The 2024 has tightened up—that is without question. Kamala Harris has given a jolt of life to a Democratic Party that was meandering in a realm of hopelessness and despair. Harris’ usurpation of the Biden presidency has allowed Democrats to raise money and give something their base can get excited about. These are all bad things. Donald Trump was cruising to a 1980-style beatdown of Joe Biden until July 21.
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Though a shoddy do-over candidate who was never really liked by Biden’s staff due to her messy, uneven, and overall strangeness, she’s now a major party candidate and has yet to take any questions from the media or hold a press conference. It’s simple: the more she talks to the press off-script, the more danger she puts herself with voters—she’s a word salad queen. Instead, we’ve been hit with a river of press releases. For now, the media is content with this arrangement for now since she’s been giving reporters access and speaking to them off the record (via Politico) [emphasis mine]:
Harris’ last formal television sit-down interview was on June 24, when she joined MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” to mark the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that ended federal protections for abortion. Three days later, she appeared on CNN and spoke one-on-one with anchor ANDERSON COOPER less than an hour after Biden’s disastrous debate performance, acknowledging that “it was a slow start” but confidently suggesting that the country should assess his performance in the office over three and a half years, not “90 minutes on a debate stage.”
For a vice president who arguably damaged herself most gravely with her June 2021 interview with “NBC Nightly News” anchor LESTER HOLT, Harris’ determined on-air defense of Biden three years later — which she came up with independent of the campaign team — offered a template Biden and others would use to try to stop the political bleeding. While Biden’s closest aides also viewed that interview as a true show of loyalty, some in Harris’ orbit saw her confident and forceful responses to Cooper as proof of how far she’s come.
Ever since Biden passed Harris the baton, news organizations have been pushing the vice president’s team for a sit-down interview. According to two people familiar with the campaign’s thinking, there are ongoing discussions about a joint interview with Harris and Walz prior to the convention, which begins on Aug. 19 in Chicago. But on the whole, Harris’ top communications aides are deeply skeptical, as Biden’s inner circle was, that doing big interviews with major TV networks or national newspapers offer much real upside when it comes to reaching swing voters.
One longtime Harris ally suggested to West Wing Playbook that Harris could hold off on big interviews until after Labor Day. “There’s really no need,” the person said. “The voters that she needs are at the local level. They’re not reading the national press.”
Walz, whose viral cable TV appearances helped propel him onto the ticket, could be deployed on television more liberally than Harris in the coming months, the two people said. But it’s also quite possible both candidates will focus much of their media outreach on podcasts, influencers and other platforms outside the traditional news media.
So far, Harris’ rally speeches, delivered via teleprompter, have been well received. And she has routinely interacted with the reporters that travel with her — but on her terms. She often visits with the press pool seated at the back of her plane (something Biden did just twice in more than three years), but speaking only off the record. And when she has chosen to comment on the record on something in the news, Harris has spoken to the pool on the tarmac, making statements but not taking questions.
“What is the incentive for her [to take more questions]?” said another person close to the campaign who was granted anonymity to share how Harris’ team views the matter. “She’s getting out exactly the message she wants to get out.”
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What a ridiculous position; no one reads the national media. They’re the reason why you’re rising in the polls, Harris camp, as they’ve suffocated any negative story about any Democrat since the Republican Convention. And it’s sophomoric to think that in running for the most powerful office in the free world, local interviews with outlets akin to the Bergen County Shopper’s Guide would suffice as acceptable levels of media exposure. It’s a sign that this operation is wholly directed by social media, which isn’t real-life and provides the GOP an opportunity.
Also, not every media member is okay with this arrangement. It’s not a substitute for pressers. For a party that has the media in their pockets, they’re sure paranoid about them.