Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz did not particularly shine during their first interview Thursday evening on CNN, but still managed to avoid any missteps, believes Luc Laliberté, a specialist in American politics.
• Also read: Kamala Harris’ first interview: ‘My values haven’t changed’
• Also read: Joe Biden’s withdrawal: Kamala Harris knew nothing about it before the day of the announcement
“(Kamala Harris) didn’t take any risks yesterday. She just did the job. There were no disasters, there were no missteps. We didn’t stumble,” the expert said in an interview with LCN, the day after the Democratic performance.
“She offered a few examples, otherwise she repeated her campaign lines. There was nothing yesterday that I had not already heard,” he said.
With a slight lead in national polls, the current vice president is not the one who should be in attack mode in the election race, and her strategists would have understood this well.
“If we are not in attack mode, what we need to do is avoid stumbling so as not to harm the very real progress that we are seeing. We have done the work,” judges Mr. Laliberté.
The Democratic candidate did not, however, deliver an impressive performance, particularly in her response to the question of what she would do on her first day in the White House, with Ms Harris preferring to remain vague.
“I didn’t feel like I was hearing a leader speaking, the response was delivered in a monotonous, unenthusiastic tone, and it was essentially, in substance, empty,” the specialist analyzed.
The staging in a cafeteria did not convince Mr. Laliberté either, with the image of a “very small” Kamala Harris alongside her running mate, in a dark area.
“For the work on the image, for which we pay specialists a high price, personally, I say to myself (that) there is someone who has not done his job,” he noted.
“It’s a defensive interview (…) We didn’t win anyone, but on the contrary, I don’t think we lost anyone,” Mr. Laliberté summarized.
