WASHINGTON (AP) — With less than four weeks until Election Day, Vice President Kamala Harris faces a new urgency in determining how her potential presidency would differ from President Joe Biden’s.
Her struggle to present herself as a candidate for change while demonstrating loyalty to the politician she serves became clear Tuesday when she was asked on ABC’s “The View” how she would lead differently from Biden.
Harris said, “We are clearly two different people” and “I will bring those sensitivities into the way I lead.” But when asked to identify a decision by Biden that she would have chosen differently, she demurred. “There’s nothing that comes to mind,” she said.
She continued later in the show by saying she would put a Republican in her Cabinet.
Two and a half months into her unexpected candidacy, Harris has so far largely relied on her age and biography to signal a break with the 82-year-old Biden and her 78-year-old Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump. Now, in a tight race against Trump, she is being forced to reassess how she talks about her boss and how she might strike on her own if she wins the White House.
Harris, the first Black and South Asian woman to become a major party presidential candidate, was 9 years old when Biden was elected to the Senate and was in law school when Trump, then a real estate heir and socialite, published “The Art of the Deal.” . .” Harris, her campaign believes, embodies change. Still, maybe she needs to find a better way to talk about it.
According to aides, Harris is fiercely loyal to Biden and resistant to publicly doing anything that could be construed as critical of his presidency, although his favorable ratings remain underwater. Privately, some wonder what she should break with Biden over — given the popularity of some of the biggest parts of his legislative agenda, from infrastructure to lowering the cost of certain prescription drugs, and the recklessness of signaling any daylight to the president on foreign affairs. policy in a time of global crises.
Harris has been a central partner for Biden all along, and they fear a split now could be seen as pre-election opportunism.
Views of Biden are still more negative than positive, even after he withdrew as the Democratic candidate in July. About four-in-ten Americans had a somewhat or very favorable view of Biden in an AP-NORC poll conducted in September, and 55% had an unfavorable view, consistent with where his positive ratings have stood over the past two years . Feelings toward Harris, meanwhile, were warmer: Half of Americans had a favorable opinion of her, while 44% had an unfavorable opinion.
In addition to her promise to put a Republican in her Cabinet, Harris has introduced a number of policies that differ from Biden — including calling for a smaller capital gains tax increase than the president advocated. But they have been modest, and Biden’s White House in turn has been quick to adopt her positions.
Trump seized on her comments that she couldn’t think of a single decision by Biden that she would change, playing a clip of “The View” at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Wednesday to loud cheers from the crowd.
Some of Harris’ allies have pressured her to more forcefully signal a break with Biden.
“She has to do what’s best,” said Jamal Simmons, Harris’ former communications director. “Winning will make Joe Biden feel a lot better than anything else.”
Biden is “an unpopular president in a global anti-incumbent mood,” Democratic strategist Alyssa Cass said, adding that the small universe of undecided voters is particularly unenthralled by Biden.
Harris, she said, needs to “communicate clearly to voters something she would have done differently, which is to acknowledge some of the dissatisfaction they have — rightly or wrongly — as a way to get them to fully commit to feel comfortable with her.”
Harris is the first vice president to attempt to replace a leader of his party in nearly a quarter century and is trying to strike a delicate balance. Harris’ team has tried to keep Biden at arm’s length on the campaign trail — the pair have held just one campaign event together — but she has been pushed to appear at his side to monitor hurricanes and emergencies in the Middle East to tackle the East.
Harris’s challenge is not unique, although the compressed nature of her campaign after Biden’s departure is undoubtedly a complicating factor we don’t have to deal with in the modern era.
In 2000, then-Democratic nominee Vice President Al Gore maintained an arms-length relationship with scandal-plagued President Bill Clinton after facing a high-profile impeachment inquiry over his affair with a White House intern and efforts to cover it up. upwards. And in 1988, President Ronald Reagan, then 78, did not campaign aggressively for his vice president and eventual successor, George HW Bush.
“Vice presidents have always struggled with how to distinguish themselves from sitting presidents,” said Republican strategist Alex Conant. “That’s why so few win.”
“Her comment that she is ‘not Joe Biden’ is a good joke, but not a good message,” Conant added, saying, “She should be able to point to three things she would do differently.” Instead, he said, Harris “delivered Trump’s message better than Trump himself.”
Other Democrats see little reason for Harris to make explicit policy breaks against Biden. Her presence at the top of the ticket addresses what was the biggest Democratic vulnerability in November: Biden’s age.
“There is no doubt that the campaign understands the need for her to be an agent of change,” said Eric Schultz, a Democratic operative and former Obama spokesman. “That’s why ‘a new way forward’ is a smart framework, and it’s also why she has made it clear that her election would mark a generational change. That is of course a contrast to her 78-year-old opponent, but it is also a signal that her entire orientation will be forward-looking and forward-looking.”
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Associated Press writers Chris Megerian and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux in Washington contributed to this report.
