For President and Vice President
The Board of Governors of CIVPAC was sharply divided on whether to endorse a candidate for President in 2024. There can be no doubt that there is no centrist candidate on the ballot. The candidates of the non-dominant parties including Kennedy, Stein, and West, all represent extreme points of view. Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are also anything but centrist in terms of policy. There was no support within the Board for endorsing Donald Trump. There was a weak majority in favor of endorsing Kamala Harris as the lesser of two evils. It takes some effort to distill coherent policy positions out of either of these candidates. It is sometimes necessary to read between the lines of incoherent babble. It is sometimes necessary to look at the positions of their Vice Presidential candidates. It is sometimes necessary to impute a position from others who are associated with the candidate in various ways. We have done our best to go through that process as objectively as we can and have decided to endorse Kamala Harris and Tim Walz for President and Vice President of the United States in 2024.
A note on project 2025
The Democratic Party made Project 2025 a big issue during the Democratic Convention. Trump denies that it fully represents his views but, as usual, he is very vague about where his views and those of the authors of 2025 depart. If you read the document, it sounds like a coherent expression of Trump’s poorly stated opinions. Those who hold the views expressed in Project 2025 might wish for a better candidate, who could make the case for them in a more articulate fashion. We have tried to distill our judgment of Trump’s positions without regard to Project 2025, but we don’t think those who tar him with the views expressed in the document are far off the mark.
Key Policy Issues that Drove the Decision
Foreign Policy
Donald Trump’s inability to articulate support for Ukraine and his disregard for the NATO alliance are probably the starkest policy differences between the candidates that we reviewed. Kamala Harris has consistently worked in support of Ukraine in its efforts to repel the Russian invasion and she gives full throated support to the NATO alliance.
Trump says that he will end the war quickly. This, along with his refusal to say that he thinks a Ukrainian victory is in our interest, leads to the logical conclusion that he intends to withhold aid from Ukraine until they capitulate to Putin’s demands. The argument offered by some Republicans that the U.S. has erred in restricting the availability and terms of use of certain kinds of aid to Ukraine has some merit. One searches in vain for any mention of this concern on the part of Trump. If anything, Trump’s hand wringing over the dangers of nuclear war serves to amplify Putin’s saber rattling.
Trump has a point that the other NATO members have not fully lived up to their commitments on defense expenditures within NATO. That is a more or less inevitable consequence of the “exploitation of the great by the small” in any large multilateral organization. Inviting Russia to attack those who are less than fully compliant might seem like a rational strategy to gain a financial advantage within the alliance, but it carries a tremendous risk that Russia will take Trump seriously, with far worse consequences than an imbalance of the financial burden within NATO.
The Economy
Independence of the Federal Reserve Board
Comparisons of the Trump and Biden economies are largely pointless on either side. The pandemic, the bi-partisan efforts to stimulate the economy to prevent a recession, the initial failure of the Federal Reserve Board (Fed) and other central banks to raise interest rates, followed by policies to reign in the inevitable inflation, were all far more important than anything else in explaining the difference between 2019 and 2024.
The Fed deserves the credit for managing a soft landing without a recession and a return to lower inflation levels. Yes, most everything is about 20-25% more expensive than it was before the pandemic. Yes, the form of the fiscal policies designed to avoid a recession may have been less than ideal. No, there is no reasonable policy that will return prices down to the levels that prevailed before the pandemic. To do so would require inducing a recession. When one compares the performance of the American economy with that of Europe during this period in terms of growth, employment, and inflation, the U.S. has done remarkably well. Most of the credit for this should go to the Federal Reserve Board.
Harris, to her credit, has pledged to respect the independence of the Fed. Trump to his predictable discredit, has said that he wants a role in controlling the actions of the Fed. As we know, political control of central banks generally leads to looser monetary policy and greater inflation. Since neither party seems to have an interest in fiscal discipline, the Fed remains the sole barrier to higher inflation. On this issue alone we endorse Kamala Harris, on the basis of her economic policies.
That endorsement is not unqualified. Harris holds many ill-advised policy positions on the economy.
Price Controls
Harris laying the blame for inflation on greedy corporations is outrageous nonsense. Her proposal to legislate against “price-gouging” is either meaningless or a plan for price controls. Price controls are a prescription for shortages and hoarding. The model for this policy proposal probably comes from legislation proposed by Elizabeth Warren. If that is the case, the proposed remedies would only be enforced during “emergencies.”
