Vice President Harris’s rapid shift in direction to run for the White House has triggered a reversal on several key issues that could impact election results in swing states, providing former President Trump and the Republicans with a preferred line of attack.
About a week since Harris replaced President Biden as the presumptive Democratic nominee, her campaign team has begun distancing her from a number of positions she took during her run in the 2020 presidential primaries.
She no longer supports a ban on frackinga campaign aide said, and she also does not support expanding the Supreme Court. She no longer supports a government-run health care system, after previously supporting a “Medicare for All” proposal, the campaign aide confirmed, nor does she support a government-run gun buyback program.
Harris also supports the Biden administration’s proposed additional funding for border security, breaking with her stance during the 2020 primaries that at least Immigration and Customs Enforcement must be reformed.
Republicans say the policy changes give them another arrow in their quiver for the three-month final sprint to November.
“She will say whatever she thinks is her choice, but I don’t know how you can trust someone who represents 180-degree opposites depending on who you’re talking to,” said Senator John Cornyn (Republican, Texas). “I just don’t think she’s a credible person.”
“I’m always a little shocked and surprised by cynicism and hypocrisy,” he added when asked if he was at all surprised by the name change.
Harris’ allies resisted, arguing that voters would be more interested in her vision of the future than in the positions she held five years ago.
“You have to let Kamala go out there and win people over. You have to talk about the issues that voters in the swing states care about, the economy, child ID, abortion and fertility rights,” said a Democratic strategist who has worked with Harris. “Let Kamala be Kamala and she will win people over like she always does. You can already see that in her popularity with young people on TikTok.”
“Remember, voters are much more interested in the future than the past. They have been clamoring for new leaders in this race,” the strategist added. “And the future looks much more like Kamala Harris than Donald Trump.”
Still, the vice president’s nearly half-a-dozen policy shifts come in an effort to make progress in key swing states, including Pennsylvania, where fracking has been a key issue for voters for more than a decade.
In numerous interviews and appearances in 2019, Harris said she supported a ban on the practice — a stance that David McCormick, the Republican Senate candidate in the Keystone State, and others have tried to highlight and associate with the state’s Democratic incumbent.
“The energy agenda of Biden, Harris and Casey has essentially been to end fossil fuels and move away from lithium batteries and solar panels from China,” McCormick told Fox News behind schedule last week. “It’s really not consistent with [with] where most of Pennsylvania’s residents are.”
Senator Bob Casey (Democrat, Pennsylvania) defended the change of position on Tuesday, arguing that it would be beneficial for everyone if the leading candidates took a similar stance.
“I have always been very pro-gas production and have voted against any kind of ban,” Casey told The Hill. “The fact that there is agreement and consensus here is of course positive.”
In a survey published behind schedule last week by The Hill and Emerson CollegeHarris trails Trump by 2 points in Pennsylvania – the same lead the former president had over Biden before the June debate that ultimately knocked the president out of the race. Trump was 5 points ahead of Biden after the debate.
The Trump campaign took up another sensitive issue on Tuesday and launched its first television commercial He attacked Harris, focusing on her role as Biden’s “border czar” and mixing images of migrants crossing the border with the dancing vice president.
Leading Trump allies argue that the recent shift in Harris’s political stance only reinforces Republicans’ claims that she is among the most liberal members of their party and cannot be trusted.
“She has so much we can rely on. It’s just about showing the real her,” said Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-Oklahoma). “She’s not a moderate… Joe Biden was kind of a puppet of the progressive movement. She is the progressive movement.”
“She cannot change her positions because she was a senator. She ran on it, she campaigned on it, and she has spoken on it numerous times since she became vice president,” he continued. “Her words are enough. We just need to put it back to the American people.”
Likewise, Trump and his campaign dismissed efforts by Harris and her campaign to reposition themselves on certain issues, arguing that doing so would not resonate with voters.
“In politics, once you start saying something, you’re already there. And she was for defunding the police. She was for open borders. She was for letting anyone come in,” Trump told Fox News on Monday.
Trump, however, may not be the ideal ambassador for this argument. He has frequently changed his mind on various policy issues, including this year when he opposed a ban on TikTok, despite signing an executive order banning the app during his presidency.
Taylor Budowich, head of the pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc., argued that Harris has “always” been a “dangerous liberal,” a sign of how much the vice president will be targeted in attack ads in the coming months.
“Kamala will run with the dishonest, poll- and focus-group-tested agenda her advisers are cooking up. It won’t work,” Budowich posted on the social platform X.
Since Harris entered the race as the likely Democratic nominee, polls show the vice president’s approval rating has risen. An ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted Friday and Saturday found Harris’s popularity rose from 35 percent to 43 percent compared to the previous week, while her unpopularity fell from 46 percent to 42 percent.
And Harris rejected some of the Republicans’ allegations.
“You may have noticed that Donald Trump has resorted to some wild lies about my record. And some of the things he and his running mate are saying are just plain weird,” Harris told donors in Massachusetts.
“But the bottom line is, we have a lot of work to do. OK? We have a lot of work to do,” she continued. “And it’s not going to be easy. But I know something about the people in this room. We can do difficult things. And we like hard work.”
