Vice President Kamala Harris said on Wednesday that the Biden administration had done more in the past two years to wrangle rising inflation “than most advanced economies,” but admitted that more needed to be done to convince a deeply pessimistic public that the president’s policies had been beneficial to Americans.
Ms. Harris, speaking at the DealBook Summit in New York, said that a strong economy bolstered by record-low unemployment and stable wages was not enough to “connect with the heart and the experience and the feelings of the American people.”
She also noted that prices remained too high for many. “We still have work to do to address that,” Ms. Harris added.
The vice president echoed comments by President Biden in recent days, as a slate of polls show him trailing former President Donald J. Trump in battleground states ahead of the 2024 election. Ms. Harris also took a swipe at focusing on polls to determine what will happen next year.
“If I listened to polls, I would have never run for my first office or my second one, and here I am as vice president,” she said.
But she also used her appearance at the economy-focused gathering of business leaders and politicians, operated by The New York Times, to make a case for herself and hit back at political criticism.
Ms. Harris, who has faced questions about her ability to govern and her potential as Mr. Biden’s heir apparent, seemed slightly exasperated when asked if a vote for Mr. Biden was a vote for President Harris.
“A vote for President Biden is a vote for President Biden and Vice President Harris,” she said. “We are a ticket. It’s called Biden-Harris. That’s the administration that is on the ticket. Yes, I was elected. And I intend to be re-elected, as does the president.”
Ms. Harris also downplayed concerns about Mr. Biden’s age raised by Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the former House speaker, during an interview earlier in the day. Mr. McCarthy, discussing talks he had with Mr. Biden over the federal debt limit this spring, said that the president, 81, “talked from cards” during negotiations. (Mr. McCarthy previously said that Mr. Biden had been “very professional, very smart, very tough” during their talks.)
Ms. Harris, referring to Mr. McCarthy being ousted from the speakership, said that “when anyone who has had the experience that he has most recently had, I don’t think he’s a judge of negotiations.”
The vice president was less definitive when asked about other hot-button issues, including the war in the Middle East, Elon Musk and antisemitism, and how social media platforms could undermine national security.
She sidestepped a question about Mr. Musk’s sharing of antisemitic tropes on X, even though the White House has condemned his actions. And she dodged another about whether TikTok should be regulated.
The vice president also did not directly answer questions about whether Israel had abided by international law in its war against Hamas, and did not venture from other senior officials’ responses in recent weeks.
“When you are in the midst of attempting to leverage whatever influence or authority you have in a relationship, in a way that it will impact decisions, it is counterproductive to do that publicly,” Ms. Harris said. “It doesn’t mean it’s not being done.”
Source: Elections - nytimes.com
