Put Personalities Aside—America Wants Trump’s Economic Platform | Opinion

A few weeks ago, while at a national park with my family, I got to talking with a couple from California. They’re lifelong Democrats, but they told me they’re frustrated with the country’s direction. Over the past few years, they’ve seen soaring inflation, wages that can’t keep up, struggling Main Streets, and plummeting opportunity for those who need it most. They want the boom times back.

But when I asked that couple who they plan to vote for, they said, unequivocally, “Kamala Harris.” And when I asked why, they said they just hate Donald Trump too much.

That couple isn’t alone. Huge numbers of voters dislike and even despise the former president. But this election shouldn’t be about personalities. It should be about policies. After all, while many Americans can’t see themselves voting for Trump, an even greater share of the country wants the benefits of his agenda. He delivered a booming economy and can do it again. Kamala Harris can’t, because she stands for a failed agenda that has already hurt Americans enough.

Regardless of what you think about Donald Trump and Kamala Harris as people, the fact is that Trump has a proven record of policies that worked, while Harris stands for policies that don’t—and in fact can’t—work.

Remember the inflation of the past few years? It’s a direct result of the Biden-Harris administration’s massive spending spree. They’ve thrown trillions of dollars at special interests and welfare checks that pay more than work. This money fueled the massive price increases that have destroyed family budgets. Groceries now cost over 25 percent more than they did before Harris become vice president. Biden and Harris said they would “rescue” Americans. In reality, we need to be rescued from them.

But what does Harris want to do now? Make us suffer even more. Her new economic plan can be summed up in three words: Bidenomics, part two. She wants even bigger welfare checks that will push able-bodied adults out of work. She wants more subsidies for special interests. All told, she wants to spend trillions more, driving a new round of inflation and while driving the country toward bankruptcy.

What will the Harris agenda cost America? Not just our money, but also our freedom. She wants to raise taxes in ways that will cost families and workers in the form of lower wages and less money for retirement. In other words, she’s going to raise taxes on every American, even as she claims to just hit “the rich.” Meanwhile, she’s calling for government control over almost every part of the economy—from housing prices to grocery prices, from the cars we drive to the stoves we buy.

Harris’ agenda is a recipe for economic disaster. It shows that she thinks the past four years have been a smashing success. But Americans know better. Nearly 80 percent of the country says the economy is poor or at best fair. If Harris enacts Bidenomics part two, even more Americans will see their futures get worse.

The Trump years were dramatically better—and Americans know it. Toward the end of his presidency, voters thought his economy was the best they’d seen in 20 years. If anything, the economy was even better than that. Unemployment had reached historically low levels. African-American and Latino unemployment hit record lows, while opportunity and incomes soared.

The Trump boom years were the direct result of his common-sense policies, especially tax cuts and slashing red tape. He wants to do even more tax- and regulation-cutting in a second term. And while his tariffs surely won’t help as much as he hopes, Trump’s other pro-worker and pro-growth policies can more than make up for them. Small businesses will have a new lease on life. Entrepreneurs will have a new chance at success. Workers of all races and backgrounds will get better jobs and bigger paychecks.

That’s what Americans desperately want. We won’t get there with Kamala Harris, because her agenda assumes that Washington, D.C., should have far greater control over Americans’ lives. Trump’s agenda, relying on the time-tested belief that Americans should be free to take charge of our own future, will move us forward.

To put a finer point on it, Harris wants power over Americans. Trump wants to empower Americans. And Americans themselves want to be empowered. I heard it from those two California Democrats a few weeks ago. I hear it every day from countless others, from all walks of life. If we’re willing to look past the personalities and focus on policies, we can actually move forward as a country—out of the mess that Kamala Harris has already made and will only worsen. Americans deserve better, and as we saw before, Donald Trump can bring out our economy’s best.

John Tillman is CEO of the American Culture Project.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.