What would Kamala Harris do as president?
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It's been just a few weeks since President Joe Biden ended his campaign for reelection and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee to take on Donald Trump in November. Since then, the entire presidential election has been upended by Harris, joined by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
For as much as Harris' entry into the race has been treated as a "vibe shift" by the political press, hers is not simply a campaign animated by some intangible grasp on a fluid zeitgeist. As the initial shock of Biden's exit and her nomination fades, Harris' campaign has begun rolling out the candidate's policy slates, offering the first concrete look at what a Harris administration might look like. While the gulf between "campaigning in poetry" and "governing in prose" remains a wide and frustrating chasm, the contours of a potential Harris presidency are slowly coming into sharper focus.
What did the commentators say?
To date, Harris' campaign speeches have been "long on vibes and short on actual platforms," and — to the extent that they have gotten specific about policies — focused on "proposals originally made by Biden that he and Democrats were unable to get through Congress," NPR said. In her first major policy speech, Harris focused on the "high costs of housing, groceries, health care and raising kids." Harris has also joined with Donald Trump in standing opposed to taxing tips earned by service workers. She has broadly described her intention to build "what I call an opportunity economy" in a recent speech in North Carolina. Hers is an "aggressively populist economic agenda," which, while "building on much of Biden's economic agenda" also features her own effort to "continue, if not deepen" the current administration's hands-on engagement in "industrial, labor and antitrust policies," The Washington Post said.
Harris would also "likely continue many of Biden's foreign policy objectives" including "strong support for Ukraine's war effort," and a push to "deepen alliances in Asia and the Pacific in the face of China's geopolitical ascendance," Politico said. One area in which there may be differences is in how a Harris administration would handle the ongoing war in Gaza. She has "proven herself to be more attuned to the concerns of Democratic voters" speaking out against the war, Time said. She was also the "first senior administration official to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza," although "rhetorical differences between Harris and Biden don't necessarily presage major policy deviations." Still, Harris is not as "fixed and intransigent" as Biden when it comes to her stance toward Israel, former State Department official Josh Paul said at Politico.
Although staffing her potential administration "hasn't been a central obsession" for Harris' team, a look at some of the names being discussed by her allies and staff "show how Harris and her team will start mapping her prospective administration," Axios said, To that end "You won't see a bunch of new people you've never heard of," one adviser said to the outlet, which cited familiar names such as Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emmanuel and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg as potential Cabinet members. Having completed a "stair-step progression to the pinnacle of American power," Harris is likely to "reward officials who similarly have worked their way up and are super-prepared — even over-prepared — for the jobs she gives them."
What next?
In part, Harris' vagueness on policy specifics is a factor of her necessarily truncated campaign, in which she may not "have the time to draw out the sort of detailed policy proposals" that often take months to develop, The New York Times said. For many of her supporters, Harris' policy-lite campaign is not necessarily a bad thing, either. Some "officials who spend their lives working on policy are reluctant to suggest that she produce any between now and Election Day," the Times said. The focus instead should be "doing whatever it takes to stop Trump from returning to the White House."
