Harris implements policies cautiously, aiming to outdo Trump and address 2020 responsibilities

WASHINGTON – Vice President Kamala Harris is attempting to outmaneuver former President Donald Trump and address long-standing vulnerabilities in her policy positions as she begins to define how she would govern if elected in November.

Vice presidents rarely have a policy portfolio of their own and almost always set aside any opinions that differ from those of the Oval Office occupant. Now, after four years of following President Joe Biden’s lead, Harris is taking a cautious approach to revealing a policy vision of her own.

But her surprising rise to the top of the ticket after Biden dropped his re-election bid also means her policy platform is being put together just as quickly.

When Harris inherited Biden’s political operation in late July, the campaign website was quietly scrubbed of the six-point “issues” page that framed the race against Trump, from expanding voting protections to restoring national abortion access. Instead, Harris has peppered her speeches (so far heavily focused on her and her running mate’s biographies) with broad goals like “building the middle class.” She has called for federal laws to provide abortion access and ban assault weapons, but has not provided details on what those would specifically entail or how she would convince Congress to move forward on some of the hottest policy issues.

Asked by reporters on Saturday when she would unveil her policy platform, Harris promised more details this week, adding: “It will focus on the economy and what we need to do to reduce costs and also strengthen the economy overall.”

His team has offered few clues about what it will include, but the first major window into his thinking came last weekend, with a proposal drawn not from the political backwaters of the Biden administration or the cutting room floor of the legislative process but from his rival: Trump.

Harris announced that, like Trump, she wants to end federal taxes on workers’ tips, with the added caveat that she would limit the plan to those with low and middle incomes. The idea has generated bipartisan support in recent months and is particularly relevant in Nevada, where the service industry predominates.

It is also one of the few new ideas Trump has embraced in his bid to return to the White House in 2024, an advantage in the view of Harris’s camp, which has sought to pressure the Republican into making unnecessary mistakes.

The Republican was not thrilled that Harris backed the idea, complaining on his social media platform that “it was TRUMP’s idea. She has no ideas, she can only steal from me.”

Trump continued to address the issue in an interview with Elon Musk on Monday night, criticizing Harris for embracing his idea after what he claimed was harassment by the Biden administration of tipped workers.

On Monday, the White House said Biden also supported the plan, though White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to explain why Biden and Harris did not push for it during their first three and a half years in office.

“Obviously, it’s a new idea,” he said, but later added in response to Trump’s criticism: “Why didn’t they pass it during the last administration?”

In her first weeks as a candidate, Harris’ most pronounced policy moves have been a shift away from the liberal stances she took in her failed 2020 White House bid, including proposals to ban fracking, establish a single-payer health care system and decriminalize illegal border crossings. Harris dropped out of that close race before a single vote was cast, but acknowledges that voters could now punish her for those stances if they are not addressed quickly.

Another complication for Harris stems from her relationship with Biden, who quickly endorsed her and handed her the keys to his political operation after he dropped out.

“Over the last three and a half years they have been in sync,” Jean-Pierre said. “They have certainly been on the same page. And I assume they will continue to be like that from now on.”

Biden began outlining detailed policy ideas for a second term during his final, frantic effort to salvage his candidacy after his disastrous June 27 debate against Trump. He advocated restoring abortion access, raising the federal minimum wage and passing a new surtax on billionaires. Harris has largely embraced all of those priorities, including the current president’s call for changes to the Supreme Court.

But all of those plans would require congressional support, which proved difficult to secure even as Democrats maintained unified control of Washington during the first two years of the Biden-Harris administration.

Harris’s campaign, meanwhile, suggested her attempts to shift to the center reflect how she would try to build consensus in government.

“While Donald Trump is wedded to the extreme ideas of his Project 2025 agenda, Vice President Harris believes true leadership means bringing all sides together to build consensus,” Harris spokesman Kevin Munoz said. “It’s that approach that made it possible for the Biden-Harris administration to achieve bipartisan progress on everything from infrastructure to gun violence prevention. As president, she will take that same pragmatic approach, focusing on common-sense solutions in the interest of progress.”

While Trump has resorted to personal and racially charged attacks against his new rival in recent weeks, his campaign has been working to put Harris’s political goals front and center, aiming to paint Harris as a radical liberal by pointing to old videos of her discussing policy positions during the 2020 Democratic primaries.

“Kamala Harris has changed her mind on virtually every policy she has supported and stood by her entire career, from the border to tipping, and the Fake News Media is not reporting it,” Trump posted on Sunday. “She sounds more like Trump than Trump, copying almost everything. She is misleading the American public and will change her mind immediately. I WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!! I will not change my mind!!!”

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Associated Press writers Jill Colvin and Darlene Superville contributed to this report.