It wasn’t the best week for the Vice President Kamala Harris media tour, what with Hurricane Milton bearing down on Florida, Israel preparing a potentially massive strike on Iran and the Oct. 7 anniversary, which brought both solemn commemorations and furious protests to cities and campuses across the United States.
The Harris campaign conducted this tour not because it had something new to say, but because it needed to redirect the media narrative about its candidate.
But with the presidential election only 25 days away, her campaign did not have much more time to respond to the persistent criticism that she was hiding from journalists and voters, avoiding unscripted exchanges and essentially trying to run the clock out like a team nervous about its razor-thin lead. So there she was, on “60 Minutes,” the “Call Her Daddy” podcast, drinking beer with Stephen Colbert, chatting with the ladies of “The View,” telling Howard Stern about her exercise routine (elliptical machine in the morning while watching “Morning Joe”).
And that is the problem: The Harris campaign conducted this tour not because it had something new to say, but because it needed to redirect the media narrative about its candidate.
“There is at times an impression that her campaign consists almost entirely of pivots,” Alex Shephard smartly observed in The New Republic earlier this week, while a New York Times headline said she “Continues to Bob and Weave” in interviews. It all adds to the very mood the press tour was supposed to dispel.
Take, for example, her exchange with Bill Whitaker of “60 Minutes” about whether the United States still has influence over Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister who could be pushing for a wider Middle East war.
“We are not gonna stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end,” Harris said. I have no idea what this means. Neither did Whitaker, who pressed her in a follow-up, asking if we have “a real close ally” in Netanyahu.
“The better question is do we have an important alliance between the American people and the Israeli people. And the answer to that question is yes,” Harris answered. She probably wanted to say that Netanyahu is a jerk, which everyone knows, but that the United States is going to make sure it can fend off existential threats from Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran. But she didn’t want to upset Jewish voters, or Arab American and Muslim voters, so she said nothing at all.
Later, Whitaker — the week’s best interviewer — asked how she would pay for her economic plan, which he pointed out came with an estimated price tag of $3 trillion. Her answer included the bland assertion that small businesses are “part of the backbone of the economy.” OK, and?
Because of the way the interview has been edited — with voiceovers from Whitaker regularly breaking in — the Trump campaign is pushing CBS News to release a full, unedited transcript of the interview.
Voters who are mobilized by reproductive rights are already firmly in her camp.
As the media tour came to a close with a Univision town hall on Thursday night, I was left with the same vague impression I had before the press tour — which makes that tour a massive missed opportunity. There was no moment akin to Bill Clinton blowing the horn on “The Arsenio Hall Show” in 1992, nothing surprising or unexpected.
Running out the clock may not be an option. “Polls coming in show Harris peaked and interviews not helping. Swing states trending away from Harris,” veteran pollster Mark Penn wrote in a social media post. “It’s not over until it’s over and this is still on a razor’s edge so it can flip back but that’s a fair read of newest polling.”
And in The New York Times, the former Obama communications director Daniel Pfeiffer pointed out that Trump is making critical inroads with younger men by appearing on nontraditional podcasts and streaming shows. Pfeiffer observed that 13 million people watched Trump’s interview with gamer Theo Von, “about twice the viewership of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s much ballyhooed interview with Dana Bash of CNN.”
Harris had a good conversation with Alex Cooper, host of the massively popular “Call Her Daddy” podcast. Much of it focused on reproductive health, with Harris pointing out that Roe v. Wade was overturned by a Supreme Court with three Trump picks. And if he wins in November, she warned (correctly) that he may well have two more high court appointments, which would turn the Supreme Court into a right-wing fortress.
The problem is that the voters who are mobilized by reproductive rights are already firmly in her camp and polls have shown the economy remains the top concern for swing voters.
Harris spent an hour with a strangely fanboyish Howard Stern — who might be looking to atone for his role in mainstreaming Trump over dozens of appearances between 1993 and 2015. Stern described a potential second Trump term as a nightmare for democracy, and Harris naturally enough agreed. The problem here is that, as with abortion, the voters for whom a second Trump term is unpalatable are already in Harris’ camp.
As for the swing voters? In a recent focus group of swing voters, the democracy argument fell flat. “Many of these Pennsylvania swing voters have grown skeptical of end-of-democracy warnings, and now suffer from ‘Most-Consequential-Election Fatigue,’” said moderator Rich Thau of Engagious.
We do know that voters badly want change. They are unconvinced that the sitting vice president will be that change agent (though it’s unclear how returning to a previous president is all that much change, either). During her appearance on “The View,” Harris was asked how she would have governed differently in the last four years, had it been she, not Biden, who were president.
“There is not a thing that comes to mind in terms of — and I’ve been a part of — of the decisions that have had impact,” Harris mystifyingly responded.
Because I like beer, I was amused to see Harris sipping a Miller High Life with Stephen Colbert. But with Colbert (and most other late-night comedians) firmly in the anti-Trump camp, does yet another buddy-buddy interview move the needle in key battleground states?
For what it’s worth, I still think Harris will squeak it out. But if she doesn’t, her inability to fearlessly say who she is and what she believes will be one of the reasons. And even if she does, she will likely face a Congress where both chambers are controlled by Republicans. There will be no avoiding difficult conversations with GOP leaders who are going to be a lot less understanding than Joy Behar.
During her interview with Stern, the host expressed frustrated amusement at the state of the presidential race. “I don’t even understand how this election is close,” he said. I read that as a subtle rebuke. As for the vice president, she had no response.
