Convention Kickoff, Kamala Reshapes the Electoral Map, and TimTok Arrives

24:45She still was not there was. I mean, remember, one thing about that was that was really interesting about the Republican National Convention is they didn't seem to feel a need to sell. Yeah. What they were showing was a show of strength and force of Trump and Trumpism. All of the ex-Bush people vanquished. Anybody who opposed him in the past has been subsumed. They were not there. They just weren't there. Right. So after three cycles, you were seeing the complete and total maturation of the Trump movement. And he was literally sitting back physically and metaphorically, letting people just come to him and tell him how great he was.

25:20So he was not positioned as, hey, you voters, we're going to do for the future. Yeah. All about the past. And there wasn't a bump that he got polling wise out of that convention, but she has erased his lead. He was sitting on a lead. He was playing like he had the ball in the fourth quarter with a big lead. And it didn't, you know, he just basked in why he picked J.D. Vance. I always said it was someone who thought he was going to win would only pick and not even at the time. Yeah, people said that in the moment was, oh, this is a pick that's not designed to appeal to what people were calling the Nikki Haley voter.

25:51Yeah. Seems like she would have been a better choice at this point. But this race was static for a year. He's now picked J.D. Vance. That's the choice. And the Democrats have completely reformed the entire ticket. And she has erased his polling advantage. Polls show her with not just a national lead now, but a lead in the Electoral College, even though a lot of those states are very close and it's hard to put too much into the polling. There's clearly a trend line in this campaign that has changed. It was static for over a year. Amazing. And now it's completely changed. Well, let's get into it.

26:21It's been a month since Joe Biden announced he's dropping out of the race. And Kamala Harris became the Democratic presidential candidate. In that time, she's raised massive amounts of money and is spending it, drawing huge crowds at rallies, reset, as you said, the electoral college map. The mood has been one of the rational exuberances David Axelrod said, who was one of the ones pushing for this to happen, not necessarily Kamala, but a shift. What do they need to accomplish at this convention? Auda, you first and then Eli. Well, I guess they need to put to bed the whole story about Biden. And you can see they're trying to - Rewrite that narrative into a, thank you, Joe, for your service.

27:02Yeah. And not, we definitely didn't want you to be running because we thought you were losing. So it's going to be a moment to kind of maybe polish that rough edge a little bit. Which she's done well, even if others, you know, from Nancy Pelosi on, people have always spoken about how she handled those couple of days. Not just that she was able to get the money and the delegates in a day and spend the day on the phone, but that she didn't throw him under the bus on the way. No, that was Nancy's job. That she was loyal. But even Nancy said, look, they were disciplined. Right. And I think that was the first glimmer of what we came to understand and what we're talking about now of Harris and her campaign being disciplined instead of the way we were talking about it back in 2019.

27:42of like, does she know what she's doing? I think they're going to do all the things you always see at conventions. They're going to speak to their own constituencies. They're going to try to speak to Republicans. They're going to, without centering Trump, they're going to talk about reminding people about January 6th. They're going to have Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican congressman, on the stage. There may be other speakers like that. But I think if you think about this in the bigger picture, the macro sense of this, this race now is all about Kamala Harris in a way that 2016 was all about Donald Trump.

28:10She has the attention. She is the new thing. That is something he can't fix at this point. This is third run. His act is kind of tired. She is the new thing generating excitement. But she is still a new thing. And the eyeballs of people this week will be on her who maybe don't always watch politics or maybe watching her for the first time. I think generally in this race, she just needs to convince people that she is a credible president, that she is capable, that she knows her stuff, that people can picture her in the office. And I think that her speech, Walls' speech especially, if they do that, if they come out of here and people say, yeah, I can see it.

28:48I think that more than winning Republicans, exciting the base. The base is excited. Republicans are there for the taking, but it comes down to her performance. They seem open to her. And there are going to be some little Easter eggs along the way. Like if a Barack Obama is speaking, for instance, that's a scenario where everyone will look on stage and think, oh, I remember when we weren't sure if that guy could be president. You know what I mean? I remember what it was like to be like, is this person ready? That's another thing that's the building block. He's got to do a big sale of her. All of them do.

