Harris Faces New Urgency to Explain How She's Not Biden

With less than four weeks until Election Day, Vice President Kamala Harris is facing new urgency to define how her potential presidency would be different from that of President Joe Biden.

Her struggle to present herself both as a candidate of change while demonstrating a loyalty to the politician she serves under was made clear Tuesday, when she was asked on ABC’s “The View” how she would lead differently than Biden.

Harris said, “We’re obviously two different people” and “I will bring those sensibilities to how I lead.” But when pressed to identify a decision made by Biden that she would have taken another way, she demurred. “There is not a thing that comes to mind,” she said.

She followed up later in the show by saying she would put a Republican in her Cabinet.

Two and a half months into her unexpected candidacy, Harris has so far largely relied on her age and biography to signal a break from the 82-year-old Biden and her 78-year-old Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump. Now, in a tight race against Trump, she is being forced to reassess how she talks about her boss and how she might strike out on her own should she win the White House.

The first Black and South Asian woman to be a major party presidential nominee, Harris was 9 years old when Biden was elected to the Senate and was in law school when Trump, then a real estate heir and socialite, published “The Art of the Deal.” Harris, her campaign believes, embodies change. Yet, she still may need to find a better way to talk about it.

According to aides, Harris is deeply loyal to Biden and resistant to publicly doing anything that could be construed as criticizing his presidency, though his favorability ratings remain underwater. In private, some question what she should break with Biden on — noting the popularity of some of the biggest pieces of his legislative agenda, from infrastructure to lowering the costs of some prescription drugs, and the recklessness of signaling any daylight with the president on foreign policy at a time of global crises.

Harris was a central partner to Biden throughout, and they worry a break now could be viewed as preelection opportunism.

Views of Biden are still more negative than positive, even after he withdrew as the Democratic nominee in July. About 4 in 10 Americans had a somewhat or very favorable view of Biden in an AP-NORC poll conducted in September, and 55% had an unfavorable view, which is consistent with where his favorability ratings have stood for the past two years. Feelings toward Harris, meanwhile, were warmer -- half of Americans had a favorable opinion of her, while 44% had an unfavorable opinion.

In addition to her pledge to put a Republican in her Cabinet, Harris has introduced some policies distinct from Biden — including calling for a smaller hike to the capital gains tax than advocated for by the president. But they have been modest, and Biden’s White House, in turn, has quickly signed on to her positions.

Trump seized on her comments that she couldn’t think of any decision by Biden that she would change, playing a clip of “The View” appearance at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Wednesday to roars from the crowd.

Some Harris allies have pressed her to more forcefully signal a break from Biden.

“She should do what’s best,” former Harris communications director Jamal Simmons said. “Winning will make Joe Biden feel a lot better than anything else.”

Biden is “an unpopular president in a global anti-incumbent mood,” added Democratic strategist Alyssa Cass, adding that the small universe of undecided voters is particularly not enthralled by Biden.

Harris, she said, needs to “communicate clearly to voters something she would have done differently that is acknowledging some of the dissatisfaction that they have — rightly or wrongly — as a way to move them to be fully comfortable with her.”

The first vice president to mount a bid to replace a leader of their party in almost a quarter century, Harris is trying to strike a delicate balance. Harris’ team has tried to keep Biden at a distance on the campaign trail – the pair have held only a single campaign event together — yet she has been pulled into appearing by his side to monitor hurricanes and address emergencies in the Middle East.

Harris' challenge is not unique, though the compressed nature of her campaign after Biden's exit is undoubtedly a complicating factor not faced in the modern era.

In 2000, the then-Democratic nominee, Vice President Al Gore, maintained an arms' length relationship with a scandal-tarred President Bill Clinton after he faced a high-profile impeachment inquiry over his affair with a White House intern and attempts to cover it up. And in 1988, President Ronald Reagan, then 78, did not campaign aggressively for his vice president and eventual successor, George H.W. Bush.

“Vice presidents have always struggled with how to separate themselves from incumbent presidents,” said Republican strategist Alex Conant. “It’s why so few of them win.”

“Her talking point that she’s ‘not Joe Biden’ is a good quip, but not a good message,” Conant added, saying, “She should be able to point to three things at the ready that she’d do differently.” Instead, he said, Harris "delivered Trump’s message better than Trump does himself.”

Other Democrats see little reason for Harris to make explicit policy breaks from Biden. Her presence at the top of the ticket resolves what had been the biggest Democratic vulnerability in November — Biden’s age.

“There’s no question that the campaign understands the imperative for her to be an agent of change,” said Eric Schultz, a Democratic operative and a former Obama spokesperson. “That is why 'a new way forward' is a smart frame, and it’s also why she has made clear that her election would represent generational change. That is, of course, a contrast with her 78-year-old opponent, but it’s also a signal that her entire orientation will be future and forward looking.”