Vice President Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democrat presidential nominee 11 days ago, yet she has not engaged in a substantial interview nor a press conference since then. Election Day is 95 days away, and early voting will begin much sooner.
After Hollywood elites, top Democrats, and donors reportedly forced President Joe Biden out as the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, he quickly endorsed Harris after stepping down from the race on July 21. She subsequently received support from top Democrats and became the presumptive nominee by July 22.
Yet, Harris has gone twelve days since Biden bowed out and eleven days since securing enough delegates for the nomination without doing a robust interview or press conference, as Fox News’s Brian Flood pointed out, allowing her to skirt key questions on major policy issues like the economy, inflation, immigration, national security, and more.
Instead over the past week and a half Harris has largely communicated with Americans through speeches and addresses, where she can focus on the issues she wants to talk about, like abortion, without the threat of fielding a question on policy, where she is inherently tied to Biden’s historically bad legacy. She has, however, had minor engagements with reporters on the trail, according to Fox News.
During the 2020 campaign, Biden caught heat for campaigning from what former President Donald Trump called Biden’s “basement.”
“We have a sleepy guy in the basement of a house that the press is giving a free pass to, who doesn’t want to do debates because of Covid,” Trump famously said in April 2020.
While some argue Biden’s strategy included running out the clock by giving press conferences and interviews only sparingly, it did not keep him from the White House, as one expert told Fox News Digital.
Jeffrey McCall, a media studies professor at DePauw University, told Fox News that Harris’s team is “well aware that Biden dodged the media throughout his 2020 campaign and still got elected.”
Engaging with the media, regarded for hundreds of years as the fourth estate or fourth unofficial check in the balance of government power, would force Harris to defend her record.
McCall said:
The Harris camp is also well aware that their candidate doesn’t do well in unscripted settings, not to mention that a presser or legitimate sit-down interview would necessarily require her to defend some of her positions, previous statements and record. Thus, a rerun of the Biden basement campaign sounds pretty good, as long as you throw in a couple of rallies with Megan Thee Stallion.
He added it would benefit Harris from a “rhetorical strategy standpoint” to engage with the press.
“At some point, it would seem, she’ll have to attract moderates or undecided voters who want to see her take questions,” he said.