2 weeks Ago By Isaac Schorr
For the first month and change after being handed a major party’s presidential nomination without earning a single vote, Kamala Harris coasted. Democrats and their allies in the press rejoiced at no longer being saddled with Joe Biden and rewarded her with a luxurious honeymoon that she used to walk back the unpopular, far-left agenda she endorsed back in 2020 and present herself as all things to all people. It’s been a boon to her prospects, and an injustice to voters.
On Thursday, though, Harris was finally forced to answer a question or two alongside her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. In the afternoon, CNN released a short clip to preview the veep’s interview with Dana Bash ahead of its airing that night; it was vintage Harris. Asked about her various flip-flops on various issues – and energy policy in particular – she served up word salad: Climate change “is an urgent matter to which we should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time.
” And platitudes: “The most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed.” And a reminder of her mendacious brand of radicalism by all but admitting that the “Inflation Reduction Act” was actually a cynical way to use an economic crisis to pass a climate bill. When the interview actually began, Bash’s first inquiry was about what Harris would do on Day 1 in the Oval Office; all she mustered were platitudes about the middle class and a lamentation of Donald Trump’s character flaws.
Bash had to repeat the inquiry. It was an inauspicious start, and conservatives will call it a disaster. But as full of dodges, obfuscations, and outright lies as it might have been, a disaster it was not.
Harris started slow, but the interview showed exactly how, with a savvy campaign strategy and a friendly media, she is capable of defeating Trump. Asked if she stood by “Bidenomics,” she shrewdly stiff-armed the term and pivoted to specific policies advanced by the administration. When immigration – perhaps her greatest vulnerability as a candidate came up – she hammered Trump for killing a bipartisan immigration bill and promised that as president, she forcefully promised to sign it into law.
Given the poor hand she’s dealt herself as border czar, it was the best she could reasonably be expected to do. And while Walz has plenty of vulnerabilities himself given his radical record, he is a smooth operator whose platitudes come off as sincere if you’re not attuned to his act. This playbook of simple, scripted answers only works, though, because it was paired with Bash’s friendly tone and approach.
She would press them once , but never really try to pin either of them down if they continued to evade uncomfortable terrain. Bash really gave the game away when she asked – with her final questions in the first interview Harris has granted the American people in months – softballs about her niece and Walz’s son. If the Democrats want to run a biographical, vibes-based campaign, the media is content to let them.
To be sure, Harris made mistakes on Thursday. She doubled down on her demagogic “price-gouging” talking point that doubles as a smear and excuse. She was utterly unconvincing in her effort to convince voters, and Pennsylvanians in particular, that she has changed her view on fracking.
She gave an embarrassing answer about how ending Israel’s just war on Hamas might “unlock” the potential for a two-state solution in the region. And of course, she meandered. But if Harris’s weaknesses are to be exploited, Republicans – and their standard bearer – will need to prosecute the case against her in a diligent and intelligible manner.
Because the media isn’t going to, and Harris is smart enough to use that to her advantage..
