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On Tuesday morning, Vice President Kamala Harris went on “The View” and was asked what, if anything, she’d have done differently than President Joe Biden over the last four years.
“There is not a thing that comes to mind,” Harris replied. “And I’ve been a part of most of the decisions that have had impact.”
Harris circled back on the topic later in the interview, saying that one of the differences would be that she has vowed to have a Republican in her Cabinet — because, she said, she doesn’t “feel burdened by letting pride get in the way of a good idea.”
But her initial answer raised eyebrows on both sides of the aisle, with Republicans quickly highlighting the clip as proof of something Donald Trump’s campaign has tried to make clear: That Harris is directly tied to Biden and his policies. Donald Trump Jr. declared it to be the moment where Harris’ “campaign about being a ‘change agent’” collapsed. The Trump campaign blasted out press releases linking to the clip, with one declaring that Harris “has no regrets for supporting inflationary spending, open borders, and weakness abroad.”
“She laid out Trump’s message better than Trump ever has himself,” Alex Conant, a GOP strategist, told Semafor. “She said what Trump was supposed to say at the debate.”
Some Democrats were uneasy as well. Evan Roth Smith, the lead pollster for the centrist firm Blueprint Strategies noted that their own research showed voters want Harris to emphatically draw distance between herself and Biden. Emphasizing a “clear break between her and Biden” on issues like health care and lowering the costs of gas and groceries performed best in message testing.
“What we saw consistently was that voters like it more when she either clearly says, ‘I am not Joe Biden,’ or pretends Joe Biden doesn’t really exist,” Smith told Semafor. “I don’t think this was a botched answer or anything like that. It was just a missed opportunity to do something that voters could have really liked.”
Notably, despite Harris being in the current administration, more voters currently see her as the “change” candidate, according to recent national polling released by The New York Times. Smith described that polling as “pretty remarkable,” and something that’s likely driving all of Harris’ numbers.
Harris’ answer reflects the challenge she and her campaign have had in finding ways to separate herself from Biden, and how much she should (or shouldn’t) lean into her role in the administration over the last four years. Part of the struggle is because Harris herself doesn’t want to seem disloyal, CNN recently reported. But her campaign has privately weighed more breaks from Biden, with CNN noting that internal Harris campaign research found that one of her most popular moments during the presidential debate came when she declared that “clearly,” she was “not Joe Biden.”
“I understand her not wanting to throw her current boss under the bus. And I don’t think she has to, I just think she has to be forward looking,” anti-Trump Republican strategist Sarah Longwell said. “When it comes to swing voters, rightly or wrongly, people do not think the last four years under Biden have been so strong that they just want more of the same.”
Harris has, in the past, put out policy proposals that break from Biden, including proposing a smaller increase to the capital gains tax and promising new policies like a $6,000 child tax credit. But she hasn’t framed them as a departure from the current White House or emphasized their differences much to this point. She’s instead made the contrasts more implicit — a bigger focus on cost-of-living issues where Biden emphasized jobs more, a “turn the page” message that’s about Trump but could be taken as a broader generational shift.
Biden hasn’t always made getting separation easy, either: Speaking to reporters in the briefing room last Friday, the president said the two are “singing from the same song sheet” and “was a major player in everything we’ve done.” That, too, was quickly pulled out and shared widely among conservatives and team Trump.
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Shelby’s view
Harris’ answer is a gift to Trump, though the onus is on his campaign to show they can use it effectively. There has been no shortage of efforts to tie her to Biden already and polls suggest he’s struggled to define her to this point.
The episode is confounding for Harris, though, given that her own campaign has surely expected this question from the start and has been so invested in building up a “change” brand. There were many other ways to answer that question, even without explicitly breaking with Biden, that could have sidestepped these issues.
Room for Disagreement
Will anything move the needle in this election? Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini doesn’t think so: “Get ready to be frustrated by the fact that all the Kamala interview clips don’t make a difference, just like all the Trump rally clips don’t make a difference,” he tweeted.
Notable
- Harris made plenty of other news during her blitz of media appearances on Tuesday. She discussed her new plan for Medicare home-care, vision, and hearing benefits on “The View” and criticized Trump on Howard Stern’s show for reportedly sending COVID tests to Vladimir Putin for personal use as president.