September 20, 2024 - 7:30pm

Republicans hope the Harris-Walz campaign will irritate voters by skirting the press. From a moral standpoint, the strategy is awful, particularly as part of a campaign premised on saving democratic norms. From a political standpoint, however, it’ll probably work just fine.

“The Harris-Walz ticket is on pace to do fewer interviews and press conferences than any major party’s presidential pairing in modern U.S. history,” Axios reported on Thursday, describing the campaign’s strategy as “hide from the press”.

According to Axios, during the 59 days since Kamala Harris became the Democratic presidential candidate, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance have participated in more than 70 interviews and press conferences with TV and print reporters. Harris and Walz, meanwhile, have taken part in seven. The report summed up Democrats’ strategy bluntly: “Some of Harris’s worst moments as vice president have come during interviews when she made flip or unclear comments about key policies. Her campaign is trying to avoid more moments like that.”

As well they should. Harris is famously so weak a candidate outside deep-blue California that even with significant media hype, she dropped out of the 2020 primary race before, well, 2020. Her performance as Vice President was a laughing stock in D.C. until Joe Biden dropped out of the election thanks in no small part to her hilarious struggles with media interviews and public speaking.

The cost-benefit analysis for Democrats is clearly on the side of minimising exposure. Back in August, Senior Trump campaign official Corey Lewandowski criticised Harris by arguing that she “hides in the basement” while Trump campaigns in swing states. This line of attack is also totally reasonable from the GOP. Some voters will absolutely be turned off if they hear Harris is intentionally ducking media interviews. The key word, though, is “if”.

Axios is a Beltway publication. X is frequented by only a small percentage of the electorate. People both aware of the problem and persuaded by it in this hyper-polarised climate absolutely exist, but they’re not legion. And there are a whole lot more people who would see clips of Harris inevitably fumbling interview after interview if her campaign adopted a more traditional press strategy. She went viral constantly before taking over from Biden, virtually becoming a fixture of the memesphere. And not in a good way.

Now, though, genuinely enthusiastic Democrats and Left-leaning journalists are memeing her into vogue. Why give anyone fresh opportunities to disrupt all of that? It’s a baked-in advantage that a rigorous press schedule would jeopardise. Plus, even if journalists are irked by a lack of access to Harris, they’ll still be more friendly to her than to her opponent.

There is virtually no strategic upside, even if it’s outrageous for Harris to do so few interviews. Given her problems, it’d also be outrageous for Harris’s team to keep putting her in front of journalists.


Emily Jashinsky is UnHerd‘s Washington D.C. Correspondent.

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