Across all four nights of the Democratic National Convention last week, Vice President Kamala Harris and her surrogates stressed the existential crisis they believed former president Donald Trump’s potential return to the White House would pose for the nation. Labeling the Trump-JD Vance ticket “weird” and dubbing themselves “joyful warriors,” Harris and Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota clearly emphasized four words for the American people: “We’re not going back.”
Yet while Harris made clear where her presidency would not go, her speech didn’t exactly explain the policies that a Harris-Walz administration would have in store for America. Where would a Harris presidency take this country, and how would it achieve its vision for the country? As an undecided young voter worried about the current trajectory of our nation, I wanted an answer to that question. The DNC didn’t give me one.
As a Republican disgusted with Trump’s behavior since the 2020 election — namely, his refusal to concede his loss to President Biden in 2020, his incitement of the Jan. 6, 2021, US Capitol riot, and the sea of indictments and 34 felony convictions in the last year-and-a-half — the rematch that loomed between Trump and Biden was disheartening to say the least. Harris’s entry into the race left me with optimism that we could chart a new course for our nation, one that forsook the rampant partisanship and division that had reached a fever pitch under both Trump and Biden. But it also came with concerns about her record and the policies Harris would advocate for if she is elected president.
Since Biden and Harris took office nearly four years ago, the cost of a median-priced home jumped more than 10 percent; mortgage rates have doubled; young Americans like myself are entering the workforce facing the costliest housing market in decades. Further, Americans have reached unprecedented levels of personal debt, a notable shift from the record-high household savings they enjoyed during the COVID-19 pandemic, when social distancing greatly diminished household spending and fiscal relief like the Covid Child Tax Credit, stimulus checks, and unemployment insurance put more money in Americans’ pockets. On top of that, the price of groceries has risen 21 percent while the Energy Information Administration found that the gas prices have increased nearly 50 percent since Biden and Harris took office.
The economic prosperity of our nation has been threatened by the Biden-Harris administration, and young Americans across the country are inheriting rising costs, rising inflation, and diminished purchasing power everywhere. Yet instead of addressing the worsening financial calamity young Americans increasingly face, Harris’s speech at the DNC largely skirted the issue, promising to create an “opportunity economy” and enact a “middle-class tax cut.” And while she expressed her goal of bringing together labor, workers, and small business owners to create jobs, she didn’t elaborate, simply stating that she would “provide access to capital.” If those don’t sound like clear-cut policy prescriptions designed to help an increasingly financially burdened workforce, it’s because they’re not. Rather, Harris is deliberately withholding the particulars of any economic policy she has conceived thus far in her campaign, attempting to draw voters in with buzzwords rather than specific initiatives that could benefit voters.
Yet most concerning to me as a young voter are the marked shifts in policy that Harris advocated in her first presidential campaign that she now claims to disavow. Five years ago, when then-Senator Harris first ran for the presidency, she proposed a $10 trillion climate plan, one whose price tag far surpasses the estimated $1.6 trillion federal cost of Biden’s key energy, infrastructure, and technology legislation; she co-sponsored a resolution calling on Congress to adopt the Green New Deal, estimated by the American Action Forum to cost a baseline $6.6 trillion annually; and declared that there was “no question [she was] in favor of banning fracking.”
But these policy contrasts extend far beyond climate legislation: in April 2019, Harris co-sponsored Senator Bernie Sanders’s “Medicare for All” bill, which aimed to eliminate private health insurance and replace it with a single government-run insurer for all Americans; and in 2020, Harris was an initial co-sponsor of Sanders’s free college plan, which sought to eliminate tuition and fees for all students at two-year colleges and for middle-class students at four-year public institutions.
The American people deserve answers from the Harris campaign on these policy contrasts. There are many uncertainties about where Harris currently stands on various issues, but equally important is understanding why. All we know for now is that she no longer supports some of her previous positions. Voters deserve to know the kind of America for which they are casting their ballot, and young voters deserve answers from Harris about the kind of nation in which they may grow up. As joyous as the Harris-Walz campaign has presented itself thus far, “vibes” aren’t votes. As the cost of living continues to rise and young Americans face unprecedented financial pressures, we need more than campaign slogans — we need detailed, actionable policies. The DNC didn’t provide that clarity, and it’s up to voters to demand it.
Kiran Bhatia is a senior at Brookline High School.