I don’t know about you but I was disappointed by the CNN interview of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Interviewer Dana Bash wanted her colleagues to say she was tough, so she asked several gotcha questions. In particular, I was annoyed by the “what will you do in your first day in office?” question. It seems to be a standard question, but the answers it elicits are either banal or unrealistic. I recall that Trump told Sean Hannity that he would “drill, baby, drill” and “build the wall” on his first day. Oh, and he would be a dictator on day one. Harris just offered some platitudes about starting “the opportunity culture.” The realistic answer might be “I’m going to meet with my new staff; I’m going to find out where the bathroom is; I’m going to check out the desk drawers and arrange my family pictures; I’m going to plan our legislative agenda.” If Harris were coming in after Trump, she would have many executive orders to sign, reversing his bad ideas. But she follows Biden, and it is unlikely she will reverse anything.

Thom Hartmann was disappointed by the CNN interview. He explains here:

CNN shows everything that’s wrong with 2024’s repeat of 2016’s election coverage. In an interview with Vice President Harris and Governor Walz Thursday night, CNN’s Dana Bash chose to repeat pathetic rightwing attacks on the candidates instead of engaging in issues of importance to a majority of Americans. Only four of the questions she asked during the entire interview were not rightwing talking points. She could have asked about their pledge to protect Social Security and Medicare after Trump proposed cuts to both programs every year for his 4 years in office, or the 90% of Americans who want weapons of war off our streets, or their efforts to revive labor unions in the face of GOP opposition, or how they feel about Republicans on the Supreme Court thwarting Biden’s efforts to cut student loan debt, or what they’d do about the severe ethics problem with bribed Supreme Court justices Alito, Roberts, and Thomas, or their support for the queer community in the face of unrelenting attacks by JD Vance and other rightwingers, but, no. Instead, she had to ask about a one-word misspeak by Walz five years ago, whether Harris identified as Black or Indian or what, and why Walz implicitly lied when he said he and his wife had undergone “IVF” treatment for infertility when, in fact, they’d undergone the similar “IUI” treatment. As if anybody, anywhere, gives a damn. Probably the best analysis of the interview is here on Substack by Jeff Teidrich. Meanwhile, CNN’s management is ebullient about having pulled in a “whopping 6 million viewers.” Like I said, money over country…