by Steven Richards
In the weeks since Vice President Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, the California politician has shifted her policies — sometimes quietly, even under the radar — on key issues to distance herself from her liberal past.
White House officials said Political that these changes are part of a strategy to undermine the argument that she is a left-wing politician, a reputation they say stems from positions she took in the 2020 Democratic primary, which they say do not fully reflect Harris’ views.
“For many people, this primary has been a distorting experience,” said a senior White House official, according to Political.
But that strategy risks exposing the vice president to criticism that she is softening her liberal views just to appeal to key voters in swing states. In fact, her 2024 rival, Donald Trump, has already transferred to painting her as “the most radical left-wing Democrat in the entire Senate.”
Indeed, critics, including the Republican National Committee, have begun calling Harris a change of heart. “It’s a classic bait-and-switch — but Kamala’s years of support for far-left policies cannot be hidden, as she has repeatedly defended them,” the RNC said in a press release reviewed by Only news.
Kamala Harris’ campaign did not respond to a request for comment. Only news.
Here are four key principles that defined Harris as a radical leftist, on which she changed her stance in an attempt to appear more moderate in the general election:
We used to be in favor of banning fracking, now we are no longer
At the height of the 2020 election campaign, Harris proudly declared at a CNN event on the “climate crisis” that she supported a ban on fracking, a method of extracting natural gas from the ground.
“There is no doubt that I am in favor of banning fracking” she said at the town hall“And let’s start with what we can do on day one on public lands, right?”
“And then there has to be legislation, but yes, and that’s something that I’ve taken on in California. I have experience working on this issue and, to get back to your point, we just have to acknowledge that the residual impacts of fracking are huge in terms of community health and safety,” she added.
Now, as Harris struggles to win over key voters in undecided states, her campaign confirmed Down Hill that he no longer supports banning the practice. One significant swing state is Pennsylvania, the second-largest producer of natural gas.
After winning the nomination, Trump began criticizing Harris for her previous positions, but her campaign, in keeping with its practice of rewriting history, called those claims false.
“Trump’s false claims about banning fracking are an obvious attempt to distract from his own plans to enrich oil and gas executives at the expense of the middle class,” a campaign spokesman said. Hill.
Demands to defund police
IN Interview from June 2020At the height of the protests following the death of George Floyd, Harris made it clear that she supported changing the approach to public safety as protesters demanded defunding of the police.
“Defund the police, the problem is we have to rethink how we provide safety,” Harris said in a June 2020 radio interview, according to Associated Press Press Agency“And when many cities spend a third of their budget on policing, we know that’s not the smart way or the best way or the right way to achieve safety.”
“For too long, the status quo thinking has been that you make it safer by putting more police on the streets,” Harris said. “Well, that’s wrong because, by the way, if you look at the suburban, upper-middle-class neighborhoods, they don’t have that cop car.”
Now, as the 2024 election campaign heats up and crime rises, surveyed as an significant problem For most Americans, Harris was trying to change public perception and highlight her past as a prosecutor, while her campaign officials pushed back against claims that she supported defunding law enforcement.
“Her position has always been that you can be tough and smart in fighting crime, and that requires funding the police, but also funding rehabilitation and things that can make the criminal justice system safer,” Mitch Landrieu, Harris’ campaign co-chair, told CNN’s Pamela Brown“You can do both.”
Elimination of private insurance: “That’s not what I meant.”
Before she ran for president for the first time in 2020, then-Senator Kamala Harris co-sponsored Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ universal health insurance bill This would mean eliminating private insurance in favor of a government-run system.
Harris was the first Democratic senator to sign the bill alongside Sanders, telling voters at a California town hall that she intended to sponsor the bill because “it’s just the right thing to do.”
When she ran for president in the 2020 primaries, Harris reiterated her support for Medicare-for-All.
“I think the solution — and I really feel very strongly about this — is that we have to have Medicare for all. That’s just the heart of the matter… it’s inhumane to force people through a system where they literally can’t use what medicine has to offer because some insurance company decided it didn’t meet their expectations.” she said during a CNN meeting in Iowa.
Later during the primary campaign, Harris changed her stance, saying she was open to other strategies, and eventually clarified in another interview with Tapper that “that’s not what I meant” when it came to her stance on eliminating private insurance.
Vice President Harris has yet to offer an official 2024 position on Medicare-for-All, but there are signs she may be moderating her views on the policy as well. Harris’ campaign did not respond to a request for comment from Only news about her positions in the health service.
Evidence of change is Harris’ support for President Biden’s efforts to expand participation in the Affordable Care Act. record number of people registered for insurance for 2024 by law, which actually makes it easier to exploit insurance on the private insurance market.
Decriminalization of illegal immigration
During the 2020 campaign, Vice President Harris’s positions on immigration were among the most liberal in her party. For example, during the 2019 Democratic primary debate in Miami, Harris she raised her hand in confirmation when moderators asked candidates if they would support decriminalizing border crossing.
She too expressed support for providing taxpayer-funded health care to illegal immigrants under her plan.
As part of the administration, Harris worked with President Biden, who reversed many of Trump’s executive orders on immigration on his first day in office. He then tasked Harris with addressing the root causes of immigration, earning her the label of “border czar” in the media.
Suddenly Harris and consistent media denies has ever been entrusted with a leadership role in a border crisis.
But after years of pressure on the border, Biden recently introduced modern executive orders that angered the more liberal wing of the Democratic Party. The order included restrictions on asylum applications and aimed to reduce border crossings.
Harris’ presidential campaign, in a departure from her liberal views, has reaffirmed that the vice president will seek to maintain Biden’s immigration policies and has signaled that she supports border security.
“I think at this point … policies that … have a real impact on ensuring security and order on our border are policies that will continue,” her campaign manager told CBS News.
Harris has yet to give any interviews challenging her changing views, nor has she held an unscripted news conference where she could be asked about her series of changes.
– – –
Steven Richards is a reporter for Just the News.
Photo “Kamala Harris” by Kamala Harris.
