Vice President Kamala Harris has so far been deferential to President Joe Biden after his decision to relinquish the 2024 Democratic nomination, but she is starting to have to grapple with the political repercussions of his record on her campaign.
Harris has had a slow rollout of her policy platform, only announcing last weekend her support for former President Donald Trump‘s no-tax-on-tips proposal and promising more information this week on her economic positions after rolling back more liberal stances she has previously held.
But her appearance with Biden on Thursday, their first since he stepped down, may remind the public she is an incumbent as a member of his administration, not the change agent her campaign is trying to portray her as.
Despite Harris’s surge in polling and fundraising, Republicans, such as Michigan‘s Oakland County Republican Party Chairman Vance Patrick, remain adamant that “the only place” there has been a “Kamala bump” is on TV. That is because “the same issues are the same issues,” Patrick told the Washington Examiner.
“You can’t take a slice of cheese and turn it into a potato,” he said. “She is the same vice president that’s now running for the presidency. So all the things that she says she’s going to change, she’s had four years to change those things. If she was part of Joe Biden’s team, then she’s part of the problem.”
Harris’s campaign has embraced Biden’s more centrist record to shield her from criticism regarding more liberal policies she adopted in the past, including backing Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, Black Lives Matter, expanding the Supreme Court, a mandatory gun buyback program, a fracking ban, even a federal job guarantee, as recently as her unsuccessful 2020 Democratic primary bid. But it has also endeavored to posture her toward the future, for instance, through her catch-cry, “We’re not going back!”
“Voters see Harris as the Energizer Bunny with brand new batteries, and Trump as an old angry man with out-of-date batteries and policies,” former California Democratic Party adviser Bob Mulholland told the Washington Examiner. “This election is about the future.”
Polling conducted by the likes of Democratic super PAC Priorities USA contends respondents do not consider Harris as one and the same as Biden.
“Where Democrats broadly can be viewed as weaker on certain issues — like inflation — Harris carries less baggage, and trust in her hasn’t changed despite the efforts by Team Trump,” Priorities USA wrote last week in a memo.
A separate Blueprint poll found voters blame Harris “far less than President Biden for inflation, trusting her more than Biden on nearly every issue, and wanting to hear more about Harris and her policies than about Trump.”
Those are two Democratic-sourced data points regarding Harris, Biden, and the economy, but the political difficulties concerning the president, the vice president, and his record were underscored by White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre‘s briefing on Monday during which she was pushed on the differences between the pair on that issue, in addition to the border and the deadly withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in 2021.
“They’ve been aligned for the last three and a half years. There’s not been any daylight,” Jean-Pierre told reporters. “She’s going to build, going to build on the successes that they’ve had.”
“They’ve been critical partners,” she said later. “It doesn’t matter if it’s domestic issues — also foreign policy issues.”
Suffolk University Political Research Center Director David Paleologos believes Harris has to “figure” this political problem “out.” However, former White House economic aides Gene Sperling and Brian Deese have since joined Harris’s campaign, indicating so-called Kamalanomics may be similar to Bidenomics.
“Harris trails Trump by a lot among voters who say that either the economy or immigration are the most important issues,” Paleologos told the Washington Examiner, adding those issues “are polling No. 1 and No. 2 currently.”
“If she defends Biden unequivocally, she point-blank loses on those two issues, which she cannot afford to do,” Paleologos said. “Therefore, she needs to carve out where she would do things differently on these issues or suggest new policies, so long as she doesn’t throw Biden under the bus in the meantime, which would be seen as disloyal and opportunistic. It’s a tricky needle to thread.”
Most 19th-century vice presidents never encountered the political challenge Harris is facing because they never successfully contested the presidency, according to presidential historian David Pietrusza.
“John Adams did, but no one else did until Theodore Roosevelt, until the beginning of the 20th century,” Pietrusza told the Washington Examiner.
Trump supporters argue the former president could have a “second coming” like Grover Cleveland, the only commander in chief to have served two nonconsecutive terms, per the historian, whereas Democrats assert “Trump may be more like William Jennings Brian, who was nominated three times and lost the popular vote each time.”
“Both Trump and Harris share a commonality, which is often overlooked,” Pietrusza said. “Both have to explain why all the things they promise to now do were somehow not done in the administrations they were a key part of.”
The Harris campaign did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment. Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt reiterated that the vice president not only has to defend Biden’s “failed agenda over the past four years, she also needs to answer for her own terrible weak-on-crime record in California.”
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“After four years of some of the worst approval ratings for any vice president in history, Americans know that Kamala Harris is just as weak, failed, and incompetent as Joe Biden — and she’s also dangerously liberal,” Leavitt told the Washington Examiner. “A vote for Kamala is a vote for more crime, inflation, open borders, high gas prices, and war around the world, and our team will make sure every American knows it.”
Harris and Biden are scheduled to address “the progress they are making to lower costs for the American people” in Maryland on Thursday.
