Trump's core beliefs vs Kamala Harris' shifting stance
By: Liz Peek (The Hill)
Will the real Kamala Harris please stand up?
Kamala Harris is still running a primary campaign rather than a general election campaign. And Harris isn't challenged by any other primary candidates. That's somewhat understandable since Harris didn't participate in the primaries as a candidate for President. But that excuse won't hold water on Aug. 23, 2024.
Time is running out. If Kamala Harris does not come away from the DNC convention as a serious candidate with a clear message for what she will strive for as President then the election resets to where it was before Joe Biden was given the axe.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Someone recently posted on X: "Trump's Agenda is whatever the last adviser or billionaire told him to do…"
Like so many attacks launched against the former president, it is not accurate. There are at least 10 core beliefs that have inspired candidate and President Donald Trump since he first considered running for the Oval Office, and which continue to headline his campaign.
Specifically, Trump has consistently fought to secure our border; reduce taxes; beef up law enforcement and make our streets safe; lighten regulation, allowing businesses to thrive; oppose unfair trade policies that send jobs overseas; strengthen our military; exit globalist treaties, such as the Paris climate accord, that disadvantage the U.S.; promote school choice; support Israel; and yes, make America great again.
Trump has steadfastly championed these policies, both on the campaign trail and when he was president. Because most of them make sense and are popular with most Americans, even Democrats have embraced some of these positions — for example, demanding fairer trade terms.
Recall how, during the 2016 campaign, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton suddenly reversed her stance on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed trade deal involving 11 Pacific Rim countries. Signaling her flip-flop, left-leaning Politico ran a piece titled: "Clinton raved about Trans-Pacific Partnership before she rejected it."
We know what Trump stands for, and what he would do as president. But what about Kamala Harris? What does she believe in? Voters must wonder. When she ran for president in 2019, she backed a ban on fracking; mandatory gun buybacks, i.e. gun confiscation; taxpayer-funded sex-change surgeries for prison inmates; racial reparations; decriminalizing illegal immigration; defunding the police; eliminating Immigration and Customs Enforcement; "Medicare for All"; the Green New Deal; and allowing felons to vote.
Now Harris is denying that everything she ever did was the real her. For instance, her campaign says she no longer favors outlawing fracking. Her shift no doubt reflects the unpopularity of that stance in Pennsylvania, a critical swing state.
Her campaign has also said she didn't really mean she supported defunding the police. When she said to defund the police, she really just meant that the police should be smarter and tougher.
But Harris is sticking to some of her extreme positions, such as reparations, at least for now. Let's see whether she flip-flops on that as well, when her backers do some polling and discover that less than one third of Americans endorse paying Black people to make amends for slavery.
Democrats, aided by their allies in the liberal media, are reinventing the vice president. They are eager to hide all traces of her progressive positions and policies. They know that far-left candidates are unelectable nationally, which is why Democrat bosses conspired to sideline Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in 2020 even though the self-described Democratic socialist had won the popular vote in the party's first three primary contests.
Hence the frantic re-positioning of Harris on numerous controversial issues. Democrat pooh-bahs are thrilled that Harris was once a prosecutor and served as California's attorney general, allowing them to present her as a law-and-order candidate. Unfortunately, her policy record during that phase of her career is just as confused as her campaign today.
For example, critics charge her with having supported Proposition 47, which reduced penalties on numerous crimes and arguably ushered in San Francisco's current lawlessness. Others argue she cleverly refused to take a stance on important criminal justice issues during her tenure so as to avoid making unpopular choices.
Eventually, Harris will have to sit for a real interview. She will have to explain where she stands on a host of issues. It's easy to escape scrutiny and avoid revealing your beliefs when you're appearing before friendly groups like Black sororities and RuPaul's Drag Race. But Harris will be exposed as a politician who swims with the polls and has no real core when she tries to explain her shifting views of fracking and "Medicare for All."
