For the past two weeks, I've been tossing and turning around this question: Does it really matter if Kamala Harris stands for something? The days since she became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee have been filled with palatial intrigue, the occasional stirring speech, a bounce in the polls and a vice presidential contest that, frankly, it was kind of boring, like a handful. of perfectly fine candidates went to great lengths to be nice to each other.
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Harris has shown more talent as a speechwriter than when he last ran in 2019, and his campaign and fellow Democrats deserve credit for his rise in the polls amid strong skepticism from many, including myself, that they could take out a candidate. switch But we also have to be honest about what we're dealing with here. In tennis, a “pusher” is a player who returns the ball safely over the net, over and over again, waiting for an increasingly frustrated opponent to make a mistake. That seems to be the strategy of the Kamala campaign: don't make unforced errors, keep things vanilla, and eventually either Trump or Vance will implode. Harris, as Vance has pointed out repeatedly on Twitter, using the hashtag #whereiskamala, has taken almost no questions from reporters and has spent most of her time giving speeches at rallies. He has not explained what exactly happened in Washington after President Joe Biden's disastrous debate; or why he has changed his mind on fracking, which he once said should be banned, and faltered on Medicare for All, which he supported; or what he plans to do with Lina Khan, the head of the Federal Trade Commission, who is said to be unpopular with some of Harris' wealthy donors; or much about how a Harris Administration would handle the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
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On the Democratic side, there is a good feeling about the Kamala campaign—to a degree not felt, at the presidential level, since Barack Obama's last run—and no one wants to sully it with debates about politics Harris is popular; Biden was not. Harris Gives Democrats a Chance to Beat Trump; Biden probably didn't. Most liberals I know seem to be shrouded in a pleasant, if thin, fog in which concerns and criticism melt away.
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This is not the kind of column where the writer leans over and gives advice to the Democratic Party. If so, I would simply point to the positive signs: the raucous crowd at Walz's opening speech in Philadelphia; the enthusiasm for Harris I've seen around the country; the renewed belief among Democrats that they may be able to stop Trump for good. But I wonder how the mainstream press will respond to a scandal, or even a hiccup, in the Harris campaign. If it turns out that Harris has been maintaining an idiosyncratic and not entirely secure approach to email, or if a relative dropped off a laptop full of salacious images for repair and they were shared with the New York Post, how would they the media? the story? More plausibly, if the Kamala Campaign sticks to this strategy of keeping the candidate on message through speeches and answering few questions from the press corps, will reporters just shrug and let it go? Should we care that he hasn't had a settlement interview or had to answer a substantial policy question in weeks?
The answer is that journalists should care, but they shouldn't expect voters, or even their audiences, to. This may be a minority view, but I don't think journalists are ethically obligated to stop Trump and “preserve democracy,” nor do I think every criticism or investigation of a liberal candidate should be balanced with a superficial statement about how Trump is a criminal liar. If Harris is running a campaign full of energy but lacking in details, we should say so[.]
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A generic candidate who doesn't promise anything on the campaign trail and isn't burdened with any past might be an electoral politics nerd's dream, but it's the job of the press in a healthy democracy to make sure voters know who they are supporting An unvetted candidate can become anything, and can work under anyone's influence, when he assumes power. This week, Wes Moore, the Democratic governor of Maryland, suggested on CNBC that a Harris administration would reverse Biden's more restrictive regulatory economic policies and create a friendlier environment for “our big industries.” Was he speaking for Harris? Does he know something that Harris has refused to share with the public?
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On Thursday, shortly after Trump held a strange and rambling press conference, Harris finally answered some questions from the roving press corps. He said he was looking forward to debating Trump on Sept. 10 and hoped to “get an interview scheduled before the end of the month,” which is still, of course, three weeks away. The press, it seems, will have to persist in the thankless task of demanding answers, even if we risk disturbing the good times.
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