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For greater than a month, Kamala Harris has used probably the most optimistic press any presidential candidate has acquired in twenty years, in addition to her personal expertise, to show what had been a misplaced trigger for Democrats into a particularly tight race.
However does she have a second act?
Kamala 2.0, underneath fixed assault from Donald Trump and the Republicans, does not have a lot new to say. She’s working a play-it-safe marketing campaign, like a basketball crew on the road and working out the clock.
However Harris does not have a lead within the three “blue wall” states within the Midwest she must win, and shedding any of them might hand Trump the presidency once more.
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Regardless of all the eye on Pennsylvania, Harris leads in Michigan by 0.7 p.c – a statistical tie, based mostly on the Actual Clear Politics common.
In Sunday’s Media Buzz, Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell advised me her situation might go both approach.
“The vice chairman has an issue with union staff,” Dingell stated. “Lots of the males, and admittedly African-American younger males who’ve stated to me, I used to be with a gaggle with them final week. “You recognize what, Donald Trump is speaking to us. The Democrats are taking us without any consideration.’”
The lawmaker recollects how “everybody 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 giant downside for Harris is that she does not appear to know tips on how to make information. With lower than 30 days to go, with many citizens understandably believing they do not know her, or sufficient about her insurance policies, since taking up from Joe Biden, the vice chairman is stitching collectively elements of her stump speech and just about recycling the identical anecdotes. verbatim.
A presidential candidate must give you some new guidelines, a brand new proposal, one thing to interrupt into the information cycle, which is at present dominated by Trump.
So what’s on the agenda this week? Kamala sits down with Howard Stern (who is totally towards his previous good friend Donald); “The View,” the place the women despise Trump, and Stephen Colbert, who hosted fundraisers for Joe Biden in 2020 and this yr.
For good measure, she additionally spoke with Alex Cooper, whose podcast “Name Your Daddy” is about intercourse.
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I will go a step additional right here and say that these classes are supposed to be pleasant — just like the dialog with MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle, who continued to agree with Harris and had simply labeled Trump a hazard to democracy.
To be truthful, Harris additionally participated in a “60 Minutes” interview, an invite Trump declined.
Look, there’s nothing improper with candidates displaying their softer aspect by way of unorthodox channels in our fragmented media universe. We have come a great distance since critics mocked candidate Invoice Clinton answering the “boxers or briefs” query on MTV, calling it unpresidential.
On “Name Your Daddy,” Harris was really fairly considerate when responding to Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ remark that her youngsters maintain her humble and that the VP has nobody to maintain her humble.
(Rebecca Droke/Bloomberg by way of Getty Pictures)
As an alternative of berating the governor of Arkansas, which might have made for an inexpensive headline, she remembered that households are available in all kinds, sure by blood or love, that she is deeply concerned along with her stepchildren, and that that is now not the years are fifty. In addition they mentioned tampons.
Nonetheless, the occasion is getting nervous. “Democratic operatives, together with a few of Kamala Harris’ personal staffers,” says Politics“are more and more involved about her comparatively mild marketing campaign schedule, which has seen her host fewer occasions than Donald Trump and virtually fully keep away from unscripted interactions with voters and the press.”
Because the conference, the veep has spent greater than a 3rd of its days in conferences and briefings, with no public occasions.
With early voting underway in additional than half of states, Politico describes it as “a ‘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 offers Harris a tough blow:
“She hasn’t labored out her political intentions — what she stands for, what she will not adhere to, what she desires to perform, what she will not let occur.
What’s its important mission? Is it a nationwide ‘restoration’, is it ‘stabilizing’ an insecure nation, is it a ‘relaunch’?
“She has proven no sense of mental understanding thus far. Her marketing campaign has had an excessive amount of affect on the concept of the ambiance, the ambiance and the picture.”
And vibrations can solely take you thus far.
However the vice chairman has sure duties and spent two days visiting hurricane victims and first responders in North Carolina and Georgia — which additionally occurs to be good politics. She additionally met Volodomyr Zelenskyy.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy addresses the 79th United Nations Basic Meeting at UN Headquarters in New York, US, September 25, 2024. REUTERS/Mike Segar (REUTERS/Mike Segar)
Harris attended a fundraiser this weekend. Why trouble? Her marketing campaign has already raised $400 million. She already outspends Trump 2.5 to 1 on advertisements. She does not want any more cash. Moreover, Harris does not make information throughout these fundraisers, which occur off-camera anyway. A floor sport is nice, however it should be accompanied by a successful message.
Here is another: Dan Pfeiffer, a former prime Obama White Home official, says on Message Fieldhis Substack column, that “the media — and Politico Playbook particularly — are outraged by the Harris-Walz media technique.”
Kamala ‘should be on the assault always – saying new issues, being tense sufficient to draw consideration and dictating the phrases, in any other case the marketing campaign ‘might turn out to be watered… On this media world, there’s a unending, insatiable starvation for content material. Serve lunch or turn out to be the menu…
“Consideration dominates Trump’s political superpower… Even when he isn’t having an enormous second, Trump speaks so outrageously that it shifts consideration to his problems with alternative.”
Now it is simple to snipe from the sidelines. That Harris is neck-and-neck in the important thing battleground states means she has clearly completed numerous issues proper. She needed to deal with the Biden operation and examine a working mate whereas the marketing campaign was in full swing, like altering the tires on a dashing sizzling rod. She might nonetheless win.
One optimistic signal: The Harris camp eliminated the bubble wrap and had Tim Walz seem on “Fox Information Sunday.” This was an try at harm management since he misplaced the talk so badly to JD Vance.
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Whereas Shannon Bream repeatedly pressed the governor on late-term abortions, his document in Minnesota and his historical past of falsehoods and exaggerations, Walz was way more forceful than he had been within the CBS debate. He averted sure questions, however an interview format fits him a lot better than pleasant conversations along with his opponent.
Walz’s subsequent cease? A person who enjoys his feuds with Trump, Jimmy Kimmel.
Howard Kurtz is the host of FOX Information Channel MediaBuzz (Sunday 11am – 12pm ET). Primarily based in Washington, DC, he joined the community in July 2013 and seems commonly Particular report with Bret Baier and different applications.
The problem of Kamala 2.0? Making extra information, and never simply with ultra-friendly hosts
World Information,Subsequent Massive Factor in Public Knowledg
