Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo
Vice President Kamala Harris is interviewed by the National Association of Black Journalists at the WHYY studio in Philadelphia, September 17, 2024.
If you compare Harris’s MSNBC interview of two weeks ago with her 60 Minutes performance Monday night, you’ll see the difference. On MSNBC, the talking points came across as more canned and Harris missed several chances for impromptu rejoinders. On 60 Minutes, she was more relaxed, fluent in her responses, effective in off-the-cuff comments, and reassuring as a leader. She also came across as a likable, normal person, in contrast to you-know-who.
Even her necessary evasions sounded less evasive. The two toughest issues are immigration and Israel-Palestine. As Bill Whitaker, the best of the network interviewers, asked, if Biden’s new immigration policies are working so well, why did it take Biden more than three years to implement them?
Harris couldn’t very well say “because we were getting killed on the issue in the campaign.” So she accurately pointed out that Congress was on the verge of passing an even more effective bipartisan bill in 2021 when Trump muscled Republicans into opposing it. She made the same point on MSNBC, but more cogently and effectively on 60 Minutes.
Harris also responded to hard questions on Biden’s complete lack of influence on Netanyahu despite providing his weapons by insisting that confidential talks are ongoing. Not a great response, but short of breaking with Biden, the best one available.
When Whitaker asked how she planned to pay for all of her new policies, Harris said she’d tax the rich. Whitaker then pressed her on how she would expect Congress to go along. Harris responded with a less-than-effective answer that there are lots of good people in Congress whom she expects to work with.
Here was a missed opportunity. She might have said: “That’s why I need you to vote for a Democratic Congress when you vote for me. President Biden was far more effective in his first two years, when Democrats had narrow majorities in both the House and Senate. That’s when we passed the Child Tax Credit, the Inflation Reduction Act, and other measures to help working families. Since Republicans took the House in 2022, they’ve used their majority to obstruct and bicker among themselves.”
Harris’s interview with Howard Stern, of all people, served to humanize her. When people tell pollsters they don’t really know enough about her, they mean one of three things. Either they don’t have a clear sense of her views on the issues, or they want a clearer sense of her as a person. (Or sometimes, what they really mean, but can’t very well say, is that they don’t much follow politics and are just plain poorly informed.)
To the extent that many voters really do want to know more about Harris as a person, her performance with Stern was superb. We learned that she’s a big fan of Formula One racing, that she works out 30 to 45 minutes every day, that she likes Raisin Bran but not too much, and that she’s a big fan of Maya Rudolph’s impersonation of her.
Harris could point out that the administration has made a difference by challenging corporate collusion and price-gouging, in everything from prescription drugs to food wholesalers.
She is also getting a lot better at reminding viewers of Trump’s sheer craziness, and Trump keeps giving her plenty of ammunition. Her stance is a perfect blend of incredulity and scorn. After Bob Woodward’s book reported that Trump had supplied COVID tests for Putin’s personal use, Harris told Stern, “This guy who was president of the United States is sending them to Russia to a murderous dictator for his own personal use. This person who wants to be president again who secretly is helping out an adversary when the American people are dying by the hundreds every day and in need of relief.”
And on 60 Minutes, when Whitaker asked if she’d meet with Putin to seek an end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as Trump has promised, her reply was pitch-perfect. “Donald Trump, if he were president, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv right now. He talks about, ‘Oh, he can end it on day one.’ You know what that is. It’s about surrender.”
As Trump sounds ever darker and more bizarre, and Harris sounds more calm, cogent, and likable, it plays to her strength that Trump’s handlers are afraid to let him sit for a one-on-one, where he would come off the rails. As the Harris campaign keeps rolling out new proposals, it’s good that they are pitching easy-to-grasp ideas that benefit large numbers of people, such as home care for the frail elderly under Medicare, a pitch to the “sandwich generation” as well as to seniors.
But many of the Biden-Harris policies that truly have benefited working people are a little tricky to explain. My last two posts were about two Biden-Harris triumphs—the quick settlement of the port strike to the benefit of unionized workers, and Harris’s commitment to block Nippon Steel’s proposed takeover of iconic U.S. Steel. Harris got off some good one-liners on the latter, but short of resorting to Trump-style jingoism, these issues are challenging to explain in a sentence or two.
The other tough issue that has played, unfairly, to Republican advantage, is inflation. The fact is that inflation spiked during COVID because of supply shocks, and Biden did superbly at rebuilding supply chains and at preventing the COVID recession from becoming a depression. The fact that inflation was heading down while jobs were way up by 2023 was thanks to acts of real statesmanship.
But a lot of voters don’t want to hear about this. They’d rather talk about the high price of eggs. OK, let’s talk about the high price of eggs.
As inspiration, Harris should watch FDR’s first fireside chat, just a week into his presidency, when Roosevelt explained to the American people how banking worked and asked for their help to stem further runs on banks while the administration recapitalized them. FDR spoke with good humor, and not a shred of condescension, honoring the public’s intelligence. After the radio talk, people lined up to put their money back into banks.
FDR is a hard act to follow, but Harris could give a speech on the price of eggs, pointing out the following. Egg prices, unlike most prices (which keep moderating), have spiked, partly because of bird flu. In fact, they rose 28 percent in the past year. The virus has affected over 100 million hens since 2022, and the supply of eggs is down, causing prices to rise. But that’s not the only reason.
Large egg producers have taken advantage of the general egg shortage to hike prices far beyond what’s warranted. According to Farm Action, in a letter to Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, Mississippi-based Cal-Maine Foods is engaging in “apparent price gouging, price coordination, and other unfair or deceptive acts or practices” to coordinate price hikes.
Cal-Maine Foods, which controls 20 percent of the retail egg market, reported gross profits up more than 600 percent over the same quarter in the prior fiscal year, according to a December filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Cal-Maine brands include Eggland’s Best, Farmhouse Eggs, and Land O’ Lakes eggs. The company has had no positive avian flu tests on any of its farms, according to its SEC report.
Here, as Harris could point out, the administration has made a difference by challenging corporate collusion and price-gouging, in everything from prescription drugs to food wholesalers. She’s promised to do even more. The crackdown on corporate abuses also resonates with Harris’s superb use of freedom as a unifying theme. That includes not just the right to control your own body, but the right to repair your own car as well as freedom from noncompete agreements.
I don’t trust polls, but all the polls suggest that Harris is slowly expanding her narrow lead over Trump. And if Harris is truly moving the needle, her greater fluency in interviews is a big help.
