A week ago, the Harris-Walz campaign tried to get ahead of a visit to the battleground state of Michigan from GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance by declaring that Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, did not support electric vehicle mandates.
One thing they said Vance would likely claim during his Michigan trip is that “Vice President Harris wants to force every American to own an electric vehicle,” The Spectator reported at the time.
“Vice President Harris does not support an electric vehicle mandate,” Ammar Moussa, the campaign’s rapid response director, went on to say, according to the report.
It was a pretty eye-opening statement, as we noted, considering her history of support for such mandates – including her co-sponsorship of the 2019 Zero-Emission Vehicles Act and even more sweeping positions she took on EV/climate change mandates (to the tune of over $10 trillion) during her failed 2020 presidential campaign.
READ MORE: Kamala Harris Pulls Another Flip-Flop, the Second One Today
Because Harris and her staff have been extremely evasive when it comes to policy talk and details, the Axios news outlet pressed them shortly after the statement was issued as to whether this meant she would veto or sign that 2019 bill she put her name to if it ever hit her desk in the event she wins the election.
It took the campaign a week to formally respond to the request after a brief “back and forth” with the reporter. Their response? No comment:
Harris’ campaign has sent contradictory signals about her position on a mandate for automakers — a key issue in pivotal Midwestern states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, where many autoworkers are based.
- In a lengthy “fact-check” email last week that covered several issues, a campaign spokesperson included a line saying that Harris “does not support an electric vehicle mandate” — suggesting she changed her previous position, without elaborating.
- On Aug. 28 Axios asked the Harris campaign to clarify her position, and whether she would sign or veto a bill she co-sponsored in 2019 that included such a mandate for manufacturers.
- On Tuesday afternoon, Harris’ campaign ultimately declined to comment.
New: the Harris campaign wrote in an email that she “does not support an electric vehicle mandate.”
I asked if that meant she would veto or sign the bill she co-sponsored in 2019 w/ such a mandate for manufacturers.
The campaign declined to commenthttps://t.co/ogOwDdDD99
— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) September 4, 2024
I asked the campaign last Wednesday if she would sign or veto the 2019 bill if she’s elected.
After some back and forth, on Tuesday the campaign ultimately declined to comment.— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) September 4, 2024
Just pathetic. This is what happens when you rely on campaign staffers and officials to do your speaking for you rather than speak for yourself. But then again, this is Kamala Harris we are talking about here, a public official who creates even more confusion than her staff does when she tries to act like she knows what she’s talking about.
Fascinatingly, when this happens, Harris has been known to punish her staff for the mistakes she makes during speeches and interviews, blaming them for the fact that she’s not a policy wonk and doesn’t like to dive too deeply into the weeds.
The Washington Post of all places let the cat out of the bag on this in December 2021:
Staffers who worked for Harris before she was vice president said one consistent problem was that Harris would refuse to wade into briefing materials prepared by staff members, then berate employees when she appeared unprepared.
“It’s clear that you’re not working with somebody who is willing to do the prep and the work,” one former staffer said. “With Kamala you have to put up with a constant amount of soul-destroying criticism and also her own lack of confidence. So you’re constantly sort of propping up a bully and it’s not really clear why.”
In other words, Harris can’t be bothered to do due diligence on anything she speaks publicly about. She expects to be able to spout off common talking points and buzzwords that make the media and the activist left swoon, and when she ends up getting embarrassed about it later, it’s the hard-working staffers behind the scenes who pay the price.
Sounds an awful lot like an empty suit if you ask me.
Harris is no doubt a radical leftist, something that was made clear in 2019 when she ran for president. But she is now trying to shift to the center not just by flip-flopping on some of those 2019 stances but also by adopting some Republican themes and some of Donald Trump’s policy positions as her own, with her spokespeople having to do the heavy lifting of explaining (very briefly) where she currently is on these matters (subject to change, of course).
If it feels like a lot of what’s happening in the Harris camp is being done on the fly – with various factions seemingly working against each other without knowing it, it’s because it is. That should terrify Americans who are tired of nearly four years of an incoherent, incompetent “leader” in the White House who 50 percent of the time left the details to his staff to explain because he couldn’t and who the other 50 percent of the time was having his strings pulled by the woke left.
America can’t take another four years of this, which is the main reason why the Harris-Walz presidential campaign needs to be shut down at the ballot box come November. Because the alternative is too disconcerting to contemplate.
Related: Say What? Kamala Spox Steps in It Big Time With Response to Critics of Joint Harris-Walz Interview
