Former CNN political analyst Chris Cillizza suggested Monday that Vice President Kamala Harris’ cautious campaign strategy could end up causing her to lose against former President Donald Trump in November.
Harris did not give her first sit-down national solo interview since launching her campaign on July 21 until Wednesday with MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle. Cillizza, on his YouTube channel, said Harris’ strategy of avoiding media and not detailing her policy could be blamed if she ultimately loses to Trump, drawing a comparison to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful 2016 campaign.
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“I think it might be a winning political strategy, but if we look back and Kamala Harris does lose this race to Donald Trump — and I think she could — I think we will look back and say they were too risk-averse,” Cillizza said. “That the theory of the Harris campaign was, ‘All we have to do is … meet a low bar of credibility to be an alternative to Donald Trump. That people are not going to vote for that guy, and so it’s a binary choice. If they’re not going to vote for A, they got to vote for B, and Kamala Harris is B.’”
“That may work. The only thing I will say is it does remind me a little bit of eight years ago. That was the working theory behind Hillary Clinton’s campaign: that people were not ultimately going to vote for Donald Trump, so even if they didn’t love Hillary Clinton, they weren’t going to vote for … Trump, and therefore, again, binary choice, you vote for the other person, which would have been Clinton,” he continued. “We know how that turned out, right? Clinton was risk-averse. I mean, she is risk-averse by nature, the campaign reflected that, she was risk-averse. They didn’t do all that much on the offensive end; they mostly played defense just because they thought if they just ran out the clock, they would win. She obviously didn’t win that election.”
Harris repeatedly asserted that wealthy Americans and corporations need to “pay their fair share” of taxes during her interview with Ruhle. Pollster Frank Luntz on Thursday said voters have no desire to hear that phrase, as they want more specific policies from the vice president that she is failing to deliver.
“So, if Harris loses, I think we might look back and say she should have taken a few more risks,” Cillizza said. “She should have been a little more willing to put herself out there, even though that putting yourself out there does have risk because there’s opportunity in that.”
Cillizza on Friday asserted Harris is not conducting many interviews because “she’s not great in those settings.”
Harris is currently only leading Trump by 2% nationally, according to the RealClearPolling average.
(Featured Image Media Credit: Screenshot/YouTube/Chris Cillizza)
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