Trump you know and Harris you don’t

Harris criticized for her CNN town hall appearance with former president Barack Obama alumnus David Axelrod gives her the key to “word salad city” for some of her answers.

Trump, by contrast, holds freewheeling rallies where he recklessly deviates from the script. Democratic efforts to highlight his perceived missteps often fall on deaf ears outside the progressive base.

“They take different exams,” CNN reports. Van Jones complained later. “He will become a lawless man. It must be flawless.”

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The internet left often rails against Trump’s “smart whitewashing,” the latest version of their complaint about the “normalization” of the former and possibly future president of the United States.

Part of this is because Harris emphasizes her traditionalism as an argument against the unorthodox Trump. On the plus side, she appeals to some voters who view the former president as too chaotic. The downside is that she is judged by the standards of the average politician and Trump is not.

But the main reason the test is harder for Harris is that people know Trump better than she does, and she tries to keep her beliefs private.

Trump has been involved in national politics for nearly a decade, with previous flirtations with public office dating back to at least 1999. He served one term in the White House and was the Republican presidential candidate for the last three terms. elections.

Before this, Trump was reality show star and New York real estate tycoon. Trump has made his business dealings public with an interview schedule that rivals that of most politicians, made multiple cameo appearances on TV shows and films, graced the covers of magazines, newspapers and tabloids, amassed a huge following on social media and was a housewife. name since the 1980s.

Love him or hate him, most voters have formed an opinion about Trump.

Harris is less familiar. Moreover, she doesn’t want to be judged solely on her record as vice president or even on her 2019 campaign, when she unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination. She wants to separate from the president Joe Bidenbut without revealing any obvious disagreements.

Voters don’t feel like they know Harris, which is probably better than simply continuing to hold the same negative views they expressed to pollsters for much of her vice presidency. She didn’t make it easy for them to get to know her.

In many ways this was done on purpose. Harris replaced Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket after the primaries but before the party’s convention. She avoided the competitive process to receive the nomination. She then stuck to an abbreviated interview schedule and strictly scheduled events until the end of the truncated general election campaign.

The hope appears to have been that, with limited attention, she could preserve or recreate Biden’s 2020 anti-Trump coalition without alienating either its progressive or centrist wings. The coalition is expected to run the gamut from hardcore socialists to former Republicans rejected by Trump, as well as Democrats on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide.

But now this chaotic coalition must be preserved in a war in Gazawith much angrier progressives, in the absence of a pandemic but with higher prices and Biden’s real, unpopular reputation, while Trump had several higher favorability ratings and people remember his term more fondly than they do in 2020. And all this with a candidate from a deep blue state who has never managed such a broad coalition before and has no special skills in managing one.

This left Harris unable to answer basic questions. She left the most difficult media appearances, such as one interview with Fox Newsuntil the end of the campaign. While she’s reluctant to shed light on her own platform or overarching political philosophy, her team remains hopeful that she can uncover new scoops that will change the narrative about Trump at the last minute.

Biden urged Democrats to compare him to the alternative, not to the Almighty. But he served in Washington for 52 years and served two terms as vice president before taking the top job.

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Harris gave voters limited opportunity to get to know her before the election, and she is being judged more harshly than Trump, who has practically lived on public TVs and smartphones for the past nine years.

But the problem is not so much the difficult exam, but the fact that, as Jay Cost put it, she wants to pass the exam. “pass or fail” option to the presidency.