August 14, 2024 - 8:00pm
Kamala Harris has historically been to the Left of the Democratic mainstream. But in the past month she’s been moving to the centre on the very few policy issues she’s actually commented on.
The newly minted Democratic presidential nominee has not yet released a first-100 days plan or a day one plan, and her campaign website doesn’t have a policy section, though she’s pledged to release information on her economic plan this week. She also hasn’t taken any media interviews since Biden announced he was ending his campaign, leaving the press and the public to wonder where she stands on key issues.
So far, the Harris campaign’s policy statements have reflected an effort to moderate her progressive reputation, particularly the positions she took in her failed primary campaign in 2019. For instance, she expressed that she was open to abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2019, and she’s done little to quell the public’s belief that she’s soft on immigration in the years since. In 2022, amid record-breaking illegal crossings, she claimed the border was “secure”, and her immigration-related responsibilities as vice president have focused on “root causes” of immigration rather than border crossings.
But in the past month she’s pivoted sharply on the issue, perhaps aware of the public’s strong support for stricter immigration control. One of her first 2024 video ads portrayed her as a border hawk, and over the weekend she told a crowd, “I went after transnational gangs, drug cartels and human traffickers who came into our country illegally. I prosecuted them in case after case, and I won,” adding that the US needs “strong border security and an earned pathway to citizenship.”
Harris has historically been progressive on climate and energy issues, which could pose a problem for her in the general election. She supported a ban on fracking in 2019, but she reversed that stance after her campaign began last month in an apparent concession to voters in swing states like Pennsylvania, with economies heavily reliant on the fracking industry.
Much has been made of the Vice Presidents’ sympathetic stance towards Palestine and her call for an immediate ceasefire in March. But this, too, has been moderated. Her campaign recently said she doesn’t support an arms embargo against Israel, and she condemned anti-Israel protesters who had burned the American flag near the US Capitol in July, in yet another instance of moving her tone toward the political middle.
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