We’re awash in polls these days, and pretty much every one of them is trending toward Donald Trump and away from Kamala Harris. But if you want an even better indicator of who’s winning this presidential election, take a look at who’s smiling, who’s having fun out there on the trail. And then take a look at who’s gnashing her teeth and calling the other guy a fascist and a Nazi.

The former is your winner. The latter is your loser.

As if on cue, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper asked Kamala Harris at a town hall on Wednesday night, “You’ve quoted General Milley calling Donald Trump a fascist. You yourself have not used that word to describe him. Let me ask you tonight: Do you think Donald Trump is a fascist?”

To which Harris replied, “Yes, I do. Yes, I do. And I also believe that the people who know him best on this subject should be trusted.”

As proof of Trump’s Mussolini-ism, Harris then cited his former vice president, Mike Pence. Pence, though, has never once called Trump a fascist. And then she cited Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney, who hate Trump’s guts and who would swear he’s Jeffrey Epstein if they thought it would cost him a point or two in the battleground states.

Yesterday, our Nate Jackson explained why all these facile fascism smears are so phony.

Of course, none of this is new. The Left has been telling us that Trump is a fascist and a Nazi for years now. And it hasn’t stuck. But these desperate attacks weren’t Kamala Harris’s only problem at that town hall. Her repeated word salads were even worse.

Asked by Cooper if she’s ever made a mistake in her political career, she answered: “I mean, I’m, I, I’ve made many mistakes. Um … and they range from, you know, if you’ve ever parented a child, you know you make lots of mistakes, too. Um, in my role as vice president, I mean, I’ve probably worked very hard at making sure that, um, I am well versed on issues, and, um, I think that is very important.”

That’s all well and good. Disjointed and sad, but well and good. And is she really trying to say that she didn’t make a mistake when, for example, she repeatedly and viciously denounced Donald Trump’s border wall? Didn’t make a mistake by calling for the decriminalization of illegal border crossings? Didn’t make a mistake on that fracking ban? Didn’t make a mistake by supporting single-payer healthcare? Didn’t make a mistake by bailing would-be killers out of jail? Didn’t make a mistake by exhorting those George Floyd rioters to keep on rioting?

This sort of thing went on all night, and it was practically painful to watch. As Fox News funnyman Greg Gutfeld quipped, “Kamala’s town hall was such a disaster, Ukraine sent us money.”

Midway through the event, Cooper listened to Harris talk about all the great things she wants to do, then noted that Harris had already been in the White House for four years. Here’s her Churchillian reply:

Well, there’s a lot that was done, but there’s more to do, Anderson. And, and, I’m pointing out things that need to be done. That haven’t been done but need to be done.

Credit to Cooper, who asked good, solid, probing questions all night long. As Robby Starbuck put it, “I did not have Anderson Cooper cooking Kamala on my bingo card but here we are.”

Perhaps Harris’s most pathetic moment came when Cooper asked her about the “stupid,” “useless,” “medieval vanity project” otherwise known as Donald Trump’s border wall. “So, remember,” she began, “Donald Trump said Mexico would pay for it? Come on. They didn’t. How much of that wall did he build? I think the last number I saw was about two percent.” (Here, history will show that the Democrats resisted Trump’s efforts to build the wall at every step.)

I did not have Anderson Cooper cooking Kamala on my bingo card but here we are.

She’s exposed as a total hypocrite here. First the wall was racist, stupid and xenophobic but now that she needs votes she’s pandering. pic.twitter.com/ctk6nmQcvZ

— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) October 24, 2024

Not even CNN’s Van Jones could mask his disappointment. “I think that the word-salad stuff gets on my nerves,” he said. “I think that some of the evasions are not necessary.”

On the “bright” side for Harris, no one watches CNN. But still.

“When she doesn’t want to answer a question, her habit is to kind of go to word-salad city,” said former Obama strategist David Axelrod, “and she did that on a couple of answers; one was on Israel, Anderson asked a direct question, ‘Would you be stronger on Israel than Trump?’ And there was a seven-minute answer, but none of it related to the question he was asking. And so, you know, on certain questions like that, on immigration, I thought she missed an opportunity because she would acknowledge no concerns about any of the administration’s policies. And that’s a mistake.”

It’s a mistake, all right. The American people, by and large, aren’t stupid.

When an audience member asked, “What weaknesses do you bring to the table?” Harris couldn’t even play along:

That’s a great question, Joe. Um, well I am certainly not perfect. So, let’s start there. And, um, I think that … I, perhaps a weakness, some would say, but I actually think that it’s a strength, I really do value having a team of very smart people around me who bring to my decision-making process different perspectives. I, my team will tell you I am constantly saying, ‘Let’s kick the tire on that. Let’s kick the tires on it.’ Because, listen, I, as I mentioned earlier, I started my career as a prosecutor. I was a courtroom prosecutor.

Indeed. And she also grew up in a middle-class household.

That’s been Kamala Harris’s fatal flaw from the start: her abject inability to think on her feet. Ask her for a weakness, and she lamely humblebrags about a scripted strength. Sheesh. As the inimitable Casey Stengel once rhetorically asked of the sad-sack ‘62 Mets: “Can’t anyone here play this game?”

Answer: No.

Succinctly summing things up immediately afterward, Republican strategist and former Trump campaign adviser David Urban put it this way: “Kamala Harris participated in a one-person debate last night, and she lost.”