michael barbaro

From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.” Today: Democratic voters have been drawn to Kamala Harris as a messenger, even though her message remains a work-in-progress. Ahead of her debate performance tonight, what Harris herself says she stands for. Plus, last night’s debate. It’s Wednesday, July 31.

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michael barbaro

Hey, I’m trying to reach room 825, Alex Burns.

speaker

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michael barbaro

Yes.

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alexander burns

Hello?

michael barbaro

Hey, it’s Michael.

alexander burns

Hey.

michael barbaro

We just were serenaded with descriptions of snack attacks, sound-centric scenes, and pinot noir. We’ve reached Alex Burns in Detroit, where he’s covering the Democratic debates. Alex, the last time we spoke, it was right after the first Democratic debate, and all the attention had been on this exchange between Kamala Harris and Joe Biden about busing. But then this other interesting thing happened.

archived recording (kamala harris) No one should have to work more than one job to have a roof over their head and food on the table.

alexander burns

Right, there was this more muddled moment for Kamala Harris.

archived recording (lester holt) You’ve all expressed an interest in talking about health care — archived recording (marianne williamson) I’d like to say something if I might. archived recording (lester holt) — so let’s talk about health care. And this is going to be a show-of-hands question. Many people watching at home have health insurance at their employer. Who here would abolish their private health insurance in favor of a government-run plan?

alexander burns

She raised her hand on the debate stage, and then after the debate, clarified that she thought the question was referring to whether she would give up her own personal private health insurance and enroll in a single-payer plan, and that in fact, she did not favor getting rid of private health insurance entirely.

archived recording (kamala harris) So the question was, would you be willing to give up your private insurance — archived recording (tony dokoupil) That’s not how it was asked. archived recording (kamala harris) — for such a plan, and — archived recording (tony dokoupil) That’s what you heard, right? archived recording (kamala harris) O.K. Yeah, that’s certainly what I heard. And in terms of — I am supportive of “Medicare for all.” And under a Medicare for all policy, private insurance would certainly exist and for supplemental coverage. But —

michael barbaro

And it feels like this is kind of emblematic of Kamala Harris and her entire candidacy.

alexander burns

That’s right, that she’s somebody who is deeply inspiring to liberals, a lot of people who are on the more progressive end of the Democratic Party. But she has consistently stopped short of fully embracing a lot of the big ideological litmus test issues that tend to define those candidates, that folks like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have been much clearer about where they fall on the left-right spectrum. And on the other side of the spectrum, folks like Joe Biden have been just as clear. Kamala Harris, somewhere in between.

michael barbaro

And Alex, why does that matter?

alexander burns

In a presidential election, we tend to try to sort candidates both in terms of how liberal or conservative they are, but also just in terms of what their overarching vision for the country is. What would the country look like after four or eight years of this person’s presidency if they could do anything they wanted or if they could do a lot of the things they wanted? Now, Kamala Harris has been taking her time to sort of lay out exactly what that would look like. And at this point in the campaign, where she has clearly caught on as a very serious contender for the nomination, a lot of Democratic voters I talked to still feel like they don’t totally have their arms around what the vision is supposed to be.

michael barbaro

So what have you been doing in the time since the first debate on that front of trying to understand what she stands for?

alexander burns

Well, we really set out after that first debate to try to get a hold of what that vision was, to try to clarify. To that end, I spent a lot of time talking to people who have worked with her, reading her most recent book, reading columns she wrote over the years, both in San Francisco and nationally, looking at commencement speeches she gave to see sort of what she talks about when she talks about inspirational values. There were some consistent themes that came out of all of that. A number of people — five different people I spoke to about her who have worked quite closely with her said in different ways that she was just not an ideological person. In almost identical language, she’s not ideological. She’s not an ideologue. One man who was one of her most senior advisers as attorney general of California said that he thinks ideology is just not relevant to the way she makes decisions. So all those conversations, all of that reporting was really helpful in getting a broad picture of how she approaches issues, some sense of what goes on in her head as she executes the powers of government. But of course, you can’t really get inside someone’s head without talking to them. And even then, it can be kind of a stretch. So I went to L.A. to actually sit down with her about a week and a half ago. She was out there doing a whole bunch of fundraising, was doing some debate prep. And so on a Sunday afternoon, I trekked out to Century City, to a pretty desolate, corporate part of town where I think she had been doing debate prep. And we sat down at a very, very long conference table in a very, very nice office suite and sort of went right at it.

alexander burns I spoke to a lot of people who you’ve worked with over the years, and there are some pretty consistent themes that come out of that. And one of them that — I don’t know if it was surprising to me, but it was interesting to me. Four or five different people in almost exactly the same language just said, like, she is not ideological. She’s not an ideologue. And I was wondering, just to start, does that ring true to you? kamala harris Yeah. Yeah, it does. alexander burns And what does that mean?

