As for the CNN talk, “she was methodical and risk-averse in the 27-minute interview, performing like a top seed in the early rounds of the U.S. Open tennis tournament trying to hold serve, survive, and advance to the next round,” the New York Times wrote. It wasn’t that hard to do. While interviewer Dana Bash asked a few probing questions, with an occasional follow-up, they weren’t the sort of follow-ups designed to really dig down to the crux of an issue.

Still, since this is literally the only time Harris has taken a series of questions as a presidential candidate, it’s worth looking closely at what she said about the three issues polls show are the most important to voters in the 2024 elections. Those issues are inflation, immigration, and abortion. 

On inflation, Harris took care never to mention or acknowledge that it shot up during the time she and President Joe Biden have been in the White House. That’s a pretty big thing to leave out. In her telling, the United States was in a state of disaster when she and Biden took office and they have rescued the nation. “Our highest priority was to do what we could to rescue America,” she said. “And today, we know that we have inflation at under 3%.”

Harris did not note that inflation, as measured on an annual basis, was at 1.4% in January 2021, when she took the oath of office, and then rose to 9.1% by June 2022. It has slowly fallen to 2.9% today, meaning that prices have continued to increase all that time but at a progressively slower rate. The cumulative effect of inflation has been that grocery prices, for example, are 20% higher under Harris and Biden than they were four years ago. At another point in the interview, Harris said, “I’m very proud of the work that we have done that has brought inflation down to less than 3%,” while neglecting to add that even that lower figure is higher than it was when she and Biden entered the White House.

When Bash pointed out that there is an “affordability crisis” in the U.S., Harris offered three responses. The first was to express pride in “the work that we have done to cap the cost of insulin at $35 a month for seniors.” By the White House’s calculation, that affected a little less than 4 million of the 334 million people in the U.S. 

Harris’s second reaction was to promise to give people taxpayer dollars with which to pay higher prices. To see that, search the transcript of the interview for the word “tax.” She never once said “tax” in the sense of raising or lowering taxes but rather offered “tax credits” — as in expanding the current child tax credit and creating “what would be a tax credit of $25,000 for first-time homebuyers so they can just have enough to put a down payment on a home,” in Harris’s words. 

Harris’s third reaction was to do “what we need to do to bring down the price of groceries, for example, dealing with an issue like price gouging.” Most experts agree the inflation problem is not the result of price gouging and that actions designed to deal with price gouging would be inappropriate in dealing with today’s inflation, especially with grocery stores, which operate on very low profit margins.

Another thing Harris did not do when discussing inflation was to acknowledge her own role in making the situation worse. The Biden administration and Democrats in Congress pushed trillions of dollars into the economy, much of it more than what was needed, leading to predictions at the time that it would fuel inflation. Indeed, it did. Harris cast the tiebreaking vote for some of those spending measures. She has personally contributed to inflation, and none of her proposed actions will fix the problem.

On immigration, Harris simply did not account for her actions that helped the Biden administration admit more than 7 million unvetted illegal border crossers and allow them to stay in the U.S. Instead, she said her work on addressing the “root causes” of migration from the Northern Triangle “has actually resulted in a number of benefits, including historic investments by American businesses in that region.” It’s not clear that the people facing the migration crisis will be cheered that Harris persuaded more American companies to invest in Guatemala, but that is the case she made.

Harris’s main case for the effectiveness of her work on the border issue was her support of a Senate bill that she and Biden latched onto after more than three years of unchecked crossings at the border. She claimed the bill would have “contributed to securing our border,” while Republicans argued it would have normalized the entry of 1 million illegal crossers per year. The bill never even received a vote in the GOP-controlled House and failed in the Senate, which Harris blames on former President Donald Trump. Her big campaign promise on immigration is that she would press anew to pass the bill after she takes office.

On another immigration topic, Harris sort of addressed her earlier position that illegal border crossings should be decriminalized. Now, Harris says, “I believe there should be consequence” for crossing the border illegally. She did not say what that consequence should be. But she did claim that she is uniquely qualified to handle the problem because she “prosecuted transnational criminal organizations” and “served a border state as attorney general.” She did not say why that experience is superior to her opponent, who as president dramatically reduced illegal border crossings.

Finally, abortion. The one issue on which Harris’s views have been clear and unchanging is abortion. She is for an unrestricted right to abortion, at any time, any place. As a senator when Roe v. Wade was still in effect, she proposed legislation that would have banned the restrictions, large and small, that various states had placed on abortion. Now, she is running on legalizing abortion nationally without restrictions. The morning after the CNN interview, her campaign sent out an email headlined, “Team Harris-Walz Announces Reproductive Freedom Bus Tour Across the Battlegrounds.”

It would have been interesting to hear Harris answer questions about her views on abortion, given that a majority of the public opposed overturning Roe but also supported a number of the restrictions that states had placed on abortion. But CNN did not ask a single question about abortion, and Harris did not bring it up herself. 

One little note. At the Democratic National Convention, Harris appeared to take “freedom” as her campaign’s theme. In the interview with CNN, she never said the word. Not even once. It’s not clear whether that means anything or not.

To sum up: On the public’s three biggest issues, Harris ignored some important matters, misrepresented others, or simply relied on non sequitur arguments. And of course there was little time to cover much beyond those issues. To give voters a deeper and more accurate picture of her views would require a more probing journalist with more than 27 minutes for Q&A.