Speaker 1: Cancer Straight Talk is a podcast for Memorial Sloan Kettering
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Speaker 1: learn so much. Hi everyone, I'm Kitty Kuric and this
Speaker 1: is next question. The election is so close, nail biding,
Speaker 1: toss and turning, stomach churning close. So here to discuss
Speaker 1: the state of the race and the final leg is
Speaker 1: Charlemagne the God, host of the popular radio show The
Speaker 1: Breakfast Club, someone who's interviewed kamalast several times over the years.
Speaker 1: We're doing an audio threesome, if you will, with a
Speaker 1: Steed Herndon, national politics reporter from The New York Times
Speaker 1: and host of the podcast The Run Up. Together, We're
Speaker 1: unpacking everything from Vice President Kamala Harris's strategy to the
Speaker 1: dynamics influencing black voters in this critical election.
Speaker 2: Plus we'll talk.
Speaker 1: About why Donald Trump seems like the teflon candidate and
Speaker 1: whether Democrats have what it takes to rally voters feeling
Speaker 1: left behind. It's candid, insightful, and just a little spicy.
Speaker 1: So buckle up and take a listen before we start.
Speaker 1: What do your friends call you? Do they call you Charlemagne?
Speaker 1: Do they call you c the g?
Speaker 2: What do they call it?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Leonard?
Speaker 5: I mean it's a combination, you know, like, yeah, Leonard Charlot.
Speaker 5: It was between Leonard and Scharla Charlat.
Speaker 2: I like that. And how did you get the name
Speaker 2: Charlomage the god?
Speaker 5: Well, you know, when I was younger and I was
Speaker 5: doing things I had no business doing in Mon's Corner,
Speaker 5: South Carolina, like selling crack, I used to have an alias,
Speaker 5: and my alias was Charles because like, I come from
Speaker 5: a really small town and so like, you know, the
Speaker 5: people that would pull up to buy drugs for me,
Speaker 5: even though they were buying the drugs, they were still
Speaker 5: going tell my parents, right, So I would always have
Speaker 5: like a hoodie on and I would say my name
Speaker 5: is Charles or Charlie. And then I was in night
Speaker 5: school one day and I was reading in a history
Speaker 5: book and I saw the name Charlemagne and it was
Speaker 5: French for Charles the Great. And then you know, I
Speaker 5: also read about this Haitian Haitian general whose name was Charlomagne,
Speaker 5: and I just thought it was a cool name. I
Speaker 5: was like, you know what, that's the cool name that's
Speaker 5: going to look good on the front cover of a
Speaker 5: book one day. And you know, I've had you know,
Speaker 5: three New York Times bestsellers, national bestsellers, so.
Speaker 1: Well, I was going to say, you have come a
Speaker 1: long way from selling crack on the corner in South
Speaker 1: Carolina and now you know, you're interviewing a presidential candidate.
Speaker 1: They say this is the first podcast election, and that
Speaker 1: seems to be true. And obviously Vice President Harris wanted
Speaker 1: to talk to you and to be on the Breakfast Club.
Speaker 1: How did the interview come about? Did she reach out
Speaker 1: to you or did you reach out to her?
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: You know what's interesting, I've been interviewing the Vice President
Speaker 5: on Breakfast Club since twenty and eighteen. I had her
Speaker 5: when she was a senator. You know, she came on
Speaker 5: the Breakfast Club back in twenty eighteen. It was got
Speaker 5: a great hour long conversation that you can go watch
Speaker 5: on YouTube. When she ran for president in twenty twenty,
Speaker 5: she came back to the Breakfast Club. I had a
Speaker 5: late night talked show on Comedy Central a couple of
Speaker 5: years ago. She was a guest on that when she
Speaker 5: was a vice president. So it's almost like at every
Speaker 5: iteration of her you know, career since about twenty eighteen,
Speaker 5: I've been there. Like I said, I interviewed her when
Speaker 5: she was a senator, interviewed her when she was running
Speaker 5: for president, interviewed her when she was vice president, and
Speaker 5: now I'm interviewing her again while she runs for president.
Speaker 4: And you know, even in twenty twenty I was.
Speaker 5: I was out there on the campaign trail with her too,
Speaker 5: Like you know, we was in South Carolina together. She
Speaker 5: unveiled her mental health initiative in some of Miville, South Carolina.
Speaker 4: I was with her there.
Speaker 5: I was with her at South Carolina State University. I
Speaker 5: was with her at Charlotte North Caroline, out with her
Speaker 5: in Brooklyn. So yeah, we've developed a pretty good rapport.
Speaker 2: So you really know her quite well.
Speaker 1: So much focus, as you know, has been on her
Speaker 1: declining support among black men, particularly black men under the
Speaker 1: age of fifty. So if you had to tell people
Speaker 1: listening in a nutshell, what would you say to this question,
Speaker 1: what is going on with Kamala Harris and young black dudes.
Speaker 4: I think, well, two things.
Speaker 5: I think number one is unfair to say it's black
Speaker 5: men in Kamala Harris. I think that it's black people
Speaker 5: in the Democratic Party period. This is something that's been
Speaker 5: you know, it's been a conversation since twenty sixteen. A
Speaker 5: lot of Black people feel like the Democratic Party haven't
Speaker 5: delivered for them. And I think it's you know, I
Speaker 5: think it's just a matter of not the fact that
Speaker 5: people have something against Kamala Harris, it's just how people
Speaker 5: feel about the Democratic Party as a whole. But even
Speaker 5: with that said, I think everybody he's freaking out for
Speaker 5: no reason. I think it's all overstated when they say
Speaker 5: they're losing support, because I have nothing to show me
Speaker 5: that yet. These are just all polls and speculation. In
Speaker 5: two thousand and sixteen, eighty five percent of black men
Speaker 5: voted for Hillary Clinton. In twenty twenty, I think like
Speaker 5: ninety percent of black men, I know it was definitely
Speaker 5: over eighty percent voted for President Biden and Vice President
Speaker 5: Harris was on the ticket. I'm a person that only
Speaker 5: voted for that ticket because of Vice President Harris. So
Speaker 5: I just think that when people say things like, oh,
Speaker 5: you know, black men, you know, they don't want to
Speaker 5: support the vice president. I just think that's overstated.
Speaker 4: I don't believe that.
Speaker 5: After come November, I could be proven wrong, but I
Speaker 5: just don't believe it because I mean, since Reagan, if
Speaker 5: I'm not mistaken, you know, black people have voted conservative
Speaker 5: between eight percent and fifteen percent. Like, you know, Trump
Speaker 5: got twelve percent of the black male either the black
Speaker 5: vote or the black mail vote in twenty twenty. I
Speaker 5: think it was the black vote as a whole. Maybe,
Speaker 5: so it might have been like I don't remember what,
Speaker 5: I think it was twelve percent. But so it's like
Speaker 5: those those numbers aren't far off from the average, Like
Speaker 5: there are black conservatives out here, you know, Like it
Speaker 5: just is so it's like that that number isn't far
Speaker 5: off from the average.
Speaker 4: I think you said something.
Speaker 5: Else earlier that made me remember one of my points
Speaker 5: that I kind of forgot a little bit.
Speaker 4: But it's like, it's not that people.
Speaker 5: Are necessarily wanting to go be conservative. They're just off everything.
Speaker 5: They're not feeling the political process period. They're not feeling Democrats,
Speaker 5: they're not feeling Republicans. There's a lot of black people
Speaker 5: who feel like, regardless of who's in office, you know,
Speaker 5: our communities don't change. You know, things are still the same.
Speaker 5: You know, you got somebody like President Obama who promised
Speaker 5: a lot of hope and a lot of change, but
Speaker 5: that didn't change anything.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: So I think she's the vice president is fighting against
Speaker 5: a lot of that.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: A lot of people see it feeling like, oh, we've
Speaker 5: had that before. We had a black face in a
Speaker 5: high place before. And I feel like she's fighting against
Speaker 5: you know how people feel about feel against it about
Speaker 5: the Democratic Party.
Speaker 1: How did you find her in your interview? Did you
Speaker 1: think that she answered the questions? Did you feel that
Speaker 1: she was direct, authentic and you know her? So, how
Speaker 1: did you feel about this last go round when you
Speaker 1: guys talked well, you know.
Speaker 5: In my new book Get Out Us a Dieline Why
Speaker 5: Small Talk Sucks, I have a chapter called the Language
Speaker 5: of Politics is Dead, and so I credit Donald Trump
Speaker 5: with killing the language of politics. So I feel like
Speaker 5: politicians can speak very freely if they choose to.
Speaker 4: Plus, I'm a big fan of the movie Bullwharf No.
Speaker 5: I love that, you know, So I've been waiting for
Speaker 5: a politician to sound like, you know, a send of
Speaker 5: the bullwharf. But I think she said something to be
Speaker 5: in the beginning of our conversation when I brought up
Speaker 5: the fact that people say she's very scripted, you know,
Speaker 5: people say she sticks to her talking points, she said,
Speaker 5: you're welcome.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: I call that discipline, And it made me think about something.
Speaker 5: I think that we've seen such a lack of discipline
Speaker 5: since Donald Trump came on the scene that we forgot
Speaker 5: what that looks like. So when you have a politician
Speaker 5: who was in an interview or in a conversation and
Speaker 5: they're being disciplined, as she says, and getting their message
Speaker 5: across and telling us what their policies are, and you know,
Speaker 5: detailing their policies, it's kind of.
Speaker 4: Like we want, we want to be entertained, right.
Speaker 5: And that's not what That's not what I think we
Speaker 5: need from our politicians. So to say that, do I
Speaker 5: think she was being authentic? Yeah, I think she was
Speaker 5: being authentically authentically who she is, which is a very disciplined, seasoned,
Speaker 5: veteran politician.
Speaker 1: I have to beg to differ with you on that point.
Speaker 1: I think that she takes a really long time to
Speaker 1: get to her point and that she does rely on
Speaker 1: talking points too often. I think she's gotten much better
Speaker 1: than she used to, but it's almost as if she's
Speaker 1: afraid to say something that will later come back to
Speaker 1: haunt her. And I find the fact that she just
Speaker 1: doesn't really articulate to me her true policy position and
Speaker 1: that she isn't really directly answering the questions a lot
Speaker 1: of times. That's been my experience and my experience watching her.
