http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/lousy-interview-bodes-ill-for-harris-walz-campaign-opinion/ar-AA1pJBjq?ocid=msedgntp&;pc=DCTS&cvid=9a93c3d83c354463b0d5f771e25bb486&ei=13
By Paul du Quenoy
Newsweek
August 30, 2024
"I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed," replied Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in a verbose word salad when CNN's Dana Bash asked in her Thursday interview why her policy positions have changed since President Joe Biden cleared the path for her to run for president.
Bash looked curiously embarrassed for even asking such germane questions of someone seeking to be the most powerful person in the world. Harris, on the other hand, seemed confident that Bash would make no attempt to press her on any issue, likely knowing that the interview's main purpose was to offer her campaign cover from accusations of dodging media scrutiny. Accordingly, she did not explain what her "values" are, how they have led her to endorse policies significantly at odds with those she espoused before she became the de facto Democratic nominee five weeks ago, or why Americans should trust her.
CNN featured Harris' verbose and evasive response in a 90-second teaser released before the full interview, which lasted only 27 minutes. As short as the interview was, Harris' actual airtime was further reduced by media footage of her campaign and the unusual inclusion of her running mate Tim Walz, who, as CNN's own Anderson Cooper cynically noted, was there to reduce the amount of time Harris would be exposed to unscripted questioning. As some commentators have noted, seating Walz to Harris' right at a round table—and thus closer to the viewer—made her look physically small and unassuming, almost as though her presence was deliberately diminished.
When Harris did talk, she often stepped into the very traps her campaign has been trying to avoid. When Bash asked what she would do on the first day of her administration, Harris replied that she would "support and strengthen the middle class," adding that she believes Americans are "ready for a new way forward." She did not state what could be done in one day, but did raise the obvious question of why the middle class needs help after four years of an administration in which she later said she is "so proud" to be serving as vice president.
Still less did Harris explain why Americans, nearly 80 percent of whom believe they are worse off now than they were four years ago, feel they must escape the Biden-Harris legacy with a "new way forward" led by her. The pollster Frank Luntz called her answer "essentially worthless" and "not a good start."
In a similar blunder, when asked about illegal immigration across the southern border—one of the most important issues to voters this year—Harris boasted of having taken on the issue as California's attorney general. But she apparently forgot that as vice president, Biden placed her in charge of containing migration and that her solemn "Do Not Come" admonition to migrants was subsequently ignored by at least 7.2 million migrants who are now here.
Harris got into deeper rhetorical trouble when Bash moved on to environmental issues. The CNN host noted that the Democratic candidate flip-flopped on her opposition to fracking—approval of which will be vitally important in Pennsylvania, a must-win swing state—and on the Green New Deal, which Harris once supported but says she no longer does. "We can do what we have accomplished thus far," Harris declared in a bizarre tautology, adding that "the climate crisis is real...an urgent matter to which we should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time." She did not say what "metrics" we must apply or why, but are there deadlines that can be set in any way other than "around time?"
Walz was scarcely more impressive. When Bash asked about apparent false statements he has made about his military service, he guiltily replied that "my record speaks for itself" before meandering into a weird digression about how much he cares about school shootings. When Bash pressed him on the specific issue of whether he had made misstatements about having served in a war zone, Walz even less comfortingly replied that "my grammar is not always correct." His answers on his DUI arrest and family fertilization treatments were equally petty and evasive.
The baleful results are already trickling in. Betting odds on the presidential election's outcome shifted on Friday from a slight advantage for Harris to parity with Trump. The pollster Nate Silver shifted his forecast from a slight Harris lead in the electoral college results to a slight Trump lead. Harris' bounce in swing states seems to be receding. If Republicans want more movement in that direction, all they need to do is to keep Harris talking. She will almost certainly avoid that as much as possible, but American voters deserve to hear her.
The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted. ~ D.H. Lawrence
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