WASHINGTON — As Kamala Harris swings toward the center in the final weeks of the 2024 presidential race, the agenda she uses to convey a pragmatic consistency includes a variety of unanswered questions as she carefully discards some of her former progressive positions.
Two days before his first debate with Donald Trump on Tuesday, Vice President Harris released a statement policy page on his campaign website, he mentioned the most comprehensive agenda of his presidential candidacy. He emphasized it plans based on final costs lowering the cost of groceries and housing and increasing the child tax credit, the most detailed it has offered.
But the agenda includes gaps and uncertainties on key issues — the minimum wage, paid leave and child care funding — that could leave voters wondering what policies she would push if elected. Some sections look back and focus more on promoting the record of the Biden-Harris administration while criticizing Trump’s agenda. Harris ran unusually late after President Joe Biden dropped out in July, and his website grew out of a page created for his campaign.
It remains to be seen whether the lack of concrete data will hurt Harris politically against his Republican challenger. random approach to policy making struggling when specifications are required on childcare and the like abortion. Recently in the New York Times request3 in 10 voters said they “need to learn more about Kamala Harris,” compared to 1 in 10 who said the same about Trump.
Some voters have forgiven Harris for switching positions.
“It’s a change I understand,” said Sidney Smith, a graduate student at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, where Harris held two rallies Thursday. “I’m a progressive, or at least I try to be, but I also want to be more of a pragmatic progressive. So I can understand the transition to the center.”
Republicans scoff at him turn to centerIt argues that Harris’s more progressive positions in 2019 represent his true beliefs.
“I don’t think he’s serious about it. I mean, he wants to be all things to all people,” Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who is running to become the next Senate GOP leader. He said Harris did not convincingly explain his evolution in now-abandoned positions like banning fracking. “I don’t buy it.”
Gaps in minimum wage, paid leave and childcare
Portions of the Harris policy page mention his role in the current administration’s legislative successes, such as the Inflation Reduction Act and infrastructure legislation.
During the debate, Harris did not mention CHIPS and the Science Act, a landmark achievement, by name. Harris’ aides say he prefers to avoid acronyms and pushes his team to make sure they speak in a tangible, accessible way for ordinary people.
The health care section of Harris’ agenda focuses more on what the Biden-Harris administration is doing than on plans for the future. He calls for continuing existing Affordable Care Act subsidies and extending Medicare’s $35 cap on monthly out-of-pocket insulin costs to all Americans. Unlike Biden in 2020, Harris is not calling for adding a public option to the ACA marketplaces. (His campaign did not comment when asked if it favored a public option.)
Harris’ agenda promises to “fight to raise the minimum wage,” but doesn’t say how high he wants it to be. It says it will “establish paid family and medical leave” without being specific about the number of weeks or other guarantees it supports. The agenda calls for “hard-working families to be able to afford high-quality child care,” without specifying how.
In response to requests from NBC News, the Harris campaign declined to provide specifics on the issues. His campaign declined to say whether it supports ideas championed by Biden, such as expanding Social Security benefits and expanding Medicare coverage for dental, vision and hearing. (His agenda says he would “strengthen Social Security and Medicare” with new tax revenue to fund them.)
Many of Harris’ ideas — such as legalizing abortion nationwide, protecting voting rights and capping insulin at $35 for all Americans, not just those on Medicare — require a Senate filibuster to take effect. The Harris campaign will not support repealing the 60-vote rule to pass these measures.
The bulk of Harris’ agenda will be subject to congressional approval, likely requiring Democrats to control the House and Senate. It’s not unusual for presidential candidates to leave some details to Congress, though campaign platforms often hold an unveiling on Capitol Hill about the new president’s plans.
Harris leans right on immigration
On immigration, Harris has repeatedly cited his record as a prosecutor and insisted that House Republicans would broadly support a bipartisan Senate border security bill passed at Trump’s urging. However, he has yet to publicly announce whether he supports some specific provisions in the legislation. For example, the bill includes $650 million previously appropriated but unspent for border wall construction. He previously called Trump’s border wall a “stupid use of money.”
Some Democrats now acknowledge that some deterrence should be used along with drones and other technologies to secure the border. He has yet to explain his thoughts on other parts of the bill, such as funding to increase the number of Border Patrol agents.
Trump is also clarifying specific points about many of his agenda. Just this week he demanded to be changed The Affordable Care Act, however, only said it had “plan concepts” when pressed for its alternative.
Trump also mandated IVF coverage for all Americans, drawing skepticism or opposition from many in his own party. The former president did not elaborate on how the ambitious proposal would be paid. The Society for Assisted Reproductive Technologies said its member clinics performed 389,993 IVF cycles in 2022. At about $20,000 each, that would come to $7.8 billion for the year.
Asked about Trump’s lack of specificity on some of the issues, his national press secretary, Caroline Leavitt, said in a statement: “President Trump has announced many different substantive Agenda 47 policy plans to address the problems created by Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. an economic plan to end inflation, reduce energy and housing costs, and reduce waste from the federal government.
Unlike Trump, Harris is crafting his turn to align with mainstream members of his party in Congress.
“They consulted with us,” Senate Finance Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said in an interview.
“We will introduce people to these problems,” he said. “We believe in the markets in the price increase. We also believe that there should be some guardrails if consumers are being ripped off.
Harris was asked twice — during a CNN interview and an ABC News debate — about the evolution of his politics. Both times, he said, “My values haven’t changed.” He noted that four years ago, during his 2020 run for vice president, he said he would not seek to ban fracking.
Hasan Pyarali, a recent graduate in North Carolina, said Harris is trying to appeal to a wider range of voters than he did when he sought the Democratic nomination in 2019.
“I think he’s doing what politicians do, which is trying to represent everyone in America,” he said. “We understand that this is a general election. It is different from the primary election and therefore it should appeal to a wide range of voters.”