Even after Tuesday evening’s nationally televised debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, too many Americans are still in the dark about Harris and her record … and it isn’t their fault.
The New York Times’ post-debate coverage said it well: “For weeks, undecided voters have been asking for more substance,” says the lead, pivoting to a recap of Harris’ first answer, and then continuing, “Some Americans might need more convincing.”
“More convincing,” indeed. Harris skipped the entire primary season. She didn’t campaign for the nomination, she had it handed to her by the Democrat Party’s elites, who worked behind the scenes to remove the presumptive nominee they had all publicly supported before he revealed his incompetence at a debate. They replaced him without a single voter casting a vote for her. Harris followed up by giving zero substance in her acceptance speech at her national convention. She evades serious questions. She’s been the presumptive nominee or the nominee of her party for almost two months, and until this week, her total exposure to questions from the media has consisted of one short softball interview – with her running mate by her side to bail her out if necessary.
In her debate with former President Donald Trump earlier this week, she evaded questions all night long. The ABC moderators did a terrible job as journalists – they asked her poorly phrased questions, then failed to follow up when she avoided answering them. While they were intent on fact-checking President Trump’s answers – and, several times, wrongly “corrected” him – they never once fact-checked Harris, despite the fact that she spewed false statements from start to finish.
She was allowed to evade answering the first question of the night, “Do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?” Instead of answering that simple but pointed yes or no question, she went off on a tangent, and neither of the ABC moderators followed up. It only got worse from there.
Debate moderators did not challenge her when she refused to answer Trump’s question about whether it was appropriate to allow abortions in the seventh, eighth, or ninth month of a pregnancy. They did nothing to challenge her when she claimed she did not support mandatory gun buybacks, despite having held that position when she ran for president in the 2020 cycle. They didn't ask her about her support for free health care, free tuition, and free housing for illegal immigrants. They said nothing about the answer she gave the ACLU in 2019 when she filled out the organization’s questionnaire and said she supported using taxpayer funds to pay for sex change operations for illegal immigrants who had been detained. She wasn’t asked about her support for reparations for slavery.
Meanwhile, the body politic is still digesting comments made by her old Senate colleague, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders – the self-described Socialist – who explained on “Meet the Press” over the weekend that despite her campaign aides’ claims that she has abandoned many of the hard-left positions she took while running for president five years ago, he believes she is still on the left: “I don’t think she’s abandoning her ideals. I think she’s trying to be pragmatic,” he said, “and doing what she thinks is right in order to win the election.”
So she sends out campaign aides to say she has abandoned leftwing positions she took in her last campaign, while her old colleague essentially tells us not to listen to those campaign aides, because they’re only saying what they’re saying about her abandoning her leftwing positions because she’s “trying to be pragmatic” so she can win the election.
And all we have to go on is her assertion in her CNN interview that “my values have not changed.”
Never in the history of the United States has a major political party nominated for president an individual about whom the electorate knows so little – and who seems to be doing her best to obfuscate her record.
It’s not surprising that we don’t know her record, we don’t know her positions on the issues, and we don’t know her plans for the future. It isn’t our fault.
A New York Times/Sienna College poll released last weekend indicates that 28 percent of Americans say they don’t have enough information about Kamala Harris. But really, no one has the information needed to make an informed decision in November, because she evades difficult questions. She tosses her head and laughs off the substantive questions.
So we at Tea Party Patriots Action are here with a way to inform our neighbors. Through basic quizzes and a new Jeopardy-style quiz called America in Jeopardy with Kamala, we are challenging Americans to learn about and think about Kamala’s record.
Americans got seven debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. Today, we might end up with two debates between the two major party candidates. So we are no longer waiting around for the media to do its job, we are doing this ourselves, using Instagram and X and other social media platforms. We are meeting Americans where they live, on their favored communications channels.
Gamification is the wave of the future in education, but we don’t have to wait. As an old football coach used to say, the future is now. We can use gamification now as a means to learn about Kamala Harris. Just go here to start playing, or to send it to family, friends, and co-workers – anyone you think needs to learn more about the Democrat nominee for president.
Harris may be doing her best to hide herself and her views from the voters – in Sanders’ words, being “pragmatic” so she can win the election. It’s up to us, the voters, to get past her attempts to hide from us, and to do the job of learning about her so we can make informed decisions. With America in Jeopardy with Kamala, that just became easier.
Jenny Beth Martin is Honorary Chairman of Tea Party Patriots Citizens Action