Labor Day marks the traditional start of the presidential campaign season — yet, by this point in the calendar, the major candidates have usually been running for months. Not so this election cycle. This race has one new candidate, and both she and the old one are scrambling to define their differences.
By the Editorial Board
Following President Joe Biden’s exit from the race in July, Vice President Kamala Harris has had to quickly assemble a national campaign. Already, some differences between her and former president Donald Trump are stark. Ms. Harris offers an optimistic view of the country and its future and has largely refused to respond to Mr. Trump’s jabs. Mr. Trump has chosen to make “American carnage,” the term he coined in his 2017 inaugural address, his guiding theme. Hints of moderation that came after his near-assassination in July seem a thing of the past.
In character, style, tone, outlook, dignity, and, yes, race and gender, the two candidates are distinct.
The distinctions between them on policy substance, however, are somewhat fuzzier. Aside from certain specifics — such as building the border wall, conducting mass deportations and raising tariffs — Mr. Trump has never detailed much of an agenda. (His supporters at Project 2025 have prepared a pointedly conservative plan for his second term, though Mr. Trump distanced himself from it after it became a political liability.) As for Ms. Harris, the charitable view is that she has had little time to develop detailed proposals. The less generous take is that she wants to avoid revealing many specifics, lest she alienate one constituency or another. Coasting on “vibes” has worked well for her so far; she has taken a slim lead in national polling, and surveys suggest she has become competitive in all the battleground states.
But the novelty of Ms. Harris’s campaign is wearing thin as an excuse for releasing only the schematics of a platform. She promises “a new way forward,” pitching herself as a change agent, even though she is the sitting vice president and takes credit for the elements of the Biden agenda with which she wants to be associated, such as a cap on seniors’ insulin costs and the administration’s climate plan. As the recent spike in her favorability ratings indicates, voters’ impressions of her are malleable, and focus groups suggest that many have questions about what she stands for.
What do we know so far? Sparse as they are, the plans the candidates have released share some common elements, reflecting the populist turn in the country’s politics. Mr. Trump pandered to Nevada workers by proposing to waive taxes on tips. Ms. Harris copied him. Neither candidate has a plan to right the country’s escalating debt trajectory. Though on this score, Mr. Trump presents a more troubling agenda; the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Wharton Budget Model reckons that he would add $5.8 trillion to the primary deficit over a decade, while Ms. Harris would add only $1.2 trillion.
Though specifics are light, Ms. Harris is plotting a wiser course. She is right to emphasize boosting housing supply, the key to lowering housing costs, and to propose enhancing effective anti-poverty programs such as the child tax credit and the earned-income tax credit. Unlike Mr. Trump, she acknowledges the fact of climate change, does not threaten Justice Department independence and seeks robust protections for reproductive rights. Mr. Trump, meanwhile, is offering a far less appealing domestic plan, focusing on illegal immigration, tariffs and ending the green energy transition, and rightly lamenting illegal immigration without offering solutions to the problem.
On foreign policy, Ms. Harris has drawn perhaps her clearest differences with Mr. Trump. She has applauded Mr. Biden’s work to strengthen U.S. alliances such as NATO, promised to stand with Ukraine and defended emphatically America’s traditional leadership role in the world. Mr. Trump’s vice-presidential nominee, Sen. JD Vance (Ohio), shares the former president’s neo-isolationist worldview. Trump’s choice of Mr. Vance suggests he would continue to challenge traditional alliances while going easy on rivals such as Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In other words, the substantive contrasts Ms. Harris draws with Mr. Trump generally make her look better. But should Americans settle? Campaigns have been defining policy downward. The 2012 election cycle, when President Barack Obama ran against former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, was the last time a presidential race turned on substantive debate. Ms. Harris says she wants to elevate American politics, an imperative that Mr. Trump has again shown little interest in. She therefore has an opportunity to lift up her campaign by going deep on substance.
