Kamala Harris – Page 2

The nuances of Biden’s 8% statement show why he was right — and why PolitiFact was wrong

Earlier this week I wrote that PolitiFact got it wrong on a claim by President Biden that billionaires pay just 8% of their income on federal taxes. PolitiFact said Biden’s assertion was “false,” and I disagreed. I got some pushback from several readers. On second thought, I decided I was incorrect. But on third thought, I’ve concluded that I was right.

Here is what Biden said Monday night:

And folks, you know we have 1,000 billionaires in America. You know what their average tax rate is? 8.2%. If we just increase their taxes, as we proposed, to 25%, which isn’t even the highest tax rate, it would raise $500 billion new dollars over 10 years.

The issue is complicated. Biden was basing his claim on the fact that unrealized stock market gains are not taxed. It’s only after you sell that you’re subject to the capital gains tax, which is 20% if your income is higher than about $500,000 (the actual income levels vary depending on marital status and how long you held the stock).

Since you can’t spend money that isn’t in your possession, and since you do actually pay taxes once you sell, then it might seem that PolitiFact was right and Biden was wrong. But not so fast.

First, the wealthy, and billionaires in particular, have multiple ways of lowering or even avoiding taxes on capital gains. Whizy Kim, writing for Vox in March of this year, put it this way:

How much tax a wealthy person owes in a given year is a complex tapestry threaded with exemptions, deductions, credits, and obscure loopholes you’ve never heard of. The ideal is to owe zilch. If that sounds impossible to achieve, just look at the leaked tax returns of the wealthiest Americans that nonprofit news site ProPublica analyzed in 2021: Over several years, billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Michael Bloomberg, among others, paid no federal income taxes at all.

Her story, headlined “The billionaire’s guide to doing taxes,” outlines a number of tax-avoidance schemes, and obviously those options are not available to middle-class Americans. As James Royal writes for Bankrate: “While it can be easy to overlook, the IRS has clearly laid out how you can qualify for a 0 percent capital gains tax rate, and it’s not that difficult for most Americans to achieve.”

Second, Biden has actually proposed taxing unrealized capital gains, and Kamala Harris has endorsed that idea as well. So when Biden talks about billionaires paying 8%, he has something very specific in mind, and something that he would change if he had the opportunity. PolitiFact argues that the very fact that this is a proposal rather than the current reality makes Biden’s assertion false, but I think it’s just the opposite. In effect, he’s saying: Billionaires are paying a tax rate of just 8% on their income. Vice President Harris and I want to change that.

The second sentence doesn’t negate the first, entirely true sentence. In reporting on Biden’s proposal for MarketWatch, Victor Reklaitis writes:

Treasury officials offered their rationale for the proposed change, saying the country’s current approach with unrealized capital gains “disproportionately benefits high-wealth taxpayers and provides many high-wealth taxpayers with a lower effective tax rate than many low- and middle-income taxpayers.” They also said the current approach “exacerbates income and wealth disparities” and “produces an incentive for taxpayers to inefficiently lock in portfolios of assets and hold them primarily for the purpose of avoiding capital gains tax on the appreciation, rather than reinvesting the capital in more economically productive investments.”

You can agree with the Biden-Harris tax proposal or disagree with it, but it doesn’t change the reality that billionaires are paying about 8% of their income on federal taxes. (A White House report cited by PolitiFact says that 8% — to be more precise, 8.2% — is an estimate, and that the actual rate could be somewhere between 6% and 12%. The report also says the data pertain to the 400 wealthiest families. Biden cited 1,000 individuals, so maybe that amounts to the same thing.)

For Biden, it was a talking point — he didn’t take the time to define what he meant by income, and we shouldn’t expect that in political speeches. But by any measure of truth and accuracy, he was right and PolitiFact was wrong.

Who are you calling a liberal? A taxonomy of the Democratic Party.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Photo (cc) 2019 by nrkbeta.

I’m thinking through what it means to say that Kamala Harris has united the Democratic Party’s disputatious factions. The media tend to refer to those on the left as “liberals” and “progressives” as though the terms are interchangeable. They’re not.

I’m not going to try to tease out the various positions that define the factions. Instead, I’ll take a shot at who’s in what camp. This is unscientific to say the least, but:

• Liberals. Also known as the center-left. This is where the bulk of the party is today, and where it’s been most of the time since FDR. Leading exemplars: Kamala Harris and Joe Biden.

• Progressives. The left, which I’ll arbitrarily define by citing Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Bernie Sanders would be in here if he were actually a Democrat.

