Supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris are rallying behind her campaign despite admitting that they can’t say where she stands on most big issues – as the Democratic nominee continues to flip-flop on major policies.
Harris, 59, has reversed her stances on energy issues, health care and illegal immigration since replacing President Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket, in an apparent effort to make herself more electable to moderates in key swing states.
Harris’ abandoned policy positions include her pledges to eliminate private health insurance, decriminalize illegal border crossings, ban fracking for oil and natural gas, and ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035 — each of those made in 2019 when the then-California senator was seeking the Democratic presidential nomination.
In recent weeks, The Post has spoken to several swing-state voters who plan to cast ballots for Harris. The majority of them painted a vague picture of what the vice president stands for – “pro-choice” and “the environment.”
But the main reason they’re backing Harris is because she is not former President Donald Trump.
Immigration
“I would say I believe she is more moderate? in terms of immigration. In the sense that she’s not like let’s let everyone in,” Aaliyah Dittman, a 20-year-old college student from Clarion County, Pa., told The Post when asked about Harris’ position on the border and immigration.
“But I feel like she’s kind of similar to Biden,” Dittman, a first-time voter excited about Harris, added. “And that’s the difficult thing. As she is still the vice president, she has to pull herself apart from the administration and say this is what I stand for and maybe she hasn’t done a great job doing that.”
(Harris previously supported decriminalizing crossing the border illegally, opposed Trump’s wall and oversaw Biden-Harris administration policies that let in more than 8 million migrants. Now, she says she’s for the wall and wants to hire more Border Patrol agents.)
Dittman also recalled that Harris, at the Democratic National Convention, “talked about the border deal that Trump had told Republicans to shut down, and that she would bring that back.”
A 28-year-old George Mason University librarian, who didn’t want to give her name, similarly couldn’t clearly define Harris’ stance on immigration and wasn’t hesitant to say the vice president flip-flopped on the issue.
“I think she’s staying true to herself. Honestly, I can’t give you a well rounded answer, because I haven’t seen her flip-flop,” the employee at the Fairfax, Va., school said.
“I haven’t been that invested in the news, but from what I’ve seen, knowing about her beginnings as attorney general of California to where she is now as vice president to presidential candidate — she has always seemed to stay true to herself, even though she changes her mind,” she added. “I think she really sees [illegal immigration] more as an opportunity for growth and development as in keeping in tune of what most Americans want.”
Energy and the environment
Harris supporters that spoke to The Post appeared skeptical that the vice president would do much to address the environment and admitted they were unclear about where she stood on the issue.
“I don’t know that — environment isn’t really what I focus on,” Mckenna Anderson, a junior at the University of Michigan, told The Post.
“My major is gender, so I’m not that up to date on environment issues in general,” Anderson said. “I know that her and Biden did the Alaska oil pipeline, which is not as pro-environment, I guess. So I don’t know exactly where she stands, but from what little I do know, she’s not like great on environment.”
(Harris previously supported a ban on fracking and was an early sponsor of the $2 trillion Green New Deal. She has reversed course on the fracking ban, and has avoided mentioning the proposed climate legislation.)
Anna Klein, a freshman from Flat Rock, Mich., studying statistics at the University of Michigan, suggested that Democrats usually pander to voters when they talk about the environment but that it wouldn’t dissuade her from voting for Harris.
“I’m gonna be honest. I’m not so sure that like, she’s gonna do much about it,” Klein said. “She might talk about it and she might act like she’s going to do something, but like, even Biden said that he was gonna do a lot and I’m sure there were some policies that helped, but like, they always talk about it just to get people on their side and then they don’t really do much.”
“I think the biggest issue right now is just whether or not we want a person with some sense of morality in office,” she argued. “I’m not really worried about certain issues.”
Abortion
Abortion policy was top of mind for several of the battleground staters that spoke with The Post, but few could articulate what Harris would actually do to expand reproductive rights as president.
Anderson, the gender major from Michigan, described Harris as being, “definitely for more, like women’s health.”
“She is pro-choice, I guess,” she added before admitting, “I definitely need to learn more [about Harris’ policies].”
Klein, the statistics major from Michigan, gave a similar response when asked what Harris policies stood out.
“I do very much agree with her pro-choice policies,” she said. “I probably can’t name them off the top of my head right now.”
Dittman, the Pennsylvania college student, recalled, “Kamala said in one of her speeches that she would restore Roe” — referring to the overturned case that legalized abortion across the US.
The Keystone State native noted that reproductive rights are among her two “core values” with the other being “gun safety.”
Does policy even matter?
Dittman told The Post that while the DNC was light on policy talk she was pleased with the “messaging” and hoped Harris would get more specific during her Sept. 10 debate against Trump.
“She needs to start that messaging now,” Dittman said, noting that she likes following the “fun” and “relatable” Kamala HQ X account but that “maybe it would be a good idea to expand on policy.”
“I really hope she hits hard on policy at the debate, because I feel like the debate, Trump is going to ramble on whatever he’s going to ramble on about and I feel like Kamala, at least I’m hoping, has the answers and her policy ready,” she added.
Brandyn Fragosa, a 20-year-old communications major from Stafford, Va., studying at George Mason University, indicated that he plans to vote for Harris in November regardless of where the vice president stands on policy issues.
“I will be voting for Kamala Harris, because I just feel like she, her beliefs align with my beliefs,” he said.
Fragosa couldn’t identify a single policy stance from Harris that stood out to him, but said he plans to do “more research” even though it won’t change his vote.
“At the moment, it’s more just about, OK, I know what Trump believes in, and I know that doesn’t align with what I believe in,” he said. “I know she was working underneath the Biden administration as the vice president, and I knew most of the things that they followed and believed in were stuff that I believed in.”
Like Fragosa, Kyle Woody, an 18-year-old psychology major from Ashburn, Va., studying at George Mason University, also said that he didn’t ”know too much about the policies” of Harris but that it likely won’t play much of a role in how he votes.
“I just don’t think Trump’s a good person,” Woody said.
Even more seasoned voters told The Post that policy wasn’t playing a major role in their ballot box decisions this election cycle.
In Las Vegas, Nev., Craig Wuest, a former Pentagon expert on nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs, said he believes Trump “is the greatest threat to democracy that I have seen in my career.”
To Wuest, that, more than Harris’s policies, motivated his vote.
Pastor Tanesha Jordan Roberts of Las Vegas’ Greater Grace Global Church, said she is a registered Republican but did not vote for “the top of the ticket” for several elections until 2020 when she pulled the lever for Biden.
“I believe we just need to get back to politics being boring,” Roberts told The Post. “I probably won’t agree on 90% of what she’s putting forth. But this is not a policy decision. This is about our democracy. This is about the rule of law. This is about our way out of the crazy that we are in.”
— Additional reporting by Ethan Dodd and Mark A. Kellner
