1. What’s Ms. Harris’s position on health care?

She’s held several of them. Originally, she was a sponsor of the Medicare for All bill offered by Senator Bernie Sanders, which would create a single-payer system and eliminate private health insurance.

But she seemed to change her position frequently on elements of Medicare for All until she released her own proposal in July 2019. Unlike the Sanders bill, her plan would maintain a limited role for private insurers and seek to pay for costs without raising taxes on the middle class.

2. Is Ms. Harris a progressive?

She has described herself as a “progressive prosecutor” during her time as a district attorney and attorney general in California. While she pushed leftward on issues like gay marriage and the death penalty, she sometimes enraged liberals by refusing to go further.

In the presidential primary, Ms. Harris styled herself as a pragmatic problem solver. In many ways, she's indicative of how Democrats have broadly moved to the left, even if she remains more moderate than the most vocal progressive firebrands.

3. How does Ms. Harris talk about her identity?

Ms. Harris is of Jamaican and Indian descent, and she is the first woman of color on a major party’s presidential ticket. She attended a historically black college (Howard University), is a member of a prominent black sorority (Alpha Kappa Alpha) and visited India often while growing up. She often argues that her identity makes her uniquely suited to fight for people who have been traditionally ignored.