What Version of Kamala Harris Will Emerge in Times of Recession? The Potential Impact and Other Perspectives

From the Right: Which Kamala Are We Getting?

Vice President Kamala Harris “owes it to the country to confirm, out loud, in person, and on the record,” whether she has “abandoned the positions she held when running for Senate” or in a Democratic presidential primary, demands the Washington Examiner’s Timothy P. Carney. For more than a decade, she’s “staked out extreme and destructive policy proposals.” Some of those positions included “socializing America’s health insurance industry,” “defunding ICE” and “banning fracking.” Essentially, “on immigration, fracking and socialized medicine, we have no idea what Harris believes.” The presumptive Democratic nominee has touted “far-left stuff when she needed to win far-left votes,” but “now her priority is winning moderate votes.” Which raises the question: “Was she lying back then, or is she lying now?”

Libertarian: If Recession Hits, We’re Screwed

“A bummer of a jobs report” Friday triggered “a sharp drop in the stock market” and stoked fears of recession — “thanks to something known as the ‘Sahm Rule,’ ” flags Reason’s Eric Boehm. That rule, named for economist Claudia Sahm, says, basically, when unemployment is significantly higher than the previous year’s low-point, recession is likely to follow, based on the record for the past 50 years. Yet if a recession hits now, “there’s literally no money for stimulus checks.” Sahm doesn’t think we’re on the cusp of recession, but is worried. But “the outlook is certainly darker after Friday’s jobs report.” And “if a recession is coming,” the governments ability to respond “will be severely limited by the poor fiscal and monetary decisions that have left the Treasury deeply in debt and the central bank’s balance sheets overstretched.”

Conservative: Dems’ Vote-Buying Blitz

“To gild Kamala Harris’s path to the White House,” the Biden administration will be “buying . . . constituencies,” warns The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley A. Strassel. “The ‘Biden-Harris administration’ this week announced ‘the next step’ in its sweeping student-loan giveaway,” and, among other goodies, “federal departments in recent weeks larded out millions in new grants for women’s health, state climate programs, tribal fisheries, youth ‘skills’ development,” plus goodies for other “core Democratic demographics.” “These White House gifts and promises are designed to smooth over cracks in the base and to tantalize activists and donors . . . Republicans can’t stop this grifting, but they commit political malpractice by continuing to ignore it — allowing Mr. Biden, his unpopular agenda, and these latest expressions of far-left pandering to recede to an afterthought.”

Liberal: Harris Voters Are Nothing Like Obama’s

“The Harris coalition bears more resemblance to the Biden coalition” than it does to Barack Obama’s, notes The Liberal Patriot’s Ruy Teixera — except “without as many working-class voters.” Or “the Hillary Clinton coalition . . . but with far fewer white working-class voters.” Harris, per a New York Times poll, is losing working-class voters by 15 points; Obama won them by 4 points. “Obama’s massive 67-point margin” with nonwhite, working-class voters dwarfs Harris’ 29-point margin. “It is difficult to look at these data and not see profound differences between the Obama coalition and the emerging Harris coalition.” “None of this means Harris can’t win.” But now she and her team are “on a narrow, polarized path to November and their reckoning with Donald Trump.”

Fiscal Watchdog: FDNY Pensions Burn Taxpayers

Recently retired NYC firefighters and fire officers “were entitled to average annual pension benefits of $151,676, up six percent from the prior year,” reports the Empire Center on Public Policy. “Among the 470 new retirees with at least 20 years of service, nearly eight out of ten (399) were eligible for six-figure pensions; 79 were eligible for pensions over $200,000.” And though “the total number of retirees remained consistent over the last decade, the share of retirees eligible for six-figure pensions has soared,” nearly tripling. Who got the highest pension? Chief of Department John Sudnik, who qualified for a whopping $385,179 a year after retiring in July of 2023.

— Compiled the The Post Editorial Board