To almost everyone's surprise, Kamala Harris has had a remarkably good two weeks.
Of course, Democrats are pleasantly surprised. Before President Biden dropped out of the race, many Democrats were deeply skeptical that Harris’s switch to Biden would improve their chances in November. So far, many of their concerns have proven unfounded.
There was no nasty, drawn-out intraparty civil war over the nomination; Harris essentially clinched it a couple of days after Biden withdrew. Her past positions have not made her radioactive among undecided voters. Her rock-bottom approval ratings as Biden’s vice president have not carried over to her candidacy. The campaign transition was seemingly frictionless: Harris basically hung a new banner on the same operation. And any concerns that she wouldn’t have time to raise money were washed away with a firehose of donations. Almost a third of a billion dollars Only in July.
It seems that the Democrats’ unpopular, senescent, cantankerous candidate was the one holding them back after all. Voters are craving a change-maker — a role that cannot be filled by an incumbent who has been in federal office since the heyday of “All in the Family” and “The Waltons.”
The biggest sign that Harris’s team knows what it’s doing may be its effort to keep the candidate under wraps. Sure, we’ve seen plenty of it — in ads, scripted rallies and a few brief statements. But she hasn’t endured extended interaction with the press since before the June 27 debate that doomed Biden’s candidacy. last time It was June 24 on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” a far from challenging spot for a Democrat.
The Harris campaign’s decision to avoid sitting down with an aggressive or even particularly curious reporter isn’t necessarily a sign of a lack of confidence in her (as many critics insist). Even if she were a fantastic, spontaneous political communicator (which she isn’t), keeping her on script for a while makes sense. The longer she can be all things to all people (or at least all persuadable voters), the better. Answering tough questions risks disillusioning some voters about who they think or expect her to be.
Also, going back to Sun Tzu or Napoleon, it has always been a truism that when your opponent is failing, you should not stand in his way. This is particularly true in the Trump era: when people’s attention is focused on Trump, they don’t like what they see. And Biden’s withdrawal has led to an outbreak of personal attacks from the former president.
Last week, Trump harshly criticized Harris’s identification as a black woman and then devoted a significant portion of his Atlanta rally to attacking Brian Kemp, the well-deservedly popular Republican governor of Georgia. Why would Democrats want to distract anyone from that?
Still, it is disturbing that while Americans and our allies harbor serious concerns about whether the president is prepared for an increasingly challenging geopolitical and economic moment, his constitutional deputy has done so little to reassure the public.
Less momentous but more scandalous is the collective attitude of the press. complicity in Harris' strategy. The vice president's campaign has known how to turned around On many of the fatally leftist positions he took during his ill-fated first presidential campaign — against fracking, in favor of Medicare for All, sympathetic to calls to cut funding for police departments, etc. — the press should not let him get away with it so easily.
If this were a normal time, reporters would be shouting questions like “When are you holding a press conference?” every time Harris steps off Air Force Two. It’s true that these aren’t normal times, but that doesn’t excuse reporters from demanding more transparency from a candidate who bypassed the entire primary process.
Voluntarily enabling a campaign strategy is not the proper role of the Fourth Estate, but even if you think it is, shielding Harris from scrutiny could eventually do more harm than good. Hiding the full extent of Biden’s decline worked well for a while. But when the reality was revealed, it was such a shock that he was forced to drop out of the race. Shielding Harris from scrutiny could also have dire consequences when, without the protection of a teleprompter or a malleable press corps, she presents one of her trademark word salads.
I don't like the press's sudden love affair with Harris, but even if I did, I'd recommend some heavy-handedness sooner rather than later.
