Critics say Kamala Harris has run a campaign long on style and short on substance. The media, they complain, has given her a pass. Late Sunday evening, her campaign finally published an issues page on her website. We still suspect that David Muir and Linsey Davis, the ABC News anchors tasked with moderating Tuesday’s debate, the only one scheduled between the two major party presidential nominees, will be gunning for the vice president, eager to show that they are fair and balanced.
So Harris and her team have holed up in Pennsylvania for nearly a week of debate prep. Here are answers to some anticipated questions for Harris. If she hopes to prevail when she comes face-to-face with Donald Trump tomorrow night, she must account for her own policy changes — and flip the spotlight back onto the 78-year-old former president and convicted felon.
Inflation and affordability
Q: Vice President Harris, let’s start with the economy. As you know, poll after poll shows you trailing Donald Trump on the economy. What do you say to Americans who think their families will do better under former President Trump?
A: I say, “I am the underdog fighting for you, the hardworking people and your family.” I am the candidate who grew up without being given a thing. I worked at McDonalds and made my way up the ladder of opportunity in America.
I know what it’s like to have a hard time making ends meet and I also know that millions of Americans are experiencing that right now. Look, we’ve made a lot of progress in fighting inflation. But I also know that there is more that we need to do.I promise that I will take that fight personally. I know the price of bread, eggs, and the food Americans consume. I pay attention to the price at the pump for gasoline. I will go after price gouging that is costing you in the grocery store and the fuel pump. Donald Trump won’t. He will protect profits for his friends, the owners of the oil companies and the big grocery chains, profits that are already through the roof.
They even admit it. Last week, Andy Groff, Kroger’s head of pricing, said in an email that Bloomberg News obtained – I’m quoting now – “On milk and eggs, retail inflation has been significantly higher than cost inflation.” Translation: “We’ve raised prices way higher than our costs, gouging consumers.”
I won’t stand for that.
I am a believer in capitalism, but it’s fair capitalism that I believe in. I want a federal government that does what some state law already does – imposes fines on big companies that exploit crises to gouge hardworking Americans
As for my opponent, the only capitalism he believes in is crony capitalism: profits for the rich and problems for the poor.
And for hardworking Americans, don’t forget also that we’ve created more than 15 million jobs in four years. The prior administration LOST 3 million jobs.
Here’s one way I’ll keep job growth going and help make American homes affordable at the same time. My plan is to give many first-time buyers $25,000 in down-payment assistance, to build three million new homes and to cut red tape that stands in builders’ way. We need to rebuild the American dream.
One last point on the big picture economy going forward: Last week, even my opponent’s Wall Street buddies at Goldman-Sachs said that under his economic plan – where tariffs will raise prices on goods for everyone – the American economy’s upswing would dive, while under mine, it will thrive.
Fracking
Q: Madam Vice President, why have you changed your position on fracking?
A: Sorry, my position is the same as it was in the 2020 Vice Presidential debate, when I said a Biden/Harris Administration would not ban fracking. I did not seek to stop fracking as vice president and I will not try to do so as president.
Five years ago, I listened and learned after I said I opposed fracking. I learned that we can move forward with clean energy while we take care of our workers in the oil industry. I’m taking the economy forward, not going back to old positions that don’t do anything for people in states like Pennsylvania where fracking matters.
Here’s what I don’t do: I don’t do daily or weekly flip-flops like my opponent.
Take abortion, where he was for it before he was against it, before he tied himself in recent days into a pretzel over it trying to please and appease. He’s the guy who said he was proud to have appointed three Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Me, plain and simple, I’m for reproductive freedom.
I’m also for making sure that we don’t leave anyone behind. Banning fracking would do just that. That’s why it will be part of our energy plan under a Harris administration.
Crime
Q: How do you explain to your progressive supporters that as a district attorney, you championed legislation that allowed parents of chronically truant students to be prosecuted?
School matters to our children’s future. Our children’s future matters to America’s future. Parents who allow their children to be chronically truant are hurting them and hurting us.
I fought truancy in California for more than a decade. I added many tools to the toolkit, this being only one. We used it to warn parents there’d be consequences if they didn’t get serious.
Prosecutors know when to use the law as a warning and when to use it as a hammer. I used law as a hammer when I sent to prison transnational cartel gangs that brought drugs into the country. Prosecution is a very effective tool to protect our borders. But I also championed a Back on Track program for young first-time drug users who often deserve a chance to get straight.
And you want to know who’s soft on crime? This guy [pointing to Trump]. He’s the one who, on his last day in office, commuted the life sentence of Jaime Davidson, who went on this summer to get convicted of battering his wife. My opponent also commuted the sentence of Jonathan Braun, a drug dealer who last month was arrested for assaulting his wife twice and punching his 75-year-old father in law.
Crime was higher when Trump was in office than it is now. That is just a fact. I’ve fought crime all my life. It steals safety, peace and hope from families.
And guess what? Criminals can also steal elections from a nation, just like a jury of his New York peers decided that Donald Trump did in 2016 when he hid his sex scandal with Stormy Daniels from the American people.
Trump’s attempt to overturn the vote to stay in power in 2020 is why respected former Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., says he can’t vote for Trump. It’s probably why Mike Pence, my opponent’s own Vice President, won’t endorse him — while former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney has endorsed me
One of us here has stood up “for the people” in courts of law. One of us has been found guilty of 34 felonies by the people of the state of New York.
Taxes
Q: Your opponent says you will raise taxes. Will you?
A: I’m for easing the tax burden on working people and families and paying for it by demanding their fair share from the ultra-wealthy and corporations.
Any American earning less than $400,000 will not get a tax hike during my presidency. Period.
Above that, people need to start paying their fair share. People with household incomes over $1 million should have the capital gains tax restored to 28%, where it was in the 1990s when President Bill Clinton was balancing budgets. And for those in the upper .01% of earners, to help us support working families, we need a tax on increases in the value of their assets.
We also need to recover some of the 14% of corporate taxes lost when my opponent’s 2017 tax package dropped the rate from 35% to 21%. I’m for compromise, going halfway back, to 28% corporate taxes.
My proposed changes will allow us to help families by restoring the tax credit of up to $3,600 a child, which we had in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. I also want a new credit of up to $6,000 in tax relief for middle- and low-income families during the first year of a child’s life.
And to help new small businesses get started in my “new opportunity economy,” I have proposed expanding the standard tax deduction from $5,000 to $50,000 so we can create 25 million new small businesses. I also want to put in place state and local governments incentives to cut red tape and reduce regulations.
My opponent has no interest in paying for his promised $10.5 trillion in tax cuts over the next decade. What happened to the Grand Old Party that always wanted to cut the deficit? He’s the one who will burden our children, in part by restoring the 2017 tax deal that so enormously favored his billionaire friends.
Race and gender
Q. Madam Vice President, how important should race and gender, considering your historic run, be in this election?
A. We are electing a president. We are electing someone who will fight for us. We are electing someone who will represent the best that we can be.
We are electing someone who will move us forward, not take us back. We are electing someone who will be president for every single one of us, including those who do not vote for us. We are electing someone who will reflect dignity and honor upon us, someone who respects the law and our equality before it.
We are deciding our future and who we want to be. Gender, the color of our skin, or the countries our forebears came from have nothing to do with it.
We are Americans, all of us with equal rights and equal claims to all our country has to offer.
That is what makes America great and always has.
