Kamala Harris’ media blitz continued Wednesday night with a town hall hosted by CNN’s Anderson Cooper in Aston, Pennsylvania. CNN did everything it could to set Kamala Harris up for success.
Yes, Anderson Cooper threw a few challenging questions her way and did follow up on a couple of issues. But make no mistake, the whole thing was set up by CNN and agreed to by Kamala Harris to be a ‘Trump is Hitler’ extravaganza. Even so, she was totally flat-footed. She didn’t break through.
The Town Hall
Kamala Harris did not have any sort of a spike the ball moment. I don’t think she reassured anyone, and I don’t predict any boost in the polls. She struggled to provide clear answers on key policy issues and she resorted to filibustering and canned lines when trying to pivot.
Even the CNN panel that was tasked with reacting to the event seemed to run out of spin. You could hear sort of the dejection from David Axelrod and others in acknowledging what we all saw. “She can be clinical on some of these economic issues,” he said. “The things 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.”
Axelrod also pointed out her failure to connect with the audience. “No one is going to be Bill Clinton, but you do want to relate to the people in front of you,” he added. “She didn’t do a lot of that. She didn’t ask them questions. She did address them particularly.”
He is right. There was almost no warmth in her performance whatsoever. She didn’t connect. She can’t. She doesn’t have it in her. She didn’t build a life that allows her that sort of emotional connection with people or the ability to have the confidence to show who she really is.
Style Points
She has been putting herself out there, and she hasn’t gotten any better at it. She doesn’t seem to improve. However, there is one thing that was better about her last night compared to her other appearances, and it is my number one takeaway.
It is clear Team Harris has worked on her style. She started off the town hall more conversational. There were some instances of, ‘Sure, I hear you’ or ‘Yeah, let’s talk about that.’ She seemed a little bit more relaxed. She wasn’t having as many weird cackles (though there were some).
She reportedly took almost two full days to work on preparing for this thing, and they seemed to massage her. Somebody must have said, ‘Could you get away from vocal-fry adjacent? If you could try not to go into this higher octave, it would help keep it down a little lower to where you are not so grading. We are trying to win over some men.’ She did okay with it.
Lack of Substance
But all I could think as I listened to her responses is that she continues to deflect and not answer. He asked her explicitly, ‘You can’t both try to get legislation through Congress on illegal immigration and issue an executive order.’ There was no answer. If you watch, she literally turned and walked away from him. She was like, ‘Holy sh-t, he is asking follow ups. I don’t know the answers. I’m walking. I’m running. I’m out of here.’
And that is because while they may have bolstered Kamala Harris’ affect, they didn’t do anything about the substance. They are unable to train or educate her on substance, on actual problems facing America, on possible policy solutions. The main problems that we need a president to help solve are policy related. Governing is about policy. It is not about affect.
We don’t give a damn how nicely a politician says inflation is at 11 percent. It doesn’t matter to us whether the voice is annoying or pleasant to listen to. We want inflation down. It doesn’t matter to us whether she comes up with a new talking point about immigration. What we want is a real answer – something that we could actually swallow as real and persuasive – on why they did nothing about it for three and a half years in the Biden administration.
Hope and Change?
The Harris campaign focused all on the looks and not at all on what is going on underneath. I hope her “joy” and her description of Americans as “aspirational,” “ambitious,” and “having dreams” lowers your gas prices, gets you a job, finds you a house, closes the border, gets the illegal immigrants out of your community, saves your child from the trans insanity.
I hope it does because the actual Kamala Harris – when she is removed from those lines she likes to repeat over and over – is in favor of all the things that cause those problems to begin with.
You can check out Megyn’s full analysis by tuning in to episode 925 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.