The rise — and fall? — of the New Progressive Economics

When Kamala Harris gave her campaign’s biggest economic speech yet in Pittsburgh last month, she tried to keep everyone in her party happy.

She did not succeed.

Attempting to strike a balance between progressive and pro-business themes, Harris said she’d hold corporations accountable if they didn’t play by the rules — but opined that “most companies are working hard to do the right thing.” She referenced the activist presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, but in calling for “experimentation” rather than sweeping transformational change. Rather than being “constrained by ideology,” Harris said, she’d seek “practical solutions to problems” and “applying metrics to our analysis.”