29:18Towards their selling block. Yeah, but I think it's really showing that they believe in her. Right, right. One of the things, I suggested last November, the Democrats embrace the word freedom in their messaging. Like, take all the Republican words. And she has done that in her ads, in her speeches, the Beyonce song. I feel good about this, even though I'm not a political person. That is someone. we're we're still getting the grill together i'll be polishing glasses yes um harris is staying away from breaking the glass ceiling talk she's staying away uh she's emphasizing being a first woman president but she's not really reacting to donald trump her social media is in a funny way um talk a little bit about that because she's taking the stage on thursday um and we'll talk about the other speakers in a minute but how do you assess those mess how she's She's very controlled.

30:05It's smart. I think, you know, they're learning. When Obama ran in 2008, everybody knew he'd be the first black president. He didn't have to talk about that in every speech. And I think, you know, a lot has happened since 2016, right? We've had Dobbs overturned. We've had Me Too. There's a lot of reasons why women are looking at politics maybe in a different way than they did before. And it kind of goes without saying that she will be the first woman president if she's elected. And, you know, I'll tell my wife's story. My wife, Elena Schneider, who I work with at Politico. She just wrote a piece on why she's underplaying her race and gender.

30:37It kind of just not something she needs to say to excite people. And I think in a really short campaign, the point is convincing people I can be president. I care about what you care about. This is where I want to take the country. Those other things are pretty obvious. And you don't need to redo the Hillary campaign. It's much more the Obama template in 2008 because you're trying to get the voters in the middle to win, not to make his. The people who I think really care about that history, most of them are probably already with her. But they weren't necessarily with Biden. Yeah. Right. And they weren't even necessarily with Hillary.

31:11I mean, these are candidates who could not recreate the Obama coalition because they couldn't bring out the low propensity voters out who are in the multiracial. Right. Right. The way Trump could bring out white low propensity voters. And so now here's where you talk about the map being opened up. It's because of her. Well, one of the things she's going to do, does she have to say I'm the first woman of color to be president? Do you think she does? No, but remember, it's not 1996. It's not 2016. As you said, I think everyone post awokening is more aware of the tokenism of those terms and they don't actually need them to accomplish.

31:51She does have some big names. President Biden is speaking tonight. President Barack Obama's tomorrow night and Bill Clinton, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as well as Hillary Clinton. No ex-presidents at the RNC. Right. No, all of them here. Right. And Jimmy Carter's grandson is coming. She Michelle Obama's also speaking, who famously told Democrats when they go low, we go high. Actually, Kamala's social media goes low, which I kind of like. Yeah. And I and also lots of people wanted Michelle Obama to run like all the Democratic fan fiction I heard over the last year. That was the most prominent.

32:24Yeah. But also rising stars of party like Josh Shapiro, who was vice president, the number two vice presidential candidate, I guess. Now, Pete Buttigieg, AOC will have a moment in the spotlight. There's always a breakout moment. Teddy Kennedy in 1980, Mario Cuomo in 1984, Barack Obama in 2004. Is there anyone you have the moment you mentioned Adam Kinziger? He'll appear at the convention. Anyone you you're predicting very briefly? It's hard to predict. I mean, I think one person nobody would ever talk about. Joe Neguse is a is a member of Congress from Colorado. He's an he's a wonderful speaker.

32:57I think, you know, it depends how much people are paying attention to those undercard speakers who are not going to be on TV speaking in primetime. I think the big speech is what they tell you about this part. This Democratic Party is that it is a big tent party and that they are all now pulling together in the same direction, even though they went through a really difficult growing pain a month ago. So here they are all pulling for Kamala Harris. You think about the RNC. I remember the night that Donald Trump Jr. was essentially the primetime speaker. And just it was just a wasted opportunity to speak to the country.

33:28And I just did not understand that speech. Right. So the contrast between these parties with former presidents, a deep bench of governors and senators and representatives speaking here. But it's just very different. They saw it as showing primacy. Right. They saw they didn't think they needed to pull in different people on stage. You know, one thing we don't talk about enough, everyone is so focused on the attention Kamala Harris got through social media and that very quick charisma kind of roller coaster. Donald Trump and the Trump campaign are not used to their candidate not being able to completely seize media spotlight.

