Guest Column: Kamala Harris rebranded as the 'New Coke'

By Lowman S. Henry

In 1985 the Coca-Cola Company took one of the biggest gambles in marketing history. It changed the formula for its widely popular soft drink and branded it “New Coke.” The result was an unmitigated disaster. Sales crashed, and the company became the brunt of jokes on the late-night talk shows that were popular in that era.

Fast forward to 2024 and political image makers have created the “New Kamala.” They have repacked the unpopular far-Left vice president of the failed administration currently in power as a moderate offering a “new way forward.”

Unlike Coca-Cola, Democrats are unable to go back to their original product — Joe Biden — and are stuck with a failing replacement. There is an old saying in advertising that good advertising makes a bad product fail faster. Thus, as Kamala’s summer of joy fades into the autumn of reality voters are finding she is not as advertised.

The underlying problem for Kamala Harris and Democratic candidates all across Rush Limbaugh’s fruited plain is that not only their record — but the present reality — on the two issues voters care about most (the economy and immigration) cut against them.

Yes, government statistics show the rate of inflation has declined, unemployment is low and the jobs market is strong, and the Fed has implemented an election-year interest rate cut. But, with inflation having soared over 20% on the Biden/Harris watch, voters are not feeling the joy.

Pennsylvania with its 19 Electoral votes is being touted as the most important battleground state. There is no path to the White House for Kamala Harris if she loses Pennsylvania and a very narrow path for Donald Trump if he loses the state.

Harris has not been successful in untethering herself from the Biden record. In recent interviews in sympathetic venues, she has been unable to articulate even one difference she has with Joe Biden. That effectively undercuts the “new way forward” message. Various polls have shown voters believe they were better off during the first Trump Administration than they currently are under the Biden/Harris Administration.

The Commonwealth Foundation’s most recent Common Ground poll conducted the last week of September found inflation and rising costs to be the top concerns of voters. The poll’s analysis states: “Nearly seven-in-ten registered voters say inflation and price increases impact their family’s ability to maintain their standard of living . . . over half of all voters surveyed say their economic conditions are worsening.”

The poll digs deeper: “High energy costs contribute to the inflation squeeze. According to the survey, 77% of respondents say their energy bills have increased over the past two years (33% saying “a lot”). A significant majority (71%) say they are concerned about their ability to afford their family’s energy needs.”

Voters clearly feel both the state and nation are headed in the wrong direction. The Commonwealth Foundation voter poll found 68% of respondents saying things in America are off on the wrong track, and only 26% think the country is going in the right direction. Fifty-seven percent say things in Pennsylvania are off on the wrong track, and 33% think the state is headed in the right direction.

The Fall 2024 Keystone Business Climate Survey conducted by the Lincoln Institute of Public Opinion Research found the owners, top executives and managers of businesses in the state to likewise be in a surly mood. By a three-to-one margin respondents to the poll say the state’s economy has gotten worse, not better over the past six months.

Forty-five percent said the state’s business climate has gotten worse over the past six months; just 17% say it has gotten better. For comparison the Spring 2024 Keystone Business Climate Survey found that 36% said business conditions had gotten worse in the preceding six months, and 26% felt conditions had improved.

Inflation is clearly the key factor. Forty-six percent of the business leaders responding cited inflation as their top challenge with 42% citing concern over current economic conditions and 37% citing concern over future economic conditions. Ninety percent of those participating in the Fall 2024 Keystone Business Climate Survey said inflation has impacted their business with 49% saying the impact has been significant.

On the other major issue — immigration — 56% report illegal immigration has had a negative impact in Pennsylvania with 31% saying the impact has been significantly negative. Fifteen percent believe illegal immigration has had a positive impact on the state.

And so, from the board room to the kitchen table, Pennsylvanians are unhappy with the current condition of the economy and think things are headed in the wrong direction. The problem for Kamala Harris is, as it was with New Coke, consumers simply don’t like the product. The question is will Donald Trump be the Pepsi-Cola who benefits from that failure?

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Lowman S. Henry is Chairman & CEO of the Lincoln Institute and host of the weekly American Radio Journal and Lincoln Radio Journal. His e-mail address is lhenry@lincolninstitute.org.

Guest Opinion: Two Roads Diverged in Penn's Woods

By Lowman S. Henry

Pennsylvania has divided state government with a Democrat in the governor's office and Republicans in control of the state legislature. That divide was on full display this week as the GOP unveiled a plan to lock in the economic gains of the past two years, while Governor Tom Wolf proposed a radical environmental agenda that would slam the state's economy into reverse.

First the good news: as a result of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Acts of 2017, and the Trump Administration's efforts to reduce federal regulations, Pennsylvania's economy is booming.  Recent statistics from the state Department of Labor and Industry show a record low unemployment rate of 3.9% and continued job growth.

