Don’t confuse anything that happened with the kind of scrutiny candidates undergo when they hold town halls under real campaign conditions. There was no cranky guy to get up and ask a question out of left field or a local activist determined to nail the candidate down on his or her obsession. No, in this case, Winfrey’s first question was “Can you feel the joy rising here?” (Harris said she could.) After that, Winfrey said, “It seems to us that something happened to you the moment Joe Biden stepped aside and withdrew his candidacy, that a veil or something dropped and you just stepped into your power.”

And so on. The event was part lovefest, part pep rally. Actually, it was all lovefest. Harris said almost nothing of consequence because 1. her entire approach to the campaign is to avoid saying anything of consequence and 2. it wasn’t that kind of event. (She did serve up a little bit of her famous word salad.) So rather than go through Harris’s various statements, it might be a good idea to take another look at her way of avoiding any substantive discussion of her record on what is one of the top three issues in the campaign — the border.