The political idea that unites Trump and Harris

By adopting the elimination of tip taxes, a policy proposal recently promoted by Donald Trump, Kamala Harris neutralizes any advantage Trump might have gained from it, without costing her own campaign much.

But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.

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Low risk, reward

On Saturday in Las Vegas, Vice President Kamala Harris made one of the first policy promises of her presidential campaign. She threw her support behind a concept that had not gained mainstream acceptance until early this summer, when Donald Trump proposed it in his own platform. Now, in a somewhat unlikely alliance, both candidates from both major parties are backing the idea of ​​eliminating taxes on workers’ tips.

Trump has said he got the idea after talking to a Las Vegas waitress. After he introduced the proposal in June, his party quickly embraced it, and the policy was included in the platform released by the Republican National Committee last month. The “no tip tax” idea that both sides are now pushing has obvious flaws. For one thing, economists are skeptical of the concept; it’s not yet clear how either campaign would implement the policy or how widely, but some versions of the idea could result in significant losses in federal revenue. And the idea would likely be difficult to pass in Congress and enforce at businesses.

But as campaign rhetoric, it seems pretty compelling: As my colleague David Graham wrote after Trump first floated the idea, “Even if it seems questionable, who wants to vote against cutting taxes for waiters and cab drivers?” The proposal’s rollout, David noted, was “a typically Trumpian move: completely detached from the opinion of pundits on the left or right, but with intuitive appeal and a political twist.” Now, Harris is looking to capitalize on that appeal—and in doing so, she’s blunting any political advantage the proposal might have given her opponent.

Trump predictably lambasted Harris for copying his idea, accusing her of supporting it for “political gain” (his capitalization). But beyond that criticism, Harris appears to have little to lose by jumping on the “no tip tax” bandwagon. There is no significant voter base against the idea. Meanwhile, the Culinary Union, a powerful force in the electorally important swing state of Nevada, has long been a vocal opponent of “unfair taxation”; the union, which had endorsed Harris before she backed the idea, welcomed Saturday’s news. “It seems to me that we’re in a situation where the electoral benefits of interest-group appeasement clearly outweigh the costs, even if the policy is questionable on the merits,” my colleague Gilad Edelman, who covers economic policy, told me. (The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to my request for comment. A Harris campaign official told NPR that her proposal is different from Trump’s — though neither campaign has laid out exactly what their proposals would look like in practice — and that she would fight for it alongside a minimum wage increase.)

Trump wasn’t wrong to note that Harris’s decision seemed driven by political interests. But her support for the measure may not tip the scales in his favor. Not all advocates for tipped workers are passionate supporters of the measure; some argue that a higher minimum wage would be a much more meaningful step toward improving the lives of service-sector workers. And while some tipped workers may support the measure, even those who stand to benefit may not vote with it in mind. It makes intuitive sense that voters would choose a candidate who would put money in their pockets, but a wealth of research suggests that Americans actually vote for what they believe is in the best interests of the country, not just what will improve their personal finances, Jon Krosnick, a professor of political science at Stanford, told me. Moreover, now that both candidates support the idea, Krosnick argued, they both lose any “potential upside” the measure has with voters.

Harris’s calculus seems as simple as “low risk, possible reward.” By aligning with this proposal, she could weaken a Trump campaign tactic, satisfy the culinary union, and signal to working Americans that she’s focused on them. Harris is expected to unveil more details of her economic-focused policy agenda later this week. But for now, as David noted yesterday, her policy priorities remain elusive, and this proposal doesn’t change that.

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