Friday Mailbag!

It's about that time.

Happy Friday!

We made it!

25 days until the 2024 election.

??? days until we know a winner.

101 days until the next president is inaugurated.

This week we learned that a) we (probably) won’t have any more debates b) Tim Walz is veering off message (get rid of the electoral college??) c) the Blue Wall is showing cracks d) one beer makes me tipsy (this happened last night in Salt Lake City; I blame the altitude.)

So, what was on your mind this week? We had LOTS of great questions. I got to as many as I could below. If I didn’t answer yours, never fear — I am doing a livestream on my YouTube channel at 1 pm eastern today where I will answer a bunch more. Tune in!

The Friday mailbag is one of a handful of posts every week that are exclusively for paid subscribers. If you are a free subscriber, you’ll be able to read some of it. But why not enjoy the whole thing! Become a paid subscriber today!

Let’s do this.

Q: Chris, to my eye, Harris is running a very conservative campaign, the type that a frontrunner might typically run. She is assiduously avoiding opportunities for significant missteps and is also deliberately staying somewhat vague on certain positions. Hillary Clinton also ran a frontrunner campaign late, but as we know, she came up just short. I fear Harris might suffer the same fate unless she embraces more risk.

I understand that a) Harris has had an exceptionally compressed candidacy and b) given the short schedule, any misstep could potentially be fatal as there isn't time to correct it. However, it seems to me that she's trying not to lose the race rather than trying to win it. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on the race Harris has been running in recent weeks.

A: I totally agree. And have talked to more than a few Democratic strategists who think the same.

I think it’s always important to keep in mind just how unique the Harris campaign is. She’s been a presidential candidate for less than three months! Like, there is no blueprint for how that can or should work!

And, I think that the early — and prolonged — surge of support for Harris in a weird way might have complicated her strategy. She was riding so high, so quickly — in terms of polling, fundraising, organic excitement etc. — that her campaign, rightly, just sort of got out of the way and surfed the wave.

The issue though is that the wave has now crested. And we still have a month left in the campaign.

Harris has been running like the frontrunner — limiting media exposure, running a careful campaign — almost since she got into the race. And I think that sort of fits her personality. I don’t think she’s a massive risk taker, politically speaking.

But, Trump clearly has found a bit of momentum of late — especially in the Blue Wall states. And it’s not immediately clear to me what Harris will do in reaction to that. This week she started doing more media interviews, which, as I have said all along, is smart.

She should get out and talk as much as possible. People need to know more about her so that the scary image of her that Trump is presenting feels false. And she needs to spend a big chunk of every campaign speech or interview talking about abortion. That’s how she wins.

Q: Hey Chris,

Back when Bill Belichick was the coach up here in New England, the media would complain that he didn't answer questions or gave non-answers. The media would says 'it is not about us, it is about the fans who deserve answers". Truth is, the fans could care less if he talked to reporters as long as he won.

So in regards to Kamala, do you think the average voter really cares if she talks to "legitimate" news outlets? Or does doing appearances on things like the Colbert Show provide enough of what she needs to win and she doesn't need to answer hard hitting questions from news outlets?

A:

I still laugh when I watch this. Epic.

Candidly, I think most media is very close to the same these days. (This is one of the reasons I am excited to talk about the end of the mainstream media with

Taylor Lorenz

next week!)

As in, Harris doing an interview on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast or Colbert is roughly the same, in terms of who sees it, as doing an interview with the Washington Post or CBS News.

I still think you probably get a bit more reach from the mainstream media outlets but that gap has closed considerably.

Content is content. I don’t know that most people differentiate something in a mainstream media outlet from something on, say, Substack.

And, it’s not like Trump is doing super hard-hitting interviews either. He is doing a lot of Fox. And a lot of bro-ey podcasts. Neither are peppering him with hard questions.

Do I think, from a democracy standpoint, it’s not great that presidential candidates no longer have to go through established media outlets to get nationwide attention? Sort of, yes. Because those mainstream outlets would ask hard questions — and the candidates would be forced to submit to those hard questions because it was the only way they could get the attention they needed/wanted.

Living in a world where presidential candidates can get the reach and audience they want without ever being challenged on much of anything isn’t great. But it’s the world we currently live in. And I think the mainstream media’s influence is only waning.

Q: You mention in your mission statement that you are now free to say whatever you choose, no longer taking a paycheck from a company. In what ways do you report on political topics now that are different than the ways you reported when you were hired by CNN? Is there a significant difference?