Four Questions for Kamala Harris

Harris' first interview goes live tonight. Here's what to watch for

Photo from Harris’ forthcoming interview | CNN

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s sit down with CNN tonight will be an indicator of whether the 2024 presidential campaign will be about vibes or policy. Harris hasn’t done a press interview since she became the Democratic nominee and her campaign has been light on specifics about what she believes or what policies she will pursue.

Tonight’s interview will make clear whether the Harris campaign has decided to break the silence. Take healthcare. Harris’ convention speech mentioned the word “healthcare” just once, offering no details beyond a vague promise to lower its cost. Donald Trump’s speech to the RNC didn’t mention the word at all, a reminder of how little policy has played into this presidential election so far. 

I’m looking for substance tonight, and I’ll be hosting a subscriber chat when it  starts at 9pm Eastern tonight, so become a subscriber to join us!

Some questions on my mind:

1. What’s the Difference Between Harris and Biden?

“New look, same great taste!” doesn’t work so well in politics. Harris needs to explain how her presidency would differ from that of Biden, who ended his campaign not just over his health but also about concerns about his cratering popularity. In fairness to Harris, differentiating herself is not so easy as a sitting Vice President. (This is why I’ve argued it would be in her interests for Biden to resign, giving her a chance as president to distinguish herself.) Still, Harris can articulate her vision without undermining Biden’s. 

Harris in particular has to say something about foreign policy if she wants to keep hold of young voters and the American left. It’s critical that she do so because the unresolved crises America is facing at the end of the Biden administration are piling up. From Ukraine to Gaza and Iran, you don’t have to be a news junkie to have a sense that the world is on fire. There have been reports of Harris privately lobbying Biden to be more sympathetic to the Palestinians in Gaza, so there potentially is some daylight between the two. Accentuating these differences with policy specifics would give voters a reason to expect a change from the dismal status quo. 

2. Healthcare

I want to just stress how insane it is that neither major candidate really said anything about healthcare in their convention speeches. The U.S. spends more on healthcare than any other country but has the worst health outcomes of any other high-income country, studies show. That many Americans must spend roughly the equivalent of rent on healthcare plans and everyone has to constantly fight with insurance companies to get coverage is a national humiliation. 

Every presidential election I can remember centered healthcare as one of the main issues, if not the main issue, as in the case of Senator Bernie Sanders’ campaigns the last two terms and Barack Obama’s in 2008. The issue is just sitting there on the table like a political bazooka for anyone willing to pick it up. While I don’t find Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s healthcare proposals compelling, his willingness to focus on the issue helped him garner enough political support that Trump tapped him for his campaign, as I wrote about yesterday.

American households in the middle three income tiers — the hallowed Middle Class that politicians love to declare their loyalty to — pay 20 percent of their income toward healthcare. For households in the bottom fifth of income groups, their healthcare expenses account for nearly 35 percent of their income. This has got to stop.

Harris was certainly willing to talk about healthcare when she was running against Bernie Sanders in the 2020 presidential primary, pushing a Medicare expansion plan that would have preserved the role of private insurers. Where do you stand now, Madame Vice President?

3. The Middle East 

From the spiraling Israel-Hamas war to the nearly three year old war in Ukraine, the Biden administration has been marked by conflicts that never seem to end, and ones where U.S. involvement seems to be doing little other than sustaining the capacity to fight. The Gaza war will soon enter its second year with not only no end in sight, but with alarming signs that the war has spread to the rest of the region. Just last month, Hamas’ political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, was assassinated in Iran’s capital during its presidential inauguration. That same day, an Israeli airstrike killed a top Hezbollah commander in Lebanon, to which Hezbollah responded by launching a volley of missiles at Israel last week. The fighting follows months of lower-intensity conflict between Israel and Lebanon, Israel and Syria, Israel and Yemen, and the United States and all of them, directly or indirectly.  This is clearly a regional war and yet the Pentagon on Tuesday insists that the war hasn’t spread outside of Gaza.

“We still assess that the conflict between Israel and Hamas is contained to Gaza,” Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said in a press briefing. But it seems even the Pentagon’s chief flack can smell the bullshit rising off the rhetoric, in light of the Hezbollah attack I described earlier. So he added this disclaimer: "What you saw over the weekend, of course, was a much larger scale than what we've seen previously, but it is, in our view, not a wider regional conflict…” 

Since Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, there has also been a sharp rise in the number of tit-for-tat attacks between the United States and Iran-aligned groups. In January, three American soldiers were killed by a suicide drone attack on a previously unacknowledged U.S. base in Jordan. Both before and since, Iran-aligned groups have carried out many attacks on U.S. troops stationed throughout the Middle East, resulting in at least 130 traumatic brain injuries. Many cases involve U.S. troops stationed at far-flung bases in Iraq and Syria, remnants of the War on Terror that the Biden administration has forgotten.

With colleges starting classes around the country, protests are no doubt going to reignite. Will Harris say anything to those students other than “I’m speaking”? This is certainly an issue that Walz, who served in the Army for 24 years, must have some deep thought about. What’s the plan here, Governor?

4. Ukraine

The war in Ukraine is approaching its third year, and with Kyiv’s incursion into Russian territory earlier this month, its most dangerous phase. There’s also very little transparency about America’  role in the conflict.For example, U.S. special operations forces have for months been conducting what are called “sensitive activities” in support of Ukrainian forces, including by providing targeting intelligence. Whatever you think of that, isn’t this something the American public should know? By policy, sensitive activities are concealed from not only the public but much of Congress for reasons that include avoiding “significant embarrassment to the United States, or its allies, or the DoD [Department of Defense].” 

That’s a pretty good metaphor for why the U.S. government doesn’t like talking about the Ukraine war in general (aside from slogans). Because there is not only no end in sight, but not even a strategy to try to end the war, Washington’s blank check support for the war is embarrassing — especially when it has no diplomatic plan of any sort. Trump blusters about ending the war “on day one” but all Harris says is that she will “stand strong with NATO” — whatever that means.

Vice President Harris has sat in on Cabinet and National Security Council meetings for almost four years. Doesn’t she have any insights or opinions about the war?  And again, what about Walz? Questions will obviously be asked, about Gaza, Iran, Ukraine, and even China (if CNN is doing its job.) Whether Walz will be willing to meaningfully say anything  will be an interesting test of the Minnesota Governor’s image as a plain-spoken populist.. It will also be a test of whether all the foreign experience Harris has said she’s accrued as Vice President has granted her what is perhaps the most important ability of any president: to explain it to the public.

— Edited by William M. Arkin