This is the problem with those of the left, anyone from the right (is wrong). How condescending your tone is. To suggest Kamala is not a socialist is naive. She even leans more left than Bernie. That’s why she didn’t spend any time talking policy, just constant Trump bashing.
Hi - Political Scientist here (not going to name the University for privacy reasons). The bolded is categorically false. To start, if she didn't spend any time talking policy, and just Trump bashing, then how can you then proclaim her policies are socialist?
In real basic terms, socialism is public ownership of public goods and crown corporations. For example, public health - whether it is public ownership of health insurance or public ownership of the hospitals themselves - are socialist concepts. Public ownership of hydro and electricity is a socialist ideal. Saskatchewan had a public insurance option for auto insurance for a while - that was a socialist ideal. But under socialism, private corporations still exist, and the public still owns their own labour.
A lot of people will conflate socialism with communism, and even Trump used the term interchangeably in order to scare people, but communism under the original Marxist idea is the abolition of private property. Under Marxism, the means of production is property of the state, and therefore all companies would be property of the state. And as stewards of the state, it was the government's responsibility to pay people their salaries (under Marxism, everyone would be paid the same because everyone contributes to a functioning society - when put in practice, Lenin recognized that not all jobs were equal, but capped it a the highest paying job being no more than 5x the lowest paid job if I remember correctly. Lenin also had to make changes to the idea of "personal property" in order to make the concept work in practice).
None of Harris' policies were socialist. Her proposals of childcare subsidies and grants for small business owners are liberal policies at best (as even conservative governments will provide grants and forgivable loans to startups), but definitely not socialist. Bernie and AOC have been on record to support socialist policies, such as public ownernship of healthcare, so to say that Harris leans further left than Bernie is categorically untrue. If there are any policies that proposed by Harris that you feel would qualify as socialist, I would be happy to hear and debate them.
But the above is also an illustration of the double standard when it came to the two candidates. What policies did Trump have? Even when asked what his plan was to replace the Affordable Care Act, he gave his infamous "I have concepts of a plan" without ever explaining what it was. He expressed his stances, sure - deport all illegals, cut taxes, etc. But what was the plan? He just made grandiose statements, saying "millions and millions" and "billions and billions" and never gave exact numbers. How much was he cutting taxes? Would it be uniform for everyone, or vary by tax bracket? (because a 4% cut for you would be very different than a 4% cut for Elon Musk). Would he be running a deficit or would he be cutting public services like medicaid or pensions? But he didn't have to give specifics because that's what grifters do - he just kept proclaiming over and over again that America sucks and he was the only one who could fix it because he's smart and everyone would be so happy, and enough people bought into it.
It's funny as someone who studies Politics to see how often this works. Doug Ford's first campaign against Kathleen Wynne, he barely had any policy proposals. He had a few, certainly more than Trump did this cycle, but his entire campaign the first time was "vote for me, because Kathleen Wynne sucks" and the province collectively went "yeah, Kathleen Wynne sucks" and voted for him. Politics since the turn of the century has been less and less about the creation of good public policy, and more and more about (and it's odd to say this on a Leafs forum) cheering for a "team." If you can get people to cheer for your team, that's how you win elections - policy be damned, just make them hate the other team more than yours.
