How Harris is snatching power from the press

The first thing you need to know about the vice president’s approach to the Washington press corps is look how well she’s doing as a result. Kamala Harris is now leading Donald Trump in some national polling averages as well as in some swing-state polls. True, her lead is within the margin of error in most cases, but that’s an improvement from where the Democrats were before Joe Biden dropped out of the running and orchestrated instantaneous unification around his No. 2.

I don’t think I’m overstating things. Her current lead, the millions of dollars she’s bringing in, the thousands of volunteers who are signing up to help, the big big mo’ – I think all of it comes directly from her campaign’s decision not to give the press corps too much access too fast. I think that decision comes directly from the fact that Harris saw firsthand what the press corps did to Joe Biden’s campaign.

Some members of the press corps have noticed how well Harris is doing without them, and apparently, it doesn’t sit right. Here’s Chris Cillizza with a representative sampling. The former Post writer said the vice president has been “almost entirely” ignoring the media since she launched her campaign, and that’s bad, he said. It “bypasses the argument that the media is a critical part of our political system and any candidate who wants to be president -- whether they are winning or losing -- should be regularly subjected to scrutiny from the press.”

Even if I agreed that candidates who want to be president should be regularly subjected to media scrutiny, I don’t think this press corps, as it is currently organized, is able to. There are exceptions, of course, but this press corps is generally not equipped to scrutinize candidates on matters of fact and substance. I say this because this press corps has conspicuously traded matters of fact and substance for vibes.

It didn’t matter what Joe Biden did – pull the country out of a pandemic, dodge a recession, tame inflation, grow jobs, grow wages, enforce anti-monopoly laws, revive every single one of the so-called “left behind” counties that voted for Trump in 2016 because of “economic anxiety” – it didn’t matter what he did. The press corps decided nothing was more important than his age, and lo! 2024 became an election about vibes and vibes ended his candidacy.

Vibes are this press corps’ forte, not fact and substance. If fact and substance were its strength, there would have been a different reaction to The Disaster Debate during which Biden talked about policy and issues while Trump didn’t bother. Trump was incoherent and false, but he came off as confident and strong, and he came off as such, because the press corps’ forte isn’t fact and substance.

If fact and substance were important, there would also have been a different reaction to Biden’s NATO press conference last month. He did it after the Disaster Debate to show he still had what it takes. He talked for an hour about foreign affairs, international laws and war. But this press corps didn’t hear any of that after Biden said “Vice President Trump” by mistake. There’s no grace for the old in Washington, nor is there interest in anything but vibes in the Washington press corps.

There was a time when liberals and Democrats would have nodded in agreement with Chris Cillizza on the merit of candidates being regularly subjected to scrutiny. But after this press corps made a fetish of Biden’s age, I don’t see any more room for the benefit of the doubt – and there’s no going back. This press corps made the election about vibes and it’s going to remain an election about vibes, and if those vibes now grind against the instincts of this press corps, tough shit.

You reap what you sow.

In the future, we might look back and see the most important difference between the Biden and Harris campaigns is their level of trust in the press corps. The president believed voters would reward him for the substantial things he has done, and he trusted – indeed, he depended on – the press corps to inform voters, as it’s supposed to.

But where he saw fact and substance, the press corps saw only vibes. And in depending on the press corps to get his message across to voters, Biden effectively handed over power that was rightfully his. He allowed the press corps to be the principal arbiters of his reality, rather than reserving that right for himself. You could say Biden was waiting for power to be given to him and he suffered gravely for it.

By contrast, the Harris campaign is not letting the press corps wedge itself between her and voters. She is not allowing the news media to mediate her message. In effect, she’s preventing the press corps from speaking for her and, as a consequence, she’s preventing it from exercising a de facto veto on her speech. In that, she is taking power – defining her campaign as well as Trump’s. She is turning the narrative about Biden’s age (81) back against Trump’s (78), such that whatever he says in self-defense is seen as proof of the allegations against him.

This decision leaves the press corps on the outside looking in. She’s sustaining a conversation with voters directly, on her own terms, and she’s doing well as a direct consequence of that decision. But being on the outside looking in feels bad to people who crave attention. They have incentive to turn attention back to where they think it belongs.

That’s why some are busy manufacturing a phony moral standard by which to scam Harris into playing by their rules. That phony moral standard goes something like this, courtesy today of Chris Cillizza: “It’s been 23 days since Joe Biden ended his candidacy. It’s been seven days since Kamala Harris was formally named the Democratic presidential nominee. She has yet to sit for an interview with any media outlet. And she has answered less than five total questions from the press.”

He’s being coy but, in essence, he’s saying that Harris is violating some kind of taboo, that she’s doing something wrong, or worse, that she’s hiding something of great importance from voters. This, of course, is favorable to her opponents, but let’s be clear: she’s violating nothing.

There are no rules. There is no lawbook declaring that candidates shall talk to reporters. There is a playbook, if that’s what you mean, but not a lawbook. The vice president could go the whole time without talking to one reporter and she would not have done anything morally wrong.

This is really important and I will repeat myself till I burst. This is a democracy. Harris is obliged to talk to Americans. That’s the end of her moral and democratic obligation. She’s not obliged to talk to the press corps, as if it were a constituency. If she stopped talking to voters, well, that would be disqualifying. Obviously, that’s far from the case.

This is not to say she shouldn’t, but that’s a different question, isn’t it? If Harris decides to talk to the press corps about matters of fact and substance relevant to her, it will be her decision made out of concern for tactics and strategy for her campaign. Reporters like Cillizza have a bad habit of presenting themselves to voters as if they operated in their interest, and we know, after watching reporters make a fetish of Biden’s age, that nothing could be further from the truth. We should not only stop tolerating this bad habit. We should be hostile towards it.

The most powerful thing Harris has done – a game changing decision, if you want to call it that – was to learn from Biden’s fatal error. He tried to meet the press corps’ phony moral standard, only to have it move around, beyond his reach, thus surrendering his rightful power to define himself and his campaign. In the end, his dependence on the press corps made it so he had to ask for permission to campaign.

Harris isn’t asking.