OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
The team’s use of the “hide and go seek” tactic is beginning to worry some Democratic Party staff members, including some who work on the campaigns of Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, both of whom are Democratic presidential candidates.
The “basement Joe” strategy worked for President Joe Biden in 2020 but there is no more pandemic and the vice president’s lack of interviews or press conferences has become an increasing concern.
The campaign is playing preventive defense with no lead and using a “do-no-harm, risk-averse approach” that has staffers concerned, sources told Politico.
“And beyond concerns about her schedule, Democrats argue that Harris would benefit from venues that allow her to introduce herself to voters in a more authentic way, such as town hall events, more sit-down interviews, and unscripted exchanges with voters,” the report said.
“There’s a time at which you just have to barnstorm these battlegrounds,” David Axelrod, a top political strategist who worked on the campaign of former President Obama in 2008 said. “These races are decathlons, and there are a lot of events, and you have to do all of them because people want to test you.”
“It’s the most difficult oral exam on the planet for the most difficult job, and part of that is just that spontaneous — town halls, all kinds of interviews, and not just friendly interviews. OTRs where you interact substantively with people, all of those things are valuable,” he said. “And I would be doing them if I were her.”
A former Biden campaign employee compared her approach to that of former Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016 when she lost to former President Donald Trump.
“We know this isn’t actually 2016 again, and it’s not like she’s not going to Wisconsin,” they said, referring to the former Secretary of State’s infamous decision to ignore the state. “But we can still learn from that. Trump is everywhere again, just like he was then. Our side needs to be, too.”
Many said that the Harris campaign is behaving as if it is protecting a lead while actually being the underdog.
“While the plan is for Harris’ travel to ramp up in October, the vice president has spent more than a third of days since the Democratic National Convention receiving briefings from staff and conducting internal meetings, or without any scheduled public events,” the report said.
Eric Appleman’s Democracy in Action discovered that the campaign of Harris and Walz Campaign has striking similarities with the 2016 Clinton Campaign.
“Looking at the same time period in those two elections, Obama had just two days with no public events, and his schedule was packed daily with an array of campaign events, brief appearances at local restaurants, fundraisers, and other events. Clinton, by contrast, had roughly the same number of days with no events that Harris has had, including a brief stint where she was treated for pneumonia,” the report said.
One Democrat operative said that the vice president needs to spend more time in the Rust Belt to secure the needed votes from that area and in particular from the black community.
“Do not go to Georgia one more time,” they said. “You gotta get to Michigan. You need to live in Pennsylvania [because] the challenge is still Black voters in Philadelphia, Black voters in Detroit.”
The campaign also wants to use the Minnesota governor for some appearances in that part of the nation at a time when it wants to erase the memory of his disastrous debate performance against Republican vice presidential nominee and Ohio Sen. JD Vance, who was widely praised as having handily defeated his counterpart in the nationally televised debate.
