The Harris Campaign Refused To Take On Economic Elites

By Milan Loewer, Jacobin

The Democratic National Convention in August was roundly acclaimed as a great success, presenting a unified front that stretched from Shawn Fain and Bernie Sanders to Adam Kinzinger and Leon Panetta. Ezra Klein saw a party that finally “wants to win.” The vibes were good, almost euphoric. Over the past few weeks, however, Harris has dropped in the polls, and heading into Election Day, many Democrats feel less than confident.

What’s going on? A poll of 1,000 Pennsylvania voters from the Center for Working-Class Politics (CWCP), Jacobin, and YouGov shows that the campaign was tentatively heading in the right direction this summer. It also suggests why, despite Donald Trump’s efforts to alienate voters, the race is still neck and neck.

Chicago, Illinois, August 19, 2024- Vice President Kamala Harris at the Democratic National Convention.

In late August, the historian Eric Foner wrote that Democrats were attempting to make the election about competing definitions of freedom — about, as Tim Walz said in his acceptance speech, “the freedom to make a better life for yourself and the people that you love,” against the freedom of corporations “to pollute your air” and banks to “take advantage of customers.” UAW president Shawn Fain went even further at the national convention in naming and blaming the villains that stand in the way of a better life for working people: “Corporate greed turns blue-collar blood, sweat, and tears into Wall Street stock buybacks and CEO jackpots,” he argued, adding that Trump was a “scab” who would protect the interests of corporations and billionaires. That same month, the campaign announced a series of commitments to tackle the housing shortage, crack down on price gouging, and raise the minimum wage.

Our survey found strong support for this kind of economic populist messaging and widespread antipathy for billionaires and corporate elites, especially among constituencies that Harris has struggled to reach — union members, voters without a college degree, and blue-collar voters, with whom Harris was trailing by 4, 7, and 19 points respectively in our poll. Despite these clear findings, Harris has pivoted away from anti-elite, economic messaging in the last month of the campaign and backtracked or de-emphasized some of her more popular policies in response to pressure from the business community.