Vice President Kamala Harris is surging in the polls and drawing enormous crowds with her “joyful warrior” presidential campaign, but where she really stands on matters remains a mystery.
“The thing that we love about hard work is we have fun doing hard work because we know what we stand for,” Harris said Thursday in Detroit. “That’s a big part of this campaign. When you know what you stand for, you know what to fight for. We know what we stand for — we stand for the people.”
Despite that assertion, Harris’s website does not include a policy tab laying out what she plans to do if she wins in November. In contrast, the policy tab on President Joe Biden’s campaign website remains up as of Aug. 9, featuring six subsections with labels such as “building a fairer tax system that works for the middle class” and “fighting to restore reproductive freedom.”
Former President Donald Trump‘s, the GOP nominee, campaign site includes a section labeled “platform,” with 20 bullet points his team has dubbed Agenda 47.
Harris has made her stance clear on a few key matters, saying she would restore the abortion access protections that existed under Roe v. Wade and retaining Biden’s promise not to raise taxes on anyone earning under $400,000 while letting portions of the Trump tax cuts expire.
Her campaign has distanced Harris from several policy stances she took during her 2019 run for president. She no longer supports a federal jobs guarantee, no longer wants to ban fracking, no longer entertains the idea of abolishing private health insurance, and no longer backs a mandatory assault weapons buyback program. These changes have all been announced by staffers rather than Harris herself.
The Harris campaign did not respond to questions from the Washington Examiner about when it will reveal more robust policy platform details.
A related concern, at least to Harris’s critics, is that she has largely avoided speaking to the press since Biden left the race on July 20. She has done no wide-ranging interviews or press conferences and took questions from reporters for just 71 seconds on a Detroit tarmac Thursday afternoon.
Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), are trying to draw attention to Harris’s media silence, with both Trump and Vance holding solo press conferences of their own last week. Vance went so far as to approach Harris’s plane, telling reporters he thought they might get lonely since she won’t answer questions.
Conservative groups are calling her out as well.
“VP Harris’ staff is working tirelessly to avoid the press and make their candidate remotely palatable to people outside San Francisco,” Win It Back PAC President David McIntosh said.
“But even with the help of the press, her campaign won’t be able to cover up her horrible instincts and support for radical policies like raising taxes by ending Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, crippling American energy production, and making our communities less safe,” McIntosh continued.
The big question for both Harris and Trump is whether voters will care enough about policy platforms or press appearances to abandon her. Harris has overtaken Trump’s lead in the RealClearPolitics national polling average and has erased his edge in several battleground states.
Some voters may feel as if they already know enough about Harris to cast their votes, and others might simply want to keep Trump out of the White House.
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“For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been circling around this question,” The New Yorker‘s Jay Caspian King wrote last week. “Does it actually matter if Kamala Harris stands for something?”
Harris staffers recently told Politico they feel there’s no need for her to do big interviews before Labor Day. She told reporters in Detroit she’d like to schedule one before the end of August.
