The Pundits Think They Know What’s Best for Harris-Walz

Vice-President Kamala Harris has been given marching orders by the pundits of our major newspapers, the armchair Democratic advisors to past presidents sitting on TV panels, the scholars of campaigns past.

Vice-President Kamala Harris must move to the center.

She must appeal to right-wing voters.

She must convince people she cares about their problems. 

She must prove she can excel in every task the president might be asked to do. 

And no matter that their advice is unpopular, these pundits push forth with conviction and hubris in presuming their so-called wisdom must be heeded. 

Consider that the Democratic National Convention confetti was still floating in the air in Chicago when the Huffington Post’s crack political analysts began warning about the after-party “hangover”:

HuffPost was certainly a buzzkill at the convention, walking around asking elated delegates and attendees if they recognized, given current polling, that Harris could lose …  though Democrats’ new hope and joy are real, it does not mean Harris has this in the bag.

The New York Times took a cautionary tone following an extraordinarily upbeat convention and Harris rising in the polls: Democrats are riding high. The hard part comes next.

While some Democrats are privately beginning to dream that Ms. Harris’s momentum might carry her for another 10-plus weeks, many are bracing for the likelihood of stumbles against the most unpredictable of opponents.

They then quoted one Democrat, who noted there was still an election to win, a far cry from “likelihood of stumbles” or worries over an “unpredictable opponent.” 

She’d already been slammed by pundits for picking vice-presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, whom New York Times “analyst” Nate Cohn claimed was an unacceptably radical liberal: 

On paper, the ideological stakes of Walz over [Pennsylvania Gov. Josh] Shapiro or [Arizona Sen. Mark] Kelly were quite small, but the fight was sufficiently intense for Mr. Walz’s selection to be seen as a material win for progressives, regardless of whether it had anything to do with his selection. As a consequence, he won’t assuage concerns that she’s too far to the left; his selection doesn’t signal that Ms. Harris intends to govern as a moderate. Many Republicans are already arguing that it’s a left-wing triumph.

Professional scold Jonathan Chait, writing in New York Magazine, just said it flat out: Kamala Harris and Tim Walz Need to Pivot to the Center Right Now.

Former president Donald Trump, meanwhile, must do nothing. He doesn’t have to move to the center. He doesn’t have to appeal to Biden loyalists or likely Harris voters. He doesn’t even have to be coherent. He can forget what he was asked, who he’s speaking to and even who he’s running against.

There are no headlines: Trump must overcome his 34 felony convictions and violent misogyny in order to be president. 

Pundits continue to treat him like America’s wacky old uncle who spews racial slurs and probably shouldn’t be driving anymore. No matter, the media treats everything he does as darkly amusing, evidence of his authenticity, or at the very least, unavoidable. Trump gets to be Trump. 

There’s no worrying about his favorability numbers. There’s no pushing in the press to get him to be less of himself. But if Kamala Harris opines that transgender Americans deserve equal rights, that the state shouldn’t dictate women’s reproductive choices, well, she’s not doing enough outreach to conservatives. 

Following her decisive debate win over Trump on Tuesday, in which she laid out a vision for America and he screamed vile slanders against immigrants and people of color, the Times front-paged “undecided voters” who wanted more from Harris: 

Voters said they were glad she has a tax and economic plan. But they want to know how it will become law when Washington is so polarized. They know she wants to give assistance to first-time home buyers, but doubted that it was realistic.

Part of this centrism-cheerleading comes from a profound misunderstanding of where, and what, the center is. 

63% of Americans think abortion should be legal in most or all cases. 

61% of Americans think marriage equality is good for society. 

83% of Americans think some or all wealthy people don’t pay their fair share of taxes. 

Even on the most contentious issue in the 2024 election—immigration—most Americans think immigration is “a good thing for this country today.” 

More than half of Americans oppose deporting all undocumented immigrants, a key Trump goal if he wins a second term. And while they want to see a decrease in illegal border crossings, most Americans favor letting those undocumented immigrants become citizens. 

On all of these issues, Harris and Walz are exactly where the majority of Americans are. They are already in the center. What pundits want is for them to move to the right, to alienate the Democratic base, and to validate the misunderstandings of pundits whose political appearance is 30 to 40 years in the past. 

James Carville—who last won a presidential election in 1992 and has been dining out on it ever since—all but ordered VP Harris to “break from President Biden on policy.” 

Here’s an idea: Do it one day in a swing state, just a hair after the debate. Hold a rally. Put out a broad list of “new way forward” policies that detail why she is breaking from the sitting president on the given issues and what change would deliver to the American people. And after that rally, do a news conference on it, so media organizations stop cranking their clamshells about a lack of access. Don’t run from your differences with the president. Embrace them, respectfully and honestly.

Which “given issues”? Any in particular or should she just pick one from a hat? Does it matter if she actually disagrees with Biden or should she just pretend to hate, for example, his decision to pay for dairy farms’ bird flu protective measures? Why must the headline be her defying him? What kind of data backs up Carville’s idea that she would gain something from this? 

This kind of clown-college advising extends to Democrats overall, in truth. They must always compromise their assumed radicalism to pacify … some straw construction, whereas Republicans are allowed to march in lockstep against the majority of public opinion and still be described as “centrist.” 

Not being a virulent religious bigot is “centrist” for Republicans. Supporting the Constitution is “centrist.” Refusing to vote for a literal traitor is “centrist.” The bar for Republican compromise is the bare minimum that should be expected of American lawmakers, and they’re portrayed as heroes for clearing it. 

Democrats, meanwhile, who by and large are the center, must constantly prove that they can compromise their core values, just for the vibes. 

And the terrible thing is that Democrats have compromised, over and over and over, for the past four decades. Democrats vote for restrictions on abortion. Democrats vote for work requirements for public assistance. Democrats vote against restrictions on guns. 

Democrats voted for the impeachment of their own president once upon a time, but they still get included in congressional “gridlock” and “partisanship”—things that are mainly Republicans’ fault. 

If there’s a bright light in the current media landscape, it’s that Harris and Walz seem to be ignoring the drumbeat of has-beens and armchair campaigners who tell her what to do. She gives full-throated support to cultural issues once thought anathema for Democrats in the mainstream, and refuses to attack members of her own party for clout, even when pressed: 

The vice-president defended her work with President Joe Biden, saying they had to work to “recover” the economy in the midst of the pandemic and touting achievements during the administration, like falling inflation in recent months.

“There’s more to do, but that’s good work,” Harris said …

And it’s more productive work than listening to people tell her to move to the right.