The Harris Ruhl interview
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@Mik said in The Harris Ruhl interview:
I couldn't even get through the first question.
Ha! Same, stopped it after 2 minutes. Her preface that this is for people who are hard working and have ambitions... ummm, has she met a very large chunk of her voting base? MANY are looking for ways to NOT work and get what they need (which is already possible btw). And her claim of having an opportunity economy... maybe I live in another reality, but that already exists. IT IS NOT EASY but you can work your way to a better life. But it is not easy.
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Here's her economic "plan"
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/kamala-harris-economic-plans-taxes-childcare-housing-2024-09-25/
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She keeps using the phrasing “We’re Not Going Back, Forward Together”
I wonder where she got that from?
https://www.cpusa.org/article/were-not-going-back-forward-together/
https://cpusa.org/article/forward-together-for-pre-convention-discussion/
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New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/25/us/politics/kamala-harris-msnbc-interview-takeaways.html
As Vice President Kamala Harris parses out the details of her agenda, she has favored broad strokes over detailed policy papers. Only recently has she begun sitting for interviews, which have elicited few details about what her presidential administration might look like.
Little about that careful approach changed during a 25-minute interview with Stephanie Ruhle of MSNBC that was broadcast on Wednesday night. It was Ms. Harris’s first one-on-one interview on cable television since becoming the Democratic nominee.
In her discussion with a friendly interviewer, the vice president again presented herself as a champion of the middle class and hit many of the same themes from her pro-business economic speech earlier in the day. She largely avoided direct questions about how she would govern and why some voters remain fond of former President Donald J. Trump’s stewardship of the economy.
Here are three takeaways from Ms. Harris’s interview.
Harris had roundabout answers to open-ended questions.
Ms. Ruhle’s first question was about how Ms. Harris might respond to people who hear her proposals and say, “These policies aren’t for me.” The MSNBC host’s second was about why voters tend to tell pollsters that Mr. Trump is better equipped to handle the economy.
Ms. Harris responded to the fairly basic and predictable questions with roundabout responses that did not provide a substantive answer.
Instead of offering any explanation for why Mr. Trump polls better on the economy — a matter that has vexed Democrats as President Biden has overseen a steadily improving economy — Ms. Harris instead blasted Mr. Trump’s record. She blamed him for a loss of manufacturing and autoworker jobs and said his tariff proposals would serve as an added sales tax on American consumers.
She said nothing about why voters think Mr. Trump and Republicans would be better on the economy.
But she did say her policies are for everyone.
“If you are hardworking, if you have the dreams and the ambitions and the aspirations of what I believe you do, you’re in my plan,” Ms. Harris said.
She avoided a looming scenario: What if Democrats lose the Senate?
Ms. Harris has been eagerly promoting the big-ticket items on her agenda. A middle-class tax cut, tax increases for the rich and for big corporations. More money for child care and health care.
Ms. Ruhle brought up the elephant in the room: How could any of this happen without Democratic control of the Senate?
The economy. We’re tracking where the candidates stand on issues affecting the economy, business and consumers, including Social Security and Medicare. Our economic policy reporters help you understand how the candidates’ policies would affect inflation, interest rates, major industries and the job and housing markets.
This is a key question that hangs over the Harris campaign as Democrats increasingly fear Senator Jon Tester of Montana is in a perilous political situation. If he loses his re-election bid, Democrats would need to flip at least one Republican-held Senate seat to retain control of the chamber — an unlikely prospect given this year’s daunting map for the party.
Ms. Harris skated past Ms. Ruhle’s question about where Democrats would find the money for such proposals without addressing her party’s Senate prospects.
“But we’re going to have to raise corporate taxes,” she said. “We’re going to have to make sure that the biggest corporations and billionaires pay their fair share. That’s just it. It’s about paying their fair share. I am not mad at anyone for achieving success, but everyone should pay their fair share.”
That is an argument she may find herself making to very skeptical Senate Republicans next year if she wins the White House.
A hard-hitting Harris interview is still yet to come.
Since Ms. Harris began granting more interviews in recent days, her media strategy has been to sit with friendly inquisitors who are not inclined to ask terribly thorny questions or press her when her responses are evasive.
Nothing about that changed during her interview with Ms. Ruhle before her audience on MSNBC, the liberal cable channel whose viewers overwhelmingly favor Democratic candidates.
It’s not quite clear what Ms. Harris gained, aside from giving her campaign aides the ability to say she held a one-on-one cable television interview.
For the vice president, speaking with Ms. Ruhle was roughly in the same ballpark as Mr. Trump having one of his regular chats with Sean Hannity of Fox News.
Last week, Ms. Ruhle openly showed her preference for Ms. Harris over Mr. Trump during an appearance on Bill Maher’s HBO program. And when she interviewed Mr. Biden in May 2023, Ms. Ruhle did not press him after his stumbling answers and praised him throughout the 14-minute discussion.
So it went with Ms. Harris. Ms. Ruhle joined Ms. Harris in attacking Mr. Trump (“His plan is not serious, when you lay it out like that”) and avoided posing tricky questions about positions Ms. Harris supported during her 2020 presidential campaign or what, if anything, she knew about Mr. Biden’s physical condition or mental acuity as his own campaign deteriorated.
Which is perhaps why Ms. Harris agreed to the interview in the first place.
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I'm so confused...Is peak brat Kamala-lama-ding-dong over?
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@Jolly said in The Harris Ruhl interview:
I'm so confused...Is peak brat Kamala-lama-ding-dong over?
Looks like it. Too bad everyone already voted.
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Early voting really should be reduced. 6 weeks is way too long, leaving way too much time for shenanigans.
Plus, I will never for the life of me understand why they don’t publish the total number of early votes the morning of election day, by state and by district. And the minute the polls close, those early votes are the first published (already counted). Just get rid of the middle of the night vote gains or bag of ballots that weren’t accounted for suddenly found…
And I don’t care about the postmark. If a ballot is not received prior to Election Day, oh well.
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