Kamala Harris Is a Political Chameleon

Last night, newly-crowned Democratic pick Kamala Harris (and VP-hopeful Tim Walz) sat down with CNN’s Dana Bash for a half an hour interview. This is the most time any journalist has had with Harris since she replaced Joe Biden as the presidential candidate going head-to-head with Donald Trump in November. So, what did we learn?

Though Harris was keen to channel her inner Mike Skinner, repeatedly promising to “turn the page”, much of the interview was spent defending Biden’s time in office. The former attorney general for California waxed lyrical about the president’s economic record, defended his decision to allow fracking in Pennsylvania, and his approach to dealing with the border crisis. What’s more, Harris said she had no regrets about publicly standing by Biden’s health and mental acuity after a series of, ahem, less-than-optimal televised appearances.

Harris is in a tricky position here. Firstly, she’s been a core component of Biden’s administration – anything less than full-throated praise for his policy-making calls into question her own part in it. Secondly, she can’t afford to alienate Democrats who still feel fondly towards the president (or at least don’t want their noses rubbed in the fact of his visibly-declining media performances). But the problem with sticking by having said that Biden was “extraordinarily strong” right after his clusterfeck of a debate is that he quite obviously wasn’t. It’s not a great look to be the last person left insisting that no one saw the emperor’s bollocks.

On domestic policy specifics, Harris was often vague. When asked what she would do on her first day in the big chair, she came out with some cookie-cutter guff about doing “everything we can to support and strengthen the middle class”. Pressed on her policy u-turns, including over fracking, Harris retreated to blathering platitudes. “I have always believed, and I have worked on it, that the climate crisis is real,” she said, setting the bar at shoe-level. “[It] is an urgent matter to which we should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time.”

One thing that was clear, however, is that Harris is more concerned about winning over Republican voters than shoring up her progressive flank. Like Barack Obama before her, she vowed to include Republicans in her cabinet. She took care to minimise questions around her race and gender.

And despite still facing intense criticism for her Gaza stance from progressive undecideds, her main message to voters (*cough* AIPAC) was that nothing would change about America’s relationship with Israel if she became president. When asked by Bash whether she would consider an embargo on weapons shipments to Israel, Harris replied that she is still “unequivocal and unwavering in [her] commitment to Israel’s defence, and its ability to defend itself. And that’s not going to change.” Some would say that not rocking the boat during an election campaign is the smart thing to do. But with 60% of voters believing that the US shouldn’t send arms to Israel, it’s clearly not the electorate being courted here. It’s the pro-Israel lobby.

Harris was adamant that her “values have not changed”, despite running for president. But take a cursory glance at her policy positions over the years. In 2020, she supported a ban on fracking. Now she doesn’t. She co-sponsored a Medicare for All bill with Bernie Sanders. And then she opposed it. In her bid to become San Francisco district attorney in 2004, she promised to “never charge the death penalty”. She abandoned this position during the California attorney general race. She has presented herself variously as a “blood and guts prosecutor” and a “progressive prosecutor”, depending on the context and audience.

If there is one constant in Harris’ politics, it is her talent for chameleonic shifts in personal branding. Maybe she’s being honest when she says her values have not changed. Perhaps she just didn’t have any in the first place.

The article was adapted from our newsletter The Cortado. For more political analysis straight into your inbox, click here.