Debate Strategy: Kamala Harris to Cast Herself as Agent of Change After Years in Power

President Joe Biden talks with Vice President Kamala Harris before a meeting with Congress
White House/Adam Schultz via Flickr

Vice President Kamala Harris will likely try to cast herself as an agent of change during Tuesday’s debate, even though she has been in power for nearly four years.

Under the Biden-Harris administration, costs soared about 20 percent across the board, migrant crime spiked, illegal immigrants invaded the southern border, Russia invaded Ukraine, and 13 U.S. troops died during the Afghan withdrawal.

Former President Donald Trump, who is the most experienced debater in the “modern age,” according to CNN, will slam Harris on those issues, holding Harris accountable for the administration’s failed policies.

“We want to keep him steered toward hitting her record. On fracking, on her flip flops, and show that she is just as responsible for the Biden administration’s failed policies as Biden is,” one Trump adviser told CNN.

Many of Harris’s policy solutions remain ambiguous, leaving Trump a powerful line of attack to cast her as a slippery politician and a flip-flopper. Harris allegedly changed her view, outright flip-flopped, or has an unknown position in nine areas:

  1. Banning plastic straws (Flip-flopped)
  2. mandate for only producing electric and hydrogen vehicles by 2035 (Unknown)
  3. Banning fracking (Flip-flopped)
  4. Gun confiscation through a buyback program (Allegedly no longer supports according to anonymous campaign spokesperson)
  5. Decriminalizing illegally crossing the southern border (Allegedly no longer supports according to anonymous campaign spokesperson)
  6. Reparations (Unknown)
  7. Building a border wall (Formerly opposed, allegedly now supports according to anonymous campaign spokesperson)
  8. A federal jobs guarantee (Allegedly no longer supports according to anonymous campaign spokesperson)
  9. Medicare for All (Flip-flopped)

Trump will have the opportunity to exploit Harris’s conundrum: She cannot campaign on policies to fix crime, inflation, and border security without undermining the Biden-Harris administration’s policies, but she must tout the administration’s policies to validate her record and candidacy.

CNN’s Dana Bash exposed Harris’s conundrum during her first and only pre-taped interview.

Harris owned the Biden-Harris administration’s economic record while she simultaneously blamed Trump for it. The contradiction was stark, producing an outcome that forced her to tout her administration’s policies in order to validate her candidacy, all while she undermined her record and her candidacy.

Tuesday’s 90-minute debate will air at 9:00 p.m. EST on ABC News. ABC anchors Linsey Davis and David Muir will moderate.

Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.

via September 8th 2024