Vice President Kamala Harris is defending her past support of more liberal policies during the 2020 Democracy primary campaign, repeating that her values “have not changed” in her first interview since becoming her party’s 2024 presidential nominee.
“I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed,” Harris told CNN on Thursday. Since Harris took over as the Democratic nominee, her aides have walked back many of her previous stances, including being in support of a fracking ban and support for a federal job guarantee.
In particular, Harris addressed her previous support of the Green New Deal and more lenient immigration policies, including rethinking the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“You mentioned the Green New Deal,” Harris said. “I have always believed and I’ve worked on 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. We have set goals for the United States of America and, by extension the globe, around when we should meet certain standards for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, as an example, that value has not changed.
“My value around what we need to do to secure our border, that value has not changed,” she added.
“I spent two terms as the attorney general of California prosecuting transnational criminal organizations, violations of American laws regarding the passage, illegal passage of guns, drugs, and human beings across our border. My values have not changed.”
Harris has come under increasing pressure to explain her policy positions after she succeeded President Joe Biden as the nominee last month without a traditional primary process.
Four years ago, when she ran for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, Harris’s record in California created problems for her with more liberal Democrats, for instance, over her decision not to oppose California’s anti-gay Proposition 8 ballot initiative in 2013 and her defense of the death penalty in the Golden State in 2014, in addition to not reforming the state’s former three strikes law but attempting to introduce anti-truancy laws she implemented in San Francisco statewide.
Still, Harris’s more liberal record in Washington, from her endorsement of Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, Black Lives Matter, expanding the Supreme Court, a mandatory gun buyback program, a fracking ban, and even a federal job guarantee, created similar problems for her with more centrist Democrats and independents.
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Harris and Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), her vice presidential pick, sat down with CNN in Georgia on Thursday as the pair toured the Peach State after last week’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The interview is scheduled to be broadcast in its entirety at 9 p.m. Thursday.