Don Lemon, late of CNN and currently trying to make it on his own as a video podcaster, sat down with MSNBC's Jen Psaki this week to talk about his recent interviews with people across the country about Kamala Harris.
The results made me spit out my coffee.
"What did they think about Harris?" Psaki asked. "What do they think about her?"
Lemon, usually smooth, looked up at the ceiling as he fumbled for words.
"They did ... listen, um... it depends on where you are... For the most part: in Pittsburgh, or the Jersey Shore, in Ohio especially, many people did not know who she was. They weren't familiar with her."
"But for [Donald Trump], think they thought that he's better for the economy. That he brought money into the community, that he was on black people's side."
That's when I spit out my coffee.
Trump has worked hard to win over black voters. He has a record, too, one where for the three years before COVID, he delivered results to them. Harris — a not-really-black child of privilege and Marxism — remains unknown to "her" people.
She's a blank. In a column last week, I jokingly kept referring to her as The Cipher™ but it's no joke. The Harris '24 campaign plan — courtesy of Obama '08 alum David Plouffe, it seems — is to give Harris the Barack Obama Treatment:
- Talk about the candidate's biography. A lot. Omit the inconvenient stuff, which is plentiful.
- Keep it low on content, high on feelz — "Hope and change" from '08 is today's "Vibes and joy."
- Keep the radical agenda under wraps.
- Trust the media not to embarrass the candidate.
Most of all, whatever you do, make sure the candidate remains exactly how Obama described himself in the prologue of his memoir, "The Audacity of Hope." He wrote, "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views," and "my treatment of the issues is often partial and incomplete."
Who needs issues when you have a candidate so dreamy that the press slobbers over him and voters willingly suspend their disbelief about his true agenda?
The problem for Plouffe this time around is that Obama made for a much better canvas than Harris ever could.
"I think she has to reintroduce herself to the public," Lemon concluded.
(You can watch the clip here.)
Harris has been running for president since 2019. She's been vice president for almost four years, during which Presidentish Joe Biden assigned her high-profile jobs like Border Czar, which she's since disowned.
Before that, she made a name for herself in the Senate — not for any major legislation she introduced or got passed, but by siding with its most radical members like Bernie Sanders (CPUSA-Vermont) on issues like abolishing private health insurance. (Obama was too smart to publicly side with his party's radicals, once he'd reached the national stage.)
Harris has been introducing herself to the American public for more than a decade and yet people still don't know who she is or where she stands. That's by design. But when Lemon talked to black voters in swing states, he learned her plan isn't working.
Recommended: That Trump Fellow Who's Been President the Last Four Years Sounds AWFUL
P.S. If you aren't already a VIP supporter, please consider helping us keep independent news and analysis alive, and don't forget our 50% off SAVEAMERICA promo code.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member