It has now been nearly two months since the Democratic Party forced President Joe Biden to forgo the nomination in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris. When that unprecedented event occurred, people were left asking, what kind of campaign will she run?

The answer by this point is clear. Hers is a Seinfeld campaign, about essentially nothing. That came across in her one and only interview to date with CNN, at the Democratic National Convention, and most recently at the presidential debate.

To be sure, Harris claims she has a vision for her administration. But her rhetoric is so airy and effervescent that it might be better to call it a vision to have a vision. This was clear at the Sept. 10 debate in Philadelphia, on both foreign and domestic policy. 

Consider, for instance, the opening question from ABC News. David Muir asked Harris, “When it comes to the economy, do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?” This is, arguably, the key question of the debate. Harris and her team must have known it was coming. And what was her answer? She spoke a lot of words, but at the end of the day, her answer boiled down to a $6,000 child tax credit and a $50,000 deduction for small businesses.

That’s it.

On foreign policy, the question of the day remains the Israel-Hamas conflict. Moderator Linsey Davis noted how the Biden administration has so far failed to resolve that conflict and asked what she would do differently. Again, Harris spoke quite a bit, but substantively, she said two things: “continue to work around the clock on” a ceasefire and pursue a two-state solution. 

So it went for the entire debate. Indeed, the only time Harris spoke with any specificity or clarity was on abortion. Here, she was unequivocal in her intent to enshrine Roe v. Wade in federal legislation.

Granted, Harris spoke with much greater eloquence than Biden did back in July. Her answers were clearly well designed. And she did a good job at needling former President Donald Trump, who felt obliged to rise to every provocation. It was especially interesting to see how she used this tactic to evade an answer on immigration. When asked why the Biden administration waited so long to tighten border restrictions, Harris fell back on supporting the moribund Senate bill, then suddenly switched gears:

“And I’ll tell you something, he’s going to talk about immigration a lot tonight even when it’s not the subject that is being raised. And I’m going to actually do something really unusual and I’m going to invite you to attend one of Donald Trump’s rallies because it’s a really interesting thing to watch. You will see during the course of his rallies he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He will talk about windmills cause cancer. And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.”

Trump took the bait on this. It was a good tactical way to get around the sticky problem of immigration. But of course, unanswered was the underlying matter of: What do you intend to do about an issue that ranks high on the pubilc’s list of priorities?

The debate was thus a microcosm of the entire Harris campaign to date — to avoid substance. Of course, voters are not looking for detailed policy papers, written by policy wonks and certified by outside experts as being realistic. What matters is giving voters a sense of direction: where one candidate will take the country versus another. Harris has not done that, and by now, it is safe to say she has no intention of doing so.

This is a gamble, for sure. But it might very well be a necessary one. Even though Harris is a new candidate, she is not a new figure. She is the sitting vice president and the successor to Biden, who remains starkly unpopular among the broader electorate. She cannot endorse the status quo because voters do not like it. But at the same time, she has to stay vague because she and Biden are in office right now and could begin to enact whatever vision she has. 

In his closing remarks, Trump hit this point:

“So, she just started by saying she’s going to do this, she’s going to do that, she’s going to do all these wonderful things. Why hasn’t she done it? She’s been there for 3 1/2 years. They’ve had 3 1/2 years to fix the border. They’ve had 3 1/2 years to create jobs and all the things we talked about. Why hasn’t she done it? She should leave right now, go down to that beautiful White House, go to the Capitol, get everyone together, and do the things you want to do. But you haven’t done it.”

Trump’s debate performance was uneven, for sure. But this line precisely illustrates the dilemma in which Harris finds herself: She cannot be the candidate of the status quo, yet she cannot be the candidate of change.

She and her team have clearly set upon their solution — say a lot without saying much at all.

The usual caveats apply. This strategy could work. The country is about evenly split, meaning a small shift of votes one way or another could make the difference. Trump, even though he is more popular now than ever, remains deeply divisive. Regardless, no major party nominee in the modern history of the United States has ever pursued a strategy that, when asked about the major issues of the day, offers answers that boil down to “pass.” 

Jay Cost is the Gerald R. Ford senior nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.