President Joe Biden refused to allow Vice President Kamala Harris to establish “daylight” between his policies and hers when she succeeded him as the Democratic presidential nominee last summer, an insistence that hamstrung her campaign and ultimately contributed to her defeat to Donald Trump at the polls, a new book alleges.
An excerpt from the forthcoming Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, published by The Hill, emphasizes that both Harris and Trump “understood the importance of being seen as the bigger change agent” due to the unpopularity of the Biden administration.
The authors assert that the Republican needed only to present himself as the “antidote” to the Biden-Harris era, but the VP potentially had a much greater degree of freedom in choosing how she presented herself to the electorate.
They argue that Harris had three options: she could make “clean breaks” with Biden by rejecting policy positions she had endorsed as his deputy (risking accusations of hypocrisy), she could seek out entirely new issues with which to define herself and run on or, alternatively, “she could rely on voters to see her gender, her genes, and her ‘lived experience’... as symbols of change.”
However, the first of those approaches was reportedly taken “off the table” by the president and his loyalists, with Biden saying publicly that Harris must do whatever was necessary to beat Trump but telling her in private that there should be “no daylight” between them, a message stressed to Harris “almost everywhere she went” by his aides, who were seeking to safeguard his legacy.
Allen and Parnes offer as an example Harris preparing for her first joint television interview alongside running mate Tim Walz and being presented with a list of achievements she could say she was proud to have shared with Biden by veteran Democratic communications strategist Stephanie Cutter.
Sean Clegg, the VP’s long-term adviser, objected to the approach, saying, “Let’s not do this. Let’s not go down memory lane.” He was allegedly excluded from all subsequent media prep sessions.
When the interview with CNN’s Dana Bash took place in late August, Harris found herself reciting a “laundry list” of Biden policies sitting on a chair that was lower than Walz’s. The authors suggest this meant she “did not look like a candidate seeking the highest office in the land” and only reinforced a perception that she was “either incapable, or afraid, of answering tough questions on her own.”
With Harris continuing to struggle to make the case for why she should be the next president of the United States and outline her vision for the country's future, her September 10 debate against Trump was seen as a key opportunity to definitively establish her narrative in front of a national audience.
But, on the day of the clash, Biden called Harris and reportedly made clear that he expected her to protect his record, even at the expense of forging her own path, reminding her once again: “No daylight, kid.”
Allen and Parnes’s reporting perhaps cast new light on a pivotal moment in the campaign, when Harris told the panellists on ABC’s The View on October 8 that “there is not a thing that comes to mind” that she would have done differently to Biden.
While the former California attorney general and senator has been seldom seen since losing the election last November, Walz has gradually re-emerged to give interviews reflecting on their defeat.
“I own this,” the Minnesota governor told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes on Wednesday night, referring to Trump’s chaotic tariff war causing economic shockwaves and Elon Musk’s attempt to streamline the federal government resulting in mass redundancies.
“We wouldn’t be in this mess if we’d have won the election and we didn’t. We have to make sure that Americans know it’s not just that Donald Trump is bad, but we’re offering them something better.”
Walz also revealed to The New Yorker’s editor David Remnick earlier this month during a podcast appearance that he could be tempted to run for the White House himself in 2028 and that he has barely spoken to Harris since their loss, insisting the pair were not estranged but merely busy with their own lives.
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