If there’s a more complicated explanation for what we’re seeing, I haven’t heard it.
In the ten days since Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race, Kamala Harris has been everywhere. She is a media sensation. Her visage is a ubiquitous presence online. Cossetted by the Biden campaign she inherited, Harris’s message and profile have been tightly controlled, but her visibility conveys the false impression that voters are privy to an unfiltered version of the Democratic Party’s new presidential nominee. That’s apparently just how the press likes it.
There are ways in which a campaign can demonstrate both confidence in its candidate and respect for the voters it hopes to persuade by Election Day. Candidates can sit down for one-on-one interviews with professional journalists, though those outings are subject to post-production editing and even adulteration. They can participate in town halls with voters, but the questions candidates are expected to field are tightly vetted and, therefore, provide the campaign an opportunity to put rehearsed responses into practice. The most revealing exposure to which a candidate can submit is a prolonged press conference — and that’s precisely what Harris needs to do. Indeed, we know that’s what she needs to do because it was only a few weeks ago that Democratic political professionals and their allies insisted that was what Biden had to do.
Mere minutes had passed since Biden walked off the debate stage when reporters and center-left political professionals who hadn’t resigned themselves to the president’s fate insisted upon another extemporaneous performance. Only then could Biden either dispel or confirm the evidence of their own eyes.
In retrospect, the fact that the White House “cut press conferences and media interviews to a minimum” was an ominous portent, the Guardian’s Robert Tait wrote. “Joe Biden has not held a formal, solo press conference this year,” NBC News contributor Anthony Coley observed. “It’s time to break the drought.”
“He owes it to concerned voters to do a press conference,” the View’s Alyssa Farah Griffin insisted less than a week after the debate. “The fact that he hasn’t yet is malpractice.” Maybe “another debate,” a “series of town halls,” or a “series of press conferences” would buttress Biden’s deteriorating political position,” commentator and columnist Brian Stelter argued. Anything less is a “Band-Aid on a bullet hole.”
Democratic politicians prodded at Biden in pursuit of signs of life. “Do a town hall, do a press conference,” demanded Senator Chris Murphy. Something to “show the country he is still the old Joe Biden.” The ostensibly objective political press suddenly took exception to Biden’s light schedule. “President Biden has engaged in fewer press conferences and media interviews than any of the last seven presidents at this point in their terms,” Axios reported in the debate’s aftermath. “It would be great to see President Biden command several press conferences over the next few weeks,” Democratic strategist Jennifer Holdsworth told Reuters in a piece outlining the immense pressure on Biden to “do more press conferences with groups of reporters.”
It was not, in fact, “great.” When Biden acquiesced to demands for a press conference two weeks after the debate, it did little to satisfy the president’s critics. But even that lackluster showing served its purpose.
The demands that were made of Biden were designed to shatter a stalemated status quo. At the time, Biden’s career languished in political limbo, and an extended exchange with reporters would destabilize a set of circumstances that were disadvantageous for Democrats. If Biden performed at par, he would quell dissenters. If he bombed, it would hasten his exit from the race. Either way, putting Biden through the gauntlet was desirable.
By contrast, the status quo that prevails today is not one that discomforts the Democratic Party. Harris’s star continues to rise amid a glowing reception from the Fourth Estate and relieved Democratic voters — a trajectory that will continue through August and into the party’s nominating convention. It may be in voters’ interests to get an untreated eyeful of the Democratic Party’s nominee if only to assess the degree to which her ability to manage inputs in real-time improves on the president’s capabilities. But it’s not in the interests of those who support her candidacy.
Media professionals wanted Biden to talk to reporters because it would shake up circumstances unfavorable to Democrats. There are no calls today for that kind of transparency from Harris because it might shake up circumstances that are presently favorable to Democrats. If there’s a more complicated explanation for what we’re seeing, I haven’t heard it.