Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, pushed back on being labeled the “most liberal” senator by Vice President Mike Pence during the debate in an interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes.
Correspondent Norah O’Donnell told Harris that she was rated the most liberal senator by non-partisan GovTrack, and asked if she would bring those progressive policies she supported as a senator to a Biden administration.
“What I will do, and I promise you this, and this is what Joe wants me to do, this was part of our deal,” Harris responded, “I will always share with him my lived experience as it relates to any issue that we confront.”
When pressed by O’Donnell if that is a socialist or progressive perspective, Harris laughingly answered “No, no, it is the perspective of, of a woman who grew up a Black child in America, who was also a prosecutor, who also has a mother who arrived here at the age of 19 from India. Who also, you know, likes hip-hop.”
O’Donnell pointed out during the interview that Harris fought for the Green New Deal, Medicare For All, and legalizing marijuana, policies which Joe Biden didn’t support.
“I would not have joined the ticket if I didn’t support what Joe was proposing,” Harris responded when asked if she would push for Medicare For All at a later stage.
In July 2019, Harris proposed Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act, which would legalize the drug federally, expunge certain past marijuana-related offenses from people’s criminal records, and introduce a 5 percent federal tax on marijuana.
Harris also co-sponsored Bernie Sanders’ Medicare For All Act and Senator Edward Markey’s Green New Deal resolution in 2019.
Harris supported decriminalizing border crossings by undocumented immigrants and providing taxpayer-funded healthcare for those crossing the U.S. border illegally.
However, Harris’s positions have been widely considered to be shifting.
“You’re very different in the policies you’ve supported in the past,” O’Donnell told Harris at the beginning of the interview.
The left-leaning Washington Post admits that Harris was criticized for her varied positions during her presidential campaign.
Harris’s recent repeated claims that Joe Biden will not ban fracking also drew heavy criticism from Republicans, who argued that both Biden and Harris expressed opposite views on multiple occasions.
