This is a moment of self-sabotage

The joy is gone – and her recent interviews have shown why

Polls still show a tight race, but the trend is not Kamala Harris’s friend. The “joy,” which her campaign once emphasised, left the building long ago. Her ebbing chances today are better captured in an old blues lyric. “I have had my fun, but now I’m going down slow.”
The signs certainly point that direction for Harris’ campaign. The first one is a sharp turn against her in the betting markets. Until recently, they gave Harris a slight edge. Now, they favour Donald Trump.
Second, internal polls from both campaigns show Trump either tied or leading in nearly all swing states. Harris’ “blue wall” of northern states – Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania – seems as porous as the Biden administration’s Southern Border.
Third, the panic is palpable among Democratic campaign consultants and elected officials. They aren’t trying to hide it. Nor are Republicans trying to hide their confidence, perhaps their overconfidence.
One sign of the Democrats’ panic was Harris’ decision to switch from simply reading her writers’ speeches at rallies to conducting a few interviews. True, she chose friendly shows on friendly networks, but, even so, she would never have dared if things were going well. After all, she hasn’t held a single press conference during the campaign. Marcel Marceau was chattier.
The whole campaign has been conducted via paid ads and scripted speeches. The reason was recently made obvious when her teleprompter appeared to freeze. Instead of improvising, as any nimble candidate would, all Vice President Harris could do was wave her arms and repeat her last scripted line until technicians managed to fix the machine.
The only reason a candidate who is not good at interviews would begin doing them is that the scripted speeches weren’t enough to win. Her consultants pushed her to try something different, so she opted to do a few interviews in friendly venues.
It didn’t go well.
On CBS’ 60 Minutes, her explanation of the administration’s Israel policy was so convoluted and vacuous that the network apparently decided to cover it up. Instead of airing her answer, they appeared to substitute a different answer to a different question. That’s journalistic malpractice – it’s completely unethical – but CBS seemed to consider it necessary to help their candidate.
The help from CBS hasn’t stopped. They are still refusing to release the unedited transcript of the interview. They must know how bad it is.
Harris’ performance on The View, a mindless talk show, was even worse. For a Democrat – any Democrat – The View isn’t softball. It’s Kindergarten Tee Ball. But when one of the hosts – a strong Kamala supporter – asked a simple, obvious question for which the vice president should have been well prepared, she wasn’t.
“Would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?” asked Sunny Hostin. Harris paused and then said, “Uh. There is not a thing that comes to mind.”
That is the single most damaging answer of the entire election. Category 5 Hurricane damage.
How bad was it? So bad that even CNN has criticised it. So bad that Donald Trump is playing it at his rallies, followed by news clips of a string of Biden-Harris policy disasters.
Why was Harris’ answer so damaging? Because it destroys the main theme of her campaign. That theme is “A New Way Forward”. Like most campaign slogans, it’s vague. Over time, voters want the candidate to fill in some details. That’s what’s happening now. Voters and even friendly networks are beginning to ask, “Tell us what your ‘new way’ looks like? Give us some details. How will your policies differ from Joe Biden’s?”
Harris should have had a clear, succinct answer. She didn’t. Her response to Sonny Hostin was, in essence, “I have no answer.”
After that face plant, you’d think she would work on a better answer. But she didn’t. She appeared on a late-night talk show and, once again, had no answer.
Harris’ response is damaging for a second reason. It lashes her to the mast of the sinking Biden administration. That is Trump’s strategy against her, and Harris played right into it. Moreover, her response – “there is not a thing that comes to mind” – was so succinct and memorable that Republicans will replay it constantly in advertisements.
Harris will have another chance to clean up the mess on Wednesday, when she will sit down with Fox News anchor, Bret Baier. He’s a serious journalist, not an editorialist, like the channel’s prime-time lineup. The dangers for Harris are obvious. Baier will not only ask serious questions, he will press for follow-ups, want to understand why she has flipped her positions on so many key issues, and then air the interview without the deceptive edits like those on CBS.
She’ll need to come well prepared. She wasn’t for CBS, The View, or Stephen Colbert’s late night show. Her lack of preparation revealed yet another problem, a characteristic one. According to numerous staffers, she doesn’t do her homework. She doesn’t bother to read her briefing books or probe advisers with difficult questions, as Bill Clinton did.
The one exception was her week-long prep for her debate with Trump, where she performed very well. But that’s the exception, and she didn’t learn from success. She failed to prepare for the recent barrage of interviews, and she stepped off the cliff.
Before you hear the splat far below, remember that Harris still has some important assets. Some 40 per cent or more of the electorate favour Democrats, and many of them are staunchly anti-Trump. Democrats also have a strong ground game to get out their vote. They have a lot more campaign money than Republicans, a vital edge in expensive advertising markets like Philadelphia.
They have strong backing from all the legacy media and effective support from judges like Tanya Chutkan of Washington’s federal district court. Chutkan decided to release the anti-Trump brief written by Special Counsel Jack Smith before the election, even though the trial itself won’t happen for several months, if it happens at all. Chutkan did not need to release that material before the election, and there is no excuse for her doing so. It’s simply one more move in the lawfare effort to damage Trump and influence the election.
Despite these assets, Harris is facing very serious problems, and they are growing. When Biden was still the candidate, she was the most unpopular vice president in polling history. After Democratic Party bigwigs kicked Biden to the curb, Kamala’s popularity soared. It was lifted on hot air, media puffery, and not being Joe Biden. Unfortunately for Harris, the hot air is cooling among voters and even among some media outlets.
Given the overwhelming polling numbers showing the country is on the “wrong track,” voters want to hear about affordability, crime, and illegal immigration. They don’t want more evasions or “I can’t think of anything I’d do differently”. That’s why Harris’ answer on The View was so damaging. If anything, she made matters worse by looking as if it was the first time she’d considered the question.
It’s hard for a sitting vice president to differentiate herself from the president. But Harris needed to do better, much better. Her high-profile failures blew up her own campaign. Unless she can glue the pieces back together, and do it quickly, she will be singing the old blues lament. She’s going down slow.
Charles Lipson is the Peter B Ritzma Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of Chicago. His latest book is Free Speech 101: A Practical Guide for Students. He can be reached at [email protected]