Opinion | Kamala Harris Takes Her First Big Risk

Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. How do you feel about price controls?

Gail Collins: Bret, we’ve spent a long time agreeing about stuff, thanks to our shared loathing of Donald Trump. But now we’re back to our great divide: economics. And just at the end of summer vacation!

Bret: No better way to enliven an August afternoon than to summon the ghost of Richard Milhous Nixon — probably not your favorite president.

Gail: You’re talking about a piece of Kamala Harris’s big economic speech on Friday. Well, I admit price controls would be a tough plan to get through, politically speaking.

But Harris is trying to lay some of the groundwork for her overall agenda, which on the fiscal side includes redistributing some of the mega-wealth of the upper class to folks who are struggling to reach the middle. I do like that scenario.

Bret: The best thing that can be said about her promise to go after price “gouging” is that she knows it has no hope of passing and that she understands that every serious economist on the planet will warn her that the consequences of price controls would be shortages, hoarding and, soon enough, black markets. In fact, my only hope for Harris is that her agenda is for campaign purposes only, and that she’ll become a normal Democrat once in office.

Gail: Well, you have hope …

Bret: On the other hand, as Catherine Rampell of The Washington Post pointed out last week, if your opponent is going to call you a “communist,” it might be wiser not to propose legislation worthy of Venezuela. Or is there some political logic at work here that I’m missing?