After Vice President Kamala Harris’s nomination at the Democratic National Convention in August, the 2024 presidential race has begun in full. Harris and her running mate Governor Tim Walz will run against former President Donald Trump and JD Vance. As the election approaches, media coverage of both candidates has increased. While Trump’s flaws and shortcomings go unnoticed, Harris’s are inspected and picked apart under a microscope by Republicans and Democrats.
This disparate coverage is apparent in the lack of comparisons between President Trump and President Joe Biden. Biden, as the incumbent, was originally favored to be the Democratic Party Nominee. After increasing concerns about his age, he chose to drop out and endorse Vice President Harris. At 78, Trump sits only three years younger than the 81-year-old Biden. Yet, very few have raised his age as a concern. While even Democratic-leaning news outlets continuously reported Biden as too old to be president, these same outlets have made few comments on Trump, other than to criticize his speeches and performances in debates. In contrast, Biden is frequently described as incoherent and rambling. Only after the debate against Harris did reporters begin to raise concerns about Trump’s cognitive state, and still without the harshness that they went for Biden’s.
Though many have reported Vice President Harris’s debate performance on September tenth as exceptional, this does not erase the fact that many reporters refrain from speaking against President Trump. Specifically, news outlets frequently criticize President Biden and Harris’s presentations, while never commenting on Trump’s. Just weeks before the debate, The New York Times ran an article titled “Joy is Not a Strategy”, detailing how Harris’s demeanor at the Democratic National Convention would not win her the election. Three days later, they published an article titled “Trump Can Win on Character”, which claimed that Trump could win this election by attacking Harris repetitively. The arguments of both articles are fundamentally quite similar. One argues that Harris’s presentation of joy and grace will not win her the election, while the other argues that Trump’s anger can. The inherent misogyny and racism in this goes unnoticed by both conservatives and liberals. As a female nominee of color, Harris is expected to be perfect, whereas Trump can appear with hyper-masculine anger.
For the last decade, the media has given President Trump grace that they have not afforded President Biden and Vice President Harris. Donald Trump has consistently performed poorly in speeches, debates, and addresses, setting the media’s expectations for these events low. Meanwhile, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are torn apart from every angle, due to age or presentation of character. The media grants Trump their leniency, due to him consistently setting low expectations in every category. His opposition has set these expectations disproportionately higher, leading to Vice President Harris’s smallest flaws seeming larger than his grandest.