in the party.

The fact that she is biracial (her mother is Indian, her father is Jamaican) makes it very difficult for the Democratic party to find a candidate with a stronger “diversity background.” And she will benefit enormously from the California primary being moved up from June to March in 2020.

Among those who have declared their candidacy, I don’t see anyone coming close to Senator Harris. Among those who have not, there is former vice president Joe Biden. But Biden must cross the increasingly wide chasm that now confronts any candidate within the Democratic party who has relatively moderate policy positions.

Harris’s economic positions dovetail with a Democratic party that is moving rapidly to the political left.  As a US senator, Harris’s voting record on labor, minimum wage, taxes, health care, housing, the environment, and other issues has been evaluated as being nearly 100 percent politically progressive.

Her campaign slogan is “For the People,” but her economic positions will harm many of those whom she wants to help. One policy position is the minimum wage, in which Senator Harris supports increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour.

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