Fox News’s interview with Kamala Harris itself made news. The betting markets had Ms. Harris tanking; we await post-interview polls. Bret Baier did more than a competent job, pressing the Democratic candidate like Sam Donaldson used to press President Ronald Reagan.
Harris came to the interview “fashionably” (strategically?) late, which added some frisson to the affair. But what stuck out to me was a repeated evasion, which to Kamala no doubt felt natural, but to this onlooker, anyway, seemed bizarre.
Trump.
When challenged about Biden Administration failures of policy, leadership, or efficacy, candidate Harris — in addition to insisting that she will lead in a totally new direction, mostly unspecified — kept on blaming, somehow, Donald Trump.
Republican Vice Presidential candidate J. D. Vance noted this, saying “something pathological is going on.”
That pathology is TDS: Trump Derangement Syndrome.
“You’ve been in office for three-and-a-half years,” Baier challenged in the interview’s most memorable exchange, eliciting from the Democrat an immediate response: “And Donald Trump has been running for office since …” A stunned, incredulous Baier watched Harris rant on against Trump, declaring that “he is unfit to serve, that he is unstable, that he is dangerous, and that people are exhausted with someone who professes to be a leader who spends full time demeaning and engaging in personal grievances, and it being about him instead of the American people.”
This is her appeal to the middle, to non-partisan voters: not for her or her policies, but against Trump.
Democrats need their devil. Without him could they win a national election?
And we should inquire whether the reverse is also true.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Watch the entire interview is here.
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