Bear in mind: This is the same outlet that insisted Kamala Harris was never "border czar" despite their own "reportage" calling her that in 2021.
With 60 days left in the race, and at the very moment she's presenting a different ideology than four years ago, Vice President Kamala Harris isn't getting subjected to the media scrutiny typical for a presidential nominee.
Why it matters: Harris is copying President Biden's self-protection media strategy -- duck tough interviews and limit improvisational moments.
Her circumstances are different, for sure. She entered the race just seven weeks ago, did dozens of interviews this year before Biden's exit, and plans to do more interviews and gaggles.
But with her debate with former President Trump coming up Tuesday (9pm ET), Harris has big questions to answer in two areas that go to the heart of running America:
Why did President Biden's top advisers routinely leak word they found her performance as vice president disappointing or episodically problematic?
How did her views change in five years, from liberal to centrist on health care, immigration and energy? Why should voters believe her new views are the ones she'd stick with inside the White House?
...
Nine areas in which she's shifted views or her current position is unknown:
Banning plastic straws for environmental concerns. (She's no longer for it, as Axios reported Thursday.)
A mandate for automakers to only make electric and hydrogen vehicles by 2035. (The Harris campaign won't say whether she's still for it.)
Banning fracking because of concerns over global warming and potential water contamination. (No longer favors a ban.)
A mandatory buyback program for assault weapons as part of her gun safety agenda. (She's dropped this idea.)
Decriminalizing crossing the border from a criminal offense to a civil one. (No longer supports.)
Reparations for slavery, which many progressives argued for during the 2020 primary. (Position unclear.)
Building a wall on the Southwest border, a defining Trump promise that many Democrats have fought. (Accepted it as part of the bipartisan border package that Republicans killed.)
A federal jobs guarantee that was part of her Green New Deal proposal. (No longer for it.)
Medicare for All, which Harris embraced in her first year as senator. (She's backed off this.)
What they're saying: Harris and her campaign haven't provided many details explaining her policy shifts.
...
Reality check: One of the features of her melded staff (Harris loyalists and Obama alumni, grafted onto existing Biden staffers) is that even some of her own staffers aren't sure where she stands on a range of issues.
[Trump's] running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), routinely sits for tough interviews with mainstream reporters. Harris' running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, hasn't done a solo TV interview.
I saw a story a couple of weeks ago that Walz avoids interviews precisely because 1, he doesn't want to say what the Harris-Walz position is on issues, and 2, he doesn't even know what the Harris-Walz position is on issues.
Behind the scenes: As Axios' Sophia Cai has reported, Harris made a decision not to get too deep into specific policies because there wasn't time.
LOL, that must be it, Axios. Good "reporting."
...
The result is lots of down-the-middle vagueness. That's the case on the issue of whether Harris would require automakers to build only electric or hydrogen vehicles by 2035 -- a position she took during her 2020 campaign for president.
For a story this week, Axios asked her campaign about the issue for six days before getting a "no comment."
Why does Kamala Harris think she can stiff-arm a Kamala-boosting media with "no comment," wonders a Kamala-boosting media that makes excuses for her when she stiff-arms them with a "no comment"?
Bonchie from RedState comments:
Some elements of the national press are finally starting to understand that Kamala Harris is playing them for fools. Of course, admitting there's a problem is different than acting on it.
I'm not sure what's more frustrating. That Kamala Harris doesn't even have an official policy platform yet and early voting is already starting, or that the supposed news outlets are trying to play the victim in the face of that. If only there was a massive "fourth estate" with enormous, worldwide influence that could report honestly on Harris and pressure her into doing interviews and press conferences.
If you are to believe Axios' framing, they and other mainstream news sources are helpless. There's just nothing they can do. That contradiction between complaining about Harris' strategy and the press feeding into it is illustrated later in the same article.
What they're saying: Harris and her campaign haven't provided many details explaining her policy shifts.A Harris campaign aide explained to Axios that she's no longer pushing Medicare for All because of what she learned during her four years of experience in the White House, and seeing how the Biden administration has expanded coverage through the Affordable Care Act.
Do you know what the press could do if they want to make Harris speak clearly and publicly about her policy positions? They could stop publishing anonymous sources like the one cited above. Every single time an anonymous "aide" is allowed to change a Harris position with no further details or explanation, her campaign is given every incentive to continue hiding the candidate behind a teleprompter.
Even slump-shouldered pudgebucket Chris Cillizza, who even CNN decided was too dumb and leftwing for them, has trouble believing Kamala has really changed her positions.
John Sexton:
If it were one issue it wouldn't be a big deal but as Cillizza correctly points out, she's done this on a bunch of issues: Fracking, the border wall and asylum policies, the Green New Deal, gun confiscation, Medicare for All. She has done an about face on all of them. It's a big part of her strategy to get elected.
Those, um, policy shifts are all part of a designed strategy on the part of the Harris team. This, from Axios, is telling on that front:A big part of the Harris plan is to unapologetically change some of her more liberal positions, and claim her White House experience helped change her mind. Yes, when she was running for president in 2019, she was against fracking, for decriminalizing illegal border crossings, and for single-payer health care (Medicare for All).
So here's the obvious part. The claim that Harris has actually changed her mind because of her time as VP and that her values haven't changed is just not credible.
