In choosing Senator Kamala Harris of California to be his working mate, Joseph R. Biden Jr. opted for a companion who has occupied the same area wi
In choosing Senator Kamala Harris of California to be his working mate, Joseph R. Biden Jr. opted for a companion who has occupied the same area within the center-left of the ideological spectrum — somebody with whom he can probably agree on many issues of coverage.
Amid a discipline of greater than 20 candidates within the Democratic major, Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris had been seen as a relative moderates. Throughout her personal unsuccessful presidential marketing campaign, Ms. Harris usually resisted litmus checks posed inside Democratic circles and at instances struggled to obviously outline her stance on basic points like whether or not she would endorse a “Medicare for all” fashion of medical insurance.
“I’m not making an attempt to restructure society,” Ms. Harris stated final summer season in an interview with The New York Occasions. “I’m simply making an attempt to handle the problems that wake folks up in the course of the night time.”
In newer months, since Mr. Biden grew to become the presumptive Democratic nominee, the nation has been rocked by the coronavirus pandemic in addition to widespread unrest over police brutality and racial inequities. Each Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris have appeared to maneuver additional to the left — Mr. Biden searching for to convey collectively the Democratic Get together and attraction to its progressive wing, and Ms. Harris rising as a robust voice on racism and police misconduct.
Here’s a have a look at the place Ms. Harris stands on key coverage points.
Racial justice and policing
Ms. Harris, 55, would be the first Black girl and the primary particular person of Indian descent to be nominated for vice chairman by a significant celebration. She is a former prosecutor, and her dealing with of instances involving police shootings of civilians whereas she was California’s lawyer basic drew criticism from activists on the left, who argued that she was not aggressive sufficient in stepping in to overtake rogue police departments and that she sided too often with police unions.
Ms. Harris has stated she was making an attempt to impact change from “inside” authorities. “After we wish to reform programs, it shouldn’t and it will possibly’t solely be from the skin on bended knee or making an attempt to interrupt down the door,” she instructed The Occasions early in her marketing campaign.
As a Democratic presidential candidate, Ms. Harris launched plans outlining her imaginative and prescient for legal justice reform and learn how to “get up for Black America.” As a part of the plans, Ms. Harris known as for ending mass incarceration, money bail and the demise penalty; making a nationwide police programs assessment board; making attending traditionally Black faculties and universities debt-free for college kids; and plenty of different measures.
Her stance on capital punishment particularly has drawn scrutiny. As San Francisco’s district lawyer, Ms. Harris selected to not search the demise penalty in a significant case on ethical grounds, however as lawyer basic she appealed a decide’s resolution declaring California’s demise penalty regulation unconstitutional.
Maybe probably the most memorable second of her presidential marketing campaign got here through the first spherical of Democratic major debates, when Ms. Harris confronted Mr. Biden about his fond recollections of working with segregationists within the Senate after which opened up about her private historical past with faculty busing.
Mr. Biden, she stated, had opposed faculty busing mandates to combine faculties within the 1970s, including: “There was a little bit lady in California who was part of the second class to combine her public faculties, and he or she was bused to high school on daily basis. And that little lady was me.”
In newer months, for the reason that demise of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Ms. Harris has spoken out strongly in regards to the injustice confronted by Black folks in america. She launched police accountability laws generally known as the Justice in Policing Act earlier this summer season and sparred with Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, after he blocked a invoice that may have made lynching a federal crime.
Well being care
Throughout her presidential bid, Ms. Harris acquired tousled by the problem of well being care. She was not the one candidate to endure that destiny, however her stumbles had been memorable.
Within the Senate, Ms. Harris co-sponsored Senator Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for all laws, and at a CNN city corridor occasion early in her marketing campaign, she responded to a query about personal medical insurance by saying, “Let’s get rid of all of that.”
She got here beneath hearth for the assertion, and the blowback was a sign of the political sensitivity surrounding the problem of abolishing personal protection beneath a single-payer system.
Then, on the talk stage, the Democratic candidates had been requested who would abolish personal medical insurance. Ms. Harris was amongst those that raised their fingers. However after the talk, she stated she had misunderstood the query.
Mr. Biden — who desires to construct on the Reasonably priced Care Act — didn’t increase his hand in favor of eliminating personal insurance coverage.
Ms. Harris later put out her personal well being care plan, which positioned her someplace on the ideological spectrum between Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders. Her plan sought to supply Medicare for all People, but it surely stored a major position for medical insurance firms by permitting folks to decide on personal plans modeled on Medicare Benefit.
Regulating enterprise
Ms. Harris’s relationship with Wall Avenue and Silicon Valley additionally highlights her status as a centrist.
After the 2008 monetary disaster, she pulled California out of a nationwide settlement with huge banks, leveraging her energy as lawyer basic to wrest more cash from main mortgage lenders. She later introduced that California owners would obtain $12 billion in mortgage aid beneath the settlement.
But critics on the left stated she had not finished sufficient to clamp down on miscreant lenders or to manage the expertise trade, citing her shut ties to Silicon Valley. One sticking level throughout her Senate profession was her late endorsement of SESTA, the Cease Enabling Intercourse Traffickers Act, which made web sites accountable for aiding intercourse trafficking.
“Repeatedly, we bumped into her working interference for Silicon Valley,” stated Jamie Court docket, president of the California-based group Client Watchdog.
On one other difficulty — autonomous automobiles — Ms. Harris threatened Uber with authorized motion in 2016 if the corporate didn’t take away driverless vehicles from the California roads. However as soon as she was in Washington, client activists criticized her for failing to oppose laws that may have overridden robust California guidelines on autonomous automobiles.
Extra just lately, like Mr. Biden, she has known as for a rise in company taxes.
Training, gun management, abortion and different points
Ms. Harris was not generally known as the “plans” candidate within the major — one other presidential contender, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, earned that label — however like her rivals, she put forth a number of coverage concepts.
Taking intention on the trainer pay hole, she proposed giving lecturers pay raises averaging $13,500.
Ms. Harris additionally dedicated to utilizing her government energy to place in place an array of gun management measures, like obligatory background checks and extra stringent regulation of gun producers. She additionally promised to work to shut a loophole that enables some home abusers to purchase weapons beneath sure circumstances.
She argued that states and localities with a historical past of unconstitutionally proscribing abortion rights ought to must get hold of federal approval earlier than new abortion legal guidelines can take impact. And he or she proposed closing the gender wage hole by requiring bigger firms to certify that women and men are paid equally.
On local weather, Ms. Harris teamed with Consultant Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York to suggest laws that may set up an impartial Workplace of Local weather and Environmental Justice Accountability and charge environmental legal guidelines and guidelines primarily based on their affect on low-income communities.
Earlier than kicking off her marketing campaign, Ms. Harris additionally launched laws to supply a tax credit score of as much as $6,000 for middle-class and working-class households.