News coverage following Thursday night’s CNN interview with Vice President Kamala Harris predictably recast the episode in ways that were unfamiliar to anyone who watched live and who has even just loosely followed her career in national politics.

New York Times reporter Reid Epstein said Kamala “parried questions from Dana Bash on Thursday without causing herself political harm or providing herself a significant boost.” Aaron Blake at The Washington Post said she “didn’t really stumble or seem to do anything that might hamper her momentum.” Politico’s popular morning “Playbook” newsletter gleaned that the interview “suggested to us how tough Donald Trump’s job is now …”

These are supposed to be the big “takeaways” from the event, but any fair-minded person who watched knows that the reality wasn’t so forgiving. What the taped interview with Nancy Pelosi’s favorite journalist did was reinforce the Kamala we all knew before we were told one day two months ago that she’s a beloved sex symbol — the Kamala who’s in over her head, has no vision for the country, and has no interest in governance.

There’s a reason that Democrats and the media have forced an amorphous, ever-shifting concept of “joy” to be the animating force of Kamala’s campaign. This interview, containing not a single unexpected question, illustrates perfectly why they’ve done so. (Here’s a link to the full CNN transcript for reference.)

Kamala can’t withstand scrutiny.

She implied that she’s never been in favor of banning fracking but when confronted with her position when she ran for president in 2020, she skated past the question to only say she has “made very clear” she’s not in favor of it. In that exchange alone, she used the word “clear” five times. Much like the constant hammering with messages about how average and dad-like Tim Walz is unpersuasive, if you have to repeatedly state how “clear” you’ve been, nobody is convinced.

Kamala can’t articulate an argument for herself.

Confronted with her on-record position to decriminalize unauthorized crossings at the southern border, she started talking about climate policy. “My values have not changed,” she said. “You mentioned the Green New Deal. I have always believed and I have worked on it, that the climate crisis is real, that it is an urgent matter to which we should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time. We did that with the Inflation Reduction Act.” (Yes, Kamala admitted the “inflation reduction” bill was actually about funding the electric cars scam.)

Kamala can’t even fake a fundamental grasp of critical foreign policy issues.

The war in Israel is just one of two violent global conflicts to break out under the Kamala-Biden administration, and in the almost year since it started, the closest she could come to explaining her depth of understanding about it or how to bring it to an end was to repeat in frustration, “We have to get a deal done.”

— “We have got to get a deal done.”

— “We — we were in Doha. We have to get a deal done.”

— “This war must end.”

— “And we must get a deal that is about getting the hostages out.”

— “Let’s get the ceasefire done.”

— “We have to get a deal done.”

— “Dana, we have to get a deal done.”

— “A deal is not only the right thing to do to end this war but will unlock so much of what must happen next.”

Look at all that joy! Damn, that’s a lot of joy!

Kamala looked tired. Admittedly, she’s vice president and simultaneously running for president on a platform that ignores she’s currently in the White House. Oh, and joy. I’d be exhausted, too.

We’re finally getting to see again the Kamala we knew all along.