Revealed: The Real Shocker About the Harris Campaign

No one expected it!

As those of you who are regular visitors to this establishment know…

…Wait, I know you may not think of this as an “establishment.” That’s just me. In my mind this is a small beachfront shack serving up snacks, drinks and from the guy with the twinkle in his bright blue eyes at the end of the bar who owns the place (me) wisdom about politics, international affairs and, every so often, movies. Every day you wander down the beach, drop by, order your favorite cocktail in a coconut with a paper umbrella, and I offer up some freshly baked takes with a side of wry appreciation for our strange, brief existence on this spinning rock off in the middle of nowhere in space.

Wait, did I make you feel all comfortable there, like you were settling in for a relaxed vacation from your daily life, and then I screwed up with a dose of existential angst? Well, as it happens, the Existential Angstarita is our special cocktail here at this beach shack. Settle in. It’s an acquired taste but after two or three rounds oblivion will reveal itself to be the place you were trying to get to all along…

…anyway, as I was saying, as those of you who are regular visitors to this establishment know, I’m not one of those who regularly writes stories about how Vice President Harris has surprised me during this campaign. For the most part, she has not. Because I have for many years thought and argued that she was exceptionally gifted and that she was precisely the kind of leader we need in times like these.

But I will tell you one thing about this campaign that is a real shocker, even to me. It is the degree to which she has conducted this campaign on her own terms, the degree to which it has decidedly been her and not Trump and not the titanic egos of the media world or money grubbing political consultants who has from the moment she entered the race determined what it would be about. It has pretty much all been on her terms. Even when Trump would do his usual freak show. Even when media commentators were saying “dance to our tune little lady.” Even when the Washington insiders trying to be heard inside campaign offices and fund-raisers and restaurants serving $18 bowls of blueberries for breakfast were saying, “You’re doing a nice job Madame VP, now this is all you need to change….” (Cue them unrolling a scroll that unfolds over the table cloth, down to the floor and across the breakfast room at the Four Seasons Hotel.)

But she has not played their game. Instead, she has done the single hardest thing for a politician under the scrutiny of the media to do. She has been authentic. She has been true to herself. Oh, sure, every so often what she is doing is a photo op or she is repeating a stump speech. But when it counts, she is being herself, laughing her laugh, speaking her truth and making it work.

A perfect example is her decision to do a one-on-one interview with MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle tonight about the economy. It followed an address she gave earlier in the day about…the economy. It emphasized several of her core messages: I want to help make the lives of average Americans better. I know how to do it. I have a clear plan. My opponent has a disastrously bad economic record, but rather than making this about his past failures I am going to focus on what we can make America look like as we turn the page into the future.

She stayed on message. She kept it simple. She spoke to the needs of core audiences. She made it clear that she was both an ardent, committed capitalist and that she was an advocate for the people who has fought against the corporate abuse and exploitation by the richest Americans throughout her career. Her “opportunity economy” was not just a slogan. She understood how it would work. She showed how different she was from her opponent the Fraudster-Serial Bankruptcy Specialist-in-Chief.

Right after it was over, I wrote this on Twitter/X:

“For all the disgruntled media superstars who are bent out of shape that Kamala Harris is not dancing to their dance, I say, shhhh. Watch, listen and learn. She is speaking to the press plenty. She has plenty to say. But she is doing so in ways that allow her to address the real core issues of this campaign. She will not be baited into sessions in which all she hears are recycled Trump oppo translated into gotcha questions to burnish a multimillionaire reporter’s career bonafides and earn them a backslap or two at the next Georgetown cocktail party. Tonight's conversation about the economy was a perfect example. She had an in-depth discussion about critical issues with a first-class reporter who is one of the very few who truly and deeply understands economics and business. And the result was an exchange that should be must-watch TV for all voters. It was substantive. It was detailed. It was factual. It drew a stark contrast with her concept-of-a-program counterpart. It was excellent. Kamala Harris was excellent. Stephanie Ruhl was superb. It sent the right message in the right way to the right audience. It was good campaign strategy and it was also an example of the public service side of campaigning. If you watched it, watch it again. Share it. And then light a candle that the VP is soon our president.”

I stand by all that. But what is striking that from how she handled her campaign launch, to how she handled taking over and then modifying her campaign team, to how she took control of the message and the strategy of the campaign, to how she conducted herself at rallies, to how she picked her VP, to how she orchestrated and basked in the warm light of the Democratic National Convention, to how she eviscerated Trump in the debate, to how she has engineered a remarkable turn around so far (knock wood, spit, spit) in the polls, to where she has engineered that turn around gaining not just in likability but in a key demographics and around issues like…wait for it…the economy (once thought to be a strong suit of her opponent even though his record on the economy was really just a big stinky ole dog turd.

At every step of the way during this campaign, she has been its strong center, its engine and the leader all others have followed. It is really quite stunning. And while it is no doubt true that she has grown on the job, I can’t help but think what a pity it was that she was not fully empowered/unleashed for most of the past few years.

But that is water under the bridge. Spilled milk. Yesterday’s news. And here at my beach shack, one of the things that makes life so great is the view…which stretches out before us to the horizon, to the place where tomorrow begins. We don’t look back here. We look forward. And with a campaign like the one our VP is currently running, I have to admit, the view is getting better and better from here every day.

(And no, none of us here think we just fell out of any of these here coconut trees.)