The End of the Kamala Harris Media Honeymoon: Whose Fault Is It?

In the last couple of weeks, there has been a lot of virtual ink spilled over the campaign of Kamala "Queen of Word Salads" Harris and Tim "Great Walz of China" and how that campaign gives every appearance of imploding. This was, perhaps, inevitable. Kamala Harris is the worst candidate since Hillary Clinton, and she may even be worse, even though that bar is set so low as to be sunk through the earth's crust and halfway through the mantle.

At UnHerd, Emily Jashinsky, that site's Washington correspondent, has provided some thoughts on the end of what the media is calling Kamala Harris's "honeymoon" and why it's so clearly over. And, as should not surprise anyone, I have some thoughts.

Emily writes:

This is the race Democrats feared. Less than a month before the US election, Donald Trump is regaining the slight edge he held before Democrats convened in Chicago to nominate Kamala Harris. According to the RealClearPolitics polling average in battleground states, Trump trailed Harris from late August until late September. Now, though, he’s back on top at 48.4 to 48.1. His lead may be fractional — and Harris is up two points in the popular vote — but the numbers have Kellyanne Conway feeling good.

That's as may be - and it is. Harris is falling behind in the averages in all the battleground states and has lost her commanding lead in the (ugh) "national popular vote." But the last two polling cycles in 2016 and 2020 badly underestimated the numbers for the Republican candidates.

Alongside a picture of the RCP numbers, the pollster argued this week that Trump is “in his best polling ever era, even as media outlets are likely undercounting his voters — again”. On CNN, Harry Enten crunched the numbers too. “Let’s say we have a polling miss like we had in 2020. What happens then?” he asked on Tuesday. “Well, then Donald Trump wins the election in a blowout with 312 electoral votes.”

Emily is correct. This is the race the Democrats feared. And they should have known better. It is, after all, their own fault. The choice of her running mate didn't help, either. She could have gone with the governor of a swing state; Josh Shapiro could have very well brought along Pennsylvania's essential electoral votes, but he is Jewish, and Harris didn't want to upset the Hamas caucus, so she instead chose Tim Walz, the pop-eyed fan of Communist China that offers nothing.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, actually made a good pick in JD Vance: An intelligent, accomplished writer and speaker who is making the rounds and growing more impressive by the day.

Meanwhile, it's looking a lot like a civil war is brewing in the Democratic Party over this mess - and if Kamala Harris loses, which is looking increasingly likely, it may well explode.

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That may be a good thing. Today's Democratic Party mainstream would look at Harry Truman or John F. Kennedy as flaming right-wingers, and that isn't a good model for longevity in an American political party. Kamala Harris is, however, a member of the far left even among today's Democrats - and that's a big part of her problem.

The risk aversion that characterised Harris’s campaign before Labor Day might be her best bet. Tack to the centre, stick to the script, and stay the hell away from Bill Whitaker. Perhaps remaining a blank slate for some small group of undecided voters is better than Harris trying to define herself at all.

Remaining a blank slate won't work. Not this year. Too much is known about Kamala Harris already. What's more, nobody with enough brains to pound sand is going to buy any sudden tack to the center. The "risk aversion that characterized Harris's campaign before Labor Day" isn't her best bet - it's what got her in this position in the first place, and the only other option is to come out as what she really is: A far-left ideologue who is lazy, poorly informed, not very bright, and unsuited to be president of the United States.