It’s happened before: In 2004, as the two candidates prepared for the second presidential debate, hosted by ABC, the Republican presidential campaign accused the Democratic candidate of constantly changing policy prior to the political showdown.
The race for the White House was between then-President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry.
During a debate in St. Louis in October, President Bush attacked Kerry for his ever-changing stance on the Iraq War. President Bush argued that Kerry should not be president because the country needed a commander in chief who was “steadfast, strong and resolute.” This ever-changing attack took hold and became a key moment in the debate and the 2004 presidential election.
Though a lot has changed in the past two decades, presidential campaigns continue to launch these kinds of attacks at each other, though they may not have as much impact on voters as candidates hope.
Former President Donald Trump and his campaign have in recent weeks capitalized on Harris’ shifting stances on fracking, health care and immigration, with Trump calling her “the person who has changed the most” at a rally in Michigan.
Meanwhile, Harris’ campaign criticized Trump’s “brazen back-and-forth” on marijuana legalization and abortion. Last month, Trump suggested he would vote for Florida’s abortion access amendment, before making it clear he would vote against it.
The issue is likely to come up again during Tuesday night’s debate.
“Consistency isn’t that important.”
Voters don’t seem to mind when politicians invert, despite frequent critical comments from candidates, said Sarah Crocco, a political science professor at the University of Maryland, who has conducted several national surveys of voter reactions to policy inversions.
“When you do survey experiments, you find that there’s no political cost to people who switch, as long as they switch to a position that the survey subjects want,” Kloko said of surveys conducted in 2016 and 2019. “Consistency doesn’t matter much to them, as long as they arrive at the right position.”
In Kroko’s research, politicians who correctly reverse their views are viewed as “woke.” Voters tend to be somewhat forgiving when politicians change their views, but this is not always the case.
“If you turn your back on someone, that’s when the criticism comes in: ‘Oh, this person is indecisive,'” Kroko said. “‘This person has no principles. This person is a really stupid politician. He can’t even hold his own.'”
And in an increasingly polarized political environment, where voters let their political preferences determine right and wrong, teetering attacks are even less effective.
“Voters are generally very attached to the candidates their party supports, so I don’t think these ever-changing criticisms will have much of an impact,” Crocco said.
But the professor acknowledged that not all flip-flops are the same.
Possible exceptions
Both Trump and Harris changed their policy positions during the presidential campaign.
Harris no longer supports a ban on fracking, has withdrawn her support for Medicare for All, and has backed a bipartisan immigration bill to build an additional wall on the southern border — all departures from her 2020 presidential positions. Trump no longer wants to ban TikTok, is open to legalizing marijuana, and has wavered on restricting or banning abortion, but maintains the issue is up to the states to decide.
For Crocco, only one issue poses a serious threat during this election: abortion. This poses a unique challenge to the Trump campaign in that an abortion-rights position has been widely shown to be a winning political position, while potentially alienating voters who oppose abortion rights.
“I think Republicans recognize they need to find a different position on this issue, but it’s going to be very hard to do that without alienating Republican evangelical voters,” Kloko said. “So it’s going to be hard for them.”
Asked whether Harris’s shifting stance on immigration or energy policy could pose a similar risk, Crocco said he didn’t think it would be to the same extent.
“In many cases, either (Harris’) campaign hasn’t announced a new position yet, or she just said she had this opinion in 2020 and is now silent on the issue,” Crocco said. “To me, these seem like weaker attacks because they’re not on an issue that has a clear binary.”
Looking back at the 2004 Bush-Kerry debate, Crocco said the Iraq War was a stark dichotomy in that election, and any back and forth on such an issue creates political risks and could determine the direction of the debate.
“So I wouldn’t be surprised at all if this issue came up during the debate,” Crocco said.