When it comes to socialism, it’s tempting to say that Republicans resemble the boy who cried wolf. But the comparison is unfair: The wolf finally did come, just as the boy claimed. By contrast, socialism, according to conservatives, has been perpetually imminent in America for at least 60 years — and somehow it never materializes.
The latest emergence of this horrifying specter comes in the form of Kamala Harris. Donald Trump paints her as “a radical-left lunatic.” Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council under Trump, labels her a “big-government California socialist.” Fox Business says she has “a long history of touting socialism.” The Federalist goes further. “Yes, Kamala Harris Is a Communist,” one recent headline said.
Finding a basis for these claims is like trying to make a ham sandwich without ham or bread. Harris has been a key part of the current administration, which has been so fanatical about dismantling capitalism that the stock market has boomed — with the S&P 500 up 45% since Joe Biden took office.
Corporate profits hit record highs this year. Biden, it’s true, did propose to raise the corporate income tax to 28% — which would leave it well below the rate under Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Harris, who once endorsed Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, has backed off on both. Right-wing alarmists don’t believe her, forgetting that Trump has changed his mind on a host of issues. They express shock at her stated belief that “equity” means “we all end up in the same place.” But it’s a tortured stretch to interpret that as a call to enforce a strict policy of equal incomes.
In a 2023 speech, Harris said the administration is “dedicated to a specific principle, which is that of equity.” What does it mean? “We must see who’s not in the room, who’s never been in the room, where are the resources going, who needs what kind of resources. To do what? To be able to compete equally, to have equal opportunity to achieve, to have equal encouragement, to have aspirations and be ambitious.”
It’s not exactly the language of Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong. Harris, in fact, has also often said, “I’m a capitalist.”
Harris is merely a liberal — meaning she believes in protecting the rights of women, people of color and LGBTQ Americans, maintaining a sturdy welfare state to curb poverty, combating climate change, strengthening unions, preserving the Affordable Care Act and reforming the criminal justice system. She’s not a communist or a socialist. She’s not even a progressive.
You don’t have to take my word for it. In 2021, Briahna Joy Gray, who was national press secretary for the presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders — an actual socialist — told Politico, “I say this with no malice, but there is not a progressive in America who was appeased by Kamala Harris’ appointment” to the Biden ticket.
The people at Fox News obviously have never met a real socialist. Here’s what the World Socialist Web Site said after she ended her 2019 presidential campaign: “For the vast majority of the population, Harris’s constant invocations of her identity did little to convince them that she was in any way a progressive candidate. Rather, she was recognized as a pro-corporate Democrat.”
New York magazine staffer Sarah Jones recently wrote “A Socialist’s Case for Kamala Harris,” which indicated an enthusiasm level barely higher than room temperature. “I still want Medicare for All, and free public college, and student-debt forgiveness for all,” she lamented. “I want a president whose foreign policy isn’t soaked in innocent blood. I want someone who knows the codification of Roe v. Wade is not nearly good enough. But if I can’t get what I want this year, I’d rather settle for Harris.”
It’s worth remembering all the times Republicans have warned that Democrats were scheming to destroy capitalism and replace it with a Soviet hellscape. When Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, Investors Business Daily ran a 21-part series of editorials titled “The Audacity of Socialism.” In the following eight years, the S&P climbed 166%. Corporate profits rose 55%. Obama did about as much to advance socialism as he did to popularize cricket.
In 1961, Ronald Reagan opposed the creation of government-funded health insurance for seniors. “Behind it,” he predicted, “will come other federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country, until one day, as Norman Thomas said, we will awake to find that we have socialism.” But Medicare came to pass, and, wonder of wonders, socialism didn’t.
Every four years, Republicans suffer nightmares of Marxist militants torching Wall Street and seizing the means of production while proclaiming victory for the proletariat. One of these days, maybe, they’ll wake up.
Steve Chapman was a member of the Tribune Editorial Board from 1981 to 2021. His columns, exclusive to the Tribune, appear the first Thursday of every month. He can be reached at stephenjchapman@icloud.com.
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