On the menu today: Major mainstream-media institutions notice that Kamala Harris has answered fewer questions than any other major-party nominee in memory, and her campaign is answering “no comment” to basic questions about whether she still holds positions from her 2020 campaign. Meanwhile, J. D. Vance takes his message to all those undecided voters in the audiences of Charlie Kirk and Tucker Carlson. And Republicans will probably control the Senate in January, even while bobbling away Senate races that ought to at least be competitive.
America on Autopilot
Believe it or not, we’re almost at vote-casting time. North Carolina was supposed to send out its absentee ballots today, but a legal dispute over whether Robert F. Kennedy Jr. should remain on the ballot is pausing that for at least 24 hours. (Kennedy now wants his supporters in all states to vote for Trump, not just ones in the competitive swing states.)
The gang at Axios notices that the Democratic nominee, who probably has about a 50–50 shot of winning right now, has done one television interview with her running mate and zero formal press conferences since becoming the nominee:
With 60 days left in the race, and at the very moment she’s presenting a different ideology than four years ago, Vice President Kamala Harris isn’t getting subjected to the media scrutiny typical for a presidential nominee.
Why it matters: Harris is copying President Biden’s self-protection media strategy — duck tough interviews and limit improvisational moments.
Hey, at least the Huffington Post can write about how “smart” Harris is to not use Bluetooth headphones when she’s ignoring shouted questions from reporters.
The current response from the Harris campaign to questions such as whether she supports “requiring automakers to build only electric or hydrogen vehicles by 2035 — a position she took during her 2020 campaign for president” is “no comment.”
No. You don’t get to do that when you’re asking 300-some million people to trust you with the executive branch of the U.S. government and the duties of commander in chief. As I fumed on yesterday’s Three Martini Lunch podcast, Democrats love their presidents who are known by three initials — FDR, JFK, LBJ. Apparently, Kamala Harris will be known by the initials “TBD.”
But running as a blank slate is the way her campaign wants it, the way the Democratic Party wants it, and the way most, but perhaps not quite all, of the mainstream media wants it, if that’s what it takes to defeat Donald Trump. That is the apex priority. After Harris takes the oath of office, then reporters and correspondents can start pointing out that the presidency is not the kind of job you can do with the media accessibility of J. D. Salinger.
Kamala Harris is going to answer as few questions as possible between now and Election Day, and most Americans are just fine with that. The country is on autopilot.
Hey, Remember When We Had a President?
A common question on the right these days is, “Who’s really running the country?” We have no reason to think that Joe Biden, behind the scenes, is any more coherent, clear, energetic, or focused than what we see in his increasingly rare public appearances. Which means that during that 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. window, he may well start rambling that he wishes his ancestors had killed more people in labor disputes.
You noticed that in the White House Situation Room, all of the nametags are facing Biden instead of facing out from the speaker, right? We wouldn’t want Biden referring to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin as “the black man” again, now, would we?
A reminder from the Washington Post, just two months ago:
But during the Group of Seven nations summit in Italy last month, a number of European leaders were struck by Biden’s appearance and demeanor, according to four people who spoke directly with multiple leaders. The general impression among leaders, the people said, was that while Biden appeared capable of carrying out his duties today, they were concerned about how he would be able to serve another four-year term.
The leaders noted that Biden seemed more tired, frail and less lucid at certain moments. Several said he was hard to hear, prompting meeting participants to ask him to speak up at times, according to a summit participant. The president also sometimes lost his train of thought, though he would return to the point quickly, three of the people said.
It’s as if the Men in Black have used the memory-erasing neuralyzer and made the vast majority of the American public forget that midsummer, the likes of Ian Bremmer were telling us unnerving stories like this one from the G-7 summit:
[The foreign leaders that are here in Washington right now have] seen the deterioration. They’ve seen him slow down, and it’s not just physically slowing down. It’s repeating the same anecdote twice in an individual meeting. I’ve heard that from a world leader today. It’s not recognizing someone that he knew quite well when he came up and introduced them.
Do you think any aspect of Biden’s condition has improved over the past two months?
Notice that the moment Harris became the nominee, almost everyone in Washington forgot about the guy who’s still sitting in the Oval Office.
Again . . . the country is on autopilot.
