Kamala Harris' Media Blitz
What do people need to know?
There was a poll question last month that keeps coming up in the news. When asked if they felt like they knew enough about the 2024 presidential candidates, 9% said they needed to know more about Trump while 28% needed to know more about Harris.
Political journalists and pundits took that 28% figure and argued that it meant that people wanted to know more about why Harris had shifted certain positions since her 2019 campaign. They argued that this meant that she should sit down for interviews with the establishment press so that they could explore those topics. Even though she had done so with Dana Bash on CNN, they felt that more questions needed attention (or at least they wanted to be the one asking the questions and maybe getting “the big get.”) Noah Berlatsky wrote about this in today’s Public Notice, suggesting that they want this year’s version of Clinton’s “deplorables” moment.
Mainstream outlets have an audience primarily composed of political junkies who follow the horserace closely. The outlets and their audience already know candidate backgrounds and positions for the most part. They are tuning in to find out the next big development and the next scandal.
As Margaret Sullivan observed on her American Crisis substack, this obsession can prove embarrassing.
The Times, though influential, is far from alone. Here’s a news alert from Politico Playbook that rightly came in for its share of criticism Sunday.
“After avoiding the media for neigh on her whole campaign, Kamala Harris is … still largely avoiding the media. The VP is set for a series of interviews that likely won’t press her on tough issues, even as voters want more specifics.”
This is embarrassing, and not only because its misspelling and misuse of “neigh on” makes me blush for whoever wrote it. I guess they meant “nigh on,” meaning nearly, not “neigh,” which is the sound that horses make. (These words are also pronounced quite differently.)
But more substantively, the alert was sent out even though Harris’s interview with 60 Minutes was due to air Monday. “I just can’t get over … pressing publish on this bad boy when Kamala Harris is on the nation’s premiere tough interview program,” wrote the podcast host and former presidential speechwriter Jon Lovett.
I really like Perry Bacon’s August proposal in the Washington Post: that Harris should do interviews but with policy journalists, not political ones. The Post’s Catherine Rampell is an excellent economics journalist and it would be really valuable to read interviews she might do with Harris and Trump about their respective economic policies.
Instead, we get the “60 Minutes” interview Sullivan mentioned. While the show began with the explanation that Trump had backed out because there would be fact-checking and because of a grudge against Leslie Stahl from 2020, the “newsworthy” part involved a sit-down between Ed Whitacre and Kamala Harris. It was a perfect example of what Berlatsky was writing about.
I watched it Monday night and went through it again this morning. The first time through, I was focused on Harris’s answers. Today I focused on Whitacre’s questions. Here’s just a sampling (with minor edits):
How do you stop war in Middle East?
The American people don’t feel economy and people blaming the administration. Are they wrong?
We’re dealing with real world. hHow are you going to get your proposals through Congress? They have shown no inclination to move.
A quarter of votes say that don’t know you. Why is that?
Want to talk about impact of the administration’s recent immigration policy change. Why not do this in 2021? I’ve been covering border for years and it’s tough. But there was a historic flood of immigrants early in your administration. Was it a mistake to move from Trump’s policies?1 [Repeated three times]
You have accused Trump of using racist tropes2 and called him a racist. But he has the support of millions. How do you explain that? How do you bridge to those people?
I thought Harris’s answers were fine. Some of these questions were minefields that she traversed as well as one could.
These are not the questions that 28% wanted answers to!
I’ve read some good analysis arguing that the 28% figure should be thought of not in terms of what they know about Harris but instead on whether they know enough to motivate them to vote when they would otherwise stay home. I think that makes sense.
What those potential voters are asking is not “how would she end the war in the Middle East?” but “What kind of person is this and can we trust her to govern?”
That makes the rest of Harris media blitz really important. Ten days ago she appeared on the “All The Smoke” podcast, hosted by former Golden State players Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson. On Monday, she was on Alex Cooper’s “Call Her Daddy” podcast. Tuesday, she was on Howard Stern’s radio show. She was on ABC’s “The View” Tuesday during the day. That night she was on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert”. Tonight she is doing a Univision town hall and just today agreed to a CNN town hall on the 23rd.
I have watched or listened to all four of the interviews above. And they are as far away from what Politico wanted or what Ed Whitacre asked as one could imagine.
In the “Smoke” podcast, they talked about Oakland sports teams and how they have now all left town (and mentioned the jobs lost as a result). They spoke of the need for a solid middle class and business start ups. They talked about being stepparents and looking out for the healthy development of children. They asked her how she maintains her mental health and talked about why that’s important for the population. They spoke of basic civics and what representative democracy means.
While the “Daddy” podcast unsurprisingly dealt with reproductive health in a post-Dobbs world, it dealt more broadly with issues of family well-being. They spoke having role models and being role models. And they addressed economic concerns and the need for a more middle-class focused policy.
Howard Stern conducted a very balanced interview that was free ranging but insightful. He shared his views (as he does) but gave he plenty of room to speak. She was able to explore how she came to her current policy preferences through her biography and make a sharp contrast to Trump.3
I don’t know how well The View worked. It’s a tough format to have questions asked by each of the panelists with little apparent strategy. So there was a little policy and a little background. The highlight was seeing her react in real time to her first viewing of Maya Rudolph’s spot-on impression from Saturday Night Live.
The Colbert interview allowed her personality to shine through without ducking more difficult questions. The “beer moment” captured above was at the very end of the show.4
I’m pretty sure that most of her interviewers were already planning to vote for Harris next month (some said so directly). But these weren’t softball questions that allowed her to just repeat talking points (she did a little of that). They dug beneath to show why she holds the positions she does.
It will be interesting to see how these four interviews/podcasts will impact that 28% figure. Personally, I think it was exactly the right strategy.
These appearances allowed Harris to become a three-dimensional person, to explain how her personal journey has prepared her, and — most importantly — to demonstrate the values that will shape her approach to governing.
People know what motivates Trump’s style of governing. Perhaps knowing more about Harris as a person will give them a clearer picture of what kind of president she might be.
If she wins the election, we’ll look back on these few days in late September and early October as the time when her lead took hold.
I yelled at my TV here. There were court decisions that blocked the continuation of some of those policies.
This was hard to fathom. Why use the passive voice about Trump’s language? Is talking about “animals” “bad genes” just a political talking point?
Stern isn’t a Trump fan.
It was Miller Lite — he argued that they were locking down the Wisconsin vote.
What I see as really extraordinary is the fact that most people know enough about the lack of character of one candidate, and are still considering voting for it.