Vice President Kamala Harris’s so-called “honeymoon” phase is winding down following a consequential week after becoming the Democrats’ de facto nominee without receiving one presidential primary vote in her infamous political career.
Harris will now have to defend her radical-left record, the failures of the Biden-Harris administration, and pressure from the media to sit for one-on-one interviews.
“Harris and emerging campaign brain trust share the view that shifting the fundamentals of the race will be difficult with a calcified electorate and fragmented media environment,” Politico Playbook reported Monday:
Harris and her “emerging campaign brain trust share the view that shifting the fundamentals of the race will be difficult with a calcified electorate and fragmented media environment.” https://t.co/pkB3sHqDzm
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) July 29, 2024
Breaking through the noise in a positive way will likely be difficult for Harris.
After numerous gaffes as vice president, Harris shied away from the press and has not sat for a single one-on-one interview with the media since becoming the de facto nominee. On the record, she has yet to be challenged on her radical-left record, a sign Harris might not be the strongest candidate to replace President Joe Biden.
“We need to be very clear-eyed, and it’s going to be brutally tough,” a Democrat senator told the Hill on Monday.
The media have so far applauded Harris’s candidacy in the wake of Democrat fears about Biden’s political viability, but Harris will have to convince voters, not the media, of her presidential viability.
Only 39 percent of registered independents say Harris is “qualified” to be president, an Economist/YouGov poll found last week. And among the 54 percent of registered voters who believe there was a “cover-up of Biden’s health,” 92 percent say Harris was “involved,” at least a little, in the cover-up.
“I would call it a honeymoon phase,” former Democrat governor of Nevada Steve Sisolak told the New York Times on Monday. “We’ve got to keep the energy going. You got it started — now you’ve got to keep it going. It’s going to be a challenge for everybody.”
Democrats are privately expressing concerns over Harris’s candidacy. One source familiar with the internal discussions told the Hill that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was “lukewarm” about Harris becoming the nominee, a view that appears to be widespread among the party elites.
“She wasn’t a great candidate,” a Democrat senator told the Hill about Harris’s 2020 presidential campaign. Harris ended her bid before the Iowa caucuses. “And she may not be as a political campaigner as good as Biden was in his prime,” the senator said.
A third senator outlined the contradiction Harris will face: running on the unpopular Biden-Harris record while praising Biden and the administration in the midst of attacks that will expose her own record in the Senate.
“She’s got to define herself,” the senator warned. “She doesn’t have the brand on the economy but she’s got the chops and Biden has the record.”
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Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.
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