Vice President Kamala Harris refused to give outright answers to several questions during a CNN town hall Wednesday, including whether she supports building more border wall—as criticism that she hasn’t done enough to explain her policy positions during her truncated campaign is a vulnerability with undecided voters.
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaks as she replies to a ... [+]
Harris said “I want to strengthen our border” when CNN moderator Anderson Cooper asked her if she supports some border wall construction on the U.S.-Mexico border, noting the tabled bipartisan border security bill she supports includes funds for a wall, despite referring to the wall as Trump’s “medieval vanity project” during her 2019 run for president and calling it “a complete waste of taxpayer money” in 2020.
When Cooper asked if she would be “more pro-Israel than Donald Trump,” Harris answered “I believe that Donald Trump is dangerous,” citing his reported praise for Adolf Hitler according to Trump’s ex-chief of staff John Kelly—a frequent move for Harris, who often steered her answers to Trump, whom she called “unstable” and a fascist.
She also pivoted when asked whether her plan not to raise taxes for anyone making under $400,000 also meant she would raise taxes for people making more than that threshold, telling Cooper she supports “parity around what the richest people pay in terms of their taxes right now,” and answering “we can’t have this conversation without knowing that it’s a very complicated situation, right?” when Cooper pressed her.
When one of the audience members asked Harris to explain her shift toward the center on several issues, including banning fracking, offering Medicare for All and decriminalizing border crossings, Harris said she believes Americans deserve a president who “works on getting stuff done, and that means compromise,” but did not acknowledge her positions on those three issues have changed or explain why.
Harris also didn’t give a direct answer in response to an undecided voter who asked if she would be in favor of expanding the Supreme Court, and said “I do believe that there should be some kind of reform of the court and we can study what that actually looks like.”
Harris did reiterate several of her policy positions throughout the event, including her proposals to expand the child tax credit, have Medicare cover home health care for the elderly and tamp down on corporate price gouging. She also said she would work with the private sector to “create tax incentives so that we can create more housing supply and bring down the price.” When asked how she would reinstate the federal right to abortion if Congress can’t pass a bill to do so, Harris reiterated a suggestion she has previously floated to eliminate the Senate filibuster so the bill could pass on a simple majority, rather than 60 votes.
Former Obama senior adviser David Axelrod said on CNN after the event that Harris had a “mixed night,” observing that “when she doesn’t want to answer a question, her habit is to kind of go to word salad city,” using the question about whether she would be more pro-Trump than Israel as an example. He also said Harris “missed an opportunity” to concede issues with the Biden administration’s border policies. Still, Axelrod said many of her remarks on Trump were stronger.
37%. That’s the share of respondents to an October ABC News/Ipsos poll who said Harris hasn’t done enough to detail her policy positions, compared to 42% who said the same about Trump.
Harris participated in the town hall from Pennsylvania and fielded questions from the audience of undecided voters in the crucial swing state just 13 days before the election as polls show a virtual tie between her and Trump, who refused to participate in the event. Harris has faced an uphill battle in familiarizing voters with her positions and how her administration would differ from President Joe Biden’s during her truncated campaign after Biden dropped out of the race. She frequently relied on her campaign talking points throughout the town hall, often pivoting to her criticism of Trump, who she called a “fascist” early in the event.
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