Vice President Kamala Harris has been criticized for avoiding specifics and dodging questions in the wake of multiple interviews she’s done this week, as media pundits demand she actually answer questions from the press.
“This week she couldn’t or wouldn’t answer a single question straight, and people could see it. She is an artless dodger,” the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan wrote, suggesting voters now have a choice between “awful and empty.”
Harris spoke to journalists this week during an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists (NAJB) and sat down with Oprah Winfrey, who endorsed her for president at the DNC. Harris has yet to hold a formal press conference since emerging as the nominee.
“She owes us these answers. It is wrong that she can’t or won’t address them. It is disrespectful to the electorate,” Noonan wrote, arguing that avoiding questions on illegal immigration was “political malpractice.”
The New York Times’ Todd Purdum, a former White House correspondent for the outlet, wrote Thursday that Harris could not afford to be vague.
“In a campaign in which Donald Trump fills our days with arrant nonsense and dominates the national discussion (and polls show a tight race where Ms. Harris is running behind Joe Biden’s level of support in 2020 with some groups), the vice president can’t afford to stick only to rehearsed answers and stump speeches that might not persuade voters or shape what America is talking about,” Purdum said.
Purdum suggested that direct answers from the vice president would go a long way with voters.
“Writing about politicians for decades has convinced me that direct, succinct answers and explanations from Ms. Harris would go a long way — perhaps longer than she realizes — toward persuading voters that they know enough about her and her plans,” the journalist wrote.
MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have suggested the opposite, arguing that Harris didn’t need to be specific about her policies.
Clinton argued that she had more policy than anyone when she ran against Trump in 2016.
“I gave speeches about it. It was on our website. I wrote a book with Tim Kaine about it. We had lots of policy. At the end of the day, that’s not what caused people to vote for me or against me, and I think the Harris campaign knows that. They know that you’ve got to, you know, cross a threshold which they have more than done in terms of what kind of governance you’re promising,” Clinton said during an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
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Ruhle suggested Harris didn’t need to be specific because she was running against Trump.
“Kamala Harris is not running for perfect. She’s running against Trump. We have two choices. And so there are some things you might not know her answer to. And in 2024, unlike 2016 for a lot of the American people, we know exactly what Trump will do, who he is and the kind of threat he is to democracy,” Ruhle insisted during an appearance on Bill Maher’s show.
Bret Stephens, an anti-Trump New York Times columnist, who has also called on Harris to answer questions more directly, told Ruhle, “I don’t think it’s a lot to ask for her to sit down for a real interview as opposed to a puff piece in which she describes her feelings of growing up in Oakland with nice lawns.”
Stephens called on Harris to answer more difficult questions in a recent NYT column.
“It should not be hard for Harris to demonstrate that she can give detailed answers to urgent policy questions. Or to express a sense, beyond a few canned phrases, of how she sees the American interest in a darkening world. Or to articulate a politics of genuine inclusion that reaches out to tens of millions of distrustful voters. Or to prove that she’s more than another factory-settings liberal Democrat whose greatest virtue, like her greatest fault, is that she won’t step too far from the conventional wisdom,” he wrote.
Some reports and pundits suggested Harris “lacked specifics” and stuck to her script during the NABJ interview.
ABC’s Selina Wang said Harris “did not directly answer the question or offer any policy specifics,” referring to a question about the Israel-Hamas war.
“There were multiple times, though, during this interview where Vice President Harris did not offer a specific answer. Instead, she pivoted and returned to her talking points that she wanted to hit,” Wang continued.
CNN’s Abby Phillip played a clip of Harris responding to a question about whether voters were better off than they were four years ago.
“We came in during the worst public health epidemic in centuries. We came in after the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War and a lot of it due in large part to the mismanagement by the former president, as it relates to COVID and, obviously, January 6. And we had then a lot of work to do to clean up a mess. As of today, we have created over 16 million new jobs, over 800,000 new manufacturing jobs. We have the lowest black unemployment rate in generations,” Harris said during the interview.
Phillip argued that Harris should have something “quick” and “understandable” ready in response to a question about whether voters were better off four years ago, adding, “and that wasn’t really it.”
CNN political commentator Scott Jennings argued Harris should just “answer the question,” and pointed to some of Harris’ answers during the debate.
“Every single policy question she got at the debate, she totally ignored and never answered. Why is it that she believes she does not have to answer to journalists who are asking pretty basic questions of a presidential candidate?” he said.
Following the interview, Politico reported Wednesday that Harris refused to “veer off script.” The report said Harris evaded questions about important issues, adding, “she did not break much ground or stray far from her talking points.”
The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
