To the surprise of just about everyone, Kamala Harris has had a remarkably good two weeks.
Democrats, of course, are pleasantly surprised. Prior to President Biden’s withdrawal from the race, many Democrats were exceedingly skeptical that swapping Harris for Biden would improve their chances in November. So far, many of their concerns have proved unwarranted.
No ugly, protracted intraparty civil war for the nomination ensued; Harris essentially secured it within a couple of days of Biden’s withdrawal. Her past positions haven’t made her radioactive among swing voters. Her very low approval numbers as Biden’s vice president have not carried over to her candidacy. The campaign transition was apparently frictionless: Harris basically just hung a new shingle on the same operation. And any concern that she didn’t have time to raise money was erased by a fire hose of donations — nearly a third of a billion dollars in July alone.
It seems it was the Democrats’ unpopular, senescent, cantankerous candidate who was holding them back after all. Voters hunger for a change candidate — one role that can’t be played by an incumbent who has been in federal office since the heyday of “All in the Family” and “The Waltons.”
The chief indication that the Harris team knows what it’s doing may be its effort to keep the candidate herself under wraps. Sure, we’ve seen a lot of her: in ads, scripted rallies and a few brief statements. But she hasn’t endured an extended interaction with the press since before the June 27 debate that doomed Biden’s candidacy. The last time was on June 24 on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” hardly a challenging venue for a Democrat.
The Harris campaign’s decision to avoid sitting down with an aggressive or even particularly curious reporter is not necessarily a sign that it lacks confidence in her (as many critics insist). Even if she were a fantastic off-the-cuff political communicator — which she is not — keeping her on script for a while makes sense. The longer she can be all things to all people — or at least to all persuadable voters — the better off she is. Answering hard questions runs the risk of disabusing some voters of who they think or hope she is.
Also, going back to Sun Tzu or Napoleon, it’s been a truism that when your opponent is flailing, you shouldn’t get in the 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 provoked an eruption of ad hominem Trumpiness from the former president.
Last week, Trump railed against Harris’ identification as a Black woman and then spent a sizable chunk of his rally in Atlanta attacking Brian Kemp, Georgia’s deservedly popular Republican governor. Why would Democrats want to distract anyone from that?
Still, it is disturbing that even as Americans and our allies harbor serious concerns about whether the president is up to an increasingly fraught geopolitical and economic moment, his constitutional understudy has done so little to reassure the public.
Less consequential but more outrageous is the press’ collective complicity in Harris’ strategy. The vice president’s campaign has wisely flip-flopped on many of the fatally left-wing positions she took during her ill-fated first presidential campaign — against fracking, in favor of Medicare for all, sympathetic to calls to cut funding to police departments and so on. But the press shouldn’t let her get away with it so easily.
If this were a remotely normal time, reporters would be shouting questions like “When will you hold a press conference?” every time Harris steps off Air Force Two. Admittedly, this isn’t a normal time. But that doesn’t excuse journalists from demanding more transparency of a candidate who sidestepped the entire primary process.
Willingly enabling a campaign strategy is not the Fourth Estate’s proper role, but even if you think it is, protecting Harris from scrutiny could eventually do more harm than good. Hiding the full extent of Biden’s decline worked well for a time. But when the reality was revealed, it came as such a shock that he was forced to drop out of the race. Shielding Harris from scrutiny could also have serious consequences when, unprotected by a teleprompter or a pliable press corps, she produces one of her signature word salads.
I don’t like the press’ sudden love affair with Harris. But even if I did, I would counsel some tough love sooner rather than later.