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I joined my colleagues Charles Lane and Ramesh Ponnuru to chat about how she did.
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Stephen Stromberg: Hello, Chuck and Ramesh. So, what impression did Kamala Harris leave?
Charles Lane: Someone who sticks to her talking points.
Ramesh Ponnuru: All politicians evade some questions. She does it a lot, and she has not mastered the art of hiding when she’s doing it. CBS’s Bill Whitaker did not let her off easy, repeating several questions that she had not answered — in one case, on immigration, twice.
Chuck: I thought Whitaker was the star of the show, tbh. He is a superb interviewer and showed the impact of simple, straightforward, succinct questions — without a lot of preamble. He did that with Tim Walz, too. And it never seemed unfair or tendentious.
Steve: Agreed. He did a great job.
Ramesh: I suspect it would not have gone well for Donald Trump had he shown up, which the show made a point of noting he had initially agreed to do.
Chuck: As it should have. It’s ironic, as well as a bit gutless, that Trump skipped this, since he had made a point of speaking with the National Association of Black Journalists and doing other news conferences earlier in the campaign.
Ramesh: Trump and Republicans had also been quite tough on Harris for avoiding interviews for the first weeks of her campaign.
Steve: This interview — all interviews — are extra important for Harris because she has done so few of them.
Chuck: I doubt this moved the needle since she said nothing new or surprising, except perhaps the make of her handgun — a Glock. The toughest question for her is “Why didn’t you guys start controlling the cross-border flow earlier?” and she doesn’t have a good answer for it, even at this late date. It’s a problem!
Ramesh: Yes, she showed she hasn’t found a strong political message on two of the issues that have been boosting Trump: immigration and the economy. I doubt voters are going to be mollified by the thought that many macroeconomic indicators are positive (although they are). And she can neither defend nor repudiate Joe Biden’s immigration moves early in their term.
Steve: On both questions, she got around to giving answers that were evasive yet made some sense: Congress needs to act. But it took her some time to do that.
Chuck: She needs a catchy policy idea. Something as succinct as “build the wall” but responsible and relevant.
Ramesh: The price-gouging idea is catchy. It’s just not a serious answer to inflation.
Steve: She seemed to hit her stride when the conversation turned to Ukraine and America’s role in the world, no?
Chuck: That’s when my wife talked over her lol, so I missed it.
Ramesh: I thought her answer about whether she would negotiate with Vladimir Putin — a firm no, unless Ukrainians are in the room, too — was both right on the merits and well delivered.
Chuck: Agree.
Steve: It was also an answer that Trump would not have given.
Chuck: Ironically, given her record, which is all on domestic policy, she seemed most sure-footed on foreign policy. I thought even her Middle East answers, though formulaic, were responsible and sounded the right notes.
Ramesh: It may be that precisely because she has less background on those issues, she studied her lines more avidly.
Steve: I think the reason is that foreign policy is one of the biggest differences between the campaigns. Their positions are clear-cut: engagement vs. isolationism.
Ramesh: I don’t know about that. Trump certainly talks a lot about supporting Israel, for example, and has been sometimes hard to pin down on Ukraine.
Steve: Sure, but his harsh and persistent critique of internationalism leaves a lot of room for Harris to occupy more sensible ground. Whereas on the economy, the candidates often (too often, to my mind) try to out-populist each other.
Ramesh: She certainly talks about cooperation with allies a lot more than he does.
Steve: Back on the economy, polling suggests that, for all the messaging concerns you both raise, she is fighting Trump to a draw, or close to it, on this all-important issue. Why do you think that is?
Chuck: Hard to say, but maybe it’s because the situation is objectively getting better. Gas prices are down!
Ramesh: I think it’s a combination of slightly improving economic sentiments — themselves the result of good underlying trends — and Trump’s inability to stick to a consistent and appealing economic message.
Chuck: Trump has been all over the lot promising everyone a tax break. On the other hand, maybe that’s how you win under an electoral college system — see Nevada and his proposal to not tax tips.
Ramesh: Trump has been reasonably consistent about imposing tariffs, but some of the polling suggests it’s not going over well.
Steve: It’s true! If there’s one thing we know about Donald Trump, it’s that he really likes tariffs. Always has.
Chuck: Seems like tariffs are bipartisan policy these days, alas. He would just do more of them.
Ramesh: His would be bigger and more indiscriminate.
Steve: A lot more. It is heartening that Harris is campaigning against them, though in a roundabout way: calling them a new national sales tax.
Chuck: There should be more discussion of the need for Congress to legislate power on tariffs back to itself — part of Trump-proofing government.
Steve: Totally.
Ramesh: Part of the theory behind the decades of delegation on that issue was that presidents would be less parochial, and therefore more free trade-oriented, than Congress. It was true until it wasn’t.
Chuck: Correct. Trump used the power to destroy free trade. His trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, is underrated as a Washington operator. That stuff was all his idea.
Steve: All right, let’s look forward. What does Harris need to do over the next month?
Chuck: Spend every moment she can spare in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. She needs to get out there and show the flag. Motivate people. I say that because my read of the state-by-state races is that she can’t win if she loses any one of them, but she will win if she gets all three.
Ramesh: I think she should find a way to signal that she has moderate instincts, not just a few currently moderate positions — perhaps by making the case for why she has changed her mind about some of the issues on which she has already moved.
Chuck: Interesting. Kind of late for that, but it might work. What’s the theory — that progressives have nowhere to go?
Ramesh: I think progressive threats to sit this out are mostly empty, yes. Her bigger problem is persuading voters who have misgivings about her being too progressive but don’t like Trump either.
Chuck: Tbh, I really doubt policy moves of any kind are going to swing this race at this late date. It’s an all-out mobilization contest, and that’s what she should focus on.
Steve: Still, I think Ramesh makes a good point that has to do with policy positioning but is really about authenticity: How does she persuade people that 2024 Harris is the real Harris, and not the 2019 Harris? She first tried to argue that her values haven’t changed, even if her policies did. On Monday night, she came close to what is, to my mind, the right answer: I learned and changed my mind. The other guy won’t do that.