So far, her campaign has successfully protected her from that kind of examination, redeploying tactics that similarly shielded Joe Biden during the 2020 race. Biden campaigned mainly from his basement, using COVID-19 as an excuse for not making more public appearances, Voters now know why: Even then, Biden was showing signs of mental impairment, which ultimately forced him out of this year's race.
Americans will demand more from Harris. In recent weeks, the U.S. media has gone all out to whitewash and rewrite her past, hoping voters will forget that she was one of the most unpopular vice presidents in history. They have done a remarkable job bashing Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), taking the spotlight off a vulnerable Harris.
Democrats' approach so far has been working. According to a recent Bloomberg-Morning Consult poll, the VP is running neck-and-neck with the former president in key swing states.
But it won't last. Voters who are most concerned about the economy and immigration, the top two issues by a wide margin, heavily favor Trump.
The most telling question asked by this poll was this: "Have you seen, read, or heard anything about each of the following in the past week?" Concerning Harris, 49 percent of respondents answered, "Yes, and it was mostly positive" while 42 percent said it was mostly negative. About Trump, 37 percent said what they had heard was positive, while 54 percent said it was negative.
That is the liberal media putting its thumb on the scales. On the issues important to voters, as opposed to the valiant whitewashing efforts of the New York Times, MSNBC et al, Trump wins.
The Trump campaign was wrong-footed by Joe Biden's exit from the race. Now it is readying a tidal wave of negative advertising about Harris's extremely unpopular and shifting positions. They will brand her as a lightweight and as inauthentic. The latter charge was also leveled against Hillary Clinton in 2016. It was true, it stuck and she lost. Kamala will suffer the same fate.
Liz Peek is a former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim and Company.
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Democrats will point to Biden's record as support for Kamala Harris. But is Harris really intending to oversee a Biden 2nd term?
Kamala Harris will highlight her own political history. Does that mean Harris intends to break with Biden's agenda?
Democrats will point to Harris' fundraising as a measure of enthusiasm. But the reality is that Harris' fundraising is slightly behind that of Joe Biden during the 2020 election.
Joe Biden was not a popular President. And that unpopularity can't be attributed to only Biden's age. If general election voters are only promised more of the same then how do Democrats sustain enthusiasm. So, what will Harris do? The real Kamala Harris will need to stand up after the convention or the general election resets to where it has been all along. Will Aug. 23, 2024, really decide the election?
This is interesting since it was another right winger on NT that recently pointed out that Trump used to be a democrat.
How does that fit in with the title of this piece?
He paid more to Stormy Daniels, i guess he valued Stormy's services higher.
Or her silence.
Are you denying it?
Trump will at least try to follow through on some of what he promises. The border and illegal immigration being first and foremost.
Harris is so busy trying to lie her ass off running to the center- that she will break every campaign promise she makes when she moves back to her normal extremist leftist views.
Reread my comment. I have neither denied not agreed with it. Stop making things up.
Since when? Trump barely kept a very small fraction of his promises last time.
Let's see, the last promises he kept was to eliminate Roe v Wade, and tax cuts for millionaires. Can't think of any others that he kept off hand.
Harris is playing the same “switcheroo” game Biden pulled in 2020. Run as a moderate to get in, then move heavy left. Pee on their shoes and tell them it’s rain.
Anyone that believes a Harris-Walz ticket, will be anything but one the most left leaning tickets in history, is a complete dumbass.
It is really strange that they don't have enough faith in the LWNJ platform to feel the need to trick the American people to make them think they are running as moderates. It worked for Joe because he really was a moderate before the brain damage but it seems Kamala and maybe Walz have always been LWNJs. So why not run on the LWNJ platform instead of trying to get in being moderates? Dems are full of big lies to get power.
They already have a blueprint that worked.
Basement Biden 2020
"The Trump campaign was wrong-footed by Joe Biden's exit from the race. Now it is readying a tidal wave of negative advertising about Harris's extremely unpopular and shifting positions. They will brand her as a lightweight and as inauthentic. The latter charge was also leveled against Hillary Clinton in 2016. It was true, it stuck and she lost. Kamala will suffer the same fate."
I have to agree with this assessment.