alexander burns

So right off the bat, she basically endorses that description of her and her approach to policy, that she’s not ideological.

kamala harris I mean, I’m not really into labels. For me, I come at issues through the lens of how it actually impacts people, as opposed to, does this issue fit in a certain category of perspective, right?

alexander burns

That she thinks about policy in terms of a series of practical tests, but not necessarily trying to fit it into a particular ideological umbrella or even necessarily some big sweeping integrated vision.

kamala harris You know, if anything, what they would have told you probably is that I have often asked — I always ask questions about policy there based on how will this actually impact a person, to the point that sometimes it just drives them bananas, because I literally get into that level of detail.

alexander burns

You know, for me, that was sort of an interesting statement that she just rejected the basic terms of a debate that a lot of the other candidates and certainly a lot of political analysts want to use to understand campaigns. What it didn’t say to me was if somebody is just a pragmatist, if somebody is just interested in making concrete policy change, well, how do they choose what kinds of policies to pursue and what counts to them as important change? And she talked a lot about less an ideology and more an orientation, that her grounding in thinking about government and in thinking about the role of policy comes from her background as a lawyer, as a prosecutor, as an executive. And when she thinks about policy, asking a series of pretty concrete, ground-level questions to assess whether something is worth doing, not trying to slot it into a bigger picture.

kamala harris Because it really, for me, policy has to be relevant. That’s my guiding principle. Is it relevant? Not does it — is it a beautiful sonnet, right? Is it actually relevant? Because if it’s not, it does not matter. If not, then it’s just, it’s an idea, right? As opposed to what it’s — maybe because my orientation is also as an executive, which is I believe that the things that I say are going to happen will actually happen. Not just supposed to happen, I believe they will actually happen. So for me, knowing that they will actually happen, how will they impact real people? So if anything, there are tests that I have for the relevancy or the significance of policy, but it’s not an ideological test. alexander burns What else is in that list of tests besides just, will it help actual people?

alexander burns

She listed three questions. The first is does it help a substantial number of people?

kamala harris Because policy, if it only impacts just a few, I don’t know that it’s really as relevant, right? To the greater number.

alexander burns

The second question was whether it affects children, how it affects children. And the third question is how long will it take?

kamala harris The significance of the passage of time. So using Brown v. Board of Education as an example of this, the significance of the passage of time is that all those who knew the importance of getting that case there had to be patient to some extent, knowing that they had to build a precedent. So then Brown v. Board of Education was decided in 1954, I believe, May of 1954. And everyone is sitting around. This is my interpretation of what happened. Cha-ching, cha-ching. There are glasses of chardonnay and champagne. Oh, this is lovely and wonderful. We won, right? But not until almost 20 years later did it hit the streets of Berkeley, California. alexander burns Mm-hmm.

alexander burns

And that one to me was sort of the most revealing, that there are a lot of candidates in this race who are promising really, really big changes because they feel they would have profound consequences on everyday people’s lives. The notion that a fundamental test for Kamala Harris is can this be done quickly, to me, was sort of eye opening.

kamala harris Every day in the life of someone who is being denied justice is a very long time. So part of how I think about policy is also through that lens. How long will it take us to get where we need to go? And what will be the cost-benefit of the significance of the passage of time? I guess that’s it.

michael barbaro

Alex, when you pushed her on this, did she give you any examples from her own time in government?

alexander burns

Well, she talked about her decision to, when she was attorney general, walk away from the initial settlement with the big banks around the mortgage crisis.

kamala harris I’m going to tell you, that was one of the most difficult professional and personal experiences that I’ve had.

alexander burns

There was a settlement offer of several billion dollars that she ultimately decided was not adequate. And she, along with several other state attorneys general, walked away from the deal until the banks offered them something substantially greater than that.

kamala harris I knew that every day that we did not have a deal was a day people would lose their homes in real time.

alexander burns

The question was do you help more people later or fewer people sooner, right? Give less help faster or more help after more time has passed. And she chose the latter option in this case, which, in some ways, is the exception that proves the rule, right? But the notion that the pressure to do something quickly was weighing on her, to me, was a pretty vivid description of how she thinks about making big decisions.

kamala harris The way I used to talk about it is that there are people barely holding on with their fingernails in their homes. And the issue there was that, well, that deal would have helped me save, if I remember the numbers correctly, about 40,000, versus what I knew the settlement actually should be, that would have been a lot more.

alexander burns

She talked about this real internal tension around whether to push it even further with the banks, which, of course, is ultimately what she did.

