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For effectively over a month, Kamala Harris rode a wave of probably the most optimistic press any presidential candidate has gotten in 20 years, and her personal abilities, to show what had been a misplaced trigger for the Democrats into a particularly tight race.
However does she have a second act?
Kamala 2.0, beneath fixed assault by Donald Trump and the Republicans, doesn’t have a lot new to say. She is conducting a play-it-safe marketing campaign, like a basketball workforce sitting on a lead and working out the clock.
However Harris doesn’t have a lead within the three “blue wall” midwestern states she must win, and the lack of any certainly one of them might hand Trump the presidency as soon as once more.
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For all of the deal with Pennsylvania, Harris leads by 0.7 % in Michigan – a statistical tie, primarily based on the Actual Clear Politics common.
On Sunday’s “Media Buzz,” Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell informed me her state might go both means.
“The vp has an issue with union employees,” Dingell mentioned. “Most of the males, in addition to, fairly frankly, African-American younger males who’ve mentioned to me, I used to be with a gaggle with them final week. ‘You recognize what, Donald Trump talks to us. Democrats take us with no consideration.’”
The lawmaker remembers how “everyone acquired mad at me” when she predicted in 2016 that Trump would win Michigan – which he did, together with Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Pictures)
A significant drawback for Harris is that she doesn’t appear to know tips on how to make information. With lower than 30 days to go, with many citizens understandably believing they don’t know her, or sufficient about her insurance policies, since she took over for Joe Biden, the VP is stitching collectively components of her stump speech and recycling the identical anecdotes just about verbatim.
A presidential candidate has to ship a number of new strains, a brand new proposal, one thing to interrupt into the information cycle, which is at the moment being dominated by Trump.
So what’s on this week’s agenda? Kamala will sit down with Howard Stern (who is completely towards his outdated pal Donald); “The View,” the place the women despise Trump, and Stephen Colbert, who hosted fundraisers for Joe Biden in 2020 and this 12 months.
For good measure, she’s additionally spoken to Alex Cooper, whose podcast, “Name Your Daddy,” is about intercourse.
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I’ll exit on a limb right here and say these periods are designed to be pleasant – not in contrast to the dialog with MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle, who saved agreeing with Harris and had simply pronounced Trump a hazard to democracy.
In equity, Harris additionally sat for a “60 Minutes” interview, an invite declined by Trump.
Look, there’s nothing unsuitable with candidates exhibiting their softer facet with unorthodox shops in our fragmented media universe. We’ve come a great distance since critics scoffed at candidate Invoice Clinton answering the “boxers or briefs” query on MTV, calling it unpresidential.
On “Name Your Daddy,” Harris was truly fairly considerate in responding to Sarah Huckabee Sanders saying that her children maintain her humble and the VP doesn’t have anybody to maintain her humble.
(Rebecca Droke/Bloomberg by way of Getty Pictures)
Quite than jab on the Arkansas governor, which might have produced an affordable headline, she ruminated that households are available all shapes, sure by blood or love, that she is deeply concerned along with her stepchildren, and this isn’t the Fifties anymore. Additionally they mentioned, uh, tampons.
Nonetheless, the occasion is getting nervous. “Democratic operatives, together with a few of Kamala Harris’ personal staffers,” says Politico, “are rising more and more involved about her comparatively gentle marketing campaign schedule, which has her holding fewer occasions than Donald Trump and avoiding unscripted interactions with voters and the press virtually completely.”
For the reason that conference, the veep has spent greater than a 3rd of days on assembly and briefings, with no public occasions.
With early voting beneath means in additional than half the states, Politico describes this “a do-no-harm, risk-averse strategy to the race.”
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Wall Avenue Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, who fervently doesn’t need Trump to win, nonetheless is whacks Harris fairly arduous:
“She hasn’t fleshed out her political intent — what she stands for, what she received’t abide, what she means to determine, what she received’t let occur.
What’s her important mission? Is it nationwide ‘restore,’ is it to ‘stabilize’ an unsure nation, is it ‘relaunch’?..
“She thus far hasn’t conveyed a way of mental grasp. Her marketing campaign has positioned too many chips on the concept of the temper, the vibe, the image.”
And vibes can solely take you thus far.
However the VP has sure duties, and spent two days visiting hurricane victims and reduction employees in North Carolina and Georgia–which additionally occurs to be good politics. She additionally met with Volodomyr Zelenskyy.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy addresses the 79th United Nations Normal Meeting at U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S., September 25, 2024. REUTERS/Mike Segar (REUTERS/Mike Segar)
Harris attended a fundraiser over the weekend. Why trouble? Her marketing campaign has already had $400 million roll in. She’s already outspending Trump 2-½ to 1 on advertisements. She doesn’t want any more cash. What’s extra, Harris doesn’t make information at these fundraisers, which in any occasion are off digital camera. A floor sport is nice, however it must be married to a profitable message.
Right here’s yet another: Dan Pfeiffer, a former prime Obama White Home official, says on Message Field, his Substack column, that “the media — and Politico Playbook particularly — are fuming over the Harris-Walz media technique.”
Kamala “should be on offense always — say new issues, be edgy sufficient to get consideration, and dictate the phrases, or the marketing campaign might “tackle water…On this media world, there’s a endless, insatiable urge for food for content material. Both serve lunch or turn into the menu…
“Dominating consideration is Trump’s political superpower…Even when he doesn’t have a giant second, Trump speaks so outrageously that it shifts consideration to his problems with alternative.”
Now it’s simple to snipe from the sidelines. For Harris to be neck and neck within the core battleground states means she’s clearly executed many issues proper. She needed to overhaul the Biden operation and vet a working mate whereas the marketing campaign was in full swing, like altering the tires on a dashing scorching rod. She might nonetheless win.
One optimistic signal: The Harris camp took off the bubble wrap and allowed Tim Walz to seem on “Fox Information Sunday.” This was an try at injury management, since he misplaced the controversy so badly to JD Vance.
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Whereas Shannon Bream repeatedly pressed the governor on late-term abortions, his Minnesota file and his historical past of falsehoods and exaggerations, Walz was way more forceful than he’d been within the CBS debate. He ducked sure questions, however an interview format is a lot better suited to him than pleasant exchanges along with his opponent.
Walz’s subsequent cease? A person who relishes his feuds with Trump, Jimmy Kimmel.
Howard Kurtz is the host of FOX Information Channel’s MediaBuzz (Sundays 11 a.m.-12 p.m. ET). Primarily based in Washington, D.C., he joined the community in July 2013 and often seems on Particular Report with Bret Baier and different applications.
Kamala 2.0’s problem? Making extra information, and never simply with ultra-friendly hosts
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