• Centrists. Now this is slippery. Bill Clinton for sure. Joe Manchin*? Does anyone know if he’s still a Democrat? It’s tempting to say that he’s a conservative, but he votes with President Biden most of the time. Barack Obama governed as a centrist, but I’m not sure whether that was his preference or if he was just playing the hand he was dealt.

What unites them all, incredibly, is not just support for Harris but genuine enthusiasm and excitement.

*Note: Manchin used to be a Democrat, but he’s now an independent.

Harris’ memorable acceptance speech embraces mainstream values and muscular liberalism

Thirty-two days ago, President Biden ended his campaign and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris. It seems like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it? Biden seemed destined to lose; this morning, Harris is up by an average of 3.6% in the national polls, which is in the range of what a Democratic candidate needs to overcome the Republicans’ inherent advantage in the Electoral College.

On Thursday night, Harris delivered her acceptance speech, and it was memorable, mixing her personal story, her dedication to improving life for the middle class, her deep sense of patriotism, and the authoritarian threat posed by Donald Trump. Although words alone are not substance, she also did a better job than Biden of expressing support for Israel and horror at the humanitarian toll of the war in Gaza.

Although Trump’s menacing incoherence can’t really be described in policy terms, Harris made it clear that she’s running to his left on domestic issues and to his right on foreign policy. “I will not cozy up to tyrants and dictators like Kim Jong-un, who are rooting for Trump,” she said, adding:

And as president, I will never waver in defense of America’s security and ideals, because in the enduring struggle between democracy and tyranny, I know where I stand and I know where the United States belongs.

This is muscular liberalism in the tradition of Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy and, well, Joe Biden. Traditionally, the views she expressed Thursday night have defined what it means to be a mainstream, patriotic American.

Harris also called the 2024 election “not only the most important of our lives, it is one of the most important in the life of our nation.” Elections shouldn’t be that important. In a healthy democracy, every election would be Barack Obama versus Mitt Romney, or Bill Clinton against Bob Dole. The fate of the country shouldn’t depend on Harris’ defeating Trump and then overcoming the legal and extra-legal chaos that is sure to follow.

But that’s where we find ourselves. Trumpism has got to be defeated once and for all. This week helped move us closer to that goal.

Bonfire of the fact-checkers; plus, Dems embrace the night, and Walz’s heartland appeal

The media fact-checkers have not distinguished themselves this week, torturing the language to find fault with statements by Democrats that, in some cases, are actually true.

Now, I’m going to confess that I was not following the fact-checkers during the Republican National Convention. But what I have found going back a number of years — as I wrote for HuffPost way back in 2011 — is that organizations like PolitiFact often twist themselves into knots to find negative observations to make about Democrats so they can achieve some sort of balance with Republicans, who were often untethered from the truth even before the rise of Donald Trump.

Fact-checkers for The New York Times and The Washington Post have both come under fire during this week’s Democratic National Convention. But I want to focus on PolitiFact, a Pulitzer Prize-winning project, which has produced some fact-checks that make you scratch your head. I’ve been following PolitiFact on Threads. Here are a few examples:

• On Tuesday, PolitiFact gave President Biden a “false” on its Truth-O-Meter for claiming that billionaires pay an average tax rate of 8.2%. The post linked back to a PolitFact story from last January that said:

The White House report found that if you include unrealized gains in the income calculations of the 400 richest U.S. families, then their taxes paid would account for just 8.2% of their income.

Economists and policymakers have long debated whether the government should tax unrealized gains. But Biden made it sound as if 8% was the standard rate today, not what would happen under a potential future proposal.

In other words, Biden was correct under PolitiFact’s own analysis.

• On Wednesday, PolitiFact slapped J.B. Pritzker on the wrist: “Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Trump told ‘us to inject bleach’ during the pandemic. That’s Mostly False. Trump’s 2020 comments about treatments were criticized, but he didn’t tell people to inject or ‘take a shot’ of anything.”

Pritzker’s statement was labeled as “mostly false.” Yet here’s a BBC report from 2020 that quotes Trump’s exact words: “And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?”

Pritzker was right on the facts, the nuance and the context. Full stop.

• Two more from Biden: PolitiFact said the president’s assertions that Trump wants to cut Medicare and Social Security were “mostly false” because — God help us — “When he was president, Trump released annual budgets that proposed cutting Medicare but he has repeatedly pledged throughout the 2024 presidential campaign that he will not cut the program” and “Trump has said in the past that he’s open to cutting Social Security, but this isn’t his current position.”

I’m sorry, but that’s just embarrassing.

