Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has abandoned yet another one of her policy pledges from her 2019-20 presidential campaign.
She no longer supports, according to recent reporting by Axios, a ban on plastic straws.
“I think we should,” she told CNN host Erin Burnett in 2019 during a townhall. “We do need to ban the plastic.”
But now, when asked by Axios if she still holds that position, her campaign says she’s changed her mind. “She joked even then about how crappy paper straws are and the need to come up with better eco-friendly alternatives,” the anonymous campaign official said.
It’s the latest policy shift, albeit a small one, from Harris. The overall trend is quite obvious. While she tried to run further to the left during her first presidential run in a bid to secure the Democratic nomination, now that she’s actually the presidential candidate she’s trying to run to the center.
She has now walked back — at least as told by anonymous campaign officials to the press over the past month — her past support for Medicare for All, a federal gun buyback program, rethinking Immigration and Customs Enforcement and a ban on fracking.
“My values have not changed,” was her mantra during her recent interview with CNN’s Dana Bash when asked about her policy shifts.
It’s possible, of course, that Harris is indeed as progressive as ever but she recognizes the need for pragmatism and incremental change rather than radical change.
It’s also possible that she just values obtaining power by any means necessary and is willing to say anything to get it.
Both are also possible.
Even so, if Harris prevails in November, it is for the best that she continues to run toward the middle. That way, if she does win, she will have done so on a more moderate platform and won’t be able to legitimately claim to have a mandate to pursue a far-left agenda.
Of course, she’s already slipped a bit in floating price controls as an idea she wrongly thinks has merit.
But it’s overall apparent that Democrats are getting the memo that a hard-left agenda isn’t what Americans are clamoring for at this time. And that’s a good thing.
