Kamala Harris on Wednesday night called Donald J. Trump a fascist, a move only made in the lower echelons of the Democratic Party, which until recently had been attacking Trump for years as anti-democratic, unfit to serve and a criminal. It heightened the debate that had been going on.
At the beginning of a CNN town hall in Pennsylvania, host Anderson Cooper asked her if she thought Trump met the definition of a fascist, and she quickly agreed. “Yes, I am,” she quickly retorted. “yes i will.”
Later, when asked about the plight of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, she launched into a fierce criticism of her rival.
“A lot of people who care about this issue also care about lowering food prices,” she says. “They also care about our democracy and the fact that we don’t have a president of the United States who praises dictators and is a fascist.”
Her comments go a step beyond the previous consensus that Trump is a fascist, a definition that Trump’s former White House chief of staff, John Kelly, believes the former president meets. The purpose was to amplify this week’s news that he said. He was deeply concerned about the threat the second Trump administration posed to democratic institutions.
Harris’ attack Wednesday night went largely unanswered. Trump rejected both the second debate and an invitation from CNN to participate in a similar forum.
Here are six takeaways from City Hall in Chester Township, Pennsylvania.
Her default answer is “Trump is much worse.”
During the 80-minute town hall, Harris was asked questions about a wide range of policy issues. Her answers often stuck to the same theme.
Will she expand the Supreme Court? Will someone making $500,000 pay more taxes? Will Americans pay benefits to immigrants who cross the border? How would she codify Roe v. Wade into federal law? And what about Gaza?
Her answer boiled down to: “Donald Trump would be worse.”
This targets traditional Democrats who may be upset with her, such as progressives dissatisfied with U.S. support for Israel and Jewish voters worried that Harris doesn’t have enough support. That was the strategy.
Her goal was to refocus Democrats on something they could all agree on: the danger they see in Trump and his divisive and sometimes anti-democratic rhetoric.
Voters asked questions directly. Mr. Harris gave a circular answer.
Ms. Harris was asked a fairly direct question by a self-identified Jewish independent voter about how she would address anti-Semitism on college campuses.
In her more than five-minute response, she briefly touched on hate crimes, but then moved on to Trump’s reported references to Hitler, his relationships with Kim Jong-un and Vladimir V. Putin, and Trump’s recent references to Hitler. They started talking about the president’s actions during his time there. coronavirus pandemic.
It was indicative of the turn Harris made all night, from the short, sharp questions asked of her to the long, meandering answers she liked to give.
She got the moment she wanted by showing up.
Harris’ campaign had hoped voters would hear her strongest case against Trump in the early hours of the town hall before turning the channel back to “Survivor.” Trump’s aides got their wish when she quickly agreed that he was a fascist.
Trump was content to vent his frustrations on social media from the sidelines. Unlike the previous president, who has largely stuck to conservative safe spaces and friendly podcast interviews, Ms. Harris has given a series of high-profile interviews with combative news outlets on the Independent and, last week, on Fox News. I was present at the event.
She has managed to drive the news cycle in most of her appearances, and likely did so again Wednesday night. It remains to be seen whether voters will appreciate her willingness to interrogate her, but there is little doubt that she has responded to criticism that she hid from media scrutiny.
Still, she might have been better at the debate.
It turns out that attacking Trump is more effective when he’s standing there.
Ms. Harris’ strong performance in her first and only presidential debate against her rival demonstrated her ability to set him up for failure. But without him standing nearby, her attacks on him seemed more like deflecting questions about her own plans than crisp answers about what he would do as president.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly refused to participate in another debate, not wanting to jeopardize new opportunities for American voters to compare themselves. While the decision may not be in the best interest of voters looking to narrow down their candidates, her performance Wednesday night showed why it could benefit Mr. Trump.
She has the answer to the turnaround from 2019.
One of Harris’ most powerful moments came when she was asked about policy shifts on issues like fracking, a topic of particular concern in Pennsylvania. Since running for president in 2019, she has shifted positions on a number of issues, including defunding the police, supporting single-payer health care, and decriminalizing illegal border crossings.
When asked about flip-flopping, Ms. Harris repositioned what had long been considered her weakness into a strong personality trait and a subtle attack on her opponent’s egoism.
“Our country deserves a president of the United States who is not afraid of good ideas and who is not proud.” “I’m not going to shy away from good ideas, and I’m not going to feel the need to take pride in the positions I take when it’s important to build consensus to solve problems. ”
Two weeks into her career, she’s still defining herself.
With less than two weeks left in the campaign and nearly four years as vice president, it remains impressive that Harris is still explaining basic details of her personal history to American voters. be.
She comes from a middle-class family. She prays daily and has a close relationship with her pastor. She is still grieving her mother’s death. Most of her career was spent outside Washington.
Her extensive biographical knowledge stands in sharp contrast to her opponents. Trump’s life is not only a piece of political folklore, it has been broadcast on television screens for decades, the subject of best-selling books, and dominated American politics for nearly a decade.
Candidates typically explain their personal backgrounds during long primaries and then again in the spring and summer to a broader general election audience. Harris has been forced into an unusually short schedule this year, but the fact that she’s still telling her story shows just how far she has to go to tell voters who she is. This highlights the issue of whether or not this should be done.
