The article:
The Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, is actively working to address the longstanding issue of her policy positions, specifically how she would govern if elected in November.
Previous vice presidents have rarely had their own policy portfolios, usually choosing to set aside any views different from the Oval Office occupant. Now, with Biden opting out of reelection and Harris unexpectedly becoming the Democratic presidential nominee, she is speeding up the formation of her own policy platform after following President Joe Biden for four years, carefully unveiling her policy vision.
Due to her late entry into the presidential race and the lack of a written manifesto, she has had to articulate her political stances through public statements. These positions sometimes align with President Biden’s positions, sometimes differ, and often differ from her own previous stances.
After officially taking over Biden’s campaign operations at the end of July, the six “issues” pages that were previously on her campaign website, covering topics from expanding voting rights to nationwide abortion services, were quietly removed. These issues had been part of the Biden and Trump campaigns’ frameworks. They were replaced with broader goals such as “building the middle class.” These have been prominent in her speeches and biographies for herself and her running mate.
Furthermore, Harris has called for the creation of federal legislation to provide more abortion opportunities, banning assault weapons, but was vague on the specifics of these laws or how she would persuade Congress to make progress on some of the most contentious political issues.
Last Saturday, when asked when she would release her governing agenda, Harris promised to provide more details this week, focusing on the economy and what needs to be done to reduce costs while strengthening the overall economy.
Her campaign team has provided scarce clues about the content of her agenda.
Harris’s governing philosophy had a significant opening last weekend, drawing ideas not from Biden’s administration’s policy backrooms but from her competitor: Trump.
Harris announced that, like Trump, she wishes for the federal government not to tax workers’ tip incomes. She added that she would limit this plan to low to middle-income groups. This idea has gained bipartisan support over the last few months, especially popular in service industry-heavy Nevada.
This was one of the few new positions Trump accepted during his 2024 presidential bid to return to the White House.
Harris’s endorsement of this idea displeased Trump. He complained on his social media platform, saying, “This is Trump’s idea, and she has no ideas; she can only steal from me.”
On Monday evening, Trump continued to address this during an interview with Elon Musk, criticizing Harris for adopting his idea after he criticized the Biden administration for harassing workers who receive tips.
The White House on Monday stated that Biden also supports this plan. However, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to discuss why Biden and Harris did not push this plan within the first three and a half years in office.
She explained, “Clearly, this is a new idea,” later responding to Trump’s criticism by asking, “Why didn’t they pass (legislation) during the previous administration?”
In the initial weeks of being a candidate, Harris’s most noticeable policy moves involved straying from her liberal positions taken during her failed 2020 presidential candidacy, including proposals such as banning fracking, establishing a single-payer healthcare system, and decriminalizing non-criminal illegal border crossings. Harris dropped out of that intense campaign early, but now realizes that if she does not address these old debts quickly, voters may penalize her for these stances now.
Harris, one of the co-founders of the “Green New Deal,” previously called for a ban on fracking. However, fracking has propelled the prosperity of the U.S. oil and gas industry, booming economies in states like North Dakota, western Texas, and Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania is one of the few key swing states that presidential candidates must win, and Harris is evidently concerned that her stance on fracking could face more resistance in Pennsylvania.
Another complex issue Harris faces is her relationship with Biden. Biden swiftly endorsed her and handed her the keys to his political operations after announcing his withdrawal from the campaign.
Jean-Pierre said, “They have been in sync over the past three and a half years; they are certainly on the same page; I believe that will continue.”
Biden himself began outlining detailed policy proposals in the final efforts to salvage his bid for a second term after a disastrous debate with Trump on June 27, advocating for restoring abortion rights, raising the federal minimum wage standard, and imposing new surtaxes on millionaires.
Harris largely supports all of these priorities of Biden.
Regarding Biden’s recent proposal for Supreme Court reforms, Harris released a statement expressing support, including limiting Supreme Court justices’ terms to 18 years and ethical judicial standards enforcement, but did not mention increasing the number of justices.
In a statement on July 29, she said, “The Supreme Court is facing a crisis of confidence because its integrity has been called into question after numerous ethical scandals and decisions overturning long-standing precedents.”
Harris’s campaign team states that she is working to move towards the center to gain more consensus.
Her spokesperson, Kevin Munoz, contrasted Harris with Trump: “Donald Trump sticks to his ‘Project 2025’ agenda’s extreme positions, while Vice President Harris believes that true leadership means bringing all sides together to reach consensus; it is this approach that has allowed the Biden-Harris administration to achieve bipartisan breakthroughs in everything from infrastructure to gun violence prevention. Once elected president, she will take a similarly pragmatic approach, focusing on finding common-sense solutions for progress.”
Trump’s campaign team has been working hard in recent weeks to target the core of Harris’s policies and portray her as a radical liberal, using old videos of Harris discussing her policy positions during the 2020 Democratic primary as evidence.
On the evening of July 27, Trump told supporters at a rally in Minnesota, “This November, the American people will overwhelmingly reject Kamala Harris’s crazy liberal extremism.”
Trump posted last Sunday, stating, “From border issues to tip issues, Kamala Harris has flopped on nearly every policy she supported and pursued throughout her entire career, but the fake news media does not report it; her words sound more like Trump than Trump himself, borrowing almost everything, she is deceiving the American public, and flip-flopping, but I will make America great again! No change!!!”
(This article referenced reporting from the Associated Press)