Harris cautiously rolls out policy, aiming to outmaneuver Trump and address 2020 liabilities
WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris is trying to outsmart former President Donald Trump and address old problems. vulnerabilities on her policy positions as she begins to flesh out how she would govern if elected in November.
Vice presidents rarely have their own policy portfolio — and almost always set aside any positions that differ from those of the Oval Office occupant. Now, after four years of following President Joe Biden’s lead, Harris is taking a cautious approach to unveiling a policy vision of her own.
But her surprise rise to the top of the list after Biden dropped his re-election bid also means her policy platform is being put back together just as quickly.
When Harris inherited Biden’s political operation in late July, the campaign website quietly ditched the six-point “issues” page that had defined the race against Trump, from expanding voting protections to restoring nationwide access to abortion. Instead, Harris has peppered her speeches — so far heavy on biographies of herself and her running mate — with broad goals like “building the middle class.” She has called for federal laws to provide abortion access and ban assault rifles, but has been thin on the details of what they would specifically entail or how she would persuade Congress to move forward on some of the hottest political issues.
Asked by reporters Saturday when she would unveil her policy platform, Harris promised more details this week, adding: “It will be focused on the economy and what we need to do to lower costs and strengthen the economy overall.”
Her team has offered few clues about what it will include. But the first big window into her thinking came last weekend, with a proposal that came not from the policymaking backwaters of the Biden administration or the legislative chopping board, but from her rival: Trump.
Harris announced that she, like Trump, wants to end the federal tax on employee tips — with the added caveat that she would limit the plan to low- and middle-income people. The idea has gained bipartisan support in recent months and is very striking in Nevada, a state with a strong service sector.
It’s also one of the few new ideas Trump is embracing in his bid to return to the White House in 2024 — a bonus in the eyes of the Harris camp, which has tried to force Republicans to make unforced errors.
The Republican was less than amused by Harris’ support for the idea, complaining on his social media platform: “This was TRUMP’s idea – She has no ideas, all she can do is steal from me.”
Trump expanded on the issue in an interview with Elon Musk on Monday night, criticizing Harris for adopting his idea after he alleged the Biden administration had harassed tipped workers.
On Monday, the White House said Biden also supported the plan, but White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre declined to comment on why Biden and Harris did not push for it during their first three and a half years in office.
“It’s clearly a new idea,” she said, but later added, in response to criticism from Trump, “Why didn’t they adopt it during the previous administration?”
In her first weeks as a candidate, Harris’ most outspoken policy moves have been to back away from liberal positions she took in her failed 2020 White House bid, including proposals to ban fracking, establish a single-payer health care system and decriminalize illegal border crossings. Harris dropped out of that heated race before a single vote was cast, but acknowledges that voters could now punish her for those positions if they aren’t addressed quickly.
Another complication for Harris is her relationship with Biden, who quickly endorsed her and gave her the keys to his political operation after he stepped down.
“They’ve been in sync for the last three and a half years,” Jean-Pierre said. “They’ve definitely been on the same page. And I assume that’s going to continue from here on out.”
Biden himself only began sketching out detailed policy proposals for a second term during his last-ditch effort to salvage his candidacy after his disastrous June 27 debate with Trump. He advocated restoring access to abortion, raising the federal minimum wage and instituting a new surtax on billionaires. Harris has largely embraced all of those priorities, including the sitting president’s call for changes to the Supreme Court.
But all of these plans would require Congressional support, and that support has proven hard to come by, even when Democrats held joint control of Washington during the first two years of the Biden-Harris administration.
Meanwhile, Harris’ campaign indicated that her efforts to shift the center reflect her efforts to build consensus in government.
“While Donald Trump is wedded to the extreme ideas in his Project 2025 agenda, Vice President Harris believes that true leadership means bringing all parties together to build consensus,” said Harris spokesman Kevin Munoz. “That approach has allowed the Biden-Harris administration to achieve bipartisan breakthroughs on everything from infrastructure to gun violence prevention. As president, she will take the same pragmatic approach, focusing on common sense solutions in the interest of progress.”
While Trump has resorted to personal and racist attacks on his new rival in recent weeks, his campaign has made an effort to center Harris’ policy goals. He has sought to portray Harris as a radical liberal, citing old videos of her discussing policy positions during the 2020 Democratic primaries.
“Kamala Harris has changed course on virtually every policy she has supported and lived by her entire career, from the border to Tips, and the Fake News Media is not reporting it,” Trump posted Sunday. “She sounds more like Trump than Trump, she copies almost everything. She is deceiving the American public and will reverse course immediately. I WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! There will be no turning back!!!”
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Associated Press editors Jill Colvin and Darlene Superville contributed to this report.