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It hasn’t happened in four decades: a presidential candidate refusing to attend the iconic Al Smith dinner, the fundraiser hosted by the Catholic Archdiocese of New York that for nearly 80 years has served as a lighthearted bright spot in an otherwise toxic political environment.
This decision by Kamala Harris — or at least her handlers — to cloister herself from the gentlest of negative spotlights comes as part of a campaign of silence: She has yet to hold even a single press conference since becoming the Democratic nominee in July.
In fact, Harris has done fewer than 10 interviews total in that time, while Donald Trump and J.D. Vance have done nearly 80 since becoming the Republican ticket two months ago.
The calculation here, of course, is to shorten the runway, run out the clock to Nov. 5th, and expose Kamala to only controlled and friendly environments that will allow her to extend her ridiculous “joyful warrior” campaign persona.
We witnessed this strategy when she sat down with Oprah Winfrey for an extended slobbering-campaign-commercial-of-an-interview last week featuring two hours of Harris’ scripted non-responses to benign questions about the border and the economy.
That “interview” was undoubtedly stage-managed by her campaign, which is easy to do when the host implores her audience to vote for the interviewee.
But the campaign couldn’t demand that kind of control during the Al Smith dinner. And for Team Harris, that’s simply too scary a prospect to risk.
After all, nothing is so cringe as Kamala attempting to do comedy, in routines that feature her cackling at her own jokes when no one else does.
Who can forget her bizarre quips about Venn diagrams and electric buses, or her painful patter concerning Starbucks coffee-cup lids?
“So you know how those lids on the Starbucks cups, they’re white, right? And so if you wear lipstick, they get all over the lid!” she exclaimed in a 2018 speech. “So I said, can we do something about the color of the lid?” she wrapped up, chortling uproariously and applauding herself.
But her most likely reason for skipping the dinner — which has raised millions of dollars for New York’s poor for 79 years — is simply to avoid humanizing Donald Trump in any way, shape or form.
How can she trade lighthearted jabs with Trump after repeatedly calling him “a threat to our democracy” and “our greatest national security threat” — even after two assassination attempts on him in the past two months?
Pivoting from that kind of overheated rhetoric to cheery standup material would be too difficult of a tightrope to walk.
Trump campaign was wise to announce that he’ll attend the Oct. 17 event at the Waldorf-Astoria. It will undoubtedly receive ample national coverage while also showing his respect for Catholic voters — a constituency Harris clearly doesn’t care about snubbing.
But it will also serve to show the country that Trump has quite a good sense of humor in these settings. We saw it last week when he appeared in-studio on Greg Gutfeld’s Fox News show. Nearly 5 million people tuned in, making it easily the most-watched program on broadcast or cable that night.
Here’s Trump at the Al Smith event back in 2016, having some fun at Hillary Clinton’s expense when the two presidential rivals were both in attendance:
“Just before taking the dais, Hillary accidentally bumped into me and she very civilly said, ‘Pardon me.’
“And I very politely replied, ‘Let me talk to you about that after I get into office.’”
Good stuff.
And that’s the fear from the Harris campaign: She will get roasted by the King of Roasters if she goes up against Trump in an uncontrolled setting.
Given her authenticity problem and the lack of toughness that comes from only exposing herself to the political version of safe spaces, Kamala won’t handle it well.
A recent Pew Research poll shows Trump leading Harris by five percentage points among Catholic voters. Historically, the candidate who wins the Catholic vote wins the presidency.
In the end, skipping the Al Smith dinner will reinforce a crystal clear fact about Kamala Harris: She wants to win the White House by running a hide-and-seek campaign.
It may be her ultimate undoing.
Joe Concha is the author of “Progressively Worse: Why Today’s Democrats Ain’t Your Daddy’s Donkeys.”