The late show

A number of observers, me included, have been puzzled by the DNC’s schedule, which has resulted in the main speaker of the night taking the podium after 11 p.m. The swing states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia and most of Michigan are all in the Eastern time zone, and presumably you don’t want soft supporters and undecided voters to go to bed before hearing from the Obamas, Tim Walz and, tonight, Kamala Harris.

But it may not have made much difference. According to Craig Harrington of the liberal organization Media Matters for America, the audience for President Biden fell off only 2%. “Not ideal, but not disastrous either,” he wrote on Twitter/X.

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that no one is going to invest a couple of hours tonight and then tune out just before Harris comes on. Still, it strikes me that it would have been a good idea to wrap up each night’s proceedings before viewers decide they’ve had enough.

Walz from the heart

Tim Walz’s short, punchy address and Oprah Winfrey’s speech were pitch-perfect.

Those who thought that Harris should have picked Josh Shapiro as her running mate may have changed their minds Wednesday night, as Shapiro delivered a perfectly serviceable but rather generic address. Walz, by contrast, was folksy and empathetic, speaking to the heartland in a way that the Democrats haven’t done in many years. You had to love his former football players taking the stage, too.

What can I say about Bill Clinton? It was interesting to see that some women I follow on Threads were tuning out. Given his history, I couldn’t believe that he glommed onto the dick joke President Obama indulged in — funny coming from Obama, creepy from Clinton.

Clinton also spoke way too long and just sort of rambled. I know that some viewers loved it, and I’ve heard from a few. I also understand that a former president can’t be denied his place at the podium. But I was glad when it was over.

Michelle Obama’s rhetoric soared while the former president focused on the mission

Barack and Michelle Obama in 2008. Photo (cc) by Luke Vargas.

Twenty years ago, when the Democratic National Convention gathered in Boston, a young senator named Barack Obama delivered the speech that launched him to the presidency.

I was covering the convention for The Boston Phoenix, but I wasn’t in the hall. No regrets — I reported from four national conventions, and I thought the best way I could serve our audience was to spend as little time in the building as possible, focusing instead on alternative events, protests, what the media were up to and the like. Still, that was a big one to miss.

I didn’t miss Barack Obama’s speech last night, nor Michelle Obama’s, even if it was from the comfort of our TV room. Wow. Observers are trying to decide who delivered the better of what were two magnificent addresses. I thought hers was a superior piece of pure oratory but that his did more to advance the cause of getting Kamala Harris and Tim Walz elected. The two addresses complemented each other perfectly.

And soaring though their rhetoric was, it was pretty amusing to see the former president go there for what I believe was the first time since Marco Rubio made some awkward remarks about the size of Donald Trump’s, uh, hands.

Doug Emhoff’s speech was folksy and effective. All in all, it was another strong night for the Democrats.

Biden coverage underscores the decline of print; plus, a couple of DNC media tidbits

Early print deadlines meant that three of our national newspapers, The New York Times, The Washington Post and USA Today, have no coverage of President Biden’s keynote address. All of them, needless to say, go big with Biden’s speech online. It makes you wonder who’s still bothering with the legacy press’ shrinking print editions.

A fourth national paper, the business-focused Wall Street Journal, did manage to get Biden’s speech on page one, though it’s not the lead. Locally, The Boston Globe leads with the president as well. I have to assume that’s a late edition.

Biden was supposed to go on at about 10:30 p.m., but the Democrats veered off schedule and he didn’t start for another hour. They’d better fix that — the last thing the party wants is for Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s acceptance speech on Wednesday and Vice President Kamala Harris’ on Thursday to get pushed out of prime time.

Stop talking at me

God bless C-SPAN. We tuned in around 9 p.m. and chose PBS, figuring the “NewsHour” crew would strike a good balance between carrying the speeches and offering a little bit of commentary and analysis. We were wrong. We missed Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s speech entirely. And when we finally switched over, we discovered that PBS had cut away from Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, a major figure in the party.

At least PBS carried New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose fiery populism was probably the highlight of the evening, though Hillary Clinton’s address conjured up all sorts of emotions. Yes, it should have been her.

I’m not going to try to assess Biden’s speech except to agree with other observers that I respect his successful presidency and am grateful that his deep sense of patriotism led him to step aside, even though it was evident that he’s still angry he was forced to make that move.

New Haven crew hits Chicago

Normally I like to see local news organizations stay mission-focused when big national events occur. But I’ll cut the New Haven Independent some slack. After all, founder Paul Bass is no longer the editor, and he’s as knowledgeable about politics as anyone I know.