The national economy is so strong this expansion is happening in Penn's Woods despite the fact that every survey of state-by-state competitiveness shows our business climate to be near the bottom of the list.  In an effort to change that - and ensure the economic good times continue - House Speaker Michael Turzai this week announced the Energize PA initiative which is a "pro-growth, pro-jobs legislative package."

The package of bills is designed to capitalize on the fact that energy production is one of the fastest growing segments of our state's economy. It will encourage manufacturing expansion while reducing the regulatory burden and shorten the permitting process.

Among the proposals is the creation of Keystone Energy Enhancement Zones that would make businesses eligible for state and local tax exemptions and credits, institution of a tax credit for industries using Pennsylvania methane in their production process, creation of a registry of abandon manufacturing sites that will list properties available for development, and make low-cost gas energy more available to residents and to manufacturers.

Additionally, the Energize PA plan would create an independent commission that would review and propose changes to the Department of Environmental Protection's (DEP) permitting processes with an eye toward streamlining those procedures thus allowing companies to adapt more quickly and improve their economic competitiveness.

The proposals are environmentally sound as they will encourage the clean-up of brownfield sites and significantly reduce carbon emissions helping Pennsylvania meet Clean Power Plan goals ahead of schedule and without government interference.

While Republicans propose tried and true measures to expand the state's economy and foster the creation of new, family-sustaining jobs, Governor Tom Wolf uncorked his "Climate Action Plan," a toxic stew of radical environmental goals which taken together form a blueprint for economic disaster.

Wolf is embroiling Pennsylvania in the Climate Change Alliance, a loose confederation of states working to undercut President Trump's decision to remove the United States from the Paris Climate Accord. That now discredited agreement placed unrealistic goals and restrictions on so-called "greenhouse gas emissions" to combat the Left's belief that those emissions are somehow contributing to global climate change.

Knowing his radical plan could not win approval in the legislature, Governor Wolf has decided to try and advance his environmental agenda through regulation and the deep state bureaucracy. Essentially a Green New Deal for Pennsylvania, the goal is to eventually completely eliminate CO2 emissions.

Not only is that unrealistic, it is undesirable and unnecessary.  The governor's plan would cripple the economy and devastate family budgets as it would require the elimination of all carbon-based fuels - meaning no gas-powered cars or trucks, no home heating by natural gas or oil, nor the manufacture of the thousands of plastic items using carbon bi-products.

Having worked itself into frenzy over climate change, and the fact President Trump does not buy into its dire predictions, the Left has become even more radicalized.  Governor Wolf is fully under their sway.  In addition to the danger his proposals pose to the economy and our way of life, his efforts to end-run the legislative process are alarming.

These two visions of Pennsylvania's future will collide in coming months as legislative Republicans seek to enact their Energize PA plan, while simultaneously preventing the governor from crushing the economic expansion by doing through regulation what he cannot achieve through legislation.

(Lowman S. Henry is Chairman  & CEO of the Lincoln Institute and host of the Lincoln Radio Journal.  His e-mail address islhenry@lincolninstitute.org.)

LOWMAN S. HENRY: Cycle of Dependency

By Lowman S. Henry

The headline blared from the Sunday opinion page: Where's Washington's Heart?  Rather than being an editorial on helping to lift people out of poverty it was instead - predictably - a robust and deeply flawed defense of government social welfare programs.

Decades after President Lyndon Johnson declared a "war on poverty" that turned out to be a massive expansion of government dependency programs, and after the expenditure of trillions of taxpayer dollars on those programs, the needle on poverty has barely moved.

What has changed is the number of Americans trapped on the government dole.  The Left believes this is a good thing - government is assisting more people.  And while helping people who truly need assistance is a shared goal across the political spectrum, conservatives want to take that one step further and return as many people as possible to self-sufficiency.

The term "cycle of dependency" is used by social scientists to describe how addiction to government aid gets handed down from one generation to the next.  But, there is another "cycle of dependency" that explains the Left's fixation with growing the number of people receiving public assistance.

Here is how it works: more people dependent on government creates more voters will support those candidates pledging to preserve and expand their benefits; this results in the election/re-election of Left-leaning candidates who then work to increase the number of people dependent on such programs, repeat, repeat and repeat.

Attempt to break this cycle and the Left will attack saying you lack compassion, or as the headline put it "heart."  This too is a favorite, and highly effective, tactic of the Left.  Big government advocates are exceptionally good at messaging.  They can take any government program, regardless of how ineffective or inefficient it might be, and make it sound like mom and apple pie.  For example the "Affordable Care Act" made health care less available and more expensive; illegal immigrants become "dreamers" and the murdering of babies in the womb becomes "reproductive rights."

What triggered the editorial screed, augmented by the sub-headline "When it comes to helping hunger Americans, we have lost our humanity," was a move by the Trump Administration to allow states greater flexibility in moving people off the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as food stamps, and into self-sufficiency.

