--- title: Exclusive: How Harris Is Pivoting From Biden’s Campaign Message description: Kamala Harris is expected to focus less on the Biden administration accomplishments in her speeches than Joe Biden did in recent months. canonical: https://time.com/7002596/kamala-harris-campaign-biden/ author: Brian Bennett article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2024-07-24T15:21:05.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-01-19T08:55:06.000Z article:section: Politics og:title: Exclusive: How Harris Is Pivoting From Biden’s Campaign Message og:description: Kamala Harris is expected to focus less on the Biden administration accomplishments in her speeches than Joe Biden did in recent months. og:url: https://time.com/7002596/kamala-harris-campaign-biden/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta5d2e807e80b8213/698a592916d8840b6fc3ee73/GettyImages-2162559923.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: Vice President Kamala Harris Campaigns In Wisconsin og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Exclusive: How Harris Is Pivoting From Biden’s Campaign Message twitter:description: Kamala Harris is expected to focus less on the Biden administration accomplishments in her speeches than Joe Biden did in recent months. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta5d2e807e80b8213/698a592916d8840b6fc3ee73/GettyImages-2162559923.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Exclusive: How Harris Is Pivoting From Biden’s Campaign Message > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, twice a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=4fd7a9f8-48ab-4ff4-8eb6-c675f8a89080&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1) ## Video: ‘I Know Donald Trump’s Type’: Harris Launches New Attack as She Takes Over Campaign [Watch (HLS stream): ‘I Know Donald Trump’s Type’: Harris Launches New Attack as She Takes Over Campaign](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/uP2elX9g.m3u8) (5:25)  _Published 2024-07-23. Vice President Kamala Harris had a busy 24 hours after being endorsed as the Democratic presidential candidate by President Joe Biden. Rallying staffers at Biden’s campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, now hers to inherit, Harris emphasized her professional background as a prosecutor._  by [Brian Bennett](https://time.com/author/brian-bennett/)  ## Brian Bennett Bennett is a former senior White House correspondent at TIME. Updated: Jan 19, 2026 8:55 AM UTCPublished: Jul 24, 2024 3:21 PM UTC Vice President Kamala Harris had a busy 24 hours after being endorsed as the Democratic presidential candidate by President Joe Biden. Rallying staffers at Biden’s campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, now hers to inherit, Harris emphasized her professional background as a prosecutor.  by [Brian Bennett](https://time.com/author/brian-bennett/)  ## Brian Bennett Bennett is a former senior White House correspondent at TIME. Updated: Jan 19, 2026 8:55 AM UTCPublished: Jul 24, 2024 3:21 PM UTC In her first two stump speeches this week as a presidential candidate, Kamala Harris made clear she was overhauling the Democrats’ pitch to voters. In both speeches, the Vice President offered a sharper message that largely left out the long recitations of Biden administration accomplishments that often bogged down the stump speeches she and Joe Biden had been delivering for months. Instead, Harris emphasized her vision for the country, while also framing the contest as between a convicted criminal in Trump, and herself as a prosecutor The scant mention of her administration’s policy wins was no accident. The Vice President purposely used those initial speeches to center her comments around her own vision for the future “because she’s now running for President of the United States,” said a Harris aide. Upcoming speeches will incorporate more of what the Biden administration has gotten done, the aide said, including one she’s delivering Wednesday afternoon in Indianapolis at the annual convention of the influential historically Black sorority Zeta Phi Beta. Still, the overall focus of a Harris campaign speech is likely to be more forward-looking than Biden’s have been in recent months. Polls showed that Biden struggled to break through to voters with long descriptions of what he’d done, and his efforts to define Trump as an existential threat to democracy had fallen flat. Biden also increasingly stumbled over his words and often struggled to deliver clear, clean sound bites to ram home his points in video clips shared online and in news broadcasts. **Read More**: [_A Guide to Kamala Harris’ Views on Abortion, the Economy, and More_](https://time.com/7001208/kamala-harris-views-abortion-economy-immigration-israel-gaza/) Harris is taking a different tack. On Tuesday afternoon in Wisconsin, Harris tested her newly-honed stump speech in front of 3,500 people packed into the gym at West Allis Central High School on the outskirts of Milwaukee, drawing a crowd larger and more boisterous than any Biden addressed in recent months. Harris called hers “a people-powered campaign” and said her administration would be a “people-first” presidency. Trump, she said, wants to give tax breaks to corporations and billionaires, make working families pay for it and strip away protections in the Affordable Care Act. “America has tried these failed economic policies before and we’re not going back,” she said. The crowd began chanting “We’re not going back!” Harris framed the choice for voters this way: “Do we want to live in a country of freedom, compassion, and rule of law, or a country of chaos, fear, and hate?” A day earlier, Harris delivered [her first speech](https://time.com/7001650/kamala-harris-speech-trump/) as the head of the ticket at Biden’s campaign headquarters, which had suddenly become her headquarters. She spoke about building up the middle class, reducing health care and child care costs, and expanding access to abortion. She did not explicitly mention any Biden administration accomplishments. “This campaign is not just about us versus Donald Trump,” she said, describing a Harris administration as ushering in “a future where no child has to grow up in poverty.” **Read More**: [_The Kamala Harris Campaign Is Embracing the Memes_](https://time.com/7001188/kamala-harris-memes-campaign-brat-coconuts-unburdened-context-venn-diagrams/) Having quickly locked up enough delegates to secure the Democratic nomination, Harris is hop-scotching her way across the country this week, speaking in Indiana on Wednesday, at a teachers union conference in Texas on Thursday and at a fundraiser in Massachusetts on Saturday. Team Harris believes their brand