Time cover girl Kamala Harris: Is her rise against Trump fueled by an endless media honeymoon?

It's all about the vibe.

A word not usually associated with presidential politics, but rather with late-night parties and joints, is now all that matters. At least if you're Kamala Harris.

She's on the cover of Time—with an admiring sketch that makes her look like she's already president—because of “the fastest turnaround in American political history.”

DESPITE HIS VOTING MATE'S ULTRA-LIBERAL HISTORY, MOST MEDIA ARE JUMPING ON THE WALS BANDWIDTH

Is that all it takes to win? It doesn't hurt that the vice president has surged in the polls, raised huge amounts of money, become a cultural phenomenon, had a relatively successful launch from Tim Walz and is getting a boost from the Democratic convention.

But after that, will it turn out to be a sugar rush? Will his numbers go back to where they were before the Republican attacks?

For the moment, at least, Donald Trump appears unhinged, his attacks on Harris failing to stick and him openly pining for Joe Biden after spending years preparing to run against the frail 81-year-old president.

Moreover, with Biden's withdrawal, Trump, at 78, is now the old man in the race. And many of the pundits who spent their time defending Biden's mental acuity have now moved on to argue that Trump is simply losing control.

I thought he denied that in his hour-long press conference, though he has a tendency to ramble. It reminded me of our recent interview at Mar-a-Lago, when he was sharp and serious on at least 15 issues.

But the media, which has been largely anti-Trump for nine years, trashed the press conference. “It’s crazy,” said HuffPost. “It’s crazy,” said Rolling Stone.

Still, how did it help him to say that the crowd at his inauguration was as large or even larger than the one for MLK's famous “dream” speech in 1963?

The former president was widely ridiculed for saying at the press conference that he once had to make an emergency helicopter landing with Willie Brown, after Kamala's ex-boyfriend denied it. But it turns out there was an emergency landing, with another black politician from California. He had mixed up the names.

IN BATTLE TO DEFINE HARRIS, TRUMP STRIKES DEMOCRATIC COUP, AD CALLS HER 'DANGEROUSLY LIBERAL'

Trump has always presented himself as a strongman, a fighter, a leader of a movement, someone who transformed the party from its Reagan-esque roots. Has Harris succeeded in making undecided Republicans and independents who dislike his conduct find her a safe haven?

Her allies are urging her to focus more, including two former senior Trump advisers, Larry Kudlow and Kellyanne Conway. On Fox Business, Kudlow asked her about her former boss: “Don't walk away, don't call her stupid and all kinds of names, stay focused.”

“The winning formula for President Trump,” Conway said, “is very clear: less insults, more insight and that contrast of policies.”

In a two-hour conversation with Elon Musk on X, plagued by technical glitches, Trump said Harris's portrait on the cover of Time “looks like the most beautiful actress that ever lived” and that she looked a lot like Melania. He again called Kamala “a beautiful woman” (Musk says traffic peaked at 73 million views).

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald J. Trump holds his first public campaign rally with his running mate, vice presidential nominee U.S. Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) (not pictured), at Van Andel Arena on July 20, 2024, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. (Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)

One result of Trump’s media campaign is that Harris finally accepted important questions from his press corps (this was after her 70-second speech with short, concise answers). Trump is up against a media establishment that treats Harris like a queen.

I don’t take credit away from Harris or her savvy over the past three weeks. Having watched several of her television interviews while Biden was still campaigning, I told people she had improved greatly compared to the hesitant, hyper-cautious speaker of the early days.

But the mainstream press hasn’t made an issue of Harris’s refusal to grant a single interview, despite constantly criticizing Biden for avoiding the media. She simply downplays it by saying she expects it to be by the end of the month. Yet Trump and JD Vance have pushed the issue so hard that journalists have been forced to cover the controversy, framing it as “Republicans impeach Harris” when that should also be part of their job.

The former president said he would be less divisive after barely surviving that horrific assassination attempt, but he soon announced he was abandoning that strategy — a classic Trump pattern. He called Harris dumb as a rock and questioned her racial identity before the National Association of Black Journalists.

TRUMP VS. NABJ: HOSTILITY AND QUESTIONS ABOUT JOURNALISM

Trump also said Harris' team was using artificial intelligence to simulate large crowds at the Detroit airport, when wider shots showed there was an audience of thousands.

And he may have been baffled by what he says was an illegal hack, with internal documents sent to three outlets – Politico, the Washington Post and the New York Times – that refused to publish the material.

“I absolutely hate the fake news media,” he posted after the conversation with Musk.

But Trump has a much easier path to 270 and is likely to win. Harris is attracting new supporters, but she is also losing among some demographic groups that favored Biden. Consider her the underdog. She has to deal with her political swings and convince voters that the first Black and Asian-American president would be a plausible commander in chief.

U.S. Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris waves as she boards Air Force Two at San Francisco International Airport August 11, 2024 in San Francisco, California, while returning to Washington, DC. (JULIA NIKHINSON/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

One sign that's no longer unthinkable: Politico has an article about how “progressive national security professionals are already eyeing positions in a potential Kamala Harris administration.”

Time's cover story is overwhelmingly optimistic. Her enthusiasm “resembled Barack Obama's early days… She seems to rise to the moment: a former prosecutor running against a convicted felon.”

And: “Harris's rebranding — the happy-warrior attitude, the viral memes, the disapproving glare at Republican weirdos — has already accomplished what no opponent of Trump has ever been able to do: steal the spotlight from him.”

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We'll see how far this new wave can take her.