Harris’ entrance into the presidential contest has reset the race, and her VP pick is looming. But she’s got decisions to make aside from choosing a running mate.
When Will Harris Do Her First Proper Q&A With the News Media?
Consider this: Harris has three national political records. There’s her tenure as senator; her brief, failed run for president in 2019; and her time as vice president. As her party’s nominee, she now needs to synthesize those into a set of issues and promises that will appeal to enough voters to win.
- She has already started that process. In her quest for the White House five years ago, she backed a ban on hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking. Her campaign now says she would not ban the practice if she wins in November.
Has the elevation of Harris to the nomination energized Democrats? Yes. She’s pulled in the kind of money that would make the Marvel Cinematic Universe envious, much of it from first-time donors. And look at the shifts in enthusiasm among key constituencies.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t fissures in the party. Over at The New York Times, Reid Epstein has cannily observed how the bitter primary Biden/Harris avoided is now playing out behind the scenes, via jockeying for the vice presidential slot.
This is where an interview, a series of interviews or even a press conference could be useful. An anonymous campaign repudiation of her old no-fracking stance doesn’t pack the punch that her speaking to the cameras would. She could lay out where she stands on a range of issues, explain how her record lines up (or breaks) with the positions of this White House.
(Decision Points bet: She and her running mate will do a joint sit-down interview with a network morning show.)
Will She Get a Chance to Debate Trump?
By now, you know that Trump has withdrawn from the Sept. 10 debate he and Biden had agreed to conduct on ABC.
- The former president is entirely within his rights. He had accepted the debate when he was facing the president. He now faces a very different candidate with very different strengths and weaknesses.
Trump has unilaterally declared he will debate Harris on Sept. 4, on Fox News, with a full television audience, or not at all. Harris has not accepted, and her campaign has accused him of “running scared.” The former president skipped all of the Republican primary debates.
These are the two biggest policy trouble spots for Harris. She’s only had a few weeks as a candidate to figure out how to respond. But she was always going to have to figure out a campaign trail strategy for blunting the most obvious Republican attack lines.
So far, her stump speech approach to inflation has been to largely blame the higher cost of living on corporate greed.
“While inflation is down and wages are up, prices are still too high. You know it and I know it,” she said in a July 30 speech in Atlanta. “And when we win this election, here’s what we’re going to do about it: On Day One, I will take on price gouging and bring down costs.”
Or here she is in Houston a day later: “I will ban more of those hidden fees and surprise late charges that banks and other companies use to pad their profits; I will take on corporate landlords and cap rent increases; and take on Big Pharma and cap the cost of prescription drugs for all Americans.”
On immigration, Harris appears to have two main tacks:
- Point to her record as attorney general in California (look at the “underground tunnels” line here).
- Promise to revive bipartisan legislation that would have set some of the toughest immigration policies in a generation. Congressional Republicans say Trump killed the bill to deny Biden a legislative victory and keep the issue in the assets column for the GOP going into November.
“As president, I will bring back the border security bill that Donald Trump killed and I will sign it into law,” she said in Atlanta.
Will these work? That’s what campaigns are for.
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