What Kind of President Would Kamala Harris Be?

On a sunny Wednesday in late September, Vice President Kamala Harris took the stage at Carnegie Mellon University for the first comprehensive economic-policy speech of her short presidential campaign.

Addressing a sedate audience in suits and ties, the Vice President outlined plans to strengthen small businesses, cut taxes on the middle class, and build more affordable housing. "I am a capitalist," she told the Pittsburgh crowd, detailing how she would invest in startups and increase public-private partnerships, and describing an approach to economic growth that stressed stability.

It was a business-friendly speech tailored to business-­friendly voters. But in a neck-and-neck presidential race, wonky pitches like these could make the difference. In a September New York Times/Siena poll, nearly 30% of likely voters said they felt they needed to learn more about the Vice President before making their choice. The fight to define Kamala Harris—who she is, what she stands for, and what kind of President she would be—will be one of the central battles of the campaign’s final weeks.

To examine these questions, TIME spoke with 20 current and former Harris campaign advisers, former aides in her vice presidential and Senate offices, senior officials from each of the past five presidential administrations, and a range of policy experts. The portrait that emerged was of a politician who is more practical than ideological—a cautious candidate running in a change election, juggling the liabilities and benefits of her ties to her boss, President Joe Biden, as well as her own past positions, all while trying to keep the focus on her opponent. For Harris, policy specifics are in service to the larger goal of her campaign, which is to present a credible alternative to a second Donald Trump presidency.

At Carnegie Mellon, Harris offered the most detailed look at her economic plans since taking over as the Democratic nominee. She’s proposing a $50,000 tax deduction to help Americans start more small businesses, and a $6,000 Child Tax Credit for families in the first year of a baby’s life. She plans to extend $35 insulin to all Americans and eliminate degree requirements for 500,000 federal jobs. She wants to invest in research and development in new manufacturing industries, and trim red tape to further the Biden Administration’s overhaul of America’s infrastructure. Perhaps more than any other presidential candidate in recent memory, Harris has focused on solving America’s housing crisis. She plans to offer $25,000 in down-payment assistance to first-time home buyers, a tax credit to incentivize builders, and pledges to build 3 million affordable housing units in her first term.

You can imagine the Harris presidency as an iOS upgrade of the current Administration: the operating system would stay the same, but with new features and better packaging. There are tonal ­differences between the two: Harris talks more—and more ­comfortably—about abortion rights than Biden ever did, speaks with more empathy about the suffering of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, and has put housing and small business at the center of her plans for strengthening the middle class. But for the most part, allies and critics agree there is little evident policy daylight between the Democratic nominee and the President she replaced atop the party’s ticket this summer.

Read More: The Reintroduction of Kamala Harris.

The sharper contrast is between Harris’ current positions and her previous ones. If you talk to Harris’ advisers, the word that frequently comes up is “pragmatic.” But the candidate who campaigned for President in the 2020 Democratic primary was part of the party’s leftward lurch. Back then, Harris supported a public health care option and a Green New Deal. She wanted to ban fracking, ­decriminalize ­unauthorized border crossings, and cut funding for immigrant detention. She backed forcing owners of assault weapons to sell them to the government. She has since changed her stance on all these issues.

Some voters see these shifts as part of a predictable pivot to the center; others see them as flip-flops in need of an explanation. Outside the auditorium at Carnegie Mellon, Rodrigo Lopez, a registered independent from Florida, was finishing up homework for his mechanical engineering class. Lopez followed the 2020 primary closely, and recalled that Harris took left-wing positions he disliked. He said he would never vote for Trump, but doesn’t feel he knows enough about Harris to cast a ballot for her ­either. “It’s hard to tell what her real policy intentions are,” he says. Harris “could win my vote,” Lopez adds, “if she articulates the reasons she’s changed some of her stances.”

