A rare Biden campaign trail appearance reveals a delicate balancing act for him and Harris

President Joe Biden acknowledged Tuesday that Vice President Kamala Harris wouldn’t act as a carbon copy of his own administration, tacitly nodding to a key challenge his vice president faces as she enters the final sprint of her campaign: How to distinguish herself from his record.

President Joe Biden acknowledged Tuesday that Vice President Kamala Harris wouldn’t act as a carbon copy of his own administration, tacitly nodding to a key challenge his vice president faces as she enters the final sprint of her campaign: How to distinguish herself from his record. Delivered during what has become a rare campaign stop for the incumbent, Biden said Harris’ loyalty to him up to now doesn’t mean she won’t forge her own way going ahead. “Every president has to cut their own path. That’s what I did. I was loyal to Barack Obama, but I cut my own path as president. That’s what Kamala is going to do,” Biden said at Democratic Party dinner at a union banquet hall in Philadelphia on Tuesday. “She’s been loyal so far, but she’s gonna cut her own path.” “Donald Trump’s perspective,” he added, “is old and failed and quite frankly thoroughly totally dishonest.” The comments highlight part of the balancing act Biden and Harris are each trying to strike as she faces some pressure to distinguish herself from the current president. After declaring in September he would be “on the road” from Labor Day onward, Biden’s campaign schedule this fall has been conspicuously light – hampered, in part, by a string of urgent domestic and foreign crises requiring his attention, but also complicated by the sense that his presence on the trail could remind voters of the page Harris is trying to turn.