Opinion: Debate moderators failed to ask Harris the most important question

“Vice President Harris, you and President Trump were elected four years ago,” began the second sentence debate moderator David Muir of ABC News uttered to kick off Tuesday night’s showdown between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.

Muir clearly meant to say “President Biden” in his question, but he, like his co-moderator Linsey Davis, had Trump on the mind all night. It was an embarrassing and inauspicious start, but instructive about the incompetence to come.

Tuesday could have been an important opportunity to showcase two very different visions for America. Instead, the performance by all four participants in that barren room was lacking. Harris stuck to her memorized soliloquies and baited Trump rather than answer any direct questions with a substantive response.

For his part, Trump gleefully took the bait every time, triggered by Harris’s obvious poking and prodding at his ego. He focused on the tiny trees while ignoring the forest entirely.

The moderators were clearly focused on walking away from the night winning praise from the elite consensus-pushers in the Acela media: fact-checking Trump at every turn, sometimes incorrectly, while ignoring Harris’ false statements entirely. That put them in lockstep with their colleagues in post-debate coverage, like Daniel Dale on CNN, who actually tried to sell the narrative that Trump made 33 false claims while Harris made….one.

But the ABC debate will be remembered not for what was said, but for what wasn’t — both from the candidates and the moderators. Because Muir and Davis had more than 90 minutes to ask the most important question of the Democratic nominee, and they failed to do so.

That question: “Why are you here?”

Seventy-five days earlier, President Joe Biden was the one standing opposite Trump on the presidential debate stage. And what a chaotic, consequential 75 days it has been. Ultra-casual consumers of the news might be wondering what happened in the intervening two-and-a-half months to flip the page from one nominee to another.

Why was the sitting president jettisoned off to California vacations and beach trips while his vice president was installed as the nominee in a matter of hours — with no voter involvement? And most importantly , what did Harris know about Biden’s cognitive decline and mental fitness? How could she not know? And why did she keep what she knew a secret from the country and the world?

It was left to Trump himself to raise the issue in a brief aside that, characteristically for his Tuesday performance, he undermined while throwing out a bizarre insult in the middle of his rant. “She got no votes, he got 14 million votes. You talk about a threat to democracy, he [Biden] got 14 million votes and they threw him out of office,” he said . “And you know what, I’ll give you a little secret, he hates her, he can’t stand her. But he got 14 million votes, and they threw him out.”

A few seconds later, Muir jumped in with a “your time is up, we’ve got a lot more to get to.”

And he did — like Trump’s threats to democracy, while ignoring the very undemocratic way a few thousand delegates selected Harris as the Democratic nominee after the sham of a primary process had already been concluded.

This echoed a similar lack of interest in how Harris became the nominee, and what she really knew about her boss’s fitness for office, during the lone interview she has given. “After the debate you insisted that President Biden was extraordinarily strong. Given where we are now, do you have any regrets about what you told the American people?” asked Dana Bash near the end of the sit-down.

“Not at all,” answered Harris, as she rambled some talking points about the administration. Bash moved on right away: When Biden called and said he was dropping out, “what was that like?” she asked, as if she were Oprah talking to a celebrity about a new relationship.

This matters, because it relates to other elements of the Harris story. ABC allowed her to coast on “my principles haven’t changed” when it comes to serious policy positions she says she no longer believes — everything from banning fracking to, yes, “ gender transition surgery for detained migrants.”

But that’s not acceptable. In the same way these policy evolutions have taken place in the dark with no explanation, so has her leap from vice president to Democratic nominee, with no accounting for what she actually knew behind the scenes.

And it matters that she wasn’t asked to address the elephant in the 2024 electoral room once and for all, because she so rarely offers the public the opportunity to hear her answering a journalist’s questions.

ABC News avoided the issue entirely because they don’t care — they don’t see it as a problem. When Biden was flailing in early July and looked to be heading for a November loss to Trump, the legacy media suddenly became very curious to uncover the truth. Now that Harris is better positioned, why rock the boat?

Harris needs to sit for another interview soon — alone this time. And when the next member of the media gets a chance to ask her the key questions that matter, hopefully someone gets at the basics: “You’re the candidate. How did we get here?”

Steve Krakauer, a NewsNation contributor, is the author of “Uncovered: How the Media Got Cozy with Power, Abandoned Its Principles, and Lost the People” and editor and host of the Fourth Watch newsletter and podcast.

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