OPINION:
It’s been less than two weeks since Vice President Kamala Harris became the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, but it feels like an eternity. Rarely have the media risen so suddenly in unison, with such excited certainty, to hail a new political hero, and it has been predictably nauseating.
Sure, they still gush over former President Barack Obama, and they fawned over and protected President Biden until they didn’t, but the rapturous media reaction to Ms. Harris is something to behold in its blindness to history and reality. The truth is that she is a terrible national candidate and always has been, but the media want to conceal that as much as they can over the next 90-some days, Here’s why:
Many White House reporters were guilty of looking the other way when Mr. Biden showed evidence of cognitive decline. Others actively participated in the lie that Mr. Biden was mentally competent. The worst co-conspirators were the ones who credulously reported the ridiculous White House claim that videos it called “cheap fakes” were misleadingly making Mr. Biden seem feeble.
When Mr. Biden performed a face-plant for the ages in his June 27 debate with former President Donald Trump, the charade was exposed, and the media were caught with their impartiality down. Mr. Biden had broken the agreement — spoken or unspoken — that the media would not make an issue of his infirmity as long as he didn’t embarrass them along the way.
But Mr. Biden failed to keep his end of the deal, which angered the media. They decided that he had to go — both to eliminate the reminder of their own ethical transgressions and to salvage any chance for the Democrats to win the election.
After they had hounded Mr. Biden into stepping aside, working in concert with Mr. Obama, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, they promptly fainted with relief and ecstasy as Ms. Harris was anointed as the replacement candidate.
They didn’t care that she failed miserably in her first presidential campaign, that she has failed to demonstrate any utility as vice president or that she frequently gets stuck in catchphrase loops that reveal her panic whenever she is forced to address serious policy questions. They cared only that she was not Mr. Biden and that she had given the Democrats a fresh start with a different candidate.
And so the media set out to prop up and defend their new hero.
Among the first and most egregious attempts to remake her record was the assault on what had formerly been a line on her resume — that she had been Mr. Biden’s “border czar.” Because the illegal immigration crisis is a political liability for her, she didn’t want to be held responsible for it, even though Mr. Biden held a news conference in 2021 to put her in charge of the administration’s efforts. And no, she didn’t have the title “border czar,” because no such title exists in American government, although people who are given leadership responsibilities in large policy areas are colloquially referred to as czars all the time.
Axios led the way with a post on X that lectured, “The Trump campaign and Republicans have tagged Harris repeatedly with the ‘border czar’ title — which she never actually had.” The problem was that the same publication and the same reporter had previously referred to Ms. Harris as the “border czar.”
Many other media outlets followed this pattern, and the cable news channels were full of apologists denying she was ever given responsibility for anything, as if that were a defense.
Another astonishing phenomenon is the way Ms. Harris’ campaign is systematically erasing her leftist positions on key issues and replacing them with new opinions she has apparently just discovered. And they’re doing it by dribbling out little exclusives to different media outlets to announce that she’s reversed herself on something important, such as banning fracking, ending the use of fossil fuels, confiscating guns, outlawing employer-provided health insurance, decriminalizing border crossings and supporting the “defund the police” movement.
The reporters are accepting these “scoops” from staffers who don’t speak on the record, and they shouldn’t be. When someone discards so many long-held beliefs at once, voters deserve an explanation from the candidate herself. That we have not is a failing of both Ms. Harris and the media.
Aside from effervescent enthusiasm for her brand candidacy and a lot of fanboying and girling, the media are doing some heavy lifting on substantive things — actively helping her reshape her record and hide who she really is, just as she’s being reintroduced to the country.
Conscientious journalists wouldn’t do any of this, but people do crazy things when they’re in love.
• Tim Murtaugh is a Washington Times columnist, a communications consultant, co-host of the “Line Drive Podcast” and the author of the Amazon bestselling book “Swing Hard in Case You Hit It: My Escape From Addiction and Shot at Redemption on the Trump Campaign.”
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