Extraordinary and unprecedented as it was, the Harris campaign’s early strategy of limiting Vice President Kamala Harris’s public exposure to scripted situations was actually very smart. She had initially performed admirably during her 2019 run for the Democratic presidential nomination. It was only when voters got to know her a little better that her support began to fade, forcing her to drop out of the race before a single primary vote was cast. Democrats were determined to prevent that from happening again.
Buoyed by the media’s full-court press to reinvent Harris as the next Barack Obama as well as the party’s tremendous relief that President Joe Biden had exited the race, she rose quickly in the polls and even surpassed former President Donald Trump in several crucial battleground states. Harris was riding high.
Moreover, Americans were surprised by her strong performance at the September debate with Trump. Despite Harris’s countless lies and obnoxious facial expressions, the night’s biggest surprise was just how ready she was to take on Trump. Gone were the word salads we’ve come to expect from her. Instead, many of us were forced to admit that Harris was uncharacteristically articulate, confident, and well-prepared. Remarkably so. She had taken five days off from the campaign trail to literally memorize her lines so she could recite them at the debate.
One month later, however, Harris’s momentum has stalled. In an effort to restore it, the campaign did precisely what they have so studiously avoided so far: they scheduled a media blitz. The two most notable appearances included a Univision town hall in Las Vegas on Thursday and an interview on CBS News’ “60 Minutes” last Monday. These events showed that Harris’s continued reliance on canned answers has started to grate.
In a clip from the town hall, an audience member seated behind a questioner was seen lip syncing Harris’s words because she’s heard them so many times before.
She even turned on her Spanish accent for the occasion.
In the following X post, a user noted that reaction to Harris’s performance was largely negative. He wrote, “Fake, liar, scripted, teleprompter, terrible, brainless, and fake accent top the list of adjectives used.”
Harris’s worst fears were realized during her “60 Minutes” interview. Reporter Bill Whitaker had the audacity to ask Harris some tough questions. (If all journalists conducted interviews like he did, the race would not be so close.) Fox News host “Kennedy” said she saw fear creep across Harris’s face as Whitaker questioned her.
Among his many questions, Whitaker asked how she planned to pay for “proposals to boost the child tax credit, giveaways for first-time home buyers and big handouts to small business owners,” measures that would add $3 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.
She replied, “When you invest in small businesses, you invest in the middle class, and you strengthen America’s economy. Small businesses are the backbone of America’s economy.” We’ve heard some variation of that answer in nearly every interview she has done.
Whitaker challenged her on her many flips on major policy issues. Harris said, “We are a diverse people. Geographically, regionally, in terms of where we are in our backgrounds. What the American people do want is that we have leaders who can build consensus. … That has been my approach.”
In one of the most contentious exchanges between the two (below), Whitaker pressed Harris on the administration’s decision to “loosen the immigration policies as much as you did.” He pointed out that these changes caused the number of illegal border crossings to quadruple.
She recited all of her previous talking points, but he kept pushing for a real answer.
The full interview can be viewed below.
Although Harris’s rote memorization served her well during the debate, five weeks later, she continues to draw from this limited and stale material to avoid answering questions from both the media and from voters. Even New York Times political correspondent Michael Bender noted last week that Harris “keeps answering the question she wants, not the one that was asked.”
Are voters catching on? It appears they are.
NBC released a poll on Sunday that showed Harris and Trump tied nationally at 48%. When third party candidates were added, Trump led by a 47% to 46% margin.
In the September NBC poll, Harris led Trump by 5-points, 49% to 44%.
The latest NBC poll also shows a drop in Harris’s popularity among voters over the past month:
One of the major developments in September’s NBC News poll, conducted after the Harris-Trump debate on Sept. 10, was her double-digit increase in popularity compared to earlier in the summer, before she became Democrats’ presidential candidate. Her ratings shot upward to 48% positive, 45% negative (a +3 net rating).
But in this latest poll, Harris’ rating stands at 43% positive, 49% negative (-6), with the erosion coming mainly from independents and young voters.
Over the past few weeks, support in the critical swing states has ticked up for Trump and down for Harris. Her lead in the RealClearPolitics national average has softened to 1.7%, far lower than Biden’s lead of 9.2% at this point in the 2020 race, or Clinton’s lead of 6.7% in 2016.
“Harrismania” was never based on reality. Rather, it was a media-driven construct that ignored the most basic truths about Harris: she is vapid, arrogant, and inauthentic.
Democrats hoped that a short campaign would prevent voters from seeing the real Harris. But, despite their best efforts, the truth is slowly being revealed and voters are starting to grasp that Harris is the same weak and unappealing candidate she was in 2019.
Elizabeth writes commentary for The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a member of the Editorial Board at The Sixteenth Council, a London think tank. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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