Harris’s relationship with the media probably hurt her as much as or more than it helped her.
Kamala Harris benefited from an inordinate amount of active support from the press. The Media Research Center estimated that roughly four-fifths of all the coverage she received was positive. And that was when the press was covering her at all — at least, in the conventional sense.
Harris spent the first month of her campaign conspicuously avoiding exposure to reporters — a strategy to which reporters themselves did not object. Rather, some in the Fourth Estate celebrated their marginalization in observation of their political objectives, which aligned with Harris’s. When she dared expose herself to ostensibly adversarial reporters, she was peppered with stumpers like “Are you open to more debates?” and “When are you going to sit down for your first interview?”
When the vice president did sit for interviews, she might have created the illusion that she was being asked hard questions only because her answers were painfully labored. But that was fine, too. “One could watch that and say, ‘Well, she didn’t give a clear, direct answer,’” one of Harris’s interlocutors, MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle, observed. “That’s okay, because we are not talking about clear or direct issues.” Voters appeared to disagree.
It is a testament to how much the Harris campaign relied on a pliant press to push her over the finish line that her campaign sat her down for her first truly confrontational interview against Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier just two and a half weeks before the vote (and probably begrudgingly). It speaks to the expectations Democrats have of the press that Baier’s efforts to avoid allowing Harris to filibuster her way out of a difficult query — standard journalistic practice — was met with hysterical contempt from her fan base.
Journalists and commentators twisted themselves into knots over the degree to which their job should compel them to advocate on behalf of her candidacy. The Washington Post melted down over it. Despite rearguard actions from a few prominent dissenters, the prevailing view in the press aligned with the notion that objectivity in the face of an imminent fascist takeover of the executive branch was an abdication of civic responsibility. Political media pulled out all the stops. And, in the end, it amounted to nothing.
There had been a fierce debate in these pages between my colleagues Mark Antonio Wright and Charlie Cooke back in August over the degree to which the press’s explicit and implicit biases achieve their presumptive aims. It seems to me that the election results should put that dormant debate to rest — at least for now.
If the press provides Democrats with a modest messaging advantage, it also cossets Democratic candidates in a false reality that insulates them from most voters’ experience. It creates the illusion that broad coalitions are available to the enterprising politician who can harness the latest boutique issue of interest only to the overeducated progressives. It dulls Democratic candidates’ senses by failing to challenge them. It robs them of the chance to expand their vocabulary in ways that would allow them to speak to the broadest universe of American voters.
Its efforts to shield Democratic politicians from stories that discomfort them and detract from their prospects functionally cede those issues to their opponents. Thus, the GOP ends up controlling the messaging around those issues and, subsequently, owning the voters who care about them. Media cannot do the work of political persuasion because very few Americans trust the press and don’t consume its products.
On balance, a posthumous analysis of Harris’s relationship with the media is likely to conclude that it hurt her as much as or more than it helped her. At the very least, media bias is a weak force. Like gravity, it is only powerful if it achieves a certain level of mass. The mainstream press has not enjoyed that kind of purchase in this country in decades. Conservatives who are duly annoyed by media’s left-wing proclivities assume that this tendency is a force multiplier for Democrats. In reality, it is an act of self-harm.