On July 20th, Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race. It's now August 20th. In the interim, Biden's replacement, Kamala Harris, has taken zero substantive questions and has conducted zero interviews. Her new running mate, Tim Walz, has taken zero questions and has conducted zero interviews. Harris has generously suggested that she'd like to get an interview scheduled by the end of this month, approximately five weeks after she became the presumptive -- and then the official -- Democratic nominee. In a segment on Fox News from the convention hall in Chicago, I was asked about this state of affairs. I called it "embarrassing" and "ridiculous," noting that the so-called 'news' media had broadly been supine and compliant in the face of this historic stonewall.
The Democratic strategist in the segment first attempted to excuse the breathtaking lack of transparency by arguing that Harris travels with members of the press who have access to her, a reference to this:
Playbook detail I hadn't seen before: Harris has been talking with her traveling press off the record (which Biden rarely did). One reason that you haven't seen as much media grumbling about access - the outlets paying for the plane are getting facetime https://t.co/NPvxGNpolH
— David Weigel (@daveweigel) August 8, 2024
She's giving "face time" to some reporters, you see, but they just can't report anything that she says. Just like journalism and democracy are supposed to work. His next point was that Harris has been 'interviewing' with voters. But she has not even been fielding questions from voters, either. He then tried to ask about who was selecting the nominee, in response to which I accurately reminded viewers that Democrats discarded the votes that elected their nominee, nullifying their election, with elites making the switch for entirely political reasons. He denied this, then wrapped up by pretending this was all voluntary on the incumbent's part:
This exchange about Kamala Harris avoiding any substantive Q’s — and any interviews at all — for a *month* got a bit…spirited: pic.twitter.com/sM5flqJ7iM
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) August 18, 2024
His reference to the polling, however, is the real point. This is why Democrats and their media allies are ultimately more than comfortable with a bubble-wrapped, opaque, stage-managed Kamala Harris: They know it's a liability to have her in any non-controlled setting -- and, crucially, it's working. This is their 2024 version of Biden's 2020 basement strategy, which also worked. Harris, by virtue of not being Biden, and basking in the glow of virtually nonstop media adulation, has taken the lead in the national polling averages, and appears relatively well-positioned to win the Electoral College. She's not the clear leader overall, and Trump still has a very good chance of winning. But her position is far better than Biden's was at the time of the coup. He was on the path to defeat. As of now, she has at least a 50/50 shot at winning. Incidentally, "coup" is not my word to describe what the Democrats did in tossing out 14 million votes. It's how liberal New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd just described it. Here's part of what she wrote in a column entitled, "The Dems Are Delighted. But a Coup Is Still a Coup:"
We head to Chicago on a wave of euphoria, exuberance, exultation, excitement and even, you might say, ecstasy. It’s going to be a glorious coronation — except that everyone’s mad at one another. Top Democrats are bristling with resentments even as they are about to try to put on a united front at the United Center in the Windy City. A coterie of powerful Democrats maneuvered behind the scenes to push an incumbent president out of the race...Even though it was the right thing to do, because Joe Biden was not going to be able to campaign, much less serve as president for another four years, in a fully vital way, it was a jaw-dropping putsch...Party leaders whitewashed the coup by ornately extolling Biden.
Unmentioned are the 14 million primary voters whose ballots were thrown in the dumpster and lit on fire -- almost as if they were entrusted to the rioters Kamala Harris helped bail out of jail while Tim Walz allowed the burning to endure for days. But Dowd at least acknowledges the "coup" and "jaw-dropping putsch" for what it was. She is also candid about her support for it, writing down what so many of her fellow partisans believe but don't quite feel comfortable making explicit: "Those who pushed out Biden should be proud. They saved him and their party from a likely crushing defeat, letting Trump snake back in and soil democracy." The thing is, if Trump "snakes" back in, it will be because voters -- first in the primary, then in the general -- decided to re-install him. Through literal democracy.
All that said, complaining about the coup does not undo it, and does not alter the reality that Trump has a tough fight on his hands. The media may get a bit more skeptical of the Harris-Walz ticket than the month-long tongue bath they've given thus far, but they can taste possible victory, and only have to sustain historic levels of hackery for a matter of a few short months:
VP @KamalaHarris’ chief of staffs, on the campaign and official side, are both donning brat-esque outfits today. pic.twitter.com/wOkG8Zu2Lo
— Akayla Gardner (@gardnerakayla) August 18, 2024
You can tell that Harris’s policy rollout has been utterly disastrous when the smug pushback from the media is “it’ll probably be okay because the Republicans will probably win the Senate.” https://t.co/KfrNwBQE95
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) August 18, 2024
How the media used to cover Kamala Harris before she became the Democratic nominee for President, and how they cover her after. See if you can spot the difference. pic.twitter.com/G1Cmz26MsG
— Alberto E. Martinez (@albertemartinez) August 18, 2024
Join the conversation as a VIP Member