Bucking corporate media and liberals’ comfort in a “thin fog” regarding Vice President Kamala Harris, one writer issued a stark reminder about the “job of the press.”
“We don’t know the answers to any of these questions.”
Since the vice president was coronated as the presumptive nominee for the Democratic Party, examinations of her policies from the media have run about as deep as their explorations of President Joe Biden’s cognitive ability. But while many outlets remained comfortable pushing the “brat” candidate and ragging on the “weirdos” of the Trump-Vance ticket, New Yorker staff writer Jay Caspian Kang questioned what could come of failing to question Harris’ policies.
“A generic candidate who promises nothing on the campaign trail and is unburdened by any past might be the dream of electoral-politics nerds,” wrote Kang, “but it’s the job of the press in a healthy democracy to make sure that voters know whom they’re supporting. An unexamined candidate can become anything, and can work under the influence of anyone, when they assume power.”
Comparing Harris to a tennis “pusher,” who relies on their opponent to make a mistake, he argued, “This appears to be Campaign Kamala’s strategy: don’t make any unforced errors, keep things vanilla, and eventually Trump or Vance will implode.”
“Harris–as Vance has repeatedly pointed out on Twitter, with the hashtag #wheresKamala–has taken almost no questions from reporters, and has spent most of her time giving stump speeches at rallies,” the Thursday piece pointed out. “She has not explained what, exactly, happened in Washington after President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate; or why she has changed her mind on fracking, which she once said should be banned, and has wobbled on Medicare for All, which she once supported; or what she plans to do with Lina Khan, the head of the Federal Trade Commission, who is said to be unpopular among some of Harris’s wealth donors; or much about how a Harris Administration would handle the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.”
Kang also drew attention to a need for clarity on her positions and policies in pushing for a ceasefire in Gaza and an arms embargo against Israel. To his point, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance had capitalized on the sitting vice president’s failure to field questions from the press for the better part of a month as her campaign was underway by confronting the complicit media outside Air Force Two while they were both in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
When she finally did engage with the press in Detroit, Michigan, Harris defended the lack of media access by telling the press, “I’ve talked to my team. I want us to get an interview scheduled before the end of the month.”
“Most of the liberals I know seem to be enveloped in a pleasant if thin fog in which concerns and criticism melt away,” wrote Kang.
Supporting the need for a basement campaign akin to Biden’s 2020 run, Harris took heat earlier in the week when she had broken from another rerun speech to confront hecklers for Hamas that left her miffed.
“You know what, if you want Donald Trump to win then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking,” she had said during her Detroit rally.
Harris angrily reacts to hecklers, accuses them of helping Trump https://t.co/wmkupP6trw
— BPR (@BIZPACReview) August 8, 2024
“But, to date, there have not been particularly loud or widespread calls for her to sit down and answer questions, as there were for Biden after his catastrophic debate,” asserted Kang who also remarked, “If Harris is running a campaign that’s full of energy but short on specifics, we should say that, even if we think Harris’s content-light approach is an optimal strategy for winning in November.”
Hardly alone in the assertion, S.E. Cupp had held a similar position when she got in a tense exchange during a CNN panel with Bakari Sellers who argued, “Don’t nobody care about us, about somebody taking questions.”
“No, I speak to swing votes all the time,” said Cupp. “They have questions, they want answers…because when fans ask them Bakari, when friends ask them, when surrogates ask them, they’re not getting the real answer.”
In response to concerns about the sequestered strategy, the Harris campaign provided a statement to Fox News Digital that argued, “With under 90 days to go, the Vice President’s top priority is earning the support of the voters who will decide this election. In a limited time period and a fragmented media environment, that requires us being strategic, creative, and expeditious in getting our message to those voters in the ways that are most impactful — through paid media, on the ground organizing, and aggressive campaign schedule, and of course interviews that reach our target voters. It’s a far cry from Trump’s losing, ineffective strategy of rage-posting, accosting reporters, and insulting the voters he’ll need to win.”
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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