34:05Right. She's good at little to no effort. Remember, even his his criminal trials. He took advantage of it. It was a constant. Yeah. Even now he's able to call a press conference and hold forth for an hour publicly. Right. But it's not scoring the same points that it was in the past. The old hits. And the number of times you see something on the screen that says Trump defends, J.D. Vance defends. They are spending that post-convention bump time they could have had completely on the defense and not the. I remember the story I wrote in 2015, 2016 in the primary season about how Trump did it. And there was a bit about how he told advisers years before that he was actually going to run for president.

34:46People who are trying to convince him to run for governor of New York. He said, no, I'm going to run for president. And you just watch. The cameras will not be able to take their eyes off of me. And that turned out to be the case in 2016. And that is not the case now. But weirdly, just in this 30 days, like all of a sudden. Well, because you've got a fresh new character. No, the drama of how it came to be. and about Biden. Yeah, you're right. Nobody wanted to go look at the person who had just captured their nomination. No, it's a great story. It was done. And I think he's really struggled with that.

35:17Yeah, so tens of thousands of protesters are expected to converge on Chicago this week. Obviously, there's memories of 1968. It's happened before, with the majority focused on Palestinian rights, ending the war in Gaza, reducing USA to Israel. Activists said the elevation of Harris to the top of the ticket has not lessened their outrage. Violence are up between police and protesters. as I said, in 1968. Should Democrats be worried about it? She handled hecklers pretty well so far. She's handled them better and better. I think there might be some minor concerns about this, but my reporting is not that the campaign or the people who are working on this convention are really too preoccupied with that.

35:53I think the fact that Biden is president, he's the one who the protesters have really been frustrated with in terms of driving the policy, not maybe being tough enough on the Israeli government. I mean, you know, they are selling a lot of the administration's work now is Biden and Harris together. But I just don't know if that has taken some of the wind out of the sails of some of the protesters or the fact that they are closer maybe now to a ceasefire than they have been, even though it's not done yet. I mean, I just I saw protesters in the streets yesterday. And there are going to be some. These things always draw protesters.

36:24But I just don't think we're getting to 1968. It's a confluence of things. First of all, school is out. Right. So there were there isn't this campus organizing space. Right. point also quite similar to the abortion issue Kamala Harris over the year prior to becoming nominee had always talked about this with a slightly different tenor and tone right right so whereas Joe Biden on abortion was is Catholic talked about his concerns but also support for right she was like at the clinic you know what I mean and out there talking about it and when it came to this she was you know a person who came out I always talk about the speech at Selma where she first talked about the idea of a ceasefire, but specifically around the humanity of Gazans and Palestinian women and victims.

37:14No, she has. She used that language early and often, even though policy-wise, there is no difference there. There's no meaningful difference there. There's like a generational difference where she thinks about the Middle East in maybe a fresher way than a politician like Joe Biden, whose reflexive reaction initially was not that. It was to talk about Israel's right to defend itself and only that, and it was kind of, he almost had to be dragged into recognizing the Palestinian side of things. But you know, Kara, it's so hard to protest these things now. You probably remember the perimeters. This is not 1997 Seattle WTO.

37:51There's a lot of perimeters. The way security works now at any large or soft event, whether it's this or a Taylor Swift concert, Right. It is created to deter any kind of real disturbance. So the question I'll have is, one, what happens outside this perimeter in and around Chicago? And two, the uncommitted delegates and the people who were concerned, how will they show their displeasure, even if they don't want to pull away from Harris? The Minnesota delegation has quite a few of them. They'll have a prominent. They'll find a way. They actually have a prominent position because of false, which will be interesting.

38:26Anyway, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, the Kamala effect on Electro College map. And Tim Walls brings his dad jokes to TikTok.

