It’s no well-kept secret that Vice President Kamala Harris has been doing her best to hide from outlandish media appearances, or even answering tough questions.
You just haven’t heard a lot of outcry from the media… until one Wall Street Journal reporter finally had enough.
“This week she couldn’t or wouldn’t answer a single question straight, and people could see it.”
But a five-word nuke on Harris is finally making it’s way into the mainstream media.
Kamala Harris Is an Artless Dodger by @Peggynoonannychttps://t.co/PO4zpt9T9o
— Wall Street Journal Opinion (@WSJopinion) September 22, 2024
“She is an artless dodger,” The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan wrote.
The outcry from Noonan is on the heels of Harris recently only doing an interview this past week with the National Association of Black Journalists (NAJB) when she sat down with Oprah Winfrey.
“She owes us these answers. It is wrong that she can’t or won’t address them. It is disrespectful to the electorate,” Noonan wrote, arguing that avoiding questions on illegal immigration was “political malpractice.”
Even The New York Times‘ Todd Purdum, a former White House correspondent for the outlet, agreed, writing last Thursday that Harris cannot be allowed to avoid the media (even while taking a dig at Trump).
“In a campaign in which Donald Trump fills our days with arrant nonsense and dominates the national discussion (and polls show a tight race where Ms. Harris is running behind Joe Biden’s level of support in 2020 with some groups), the vice president can’t afford to stick only to rehearsed answers and stump speeches that might not persuade voters or shape what America is talking about,” Purdum said.
Purdum suggested that direct answers from the vice president would go a long way with voters.
“Writing about politicians for decades has convinced me that direct, succinct answers and explanations from Ms. Harris would go a long way — perhaps longer than she realizes — toward persuading voters that they know enough about her and her plans,” the journalist wrote.
Bret Stephens, an anti-Trump New York Times columnist, who has also called on Harris to answer questions more directly, told Ruhle, “I don’t think it’s a lot to ask for her to sit down for a real interview as opposed to a puff piece in which she describes her feelings of growing up in Oakland with nice lawns.”
Stephens called on Harris to answer more difficult questions in a recent NYT column.
“It should not be hard for Harris to demonstrate that she can give detailed answers to urgent policy questions. Or to express a sense, beyond a few canned phrases, of how she sees the American interest in a darkening world. Or to articulate a politics of genuine inclusion that reaches out to tens of millions of distrustful voters. Or to prove that she’s more than another factory-settings liberal Democrat whose greatest virtue, like her greatest fault, is that she won’t step too far from the conventional wisdom,” he wrote.
Even Winfrey, who led the sit down, at one point had to prod Harris to answer a question.
Oprah steps in after Kamala Harris fails to say what she'd do for the border: pic.twitter.com/90U7VZ4gtV
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) September 20, 2024
While Noonan pointed out the obvious, it’s just a sliver of the growing resentment from media pundits growing frustrated with Harris’ lack of candor.
ABC’s Selina Wang said Harris “did not directly answer the question or offer any policy specifics,” referring to a question about the Israel-Hamas war.
“There were multiple times, though, during this interview where Vice President Harris did not offer a specific answer. Instead, she pivoted and returned to her talking points that she wanted to hit,” Wang continued.
Even CNN’s Abby Phillip played a clip of Harris responding to a question about whether voters were better off than they were four years ago.
“We came in during the worst public health epidemic in centuries. We came in after the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War and a lot of it due in large part to the mismanagement by the former president, as it relates to COVID and, obviously, January 6. And we had then a lot of work to do to clean up a mess. As of today, we have created over 16 million new jobs, over 800,000 new manufacturing jobs. We have the lowest Black unemployment rate in generations,” Harris said during the interview.
Phillip argued that Harris should have something “quick” and “understandable” ready in response to a question about whether voters were better off four years ago, adding, “and that wasn’t really it.”
CNN political commentator Scott Jennings argued Harris should just “answer the question,” and pointed to some of Harris’ answers during the debate.
“Every single policy question she got at the debate, she totally ignored and never answered. Why is it that she believes she does not have to answer to journalists who are asking pretty basic questions of a presidential candidate?” he said.