Can you be the change candidate and the sitting VP? Kamala Harris is trying

WASHINGTON — Twice during her first sit-down interview as the Democratic presidential nominee last week, Kamala Harris used the phrase of someone challenging a sitting officeholder.

Americans are ready to "turn the page," Harris told CNN anchor Dana Bash.

Harris, of course, wasn't suggesting moving on from herself and the Biden administration. She meant turning the page from Donald Trump ? the former president and Republican nominee who, Harris said, for the past decade has pushed "an agenda and an environment that is about diminishing the character and the strength of who we are as Americans."

To sustain her polling momentum for multiple weeks now, Harris has managed a political balancing act – casting herself as the change candidate even though she’s an incumbent vice president who has created little distance on policy with outgoing President Joe Biden.

"We are charting a new way forward," Harris said in her acceptance speech last month at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in what's become a go-to slogan of her campaign.

More: Kamala Harris addresses flip-flopping, takes on Trump in CNN interview with Walz

Harris has used that drumbeat ? framing herself as the candidate who stands for change, a new vision and the future ? to help erase polling leads in key battlegrounds Trump previously held over Biden. She's coalesced support of key Democratic constituencies, including Black, Latino and young voters, whose backing of Biden lagged.

Yet the fundamental paradox of Harris' candidacy ? a sitting vice president for three and a half years running on a break from the past ? provides an opening for Trump with a 2024 election now in the post-Labor Day homestretch. The Trump campaign is working to remind Americans that their anxieties about the economy and migration at the border came while Harris was working directly alongside Biden.

"She's trying to thread the needle," said Matt Grossman, director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research at Michigan State University, adding that Harris has an incentive to "pick and choose" what she highlights from her record as vice president because the majority of Americans are concerned with the direction of the country.

She has executed the strategy so far, Grossman said, in part because the absence of a long Democratic primary has allowed Harris to "design the self-image she wanted." He said Harris ? the first Black and Asian female presidential nominee of a major party ? also offers a drastically different personal image than Biden.

But above all, 2024 is not a typical election, and her opponent is not a typical opponent.

Harris is in the unique position of running against a former president in Trump, who has now been the Republican nominee three straight election cycles and dominated American politics for nearly a decade. He's been in the media spotlight even longer, and racked up well-documented controversies ? including four criminal indictments and two impeachments. It has allowed Harris to position the race as a referendum on Trump.

"What would have seemed like an odd claim in other contexts seems more reasonable now that we have really been in a Trump era," Grossman said.

More: Harris campaign launches TV ads around Trump's Mar-a-lago home tying him to Project 2025

Trump campaign counters with the 'real record of Kamala Harris'

The Trump campaign has labeled Harris "dangerously liberal" and tried to tie her to the low marks Biden has received for his handling of the economy and inflation. A Trump campaign television ad released last week highlighted clips of Harris saying "everyday prices are too high," with the vice president singling out grocery items like ground beef that are up 50% in costs. The ad then show Harris' past statements declaring "Bidenomics is working."

Meanwhile, the Harris campaign has been careful in deploying Biden on the 2024 campaign trail, with Harris and Biden making their first joint campaign appearance together on Monday in Pittsburgh with union members. Yet as the vice president, Harris will remain tethered to Biden for the duration of the campaign, making her the potential beneficiary of the administration's achievements and losses.

"Nothing says charting 'a new way forward' like campaigning with Joe Biden on Labor Day to remind voters how much more everything costs under Bidenomics," Trump campaign advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles wrote in a memo Tuesday.

"We hope it’s only a matter of time before the public ? through the Trump campaign, millions of citizen journalists, and alternate media ? breaks through and hears the real Kamala Harris record," the memo continues.

Yet since Harris replaced Biden as the Democratic nominee, Trump ? who has introduced several of his trademark pejorative nicknames for Harris, most recently "Comrade Kamala" ? has struggled to find a winning attack.

