Kamala Harris has become a media darling with her newfound "vibe," but will it be enough to win her the presidency? Critics argue that her ultra-liberal record and refusal to sit for interviews make her vulnerable to Republican attacks.
It's all about the vibe. A word not usually associated with presidential politics — more with late night parties and a bong — is now the only thing that matters. At least if you’re Kamala Harris.
She’s on the cover of Time — with an admiring sketch that makes it look like she’s already president — because of "the swiftest vibe shift in American political history."
The Vibe Shift: Kamala Harris's Bid for the Presidency
Is that all it takes to win? It doesn’t hurt that the vice president has surged in the polls, raised truckloads of cash, become a cultural phenomenon, had a relatively successful rollout of Tim Walz, and will get a further bump from the Democratic convention.
It reminded me of our recent Mar-a-Lago interview, when he was sharp and serious across at least 15 topics.
The Vibe Shift: Kamala Harris's Bid for the Presidency
But the media, which have been largely anti-Trump for nine years, trashed the presser. "Wackadoodle," said HuffPost. "Unhinged," said Rolling Stone.
Trump has always run as the strongman, the fighter, the leader of a movement, one who transformed the party from its Reaganite roots. Has Harris made it safe for wobbly Republicans and independents who don’t like his conduct to find in her a safe harbor?
The Vibe Shift: Kamala Harris's Bid for the Presidency
In a two-hour conversation with Elon Musk on X, plagued by technical glitches, Trump said the Time cover sketch of Harris "looks like the most beautiful actress ever to live" and that she very much resembled Melania. He circled back to call Kamala "a beautiful woman." (Musk says that traffic peaked at 73 million views.)
I’m not taking anything away from Harris and the shrewd way she’s handled the last three weeks. Having watched several of her TV interviews while Biden was still running, I told people she had improved tremendously from the hesitant and hyper-cautious speaker of the early days.
The Vibe Shift: Kamala Harris's Bid for the Presidency
But the mainstream press hasn’t made an issue of Harris’ refusal to sit for a single interview, despite constantly criticizing Biden for avoiding the media. She just brushes it off by saying hopefully by the end of the month. Yet Trump and JD Vance have hammered the issue so hard that journalists have been forced to cover the controversy, framing it as "Republicans accuse Harris" when it should also be part of their job.
Trump also said the Harris camp was using AI to fake large crowds at the Detroit airport, when wider shots proved there was an audience of thousands.
And perhaps he was rattled by what he says was an illegal hacking, with internal documents sent to three outlets – Politico, Washington Post and New York Times – which have declined to publish the material.
But keep in mind: Trump has a much easier path to 270 and may well win. Harris is drawing new supporters but also losing among some demographics that favored Biden. She has to be considered the underdog. She has to deal with her policy flip-flops and persuade voters that the first black female president and Asian-American president would be a plausible commander in chief.
One sign that’s no longer unthinkable: Politico has a piece on how "progressive national security professionals already are angling for positions in a possible Kamala Harris administration."
The Time cover piece is overwhelmingly upbeat. Her excitement "resembled the early days of Barack Obama…She seems matched to the moment: a former prosecutor running against a convicted felon."
And: "Harris’ brand shift—the happy-warrior attitude, the viral memes, the eye roll at Republican ‘weirdos’—has already done what no Trump opponent has ever been able to do: snatch the spotlight away from him."
