Trump, Kamala aiming for the middle with varying degrees of success

Everyone wants to be a centrist now.

It’s all the rage.

Now if an ordinary person, say a friend of yours, changed positions on major issues, they would probably offer you an explanation. But politicians play by a different set of rules. 

After a primary season in which both Donald Trump and now Kamala Harris have been laser-focused on riling up their base, both are edging–in some cases sprinting–toward the center.

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Political theft is not a crime, or the jails would be packed to capacity. 

Harris, in Las Vegas, blatantly ripped off Trump’s proposal to bar taxes on tips to service workers.

The focus has been on the vice president, not just because she’s new to the race but because she has studiously avoided the press until her sitdown with CNN’s Dana Bash. She does regularly come back on the plane for off-the-record sessions, with each reporter present getting a question. But obviously that’s of limited value to the rest of us.

The larger problem for Harris is that she has a host of far-left positions she took in her 2020 presidential run that she had abandoned without explanation.

These include the abolition of private health insurance (under Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All); her past opposition to fracking, and embrace of decriminalizing illegal border crossings.

Her repeated refrain; "My values have not changed."

On fracking, Harris told CNN, "I made clear on the debate stage in 2020 that I would not ban fracking as vice president." That is not true. She said Joe Biden would not ban fracking. 

The VP did offer something of an explanation, that the administration had created over 300,000 clean energy jobs and "that tells me…we can do it without banning fracking."

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Bash cited another blast from the past: "There was a debate. You raised your hand when asked whether or not the border should be decriminalized. Do you still believe that?"

Harris: "I believe there should be consequences. We have laws that have to be followed and enforced, that address and deal with people who cross our border illegally." No mention of why she shifted her stance.

What Kamala is doing is what most general-election candidates do: moving toward the center. Whatever she thought matched the mood of the country in 2019, including her earlier career as a prosecutor, is clearly untenable today.

But on the Republican side, Trump is doing the same thing. It’s just getting less attention because he makes plenty of other news, from the Arlington Cemetery flap to personal attacks on Harris.

This has been most visible on abortion, which has become a difficult subject for Republicans. On one level, Trump owns the issue, because it was his three Supreme Court justices who enabled the overturning of Roe after a half-century of precedent.

But now he’s said that Florida’s 6-week ban on the procedure is too short, that he believes there need to be more weeks. There was some backtracking on whether he’d support a competing initiative in the state, but not on the comments about 6 weeks, when many women don’t know they’re pregnant.

When I interviewed the former president at Mar-a-Lago, he indicated he would favor a 15- or 16-week abortion ban – but decided at the state level, under the SCOTUS ruling. 

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"He also declared that "my administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights." This has triggered a backlash among some pro-life groups, who now deem Trump essentially pro-choice.

Trump is basically sliding to the center, to make his position more palatable to a wider range of voters, especially women, even though he has boasted about the repeal of Roe. 

(In that Mar-a-Lago interview, I asked Trump why he changed his mind on TikTok after trying to ban the Chinese-owned app as president. He said that would help Facebook, which he’s more concerned about, and of course TikTok has an enthusiastic base of younger users.)

Over the weekend, Trump said he would back another Florida measure, to legalize recreational use of marijuana. He said the state should not "ruin lives & waste Taxpayer Dollars" by prosecuting people who possess small amounts for personal use. Again, a move toward a more moderate position that has drawn flak from some conservatives. 

Kamala accused him of, well, a flip-flop. She said that as president his Justice Department cracked down on pot smokers.

Part of what’s going on is that both candidates ignore the timing of past stances for political benefit. A Trump ad has Harris saying "Everyday prices are too high. Food, rent, gas, back-to-school clothes," edited into "Bidenomics is working." 

Harris was talking about high prices caused by the pandemic in a speech last month, and "Bidenomics" was from a speech last year when she was reacting to a monthly jobs report. 

Kamala says Trump is pushing Project 2025, although he disavowed the Heritage project early on and repeatedly (though it’s staffed by many of his former White House aides).

Moving to the center is an art form, and that’s what both candidates are attempting right now.