Vice President Kamala Harris is furiously trying to “distance” herself from President Biden’s record — while also disavowing the far-left policies she heartily embraced just a few years ago.
The result is a campaign run entirely on style over substance since Harris took the Democratic mantle from Biden last month.
And Democratic campaign operatives warn that she risks voters catching on — and realizing she’s selling only cynical political opportunism.
“It’s a marketing strategy that is TV-esque,” one senior Democratic aide said. “With such a short timeline now, policy matters less than personality.
“She’s going to almost exclusively look at a voter like a consumer — and sell, sell, sell!” the aide quipped.
“Do I think that’s a long-term strategy? No,” the aide admitted. “But I think the plan is win and figure it out.”
Another Democratic campaign operative told The Post Wednesday that Harris was wisely trying to break with Biden’s economic policies due to his “horrible” polling numbers — and is prepared to jettison any of their administration’s talking points that don’t have “strong” public support.
At the same time, Harris, 59, is also seemingly rejecting a host of her own progressive pet projects that she touted during her failed 2020 presidential bid — including support for Medicare for All, banning fracking and legalizing illegal immigration.
Critics attacked Harris from both sides of the party four years ago — with the Biden campaign mocking her Medicare flip-flop in particular as a “have-it-every-which-way” plan, and aides for Democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) slamming her policy stances as having been “cobbled together to address various poll numbers,” Politico reported.
Now, she’s trying to burnish her moderate credentials by talking about inflation and the high cost of goods head on, while also embracing Trump’s pledge to not tax tips for service and hospitality workers in key battleground states like Nevada.
“As far as Harris distancing from Biden, she was going to do that,” the campaign operative said, noting that Democrats have been energized by the opportunity to redefine the 2024 race.
“It wasn’t called Harrisflation,” the operative added, referencing the “Bidenflation” moniker that Republicans have branded on the 81-year-old president as the US surged in 2022 to a 40-year high in consumer prices.
Meanwhile the hits she’s taken for being aloof on policy and dodging major media interviews for almost a month after Biden’s departure has been strategic on her part, the senior Democratic aide said, giving her a chance to “to get her story straight later.”
Harris advisers spilled to Axios on Wednesday that the presidential pick, who was elevated to presumtive nominee solely by winning over party bosses, isn’t afraid to lean into the policy reversals.
“It’s no different than [Gov.] Kathy Hochul’s about-face on congestion pricing,” Rockland County Republican Rep. Mike Lawler told The Post, ripping Harris as a “fraud.”
“Nobody believes that the economy is in a better position than it was under Donald Trump,” he said.
Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance told reporters on Wednesday that Harris’ revamped campaign — with its peddled talking points about “joy” and “fun” — was just as fake as the dances she has showed off at campaign events.
“Everything about her campaign is fake,” Vance said.
On Friday, she is expected to “take on corporate price-gouging” and discuss her own plans to lower the costs of food, housing and health care for the middle class during a planned campaign rally in Raleigh.
Harris is also reportedly crafting a new image around her relatively humble California roots — the daughter of a working single mom — to curry favor with voters, saying the Harris agenda is about an effort to “win the future.”
A slight plurality of voters trust Harris on economic issues over Trump, a Financial Times survey found earlier this week, while a larger plurality believe they will be in better financial shape under the former president.
Still, some of the Biden economic agenda is expected to stick to Harris.
White House press secretary Karine-Jean Pierre confirmed during the daily press briefing that the record was “both” of theirs.
“I’m not going to get into polling,” she said. “What I will tell you is Bidenomics has been something that both the president and the vice president has worked on.”
The Democratic operative who spoke with The Post said that some of the economic messaging points may be “easier to defend,” but that “Biden’s immigration record will stick to her.”
“It’s easier to defend Biden’s record on the economy,” the operative explained. “You can point to jobs, you can point to the stock market, lowering the costs of drugs. … Immigration is much more difficult.”
Another stumbling block could be her past promises to eliminate gas-powered vehicles by 2035, but she has signaled to some energy trade groups in Pennsylvania that she wouldn’t kill the domestic gas and oil industry, according to Reuters.
Chet Thompson, the president of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, told the outlet he would still maintain caution.
“Until the vice president says otherwise, we have to believe she still stands for everything that was in her 2019 policy plan and for every policy she cosponsored as a senator,” he said.
Harris and Biden are slated to appear in Prince George’s county, Md., for an event also touting their administration’s efforts to lower costs — their first joint appearance since he dropped out.