Speaker 1: I just wish she would say, this is our plan,
Speaker 1: or you're right, a lot of illegal immigrants have come
Speaker 1: into this country during the Biden administration, but this is why,
Speaker 1: and this is what I want to do about it
Speaker 1: moving forward. You know, I just I don't find her
Speaker 1: explanation of policy that compelling compared to say, someone like
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton or Barack Obama.
Speaker 2: Have you ever interviewed them?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I interviewed the President Obama before. I interview President
Speaker 5: Obama when his book came out. I'm never interview President
Speaker 5: Obama when he was running for office. I've interviewed you know,
Speaker 5: Hillary Clinton a couple of times as well when she
Speaker 5: was running.
Speaker 4: I can understand what you're saying.
Speaker 5: I think that you know a lot of politicians, or
Speaker 5: at least disciplined ones, are scared of saying things that
Speaker 5: you know, may come back to haunt them. But my
Speaker 5: thing is, in twenty twenty four, what can truly come
Speaker 5: back to haunt you? But then again, there's only one
Speaker 5: Donald Trump. Nothing seems to haunt Donald Trump. Nothing seems
Speaker 5: to stick to Donald Trump, but everything seems to stick,
Speaker 5: you know, to everybody else.
Speaker 1: But how do you explain that? How do you explain that?
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people are media.
Speaker 5: I really truly believe it's the media's fault because we
Speaker 5: created this double standard, like not just the media, government,
Speaker 5: because you know, people will say things like Donald Trump
Speaker 5: is a threat to democracy. But as I told the
Speaker 5: Vice President, I don't feel like the administration acted like it.
Speaker 5: Like Merrick Garland could have, you know, arrested Donald Trump
Speaker 5: a long time ago for leading an attempted to cool
Speaker 5: with his country, but he chose not to. So now
Speaker 5: when you choose not to, you get Donald Trump at
Speaker 5: you know, dinners, telling jokes. So it doesn't even look
Speaker 5: like he's a guy that has ninety plus criminal charges
Speaker 5: who've been convicted of thirty thirty.
Speaker 4: Four of them already or whatever.
Speaker 5: The number was, you don't even look at him as
Speaker 5: you know what he actually is, which is a true
Speaker 5: threat to our democracy. Like I was reading something in
Speaker 5: The New York Times the other day and it said
Speaker 5: how this election is a moment of truth to Donald Trump,
Speaker 5: and they just laid out every single thing he's ever
Speaker 5: been accused of in life. This guy should have been
Speaker 5: disqualified from running for president a long, long, long, long
Speaker 5: time ago. And if Kamala Harris or President Obama or
Speaker 5: a Bill Clinton back in the day, any of those
Speaker 5: people had said one of the things that Donald Trump
Speaker 5: has said are done one of the things Donald Trump's done,
Speaker 5: they'd be disqualified already.
Speaker 1: Well, let's bring in our guest, Astad Herndon. He's a
Speaker 1: national politics reporter for the New York Times. He's so
Speaker 1: the politics podcast The Run Up. In twenty nineteen, he
Speaker 1: was the Times campaign reporter for Kamala Harris's presidential campaign.
Speaker 1: And the three of us have something in common. We
Speaker 1: have all interviewed Kamala Harris. So I thought it would
Speaker 1: be interesting for us to compare notes and talk about
Speaker 1: her interview style and then talk about the state of
Speaker 1: the race.
Speaker 2: Highest ed, thank you for doing this.
Speaker 6: Yeah, thank y'all for having me. I really appreciate being
Speaker 6: here and y'all hearing us out.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, we were just talking and we were
Speaker 1: saying that nothing, as you overheard, seems to affect Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: I think the word teflon presidency was first came to
Speaker 1: be talking about Ronald Reagan, I believe. And now I'm
Speaker 1: not sure what's stronger than teflon. And I guess teflon
Speaker 1: is now considered a dangerous substance. But I don't know
Speaker 1: what it is about Donald Trump that nothing sticks no
Speaker 1: matter what he does. Ostead, what do you think is
Speaker 1: the reason for that that people are willing to forgive
Speaker 1: so many host things?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean I think to what you know, Charlemagne
Speaker 6: just said, I agree that if half the things that
Speaker 6: Donald Trump is said are done, one percent of the
Speaker 6: things Donald Trump is said have done had been you know,
Speaker 6: has was true about the Democratic candidate or even most
Speaker 6: other Republicans, you would see them pretty clearly disqualify from
Speaker 6: the jump. I mean, I think we know some of
Speaker 6: the answers to this, like there is a different type
Speaker 6: of relationship with supporter that he fosters. I think it's
Speaker 6: important to see Trump as a more movement candidate than
Speaker 6: that's particularly party figure, because his voters feel as if
Speaker 6: they know and can interpret what he believes more so
Speaker 6: than mainstream media, more so to the things that they
Speaker 6: hear and read. They're willing even to dismiss stuff that
Speaker 6: doesn't fit within that overall picture. But I guess I'm
Speaker 6: not someone who thinks that this stuff hasn't affected Donald Trump.
Speaker 6: Donald Trump is the second most unpopular presidential candidate who's
Speaker 6: ever run. He just happens to be running against people
Speaker 6: who were just as impopular as him, particularly in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 6: I think, and much of this race against Joe Biden.
Speaker 6: In fact, I frankly would go even further and say,
Speaker 6: if the Democratic Party had kind of followed through on
Speaker 6: the plan they implied in twenty twenty, where Biden didn't run,
Speaker 6: they held a primary, worked out some of their kind
Speaker 6: of internal ideological shifts, and then produced a nominee, even
Speaker 6: if that nominee was still Kamala Harris, I think that
Speaker 6: person would have been in a much stronger position than
Speaker 6: they currently find themselves, because I don't think Donald Trump
Speaker 6: actually is all that massively popular. I think Donald Trump
Speaker 6: has a hard ceiling of popularity that is greater than
Speaker 6: most other politicians. But what we know is that the
Speaker 6: anti Trump coalition is one that is just as strong,
Speaker 6: if not stronger. We saw that in the midterms, We've
Speaker 6: seen that in special elections. We see that kind of
Speaker 6: over and over, and frankly, it's what gives democratics some
Speaker 6: confidence even as this looks really fifty to fifty. So
Speaker 6: I guess I would take the other side and say
Speaker 6: I don't think that Donald Trump is fully teflon. I
Speaker 6: think that a lot of the things are just priced
Speaker 6: in for most people, so they see him as untrustworthy.
Speaker 6: They see him as someone who will fly out rules
Speaker 6: and norms. But I think for a lot of people
Speaker 6: that's being held up against a desire for change that
Speaker 6: he can also represent when Democrats that feel a little
Speaker 6: more status quo, which I do think they do feel now,
Speaker 6: and part of that is part of the process question. Like,
Speaker 6: I don't think it was inherent that Kamala Harris felt
Speaker 6: like that. I think there was a version of that
Speaker 6: that did feel like a big new way forward some ways.
Speaker 6: I think that this process has played out has hurt
Speaker 6: their ability to cast themselves as that well let's.
Speaker 1: Talk about this whole idea of having a more open primary,
Speaker 1: given that there were only a few months between the
Speaker 1: time Joe Biden stepped down or decided not to run
Speaker 1: and the election itself. I mean, it's great to say
Speaker 1: that in hindsight, right Astead, And I'd love to hear
Speaker 1: what Charlemagne says about this as well. But do you
Speaker 1: really think it would have put the Democrats in a
Speaker 1: stronger position. I mean, that's sort of a fantasy, isn't it.
Speaker 6: I hear why you're saying that, But I was there
Speaker 6: in early twenty twenty three asking them the same questions
Speaker 6: about Biden's age. It was only the evidence was there
Speaker 6: that the public thought he was too old for a
Speaker 6: second term. The donor money was there for interest in
Speaker 6: the open and other candidates. It was their own deference
Speaker 6: to Joe Biden that put them in this position. It's
Speaker 6: the only thing that put them in this position is
Speaker 6: their traditional deference to his reelections. I'm really talking about
Speaker 6: early twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2: Oh, you're saying if he had dropped out a year early.
Speaker 6: I'm saying, if he would have followed through and what
Speaker 6: he implied to the public in twenty twenty, which is
Speaker 6: that he would be a transitional president lead to another
Speaker 6: generation of Democrats.
Speaker 4: They wouldn't be in this position.
Speaker 6: I think a lot of their voters assumed that they
Speaker 6: wouldn't be in this position, and that the party would
Speaker 6: have a new conversation with itself in an open primary way.
Speaker 6: But that's obviously not how it developed. He ran and
Speaker 6: folks stuck by him for a year and a half,
Speaker 6: two years, and then by the time I think it
Speaker 6: became really clear that something different needed to happen after
Speaker 6: the debate, there was no real's plan B.
Speaker 4: There was no other option, I think.
Speaker 6: So I guess I say that to say, I don't
Speaker 6: think there's a different way this could have developed after
Speaker 6: they put themselves in the position they put themselves in,
Speaker 6: got it, But I do think there were different options,
Speaker 6: and so somehow I think the conversation has to start
Speaker 6: not just in what they could have done with Kamala
Speaker 6: Harris's message or what she can do individually to win
Speaker 6: these people back in the short term. I think the
Speaker 6: biggest thing they could have done is recognized that a
Speaker 6: lot of the country wanted a different direction or thought
Speaker 6: of the Democratic Party in a transitory period, and they
Speaker 6: ignored that evidence for way too long.
Speaker 4: That's all I'm saying. Yeah, I I agree with a
Speaker 4: set one hundred percent.
Speaker 5: I was a person that was calling for Joe Biden
Speaker 5: to step down, you know, a year ago, two years ago,
Speaker 5: you know, just because I knew that if we kept
Speaker 5: going the way that we was going, there was no
Speaker 5: possible way that you know, Joe Biden could win in November.
Speaker 5: And yeah, I think that he should have been a
Speaker 5: transitional president, like that should have been the plan. But
Speaker 5: it shouldn't have been just up to him. It should
Speaker 5: have been everybody around him should have known, like, hey,
Speaker 5: twenty twenty, you're gonna run, You're gonna win, but you
Speaker 5: got to set up the next generation of Democrats. The
Speaker 5: only thing I would say is maybe three four years ago,
Speaker 5: it didn't feel like Democrats had.
