Vice President Kamala Harris had her highly anticipated interview with CNN last night, and as far as candidate performances go, it was . . . fine.

That the interview had the level of hype it did was fairly absurd in the first place, since up until this point, answering questions from reporters has been a routine, unremarkable part of a politician’s job, especially one vying to become president. Not for Harris, who has faced mounting criticisms over her steadfast avoidance of any unscripted interaction with the media since becoming the Democratic standard-bearer. There is a reason that Democrats, as alarmed as they were by Joe Biden’s inability to speak coherently, were for a long time more confident in the clearly declining president than Harris, whose 2020 presidential campaign was an embarrassing flop and who has garnered numerous negative headlines as Biden’s number two over her unforced errors.

To the extent that all Harris had to do last night was avoid the kind of potentially viral disastrous interview moments that have plagued her in previous years, she passed this lowest of low bars. Even so, despite everyone and their hamster knowing the question was coming, Harris still doesn’t have a good answer for why exactly she’s done a 180 on a host of policy issues she championed when first running for president, a list that now includes not just progressive policies like a fracking ban and Medicare for All but even middle-of-the-road Democratic principles like opposing Donald Trump’s border wall, which Harris now pledges to build more of. Harris simply kept repeating that her “values have not changed,” a canned line that was enough to get her through an interview with Dana Bash but may not work as well with a more aggressive interrogator.

But it’s the substance that really matters. Here the verdict is far less rosy.

The Harris campaign so far has often seemed intentionally designed to confuse observers about what kind of president she would actually be. She wants to raise corporate taxes, but she’s actively courting big business tycoons. She hasn’t commented one way or another on whether she’ll keep Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan in place after billionaire donors called for her ouster. Her chief foreign policy adviser is a major proponent of the Iran deal, while Harris insiders publicly say it’s as good as dead if she returns to the White House.

Last night’s interview will not be reassuring to anyone hoping Harris would steer the country in a more progressive direction, or even simply be a competent president. It’s telling that in the whole nearly thirty-minute-long interview, Harris got most animated and specific when answering a softball question about how Biden broke the news to her that he was stepping down.

By contrast, when asked about what she would do “on day one in the White House,” the vice president floundered.

“There are a number of things,” she said, including “to do what we can to support and strengthen the middle class,” before filling time with pablum about Americans’ hopes and aspirations and launching into a criticism of Trump. It took Bash repeating the question and another twenty seconds of vague generalities before Harris finally landed on a specific policy: extending the child tax credit to $6,000 for a child’s first year.

That it took this much runway and cajoling from an interviewer for Harris to name this (specific and popular) policy and the vague promise of “investing in the American family around affordable housing” — in spite of the fact that, as she herself pointed out, she had “already laid out a number of proposals” — does not inspire confidence. Either the vice president does not think her own proposals are popular and is scared to bring them up, or she does not have a solid grasp of her own policy agenda. (When later pressed on the affordability crisis, Harris also briefly mentioned “dealing with an issue like price gouging” and her $25,000 first homebuyer down-payment assistance.)

There were other lowlights. Harris once again touted the Democrats’ far–right border bill gutting the right to asylum, and did so without outlining the kind of positive alternative vision to Trump’s cruel, deportation-focused immigration agenda that was once standard for Democrats. She quickly agreed to appoint a Republican to her cabinet, then her campaign touted the promise in a press release.

But the lowest point came in her response to a question on Gaza. Harris’s perceived distance from Biden’s disastrous Middle East policy was sold as one of her strengths before she became the nominee, and Harris has been able to avoid the rage that has greeted Biden by publicly displaying more empathy for Palestinian suffering and aspirations, and appearing at times to take a harsher line toward Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

But after last night’s interview, no one should believe that Harris is offering any alternative to Biden’s ghastly and potentially catastrophic unconditional support for what is now widely understood to be an Israeli campaign of genocide.

Asked “Would you do anything differently?” including by stopping arms shipments to Israel, Harris reiterated her belief that Israel “has a right to defend itself” and repeated over and over that “we have to get a deal done.”

“But no change in policy in terms of arms and — and so forth?” asked Bash.

“No,” Harris replied.

Bash was, in the first place, wrong to frame the demand for an arms embargo as something that “a lot of people on the progressive left want.” Poll after poll shows this has majority support from a broad spectrum of voters.

For instance, a June CBS News poll found that 61 percent of voters opposed sending more weapons to Israel, including 62 percent of independents and 63 percent of moderates, and with majorities cutting across, racial, gender, and age lines. (Only those aged sixty-five and over had majority support for more arms shipments, though 44 percent of the bracket was opposed.)

Another recent poll found that a Democratic candidate actually grew her support when she backed a cease-fire and arms embargo on Israel, a finding backed by other surveys. This fact is so incontrovertible, even the pro-Democratic, pro-Harris anchors on MSNBC are pointing it out.

But Harris’s interview answer not only closes whatever distance she was able to make people believe exists between her and Biden. It reveals that her understanding of the situation in the Middle East is just as incoherent as the president’s.

It is, without exaggeration, nonsensical at this point to say that “we must get a deal,” meaning a cease-fire, but oppose stopping the flow of arms to Israel. Even Israeli sources admit that Netanyahu is the main obstacle to the cease-fire, just as Egyptian and other officials involved in the never-ending cease-fire talks have likewise done, because, as Biden himself openly told the public months ago, Netanyahu wants the war to go on as long as possible so he can stay in power (and because he wants Trump to win in November, which is why the Israeli PM said in May he would keep fighting for another seven months — until the month after the presidential election was over, in other words).

Given the closeness of the race in the heavily Muslim- and Arab-populated must-win state of Michigan, Harris’s answer to Bash’s Gaza question — and her decision to tie herself completely to Biden’s approach — is the most electorally risky move the notoriously risk-averse politician has made in her short time as the nominee.

Harris avoided disaster in her only sit-down interview with a reporter so far, after a whole month as the nominee. But simply reading that sentence back to yourself should show why Democrats should not be breathing a sigh of relief.