So much for a "new way forward." After nearly seven weeks of dodging the media and refusing to produce nearly any agenda for her proposed presidency, Kamala Harris finally published an Issues page on her website. As I wrote yesterday, her vague and generalized policy "values" amount to nothing more than a rehash of Joe Biden's agenda items from his State of the Union speeches.

Forget 'rehash,' as it turns out. Think flat-out plagiarism instead, and from an ironic source. The New Republic reports this morning that a peek at the code reveals that the entire page got lifted from Joe Biden's old campaign website, emphasis mine:

She quickly jettisoned progressive positions she took during the 2020 presidential race—such as gun buybacks, a fracking ban, and Medicare for All—without saying much about where she currently stands. Last month’s DNC was a celebration of the party’s normalcy and the middle class, but there was little of substance beneath it. Her big policy ideas in August were to punish price-gouging in grocery stores, kill taxes on tips, and spur the construction of new homes.

The campaign’s strategy, it seemed, was to ride those good summer vibes and avoid the risk of an aggressive policy agenda that would expose her to criticism. But having too few policies is also risky, not least because it makes Harris look like she doesn’t stand for anything (and also because her few policy stances then get nitpicked to death: her price gouging solution was roundly criticized by economists across the political spectrum, while her tip policy has come under fire because it was first taken up by Trump).

The Harris campaign is only now, belatedly, realizing that this is a problem. On Sunday, they finally added an “Issues” section to her website. It includes a slew of policies that the campaign has previously outlined, as well as sections on reproductive and civil rights. Unfortunately for Harris, its release was undermined by a simple but telling error: The page’s source code revealed that parts of the platform were copied directly from Biden’s campaign page.

How ironic can this get? Joe Biden got plagiarized. The man who once claimed Neil Kinnock's origin story in a speech, and reportedly plagiarized his work in law school as well? Not only did Biden get plagiarized, he got plagiarized by the replacement he insisted on endorsing ... and the one who keeps promising a "new way forward" to boot. 

And how incompetent is this, too? Most plagiarizers these days at least put a little effort into reworking the text to keep the theft from getting noticed. At a bare minimum, they would retype it themselves to keep the code from copying into the new document, where it would provide easy proof of plagiarism. Like ... in this case. Sheesh.

How reliable is this? Well, The New Republic isn't exactly a bastion of conservative thought, and these days is as progressive as the day is long. They picked it up from a Twitter/X user who just took a peek behind the code curtain after noticing some odd familiarities:

A NEW WAY FORWARD and it's literally just biden's exact shit you cannot make this up lol pic.twitter.com/s4Ixb7u6wj

— Corinne Green (@gaynarcan) September 9, 2024

they copied and pasted the policy page code from biden's website and couldn't be assed to change it. "join our campaign to re-elect joe biden today!" pic.twitter.com/cDlL8xn01Q

— Corinne Green (@gaynarcan) September 9, 2024

party's over 😭https://t.co/layNEZ1yDP

— Corinne Green (@gaynarcan) September 9, 2024

Clearly, Kamala Harris is incapable of making up anything on her own. She's an empty suit without any substance at all, and what substance she does have she has to steal from others. Had they reworked these "values" into new prose in Harris' voice, it still would have been a rehash of Joe Biden's SOTU highlights, but at least it would had been harder to make the case that she's nothing more than a rerun of his administration. 

Yesterday, Nancy Pelosi insisted that she didn't want Biden to withdraw but just wanted a better campaign. Even assuming that's true -- which is nonsense -- Pelosi now has the worst of both worlds: an incompetent campaign with an even more incompetent candidate. Let's see how well Harris sticks to the "values" she plagiarized in tonight's debate, or whether she even will recognize them.