Speaker 4: That strong of a bench.
Speaker 5: But you know now, I remember Joe Biden said toward
Speaker 5: the end of last year, he was leaving one of
Speaker 5: the press conferences and they asked him, they said, you
Speaker 5: know who else can beat Trump except for you? When
Speaker 5: he turned around and he was like, there's about fifty
Speaker 5: of us that could beat Trump. And I was like, well,
Speaker 5: line him up, because I felt like when he said
Speaker 5: that it was true, right. I felt like Dumingapiro, I
Speaker 5: felt like Gretchen Whitmer, I felt like, you know, Wes Moore,
Speaker 5: I felt like the Vice president, Kamala Harris like I
Speaker 5: felt like there was people, you know, who would have
Speaker 5: been more formidable opponents.
Speaker 4: So I think that the Democrats, you know, they they
Speaker 4: just didn't have a plan.
Speaker 1: To me, I think they had a bench, but the
Speaker 1: bench needed a lot of I don't know, to use
Speaker 1: a sports metaphor, they needed a lot of practice, and
Speaker 1: they needed to be in front of a national audience.
Speaker 1: And some of those people you just mentioned, Josh Shapiro,
Speaker 1: Gretchen Whitmer, definitely Wes Moore, who I like and I
Speaker 1: think he has a great political future. But they are
Speaker 1: very unproven on a national stage. So I'm not sure
Speaker 1: how strong the bench actually was. And I think part
Speaker 1: of the problem is what Astead was saying. They didn't
Speaker 1: have an opportunity to develop the bench because Joe Biden
Speaker 1: was so entrenched in the presidency. I want to tell
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Speaker 1: I thought we would talk about Kamala Harris as an
Speaker 1: interview subject, because that's something the three of us have
Speaker 1: in common. Instead, Charlemagne and I have all interviewed the
Speaker 1: Vice president, and I think we have different impressions. I
Speaker 1: was asking Charlemagne about Charla. I have a hard time
Speaker 1: calling you Charlotte, but I'll call you Charlotte charlt and
Speaker 1: he was saying he found her to be very disciplined,
Speaker 1: which made me smile because it's exactly what she said
Speaker 1: when you said something about her being scripted. I think
Speaker 1: she came back to you Astead in that twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: interview and said no, I'm just disciplined. How do you
Speaker 1: think she's changed as a candidate. You've been watching her
Speaker 1: interviews from your experience. Do you think she's getting better
Speaker 1: or is it all sort of remaining the same.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean there's been an evolution, for sure.
Speaker 6: I remember meeting with at that time Senator Kamala Harris
Speaker 6: when she was getting ready to announce her presidential run
Speaker 6: a year into her kind of time in Washington, and
Speaker 6: I think it's just important to remember how different Democrats
Speaker 6: felt at that time. They was really kind of set
Speaker 6: between two polls being Joe Biden's moderateness in Bernie Sanders's progressiveness,
Speaker 6: and there was a feeling for the folks who were
Speaker 6: sitting out in the middle that you kind of just
Speaker 6: had that the party was moving in an inevitably progressive direction.
Speaker 6: And so she did things at that time like signing
Speaker 6: on the healthcare bill, single payer, like embracing some progressive
Speaker 6: stuff that she's obviously walked back. But I think it
Speaker 6: was an uncomfortable fit even at that time. Like her
Speaker 6: record is one that has always suggested a hodgepodge of
Speaker 6: ideological ideas, a fluidity and a desire to kind of
Speaker 6: yes of reject some of the more rigid, particularly hard
Speaker 6: on crime stuff of the past, and also you know,
Speaker 6: kind of leading in a I would say, more progressive direction,
Speaker 6: but it's never been the leftissness of San Francisco in
Speaker 6: the way that Republicans are describing.
Speaker 4: And so at the.
Speaker 6: Time you could kind of feel the odd pairing that
Speaker 6: she was trying to do in that primary, and I
Speaker 6: don't think it really served them that well. So I
Speaker 6: remember to answer your first question, like I remember interviewing
Speaker 6: her initially, and you could kind of feel a candidate
Speaker 6: that was searching for the story they wanted to tell
Speaker 6: amid this like very intense democratic landscape where Elizabeth Warren's
Speaker 6: putting out a plan every five minutes and you got
Speaker 6: Pete Boudajeedge doing an interview every day. Right where do
Speaker 6: you find yourself in? That was really, I think fairly difficult.
Speaker 6: I think she found a lot more of her voice
Speaker 6: toward the end when it was going worse, to be honest,
Speaker 6: that's when you had them say, you know, she can
Speaker 6: be tough against Trump or or she was embracing the
Speaker 6: kind of prosecutor against a felon that I think they've
Speaker 6: arrived at and it got her away from the progressive stuff.
Speaker 6: She was never going to be a fit for people
Speaker 6: who wanted Bernie Sanders to be a president. She was
Speaker 6: never going to be a fit for people who are
Speaker 6: more interested in more and they kind of had to
Speaker 6: learn where that is. Interview wise, though she doesn't and
Speaker 6: I don't know how you are feel but like, if
Speaker 6: you're asking for a vision, if you're asking for a
Speaker 6: root cause, if you're asking for I think some of
Speaker 6: the answers we expect from typical presidential candidates, it's never
Speaker 6: really the lane she wants to play in. I have
Speaker 6: not found her to be like particularly reflective on that
Speaker 6: front or like an affirmative case to lay out where
Speaker 6: she stands on a lot of issues. But I do
Speaker 6: think she's true at is, you know, executing a set play,
Speaker 6: talking about decision making and being empathetic to a lot
Speaker 6: of different communities. And so it reminds me of a
Speaker 6: prosecutor in the way they come to issues because it's
Speaker 6: not it's oftentimes a reactive role, it's oftentimes an accountability role.
Speaker 6: It's not a vision setting role. And so sometimes I
Speaker 6: think in the interviews you're feeling that tension because the
Speaker 6: questions we're used to asking some of these candidates is
Speaker 6: I don't think really the lane her her. She's existed
Speaker 6: foremost in it's certainly a lawyer and a prosecutor, I
Speaker 6: think more and that is the foremost identities I've come
Speaker 6: to understand her through.
Speaker 1: And maybe because she really deals with facts and evidence,
Speaker 1: I think she has a hard time being theoretical and
Speaker 1: as you said, visionary.
Speaker 4: That's not really her laying.
Speaker 1: I don't think, I know, because you know, I really
Speaker 1: wanted to talk to her about the conundrum the Biden
Speaker 1: administration was finding itself in with Israel. And I said,
Speaker 1: October seventh was horrible, horrific, unimaginable, the brutality, the barbarism
Speaker 1: that the world heard about, there are no words. Having
Speaker 1: said that, let's talk about where we are now. And
Speaker 1: I think it was last January, and you know, the
Speaker 1: Palestinian deaths were mounting, and I just wanted to give
Speaker 1: her permission, and I asked her about how challenging this was,
Speaker 1: because it is the most complex and historically complicated situation
Speaker 1: there is. And instead of saying, you know, picking up
Speaker 1: where I left off, she said, Katie, let's talk about
Speaker 1: October seventh and I was like, but I just basically
Speaker 1: did that. But she seems and so many interviews I've
Speaker 1: listened to she does the same thing. And I think
Speaker 1: that's why people feel she's scripted, because she often answers
Speaker 1: questions the same way. And that's why I think again, Charlotte,
Speaker 1: that they think that she relies on talking points because
Speaker 1: you often hear the same points again and again and again.
Speaker 1: But you found that to be disciplined, not frustrating.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, because once she's explained it in the the
Speaker 5: last conversation we had when she said, you know, she
Speaker 5: has to be disciplined and you have to repeat things
Speaker 5: over and over and over and over in this era
Speaker 5: that we're in, I agree with that. And you know,
Speaker 5: there are the double standards because we act like Donald
Speaker 5: Trump doesn't do the same exact thing, like Donald Trump will.
Speaker 4: Eat the same thing over and over, same rhetoric, over
Speaker 4: and over.
Speaker 5: All politicians do that, like I can't think of a
Speaker 5: Polo Petician who doesn't. I just think that we're in
Speaker 5: this news cycle in twenty twenty four where we see
Speaker 5: every single conversation, we see the conversations where she's just
Speaker 5: talking locally to people in Pennsylvania, locally in Michigan. But
Speaker 5: then we see the big national conversations and a lot
Speaker 5: of this rhetoric is the same, and I think it
Speaker 5: starts to become redundant to us what the reality is. Like,
Speaker 5: if you have a message that you're trying to get
Speaker 5: across to people, and you're trying to nail these points,
Speaker 5: you are going to repeat yourself over and over.
Speaker 6: I think that's totally true, And certainly the comparison to
Speaker 6: Donald Trump isn't a fair one. Like Trump doesn't answer
Speaker 6: anything and has often, even increasingly over the last four
Speaker 6: to eight years, done less interviews, done less all of
Speaker 6: that type of stuff. The only thing I would say,
Speaker 6: and this is why, and I think some of this
Speaker 6: is based in my experience with her presidential campaign, is
Speaker 6: like there, I think Trump has told a you know,
Speaker 6: maybe bashing on this, but I think Trump has told
Speaker 6: a consistent story on the biggest issues that he cares about,
Speaker 6: Like he's always been basically saying the same thing about immigration,
Speaker 6: he's always been basically saying the same thing about crime,
Speaker 6: and like he has changed on.
Speaker 4: Thirty forty other areas.
Speaker 6: But you kind of have a sense of the issues
Speaker 6: he cares the most about and the ways he will
Speaker 6: go about it. And one thing I think is different
Speaker 6: with Harris is the story of twenty nineteen when she
Speaker 6: was introducing herself to a lot of the country is
Speaker 6: not exactly the same place the party is now, and
Speaker 6: so I partly think that more than just individual interviews
Speaker 6: or policy or vision, we're really talking about those things
Speaker 6: as a proxy of how to get to know someone's
Speaker 6: true beliefs, what is motivating them, what they prioritize more
Speaker 6: than other stuff.
Speaker 2: And you don't think she's done that well.
Speaker 6: And I don't think it's been consistent enough for people
Speaker 6: to really grab on to, Like I know that because
Speaker 6: the voters I talked to still feel like they haven't heard.
