On Thursday’s CNN “Outfront” broadcast, CNN political analyst and The New York Times National political reporter Astead Herndon said Vice President Kamala Harris, a 2024 Democratic presidential candidate, is running a different campaign than she did four years ago, when she “tried to appease the left.”
“She took the Trump campaign by surprise, because I think they were expecting a progressive left Kamala Harris, someone who supports the Green New Deal or someone who ran off with her law enforcement credentials,” said Alyssa Farah Griffin, CNN political commentator and former Trump administration communications director. “And she’s running a general election campaign. She’s running as a centrist Democrat. Her message, you see it, she gives the same platform every time. And in a three-month campaign, that works. She’s talking about paid family leave, she’s talking about rebuilding the middle class. It’s an economic message, it alludes to reproductive rights, it values people over criminals. It’s a message that resonates. She’s not a laundry list of left-wing priorities, and I don’t think that’s what they were expecting from her.”
Herndon responded, “That’s where she’s most comfortable and that’s where she is right now. She was uncomfortable four years ago when she was trying to appease the left.”
to follow Ian Hanchett’s Twitter Ian Hanchett
