This same-but-different message is particularly complicated with inflation. “Costs are still too high,” Harris said in an August 16 speech on her plans for the economy, citing the price of groceries, rent, gas and medicine and calling for a federal ban on price gouging. Yet in her CNN interview two weeks later, Harris tried to stress the positive, emphasising that “we have inflation at under 3 per cent.” It’s tough to credibly present yourself as a champion of a lower cost of living when prices are up nearly 20 per cent since you took office.

On the difficulties at the southern US border, Trump handed Biden and Harris a gift when he torpedoed a bipartisan immigration bill earlier this year because he thought it would benefit the Democrats. In her speech at the Democratic convention in Chicago, Harris said she would not “play politics with our security” and pledged to bring back the bill and sign it into law.

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But this comes after three years in which Biden struggled to get border crossings under control and during which Harris — whom Biden assigned to work with Central American nations in addressing the root causes of migration — has at times stumbled when discussing the issue. Even now, when crossings have fallen in recent months following a Biden executive order restricting asylum-seekers at the southern border, and when Harris is talking tougher on immigration, the latest New York Times/Siena College poll of voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin shows that they still trust Trump more than Harris on both the border and the economy.

When he left the 2024 race and endorsed Harris for the Democratic nomination, Biden said choosing her as his running mate was the “best decision” he’d made. And in his convention speech last month, the president repeatedly referred to the work “Kamala and I” had done on infrastructure, education, public safety and gun violence. Biden seems to understand that his legacy is now wrapped up in her success: If she wins in November, he’s the selfless statesman who stepped aside for the next generation; if she loses, he’s the self-obsessed politician who hung on too long.

Harris’ own prospects intersect with Biden’s legacy, record and popularity as well. She served less than a single full term in the Senate — where she did not have a particularly distinguished legislative record — before ascending to the vice-presidency. Her case for replacing Biden as the party’s nominee rests largely on her standing as his loyal No. 2, yet that very status undercuts her ability to turn that page. “No vice-president makes policy,” David Axelrod, a former adviser to President Barack Obama, said bluntly on CNN after Harris’ interview. “It is a challenge for her to take credit for the things that are good and to try and walk away from the things that are not.”

Harris’ dilemma is simple but awkward: She can own the positive aspects of Biden’s record but risk getting tarnished by inflation and the border, or she can distance herself from the administration in which she still serves but risk appearing to be a non-factor in the highest executive post she has ever held.

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Writing in the New York Times this week, James Carville, the veteran Democratic strategist, urged Harris to break “clearly and decisively” from Biden on key issues. The case for a full break is potentially undercut by Biden’s approval ratings, which have been trending higher since he left the race. (Somewhere, LBJ is scowling in sympathy.) I suspect Harris, out of some combination of loyalty, expediency and strategy, will continue to split the difference between herself and her boss. On Wednesday, for example, she called for an increase in capital gains taxes for Americans who earn more than $1 million a year, but to a far lower rate than Biden had proposed — a move aimed at wooing the business community and putting some distance between her and Biden.

One of Harris’ campaign slogans, “We’re not going back,” is a bit of genius in its ambiguity and elasticity. The Democratic nominee mainly uses it to contrast her priorities with those of her Republican opponent. The “sum total” of the Trump project, Harris said in her convention speech, “is to pull our country back to the past. But America, we are not going back. We are not going back. We are not going back.”

But the slogan can also imply a broader rejection of the past, including Harris’ move beyond the tenure of the man who twice put her in position to reach the presidency — first by naming her as his running mate, and next by anointing her as his successor when he decided that running was no longer an option.

Trump seems to wish he could still run against Biden. Harris probably wishes she didn’t have to.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.