President Joe Biden acknowledged on Tuesday that Kamala Harris wouldn’t act as a carbon copy of his own administration, tacitly nodding to a key challenge his vice president faces as she enters the final sprint of her campaign: How to distinguish herself from his record.
Delivered during what has become a rare campaign stop for the incumbent, Biden said Harris’ loyalty to him — up to now — doesn’t mean she won’t forge her own way going ahead.
“Every president has to cut their own path. That’s what I did. I was loyal to Barack Obama, but I cut my own path as president. That’s what Kamala is going to do,” Biden said at Democratic Party dinner at a union banquet hall in Philadelphia on Tuesday. “She’s been loyal so far, but she’s gonna cut her own path.”
“Donald Trump’s perspective,” he added, “is old and failed and quite frankly thoroughly totally dishonest.”
The comments highlight part of the balancing act Biden and Harris are each trying to strike as she faces some pressure to distinguish herself from the current president.
After declaring in September he would be “on the road” from Labor Day onward, Biden’s campaign schedule this fall has been conspicuously light — hampered, in part, by a string of urgent domestic and foreign crises requiring his attention, but also complicated by the sense that his presence on the trail could remind voters of the page Harris is trying to turn.
The event on Tuesday — a ticketed dinner to raise money for Philadelphia Democrats — was one of the few political appearances the president has made since Harris secured the Democratic nomination.
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“I’m one of the few people in American history who has been vice president and president,” Biden said as he stood before signs bearing the name “Kamala.”
“And I know both jobs, what they take and I can tell you, Kamala Harris has been a great vice president. She’ll be a great president as well,” he said.
Less than three weeks until the election, the campaign and White House have yet to detail what Biden’s campaign schedule will look like in the lead up to November 5. One deployment under consideration, a source close to the campaign said, is a tour through Pennsylvania with the state’s governor, Josh Shapiro. Biden himself previewed such a swing weeks ago in an interview.
