The Harris campaign is riding a wave to defeat — and may be setting a trap we’ve seen before
When George H.W. Bush was ducking debates during the fall of 1992, Bill Clinton’s campaign sent trolling 7-foot chicken mascots to every Bush campaign event. The humorous jab was brilliantly effective.
A chastened Bush relented, agreeing to three debates. But by that time, “Chicken George,” as it came to be known, had done its damage. Clinton emerged as the alpha-male to Bush’s beta and Clinton never looked back as he rode the wave into the White House.
Kamala Harris is potentially setting up the same trap.
While she certainly gets a passing grade in her CNN interview on Thursday night, skating by a softball chat that had no meaningful policy examination will not settle the question of readiness — a critical issue unscored by her systematic avoidance of unscripted news media exposure.
The preparedness issue is potent in large part because Democrats and liberal reporters themselves seeded the ground.
After her disastrous 2021 interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, when she couldn’t define the Biden administration’s policy on immigration, even The New York Times reported Harris “all but went into a bunker for about a year, avoiding many interviews out of what aides said was a fear of making mistakes and disappointing Mr. Biden.”
But it wasn’t only The New York Times.
President Biden himself put down the vice president publicly, claiming in a biography that “Harris was a work in progress.”
In a Politico profile of the “dysfunction” in the VP’s office, her own staff widely complained of disorganization and “managed chaos.”
A Washington Post profile of mass staff exodus conveyed the same sentiments.
And last month, Biden’s own staff reportedly “denigrated her political strength and suggested that she would not be as strong a candidate against Donald J. Trump.” The Atlantic claimed that “few people seem to think she’s ready to be president.”
Still, the current media bias that has been favorable to Harris can change quickly, as it did with Joe Biden after his fateful debate flop.
As much as reporters don’t want to see Trump win, most reporters also don’t want to miss the next turn of the story when Harris inevitably trips with a verbal miscue. I have called this the FOMO swoon (fear of missing out).
Her protective shielding ultimately gives credibility to her opponents’ arguments that she’s hiding something.
This shielding is wrong not just because it’s self-defeating but also because it’s anti-democratic.
For eight years now, Democrats have piously argued that they are the “protectors” of democracy. Yet, with a straight face, Democrats had no hesitation in hiding President Biden’s infirmity from the public — ignoring the undeniable truth that voters had a right to know.
Voters similarly have every right to see Harris regularly cross-examined by the news media on everything from the reported dysfunction in her office; her knowledge, fluidity and facility on the issues; how she responds under stress; and the reasons for her innumerable eleventh-hour flip-flops.
Changing positions on one issue is understandable; changing positions on nearly everything suggests the lack of a core — or, perhaps, that someone else is pulling the strings.
The argument by some of Harris’ staff that she is upholding democratic norms of transparency with mere teleprompter campaign rallies is sophistry.
Regular and ongoing exposure to an independent press is democracy’s fourth column; it’s what gives voters a true look at the character, philosophy and talents of a candidate.
Barack Obama and Bill Clinton took every opportunity with the news media to showcase their remarkable political and policy talents.
While Thursday’s interview was a useful start, it provided no real challenge to her mostly redistributionist big-government economic philosophy or serious probing to her “my values haven’t changed” reversals. In coming days, we are likely to hear more of what a liberal New York Times columnist says is Harris’ need “to start proving herself outside her comfort zone.”
Ultimately, Harris’ strong-arming of the news media up to now seemed rooted in the siren song that she’s ahead and can therefore get away with it. This is a delusion bordering on malpractice.
Consider the following: In the Real Clear Politics polling average, Harris is up by 1.7 points nationally; but Biden was up 6.9 at this point in the campaign in 2020 and Hillary Clinton was up 6.0 in 2016. In Wisconsin, Harris is up 1 point, but Biden was up 3.5 points and Clinton 11.5 points at the same point in their campaigns there.
Trump is up 0.2 points in Pennsylvania, but Biden was up 5.8 point and Clinton was up a whopping 9.2 points on this date.
And in Michigan, Harris is up 2 points, while Biden was up 2.3 and Clinton was up 9 points at the same point.
If the polling errors favoring Democrats in 2020 and 2016 persist, then Trump is probably still in the lead.
Further, the focus of the fall campaign will increasingly move from “joy” to policy — and Trump leads on most issues because of a Biden-Harris record of which most voters disapprove.
The cocooning of Harris is an affront to the transparent principles of democracy. It invites a return of the Bush-era chicken mascots.
Most importantly, it feels dangerously close to a reprise of the failed 1988 Mike Dukakis presidential campaign that never came out of its left-leaning bunker.
Julian Epstein is the former Democratic chief counsel to the House Judiciary Committee.
