By the time Vice President Kamala Harris took the stage at a CNN town hall, about 25 million Americans had voted early in the US election.
With 13 days left in the race, such participation is an encouraging sign of passion, but it also reflects the task Harris faces in the last stretch of her campaign.
Donald Trump has effectively been running for president for the past nine years, and most of the opinions about him are largely baked in.
But Harris was only elevated less than 100 days ago, and if the swing states I’ve visited over the past few weeks are any guide, many voters still don’t really know who she is or what she stands for.
To that end, the prime-time event on Thursday AEDT was a chance for the vice president to convince a small percentage of “undecided and persuadable” voters to swing her way in the seven battleground states that will decide the presidency.
Many of these voters – including Democrats – don’t necessarily like Trump, but they’re not sure about Harris either.
Indeed, as progressive Democrat Gilbert Romero from Arizona recently told me: “This election is not just Kamala versus Trump. It’s Kamala versus the apathetic voter.
“She needs to give us something more than what she’s given so far.”
Harris began the night with her gloves off. Having started her run for the White House taking relatively tepid shots at Trump, the vice president has now entered the “go hard or go home” phase of the campaign, increasingly portraying her Republican rival as someone who is “dangerous” and “unfit for office”.
After she highlighted how many of Trump’s former aides have made the same case – including former chief of staff and retired four-star general John Kelly – CNN host Anderson Cooper asked her: “Do you believe Donald Trump is a fascist?”
“Yes, I do,” Harris replied, in what was the first time she has categorically used that term to describe the former president.
As a former California attorney general and US senator, Harris is clearly smart – contrary to Trump’s attacks that she has a “low IQ” – but she often fails (or deliberately refuses) to answer questions directly.
“Well, there’s not just one, I have to be honest with you, Carol,” Harris replied, before embarking on a meandering stump speech.
A student at Drexel University, who identified as a registered Republican, later asked the vice president how she would integrate immigrants safely into society. In something that felt like a trap, he also wanted to know what benefits she would give them and how much this would cost taxpayers.
Harris didn’t quite answer and instead spent most of her time attacking Trump for quashing a bipartisan border bill that could have tackled America’s “broken immigration system”.
Not surprisingly, Harris picked a strength, namely that “I’m a bit of nerd”.
But when Cooper followed up by asking if she’d made any mistakes, she replied, “I’ve made many”, before giving the audience one of her trademark word salads.
“They range from, you know, if you’ve ever parented a child, you know, you make lots of mistakes, too. In my role as vice president, I mean, I’ve probably worked very hard at making sure that I am well versed on issues, and I think that is very important. It’s a mistake not to be well versed on an issue and feel compelled to answer a question.”
The town hall was conducted in Pennsylvania, which both parties feel would be the most important battleground of this year’s election.
It also happened on the date CNN proposed a second discussion between Harris and Trump, which the former president turned down.
Instead, the Republican candidate was at an evening rally in Georgia, where he escalated his personal insults at Harris, describing her as “crazy” and demanding that voters tell her: “You’re the worst ever. There’s never been anybody like you. You can’t put sentences together.”
It was pure Trump vs quintessential Harris in a race that is still neck and neck.
However, with no more debates or prime-time events scheduled before the November 5 election, this town hall was one of the last opportunities for the vice president to demonstrate how she would govern if she were elected president.
She didn’t fully meet the occasion, focusing on defining Trump rather than her own programs and ambitions.
And perhaps – just maybe – that is her approach for winning the White House.
