Takeaways from CNN’s interview with Harris and Walz | CNN Politics

Vice President Kamala Harris said she was “deeply touched” by a photo of her young grandniece, in pigtails, watching her speak at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last week.

Though Harris hasn’t emphasized it — she said she is running to be president for “all Americans” — the photo captured the potential of her candidacy to make history.

“It’s very humbling. Very humbling in many ways,” she told CNN’s Dana Bash on Thursday.

Her comments came during the first joint interview of Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz. The Minnesota governor added that he’d seen video of his son Gus emotionally reacting to his convention speech.

“Our politics can be better. It can be different. We can show some of these things, and we can have families involved in this,” he said. “I hope people felt that out there, and I hope that they hugged their kids a little tighter, because you never know. Life can be kind of hard.”

In the interview, Harris explained how her positions on issues including fracking and border security have evolved since she first ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2019 — and offered a preview of how she’s going to explain those evolutions to voters when they come up in her debate with former President Donald Trump and at other moments as the race moves forward.

“My values have not changed,” she said.

She also sought to frame the 2024 race as one that offers the American people “a new way forward” after a political decade in which Trump — in office or out — was a central figure.

Democrats have framed Harris’ 2024 campaign as one of joy — a turning of the page from a former president who has cast his political rivals, the media and others as enemies and frequently tapped into dark themes with dire warnings about the nation’s future. That approach will soon face its biggest test yet, with Harris and Trump both preparing for their September 10 debate on ABC.

Here are six takeaways from the Democratic ticket’s interview with Bash:

Explaining flip-flop on fracking

As a presidential candidate in 2019, Harris opposed fracking — a position that could have proven politically damaging in Pennsylvania, where it’s a huge employer. Now, she says, she supports it.

“As vice president, I did not ban fracking. As president, I will not ban fracking,” she said.

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is the process of breaking through dense shale to unlock natural gas. Progressives have opposed fracking due to concerns about climate change. However, under the Inflation Reduction Act, a sweeping $750 billion health care, tax and climate bill that Harris cast the tie-breaking vote to pass in the Senate and President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022, fracking has expanded in the United States, while also advancing clean energy efforts.

Harris said she had already changed her position on fracking in 2020, when she said during the vice presidential debate that Biden “will not end fracking.”

“I have not changed that position, nor will I going forward,” she told Bash, adding, “My values have not changed. I believe it is very important that we take seriously what we must do to guard against what is a clear crisis in terms of the climate.”

She cited the Biden administration’s efforts to spur growth in clean energy, saying: “What I have seen is that we can grow and we can increase a thriving clean energy economy without banning fracking.”