This Election Has Been Defined by Presidential Policy Pandering
In June, former President Trump traveled to Las Vegas where he unexpectedly revealed a new tax idea: no taxes on tips. Why was Trump suddenly so keen on eliminating taxes on tipped earnings? Because he was trying to win the electorally important state of Nevada, which is home to a large number of Las Vegas-area service workers who rely heavily on tips for income.
This wasn’t a policy that fit into some broader framework or comprehensive theory of how taxes should work. It was an idea, floated in the middle of a rambling speech, targeting a specific, electorally important group, and offering them a benefit through the tax code.
Trump didn’t even try to pretend otherwise. At the June rally, he announced the plan, saying, “for those hotel workers and people that get tips you’re going to be very happy because when I get to office, we are going to not charge taxes on tips people (are) making.”
There’s a word for this: pandering. And it has defined many policy proposals from both the Trump and Harris campaigns this year.
In recent weeks, for example, Democrats have grown concerned that their party’s candidate was not connecting with men, and in particular with black men. So Harris began to tout an “Opportunity Agenda for Black Men” that included fully forgivable loans of up to $20,000 to black entrepreneurs.
As it turned out, the loans wouldn’t be limited to black men, because that would probably be illegal. But the Harris campaign marketed them that way for the same reason that Trump pushed ending taxes on tips in Las Vegas—as an election season ploy to win votes from a specific cohort the campaign wanted to court.
Trump’s tax pandering wasn’t limited to tipped wages: Over the course of his campaign, he has proposed eliminating taxes on Social Security (to court seniors) and on overtime pay. He even proposed retroactive tax deductibility on generator purchases, after a series of brutal hurricanes hit the east coast. Even with election season coming to a close, he has continued to roll out new ideas. At his Madison Square Garden rally over the weekend, he proposed “a tax
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