To win in 2024, Harris and Waltz must wholeheartedly embrace a populist vision that makes people’s economic self-determination as important as control over their own bodies.
In the days after Kamala Harris chose Tim Waltz as her running mate, many commentators and the media focused on the progressive policies he championed as governor of Minnesota. August article of Art Axios laid out 10 elements of his “progressive agenda,” from expanding family leave to laws guaranteeing abortion rights and “gender-affirming care” to legalizing marijuana and restoring voting rights to ex-felons.
Another articleArt US News and World Reportdescribed how Waltz has “evolved into a strong progressive leader,” citing his record on abortion, gender-affirming care and driver’s licenses for immigrants. NPR cites “several progressive proposals” that Waltz has signed into law, reiterating the above as well as a commitment to climate-friendly energy.
What is missing from all these descriptions of progressive priorities? Anything related to workers, family farmers, or the fight against economic inequality.
In today’s Democratic Party, the fight against corporate dominance has fallen by the wayside as a progressive priority. Indeed, many even on the left single out issues of personal liberty—abortion, LGBTQ rights, legalizing marijuana—not as part progressive agenda, but as its essence. Could this be part of why we lost so many rural and working-class voters?
Forty years of laissez-faire antitrust and neglect of the people who make things have created an uphill (as nothing special trickles down) economy that has devastated so many small towns and rural communities, paving the way for Trump and Vance to win over the “forgotten Americans” . Yet too many Democratic academics and pundits continue to relegate the priorities of rural and working-class voters to the bottom of the progressive agenda. To win in 2024 and prevent an even wider acceptance of Trumpism, Harris and Walls must wholeheartedly embrace a new progressive populist vision that makes economic self-determination as important as personal autonomy and control over one’s own body.
Tim Waltz’s track record, especially as governor of Minnesota, but also as a congressman, aligns well with the pro-worker, pro-farm politics of the last four years of the Biden-Harris campaign. On the House Agriculture Committee, Waltz championed the Beginning Farmers and Ranchers Act, which helped a significant number of new farmers get started. He helped enact the Rural Energy for America program, expanding energy efficiency and renewable energy on farms and supporting climate-friendly farmers. Although Waltz was considered a “moderate” in Congress, he opposed most free trade agreements as well as the Wall Street bailout, largely for the same reason that they hurt working people and increased the power of corporations.
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As governor, Walz and Minnesota’s Democratic majority have adopted a number of economically progressive policies, from raising taxes on multinational corporations to repealing non-compete clauses to banning the intimidation of workers who try to unionize. Tim Waltz’s progressive policies in Minnesota mirror those of the Biden administration, with workers and farmers at the center, where they should be.
While Waltz’s inclusion on the ticket was promising, it would be a mistake to assume that his selection guarantees a continuation of the Biden-Harris shift toward working people, let alone a renewed commitment to rural America. One of the most important areas that rural progressives are watching closely is antitrust law. The good news is that Harris-Walz “Opportunity economy» The plan includes commitments to prosecute corporations for price-fixing on groceries, rents and pharmaceuticals, to challenge the ever-expanding dominance of private capital in health care and to combat anti-competitive corporate practices.
Nowhere in the plan, however, is there a specific commitment to vigorous antitrust enforcement in all sectors of the economy. Why is this a concern? Because megadonors like Reid Hoffman are Harris called to fire Lina Hahn, the tireless FTC chairman whose efficiency earned her the hatred of Silicon Valley and Wall Street. As Mark Cuban, who is acting as an unofficial campaign surrogate, called the current chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission “bad for the tech community,” asserting that Harris’ team told him “in no uncertain terms” that they would go easy on regulating the cryptocurrency. And that’s why, as Matt Stoller, one of the country’s leading antitrust experts, said put it downshe is “surrounded by Silicon Valley-friendly Obama types.”
They are not the only Democrats encouraging Harris to loosen antitrust laws. None other than Larry Summers, the bad penny that keeps popping up at the top of Democratic circles, laid out the case that Khan must leave. In comments on Bloomberg TV, he argued: “The function of antitrust policy is to maintain competition in favor of low prices for consumers; to help consumers.” Hahn’s mistake, he says, is that she “tried to go further, to some kind of broader, populist theory of antitrust.”
Where does this “broad populist theory” that Khan espouses come from? Maybe it is Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914which provides that mergers and acquisitions should be prohibited if they “substantially lessen competition”; prohibits corporations from requiring customers to buy exclusively from them; prohibits corporate board members from serving on competitor boards if doing so reduces competition; and, perhaps most importantly, insists on protecting the right of workers to join a union because work is “is not a commodity or an item of commerce.” Sounds like a pretty broad populist policy to me, and hardly a “mistake” to follow.
The notion that higher prices for consumers is only The reason why corporate mergers should be challenged is not Larry Summers. This came from Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan’s failed Supreme Court nominee. Although Congress rejected Bork’s nomination, his radical reduction became the dominant view of antitrust law from the late 1970s to the 2020s, with relentless pressure from conservative economic and judicial scholars. And with the shameful the tacit consent of Democratic presidents.
This core of extreme wealth concentration and corporate political dominance has finally found its way into Lina Khan and other antitrust warriors in the Biden-Harris administration. And their return to the larger view of the Clayton Act is beginning to yield concrete results, from greater transparency and fairer conditions for contract chicken farmers to lower prices for pharmaceuticals and medical devices to the biggest surge of new small businesses in decades, thanks in part to these challenges for corporate concentration. But most of the gains of the past four years will soon disappear if Harris retreats from antitrust. If the election is behind us, Democrats and progressives must do everything they can to prevent it from happening.
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