Harris leads Trump nationally 48%-43% among likely voters in a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll released last week, with the Democratic nominee defying negative perceptions about the state of the county that historically doom a candidate in office. Only 31% of Americans surveyed said the country is on the right track, compared to 58% who said it is on the wrong track.

More: New election poll shows low-income voters flocking to Kamala Harris over Donald Trump

Voters seem willing to give Harris more of a pass on the economic concerns than they were Biden. The USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll found more voters believe Trump would do a better job handling the economy than Harris, but it's by a smaller 51%-45% margin compared to July, when Trump held a 54%-40% advantage on the economy over Biden.

For more than a year, polling showed voters widely dissatisfied with Biden and Trump as their main two choices, which opened the door for Harris to present herself as a new alternative when she quickly emerged as the Democratic nominee.

And Harris' presentation as the change candidate is aided by the historic nature of her White House bid. If elected, she would be the country's first woman president, and she's already the first woman of color to be a major party nominee. Harris, 59, is younger than the 78-year-old Trump. At the DNC in Chicago, she told her personal story as the daughter of middle-class immigrants from Jamaica and India.

"She looks, sounds and acts very different, even from somebody that would fit in the stereotype of a vice president," said Amy Walter, publisher and editor-in-chief of The Cook Political Report. "Because she's a woman, because she's a woman of color, somebody who's not 81, I think that also gives her an advantage in sticking out as someone who literally looks like change and looks different."

Does Harris need to break more from Biden on policy?

The rallying cry of the Harris campaign ? "We're not going back," a line Harris recites in all her campaign speeches ? is meant to reinforce Harris as new versus the old politics of Trump. It's much like the call for "change" and "hope" that former President Barack Obama famously made in the 2008 election after voter fatigue with former President George W. Bush.

Harris is expected to try to use her first televised debate with Trump on Tuesday to further push her version of change.

To make the contrast, the Harris campaign has tried to tie Trump to Project 2025, the policy blueprint of the conservative Heritage Foundation that details a wish-list of controversial policy goals for a potential second Trump administration: eliminating the Department of Education, limiting access to abortion pills, overhauling the FBI and reinstating a first-term Trump executive order to allow the president to replace civil servants with political appointees throughout the federal government.

Trump has worked to distance himself from Project 2025 despite more than 100 former Trump administration officials having a hand in its creation.

More: What is Project 2025? Inside the conservative plan Trump claims to have 'no idea' about.

Veteran Democratic campaign strategist James Carville, in a New York Times op-ed this week, wrote that every election since the 1990s election lacking a popular incumbent ? like the current one ? turns into a "de facto change election."

"If Bill Clinton prevailed in 1992 on a message of change versus more of the same, if Barack Obama won in 2008 on the audacity of hope and even if Mr. Trump eked it out in 2016 on a blank promise to revive a relic of America, 2024 will be won by who is fresh and who is rotten," Carville said. "It’s quite simple: The shepherd of tomorrow wins the sheep."

Carville said one of the things Harris needs to do to be the "certified fresh candidate" come November is "clearly and decisively break from Mr. Biden on a set of policy priorities she believes would define her presidency."

More: Harris announces rare policy break with Biden on capital-gains tax rate

Harris took a step in that direction Wednesday, when she proposed a less drastic increase to the capital-gains tax rate than Biden supports. Yet to date, Harris has mostly embraced the economic policies and domestic priorities of Biden. Her new proposals have included a first-ever federal ban on price-gouging at grocery stores, $25,000 in down-payment support for first-time homeowners, and a return of COVID-19-era tax credits for families with young children.

"It's challenging, of course, because she's been the vice president for the past three and a half years," David Cohen, a political science professor of the University of Akron, said of Harris maintaining her pitch for change the rest of the campaign.

Cohen said Harris "doesn't want to disavow" what she thinks are accomplishments from the Biden-Harris administration.

"But I think, ultimately, it's very effective framing, because people are tired of 2015 onward ? tired of the polarization," he said.

Reach Joey Garrison on X, formerly Twitter, @joeygarrison.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Kamala Harris' balancing act: running on change as the sitting VP