Kamala Harris's first speech outlining her economic policies did not bode well for business. In Raleigh, N.C., a week before the convention where she officially became the Democrats’ nominee for president, her language sounded bellicose: She boasted that as California’s attorney general she “took on insurance companies and Big Pharma,” that she “went after companies that illegally increased prices,” and that as president she would “attack” the high cost of health care and crack down” on unscrupulous corporate landlords. In that speech and many to follow, “big banks,” “Wall Street,” “corporations,” and “middlemen” were the liberal version of red meat—dirty words thrown out to elicit loud boos.
Yet while Harris’s public rhetoric does little to win over businesspeople, she is attracting the support of many of them. The language in an endorsement letter signed by 90 prominent business figures shows clearly why: her predictability, compared with her erratic opponent.
