Jonathan Chait argues that Kamala Harris would be well advised to distance herself from Joe Biden’s unpopular policies:
Why is this a struggle? Why not directly repudiate unpopular Biden positions? . . . Rather than trying to balance loyalty to Biden against catering to the desires of the electorate, Harris’s strategy should focus entirely on catering to the public with no attention whatsoever to Biden’s feelings. . . . There is no rule requiring Harris to own every action Biden has taken. She can even say that she disagreed with him. . . .
Exactly why Biden has proven so toxic has confounded Democrats. I sympathize with their bewilderment. The economy is excellent, and people should be crediting Biden’s management rather than blaming him for an inflation surge that was mostly beyond his control and has almost entirely receded. At this point, alas, public opinion is what it is. And I fear that Democrats have allowed their sentiment that Biden has gotten an unfair rap to cloud their judgment . . .
If Biden has an unpopular stance, Harris should simply oppose it. People understand that she couldn’t undermine her boss. Harris can say she privately disagreed with some of Biden’s positions on fiscal management and immigration enforcement but supported them because she was a good soldier.
It’s good advice, but it’s too little, too late, and too vague. As I noted immediately after Biden left the race:
The Harris record is arch-progressive in ways characteristic of a California Democrat from the most left-wing part of the state. . . . The Biden-Harris record, while it is larded with progressive excesses, has at least avoided some of the pure, uncut leftism that Harris backed previously. . . . But the Biden record is enormously unpopular, associated with runaway inflation and a porous southern border.
Harris can run away from one of these records, if she tries hard enough. But it will be very hard to run away from both at once and forge an entirely new political persona more in line with the politics of the Midwest. Given a year and a half to campaign, Harris could undoubtedly find some ways to separate herself from standard progressivism and go forth with her own signature proposals. She could explain where she has changed her mind from past stances, and why; she could at least implicitly criticize her own administration’s record on particular points. Doing so in just over three months will be a very tall order. And in the interim, she will be cross-pressured by progressives who used their leverage over a weakened Biden to extract concessions, and will try the same with Harris. It’s much more likely that Harris will just have to run the fall campaign on factory settings.
That was 48 days ago. There are 57 days left until Election Day. The Harris campaign is nearly half over already. The convention is done. She only just put an issues page on her website yesterday. The (probably sole) debate is tomorrow. Harris has scrambled to issue denials of her prior positions and to make Trumpy noises about the border, but she has yet to say a word about disagreeing with Joe Biden or her record. I don’t think, even with all of the media ready and willing to take up the megaphone on her behalf, there is enough time left to convince the voters who currently see her as a continuation of Biden policies that she’s something substantively different, as opposed to someone cosmetically different. As Ramesh notes, she hasn’t been helped in that regard by Biden’s disappearing from public view. Certainly, if Harris doesn’t use tomorrow’s debate to name specific ways in which she parts company with Biden, she will be out of time to do so.
Also, what specific things? Chait, having defended Biden’s record at nearly every turn for three and a half years, can’t name anything he did that was bad or is unpopular. He concedes only “if Biden has an unpopular stance,” it might hypothetically involve “some of Biden’s positions on fiscal management and immigration enforcement.” Such as what? Chait isn’t running for office; he’s just writing a column. If he can’t name a single thing Biden did that Harris should criticize, it’s no wonder that it hasn’t occurred to Harris or the people around her to try. It’s the same instinct that explains why Bob Casey couldn’t think of a single way in which he’s different from Harris, although Harris has by now been on multiple sides of enough issues that it may just be that none of her surrogates want to commit to saying what they think she stands for.
The “change” theory of the Harris campaign reflects the fact that Democrats have spent three and a half years telling themselves that Joe Biden’s only flaw was his age, and maybe his being white and male. So, put a new face on TV, and you’ve fixed everything. Only the voters can disabuse them of this thinking. Nothing else will suffice.