Why Kamala Harris might be worse than Joe Biden

>What follows is from the July 22, 2024 Wall Street Journal As a senator, Harris supported Medicare for All, which would shift the healthcare system from private and employer-based insurance to a government-run program. 

But in 2020, during her run for the White House, she released a more moderate proposal to expand access to Medicare while keeping private insurance intact. And since joining Biden’s presidential ticket, Harris has backed his plan, which calls for building on the Affordable Care Act.On trade, Harris opposed two recent major trade deals that Biden supported, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. 

Harris was one of just 10 senators who voted against the USMCA, a renegotiated version of the North American Free Trade Agreement under the Trump administration, arguing the environmental provisions were insufficient. 

She also opposed TPP as a Senate candidate, arguing it didn’t do enough to protect the environment and worker regulations. Harris’s climate record has arguably been the most liberal part of her policy portfolio. She has backed the Green New Deal and supported banning fracking. Biden ran on a fracking ban, but only for oil and gas production from federal lands. 

As president, Biden did more to address climate change than any of his predecessors spending $1 trillion in tax credits, grants and loans for clean energy. As a presidential candidate, Harris proposed a full repeal of the 2017 tax cuts enacted by Trump and congressional Republicans.

 Biden as a candidate and as president has backed leaving in place the tax cuts for people making under $400,000 and fully paying for those extensions with new taxes on companies and high-income households. During her campaign, she also favored raising estate taxes. 

 While in the Senate, she proposed an expansive tax credit for lower-income and middle-income workers worth up to $3,000 for individuals and $6,000 for married couples. That idea, worth more than $2 trillion over a decade, would have tilted the tax code to be much more progressive. It didn’t make it into the Biden agenda, though it has some similarities to the child tax credit that was in place for 2021.

Did God Save Donald Trump? Thoughts from Rolling Stone magazine

These MAGA Leaders Claim God Spared Trump’s Life Did divine intervention save Donald Trump from certain death in Pennsylvania? Marco Rubio and Charlie Kirk are apparently believers Rolling Stone magazine BY TIM DICKINSON JULY 15, 2024 Was Donald Trump’s survival an act of God? In the wake of the shocking assassination attempt on the former president in Pennsylvania Saturday evening, many prominent Republicans — and even a shortlister for Trump’s vice president — are crediting divine intervention for saving Trump’s life. Florida Senator Marco Rubio, widely regarded as a potential 2024 veep choice, posted on X for example: “God protected President Trump.” Trump — despite his sinful history as a thrice married felon who paid off a porn star and has been held civilly responsible for sexual abuse — is seen, paradoxically, among many in the MAGA base as a flawed actor that the Christian God is using to divine ends in American politics. House Speaker Mike Johnson, himself a zealot who has compared his role in government to Moses, declared on X that “God protected Trump.” Johnson claimed the intervention was “just” like how God had once “miraculously protected” George Washington from a gunfire during an ambush in Pennsylvania in 1755. Dan Patrick, the Lt. Gov. of Texas, had gotten the God-saved-Trump ball rolling just an hour or so after the shooting near Butler, Pennsylvania. Patrick is a far-right lawmaker and key player in billionaire Tim Dunn’s Christian nationalist takeover in Lone Star politics. In a post on X, Patrick shared a text he said he sent to Trump: “By the slightest turn of your head in a mere microsecond, or the shield of a teleprompter, your life was spared by the Grace of a Merciful and Holy God,” Patrick wrote. He returned to a thought he said he’d shared with Trump on a recent plane flight: “God has had his hand on you since you first ran for President,” Patrick texted. “No man could survive all you have been through without the Grace of God.” For his part, Dr. Ben Carson, a former Trump cabinet member, posted that the Trump assassination attempt was just the latest in a series of trials that God will set right: “They tried to bankrupt him. They tried to slander him. They tried to imprison him. Now they have tried to kill him, but if God is protecting him, they will never succeed.” That post was shared widely, including by Christian nationalist Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA, who insisted that Carson was “100% right.” In another post, Kirk suggested a “gust of wind” may have “pushed that bullet ever so slightly.” Kirk added that “the Holy Spirit in scripture is often associated with a gust of wind.” And he insisted, “God’s hand is on Donald Trump.” The Christian nationalist evangelist Lance Wallnau helped popularize the notion that Trump is a modern-day Cyrus, an old testament pagan king whom God used for divine purposes. Appearing on the far-right religious broadcast Flashpoint, Wallnau said that a nicking of Trump’s ear, instead of a deadly wound, proved that God is “ruling in the details.” By Sunday, Trump himself was getting behind the idea that Providence had protected his life. Posting on Truth Social, Trump expressed his gratitude for the nation’s “thoughts and prayers,” because, he wrote, it was “God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening.” The poor marksmanship of a 20-year-old shooter, who reportedly was barred from his high school rifle club and may have been rushed by a local cop trying to stop his rampage, is a more likely explanation for why the shots on Trump lacked accuracy. The notion of divine intervention itself raises uncomfortable questions — including why a just deity would allow a local former fire department leader to perish in the same attack, while shielding his wife and daughter. Or why such a God, for example, didn’t spare the school children of Uvalde from a similar deadly shooter with an AR-15. But such qualms did not appear to trouble MAGA stalwarts, whose blind faith in the righteousness of far-right American politics continues to rival, if not trump, any genuine faith in Jesus.