The "mainstream" media messaging machine spent the whole Democratic convention channeling the notion of "reintroducing" Kamala Harris to America, relying on the assumption that vice presidents are only seen and not heard.
For all the journalists who suddenly want to channel the same aspirational biracial narrative that marked Barack Obama's march to the White House, we must note that these autobiographies can be heavily shaped and edited, which is why the word "reintroduction" should land like a brick. Obama's "autobiography" was riddled with fictional elements, even composite girlfriends.
On the front page of The New York Times on Aug. 26 is a story explaining that the Harris campaign has an allergy to noting their candidate was born in the radical tumult of Berkeley in the 1960s. Instead, a convention video listed her childhood home as located in "East Bay." It can't be "The People's Republic of Berkeley" in anyone's reintroduction to moderate voters.
Reporters Heather Knight and Alexandra Berzon acknowledged Kamala's mother Shyamala was "steeped in the social activism vibrant in both Berkeley and Oakland." They told readers that the word "Berkeley" went missing early in her career, when Harris ran for attorney general of California in 2008.
But in other places, it's more explicit. On their podcast "The Daily" -- broadcast across the country on taxpayer-subsidized National Public Radio -- Times reporter Astead Herndon underlined that activism was prominent in her upbringing. "This is someone who is growing up really around not only just a black community but a very prideful, rich history of blackness. ... The Black Panthers' headquarters was blocks from her house." Her parents made "a very intentional effort to place their children in black affirmation spaces," teaching black history in a radical activist way.
The "reintroduction" shapers also left out Harris' teenage years in Canada. From 1976 to 1982 (from roughly 12 to 18 years old), she lived in Montreal, where her mother worked at McGill University. The Times noted Montreal "fared even worse than Berkeley at the convention. The city's name was completely excised from Ms. Harris's re-telling of her childhood."
With Obama and Harris, their narrative of negotiating the world as a biracial American is incredibly fluid, depending on which voting bloc you're targeting.
In his podcast interview, Herndon talked up Harris as a prosecutor, and how it explains "the story of somebody who believes you can be multiple things at the same time. You can be an empathetic progressive, but also believe in punishment and in accountability." That's not at all what San Francisco prosecutors are known for, but it's an election year, so it's time to fudge.
Herndon and the rest of the pro-Democrat press just want to defeat Donald Trump, and they would prefer that Harris be very difficult to pigeonhole as a leftist: "She is a vessel that you can see what you want to see in. If you want to see a progressive, there's enough there you probably can. If you want to see a moderate, you probably can see that, too. And so what I think is one of the stories here is an ideological fluidity that was once seen as a problem is now being seen as a solution."
Confusion is a solution. They're not hiding their advocacy at all.
Herndon admits all that intentional blurring makes it difficult to know how Harris would govern as president, but for the Democrats inside and outside the press, this is not the time to care. That's a problem (and a project) for 2025.
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