Bass and staff reporter Nora Grace-Flood are in Chicago while Babz Rawls Ivy, the morning host at the Independent-affiliated radio station, WNHH-LP, is back in New Haven offering some commentary. Oakland-based cartoonist Fred Noland of the Independent Review Crew is in Chicago as well, though he hasn’t started drawing yet.

And it’s not all national. Here’s a funny story, with video and photos, about Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar squaring off with New Haven Democrats about the virtues of New Haven apizza versus Chicago-style deep-dish pizza.

The Washington Post: The early print bird misses the keynote

USA Today: Protests but no convention coverage above the fold

The Wall Street Journal: Biden’s speech, yes, but wow, Edgar Bronfman!

The Boston Globe: The president makes page one

The happy warrior

We watched Kamala Harris’ speech in Atlanta on YouTube, and it was extraordinary — her pitch-perfect message casting liberalism as patriotism, her taunting of Donald Trump, and the sheer joy she brought to the proceedings. I was impressed with her body language and comfort level as well. I don’t think we’ve seen anything like this for a long time, and I just hope it can continue.

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Meg Heckman on gender, ‘viability’ and the pitfalls of covering female politicians

Then-Sen. Kamala Harris. Photo (cc) 2019 by Gage Skidmore.

My Northeastern colleague Meg Heckman writes for WBUR’s Cognoscenti about the challenges facing the media in covering Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, arguing that we ought to be wary of discussing Harris’ “viability” — a “vague term [that] is often code for a lingering — and likely inaccurate — perception that women are somehow less electable than men.” She continues:

The viability question comes packaged with observations about a candidate’s “likability,” “broad appeal” and “strength.” Can she win over moderate suburban voters? Does she look presidential? Is she authentic? These factors do matter, especially when the narrow path to victory winds through a few swing states — think back to 2016, when Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and lost the election — but they also carry a specific type of misogyny, one that’s cloaked as pragmatism and deeply internalized across the political spectrum.

Meg’s conclusion: The media have gotten better, as shown by their mostly non-gendered coverage of Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign. But Vice President Harris, who has a genuine chance of becoming the first female president, presents a larger and trickier test.

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President Biden emphasizes democracy as he begins his long goodbye

President Biden in the Oval Office on Wednesday. Photo via the Biden White House.

I found President Biden’s address Wednesday night to be sad and moving. His theme was democracy and how we can preserve it. His 2020 victory over Donald Trump saved us from authoritarianism to an extent that no one realized when they cast their ballots. After all, it was only afterwards that Trump launched his effort to steal the election by any means necessary, including fomenting violence in the halls of Congress.

Biden proved not to be up to the challenge of defeating Trump again. Fortunately, by stepping aside and handing off his campaign to Vice President Kamala Harris, he has energized the anti-Trump movement and given it a chance of prevailing this November, though there are no guarantees.

There was nothing in Biden’s 11-minute Oval Office speech that would make anyone doubt the wisdom of his decision to end his re-election campaign. His voice was hoarse and halting, and before you blame COVID, keep in mind that this is the Biden we have come to know in recent months. Louise Aronson, a gerontologist who was one of the formerly anonymous physicians interviewed by The New Yorker last week, observed for The Atlantic (free link) that “his voice was weak, he stumbled occasionally over his prepared remarks, and his physical presence was diminished from what it once was.” She added:

Part of what was so excruciating about watching Biden hold on to his hope of winning a second term was seeing someone struggle to accept that their best-case scenario might be impossible. Variations of this situation play out daily in clinics and hospitals, and if you have a shred of empathy, it’s always heartbreaking. Yet few such difficult conversations — or the loud silences that too often take the place of these conversations — happen so publicly. Watching this one reminded me how unwelcome they are in American life, even in the offices of physicians delivering bad news.

The historian Heather Cox Richardson has a thorough overview of Biden’s address, writing that he joins George Washington in his willingness to walk away and John Adams in presiding over a peaceful transition. “Like them, Biden gave up the pursuit of power for himself in order to demonstrate the importance of democracy,” Richardson said. “After the speech, the White House served ice cream to the Bidens and hundreds of White House staffers in the Rose Garden.”

And I’m sorry, but I have to single out Peter Baker of The New York Times for a particularly sour “news analysis” (I’m not wasting a gift link on it). Here’s an excerpt that is very much in keeping with the rest of what he wrote:

What there was not much of was introspection about how he had gotten to this moment of indignity. He may be focused on the soul of America, but he revealed little of his own. Indeed, if there has been much soul searching over these past days and weeks of personal and political trauma that led to this reluctant end of his storied half-century political career, the search has been called off. Or at least the results were not reported.

