哈里斯的辩论挑战：继续前进，不让拜登落后
【中美创新时报2024 年 9 月 9 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）副总统卡马拉·哈里斯将试图利用周二与前总统唐纳德·特朗普的辩论来表明，美国人已经准备好翻开过去十年政治动荡和社会敌意的一页。《纽约时报》凯蒂·罗杰斯和埃里卡·L·格林（Katie Rogers and Erica L. Green）对此作了下述报道。
但站在几英尺外的特朗普可能会提出不同的理由：他预计将试图将哈里斯描绘成维持现状的候选人。
这场辩论将给哈里斯带来挑战，她必须决定在多大程度上接受或疏远拜登总统及其政策，而此时民意调查显示许多美国人渴望改变。这是其他副总统在竞选总统时面临的难题，哈里斯的盟友表示，她在为自己辩护时必须谨慎行事。
“她可以赞扬拜登并谈论他的成就，但也要承认工作尚未完成，”哈里斯的盟友、民主党政治评论员巴卡里·塞勒斯 (Bakari Sellers) 说。“因此，她必须愿意向美国人民展示一定程度的同理心和理解，而不是简单地说我们所做的一切都是上帝对政治的恩赐。”
《纽约时报》和锡耶纳学院最近进行的一项民意调查凸显了哈里斯面临的艰巨任务。调查发现，61% 的潜在选民表示，下一任总统应该代表拜登的重大变化。只有 25% 的人说哈里斯代表了这种变化，而 53% 的人说特朗普做到了。
副总统最明显的弱点之一是经济稳定，但许多选民表示他们无法感受到其好处。民意调查发现，特朗普在经济方面领先 13 个百分点，而经济问题被认为是选民最关心的问题。
拜登支持并推动立法，以实现国家基础设施的现代化，并将经济从疫情漩涡中拉出来，但近年来，他执政期间通胀率居高不下，选民们感到生活成本上涨的压力。
哈里斯的顾问指出，她已经推出了一些政策，他们希望这些政策能让她对选民和商界人士产生吸引力，并与拜登形成微妙的对比。
但他们也表示，哈里斯关心的对比是她和特朗普之间的对比。她把自己作为检察官的过去视为与前总统对抗的优势。她的竞选信息主要集中在维护个人自由上，而不是拜登倡导的民主上。
上周，哈里斯表示，她将以远低于总统提议的税率提高资本利得税。 （周五，包括亿万富翁马克·库班和前 21 世纪福克斯董事长詹姆斯·默多克在内的数十位商界领袖签署了一封支持她的信。）
她还提出了一项 25,000 美元的福利，帮助首次购房者进入房地产市场。这项福利最初是由拜登提出的，但哈里斯接受了它，并将其作为她对抗高昂住房成本和吸引那些感到被排除在市场之外的年轻选民的计划的主要特征。
在每一个转折点，哈里斯都小心翼翼地避免批评她所服务的政府或她所服务的总统。当面，她和总统已经表明他们关系密切。
在公开场合，特朗普和他的顾问们长期以来一直把移民涌入作为他们攻击民主党的重点。尽管美国西南端的过境人数处于多年来的最低水平，但在拜登总统任期的早期，过境人数曾创下历史新高。
拜登和哈里斯都曾多次表示，特朗普应该为移民危机承担部分责任，因为他帮助破坏了两党立法，该立法将成为多年来最严格的移民限制。
执政初期，总统让哈里斯评估危地马拉、洪都拉斯和萨尔瓦多移民的根本原因——她的盟友长期以来一直认为这是一项没有胜算的任务，而她的对手现在正利用这项任务来攻击她。
拜登前幕僚长罗恩·克莱恩表示，哈里斯需要在一些她比特朗普更有优势的问题上发起攻势。他说，她应该在堕胎权问题上抨击特朗普——根据《时代》/锡耶纳民意调查，哈里斯在这个问题上领先 15 个百分点——并向不太了解她的观众表明，如果她在 11 月获胜，她将准备好领导。
“我认为她需要在第一天就表明她已经准备好成为总统，”克莱恩说。“她必须向选民表明她关心他们的问题。”
民意调查强调的一个挑战——也是一个机遇——是，超过四分之一的选民认为他们需要更多地了解她，而只有 9% 的人对特朗普表示同样的看法。特朗普竞选团队发言人卡罗琳·莱维特表示，周二晚上，这位前总统将把哈里斯与她所说的“拜登-哈里斯政府的失败政策”联系起来，并用大写字母写出副总统的名字以示强调。
“卡马拉·哈里斯不是变革的候选人，也不是未来的候选人，”莱维特在一份声明中说。“卡马拉·哈里斯现在是副总统，无论她是否喜欢，她都要为过去四年的经济、移民和外交政策危机负责。”
题图：副总统卡马拉·哈里斯。ERIN SCHAFF/NYT
附原英文报道：
Harris’s debate challenge: pushing ahead without leaving Biden behind
By Katie Rogers and Erica L. Green New York Times,Updated September 9, 2024
Vice President Kamala Harris.ERIN SCHAFF/NYT
WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris will try to use her debate Tuesday against former president Donald Trump to argue that Americans are ready to turn the page on the politics of the past decade, with its turmoil and social animus.