Speaker 6: And it's not because he hasn't done enough interviews. I
Speaker 6: don't think it's not because she hasn't. I just think
Speaker 6: that hasn't been at the story that you started with
Speaker 6: and the story you've landed with.
Speaker 4: There's still some distance there that has not been explained.
Speaker 4: In my opinion.
Speaker 5: Well, I think one thing that we have to keep
Speaker 5: in mind to talking about man one hundred days of
Speaker 5: Vice President Kamala Harris running for president versus twelve years
Speaker 5: of Donald Trump running for president, So of course we
Speaker 5: know all Donald Trump's messaging. Of course we know where
Speaker 5: he's staying on the biggest issues. She hasn't even had
Speaker 5: a chance to, you know, create that type of campaign
Speaker 5: for herself, Like you know, when she ran in twenty twenty,
Speaker 5: she was only here for a split second. Then she
Speaker 5: became vice president and had to play that role, so
Speaker 5: we didn't hear from her at all.
Speaker 4: Now you got one.
Speaker 5: Hundred days or however long it was to tell the
Speaker 5: American people what it is you're about versus you know,
Speaker 5: going against someone for twelve years. And to your point
Speaker 5: about what you said, a set about where she stood
Speaker 5: in twenty nineteen versus now is much different. And we
Speaker 5: all admit that the party was the Democratic Party was
Speaker 5: out of there goddamn mind in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 4: I think that's an important point.
Speaker 5: Like I'm so glad that I'm so glad that she's
Speaker 5: more of a of a interest I really am. Like
Speaker 5: I think that the right was too far this way,
Speaker 5: the left is too far this way. I'm glad we
Speaker 5: got somebody that's just in the middle. That's what we
Speaker 5: need to be.
Speaker 6: Because all I'm saying, is that is a story that
Speaker 6: she could tell? You know that, I guess so all.
Speaker 6: And I can tell you in my experience when I
Speaker 6: have asked what has changed then from there? And you
Speaker 6: can say, looking back, I think the party went too
Speaker 6: far in one direction. And I think people will hear
Speaker 6: that for sure, And so I guess I'm saying there
Speaker 6: is an unwillingness to make that leader.
Speaker 1: Don't you think that she'd be afraid to alienate progressives
Speaker 1: if she said something like that Astead.
Speaker 4: I think that's probably true.
Speaker 6: But she's camp her final message is campaigning with Liz
Speaker 6: Cheney and Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconson. She's already basically done it,
Speaker 6: you know, she's already She's the thing she's made most
Speaker 6: clear over the last couple of months to answer whether
Speaker 6: the differences between you and Biden question are basically that
Speaker 6: she's more of a centrist, she's more of a mother,
Speaker 6: And so I think she's basically doing it. She's just
Speaker 6: not making it clear. And I think that's a messaging
Speaker 6: choice that we've seen from the campaign, even before she
Speaker 6: was the nominee. There's clearly a desire to be everything
Speaker 6: that everyone because they want to recreate, I think an
Speaker 6: anti Trump. They don't want to break up the anti
Speaker 6: Trump coalition. I just think at that point then you're
Speaker 6: seeing some points on the vision scale too, and so
Speaker 6: that's the only thing that's the choice I think they're making.
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you all about her having to
Speaker 1: define herself in one hundred days. I just wish that
Speaker 1: she had been more forward facing or public facing during
Speaker 1: her years as vice president. And I think Joe Biden's
Speaker 1: hesitancy to do interviews, to get out there to do
Speaker 1: unscripted moments really hurt her because she was sort of
Speaker 1: in the witness protection program for four years.
Speaker 4: Yes, that was my biggest critique of her.
Speaker 5: You know, when I made a statement one time that
Speaker 5: I felt I was disappointed, you know, and I had
Speaker 5: a little bit of regret, you know, voting for that ticket.
Speaker 5: Not that I would have voted for Trump, but I
Speaker 5: just was like, damn, you know, I don't know if
Speaker 5: I could do this again come November.
Speaker 4: And I don't know if that means I would you know,
Speaker 4: sit out.
Speaker 5: No, I would. I wouldn't have sat out. I would
Speaker 5: have voted, but I just wasn't willing to endorse. I
Speaker 5: wasn't going to tell people, Hey, I'm voting for President Biden.
Speaker 4: But that was my biggest partiker. My biggest partiker her
Speaker 4: was like, Man.
Speaker 5: I voted for this ticket because of you, and because
Speaker 5: I thought Joe Biden was going to be a transitional president.
Speaker 5: I thought that, even though we know what the role
Speaker 5: of vice president traditionally has been, because you're a woman,
Speaker 5: because you're a woman of color, because you can speak
Speaker 5: to a lot of things in this moment that he can't,
Speaker 5: I just thought she would have been, like you said,
Speaker 5: Miss Cork, a little bit more front facing.
Speaker 4: And when I didn't get that, I was disappointed.
Speaker 5: But I think I personally had an unrealistic expectation of
Speaker 5: what I expected from her.
Speaker 4: All I'm saying is I don't think that was unrealistic.
Speaker 6: I think they pretty clearly implied that to most Americans
Speaker 6: in twenty twenty. I think the age was a big
Speaker 6: concern about Joe Biden in the primary when he was
Speaker 6: running four years ago, and they made those statements about
Speaker 6: transitional president, about pos signaling one term her selection. I
Speaker 6: remember what the campaign was telling reporters on background. They
Speaker 6: set up the idea that you should think about this
Speaker 6: as a two person ticket and that the future would
Speaker 6: flow through at least start with the Kamala hairs, right,
Speaker 6: And so I just think I don't think the plan
Speaker 6: that would have changed some of this stuff is all
Speaker 6: that mysterious.
Speaker 4: I just think they backed off of it.
Speaker 6: And for my reporting, it was pretty clear that in
Speaker 6: the first couple of years of Harris there was some
Speaker 6: stuff about her stepping back from media, particularly after the
Speaker 6: Lester Hold interview, but much more important was a White
Speaker 6: House that was trying to insulate Joe Biden. And so
Speaker 6: I do think, to your point, Katie, like she was
Speaker 6: a victim somewhat of that strategy because they created this
Speaker 6: adversarial media relationship that I'd never understood. Like I like,
Speaker 6: you know, but it's okay probably for Biden, who has
Speaker 6: such a brand in the country and people said have
Speaker 6: a sense that they know. I think it matters more
Speaker 6: for someone like Harris, where that is not as defined.
Speaker 4: And it didn't.
Speaker 5: And it didn't help that there was so much negative
Speaker 5: stories coming out of the White House about her, and
Speaker 5: a lot of that was was from the administration. It
Speaker 5: was people in the administration who was putting out these
Speaker 5: sort of hit pieces about her and saying out she
Speaker 5: has aspirations beyond being vice president, and so what you know,
Speaker 5: she can't keep anybody on her staff, you know, right?
Speaker 1: Why would the administration do that? You guys, why would that?
Speaker 1: I mean just because they were being assholes? I mean,
Speaker 1: or were they threatened by her? Why would the administration
Speaker 1: do something like that put out all these bad stories.
Speaker 5: I think somebody was scared of a potential president Kamala
Speaker 5: Harris like I think of.
Speaker 4: I think it's a fair read.
Speaker 6: I would say that the tensions between president and vice
Speaker 6: president are there's often those ten, right, But this one
Speaker 6: was different, I think partially because you had the looming
Speaker 6: question of age, and the White House's strategy was to
Speaker 6: deny that that was a real problem not just amongst
Speaker 6: but in the country, or that that was not a
Speaker 6: real Biden liability. And so it was coming from the
Speaker 6: White House an administration to say that Joe Biden is
Speaker 6: the only person who can beat Donald Trump, that Joe
Speaker 6: Biden is the only one who you know, and so
Speaker 6: all of some of that stuff I remember. I'll tell
Speaker 6: you an actual story. I remember one time talking to
Speaker 6: this White House official and saying, Okay, you know, I
Speaker 6: was building my profile of the Harris that we were
Speaker 6: doing in the Times magazine last year, and one thing
Speaker 6: I had heard was that they had seen some data
Speaker 6: that said when she goes out and delivers messages specifically
Speaker 6: on abortion, they get big movement among independence. So I'm
Speaker 6: running this past the White House and the way that
Speaker 6: you think they would support because it's their vice president.
Speaker 6: And the thing the person told me was actually like, Hey,
Speaker 6: that's not specific to her, that's anybody who gives the
Speaker 6: Biden message. And that is the type of weirdo relationship
Speaker 6: I'm talking about, because on one hand, you could see
Speaker 6: you would think that they would see her as a
Speaker 6: as a valuable asset, right because the duck, because they're incentive.
Speaker 6: And I think this is like how some of those
Speaker 6: White House ambitions work, is to insulate their own candidate.
Speaker 6: Sometimes that comes at the expense even of other Democrats.
Speaker 1: Well, during that profile, I know that you said you
Speaker 1: felt like you were on trial when you were interviewing her.
Speaker 1: I want to play a short clip of the interview
Speaker 1: you did with her in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3: Another thing in twenty and twenty was, obviously those things
Speaker 3: were happening at the time that Biden was making his
Speaker 3: selection for running me and I was reading stories at
Speaker 3: the time that was basically saying, very clearly, you know
Speaker 3: the time story Harry Reid says that you know he
Speaker 3: came to decision that he needed to choose a black woman.
Speaker 3: While that is obviously about you, that's not necessarily you personally,
Speaker 3: but your identity.
Speaker 4: How should it matter?
Speaker 3: Does it matter that that narrative has existed that Biden
Speaker 3: needed to choose someone or who was a black person,
Speaker 3: And should it matter?
Speaker 7: I don't think I understand your question.
Speaker 3: I'm saying, does it matter that that kind of narrative
Speaker 3: around Biden needed to choose a black woman as a
Speaker 3: running mate still exists and has hovered over that selection,
Speaker 3: or is.
Speaker 7: That it happened? I don't I don't think I understand you.
Speaker 7: Honestly don't understand your question.
Speaker 4: I'm saying that.
Speaker 7: He chose a black woman. That woman is me, So
Speaker 7: I don't know that anything lingers about what he should choose.
Speaker 7: He has chosen. He asked me to join him on
Speaker 7: the ticket.
Speaker 4: I guess I was. I can move on. I want
Speaker 4: to ask I just gave up.
