The Kamala Harris-Tim Walz campaign has, finally, added an Issues section to its campaign website, answering a criticism that wasn’t just coming from the other side.
This was a big issue to me, and I noted it to campaign higher-ups a couple of weeks ago, that we were hearing from readers that they wanted to be able to point friends who had questions about where Harris stands on the issues to her website so that they could see for themselves.
I didn’t think there was anything sinister about the omission, like, oh, they’re just trying to hide something or the other from public purview because they’re afraid of creating a controversy of some sort.
I mean, anybody who’s been following politics even just a touch the past several years knows where things stand going into November.
But that’s the thing: most people don’t follow politics much or at all until they have to.
For all the love that Fox News gives itself for being the dominant cable-news network, it averaged 2.3 million viewers in the 8-11 p.m. ET prime-time weeknight slot last week, and MSNBC and CNN combined to average another 2.3 million.
For reference, Nielsen says there are roughly 125 million TV households in the U.S.
Throw in the trickle of people who watch Newsmax, NewsNation and the other challengers to the Big Three, and the number of people watching cable news is around 4 percent of the potential viewing audience.
More numbers: 136 million people voted in the 2016 election, and 158 million voted in 2020.
Where are all of these people going to get their information on where the candidates stand?
We all know the answer to that: social media, TV commercials, news websites, that small sliver from cable news.
The smart strategy would be to use the advertising dollars to not only deliver a message, but also tell people to go to the website for more, right?
That’s why the Harris-Walz campaign site needs this Issues section, and as much as it needed an Issues section yesterday, last week, last month, it’s there now.
I get it that the campaign had a lot to do to get ramped up for the fall, given the VP’s late entry into the presidential race, after President Biden decided to step down on July 21, which might seem like forever ago now, but when you look at the calendar, it was just seven weeks ago.
Me, I would have prioritized the Issues stuff before a lot of other things, but that’s a matter of conjecture now.
You want to know, click here, and you’ll know.