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Kamala Harris has spent the last five weeks running away from the media, which clearly has no issues with her refusal to engage. As of this afternoon, her campaign website still has no information on her agenda or policy positions. Harris or her handlers don’t even feel confident enough in her grasp of issues for her to talk to CNN’s Dana Bash without Tim Walz as a minder/wingman/chaperone.
Will Bash force Harris to address these gaps, and put her on the spot over her flip-flops? Perhaps; Bash and Jake Tapper did a credible job in the debate between Donald Trump and the actual nominee, Joe Biden, two months ago. Having Walz as wingman will absorb some of that emphasis on softballs about their relationship, but Bash at some point has to address hard questions.
The one question by which we can judge her integrity is about how Harris ended up being the nominee at all. What did Kamala know about Biden’s cognitive decline? When did she know it? And why didn’t Harris speak out before the debate?
This is no mere academic question. We have just witnessed an unprecedented removal of an elected nominee — and an incumbent president — between the primaries and the general election. Harris then got the nomination by decree of the party establishment rather than by the will of primary voters, and not even by a competitive process among their elected delegates to the nominating convention. That has never happened in the modern history of primary elections for major-party nominations, and the reason it took place this time is because Joe Biden’s cognitive impairment got so thoroughly exposed on national television on June 27.
