On Tuesday’s “CNN News Central,” Senate Majority Whip Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) responded to a question on how he thinks voters will receive 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris abandoning multiple stances she took when she ran for president in 2020 by stating that “the voters judge these candidates in their entirety. They have an image of Donald Trump. They have an image of Kamala Harris. And that propels them to make a decision on how to vote.”
Co-host John Berman asked, “Senator, the Trump campaign and its associates have started running ads against Vice President Harris. And The New York Times this morning has noted how she has shifted some of her positions since she was first running for president in 2019 and 2020. I’m just going to read you a paragraph from the Times article. She changed her position on fracking in Pennsylvania. She released that just Friday. And The Times says, ‘In addition to changing her position on fracking, campaign officials [say] she now back[s] the Biden administration’s budget requests for increased funding for border enforcement; no longer support[s] a single-payer health insurance program; and [now] echoe[s] Mr. Biden’s call for banning assault weapons but not a requirement to sell them to the federal government.’ Which she apparently backed before. How do you think voters feel, Senator, about a candidate who does shift positions?”
Durbin responded, “Well, the issue may be so central to the campaign that it makes a significant difference. But I think the bottom line is, the voters judge these candidates in their entirety. They have an image of Donald Trump. They have an image of Kamala Harris. And that propels them to make a decision on how to vote. Take a look at what’s happened since Joe Biden stepped out of the race and Kamala Harris stepped in, there’s been a dramatic shift of young people, for example, and their opinion of whether this race is important. So, it’s in the entirety of the career of these individual candidates, as well as all of the positions they take. It’s seldom that one position is going to decide the vote.”
Berman then asked, “Because the Republicans and the Trump campaign are now trying to label the Vice President as a liberal, what will it take to keep that from sticking?”
Durbin answered, “Well, they’re going to beat her with that as long as they can possibly do it, try to make an impression, but I think they’re going to find that a former prosecutor, state attorney general in California, who served on the Senate Judiciary Committee with me, has a lot more to her background than just a simple labeling.”
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