In his latest book, entitled Howard Stern Comes Againthe famous American radio host says he tried several times to interview Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election campaign. In vain.
“Why didn’t she do it?” I’ll tell you why: she was scared. She thought the matter was in the bag [pour son élection] and she thought that by coming to talk to Howard, she was going to ruin everything,” he wrote.
And yet… it is the risk of grabbing her microphone that the Democrat should have taken, rather than avoiding it. This would have allowed her to reach part of the electorate she needed to become the first female president of the United States, retrospectively estimates the strong figure in the American media landscape.
Eight years later, the analysis appears to have been embraced by Kamala Harris’ campaign team, which this week decided to seat the Democratic candidate in the guest chair of the Howard Stern Show. It happened last Tuesday on Sirius XM.
In an hour of interview, on friendly ground, the vice-president was able to introduce herself to a clientele less committed to her cause and more undecided, shoot several arrows in the direction of her Republican opponent, talk as much about foreign policies, the defense of democracy, that of his passion for the group U2 and for Formula 1…
But above all, she also confirmed one thing: if she is currently walking on the same path as Hillary Clinton towards the White House, facing the same opponent, Kamala Harris seems to have learned from the mistakes of her predecessor. And since she entered the scene last July, she has tried to avoid putting her feet in the same footsteps.
Calculated audacity
“The vice-president has shown that she can take risks,” something Hillary Clinton had more difficulty doing, summarizes Shawn J. Parry-Giles, director of the Department of Communication at the University of Maryland and specialist in political discourse in the United States. “She took these risks by debating with Donald Trump and offering to debate with him again.” On Wednesday, the Republican definitively rejected the possibility of a second televised duel with Kamala Harris. “It also does so with a voter targeting strategy that no longer only uses the major traditional networks, but also social media and local media. »
This materialized all week, with several media appearances by the Democratic candidate in predictable spaces, such as the show 60 Minutes from CBS or The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on the same network, and others which are a little less so, such as Howard Stern’s media mass or the feminist podcast Call Her Daddy, hosted by the young Alexandra Cooper.
Last week, Kamala Harris went to support the decriminalization of cannabis against two ex-NBA players, Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson, who host the podcast called All the Smoke. A statement and a noted presence in a less formal setting.
On the ground, the Democratic candidate is also daring. At the end of September, she went to southern Arizona, on the border with Mexico, to announce her intentions to tighten the legal framework around asylum seekers. She also promised to fight against fentanyl entering American territory illegally, her “big priority” once elected.
It was the first time since the start of her campaign that the vice-president approached the border. The ground is slippery for the Democrats, because it has become, in the Republican camp, an inexhaustible source to feed the anger, indignation and ordinary racism, often through exaggeration and disinformation, of its electoral base.
A controlled story
“Kamala Harris has a different way of controlling her story, compared to Hillary Clinton,” summarizes Kristina Horn Sheeler, specialist in political communications, joined by Duty at Indiana University. His late arrival in the race [à la faveur du retrait soudain de Joe Biden fin juillet] left her less time to make herself known between now and election day, but, consequently, the possibility, in an emergency, of taking the lead in defining the terms of her campaign herself, before the Republicans do it for him. »
In the public arena for less time than Hillary Clinton, and with a “less charged” history than the former Secretary of State, Kamala Harris therefore quickly took action, easily thwarting the suspicious comments which accompanied the candidacy of his predecessor. And it did it too, without neglecting its presence in key States, lands to which Mme Clinton had, in 2016, given a little too much confidence and granted a few fewer political rallies, which was fatal to her on voting day.
Thursday evening, former President Barack Obama supported the approach by calling on the male electorate – mainly more oriented towards Trump – to vote for Kamala Harris, during a political rally in Pennsylvania, one of the pivotal states necessary to obtain the keys to the White House.
Since July, she, her running mate, Tim Walz, and her allies have been making multiple stops there to mobilize the troops in this state won by Joe Biden in 2020 with a majority of 80,000 votes.
Last week, the Democrat also returned to Wisconsin, a state she must win in November to ensure a victory. Boldly, she presented herself there in a corner acquired by the Republicans, the town of Ripon in the county of Fond du Lac, alongside the Republican Liz Cheney, who supports her candidacy. The event was held just a few miles from the Little White Schoolhouse, a public school that, in 1854, hosted the meeting between American elected officials who laid the foundations of the Republican Party.
Symbolically, it was in Wisconsin that she launched her electoral campaign as a Democratic presidential candidate, during a political rally organized in Milwaukee.
“Doing risky things can sometimes be considered irresponsible for women,” notes Kristina Horn Wheeler. And for African American women, there is the added threat that it will be perceived as aggressive recklessness. But his team is well aware of these stereotypes and makes strategic choices that succeed in thwarting them. »
With just over three weeks until the vote, the strategy is giving encouraging signs to Democrats. The latest Siena College survey on behalf of the New York Times Kamala Harris confirmed a three-point lead over Donald Trump in national voting intentions on Tuesday. On Thursday, Ipsos reported that the Democrat led by six points among the suburban electorate, a segment whose influence can be crucial in making or breaking a candidacy, particularly in close races.
And this race is tight: the two candidates are still neck and neck in several key states, such as Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Georgia, which, next November, will be able to say whether M’s risk-takingme Harris will have worked. Or not.