Harris seeks to create distance from Biden in campaign homestretch
Vice President Harris is carefully putting more distance between herself and President Biden, seeking to reassure voters still on the fence that she will govern differently than her boss.
Harris delighted her Republican opponents earlier this month when, in a pair of friendly interviews, she was unable to point to anything specific she would have done differently than Biden during their time in office.
Since then, the vice president has taken a different tack, with Biden himself now backing her up.
In a contentious interview with Fox News on Wednesday, Harris told Bret Baier that her presidency “will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency,” citing her own life experience, her policy proposals and her desire for input from Republicans and business leaders. Her appearance on Fox was itself a break from Biden, who has not sat down with the network at all during his presidency.
During a campaign stop in Michigan on Friday, Harris was pressed with the question again when NBC's Peter Alexander asked her which of Biden's policies she would have done differently. Harris responded by acknowledging the conundrum of a vice president being critical of who they serve.
"To be very candid with you, even including Mike Pence, vice presidents are not critical of their presidents. I think that really in terms of the tradition of it and also just going forward, it does not make for a productive and important relationship," she said.
Harris’s shifting approach underscores her campaign’s awareness that she needs to offer some kind of change from the status quo to win over certain voters on both the right and the left.
"I think it’s important less even because Biden is unpopular, and more because she needs to stake out that she is ready to forge her own presidency. She is ready to be the leader of the free world. And she’s not coming in as Biden’s apprentice,” said Jesse Lee, who served in the Obama and Biden White Houses.
“I think to some extent she’s just reminding people of what’s obvious, which is she and Biden are not the same person,” he added. “I think there’s no reason to kind of dance around that.”
Harris’s interview on Fox News was her sharpest effort to date to convince voters her presidency would be different from Biden’s. She has pointed to economic proposals that differ from the Biden administration, including a call for increased assistance for homebuyers, a potential ban on price-gouging and an economic agenda tailored specifically to Black men.
“Like every new president that comes into office, I will bring my life experiences, my professional experiences, and fresh and new ideas. I represent a new generation of leadership,” Harris told Baier.
Her comments came a day after Biden told Democrats in Philadelphia that Harris would “cut her own path,” comparing it to his administration being different from former President Obama’s.
“Folks, Kamala will take the country in her own direction. And that’s one of the most important differences in this election,” Biden said last week. “Kamala’s perspective on our problems will be fresh and new. Donald Trump’s perspective is old and failed and, quite frankly, thoroughly, totally dishonest.”
The shift comes after Harris took heat for being unable to explain earlier this month how she might govern differently than Biden.
During a media blitz last week, Harris was asked twice in the same day about her differences with Biden. Harris told “The View” there was “not a thing that comes to mind” she would have done differently from Biden. Asked a similar question by Stephen Colbert on “The Late Show,” Harris again struggled to point to anything specific.
“I’m obviously not Joe Biden,” Harris said. “So that would be one change.”
Trump has played a clip of Harris’s remarks on “The View” at each of his campaign rallies over the past week, seeking to make the case to voters that the vice president should be held accountable for the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, persistent inflation and a surge in immigration at the southern border.
“She would do nothing different. Think of it. You have the worst administration in the history of our country,” Trump told supporters this week in Georgia.
Harris has had to walk a tightrope between remaining loyal to Biden and touting the accomplishments of the past four years, while also extending an olive branch to voters on both sides of the aisle who worry the country is heading in the wrong direction.
Harris has often spoken with more sympathy for the plight of Palestinians in Gaza amid the Israel-Hamas war than Biden in a nod to concerns from the left, though she has not outlined any specific policy break she would make with the current administration. She met earlier this month with leaders from the Muslim and Arab American community while in Michigan.
She has said she would put a Republican in her Cabinet and form a bipartisan council of advisers in an appeal to the disaffected GOP voters she is hoping to win over in November.
“Being not Trump is not enough. You have to give voters something to vote for. And her campaign was very slow to do that,” said Alex Conant, a GOP strategist who worked on Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-Fla.) 2016 White House bid.
“In the absence of saying what you’re for, people are going to continue you’re for a continuation of Biden, which is problematic when the guy is so unpopular,” Conant added.
Recent polling has suggested Harris’s efforts to convince voters she would be a candidate of change has been at least somewhat effective.
A New York Times/Siena College poll published earlier this month found that 46 percent of voters said Harris better “represents change,” compared to 44 percent who said Trump did.
A FiveThirtyEight tracker of favorability ratings also suggested Harris has managed to separate herself from Biden. Harris’s favorability rating stands at 46.5 percent and has seen a sharp uptick since she replaced Biden, based on an average of surveys. Biden’s favorability, meanwhile, is at 40 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight.
That’s left some political watchers thinking the notion of Harris is not Biden might be breaking through.
“From the moment she entered the 2024 race she demonstrated her candidacy and presidency would be different than Biden’s,” said Jim Kessler, co-founder of the left-leaning think tank Third Way. “Her convention speech was one that Biden could not give. The Fox interview confirmed that she is her own person with her own agenda and style.”