WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris is trying to outwit former President Donald Trump and reach out to old friends vulnerabilities on her policy positions as she begins to consider how she would govern if elected in November.
Vice presidents rarely have their own policy portfolios and almost always sideline any views that differ from the Oval Office occupant. Now, after four years of following President Joe Biden’s lead, Harris is taking a cautious approach to unveiling her own policy vision.
But his surprise rise to the top of the ticket after Biden dropped his re-election bid also means his policy agenda is being undermined. gathered just as quickly.
When Harris took over as Biden’s policy chief in late July, the campaign website quietly stripped down the six-point “issues” page that framed the race against Trump, from expanding voter protections to restoring abortion access nationwide. Instead, Harris peppered her speeches — so far heavily focused on biographical material about herself and her running mate — with broad goals like “building the middle class.” She called for federal laws to provide access to abortion and ban assault weapons, but didn’t offer details on what those would entail specifically or how she would convince Congress to move forward on some of the most hot-button policy issues.
Asked by reporters Saturday when she would unveil her policy agenda, Harris promised more details this week and added: “It will be focused on the economy and what we need to do to reduce costs and also strengthen the economy overall.”
His team has given few clues about what the bill will contain. But the first major window of insight into his thinking came last weekend, with a proposal drawn not from the political backrooms of the Biden administration or the backrooms of the legislative process, but from his rival: Trump.
Harris announced that she, like Trump, wants to end federal taxation of workers’ tips — with the added caveat that it would limit the plan to low- and middle-income people. The idea has gained bipartisan support in recent months and is particularly salient in Nevada, where the service industry is predominant.
It’s also one of the few new ideas Trump has embraced in his bid to return to the White House in 2024 — a bonus in the eyes of Harris’ camp, which has tried to pressure the Republican into making unforced errors.
The Republican was not amused that Harris endorsed the idea, complaining on his social media platform that “it was TRUMP’s idea – she has no ideas, she can only steal from me.”
Trump followed up on the issue in an interview with Elon Musk Monday night, criticizing Harris for adopting his idea after what he called harassment by the Biden administration toward tipped workers.
On Monday, the White House said Biden also supported the plan, though White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre would not comment on why Biden and Harris did not push for it during their three and a half years in office.
“It’s obviously a new idea,” she said, but later added, in response to Trump’s criticism, “why didn’t they adopt it in the last administration?”
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In her first weeks as a candidate, Harris has largely distanced herself from the liberal positions she espoused during her failed 2020 bid for the White House, including proposals to ban fracking, establish a single-payer health care system and decriminalize illegal border crossings. Harris withdrew from the fierce race before a single vote was cast, but she acknowledges that voters could now punish her for those positions if they are not quickly addressed.
Another complication for Harris comes from her relationship with Biden, who quickly backed her and handed her the keys to his political operation after she stepped down.
“For the past three and a half years, they’ve been in sync,” Jean-Pierre said. “They’re certainly on the same page. And I suspect that’s going to continue.”
Biden himself only began to outline detailed policy ideas for a second term in his last, frantic effort to salvage his candidacy after his disastrous June 27 debate with Trump. He advocated restoring access to abortion, raising the federal minimum wage and passing a new billionaire surtax. Harris has largely embraced all of those priorities, including the outgoing president’s call for changes to the Supreme Court.
But all of these plans would require congressional support, which has proven difficult to obtain even when Democrats held unified control of Washington during the first two years of the Biden-Harris administration.
Harris’ campaign, meanwhile, has suggested that her attempts to move toward the center reflect how she would try to bring consensus to government.
“While Donald Trump is wedded to the extreme ideas of his Project 2025 agenda, Vice President Harris believes that true leadership is about bringing all sides together to build consensus,” Harris spokesman Kevin Munoz said. “It’s this approach that has helped the Biden-Harris administration deliver bipartisan progress on everything from infrastructure to gun violence prevention. As president, she will take that same pragmatic approach, focusing on common-sense solutions in the name of progress.”
While Trump has resorted to personal and racially charged attacks on his new rival in recent weeks, his campaign has sought to put Harris’ political goals front and center, aiming to paint Harris as a radical liberal by pointing to old videos of her discussing policy positions during the 2020 Democratic primaries.
“Kamala Harris has changed her mind on virtually every policy she has supported and followed throughout her career, from the border to tipping, and the Fake News Media isn’t reporting it,” Trump wrote Sunday. “She is more Trump than Trump, copying almost everything. She is deceiving the American public and will change her mind immediately. I will MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! There will be no changing her mind!!!”
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Associated Press writers Jill Colvin and Darlene Superville contributed to this report.
