By: The Editorial Board – wsj.com – August 19, 2024

Its platform offers a vision where the answer is always government.

What Kamala Harris will do if she wins the White House in 77 days is still mostly an open question, since she leapfrogged the primaries and didn’t have to argue over policy with any Democratic competitors. But for one clue as to Ms. Harris’s direction, look at what the Democratic base believes, since she has a history of following her party instead of leading it.

The 92-page document is filled with political rhetoric and exaggerations that present Mr. Biden as a working-class hero and Donald Trump as a richy-rich villain. But the platform is also a peek into an economic worldview in which the government is the answer, almost no matter the question. While private businesses are always “gouging” or adding “junk fees,” or otherwise trying to rip somebody off, Washington’s wise men are capable of providing for the American people, if only they have the power to pass the laws and regulations.

Here are only some of the promises:

• “Health care should be a right in America, not a privilege,” the platform says. “We’ll never quit fighting to protect and expand the Affordable Care Act.”

• “We support Medicaid expansion, encouraging states to provide health coverage to low-income Americans on the federal government’s tab.”

• “We’ll look to expand traditional Medicare coverage to include dental, vision, and hearing services.”

• “Democrats will provide free, universal preschool for four-year olds.”

• They will “guarantee affordable, quality child care to millions of working families for less than $10-a-day per child.”

• They’ll pass “America’s first, full, national paid family and medical leave program.”

• “We’ll work to finally raise the federal minimum wage to at least $15-an-hour.”

• “We’ll keep pushing to restore the expanded Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit.”

• “We’ll work to pass the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act, guaranteeing public sector bargaining rights.”

• “We’ll double funding to repair and expand active transportation and public transit.”

• “We’ll no longer permit companies to deduct the cost of paying executives more than $1 million a year.”

There’s plenty else in the platform, including turning Washington into the 51st state, codifying national abortion protections, spending more on “environmental justice” and climate change, and passing a series of enormous tax increases on Americans and businesses that probably still couldn’t begin to pay for all of these promises and many more.

Ms. Harris isn’t committed to every jot of this document, and the rap on party platforms is that they’re quickly forgotten. But is Ms. Harris really going to steer a different direction if Democrats send her to the White House after she won zero primary votes? In her debut speech as the presumptive nominee, she said she wants a country where “every person has affordable healthcare, affordable child care, and paid family leave.” Mr. Biden fancied himself as FDR, and perhaps Ms. Harris wants to be LBJ.

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Source: The Democratic Party’s Project 2025 – WSJ