Top Obama Advisor David Axelrod Sounds Alarm About Kamala Harris's Town Hall Performance: 'Word Salad City'
Even when praising her, Democrat figureheads are finding plenty to criticize about Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, with less than two weeks until a critical election.
While Harris has had plenty of critics from both the Republican Party and from voters since taking over for incumbent President Joe Biden in late July, she had generally been shielded from the barbs of her fellow Democrats.
(If anything, it appears her “Democrat” critics would sooner ditch the party altogether.)
But after a torrid — and, according to her critics, horrid — media blitz over the last few weeks, it seems even the Democrats need to criticize some of the warts of the Harris campaign.
One such critic emerged on the usually-friendly airwaves of CNN, and that was one of the architects of former President Barack Obama’s successful election campaigns: David Axelrod.
The 69-year-old political consultant and strategist analyzed Harris’s performance during a Wednesday night town hall event with Anderson Cooper. He did offer some praise for the de facto leader of the Democrats.
But after offering his platitudes, Axelrod offered a more biting criticism when pressed on Harris’s overall performance.
“Look, I think it was a mixed night, OK?” Axelrod began. “I think she was very strong coming out of the gate, and she obviously came with a purpose.”
The former political advisor then lauded Harris for attacking her chief political rival and Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, on a number of issues, including alleged quotes about admiring Adolf Hitler’s generals, which appear to have been largely discredited.
Axelrod also gave Harris points for hitting on the topic of abortion in a way that her base will certainly eat up.
But Axelrod also couldn’t help but notice that one of Harris’ most common criticisms — her propensity for “word salads” — reared its ugly head during the Wednesday night event.
“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 explained.
The Democrat strategist offered one example in which Cooper asked Harris whether she thought she could handle the Israel-Hamas conflict better than Trump.
Instead of answering that yes-or-no question, Harris, as Axelrod described, responded with “a seven-minute answer, but none of it related to the question he was asking.”
Axelrod also criticized Harris’s steadfast refusal to take any responsibility or accountability with regard to the illegal immigration crisis that occurred under the watch of Harris and incumbent President Joe Biden.
“On immigration, I thought she missed an opportunity, because she would acknowledge no concerns about any of the administration’s policies,” Axelrod said. “And that’s a mistake.
“Sometimes you have to concede things, and she didn’t concede much.”
Axelrod wasn’t done.
“You do want to relate to the people in front of you,” he said. “She didn’t do a lot of that. She didn’t ask them questions.
“She didn’t address them particularly, so she was giving set pieces too much.”
Axelrod’s concerns are not completely unfounded, as Trump has recently retaken the national polling advantage over Harris.
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