OPINION:
Democrats are realizing that their candidate for president, thrust upon them without much discussion, is not up to the job and is fading fast. Vice President Kamala Harris, jammed into place after President Biden was forced to step aside, is making poor decisions, hurting herself badly in media appearances and generally losing steam.
If you think you’ve seen this before, it’s because you have. Ms. Harris ran for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination but withdrew for lack of support before 2019 was over. In that race, too, she was initially seen as a buzzy candidate with some excitement around her, but as people saw her in action, the novelty wore off.
This time, she became the replacement for Mr. Biden basically overnight and was the beneficiary of six uninterrupted weeks of media adulation. Her poll numbers quickly strengthened, propelled entirely by a news media intent on finding anyone they thought could beat former President Donald Trump in November.
She was selling “joy” and cackling through a “brat summer” — a term describing an aesthetic that advocates being carefree, bold, and unconcerned with sloppiness or mistakes.
Only she wasn’t carefree; she was so concerned about mistakes that she avoided media interviews. When she finally did talk to CNN, she brought her running mate with her. Still, she managed to botch it, repeatedly stressing that her liberal values had not changed even though she was asking everyone to believe that she’d changed her mind on almost every significant policy issue.
Now, it’s far worse.
Knowing that her reclusiveness was not working, her campaign advisers forced her onto the interview circuit even though they knew they were risking disaster. They promoted it like it was a good thing that they were radically and obviously changing a core campaign strategy.
Few in the media called it a campaign reboot, but it was.
And it has not gone well. At all.
The “media blitz” coincided with horrific images and stories coming out of states ravaged by Hurricane Helene, most notably from North Carolina, where more than 200 people died in the storm. While that was unfolding, Ms. Harris appeared on a podcast titled “Call Her Daddy,” which is often raunchy and focused on sex.
The video of a laughing vice president juxtaposed with images of miserable natural disaster victims was jarring and politically ruinous. She was also not helped by reports that her Federal Emergency Management Agency has spent billions housing illegal aliens yet claims it might run out of money to help American citizens before hurricane season ends.
Then came her “60 Minutes” interview on CBS, which can generously be described as calamitous.
Three times, she wouldn’t admit that it was a mistake to open the southern border to practically unlimited numbers of illegal aliens. She also clumsily refused to answer a question about why anyone should believe her radical policy shifts after so many years in elected office. She had to be bailed out by CBS producers who edited her answers to make them sound less incoherent.
She spoke to worn-out radio personality Howard Stern, who these days mostly gripes about people who don’t wear COVID-19 masks. But the real doozy was her appearance on ABC’s “The View.”
Co-host Sunny Hostin asked, “If anything, would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?”
“There is not a thing that comes to mind,” Ms. Harris replied. “And I’ve been a part of most of the decisions that have had impact.”
This was an astounding answer for a candidate whose whole message is “turning the page” from Mr. Biden and who should have been ready with a quick description of how she’s different. It reinforced what people already think of her: that she represents more of Mr. Biden, which is precisely what voters do not want.
Late-night talk show host Stephen Colbert gave her a shot at a do-over when he taped his show hours later, but she again failed to list any differences between herself and Mr. Biden. She compounded her troubles by cackling through the motions of having a beer with Mr. Colbert at the precise moment that another hurricane — Milton — was bearing down on the Gulf Coast of Florida.
All this has been accompanied by a Trump surge to polling leads and public hand-wringing among Democrats and liberal journalists.
You don’t often see candidates inflict as much damage on themselves as Ms. Harris has in such a brief period of time. You’d probably have to go back to 2019, when it happened to someone named Kamala Harris.
• Tim Murtaugh is a senior adviser to the 2024 Donald J. Trump for President campaign.
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