There's a frenzied push among Democrats to sell Vice President Kamala Harris' persona as something to be uniquely excited about. (AP Photo/John Raoux)
So with the reality that Twitter is not the real world – shocking I know – here is a more skeptical view of her obviously hasty campaign launch.
Liberal New York Times columnist Ezra Klein says the question, after a grueling month, is "How do candidates respond to pressure? Do they seem honest and authentic to voters, or does something about them read as false or opportunistic? Do they have that charisma that convinces people to knock on doors for them, share memes of them, proselytize to family members about them?
"Harris’s reputation was as a candidate with the tangibles but not the intangibles. She was great on paper but, in 2020, couldn’t put the pieces together…
THE RACE TO DEFINE KAMALA HARRIS, AS PELOSI ENDORSES HER AND NO CHALLENGERS EMERGE
"But Harris has never won an election atop the ticket in Pennsylvania or Wisconsin or Michigan. She’s never won an election atop the ticket anywhere but California. The Biden administration’s record is unpopular, and she cannot make a clean break from it. Immediately uniting around Harris feels safe to some Democrats. To other Democrats, it’s risky. They risk making the mistake they made with Biden, which is being so afraid of disunity that they’re failing to gather the information they need to know how their candidate will really perform.
And here’s the truth: It’s all risky. It could all go bad, no matter what path is chosen."
Now that’s a candid assessment.
National Review's Noah Rothman dismisses the notion that Democrats have regained confidence in the Vice President's political viability. (Leigh Vogel/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
"The revolt of the staffers coincided with a one-on-one interview with NBC News [anchor] Lester Holt, in which Harris defended her failure to visit the rapidly deteriorating Southern border by laughing awkwardly while insisting she hadn’t ‘been to Europe’ either. ‘I don’t understand the point you’re making,’ Harris insisted. No one else appeared similarly perplexed."
"The revolt of the staffers coincided with a one-on-one interview with NBC News [anchor] Lester Holt, in which Harris defended her failure to visit the rapidly deteriorating Southern border by laughing awkwardly while insisting she hadn’t ‘been to Europe’ either. ‘I don’t understand the point you’re making,’ Harris insisted. No one else appeared similarly perplexed."
She was largely sidelined after that, preferring friendly settings like "The View" and a show on Comedy Central hosted by Charlamagne tha God.
"For all the party’s public displays of bravado, Democrats appear to understand that the vice president needs to operate in a rigidly structured environment . . . or else… As a presidential candidate, the vice president will be at least as rigorously stage-managed as Joe Biden was in the closing days of his campaign." So Democrats "have to preserve the abstraction of Kamala Harris for as long as possible."
Vice President Harris was billed as "even more radical and incompetent" than President Biden by Fox News primetime host Jesse Watters. (Getty Images)
In Fox prime time, Jesse Watters said: "Kamala is even more radical and incompetent than old Joe Biden," calling her a "California socialist" and "even more unpopular than the most unpopular president in American history."
"No one who truly loves this country, no one who truly wants the best for the American people, would ever subject us to someone like Kamala Harris," said Laura Ingraham. "They know that Harris is incompetent, just as they knew that Biden is incompetent."
But the beat goes on. Speaking of "The View," the liberal ladies conducted an absolute love fest yesterday with the White House press secretary, the woman who constantly assured reporters that the president was definitely running (as she was told to do).
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"Please welcome back the fabulous Karine Jean-Pierre," Whoopi Goldberg said.
Other than a skeptical question or two, the spokeswoman said her boss "still has the job. And we have a lot more to get done on behalf of the American people."
Can a Kamala appearance be far behind?
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Look, maybe Harris will catch fire and make this a cliffhanger. Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries endorsed her yesterday, by which time she didn’t need them anymore. A Quinnipiac poll has her trailing Trump by just 49 to 47 percent, or several points better than Biden. Trump is suddenly the old-guy candidate in the race.
But for now the media cheerleading for Harris isn’t providing the full picture.
Howard Kurtz is the host of FOX News Channel's MediaBuzz (Sundays 11 a.m.-12 p.m. ET). Based in Washington, D.C., he joined the network in July 2013 and regularly appears on Special Report with Bret Baier and other programs.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/kamala-rides-tsunami-positive-press-skeptics-see-risky-choice