Kamala Harris isn’t Joe Biden…She doesn’t have to hurry to dance with the media….

From Daily Kos….

Kamala Harris doesn’t owe the national press anything

The Beltway press is angry that Vice President Kamala Harris hasn’t sat down with them to talk about things like policy. In their warped, archaic minds, they are important to the political process as a way to inform readers about the candidates.

That was a thing before social media and the internet, for sure. But today? The Beltway media is broken beyond repair, and we’re all doing fine learning about Harris on our own, thank you very much.

Margaret Sullivan, a columnist for The Guardian, echoed much of the press with her haughtily titled column “Kamala Harris must speak to the press,” published Tuesday. As Sullivan admits up front, Harris is riding high bypassing the traditional press, rising in the polls, and dominating media coverage.

“From a tactical or strategic point of view, there’s little reason” for Harris to give a sit-down interview or hold a press conference, Sullivan wrote.

She also admits the core reality of today’s Beltway media: “What’s more, when the vice-president has interacted with reporters in recent weeks, as in a brief ‘gaggle’ during a campaign stop, the questions were silly. Seeking campaign drama rather than substance, they centered on Donald Trump’s attacks or when she was planning to do a press conference.”

That should’ve been the end of the column. Harris doesn’t need the press, and when she does talk to them, they squander their opportunity on inanities. The end!

But no, Sullivan argues that Harris “owes it to every U.S. citizen to be frank and forthcoming about what kind of president she intends to be. To tell us—in an unscripted, open way—what she stands for. We don’t know much about that, other than vague campaign platitudes about ‘freedom’ and ‘not going back.’”

Sullivan is clearly confused, but I doubt that many of her readers are….

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Once more, this time with Harris, the Beltway media has decided to insert itself into the process, rather than report on it. How else do you explain The New York Times’ hissy fit over Biden’s refusal to sit for an interview with the outlet earlier this year, calling it a “dangerous precedent,” as if they were owedface time with the president? Biden didn’t owe them or any other media outlet shit, and neither does Harris.

And let’s take it one step further.

A presidential candidate’s job is to win. That’s it! So pray tell, how does talking to The New York Times or any other national media outlet help that cause? Either journalists will ask ridiculous, shallow questions and waste everyone’s time, or they’ll fish for a gotcha quote they can use to generate “controversy” and clicks. Or they might actually ask a policy question, which … no one cares. Literally, no one. For decades, Democrats issued reams of policy white papers, and no one cared. At best, those policy proclamations are ignored; at worst, they become attack fodder for the other party.

There are two candidates this election, and no one is basing their decision on the finer points of a policy platform. They are basing it on values. Republicans have known this and wielded it to great electoral success, and now Democrats are finally there. Watch that Walz clip above, and tell me how that doesn’t speak 1,000 times better to the heart of a Harris-Walz administration than some ridiculous question about what Harris would do with Lina Khan, head of the Federal Trade Commission.

All of this being said, Harris should talk to local newspapers and TV reporters in battleground markets. There is research that suggests that local coverage can very much stimulate voter results.

But the national Beltway press? They need to reckon with their failures. Until then? Harris can speak to them if it tactically suits her campaign, but otherwise, she doesn’t owe them anything.