Vice President Harris has avoided getting into the nitty-gritty of detailed policy positions as she seeks to win over centrist voters from former President Trump.
While the vice president has outlined a tax plan and has proposals to lower housing costs and to combat price gouging, she hasn’t gone into detail on plans to fix the immigration system, fight climate change, curb gun violence and expand access to health care.
Harris has said she wants to bring back the bipartisan border deal that died in the Senate earlier this year, and she wants to codify the abortion protections of Roe v. Wade — two proposals that would require a Democratic majority in Congress to achieve.
She has also touted steps the Biden administration has taken on gun control, climate change and health care.
But in general, Harris, who has come under pressure from Republicans to provide more information on her agenda, has not been too detailed. The vice president also has not done very many interviews, and when she has, she’s pivoted to general statements on policy.
In her first major interview after becoming the Democratic nominee, a joint interview on CNN with running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris was pressed on her decision to no longer support a ban on fracking.
“I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed,” she told CNN’s Dana Bash.
“You mentioned the Green New Deal. I have always believed — and I have worked on it — that the climate crisis is real, that it is an urgent matter to which we should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time,” she added, referring to the climate change initiative.
Harris was pressed on her specific plans for expanding access to reproductive rights and for curbing gun violence, among other issues, during a panel Tuesday with the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ).
Asked if she supports the restrictions Roe included, like allowing states to ban abortion in the third trimester, Harris said she would “proudly” sign a bill to codify Roe and blamed Trump for restrictive abortion bans across the country.
When asked by the NABJ panel what else she would do on the issue of gun violence, Harris leaned on the work the Biden administration has done to invest in gun safety and said she wants to impose universal background checks and ban assault weapons.
Harris in an interview with Nueva Network radio this week said she would reduce costs for Americans through a tax deduction for startup small businesses and a $6,000 tax credit for parents during the first year of a child’s life.
When asked about immigration in that interview, she repeated that she wants to pass the border deal negotiated by a bipartisan group of senators. Otherwise she spoke generally, saying she supports immigration policies that keep families together and secure the border.
To be sure, former President Trump has not been crystal clear with many of his proposals.
When he was pressed on how he would lower the cost of child care earlier this month, Trump didn’t articulate any specific legislation and instead argued the impact of tariffs would be enough to cover child care costs.
Harris has been specific on taxes to differentiate herself from President Biden.
She has proposed raising the corporate income tax rate to 28 percent from 21 percent and said she wants to increase the capital gains tax to 28 percent for those with $1 million or more in income, which is a lower tax increase from what Biden had proposed and up from its current effective level of 23.6 percent.
Harris’s campaign, which only launched in July after Biden’s exit from the race, did add policy positions to its website last week, which leads with her plans “build an opportunity economy and lower costs for families.”
Democrats argue that Harris has been detailed enough on issues, especially going into the final stretch of the campaign.
“Seems to me she is giving enough details to the electorate. It’s a tight schedule with a crowded media, you can only get so deep. Again, I think this is more driven by the media, elites, and people rooting for her to give a detail they can run against,” said Ivan Zapien, former official at the Democratic National Committee.
“Plus, at this point, it’s time to think about closing arguments, not details,” he added.
Harris holds a 3.4 percentage point lead over Trump nationally, according to the Decision Desk HQ/The Hill aggregation of polls.
The race is very tight in the seven swing states that will decide the contest, however. In state-based polling averages from Decision Desk HQ/The Hill, Harris leads by 0.4 percentage points over Trump in Pennsylvania, by 0.8 percentage points in Michigan and by 0.3 percentage points in Georgia. In Arizona, the two candidates are tied.
While not always offering specific details, Harris has moved to the center on some issues compared to when she was a candidate in 2020.
Besides dropping her call for a ban on fracking, Harris says she no longer plans to push for a single-payer health care system after backing “Medicare for All” in 2020.
She also has made clear that she is aligned with Biden on the administration’s pro-Israel stance amid the war in Gaza, though some have seen signals in her statements of a more sympathetic bent toward the Palestinians.
Democratic lawmakers have given her a pass on her policy flops and are confident she’s still a progressive at heart. Overall, those in her party argue she is putting in the work to reach out to the critical voting bloc of moderate voters she needs to win in November.
“The vice president is appealing to moderate voters through her policy positions because they see her policies as an extension of her background, her values and her experience,” said Jonathan Kott, former adviser to Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.).