Vice President Harris has reversed some far-left policies in an effort to distance herself from President Biden and make a name for herself as the Democratic presidential nominee.
Harris is set to deliver her first policy speeches in North Carolina later this week and at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next week, essentially showing Americans who she is and how she plans to govern for the first time since Biden dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Harris’s bid.
In recent weeks, Harris has changed at least five major policy stances: on mandatory buybacks of assault rifles, fracking, immigration, health care and a federal jobs guarantee.
During the 2019 presidential campaign, she supported a mandatory buyback program for assault rifles.
“We need a buyback program, and I support a mandatory gun buyback program,” Harris told NBC News in October 2019. “We have to be smart, we have to do it the right way. But 5 million guns… [assault weapons] “Some estimate it’s at least 10 million. We need smart public policies in the right way to get these people off the streets.”
A spokesman for Harris said she would not pursue a mandatory assault rifle buyback program in 2024.
Tracking Kamala Harris’ policy shifts: A comprehensive list of policy shifts on key issues
Harris is also now contradicting comments she made about fracking during a CNN town hall in September 2019. At the time, an audience member asked, “From polluted groundwater to toxic wastewater, will you commit to implementing a federal fracking ban on your first day in office, adding the United States to the growing list of countries that have banned this destructive practice?”
“There’s no question that I’m in favor of a ban on fracking, so I’m in favor,” Governor Harris said at the time. “And we should start with what we can do on public lands from day one, right? And then we have to get legislation in place after that, but yes, this is something that I’ve taken on in California. I have a history of working on this issue.”
Kamala Harris has completely changed her stance on five major policy issues. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
In 2024, Harris’ campaign said the vice president “does not support a total ban on fracking.”
Five years ago, Harris called for decriminalizing border crossings and overhauling the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
She also raised her hand onstage at an NBC News debate on June 27, 2019, when moderator José Diaz-Balart asked, “Last night, we had a very spirited debate on this stage about decriminalizing the border. If you don’t mind, please raise your hand if you believe crossing the border without papers should be a civil offense, not a criminal one. Please keep your hand up so we can check.”
She now calls for “strong border security and a path to citizenship.”
Harris said she would abolish private insurance and institute a single-payer health care system in 2019. The morning after a debate hosted by NBC News on June 27, 2019, Harris famously changed her answer, saying she misunderstood the question and would support maintaining supplemental private health insurance. Harris lost support from some progressives after making this change.
Senators Harris and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) raised their hands when moderator Lester Holt asked participants, “Many of you watching at home have health insurance through your employer. Is there anybody here who would get rid of their private health insurance in favor of a government-run plan?”
Harris’ campaign has said that as of 2024, she no longer supports single-payer health care.
Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, are campaigning. (Rhonda Churchill/AFP via Getty Images)
The Biden administration is not pursuing a federal jobs guarantee, but Harris twice supported a Green New Deal that would include a federal jobs guarantee during the 2019 debates, and in one clip, CNN host Dana Bash points that out immediately after Harris’ answers.
“The president currently in the White House clearly does not understand science. He’s pushing science fiction instead of scientific fact. He believes wind turbines cause cancer, but they actually create jobs,” Harris said during a Democratic debate hosted by CNN on July 31, 2019. “And the reality is, I would rather support any Democrat on this stage than the current president, who is pushing it back to the peril of all of us. We have to get the Green New Deal done and embrace it on Day One of his presidency.”
Kamala Harris, who previously criticized voter ID laws as racist, comes under fire for requiring ID to attend a rally in Arizona
Harris added that time was running short, but that she would rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement and aim to be carbon neutral by 2030. “Thank you, Senator,” Bash interjected. “I’d like to talk to Senator Gillibrand about that. You’re a co-sponsor of the Green New Deal, which includes guaranteed employment with medical leave, paid vacation, and retirement security for every American. Can you explain how that’s realistic?”
Harris’ advisers privately told Axios this week that she wants to counter Biden’s unpopular stance on the economy and rising prices.
In Raleigh on Friday, he plans to propose ways to tackle health care, housing and food costs for middle-class consumers, as well as ways to “combat corporate price gouging.”
Harris said she wants to offer clearer, more urgent solutions to inflation, one of her campaign’s biggest domestic policy issues. In their first joint visit since Biden suspended his reelection campaign, she and Harris are scheduled to appear together in Prince George’s County, Maryland. At the event, they are expected to discuss lowering costs for Americans.
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at the presidential campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware on July 22, 2024. (Erin Shaff/Pool via Reuters)
During her 2019 presidential campaign, Harris said she opposed fracking, supported decriminalizing illegal border crossings and backed a single-payer health care system known as Medicare for All, but just three months into her brief campaign for the 2024 presidential election, she has backed down on all three.
She also copied Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump’s “no tip tax” campaign pledge, calculating how well it would go down with a key working-class, largely immigrant constituency of service and hospitality workers in the battleground state of Nevada.
Harris will not hesitate to change some of her more liberal positions, taking advantage of the fact that most people know very little about her in her last-minute presidential campaign.
She’s hoping to pitch herself as an agent of change in the race, and by focusing on grocery costs she hopes to show she’s more relatable to everyday families than Trump, according to Axios.
According to a Gallup poll, 80% of American adults are dissatisfied with the direction of the country.
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The vice president said at the rally that, even though he’s already in the White House, if elected president in November he would make fighting inflation a top priority from day one. The Biden administration this week announced efforts to “ease the burden on families and fight corporate abuses.”
And in a new campaign video, Vice President Harris talks about her job working at McDonald’s while attending Howard University, portraying her as coming from a middle-class background.
Harris’ plan also will focus on her record as a prosecutor, highlighting her settlement victory in a price-fixing case as California’s attorney general, Axios reported.
Fox News’ Mary Schlageter contributed to this report.