Given that history, I struggle to swallow the spin that her time as vice president is what explains all of these policy shifts. Especially when you consider that every single one of them is Harris moving from a position liberals love to one centrists -- and swing voters -- prefer. Like, she never learned anything during her time in the White House that made her think a more liberal solution was the right way to go?
And the explanation that she and her campaign team have settled on -- "my values have not changed" -- doesn't really fly either. If her values told her that single payer, government run healthcare was the right way to insure Americans get the best services possible, why does she no longer think that?
Yes, this is all blindingly obvious but again, how many journalists are saying it? We had a good story at CNN yesterday which I wrote about earlier and there have been others but they stand out precisely because this kind of blunt comparison has mostly been backburnered by the media who would rather talk about Kamala's Joy. The NY Times pointed out the potential problem the Harris camp was facing back in July.
She said then that she opposed fracking; would "think about" abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency; called the idea of adding more police officers "wrongheaded thinking"; entertained the idea of allowing felons to vote; said she supported a "mandatory buyback program" for some guns; and called for the elimination of private health insurance.Fracking is a particularly tough issue for Ms. Harris. Banning it was a plank in her energy platform in the 2020 primary race. But fracking remains a key element of the economy in Pennsylvania, perhaps the most important battleground state this year...
The Harris campaign will rebut most of Republicans' attacks by arguing that they are exaggerating or lying about her record, said a campaign official briefed on the plans who was not authorized to discuss them publicly...
"Kamala Harris spent 20 years as a tough-as-nails prosecutor who sent violent criminals to prison," said Brian Fallon, a Harris campaign spokesman. "Her years spent in law enforcement and her record in the Biden-Harris administration defy Trump's attempts to define her through lies."
It's pretty hard to claim her opponents are all liars when there is oodles of video showing Harris herself stating her left-wing views. And the silly claim that her views have evolved, as Chris Cillizza said, just doesn't seem credible. What does seem credible is that Harris' advisers are lying because the real Kamala Harris is a fringe candidate who can't possibly win this election.
The alternative possibility is that she hasn't got any real views of her own and just repeats whatever she's told to say. In 2019 that was far-left pablum about Medicare for All and fracking and in 2024 it's the opposite.
Well, actually, the real truth is that she does have real views, and they are the hard-left views of her Marxist professor father, and she knows she cannot win on those issues, so she's, get this, lying about them with a paper-thin lie that is only designed to hold up for 60 days.
It's infuriating that on Axios' own front page, they have another story about Kamala refusing to explain a policy shift -- and making excuses for her.
Harris campaign dodges over EV mandate walkback
Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign won't say whether she supports requiring automakers to build only electric or hydrogen vehicles by 2035 -- a position she took during her 2020 campaign for president.
Why it matters: Since taking over President Biden's campaign in July, Harris has been light on policy details.
Harris' campaign has said she no longer supports many of her past progressive positions and has embraced more centrist stances on health care, immigration, gun control and fracking.
Even so, Donald Trump's campaign has focused on footage from Harris' 2020 campaign to attack her as "dangerously liberal."
Driving the news: Harris' campaign has sent contradictory signals about her position on a mandate for automakers -- a key issue in pivotal Midwestern states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, where many autoworkers are based.
In a lengthy "fact-check" email last week that covered several issues, a campaign spokesperson included a line saying that Harris "does not support an electric vehicle mandate" -- suggesting she changed her previous position, without elaborating.
On Aug. 28 Axios asked the Harris campaign to clarify her position, and whether she would sign or veto a bill she co-sponsored in 2019 that included such a mandate for manufacturers.
On Tuesday afternoon, Harris' campaign ultimately declined to comment.
But the important thing is: Trump lies. Trump lies when he says Biden-Harris is already pushing an EV mandate, when all they're actually doing is attempting to force people to buy EVs through "tough regulations and financial incentives:"
Trump has falsely claimed that Biden has already instituted such a mandate, but the current administration has pushed the adoption of EVs through a combination of tough regulations and financial incentives.
Matt Whitlock makes the important point: As that female journalist on CNBC correctly noted, alleged "policy shifts" aren't real if it's just Kamala Harris's Media Whisperers claiming, anonymously and on background, that she's shifted positions.
Matt Whitlock
@mattdizwhitlock
Notable that these changes were ALL announced through unnamed staffers - not from her and not on her website.
So we have to trust she's flipped completely on positions - many of which she held even before 2019/2020 - based on anonymous campaign sources in media reports.
The media keeps claiming she's dropped her hard left positions -- but Kamala Harris hasn't herself claimed this, except for a couple (like her claim she doesn't support frakking now, for the next 60 days).
But mostly, the media's "source" for her pretended change in positions isn't Kamala Harris herself, but her (and Obama's) people lying to the press about her "new positions," while Kamala remains free to reassert those positions post-election, and say, honestly: "I never said I was changing positions on that." And she's say, dishonestly: "If you heard that from a mere staffer, it's your fault for believing they could change my policies behind my back."
It's both Kamala's fault and the media's fault. The media shouldn't allow her to get away with this, obviously, and also obviously, Kamala Harris is sending out her Media Whisperers to lie anonymously about her supposedly new, changed positions without Kamala ever committing to these new positions.