Election Watch Week 6: Kamala and Tim Give Georgia Love and CNN Gives Us a Pseudo-Event.

Still wondering why Kamala and Tim prefer to meet with real people rather than “sit down” with “the press”?

I’ve been quoting Daniel Boorstin’s concept of the “pseudo-event” for as long as I’ve been writing about the media:

“Great unforeseen changes—the great forward strides of American civilization—have blurred the edges of reality. The pseudo-events which flood our consciousness are neither true nor false in the old familiar senses. The very same advances which have made them possible have also made the images—however planned, contrived, or distorted—more vivid, more attractive, and more persuasive than reality itself.

We cannot say that we are being fooled. It is not entirely inaccurate to say that we are being ‘informed.’ This world of ambiguity is created by those who believe they are instructing us, by our best public servants, and with our own collaboration. Our problem is the harder to solve because it is created by people working honestly and industriously at respectable jobs. It is not created by demagogues or crooks, by conspiracy or evil purpose. The efficient mass production of pseudo-events—in all kinds of packages, in black-and-white, in technicolor, in words, and in a thousand other forms—is the work of the whole machinery of our society. It is the daily product of men of good will. The media must be fed! The public must be informed! . . .“

(Daniel Boorstin, The Image, 1961)

The most informative and vital reality of this week’s campaign was Kamala Harris’ and Tim Walz’s two-day bus tour of southeastern Georgia, a region of the state usually ignored by Democratic campaigns. The press, however, preferred to pay more attention to a tepid and irritating pseudo-event: the media-pushed and media-pumped-up “sit-down” interview with Dana Bash.

The tour was vibrant and left a neglected region feeling noticed—and needed. (The interview? I’ll get to that eventually. Allow me a few moments of pleasure first.) Harris and Walz were greeted at the airport in Savannah by students from Savannah State University, the oldest public historically Black university in the state. At Liberty County High School they met with members of the school’s marching band. They clapped and beamed as the band played, and Kamala, her warm and sparkling gaze moving from one student after another, linked their lives as band members to their future as leaders—and implicitly to her own ups and downs putting herself “on the field…in front of people” and getting to where she now is:

“I WAS IN BAND WHEN I WAS YOUR AGE…IT REQUIRES A WHOLE LOT OF REHEARSAL, A LOT OF PRACTICE, LONG HOURS. SOMETIMES YOU HIT THE NOTE, SOMETIMES YOU DON'T. BUT ALL THAT PRACTICE MAKES FOR BEAUTIFUL MUSIC.

AND THAT IS A METAPHOR, THAT IS SYMBOLIC FOR EVERYTHING THAT YOU ALL DO IN YOUR LIVES. WHICH IS YOU ARE GOING TO SHOW WHAT A WINNING TEAM LOOKS LIKE, YOU ARE GOING TO SHOW WHAT IT MEANS TO PUT YOURSELF ON THE FIELD, TO PUT YOURSELF IN FRONT OF PEOPLE, TO HAVE THE CONFIDENCE TO DO IT.

SOMETIMES YOU'RE GOING TO HIT THE STEP RIGHT, SOMETIMES YOU ARE NOT. SOMETIMES YOU'RE GOING TO WIN THE GAME, SOMETIMES YOU MAY NOT. BUT YOU KNOW, YOU NEVER LET ANY CIRCUMSTANCE KNOCK YOU DOWN OR SLOW YOU DOWN. YOU JUST KEEP GOING AT IT.

THAT'S WHO YOU ARE. AND THAT'S WHY WE ARE SO CONFIDENT IN EVERYTHING THAT YOU ARE DOING AND WILL CONTINUE TO DO FOR OUR COUNTRY. SO JUST KEEP BEING YOU, AND BEING EXCELLENT IN EVERYTHING YOU DO.”

Their next stop was Sandfly Bar-B-Q in Savannah, where they had actual conversations with customers and workers.

(Click here or below pic for video of what I just described):

Pic: Harris and Walz talking to workers at the Sandfly Bar-B-Q during visit Savannah. Cick here for video.:

The tour ended Thursday with a rally in Savannah, in which Kamala—as she always does—tailored her stump speech so that this particular audience would feel seen and important. (The following homemade clip is of the very end of her speech; it will only take a minute or two to watch):

Kamala’s ability to make connection—with her words, her eyes, her smile, her laugh, her gestures—is a super-power that the mainstream press doesn’t seem to have cared much about as they pressured her, without waiting a moment once they’d exhausted their DNC stories, to provide “unscripted” answers in a “sit-down” interview with a member of the press.

The Big Story they collectively generated was reminiscent of similar stories about Hillary Clinton’s “avoidance” of the press. They just can’t stand being ignored, can they? But they have the mechanism to get even. Marx called it “owning the means of production,” and in this case, it’s a version of reality itself that’s being produced:

The subtext—and at times explicit text—of Hillary’s “avoidance” was that she was hiding something that she didn’t want subjected to the probing of “hardball” questions (usually about her emails.) But take a look at any of her press conferences; harassment is more accurate a description than “hardball.”

