Vice President Kamala Harris made a statement during her much anticipated Thursday interview with CNN that many are going to find hard to square: Her “values have not changed,” just her policy positions.
Of course, everyone learns to take what politicians say with a grain of salt, but when a candidate is making major policies flips just a few months out from Election Day, buyer beware.
Harris said she now backs building a border wall, opposes banning fracking, and is not pushing for Medicare-for-All as she did as a presidential candidate in 2019.
CNN’s Dana Bash raised the issue of major policy flips in the interview.
“How should voters look at some of the changes that you’ve made, that you’ve explained some of here in your policy? Is it because you have more experience now and you’ve learned more about the information? Is it because you were running for president in a Democratic primary?” Bash asked.
Trending:
“Should they feel comfortable and confident that what you’re saying now is going to be your policy moving forward?” the CNN host further queried.
Harris responded, “I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed.”
Kamala confirms her values “have not changed.”
Here are some of her views:
– Abolish ICE
– Open the borders
– Defund The Police
– Release violent offenders
– Eliminate middle-class tax cuts
– End fracking
– End fossil fuel usagepic.twitter.com/KlBMdXdPzV— GOP (@GOP) August 29, 2024
Do you think Kamala Harris will lose?
Well, if her values have not changed, then her policies have not either.
In 2019 as a senator, Harris called then-President Donald Trump’s border wall a “medieval vanity project” and a waste of money. What in her unchanging value set makes it a good idea now? Winning an election?
Harris further explained to Bash, “You mention the Green New Deal. I have always believed — and I have worked on it — that the climate crisis is real, that it is an urgent matter to which we should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time. We did that with the Inflation Reduction Act. … That value has not changed.”
In other words, she’s admitting the value of supporting the green agenda was consistent with casting the tie-breaking vote in the Senate to pass the IRA. So her value matched her policy.
By the way, the “green” initiatives included in the IRA are costing almost three times more than the administration forecast, Bloomberg reported in August 2023.
In April 2023, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, working with the investment firm Goldman Sachs, updated their estimated cost of the legislation’s green initiatives from $385 billion over a 10-year period to more than $1 trillion.
Now let’s look at Medicare-for-All. When running for president in 2019, Harris said she has “always” supported it and co-sponsored Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders bill for the proposal in 2017.
🚨Wow. Kamala Harris praised Bernie Sanders & fully endorsed his $34 trillion Medicare for All scheme that eliminates private health insurance.
“I want to give credit to Bernie Sanders…you brought us this far on Medicare for All, I support Medicare for All, and I always have.” pic.twitter.com/na8kcWDU4G
— Steve Cortes (@CortesSteve) August 13, 2024
So if her value remains the same, were Congress to pass Medicare-for-All (with a 10-year estimated price tag in 2017 of over $32 trillion) or some other legislation that moves the country in that direction, it seems pretty likely Harris would sign the bill.
Finally, Harris mentioned in the interview that deadlines should be based around time. What deadlines aren’t?
It calls to mind this gem of Harris speaking about the “significance of the passage of time” over-and-over back in 2022.
KAMALA HARRIS: “The significance of the passage of time, right? The significance of the passage of time. So when you think about it, there is great significance to the passage of time…there is such great significance to the passage of time.” pic.twitter.com/jUsnyNiSpB
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 21, 2022
There’s a reason that Harris did not give an interview until 40 days after declaring her candidacy.
She’s not good at it, and she is prone to making silly statements.
If her values have not changed, her policies as president really wouldn’t either.
