ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith warned in a Thursday video that Vice President Kamala Harris won’t succeed by adopting President Joe Biden’s low-visibility campaign strategy.
Biden faced criticism for running a “basement campaign” in 2020 as he frequently remained in his home studio for media appearances and held limited rallies. Smith, on “Front Office Sports” Tuesday said Harris must follow former President Donald Trump’s approach of “showing up everywhere” if she wants to defeat him in the November election.
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“She’s using rallies as interviews. No, no, that’s not the same thing. You got to go up there and fight fire with fire. He’s showing up everywhere despite 34 felony convictions, two impeachments, multiple civil suits against him. He’s going out there and showing his face everywhere,” Smith said. “And then he’s bringing up the war in Ukraine, he’s bringing up the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza and beyond, he’s bringing up some stuff that’s going on with our borders, stuff that’s going on in this country. And he’s saying, ‘Where is she?’”
“He’s doing that on purpose because this is an engagement in misogyny where he’s trying to imply, ‘I’m a man, I’m strong, I’m willing to show up and fight. Where is she at?’ You can’t answer that by not showing up yourself,” he continued. “It’s working now, please don’t get me wrong … It’s not going to continue to work. You’re going to have to show up and show out just like he does. Wherever he goes, you gon’ have to show up and be like, ‘I’m here too, let’s get it on.’ You gon’ have to treat him like he’s hiding: ‘You need to run from me, it ain’t the other way around.’ She has to do that.”
Harris has typically stuck to scripted remarks since launching her campaign on July 21, providing just one sit-down interview and participating in a single presidential debate. She has not held a single official press conference during her campaign, according to Fox News.
Biden only averaged about 11 press conferences a year heading into the fourth year of his presidency, according to data compiled by the University of California at Santa Barbara’s American Presidency Project. He also neglected to hold a traditional end-of-year press conference in 2023 and decided not to do a prime-time Super Bowl interview in 2024.
“If you don’t do that, then they’re going to piggyback off of Biden,” Smith said. “They’re going to look at what he avoided, they’re gonna say, ‘You’re mirroring that strategy. The Dems forced you to do this.’ That’s not the right way to go, and it’s going to be an excuse for a whole bunch of people to say, ‘We’re living in some trying times, we think he’s tougher, we want to go in that direction.’ That’s his only play.”
Democratic strategist James Carville during a Thursday podcast suggested Harris field a mix of “planted” and unrehearsed questions during public speaking engagements to seem more impressive, without making it “evident” she has prepared for some of the queries.
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