Kamala Harris sips beer and jokes on a talk show tour

WASHINGTON – Audiences cheered Kamala Harris during her media campaign this week. The talk show hosts also asked the questions.

“You have to win,” Howard Stern told her on his radio show of the same name.

“I personally can’t understand why anyone would vote for him,” Joy Behar of ABC’s “The View” said of Donald Trump.

“Would you like to have a beer with me so I can tell people what it's like?” asked CBS's Stephen Colbert.

Out came the Miller High Life, and the Vice President boldly clinked glasses with Colbert and sipped it.

To gain ground in crucial voting blocs, Harris shed some of the caution she had displayed since the start of the race and participated in a series of interviews, albeit on her own terms with mostly friendly hosts. Her campaign believes the appearances will help introduce her to Americans who never gave Harris much thought before she became the presumptive Democratic nominee in July and want to learn more about her life story.

“We’ve seen in surveys that people want to get to know them better. They want to see her more and we are committed to that and want to continue to do that,” a Harris campaign aide said before Election Day.

There is nothing random about the places where she appeared. Given that “The View” is particularly popular with female voters, the campaign used Harris' visit on Tuesday to unveil a new policy proposal aimed at helping “sandwich generation” households that include both elderly parents as well as caring for dependent children.

Stern's audience is overwhelmingly male – a chance for Harris to capture a core part of Trump's base. This year's NBC News poll found that only 25% of men ages 18 to 49 had a positive view of Harris, compared to 55% with a negative view.

She needs help wooing young male voters, and Stern vouched for her, inviting his millions of listeners to embrace the prospect of a female president. Stern is notoriously rude — he once asked actor Warren Beatty about his bathroom routine. In Harris' case, he struck an admiring tone, gently telling her about her upbringing and her career.

He praised the women he knew in leadership positions and said that “his best connections in radio and in business were working with women.” Men, on the other hand, “can assert themselves and get away with a lot of impunity,” he said.

“I was the first woman in almost every position I held,” responded Harris, a former U.S. senator, California attorney general and San Francisco district attorney. “I believe that men and women support women in leadership positions and that is my life experience and that is why I am running for president.”

A challenge for Harris is the sheer omnipresence of her opponent. Whether he's in power or not, Trump tends to dominate the news cycle, running a presidential campaign that began in 2015 and never really stopped.

In contrast, Harris appeared to be reserved, wary of the gaffes that are always a risk in casual encounters with the media. But four weeks later, and the race is too close to call, Harris is looking for ways to jump into what the campaign aide called “to the front of the conversation.”

Harris dialed into the Weather Channel and then spoke to CNN by phone Wednesday afternoon and urged Floridians to heed warnings and stay out of the way of Hurricane Milton.

She gave an interview to CBS' “60 Minutes” for an election special that aired Monday. Trump declined the show's interview request.

And on Thursday evening, Harris is scheduled to attend a televised town hall event in Las Vegas hosted by Univision. Harris answers audience questions and tries to make inroads with Hispanic male voters who have aligned themselves with Trump. In two key battleground states, Nevada and Arizona, the majority of Hispanic men under 50 prefer Trump over Harris, according to a USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll.

Even if voters miss their on-air appearances, they could still witness viral moments replayed on their social media feeds, campaign officials said.

“People may not see it live, but there are a few clips – maybe a picture of her having a beer with Colbert – that are being circulated by the campaign and by a lot of people,” the aide said.

Trump has taken a more unorthodox approach. He has remained heavily focused on his constituency, appearing repeatedly on Fox News and other conservative media outlets, along with podcasts that target far-right male listeners.

The conversations can go in any direction – and they often do. Cocaine was discussed at length during Trump's appearance on a podcast by comedian Theo Von. At one point, Trump asked the moderator whether the drug gave the user a “stronger head.”

“Cocaine will turn you into a fucking owl, homie,” Von told America’s former commander in chief. “Do you know what I’m saying? You'll be outside on your porch. You will be your own street lamp.”

Harris, for her part, seemed most comfortable discussing her personal life, but less so when it came to politics.

She told Stern how she dealt with the news of Trump's victory in 2016 by devouring an entire family-sized bag of Doritos.

When Stern asked if therapy could be an antidote to the stress she faces on the trail, she said with a laugh, “That's my form of therapy right now, Howard.”

“With me? Oy wey!” said Stern.

She seemed less sure-footed in her “60 Minutes” interview. Asked how she would secure passage of her plan to raise taxes on wealthy Americans, she offered no plausible path to overcoming divisions in Congress.

“You know, if you talk to a lot of people in Congress calmly, they know exactly what I'm talking about because their constituents know exactly what I'm talking about,” she said.

“And Congress has shown no inclination to move in your direction,” said her interviewer, Bill Whitaker

Still, Harris campaign officials say they are thrilled with her performance in these less scripted situations.

“She rocked it!” said a Harris aide.

“It was great,” said another senior Harris campaign aide. “We were able to communicate with a lot of voters.”

In addition, she made contact with the campaign's target groups, including young people, said the senior adviser.

Harris spoke without notes and sometimes stumbled in delivering her message. She presents herself as a change agent – ​​a woman who breaks barriers and looks, acts and sounds younger and more vibrant than Trump or Biden. Yet she still finds it difficult to pay respect to Biden while explaining how her presidency would differ from his.

During her appearance on “The View,” Harris was asked what she would have done differently than Biden during the nearly four years she spent as his understudy.

“I can’t think of anything,” she said.

Later in the interview, she revised her answer and said, “You asked me what the difference is between Joe Biden and me. … I will have a Republican in my Cabinet because I don't feel burdened by pride getting in the way of a good idea.” (That's no different than what Biden had planned for a second term. He was also prepared to to add a Republican to his cabinet.)

It may take days or weeks for Harris' media offensive to be felt in the polls – for better or for worse. The first in-person voting opened Wednesday in Maricopa County, Arizona, the populous heart of a key electoral district.

In 100-degree heat, an Arizona voter said she was unimpressed with Harris' appearance on the Stern Show as part of the South expects storm damage.

“She's laughing at Howard Stern,” a woman who showed up to vote told NBC News.