Speaker 2: She wasn't picking up what you were putting down as.
Speaker 6: She knows getting well what I'm talking about. I know
Speaker 6: she knows what I'm talking about, you know, and it's
Speaker 6: it's fine. I think it's so. I think this is
Speaker 6: my point about sometimes she also doesn't want to be
Speaker 6: put in the position I think sometimes journalists do more
Speaker 6: often of like respond to the thing you don't want
Speaker 6: to respond to, right, And so I think that the
Speaker 6: whole time I was doing that story, I heard so
Speaker 6: much about how the diversity, higherness of it all unfair
Speaker 6: or you know whatever, was still part of the reason
Speaker 6: people were kind of invalidating her selection and I think
Speaker 6: minimizing the prospect that she could be the eventual leader
Speaker 6: of the Democratic Party. And so you would talk to
Speaker 6: Democrats about what happens after Joe Biden and they wouldn't
Speaker 6: even include Kamala Harrison the picture. And that was of
Speaker 6: informing so many of those questions at the time. It's
Speaker 6: because it seemed very clear that some of this was
Speaker 6: really tied to what was a subtle dismissing of her role.
Speaker 6: And I think what I wanted to do in that
Speaker 6: is put it in front of her to respond to.
Speaker 6: And I think that there is somewhat a subtle way
Speaker 6: that discrimination works, where particularly in political media, people have
Speaker 6: these kind of silent, anonymous conversations around you and they
Speaker 6: won't give you the dignity of saying this is what I.
Speaker 4: Think about that.
Speaker 6: And so I thought, Okay, she would appreciate being able
Speaker 6: to be like this is ridiculous, blah blah blah blah blah,
Speaker 6: or whatever she wants to decide. But that's a critical
Speaker 6: misunderstanding of that I made, because I don't think she
Speaker 6: wants to do that, and frankly, I think she found
Speaker 6: it insulting to bring it up to her.
Speaker 1: I think also you pointed out that she's not particularly
Speaker 1: introspective right in these interviews, not in that way.
Speaker 6: She's not gonna do it with you, I don't. I
Speaker 6: think she does it with some other people. She's not
Speaker 6: gonna do it with me. She's not gonna do it,
Speaker 6: and that type of set it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I also think that, you know, man, if
Speaker 5: there's anything that would like I don't want to say
Speaker 5: conflict right because I don't know if you remember, but
Speaker 5: there was, uh, he didn't just pick the vice president
Speaker 5: like there was was a huge too.
Speaker 4: There was a there was a lot.
Speaker 6: Of tension, radicitions, room convo, back combo.
Speaker 4: They did.
Speaker 5: They did the big They did a big, big write
Speaker 5: up in USA Today where it was like Angela Raie
Speaker 5: and Sonny Houston and all these different black women who
Speaker 5: were demanding, you need to pick a black woman as
Speaker 5: you're running mate. And you know, there was a lot
Speaker 5: of pushback on that because there was all of these
Speaker 5: rumors about, oh, I don't think the first lady at
Speaker 5: the time, Joe Biden didn't necessarily like Kamala, and a
Speaker 5: lot of people around Biden didn't like Kamala because of
Speaker 5: the way Kamala came it.
Speaker 4: Uh, you know, Joe Biden during the debate.
Speaker 1: Wasn't it all James Clyburn, you guys, wasn't it James Clyburn,
Speaker 1: who basically it was not.
Speaker 5: Cliburn wanted the Supreme Court justin did not care about
Speaker 5: the VP, Yes right, he did not. Cliburn did not
Speaker 5: care about to be pep to climberk were like, you
Speaker 5: need a black woman Supreme Court judge.
Speaker 1: That's so interesting was that misreported astead for a long time.
Speaker 6: No, I think I think people have overinflated Clyburn's role
Speaker 6: a little bit. You know, I think the mythology posts
Speaker 6: South Carolina primary has become very large. But he's really
Speaker 6: clear about this, and he's been clear about this from
Speaker 6: the job. He did not he did not he did
Speaker 6: not say you need to choose Kamala Harris. He said
Speaker 6: he wanted his Supreme Court justice and he got it right.
Speaker 6: Like it was a big campaign discussion, to your point,
Speaker 6: like they basically had an internal fight among the Biden
Speaker 6: campaign of whether they had to choose a black woman,
Speaker 6: and there were people on multiple sides in that fight.
Speaker 4: But the truth is that Harris was.
Speaker 6: The only one who was qualified in a non race
Speaker 6: way and also sufficed this kind of racial conversation that
Speaker 6: was happening too, right, So I don't think it was
Speaker 6: just identity, you know, I don't think it was only that,
Speaker 6: but I do think it played a huge role, and
Speaker 6: particularly at that time when we had the post Floyd moment.
Speaker 6: And so I think to your point about twenty twenty
Speaker 6: seeming kind of crazy, like the fact that this happened
Speaker 6: so publicly was so unique anyway, And so that was
Speaker 6: part of the reason I was bringing those questions to
Speaker 6: her is because I know that conversation reached her I
Speaker 6: know that even the kind of backlash to that reached
Speaker 6: her too, And so the difference is she does not
Speaker 6: want that, and other people said it.
Speaker 4: There were people in the story who.
Speaker 6: Were like, you know, I think that they have you know,
Speaker 6: pigeonholed her and blah blah blah bla blah. But she
Speaker 6: doesn't want that to come from her, And I partially
Speaker 6: understand that. I just want something that's not the type
Speaker 6: of adversariness that then acts like you're crazy for asking it.
Speaker 5: Dana Bass, I remember this vividly. Dana Bash was interviewing
Speaker 5: President Biden. They looked like they were outside somewhere, and
Speaker 5: Dana Bass said to him, Charlamagne and a host of
Speaker 5: others say, you have to choose a black woman as
Speaker 5: a running mate, and Joe goals, well, Miss Jim Carvern says,
Speaker 5: I don't ready. So this happened on CNN. So these
Speaker 5: conversations were happening everywhere.
Speaker 4: This is a fact.
Speaker 1: If you want to get smarter every morning with a
Speaker 1: breakdown of the news and fascinating takes on health and
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Speaker 1: you think she's improved in her interviews as stead I do.
Speaker 6: I think she's done more of them, and so I
Speaker 6: think doing more is usually better. You know, there's multiple
Speaker 6: ways for politicians to think about interviews, but the best
Speaker 6: strategy I've learned is to is when they see it
Speaker 6: as an opportunity to get their message across. And I
Speaker 6: think there's been a change in thinking a little bit.
Speaker 6: But I have to also say they've changed the type
Speaker 6: of people they talk to, and that's been a big
Speaker 6: difference in the last four years too. Like they I
Speaker 6: don't think they're like, you know, anti New York Times
Speaker 6: or mainstream media of you know, kind of incentive or
Speaker 6: you know, the message they've been doing to kind of
Speaker 6: pull them away from that type of stuff as an accident,
Speaker 6: I think they prefer talking to people who are more
Speaker 6: explicitly supportive. You can have more intimate conversations. I know,
Speaker 6: podcasting and that stuff. I'm not saying like that stuff
Speaker 6: is bad. I'm just saying it's it's kind of been
Speaker 6: zero sum where they've done more interviews with people who
Speaker 6: support them a they've done less with more traditional media.
Speaker 6: And partially I think we underrated the intentionality of that.
Speaker 1: Does that help them, because to me, I think people
Speaker 1: are craving not necessarily a Brettbear interview, And I think
Speaker 1: Charlemagne did ask some really good questions during his interming.
Speaker 4: I'm not talking about the quality of questions. I think
Speaker 4: that interview is good.
Speaker 6: I'm saying that they also, but I'm saying they they're
Speaker 6: choosing the places really specifically.
Speaker 1: But what do you think that they're these questions, They're
Speaker 1: they're appealing to different groups like the Call Her Daddy
Speaker 1: podcasts and the Breakfast Club. Obviously, she knows that there
Speaker 1: are a lot of blackmail listeners for the Breakfast Club,
Speaker 1: so it seems like they're really being very intentional about
Speaker 1: reaching a certain audience. At the same time, do you
Speaker 1: think it's hurt her not doing an interview with a
Speaker 1: fair minded but tough traditional journalists who will really kind
Speaker 1: of go through some of the issues, not talk over her,
Speaker 1: not feel like they're reading Donald Trump's talking points. What
Speaker 1: Brettbear kind of felt like somebody who who really asks
Speaker 1: some some really well crafted, well thought out questions.
Speaker 2: You don't think that's hurt her, you guys, I think.
Speaker 4: She might need one big prime time interview.
Speaker 2: Well, she did sixty minutes with Bill Whitaker.
Speaker 5: She did, I'm gonna be honest with you know, they
Speaker 5: respect to sixty minutes. I hate how they do interviews.
Speaker 5: I can't stand when they narry when they asked the
Speaker 5: question then narrate the answer.
Speaker 4: I hate. I cannot stand that. They drives me crazy.
Speaker 4: But I think she needed to.
Speaker 5: Do one big prime time conversation for America from a
Speaker 5: from a traditional journalist.
Speaker 6: I do agree that would help a lot. Yeah, And
Speaker 6: I think it's just a matter. And to me, it's
Speaker 6: like not just going there, but what are they willing
Speaker 6: to say when they're there?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 6: And I think that, you know, the second to switch happened.
Speaker 6: The overall question in my head is are we still
Speaker 6: talking about the Joe Biden second term with the new
Speaker 6: person at the top, or is there something different about
Speaker 6: Kamala Harris that they want to lay out and make
Speaker 6: a different type of break from the administration or embrace
Speaker 6: it kind of change mantle more. And they've slowly gotten
Speaker 6: around to doing some breaks with the administration, but it's
Speaker 6: been really small. And I think that's the question I
Speaker 6: really have that I think a more traditional interview would
Speaker 6: really lay out is to the point about the vision question,
Speaker 6: what is that and what is the differences between that
Speaker 6: and what your just generic Democrat would be.
Speaker 1: Well, she famously said on the view that she couldn't
Speaker 1: think of anything that she would have done differently in
Speaker 1: the Biden administration. She did say to Brett Baer, I'm
Speaker 1: not Joe Biden. I'm a different person. I'll bring my
Speaker 1: life experiences, my professional background, YadA, YadA, YadA, But she
Speaker 1: still didn't really, I don't think crystallize how they differ.
