Vice President Harris’s sharp shift in tackling her bid for the White House has given former President Trump and the Republican Party a major opening for attack, reversing course on several key issues that could affect the outcome in battleground states.
Nearly a week after Harris became President Biden’s leading Democratic nominee, her campaign has moved to distance herself from a series of positions she took as a candidate in the 2020 presidential primary.
Campaign officials said she no longer supports a ban on fracking and does not support expanding the Supreme Court. Campaign officials confirmed that while she previously supported “Medicare for All” proposals, she no longer supports single-payer health care or a government gun buyback program.
Harris also supports the Biden administration’s proposed additional border funding, a departure from her 2020 primary position that Immigration and Customs Enforcement should at least be reformed.
Republicans say the policy shift will give new impetus to their onslaught in the three months leading up to November.
“She’s going to say whatever she thinks will get her elected, but I don’t know how you can trust someone who changes their stance 180 degrees depending on who they’re talking to,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). “I don’t think she’s trustworthy.”
“I’m always a little shocked and surprised by the cynicism and the hypocrisy,” he added when asked if he was surprised at all by the rebranding.
Harris’ allies have countered, arguing that voters will care more about her vision for the future than her positions from five years ago.
“We need to let Kamala go out there and win people over, talking about issues that matter to swing state voters: the economy, child support, abortion and fertility rights,” said a Democratic strategist who has worked with Harris. “Let Kamala be Kamala and she’ll win people over like she always has. You can already see that with her explosive popularity among young people on TikTok.”
“Let’s not forget: Voters care more about the future than the past. They’re looking for new leadership in this race,” the strategist added. “And that future looks more like Kamala Harris than Donald Trump.”
Still, the vice president’s shifts on nearly a half-dozen issues come as she seeks to make headway in key battleground states, including Pennsylvania, where fracking has been a key issue for voters for more than a decade.
In numerous interviews and appearances in 2019, Harris said she supported banning the practice, a position that has been emphasized by Keystone State Republican Senate candidate David McCormick and others who have sought to connect with the state’s Democratic incumbent.
“The Biden-Harris-Casey energy policy is basically about getting off fossil fuels and transitioning away from Chinese-made lithium batteries and solar panels,” McCormick told Fox News last weekend. “It’s really outdated. [with] This is where most of Pennsylvania’s people are.”
Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pennsylvania, defended the change in position on Tuesday, arguing that having similar ideas among the top candidates is good for everyone.
“When it comes to gas extraction, I’ve always been very supportive and voted against any ban,” Casey told The Hill. “Having alignment and consensus on this is obviously a positive.”
According to a survey released last weekend, The Hill and Emerson CollegeHarris is trailing Trump by two points in Pennsylvania, the same margin she had over Biden before the June debate that ultimately saw the president drop out of the race. After the debate, Trump led Biden by five points.
Addressing another key issue, the Trump campaign on Tuesday First TV ad He attacked Harris and interspersed footage of the vice president dancing with migrants crossing the border, focusing on Biden’s role as “border czar.”
Trump’s most vocal supporters argue that Harris’ recent shift in policy stance only bolsters Republican arguments that she is one of the party’s most liberal members and cannot be trusted.
“She has a lot to be said for the election. It’s just going to show who she really is,” said Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla. “She’s not a moderate. Joe Biden was a puppet of the progressive movement. She is the progressive movement.”
“Because she was a senator, she can’t back down. She campaigned on it and has spoken about it many times since becoming vice president,” he continued. “Her word is enough. We need to reiterate that to the American people.”
Trump and his campaign have similarly ignored efforts by Harris and her campaign to change their positions on certain issues, saying they don’t resonate with voters.
“In politics, once you start saying something, that’s your position. She was in favor of defunding the police. She was in favor of open borders. She was letting anybody come in,” Trump told Fox News on Monday.
But Trump may not be the ideal vehicle for that argument: He has frequently reversed course on various policy issues in the past, and this year he took a stance against banning TikTok, despite signing an executive order banning the app while in office.
Taylor Budowicz, head of the pro-Trump super PAC MAGA, said Harris has “always been” a “dangerous liberal” and that it was indicative of what ads attacking the vice president will look like in the coming months.
“Kamala will run on an agenda created by consultants that is dishonest and based on polls and focus groups. It won’t work,” Budowicz wrote on social platform X.
So far, polls have shown Harris’ approval rating rising since she entered the race as the Democratic front-runner: In an ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted Friday and Saturday, her favorability rating rose from 35 percent to 43 percent compared to just a week ago, while her disapproval rating fell from 46 percent to 42 percent.
And Harris pushed back against some of the criticism from Republicans.
“You may have noticed that Donald Trump has told some outrageous lies about my record. Some of the things he and his running mate have been saying are just bizarre,” Harris told donors in Massachusetts.
“But at the end of the day, we have a lot of work to do. Listen? We have a lot of work to do,” she continued. “And this isn’t easy. But I know the people in this room. We can get hard things done. And we love hard work.”
