<body><div><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=12jxQr_0w3QyuQb00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=12jxQr_0w3QyuQb00" width="1400" height="788" >MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: Vice President Kamala Harris is in Arizona this morning. Democrats are trying to hold on to that state, which they won narrowly in 2020. She went there after a stop in Nevada - another swing state - where she made an emotional pitch to Latino voters in a town hall on Univision. Meanwhile, in another swing state, former President Barack Obama was in Pittsburgh with a blunt message to Black men, who he said are dragging their feet on getting behind Harris. NPR political correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben is traveling with Harris, and she's with us now from Phoenix. Good morning, Danielle.DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, BYLINE: Good morning, Michel.MARTIN: Very early morning for you, so thank you. So you were at two different events with Harris yesterday. What stood out to you?KURTZLEBEN: Well, her day started with that Univision town hall in Las Vegas, and that was the first time we've really seen her interacting in an unscripted way with voters at length, and there was a lot more emotion there than we've seen before. For example, there was a question from a woman who recently lost her mother, and this woman tearfully told Kamala Harris that her mom had had difficulty getting health care because she was undocumented. So she asked Harris what her plan is for people who, as she put it, live and die in the shadows. Now, here was the start of Harris' response.(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: I'm so sorry for you.IVETT CASTILLO: (Crying) Thank you.HARRIS: You must remember your mother as she lived. I have enough of a feeling about your strength - that it probably comes from her - to know she would want you to remember her as she lived and not as she died, OK?KURTZLEBEN: Now, the answer went on to be a bit more fulsome. She talked about a pathway to citizenship. But that feeling you heard there really echoes something Harris has been stressing - the idea of empathy, of saying that that's what separates her from Trump. Now, I do want to add, by the way, that Trump will be doing his own Univision town hall next week, and I'm really interested in what kind of emotions come up there.MARTIN: Yeah, interesting. It seems like it kind of broke out of the rote that we often expect from these kinds of scripted events. So, OK, let's make a mad dash across the country for a minute because while she was doing that town hall, former President Barack Obama was in Pennsylvania, and he said that there isn't the energy for Harris that there was when he was running, especially among Black men. What do you make of that?KURTZLEBEN: Well, there is evidence that younger Black men are much more likely to support Trump than older and female Black voters. There was this one poll from the NAACP last month that found that 26% of Black men under 50 - 1 in 4 support Trump. That's twice the share of the total Black population that supports Trump. Now, that's just one poll, but it's worrying some Democrats.Now, what Obama said was that he thinks that some Black men, quote, "just aren't feeling the idea of having a woman as president." Now, the phrase that we've been using lately to talk about people like Tim Walz and Barack Obama and other powerful men who support Harris is permission structure, that these guys give men voters permission, so to speak, to vote for a woman of color. Obama was doing that in a sense, though he wasn't so much giving permission at times as kind of scolding.MARTIN: Interesting. So I take it that Harris hasn't really addressed this issue on the trail herself.KURTZLEBEN: No, she hasn't. She really stays away from questions of identity, especially about being a woman and a woman of color. But she does talk a lot about coming from a middle-class background, which she did yesterday.MARTIN: Any other questions that she got at the town hall that stood out to you?KURTZLEBEN: Well, there was one in particular that stood out. One man told Harris that he was concerned about the fact that she wasn't nominated via the primary process. Harris, in her answer, got extremely impassioned. She talked about January 6, about Trump's relationship with Putin and about defending democracy. And she finished by saying, quote, "I thank you for your candor." Now, it was just such a rare interaction of a candidate taking on an undecided voter's real concern.MARTIN: That is NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben in Phoenix. Danielle, thank you.KURTZLEBEN: Thank you.Copyright © 2024 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.</div></body>

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Harris uses town hall to show empathy with Latino voters

Vice President Kamala Harris is in Arizona this morning. Democrats are trying to hold on to that state, which they won narrowly in 2020. She went there after a stop in Nevada - another swing state - where she made an emotional pitch to Latino voters in a town hall on Univision. Meanwhile, in another swing state, former President Barack Obama was in Pittsburgh with a blunt message to Black men, who he said are dragging their feet on getting behind Harris. NPR political correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben is traveling with Harris, and she's with us now from Phoenix. Good morning, Danielle.

Harris uses town hall to show empathy with Latino voters

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