I don’t think Baker would have been satisfied unless Biden confessed he was becoming senile and thanked the Times for pointing it out. Baker takes an enormous amount of grief from liberal readers for his resolute both-sides-ism, and I often find the criticism to be overwrought. This time, though, any brickbats directed his way are well deserved.

Wednesday’s address was not a farewell for Biden. After all, he’ll be president until next January, and I’m sure he’ll be out on the campaign trail with Harris. Still, it marked the latest in a series of closing acts for the president beginning with his Sunday announcement. We are going to miss this good and decent man.

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Biden’s age and health: A legitimate story that was marred by media excess

We were on our way back from a family gathering in upstate New York when we learned that President Biden had stepped aside from his re-election campaign and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. I was checking social media at the Lee rest stop on the Mass Pike eastbound; I think I was about an hour behind. We’d been anticipating the moment for days, if not weeks. Still, it came as a surprise.

I’m hearing some people grouse that Biden should have acted sooner, but this had to be incredibly difficult. No doubt he believes he can still do the job. What he couldn’t do was govern and campaign simultaneously. Nor was it reasonable to expect voters to believe he could serve more than a fraction of a second term. He’s now given us the best chance of beating Donald Trump and the authoritarian menace he represents.

Harris is an accomplished leader who, after all, is already the elected vice president. Opening up the process to some sort of vague celebrity bakeoff could have led to disaster. Can Harris win? I don’t know. Every possible choice was a risk, but I think giving her a chance of claiming the nomination quickly is less of a risk than continuing with Biden or having an open convention. (To be clear: It will still be an open convention.)

There’s one important media angle to all this that I think needs to be addressed. It really looks like Biden was driven out of the campaign by the press, and that’s not a good perception. There have been stories over the past year or two suggesting that Biden shouldn’t run for re-election because of his advanced age, the three most notable being a Mark Leibovich piece in The Atlantic in 2022, an Ezra Klein commentary in The New York Times this past February, and a Wall Street Journal article in early June. But Biden’s age-related problems have been a 24/7 obsession since about 9:10 p.m. on June 27, when it became clear in the presidential debate that something was seriously wrong.

Many diehard Biden supporters have erupted in fury at the media, and especially the Times, for publishing story after story after story about Biden’s infirmities while not dwelling nearly as much on Trump’s far worse deficits. There are many on the left who’ve come to the conclusion that the corporate media — I’m not using quotation marks because there really is a corporate media — want to see Trump back in office for ratings and circulation. I don’t think that’s the case. Biden’s age, questions about his cognitive health, and fading electoral prospects were a huge and entirely legitimate story. But that doesn’t mean the media covered themselves in glory.

My own belief is that the media — again, led by the Times — were shocked and horrified by the prospect of Trump’s return to the White House, so they embarked on an overwrought effort to bring Biden’s campaign to a close. The Times put it this way in an editorial today: “Had he remained at the top of the ticket, he would have greatly increased the likelihood of Mr. Trump retaking the presidency and potentially controlling both houses of Congress as well.” That’s not just a statement of truth; it’s also an explanation for the media behavior we’ve seen over the past three weeks.

Jon Keller of WBZ-TV asked me the other day if this was evidence of “bias.” I responded that yes, I suppose it was. But it was bias in favor of democracy, something that media observers such as Margaret Sullivan and Jay Rosen have been calling for from the start of the campaign. This is not Bill Clinton versus Bob Dole in 1996. Trump represents an existential threat to democracy.

Still, the media excesses were notable, especially a Times report that a physician who specializes in Parkinson’s disease had visited the White House repeatedly. That was just irresponsible journalism. It didn’t pan out, and no evidence has emerged that Biden has Parkinson’s. Another example of excess was published by The New Yorker last week, in which nine physicians were allowed to speculate anonymously about the state of Biden’s neurological health. Now, I have to say that the story was interesting and possibly shed some light. But that doesn’t mean it should have been published.

President Biden said he will address the nation later this week. He could do Harris a lot of good if he acknowledges that he’s leaving not because of the media, not because fundraising had dried up, not because Nancy Pelosi told him to, but because his age and his health had finally caught up with him. And the media should ask themselves how they once again managed to turn a legitimate story into the only story for the past three weeks, embarrassing themselves and calling their judgment and fairness into question.

Biden has been an outstanding president, and he cements his legacy by knowing when it’s time to leave. He deserves our respect and gratitude. We are all going to miss his steady hand come next January, regardless of who succeeds him.

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