LARRY KUDLOW: Why aren't any Democrats defending Kamala Harris' crazy price control package?
Why aren't any Democrats defending Kamala Harris' crazy price control package? That's the subject of the riff.
On day two at the DNC in Chicago, Michelle and Barack Obama disgraced themselves. Once upon a time at the DNC in 2016, Michelle Obama said: "When they go low, we go high."
Well, last night, they both went low, and then lower still. All they did was trash Donald Trump and it was awful. Unseemly, especially for former President Obama.
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Totally obsessed with Donald Trump. He's inside their heads. No wonder the DNC ratings crashed 22% from 2016. The whole setup is a big nothing-burger and then, of course, Michelle Obama couldn't help but play the race card, as usual. Take a listen:
MICHELLE OBAMA: "For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us. See, his limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hard-working, highly-educated, successful people who happen to be Black. Who’s gonna tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those ‘Black jobs'?"
There's not one whit of policy, certainly nothing on the economy, which is the biggest issue thus far in this election cycle. In fact, for the first two nights, I don't think any of the speakers referenced the economy.
Except Joe Biden – who nobody saw, because the Democratic bosses pushed him deep into the night, the same way they took him off the ticket. Like a Godfather-style hit job.
Other than that, nobody talked about the economy or the border. I keep waiting for the Democratic bigwigs to defend Kamala Harris' $2 trillion spending package and her crazy price controls on food and groceries.
I mean this was her big economic speech last Friday, which was uniformly eviscerated by liberals and conservatives, including the left-wing Washington Post because no one seems to want to bring back Nixonomics. People can talk about Soviet-style controls, or Venezuela-style controls, but we had our experiment right here at home with Richard Nixon in the early 1970s and it was a disaster.
Controls led to shortages, then the price caps were finally blown off, and inflation soared 15%. Remember Jimmy Carter's gas lines in the late 1970s? When Reagan decontrolled gas, oil plunged to around $10 a barrel, but I digress. Back to Kamala's economic policy debut.
Suddenly, no one is talking about it. Odd, don't you think? Plus, it was about a $2 trillion spending package with numerous programs paying people not to work, completely goofy national rent controls and housing subsidies that will – wait for it – actually make housing prices even higher and more unaffordable.
Why didn't the Obamas defend Kamala's economic plan? Why didn't anybody after two days of the convention? Or is she going to flip-flop again Thursday night in her speech and say – "I really didn't mean it. I said it when I was much younger, six days ago, but now I've changed my mind." Kind of like the fracking ban, decriminalizing illegal immigration, giving illegals free healthcare, abolishing ICE, defunding the police and government takeover of health care.
She didn't really mean it right? Flip-flop, flip-flop and let's not forget raising the corporate tax, which will make America uncompetitive and destroy the wages and take-home pay of working folks.
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Or the wealth tax on unrealized capital gains. Or the tax hike on stock buybacks. Or the higher tax rate on small businesses. All that was in the Biden-Harris budget that came out five months ago, when Kamala was much younger, and maybe she didn't mean it, but you know what? She personally hasn't denied any of it and she is stuck with that price control turkey of a speech last Friday.
And you know what else? If she ever wins and jacks up all those taxes, spends all that extra money and keeps the price controls, she will destroy the economy.
This article is adapted from Larry Kudlow’s opening commentary on the August 21, 2024, edition of "Kudlow."