When the Democratic candidate unveiled her economic program in August, the Washington Post went into a tizzy. "Kamala Harris unveils populist policy agenda," headlined the center-left daily, highlighting "a $6,000 credit for newborns." In a country with no family allowance or generalized social benefits, such a proposal is a small revolution. It joins a series of others: help with home ownership, medical debt forgiveness, a cap on out-of-pocket expenses for medicine and a tax credit for entrepreneurs.

Part of a discourse singing the praises of the middle class and upward mobility, these measures are very progressive, almost European-style. Following his opponent's nomination, Donald Trump called her "Comrade Kamala," a "communist" and "the most incompetent and far-left vice president in American history... a radical left lunatic who will destroy our country if she ever gets the chance to get into office." Trump even declared in July that she was "more liberal than Bernie Sanders." The socialist senator from Vermont, star of the progressive youth in the 2016 Democratic primary, had to fly to Harris's rescue. "For better or for worse, Kamala Harris is not more progressive than I am," Sanders asserted in late July.

The reality is that Joe Biden adopted a much more left-leaning policy than previous Democratic presidents Bill Clinton (1993-2001) and Barack Obama (2009-2017), because Americans now aspire to more left-wing measures. Traumatized by the great financial crisis of 2008, the shock of Chinese competition and the Covid-19 pandemic, there's now a stronger American demand for state protection. And Harris is continuing in his footsteps. "But the policy positions she embraced Friday suggest she will continue, if not deepen, the party’s transformation under Biden, who pushed for more aggressive government intervention in the economy on industrial, labor and antitrust policies," observed the Washington Post.

Although the term is never used, as it seems outdated and ill-suited for the United States, the country, which contemptuously looks down on a Europe that has stalled economically, has paradoxically taken on a social-democratic look in recent years. Witness the return to favor of the trade unions supported by Biden, the rise in low wages, the generalization of the right to healthcare, the return of anti-competitive measures, the outline of a family policy...

More complex than the French sometimes believe it to be, the United States ticks some of the boxes that the European welfare-state model is supposed to offer, even if it's still a long way off. American public spending was 36.7% of gross domestic product in 2022, compared with 57.2% in France and 48.9% in Germany, according to the International Monetary Fund. Welfare spending there is 15.4%, compared with over 25% in France and Germany. This difference can be explained in particular by the burden of public pensions, which is 14.5% in France, compared with 7.5% in the US.

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