Commentary: Harris forced to explain policy changes in first interview as Democratic candidate

by Philip Wegmann

Kamala Harris shrugged.

Asked about former President Donald Trump’s question about her racial identity, the vice president responded, “Same old, tired playbook. Next question, please.”

And then she laughed. “That’s it?” protested CNN’s Dana Bash, pressed for more during the Democrat’s first interview since accepting the nomination. “That’s it,” Harris confirmed.

She’s about to make history. Harris would not only be the first female president of the United States, but also the first Black woman and the first person of South Asian descent to occupy the Oval Office. She has eschewed identity politics; Harris is instead focused, and above all, on a message of economic renewal.

Intersectionality, the progressive placeholder for the overlap of different kinds of discrimination like racism and sexism, is the talking point that Democrats have suddenly stopped using. While Democrats wore suffragette white to the convention in Chicago to mark the occasion and other speakers emphasized the historic nature of Harris’ candidacy, the nominee herself made no explicit mention of her gender or race when she accepted the nomination. It’s a notable omission from a member of an administration that has repeatedly made concerns about racial equity central.

But Harris already had her hands full without talking about the possibility of historic firsts.

Republicans have attacked her for dodging reporters after President Biden announced he was dropping out of the race. Journalists have openly grumbled. The vice president finally met with the press on Thursday, and Dana Bash had plenty of material to draw on during the interview. That’s because Harris has undergone a media makeover.

Once considered the most liberal member of the Senate, Harris has since backed away from the more progressive policy positions she championed when she ran for president in 2020. For the first time as a Democratic candidate, Harris was pressed to explain that development during the CNN interview.

Harris was asked if she would still ban fracking. “No,” she replied firmly, “and I made it clear on the debate stage in 2020 that I would not ban fracking. As vice president, I did not ban fracking. As president, I will not ban fracking.”

But she had said the opposite five years earlier during a CNN town hall in the midst of the Democratic presidential primary, while she was still seeking the nomination. “There’s no question that I support a ban on fracking,” she told voters. After joining the Democratic ticket the following year, Harris vowed during a debate with then-Vice President Mike Pence that a Biden administration would not, in fact, end fracking.

Still, while the policy prescriptions are different, Harris said her principles are not. “Well, let’s be clear,” she told Bash. “My values have not changed. I believe it’s very important that we take seriously what we need to do to protect ourselves from what is a clear crisis in terms of the climate.”

Another clawback: Harris was asked if she still believed that illegal border crossings should be legalized. Once again, the Democrat was definitive. Suddenly aggressive on the issue, she responded: “I believe there should be consequences. We have laws that should be upheld and enforced that address and prosecute people who cross our border illegally.”

In a line repeated endlessly in Chicago — and in television ads for the Democratic ticket — Harris also told Bash that as California attorney general she had prosecuted transnational criminal organizations. Left unmentioned, however, was the fact that illegal border crossings during the Biden-Harris administration topped 10 million.

Accompanied by her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris walked into the interview with a mission. The nominee wanted to discuss exactly how she plans to “support and strengthen the middle class.” An expanded child tax credit. A $25,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers. Investment in small businesses. Implementing all of this, she said, would be part of her agenda on Day One in the White House. But there’s an obvious follow-up question to those promises.

“These steps you’re talking about now,” Bash asked, “why haven’t you done them yet?”

“We had to recover as an economy,” Harris responded, before pointing to reducing inflation and a Medicare program to cap drug prices, “and we did that.” The public disagrees. Only 23% of Americans say the economy is in good shape, according to a May Pew Research poll.

But Harris wanted to tell a story that began during the pandemic, to remind voters how far the country has come since then. That will be a tricky balance for her to strike. She has tried to distance herself from the Biden administration’s perceived shortcomings while embracing its success. White House officials, meanwhile, told RealClearPolitics that the current vice president has been “an integral partner” and “owns the whole picture” of the past four years.

To get back on track, Harris has all but abandoned the standard “saving democracy” slogan Biden repeated at every campaign stop when he was a candidate. She has also moved away from the rhetoric about a strong labor market, the feather in this administration’s cap, to talk more about lowering the daily costs of living.

That’s the New Way Forward she emphasized in Chicago. It appears to be working. She has a 1.5-point lead over Trump in the same RealClearPolitics Average that Biden recently trailed. Democrats have experienced a significant shift among key demographic groups since Harris took over the party, according to new polling from Suffolk University.

Young people aged 18-34 favored Trump over Biden by 11 points in June. With Harris at the top of the ticket, Democrats now lead that group by 13 points in August – a dramatic improvement of 24 points. Similarly, while black Americans favored Biden over Trump by 47 points, 64% now favor Harris. Most striking, however, are the shifts in opinion among Americans making less than $20,000 a year.

Trump led that group by three points at the start of the summer, but Harris now holds a 23-point lead — a notable 26-point shift that likely explains her emphasis, first and foremost, on the economy.

Without copying and pasting old talking points about hope and change, Harris has tried to portray herself as a transformational candidate and Trump as the incumbent president, even though she is the one currently in office and running for president. “I’m talking about an era that started about 10 years ago,” she said of the time frame her campaign now insists the country cannot return to.

The Trump campaign’s counterargument is one of nostalgia. Weren’t you better off, the former president often asks voters, just four years ago? The election will likely hinge on that question. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign was less than impressed with the interview it had long pressured Harris to accept.

“Kamala spoke for just over 16 minutes and did not even touch on the crime crisis in this country,” the Trump campaign said in a statement posted to Truth Social. “She spoke for just 3 minutes and 25 seconds on the economy and 2 minutes and 36 seconds on immigration.”

Harris, remarkably, spent even less time talking about race or gender. She dodged the subject for most of the interview, except during one notable exchange. Bash asked about a convention photo of one of Harris’s young nieces watching her accept the historic nomination.

“Look, I’m running because I believe I’m the best person at this time to do this job for all Americans, regardless of race and gender,” she responded.

Then Harris added: “But I did see that picture. And I was deeply moved by it… It’s very humbling.”