Harris plays it safe. Some Democrats fear this could derail their campaign.

WASHINGTON — Even as polls show the presidential race is a back-and-forth, Vice President Kamala Harris is running with a degree of risk aversion that some Democratic strategists and activists fear has left her unable to take full advantage of the excitement surrounding her entry into the race in July.

Up to this point, Harris has largely avoided revealing interactions with voters, such as town hall-style events or interviews with the media, which could provide a sense of her authentic self and make people more comfortable with her abrupt emergence at the top of the voter roll, these Democrats say .

“They’re trying to keep them out,” Steve Shurtleff, a former Democratic speaker of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, said of the Harris campaign. “It’s like watching your favorite Hollywood actor and then being on a talk show and not being able to even speak.”

“The president of the United States must be able to be on guard and answer questions at all times,” he added. “It’s so obvious she avoided the one-on-one interviews, and voters deserve better.”

Harris campaign aides say she will venture into new forums in the coming weeks to reveal more about her temperament and character. She gives an interview to CBS News' “60 Minutes” as part of an election special airing next week. And she is expected to appear on late-night talk shows, as is her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

Unanswered questions at this late stage of the race are whether Harris can rely on her early momentum and whether she can reach the part of the electorate that has not yet made up its mind and make a positive impression.

Early voting has already begun in some states, and Harris has been kept off the ballot in recent days because of the devastating damage caused by Hurricane Helene.

Interviews and town halls aren't the only ways to reach voters — her campaign is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on ads aimed at swing voters, but that may not be enough.

An NBC News poll last month found that as Harris headed into the final stretch of Election Day, a portion of voters still harbored doubts about the kind of president she would make: 13% said they were “unsure and wondering “Whether it would do any good work.

Others said Harris' campaign behaved as if she was on the trail, even as she failed to separate herself from her opponent, former President Donald Trump.

“The campaign runs the risk that it will run out of time and Trump's weaknesses will be enough to win,” said Chris Kofinis, a Democratic strategist. “But the danger is that if you don’t define your own candidacy well enough, people will start to define it for themselves.”

Walz's performance at Tuesday's vice presidential debate sparked new doubts among Democratic supporters. He showed the caution that some Democrats say has marred the campaign. In a competent if largely workmanlike performance, Walz appeared as if the campaign had tempered the natural exuberance he displayed when Harris chose him as the vice presidential running mate.

“It was a mistake to keep Walz and Harris away from interviews,” said one Democratic lawmaker. “It's like playing basketball – if you don't play for weeks, you're not going to be able to get into a game and perform well. You have to be on the pitch.

“I would make it very widely available,” the lawmaker added.

Walz was partially protected, giving him time to prepare for the debate, and now he, too, will mingle with voters in a more spontaneous way in the coming weeks. On Wednesday he set out on a bus tour of Pennsylvania. And he took part in a video call with Muslim voters on Wednesday evening – an opportunity to strengthen ties with a constituency angered by the Biden-Harris administration's position on the war in Gaza.

A Harris campaign spokesman, Kevin Munoz, said in a statement: “Our job for the final stretch of this campaign is to ensure this.” [Harris’] The winning vision reaches the undecided voters who will decide this election in places and ways that actually reach them. This may look different than previous campaigns in today’s changing media environment, but coupled with campaign events, aggressive organizing and a historic paid media campaign, it is a winning approach.”

Harris' cautious public stance could be a holdover from President Joe Biden's defunct campaign. Concerned that Biden, 81, might make a gaffe, he carefully controlled his campaign and limited his public appearances. Many of the people who ran Biden's campaign are working to elect Harris.

The campaign has repeatedly expressed a deep distrust of the media and concern that news outlets would seize on any misstep based on an off-the-cuff remark.

“They're very cautious,” one person involved in Harris' race said of her campaign. “Sometimes it seems like they can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. I know Harris is willing to do whatever they ask of her. The campaign controls all of these things. She’s a “pick me up and let me go” type of person – she’s willing to do whatever it takes.”

Harris is younger and more telegenic than Biden and doesn't need to be wrapped in a cocoon, some analysts said. For one thing, many undecided voters are still unsure about their stance on certain issues. They need to hear from her and be convinced that she is not, at heart, a “San Francisco progressive” trying to make herself palatable to a broader electorate, said Sarah Longwell, host of “The Focus Group” podcast.

But Harris also benefits from something any candidate would envy: The more people see her, the more they like her, Longwell said. According to an NBC News poll, Harris' popularity rating rose 16 percentage points from July to September. This is the largest increase of any politician in the network's polls since President George W. Bush's numbers surged following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Still, her 5-point lead over Trump among registered voters was within the poll's margin of error.

“She had these big performances that in many cases went very well,” said Longwell, who also runs a group called Republican Voters Against Trump. “And sometimes you feel the impulse to say, 'We just destroyed that.' “Let's not disrupt the narrative of everyone who's talking about it that we've just killed the debate.” But that's not the world anymore. You have to keep going. You have to own one media cycle at a time, one media cycle at a time. You have to be constantly on the offensive. This is something Republicans understand but Democrats are struggling with.”

A superficial argument would be that Trump is always in the spotlight while Harris remains hidden. Trump declined an interview for the “60 Minutes” special and, unlike Harris, refused to take part in further debates. In both cases he forwent an audience of millions on television.

As for Harris, she was recently featured on the “All the Smoke” podcast, hosted by two former NBA basketball players, Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson. She appeared relaxed and chatty throughout, discussing cooking, parenting and race — all while saying she supported the legalization of recreational marijuana, or as she called it, “weed.”

The popular podcast, with two friendly hosts, offered her a way to reach black male voters in particular.

Harris' campaign has also made overtures to voters in unconventional forums such as the gaming site IGN.

Trump has taken a more direct approach since his first days as a candidate. He tends to make headlines whether he wants to or not, most recently because of special counsel Jack Smith's court filing outlining his alleged role in trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat.

Since February, he has conducted 175 interviews on nearly all types of platforms, including mainstream media and podcasts, which have large audiences of predominantly far-right male listeners.

It was part of the campaign's strategy to woo younger, male voters who have historically had no connection to politics. The campaign viewed them as an untapped voter bloc and spent a lot of time listening to podcasts as a result, aides told NBC News.

Michael LaRosa, a former press secretary to first lady Jill Biden, said: “What Trump and [running mate JD] Vance gives voters accessibility. They are seen and heard because they are accessible. They are willing to sit down and answer questions from anyone. And you have to respect that.

“A duck-and-cover approach does not exude strength or confidence,” he said.