But Trump, standing just feet away, is likely to make a different case: He is expected to try to paint Harris as the candidate of the status quo.
The debate will pose a challenge for Harris, who will have to decide how much to embrace or distance herself from President Biden and his policies at a moment when polls show that many Americans are hungry for change. It is a conundrum other vice presidents have faced while seeking the presidency, and Harris’s allies said she would have to tread carefully as she makes a case for herself.
“She can praise Biden and talk about the accomplishments, but also acknowledge that the work is not done,” said Bakari Sellers, an ally of Harris and a Democratic political commentator. “So she has to be willing to display to the American people a level of empathy and understanding, and not simply say everything we did was God’s gift to politics.”
A recent poll by The New York Times and Siena College highlighted the difficult task Harris faces. It found that 61 percent of likely voters said the next president should represent a major change from Biden. Only 25 percent said Harris represented that change, while 53 percent said Trump did.
One of the most glaring vulnerabilities for the vice president is an economy that is stable but whose benefits many voters say they cannot feel. The poll found that Trump held a 13-percentage-point advantage on the economy, the issue that was cited as the most important to voters.
Biden championed and pushed through legislation to modernize the country’s infrastructure and pull the economy out of a pandemic spiral, but in recent years he has presided over a period of high inflation, with voters feeling pinched by higher costs of living.
Harris’s advisers have pointed out that she has already introduced some policies that they hope will make her appealing to voters and to members of the business community, and strike a subtle contrast with Biden.
But they also say the contrast Harris cares about striking is the one between herself and Trump. She has embraced her past as a prosecutor as a strength in her ability to take on the former president. And she has focused much of her campaign message on preserving personal freedoms rather than on democracy, an idea Biden had championed.
Last week, Harris said she would increase the capital gains tax at a far lower rate than what the president had proposed. (On Friday, dozens of business leaders, including billionaire Mark Cuban and former 21st Century Fox chair James Murdoch, signed a letter of support for her.)
She has also floated a $25,000 benefit to help first-time buyers break into the housing market. That benefit was first proposed by Biden, but Harris has embraced it and made it a major feature of her plan to combat high housing costs and appeal to young voters who feel shut out of the market.
At every turn, Harris has been careful not to criticize the administration she works for or the president she serves. In person, she and the president have telegraphed that they have a close relationship.
Publicly, Trump and his advisers have long made an influx of migrants a central focus of their attacks against Democrats. Though border crossings along the southwestern tip of the United States are at their lowest level in years, they reached record highs earlier in Biden’s presidency.
Biden and Harris have both repeatedly said that Trump should bear some of the blame for the migrant crisis, since he helped torpedo bipartisan legislation that would have amounted to the strictest restrictions on immigration in years.
Early in the administration, the president gave Harris the task of assessing the root causes of migration from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador — a portfolio item that her allies have long believed was a no-win assignment, and one that her opponents are now using to attack her.
Ron Klain, Biden’s former chief of staff, said Harris would need go on the offensive with some of the issues where she has stronger footing than Trump. He said she should hammer Trump on abortion rights — according to the Times/Siena poll, Harris holds a 15-percentage-point advantage on that issue — and show viewers who don’t know much about her that she would be ready to lead if she wins in November.
“I think she needs to convey that she’s ready to be president on day one,” Klain said. “And she has to show voters that she cares about their problems.”
A challenge — and an opportunity — highlighted by the poll is that more than a quarter of voters feel they need to learn more about her, while only 9 percent said the same of Trump. Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, said that on Tuesday night the former president would tie Harris to what she said were “the Biden-HARRIS administration’s failed policies,” writing the vice president’s name in capital letters for emphasis.
“Kamala Harris is not the candidate for change nor is she the candidate of the future,” Leavitt said in a statement. “Kamala Harris is the Vice President right NOW, and whether she likes it or not, she is responsible for the economic, immigration, and foreign policy crises over the past four years.”
