When Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the campaign for the presidential election on July 21, he left a Democratic camp apathetic and discomfited in the face of the presidential election which arrived less than four months later. But, invested almost immediately and without any internal dispute, its vice-president Kamala Harris was able to reverse the trend in a few weeks, with a clear gain in popularity in the polls and the return of optimism in her camp.
However, “Kamalamania” seems to have bogged down somewhat in recent weeks, giving way to an election which once again promises to be extremely close. To try to win the race for the White House, Kamala Harris has deliberately kept a large part of her program vague, with the exception of a few key proposals. A look back at five key measures wanted by the Democrat.
To counter inflation, boost consumption
Kamala Harris assures us: she is the candidate of the middle classes. Her promise is to create an “economy of possibilities”, as she repeated during her campaign. To do this, it intends in particular to revive consumption and stimulate demand, whether through a birth tax credit, or aid for access to real estate ownership or business creation. .
To fight inflation, the Democratic candidate also wants to fight against the “anti-competitive” practices of certain companies, accused of raising prices to increase their margins, without detailing her method. She further promises a “fairer tax system”, by increasing taxes on large companies and on the richest people, in order to allow better redistribution towards the most precarious households.
The right to abortion at the heart of the campaign
This is perhaps the subject on which Kamala Harris has focused her campaign the most: the defense of the right to abortion. When the American Supreme Court, with a conservative majority, ended the constitutional guarantee of the right to abortion in 2022, leaving each state free to legislate on the subject, Kamala Harris was one of the most invested in the camp Democrat to denounce this change of heart.
The candidate wishes in particular to pass a federal law which would incorporate the provisions of this now famous Roe vs Wade decision, and would once again guarantee this freedom. And this, in order to guarantee the freedom for women to “make decisions concerning their own bodies”, she affirmed. A chosen angle of attack in the face of Donald Trump’s groping on the subject, in an election which promises to be perhaps more gendered than ever.
On the climate, a partial about-face
The environmental aspect is particularly symbolic of the three months of express campaign that Kamala Harris has just led to try to reverse the dynamic of Donald Trump. If the Democratic candidate assured that she wanted to advance “environmental justice”, and defended during the Democratic convention “the right to breathe clean air, to drink clean water and to live without the pollution that fuels the climate crisis”, the climate aspect is far from being at the heart of his program. Enough to be interpreted by some as a desire to lead a campaign that is as less divisive and as central as possible, contrasting with the radicalism of his rival.
One example is particularly glaring: his reversal on hydraulic fracturing, a method of hydrocarbon extraction denounced by environmental defenders because it is considered very polluting. While she called for banning this practice during her campaign in the Democratic primaries in 2019, Kamala Harris now defends it, no longer deeming it incompatible with climate objectives, to the great dismay of some. During her debate with Donald Trump, she also took pride in the fact that the United States had “experienced the largest increase in national oil production in history” during the last four years. The Democratic candidate, however, calls for continuing the massive investments for the decarbonization of the American economy launched during the presidency of Joe Biden.
The defense of carrying weapons
This is still a highly sensitive subject in the United States, where nearly a third of adults and 40% of American households own at least one firearm. Kamala Harris promised during her campaign to better regulate the circulation of weapons, in particular by banning the sale of high-capacity assault rifles – in other words, weapons of war, like those used during the attempted assassination against Donald Trump. But also by systematizing the verification of the criminal and psychiatric records of weapon purchasers.
But, similar to her proposals on climate, Kamala Harris is far from wanting to wage war on the American Second Amendment, despite accusations from Donald Trump who claims that she wants to “seize” the weapons of American citizens . The Democratic candidate also highlighted an aspect of her life that she had never really mentioned until now: yes, she herself has a weapon at home. And if someone broke into her house, “he would be shot,” she said on the set of star presenter Oprah Winfrey. A way of giving assurances on the subject. Maybe too much?
Internationally, continuity, but…
On the international side, Kamala Harris seems to be continuing Joe Biden’s mandate. In the Middle East, the Democratic candidate intends to maintain her support for Israel. She promised that she would “always ensure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself”, ensuring that she did not intend to suspend the delivery of arms from the United States to the Jewish state. Like Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate also insists on a ceasefire in Gaza, despite the inability of the current American president to achieve it so far.
On the European continent, Kamala Harris assured she would stand “firmly alongside Ukraine and (the) NATO allies” and would not make “friends with dictators”. Enough to suggest a certain continuity of military and economic support from the United States towards kyiv. Even if nothing suggests that everything will continue as before, even in the event of the election of the current vice-president at the head of the country. “Kamala Harris, like Obama, is representative of an American elite which is not the product of the Cold War, and does not have intimate, cultural links with Europe, unlike Joe Biden,” explained the former diplomat Jérémie Gallon to L’Express. “The Europeans, however, would be making a big mistake if they said to themselves that with Harris, everything will continue as before. On the contrary, they must put themselves in working order to develop this relationship.” Answer on November 5.