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Vice President Kamala Harris gave a nice, calorie-free acceptance speech last week. She said nothing about her two previous substantive policy proposals — price controls and a Publishers Clearinghouse-style $25,000 donation for first-time homebuyers — and avoided formally reneging on her 2019 presidential campaign platform. (As Senator Tom Cotton repeatedly pointed out to ABC’s Jonathan Karl on Sunday, Harris hasn’t said a word about her supposed retraction of her 2019 proposal to eliminate employer-sponsored health insurance and move to “Medicare for all.” An unnamed aide has told some media outlets that she no longer believes that, but she hasn’t said it herself, and what she believes about health policy we don’t know.)
Harris has been the Democratic Party’s nominee for 36 days and has not given an interview or answered serious questions. Her acceptance speech was a dance of GOP cliches — yes, standard Republican terms like “opportunity society” — and represented a very calculated distraction from her actual record. But we know that as a senator, she was once considered the most liberal member of the Senate. We know that during her 2019 presidential campaign, she promised to close detention centers for illegal immigrants, “absolutely. On day one.”
We also know that she was specifically tasked by President Biden with “curbing migration to our southern border.” President Biden also said in March 2021 that Harris’s responsibilities at our border include persuading Central American countries and Mexico to “strengthen migration control at their borders — at their borders.” At least 10 million uninvited migrants have crossed our southern border since Biden tasked Harris with bringing them under control. So we know for sure that Harris has failed spectacularly in her grand mission as vice president, and indeed Democrats were convinced that an incoherent Biden was preferable to Harris’ candidacy until Joe Biden’s ineptitude became too obvious to hide.
That’s because Harris is an absolutely terrible candidate who has never won an election except in deepest California. Her interviews have always been muddled disasters. Her laughter is notorious and her quick wit is nonexistent. Perhaps her candidacy will survive the September 10 debate with former President Trump. Stranger things have happened. There are strategies that will work if she can execute them without a teleprompter and an enthusiastic audience. We’ll see.
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What we have already seen, however, is that the traditional media, such as Jonathan Karl with Senator Cotton – and actually all other anchors and chief reporters of the traditional networks since Biden’s abdication – are participating in the campaign strategy of “no seeing Harris, no hearing Harris, no skepticism and certainly no bad things about Harris.”
James Carville and George Stephanopoulos articulated the iron law of Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign: “It’s the economy, stupid.” Whoever runs Harris’ campaign has a similar dictum: “Often, say nothing.”
Republicans criticize Harris for being “the last person in the room” when Biden called for evacuation of Afghanistan
This is brilliant when your candidate is from the far left of the Democratic Party, a true “San Francisco Democrat,” and can’t give interviews or answers without being deeply embarrassed. And especially when the traditional media are on your side and helping you every step of the way. Harris has a huge advantage in the campaign: all the traditional media are fully behind her.
It’s as if the cartel of leading establishment media outlets came together and agreed: “We will emphasize everything negative about Trump and erase everything positive about his presidency. We will also erase everything negative about Harris and emphasize everything positive we can find.”
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS – AUGUST 22: Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris speaks onstage during the final day of the Democratic National Convention at the United Center on August 22, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois. Delegates, politicians and supporters of the Democratic Party gather in Chicago as current Vice President Kamala Harris is announced as her party’s presidential nominee. The DNC will take place from August 19-22. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
The cartel also agreed not to make public that Harris is a child of Berkeley, California, and Montreal, Canada—Harris lived in Berkeley until she was 12, and then in Montreal, and until she went to Howard University in the District of Columbia after high school. She left Canada for good after graduating from Westmount High School in Montreal and enrolling at Howard University in DC. During her junior and high school years, she apparently did indeed spend time with her father, a Stanford economist, and family friends during summers and holidays, but the Harris campaign is keeping quiet about Harris’ years in Montreal or her visits to the Bay Area. (Apparently, records, yearbooks and classmates from Westmount High School in Montreal are much harder to find than those from Georgetown Prep, where Justice Bret Kavanaugh studied, and all of which played a major role in his confirmation hearings.)
The only bit of policy that made it into Harris’ speech was a spectacular bit of “moral equivalence,” when Harris began by mentioning the atrocities committed in Israel by Hamas and various other Gaza residents, while also emphasizing the hardships inflicted on Gaza as a result of that attack and Hamas’s refusal to release its Israeli (and American) hostages. This peculiar, clumsy phrasing should shock supporters of Israel who do not closely follow national security issues or figures. It did not, however, shock those who know the past positions of their National Security Advisor, Philip Gordon, or their likely White House National Security Advisor, Maher Bitar, if, as is rumored, Gordon seeks a Cabinet seat if Harris wins.
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The country knows everything about Trump, not just his record as president but every detail of his life. Dozens of books have been written about the former president. We know nothing about Harris except her record in the Senate, her 2019 presidential campaign and her time as Joe Biden’s right-hand man at the border.
The established media are happy with the situation. Because like Harris, the Manhattan Beltway media elite is far left of center.
Independents and moderates in both parties should be repelled by the idea of electing a candidate who is hiding in plain sight. They should ask: Why is that?
Hugh Hewitt is host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” heard weekdays from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. ET on the Salem Radio Network and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliate stations nationwide and all streaming platforms where SNC is seen. He is a frequent guest on Fox News Channel’s news roundtable, hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6 p.m. ET. Hewitt, a son of Ohio and graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, has been a professor of law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996, where he teaches constitutional law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show in 1990 from Los Angeles. Hewitt has appeared frequently on every major national news network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American newspaper, is the author of a dozen books, and moderated twenty Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015–16 cycle. In his radio show and column, Hewitt focuses on the Constitution, national security, American politics, and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. In his 40 years in broadcasting, Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests, from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump, and this column previews the top story that will dominate his radio/television show today.
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