kamala harris But again, it’s the significance of the passage of time. And maybe my orientation comes, again — I’ll repeat — from being an executive and knowing that the decisions that I make are decisions that will actually happen, as opposed to me writing an article or writing a book. alexander burns Just to try to make the subtext text here, like, is that the Elizabeth Warren agenda here, that this is like, yeah, this looks great in a journal article, but, like — kamala harris I don’t know. I don’t know. I mean, I think she’s got some good ideas. And definitely, she’s got some good ideas. But I don’t say what I’m saying to contrast myself with her. Yeah.

alexander burns

It also, to me, explains why, in some ways, she has seemed resistant to or skeptical of some of the really, really monumental policy commitments that other candidates have made, like Medicare for all, because it’s certainly a transformational change. It’s a change that, on a practical level, may or may not be able to happen within the term of one president.

alexander burns I mean, something like Medicare for all, right? The idea that, like, yeah, in four years, everybody’s going to be on a different health plan, and it’s going to be amazing. Do you look at that as a worthy aspiration, but probably not really? kamala harris Well, this is really interesting. I mean, I haven’t been talking about it a lot publicly, but certainly, I certainly do think a lot about that, about what is that transition really going to look like? Because I know that the goal is achievable. But what’s the transition going to look like? And I do give that a lot of thought. I do, because, again, to your point, it’s about — well, and maybe to my point — [LAUGHTER] I’m sorry. It’s just I’ve been working every day, and I’ve got stuff to do non-stop. It is about relevance, right? Like, how are we going to actually get there? This thing sounds great, but how are we going to actually get there?

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michael barbaro

We’ll be right back. Harris seems to be describing a vision of governing within a system that has real limitations and constraints. But a lot of her rivals in this race and the people that she’s going to be standing next to on stage Wednesday night stand for sweeping change that would kind of swap out a burdened system and replace it with something where they can do more.

alexander burns

Yeah, I asked her about exactly that.

alexander burns Tell me if you totally disagree with this, obviously, right? But on the one hand in the race, you have Warren and Sanders, who very clearly want to restructure society, right? kamala harris Right. alexander burns And on the other side — you’re shaking your head. kamala harris Yeah, well, because I’m not trying to restructure society. I’m just trying to take care of the issues that wake people up in the middle of the night. alexander burns Yeah. And you think those people can be essentially relieved of that in a meaningful, durable way without changing fundamental structures? kamala harris Well, no, no, no. But let me tell you the fundamental structures that I think about. And it’s probably not what you have in mind, but it’s certainly how I think about it. Infrastructure — America’s infrastructure, 125, 150 years old, bridges and highways falling apart. Almost half of American families are a $400 unexpected expense away from complete upheaval. Do you know how much four tires cost? alexander burns I don’t. kamala harris It’s about that. speaker He’s a New Yorker. kamala harris But — I know, but this is my point about the details of how I think about it. Because here’s how I think about the whole infrastructure issue. People are driving every day on roads and bridges that have potholes. Why do you need to buy new tires? Because you’re driving on those damn potholes every day. Another fact that I know to be true for working families, many working families cannot afford to live where they work. So they got these long commutes, and their cars are breaking down. Like, this is what I mean about looking at the policy through the lens of real people. I would —

alexander burns

So her argument is if you fix the roads and fewer people have to replace their tires because of these potholes, that ought to be seen as a fundamental change. It’s not getting rid of the electoral college. It’s not reforming the Supreme Court. It’s not creating a Canadian-style health care system, right? It’s infrastructure. Is that fundamental change? That’s a question that other people, I guess, can assess what counts to them. But to me, it’s super revealing that she would say, no, I am in favor of fundamental change. And the example of that is this extremely non-controversial, broadly supported idea of spending more money on roads. It’s not really a dividing line between her and other candidates. What is a dividing line between her and other candidates is that she considers that fundamental change.

kamala harris Now, I don’t know. Do you call that grand systems change or not? I don’t know. But I’ll tell you that it’ll have a profound impact on a lot of people’s lives — profound.

alexander burns

I guess one of my big takeaways here is that it’s not just that she resists positioning herself on a left-right spectrum. It’s that she doesn’t necessarily have a thematic vision of all the kinds of change she wants to make that you can just fit all her policies into. What there is is a unifying attitude towards what counts as important policy and how government power ought to be used.

michael barbaro

So in other words, she has a clear definition of why something is worth pursuing, why it’s important. But the result can look a little bit like a grab bag — different policies that don’t necessarily all line up.

alexander burns

I think that’s a great way of describing it, that it’s different policies that pass her practical tests, but don’t necessarily have a whole lot to do with each other.

