With Election Day fast approaching, Vice President Kamala Harris is staking her final campaign strategy on an incendiary message: that Donald Trump represents an existential threat to American democracy. In a turbulent CNN town hall, Harris gave an unequivocal answer when Anderson Cooper asked if she considers Trump a fascist: “Yes, I do.” Expecting her declaration to resonate, the silence that followed in the largely supportive audience was telling.
Columnist Maureen Callahan critiques this approach as evidence of a campaign unmoored from concrete policy, pointing to Harris’s struggle to define her vision without merely contrasting it against Trump. In her coverage, Callahan suggests Harris’s focus on anti-Trump rhetoric overshadows any positive platform and leaves voters to wonder, “What does she stand for?”
This criticism extends to Harris’s attempts to address complex topics like the U.S. role in global conflicts, which stumbled when a young volunteer pressed her on avoiding civilian casualties in the Israel-Palestine conflict. In an answer that critics dubbed “word salad,” Harris faltered before offering a generic endorsement of a “two-state solution.”
Callahan also highlights unresolved issues surrounding Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, noting allegations of past misconduct that have been largely ignored by the mainstream media. Such questions remain, Callahan argues, adding to what she perceives as a candidate more focused on control and optics than transparency.
In a fiery exchange, MSNBC’s Jen Psaki appeared to validate this “scare tactics” strategy by asking Democratic strategist James Carville if the left should indeed “scare people” into voting against Trump. “Yep,” Carville responded, amplifying what Callahan describes as an “intellectual fascism” within the Democratic strategy — an attempt to steer voters through fear rather than policy clarity.
Ultimately, Callahan’s piece argues that Harris’s approach may backfire. Instead of reaching across the aisle, as Barack Obama once did, Harris seems to underscore division. To Callahan, this tactic reveals an urgent, almost desperate pivot, one that risks alienating those still undecided by sidelining policy in favor of polemic.