With Kamala, who didn’t come to her campaign like Hillary, carrying the weight of past scandals in which the press often merged her with her husband Bill, the issue was competence rather than secrets. Did she have what it takes to be POTUS? Would she fall apart without a teleprompter? Are “vibes” and “joy” all she has to offer? Is there any “substance” to her?

The petulant press got something extra to headline when it was announced that the interview would finally happen—but with a Lancelot sitting by Queen Kamala’s side for her to turn to when she couldn’t handle Dana Bash’s “tough questions.”

From the Wall Street Journal:

“Don’t think Kamala Harris’s handlers are shielding her from tough questions? Consider that in her first sit-down interview with the press this week, she’s bringing along a crutch: running mate Tim Walz.

The Vice President’s campaign has finally allowed her to take questions from Dana Bash of CNN. But instead of a one-on-one interview, Ms. Bash will have to deal with the Veep and Mr. Walz. This is a deliberate attempt to limit the potential exposure risks for the Vice President.

The one-on-two format will limit Ms. Harris’s time in answering questions. It will also make it harder for Ms. Bash to pose follow-up questions that bore in on the Vice President’s contradictions with previous positions, or get beyond general blather and seek specifics on taxes or foreign policy. Mr. Walz will be there with a parachute to rescue the presidential candidate if she has a rough go or struggles to answer something…

….The Bash interview is an attempt to rebut the criticism that she hasn’t done any interviews as a candidate. But that isn’t nearly enough, especially with Mr. Walz along as chaperone.”

So Tim Walz, who is a great guy but hasn’t been traveling the globe, meeting with allies and negotiating with not-so-friendly leaders over the past three years, has more experience with foreign policy than Vice-President Kamala Harris?

Oh, forgot, Tim has a penis.

If the portrait of Kamala as withering when those tough questions “bore in” (have fun with that metaphor) isn’t enough to make you skeptical about the WSJ’s gender politics, consider this:

Was Sarah Palin there to rescue McCain from tough foreign policy questions? Like how far Russia is from Alaska? How lucky that he had Sarah Palin there to take over when the “probing” and “boring in” became too much for him.

The fact is that it’s typical for a POTUS candidate to do an interview with their VP choice. It’s just the timeframe that was different this time, because the whole pre-election period has been so compressed.

With a parachute or not, the interview—as we were constantly told—was going to be a crucial test for Kamala:

So Thursday came, and sandwiched in between talking to working folks and the Savannah rally, Kamala—along with her “chaperone” Tim—“sat down” with Dana Bash for the “highly anticipated” interview.

There were no questions about taxes that Kamala needed Tim to “rescue” her from. There was one question about foreign policy: predictably, about the Israel/Gaza war. (Did Dana Bash really expect Kamala to announce a major shift in policy on a Thursday night at the end of a Georgia campaign tour just because she asked nicely, or what?) The opening question was that silly “What would you do on day one?”—and when Kamala didn’t answer it literally (“Well, first I’d unpack my briefcase, take a satisfying dump in the Oval Office john, and then I’d issue a couple of executive orders,” etc.) Dana asked it again. And then she asked the same of Tim.

Next up, in response to Kamala’s specifying parts of her proposed “opportunity economy,” Dana challenged her with: “You’ve been Vice-President for three-and-a-half years; the steps you’re talking about now; why haven’t you done them already?” (Jeez, maybe reforming the whole economy wasn’t part of the VEEP job description.)

Then there was a whole lot of time spent on fracking. It was one of several questions that had the basic format of: “You said this then; Why are you saying something different now?” In other words, challenging Harris on what the press calls a “flip-flop” (something that Donald Trump does as often as he arranges his hair and never gets called out for.) Leaving Trump’s penchant out of it (one of my FB friends says with him it’s more like “ping pong” than “flip-flop”,) I have to say that in my opinion, “flip-flop” needs to be thrown in the garbage along with other journalistic “gotcha” equipment. I don’t know about you but much of my life has been a series of flip-flops such as changing my mind/behavior due to:

learning something I didn’t know before,

accommodating to a new situation,

noticing something I hadn’t seen before,

regretting hurting someone,

realizing something isn’t working,

getting older and less dogmatic,

getting older and smarter,

finally hearing what another person is saying,

having a personal experience that’s transformative.

Cynically “flipping” ones position from something deeply held to something one doesn’t really believe but hopes is going to get votes is one thing. That’s Trump’s specialty, except nothing is “deeply held” by him except staying out of jail. Changing, learning, growing, or accommodating different circumstances is another. Yet Bash—and she’s hardly alone—asks Harris if voters should believe what she says now because it’s different from something she said in the past:

Bash: Generally speaking, how should voters look at some of the changes that you’ve made — that you explained some of here — in your policy? Is it because you have more experience now and you’ve learned more about the information? Is it because you’re running for president in a Democratic primary? And should they feel comfortable and confident that what you’re saying now is gonna be your policy moving forward?

