Vice President Kamala Harris gave a nice, no-calorie acceptance speech last week. She said nothing about her two substantive policy proposals to date—price controls and a Publishers Clearinghouse-style giveaway of $25,000 for first time new home buyers—and steered clear of formal repudiation of her 2019 presidential campaign platform. (As Senator Tom Cotton pointed out repeatedly to ABC’s Jonathan Karl Sunday, Harris has not said a word about her alleged repudiation of her 2019 proposal to abolish employer-provided health care and a move to "Medicare for All." An unnamed staffer has told some media outlets that she no longer believes that, but she herself has not said so, and what she does believe about health care policy we do not know.)
Harris has been the nominee of the Democratic Party for 36 days and has not given an interview or taken any serious questions. Her acceptance speech was a dance of GOP cliches—yes, Republican go-to talk like "opportunity society"—and represented a very calculated misdirection from her actual record. But we do know that as senator she was once rated as the most liberal member of the Senate. We know that during her 2019 presidential campaign she vowed to close illegal immigrant detention centers "Absolutely. On Day 1."
We also know she was charged, explicitly by President Biden with "stemming the migration to our southern border." President Biden also said in March of 2021 that among Harris’s responsibilities at our border was to persuade Central American countries and Mexico to "enhance migration enforcement at their borders—at their borders." At least 10 million uninvited migrants have crossed our southern border since Biden tasked Harris with getting it under control. So we know for sure that Harris is a spectacular failure in her big mission set as Vice President, and indeed, until Joe Biden’s incapacity became too obvious to hide, Democrats were persuaded that an incoherent Biden was preferable to the candidacy of Harris.
That’s because Harris is a perfectly awful candidate who has never won an election other than in deepest blue California. Her interviews have always been rambling disasters. Her laugh is infamous and her quick wit non-existent. Perhaps her candidacy will survive the September 10 debate with former President Trump. Stranger things have happened. There are strategies out there that, if she can execute without a teleprompter and an adoring audience, will work. We shall see.
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What we have already seen, however, is that legacy media, like Jonathan Karl with Senator Cotton—indeed like every other legacy network anchor and lead reporter since the Biden abdication—are complicit in the "see no Harris, hear no Harris, speak-no-skepticism-much-less-ill of Harris" campaign strategy.
James Carville and George Stephanopoulos famously laid down the iron law of Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign: "It’s the economy stupid." Whomever is running the Harris campaign has a similar dictum: "Say nothing at all, often."
This is brilliant when your candidate is from the far left of the Democratic Party, is the real deal "San Francisco Democrat," and cannot give interviews or answers without great embarrassment. And especially when legacy media is in your corner and helping at every turn. Harris has one enormous advantage in the campaign: All of legacy media is all in for her.
It is as though the cartel of legacy media leaders gathered and agreed: "We will emphasize every negative about Trump and erase every positive from his presidency. We will also erase every negative about Harris and emphasize every positive that we can find."
The cartel also agreed that it would not publicize that Harris is a child of Berkeley, California and Montreal, Canada—Harris Iived in Berkeley until she was 12 and then Montreal and until she left for Howard University in the District of Columbia after her high school years. She left Canada for good after completing Westmount High School in Montreal and enrolling at Howard University in D.C. She apparently did spend time with her father, a Stanford economist, and family friends during summers and vacations during her junior high and high school years, but the Harris campaign is tight-lipped on Harris’s Montreal years or her visits in the Bay Area. (Apparently records, year books and classmates from Westmount High School in Montreal are much more difficult to locate than those belonging to Georgetown Prep, where Justice Bret Kavanaugh which all figured mightily in his confirmation hearings).
The one portion of policy that made it into Harris’s speech was a spectacular bit of "moral equivalency" when Harris first noted the horrors in Israel perpetrated by Hamas and various other residents of Gaza while emphasizing "At the same time" the hardships visited on Gaza because of that attack and Hamas’s refusal to surrender its Israeli (and American) hostages. That peculiar, awkward phrasing should shock supporters of Israel who don’t follow national security issues or figures closely. It did not shock those who know the past positions of her National Security Advisor Philip Gordon or her likely White House National Security Advisor Maher Bitar if, as is rumored, Gordon wants a Cabinet seat if Harris wins.
The country knows everything about Trump, not only his record as president but every detail of his life. Scores of books have been written about the former president. We know nothing about Harris except her record in the Senate, her campaign for president in 2019 and her time as Joe Biden’s right hand on the border.
The legacy media is fine with situation. Because like Harris, the Manhattan-Beltway media elite is far to the left of the center.
Independents and moderates of both parties should be repulsed by the idea of voting for a candidate who is hiding in plain sight. They should ask: Why is that?
Hugh Hewitt is host of "The Hugh Hewitt Show," heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.
