Can Republicans Beat Kamala Harris and the Media?

The sense of euphoric inevitability that prevailed when Republicans gathered in Milwaukee for the party’s nominating convention is gone. Victory, once all but assured, is now in doubt. The Trump campaign has struggled to break into the Kamala Harris–dominated news cycle in a positive way. And maybe most dispiritingly, the press now has something to prove — not to news consumers, who were let down by its effort to whitewash Joe Biden’s deteriorating condition, but to those who counted on the whitewashing to succeed. Republicans are resigned not just to a race against a tougher opponent but to an array of cultural and journalistic institutions acting with reckless disregard for their reputations to shield Harris from scrutiny. It’s all rather depressing.

That is not an irrational response to a near-unprecedentedly shameless display of kowtowing from the press. From Harris’s taste in cookbooks to her preternatural knowledge of Los Angelean restaurants, Harris is being transformed from a national punch line into a rock star. There is no pressure on the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee to sit for interviews, hold press conferences, or even merely speak extemporaneously for more than a few sentences. Even what may be Harris’s foremost vulnerability — her inauthenticity — is presented as an asset. “Code-switching” — a polite way of describing a person who overhauls her whole demeanor depending on the audience — is “one of the most effective communication tools that politicians of color use to wield influence and gain power in venues where they have historically not had it,” the Associated Press recently mused. It all seems to be contributing to Harris’s rising stock.