Even Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders doesn’t believe that Kamala Harris has flipped her positions but kept her values. So confusing are Harris’ claims that she has reversed her fundamental positions but retained her foundational values that Sen. Sanders has been forced to come to the aid of his fellow lefty. While Sanders may have cleared up the question about where Harris stands (unchanged), he has only added to those about who she is.
Make no mistake, Kamala Harris is a green extremist. When she was in the Senate and running for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, she co-sponsored the gargantuan Green New Deal and advocated banning fracking. Yet now, as she runs for president four years later, she claims that she would not ban fracking — a crucial issue in battleground Pennsylvania.
Without a doubt, Kamala Harris is an open-borders champion. She not only supported decriminalizing illegal immigration, but as a senator visited the southern border to excoriate the Trump administration’s attempts to close it. She also bought into the border patrol whipping hoax. Yet, now as she runs for president four years later, she claims that she supports a tough border policy.
This leftist leopard’s claims to have changed her spots elicited questions during her first interview after becoming the Democrats’ second-choice 2024 nominee and later in her debate with former President Donald Trump.
When interviewer Dana Bash raised her changed positions on fracking and illegal immigration, Harris disputed both: “No, and I made that clear on the debate stage in 2020, that I would not ban fracking… As president, I will not ban fracking.” And on illegal immigration, she said: “[W]e have laws that have to be followed and enforced that address and deal with people who cross our border illegally. And there should be consequence.”
Still pushing at the discrepancy between Harris then and Harris now, Bash asked: “Generally speaking, how should voters look at some of the changes that you’ve made — that you explained some of here — in your policy?”
Harris again sought to evade by contrasting positions with “values”: “Dana, I think the — the — the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed.”
When the same discrepancy between Harris and her claims to have reversed previous positions was noted by Linsey Davis of ABC News in the Sept. 10 debate, Harris again resorted to her “values” dodge: “So my values have not changed.”
Having heard Kamala’s first attempt at a bait and switch between her positions and values, Bernie Sanders felt compelled on Meet the Press to step in and translate Harris’ linguistic legerdemain to the Left: “No, I don’t think she’s abandoning her ideals. I think she’s trying to be pragmatic and doing what she thinks is right in order to win the election.”
Kamala Harris’ attempts to try and be “pragmatic and doing what she thinks is right in order to win the election” have produced layers of duplicity worthy of an onion. Peeled down to its center, the question is: Were you lying then, or are you lying now?
Was Harris telling the truth when she was a leftist extremist from her time in the Senate to when she ran for president in 2019? Or is Harris telling the truth now when she claims that primary components of her leftist tenets are now reversed? And is she somehow telling the truth when she claims that, despite reversing her previous positions, her “values” — which her positions are supposed to reflect — are somehow still intact even though the positions themselves no longer are?
Apparently only Sanders, given his “she’s trying to be pragmatic” comment, can manage to tell the truth about Kamala’s contortions over her record. This, of course, is a politically polite way of saying that Harris is being untruthful.
Harris’ attempt to change her positions should leave America wondering. In the next two months, what other positions will she reverse while still maintaining her “values?” If elected, which positions will she re-reverse back? If a leopard can change its spots once, then it can change into anything that suits it again and again.
Harris is a uniquely unscrutinized candidate for someone who has already attained America’s second-highest office and now seeks its highest. In 2020, she did not face a single presidential voter, yet she became the vice president. In 2024, she did not face a single presidential voter, yet she has become the Democrats’ nominee. Now with less than two months to go before the election, she has not done a single press conference.
Harris claims she has reneged on her fundamental positions, while also claiming that she has not — while steadfastly refusing to explain how this oxymoronic situation can exist and dodging all settings in which it could be examined.
In the end, America should be asking itself: If Bernie Sanders does not believe Kamala Harris, why should we?
J.T. Young was a professional staffer in the House and Senate from 1987-2000, served in the Department of Treasury and Office of Management and Budget from 2001-2004, and was director of government relations for a Fortune 20 company from 2004-2023.