What is Kamala Harris Afraid of?

Barely talking to the media is weird

There’s a faction of human beings—partisan Democrats, partisan media pundits—who do not care if Kamala Harris talks to journalists between now and November 5th. Harris and Tim Walz sat down with CNN and that seems to be enough for them, if the most disingenuous pundits felt affronted somehow by Dana Bash’s mostly banal questions—and the idea anyone might demand more. It’s a peculiar time, and a reminder of how much Donald Trump has warped the discourse. Nine years into his presidential political career—he’s been contesting nominations since 2015—Democrats have become the party of media avoidance in the name of defeating him. And that’s the subtext here. If Trump is truly committed to ending democracy, then it does not matter whether a candidate interacts with the public or not as long as the candidate beats him. Or, if you’re a media critic in the vein of Margaret Sullivan or Jay Rosen, you are concerned with any attempt by journalists to “normalize” Trump or introduce the hint of “false balance.” Given the activist posture many in the media adopted in the 2010s—and are now, slowly, pivoting away from, understanding that Democratic flag-waving undercuts public trust in their work—this has not actually been a problem. Even now, you will find no shortage of adversarial coverage of Trump. It’s not as if Trump’s disastrous appearance in front of the National Association of Black Journalists was ignored or that the Harris ticket hasn’t benefited from their fair share of mainstream puffery. The Atlantic ran its “democracy in peril” issue (the New Republic very much went for it with the Hitler cover) and most other prestige publications, whether it’s the New Yorker or the Times, have devoted enormous space to the Trump threat.

Harris’ avoidance of the media is rather remarkable. Since becoming the de facto nominee on July 21st, the day Joe Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed her as his successor, she has conducted that one television interview and only a handful of “gaggles” or “scrums” with the traveling press. Having done many of these myself, over the years, I can tell you they are terrible for journalists and often useless. A pack of reporters shouts their questions very quickly and hopes the principle will respond. Questions of substance can rarely be asked and the answers tend to be perfunctory. Follow-ups are very challenging unless you are willing to shout more.

Harris, the sitting vice president, should talk to the media because it’s anti-democratic to do otherwise. We have a First Amendment and a free press in this country for a reason. The media might fail in its duty to represent the public, but that doesn’t mean it will always fail. It doesn’t mean the media, despite its myriad flaws, isn’t the best mechanism to communicate the public’s will to a politician. A rally with a canned speech or a choreographed, hagiographic political convention is not the same as fielding questions about the Federal Trade Commission or the war in Gaza. Anyone who argues otherwise is profoundly ignorant or an insidious liar. (The same sort of people thought Biden still made a great Democratic nominee.)

Harris should also talk to the media because it is, to borrow phrasing from a certain Minnesota governor, profoundly weird to do otherwise.