Harris is hardly the first Presidential candidate to change her positions; Trump has flipped on everything from abortion to gun control to Social Security. When asked on 60 Minutes about her shifts since 2020, she said her time as Vice President has included a lot of “listening” and “consensus building.” Forging compromise is “not a bad thing,” she said, “as long as you don’t compromise your values.” What she means, according to her aides, is that her goals remain the same—affordable health care, a strong middle class—but she is flexible about how to achieve them. Yet she has skirted the thorough accounting of her policy evolution that Lopez is seeking, in part by speaking infrequently to reporters. When she does do interviews, she mostly favors local media, culture podcasts, or friendly talk shows. Harris declined repeated requests for an interview for this story. In contrast, Trump talked about his policy vision with a TIME reporter for 90 minutes across two interviews. Biden spoke to TIME at similar length before dropping out of the race.

Harris is running on what she won’t do as much as what she would. She won’t curb abortion rights, as Republicans want to do. She won’t impose Trump’s blanket tariffs, which most economists believe would raise prices and could throw the country into a recession (hers are more narrowly targeted). She won’t initiate the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, as Trump promises, or fire legions of civil servants and replace them with MAGA loyalists. She won’t attempt to overturn the results of a free and fair election, as Trump did.

Once upon a time, presidential candidates compared health care plans or tax policies when competing for votes. These days, a policy-heavy campaign can weigh you down. Elizabeth Warren’s “I have a plan for that” campaign sputtered through the 2020 primary, failing to win a single state. She lost the nomination to Biden, whose campaign was about “Restoring the Soul of the Nation,” whatever that was supposed to mean. Airy promises of “Hope and Change” worked for Barack Obama, whereas Hillary Clinton’s economic white papers did not. Trump’s own campaign is constructed around a set of one-liners; he acknowledged in his recent debate with Harris that he had only “concepts of a plan” for overhauling the American health care system. None of that has cost him an iota of support. Instead of policy, many voters are making their decisions based on tribal allegiance or vibes.

Which is one reason Harris’ approach may be a winning strategy. For many, the fact that she is not Trump is reason enough to vote for her. Running against MAGA has boosted Democrats to victory in scores of elections since 2016—whether those candidates had well-defined policies or not. “She knows that very few people are going to choose between her and Donald Trump based on some details of economic strategy, or some full-fledged proposal, so she’s not presenting them,” says David Wessel, director of fiscal and monetary policy at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think tank. “It’s a strategy to win the election. What reason is there to put out a detailed economic plan if your opponent is just throwing snowballs?”

When somebody joins the Vice President’s staff, Harris often asks them to think of a wedding album. Imagine you’ve been to somebody’s wedding, she says, and you go to their home and see their photo album. When you start flipping through it, what are you looking for? The question is rhetorical; you’re looking for yourself. “Because you want to see if you’re in their vision of what their day was,” recalls Rohini Kosoglu, Harris’ former domestic-policy adviser. “That’s how the American people feel when they’re listening to us talk. Are they in our vision when we see the future of our country?”

This approach, more than any ideology or economic theory, animates Harris’ style of governance. How does policy feel to the people who are experiencing it? One aide recalls a conversation about transportation infrastructure in which the Vice President asked how the outcome would work for a mother pushing her stroller down the street. Another ally recalls how, after hearing small-business owners tick off the burdens of paperwork, Harris worked to automate the way small businesses pay taxes. When discussing abortion restrictions, she often describes how painful it must be for a patient to wait in line at TSA while flying out of state to get reproductive care. “She puts a tremendous amount of capital on having people make sure they’ve really thought through the everyday life and experience of Americans,” says Kosoglu.

Harris has put abortion at the center of her campaign, with a promise to suspend the filibuster to restore the protections of Roe v. Wade. She would extend Biden’s initiatives on infrastructure, climate, and jobs, while adding new ones to build more affordable housing, invest in small businesses, and cut taxes on working families. On Oct. 8, she proposed a new Medicare benefit to help families pay for home health aides for seniors and the disabled. To finance all this, she proposes increasing the long-term capital gains tax on people who make more than $1 million a year, and restoring the 28% corporate tax rate that existed under previous Democratic and Republican Presidents.

