Jim Geraghty writes for National Review Online about a major media outlet’s recent encounter with the Democrats’ last presidential candidate.
[Kamala] Harris sat down for an interview with the New York Times, and the result is one of the odder profiles of a once and potentially future presidential candidate you’ll ever read. Clearly, Harris agreed to do the interview, but she seemed to have put little or no thought into what she wanted to say. And we’re talking about basic open-ended questions, like, “Where should the Democratic Party go from here?”
She has mostly been a bystander in the Democratic Party’s raging debate over its direction. Should Democrats veer to the left or center? More populism? More progressivism? Both? Neither? What exactly should the party stand for?
“This sounds really corny,” she said in the wide-ranging interview with The New York Times in Nashville. “But we have to stand for the people. And I know that that sounds corny. I know that. But I mean it. I mean it.”
“Stand for the people.” Thank goodness she’s here to give the Democrats such groundbreaking, insightful, specific ideas!
You can almost sense the frustration of Times national political correspondent Shane Goldmacher, as Harris apparently agreed to the interview, but didn’t want to say much of anything:
Lawyerly language remains her safe space, and she still defaults to acting as if every question is part of a deposition where answers can and will be used against her. . . .
Yet people aren’t just showing up for her. They’re paying to see her.
“Thousands of people are coming to hear my voice. Thousands and thousands,” she said. “Every place we’ve gone has been sold out.”
The question is what she wants to say. …
… The Democrats have moved on from the defeat of 2024, and few in the party have spent much time worrying about what Harris thinks about any given topic in any given day. She’s an afterthought, a bad memory, the answer to a question no one is asking anymore.
