For the last six weeks, Kamala Harris has basked in the glow of the most positive and loving media coverage I've ever seen in a campaign.
And I've seen a lot of campaigns.
I remember the 1964 election very well, even though I was only ten years old. The Republicans put up Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, a crusty conservative whose tagline—"I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue"—was taken out of context. The Democrats destroyed him with it. "There was a whiff of violence" in his signature line from the convention, said the New York Times at the time.
Then there was the 1976 race with Jimmy Carter, where the media went overboard to lionize a minor politician from Georgia. But what was most important was that Carter wasn't Nixon. They sold Carter like they sold Kennedy—"We'll sell him like soap flakes," said old Joe Kennedy before the 1960 race. The media portrayed President Ford as a bumbling fool. That was the end of Ford.
The media tried to elevate Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis in 1988 as a "tough liberal." That lasted until this photo of Dukakis in an Abrams tank became one of history's most iconic campaign photos.
Something happened in 2004 when CBS News tried to end George Bush's campaign by portraying him as using his rich father's influence to dodge a tour in Vietnam. The internet was just becoming ubiquitous, and a legion of conservative bloggers began to dissect the CBS story, finding numerous discrepancies in key documents.
“Bloggers have no checks and balances. [It’s] a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas," said Jonathan Klein of "60 Minutes" in 2004.
Maybe. But four "60 Minutes" staffers were fired after the network grudgingly admitted the documents couldn't be authenticated. PJ Media, AKA "Pajamas Media," went live shortly after.
The media is still biased, but there is at least some pushback from the other side.
Nevertheless, when the media is nearly unanimous in its storytelling, there isn't much the opposition can do. That's where we find ourselves today. Kamala Harris has received hysterically positive coverage of her campaign. She can do no wrong. Tim Walz is the second coming of "Father Knows Best." All her scary, radical proposals from her 2020 campaign have disappeared down the memory hole.
Yet, the latest polling shows that Harris has a lead over Donald Trump within the margin of error.
Harris had 48% support to Trump’s 47% in a head-to-head test of the two candidates, and she led by 2 points, 47% to 45%, on a ballot that included independent and third-party candidates, according to the poll, which was conducted after Democrats concluded their televised national convention. The leads in both matchups fell within the survey’s margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
The poll marked the first time that the Democratic candidate led Trump head-to-head in any Journal survey dating to April of last year. Trump had a 2-point advantage over Harris in the Journal’s head-to-head test in late July.
Why isn't Harris up by 5-10 points? Why isn't Trump collapsing?
Obviously, it's a different media universe than 1964 or even 2004. Voters are more media savvy. They can see through most fake news. And with so many different sources of news and information, they can pick and choose which news outlets to read and, just as importantly, believe.
The glowing news coverage given to Kamala Harris is too good to be true, and a lot of people realize that. They haven't changed their views of Harris since she was a bumbling, near-incoherent vice president. The media will try to protect Harris, as we saw in the CNN interview on Thursday night. They won't pressure her to hold press conferences. They won't hold her feet to the fire on issues where she's flip-flopped.
The image they are creating of Harris is bold, brave, and beautiful. Tearing that image down to portray reality is the challenge facing Donald Trump and the Republican Party.
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