Harris ‘wasn’t willing’ to publicly break with Biden, says top adviser
Vice President Harris “wasn’t willing” to publicly break with President Biden during her 2024 presidential run, and wanted to avoid the negative news cycles that doing so would have triggered, according to her campaign’s senior adviser.
On the campaign trail, Harris defended her reluctance to publicly criticize the incumbent president, saying she was following a “tradition” of vice presidents staying loyal.
“She wasn’t willing to, you know, change that precedent for whoever the future president, vice presidential partnership would be because it would mean a whole, you know, different set of problems, as if we don’t have enough problems in our democracy right now,” Harris-Walz campaign senior adviser Stephanie Cutter said during an appearance on “Pod Save America,” in an episode released Tuesday.
“So unless we were willing to say, you know, Biden said green and she said blue on any particular issue where we’re never really going to satisfy that,” she added.
“Because she felt like she was part of the administration. So why should she look back and pick out — cherry-pick some things that she would have done differently when she was part of it? And she also, she had tremendous loyalty to President Biden,” Cutter said.
“So, the best we could do and the most that she felt comfortable with was saying, like, ‘Look, vice presidents never break with their presidents. The only time in recent memories is when Pence broke with Trump after Trump stormed the Capitol,’” Cutter added.
Harris addressed the questions during an interview with NBC News in mid-October, after being criticized for a separate interview on “The View” in which she was asked what she would have done differently from Biden and said nothing came to mind.
“I mean to be very candid with you; including Mike Pence, vice presidents are not critical of their presidents. I think that really, actually, in terms of the tradition of it, and also just going forward, it does not make for a productive and important relationship,” Harris told NBC News.
Harris said during an interview on Fox News later that her potential tenure in the White House “will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency,” but again avoided any specific criticism.
Her campaign advisers told “Pod Save America” that she tried to create distance from Biden by focusing on her life experiences, and defining her priorities and perspective as new and reflective of her work both inside and outside the administration.
“So our focus was let’s look to the future. Let’s describe her and her approach to things. Let’s use policies, future-looking policies to demonstrate that difference,” Cutter said. “But in the end, you know, we’ve all seen the data. It’s, too many people thought that you’d be a continuation. Which on the economy was, you know, the incumbent killer.”
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