Emerging media narrative: Kamala Harris is ready to lead!

Uncomfortable reality, according to Axios: Kamala Harris Can't Attend a Media Dinner Party Without a Mock Dinner Prep Session.  Not only did she need the prep session, her handlers decided to keep her away from the wine, just in case:

In April 2022, Harris was the guest for a dinner at D.C. news mogul David Bradley's home — a salon-style event Bradley hosts with Washington journalists and newsmakers.

• Harris' anxiety about the dinner was such that her staff held a mock dinner beforehand, with staffers playing participants, according to two people familiar with the event.
• Harris aides even considered including wine in the mock prep so Harris could practice with a glass or two.
• They ultimately decided against it.

For reference sake, this took place in the same time frame that the Easter Bunny ordered Joe Biden to stop talking to reporters and attendees at the White House Egg Roll. If this anecdote is accurate, it shows that both Biden and Harris needed extraordinary coddling from handlers around them just to function in a normal political environment. 

It's one thing to need a walk-through of formal protocol ahead of a particular and specific event. Candidates routinely do this for debates, and for good reason. But how does a politician rise to the level of Vice President without having developed the skills necessary to navigate a dinner among journalists -- especially one in a relatively friendly environment for Harris like DC media circles? Isn't that a necessary skill development for politicians at the lowest levels, let alone the highest levels? 

And yet, Harris needed her staff to play Pretend Dinner Party to deal with a single evening of informal interaction with reporters. 

Needless to say, assuming this is accurate, it comes as no surprise at all. Every interaction Harris has with the media shows her awkwardness, her lack of intellectual heft, or flat-out evasion of reality. Some of them, such as the June 2021 interview with NBC's Lester Holt that prompted the White House to sideline Harris for the last three years, feature all three. This will remind everyone why Democrats wanted an "open process" to replace Biden rather than a Harris succession:

HARRIS: "We’ve been to the border. So this whole thing about the border."
Harris: "We’ve been to the border."
Harris: "We’ve been to the border."
HOLT: "You haven’t been to the border."
Harris: "I... and I haven’t been to Europe." https://t.co/dftSFsU88F pic.twitter.com/Q6pIdXQqPs

— Caleb Howe (@CalebHowe) June 8, 2021

“Well, we are going to the border,” Harris replied. “We have to deal with what’s happening at the border, there’s no question about that. That’s not a debatable point. But we have to understand that there’s a reason people are arriving at our border and ask what is that reason and then identify the problem so we can fix it.”

Later on in the interview, Holt pressed again on the topic: “Do you have any plans to visit the border?”

“At some point, you know, we are going to the border. We’ve been to the border. So this whole thing about the border. We’ve been to the border. We’ve been to the border,” Harris replied.

“You haven’t been to the border,” Holt pointed out.

“And I haven’t been to Europe,” Harris said with a laugh. “And I mean, I don’t understand the point that you’re making. I’m not discounting the importance of the border.”

As Guy Benson pointed out yesterday, this clip has it all:

The attempted dishonesty, the bizarre non-sequitur, the laugh, the playing dumb — all on the central issue of her policy portfolio, which has resulted in a history-making, record-shattering catastrophe on her watch[.]

My friend Phil Kerpen of Americans for Tax Reform offers up a supercut of Harris' bungles to refresh everyone's memories. And these are mainly on tax policy alone:

Some Kamala classics from @taxreformer.

1. In your plan, eventually everyone would be taken off the private plan that their company currently has? "Yes."

2. "There's no question I'm in favor of banning fracking."

3. Do you ban plastic straws? "I think we should. Yes."

4. "I… pic.twitter.com/NDvAF5vL6q

— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) July 5, 2024

4. "I am prepared to get rid of the filibuster to pass a Green New Deal." 

5. "On day one, we're going to repeal that tax bill." 

6. "We've got to increase the corporate tax rate."

7. "Estate taxes are going to have to go up." 

8. "There will also be a carbon fee." 

9. "So I decided I was going to start prosecuting parents for truancy."

Clips from this Today interview January 2022 might be seen again, too. After Joe Biden bizarrely claimed that the midterm election results coming ten months later might be illegitimate. Savannah Guthrie tried to get an answer out of Harris and got gale-force word-salad winds in response:

Is President Biden really concerned that we may not have free and fair elections? -@SavannahGuthrie to @VP pic.twitter.com/pQmv6MLVb5

— TODAY (@TODAYshow) January 20, 2022

She did everything but answer Guthrie's question. And Twitchy has a few handy as well, and this threat from AG on Twitter cannot be missed:

Vice President Selina Meyer: “It is time for us to do what we have been doing. And that time is every day. Every day it is time for us to agree that there are things and tools that are available to us to slow this thing down”

pic.twitter.com/K6qAWSQZfV

— AG (@AGHamilton29) July 22, 2024

The only way this doesn't become a sticking point for Democrat delegates will be if Harris refuses to hold pressers or do interviews ahead of the vote. Hugh Hewitt pointed out yesterday that Harris has done very few full-out press conferences as VP, too. He can only recall one, but IIRC, she has done a few -- mainly while appearing with foreign leaders at confabs. Mostly, though, they've kept Harris away from the media, and in at least one instance, acted to prevent any media access to Harris when the questions would have been about the bungled Kabul operation. 

Right now, the Democrats and the media are circling the wagons around Harris. As soon as she has to hit the campaign trail, however, they will live to regret it. Either that, or Harris will be spending all of her time in mock prep sessions for every task ahead, from kissing babies to any interactions with the media preparing to fawn all over her.