Vice President Kamala Harris’ much-anticipated CNN interview on Thursday didn’t go as expected, at least not according to the odds of the presidential election.
Newsweek reports, “The vice president is the favorite to win with a probability of 10/11 (52.4 percent) on Thursday, tied with Donald Trump at 19/20 (51.3 percent) every Friday morning, according to the Star Sports betting company. .”
“During the same period, the odds of a Trump victory in November rose from 21/20 (48.8 percent) before the interview to 20/21 (51.2 percent), according to UK-based bookmaker Betfair,” the outlet said.
Star Sports betting analyst William Kedjanyi also spoke to Newsweek.
“Vice President Harris is now tied at 19/20 with Republican candidate Donald Trump, slightly drifting from yesterday’s 10/11,” the analyst said. “California has been 5/6 in the last few weeks, but they failed to advance before Trump in the market.”
Kedjanyi added: “GOP supporters hope Trump can now redress the balance, ahead of the November presidential election.”
Forbes pointed out that when Trump was behind Harris about 2 points among bookmakers after the Democratic National Convention last week, but then gained some ground in the past week after Robert F. Kennedy’s endorsement of the Republican last Friday.
“Bettors on the crypto-based betting platform Polymarket give Trump odds of slightly more than 50% to Harris’ 49%, while predicting that both candidates have roughly the same chance of winning the swing state of Pennsylvania,” Forbes said.
After all the glitz and glamor at the DNC last week, the visuals of Harris’s CNN interview seem small, and not unlike the Wizard of Oz, made “man behind the curtain”-effect.
Audience editor-at-large Ben Domenech noted, “Television is mostly about visuals. Whoever set these visuals is terrible at work. Bad lighting, make-up, hair, color choices, Walz’s crooked collar, angles that make Kamala look small, shots at the middle of a cup of water, from an ill-fitting suit … all this looks bad.
Television is mostly about visuals. Whoever set this visual is terrible at work. The bad lighting, the make-up, the hair, the color choice, the slanted Walz collar, the angle that makes Kamala look small, the shot in the middle of a cup of water, from the wrong setting… it all looks bad. pic.twitter.com/6KqlthfuKn
– Ben Domenech (@bdomenech) August 30, 2024
Then there’s her body language, which tells. GOP Rep. Byron Donalds did a good job on Fox News on Friday articulating the message he was sending.
“Forget everything they said,” Donalds said. “People come back and watch your body language.”
“When you ask about policy and flip-flopping, he looks down, he looks small. He doesn’t seem to believe what he’s saying, because he doesn’t,” said the congressman. “He’s trying to remember what he was trained to do.”
“This is not the leader our country needs at this crucial time. We need Donald J. Trump,” Donalds concluded.
Go back and watch Kamala’s body language:
When he asked about family, he relaxed and made eye contact.
When he was asked about his policy, he was not confident and seemed aloof.
Why?
Because they don’t believe in the policy & try to remember what the staff was trained to do. pic.twitter.com/5jbqyX1RGj
– Byron Donalds (@ByronDonalds) August 30, 2024
Most rational people have learned to take what politicians say, but when a candidate makes a major policy move just months out from Election Day, it’s buyer (especially) beware.
Harris said he now backs building the border wall, opposes fracking bans, and isn’t pushing for Medicare-for-All as he did as a presidential candidate in 2019.
CNN’s Dana Bash raised the issue of major policy flips in the interview.
“How should the voters see some of the changes that you have made, that you have explained in your policy? Is it because you have more experience now and you have learned more about the information? Is it because you were president in the Democratic primary? Bash inquire.
“Should they be comfortable and confident that what you’re saying now will be your policy going forward?” the CNN host asked more.
Harris replied, “I think the most important and most important aspect of my perspective and policy decisions is that my values ​​have not changed.”
That’s all you need to know.
His values ​​will be the same as his policies. Harris himself provides a perfect example to prove the point.
After sponsoring the multi-trillion dollar Green New Deal as a senator, as vice president, he cast a vote on the Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022.
“You mentioned the Green New Deal. I’ve always believed – and I’ve been working on it – that the climate crisis is real, that it’s an important matter that we have to use metrics that include implementing deadlines. We did that with the Inflation Reduction Act. … Value that hasn’t changed,” Harris told Bash.
By the way, the “green” initiative included in the IRA cost almost three times more than the administration’s forecast, Bloomberg reported in August 2023.
In April 2023, researchers at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, working with investment firm Goldman Sachs, updated their estimate of the cost of the law’s green initiatives from $385 billion over a 10-year period to more than $1 trillion.
The CNN interview, his first since becoming a presidential candidate 40 days ago, did not go well for Harris, and buyers and the voting public could see that.
This article first appeared in The Western Journal.
