Where does Kamala Harris stand on some of the 2024 election's top issues?

It’s only two weeks into Harris’ presidential campaign and the areas where she stays or breaks with Joe Biden are under the microscope.

BY NIGEL THOMPSON ON AUGUST 09, 2024

Vice President Kamala Harris announced her presidential run, marking a milestone in her political career. (Credit: Shutterstock)

When President Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election in 2024, it capped off one of the biggest political news weeks of recent memory. In stepping aside, Biden also endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to be the new Democratic presidential nominee on Election Day, now less than 100 days away.

Harris’ nomination won’t be confirmed until the Democratic National Convention that starts on Aug.19, but given a majority of the delegates backing Biden after the primaries have now backed Harris, she is more than likely to be the candidate takes on Republican nominee Donald Trump in November at the top of the Democratic ticket.

In the week-plus since Harris has entered the spotlight, her young campaign has seen record fundraising for a presidential bid and it estimates more than 170,000 volunteers have since signed up to phone bank, canvass or help in any way with get-out-to-vote efforts.

“The momentum and energy for Vice President Harris is real — and so are the fundamentals of this race: this election will be very close and decided by a small number of voters in just a few states,” Michael Tyler, the Harris campaign’s communications director was quoted as writing in a memo by the Associated Press.

The small number of voters could make their choices for or against Harris for any number of reasons, but the best guess is depending on where she stands on some of the 2024 election’s top issues.

Abortion

If there’s one issue taking center stage of Harris’ early presidential campaign, it is her defense of abortion rights. 

“We who believe in reproductive freedom will stop Donald Trump’s extreme abortion bans, because we trust women to make decisions about their own bodies and not have their government tell them what to do,” she said in a speech at her first rally in Wisconsin after Biden dropped out.

Even before the world knew her as the likely new Democratic presidential nominee, Harris was the chief messenger for abortion for the Biden Administration. In the days following the Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe v. Wade, Harris met with a number of lawmakers in conservative states to discuss how to protect abortion rights in the aftermath. 

She’s tied the rise of maternal mortality in the U.S. — especially Black maternal mortality — in recent years to the enactment of restrictive abortion policies in conservative states. 

To shed light on that rise, Harris held the White House’s first-ever Maternal Health Day of Action back in December 2021.

At the start of 2024, she also went on a nationwide “reproductive freedoms tour,” to support efforts for reproductive freedom around the country. 

That tour also included a stop at an abortion clinic in Minnesota, where Harris became the first-ever president or vice president to visit an abortion clinic. There, she called the restrictive policies put in place by some states “immoral.”

“How dare these elected leaders believe they are in a better position to tell women what they need,” she said during the visit. “We have to be a nation that trusts women.”

The Economy

Inflation has made the cost of living a major burden for voters, and it is the top issue across many different polls for voters heading toward Election Day in 2024. But according to the Associated Press, Harris didn’t mention the word once in her first three campaign speeches since Biden dropped out. 

Instead, she’s focused so far on a forward-looking message that will allow Americans “to get ahead.”

“A future where no child has to grow up in poverty, where every senior can retire with dignity and where every worker has the freedom to join a union,” she recently told the American Federation of Teachers.

Looking at economic proposals from Harris’ past White House bid in 2020, she promoted a refundable tax credit of $6,000 (per couple) to help keep up with living expenses, a 35% corporate income tax rate (up from Biden’s proposed 28%), and also pushed to make things like health care and housing more affordable.

Health Care

Like abortion, health care is expected to be another main pillar of Harris’ campaign. What will she do with it? Early expectations are that she would continue with President Biden’s efforts to expand and protect coverage for Americans under the Affordable Care Act.

A look at Harris’ past on the issue shows an evolving view. 

In 2019, Harris signed on to Senator Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All Act, which expanded Medicare to cover every American and eliminated private insurance. She was grilled on her support for it during her 2020 presidential bid and subsequently released her own Medicare for All plan.

Under that proposal, every American would transition to being covered by Medicare over a 10-year timeframe, but private insurance would still have a place under what was called “Medicare Advantage,” which would allow people to opt-in for coverage from a private insurance company.

She’s also likely to promote the Biden Administration's win of Medicare being able to negotiate prices for the 10 costliest medications, which will go into effect in 2026.

Immigration

The verdict is still out on Harris’ impact on the immigration front during the last four years of the Biden Administration. 

In 2021, Harris was appointed as the point person to — as the White House had to clarify multiple times — diplomatically address the issue of immigration at the U.S.’s Southern border. Rather than focus on the physical security at the border — as is often the focus — Harris’ job was to address the root causes of the massive migration of people to the U.S. from countries like Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador.

The two biggest things to come from that role were a commitment of $4 billion in direct assistance and $5.2 in private assistance to the region while visiting Mexico in June 2021, and Harris’ comments of “do not come” directed at migrants during another visit that same month to Guatemala.

More recently, Harris’ campaign chief Julie Chávez Rodriguez, told CBS News that Harris would be likely to keep Biden’s crackdown on asylum seekers. 

The executive order suspended the processing of migrant asylum claims along the border, allowing for their more rapid deportation. In the months after the order, border crossings have fallen to their lowest level under Biden.

“I think at this point the policies that are, you know, having a real impact on ensuring that we have security and order at our border are policies that will continue," Chávez Rodriguez said in response to a question about whether Harris would keep Biden’s asylum crackdown in place.