Speaker 1: And do you think that's because she didn't want to
Speaker 1: offend Joe Biden. I read somewhere that he kind of
Speaker 1: gave her permission to say, yes, it's okay, you can
Speaker 1: separate yourself from my agenda or my administration.
Speaker 2: Do you think that's true.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I've seen her say I saw her saying at
Speaker 6: different times when she was at this question. I thin
Speaker 6: couple days ago. You know, traditionally vice presidents don't criticize
Speaker 6: the president. All I would say the Democrats is like
Speaker 6: that sort of deference is part of the reason they
Speaker 6: have got themselves in this in the first place. Like
Speaker 6: their inability to see this administration as unpopular is a
Speaker 6: big problem, and so they can keep pretending as if
Speaker 6: people don't have those feelings about the administration, and then
Speaker 6: I think their play is basically an anti Trump one,
Speaker 6: which might work, or they have to acknowledge that some
Speaker 6: of that is in the air, and then it becomes
Speaker 6: more important to lay out what those differences might be.
Speaker 6: And so I really like and so to your point, like,
Speaker 6: I haven't seen that become clear. But I think that's
Speaker 6: downstream of a bigger problem I think they're facing, which
Speaker 6: is that they have not really come to terms with
Speaker 6: the fact that they cannot just be the Biden administration
Speaker 6: and tell people that's okay. For as much as they
Speaker 6: want to tell people the economy is better in the
Speaker 6: numbers than you might feel, as much as they want
Speaker 6: to say like Gaza would be worse under Trump, so
Speaker 6: get over it.
Speaker 4: Like that's not.
Speaker 6: Really working with those people, and so they keep going
Speaker 6: back to that. Well, I just think it's kind of
Speaker 6: a risky one to do because the kind of lecture
Speaker 6: strategy see Obama with black Man a week or two ago.
Speaker 4: I don't think that's a winning one.
Speaker 5: There were two places that I feel like she could
Speaker 5: really break away from Biden.
Speaker 4: She's doing one of.
Speaker 5: Them where she talks about her opportunity economy, like when
Speaker 5: she talking about rebuilding the middle class, when she talks about,
Speaker 5: you know, wanting to provide people with the opportunity to
Speaker 5: own a small business, own a home, I think speaking
Speaker 5: directly to that, directly rebuilding the class, I think that
Speaker 5: is very That could be something she could break away
Speaker 5: from Biden with and talking about how, you know, you
Speaker 5: have these conversations about the middle class. When we was
Speaker 5: in Detroit, my man e t Eric he had he
Speaker 5: said something to her, I hear all of this talk
Speaker 5: about the middle class, but how do we get people
Speaker 5: from poverty?
Speaker 4: For sure? Middle class? That could be the way to
Speaker 4: break away. And another way to break away.
Speaker 5: Is to simply say, hey, man, I feel like, you know,
Speaker 5: this administration got a lot wrong with the border. Yeah,
Speaker 5: you know, and and and and and and and it's
Speaker 5: gonna take by partisan legislation to fix the border. The
Speaker 5: border has been a problem under a lot of different administrations.
Speaker 5: So you know, Democrats Republicans were gonna have to come
Speaker 5: together and fix this. And guess what, we did have
Speaker 5: a bill that you know, Democrats agreed on Andy, Republicans
Speaker 5: agreed on but with what Trump shot it down because
Speaker 5: he didn't want us to get any political wins. But
Speaker 5: she should speak to that, like, she should really say, hey,
Speaker 5: we got it.
Speaker 4: We didn't get it right on the board, this administration
Speaker 4: getting right.
Speaker 5: I'm not the president, I'm the vice president, so I'm
Speaker 5: just you know, riding with my guy. But I don't
Speaker 5: think we got it all the way right on the border.
Speaker 5: I'm going to be stronger.
Speaker 2: Why doesn't she do that because.
Speaker 5: Politicians just don't admit they wrong. Politicians don't want to
Speaker 5: admit because if I admit I was wrong on the border,
Speaker 5: then that means the Republicans were right, so that gives
Speaker 5: them a political win, you know, so to speak.
Speaker 4: It's just that simple. They don't want to admit that
Speaker 4: they got it wrong.
Speaker 6: I think those are all great of options that she
Speaker 6: has in front of her in terms of making a
Speaker 6: more explicit break, and I think it is just that
Speaker 6: kind of simple the o. It goes to something I
Speaker 6: said earlier though this one. I think they kind of
Speaker 6: like politics galaxy, bringing themselves out of doing the obvious thing.
Speaker 6: It's because she's already the Jimcrats are already kind of
Speaker 6: conceding the Trump point that the borders a problem. It's
Speaker 6: clear in their ads, it's clear in how they talk.
Speaker 6: It's they've done a one to eighty from how they
Speaker 6: talk about the border from four years ago when they
Speaker 6: were running. And so all I'm saying is that it's
Speaker 6: already there. What's not there is a clear explanation of
Speaker 6: how you transition or where you find yourself in that.
Speaker 6: And so some of that is a leadership question, Like
Speaker 6: I would much rather be the person driving my party
Speaker 6: shifts in an election than a person feeling like I
Speaker 6: was just a weather vean and I'm flowing wherever the
Speaker 6: party's going. And so some of that is what I
Speaker 6: think they have to get comfortable and stepping into. And
Speaker 6: I just think at this point they're just gonna roll
Speaker 6: the dice with the election and kind of anti trumpness
Speaker 6: and call of the day. But like in the end,
Speaker 6: the question for her will be what does the party
Speaker 6: look like under you? And there's no way to avoid that,
Speaker 6: you know, Like so when I hear like even when
Speaker 6: I hear like a bipartisan Council of Advisors with Republicans, yeah,
Speaker 6: I think that does the signaling to the list Chaney
Speaker 6: types that you're open to more centrist ideas. But I
Speaker 6: also hear someone who's again seeding the vision question to
Speaker 6: other people, and I'm like, I don't think that really
Speaker 6: solves the biggest problem. I don't think people don't think
Speaker 6: you listen. I think people want to know what you believe,
Speaker 6: you know, and so I think that's a slight difference
Speaker 6: that they're not necessarily playing in right now. And I
Speaker 6: really think the answer is because they don't want those
Speaker 6: the beliefs to turn off the type of people who
Speaker 6: they can keep in line if it's just about beating Trump.
Speaker 4: You know. That was a question I had for her. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that I didn't get to because I only had an hour.
Speaker 5: But it's like, do do black people people of color
Speaker 5: who run for president do they have to say we're
Speaker 5: going to have Republicans in our cabinet just to appeal America?
Speaker 4: That's a great question.
Speaker 5: I like, there's a certain sector of white America that
Speaker 5: people of color when they are because President Obama did it, yes,
Speaker 5: not doing it?
Speaker 4: They or do y'all have to do that just to appease?
Speaker 1: Is it just black candidates who who have said that
Speaker 1: in the past. I don't think so. I think other candidates.
Speaker 6: But I do think identity plays a big piece here
Speaker 6: because I think, like, think about how many times Obama
Speaker 6: made a point to clarify he just won't be the
Speaker 6: president of Black America.
Speaker 4: Like I think that there is something and the opposite
Speaker 4: is true too.
Speaker 6: Biden was free to talk about black people all the time,
Speaker 6: you know, like Biden made clear I will do things
Speaker 6: specifically for black communities in a way that I think
Speaker 6: black politicians sometimes scare away from.
Speaker 4: And I also think his brand as moderate.
Speaker 6: Yes it's true because he's been there for a long time,
Speaker 6: but I also think white manness allows you to pass
Speaker 6: some of those electability concerns. You know a story I
Speaker 6: will tell about hair specific to this point. Do you
Speaker 6: remember the second debate? You know, the first debate is
Speaker 6: the one she came to Biden about segregation and bustling, right,
Speaker 6: But the second debate she was kind of a different person, yes,
Speaker 6: like and it felt Jekyl Heidi from the person you
Speaker 6: met in the first debate. And I remember asking one
Speaker 6: of her advisors like, WHOA, what was up with that?
Speaker 6: Like what was the decision process there? And the answer
Speaker 6: I remember getting was we didn't want her to feel
Speaker 6: too much like a hard charging or angry black woman.
Speaker 6: And so partly it was about show some different sides
Speaker 6: of yourself. And this is some white guy telling me,
Speaker 6: you know, classic dim consultant type.
Speaker 4: And I think, like, on one hand, you see.
Speaker 6: How that why that is the advice, But you're also
Speaker 6: pulling someone away from who they are, Like I think
Speaker 6: Kamala Harris is a fairly direct, fairly hard charging black
Speaker 6: woman and that's fine, Like that's the appeal, you know,
Speaker 6: is mean, that's when she's at her best. That's when
Speaker 6: you understand her the most, Like that's when it's clear.
Speaker 6: So so I think partly there is these ways they
Speaker 6: tell themselves women black people have to operate, And I'm like,
Speaker 6: is that rule true? Or if she is just who
Speaker 6: she is, then do people pick up on that?
Speaker 4: And that matters more.
Speaker 5: She's a prosecutor, she's a person who used to hold
Speaker 5: people accountable in those Senate here. When I watched her
Speaker 5: with Brett Baer, when she gets angry, she's like, all righty, Brett,
Speaker 5: cut that out, Like we're not doing that. When I
Speaker 5: had her on my TV show and I was staying
Speaker 5: to her like, who is the real president is Joe
Speaker 5: mansion or is it Joe Biden. She was like, Charlamaine,
Speaker 5: cut it out, stop talking like a Republican president and
Speaker 5: Biden is the president, and I'm Kamala Harris the vice president.
Speaker 4: Like she's at her best when she's when the fire
Speaker 4: is lit, when she's rosed than me.
Speaker 6: I think you get it more even in the interview right,
Speaker 6: like I'm saying, like she is, it's who I think.
Speaker 6: And so sometimes I think I particularly learned this covering
Speaker 6: her and Warren in the last primary. There's often these
Speaker 6: people in the back room that have decided who these
Speaker 6: people have to be. And I think, particularly among Democrats
Speaker 6: in the post Trump era, I just think that like
Speaker 6: being what is most true matters more, and like if
Speaker 6: you're up against Donald Trump, who is gonna play who's
Speaker 6: gonna be himself every day of the week and lose
Speaker 6: on that front, I think inauthenticity is a much bigger
Speaker 6: risk than they acknowledge. And some of that stuff I
Speaker 6: do think is really tied to identity, blackness, and sexism.
