How Harris is preparing to contrast her record as a prosecutor with Trump’s as a felon

Kamala Harris has spent much more of her life as a prosecutor than as a senator or vice president – and that is exactly how she is now going to run against Donald Trump.

Kamala Harris has spent much more of her life as a prosecutor than as a senator or vice president – and that is exactly how she is now going to run against Donald Trump. In sessions that were quietly underway at the Naval Observatory even before Joe Biden’s disastrous debate, Harris and her inner circle had already landed on the plan to look past whoever Trump picked as his running mate and focus almost exclusively on the former president. The vice president had expected that to be part of her role making the case for Biden. But it became clearer and clearer over the last month that she was likely going to be making the case for herself. Now that Biden has stepped aside — and with even more of her potential opponents planning to endorse her by the end of the day Monday — over a dozen advisers and close allies told CNN they think her candidacy will lean heavily on her background as a district attorney, attorney general and cross examiner in Senate hearings. It is simple, they say: prosecutor versus felon. The strategy will be a return to the “prosecutor for president” framework of her 2020 presidential campaign, which included her slogan taken from her days standing up in court as a young assistant district attorney: “Kamala Harris, for the people.” In those days, her team was stretching the rhetoric. But this year, the GOP nominee has been found guilty in a New York hush money trial, liable for battery in a civil case, and faces two other criminal cases related to subverting the 2020 election.