CNN
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At Throwback Brewery, Kamala Harris looked ahead and distanced herself a little more from the Bidenomic movement, attempting to run as a candidate of change against the incumbent administration that is driving Donald Trump insane.

The vice president made a stopover in New Hampshire on Wednesday – home to four valuable electoral votes – before heading to debate camp in Pittsburgh, where she will face the former president next week in a televised duel that could swing the outcome of the election.

Harris’ political momentum and chances in November depend in part on whether she can present herself to voters as a fresh option and dispel any impression that she is campaigning for a second term for unpopular President Joe Biden.

This is the basis of their efforts to court Americans angry about high food prices and inflation and shut out of the housing market, as well as their efforts to appeal to moderates in the suburbs and the middle class in swing states.

The vice president had previously promised to crack down on price gouging by supermarket giants and to give low-income first-time home buyers a $25,000 down payment. On Wednesday, she moved closer to the political center by promising to encourage 25 million new small businesses in her first term by giving startups a $50,000 tax deduction. And she called for a much smaller capital gains tax increase than Biden has proposed to spur investment and innovation.

“I believe America’s small businesses are an essential foundation for our entire economy,” Harris said at a brewery founded by two female business pioneers that sources local ingredients. “Small businesses in our country employ half of all private sector workers. Half of all private sector workers own or operate a small business or work for a small business.”

The former president, who had stoked nostalgic memories of the Trump economy before the crisis triggered by the Covid-19 emergency, may seek to respond to Harris’ recent economic policy maneuvers in his speech to the New York Economic Club on Thursday.

The political considerations behind Harris’ strategy are clear. On the capital gains tax, for example, Harris has abandoned a more progressive approach from Biden and called for a 28% tax rate on those earning $1 million or more, rather than the 39.6% rate the president proposed in his fiscal 2025 budget. Her gesture shows that she is not a hostage to her boss’s policies and refutes Trump’s claim that she is the heir to a failed economic legacy. The proposal is also unlikely to go unnoticed by Democratic donors with capital gains wealth who helped her raise half a billion dollars in campaign funds.

Harris’ commitment to the powerful myth that small American businesses drive overall prosperity and the economy also appears to be intended to counteract attempts by Trump and his surrogates to dismiss the California Democrat as an extreme “San Francisco liberal,” a “communist,” and a “Bolshevik.”

Their new approaches have led economists to debate the viability of “Harrisomics.” Would their federal ban on price gouging simply lead to shortages of goods, as it has in the past? And would pumping more money into the housing market inevitably trigger price inflation and make homes even more unaffordable?

These questions could prove problematic in the first weeks of a potential Harris administration. But with less than nine weeks to go before the election, Harris is more interested in making a convincing political impression than in the mechanics of economic policy. Given Trump’s poll advantage on the economy, an intense political fight with her rival on this issue would probably be ill-advised anyway. Harris needs to make the election a referendum on personality and which candidate can emerge as a fresh political force. Even small steps out of Biden’s shadow can therefore be important.

Harris, for example, has shown far more understanding than Biden of the plight of young adults locked out of the housing market and shoppers fearful of the cost of their weekly groceries. During his campaign, the president often angrily defended the economy’s successes and downplayed the hardships that remain.

James Carville laid out a possible strategy for Harris in a New York Times column on Monday, saying the 2024 election will be determined by “who is fresh and who is tainted.” The veteran Democratic strategist also wrote that it would not be an insult to Biden if Harris went her own way – it was essential to her political identity. “It shows even more clearly that she is passionate about her own ideas and stands for change, not more of the same,” he wrote, recalling the slogan that helped former President Bill Clinton win as the candidate of change against President George HW Bush in 1992.

Harris’ attempt to convince voters that she is a breath of fresh air is infuriating Trump. The ex-president’s comments and campaign statements are rife with frustration that Harris is getting a new face after four years in the Biden administration and has lost her role as a catalyst for change in the campaign.

Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance expressed skepticism that Harris might attempt this policy change in an interview with the Hugh Hewitt Radio Show on Wednesday. The Ohio senator tried to thwart Harris’s image change by emphasizing that she is an incumbent. “You are the vice president of the United States. You could implement this policy immediately, but you’re not doing that,” Vance said. “She created this inflation crisis with her policies and now she wants to fix it with a magic wand.”

Vance also rejected the vice president’s plan to lower food prices, but acknowledged that not every American company is an “angel.”

“We’ve had price controls in this country and everywhere else. And every time they’re done, they fail,” Vance said. “That means you can’t buy flour anymore. You can’t buy eggs at the supermarket anymore. That’s the effect of price controls.”

The Trump team is also trying to suppress Harris’ economic positioning with a sharp advertising campaign.

A recent ad in Georgia combined clips from news reports on difficult economic issues, with one TV anchor lamenting “the alarming rise in inflation, which has risen to its highest level in nearly 40 years.” Another says, “We’re still struggling with inflation.” In between these clips, the campaign shows footage of Harris praising “Bidenomics” and cheerfully declaring in speeches that “Bidenomics works.”

The Trump team rejected Harris’ small business plan on Wednesday, saying she would push for higher income taxes and an expansion of inheritance taxes, among other things, which would hurt small businesses and consumers. The former president had previously opposed the adoption of the vice president’s own proposal to abolish the tip tax, which was seen as a move for hospitality workers in the swing state of Nevada in particular.

Trump has said the economy would slide into a Great Depression if Harris wins in November. He said similar things about Biden in 2020, but the president has overseen strong, steady job growth and one of the strongest recoveries from the pandemic of any advanced economy, despite an inflation crisis that his White House initially underestimated.

Trump’s plans are often as vague as those of his Democratic rival. As he did as president, Trump promised Americans great deals without saying how he would get them to work or pay for them. For example, he said on Fox News on Sunday: “We’re going to take care of Social Security, we’re not going to do anything that hurts our retirees. There are so many cuts, there’s so much waste in this administration. There’s so much fat in this administration.”

Trump’s plans to drastically increase import tariffs – especially on imports from China – have prompted many economists to warn that he will drastically increase costs for consumers and trigger a new wave of inflation.

But at this crucial moment in a bitter and close election campaign, both Harris and Trump seem less concerned with proven economic policies than with those that deliver immediate political benefits.