Democrats give Harris rocky reviews on CNN town hall
BY ALEX GANGITANO - 10/24/24 4:32 PM ET
Matt Rourke, Associated Press
Vice President Harris’s CNN town hall performance received tough
reviews from fellow Democrats who criticized her for missing the moment
to sell her candidacy as polls have started to show a shift toward former
President Trump in recent days.
Democrats took issue with the vice president being too evasive with her
answers and overly relying on her typical stump speech and talking points
while fielding a bevy questions from CNN’s Anderson Cooper and
politically diverse undecided voters in the audience.
“Even if the questions make her uncomfortable or piss her off, why can’t
she answer them plainly and clearly and then pivot to the platitudes that
put everyone to sleep?” one Democratic political consultant said.
“Instead, it’s just all platitudes and BS … this constant evasiveness is
exactly what voters hate about politicians and her inability to
communicate like a human being instead of like a politician is her greatest
challenge.”
“Christ already, answer a damn question” the source added.
Harris in general played it safe when it came to addressing questions
about the economy, immigration and how she would lead differently than
President Biden but then at times pivoted to other matters.
One issue proving to be a sticking point to Harris’s campaign is on the
matter of the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war in
Gaza.
One audience member asked what she would do “to ensure that not
another Palestinian dies due to bombs being funded by U.S. tax dollars.”
In response, Harris reiterated that the killing of Palestinians was
“unconscionable” but then veered into other territory, saying those voters
who see that as a sticking point to her campaign also care about “bringing
down the price of groceries. They also care about our democracy and not
having a president of the United States who admires dictators and is a
fascist.”
The town hall gave Harris the chance to go before a mainstream, prime-
time audience. More than 3 million viewers tuned into the town hall, which
was held in the critical battleground state of Pennsylvania. It reached
more than 700,000 in the 25- to 54-year-old age demographic, according
to the network.
Longtime Democratic strategist David Axelrod said Harris at times took
too long to explain her answers on questions she was mostly dodging,
saying she spoke in a “word salad.”
“The thing that would concern me is when she doesn’t want to answer a
question, her habit is to kind of go to word salad city, and she did that on
a couple of answers,” he said Wednesday night on CNN.
“One was on Israel. Anderson asked a direct question: ‘Would you be
stronger on Israel than Trump?’ And there was a seven-minute answer,
but none of it related to the question he was asking,” Axelrod added.
Axelrod argued though that Harris came out strong at the top of her
remarks, during which she agreed with Cooper when he asked if she
thought Trump was a fascist. The beginning of the town hall was focused
on her response to John Kelly, Trump’s ex-White House chief of staff,
saying the 45th president “certainly falls into the general definition of
fascist” in an interview in The New York Times this week.
Meanwhile, former White House adviser Van Jones also knocked Harris’s
overall performance on CNN, saying, “the world salad stuff gets on my
nerves.”
“I think that some of the evasions are not necessary. But when she‘s
talking about trying to get you a house, I believe her,” he said.
Harris was also faced with more personal questions from Cooper and the
audience Wednesday night.
Some Democrats thought when she went personal, she was able to stand
out. The vice president did take the opportunity to present a more
intimate side of herself to voters when she was asked about her faith and
how she handles grief following the death of her mother in 2009.
She talked about religion more than she typically does, saying that she
prays “sometimes twice a day,” and she spoke directly with a widow in the
audience about grieving her own mother who died in 2009.
Harris also shared her personal background, in which she boasts a
middle-class upbringing as being at the center of some of her policy
proposals.
A former Biden administration official said, “her strongest moments were
when she talked about her experience growing up and how that influenced
her priorities around housing, small businesses, child tax credit.”
“That part was good and I think shows voters what she is really about,”
the former official said.
Harris’s stump speech and interviews in recent days have involved her
talking about her policy proposals but then quickly reverting to Trump,
drawing a contrast with her rival on issues like democracy, reproductive
rights and the economy.
Harris went into the town hall with Democrats hopeful she could turn her
campaign around while Trump has momentum in the final stretch of the
race. Trump is forecasted to have a 52 percent chance of winning in
November, according to Decision Desk HQ/The Hill’s prediction model,
and an aggregation of polls shows Harris with a 1 percentage point lead
over Trump.
Democrats questioned though if she was able to move the needle at all
with her town hall performance — but thought her way of connecting with
voters was a positive outcome of it.
“She did it. She showed up and answered the questions; she connected
with voters, which was the job,” said Ivan Zapien, a former Democratic
National Committee official. “I don’t see a world where the reviews of how
she did move the needle or help us explain how it landed with undecided
voters, so I would not pay any attention to the reviews and keep running
toward the tape if I were her.”
|
|