Asserting without evidence that Kamala Harris disagrees with the economic policies of her administration

There is some good comedy in Matt Stoller’s latest maximally uncharitable guilt-by-association attack on the Democratic nominee for president:

But as a lifelong Democrat

Ah yes, the kind of Democratic stalwart who supported Bain Capital’s Mitt Romney over Obama in 2012, and indeed considers Obama a worse president than Nixon, Coolidge, a real and imaginary Taft and equally as bad as George W. Bush. So you know this argument will be in consummate good faith! He starts off by blatantly mischaracterizing Harris’s record as Attorney General:

pic.twitter.com/OptDBG23Kw— The okayest poster there is (@ok_post_guy) August 7, 2024

So what’s the evidence that Harris disagrees with the antitrust policies of her administration, despite a more liberal track record than Biden overall? Beyond the really silly shit like “her brother-in-law is a political advisor,” the core of the case is this:

In addition, a key supporter of Ms. Harris is the billionaire LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. Mr. Hoffman seems to believe that Wall Street and big business are what make America great. Indeed, he co-wrote a book called “Blitzscaling” that endorses the business strategy of raising a lot of money from investors to corner a market.

What, if anything, does the presence of such people in Ms. Harris’s orbit imply about her governing agenda? On one level, not too much: It just means that she is familiar with a lot of people involved in the Obama administration and on Wall Street. That’s not unusual among politicians.

But that’s not the end of the story. Mr. Hoffman has publicly encouraged the firing of Ms. Khan, saying that she was “waging war” on American business, and has bemoaned tariffs.

So the claim is 1)Reid Hoffman is giving money to Harris, 2)Hoffman wants Lina Khan fired, so therefore 3)Harris will fire Lina Khan.

There is a very, very obvious problem with this argument, namely that Hoffman was a major Biden donor in 2020, despite which Biden nominated Lina Khan, and continued to be a big donor to the Biden campaign even though he nominated Lina Khan. Stoller wants to create the impression that Hoffman only started to donate to the Democratic campaign after Biden stepped down, but this is completely false. We cannot infer from Hoffman making donations that he has the power to get his wish on Khan, because he didn’t, and we can’t infer anything about Harris’s intentions because Biden took Hoffman’s money and nonetheless hired Khan, and obviously there was no quid pro quo because Hoffman didn’t stop donating when he didn’t get what he wanted on Khan. We can infer absolutely nothing about Harris’s preferences on antitrust policy from Hoffman’s continuous support of whoever is the presumptive Democratic nominee in 2024. It’s all selective McCarthyism.

And then we get the to-be-sure about what Harris has actually done:

Ms. Harris’s pick for vice president, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, is a positive sign: As governor, he has helped block the merger of health care entities, cap insulin prices and ban noncompete agreements.

Oh well, then! But, of course, “as a lifelong Democrat [LOL], I remain a bit worried. In his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly denounced close ties between Democrats and Wall Street.” Ah yes, the inevitable gestures toward Republican “populism.” It’s worth comparing Stoller’s evidence-free claims about Harris not sharing the economic views of her administration with the ludicrously gullible charity he shows to reactionary politicians with literally no progressive policy views like Ron DeSantis. As an actual supporter of Democrats, I personally think that you do not have to keep handing it to unspeakably awful Republicans while attacking Democrats with vastly more liberal policy records.