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Top journos become impatient with ‘artless dodger’ Kamala Harris: ‘She owes us these answers’

September 23, 2024 | | Print Article

In what could spell the beginning of a turning tide, some top journalists are demanding Vice President Kamala Harris deliver some actual answers to media questions.

After a handful of interviews begrudgingly delivered to American voters, Harris left much to be desired with giving vague and empty answers to key questions about her plans as president

“This week she couldn’t or wouldn’t answer a single question straight, and people could see it. She is an artless dodger,” the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan penned, claiming that voters currently have a choice between “awful and empty.”

“The race is deadlocked with six weeks to go and if you’re an undecided, unsure, or wavering voter it looks like Awful vs. Empty,” she wrote.

(Video Credit: FOX 5 Washington DC)

(Video Credit: MSNBC)

“She owes us these answers. It is wrong that she can’t or won’t address them. It is disrespectful to the electorate,” Noonan argued, going so far as to contend that side-stepping questions on illegal immigration was “political malpractice.”

Noonan took particular issue with Harris’ rambling answers during an interview with ABC’s Philadelphia station.

One now infamous “answer” has spawned never-ending mockery as Harris spoke about childhood neighbors who were proud of their lawns.

The second answer was almost as bad:

“Focusing on, again, the aspirations and the dreams but also just recognizing that at this moment in time, some of the stuff we could take for granted years ago, we can’t take for granted anymore. And so my approach is about new ideas, new policies that are directed at the current moment, and also to be very honest with you, my focus is very much on what we need to do over the next ten, twenty years. To catch up to the 21st century around, again, capacity but also challenges.”

 

Noonan gave a blistering summation of the tripe spewed by Harris,  writing, “This is word-saying gibberish. Only when speaking of her personal biography does she seem authoritative. Otherwise, she is airy, evasive, nonresponsive.”

But Noonan was far from alone.

Harris was also pulverized by The New York Times’ Todd Purdum, a former White House correspondent for the outlet and certainly no fan of former President Trump’s.

“In a campaign in which Donald Trump fills our days with arrant nonsense and dominates the national discussion (and polls show a tight race where Ms. Harris is running behind Joe Biden’s level of support in 2020 with some groups), the vice president can’t afford to stick only to rehearsed answers and stump speeches that might not persuade voters or shape what America is talking about,” Purdum said.

“Writing about politicians for decades has convinced me that direct, succinct answers and explanations from Ms. Harris would go a long way — perhaps longer than she realizes — toward persuading voters that they know enough about her and her plans,” he urged.

While a few on the left such as Purdum want Harris to be coherent and actually answer questions, many seem to want her to be as vague as possible to hide her shortcomings. Among those are former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle.

Still, that sentiment doesn’t sit well with those such as Bret Stephens, an anti-Trump New York Times columnist who wants Harris to answer questions as well and told Ruhle, “I don’t think it’s a lot to ask for her to sit down for a real interview as opposed to a puff piece in which she describes her feelings of growing up in Oakland with nice lawns.”

“It should not be hard for Harris to demonstrate that she can give detailed answers to urgent policy questions. Or to express a sense, beyond a few canned phrases, of how she sees the American interest in a darkening world. Or to articulate a politics of genuine inclusion that reaches out to tens of millions of distrustful voters. Or to prove that she’s more than another factory-settings liberal Democrat whose greatest virtue, like her greatest fault, is that she won’t step too far from the conventional wisdom,” he wrote in a recent column for the New York Times.

Stephens is not alone. ABC’s Selina Wang also smacked Harris for not giving any policy specifics.

“There were multiple times, though, during this interview where Vice President Harris did not offer a specific answer. Instead, she pivoted and returned to her talking points that she wanted to hit,” Wang asserted, according to Fox News.

CNN’s Abby Phillip also chastised Harris over the economy and whether Americans are better off than they were four years ago.

CNN political commentator Scott Jennings took Harris to task as well, pointing out, “Every single policy question she got at the debate, she totally ignored and never answered. Why is it that she believes she does not have to answer to journalists who are asking pretty basic questions of a presidential candidate?”

“Following the interview, Politico reported on Wednesday that Harris refused to ‘veer off script.’ The report said Harris evaded questions about important issues, adding, ‘She did not break much ground or stray far from her talking points,'” Fox News reported.

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