Vice President Kamala Harris will make her final pitch to voters Wednesday night, less than two weeks before the election and early voting is already underway, at a CNN town hall in Chester Township, Pennsylvania.
The event, which begins at 9 p.m. ET, comes on the same date that CNN proposed a second debate between Harris and former President Donald Trump, which Harris accepted but Trump rejected.
In the final stretch of the race, Harris ramped up his attacks on Trump’s basic mental capacity, increasingly describing the former president as unfit and “unfit to be president of the United States.” He has so pointedly zeroed in on his role in taking away federal abortion rights, calling the often heated debate on the issue “brutal.”
Trump, in turn, has continued to play on Harris and in recent weeks has appeared apt to question — and sometimes attack — Jewish, black and Latino voters who support the Democratic Party.
But for all the rhetoric, organizing and hundreds of millions of dollars spent on campaign advertising, the race seems like a coin-toss — with both campaigns showing signs of frustration with the relative consistency of national and battleground state polls.
Here are five things to note during Harris’ town hall moderated by CNN’s Anderson Cooper:
Trump speech: Harris’ campaign has spent the past few weeks questioning whether Trump is mentally and physically fit for another four years in the White House.
“He’s increasingly erratic and out of control, and that requires that response,” Harris told reporters in Detroit last weekend. “I think the American people are better off with someone who seems really unstable.”
In many ways, it’s a shift from the strategy Trump and his fellow Republicans used for years to defeat President Joe Biden before the 81-year-old incumbent dropped out of the 2024 race in July. Harris, who turned 60, kept a frantic campaign schedule and mocked Trump for dropping out of scheduled interviews — a report citing “fatigue” as the reason. The 78-year-old Republican recently stopped by a town hall to dance and dance for 39 minutes in front of a confused-looking Christie Noem, who seemed more willing to point out odd behavior than the South Dakota governor seemed to be acting sober. event.
At the same time, surveys of undecided voters continue to signal a desire to learn more about Harris and his policy proposals. He has already proposed one of the most ambitious expansions of elder care in modern U.S. history.
Harris doesn’t necessarily choose to poke fun at Trump himself, but town hall questions often give candidates a chance to steer the conversation. Where she’s headed will provide a new perspective on how she and her campaign see the race.
Read on for more things to watch ahead of tonight CNN Town Hall.
