Not one single voter cast a ballot to select Kamala Harris to be the Democrats’ nominee for president. Yet Democrats will gather next week to bestow upon her the party’s presidential nomination. Consequently, the convention will be far more important than most – especially for the very small slice of the electorate that remains undecided. Since no one was allowed to use the regular nomination process to learn about Harris, these voters in particular must use the convention as their learning tool.
Typically, presidential candidates spend many months planning, building, and running their campaigns. During that time, they are tested on multiple fronts. They must engage voters, recruit volunteers, raise money, formulate policy positions, try out various versions of a stump speech in 60-second, three-minute, and 10-minute formats – and that’s before they ever confront another candidate. When other candidates enter the fray, opposition research comes into play, debates occur, and strategies must be adjusted.
Over the course of the nomination contest, candidates are weathered. Good polls beget more excitement, and more volunteers, and more contributions, which pay for more and better staff and more and better advertising, which begets more attention from the media, which begets even better polls, and the cycle continues.
Bad polls work in the opposite fashion – fewer volunteers, less money, and less attention from the media.
At the top of it all, of course, is the candidate, who gets all the credit for a winning campaign and all the blame for a losing campaign.
The voters, meanwhile, get the benefit of having had an opportunity to do their own vetting – poking, prodding, questioning, challenging the candidates over the course of the long campaign, until, finally, one emerges, having successfully navigated the championship-level obstacle course.
By the time the nominee emerges, typically, he or she has laid out a vision for the future, girded by a policy foundation that encapsulates the candidate’s world view, area of focus, and plans for action.
Not so with Harris.
Following Biden’s announcement that he was withdrawing and endorsing Harris, she wrapped up the nomination in the space of 48 hours. Not a single challenger emerged to throw his or her body in front of the speeding train that was the Harris campaign. No one dared – in a political party that defines itself by its adherence to the politics of group identity, who would seek to deny the first black female vice president the promotion to be the party’s presidential nominee?
Since then, she has managed to avoid a significant encounter with the nation’s press corps. For more than three weeks, her campaign has successfully earned media coverage without having had to take the risk of allowing her to engage directly with the press corps. The mainstream media has allowed Harris to get away with this refusal to subject herself to their questions.
For instance, since she took the promotion to nominee, her campaign has issued several statements reversing her positions on fundamental issues. Her aides tell us she no longer supports a ban on fracking; Medicare for All; “starting from scratch” in terms of abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement; or defunding the police, all positions she took while running for president in 2019.
Neither she nor anyone associated with her campaign has explained why she changed her position on these issues. Did she actually change her mind, or just change her position? In the absence of explanations, it’s fair for voters to conclude that the obvious reason – political expediency, a conclusion by campaign strategists that the old position is politically damaging, and must be abandoned – is the explanation.
Not surprisingly, large swaths of the electorate don’t know much about Harris or her position on the issues. According to a new survey, the vast majority of these voters said they were unaware of Harris’ issue positions: 86 percent were unaware that she would consider allowing death row inmates to vote; 78 percent were unaware she promoted a fund to bail out violent protesters during the 2020 riots; 75 percent were unaware she was named the “most liberal senator” in 2019; 74 percent were unaware she said it should not be a crime to enter the U.S. illegally; 73 percent were unaware she cosponsored the Green New Deal; 72 percent were unaware she never visited a conflict zone as Border Czar; and 71 percent were unaware she supported reparations payments to atone for slavery in the U.S.
At the Chicago convention next week, Harris will put on a show, aided by Steven Spielberg, one of the greatest Hollywood directors of all time. The four-day infomercial that is a modern major party convention will be under her control, and will be her opportunity to present herself as she wishes – which likely means she’ll continue to shape-shift with impunity. Given that the media hasn’t demanded she answer any of their questions, and has willingly accepted her strategy of ignoring them, there’s no reason to believe they’ll challenge any of the deceptions we can expect her and her colleagues to tell the nation from the convention stage.
For those who remain undecided, it will be important that they make their decision based on reality. To do that, they’ll have to see through Harris’ lies. They should remember that the people making campaign promises now are the same people who lied about President Biden’s fitness for office (and lied about the need for masking with COVID-19, and who told us that giving children hormones to “transition” are safe for them, and that the Steele Dossier was real, and that Donald Trump “colluded” with Russia, etc.).
And one more thing voters should remember – everything Kamala Harris promises to do over the course of the next four years is something she could have been doing for the last three and a half.
Jenny Beth Martin is President of Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund.