"There's not a thing that comes to mind" is not good

Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty

Kamala Harris enjoyed a magical July, a brilliant August and a spectacular September. October, not so much.

The tough days, crucial hours, and decisive moments have fully arrived. The campaign teams are exhausted, tempers are frayed, and a thousand voices are swirling about them, simultaneously criticizing, flattering and backstabbing. Everything is high stakes.

A presidential campaign is, at its core, a form of character test. It’s a journey that imposes hardships and difficulties. In other words, there is no easy way up the mountain, and hard days were always going to find their way to the Harris campaign. The “mistakes were made” phase inevitably comes to all campaigns, and it has come now for that of Kamala Harris.

Yesterday was the Harris' campaign’s worst day by far since her entry into the race. It follows a trend line of creeping incoherence and contradiction within the core message that could be politically fatal if not arrested — immediately.

How did the vice president wind up sipping beer with Stephen Colbert on the edge of a historic disaster hours after telling the hosts of “The View” that “there is not a thing that comes to mind in terms of — and I’ve been a part of most of the decisions that have had impact” when asked whether there is anything she would have done differently than Biden during his presidency?

The question is whether this quote joins John Kerry’s “I voted for it before I voted against it.”

Or John Mcain’s “the fundamentals of the economy are strong.”

Or Mitt Romney’s 47% quote: “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.”

Whether the Harris quote joins the others as a campaign killer is an open question, but the risk is severe enough that the Harris campaign should consider using its first timeout and refocus on what worked so well over the past three months, which has been contradicted by the campaign’s October message sloppiness.

The Walz debate debacle is a perfect example. JD Vance needed confrontation, not a rubdown. He is either an extremist threat or not. What the American people saw was Walz strangely coddling the extremist Vance, who admitted to concocting the vicious racist lie about Black people eating pets. It was a performance that thoroughly refuted the entire point of the DNC convention, which was built around making the race about Trump as a clear and present threat. The political success of July, August and September saw the incumbent vice president become the change candidate in a change election. Everything involved in achieving that result was based on making the race about Trump after it had become about Biden.

What made Biden withdraw from the race wasn’t just his cognitive decline, but the impact of it framing his case against Trump.

If Trump was the threat that Democrats claimed, how could they justify Biden as the best candidate to stop him? The cost was incredible. Trump, the most prolific liar in the history of American politics, was made the obvious truth teller about three things: the economy, the border and Biden. Denialism became a dogma, and the Democratic party’s position was argumentative with broad public opinion. Biden was held out as FDR on cable news, despite approval levels that were historically low.

The rationale for Biden continuing his campaign collapsed because it was held together by a thread of ego, fanned by a political media elite imitating the steadfastness of Trump’s most committed sycophants. Should Kamala Harris lose the election, an enormous part of the reason will be because of performances like this that sustained something unsustainable on puffs of bullshit for way too long:

With respect to George Clooney’s praise of Biden’s selflessness and comparisons to George Washington, the truth is that his reputation is entirely dependent on a Harris victory. The Washington comparison only works if she wins.

Harris’ successes in the early stages of the campaign were driven by her near flawless performance, and the revelation that the media caricature of her was nonsense. Another major factor was the energy released from Democratic voters. The early days witnessed an immense explosion of pent-up frustration and relief by Democrats and independent voters. They knew that Biden would lose, but were nevertheless beaten into submission by the extraordinary bullying and fantastical gaslighting of leading media figures, most Democratic elected leaders and resistance grifters, which all came undone within 30 seconds on a debate stage that turned into a political euthanasia pod.

What happened over July, August, and September was the underestimated and disrespected vice president grew in stature until she utterly destroyed Donald Trump in a debate, seized the political middle and made the race a referendum on Trump’s insanity with him as the de facto incumbent facing headwinds in a change year. The achievement was spectacular, and now it is in danger of all melting away because the media interviews that Harris is doing are making her shrink in stature, putting a target on her back, and shining the light on her instead of Trump.

They should stop it immediately.

Instead, what Kamala Harris should do is give a series of closing speeches that make clear her philosophy about America, the American people, our way of life and our future. By doing so, she will tell the American people who she is, which is what every single poll is saying the American people want to know.

This is a serious moment in America and around the world. The vice president should appear in large venues and talk about big themes surrounded by Americans expressing some simple truths. Here are some of them:

We share a faith that declares that we “are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” We reject the dogma that holds one race is superior to another. We reject the venomous lie that poisoned blood flows in the vein of the immigrant. We reject the evil that holds that skin color is a barometer of genetic worthiness linked to human worthiness.

E Pluribus Unum.

The American people don’t want specifics. They want a competent, faithful, dynamic, normal president. They crave a great president, and great presidents can express a philosophy connected to their values, aspirations and patriotism. Great presidents confront the toughest issues fearlessly. Kamala Harris should aspire to a greatness far beyond election. The Harris team would do well to read and deliver some updated versions of John Kennedy speeches.

Here’s one on “The Presidency in 1960,” delivered to the Washington Press Club on January 14, 1960.

Here’s another. This one, delivered at Rice University on September 12, 1962, could serve as a template for a speech on AI:

The rhythm of the Harris candidacy has been truncated and disrupted by the unusual circumstances of the Biden withdrawal. The types of interviews she is doing now are the wrong thing strategically.

“Get to know you” time is over. It’s prosecution and closing argument time. Take the fight to Trump.

Stop playing whack a mole on television.

There are political consequences, however, that flow from having played the game at all. During her interview with Stephen Colbert, Harris attempted to evolve her answer about being different from Biden. It wasn’t enough. Her mistake requires further explicit correction that was not required before she made it, but is now. The vice president didn’t need to do “The View.” It was all risk, and the reason it happened is because cliquish personal relationships in the Acela corridor overrode political equities. The stakes are much too high.

The Harris campaign needs to come out on the other side of the epic disaster about to hit Florida, focused on closing out the election with a fierce argument about Trump’s unfitness, a refutation of his daily slanders against America and a compelling vision about the future.

Above, I said a presidential race is a character test. Here is how that plays out. The question Kamala Harris was posed gave her a choice between telling the truth to the American people, or maybe hurting Joe Biden’s feelings.

Saying that “there is not a thing that comes to mind” was a bad thing. Very bad.

It must be fixed.

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