J. D. Vance’s Target Audience in the Final Months of the Race
Republican vice-presidential nominee J. D. Vance sat down with Charlie Kirk at the Generation Church in Mesa, Ariz., on Wednesday. Now, it’s a free country, and Vance can sit down and do interviews with anyone he wishes, and tossing some red meat to the base of the party is a duty of the campaigns. But do you think anyone in Charlie Kirk’s audience isn’t already voting for Trump?
As noted in this week’s Post column, Vance is still scheduled to appear on stage at an event with Tucker Carlson in Hershey, Pa., later this month. This is after Carlson offered a warm welcome to that nutjob Hitler-apologist historian. A Vance spokesman offered this mildest of tsk-tsks in response to Carlson’s recent guest selection:
A spokesman for the Ohio senator, who will appear with Carlson at an upcoming stop on the conservative commentator’s speaking tour, told Jewish Insider in a statement that, “Senator Vance doesn’t believe in guilt-by-association cancel culture but he obviously does not share the views of the guest interviewed by Tucker Carlson. There are no stronger supporters of our allies in Israel or the Jewish community in America than Senator Vance and President Trump.”
Oh, good, the Republican ticket doesn’t share the views of the guy who insisted Winston Churchill was the villain of World War II. Glad we could clear that up.
Tucker Carlson’s current stage tour also features guest appearances on certain dates by Alex Jones, Roseanne Barr, and Marjorie Taylor Greene — how do you think they’re voting this year?
The mentality of both campaigns is that there are no swing voters anymore, there are no persuadable voters out there, and the 2024 election comes down, entirely, to bringing out every last possible vote from the base. I’m open to the argument that the “double haters” are a smaller demographic in the Harris–Trump race than they were in the Biden–Trump race; there were a decent number of Democrats who were perturbed at the prospect of another four years of a doddering geriatric stumbling to and from Marine One.
But the last New York Times poll put the number of voters who dislike both candidates at 8 percent, after reaching 20 percent earlier this year. If I was running a presidential campaign, I would not just write off 8 percent of the electorate who already dislikes my opponent! I might devote at least some time and effort to voters who aren’t already part of my base!
As Mark Wright and Noah Rothman have noted, the Trump–Vance campaign message to usually Republican-voting, pro-life, free-market, free-trade, hawkish, traditional conservatives is, “Go pound sand. We don’t need you.” Well then, have fun storming the castle.
A couple of weeks ago, our Charlie Cooke wrote that he wasn’t convinced that Americans really care about this election:
I do not mean by this that the United States faces no problems, or that the public is not aware of the issues that obtain. I merely mean that those problems do not seem to be dire enough for the average person to have escaped their usual habits or to have considered politics more than they usually would. Americans quite clearly do not believe that Donald Trump is likely to become a dictator, that he is determined to end Social Security, or that he is plotting some dastardly reengineering of society with the help of Project 2025. Nor do they look back on his presidency as a bad time. Likewise, while they might be irritated by some of its failures, they are evidently not angry enough with the Biden-Harris administration’s record to be in any great rush to punish Harris over it.
Again, the country is on autopilot.
ADDENDUM: The ebullient and astute Henry Olsen looks at the 2024 down-ticket races and concludes, “Republican chances of taking the Senate are looking great.”
He’s not wrong. But I would note that a Republican Senate majority of 50 or 51 seats would be a reflection of a good map rather than a particularly good cycle for the GOP. Republicans currently hold a lot of Senate seats that aren’t up for election this cycle, and a lot of seats in deep-red territory. (No, Ted Cruz is not in trouble.) But there are a decent number of vulnerable Democrats — or Democrats who ought to be vulnerable — who are effectively getting a pass. Kari Lake is giving away an Arizona Senate seat that ought to be competitive at worst. Republican Sam Brown isn’t looking all that competitive against incumbent Democrat Jacky Rosen in Nevada. Republican Eric Hovde just doesn’t seem to be able to get over the hump against incumbent Democrat Tammy Baldwin. And given that Trump is set to win Ohio by a large margin, Bernie Moreno should be making Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown sweat profusely, but he isn’t.
I had high hopes for David McCormick in Pennsylvania, and maybe he’s turning the corner.
So yes, Republicans will probably finish with 50 or 51 — maybe even 52 seats next January. But they had a shot at 55 or 56.