Kamala Harris avoids substance in favor of ‘Name Her Daddy’

Kamala Harris’s staff has realized that “brat” vibes and coconut emojis alone wouldn’t carry her over the end line in November.

After making avoiding interviews a cornerstone of her marketing campaign, she is lastly scheduled to make the rounds. To talk not with a teleprompter, however an actual human.

To speak about substantive points.

She’ll be examined on her practically 4 years within the Biden White Home, her document on the border and the way she plans to carry down the price of residing.

I child.

Harris is gearing up for a softball tour, visiting the right-hating women of “The View,” Stephen “dancing vaccine needle” Colbert and Howard Stern: all folks able to throw her a parade as a result of she’s not the unhealthy orange man.

On Sunday, she was on Alex Cooper’s “Call Her Daddy” podcast, which is a house for celebrities to speak about copulation in such a tawdry method that it will make Samantha Jones blush. It’s the place Katy Perry boasted of rewarding her fiance Orlando Bloom with oral intercourse if he’s performed home tasks and Brazilian pop star Anitta and comic Heather McMahan shared their fellatio ideas. Christina Aguilera as soon as referred to herself as a “promoter of the swallow” on the present.

Not precisely an incisive political discussion board.

However it’s a secure spot for Harris — who has been showered with soft-focus media options and fawning takes on her cooking and clothes — to as soon as once more be handled like a glittering superstar.

I’ve seen many Republicans dismiss the podcast, saying they’ve by no means heard of it. It’s dishonest to assert Cooper’s viewers isn’t passionate, engaged or large; “Name Her Daddy” was the fourth most listened-to podcast within the nation within the second quarter of this 12 months, according to Edison Research.

However how does that transfer the needle for Harris, who was preaching to her choir of Gen Z girl? (Though even they didn’t need it. Some listeners instantly took to social media to voice displeasure at having politics creep into their escapist house.)

Yesterday on “Meet the Press,” Andrea Mitchell mentioned Harris wanted to do more durable interviews, expose herself to harsher components. “She’s acquired such a giant drawback with males … huge drawback. But in addition the enterprise world, they don’t assume she’s severe. They don’t assume she’s a heavyweight.”

So naturally, the veep went on “Name Her Daddy” — “to speak concerning the issues that individuals actually care about,” she mentioned.

For a present that offers in lurid revelations, it was comparatively boring and Harris performed the outdated hits: her empty platitudes about chance and ambition — as if the American folks consider ourselves as do-nothing slobs within the absence of her affirmation.

Abortion took up a big a part of the dialog. Cooper repeated fear-mongering lies about Georgia girl Amber Thurman’s tragic loss of life from a septic an infection, saying the 28-year-old died as a result of medical doctors within the state had been hesitant to deal with her resulting from a six-week abortion ban, as Harris nodded alongside. (Thurman’s household blames the medical doctors, not the regulation.) Cooper then requested Harris if there may be “any regulation that provides the federal government the ability to decide a few man’s physique.”

Harris giggled. “No. No. No. No. No. It’s, no.”

Maybe a producer ought to have chimed in, “Hey, what concerning the navy draft?”

The vice-president additionally spoke of her advocacy for victims of sexual assault and home violence: “So the purpose being that abuse of anybody is one thing we must always all take severely versus saying, it’s none of our enterprise.”

Besides, that’s, if her personal husband, Doug Emhoff, has been accused of slapping an ex-girlfriend in 2012, knocking up his child’s nanny and allegedly paying her $80,000. (A spokesperson for Emhoff mentioned of the slap allegation, “The report is unfaithful.”)

The one vibrant spot was a response to Sarah Huckabee Sanders stupidly mocking Harris as a result of she doesn’t have organic kids. Harris defended the worth of being a step-parent. It was humanizing, however did little to persuade me that she may very well be commander-in-chief because the world is on fireplace.

The media panorama has skilled a seismic change even because the 2020 race — and a smart candidate will sit with a wide range of legacy and impartial media retailers. Podcasters and influencers.

They’re wonderful autos to have a free-ranging chat with nuance. And it doesn’t all the time must be combative.

But it surely needs to be led by somebody with experience. In her intro, Cooper says she doesn’t become involved in politics and doesn’t interview politicians, which was clearly a draw for staff Harris. No strain. No deep data of the problems. No pushback.

It was a venue for Harris to deal with girls like one-dimensional creatures sated by pro-abortion rhetoric — an insult to our intelligence.

However the Harris technique is to create an phantasm that she’s digging in. And all of those pleasant, ethereal chats present cowl and drown out her lack of depth. We’d like her on extra reveals like “60 Minutes,” the place Invoice Whitaker pressed the VP on her financial plan, saying what we’re all considering:

“However we’re coping with the actual world right here.”