Much has been said and written about presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’s strategy of avoiding the press since she was named by the Democratic elite to succeed Joe Biden on the presidential ticket over two weeks ago.
Republican Senator JD Vance of Ohio, the Republican vice presidential candidate, has been Vice President Harris’ most prominent critic for failing to hold a press conference or answer a single question in the 18 days since Joe Biden was forced out of the race, while the press has been OK with her bypassing the press conferences.
As we previously reported, Vance took things to the next level when Harris was on the tarmac in Wisconsin on Wednesday: The Trump/Vance plane also drew attention and Vance gave reporters a microphone.
READ MORE: JD Vance brutally mic drops Kamala Harris as they arrive at Wisconsin airport
While it is pretty obvious why she did this and got away with it, the quiet part was said loudly in an MSM article about “why Harris won’t answer questions” by the nearness on the Harris-Walz campaign:
A longtime Harris ally suggested to West Wing Playbook that Harris could wait until after Labor Day to do major interviews. “There’s really no need,” the person said. “The voters she needs are at the local level. They don’t read the national press.”
[…]
“What is the incentive for them [to take more questions]?” said another person close to the campaign, who was granted anonymity to speak to Harris’ team’s view of the issue. “She’s getting across exactly the message she wants to get across.”
What incentive exactly?
Avoiding the press and going directly to voters has been a tried and tested tactic of many political campaigns for decades so that their message can be delivered naturally unfiltered. In the case of Republicans, they often do this to avoid the media’s distorted portrayal of their appearances, but ultimately they still interact with the press and answer questions from them.
Democrats, on the other hand, do it because they know they can get away with it, no matter how much time passes between their last interview and the next. And while they aren’t afraid of the national press for obvious reasons, they do fear the candidate going off script, which has often been the case with Joe Biden and which Harris’ advisers are no doubt worried about as well.
But it was this quote that inadvertently told me the whole story: “The voters she needs are at the local level. They don’t read the national press.”
The problem is that local press agencies are clamoring for an interview with her, such as David Charns of CBS News affiliate 8 News Now in Las Vegas, but she has turned them down too, including long before Biden withdrew from the race:
.@KamalaHarris Madam Vice President, you have visited Southern Nevada six times, @VP and each time we have asked to speak with you. Each time we have been denied. Hopefully, now that you are running for president, we will have the opportunity to ask you about the issues facing the people of Nevada.
— David Charns (@davidcharns) 7 August 2024
And yet she doesn’t want to sit down with them either. The reason for this is probably that the local media tends to ask tougher questions than the national press as a whole, and the answers from a confused Harris would be very reminiscent of the terrible word salad for which she has become known.
Kamala Harris knows exactly what she is doing, and the press knows what she is doing (and what they are doing), and both are hoping voters don’t notice.
But we have.
Related: The palace intrigues behind Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential election – and the role played by John Fetterman
