Election 2024

Kamala Harris Is Running on 'Freedom.' Does She Mean More Than Just Abortion?

Gov. Tim Walz, the vice presidential candidate, told Republicans to "mind your own damn business" about abortion policy. Perhaps they should apply that concept further.

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Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz at their first joint presidential campaign rally in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania | Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Newscom
(Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Newscom)

With less than 100 days to go before the 2024 presidential election, the Democratic ticket has pivoted hard in the direction of "freedom" as a campaign strategy. But how serious are they about it, really?

Within 48 hours of President Joe Biden ending his reelection campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris locked up enough of his delegates to secure the Democratic nomination. Yesterday, Harris announced her choice for running mate: Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a plain-speaking progressive who pioneered the strategy of calling Republicans "weird."

On Tuesday, at their first joint campaign rally in Philadelphia, Walz deployed some of the folksiness that apparently won him Harris' pick. On the topic of abortion rights, he offered some choice words for their opponents.

"Some of us are old enough to remember when it was Republicans who were talking about freedom. It turns out now, what they meant was, the government should be free to invade your doctor's office," he said. "In Minnesota, we respect our neighbors and the personal choices that they make. Even if we wouldn't make the same choice for ourselves, there's a golden rule: mind your own damn business!" The crowd erupted in cheers and applause, and Walz said he heard chants of "mind your own damn business."

In a fawning segment on his MSNBC show, Lawrence O'Donnell called Walz's turn of phrase "nothing less than the single best political message the Democrats have ever delivered about abortion and reproductive freedom."

Indeed, the message is striking—even downright libertarian. It fits well into Harris' campaign theme, in which she dropped Biden's focus on "democracy" in favor of "freedom." Within days of securing her party's presumptive nomination, Harris deployed her first campaign ad, which not only chose "freedom" as its theme but featured the Beyoncé song of the same name.

But Harris' ad, like Walz's declaration at the rally, is unfortunately limited in its view of what "freedom" truly means.

"We choose freedom," Harris intones in her ad, "the freedom not just to get by, but get ahead; the freedom to be safe from gun violence; the freedom to make decisions about your own body. We choose a future where no child lives in poverty, where we can all afford health care, where no one is above the law"—that last one delivered over an image of former President Donald Trump's mug shot taken last year in Georgia.

Libertarians may feel that much of this rhetoric stretches the definition of what freedom truly means. After all, "the freedom to be safe from gun violence" is a laudable goal, but in practice, it seems to run against the constitutionally guaranteed right to keep and bear arms. "Throughout her career, Harris has been a vocal advocate for reinstating a ban on assault weapons, the weapon of choice for mass shooters and extremists," touts a press release from the gun control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety. "As California Attorney General, Harris led the fight to pass a Red Flag law, becoming only the third state at the time to do so." Walz, as Minnesota's governor, similarly signed legislation to institute red flag laws.

If you truly believe in "the freedom not just to get by, but get ahead," then you should support making it as easy as possible for a person to earn a living.

Yet the Biden-Harris administration has favored tougher enforcement of tax laws in ways that would disadvantage people with lower incomes. While gig economy companies like Uber and Etsy were previously required to report users to the IRS who earn at least $20,000 on their platform, a provision in Biden's 2021 pandemic relief bill would have lowered the threshold to $600. And when the administration proposed hiring 87,000 new IRS agents, it suggested that the extra enforcement would allow the agency to monitor people's use of services like PayPal and Venmo, to make sure their transactions match their reported incomes.

The Harris ad's support for "the freedom to make decisions about your own body" is also commendable, as is Walz's exhortation for anti-abortion Republicans to "mind your own damn business." But that involves more than just abortion rights: It also includes the right to access experimental drug treatments that have not been officially sanctioned by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). MDMA, for example, shows great promise for treating mental health disorders like post-traumatic stress, but the FDA has yet to approve its use, and in June, an FDA advisory panel voted overwhelmingly to recommend against approval.

True bodily autonomy would also include the right to take drugs that are approved in other countries but have not been sanctioned by the FDA. But the Right to Try Act of 2017 was introduced by a Republican, Sen. Ron Johnson (R–Wis.), and signed into law by Trump, who bragged about the law in his speech at the Republican National Convention. But the FDA reported that in 2023, only four drugs were used under Right to Try.

"While more exceptions made more often would be an improvement on the status quo, the need for these exceptions and the extremely high stakes for obtaining them shows that there is something deeply wrong with the underlying process," Reason Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward wrote in 2021 about the FDA.

In fairness, Harris and Walz have been liberty-friendly on other issues: Last year, Walz signed a bill legalizing recreational marijuana in Minnesota. And despite a history of locking up marijuana users as a prosecutor in California, she has been a more forceful advocate of legalization than either Trump or Biden.

But if the Democratic presidential ticket is going to choose "freedom" as its rhetorical guiding light, the candidates should consider opening up their respective definitions of what that means and the numerous ways in which people can be free. "Mind your own damn business" makes a perfect rallying cry for more than just abortion and reproductive rights.