Harris has also shown a willingness to embrace price controls in her support for limitations on the ability of large landlords to raise rents, by more than some arbitrary amount per year. This policy, in addition to being bad because it represents a form of price controls, is also counter productive. Rational landlords will raise their official rents to the maximum every year in order to avoid the constraint as much as possible. They will then offer various discounts and credits to fill vacancies. This same pattern was observed when the government tried to restrict the price of cars in the 1970’s. All that these kinds of regulations accomplish is to make markets less efficient.
Since the “deep state” of economic advisors all know that price controls are dumb public policy, one can hope that a Harris administration would never declare such an emergency or push this kind of legislation through. Also, since she is likely to face a Republican Senate, we can be reasonably certain that this legislation would not pass. Harris loses our support on this issue, but we are willing to give it a low weight in our decision.
Tariffs
Generally, the incidence of a tariff, i.e. who actually bears the burden of the tariff, is the end consumer. This is why Harris refers to the tariff proposals as a “National Sales Tax.” The reason is simple. Goods do not need to flow to the United States. Imagine a 100% U.S. tariff on Chinese cars. Chinese cars can be sold globally. If a consumer wants to have a Chinese car that might otherwise go elsewhere in the world, he must pay enough to compensate the Chinese manufacturer for the tariff or the car will go elsewhere. This is an oversimplification, but it reflects the larger truth that the impact of the tariff falls mostly on the U.S. consumer.
Those who believe that tariffs will protect American manufacturing jobs missed the lesson of the last several decades in which America’s manufacturing employment suffered, not so much from offshoring, but from automation. Across the board tariffs are far more likely to speed up that process of automation than to significantly increase manufacturing employment.
Trumps’s tariffs are bad public policy, not so much because they are generally paid by the U.S. consumer, but because they are likely to engender retaliatory tariffs and a general reduction in trade and global growth. Harris’s reference to the Wharton study criticizing the Trump tariffs was on point. On this issue, our endorsement goes strongly to Harris, who opposes these across the board tariffs.
Taxation
We have already mentioned that we view Donald Trump’s across the board tariffs as bad public policy. They are, to paraphrase one of our board members, intended to protect American consumers from high-quality, low-priced, foreign goods.
Kamala Harris’s “soak the rich” tax proposals are not much better. She pretends to care about the middle class. Nevertheless, she intends to raise taxes on corporations, forgetting that these corporations are owned, to a significant degree, by members of the middle class through their retirement savings. She acts like the supply of billionaires is infinite. Her plans for taxing unrealized capital gains also pose huge problems in implementation.
On the tax side, our support on the issue of taxation tilts away from Donald Trump. He may well be able to enact his tariffs without legislative approval. Moreover, he may well face an accommodating legislature. Harris, on the other hand, would require legislative approval for her tax policies. Moreover, she is more likely than Trump to be influenced by “deep state” expert opinion that her ideas are bad public policy.
Subsidies
Subsidies come in two forms; direct payments and special credits or deductions from the tax codes.
Harris has proposed a number of subsidies. She often couches them as a remedy for inflation. They really have nothing to do with inflation, but need to be evaluated in their own right as public policies. Among the subsidies that Harris has specifically mentioned during the campaign are payments to first-time home buyers, tax credits for new home builders, child care tax credits, and deductions for new small business owners. She is associated with a number of other subsidies, by virtue of being a member of the Biden/Harris administration, including the forgiveness of student loans. Most of these special subsidies are clearly unfair to those who are not receiving them. Unfair subsidies are sometimes defensible because they serve a larger public purpose. Of the ones listed here, only the child care tax credit seems to have merit at some level. Not surprisingly this is the only one of these subsidies that enjoys some level of bi-partisan support.
Trump, populist that he is, has proposed his own special subsidies. These include excluding tip income from taxation and excluding Social Security income from taxation. Harris, also a populist, has embraced Trump’s position on tip income. This subsidy, in addition to being unfair, opens up a Pandora’s box of potential abuses and is clearly bad public policy. Excluding Social Security income from taxation is bad public policy, because Social Security funding is already on shaky ground. Since neither party has any taste for the kind of reforms to Social Security that might make sense, we need to hold on to this source of revenue.
