Kamala Harris wants to try something new: ‘middle-class capitalism’

To fix this, experts keep telling Harris that she needs to release more policy details. What’s her plan for trade? For child care? For technology? For the deficit? This is lousy advice — because most voters don’t spend much time in the policy weeds. Those who do know that Congress will change the minutiae anyway. What Harris needs most is a clear economic philosophy. Voters want to understand her guiding values on the issue that matters to them most. What is her answer to “America First”?

Harris has a catchy slogan in the “opportunity economy,” but it seems intentionally vague. Everyone supports more opportunity, just as every American likes freedom. Similarly, Harris excels at using her personal story, and especially her mother’s story, to connect with voters. It resonates with people that Harris once worked at McDonald’s, and that her mother saved for over a decade to buy a home. But none of this clarifies what she would prioritize as president.

Until she defines her vision, others will keep doing it for her. Trump tries to paint her as a socialist or, worse, a Marxist. Harris’s surrogates cast her in different lights based on the audience. Investor Mark Cuban makes her sound like a pro-business moderate. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) insists she’s a fellow “progressive.”

To set out her own vision, Harris needs to do two things. First, she should play up the good news about the U.S. economy. There’s a lot of this right now: Wages and incomes are up, especially for the middle class. Unemployment has been incredibly low, and many people have been able to find better jobs. The inflation battle has been won; Americans are seeing prices fall for gas, cars and other goods, and the Federal Reserve is ready to lower interest rates. This looks like a soft landing.

Second, she needs to emphasize that, now that the economy has healed, the president and Congress have an opportunity to fix the country’s long-standing problems and invest in the jobs of the future.

Harris has released several narrowly targeted plans. There’s one to help first-time home buyers. There’s one to help entrepreneurs launch small businesses. There’s one to help new parents in the first year of their child’s life. There’s one to go after “price gouging.” And there’s one to tinker with the capital gains tax (to raise it, but less than President Joe Biden would). Many of these ideas are popular with voters, but Harris has no narrative to show Americans how they fit together. This is why a sizable share of voters say they still don’t know what Harris wants to do.

As an undecided voter named Stephanie told C-SPAN after the debate: “What I was looking for most was a plan for the way forward. What I got [as an undecided voter] is that Kamala, she kept on repeating her two-step plan. From what I understood … she was going to give $25,000 to new homeowners, which doesn’t affect me, and she also was going to give $50,000 for small business start-ups, which also does not affect me.”

The bigger philosophy Harris appears to favor is along the lines of something I would call “fair capitalism” or “middle-class capitalism.” She is rejecting neoliberalism. Trump and Harris agree that free trade resulted in too many losers and left the United States vulnerably reliant on China. Trump is doubling down on tariffs as well as a level of anti-immigrant sentiment that the United States hasn’t seen in a century. On top of this, he pushes the traditional Republican ideology of tax cuts and fewer regulations. His is an old playbook, but a known one. Harris wants to talk about the future.

Her agenda calls for bold, strategic investments in the economy of tomorrow. She wants 3 million new homes. She wants more start-up businesses. She champions industrial policy to bring advanced manufacturing back to the United States. In the debate, she even embraced investing in “diverse sources of energy.” This build-build-build mentality is largely bipartisan and pro-business (and it draws on what has been dubbed the “abundance agenda”).

Another facet of Harris’s strategy is to provide aid for Americans who are struggling. This is where her bigger child tax credit comes in, as well as her push for affordable child care and elder care. All of this underscores her belief that the federal government should more aggressively police large companies that break the law with anticompetitive practices. This part of her agenda looks more traditionally Democratic.

But for the most part, Harris’s economic views don’t fall neatly on the liberal-to-conservative spectrum (Trump’s don’t, either). Her plan is broader than government handouts. Former Biden adviser Jen Harris calls this vision from the vice president “build and balance.” I still like “middle-class capitalism.” Whatever Harris ultimately calls it, she has to do a better job of selling it.

Harris needs to define her economic philosophy so that voters can see it — and understand how they fit into it.