What the CNN town hall reveals about Kamala Harris

Washington: By the time Vice President Kamala Harris had taken the stage at a CNN town hall event, almost 25 million Americans had already cast an early vote in the US election.

With 13 days left in the race, such turnout is a promising sign of enthusiasm but it’s also emblematic of the challenge Harris faces in the home stretch of her campaign.

Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris addresses her audience during the CNN town hall.Credit: AP

Donald Trump has effectively been running for president for the past nine years, and most of the opinions about him are largely baked in.

But Harris was elevated less than 100 days ago, and if the swing states I’ve visited over the past few weeks are any guide, many voters still don’t really know who she is or what she stands for.

To that end, the prime-time event on Thursday AEDT was a chance for the vice president to convince a small percentage of “undecided and persuadable” voters to swing her way in the seven battleground states that will decide the presidency.

Many of these voters – including Democrats – don’t necessarily like Trump, but they’re not sure about Harris either.

Indeed, as progressive Democrat Gilbert Romero from Arizona recently told me: “This election is not just Kamala versus Trump. It’s Kamala versus the apathetic voter.

“She needs to give us something more than what she’s given so far.”

Harris began the night with her gloves off. Having started her run for the White House taking relatively tepid shots at Trump, the vice president has now entered the “go hard or go home” phase of the campaign, increasingly portraying her Republican rival as someone who is “dangerous” and “unfit for office”.

After she highlighted how many of Trump’s former aides have made the same case – including former chief of staff and retired four-star general John Kelly – CNN host Anderson Cooper asked her: “Do you believe Donald Trump is a fascist?”

“Yes, I do,” Harris replied, in what was the first time she has categorically used that term to describe the former president.

As a former California attorney general and US senator, Harris is clearly smart – contrary to Trump’s attacks that she has a “low IQ” – but she often fails (or deliberately refuses) to answer questions directly.

One woman in the audience learnt this first hand tonight when she asked the Democratic nominee: if you could accomplish only one major policy goal that requires congressional action, what would it be and why?

“Well, there’s not just one, I have to be honest with you, Carol,” Harris replied, before embarking on a meandering stump speech.

A student at Drexel University, who identified as a registered Republican, later asked the vice president how she would integrate immigrants safely into society. In something that felt like a trap, he also wanted to know what benefits she would give them and how much this would cost taxpayers.

Harris didn’t quite answer and instead spent most of her time attacking Trump for quashing a bipartisan border bill that could have tackled America’s “broken immigration system”.

The vice president then got the classic interview question from a customer service representative who asked her: what’s your biggest weakness?

Not surprisingly, Harris picked a strength, namely that “I’m a bit of nerd”.

But when Cooper followed up by asking if she’d made any mistakes, she replied, “I’ve made many”, before giving the audience one of her trademark word salads.

“They range from, you know, if you’ve ever parented a child, you know, you make lots of mistakes, too. In my role as vice president, I mean, I’ve probably worked very hard at making sure that I am well versed on issues, and I think that is very important. It’s a mistake not to be well versed on an issue and feel compelled to answer a question.”

Clearly.

The town hall event was held in Pennsylvania, which both sides believe could end up being the most consequential battleground of this year’s election.

It also occurred on the date CNN had proposed a second debate between Harris and Trump, which the former president declined.

Instead, the Republican candidate was at an evening rally in Georgia, where he escalated his personal insults at Harris, describing her as “crazy” and demanding that voters tell her: “You’re the worst ever. There’s never been anybody like you. You can’t put sentences together.”

It was quintessential Trump versus quintessential Harris, in a race that remains neck and neck.

But with no more debates or prime-time events locked in before the November 5 poll, this town hall was one of the last chances the vice president had to show voters how she would govern if they ushered her into the Oval Office.

She didn’t quite meet the moment, choosing instead to define Trump rather than define her policies and priorities.

And maybe – just maybe – that’s her strategy to win the White House.

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