In the three weeks since Joe Biden handed her the nomination, Kamala Harris spent a total of 70 seconds in front of reporters and issued one specific promise, which she stole from Donald Trump.
This is the first presidential campaign in history that appears to be guided by Nancy Pelosi’s line about Obamacare: “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”
At her brief stop before a handful of reporters while boarding Air Force Two, one of them oh-so-politely asked Harris when she’d sit down for a press interview.
Her answer: “I’ve talked to my team. I want us to get an interview scheduled before the end of the month.”
Staging rallies around the country is easy. Sitting down for an interview with a fawning reporter? That’s complicated business!
This is all in keeping with Harris’ completely content-free campaign, which she apparently hopes to ride until November on the wings of an adoring press.
To date, her website is utterly substance-free, consisting only of a bio of her and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a donation page, and a page selling sophomoric merch.
So far, the only specific promise Harris has made — other than to “defend democracy” and “freedom” — is to eliminate taxes on tips, something she only now embraces because it’s been a winning idea for Trump. (Never mind that she cast the tie-breaking vote for the criminally misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act,” which gave the IRS $80 billion to catch tax cheats, after which it quickly announced plans to crack down on tip income.)
Harris claims she’ll release an economic plan this week that will explain “what we need to do to bring down costs and also strengthen the economy.” We aren’t holding our breath.
To the press who are supposedly covering Harris, keeping her agenda vague and sticking with scripted remarks is a smart strategy. But that strategy only works if the press lets it. So far they are happily obliging.
When the New York Times reported on Harris’ lack of press access, it spent most of it defending her strategy. It’s “a cautious choice” and “political strategists” say is “exactly what she should be doing.” The Times quotes James Carville saying “Where is it written that you have to sit down for a press interview?”
Time magazine ran a sickly sweet paeon to Harris, even after she refused to sit down with them for an interview.
In a rare bit of honesty, The New Yorker magazine admitted that:
The task of filling in what Harris prefers to leave blank would usually fall to the press. But, to date, there have not been particularly loud or widespread calls for her to sit down and answer questions….I think it’s fair to say that, so far, the mainstream press has handled Harris quite gently.
You don’t say.
The press is — to the surprise of no one — bending over backward to help her win.
When the New York Times ran a headline that was the tiniest bit critical of Harris’ vacuous campaign, it quickly got revised.
Here’s the original:

And here’s the updated version that appeared later in the day.

But there’s a deeper reason for Harris’ hiding from the press. When she had to present a policy agenda in 2019, it was laughably amateurish. And when she talks off the cuff, she comes across as … well … stupid.
Early in Biden’s term, after putting Harris in charge of fixing the “root causes” of the border crisis, she sat down for an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, which was such an epic disaster that she basically avoided sit-down interviews for a year.
That didn’t prevent Harris from displaying her dim grasp on things whenever she spoke extemporaneously, repeating her “unburdened by what has been” line ad nauseam when not waxing philosophically about the “significance of the passage of time.”
Harris has no doubt spent three years preparing for this moment, so maybe she’s improved her skills. But when Americans held prisoner in Russia returned at the start of the month and a reporter asked her how she feels, Harris blurted this:
Issues & Insights @InsightsIssues · Aug 11 Kamala Harris On The Significance of Diplomacy @CSPAN
If she is so sharp and politically savvy and so full of great ideas, you’d think she’d be eager to show off all this off. Why keep her light under a bushel?
Having said all this, the real risk to the country isn’t electing someone who is stupid. It’s electing someone who’s been allowed to hide the fact that she is a hardcore leftist.
That’s what voters will learn about Harris if, God help us, she wins this November.