The Media Shouldn’t Fall for Trump’s Bad-Faith Critique of Harris’ Platform

Public policy is important.

And in a well-functioning democracy, it is important that there be real debates about policy alternatives, so that elections offer citizens some real choices and, by doing so, offer at least some minimal sense of ongoing accountability.

But we live in a democracy that is barely functioning, hampered by counter-majoritarian institutions that make serious policy innovation difficult if not impossible and forms of private power that severely undermine civic equality.

It is time for television pundits and foolish so-called “journalists” to stop treating this election as a “normal” election in which both sides are serious about policy and Donald Trump’s bombastic and lying policy claims require the Harris campaign to start communicating like the Kennedy School of Government.

Further, we are living through a moment in which one of the two major parties is not even committed to a functioning democracy centered on policy debates. The Republican Party—led by a dictatorial individual whose “policy talk” is simplistic, bombastic, and centered not on policy but on disparaging and demonizing those who oppose him—is committed above all to weakening the hard-won policy gains achieved in the past by progressive social movements.

It is beyond cynical for former U.S. President Donald Trump and his running mate Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) to denounce Vice President Kamala Harris for failing to outline a policy vision. And it is beyond dumb for commentators to give credence to this criticism.

The criticism is cynical because while Harris and the Democratic Party have yet to iron out an actual platform, Harris has made it clear that she stands behind and intends to carry forward most of the priorities and accomplishments of the Biden-Harris administration, whether we are talking about immigration or environmental policy or deepening affordable medical care or defending reproductive freedom and women’s healthcare. And Harris is very clear about her central policy issue: Roe needs to be codified in law, and the Republican assault on reproductive freedom needs to be defeated.

It is also cynical because Harris has also made clear that she supports passage of three very important democratic reforms: the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, the Freedom to Vote Act, and the Pro Act strengthening the rights of workers to organize unions.

Harris’ policy commitments, in other words, are rather substantial and clear, at least by the conventional standards of American politics and surely in comparison to the rhetoric of her opponent.

And that is the most important reason why the rhetoric of Trump and Vance is so cynical: because the Trump-Vance “policy agenda” consists of nothing more than a set of literally reactionary promises that barely engage the “problems” they purport to “solve,” and Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, have made it very clear that they oppose this cruel and reactionary agenda. And a commitment to oppose bad things is as important as a commitment to attempt good ones.

Here are some things that a Harris-Walz administration clearly will not do:

It will not organize the arrest and deportation of 10 million undocumented immigrants, requiring the establishment of detention centers, i.e., concentration camps, throughout the country, instituting a police state;

It will not gut the federal bureaucracy (Project 2025) and destroy the forms of social, economic, and environmental regulation that have protected the health and welfare of Americans for over a century;

It will not extend the repressive abortion regime now being codified by Republicans in states across the country in the wake of the SCOTUS overturning of Roe in 2022;

It will not use the Justice Department to seek retribution against political opponents and to harass and weaken autonomous institutions, especially universities;

It will not attack public education;

It will not repeal the Affordable Care Act;

It will not extend Trump’s extremely regressive 2017 tax cuts;

It will not weaken or destroy global institutions and alliances in the name of “America First” isolationism;

It will not allow Russian President Vladimir Putin to destroy Ukraine and encourage him to to extend Russian hegemony in Europe and Eurasia;

It will not make common cause with authoritarian nationalists throughout the world, from India’s Narendra Modi to Hungary’s Viktor Orban to Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Russia’s Putin to Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.

Most importantly, a Harris-Walz administration will not attack voting rights, promote mass repression of dissent, strengthen violent and racist forms of policing, offer encouragement to paramilitary and vigilante “patriots,” and in other ways seek to undermine constitutional democracy itself.

That Trump promises to do these things, and that the Democratic party opposes all of them, is very well known.

It is time for television pundits and foolish so-called “journalists” to stop treating this election as a “normal” election in which both sides are serious about policy and Donald Trump’s bombastic and lying policy claims require the Harris campaign to start communicating like the Kennedy School of Government.

For in 2024 the GOP is serious about one thing—elevating an unhinged and unrestrained Donald Trump to the presidency and supporting his plan to institute a harsh and authoritarian policy regime. And the Democratic party is equally serious about stopping this autocratic attack on constitutional democracy.

The Harris-led Democratic Party has policy commitments, to be sure. And it surely will expand on these commitments after next week’s convention in Chicago.

But its most fundamental “policy” commitment is a commitment to the constitutionally-prescribed democratic process itself.

And as flawed, limited, corrupt, and hypocritical as this process can be, what Trump and his MAGA accomplices offer is much worse—chaos, corruption, and cruelty.

That is now the choice before us.

And this choice ought to be the overriding preoccupation of everyone interested in the November election and its outcome.