On the issue of subsidies we are closer to the Republican side of the debate, but since Harris is likely to face a Republican Senate we are not as concerned, as we would otherwise be, about her redistributionist impulses.
Abortion
The Centrist Independent Voter was in favor of retaining Roe v. Wade, as settled law. This was not because we were persuaded that it was originally good constitutional law. Now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned, we would like to see the substance of Roe v. Wade institutionalized legislatively. We are opposed to any kind of national ban on abortion.
Given this position, we align well with Kamala Harris’s position on the national issue. That is not to say that we agree with the some Democratic politicians who believe that abortion should be available on demand and publicly funded at anytime during a pregnancy, under all circumstances. We oppose state laws that attempt to control interstate trade of medications and the actions of residents that occur outside of the state. We also oppose state efforts to restrict access to contraception and reproductive medical care, such as IVF. All of this puts us far more, but not perfectly, aligned with the Democratic Party’s position on these issues.
Figuring out where Donald Trump stands on these issues is like fishing with your bare hands. He brags about overturning Roe v. Wade. He once said that women should be criminally liable for obtaining an abortion. He will not commit to vetoing a national ban on abortion. He has hinted that he might, then he backed off from that position.
Immigration
The issue of immigration deserves an honest conversation about the causes of the problem and the plausible remedies. America has had a leaky southern border for a long time. To a certain extent, this has served as a safety value for the U.S. labor pool, expanding the pool during periods of low unemployment, contracting it during periods of high unemployment. The U.S. agricultural, construction, and hospitality sectors are to some degree dependent on a relatively open border. That being said, the U.S. has become too attractive to illegal immigrants in recent years. The reasons are complex. Some of it is because of crime, poverty, and corruption problems in the sending countries, particularly in Central America. Some of it is because our asylum system is open to being gamed. The vast majority of asylum claims are rejected. It is hard to make a valid asylum claim, even if you do face significant danger. If those claims were resolved in a matter of months, it would be a bad bet to make the difficult trip to get here only to have to leave in a couple of months. However, as the back log of cases has grown from months to years to decades, the incentives have changed. Making a shaky claim to asylum can give someone an opportunity to work in the U.S. for a very long time before they have to return home and an outside chance that that claim or general asylum might be granted. This process starts a death spiral, in which more asylum seekers increase the backlog, which increases the incentive to make the trip and place an asylum claim. This has led to an increase in the number of people crossing at the southern border who come from around the world.
Covid provided cover for a restrictive policy that required asylum seekers to remain outside of the U.S. Once the pandemic was over, the courts took away this cover and the problem ballooned.
The Biden administration was slow to acknowledge the problem. Partly this was because they thought you could fix the problem by fixing the sending countries. This was the task they handed to Harris. In a handful of cases this has helped, but you can’t fix the world. The real fix requires fixing the asylum system so that adjudication takes a few months, rather than years or decades. If this were the case, the cost-benefit analysis and the incentive to make weak asylum claims would decline. Fewer claims would be made, speeding up the process even more, and a virtuous cycle would be created. That takes time and some serious changes to our asylum process.
The bi-partisan compromise on immigration attempted to address some of these issues. Trump had his allies reject it, because he wanted to keep the issue as hot as possible. That does not excuse the Democrats for waiting so long to address the issue.
The problem with Trump is that he demonizes immigrants. You have to read between the lines on this a bit, but JD Vance provided a useful insight into their point of view in his acceptance speech. It is common to acknowledge that American identity is not tied up in a particular race, ethnicity, or religion, as it is in many other countries. The Centrist Independent Voter notes, as many do, that America is a set of ideas embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Acceptance of those ideas is what makes a person an American, no matter how long they or their ancestors have lived here. Vance rejected that view. He said that American identity was more than those ideas, that it included a common history and common community.
This concept essentially makes second-class citizens of legal immigrants. Many on the Republican side want to restrict both legal and illegal immigration. It is hard to know where Trump stands on that issue, but he certainly made no effort during his term in office to facilitate legal immigration.
Massive deportation of illegal immigrants and restrictive legal immigration are bad public policies for America. Putting aside the humanitarian implications of mass deportations, the economic consequences for America would be dire. America is essentially at full employment. We do not have the labor force to replace millions of deported immigrants.
