Harris’ risk-averse strategy risks it all

Vice President Kamala Harris’ refusal to sit down for a single solo interview since her coronation has reached farcical levels in Washington. Outside D.C., however, she’s playing a game with increasingly serious consequences.

But first, the show in town. Will she or won’t she? And if she does, who will she be taking? Tuesday morning’s Playbook newsletter was titled “Inside Harris’ big interview decision” and devoted over 1,000 words to the question, with literally not a sentence dedicated to how bizarre it is to receive the Democratic nomination without ever so much as entering a primary, then refusing to take any questions.

The longer the silence lasts, the more consequential any slip of the mask will be.

What, then, could Playbook have devoted 1,009 words to if not this glaring facet of the 2024 race? The answer: Which one of their friends will get the interview, who's been calling whom to talk about it, and what Harris wants to get out of it all. No joke.

If this reminds you of high school girls giggling about whom the quarterback will take to the dance, it’s because that’s what much of D.C. journalism these days is — and that’s how the media approach the Democratic nominee.

They even wondered whether Harris would try to buck the pressure by offering one of the gang a “dual interview,” where she’d sit down alongside Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.). Later on Tuesday, the campaign did just that — to CNN’s Dana Bash on Thursday. Dual interviews, they wrote, “tend to be softer and focus more on the relationship between the two candidates.” They’re right. It’s important to hold them to that.

Outside Washington, there are fewer tee-hees and whispers. The vice president’s refusal to sit for questions is such an open joke that California governor and top Democrat Gavin Newsom can’t keep a straight face on the subject in public. But it’s also deadly serious — and with each passing day, it draws further attention to her deficits.

When she finally cracks, the result will be a heavily promoted and widely covered media event. If she performs poorly, the country will notice. If she performs well, her campaign will say she’s proven her qualifications for the job and any further scrutiny is racist or conspiratorial. The danger to Harris is that even those voters with normal, happy lives generally begin to tune in to the election after the long Labor Day weekend is over. That weekend, in case you missed it, is this weekend. So the stakes for the campaign are high.

We saw what happened when Democrats hid President Joe Biden from scrutiny for too long. His singularly awful debate performance sucked the oxygen from the room, dominated the news cycle for longer than the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, and led to Biden’s painful abdication. It seems the longer you wait, the harder you fall. Of course, if Biden had done better, he’d still be in the race. This is the wager.

Then again, maybe she can make it over the finish line. Pennsylvania early voting begins in less than three weeks, on Sept. 16. Virginians can start casting their ballots four days later.

The big thing standing in her way is the Sept. 10 debate the two camps argued over until Tuesday. The Democrats are actively working to shore up her many weak spots in the lead-up to the event, most recently endorsing a border wall. In the days leading up to the showdown, however, we’re largely left guessing where she stands and on what. The concern runs so high in her campaign that staffers haven’t even deployed Walz, for fear he’ll try to explain a “policy” he does not understand.

The United States might well be on its way to electing a president it does not know. Team Harris would prefer it that way. But the longer the silence lasts, the more consequential any slip of the mask will be. It’s a bold strategy. If it succeeds, it will earn a whole lot of praise. If it fails, we’ll wonder how anyone could be so arrogant as to try it.

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IN OTHER NEWS

Mitch McConnell really doesn’t want to fight Dems over illegal alien voters

The Republican Senate minority leader is incensed. The House of Representatives and a few of his colleagues in the Senate are itching for a fight over citizen-only voting, but Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) isn’t game. It’s too risky, his aides told Axios this week. And this close to an election?

That’s ridiculous, of course, when the fight is over election integrity, the American people back it, and the Republican nominee is up for a battle. Still, McConnell thinks he has a plan for shutting down the resistance.

Republican leaders are generally shutdown-averse. They are quick to note that between corporate media dominance and a Machiavelli-level willingness to inflict pain, modern Democrats generally emerge the winners. And they’ve got a point.

But the predictions of doom can go a bit far. They've blamed electoral losses in Virginia on past shutdown fights, though the Old Dominion was long turning blue. One blogger I used to work with even blamed a mentally ill man ramming his car into the White House barriers on the Republican shutdown. Clear-eyed analysis isn’t for everyone.

But analysis aside, a win or a loss is often in the messaging. “We only want citizens to vote” is a message Republicans win on. It’s not like Obamacare or budget caps. Americans get it, and they support it.

What McConnell really wants is a big-spending omnibus package that funds his Ukraine hobby long after he’s gone, but his starting offer to shut down conservative opposition to dropping the SAVE Act is “a clean CR,” which would fund the state without expanding any Democratic prerogatives or locking a potential Trump administration into next year’s policy.

That’s a kind offer. But if Republicans are serious about election integrity (and they should be), they’ll take Democratic opposition to the SAVE Act at its word and assume the election is at risk if it does not pass. In this light, it’s hard to take Republican leaders’ word that the fight carries risk in the November election.

Axios: McConnell’s big fear on the next budget fight

Blaze News Tonight: Mike Lee details how to pass the SAVE Act

Blaze News: Texas removes 1 million ineligible voters from voter rolls — finds 30% of noncitizens previously cast ballots

Blaze News: Dems try and fail to keep Cornel West off ballot in Michigan, Jill Stein in Wisconsin

The fire rises: UnHerd: How capitalism stole London’s skyline

Poor London, beset by both the left wing's love of importing humans and the right’s love of money. Between the bankers and globalists and the lifestyle liberals, English values have few defenders. The working and middle classes have suffered a great deal from this reality. So, too, has the skyline. Jonathan Glancey reports:

Before the coronation muted him, Charles, then Prince of Wales, launched several memorable broadsides against modern architects and planners. Addressing the annual dinner of the Corporation of London’s Planning and Communications Committee at the Mansion House in December 1987, he said: “You have, ladies and gentlemen, to give this much to the Luftwaffe: when it knocked down our buildings, it didn’t replace them with anything more offensive than rubble. We did that… Your predecessors, as the planners, architects and developers of the City, wrecked the London skyline and desecrated the dome of St Paul’s.”

With dyspepsia gurgling through the room, the Prince recharged his guns. “Not only did they wreck the London skyline in general. They also did their best to lose the great dome in a jostling scrum of office buildings, so mediocre that the only way you ever remember them is by the frustration they induce — like a basketball team standing shoulder-to-shoulder between you and the Mona Lisa.” The French and Italians would never dishonour their finest buildings in this manner. Can you imagine office blocks imprisoning Paris’s cherished Notre Dame or Venice’s shimmering St Mark’s?