They probably would have gotten to it on their own. But I think TPM Reader NR is right about the trajectory here.
Read MoreThere’s an added component to your piece today on the media’s call for Harris to do interviews and put forward policies — the demand was a Republican demand first, and the media picked it up. Reporters didn’t come to this in some collective epiphany that they wanted more from the Harris campaign, but instead heard Trump and Vance and their surrogates claiming Harrs was too weak or unprepared or stupid to handle a presser. It is, once again, the media being led around by the right wing on what’s important and not important.
TPM Reader KJ sent me this in response to yesterday’s Backchannel. At first I thought these might be made up headlines. But they’re each real. I linked them.
It’s fun to split screen this email with today’s headlines:
The New York Times: Harris Is Set to Lay Out an Economic Message Light on Detail
The Hill: Harris is trying to run a no-substance campaign. Does she believe in anything?
The Washington Post: Opinion | Does Harris need a serious policy agenda? Only if she wants to win.
I’ve come at this debate in my head from a bunch different directions over the last few days. I gave my overarching view in yesterday’s Backchannel. But there are so many different dimensions to it. Kate and I knocked several of them around in today’s podcast. I actually got in a minor spat today with a reporter who I’d dinged for an article description which presented Harris as a sort mystery candidate verging on a Manchurian Candidate, with unknown views and barely detailed ambitions. Are we kidding with all of this?
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This is a post not so much focused on the news of the moment but one in response to a question I get a lot. It’s also a post I’ve wanted to do because I’ll be able to refer back to it as we go forward through the final sprint of the campaign. The question is a really basic one: Given what happened in 2016 and 2020, how much confidence can we have that the current polls are giving us an accurate or realistic picture of the current campaign?
Let me deal briefly with what are important but mostly obvious caveats. Polls, or really poll averages, are almost never exactly right and not infrequently they suffer from systemic error. So can we rely on them? No. That would be silly. Most of the time they are fairly accurate predictors of election outcomes. But in close races, a “normal” polling miss of a point or two can change the result. But what people who ask me this question are really asking is whether we should expect that polls are underestimating Trump’s strength as they did in 2016 and 2020.
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