Harris is certainly to be faulted for her open border sympathies that she evidenced in 2019. She and Biden are to be faulted for their reluctance to address the issue earlier. Trump’s solution to the very real problem of illegal immigration may be worse than the problem itself. We would prefer to address the problem incrementally in the way that Harris now says she would in her commitment to back the bi-partisan legislation.
Gun Control
The Biden administration was able to pass some modest gun control legislation. The Centrist Independent Voter supports the Supreme Court’s Heller decision that affirmed that the 2nd Amendment guarantees an individual’s right to bear arms. That decision also made clear that governments at various levels can regulate who can own guns and what kind of weapons are acceptable. We believe that the kind of restrictions that the Harris/Walz campaign is proposing for gun control fall well within this guideline.
Trump, along with the vast majority of the Republican Party, remain committed to defending the National Rifle Association’s position of no limitations under any circumstances. On this issue, we support Kamala Harris.
Housing
Housing prices, including rent, have risen faster than general inflation and it is an issue in the election. One of Harris’s proposals, subsidizing first home purchases, has been mentioned above and is clearly both unfair and counter-productive. Another policy proposal that she has embraced may have some merit; reducing regulatory and zoning restrictions that make building less-expensive housing more difficult. Harris proposes using federal policy to encourage state and local governments to pass so called YIMBY (yes in my back yard) legislation and regulations, to facilitate faster growth of low-cost housing. This seems like a good idea. Some Republicans are sympathetic. Trump speaks with a forked tongue on the issue. Sometimes he seems to like the idea. At other times, he attacks it as a plot to destroy the suburbs.
The Bottom Line
We are obviously not a huge fan of Kamala Harris. At the time, we would have preferred an open primary to select a candidate to replace Joe Biden. She is a philosophically left-wing politician from a left-wing state. In 2019, GovTrack ranked her as the most liberal U.S. Senator based on that year’s voting record. In the past, she has favored Medicare for all, forgiveness of student loans, universal child care among other things, in a cornucopia of redistributionist schemes. Her proposed funding mechanisms are, also, redistributionist. Her sympathy for anti “price gouging” and rent control legislation (price controls), is anti-free market and bad economics. She has sympathy for the DEI positions adopted by the Democrats over the years, although she rarely reminds us of that now. She has been an apologist for the worst instincts of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2019. She, along with many others, tried to conceal Biden’s declining fitness for the role as candidate in 2024.
That being said Trump is worse. How is he worse?
-His disrespect for the norms of political behavior in his failure to acknowledge, to this day, that he lost the 2020 election. His efforts, by any means possible, to overturn that election. You need not view his actions as criminal to recognize that they were bad for the country.
-His embrace of the Christian Nationalists and other extremist groups like the Proud Boys.
-His disdain for our international alliances and his desire to cozy up to dictators like Putin and authoritarians like Victor Orban (who he used as a character reference in the debate.)
-His apparent willingness to abandon Ukraine to Russia with the dire consequences for all of Western Europe. His reckless willingness to invite Russian aggression against NATO members in a bid for a financial advantage within the alliance.
-His obviously diminished mental acuity, as reflected in his debate performance and his inability to construct coherent thoughts.
-His bizarre, 19th century affinity for tariffs as a vehicle for funding the federal government.
-His lack of common decency in dealing with others.
-The fact that so many who have been close enough to observe him in action view him as a threat to the country.
-His desire, as reflected in project 2025, to strip away the guardrails that keep most Presidents (including potentially Kamala Harris) from following their impulses.
-His desire to surround himself with sycophants who will only do what he wants, however stupid it might be.
-His desire to deport millions of illegal immigrants despite the consequences to them, their families, and the American economy.
The Endorsement
It may seem odd for a centrist political organization to endorse an unquestionably left-wing candidate. It is even odder that so many conservative voices have endorsed her. The reason is because the alternative is so much worse.
While we have serious disagreements with Kamala Harris on many policy issues, she appears to be competent and sane. She appears to have moved, at least a bit, toward the center in her choice of rhetoric, if nothing else. It is reasonable to expect politicians who progress through various levels of representation to change their positions to reflect new constituencies. We are willing to take a chance that Harris will govern in a matter more consistent with her current rhetoric.
We therefore endorse Kamala Harris for President of the United States in the 2024 Presidential Election.