Democrats are urging Vice President Kamala Harris to admit the failures of the Biden-Harris administration during Tuesday’s debate, as she is seen as the status quo candidate of the past three and a half years. Harris faces clear vulnerabilities as vice president – she cannot campaign on policies to fix crime, inflation, and border security without undermining the administration’s policies, but must tout these policies to validate her record and candidacy.
This puts Ms. Harris in a difficult position during the debate. The debate will pose a challenge for Ms. Harris, who will have to decide how much to embrace or distance herself from President Biden and his policies at a moment when polls show that many Americans are hungry for change,” acknowledged Katie Rogers and Erica L. Green of the New York Times on Monday.
A recent Times/Siena College found that 61 percent of likely voters believe the next president should represent a major change from the Biden-Harris administration, while only 25 percent said Harris represented that change. In contrast, a majority said Trump represented the change.
Only 26.9 percent of Americans believe the nation is headed in the right direction, according to RealClearPolitics average. To overcome this “conundrum” in Tuesday’s debate, Democrats suggest Harris will have to throw the administration under the bus for failing to live up to its promises – a risky move that could undermine her candidacy.
Robert Shrum, a longtime Democrat political strategist, told the Times that the frame should be, “A lot done, a lot more to do.” Bakari Sellers, an ally of Harris and a Democrat political commentator, admitted that Harris must “praise Biden and talk about the accomplishments, but also acknowledge that the work is not done.
The catch-22 was already exposed by CNN’s Dana Bash during Harris’s first and only pre-taped interview. Harris tried to talk her way out of the conundrum by simultaneously owning the administration’s economic record and blaming Trump for it. This contradiction forced the vice president to tout her administration’s policies to validate her candidacy, all while she undermined her record and her candidacy.
In response to Bash’s question about Bidenomics being a success, Harris replied, “I’ll say that that’s good work. There’s more to do, but that’s good work.