Interview gaffes undermine Kamala Harris, propelling Donald Trump's soaring popularity

The silence and concealment became Kamala Harris's most effective electoral strategy. By avoiding interviews, the vice president allowed the media to craft a quasi-mystical image of her, making her appear unstoppable—even to Donald Trump—on her path to the White House. However, once she began engaging directly with journalists, that illusion shattered, revealing her true persona and prompting voters to turn and flee, as recent polls confirm.

The latest to confirm this trend is the national poll from Fox News, which puts the Republican candidate again two points ahead (50-48%), after being outperformed in September by the Kamala effect in this same house. However, this is not a trend exclusive to conservative media. Progressive-leaning polls such as those by The New York Times, CBS or Quinnipiac University also reflect the demise of the Democratic candidate in her race against Trump.

Harris is not rising in national polls or in those of the swing states

In fact, in a poll conducted by CBS in Arizona last Thursday, voters in one of the key states for November 5 would go overwhelmingly conservative (51-48%). Likewise, last Tuesday, Quinnipiac gave a six-point lead to the former president in Georgia, a considerable margin in one of the disputed swing states and which was key to Joe Biden's election in 2020.

Despite the fact that, according to aggregators Real Clear Politics and 538, Kamala is still ahead in the polling average, the nervousness of Democratic leaders continues to grow to the point of bordering on panic for several reasons. The first, because the gap between the two is closing rapidly. On Friday, the gap was just 1.5 points when October began above the two, according to RCP and on 538, it has gone from 3.3 points to 2.4 - and falling.

The polls "showed a lead for Kamala Harris that wasn't real"

Second, and in the words of David Plouffe, former campaign manager for Barack Obama and senior adviser to Harris', there have been too many polls released that aren't true, most of which pointed to the vice president as the front-runner in the race: "There were a lot of polls, I would say, in the last month that showed a lead for Kamala Harris that wasn't real. That's not what we were seeing. We've seen this basically tied, say, since mid-September."

Even the like-minded media won't save Kamala Harris

More seriously, however, the past two weeks have shown a Kamala - and even her vice presidential candidate, Tim Walz - disoriented and making avoidable mistakes. Every interview of one of the members of the Democratic electoral ticket supposes a loss of votes for the failures they perpetrate. And that most of these encounters with journalists have been in a like-minded media environment where they have not turned the screws. In some cases, as in the program 60 Minutes on CBS, have even gone so far as to air an edited version to hide several word salads from the Democratic hopeful.

In fact, her only visit to a rival field so far, was last Wednesday on Fox, which ended with an unhinged Harris and her campaign denouncing having been victims of an "ambush" by the conservative network and host Bret Baier, all this despite the latter's polite and calm demeanor, and attempts by the candidate's team to boycott and shorten the agreed-upon time for the talk.