Here, in its entirety, is The Wall Street Journal’s editorial analyzing last night’s “interview” of Kamala Harris – which was conducted by Harris-friendly Dana Bash on Harris-friendly CNN. (Please pay special attention to the two paragraphs I’ve put in bold print):
Kamala Harris’s campaign handlers were no doubt giving each other high-fives on Thursday night watching their candidate’s interview on CNN. The Vice President got away for the most part with repeating her campaign’s platitudes about “the middle class” and “a new way forward” and was never seriously challenged on anything.
That’s a shame because the voters still haven’t received a straight answer about whether, and how, she has changed her views from the far-left positions she espoused in 2019 as a presidential candidate. “My values have not changed,” she said more than once, in a practiced answer that can be read any way you want. We take it as a studied wink to her left flank that she’s on their side but can’t say so clearly until she’s elected.
The closest CNN’s Dana Bash came to pinning the Veep down was on whether she now favors a ban on fracking for oil and gas as she did in 2019. Ms. Harris said she had changed her position by 2020 and hasn’t changed since, which is news to most of America.
The Vice President said she is now convinced that the U.S. can meet all of its climate goals without a fracking ban, which would play poorly in Pennsylvania. But she notably didn’t disavow any of the Biden Administrations’s green mandates and regulations. And she said the country needs to stick by timetables to reach targets for carbon emissions and other green demands. Ms. Bash didn’t follow up, so Ms. Harris escaped again on costs or feasibility.
Ms. Bash did at least ask if the Veep believes Bidenomics has been successful. Ms. Harris slid around that one with a talking-point list of dubious achievements, including a boast that inflation is under 3%. Again, no follow-up on how inflation reached 9.1% and whether the Biden-Harris spending boom of 2021 was a leading cause.
No follow-up either on her recent proposal to impose housing price controls. No follow-up on her both-sidesism about the Israel-Hamas conflict. And nothing on her tax increases. But there were several heartwarming minutes about Gov. Tim Walz’s son and Ms. Harris’s grandniece.
It’s too much to expect much from a single interview, except that this is the first the Vice President has done as a presidential candidate and she is the least-known candidate in modern history. It’s possible her campaign will figure this is the last interview she needs to do from here to November.
Ms. Harris remains vulnerable on her past political views, her recent flip-flops, the Biden-Harris record in office, and what appears to be her implicit endorsement of the Biden economic and national-security policies.
These are openings for Donald Trump, assuming he can prosecute the case. But that’s far from a sure thing. The Harris campaign’s bet, and it’s not a crazy one, is that the Vice President can soar to victory on a cloud of general promises, platitudes and “joy.”
The campaign is betting the press won’t care. And they’re betting that Mr. Trump won’t do the homework and doesn’t have the discipline and focus to expose any of this in debate or consistently on the stump. So far it’s been a winning wager.
There it is.
Personally, I think the WSJ is spot-on in its assessment – right down to the claim that “so far it’s been a winning wager” (a status I believe, however, is now over).
Do you agree? Disagree?
Your call.
