More than a month after President Joe Biden endorsed Kamala Harris to replace him at the top of the Democratic ticket, rendering her the de facto presidential nominee, the vice president has finally agreed to sit for her first-ever interview as the ostensible leader and future of the party. The press will likely pat itself on the back, citing CNN’s announcement that Dana Bash nabbed the top prize as evidence that the media has not merely returned to its 3 1/2-year sabbatical. But it’s Harris here who is having the last laugh.
By the time she sits with Bash, she will have been coronated as Biden’s hand-picked successor for a full 39 days. Early voting ballots in the swing state of North Carolina will be mailed out just eight days after Thursday’s interview, and early voting in the must-win lynchpin state of Pennsylvania commences just ten days after that.
Harris’s first and likely only debate against former President Donald Trump is scheduled for four days after early voting begins in the Tar Heel State and just six days before it begins in the Keystone State. Since even early ballots universally bar voters from correcting or editing their past choices, that Harris managed to make it more than five weeks without sitting for a single interview and elicit little more than milquetoast frowns from the media means that her interview with Bash will likely be the only opportunity the entire country has to hear an unscripted moment from the woman asking to be leader of the free world before polls open.
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Worse than the timing is the fact that she will have a schlubby human shield protecting her in the form of running mate Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN). Like the mediocre doofus sitcom dad who serves to insulate his far more telegenic TV wife from real criticism, the Minnesota governor has acted as Harris punching bag since she tapped him as running mate, an avatar for white male mediocrity that Harris voters can use to pretend that they love his “folksy” and “fun” dad demeanor, when really they get to laugh at how little and inconsequential his stage presence is next to the first female, black, and Asian American to stand one heartbeat away from the presidency. When Bash, who notably helped Biden suicide-bomb his political career during his debate against Trump, asks Harris why she used to support a ban on fracking and public health insurance or whether she still supports a federal jobs guarantee or nationalizing 30% of the U.S. economy, Walz will be tasked to intercede, redirect, and attack Trump and company as “weird.” Lest all that fails, Walz will say what Harris will want to consider herself above actually explicating and insinuate that Bash is spewing racism or internalized sexism or whatever-ism practitioners of identity politics love hearing white guys wax on about when defending the honor of a woman of color. (The humiliation ritual of Walz is just an added bonus for an entire class of Karens to enjoy.)
The only good news for Harris haters is that just as Biden illustrated with his debate implosion, campaigning via press releases and surrogate statements reduces the risk of casual gaffes but dramatically ratchets up the stakes of the questions she actually does answer. Whereas Trump running mate Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) rapidly overcame early media obsession over a single aside about “cat ladies” from half a decade ago by flooding the news cycle with interviews across the traditional and digital media alike, Harris has made her terror of speaking without a teleprompter a national issue. While the former prosecutor is fine sticking to a script, a candidate fielding a campaign-wide debate over a single softball interview and trying to goad her opponent into canceling the only debate she agreed to does not signal confidence in her own abilities. Rather, it reveals that she believes herself unable to articulate original thoughts is a potentially fatal liability for a candidacy quite literally gifted to her by the only person on the planet who had the presidential nomination to give. And, quite frankly, she’s not wrong.