You would think helping Americans become more self-sufficient and thus not needing government assistance would be an obvious goal.  But, it would break the Left's electoral cycle of dependency so crank up the propaganda machine and declare such efforts to be heartless.

But are they heartless?

The Trump Administration's goal is to foster the movement of able-bodied adults without dependent children from dependency into the work place.  A similar effort in Pennsylvania passed the General Assembly last year, but fell victim to a veto by Governor Wolf who saw the threat to his electoral coalition.

Opposition to this policy is the opposite of heartless; it restores human dignity.  Nobody is proposing that children go unfed; or those with physical or mental disabilities are denied SNAP benefits.  The goal is for those able to work, and for whom jobs are available, to do so.

This is, as conservative author Arthur Brooks termed it, the "conservative heart":  Provide equality of opportunity through educational reforms such as expanded school choice and job training programs.  Foster a pro-growth economy that makes available good, family sustaining jobs.  This approach will break the classic cycle of dependency and move those who are able from being dependent on government to helping government through their tax dollars funding programs for those in actual need.

In fact, advocacy for the continued trapping of able-bodied, able-minded individuals on government assistance is what is truly heartless.  Doing so with an ulterior political motive is not only heartless, but downright mean. It is time we stopped falling for the Left's spin and put into place those policies that restore more people to the dignity of self-sufficiency.

(Lowman S. Henry is Chairman & CEO of the Lincoln Institute and host of the weekly Lincoln Radio Journal.  His e-mail address is lhenry@lincolninstitute.org.)

Lowman S. Henry: Bluer Blue, Redder Red

By Lowman S. Henry
Guest Columnist

On the surface it would appear the power dynamic in Pennsylvania state government changed little as a result of last week's General Election.  Governor Tom Wolf was re-elected and Republicans retained solid control of both the state House and the state Senate.

Back from where we started?

Not quite.  The 2018 election cycle saw the continuation of two trends: the drift of Democrats into the arms of the socialist Left, and a Republican power shift from the Philadelphia suburbs to the more conservative central and western parts of the state.

Governor Tom Wolf has often (and for good reason) been labeled the most liberal governor in America.  To the degree that Lieutenant Governors matter, the state's new second banana will push him even further in that direction.  Lt. Governor-elect John Fetterman is a Bernie Sanders-style socialist. He replaces the hapless Mike Stack, a Philadelphia pol more interested in the power dynamics of politics than ideology.

Wolf titled to the far Left to win his first primary four years ago and clearly felt at home.  He went on to propose tax hikes that exceeded those offered by governors in all 49 other states combined and has remained a staunch advocate for Left-wing policies ever since.  Fetterman, and the avowed socialists who upended traditional Democrats in the primary to claim seats in the General Assembly, are certain to fortify his position.

As liberal policies made the city more and more unlivable Philadelphia Democrats fled to the suburbs.  There they have continued voting into office candidates who espouse the very same policies that destroyed the city.  As a result, the four counties surrounding Philadelphia which had for decades been the epicenter of Republican power in the state have trended Democrat.

If there was a "blue wave" this election year it crashed ashore in those counties.  The numbers could change a bit as the official count progresses, but Republicans lost 13 state House seats and four state Senate seats in that region.  It is rare for more than three or four incumbents to lose statewide in a given election cycle, so the GOP wipeout in southeastern Pennsylvania can rightly be described as a blue tidal wave.

Continuing the westward shift of the statewide GOP, Republicans partially offset their losses in the southeast by flipping three Democrat seats, one in Bucks County and two elsewhere in the state. Republicans held historically high majorities in both state legislative chambers.  Thus the losses left them in solid control, but with margins closer to the historical average.

What the election did do was to shift the ideological center of both the House and Senate Republican caucuses away from southeastern liberalism into the mainstream conservatism that is popular in the balance of the state.

While legislative Democrats voted in lockstep with their leadership, Republican legislative leaders had the more difficult task of moving conservative policies advocated by their caucus majority, while trying to appease their southeastern members.  The goal was to hold onto those southeastern seats - it didn't work.

The end result is absent the need to protect its members from suburban Philadelphia because - well, they are no longer there - legislative Republicans are now free to stand firmly against the socialist policies Governor Tom Wolf and Democrats are sure to pursue.

This means Pennsylvania's divided state government has become even more divided.  The first battle will come in a matter of weeks when Governor Tom Wolf proposes his next state budget.  It is sure to be chock full of tax hikes and new spending.  Republicans effectively blocked the more radical elements of his agenda during the governor's first term.  A more conservative majority should be able to do so in the years ahead.

Thus have voters across Penn's Woods put into effect all the elements needed for epic policy and budget battles which are likely to end in gridlock. Given the fact that most legislation that actually passes expands the dependency state at the expense of taxpayers gridlock may be the best outcome.

Lowman S. Henry is Chairman & CEO of the Lincoln Institute and host of the weekly Lincoln Radio Journal.  His e-mail address is lhenry@lincolninstitute.org