While climate change looms large over Democratic politics, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign is keeping its green policies vague, offering few firm positions or clear commitments.
This seems like a gamble but, according to research, it may be her smartest political move.
Now the official 2024 Democratic presidential candidate, Harris has not yet released a detailed climate policy. Her campaign has mentioned climate change sparingly and has not provided detailed plans on how a Harris administration would address the issue.
Research suggests specificity generally signals expertise on key issues and bolsters a candidate’s suitability for leadership roles. In past campaigns, vague policy positions often signalled a lack of seriousness on critical issues. Former president Donald Trump, for example, frequently faces criticism for sacrificing details for broad, emotional appeals.
Yet Harris has already secured the approval and even endorsement of key environmental justice groups like the Green New Deal Network, the Sierra Club, the League of Conservation Voters Victory Fund, the Environmental Defense Fund Action Votes, the Centre for Biological Diversity Action Fund and Climate Power Action.
Political climate change
This marks a significant shift from the Democratic presidential campaign in 2020. At that time, primary candidates faced pressure from environmental groups to provide highly detailed sustainability plans.
Candidates competed over action plans, with ideas ranging from practical to innovative. When he secured the nomination, President Joe Biden carried this momentum forward with a set of specific, detailed policy promises.
By contrast, the Harris campaign has recently backed away from the policy positions Harris held during her 2020 primary run. A recent campaign statement reversed Harris’s previous position on fracking, a divisive issue in battleground states like Pennsylvania. Though Harris was a co-sponsor of the Green New Deal in the Senate and a strong advocate for its provisions in 2020, she has not reaffirmed her support for the policy in 2024.
In her recent appearances, environmental issues have been mentioned only briefly. While her energy policy suggests a general concern for the climate, it doesn’t dive into specifics.
(AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
Ambiguity is strategy
The Harris campaign aims to rally the young voters and liberal Democrats who demanded clear-cut climate policies four years ago. Polls show these groups still view climate change as a critical issue. So why is Harris largely sidestepping the matter?
According to several campaign aides, this ambiguity is not a sign of dismissal or inexperience — it’s a calculated strategy. A recent study on campaign rhetoric, taking foreign policy as its example, suggests candidates turn to ambiguity when campaigning on complex and divisive issues.
With no single silver bullet to the climate crisis, voters tend to have personal, incompatible opinions on America’s best options. Uniting voters under one clear vision is more difficult than allowing them to fill in their own blanks, for now. Ambiguous, emotional language helps to unite audiences with differing policy opinions.
Harris’s tendency to avoid concrete details is more effective than other classic forms of campaign hedging like flip-flopping or ambivalence. A recent study of 14 European democracies suggests when discussing complex or divisive policy matters, the superior campaign strategy is policy vagueness.
An opponent that offers a specific policy that exactly matches a voter’s own opinion can be more successful than vague rhetoric, the study shows. However, on topics like green energy policies, no clear consensus exists among the American left. The Harris campaign is seemingly opting for the next best thing.
Pointing to patriotism
Both the party platform and Harris’s candidacy now frame the fight against climate change as a patriotic duty.
In her nomination acceptance speech, Harris emphasized the fundamental freedoms she believes are at stake in this election, including “the freedom to breathe clean air, drink clean water and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis.” The political climate has apparently shifted from craving detailed plans to embracing a combative, us-versus-them mentality.
(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
In democracies with Big Tent systems — those aimed at appealing to a broad array of voters — political communication is necessarily a strategy of concessions. Candidates, particularly those with progressive platforms, have to navigate the often conflicting demands of their base, swing state voters and the broader electorate.
In these scenarios, candidates distil their positions into vague, partisan rhetoric. By attacking their opponents, candidates can provide specificity on one level while avoiding policy detail on another.
The official Democratic platform, outlined by Harris at the recent convention in Chicago, reflects this broader trend of using ambiguity to navigate conflicting demands and complex issues. Apparently written with Biden in mind as the anticipated nominee, it offers scant insight into Harris’s green policy intentions.
It primarily celebrates the policy victories of the Biden administration, including the sustainability measures in the Inflation Reduction Act. Discussions of the future of green policy centre on the potential harms of a second Trump administration, leaving readers to infer Harris’s stances are starkly at odds with Trump’s.
Different shades of green
This tactic involves politicians adopting partisan slogans or metaphorical language when addressing the media or speaking on a national stage. That vague language allows them the flexibility to adjust their messaging for different audiences on the campaign trail without appearing inconsistent.
In Harris’s case, this ambiguity has allowed media outlets focused on environmental justice to highlight her hardline 2020 positions, while Democratic pundits in battleground states dependent on oil and gas can point to her more recent, less defined policy trajectory.
Typically, candidates fill in specifics as their campaigns progress and come under greater scrutiny from the media and political opponents. However, Harris is so far framing this election as a referendum on Trump.
As the campaign unfolds, it remains to be seen whether the blanks her voters are being required to fill in on climate action will continue to align with what her campaign is seeking to project, or whether she’ll start providing more detailed information.
