Harris pivots to the economy to combat light-on-substance complaint

Vice President Kamala Harris is taking her first major step to rebut GOP criticisms that she is running a light-on-substance campaign for president with a policy-oriented speech on Friday focused on cutting costs for voters.

Harris’s initial weeks of campaigning reinvigorated Democratic voters who were apathetic about the prospect of another term under President Joe Biden. She has enjoyed a cash surge and packed rallies in battleground states across the country. 

But her campaign rollout has also come with a dose of criticism. She has distanced herself from some of the more controversial positions she held during her 2020 run for president, including Medicare for All, but she has not laid out a concrete agenda for how she would govern in office.

Harris has given hints she would largely carry forward the agenda Biden laid out for his first term in the White House, including a bipartisan immigration deal he promised to sign despite it failing in the Senate.

But a Friday campaign stop in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she will lay out in detail how to “lower costs for middle-class families and take on corporate price-gouging,” will be among her first serious attempts to counter that critique.

Harris herself told reporters over the weekend that her platform will “be focused on the economy and what we need to do to bring down costs and also strengthen the economy overall.”

Multiple veteran Democratic strategists told the Washington Examiner that they believe Harris’s delay in publishing a campaign platform is merely a factor of the short window she has had to get her campaign off the ground. Harris announced her run for president three weeks ago, teeing up a three-month sprint to Election Day.

“In many ways, this isn’t a typical campaign. Settling on an official platform takes serious time, and that’s the one resource Vice President Harris hasn’t had this cycle,” one strategist said. 

A second Democratic operative pointed to parts of Biden’s unrealized agenda, such as codifying Roe v. Wade into law, making the expanded child tax credit permanent, and reinstating the 1994 ban on “assault weapons” and high-capacity magazines, to argue that Harris plans to “carry the torch forward.”

But Republicans, who point out her campaign wiped the policy-focused page from Biden’s 2024 website, have used the ambiguity to claim that Harris’s policies are radically progressive. One ally of former President Donald Trump’s campaign said her lack of a detailed platform is an effort to “pull the wool” over voters’ eyes.

A third Democratic strategist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, downplayed Harris reversing her positions from 2020, chalking them up to her trying to assert her individuality in a crowded primary field. Harris previously suggested illegal border crossings should be decriminalized and that fracking should be banned in the United States, among other positions she has since disavowed.

“Vice President Harris is Bay Area-made, and the progressive wing of the party can’t knock her credentials,” the operative said. “But I think, suspect, that one thing she’s learned these past four years is that the White House must radiate a certain sense of consensus. Just like President Biden, Vice President Harris is trying to unify this country, and once she has a base to stand on, that’s when she can truly start instituting true systemic change voters want to see.”

Nonetheless, the Trump campaign has begun deploying clips of her past remarks in advertising while arguing that her 2020 stances reflect where she really stands on the issues. Her decision to avoid interviews with the press has opened up another line of attack for Republicans who claim she wants to hide from scrutiny.

Part of the Harris approach has been to lean on Biden’s record in the White House. She will appear alongside him in Prince George’s County, Maryland, on Thursday, the first time the pair will campaign together, even if informally, since swapping out the top of the ticket in July.

“While Donald Trump is wedded to the extreme ideas in his Project 2025 agenda, Vice President Harris believes real leadership means bringing all sides together to build consensus,” Harris campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz said in a statement.

But Harris has also attempted to neutralize popular policies Trump has put forward by embracing them herself. Over the weekend, she came out in support of eliminating taxes on tips, a proposal Trump has used to attract service industry workers in the battleground state of Nevada.

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“This was a TRUMP idea,” the former president wrote on Truth Social in response to Harris. “She has no ideas, she can only steal from me.”

“She sounds more like Trump than Trump, copying almost everything. She is conning the American public, and will flip right back. I will MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! There will be no flipping!!!” he added.