Harris uses town hall to show empathy with Latino voters

LAS VEGAS — Vice President Harris took questions from undecided Latino voters on Thursday, an unscripted format she used to try to show empathy while making the case that her opponent does not care about the problems of the middle class.

Latino voters were a key voting bloc for Democrats in 2020, helping the party win Nevada and Arizona. But polls have shown that enthusiasm has slipped, and the Harris campaign has been fighting to win back support.

At the town hall, hosted by Univision, voters asked questions in Spanish and English.

Harris expressed sympathy for a woman who, through tears, said her mother, who died six weeks ago, was unable to get the medical care she needed as a result of her immigration status.

“I’m so sorry for what you’ve been through,” Harris said, talking about how her own mother immigrated to the United States.

“I know what it is like to have a hard working mother who loves you and to lose that, but I know that her spirit is alive,” she said.

Another voter said she has lost everything because of long COVID and can’t get Social Security disability benefits, while a third shared a story about being unable to get good health care for a knee injury.

Harris pivoted from the personal stories to her own policies — and those of former President Donald Trump, who is slated to do a similar town hall with Univision next week.

“There’s a big contrast between me and Donald Trump,” she said. “When he was president of the United States, he and his friends 60 times tried to get rid of the Affordable Care Act,” she said.

Some questions were pointed

At one point, a voter who identified himself as a registered independent raised concern about how Harris replaced President Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket without having gone through a primary or caucus process.

Harris acknowledged that her path to the nomination was “a bit unprecedented,” but said Americans are living in “an unusual time” in which they face a stark choice in the election.

“This is not about a debate on trickle-down economic theory,” Harris said. “It’s literally about do we support our democracy and the Constitution of the United States, or are we going to go on the path of somebody who is a sore loser and lost the election in 2020 and tried to have a violent mob undo it.”

One woman said she sees news reports that the cost of living has gone down — yet feels that grocery prices have gone up. “Sometimes it’s really difficult because life is going up and we just simply cannot get ahead,” the woman told Harris. “What are you going to do to help the middle class so that the cost of living does not destroy us?”

Harris laid out her economic plans — such as expanding the child tax credit and tax breaks for first-time home buyers — sprinkling in her own life experiences as the daughter of a single parent.

On immigration, Harris said she would help “Dreamers” brought to the United States as children by their parents, and find a pathway to citizenship for “hardworking people” who have lived in the United States for years — but also said she would try to bring back a get-tough border security bill that died in the Senate earlier this year.

Harris was also asked how she values people she does not agree with and if she could list three virtues that Trump has.

She first criticized the former president, saying that “part of what pains me is the approach that frankly, Donald Trump, and some others have taken, which is to suggest that it’s us versus them.”

Harris went on to say that she thinks “Trump loves his family, and I think that’s very important … But I don’t really know him.”