Harris replied that voters could trust that her values would remain the same, as they had been in the past despite the demands of different circumstances. And really, what more could a person truthfully say? When Obama was elected, he was opposed to same-sex marriage. He changed his mind on that. Most of us applauded. Would we have wanted him to not change his policy on same-sex marriage just because when he was first elected he felt differently?

And what about the craven motivation implied in “Is it because you’re running for president in a Democratic primary?” And if that was the case, would anyone so accused reply “yes”??

The next question was whether Harris would appoint a Republican to her cabinet. Harris said yes, and I thought it was a great opening for Bash to delve more deeply into Kamala’s views on how she’d govern, which are so different from Trump’s (he’s going to fire anyone who is, is married to, or lives on the same block as a Democrat.) Instead, she made an absurd segue (“Speaking of Republicans…”) to Trump’s ridiculous questioning of Kamala’s racial identity.

BASH: Speaking of Republicans, I want to ask you about your opponent, Donald Trump. I was a little bit surprised, people might be surprised to hear that you have never interacted with him, met him face to face. That’s gonna change soon, but what I want to ask you about is what he said last month. He suggested that you happened to turn Black recently for political purposes, questioning a core part of your identity.

This was yet another question that left me wondering, as so many of Bash’s questions did, just why she was asking it. Why quote Donald Trump? It was among his stupidest remarks (which is saying a lot) and had already gotten way more air-time than it deserved. In a 45 minute interview, in what world was it worth devoting a question to?

I suspect that Bash wanted to get a juicy counter-attack out of Kamala, who hadn’t risen to Trump’s bait on this thus far. And—bless Kamala’s brilliance and composure—she still refused to fall into that trap:

HARRIS: Same old, tired playbook. Next question, please. (LAUGH)

BASH: That’s it?

HARRIS: That’s it.

Stymied, Bash turned to Israel/Gaza, was given no headlines, and tried to get Tim Walz to confess that he and Gwen hadn’t used IVF but a different kind of fertility treatment (and so…?) had claimed to be in combat when he hadn’t (according to Walz, just grammatical sloppiness) and in 2006 had made false claims about an arrest for drunk and reckless driving. I didn’t even know about that last one, and I’m pretty up on the campaign. All in all, not a terrific use of time when you think about all the important topics that had not been touched on. The catalogue of Walz’s “falsehoods” ended with what seems to be Dana Bash’s favorite “tough” question: “What do you say to voters who aren’t sure whether they can take you at your word?”

Kind of astonishing, isn’t it, that Walz’s honesty should be presented as a central uncertainty in a campaign in which he and Harris are running against a chronic and unscrupulous liar who lies about events and policies that have enormous consequences for the future of our country.

“What fertility treatment did you really use? Come on, confess!”

CNN had some chutzpah to advertise this as an “in depth” interview.

You’ll have noticed that I haven’t discussed any of Kamala Harris’ or Tim Walz’s answers, except for Kamala’s “next question please.” That’s because, as I browsed through journalist’s and commentator’s evaluations of their “performances” (mostly: “did what they had to” and “did no harm”) I was struck by the fact that no-one was grading Dana Bash’s “performance.” As a former teacher I know that the quality of the answers that are given has a lot to do with the questions that are asked. Kamala and Tim were perfectly solid—no dreaded “stumbles” or “gaffes” and Tim was hardly a “crutch” as per the WSJ—but Bash’s poor questions didn’t stimulate reflection or conversation or anything, really, that we hadn’t heard or read (except for the drunk driving thing) many times over the past weeks.

Bash was formulaic, unimaginative, at times passive-aggressive, and perhaps worst of all, didn’t really seem interested in anything she was asking. Amazingly, especially when you consider their opponent, the overarching theme of the interview might be summed up as: Can the American people trust you two? For their endurance and equanimity during the interview I give them both an A. As for Bash, the consensus among my Facebook friends was barely a C-. And that was generous.

And so, once again, the mainstream press cooked up a pseudo-issue (“Why is Kamala Harris Avoiding the Press?”), pumped it up to headline centrality and urgency, widely advertised the eventual event itself (The Big Interview) as a major happening that “you won’t want to miss”, and then….delivered next to nothing. Virtually a perfect illustration of Boorstin’s prescient (1960!) concept of the pseudo-event.

As a palate-cleanser, I’ll end with Lawrence O’Donnell reporting on the Georgia tour. He’s one commentator that I’d love to see interview Harris and Walz. In this one spot, which admittedly is not aimed at policy, he provides more “substance” than the interview we were all so primed to reserve our Thursday night for.

Thanks so much for reading this. I know my stacks are long, and I appreciate all of you who are following my weekly “Election Watch” editions!

Unless anything of great moment happens this coming week, I may take a break from election coverage until the debate which may or may not happen. What do you think? Will he show up or back out?