Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign apparently copied and pasted President Joe Biden's "issues" page and passed it off as her own, Breitbart reported. This plagiarism came after critics hammered her for weeks about having no publicly available policy agenda.
The Harris campaign finally posted its agenda Sunday, more than two months after she replaced Biden as the Democratic presidential candidate. However, X user Corinne Green shared a screenshot showing Harris' campaign didn't even bother to change the coding.
"[T]hey copied and pasted the policy page code from biden's website and couldn't be assed to change it. 'join our campaign to re-elect joe biden today!'" Green posted to X, formerly Twitter, Monday.
they copied and pasted the policy page code from biden's website and couldn't be assed to change it. "join our campaign to re-elect joe biden today!" pic.twitter.com/cDlL8xn01Q
— Corinne Green (@gaynarcan) September 9, 2024
The New Republic, a left-leaning publication, was the first to break the story in an article titled "Embarrassing Copy-Paste Plagues Harris’s Launch of Policy Platform." It featured the X user's post and explained the digital breadcrumbs that gave Harris away.
According to the author's piece Hafiz Rashid, the Harris campaign left language from Biden's website in its metadata. "This language was visible when links to the campaign site were shared and in the website’s description on Google searches," .
The author noted that "this creates the impression that at least some of the Harris campaign’s policy language was copied and pasted from Biden’s documents." It called this fact an "embarrassing miscue," especially because Democrats need to distance themselves from Biden's record more than ever.
"It doesn’t help that the section on her website about her Israel-Palestine policy seems very similar to what Biden’s campaign was saying," Rashid added. Meanwhile, a separate article in the same publication publicly worried about her lack of policy stances in favor of "vibes" over substance.
"She had nearly two months to show voters who she is and what she stands for. Instead, she has played it safe, hoping to maintain the positive vibes and momentum of the summer by deliberately not staking out positions on controversial policies," Alex Shephard's article "Kamala Harris Can’t Keep Running Like This" noted on Tuesday.
The Harris campaign decided to plagiarize Biden's policies exactly at a time when a departure is what's needed the most. "This is dangerous territory for Harris, given that the Times poll found that more than 60 percent of voters wanted the next president to represent a 'major change' from Biden—and only a quarter felt that Harris represented that change," pointed out.
"That makes sense, given that she’s his vice president! But it means she should be working overtime to distinguish herself from her boss," Shepard added.
"Instead, she’s doing precisely the opposite. Unwilling to break publicly with Biden—to criticize his handling of say, inflation, immigration, or Israel—she has simply positioned herself as a younger version of him."
"Whether that’s intentional on her part, or the result of her campaign being run largely by the same people who ran Biden’s disastrous reelection bid, is unclear," the author noted. Harris is running out of time before Election Day to distance herself from the administration.
Harris' victory hinges on the hope that people will forget what the past three and a half years have been like with her as second in command. Copying and pasting from the administration Americans are eager to forget is not the way forward if she wants to win.
