In the early weeks of her campaign, Harris has made Trump’s character the centerpiece of her campaign while largely skirting around the proposals she would adopt as president.

Harris has not avoided policy altogether. She has attempted to tie Trump to Project 2025, a conservative agenda he has disavowed, while slowly rolling out how she would tackle problems like inflation and the border. But Democrats have advised her to subordinate those policies to what has become the defining message of her campaign: that the former president is not fit for office.

According to CNN, Democrats are not only urging Harris to downplay policy on the campaign trail but to avoid getting into the “nitty gritty” about what she would do if elected. One anonymous Democratic aide told the outlet that “this election will clearly be won or lost on vibes.”

Harris, a former California attorney general, has focused heavily on Trump’s character from the start of her campaign, framing the November election as a “prosecutor vs. felon” battle in her first remarks as a candidate. At her Democratic National Convention speech last week, Harris said she was fighting “for the people,” whereas Trump “fights for himself and his billionaire friends.”

The emphasis suggests Democrats see Trump as a polarizing enough force that voters turned off by his rhetoric will turn out at the polls regardless of her agenda. But the strategy also comes as Harris and Trump have moved closer together on policy as Election Day nears.

Trump has moved to the middle on abortion, suggesting on Thursday that he will oppose Florida’s six-week ban when he votes on a state referendum in November. Meanwhile, Harris has moved to the right on a host of issues.

According to her staff, Harris no longer wants to end private health insurance, no longer supports an electric vehicle mandate, no longer supports mandatory gun buybacks, no longer wants to ban fracking, and no longer supports a federal jobs guarantee. Most prominently, she has endorsed Senate legislation that, among other things, includes $650 million in border wall funding despite her past progressive stances on immigration.

Both campaigns have accused the other of lying about their positions. Trump says Harris can’t be trusted on the border, pointing to past statements in which she called the wall a “medieval vanity project.”

Harris claims that Trump wants to implement a federal abortion ban despite his denials. Asked about her changing policy stances on Thursday, Harris insisted in her first interview since taking over the Democratic ticket that her “values have not changed” even if some of her stances have.

The spat over policy is unfolding amid a larger fight over whether and how much their respective campaigns should be focused on personality and competence.

Congressional Republicans and Trump’s own aides have urged him to refrain from personal attacks, particularly after he falsely accused the biracial Harris of only embracing her Indian heritage before she “happened to turn black.” Since then, he’s repeatedly attacked her as “dumb” and not a “very bright person.”

“Donald Trump, the provocateur, the showman, may not win this election,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a Trump ally, warned earlier this month. “If you have a policy debate for president, he wins.”

Trump has flatly rejected such advice.

“You know they always say, ‘Sir, please stick to policy. Don’t get personal,’” Trump said during a rally in North Carolina earlier this month. “And yet they’re getting personal all night long.”

Trump even did a mock poll asking the crowd if he should get personal or not.

“My advisers are fired,” he joked after the attendees cheered for the “get personal” option. Still, he has increasingly tailored his message on Harris around her past embrace of the Left, taunting her as “Comrade Kamala.”

For Harris’s part, her focus on Trump extends beyond his character. She and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), have riled up their base by painting the former president and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), as “creepy” and “weird.”

At the same time, her one detailed policy proposal, centered on the economy, was ridiculed, with even some Democrats openly distancing themselves from her proposed price controls to combat the rising cost of groceries.