Now that Donald Trump is president and the 2024 election a distant memory, mainstream journalists can finally admit that Kamala Harris was a terrible candidate and her campaign was a complete disaster. A recently published excerpt from a forthcoming book about the election offers an assessment of Harris's candidacy that is dramatically different from the media coverage at the time.
"Vice President Kamala Harris wasn’t performing well in softball interviews as her sugar high faded in September and early October," journalists Amie Parnes and Jonathan Allen write in their book Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House. Harris had "bombed" her interview with Fox News host Bret Baier, the authors continue, in the midst of negotiations to appear on Joe Rogan's podcast. The appearance, which never happened, would have been "a relatively risky move for a campaign leadership that had kept its candidate hermetically sealed in the manufacturer’s box, like she would retain more value without exposure to air and sunlight."
While accurate, the analysis is completely at odds with what many mainstream journalists were saying about Harris during the campaign. The suggestion that she "bombed" the Fox News interview, for example, does not reflect how the media covered Harris's performance at the time. "She more than held her own," Chris Suellentrop, politics editor for opinions at the Washington Post, said after the debate. "Baier was the one who seemed flustered. ... It was fun to watch: We learned, I guess, that she is tough under fire and that she got genuinely angry about Trump."
Post columnist Eugene Robinson declared it a triumph for Harris. "Practically since the day Harris became the Democratic nominee, Fox News hosts and guests have blasted her for not doing more unscripted interviews. Wednesday’s half-hour encounter was a reminder that we should all be careful what we wish for," he wrote. "She stood her ground, refuting the Trump campaign’s claim that she is weak and easily pushed around. She spoke fluently and cogently, putting to rest GOP claims that all she offers is word salad."
USA Today columnist Rex Huppke agreed. "Trump fans and his many minions at Fox News will undoubtedly say Harris failed miserably, but the truth, for people operating outside the bubble of insanity, is she more than held her own in a wildly adversarial situation," he wrote. CNN's Brian Stelter praised Harris for showing "toughness and strength." Former Rep. Max Rose (D., N.Y.) called the interview a "home run" because Harris had shown "courage." MSNBC's Joe Scarborough complained that Baier was "shockingly rude." The New York Times suggested Baier's aggressive questioning could endear Harris to female viewers.
Many of these takes were remarkably similar to campaign spokesman Brian Fallon's assessment that Harris had shown "toughness in standing against a hostile interviewer." Generally speaking, most media outlets highlighted the "testy" or "fiery" nature of the interview, while playing up the fact that Harris had "differentiated herself from President Joe Biden more clearly than she has in the past," according to CNN. This was technically true, but hardly a groundbreaking development. Instead of saying there was "not a thing that comes to mind" in terms of what she'd do differently as president, Harris stated that her presidency "will not be a continuation of Joe Biden's presidency" because she represented "a new generation of leadership."
Most normal observers would agree that Harris "wasn't performing well in softball interviews" in the fall of 2024, but that's not what most journalists and pundits were saying at the time. Some noted the "friendly" nature of Harris's conversations with Oprah Winfrey, Stephen Colbert, Stephanie "Chiquibaby" Himonidis, the ladies of the View, Alex Cooper of Call Her Daddy, and Ms. Jessica of Afternoon Vibes with Ms. Jessica. But many cheered Harris for eschewing conventional formats as part of her "unorthodox" strategy to target new voters. Brian Stelter parroted the campaign's talking point about how the strategy "reflects how the media world works in 2024." So did Politico, which argued Harris's reluctance to do serious interviews was a reflection of the "shifting media landscape."
Newsweek interviewed political science professors who applauded the Harris campaign's "very savvy" media strategy. Washington Post former columnist Jennifer Rubin praised Harris for recognizing the "limited reach of mainstream news outlets" and doing "revealing and meaty" interviews with alternative programs. The candidate was "doing exactly the right thing" in order to spread her "substantive message out to the widest possible audience," Rubin wrote. The New York Times was similarly impressed by Harris's media tour, noting how the candidate had used "vivid" storytelling to signal she was "engaged with life" and "the kind of candidate who would have a beer with you."
Trump's victory in the election dramatically lowered the stakes for journalists to tell the truth about Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. Stories that reflect poorly on unemployed Democrats won't be immediately condemned (by other journalists) for "helping Trump." In the weeks since the election, for example, we've gotten a clearer picture of how the White House went to great lengths to conceal Biden's physical and cognitive decline. Not long ago, anyone who suggested Biden was unfit to serve was denounced as a right-wing propagandist and a purveyor of "misinformation." Mainstream journalists have worked tirelessly to destroy their credibility in recent years. Belatedly admitting the obvious—that Kamala was a terrible candidate—won't do much to restore that credibility, but it's a start.