Vice President Kamala Harris might not have won over many Fox News viewers during her Oct. 16 interview with the network, but she didn’t do herself any harm, either. That’s an important victory indicating Harris is a dramatically better candidate than when she first ran for president in 2019.
Harris knew the Fox interview would be the most combative of her 2024 campaign, and it was.
Anchor Bret Baier hammered at the Biden administration’s shaky record on immigration, a red meat issue for Fox viewers and one of Democrats’ biggest liabilities with voters. He asked one question after another designed to trip Harris up and create an embarrassing gotcha moment that could damage her campaign. Baier also cued old clips from Harris’s earlier incarnation as a liberal California senator and asked why she once held views out of step with today’s mainstream voters.
There were no Harris blunders, gotcha moments, or cringey word salads, which is crucial given that the interview drew 7.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched candidate interview of the 2024 election so far.
Harris scooted out from under many uncomfortable questions and changed the subject to address her main talking points. She borrowed a couple of tactics from Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump: talking over the interviewer and running out the clock with long answers that landed far away from the original question. It might have been frustrating to viewers who really wanted to know why she has abandoned progressive policies such as banning fracking and adopting a single-payer healthcare model. But politically, it was an astute performance.
It was also a trick the Kamala Harris of 2019 couldn’t have pulled off. Some voters remember that Harris ran for president back then, but it was a truly forgettable affair. Harris dropped out of the 2020 Democratic primaries in December of 2019, before voting even began. She was the first major candidate to bail. It wasn’t that she failed to catch fire. It was more like she face-planted by reaching for something she wasn’t ready for.
When Harris announced her candidacy in January 2019, some supporters thought she might be an electrifying fast riser, like a female Barack Obama. She raised some money, did well in some polls, and had a fiery standout moment in one of the Democratic debates. But Harris struggled to define herself and tended to bungle impromptu remarks. Her campaign managers feuded, creating the impression that she was a poor manager.
The New York Times panned Harris for the “lack of an abiding theory of government” and said “she floated between the moderate and progressive lanes.” CNN dinged Harris for “message confusion.” Politico said “she built a precarious structure of advisers at the top — a kind of team of rivals whose quiet snarks about each other grew louder” as her campaign neared its ugly end.
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Harris’s stance on healthcare revealed her shiftiness back then.
Early in her campaign, Harris said she backed Bernie Sanders’s “Medicare for All” plan, a huge government-run program that would replace private insurance and cover everybody. On CNN, anchor Jake Tapper asked if that meant she would get rid of all private insurance. Harris bashed insurance companies, then blithely said, “Let’s eliminate all that. Let’s move on.”
Blowback came quickly. Republicans pounced, saying she wanted to take away insurance coverage many Americans were happy with. Unions howled, arguing they had fought hard battles with employers and given up other perks to secure good healthcare.
Harris eventually pitched her own healthcare plan, which was basically the Sanders plan with carve-outs allowing private insurers to compete with the government plan. By then, however, Harris was sinking in the polls, with Joe Biden — who opposed Medicare for All — pulling ahead. Money ran short. Harris aides bickered and dissed each other anonymously in the press. By early December, Harris called it quits.
Harris has clearly learned from her mistakes. She stays relentlessly on message these days, and her main message is that Trump would be a disaster if he won a second term. After Biden stepped down and Harris became the official Democratic nominee in August, critics complained for weeks that Harris was dodging hardball interviews to avoid the sort of extemporizing that got her into trouble in 2019. That narrative is now over. Baier gave Harris ample opportunity to misspeak, and she didn’t.
Harris hasn’t been perfect. When asked what she might do differently than Biden, she should have had a better answer ready than “there is not a thing that comes to mind.” That may be her biggest gaffe so far. She’s also been arch and slippery in explaining why she has become more tolerant of fossil fuels and tougher on immigration. She could easily say her views have changed as circumstances have changed, but one thing she refuses to do is criticize President Joe Biden for anything or even imply that maybe he got it wrong here or there.
Still, Harris has shown that she learns on the job and gets better with age and experience. Trump has not shown that. If anything, Trump is more shrill, more insulting, and more radical than during his presidential runs in 2020 and 2016. His latest tariff plan would plunge much of the world into a destructive, protectionist trade war. And some of his own former advisors consider Trump autocratic, even fascist.
Has Harris improved enough?
As any weekend golfer knows, you can get a lot better and still be lousy. Harris is still trying to be everything to every possible voter she might win. And her practiced answers on many topics can leave you wondering how she really feels. But a president who changes with the times is better than one who doesn't.
Maybe she'll be better still four years from now.
Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on X at @rickjnewman.
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