"Freedom," "Second Amendment," "illegal immigration": Kamala plagiarizes conservative dictionary

It's a textbook conservative phrase: "Anybody breaking in my home is getting shot." Harris' comment last Thursday to Oprah Winfrey caused a stir, even an uproar in the media as well as on social media. Although her statement may be novel, her strategy is not so much. Ever since she launched her campaign, the vice president has kept the conservative dictionary close at hand, frequently drawing from it. 

After listing proposals about gun control, banning assault weapons, universal background checks and red flag laws, Harris insisted that both she and her vice presidential candidate, Tim Walz, own firearms. This is another borrowed page from the conservative dictionary (something that surprised Oprah- "I did not know that,” despite Harris' first admission of it in her failed 2019 campaign).

After making this comment, Harris chuckled and said that she "probably shouldn't have said that," but that her team would "deal with that later.” Democratic campaign adviser Lance Bottoms said hours later that it was a joke and defended that what was "important" was that voters knew Harris stood up for "the right to bear arms."

Harris' efforts to come off as an attempt to come off as a candidate leaning toward the center, undoing many of the policies she championed before running for president, many of which have been widely reported. To explain these changes, she has resorted to a catchphrase: "My values have not changed." Her dictionary definitely has.

The phrase about defending her home pursues a twofold objective according to several analysts. On the one hand, she is trying to appease the 52% of voters who reported to owning at least one gun in a poll by NBC News. Democrats want to tell them, we're just like you - we're not going for your guns, because we have them too. In the words of Axios analyst Neal Rothschild:

"The Harris campaign is hoping that by showing welcoming arms for conservative identity, right-leaning voters will loosen steadfast liberals-are-from-Mars beliefs."

On the other hand, she seeks to play strategic ambiguity. Why didn't Harris clarify, in front of Oprah and the world, that it had been a joke? Because, just like that, it might come off as a joke, depending on who is listening. 

Pages and pages

"Freedom," "patriotism," "mind your own business." The Democratic National Convention served as a blank page for the Democrats to fill with these borrowed words.

One of the most recurrent words used was "freedom." Governor Josh Shapiro tried to redefine it, arguing that the Democrats are the party of "real freedom." Harris assured, when talking about abortion, that she is in favor of freedom of choice despite the government trying to tell women what to do ("reproductive freedom," as she calls it).

David Collinson, a professor at Lancaster University, wrote that Harris and Walz are even trying to use music to reclaim Republican values. This was evident when Harris walked to the podium to the beat of Beyoncé's Freedom and when Walz ended the evening with Keep on Rockin' in The Free World. 

Some of Harris’ promises like a "secure border" or eliminating the tip tax (which led Trump to accuse her of being a copycat), or even how she introduced Walz as an ex-military man raised in rural Nebraska (he took the stage to Small Town by John Mellencamp) prove that Harris and her party are trying to plagiarize pages from the conservative dictionary. In November, voters will show if it worked.