Speaker 1: You know, my sister was running for governor of Virginia
Speaker 1: and she got sick and had to drop out, and
Speaker 1: I remember her saying to me, when you run for office,
Speaker 1: you have to be willing to lose. And I think
Speaker 1: what she meant was you have to adhere to some
Speaker 1: north star. You have to be who you are through
Speaker 1: and through. And I think you're right a set. I
Speaker 1: think that authenticity. You know, you can smell inauthenticity a
Speaker 1: mile away. So I think there is something that has
Speaker 1: felt slightly amorphous of who she really is deep down inside.
Speaker 6: And I guess I don't think she's I don't think
Speaker 6: she's in confusion about that, by the way, Like, I
Speaker 6: think this is actually about how you present and how
Speaker 6: you tell that story through politics and policy. Like I
Speaker 6: don't actually think she I think she knows who she is. Yeah,
Speaker 6: And so one of the it's about translating that into
Speaker 6: a way that people can most understand. I remember learning
Speaker 6: that you know, advisors had asked her, did she want
Speaker 6: to call herself a pragmatic progressive?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 7: Like?
Speaker 6: Is there a way that you can distill something so
Speaker 6: that people can have a sense of understanding how you
Speaker 6: make decisions?
Speaker 4: That is what I think is the thing we're talking about.
Speaker 1: The narrative over the past few weeks, And this is
Speaker 1: something Charlemagne has waged into and I wanted your view
Speaker 1: on this is she's struggling with black men, particularly under
Speaker 1: the age of fifty. Charlemagne said he thought that that
Speaker 1: was an unfair assessment that some black folks in the
Speaker 1: United States are struggling more with the Democratic Party than
Speaker 1: with Kamala Harris. So I'd love to hear your take
Speaker 1: on the kind of latest hair on fire issue in
Speaker 1: Democratic circles.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and that I would love to hear you on
Speaker 6: this also, Charlotte Mane, I mean, I think felt like
Speaker 6: the first what you said, I definitely agree with. I
Speaker 6: think this is part of a broader story's much more
Speaker 6: about black people's relationship with the Democratic Party than it
Speaker 6: is about individual black men and Kamala Harris. If even
Speaker 6: if you look at the numbers post twenty twelve, we've
Speaker 6: seen a consistent decline a black share of support for Democrats.
Speaker 6: Even if you look at twenty twenty two, where Democrats
Speaker 6: did really well, Black turnout was their weakest points, their
Speaker 6: widest coalition yet, and they've actually as the party has
Speaker 6: got more college educated than things like they take on
Speaker 6: different types of issues, and so I don't think it's
Speaker 6: any surprise that if you have politicians that increasingly come
Speaker 6: from a more college educated lens. If you take on issues,
Speaker 6: even if you're a way you're appealing to black folks's representation,
Speaker 6: which is often about elite black folks and elite spaces,
Speaker 6: that that pulls you further and further away from the
Speaker 6: type of black folks we're talking about who feel distant
Speaker 6: from the party. I remember we did an episode about
Speaker 6: this at my family Thanksgiving table last year for the podcast,
Speaker 6: and then I got pulled together a whole bunch of
Speaker 6: family and friends. We talked about the kind of shadow
Speaker 6: of Obama because I'm from Chicago, and how that led
Speaker 6: to this kind of feeling of difference with Democrats.
Speaker 4: And one thing that I think stuck.
Speaker 6: Out is like when you ask people why are you
Speaker 6: a Democrat in the first place, the answer that I
Speaker 6: got was much more about thevery fight for poor people
Speaker 6: than it was they fight for black people. And I
Speaker 6: think that's an important thing to remember for a lot
Speaker 6: of these people, is like the drop off is partially
Speaker 6: because the brand has gotten further away from we fight
Speaker 6: for poor people, and it overlaps that that includes a bunch.
Speaker 4: Of black men.
Speaker 6: Who did you know that includes a certain share of
Speaker 6: these folks. But I don't think I think to say
Speaker 6: that it's just sexism, or it's just a white husband,
Speaker 6: or you know, or it's just excuses, you know, to
Speaker 6: not have a black woman president, I really think is
Speaker 6: a type of tone. And I think, particularly I think
Speaker 6: about what Obama said, There's no way he would go
Speaker 6: to white communities and make that same type of lecturing army.
Speaker 4: He wouldn't go.
Speaker 6: He wouldn't go to his cousins in Kansas and say
Speaker 6: it's your fault. He would say, what are your concerns?
Speaker 6: And how is the party speaking to that? And I
Speaker 6: just think it's not that hard. That's what folks are
Speaker 6: looking for.
Speaker 1: Charlemagne, I'll call you Charlotte if you call me Katie,
Speaker 1: and you don't have to call me mss correct. But
Speaker 1: you did ask Vice President Harris on your show about
Speaker 1: what Barack Obama said in that more intimate setting when
Speaker 1: he seemed like he was scolding black men for not
Speaker 1: supporting her. Let's listen to that.
Speaker 5: President Obama was out there last week waving his finger
Speaker 5: at black men. When are Liz Cheney and Hillary Clinton
Speaker 5: going wave day finger at white women? Win of Bill
Speaker 5: Clinton and Joe Biden going wave day finger at white
Speaker 5: men because fifty two percent of white women voted for
Speaker 5: Trump in twenty sixteen, fifty five percent voted for Trump
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty. They all voted against their own interests.
Speaker 5: When the finger waving gonna start at them?
Speaker 8: Well, thank you for highlighting that I do have the
Speaker 8: support of over two hundred Republicans who worked for various administrations,
Speaker 8: including everyone going back to Ronald Reagan to the Bushes,
Speaker 8: to John McCain and Romney, and including Liz Channing.
Speaker 7: I'm very proud to have her support.
Speaker 8: And I believe that they who many of them who
Speaker 8: may have voted for Trump before, are supporting me because
Speaker 8: they know the stakes are so high in terms of
Speaker 8: our very democracy and rule of law, and.
Speaker 5: So the finger wagon should start today Atamar.
Speaker 8: Well, I think what is happening is that we are
Speaker 8: all working on reminding people of what is at stake,
Speaker 8: and that is very important.
Speaker 2: So what did you think about the way she answered
Speaker 2: that question?
Speaker 5: I mean, she didn't answer my question directly, but you
Speaker 5: know what I think, what I think the VP likes
Speaker 5: to do is she likes she likes me just to
Speaker 5: say things because you know it'll be out in it.
Speaker 4: She knows somebody, she knows somebody, you'll hear it.
Speaker 5: So it's just like, you know, me saying it right
Speaker 5: there in that moment in front of her. Liz Chaney
Speaker 5: will hear it, Hillary will hear it. Bill Clinton here,
Speaker 5: Joe bidenl hear it. And it's just like, yeah, you
Speaker 5: know what we do need to be out here, you know,
Speaker 5: rallying people that look like us to go out there
Speaker 5: and support her.
Speaker 6: I think it's the difference between saying the words black
Speaker 6: people are not a monolith and truly believing right and
Speaker 6: truly operating from that front. I mean this pops up
Speaker 6: in other ways too. We should point out, like part
Speaker 6: of the black folks drifting to Trump, if you look
Speaker 6: at places like Florida are a bunch of first generation
Speaker 6: in African Americans who have different immigrant experience, different life
Speaker 6: experience than the voting block that's traditionally had a bunch
Speaker 6: of roots in America, and I think has a different
Speaker 6: lens on politics than you're more African American Southern core.
Speaker 6: So I'm like, if you actually think about the differences
Speaker 6: that are true among black people broadly, then of course
Speaker 6: there's drop off on some areas. Of course, some of
Speaker 6: these things interact differently, but I would only say that
Speaker 6: Obama has shown the consistent tone of lecturing over the years,
Speaker 6: like he did this while president, talking about your cousin
Speaker 6: Pooky and pull up your pants and things like that,
Speaker 6: and so I think, like it's just one of those
Speaker 6: things where you know, we had I talked to Governor
Speaker 6: Wes Moore about black man specifically, and what he says is,
Speaker 6: you need to acknowledge their frustration with the political system
Speaker 6: and the role that Democrats have played in that, and
Speaker 6: that's where you got to start.
Speaker 2: And then I'm just going to say, how can they
Speaker 2: win them back?
Speaker 4: And I think that's where you got to start from.
Speaker 6: I think it's a I think it's a lens on
Speaker 6: issues and that, but I also think it is a
Speaker 6: tone that acknowledges frustration with the political system and frustration
Speaker 6: with the Democratic Party, Like it is not a even
Speaker 6: if seventy eighty percent of black folks vote for Democrats,
Speaker 6: when you talk to them, they have a lot of
Speaker 6: problems with the Democratic Party. And so I think when
Speaker 6: folks act like black folks are just mindlessly hitting the
Speaker 6: blue button, that's when you don't see the type of
Speaker 6: nuances that can lead you to make those marginal improvements.
Speaker 5: You know, ms, I want to read the exact quote.
Speaker 5: You know, this is from President Obama's speech. It wasn't
Speaker 5: when he was talking in the more intimate setting. It
Speaker 5: was when he was talking at the rally in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 5: and he said, and so sometimes the other excuse we
Speaker 5: hear when we're talking to folks as well, it ain't
Speaker 5: gonna make no difference. Well, no, you're right that we're
Speaker 5: not eliminating poverty. We're not gonna get rid of all
Speaker 5: problems with race. We're not gonna prevent every bad thing
Speaker 5: from happening in this country, whoever we elect president.
Speaker 4: That's not how things work.
Speaker 5: The question is that we have somebody there who sees us,
Speaker 5: who cares about us, who will work on our behalf
Speaker 5: and can make things a little bit better. And so
Speaker 5: there are a whole bunch of things that I did
Speaker 5: not get done when I was president. After age is
Speaker 5: I couldn't do it because it was blocked by Congress.
Speaker 5: Couldn't do it because sometimes the Supreme Court stepped in.
Speaker 5: Couldn't do it because I couldn't persuade enough folks to
Speaker 5: do it.
Speaker 4: This is how you get black men back.
