The Vibes Have Run Out For Kamala Harris

Well, we now know why Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign wasn’t eager to rush her out in front of the cameras for media interviews.

Sitting with the ladies of The View, which is hardly entering the lions’ den for a Democrat (even the primary conservative co-host is a Harris supporter), she promptly produced a clip tailor-made for a Donald Trump campaign ad. Asked if there was anything she would have done differently than departing President Joe Biden over the last four years, Harris replied, “There is nothing that comes to mind.”

Harris cleaned up a bit by repeating that she would appoint a Republican to her Cabinet. She appears to believe that Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, or at least their fans, are the most coveted swing voters in this election. Perhaps she is correct, though the liberal replies to a Washington Post reporter’s social media post about this exchange were fairly unhinged.

Confronted about the woeful Biden-Harris record at the border on 60 Minutes, the vice president had no real answer as to whether the administration had been too lax for most of its term. But this back-and-forth also illustrated the basic fraudulence of her attempts to blame the border on Trump killing a flawed Senate bill she has been pushing. 

Biden was able to bring down illegal immigration through executive actions without this legislation. Trump was able to even more substantially reduce the flow at the border without this legislation. Biden and Harris made certain enforcement and policy choices that were at their discretion. These, as much as the problems in the Northern Triangle that were not resolved by Harris’s diplomacy, are the real “root causes” of the border crisis.

Harris made plain that her “solution” to illegal immigration is to have Congress pass an amnesty bill, which she noted that she and Biden had proposed upon taking office. That proposal, along with ending Trump policies like Remain in Mexico and restoring catch-and-release for apprehended migrants, also incentivized much illegal immigration. Migrants believed if they could make it into the United States under Biden and Harris, they had a better chance of being allowed to stay than under Trump.

Then there was Harris’s answer that she owns a Glock as her personal firearm. This specific weapon choice raises questions about her record on gun control. She has supported handgun bans and filed an amicus brief arguing against the Supreme Court majority’s position in District of Columbia v. Heller. Dick Heller was trying to purchase a Glock for self-defense in the nation’s capital.

One of Harris’s better moments was when she taunted Trump on Howard Stern for not appearing on 60 Minutes himself. “Ultimately, I do believe that this is an election that is about strength versus weakness, and weakness as projected by someone who puts himself in front of the American people and does not have the strength to stand in defense of their needs, their dreams, their desires,” she said.

Even that answer contained a healthy serving of Harris’s signature word salad and it also required a certain amount of prodding from Stern, who has hosted Trump many times over the years before the shock jock adopted a more woke personae. Harris demonstrated in her one (and likely only) debate of this election cycle that she can deliver canned anti-Trump lines and get under his skin effectively. Substance is another story.

It’s possible this won’t matter much as the presidential race enters the homestretch. But the sudden resort to a busier media schedule appears to be a concession that her reprise of the Biden basement strategy was no longer working.

Harris’s running mate Tim Walz lost the vice presidential debate to J.D. Vance. This was at least partly attributable to the fact that the Minnesota governor wasn’t doing many media interviews, while Vance was sitting down with hostile hosts regularly. Walz couldn’t do more interviews because he didn’t want to upstage the top of the ticket.

Even though the public polling still shows the contest a toss-up, with perhaps even a slight Harris edge, Democrats are nervous. She’s behind where Biden was at this point in 2020, and the final results turned out to be closer than the October polling suggested four years ago.

Trump is doing a lot of friendly interviews and podcasts too, but we have seen him do hostile interviews before, and he is already more of a known commodity. Even this year, the Univision town hall and sit-down with the National Association of Black Journalists were far riskier for Trump to agree to than Harris.

To paraphrase James Taylor, Harris can run for president but she cannot hide. At least not forever.