Harris had an intense week in the media, but struggled to distance herself from Biden’s legacy
Since the beginning of her campaign, Kamala Harris has been criticized for avoiding interviews, making sporadic and widely spaced appearances outside of rallies and pulpits – in contrast to Donald Trump, who appears in the most obscure of content. This week, the campaign of the current North American vice president changed strategy and Harris went from program to program and from podcast to podcast, a turn that the North American press classified as a “media blitz”, with which she tried to reach more voters and, at the same time, present a more defined image that is closer to the “ordinary” North American.
The wave of interviews began on Sunday and Monday, on the podcast “Call Her Daddy”one of the most listened to programs by North American women on Spotify, to discuss the problems of this electorate and the risks to reproductive rights at stake in the November presidential elections. Also on Monday, the traditional interview given to the CBS “60 Minutes” programa practice for presidential candidates that Donald Trump refused to comply with, and which focused on foreign policy.
The following day, the Democratic candidate was in three different spaces in New York, appearing on ABC News’ “The View”, popular among white women; on the radio program Howard Sternone of the most followed in the country, especially by men, where he talked about Formula 1; and, at night, on Stephen Colbert’s talk show, another friendly environment for Democrats and where Kamala Harris even drank a beer made in Wisconsin.
The vice president even appeared on the Weather Channel on Wednesday, where she reiterated the White House’s appeals and asked Floridians to take shelter from Hurricane Milton. And finally, Kamala Harris went to a “town hall” (conversation with voters) in Las Vegas, organized by Univisionan informative channel dedicated to the Latin American community, to convince the important Hispanic electorate in the key states of Nevada and Arizona.
His campaign colleague, Tim Walz, will not be left behind and will kick off his own ‘media blitz’. The emphasis is on the audience he was tasked with convincing when he was chosen as a candidate for vice president: the ‘bros’. An electorate typically characterized by white, middle-class men, whose social media bubbles are defined by sports, weapons and algorithms that fuel ‘culture wars’.
This Friday, Walz goes to ABC’s “Good Morning America” to talk to a former football player at the University of Minnesota stadium – the fact that the governor of Minnesota is a former sports coach is heavily mentioned by the Democratic campaign . The candidate will tour programs on local stations in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin (three critical states for the election) and, on Saturday morning, will give interviews to ‘podcasts’ and influencers dedicated to male audiences, including a ‘podcast’ about hunting.
Whether Harris gave enough interviews to ‘move the needle’ among the electorate, and whether images of the candidate drinking beer or talking about more casual topics helped, remains to be seen. In the middle of the week, Democrats had more good news: the New York Times said that the vice president’s campaign raised more than US$1 billion in less than three months, a historic feat in US presidential elections, a much greater amount than the money raised by Donald Trump, and which allows the party to invest even more in announcements and events until November 5th.
Presenters of “The View”
Lou Rocco/ABC via Getty Images
Joe Biden’s ghost and gun revelation stall media race
Amid this attempt to be everywhere and speak to everyone, many experts have doubted whether Kamala Harris has managed to achieve the objective of distancing herself from Joe Biden, without tarnishing the legacy that also bears her signature. And Harris, in fact, has had difficulty dispelling these doubts.
In several of the interviews she gave to informative programs and talk shows (some of them pro-Harris, especially Stephen Colbert and “The View”), the vice president was asked the same question: what would she do differently than Biden? Harris avoided giving a definitive answer. To Colbert, he jokingly said, “Well, I mean, I’m obviously not Joe Biden, so that would be a change.”
The statement that most reflected Harris’ position in relation to the President of the United States came on “The View”, in which, when asked what she would do differently in the last four years, she admitted: “There is nothing that comes to mind at the moment. ” THE ABC News wrote that the vice president “expanded her reach but had difficulty differentiating herself”, while the New York Times highlighted that Harris “continued to dodge” uncomfortable questions.
The Republican Party wasted no time in seizing on the quote to attack its Democratic Party opponent. On his social network, Truth Social, Donald Trump called the response “the silliest yet” and criticized Harris for “being exposed as a ‘stupid’ every time she appears on a show.” Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance mocked the vice president because “after all this time, after thinking so much,” she should know how to appropriately answer the question.
The issue of “change” is brought up repeatedly on both sides of this race. Harris sells the “change” in relation to the past, Trump the “change” in relation to Biden, but the truth is that both are part, in a certain way, of the recent past of the White House. A September survey by NBC News asked which candidate best represents the word “change”: 47% of respondents chose Harris and 38% chose Trump. However, the same study noted that 40% of the sample was concerned about Harris continuing with the same approach as Biden; 39% said they were more concerned about the possibility of Trump maintaining the same approach that marked his first term as President.
Still, the most divisive comment came from the most challenging interview in the script, on “60 Minutes.” Kamala Harris had already admitted, more than once, that she owns a firearm – she said this in 2019 for the first time and repeated it in the debate against Donald Trump in mid-September -, but revealed in the interview which weapon she owns. “I have a Glock and have had it for a while,” he said.
The news was poorly received by conservative pro-gun groups, who accused Harris of being hypocritical in defending more restrictive measures for the possession of firearms in the United States. And other groups, some more on the left, questioned how Harris had access to a Glock, given the very strict laws surrounding the weapon in the state of California.
According to NBC Newsthe Democratic candidate’s campaign did not specify when and where Harris purchased her Glock, what model and where she keeps it. The US agency explains that the 2001 California law, which is being challenged in court, limits the purchase and sale of weapons that do not meet the state’s security requirements, and old Glock models are included in these weapons (models manufactured after 2010 they are already exempt).
The vice president was a California state attorney, beginning her legal career in 1990, and has justified her decision to have a firearm for “self-defense” by the fact that, at that time, her profession and work on media cases put your life at risk. “If anyone comes into my house, they’re going to get shot,” she said, at an event with Oprah Winfrey.
