CNN analysts and pundits, usually very friendly toward Kamala Harris, expressed concerns over the vice president’s network town hall performance on Wednesday.
Harris appeared for the town hall before battleground Pennsylvania voters two weeks before Election Day, when she’ll oppose former President Donald Trump in the race for the White House.
Veteran Democrat strategist David Axelrod said Harris evades answering certain questions.
“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,” Axelrod said. “And she did that on a couple of answers.”
Pundit Van Jones agreed with Axelrod.
“The word salad stuff gets on my nerves,” Jones said. “I think some of the evasions are not necessary.”
CNN anchor Dana Bash said Harris may not have been persuasive enough for some voters.
“What I’m hearing from people who I’ve been talking to … if her goal was to close the deal, they’re not sure she did that,” Bash said after the town hall outside Philadelphia.
Pennsylvania is one of seven swing states expected to decide the outcome of the presidential election.
Axelrod said that the Democrat presidential nominee avoided answering a question about Israel and “missed an opportunity” when asked about immigration.
“She would acknowledge no concerns about any of the administration’s policies. And that’s a mistake,” said Axelrod, a key figure during President Barack Obama’s campaigns in 2008 and 2012. “Sometimes you have to concede things, and she didn’t concede much.”
CNN host Abby Phillip added: “She just didn’t want to go there.”
Several times, town hall moderator Anderson Cooper forcefully pushed Harris on policy matters. Each time, the vice president failed to give a straight answer.
CNN’s Daniel Dale offered a brief fact check of Harris’ performance.
“She also made at least one false claim, one I’d call an exaggeration,” Dale said. “Plus a couple of others that I think left out key context.”
A video then played showing Harris saying that, as a candidate in 2020, she pledged she would not ban fracking.
“It is not true that Harris pledged in 2020 that she would not ban fracking as president,” Dale said. “Her campaign has explained that she was referring to her comments in a VP debate with Mike Pence. But here’s the thing about that debate, nowhere in it did Harris say she had changed her own previous 2019 support for a fracking ban.
“What she did say in that debate twice was that Joe Biden, the head of the Democratic ticket of the time, would not ban fracking himself.”
