Harris Refuses to Say What Sort of President She Will Be

Kamala Harris had a good week. Since Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race, she has consolidated the support of a majority of delegates to the 2024 Democratic National Convention, received the grudging submission of rivals and support of Barack Obama, and managed to unlock nearly two hundred million dollars in donations that had eluded Joe Biden.

With her rally speeches receiving rave reviews on social media, a “white women for Kamala” call crashing Zoom, and the anti-Trump “conservatives” at the Bulwark so enthused they are dropping podcasts every six hours, journalists are understandably reporting smooth sailing for the good ship SS Kamala on calm seas.

But nothing about the year 2024 implies that the political seas are likely to ever remain calm for more than a few days, and a closer inspection indicates that the SS Kamala may not be quite so sturdy as she appears. The design has severe structural flaws that make her unfit for extended service in stormy weather, and there is evidence that she has already sprung a few leaks. While hardly noticeable to the passengers, a brief squall could see her start to take on water fast.

First of all, let us look at the supposed “New Kamala.” Her first rally in Milwaukee featured a packed-out stadium with a crowd of almost 3,000. That might be impressive by Biden standards, but Donald Trump is easily able to draw ten times that in many locations.

The speech, which supposedly spread such excitement, barely lasted ten minutes. It is unclear if many of those praising her performance even watched it. If they had, they would have discovered remarks filled with phrases about “not going back” and otherwise devoid of policy, echoing the sort of attacks on Donald Trump that a surrogate, says a vice presidential nominee, and not a presidential candidate herself, would make. Calling Project 2025 “Trump’s Platform” is dishonesty bordering on misinformation, which is the reason, more than age, that it was previously left to Harris to make those sorts of claims to highly partisan audiences where it was less likely to receive scrutiny.

Even in our era, it is considered unseemly for an aspiring president to regularly lie in public about her opponent. It leaves her open to the almost inevitable moment at the debate where Donald Trump says he has nothing to do with it, and Harris is stuck insisting that he really did read and approve every one of 920 pages of an interminable memo.

As for the delivery, her remarks have been serviceable, for a member of Congress or lower-level politician. What separates Kamala Harris from other politicians who have bid for the presidency successfully is the lack of any sort of personal story. Barack Obama spoke about growing up mixed race in a single-family home. Bill Clinton came out of Arkansas. George H.W. Bush had World War II, and his son overcame alcohol addiction. Donald Trump had a long business record. J.D. Vance’s life story is so compelling it became a best-selling book and Hollywood film. Joe Biden, whatever you think of the accuracy of his stories, at least had some to tell.

Harris appears to have nothing. She does not talk about her childhood, her parents, or her education. She married late in life, meaning that her husband and stepchildren missed large parts of the story. The only thing worse than an inflated or weird story, such as Joe Biden’s, is having none. It leaves a speaker struggling to connect with the audience by awkwardly describing second-hand the stories of people they just happened to meet, often forgetting names, in a manner that invariably comes to feel exploitative.

The individual Kamala Harris most calls to mind in this respect is Hillary Clinton, who also struggled to discuss anything related to her upbringing and family. Hillary Clinton had many flaws, but most could have been overcome had she been able to connect with Americans on any sort of personal level. Her inability to do so was politically fatal.

Hillary clearly felt like an outsider in her husband’s Arkansas and never managed to disguise it. Whitewater and a host of other scandals seem to have emerged from a refusal on her part to embrace Bill Clinton’s world, which she felt beneath her. Yet Hillary was unable to discuss her own upbringing in a compelling manner, nor could she discuss her marriage for obvious reasons.

The result was that the first female major party presidential candidate was unable to discuss being a daughter, wife, mother, or first lady. When combined with a lack of comfort in talking about Barack Obama, Hillary’s speeches ended up existing in a parallel reality where she was the most important senator in American history from 2001 to 2009.

It is far easier to define the reality that Harris’s speeches do not exist in than the one they do. They do not exist in the reality where she became Joe Biden’s border czar, was an advocate of Medicare for All, or did everything in her power to associate herself with her predecessor. When she declares to her audiences that “we will not go back,” what is she referring to? The Biden administration? Or, is she trying to erase the last four years from existence and pretend she is running against Donald Trump in 2020?

Therein lies the fundamental weakness of Harris’s position and campaign. It is not, as too many Republicans believe, that she is invariably burdened by the failures of the Biden administration. She is quite willing to erase those from memory, and the last week has demonstrated that in doing so she will enjoy the full support of the entirety of the media establishment. She is also, at least for the moment, in sync with her upper-middle-class liberal support base, who do not want to be reminded of those failures.

The true weakness of Kamala-mania is that Harris has nothing to establish her identity as a candidate. If she cannot speak of her time as vice president, or the policy positions she championed in the Senate, or her work as a prosecutor, then what can she talk about? The answer is apparently vague cliches and out-of-context quotes, some even fabricated, about Trump and J.D. Vance.

This would be a weakness in any campaign, but it is a particularly serious one in the type of campaign Democrats seem determined to run; namely, a 100-day sprint without a platform and without saying what Harris will do. Rather, Harris will say that, with Donald Trump on the ballot, it is a far too important a time to discuss serious issues like the border, national debt, or foreign policy. Just trust me, she will argue, and when we are rid of Donald Trump she will reveal what she plans to do.

Such a campaign relies on trust, or in the case of her more devoted fans among the Democratic Party’s base, faith. Faith may be strong, but newfound faith is a fickle thing. They believe in Harris not because she has done anything to earn their belief, but because they have nothing else. It is a faith born of desperation following their loss of belief in Joe Biden. If that faith is punctured, as it was for Joe Biden at the debate, the collapse could be equally sudden and sharp.

As for trust, this is where Harris’s lack of past will be a challenge. Voters trust politicians based on what they have done and who they are. Harris cannot talk about her achievements, such as they are, because they are unpopular.

That leaves who she is. This is where voters look for personal testimonies, from parents, from a spouse, from childhood friends. From a young age, voters have had the idea that they should not trust mysterious strangers, whether with gifts of candy, their savings, or their country. That Harris cannot provide a framework to know Kamala Harris means that she is likely to be unable to explain why voters should trust her.

Harris 2024 is therefore a campaign built around trust with a candidate who either will not or cannot provide voters with good reasons to trust Kamala Harris. Without trust, there is only faith. Faith, as we have seen over the past ten days, is a powerful emotional force. It is also a fickle one. Without it, Kamala is walking on water and is set to take a cold bath.

Walter Samuel is the pseudonym of a prolific international affairs writer and academic. He has worked in Washington as well as in London and Asia, and holds a Doctorate in International History.