Biden’s domestic agenda was partly a product of the crises he inherited—rebuilding from the pandemic, revitalizing America’s manufacturing sector. Harris, who had a front-row seat as voters’ struggles with inflation created political headaches for the Administration, promises to curb high prices on ­everything from groceries to health care. The goal is “to lower your costs by cutting your taxes; to lower housing costs; to lower pharmaceutical costs,” says Brian Deese, who served as director of the National Economic Council under Biden and is now one of Harris’s top economic advisers.

Opponents tell a different story. Harris’ agenda is “the Biden Administration agenda–lite,” says Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a center-right think tank in Washington, and the former senior economic adviser for Republican John McCain’s 2008 campaign. Holtz-Eakin considers Harris’ plans to be “profoundly antigrowth” because of their reliance on government programs. Yet he thinks Trump’s proposed tariffs would be equally bad. “Neither are good for the economy,” he says.

By many measures, the economy has thrived under the Biden-Harris Administration, with 16 million new jobs created, unemployment hovering around 4%, and manufacturing jobs at a 10-year high, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. GDP growth is around 3% this year, and the stock market keeps hitting all-time highs. But even if the data is good, the economic vibes are bad. Housing costs in particular have skyrocketed over the past decade, which is why Harris has put housing ­affordability at the heart of her economic agenda.

Read More: How Far Trump Would Go.

In addition to that proposal for first-time homebuyers­—which could be whittled down to pass a divided Congress—she’s proposing a significant expansion of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, a popular and long-standing bipartisan initiative that incentivizes developers to build more affordable rentals. She’s also proposing a tax cut designed to encourage more homes to be built for first-time homebuyers, and a $40 billion innovation fund. Housing experts say no other presidential candidate in recent memory has proposed such a detailed plan. For years, housing affordability was a “silent crisis,” says Dennis Shea, who leads the housing program at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “Now, it’s a front-burner issue.”

Harris has also proposed several ways to ease burdens on small businesses, which provide nearly half of American jobs. Helping small businesses was part of her White House portfolio, and even conservative critics acknowledge she’s been attentive to the issue. In addition to offering a $50,000 tax deduction to help new small businesses offset startup costs, she proposes to ease permitting and automate processes, with a goal of 25 million new startup applications in her first term. “If you ask small businesses what they don’t like, they will always say, It’s really hard to get permits and hard to get this licensing. The paperwork has gotten to be too much,” says Karen Mills, who ran the Small Business Administration under President Obama. “It’s the first time I’ve heard someone ­listen to that.”

Some economists are skeptical of Harris’ tax proposals. “In the aggregate, all these provisions would have a negative impact on economic growth,” says Alex Durante, an economist at the Tax Foundation, a center-right research institute. But even many conservatives doubt Trump would be much better for the economy, citing his tariffs and immigration plans. Goldman Sachs announced in September that they estimate a stronger economy and more job growth under a Harris presidency than a second Trump term. Modeling by the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania forecasts that Trump’s plans would increase the deficit five times as much as Harris’ would.

Taken together, Harris’ economic plans are “good for lower- and middle-income Americans and small businesses, and tough on high-net-worth households and corporations,” says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s, who has predicted a Harris victory. Her proposals are “not going to change the growth rates of the economy in a meaningful way,” Zandi adds, “but it does change who benefits the most from that, and that’s going to be low- and middle­-income households.”

Biden’s successor will have to grapple with multiple foreign policy crises now gripping the White House. The next Commander in Chief will have to deal with wars in Europe and the Middle East, and competition with China. Harris has deliberately not staked out new foreign policy positions, aides say, since she’s still the current Vice President. Still, there are subtle but important differences between their approaches.

While Biden views the world as a contest between democracy and authoritarianism, Harris, a former prosecutor, sees it through the prism of rules and norms: a fight between those who uphold the rules-based order and those who undermine it. As a Californian who once represented Silicon Valley, she sees technology as a crucial part of America’s global leadership, and would put it at the center of her foreign policy.

Read More: How Joe Biden Leads.

She also tends to talk more about the Global South than Biden does. One of Harris’ first diplomatic assignments was to stem the flow of migrants arriving in the U.S. by addressing the economic and security conditions in the Northern Triangle countries of Central America—El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. In an effort to improve life in the region, Harris helped launch a public-private partnership that drove big companies to invest more than $5 billion there.

