"Vice President Harris, whom Democrats have quickly endorsed to replace President Biden in this year’s election, has been a loyal Democratic foot soldier, rarely straying from party orthodoxy. But at times she has also struggled to articulate what policy positions drive her, a vagueness that helped doom her 2020 presidential campaign.
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Harris has also been in the public eye a long time, and especially since becoming vice president she has become increasingly vocal — and effective, Democrats say — when it comes to campaigning against Republicans. They argue she is carving out a profile on issues that could grow the Democratic Party’s appeal, such as embracing abortion rights and distancing herself ever so slightly from supporting Israel’s war in Gaza. And if she is the Democrats’ nominee, she can carry the mantle of the popular accomplishments under Biden.
“She has been the most effective voice when it comes to abortion justice … health-care justice, student debt cancellation, the racial wealth gap,” Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) said Sunday on MSNBC. “I am confident that Kamala Harris can unite this party and build the coalition necessary for us to win in November.”
Here’s what we know about her policy positions on five major issues.
Abortion
By far, Harris’s best-known policy position is that women should have access to abortion care.
It is one of Democrats’ strongest issues, but Biden, an 81-year-old Catholic man, has been somewhat of an awkward messenger on it. By contrast, Harris has shined, from the perspective of the Democrats’ base, by forcefully and unapologetically championing abortion rights as reproductive rights — and framing Republicans’ attempts to limit abortion as an attack on Americans’ freedoms.
“This is a fight for freedom — the fundamental freedom to make decisions about one’s own body and not have their government tell them what they’re supposed to do,” she said at an event in Florida this spring.
Democrats have yet to win a presidential election by championing abortion rights. But abortion rights allies have won several major battles at the ballot box since the Supreme Court eliminated national abortion protections by overturning Roe v. Wade two years ago.
Democrats say this is where Harris has the opportunity to draw the sharpest contrast against Donald Trump.
“In a post-Dobbs world,” said Democratic strategist Rebecca Kirszner Katz, “it could be remarkable to have a national candidate who unequivocally understands reproductive justice.” She referred to the Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
The border
Early in Biden’s presidency, Biden asked Harris to try to address the root problems of migration at the border by focusing on countries in Central and South America.
“Do not come. You will be turned back,” Harris told potential migrants heading to the U.S.-Mexican border during a Latin American trip in June 2021.
It is not clear what she accomplished. She came under criticism from border Democrats for not visiting the border sooner, and migrant crossings, until recently, have been at record highs under the Biden administration, though administration officials have emphasized that her purview was those underlying causes, not what to do with people once they arrived in the United States.
There’s a hot debate about why border crossings have been so high and whether Biden or Harris could do much about it. But polls and voter groups show voters blame Biden rather than Republicans, even though Biden has cast Republicans as unhelpful when they scuttled a bipartisan border security bill because Trump wanted to run on the issue.
“We will skewer her for her border performance,” said Stephen Moore, a Trump adviser."
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