Vice President Kamala Harris will accept the Democrats’ nomination on Thursday without sitting for one interview, giving one press conference, or providing many policy details since joining the race 32 days ago — July 21, 2024.
The strategy is notable for three reasons. First, it is a rinse and repeat of President Joe Biden’s 2020 “basement” strategy to avoid public scrutiny, which counters the multitude of exchanges the media typically conduct when presidential candidates enter races.
Second, the strategy underscores the Democrats’ perceived worry about their candidate’s likability and ability to speak off the cuff about policies without delivering a devastating gaffe. More is here on Harris’s word salads.
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White HouseThird, it spotlights the Harris campaign’s “catch-22.” Speaking about policies to fix crime, inflation, and border security would undermine the Biden-Harris administration’s claim of having solved those key issues. However, Harris must tout the administration’s policy successes to validate her record and candidacy.
The media have not interviewed Harris on television since June 24, 2024, and the last time the press reportedly questioned her at a solo news conference was eight months ago — December 2, 2023. For 32 days since joining the race, Harris has not given an unscripted press conference or sit-down interview. “She has committed to one interview by Aug. 31,” Axios reported Tuesday.
Despite the media’s lack of access, their coverage of Harris has been more positive (84 percent) than their coverage of any other major party nominee, a Media Research Center study found. Coverage of former President Donald Trump has been almost entirely negative (89 percent). In turn, 70 percent of registered Democrats and independents who voted for Biden in 2020 are mostly in the dark about many of Harris’s controversial and radical positions, a recent poll shows.
When Harris divulged her economic plan of Soviet-style price controls in August, it was unpopular, and some Democrats tried to walk it back. The media — namely Harvard economist and former Biden administration official Jason Furman, Washington Post economics columnist Catherine Rampell, and liberal economist Noah Smith — slammed Harris with coverage. “This is not sensible policy, and I think the biggest hope is that it ends up being a lot of rhetoric and no reality,” Furman told the New York Times.
More is here on Harris’s radical record.
“She doesn’t need to negotiate against herself. We’ve got the biggest possible tent right now,” Rep. Ann McLane Kuster (D-NH) told Politico. “I don’t think there’s a real strong reason for her to try to weed out any points of view right now.”
The Harris campaign’s honeymoon phase energized some Democrats, while others raised concerns about doing anything that could end the phase. “They [voters] have very little knowledge about who she is, what her job has actually been,” one battleground-district House Democrat said. “They know Trump. They know what his policies are. They don’t know Kamala, and, so, Kamala has a ton of room right now to define herself.”
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C-SPANWendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.
