you are welcome margin of errorA politics column by Tom Scocca, editor of Indignity NewsletterInvestigating Campaign 2024’s apocalyptic politics and coverage,
“There are a lot of things people want to learn about you and your policies,” Fox News’ Brett Baier told Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday. By that time, the interview segment between the Republican TV host and the Democratic candidate was almost over; Moments earlier, it had changed to Byer saying “Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis” after Harris called him “‘suckers’ and ‘losers.”
The Fox News appearance was a logical extension of the campaign waged by the campaign press about Harris’s campaign, but by no means the end point. Less than two weeks ago, Politico playbook-An item states that Harris’s schedule for the week includes call her daddy podcast, 60 minutes, Scene, howard stern show, Late Show with Stephen ColbertAnd a Univision town hall wrote that “(a)fter virtually avoiding the media during his entire campaign, V.P. kamala harris Is … still Mass media abstinence.” (Emphasis Politico.)
Politico continued: “Let’s be real here: Most of these are not the type of interviews that are going to press her on issues she doesn’t want to talk about, even if voters want more specific things from Harris.” Ten days later, Baer more or less spoke about Harris. He was repeating the same line that voters have a duty to be informed, after an interview in which the Fox anchor was shown talking about the candidate and demanding to know why Harris allowed so many “illegal immigrants” into the country. Why left open – Then, after displaying photos of young women killed by migrants, asking “Do you want an apology from those families?”
The spectacle was educational, but not about Harris. As Politico so neatly put it, “issues” for the campaign media are those the candidates “don’t want to talk about.” Byrd was vicious and abrasive, but his immigration questions could have been taken from Bill Whitaker’s mild-mannered questions. 60 minutes“Was it a mistake to loosen immigration policies as much as you did?” Whittaker asked. And: “What I was asking was, was it a mistake to let that flood happen in the first place?”
The same applies to the issue or topic of Donald Trump. Whitaker: “You’ve called him racist and divisive. Yet Donald Trump has the support of millions and millions of Americans. How do you explain that?” Bayer: “Why is half the country supporting him? … Are they misguided, the 50 percent? Are they stupid?”
(Meanwhile, at call her daddy In the podcast, along with soft personal conversation-starters, questions also included “How can we make this country safer for women?” and “Nearly one in four Gen Z and Millennials say they don’t want to have kids because it’s too expensive. How do you help young people not feel left behind?”)
The point of mainstream press sessions is not to preach, but to manipulate. Campaign reporters don’t care about Harris’s policy agenda or how it contrasts with Trump’s; They care about how unscripted comments may play out in the news cycle. Like Harris’ announcement of a potentially life-changing offer she wants to get Medicare covers long-term home care Coverage pops up and flows into the stream—just like that Scene In which he made that proposal, finally he also said “Nothing comes to mindWhen asked if he “would have done anything differently than President Biden.” It got a lot of coverage and Trump is now using it in his rallies and attack ads. Everyone knows Joe Biden is unpopular and people tell pollsters the country is on the wrong track, yet Harris won’t disapprove of anything the administration does. She didn’t want to talk about it!
Campaign reporters’ real complaint against Harris is that she managed to clear the field and lock up the nomination within a day or two of Joe Biden’s return. They were planning to fill the weeks leading up to the Democratic National Convention by holding a popularity contest in which, as interpreted by the major media, various future replacement candidates would compete for the public’s approval – a contest in which political reporters and pundits alike Will served as host, judge and audience at the time, making the convention a high-profile televised finale. Instead, Harris swiftly and completely cut her out of the loop, in the process demonstrating that the people who get paid the most to talk about politics had no idea what political maneuvering was. How it actually works.
and so new York Times—Still waiting in vain, somewhere behind Charlemagne tha God, for a chance to sit with the candidate—Harris wrote that “Frequently answers unpleasant questions without answering them, raises questions only on the basis of those she considers inappropriate, and may take it upon herself to rewrite questions she considers useless.” That is all true; In less adversarial contexts, campaign media call this “message discipline” and penalize the candidate who does not show it.
But continuity doesn’t matter, as the campaign season is now fully in its behavioral phase. Everyone who cares about politics knows that Kamala Harris is a disciplined campaigner; Anyone who cares about politics knows that Donald Trump doesn’t care about politics; Anyone who cares about politics knows that the elections are too close to call self contradictory Or both. The candidates are in a scramble for people who don’t care about politics, people who are confused and alienated think, or claimDespite all the evidence, that somehow there is something left to convince them.
For millions of voters who have long been figuring out whether they prefer Harris or Trump, sitting in a blue or red haze of their 48-ish or 46-ish percentage points on a basically static polling average graph It’s all simultaneously agitating and tiring. Watching Byer and Harris go back and forth in an interview ritual — with the video at 1.5x speed, so I wouldn’t move out of the chair — was impossible to take at face value. Nothing that Byer could ask, or that Harris could answer, would change Fox’s editorial position that Democrats are recklessly or maliciously inviting migrant hordes to take over the country. Nothing in Harris’s tone or attitude suggests that she is up to the challenge of a difficult encounter with the media.
If anything, she was there to see if she could force a few thousand more people to hear about “affordable housing” a few more times, at the expense of them calling Bayer a “heinous crime.” And one would hear saying “brutally attacked”. “That’s all that’s left for the presidential contest in October. Maybe that’s what makes the difference.