MAUREEN CALLAHAN: The week Kamala's campaign collapsed

Presidential campaigns are, to a large degree, about telling stories.

Kamala Harris is profoundly bad at telling stories. But to watch her whirlwind press tour this week — a tour that only hit sympathetic outlets — was to be told that, despite our own eyes and ears, she is the smartest, strongest, most capable leader since Lincoln.

Not to mention a true champion of women – an assertion untrammeled by those dark allegations against her husband, Doug Emhoff.

Kamala's media blitzkrieg began on Sunday, with an appearance on Alex Cooper's sex-centric podcast 'Call Her Daddy'.

Yes: The left's own Sarah Palin decided to prove her intellectual mettle on a podcast that most recently made headlines for Katy Perry's disclosure that she performs oral sex on her partner, Orlando Bloom, after he does the dishes.

This is the platform Harris chose to inaugurate her press tour, months after securing the nomination? This is what she finds most emblematic of feminism?

Speaking with a host who has done deep dives with Post Malone about his 'puffy nipples', badgered Miley Cyrus about her favorite sex acts, and titled one episode 'The Roadmap to His Assh**e' — one wonders, truly, if Kamala's team is setting her up to fail or simply putting her in front of people who, by comparison, make her look smart.

Not one legitimate press conference to date. Not one sit-down with an adversarial outlet or interviewer.

Then again, why bother?

The New Yorker — which ceased being the most august weekly publication in America circa MAGA — has just put Harris on its cover, a resplendent illustration of her in profile, bathed in regal purple, looking skyward.

Inside, the editors offer a five-page editorial endorsement that is more anti-Trump than pro-Kamala.

'As recently as three months ago,' the editors acknowledge, 'the Washington cognoscenti cast aspersions on her political skills.'

That's one way to put it. Barack Obama reportedly did not want Harris leading the ticket, so doubtful was he that she could defeat Trump.

Save his appearance at the Democratic National Convention this summer, Obama has been remarkably absent – until Thursday night.

What was meant to be Kamala's victory lap has, to top Dems, clearly become a five-alarm fire.

Speaking in Pittsburgh, Obama had the temerity to bully black male voters — a historically disenfranchised demographic that is increasingly fleeing to Trump.

'Part of it makes me think,' he said, 'that, well, you just aren't feeling the idea of having a woman as president.'

How insulting. Obama knows better, not least because his party and the media were all but begging his wife to run.

It was also announced this week that Bill Clinton, who has his own troubles with women, will be hitting the campaign trail in a last-ditch attempt to boost voter enthusiasm.

Note to Kamala: Don't leave Dougie alone with Bill.

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BREAKING NEWS
Harris's husband Doug doesn't deny bombshell claims he slapped his ex

This intra-party doubt about Harris is nothing new. Nancy Pelosi, in September last year, refused to affirm Harris as Biden's best running mate in 2024.

'[Joe Biden] thinks so,' Pelosi told CNN, 'and that's what matters.' That was back in the halcyon days when D.C. and the media were covering up Biden's cognitive decline. How quickly things change.

Back to Kamala's first interview of the week: Alex Cooper opened her podcast by making one thing clear — it was her decision to book Kamala, not the other way around.

'Daddy Gang,' Cooper earnestly began.

How juvenile. How beneath the office Harris seeks.

Cooper admitted that her lack of political fluency was a real concern: 'Do I talk about the economy? Do I talk about border control? Do I talk about fracking?'

Sex toys, check. Polyamory, check. But with a potentially devastating hurricane looming, and a good portion of the country still reeling from Helene, Harris sat down with this myopic, immature, sex-obsessed simpleton.

Had she been sitting across from someone well-informed, this interview might have taken a substantial turn.

But here was Harris, inveighing against those who harm women: 'We still have so far to go… [There is] this really warped idea that, well, what happens in the house is none of our business. But if it happened on the street, it would be our business!'

Kamala's husband Doug has been accused of smacking an ex-girlfriend in the face so hard – in public – that she spun around

Was Harris asked about that? Nope.

Just as there has been a near-total media blackout regarding Doug's affair, during his first marriage, with the nanny, who he allegedly impregnated.

But wait! On MSNBC — a network one staffer recently admitted is nothing but an arm of Kamala's campaign — Joe Scarborough, host of 'Morning Joe', asked Emhoff whether he was 'p***ed off' with 'tabloid stories about [his] personal life'.

Emhoff did not deny that he had struck his ex-girlfriend. Nor did Scarborough push him for an answer.

'It's all a distraction,' Emhoff simply said. 'It's designed to get us off our game.'

Tell that to female voters. Tell that to Doug's wife, who just said that domestic violence is serious and 'all of our business'!

Clearly, the left-wing media, which otherwise insists that we 'believe all women', will not allow these extremely concerning allegations to interrupt their coronation of Kamala Harris.

Next was '60 Minutes', in which CBS correspondent Bill Whitaker gave the appearance of a tough interview on Monday night. In fact, it was quickly determined that this former lodestar of broadcast journalism had helped Harris, editing at least one of her answers.

Pre-broadcast, '60 Minutes' teased this response to a question about whether the Biden-Harris administration has any real influence over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: 'The work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by or a result of many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region.'

