Vice President Kamala Harris was slammed for avoiding media appearances when she launched her nascent presidential campaign less than four months before the election. Now that she's embraced the media circuit, the Democratic nominee is being criticized — including from those within her own party — for not being quicker or sharper on her feet when she's given opportunities to answer direct questions.
Her campaign initially worked to address concerns about its media strategy by scheduling a series of interviews, on both cable news and with outlets outside the mainstream, aimed at reaching undecided and swing-state voters.
But things took a turn for Harris when she went on ABC's The View earlier this month and immediately caught blowback for saying she couldn't think of anything she would have done differently than President Joe Biden in the last four years.
"There is not a thing that comes to mind," Harris told co-host Sunny Hostin when Hostin asked her about specific things she would have changed.
Former President Donald Trump's campaign immediately seized on the comment as being indicative of Trump's frequent assertion that Harris' candidacy — and a potential Harris presidency — would only be a continuation of Biden's policies.
Harris, for her part, has since said she'd bring a "new generation of leadership" to the White House, though the damage from The View was done. Her "not a thing" line now appears in Trump's closing ad campaign, along with another spot centered around her policies on transgender issues.
"She is Biden," Trump said during his first and only presidential debate with Harris in September. "She's trying to get away from Biden. I don't know the gentleman, she says. She is Biden."
On Wednesday, Harris again had a less-than-stellar showing during a CNN town hall, which the network's own pundits and political strategists pointed out.
Among the harshest critics was David Axelrod, a longtime Democratic operative who was Barack Obama's chief strategist during his 2008 and 2012 campaigns.
"The things that would concern me is when she doesn't want to answer a question, her habit is to kind of go to word salad city," Axelrod said Wednesday after the town hall, using Republicans' oft-repeated jab against her.
Axelrod also criticized Harris for being evasive when asked direct questions on foreign policy, immigration, and border security.
"She would acknowledge no concerns about any of the administration's policies," he said. "And that's a mistake. Sometimes you have to concede things, and she didn't concede much."
Glen Bolger, a veteran Republican strategist and the co-founder of Public Opinion Strategies, didn't mince words on what he thinks of Harris' media strategy.
"She can't think on her feet, doesn't know what she stands for, and has no original policy ideas," he told Newsweek. "Her advisers are smart to keep her from the press. Word salads aren't very tasty."
Maria Cardona, a veteran Democratic strategist, struck a different tone, saying it was important to look at Harris' campaign in context.
"The reality is that she had a very constricted timeframe from which to build a campaign from scratch, get her national and state staff in place, reach out to DNC delegates to get their support, get nominated, pick a vice president, put together a flawless convention," introduce herself to voters, and come up with a coherent messaging strategy, Cardona told Newsweek.
Harris has "had to do the impossible, layered with historic sexism and misogyny ... that demand that she be flawless," Cardona added.
A series of recent national polls, meanwhile, have shown Trump and Harris in a dead heat in the final stretch before Election Day. Early voting is also kicking off across the country, and both candidates have focused almost all their energy on rallying voters in key swing states like Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada (notwithstanding Friday's dual visits to Texas).
Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie weighed in on the state of play during an appearance on The View Friday, indicating that the last week or so may have been pivotal for Harris' campaign.
"Ten days ago, I would have said she's going to win," Christie, a vocal anti-Trump Republican, told the hosts. "But she's had a bad ten days."
But Cardona, the Democratic strategist, thinks Harris' strategy has been effective so far.
"The energy and enthusiasm out there for her is immeasurable, and it certainly is not getting picked up in the polls," she told Newsweek.
"In an ideal world, she would have started talking to the media earlier, and she could've put together a campaign with a lot more time," Cardona said. "But that ideal world was never going to exist."
