Vice President Kamala Harris’ plan to avoid the media because her team laughably thinks that no one pays attention to significant networks or prominent newspapers isn’t going to last. Yes, media is an ever-changing landscape, but solely focusing on TikTok and social media is a surefire way to lose an election. People need to hear ideas and policies that will help them, and Kamala hasn’t offered much. What she has provided is a throwback to Soviet Russia.

It’s a window into why her team keeps her from press conferences. The latest pitch to curb inflation is to stomp out price-gouging, which is such pie-in-the-sky nonsense that it almost makes you wonder if Harris qualifies for this office. She’s not—you know that, but that’s not the point: what the hell is this campaign other than showing that Democrats have a black woman running after wresting the nomination from Joe Biden? Catherine Rampell trashed Harris, and now the editorial board writ large is body-slamming her, calling her candidacy gimmicky:

Americans are clearly still anxious and angry about the high cost of groceries, housing and even $5.29 Big Macs. While the inflation rate has cooled substantially since the 2022 peak, an ostensible Biden-Harris administration accomplishment, prices remain elevated relative to the Trump years. So it’s a real political issue for Ms. Harris. One way to handle it might be to level with voters, telling them that inflation spiked in 2021 mainly because the pandemic snarled supply chains, and that the Federal Reserve’s policies, which the Biden-Harris administration supported, are working to slow it. The vice president instead opted for a less forthright route: Blaming big business. She vowed to go after “price gouging” by grocery stores, landlords, pharmaceutical companies and other supposed corporate perpetrators by having the Federal Trade Commission enforce a vaguely defined “federal ban on price gouging.”

Never mind that many stores are currently slashing prices in response to renewed consumer bargain hunting. Ms. Harris says she’ll target companies that make “excessive” profits, whatever that means…

[…]

Her ideas would cost money, yet she insisted in her speech that she would hold to President Joe Biden’s pledge not to raise taxes on any household earning $400,000 or less annually. That excludes 80 percent of taxable income, and does not take into account the recent surge in families earning over $400,000. The Harris campaign says it plans to raise revenue to cover these costs but did not provide specific offsets in its economic plan rollout. Without them, Ms. Harris’s full plan would add $1.7 trillion to federal deficits over a decade, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan budget watchdog.

To be sure, every campaign makes expensive promises that will never come to pass, especially with a divided Congress. Remember Mr. Biden’s pledge to make community college free? Even adjusted for the pandering standards of campaign economics, however, Ms. Harris’s speech Friday ranks as a disappointment.

(Read more from “The Washington Post’s Editorial Board Just Decimated Kamala Harris” HERE)

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Shortly after Vice President Kamala Harris handed over the podium to President Biden on Thursday, dozens of attendees at a joint event simply stood up and left rather than listen to the retiring commander-in-chief.

The rude demonstration was a stark showing of the enthusiasm gap among Democrats revved up by Harris’ sudden elevation as the party’s presidential nominee after Biden dropped out last month — amid reporting that Harris, 59, is seeking to redefine herself to gain distance from the unpopular incumbent.

Adding insult to injury, when Biden, who regularly suffered low attendance at his own election rallies this year, and Harris greeted an overflow room, he was accused by multiple irate protesters of facilitating “genocide” in the Gaza Strip.

Harris, whose own positions on an array of issues have shifted since her 2020 candidacy for the White House, sought to tie herself to Biden’s relatively popular prescription drug policy after she’s drawn implicit distinctions elsewhere.

About 2,300 people showed up to the event at Prince George’s Community College, according to the White House — standing in long, sweltering lines outside in bright sun and near-90-degree heat. (Read more from “Crowd Leaves Joint Biden-Harris Event Early After VP Hands Off Lectern to Lame-Duck Prez” HERE)

Can you feel the joy yet? The whole week after the announcement on Aug. 6 about the selection of Kamala Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, has been a joy fest within the Democratic Party not seen since the days when Franklin D. Roosevelt wowed the press corps. What with pundits declaring Harris and Walz “happy warriors,” you would think “Happy Days Are Here Again,” as FDR’s 1932 presidential campaign theme song blared out constantly.

The Washington Post headline was “Harris and Walz seize on joyful message in contrast to darker Trump themes.” Jennifer Rubin exulted Walz’s “happy-warrior vibe” at the first joint rally in Philadelphia.

At The New York Times, Charles Blow called Walz “the epitome of the happy warrior,” “the dad figure,” “the soldier,” “the coach.” Tom Elliott at Grabien captured nine utterances of “happy warrior” by pundits on TV. And Harris’ laughter has been measured and shown to be four times greater than Biden’s was on the campaign trail!

Times reporter Katie Rogers in her Aug. 9 “analysis” offered that at one time Harris, given the criticism by conservatives, “wondered to confidants whether she should laugh, or show a sense of humor, at all.” They reassured her that she should. Yet, even as she “focused on issues like abortion rights and worked to bolster her foreign policy chops,” the “laughter never really left her.”

It was a good thing, for “joy — a battle-tested version of it — has become the backbone of Ms. Harris’s campaign in recent days,” and her running mate, “a walking bear hug,” is trying “to strike a contrast with what he casts as the gloomy vision of former President Donald J. Trump and other Republicans,” according to Rogers. (Read more from “Harris Repackages False ‘Happy Warrior’ Claims as Old as FDR” HERE)