Such long-term economic strategies haven’t succeeded in the past. And illegal crossings still spiked under Biden. Harris, like her boss, has recently toughened her position on border security. She now talks about her experience as the attorney general of a border state, prosecuting transnational cartels and drug smugglers. She supported the bipartisan immigration bill that would have hired 1,500 new border-patrol agents, improved the asylum process, and paid for new fentanyl-inspection machines. Though she is a daughter of immigrants, “Harris is not as sympathetic to some of the immigration advocacy,” says Doris Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. “She’s sympathetic to immigrants, but she’s also going to be strong on the fact that there needs to be control and discipline and consistency to the way that we do it.”

On the spreading war in the Middle East, Harris has condemned the atrocities committed by Hamas on Oct. 7, promoted Israel’s right to defend itself, and called for a cease-fire with the return of the hostages. Some supporters glean signs of greater sympathy for civilians in Gaza, even if the distinctions are subtle and rhetorical. “What I sense from her is that she will be less accommodating of Israel even than Biden was,” says Michael Allen, who served on President George W. Bush’s National Security Council. “She’s more progressive than Biden is, so I think she’d be more inclined to the point of view that the Israelis, especially [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, have prosecuted the war too aggressively.” A Harris aide said in a statement that “she has a lifelong and unwavering commitment to the security of Israel,” and added that she shares Biden’s larger goals of de-escalation, a hostage deal, and a cease-fire.

Harris has not given an address focused solely on foreign policy, and she is viewed mostly as a supporting character in the Biden Administration’s overseas dramas. “I don’t think anybody with a straight face could really say that she’s considered a foreign policy powerhouse,” says Elbridge Colby, a national-­security expert who served in the Trump Pentagon and argues for a tougher approach on China. Her closest foreign policy adviser, Philip Gordon, has served Democratic Presidents since Bill Clinton, and he and his aides are more likely to stay the course than seek to remake American strategy­. A Harris­ presidency, says Colby, would mean a “generation younger, more progressive version of the current foreign policy.”

To Republicans’ dismay, Harris’ careful policy rollout appears to be working. When she entered the race, Trump had a decisive lead on many of the issues voters say they consider most important: immigration, the economy, the cost of living. Polls show Harris beginning to erase this edge. Harris is virtually tied with Trump on who voters trust to handle the economy, and only narrowly trails him on immigration, according to a September AP poll. She continues to lead by broad margins on health care, abortion rights, and climate change. Two recent polls found that more Americans see Harris as the candidate representing “change.” Whether it’s change from Biden or change from Trump, Harris supporters have seized that mantle; the chant at her rallies is “We’re Not Going Back.”

Still, 65% of registered voters say the country is on the “wrong track,” which is a tough number for the party in power. That sour mood presents Harris with a delicate challenge: boasting about the Biden Administration’s accomplishments on infrastructure, insulin, and green jobs, while distancing herself from both her predecessor and her old policy platform. “She has a record of saying things that she’s now trying to pivot from,” says Ted Gayer, president of the Niskanen Center, a nonpartisan think tank. “I can look at that and it can cause suspicion, or I could look at that and be happy for the pivot. I’m happy for the pivot.”

Aides argue that her current platform is rooted in political reality. She is “guided by pragmatism, not ideology,” says Deese, a top economic adviser. That “doesn’t mean we can’t set big goals, but it means we need to be highly practical and constantly ask ourselves the question, Is this working? And if it’s not, try something else.”

As Harris left her economic-policy speech at Carnegie Mellon, students lined up along the street, waiting silently for her motorcade. As the line of black cars passed the crowd, Harris appeared in the window, waving through the glass, her face framed by the window like a living postage stamp. The crowd began to cheer, and the girl standing next to me began to cry. Her name was Noemi Barbagli, an 18-year-old with long curly hair. I asked Barbagli if there was a particular policy proposal of Harris’ that excited her. “Honestly? Not that much,” she said. “She brings a lot of hope and optimism. I know what I don’t like about Donald Trump.”

—With ­reporting by Leslie Dickstein and Simmone Shah