alexander burns Is there anything that I haven’t asked you that you think is essential? kamala harris There’s so much stuff. speaker You have to go to your next thing. kamala harris I know. But is there anything I should —

michael barbaro

Alex, at the end of this conversation, did you feel satisfied? Did you feel like you had a deeper understanding of this question that you went into the room with about Kamala Harris?

alexander burns

I do feel like after having that conversation, it’s clear to me that her longtime colleagues, her friends, her associates and supporters really had it right, that she’s not an ideological candidate, that there’s not a hidden ideology that she’s declining to articulate or struggling to articulate, that she truly is just not somebody who approaches policy and politics that way. What she did do is explain in, I think, illuminating detail why she makes the decisions she does.

michael barbaro

Alex, let’s talk about whether this approach from Kamala Harris can satisfy voters. Does it really matter that Kamala Harris does not want to be defined by ideology? I’m asking that broadly, in terms of what we know about politics in general and in the context of this particular primary and the calculations that the whole party is making this year.

alexander burns

I don’t think it matters that she won’t put an exact ideological label on herself. When I go to campaign events, I don’t hear a lot of voters who say, you know, I consider myself an economic populist, and therefore I’m voting for Elizabeth Warren. I do think it matters that she has resisted this idea of putting her policy under a comprehensive vision, right? An umbrella that people can use to gauge her instincts, even on issues that she’s not speaking to directly. I think there are a lot of people who, if you were to take an Elizabeth Warren voter or a Joe Biden voter, and ask them, what position do you think they would take on issue X? They have a framework for understanding how those candidates approach issues generally and what matters to them and might have at least some gut sense of how Elizabeth Warren would address an issue that she’s never been directly asked about before. I do think it matters that people may not have that same sense for Kamala Harris.

michael barbaro

Mm-hmm. Right. I mean, the value of an ideology that people can easily grasp is that it’s a road map. It helps you understand how someone’s likely to respond to a particular set of circumstances, a crisis, any kind of situation. It’s very clarifying. And without it, things feel a little more rudderless.

alexander burns

Right, and you’re asking people to put a lot of trust in your judgment to deal with things on a case by case basis. And if you can win their trust, then that gives you a lot of flexibility to choose your fights and how you’re going approach policy and sort of what methods you’re going to use. If you don’t win their trust, then people can end up feeling like they don’t quite know what your core is. And I think that’s the big challenge for her right now in this race. So the best-case scenario for Kamala Harris is that she gets through this primary by really firing up a critical mass of the Democratic coalition with the kinds of targeted policies that we’ve been talking about and with her identity and political narrative. I think the evidence so far is that Democrats are willing to give Kamala Harris somewhat more room to figure out what she wants her vision to be than some of the other candidates in this race. And then in the general election, she’s not necessarily tied to all of the same economic populist, liberal ideas that some of the other candidates in this race would be.

michael barbaro

Alex, thank you very much. Appreciate it.

alexander burns

Thank you.

michael barbaro

We’ll be right back. Here’s what else you need to know today.

archived recording (john delaney) Folks, we have a choice. We can go down the road that Senator Sanders and Senator Warren want to take us, which is with bad policies like Medicare for all, free everything, and impossible promises that’ll turn off independent voters and get Trump re-elected. That’s what happened with —

michael barbaro

In Tuesday night’s Democratic debate, the leading liberal candidates, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, fought back against claims by more moderate opponents that their plans are impractical and that their chances of beating President Trump are slim.

archived recording (jake tapper) You support Medicare for all, which would eventually take private health insurance away from more than 150 million Americans in exchange for government-sponsored health care for everyone. Congressman Delaney just referred to it as bad policy. And previously, he has called the idea political suicide that will just get President Trump re-elected. What do you say to Congressman Delaney? archived recording (bernie sanders) You’re wrong. [LAUGHTER] [APPLAUSE] Right now, we have a dysfunctional health care system.

michael barbaro

During the debate, former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper, Montana governor Steve Bullock, and former Maryland congressman John Delaney warned of, quote, “wish-list economics, massive government expansions and radical plans” from Warren and Sanders, which they said risked turning off mainstream voters.

archived recording (elizabeth warren) You know, I don’t understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president of the United States just to talk about what we really can’t do and shouldn’t fight for. [APPLAUSE] Well, I’m ready to get in this fight. I’m ready to win this fight.

michael barbaro

Both Warren and Sanders responded with defiance, rejecting the moderate candidates as offering policies that failed to meet the moment and drawing a measure of sympathy from Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who said that Republicans would label any Democratic nominee as radical.

archived recording (pete buttigieg) If — it’s true that if we embrace a far-left agenda, they’re going to say we’re a bunch of crazy socialists. If we embrace a conservative agenda, you know what they’re going to do? They’re going to say we’re a bunch of crazy socialists. So let’s just stand up for the right policy, go out there —

michael barbaro