NEW YORK — Vice President Kamala Harris, in a Tuesday appearance on ABC’s “The View,” was unable to name a decision she would have made differently than President Joe Biden.
Her answer encapsulated Harris’ challenge in portraying herself as a candidate who can deliver the change voters want after serving four years as a loyal member of the current administration.
“We’re obviously two different people,” Harris said, adding that “I will bring those sensibilities to how I lead.”
Pressed on where she might have diverged from Biden had she been in charge, Harris said, “There is not a thing that comes to mind.”
Later in her appearance, Harris identified one thing that she would do differently than Biden - she would put a Republican in her Cabinet.
“That will be one of the differences,” she said.
She said she would welcome a Republican’s contributions “because I don’t feel burdened by letting pride get in the way of a good idea.”
Harris is in the middle of a media blitz in New York, with “The View” being the first of three stops. She’s also scheduled to speak with longtime radio host Howard Stern and tape a show with late-night comedian Stephen Colbert.
The trio of appearances came after Harris granted interviews to CBS’ “60 Minutes,” which aired Monday night, and Alex Cooper’s podcast “Call Her Daddy,” which was released Sunday.
Long past the midway point of her unexpected presidential campaign and with voting already underway, Harris is still introducing herself to Americans who will determine this year’s presidential election. It’s a sharp shift after largely avoiding interviews since replacing Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket, and it’s an acknowledgment that she needs to do more to defeat Republican candidate Donald Trump.
Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster, said Harris has to energize people who have tuned out politics because they believe “all the politicians are the same, they all say the same thing, they don’t know anything about my life, I can’t relate to them at all.”
“They want to like and trust you,” she said.
Jennifer Harris, the former White House senior director of international economics, said Harris has a steeper hill to climb because of the way she became the Democratic nominee.
“We did not have a good long primary to meet Kamala Harris in the way most voters are accustomed to,” she said. Harris has to find a way to demonstrate the instincts and principles that ”will be guiding any number of hundreds of specific policy questions that will come up in the course of the presidency.”
Harris used her Tuesday appearance on “The View” to discuss her proposal to have Medicare cover in-home care for the elderly, helping to relieve the burden faced by an increasing number of families.
“There are so many people in our country who are right in the middle,” she said. “They’re taking care of their kids and taking care of their aging parents.”
Harris criticized Trump as selfish and uninterested in helping Americans. If you watch his grieveance-filled rallies, she said, “he does not talk about what your parents need, what your children need.”
Instead, Harris said, “he talks about his needs.”
Senior campaign officials have largely blocked out criticism from some corners that Harris hasn’t articulated more policy positions. Instead, they say that small yet pivotal numbers of still-undecided voters say they want to know more about Harris before making up their minds, and that the more those voters see Harris, the more they like her.
If policy papers alone won elections, Harris allies say, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would be wrapping up her second term or Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren would be in the throes of a reelection fight.
Even Trump this time around has articulated a deeper policy vision than either of his two prior campaigns, though he has worked to disavow association with the conservative “Project 2025” vision for the next Republican president produced by former aides and advisers.
Republican communications strategist Kevin Madden said defining Harris in voters’ eyes is the central challenge of the campaign.
“This race is actually pretty simple in the sense that the next few weeks are about who’s going to fill in the blanks on who Harris is,” he said.
Being a vice president confers a certain amount of basic name recognition. In October 2019, while Harris was one of many candidates in the Democratic presidential primary, AP-NORC polling found that about 3 in 10 Americans didn’t know enough about her to have an opinion. That share dropped to around 1 in 10 Americans by early 2021, when she and Biden took office, where it stayed until earlier this summer.
Now, nearly all Americans know enough to have at least a surface opinion - whether positive or negative - of Harris.
But that doesn’t mean perspectives on Harris are settled, or that Americans know as much as they would like about her. Harris’ favorability numbers shifted slightly over the course of the summer, suggesting that opinion of her may still be somewhat malleable.
Other polls indicate that while some voters are still looking for more information about Harris, views of Trump appear to be more settled. One-quarter of likely voters said they still feel like they need to learn more about Harris, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll conducted after her debate against Trump, while about three-quarters say they pretty much already know what they need to know about her.
Trump, on the hand, was more of a known quantity. One in 10 likely voters said they feel like they need to learn more about Trump, while roughly 9 in 10 said they pretty much already know what they need to know.
Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, also is spending more time doing interviews to help people get to know him better rather than going deep on policy. In an appearance on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on Monday night, Walz talked about the “surreal” experience of being on the ticket, his background as a high school teacher and football coach, and even how he lists Harris in his phone contacts - as the “dry cleaner.”
On “Call Her Daddy,” Cooper told Harris that people are “frustrated and just exhausted with politics in general.”
“Why should we trust you?” Cooper asked.
Harris answered by saying “you can look at my career to know what I care about.”
She continued: “I care about making sure that people are entitled to and receive the freedoms that they are due. I care about lifting people up and making sure that you are protected from harm.”
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