Analysis-Democratic convention over, Harris policy plans face new scrutiny

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By Jarrett Renshaw

CHICAGO (Reuters) – In a roundtable discussion at this week’s Democratic National Convention, presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ senior policy adviser Brian Nelson was peppered with questions about the policies at the heart of her campaign.

Will Harris try to revive the Iran nuclear deal? How will she pay for expanded child tax credits and her plans to help first-time home buyers? Again and again, he gave the same answer.

“I am not going to get ahead of the vice president,” Nelson said eight times during the 45-minute event.

When Harris accepted her party’s nomination on Thursday night, she laid out a series of muscular foreign policy principles – stand up to Russia and North Korea, and defend Israel’s right to self defense while also backing Palestinians’ right to self-determination.

She also promised a middle-class tax cut at home, an end to America’s housing shortage and a secure southern border.

The speech delighted her Democratic supporters and was tougher than most observers had expected, but still more focused on broad principles than details.

Harris, 59, has not had much time to formulate detailed plans – she only became the Democratic candidate a month ago after President Joe Biden abandoned his failing reelection campaign under pressure from his own party.

Part of it is by design, too. The vice president and her aides have avoided offering up clear examples of where she may depart from Biden’s policies.

Buoyed by a wave of enthusiasm, donations and much better polling numbers since Harris entered the race, her team is wary of providing enough detail that Republican candidate Donald Trump and his campaign find new ways to attack her.

With particularly thorny issues like energy policy, Harris’ aides describe their deliberately vague approach as “strategically ambiguous.”

One campaign aide told Reuters that Harris will lay out more “value statements” than granular policy and “let voters connect the dots.”

Harris will face mounting pressure to flesh out her policies in the last 75 days of the campaign.

Chauncey McLean, founder of the super PAC known as Future Forward, the largest outside group backing Harris, said earlier this week that voters are already asking questions: “What’s her plan? What’s she going to do? And specifically, what is she going to do to make my life better?”

HAVE ‘FAITH’

A former California attorney general and U.S. senator, Harris launched a White House bid four years ago but quickly fell out of contention for her party’s nomination.

An uneven campaigner then, she changed her message and tactics on the fly with little effect.

This time, she has sought to portray herself as both an extension of the Biden administration and the face of a new generation. It has so far been successful and she has made clear gains against Trump in polls, turning it back into a tight race.

When Harris rolled out an economic plan to fight grocery store price-gouging, Trump branded the effort as socialism despite similar efforts in 37 states. He called Harris “Comrade Kamala.”

On Thursday night, he attacked her speech at the Democratic convention. “No specific policies, ALL TALK, NO ACTION,” he said in a social media post.

The Harris campaign has said she no longer supports a ban on hydraulic fracking and a single-payer health system, or Medicare for all, two positions she supported in her unsuccessful 2020 bid for president.

The final sprint to Election Day on Nov. 5 includes at least one televised debate against Trump in September. She is expected also to sit for one-one-one national interviews where she will be pressed for more policy details.

Campaign aides say she will cross the country with an emphasis on battleground states like Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania that will decide the election.

At the convention in Chicago this week, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer summed up the sentiment of a party eager to put off policy discussions and focus more on defeating Trump.

Minutes before he addressed climate activists, Schumer was asked whether Harris needed to provide a more detailed climate agenda in the upcoming weeks.

“People should have a lot of faith. She’s going to be a great environmental president,” he said.

Some of the party faithful in Chicago, asked about Harris’ sparse policy platform, shrugged their shoulders. Others asked why the media was not holding Trump to the same standard. None of the two dozen attendees interviewed expressed any concern.

“Compared to the other guy, give me a break. He’s talking about electric boats and sharks and how he’s better looking. Give me a break,” said U.S. Representative Jim Costa after attending an event at Chicago’s famed Second City comedy club hosted by moderate Democrats.

Tom Malinowski, a former New Jersey congressman, said voters on the fence were not going to be wondering which candidate had the more carefully nuanced position on such matters as carbon adjustment fees.

“What they do know, or should know, is that you’ve got one candidate who believes climate change is real and a threat, and that America can and should be leading the world to clean energy and another candidate who doesn’t give a damn,” he said.