Harris Had a Wall Street-Approved Economic Pitch. It Fell Flat.
The New York Times
The vice president vacillated on how to talk about the economy, and ended up adopting marginal pro-business tweaks that both corporate and progressive allies agreed made for a muddled message.
When Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to a locally owned brewery in New Hampshire to talk about helping small businesses — a major plank of her economic platform — she made sure that one group of Americans felt included: millionaires who wanted to keep more of their profits from selling stocks and real estate.
“If you earn a million dollars a year or more, the tax rate on your long-term capital gains will be 28 percent under my plan,” Ms. Harris said in that campaign speech this fall. “Because we know when the government encourages investment, it leads to broad-based economic growth.”
The moment stuck out. In remarks that her campaign had pitched as a major address to the middle class, Ms. Harris offered a striking concession on tax rates for the wealthy — an olive branch that she used to present herself as more business friendly than President Biden, who had sought a higher rate.
Her speech underscored just how much the advice of her allies and donors from Wall Street and Silicon Valley — as well as her own longstanding belief in pragmatic, incremental progress over sweeping, ideological change — was driving her messaging on the economy.
One important influence on Ms. Harris was her brother-in-law, Tony West, who took a leave from his job as the chief legal officer at Uber to advise her campaign. Ms. Harris would often ask her staff, “Has Tony seen this?” before she would review her economic speeches or talking points, according to two people with knowledge of the conversations.
Mr. West, who served as a top Justice Department official in the Obama administration but has little background in economic policy, also flagged social media posts from her campaign and official accounts that he thought were off Ms. Harris’s economic message, one of the people said. He and Brian Nelson, a longtime adviser to Ms. Harris, were in frequent contact with business executives and Wall Street donors during the campaign.
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