During an interview with CNN‘s Anderson Cooper, Vice President Kamala Harris ackowledged that President Joe Biden had a “slow start” during Thursday night’s debate but insisted that it was a “strong finish.”
Cooper repeatedly pressed Harris on Democratic concerns over Biden’s performance, in which his raspy voice and halting delivery contrasted to the robust-if-factually dubious style of his rival, Donald Trump.
“Yes, it was a slow start, but it was a strong finish,” Harris said, adding that “what became very clear through the course of the night is that Joe Biden is fighting on behalf of the American people on substance, on policy, on performance. Joe Biden is extraordinarily strong.”
But Cooper noted that it is Democrats who have called Biden’s performance “a disaster” and “a train wreck.”
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“Listen, people can debate on style points,” Harris said. “But ultimately, this election and who is the president of the United States has to be about substance, and the contrast is clear.”
Cooper, though, returned to the question of Biden’s debate performance, noting that when Harris debated Biden during the Democratic primaries in 2019, “he was a very different person on the stage.”
Harris said, “I got the point that you are making about a one and a half hour debate tonight. I am talking about three and a half years of performance in work that has been historic.”
Cooper then pointed out that it was the Biden campaign that called for the debate.
“Can you say that you are not concerned at all having watched the president’s performance tonight?”
Harris responded, “It was a slow start. That’s obvious to everyone. I’m not going to debate that point. I’m talking about the choice in November. I’m talking about one of the most important elections in our lifetime.”
On MSNBC, network analyst Claire McCaskill told Rachel Maddow, “Nobody is a bigger fan of Kamala Harris than I am. And Gavin Newsom did a remarkable job as a surrogate. …But those two people are signaling to a whole lot of Americans that are paying attention, ‘How come they are not running? How come the Democratic Party doesn’t have them at the top of the ticket instead of using them to shore up what have become after tonight some pretty glaring weaknesses in our president.”
