The media won’t let Kamala Harris fail

In 2009, I wrote a book called “A Slobbering Love Affair” about how liberal journalists fell madly in love with Barack Obama when he was running for president. History may not repeat itself, as the saying goes, but it does rhyme — which is something Kamala Harris, I suspect, is counting on.

The media fell for Obama not only because he was a charismatic liberal Democrat. They went gaga over him because he was something else, something different — a Black man who (with their help) might become president of the United States.

Remember when Chris Mathews said that after hearing Obama’s victory speech he “felt this thrill going up my leg.” Or when Jeff Glor, a rising star at the time at CBS News, went on the air to report that “In addition to enjoying basketball and cycling during down time, Obama loves to play Scrabble…..Obama’s job as a teenager was at a Baskin-Robbins and to this day doesn’t not like ice cream….This is a man who plays to win. No matter what it is, whether it’s the woman he wants to date or elected office or board games, there is ambition there. There is a determination.”

After that, I wrote, “You can’t make this crap up!”

And I quoted Rush Limbaugh, who told me, “Barack Obama is too historically important to fail. The media simply will not let it happen.”

Kamala Harris would also be a first — not only the first woman president, but also the first woman of color to be elected president — a kind of female Barack Obama, though, with all due respect, not as charismatic and certainly not as articulate. 

So even though she hasn’t held a news conference since President Biden dropped out about a month ago, even though she hasn’t sat down for an extended interview — even with a friendly journalist who might toss her softballs — the so-called mainstream media has treated her with a reverence reserved only for the kind of candidate they like personally, and want to see succeed.

This may explain why journalists have played down or flat-out ignored the inconvenient truth that until she became the presumptive nominee of her party — without winning a single primary vote — this woman they have fallen head over heels for was considered a liability on the ticket with Biden.

To be fair, there has been some pushback from mainstream news organizations to Harris’s economic proposals. But according to a new study from the conservative Media Research Center, journalists are largely hopping on the Harris-for-president bandwagon.

“Since Joe Biden exited the 2024 presidential race four weeks ago,” the MRC report says, “the liberal networks have delivered an unprecedented boost of positive publicity to his successor in the race, Vice President Kamala Harris. Not only has Harris received 66 percent more airtime than former President Donald Trump, but the spin of Harris’s coverage has been more positive (84 percent) than any other major party nominee, even as Trump’s coverage has been nearly entirely hostile (89 percent negative).”

The MRC report goes on to state, “Harris is almost certainly the most left-wing nominee of a major party in U.S. history. In 2019, she was named as the most liberal of all U.S. Senators, a grouping that included socialist Bernie Sanders. Yet Harris’s past support for many extreme left-wing ideas, such as the Green New Deal, abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, and imposing Medicare-for-All in place of private health insurance, were completely ignored during this wave of good press.”

In “A Slobbering Love Affair,” I wrote that a journalist I know who helps run a big cable news program told me that for the liberal media, getting Obama elected “was a righteous crusade. It was okay to be biased because the cause was noble.” Are we witnessing something like that now?

Consider this: In 2012, Newsweek magazine ran a cover showing Obama with a halo over his head. In 2024, Time magazine ran a cover entitled “Her Moment,” an artist-rendering of Harris looking not like a tough politician, but more like a calm, beautiful, revered saint. The only thing missing was the halo.

The story inside the magazine, titled “The Reintroduction of Kamala Harris,” compared the atmosphere at a Harris rally to Beyoncé and Taylor Swift concerts and said (warning: history rhyming alert) it “resembled the early days of Barack Obama.”

Despite the cover and favorable story, Harris refused to do an interview with the magazine.

And even though she hasn’t answered any questions outside of a few short remarks mainly before getting on or off an airplane, her friends in the media — and the Harris fans they put on air — have described her as a trailblazer and inspiration, as a strong debater, as an advocate for justice and someone who is empathetic — unlike Trump, the man liberal journalists loathe.

Sooner or later, Harris will sit down with a journalist for an interview, which may even include a few tough questions. But the honeymoon, I suspect, won’t be over — not as long as there’s a chance Trump might win.

Rush Limbaugh’s words still echo all these years later. Instead of Barack Obama’s name, just insert the name of another candidate they’ve fallen for — and his observation, I think, still holds up.

“Kamala Harris is too historically important to fail. The media simply will not let it happen.”

Bernard Goldberg is an Emmy and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award-winning writer and journalist. He is the author of five books and publishes exclusive weekly columns, audio commentaries and Q&As on his Substack page. Follow him @BernardGoldberg.