The Democratic Party is increasingly embracing a strategy of hiding candidates in competitive races to avoid having to answer for the personal and political shortcomings of those candidates.

Vice President Kamala Harris is ducking the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, a Catholic charity dinner that both major presidential candidates traditionally have attended since 1960. This could be chalked up to Harris’s open disdain for Catholics, given that she thinks faithful Catholics should not be able to serve in the judicial branch, but it is also likely the result of Harris avoiding any public events that are not her own scripted rallies.