Forget that it would be desirable in and of itself for someone who could become the next president of the United States to voluntarily contribute to the sum of human knowledge. That comes later. For now, the safest course is to raise the subject of Harris’s insularity in partisan terms. Republicans are going to make an issue of this. She’s making herself look bad. The next stage of this logical progression is the one from which the Harris campaign cannot escape. Republicans have made this an issue, as we’re seeing from the polling. She’s making us look bad.

The Trump campaign can and probably will hasten this process. Whatever Trump says at today’s press conference will make news, and the press’s attention will be on litigating the former president’s remarks in a vacuum. But Trump will be filling the void left by Harris’s stage-managed approach to the campaign. He will be setting the terms of the discourse. Kamala Harris will merely be responding to those terms from a defensive posture. Being buffeted by events rather than commanding them will not wear well with the press for much longer — much less until September.