Politics
BUSTED: Kamala Harris Caught Copying And Pasting Biden’s Entire Platform
The struggle to escape the shadow of President Joe Biden just became tougher for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Over the weekend, the Democratic nominee added a new “Issues” page to her presidential campaign website detailing her policy positions on everything from foreign affairs to immigration and combating high grocery prices. However, if she was hoping to offer voters a clean break from four years of dismal results from the White House, she may have stumbled by rushing to fill the page with vacuous new pledges. The New Republic reported that much of the text appears to have been lifted from the old campaign site of President Biden, which the outlet writes is based on source code that appears behind the copy.
(VOTE: Are You Supporting TRUMP Or KAMALA In November?)
“They finally added an ‘Issues’ section to her website . . . Unfortunately for Harris, its release was undermined by a simple but telling error: The page’s source code revealed that parts of the platform were copied directly from Biden’s campaign page.” https://t.co/0V3HLDSL3w
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) September 10, 2024
The embarrassing copy-paste was discovered in Google search results and sharable links which included hidden source code describing the need to “reelect President Biden.” The gaffe was first spotted by X user Corinne Green who noted the unmistakable similarity between many of Harris’s newfound positions and those of Biden. By late Monday she was celebrating with fellow Reddit progressives that the source code behind the page, titled “A New Way Forward,” appears to have been removed.
we did it reddit. harris removed the exhortation to re-elect joe biden from her policy platform pic.twitter.com/LM7vxwi8AT
— Corinne Green (@gaynarcan) September 9, 2024
The task of escaping being tied to the deeply unpopular Biden is a tall one for the Democratic nominee who has already stood by Biden’s side on a number of fronts, including taking on the much-disputed role of “border czar” for the administration. As The New Republic notes, a recent poll showed that 60% of Americans hope the next president offers a “major change” from Biden who they likely associate with record-high costs, an immigration crisis, and interminable foreign wars. Until this point, Harris has mostly coasted on honeymoon vibes that got her through the Democratic National Convention and lifted her position in hotly contested swing states.
She met her ceiling on Monday when the New York Times and Siena College published a new poll showing a neck-and-neck race with Trump leading Harris 48% to 47% among likely voters, a warning sign that set off alarms in the Harris campaign. Other election forecasters have noted the likelihood that the contest comes down to Pennsylvania where she may be kicking herself for not deputizing the ultra-popular Democratic Governor Joshua Shapiro. Now, as Harris works to untangle herself from past progressive positions like opposition to fracking, President Trump has seized, casting his rival as duplicitous while eating into her recent gains among urban and blue-collar Philadelphia voters.
Other X users were quick to mock the misfortunes of Harris. “Wait, you mean to tell me the most astroturfed, entitled, fake presidential campaign in history also copied its long-awaited policy platform directly from someone else’s website?” one joked.
Wait, you mean to tell me the most astroturfed, entitled, fake presidential campaign in history also copied its long-awaited policy platform directly from someone else’s website? pic.twitter.com/04Z0Xq6vVw
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) September 10, 2024
Republic author Hafiz Rashid sums up Harris’s struggle best. “Harris’s policy platform should be giving the public a view of the detailed plans her administration hopes to implement if she and Tim Walz win in November. The last thing her campaign needs is an embarrassing misstep, and while this one is relatively small, she’ll need to reassure voters on the fence that her campaign isn’t a retread of Biden’s with a new face.”