new campaign is in “a position of strength,” Jen O’Malley Dillon wrote in a campaign memo Wednesday. Polling on Harris is showing gains in several parts of the Democratic base that had cooled on Biden, and that she will be able to reach more voters by emphasizing what she will do to protect access to abortions. Harris runs 54 percentage points ahead of Trump with Black voters, according to [Quinnipiac University](https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3901) polling conducted over the weekend, and is more popular than Trump among undecided and independent Latino voters, according to internal campaign polling. The campaign said Harris has better favorability ratings among women and leads Trump with young voters by 25 points. Trump’s campaign is bracing itself for Harris gaining momentum in the coming weeks and eclipsing Trump in the polls. Trump’s lead pollster, Tony Fabrizio, sent a memo Tuesday describing an expected “Harris Honeymoon” in press coverage and a bump in her poll numbers. Fabrizio said that would be temporary and “the fundamentals of the race stay the same.” Voters are still unhappy about the economy, inflation, crime, Biden’s border policy, housing costs and ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza, Fabrizio said, predicting that voters will eventually “refocus on her role and Biden’s partner and co-pilot.” **Read More**: [_How Trump Plans to Run Against Harris_](https://time.com/7001912/kamala-harris-donald-trump/) Trump has started attacking Harris in earnest. On Tuesday, he described her on his Truth Social platform as “Lyin’ Kamala Harris.” That same day, Second Gentleman [Doug Emhoff](https://time.com/7001806/doug-emhoff-career-family-life/) was asked by a reporter if he had a response to Trump’s name calling. “That’s all he’s got?” Emhoff said, pointing out Harris has laid out the case against Donald Trump “directly and in a compelling fashion but she also laid out a vision for the future.” ## Transcript I of it. Delaware. It is so good to hear our president's voice. Joe, I know you're still on the call. And we've been talking every day. You probably you guys heard it from Doug's voice. We love Joe and Jill. We really do. They truly are like family to us. And we everybody hear. It's Mutual. I knew you were still there. You're not going anywhere, Joe. I'm watching your kid. I'm watching your kid. I love it. I love you. Oh. And I know it's been a roller coaster, and we're all filled with so many mixed emotions about this. I just have to I love Joe Biden. I love Joe Biden, and I know we all do, and we have so many darn good reasons for loving Joe Biden. And I have full faith that this team is the team will be the reason we win in November. You all who are here. And as Julie always says, and I will quote the great Julie, we are one team, one fight. One fight. And so, again, I am a firsthand witness from being with him in the Oval office to the situation room and seeing him on the global stage with world leaders. President Joe Biden fights for the American people, and we are deeply, deeply grateful for his service to our nation. Joe, are you watching? You hear this clapping? Can you see it? I'm watching. I'm watching. I know it. You love me. You're the best kid. And let us be very clear. Joe is not done. Far from it. He knows. There is still more work to do, and our nation will continue to praise his bold and visionary leadership as president. Thank you, Joe. Thank you. And it is my great honor to have Joe's endorsement in this race. You do. And it is my intention to go out and earn this nomination. And to win. So in the days and weeks ahead, I together with you, will do everything in my power to unite our Democratic Party, to unite our nation, and to win this election. As many of you know, before I was elected as Vice President, before I was elected as United State Senator, I was the elected attorney general, as I've mentioned in California, and before that I was a court room prosecutor. In those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds. You Predators who abused women. Fraudsters who ripped off consumers. C cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump's type. And in this campaign, I will proudly I will proudly put my record against his. It is this team here that is going to help in this November to elect a majority of members of the United States Congress who agree the government should not be telling a woman what to do with her body. And when Congress passes a law to restore reproductive freedoms as president of the United States, I will sign it into law. So, ultimately, to all the friends here, I say, in this election, we know. We each face a question, what kind of country do we want to live in? A country of freedom, compassion, and rule of law? Yes. Or a country of chaos, fear and hate. Oh. So in the next 106 days, we have work to do. We have doors to knock on. We have people to talk to, we have phone calls to make, and we have an election to win. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/7002596/kamala-harris-campaign-biden/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/7002596/kamala-harris-campaign-biden/"},"headline":"Exclusive: How Harris Is Pivoting From Biden’s Campaign Message","datePublished":"2024-07-24T15:21:05.000Z","dateModified":"2026-01-19T08:55:06.000Z","description":"Less focus on Biden administration's record","url":"https://time.com/7002596/kamala-harris-campaign-biden/","keywords":["Kamala Harris"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta5d2e807e80b8213/698a592916d8840b6fc3ee73/GettyImages-2162559923.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Brian Bennett","jobTitle":"Bennett is a former senior White House correspondent at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/brian-bennett/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta5d2e807e80b8213/698a592916d8840b6fc3ee73/GettyImages-2162559923.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Vice President Kamala Harris Campaigns In Wisconsin","caption":"Vice President Kamala Harris Campaigns In Wisconsin","creditText":"Jim Vondruska—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/kamala-harris/","name":"Kamala Harris"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/7002596/kamala-harris-campaign-biden/","name":"Exclusive: How Harris Is Pivoting From Biden’s Campaign Message"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"‘I Know Donald Trump’s Type’: Harris Launches New Attack as She Takes Over Campaign","description":"Vice President Kamala Harris had a busy 24 hours after being endorsed as the Democratic presidential candidate by President Joe Biden. 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