The reactions to CNN’s interview with Vice President Kamala Harris epitomize everything that is wrong with politics today, highlighting two of its most insidious maladies: partisan blindness and a lack of proportionality.

I’m not just talking about Twitter (I still call it that, even with an X in its place), an often unrepresentative sewer that amplifies minority views. But on cable news and in op-eds, with rare exceptions, the knee-jerk “She did so well” or “She was a disaster” seemed endlessly idiotic and detached from reality. I expect this from bots and idiots. But it’s painful to see this sort of thing from supposedly smart and thoughtful people who have pawned their credibility on not veering from a partisan or ideological position.

Who are you going to believe: them or your own eyes?

Harris was vague and elusive, clearly having the “I haven’t changed my values” trick ready to distract from her protean positions, and clearly glossing over what she knew and when she knew about President Joe Biden’s downfall. She also offered precious little insight into what she will do as president. (That sound you hear is her campaign booing because they wanted the Hippocratic Oath to be enforced.)

But Harris was also affable and relaxed, comfortable in her own skin, and her demonstrated loyalty to Biden was, in a way, touching and admirable. Whether she looked “presidential” is a matter of opinion, and compared to… well, let me get to that in a moment.

Her performance — and let’s face it, it’s all performances — was spot-on, even as it revealed her obvious weaknesses and preference for vibes over details. (Again, campaign staff cheered from the cheap seats.) But anyone who says this interview shows she’s ready to be president or that she’s clearly unqualified to be president is simply wearing partisan blinders — or is paid to say such things.

You can’t talk about politics these days without also commenting on campaign journalism, especially since our industry has been under attack for so long and our approval ratings are often lower than those of politicians. So here’s what I think about CNN and Dana Bash, who were criticized from both sides — Democrats for asking what they called GOP talking-point questions and Republicans for not responding to them enough:

CNN should not have agreed to have Tim Walz there — and please spare me all the memes of other presidential tickets doing joint interviews. This is a peculiar situation in which the presidential candidate had yet to do any interviews with just weeks until the election. And the network shouldn’t have had Bash’s produced pieces following Harris, which cut into the interview time and made the whole exercise seem truncated. That resulted in Walz being a potted plant for most of the interview, with Bash only nodding to his existence by asking him a few quick — and legitimate — questions about some of his statements. (The idea that he was exaggerating his military service because he has bad grammar was a doozy, though!).

As for Bash, I have to admit my bias, because I’ve known her for years and have a lot of respect for her. We have different styles — and I had fewer constraints when I was doing these kinds of interviews — but I thought she did a good job of (or tried to) make some important points. The idea that asking about Harris’ changing positions is like spouting Republican propaganda is nonsense, and those who criticize her for that would love it if interviewers would spout what Republicans call Democratic talking points when interviewing Republicans. And the criticism that she shouldn’t have asked Harris about Donald Trump’s “She just happened to go black” comment is ridiculous. Bash should have asked it, and Harris shrewdly waved it away, showing a discipline unfamiliar to her opponent.

Which brings me to the issue of proportionality, which has been lost in this election and in political discourse in general. I will put it simply as I have done before:

Harris changing her mind about fracking or adopting far-left views that she now tries to cover up is not comparable to a man who tried to steal a second term by lying about voter fraud and inciting a mob. Trump not only has not been held accountable for that, he continues to perpetuate that disqualifying lie — in addition to his many, many disqualifying statements since 2020. Why that would even be a controversial opinion is beyond me. Why it’s even considered an opinion rather than a fact depresses me.

These same Republicans in their high dudgeon over Harris’ flip-flops are content to ignore Trump’s constant lies and shifts in position. He’s pro-choice, he’s pro-life, he brags about overturning Roe, now he’s pro-choice again in his despair over Harris’ rise.

But the idea that Trump’s depredations are so outrageous — and they are — that journalists shouldn’t go out of their way to point out Harris’s spin or misstatements is ridiculous. This isn’t what the left conveniently calls “bothsidesism.” That’s our job in covering campaigns, not to start a question: “Well, we all know that Trump’s desecration of Arlington National Cemetery with a campaign photo-op is disgusting and beyond compare, but why did you hide from the American people that the president was in cognitive decline?”

I know a lot of people are saying that the national media is treating Trump differently, and that frustration is spilling over into scathing criticism of how the media has treated Biden and now Harris. I know I would interview Trump very differently if I had the chance than almost everyone else who has, and I think too much of it is written off as Trump being Trump. But there has been a lot of great coverage of Trump, exposing all sorts of sociopathy and falsehoods. Just so you know!

I find this criticism of journalists tiresome and repetitive and mostly — not all — misplaced or tendentious. Sure, suppose I line up the cars as we Fourth Estaters do, but I also think we need to be more transparent and contrite when necessary.

It saddens me that respected conservative media outlets, many of which employ some of America’s finest writers and thinkers, have chosen to downplay Trump’s disqualifying behavior because they find Harris’ ideology so offensive, or because they see (sometimes rightly) the mainstream media’s support for Democrats.

The double standards and whataboutism on the left are annoying too, but not nearly as bad as those on the right who enabled Trump’s denial of the election and are still knee-jerks to preserve their own viability. Progressives who deny Harris was anything other than a terrible presidential candidate and defended Biden’s viability to the last and now love the vice president because she’s a cheerful warrior and can win are not very principled. But there is literally no evidence that Trump has any principles beyond his solipsistic pursuit of power and money and his disdain for basic constitutional principles. They are not the same thing.

When the history of this period in our history is written, those who bent the knee or turned a blind eye will be clear. At least I hope so.

Jon Ralston is the CEO and editor of The Indy.