Speaker 5: This is how you get black people back, because there's
Speaker 5: a level of honesty in this state and an empathy
Speaker 5: to what voters are feeling that you're speaking directly too.
Speaker 4: You don't got to get.
Speaker 5: Up there, mister President Obama and tell me about all
Speaker 5: of this hope and change that we can believe in,
Speaker 5: and you know how you're gonna wave them long and
Speaker 5: you know, change the conditions of the black community.
Speaker 4: No. I know you can't eliminate poverty.
Speaker 5: I know you're not gonna get rid of all the
Speaker 5: problems with race, but I also convinced me that you
Speaker 5: care and you will work on my behalf to make
Speaker 5: things better. That should be a messaging at a Democratic party.
Speaker 6: And it can't come this late, to be honest, they
Speaker 6: have said, they have said they understood this, they were
Speaker 6: investing early. But the reality is come the mid term,
Speaker 6: the midterms the last four years. There have been signs
Speaker 6: about this with black folks for a while. And so
Speaker 6: the fact that I think this conversation has only recently
Speaker 6: developed is already emblematic of a problem because it could
Speaker 6: have been a thing that they invested in early, and
Speaker 6: I think to the point about the primary early, these
Speaker 6: are the type of things that the primary would do,
Speaker 6: is talk about how to have a conversation about how
Speaker 6: they talk to black men in the first place. In
Speaker 6: that interview with Harris last year, I asked her the
Speaker 6: party talks more about race and blackness than before, why
Speaker 6: isn't that leading the more black votes? And her answer,
Speaker 6: you know, was ask me after twenty twenty four, which
Speaker 6: I think is the same type of dismissiveness of the
Speaker 6: problem that we've kind of seen from them. And so
Speaker 6: twenty twenty four might end up being the wake up
Speaker 6: call on this front. But I don't think it's limited
Speaker 6: to black people. There's a Latino men problem, There's a
Speaker 6: young man there is also.
Speaker 2: A blue college edu.
Speaker 6: It is a it is a broader thing, and so I,
Speaker 6: you know, the specificness of black men somewhat feels like
Speaker 6: an early attempt to blame a loss. In my opinion,
Speaker 6: if someone Harris supposed to lose first, the reason will
Speaker 6: not chiefly be black men, and so I don't I
Speaker 6: don't get why sometimes the conversation.
Speaker 1: Has felt like that before we go and you guys
Speaker 1: have been so generous with your time this podcast is
Speaker 1: going to drop when there's less than two weeks to
Speaker 1: go before the election, and I know that instead, you've
Speaker 1: been traveling like crazy, You've qualified for the Delta Diamond Medallion,
Speaker 1: You've been crisscrossing the country. I think Charlemagne and I
Speaker 1: would both like to hear what you're hearing as you
Speaker 1: travel all across America. What are some of the things
Speaker 1: that are really sticking out in your mind?
Speaker 6: I think the biggest thing is before the switch happened,
Speaker 6: so much of what we heard was an apathetic relationship
Speaker 6: to this presidential race and in a frankly downright hostile
Speaker 6: feeling of being forced to be choosed between those two candidates.
Speaker 6: And for a year or so, that was the overwhelming
Speaker 6: kind of malaise in the air, was why do I
Speaker 6: want to deal.
Speaker 4: With this election?
Speaker 6: And that was driven and I think for a lot
Speaker 6: of people we were talking to Democrats, they were saying, oh, well,
Speaker 6: you know, we have to deal with kind of getting
Speaker 6: people invested, but maybe weren't recognizing that they were part
Speaker 6: of that problem because of the candidates. Since the switch
Speaker 6: has happened, there has been a greater willingness to kind
Speaker 6: of like engage in the in the election and things
Speaker 6: like that. But I think we're still basically dealing with
Speaker 6: the landscape and when Trump is the main figure, partially
Speaker 6: Democrats own making and kind of messaging, but it feels
Speaker 6: like a referendum on him. And one thing that Republicans
Speaker 6: have done for four years ago to now is get
Speaker 6: their voters on the same page when it comes to
Speaker 6: things like early voting, when it comes to things like participating,
Speaker 6: and they use election denial in that message. So we're
Speaker 6: in Georgia last week and we are hearing people voting
Speaker 6: lined up to vote in the first day of early
Speaker 6: voting where they broke records, and they're saying the reason
Speaker 6: is because Dominion stole the.
Speaker 4: Machines last year.
Speaker 6: They're using the Donald Trump language of denial as a
Speaker 6: motivation to go vote, and so it has this kind
Speaker 6: of dual effect where I think it's created a more
Speaker 6: unified MAGA base.
Speaker 4: But we're still going to deal with the situation.
Speaker 6: Whereas some guy told me in Georgia, if Donald Trump
Speaker 6: doesn't win, I don't believe it. I think those questions
Speaker 6: are still hugely important from a democratic side. I think
Speaker 6: you have a good chance to do fine it's just
Speaker 6: with a little bit of a different base and coalition
Speaker 6: than they like to admit.
Speaker 4: The Obama days are done.
Speaker 6: Like, it's a little wider, it's a little more college educated,
Speaker 6: it's a little more affluent, it's a little in all
Speaker 6: of that type of stuff. I think it's just things
Speaker 6: that are uncomfortable for them to say out loud. But
Speaker 6: the people but who wanted to protect democracy and protect
Speaker 6: abortion rights are really real and you see that all
Speaker 6: across folks, and so without those issues, I think that
Speaker 6: Donald I think Donald Trump is correctly named people's desire
Speaker 6: for change from this administration.
Speaker 4: But I think Donald Trump is a huge liability for.
Speaker 6: Being the messenger of that, and so it creates That's
Speaker 6: how you get to fifty to fifty. And I think
Speaker 6: that that's been really clear in the different parts of
Speaker 6: the country. If you go to Georgia and Arizona, we
Speaker 6: hear so much more about immigration, we hear so much
Speaker 6: more about I think issues that I play well for
Speaker 6: Donald Trump. But when we're on Michigan and Wisconsin and
Speaker 6: hearing about abortion rights and protecting democracy, you see how
Speaker 6: there's still a path for Harris.
Speaker 4: And I just think that the party itself.
Speaker 6: Democrats specifically haven't had what we believe in adult combo
Speaker 6: since twenty nineteen, and so without that and the absence
Speaker 6: of that, what they believe in is just Donald Trump
Speaker 6: shouldn't be president again, and so like that's what this
Speaker 6: is a come to be. But it's ground that they
Speaker 6: seeded because the other conversation, the uncomfortable conversation, was one
Speaker 6: they weren't willing to have last year, before.
Speaker 4: There was a VP Harris at the top of the ticket.
Speaker 5: I was saying that this election is going to boil
Speaker 5: down to the criminals who are the Republicans, the cowards
Speaker 5: who are the Democrats because they don't fight hard enough
Speaker 5: on nothing in the couch, which is voting. And I think,
Speaker 5: you know, those people on the couch, they were totally
Speaker 5: checked out when she got to the top of the ticket.
Speaker 5: Now they're sitting up on the couch a little bit like, oh,
Speaker 5: let me see what's going on. They're listening and they're
Speaker 5: listening to, you know, hear things that you know they
Speaker 5: can resonate with. And it's really just something to the
Speaker 5: Democratic Party over the next couple of weeks. It's something
Speaker 5: to VP Kamala Harris to go out there and give
Speaker 5: them something, you know, to get up and go to
Speaker 5: that to that voting move for. You know, I think
Speaker 5: that they I think Democrats they do a terrible job
Speaker 5: of talking about people they never truly talked to. And
Speaker 5: I think that they have a real disconnect with working
Speaker 5: class people in America, not just working class Black people,
Speaker 5: leader the working class people period. I think that there's
Speaker 5: a level of eliticism that has happened in the Democratic Party.
Speaker 5: Even when they say things like the economy is great,
Speaker 5: look at the stock market.
Speaker 4: The people I'm talking to where I'm.
Speaker 5: From in rural Monks Corner, in the rural area in
Speaker 5: South Carolina, they don't know nothing about those stocks.
Speaker 4: They don't have no stocks. They they don't care about that.
Speaker 5: They want to know what the grocery prices, those rent
Speaker 5: prices that they're talking about.
Speaker 4: They're talking about the cost of whiting being too high.
Speaker 5: And you know, Democrats got to find a way to
Speaker 5: get back into the trenches and start talking to people
Speaker 5: instead of talking about people. And when they get that
Speaker 5: connection again with the working class, I think they'll be
Speaker 5: in a much better place.
Speaker 6: I think the only thing I would add to that
Speaker 6: is so much of that disconnect, I think has been
Speaker 6: driven by a bad assumption that the racial changes, the
Speaker 6: demographic had changes in the country will just inevitably lead
Speaker 6: to more Democratic votes. I think it's still it's still
Speaker 6: they're still breaking themselves from that demographic destiny belief. And
Speaker 6: so more let's you know, does not mean inherently more Democrats,
Speaker 6: like that is a misunderstanding of the diversity of that community.
Speaker 6: More black folks does not inherently mean for Democrats.
Speaker 4: That's not an understanding. That's I'm an Asian voter. We
Speaker 4: can keep going down the line.
Speaker 6: But I think the missing piece for people's understanding is
Speaker 6: really just an assumption that folks had one that Donald
Speaker 6: Trump would just be invalidated either by January sixth or
Speaker 6: the legal cases, or that they, you know, something would
Speaker 6: happen by himself. And then the second piece, I think
Speaker 6: is they still have to break themselves from the assumption
Speaker 6: that all these minority folks will inevitably moved in their direction.
Speaker 6: And so whatever the new demographic version of America is,
Speaker 6: there's no telling what that means politically, you know. And
Speaker 6: I think they are just getting to that understanding, and
Speaker 6: some of the shifts, particularly on a class front.
Speaker 4: We're talking about have forced that recognition.
Speaker 1: Astead Herndon and Charloteage the God. This was so fun.
Speaker 1: Thank you both for spending this time with me. I
Speaker 1: really appreciate it. Thank you, Miss Katie, Katie Yeah, miss
Speaker 1: Katie's Miss Katie's fine.
Speaker 2: That's so southern and cute.
Speaker 6: Hey Bill, thank you for having it. Love the work,
Speaker 6: the audience though, happy to be here.
Speaker 4: Thank your good money.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. Everyone.
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