The Middle East is on the brink of all-out war. Yet '60 Minutes' thought the electorate was best served by excising that appalling excuse of an answer from its final broadcast.

CBS has since refused to release a full transcript. Former network staffers are even calling for an external investigation.

Imagine if this had been a selectively edited Trump interview. Network execs would be called to testify before Congress!

But for Harris — well, as she would say, they prefer to be unburdened by what has been.

Dear lord. Our Veep is the walking, talking epitome of the Dunning-Kruger effect, in which those of low intellect and capabilities nonetheless believe they are superior.

But here she is in her designer suits, dropping her 'g's while talkin', goin', and sayin' stuff to the American people, with their 'dreams and ambitions and aspirations'; mooning over her troublesome hubby Doug; and doing everything she can to suppress that cackle while evincing an utter lack of specifics, detail, or grasp of the economy, the immigration crisis, or foreign policy.

Off she strode to The View — part of ABC News, if you can believe that — where she was greeted like The Second Coming.

Co-host Ana Navarro, who appeared on stage at the DNC, was allowed to play pretend journalist. So were Sunny Hostin and Whoopi Goldberg, both levitating with glee in Kamala's presence.

Again, a monster storm was in the offing. Millions were in the midst of fleeing Florida, but Kamala had not much to say about that. Instead, she once again offered her reason for running.

You may want to pour a stiff drink.

'One of the things that I'm very proud of,' she said on Tuesday, 'that we have done collectively, is we really are building a coalition around some very fundamental issues including that we love our country, that we have to put country before party. We have to agree about the sanctity of the oath we take to defend the Constitution of the United States, to support the Constitution of the United States.'

And people think Trump dumbed down America? Every time this woman speaks, brain cells collectively commit suicide. Her enablers in the media should be mortified.

Fluffed up and energized by her fangirls at The View, Harris went off to Howard Stern for another velvety interview, conducted by a one-time comic renegade, rendered humorless and paranoid by the long-past pandemic.

Yet Howard found the courage to emerge from his basement and talk to Kamala in person. He said he was terrified of another Trump presidency, admitted that his interview would be biased in her favor completely, and all but asked her to hold him.

'I'm really nervous,' Stern began, 'because I want this' — meaning her appearance on his show — 'to go well for you. Even when I watch 'Saturday Night Live', where they have Maya Rudolph playing you, I hate it. I don't want you being made fun of.'

This is a guy who made his estimated $800 million fortune by routinely making fun of society's most vulnerable: The homeless, the physically disabled, the mentally impaired. But God forbid that 'Saturday Night Live' gently mock a media-favored presidential candidate.

Truly, we are in upside-down world. After emitting some inanities — 'Let's not throw up our hands! Let's roll up our sleeves!' — Kamala got down to the important stuff.

'I love Doritos,' she said. 'Original, nacho.'

Stern: 'You've gotta win. You just have to… Like, the sun's eternally gonna go out.'

Such is the basis for this slanted, slavering media coverage: Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Harris capped her Tuesday whirlwind with a visit to Stephen Colbert.

With only 28 days to go, Colbert cracked open some beers, chugged with his good buddy Kamala, and asked her to describe her vision. You know, the one she's had months to articulate with a team of staffers and speechwriters.

'So, when we think about the significance of what this next generation of leadership looks like,' she said, 'were I to be elected president, it is about, frankly, um, I — I love the American people and I believe in our country. I love that it is our character and nature to be an ambitious people. You know, we have aspirations, dreams. We are, we — we have incredible work ethic, and — and I just believe that we can create, and, and build upon the success that we've achieved in a way that we continue to grow opportunity and in that way grow the strength of our nation.'

This is the answer of a student who didn't do the reading.

Even top Dem strategist James Carville is sounding the alarm.

'Scared to death' about Election Day, he told MSNBC this week.

Perhaps Kamala thought her briefing as Hurricane Milton approached landfall would do the trick. Alas, she was caught during Wednesday's live Zoom covering her mouth with her hands and saying, 'It's a live broadcast', to someone off-screen, seeming to surprise herself.

Immediately after, she called in to CNN, where Dana Bash asked about 'the most important' thing she'd just learned in that live briefing.

'The briefing was very helpful on a number of fronts,' said Harris.

Even an imminent catastrophe can't get Kamala off her verbal crutches, these meaningless preambles that buy her time while she tries to articulate a cogent thought.

'But most importantly in getting the word out' — isn't that the point of a live briefing? — 'to folks in Florida, in particular' — you know, the state about to get hit — 'to please heed the advice and direction of your local officials, because this storm is unlike any we have seen before.'

One official Harris could not reach was Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who she accused of playing politics by avoiding her calls.

Not so, said DeSantis — it was the other way around.

'[During] all of the storms I have dealt with under this administration, although I worked well with the president, she has never called,' he said. 'She has never offered any support. She's trying to inject herself into this because of her political campaign.'

In a surprise presser on Wednesday night Biden did not stand up for Harris. If anything, he sabotaged her.

'All I can tell you is I've talked to Gov. DeSantis,' Biden said. 'He's been very gracious. He's thanked me for all we've done. He knows what we're doing, and I think that's important.'

Kamala may have the liberal media on her side, but it seems Biden — still wounded by that palace coup — would be quite happy indeed to see Donald Trump win.

All the puff pieces in the world can't change that.