The Harris Shuffle
The Harris Shuffle
‘Clearly, I am not Joe Biden,” said Kamala Harris during the September 10 presidential debate. “And I am certainly not Donald Trump.” Well, that’s for sure. No one doubts that Harris is more youthful, energetic, attractive, and polished than President Biden. The question is whether Vice President Harris disagrees with Biden’s policy choices, regrets any of his decisions, and plans to change course if she’s elected commander in chief.
Harris is coy, but if you read between the lines, the answer is no. “What I do offer,” she said at the debate, “is a new generation of leadership for our country.” She mentioned her sense of optimism and government-centric plans for small business, child care, and housing. She pledged not to disparage America or insult her opponents and call them names. “Let’s turn the page and move forward,” she said. OK, but where are we going? And will our destination look any different from where we’ve been?
This is Harris’s challenge: She’s the incumbent vice president running for higher office in a change election. She’s an undefined candidate whose positions and job performance are vulnerable to attack. She wants to be seen as a disruptor while remaining loyal to President Biden. And she wants to move away from the far-left views she held as a senator while she continues to proclaim that her values have stayed the same.
Harris’s strategy is to avoid the spotlight, speak in fuzzy, generic, feel-good language, remind voters what they dislike about Trump, and shuffle away from Biden. So far, the strategy has worked. Before Harris, Democrats were convinced that they would lose the presidency, possibly in a landslide. Now the race is a toss-up.
The debate was a showcase for the Harris shuffle. When asked whether she believed Americans are better off now than they were during Trump’s presidency, Harris dodged. Rather than give a direct answer, she brought up housing and the child tax credit and her desire for an opportunity economy. Then she zinged Trump on tariffs and tax cuts. A few exchanges later, moderator David Muir asked Harris why, if tariffs are bad, the Biden team kept Trump’s duties and restrictions on trade with China. Again, Harris pirouetted. She accused Trump of cozying up to Chinese dictator Xi Jinping.
When Trump challenged Harris to state her support for late-term abortions, Harris laughed. Trump implored the moderators to ask her about the procedure, which would be legal nationwide if she has her way. The moderators ignored him. Next, Muir asked Harris about illegal immigration: “Why did the administration wait until six months before the election to act, and would you have done anything differently from President Biden on this?” Harris wouldn’t say. She referred to her time as a prosecutor and blamed Trump for sinking the bipartisan border bill earlier this year. Muir didn’t follow up.
The next section of the debate offered a moment for Harris to explain her current policy thinking and to separate from the left wing of the Democratic Party and from President Biden. She couldn’t do it. Moderator Linsey Davis cited Harris’s previous run for president, when she wanted to decriminalize illegal immigration, abolish private health insurance, ban fracking, end cash bail, mandate gun buybacks, ban plastic straws, and zero-out the internal combustion engine. “I know you say that your values have not changed,” Davis said. “So then why have so many of your policy positions changed?”
The 373 words Harris uttered in response did not add up to an answer. She told Davis, “I’m going to discuss every one—at least every point you made,” before limiting her comments to fracking “because we’re here in Pennsylvania.” Harris said she won’t ban fracking, then delivered a soliloquy on her Bay Area upbringing. Davis didn’t press Harris for more details. At this writing, Harris has been asked twice, once by Dana Bash on CNN and again by Davis on ABC, what led to her political makeover. And twice, Harris has failed to come up with a plausible and convincing explanation.
The explanation is obvious, of course. Harris wants to be president but voters continue to say that she is too liberal. To win, she needs the electorate to see her as a moderate, or moderate enough. And to win Pennsylvania, the tipping-point state where she and Trump are neck-and-neck, she needs to be seen as pro-fracking. Which is why she’s junked her earlier views. Harris can’t admit that she’s acting out of cynicism and ambition, however, so we are treated to the Harris shuffle: Is she a radical, or is she a moderate? Is she Biden’s heir, or someone fresh? Her movements are so various and vague that it is hard to say.
Harris seems to believe that if she keeps reminding voters that she and President Biden are not the same person, then she won’t be held responsible for the failures of the Biden-Harris administration. But if an underlying policy is perverse or unpopular, then it shouldn’t matter who is carrying it out. When the debate turned to the war in Ukraine, for example, Harris said, “Well, first of all, it’s important to remind the former president you’re not running against Joe Biden, you’re running against me.” Then she offered a defense of Joe Biden’s Ukraine policy and her role in it.
Furthermore, Harris’s policy of moral equivalence toward Israel and the Palestinians and advocacy of a laughable “two-state solution” to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is indistinguishable from Biden’s. And later, Harris said, “I agreed with President Biden’s decision to pull out of Afghanistan,” before telling the whopper that “there is not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone in any war zone around the world, the first time this century.” Trump may not be running against Biden the man, but he still is running against Biden’s policies.
The Harris shuffle works for two reasons. The first is mainstream-media bias in Harris’s favor. Harris has enjoyed almost uniformly positive coverage since the day she entered the race. She’s had one bad news cycle since her convention—coverage of the post-Labor Day New York Times/Siena College poll that showed Trump up by one point. It lasted 24 hours. The media’s failures were blinding during the ABC debate. Moderators Muir and Davis routinely disputed Trump’s assertions, while never challenging Harris’s multiple falsehoods and mischaracterizations. They spent one question on the economy and never said the word “inflation.” They softened the ground for Harris to spend all her time on offense. She did.
Which brings us to the second, and most important, reason for the success of the Harris shuffle. The vice president avoids accountability for her radicalism and incompetence because Donald Trump hasn’t made his case effectively. He’s all over the map. He lacks focus. He can’t decide which lines of attack will define Harris as unsuitable for the presidency. At the debate, Harris baited Trump into wasting precious minutes defending the crowds at his rallies, his inheritance, his personal disputes with former staff, and his behavior after the 2020 election and on January 6, 2021.
Trump’s chances depend on whether he and his campaign persuade voters, independents in particular, that Harris is weak and failed and dangerously liberal. He didn’t persuade at the debate. And time is growing short.
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