Vice President Kamala Harris will escape Republican attacks on President Joe Biden “penalty free” after becoming the Democratic presidential nominee on Thursday, according to CNN political commentator Van Jones.
Harris officially accepted the nomination at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) on Thursday night, just over one month after Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed her as his replacement.
Former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has seemingly struggled to retool his campaign in the aftermath of the candidate shake-up, continuing to often focus specific attacks on Biden rather than Harris.
Jones, former adviser to ex-President Barack Obama, argued on CNN just after the acceptance speech that Harris had not only managed to free the Democratic ticket from Biden’s baggage, but had also unified the party and was “fixing some problems on the left.”
Kevin Dietsch
“I think that Kamala Harris has done something,” Jones said. “She’s not just gonna get away from Biden—which I think that she can do now, penalty free, penalty free—she has this party behind her. But she’s doing something … She’s fixing some problems on the left.”
“The left before we walked in here was about justice, diversity, trigger warnings, reparations for the past and a bunch of party-poopers and scolds,” he added. “But now, it’s about freedom. It’s not just about diversity, it’s about patriotism … We legalized fun. We put the ‘party’ back in the Democratic Party.”
Newsweek reached out for comment to the Harris and Trump campaigns via email on Thursday night.
David Axelrod, who also served in the Obama administration and was the chief strategist for both of Obama’s successful presidential campaigns, offered his own praise for the new nominee during the same broadcast, arguing that the vice president had matched the perceived “strength” of Trump.
“This was a very muscular speech,” Axelrod said. “The whole hallmark of the Trump candidacy, when you lay it bare, was he’s strong … And that was the advantage he had over Joe Biden. She showed strength on that stage tonight and I think that she has cut his advantage there. She looked like a president on that stage.”
Axelrod went on to say that Harris was able to successfully distance herself from Biden’s baggage without speaking negatively of him, describing the speech as “her declaration of independence” and suggesting that Trump’s campaign would need to find better ways to attack Harris than attempting to equate her with Biden.
“It is really interesting how little she mentioned Joe Biden in this speech,” he said. “In certain ways, this was her declaration of independence. And she became her own person in this speech … I think [Republicans] are going to have a hard time saddling her [with Biden’s record].”