Opinion: Kamala Harris Hits It Out of the Park, CNN Not So Much

A big question was answered during the CNN interview of Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. Viewers saw for themselves why the Democratic standard-bearers did not rush to do such an interview earlier.

This message came through loud and clear not because Harris and Walz were in any way challenged by the questioning they faced from CNN’s Dana Bash. Quite the contrary, they handled all of the questions with flying colors. But rather the insipidity and formulaic nature of Bash’s questions—queries that for the most part merely echoed, and thus inadvertently lent credibility to, the limp GOP critiques of Harris and Walz—made it clear why such interviews add so little value for voters.

Trump Has Nothing Good to Say About Harris’s First Interview

The vast majority of the questions posed by Bash during the course of the interview simply picked up and repeated one of the critiques with which Donald Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance have sought to slow down the rapid rise of their Democratic opponents in the polls.

Her first question was one of those formulaic and more or less meaningless journalistic tropes, “What do you intend to do on day one in office?” Never mind that elections are about what will be done in four or eight years in office and that precious little typically gets done on the day a president moves into the White House. Never mind the fact that Harris’ opponent has promised to be a dictator on day one. It’s one of those little trap questions that is designed to make a candidate make false choices between priorities.

Harris did not take the bait. She spoke about her overall goal to create an opportunity economy focused on helping to lift up middle class Americans.

So then Bash began with the questions that might as well have been sent to her directly from some fax machine at Mar-a-Lago. Bash asserted that there was some sort of economic crisis in America—albeit the economy has shown record growth, led the world’s top economies, created an unprecedented number of jobs, and seen the stock market hit new highs. There was, she asserted “a crisis of affordability” and she said that led voters to want to go back to the Trump economy?

When Harris rightly pushed back and spoke about the strengths in the economy while also smartly identifying ways she would bring down the cost of living further, Bash asked the VP, nearly sneering, if that meant Harris thought… Bidenomics… gak… was a success?

Harris had pointed out quite effectively those areas where it had been—supported as she is by the overwhelming evidence to that effect—and then she shifted again to where she would do even more. And she was specific. And effective. And early on you could see another subtext to the interview which was the strong rapport and support between Harris and Walz, even just in exchanged glances.

Then Bash turned to another favorite GOP approach and once again demonstrated why it has not worked for Trump or Vance. She started to poke at moments in Harris’ record where her views seem to have changed, suggesting that they might make it hard for voters to know where Harris stood.

She raised a position on fracking Harris took in 2019 and Harris noted her views had evolved by 2020 and that she has remained steadfast because, and this was her key point, her values have not changed. She made the reasonable case that she and Joe Biden found ways to address our climate needs without banning fracking, and she raised the achievements behind the Biden-Harris Inflation Reduction Act, the most sweeping and effective climate legislation in American history.

Bash went then to the issue of the border and Harris noted that her efforts to reduce the flow of migrants from the Northern Triangle countries had actually worked. She noted that the Biden-Harris administration had put forward a border bill backed by conservatives that she would sign on day one and that it was Trump who killed it for cynical political reasons.

There was no deep questioning on the parts of the Harris agenda that were new, that would help the most people, or on how Harris and Walz’s approaches differed from those of Trump and Vance. Harris and Walz tried to bring these things up. But in terms of new ground covered there was precious little.

One place that something new was discovered came when Bash asked Harris if she would consider appointing a Republican to her Cabinet. Harris immediately, sensibly, and with a clear explanation of why, said yes. There’s a long history of presidents doing this and it was a smart move to continue Harris’ push to bring not only a new agenda and a new energy to American politics but also to move to a more inclusive view of how we can move forward together as a nation.

The approach with Walz was similar zeroing in on cavils the GOP had with times Walz had misspoken in the past. He too brushed off these trivial distractions with grace and made the core point that he stands by his 40 year career in public service and his actions during that career.

Bash tried to provoke Harris by bringing up an offensive statement Trump had made about her race. In that moment viewers got to see Harris’ facial expression change and the visage of the prosecutor appear. It spoke volumes but she did not. She simply said that was a reference to Trump’s old, tired playbook and told Bash to move on. It was very effective.

On Gaza, Harris again framed America’s interests in a more effective balanced way than even President Biden has done, confirming an ironclad commitment to Israel’s defense, the importance of getting a ceasefire and the return of the hostages now, and, at the same time, the importance of protecting innocent Palestinian civilians and of ultimately achieving a two-state solution.

There were no questions on Ukraine. On the relationship of the Trump team to Russia. On Trump and Vance’s attitudes toward women. On Roe v. Wade. On the hold the NRA has on Trump. On Trump’s terrible record with COVID. On Trump’s disastrous national debt-exploding record on the economy. On Trump and corruption. On Trump’s convictions. On Trump’s Cabinet and VP rejecting him. No questions on future challenges the United States might face. No questions how to ensure the elections are fair and secure. No questions, in short on any of the big issues in the race ahead.

Indeed, it was left to Harris to make the point, which she did crisply, that what the election was really about was a choice between a leader, Trump, who believed strength was demonstrated by who you beat down and another, her, who believed strength was defined by who you lift up.

Further Harris and Walz added a number of potent grace notes to the interview that underscored the uplifting tone of their campaign. Walz was clearly moved talking about his son Gus’ reaction to his speech during the convention, as was Harris when referring to the now famous picture of her grandniece watching her speak on that Thursday night in Chicago. But of all the affecting moments of the exchange, perhaps the most touching came in Harris’ heartfelt expression of appreciation and support for President Biden.

So, there you have it. Another box checked in the list of “crucial tests” facing Harris the candidate. Never mind that Trump has no such tests despite the fact that he has literally failed every test of character with which he has ever been confronted in his life.

But for Harris, she has run through them one by one. Could she pick up the torch seamlessly? How would she handle her first public address as candidate? How would she handle the possibility of rivals emerging within the party? How would she handle meeting with Israel’s Prime Minister now as the candidate and possible next president of the United States? How would she handle picking a VP? Who would she pick? Would she make the right choice?

How would she play once she hit the campaign trail? Would her new campaign be able to pick up seamlessly from where Biden’s left off? Would it be able to convey a new feeling, a new message? Would it be able to mobilize donations and volunteers in the parties? Would it trigger a response in the polls? Would she talk to the press on her plane… as she walked by the press during her campaign? How would the campaign handle the new media environment? How would they handle the convention? Could her speech top all the others? Could she handle an interview with the mainstream media?

Every challenge met. Every expectation exceeded. So it is up to Trump and company to come up with new critiques (assuming they don’t just continuously shoot themselves in the foot with fiascos like the desecration of Arlington). And it’s up to the media to come up with new make-or-break moments. Indeed, they already have. The next one is the debate on Sept. 10. I know because Dana Bash said it was so. (I’ll admit I did not listen to CNN’s pundit after-show roundtable because to be honest, I tried and it was so irritating, full of crap, and beside the point that I figured that even writing this article late at night would be less aggravating.)

But for those who watched the Thursday night interview and who have watched Harris rise up to every challenge put before, it is possible to see a pattern. Her ascendancy is not a fluke. She is well prepared for this moment. Indeed, it could be argued that she was made for this moment. And, as I suspect we will see in just two weeks, part of the reason for that is that she is the ideal person to confront her opponent face-to-face and to let him know the dark era in U.S. politics that he ushered in—that Harris mentioned during the interview with Bash—is now at last about to come to an end.

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