The Radical Kamala Harris the Media Won't Tell You About

As she attempts to pivot to the middle for the election, a look back at her past positions.

Introduction: The media have breathlessly reported on instances where JD Vance has reportedly changed his mind. What, then, of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrat’s anointed nominee?

I usually try to keep my writing focused on what the media does, pointing out when they err in their coverage. 

But I think, to really try to address the current, disheartening state of American mainstream media, it’s valuable to come at the issue from the other side of the equation: the errors of omission. 

That’s particularly important during an election, when any candidate’s track record requires public scrutiny. Too often, that doesn’t happen with Democratic candidates. And I think it’s happening right now, with Vice President Kamala Harris, who has a long legacy of purported beliefs on the public record. Many of them aren’t consistent. Many are unflattering in the light of day.

Rather than address Harris’s flip-flops — from her time as a senator and her failed 2020 campaign — with an ounce of the outrage that they’ve shown Vance, the press have instead fretted about how Republicans are “pouncing” on her “pivots.”

So I decided to do the work for them. Here’s a list of policy areas where Harris has changed her tune, often in ways that appear designed to paper over her more radical progressive past. 

Do you remember how unhinged her policies were a few years ago? I fear the media are already trying to retcon it. 

Immigration

There’s perhaps no issue that typifies Harris abandoning her purported principles as immigration. In 2020, Harris was among the majority of Democratic candidates for president who supported decriminalizing crossing the border. 

It made her role as Border Czar an odd one, and perhaps explains her failure. But voters would be remiss to head to the polls without remembering what she actually wanted to do: eliminate ICE, end the construction of the border wall, and undo Trump’s policies that actually reduced illegal immigration. 

Fracking

But that’s far from the only issue where Harris now purports to hold a more reasonable position. 

Remember her calls for a total ban on fracking, as a candidate in the Democratic primary of 2020? She’s since pivoted to the middle to try to win votes in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. But in 2019, she was unequivocal: “there’s no question, I’m in favor of banning fracking.”

She’s since abandoned that position. The press, who, in theory, should be applying scrutiny to candidates and their backgrounds, sees no problem now that she claims she won’t ban fracking. “Recalibrates” is how CNN dubbed it. E&E News, owned by Politico, went further, claiming “Harris flips the script on fracking.”

At least for the Associated Press, the problem appeared to be that Trump pointed her old, radically progressive policy out.

Climate Change

But fracking was just one of Harris’s radical environmental positions. In the same CNN “climate crisis” town hall where Harris gave the quote, she also said that, as president, she would:

1. Sick her Department of Justice on oil and gas companies for their supposed crimes against the climate;

2. Eliminate the filibuster to pass the nearly $100 trillion special interest giveaway “Green New Deal”; and

3. Ban plastic straws.

Does that sound like a moderate?

Criminal Justice

Despite her pivot to an allegedly tough stance on crime, Harris, though she’ll claim to the contrary, supported defunding the police, “reimagining” public safety, and “redirecting resources” away from police departments.

Perhaps the worst of it was when Kenosha and other American cities burned in August 2020. Harris said she “stands with protestors” who set the cities ablaze and tweeted out a link asking people to donate to a bail fund for the protests, which famously bailed out violent rioters.  

Second Amendment Rights

When it comes to people who actually follow the law, Harris is much harsher. She hasn’t pivoted on this point (yet) but voters would do well to remember what Harris has said about lawful gun owners.

In 2019, she said she would shut down the production of and ban the production of “assault weapons” (whatever that means) and AR-15 rifles, saying she would support a “mandatory gun buy-back” (how it can be both ‘mandatory’ and a ‘buy-back’ in any meaningful sense escapes me).

What it all adds up to is a gun confiscation.

Does that sound like a good idea to you?

Health Care

And has anyone bothered to ask her about her views on health care? The latest is that she doesn’t support Medicare For All, instead allegedly backing “an array of moderate alternatives.”

Which is interesting, because she wrote the book on Medicare For All.

Biden’s Cognitive Decline

And where honesty is concerned, we don’t have to go back far to recall Harris’s comments about Joe Biden’s supposed cognitive abilities. Following his disastrous debate performance, Harris was there leading the charge of voices telling you not to believe your lying eyes. It was only the latest in her months-long effort to bury the truth.

“Defending Democracy”

And for a candidate who appears to see domestic threats to Democracy around every corner, Harris has a curious way of allegedly defending it.

Harris’s rise is hardly a reflection of democracy, as I wrote recently over on The Commons at American Compass. She was anointed despite securing zero primary votes, chosen instead by Democratic superdelegates with 99% of the vote. Stalin would blush. The last time she faced an electorate — in the lead-up to the 2020 Iowa caucus — she couldn’t even crack double-digit support.

Beyond grabbing the mantle of a party that cast zero votes for her, she’s long been open to the idea of expanding the Supreme Court so that Democrats can get their way. 

Sacrificing our institutions for partisan expediency doesn’t sound very democracy-defense-y. 

“Russian Collusion”

And speaking of efforts to undermine democracy, it’s worth remembering that Harris was a long-time believer in the conspiracy theory that Trump was compromised by the Russians.

Conspiracy Theories

And that was simply the tip of her conspiracy theory promotion iceberg. From the invented border patrol “whipping” story, to Trump allegedly tear-gassing protestors and supposed “Russian bounties” on American servicemen, Harris was frequently happy to fudge the truth if doing so advanced Democratic talking points.

But the best of them all was…

Jussie Smollett

The takeaway: Of course, one way to get to the heart of what a Harris administration might look like would be for the candidate to talk to the media. But she isn’t interested. And the press aren’t doing anything about it.

She still hasn’t given an interview, live, to any media outlet since being anointed the nominee nearly three weeks ago. That despite a press that isn’t exactly antagonistic. 

So, which Harris is really on the ballot? The moderate, “vibes” machination currently being soft-sounded? Or the radical, open-borders progressive, running to take away your right to bear arms and heat your homes?

I suppose it’s anyone’s guess.