[ad_1]
One of the big questions is how Harris will handle the various shifts in her positions during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary campaign, when she aligned herself with some liberal parties who have since distanced themselves from her.
Harris made some exposition, emphasizing that her values have not changed, but did not explain in detail why she changed her specific content.
She has backed off her positions on banning fracking and establishing single-payer health care, as well as her sympathetic comments about reforming Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the “defund the police” movement. (Harris stopped short of calling for abolishing ICE and actually defunding the police, as some on the left had advocated.)
“My values have not changed,” Harris said Thursday, repeating the phrase four times.
CNN host Dana Bash suggested that Harris may have viewed the ideas as impractical because she had a deeper understanding of them, or embraced them for short-term political gain in the Democratic primary. (At the time, such a stance was more popular among Democrats.)
Harris conceded neither premise, but her answer was closer to the former, saying she still held the same values but was using different tools in a changing era.
She said the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act addresses some of the goals of the Green New Deal that she advocated in 2020 but no longer advocates, including setting goals to combat climate change.
“We did that with the Inflation Reduction Act,” Harris said. “We set goals for the United States and the world, like when we should meet certain standards for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”
Harris said banning fracking is no longer necessary because of advances in clean energy.
She has also focused on illegal immigration, having pushed to decriminalize illegal border crossings, but more recently she has emphasized border security.
“My values about what we need to do to protect our borders have not changed,” Harris said. “I served two terms as California attorney general, prosecuting transnational criminal organizations for violations of U.S. law, including guns, drugs and people that illegally crossed our borders.”
When asked if she still supports legalizing drugs, Harris did not answer directly, but said: “I believe there should be consequences.”
These explanations aren’t the most illuminating or illuminating because they don’t really address how much she believes in past policies. For example, supporting border security doesn’t explain why you’re no longer talking about reforming ICE or legalizing illegal immigration.
But politically speaking, you can’t say you gave up your position for expediency or because you realized you were wrong. The former would make people doubt your sincerity, while the latter would make people doubt your wisdom.
2. She is cautious about change
Harris has walked a very delicate line in this campaign. Although she has served as vice president to Joe Biden for the past three and a half years, Biden is not an unpopular and poorly rated president, but she has tried to run as a “change” candidate.
On Thursday, she did emphasize that distinction. She promoted the Biden administration as a success that would be viewed more positively over time. But she also sought to emphasize that her presidency could be different, even better.
Perhaps most strikingly, she repeated the same catchphrases that challengers often use: Twice she mentioned a “new way forward” and twice she referred to “the past decade” as something that needed to be surpassed.
“First, I’m proud to serve as Joe Biden’s vice president,” Harris said. “Second, I’m proud to run for president of the United States alongside Tim Waltz to bring to America what I think the American people deserve, which is a new path forward and to turn the page on the last decade, which I think has been antithetical to the spirit of our country.”
When Bash pointed out that the past decade includes three and a half years when Biden and Harris served as vice presidents, Harris said she was talking more about the spirit since Donald Trump was elected.
When Bash pressed her on why she hasn’t used her current position to do what she preaches, Harris said the Biden administration is constrained by what it needs to do to move on from the Trump administration and the coronavirus pandemic.
“First, our economy had to recover, and we have done that,” Harris said.
She pointed to the difficulties caused by the pandemic and noted that no rich country could match the recovery, no matter how uneven or how high inflation. (Many rich countries also face high inflation, for example.)
At other times, she has embraced Biden’s legacy more closely.
“I think history will show that it has been transformative in many ways, not just in terms of what we’ve accomplished in terms of investing in American infrastructure, investing in a new economy, investing in new industries, but also in terms of what we’ve done to reunite our alliances,” Harris said, adding that the current administration has had “extraordinary success.”
But she sees it mostly as a first step, and says a recovering economy will free her up to do bigger and better things.
“I would say it’s an outstanding job,” Harris said. “There’s still a lot of work to be done, but it’s an outstanding job.”
The Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos polling recently showed that most Americans do not think Harris has played a particularly central role in the Biden administration’s economic and immigration policies.
3. They don’t want to cause harm, and probably don’t
In part, this was just about getting that first big interview done. Harris has been under pressure for weeks for not taking more media questions — which built up anticipation for this interview — and, as mentioned, there were a lot of lingering questions that were not addressed during the speech and other campaign events.
Harris’ sudden surge in popularity after years as an unpopular vice president has raised questions about whether that approval rating will hold up under more direct scrutiny.
Harris was careful and sometimes oblique in her responses — the latter a frequent target of Republican attacks — but she didn’t really gaffe or do anything that could stall her momentum. She and Waltz also handled some lingering issues in a way they hope will keep them moving forward for now.
In particular, Waltz appeared to acknowledge that some of the claims he and his campaign made about his biography were inaccurate, including that he was arrested for drunk driving in the 1990s, that his family underwent fertility treatments and that he carried a weapon in combat while serving in the National Guard, even though he never saw combat while overseas supporting the war in Afghanistan. He downplayed those claims in the interview.
Regarding the weapons charge, he said his wife told him that “his grammar wasn’t always correct.” Regarding false statements about his DUI arrest and claims that his family used IVF instead of less controversial fertility treatments, Walz said, “I certainly take responsibility for the mistakes that I made.”
Walz didn’t directly address how Grammar explained his weapons charge, nor did he elaborate on the IVF allegation. But the purpose of the game seems to be to answer those questions, move beyond them, and hopefully move on.
[ad_2]
Source link
