To win, Kamala Harris must handle tough questions: Here are the answers

On Wednesday, Kamala Harris held a televised town hall meeting on CNN. She should do one every day for the rest of her campaign, but differently.

Voters in focus groups say over and over they want two things from Harris: direct answers to questions and a better explanation of how she’ll fix problems they face in their daily lives. She should indulge them.

The good news is that her campaign doesn’t need a gut rehab — it only needs to focus. Yes, it’s late in the game, but Donald Trump didn’t utter the words “Drain the swamp” until Oct. 17, 2016, just in time to flip the industrial Midwest and, with Vladimir Putin’s and James Comey’s assistance, steal the presidency.

To avert another such disaster, Harris must answer every question as clearly and specifically as she can. The doubts voters express pertain to her character as well as her vision. Nothing conveys character quite like answering a question.

At some point — I’m not sure exactly when, but long before Harris — Democrats stopped explaining things. Their reluctance arose partly from a desire to please their big donors, who don’t mind the truth so long as it’s served up in endlessly vague and amendable terms. It also reflects the advice of consultants — most of whom also work for the donors — who are obsessed with “message,” which they confuse with policy. 

Democrats obsessed with message engage in an endless search for the perfect meme, theme or slogan. Their quest ignores a basic truth: Policy precedes message; first, figure out what you believe, then how to tell people about it.

Democratic candidates tend to have a style voters find grating. They ignore questions put to them, instead launching spiels that most voters are tired of hearing. They don’t bother to refute charges or engage their opponents’ best arguments. Rather than explain new proposals, they lazily name-check old favorites.    

To beat Trump, Harris must tell the truth as boldly and relentlessly as he lies. Providing clear answers to “tough” questions is one way to start. She may find that the answers actually favor her, and that some are political gold. Here are some examples:

Are we better off now than we were four years ago?

Answer: Some of us are, but too many of us aren’t. The question is, why?  We brought the economy back from COVID and Trump. Markets are at record highs, unemployment is near record lows. GDP growth leads developed nations. Inflation, interest rates and even gas prices are coming down. Yet for millions of Americans the answer to your question is still no. That’s because, in America today, even when the economy soars, the middle class barely scrapes by.

We see record corporate profits, but working families haven’t had a real raise in 50 years. That didn’t start with Joe Biden, or even with Donald Trump.  Our economy stopped working for all of us a long time ago. The system is broken and I’m the only one in this race with a plan to fix it.

Trump’s plan is more tax cuts for billionaires. Mine is to end food-sector price gouging, have Medicare cover home health care, help new small businesses and first-time home buyers. And that’s just for starters. I’m running to bring back the American middle class. Trump just wants to bring himself back.

Could the choice be any clearer? Do we really think piling up debt so billionaires can live tax-free helps America? We can fight for a fair share for working families or let Trump give it all to his rich pals. That’s the choice on the ballot Nov. 5.

Illegal immigration spiked on your watch. Why should we trust you to fix it?

Answer: Do I wish we’d moved faster on immigration? Yes, I do. But after 20 years of failure and frustration — and Donald Trump was president for four of those years — our administration was the first to put a tough bipartisan bill in front of Congress. Trump killed it because he’d rather exploit an issue than solve a problem. He betrayed us all. Do not pretend it didn’t happen or doesn’t matter.    

I will secure and defend our borders — but I will also stop consigning many who are here to a permanent underclass. Did you know that undocumented immigrants pay $96 billion a year into a Social Security system from which they get no benefit? Without them, Social Security would collapse. Our immigrants are one reason why, during the pandemic, our economy outpaced the entire developed world. Rounding them by the millions and dumping them in internment camps would bring our economy to its knees. They harvest our food, staff our restaurants and care for our elders. They also design new technologies and discover new medicines. I won’t spread lies; instead, I’ll fix a broken system we should have fixed decades ago so it works for all of us.    

You have been vice president for four years. Why didn’t you fix the economy then?

Answer: Before Donald Trump came along, I never heard anyone say that vice presidents made policy. Just ask Mike Pence — and maybe JD Vance should have called him before taking his current gig. We passed more major bills than Trump even introduced, and ours actually helped: Chips, infrastructure, the Inflation Reduction Act. Everybody knows that what we achieved was remarkable. The only reason we didn’t do much more was because almost no Republican had the guts to pitch in and help.

Trump’s biggest campaign promise was to build a border wall that Mexico would pay for. Congress had to give him $25 billion for it, and he left office with less than 10% of it completed. He never even drafted the “beautiful” health care and “huge” infrastructure bills that he lied about nonstop. And exactly what do you think he did for the economy? Was it the tax cuts for the rich or the mountain of debt? Was it all the golf he played, all the TV he watched, all the name calling? The mob he unleashed on the U.S. Capitol?    

For the record: It was Barack Obama’s economy. Trump just inherited it. You may recall that, as a businessman, he blew through a multimillion-dollar inheritance and filed six bankruptcies. Then a book he didn’t write made him famous and he found his true calling: branding things he didn’t build. That’s exactly what all he did to Obama’s economy; He didn’t build it, he just named it after himself. 

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There are answers as good or better to every “tough” question out there, from the war in Gaza to transgender youth to Joe Biden’s infirmities. I’d be happy to supply them on request, but with any luck, someone on Harris’ staff already has them.

Democrats seek the center blindly, often mistaking Washington’s perceived middle ground for America’s, although the two don’t look anything alike. Harris now looks to Hillary Clinton for advice, and looks for the so-called center on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley.

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Clinton courted Wall Street. She outraised Trump two to one, $1.2 billion to $600 million. As it turns out, money isn’t everything. Clinton unleashed a blizzard of policy proposals, but none of them made an impression with voters. Getting too close to your donors, like listening too hard to your consultants, often ends up diluting or blurring your message.

By contrast, everybody remembers Trump’s 2016 platform: Revoke the trade deals, fortify the borders, drain the swamp. After that election, I began asking Clinton supporters to tell me what core issues she ran on.  No one could, and that should serve as a cautionary tale.

Trump’s 2024 platform is global tariffs, mass deportation and internment and raw authoritarianism.  Harris is running on the threat of Trump and her own blizzard of proposals, which are a lot like Clinton’s, though even less detailed.

To be clear, Harris’ platform, whatever its flaws, is worlds better than anything Trump has on offer. Next to his bonkers plan for a disastrous regime of tariffs, her $50,000 tax deduction for business startups reads like the Marshall Plan. The threat Trump poses to democracy, and to the global environment, is existential. That should be enough for Harris to eke out a win — but it might not be.  

This is the clearest, most important choice we as voters have ever been privileged to make. When I imagine Harris speaking to the plight of working families with the clarity and passion she brings to reproductive freedom, I imagine her winning.