Questions for Kamala Harris (assuming anyone gets to ask them).

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris arrives to speak at a campaign rally at UAW Local 900, Thursday, August 8, 2024, in Wayne, Mich. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)

When President Joe Biden finally folded following his catastrophic debate performance against Donald Trump and dropped out of the 2024 presidential race, the Democrats being the Democrats could scarcely bother with anything as messy as democracy. So they simply crowned Vice President Kamala Harris as the nominee without a single vote having been cast by a single voter.

Since her coronation nearly a month ago, she has not sat down for a one-on-one interview, nor has she taken a single question from the press. There are two reasons for this. First is her well-chronicled inability to ad lib a coherent response to a legitimate policy question. When a question exceeds the rather tight limits of Ms. Harris’s intellect, she is given to spewing gibberish punctuated by her trademark nervous cackle.

The second reason is that Biden administration policy is broadly unpopular. Inflation is biting hard in households that not so long ago were able to easily afford groceries, gas and rent. The chaos on the border is impacting schools and hospitals and public services in nearly every community in the nation. The last thing Ms. Harris wants is to be forced to defend the policies of an administration of which she has been a part for the past three and a half years.

So, the Dems are re-running the “2020 Biden-in-the-Basement” playbook and keeping Kamala Harris carefully under wraps.

But Biden had COVID to protect him. Harris doesn’t. She is bound to be forced out of the cloister some time and there are questions that a properly curious media (assuming that such a thing exists) might want to ask her.

Time and space are limited so here are just a few examples.

Madam Vice President, in 2019 you emphatically stated that you would ban fracking for oil and gas. You now say you don’t want to ban fracking. Have you changed your position based on your better understanding of how fracking helps produce affordable energy, or have you changed your position because Pennsylvania – a must-win state for you – is an oil & gas producing state?”

How about this question?

You have said on many occasions that ‘Bidenomics is working.’ You now seem to be distancing yourself from President Biden’s economic policies. Which of the two truly reflects your beliefs?”

Or…

You have repeatedly called for the abolition of private health insurance in favor of a government-run single payer system. That is, in essence, what the VA is. Given that the VA makes veterans wait months or even years for healthcare, how will a scaled-up version of the VA’s health system meet the needs of 330 million Americans?”

Truthful answers to these questions, and questions like them, don’t help Ms. Harris’s election chances. Voters remember not having to put necessities on a credit card. They remember low gas prices.

So, with the help of the corporate media, Ms. Harris is laying low hoping to simply run out the clock on the 2024 election. And she’s hoping that a sufficient number of independent voters won’t notice.