The bar has been set fairly low for Vice President Kamala Harris. All she needs to do is not be Donald Trump and be more alert than President Joe Biden. If she could only do those two things, many Americans will gladly line up behind her this November. But now that her campaign is making her go out and speak without a teleprompter, she’s reminding Americans why they didn’t back her in 2020.
For several weeks after President Biden’s decision to step aside and not seek re-election, Harris notably did not grant any interviews with the press. Instead, she participated in several scripted rallies and allowed her campaign team to answer questions on her behalf.
It was through scattered reports from her campaign team that Americans got some sense of where Harris now stood on various issues. Many of these stances, incidentally, turned out to be total reversals of her past statements — including on issues as wide-ranging as single-payer health care, fracking, immigration and plastic straw bans.
But it’s one thing for a campaign spokesperson to give a statement and another for the public to actually hear from the candidate.
In part, no doubt, because of extensive planning and preparation, Harris shellacked the easily distracted and rambling Trump in their first and only debate. But her ability to give a scripted speech at a rally or game the debate format hasn’t translated to her other public appearances.
Consider, for example, Wednesday’s town hall hosted by CNN’s Anderson Cooper, which left several Democratic pundits unable to obfuscate the truth even if they wanted to.
“The things that would concern me is when she doesn’t want to answer a question, her habit is to kind of go to Word Salad City,” former Obama adviser David Axelrod said on CNN after the town hall. “She did that on a couple of answers. One was on Israel, Anderson asked a direct question: ‘Would you be stronger on Israel than Trump?’ And there was a seven-minute answer, but none of it related to the question he was asking.”
Indeed, many Americans have noticed her tendency to revert to the same folksy “I grew up in a middle class household” line no matter the context or question to the point where it’s an online meme.
Harris is also notably very selective in when she chooses to give specifics. While she’s freely proposed expanding the child tax credit, giving tax breaks for first-time homebuyers and forgivable loans for small businesses, she’s struggled to explain how, exactly, she could pay for those or her broad economic plan.
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Bill Whitaker of “60 Minutes” tried asking her how she would pay for her plan, which would add $3 trillion to the national debt. But Harris chose instead to filibuster: “My plan, Bill, if you don’t mind, my plan is about saying that when you invest in small businesses, you invest in the middle class, and you strengthen America’s economy. Small businesses are part of the backbone of America’s economy.”
Responded Whitaker, “But — but pardon me, Madame Vice President, I— the — the question was, how are you going to pay for it?”
Her next answer yielded only a vague reference to the wealthy paying their fair share. “But—but” responded Whitaker. And so it went.
While Harris’ strongest supporters would have Americans believe that she’s the only thing standing between us and a fascist dictatorship, it’s remarkable that the Democrats actually thought Harris was the best candidate they could have fielded against Trump in such a dire situation. We strongly suspect that wasn’t true.