A Lesson for Libertarians in the Crash of the Kamala Harris Campaign and the Crashing Elizabeth Warren Campaign

Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris

By Robert Wenzel

Kamala Harris has ended her bid to gain the Democratic presidential nomination.

Elizabeth Warren's campaign is crashing. From a frontrunner high of 26.8% in polls, she is now at 14.2%.

There is a lesson here for libertarians.

Harris was taken out of the race after Tulsi Gabbard brilliantly destroyed her as a cop, in the worst sense of the word.

 


The fall of Elizabeth Warren occurred when during debates other candidates pushed her on her Medicare for All plan and emphasized the fact that it would take away all private insurance and would have to result in massive tax increases.

Bottom line: It is difficult to attack the Left when they are promising the masses freebies but it is very easy to turn voters off when the pain of presidential candidate proposals is emphasized.

Consider, Andrew Yang is proposing a nutty payment of $1,000 monthly payment per person in the United States. Although it is sound to argue against this on the basis of the distortions it will cause, the elimination of incentives to work among the lower classes and the downright immorality of the plan, these arguments are going to be difficult to grab the masses.

If on the other hand, we point out that Yang's plan, to give every adult (256 million people) $1,000 per month, will cost $256 billion per month and $3 trillion 72 billion over a year. And then point out that current annual US government expenditures are $4.45 trillion, so an increase of $3.72 trillion would have to result in a tax increase of approximately 83.6% per person, the masses will understand the potential pain.

Since all government programs are about increasing pain, it is wise for libertarians to focus the masses on the pain as a way of destroying the programs.

Find the pain and expose it!

Robert Wenzel is Editor & Publisher of EconomicPolicyJournal.comand Target Liberty. He also writes EPJ Daily Alert and is author of The Fed Flunks: My Speech at the New York Federal Reserve Bankand most recently Foundations of Private Property Society Theory: Anarchism for the Civilized Person Follow him on twitter:@wenzeleconomics and on LinkedIn. His youtube series is here: Robert Wenzel Talks Economics. More about Wenzel here.