Vice President Kamala Harris is diligently striving to reshape her public persona and policies as she enters the presidential race, undergoing a transformation that has drawn criticism for perceived inconsistencies.
According to the Washington Examiner, the policies that failed to secure her any delegates during the 2019 Democratic primary—prior to her withdrawal before the voting commenced—are now being revised. This includes adopting one of former President Donald Trump’s campaign initiatives, which focuses on abolishing taxes on tips earned by service industry workers. An initial illustration of this shift is the mandatory gun buyback program she endorsed during her presidential campaign in 2019.
“We have to have a buy-back program and I support a mandatory buy-back program,” she said.
It is a policy that former President Donald Trump highlighted at a Georgia rally this year when he said, “She supports mandatory gun confiscation … Would anybody mind if they came into your house and took away your gun? … She’s for taking away all of your guns.”
This policy was emphasized by former President Donald Trump during a rally in Georgia earlier this year, where he remarked, “She supports mandatory gun confiscation … Would anyone object if they entered your home and seized your firearm? … She advocates for the removal of all your guns.” However, a campaign representative who communicated with Fox News regarding this issue stated that the vice president has since retracted her support for that initiative. Additionally, she has also distanced herself from her 2019 endorsement of a fracking ban.
“There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking,” she said back then.
However, a campaign representative stated that she has withdrawn her support for a fracking ban and subsequently criticized the former president, who advocates for oil.
“Trump’s false claims about fracking bans are an obvious attempt to distract from his own plans to enrich oil and gas executives at the expense of the middle class.” The spokesperson said to The Hill.
“The Biden-Harris Administration passed the largest ever climate change legislation and under their leadership, America now has the highest ever domestic energy production,” they said. “This Administration created 300,000 energy jobs, while Trump lost nearly a million and his Project 2025 would undo the enormous progress we’ve made the past four years.”
Harris has since shifted her stance on the “Medicare for all” single-payer healthcare system, which she previously endorsed during her 2019 campaign. At that time, she expressed that all proposals, including the expansion of the Supreme Court beyond its current nine Justices, were open for consideration.
“We are on the verge of a crisis of confidence in the Supreme Court. We have to take this challenge head-on, and everything is on the table to do that,” she said during that campaign, but now she says she is not in favor of “packing” the court.
She has shifted her focus to advocating for ethical reforms within the court system in collaboration with President Joe Biden.
“Harris no longer supports a federal job guarantee, an idea championed by some on the Left and Green New Deal proponents that gained traction among Democrats during the 2020 election cycle. A spokesperson for Harris’s campaign confirmed the position change exclusively to the Washington Examiner,” the report said.
“A federal jobs guarantee would mean the federal government would provide a job to anyone who wants one, a massively costly proposal that harkens back to the New Deal policies of the 1930s,” it said.
In 2020, the vice president expressed her support for reallocating funds from law enforcement to alternative programs amid the “defund the police” movement that emerged in the wake of the George Floyd protests.
“This whole movement is about rightly saying we need to take a look at these budgets and figure out whether it reflects the right priorities,” she said back then.
However, she has now changed her stance.
“Her position has always been that you can both be tough and smart on crime, and it requires funding police,” Mitch Landrieu, national co-chair for the Biden-Harris campaign, said last month.
Fox News’ Peter Doocy pointed out these massive policy changes.
“Staffers insist Harris has moderated and no longer supports those positions, but the presumptive nominee hasn’t said that or explained why,” said Doocy.
“Vice President Harris has been talking so much lately about her life before she was VP, as a prosecutor, as a senator. But what she keeps leaving out is that back then, she appears to have had a very different worldview,” he added.