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40:21We're back. I'm joined again by CNN's Audie Cornish and Politico's Eli Stokuls. Kamala Harris now has multiple paths to victory in the Electoral College, according to the latest analysis from The Washington Post. Post believes Harris could get to the White House by winning the Rust Belt states or the Sun Belt states, where Donald Trump needs both to win both regions. Harris's impact is being felt down ballot. Congressional Democrats are reportedly seeing upticks in their latest polling numbers. Post Biden dropping out. House Speaker Mike Johnson warned in a private call with members last week that some of the numbers were ominous, according to Politico.

40:55I know they were just talking, some Trump people are saying Trump will get California and that's all he needs, which I was laughing quite handily about that, which is he's not getting California. Sorry, Donald. I'm pretty sure the RNC at the Politico, CNN Politico Grill, La Savita, was on stage in an interview talking about the numerous paths they thought they had through the Electoral College. Right, which they do not. Or not thought at that time had. So explain, what does Harris need, first you, Audie, need to do to maintain the momentum? And then Eli, how dramatically has she reopened this?

41:30First you, Audie. You know, I think one of Clinton's old advisers has been out talking about Bill Clinton's old advisers talking about how this is you can be a moment or a movement. And at what point do you become a movement? Barack Obama became a movement of sorts. Trump became a movement. So the question is not so much like, can she just sustain this? It's a short time period in such a short. It's like, can she convince the whole country that like, even though she is like in an incumbent administration, she's a change candidate somehow that it's a change, even though it's same policies, etc.

42:10And also, is it is there a bigger idea to her that people want to coalesce and get behind? Well, there is the gender gap factor. Harris has a 14 point lead among likely women voters in latest New York Times Siena poll. Trump has a 17 point lead among men, which is interesting. Yeah, the gender gap is huge. Talk about the electoral college and what the gender gap plays into it. Well, I just think it's it's hard to see Donald Trump winning a lot of these states if he loses women by more than 15 points. And there are polls showing him showing a 17 point gender gap in a lot of places. I mean, that is huge.

42:43That is huge. And they're not really doing themselves any favors by the way Donald Trump is going out and talking about this. Even though vice presidents don't matter. I actually think that has affected it. But, you know, this idea that Donald Trump was a better candidate because he had a better team around him. No, they're bringing in Corey Lewandowski to layer over and throw more controversy onto that team. Donald Trump has shown us whether it was the speech at the NABJ where he questioned. He recently had a sexual harassment problem. Yes, never mind the fact that he's a convicted felon and all of those issues with women already.

43:12But the way he talks about Kamala Harris questioning her race and talking about her looks. I mean, that is going that is telling an electorate of women who are already frustrated, broadly speaking, by what has happened with reproductive rights. We've been galvanized by the Me Too movement. That is just adding on to their problems and exacerbating the Republican deficit and Trump's personal deficit with women. I think the other thing to note is these polls have completely shifted. And, you know, you're right. Acevedo was definitely looking at all these different paths and thinking big about an electoral landslide just just a month or so ago.

43:47The Biden campaign at the same time was acknowledging that its path to victory with him was narrowing. And it was just those blue wall states in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. Now they have many paths. They they they're doing much better in the Sun Belt. There's, you know, Senator Jackie Rosen in Nevada. Her team has private polling showing them up far outside the margin of error and maybe not as much as some public polls have suggested. But if she's up five or six points in Nevada, then Harris is up in Nevada. Making North Carolina a fight. Exactly. And I think that's that's bringing more.

44:17I mean, people who are registering voters are talking about the enthusiasm that they're now seeing because it's real. It's organic. They're not having to drag people to register to vote for Joe Biden. Weird people are telling me they're voting for people I never thought would trump people. that I think really. Yes. Are those the Nikki Haley voters? Yes. They're not voting for Trump. But I think the other thing that that people may not look at when we're focusing so much on vibes is organization. Right. Obama in 08 was a movement, but he was also an organizer who built a campaign around organizing.

44:47And the Biden people, when this was Biden's campaign, they invested a lot of money in these swing states because they knew we have a candidate who himself is not going to really excite people to vote. It's not going to broaden the electorate. We're going to have to do it on our own. And now that system, that infrastructure that exists is being utilized by a candidate who is popular, who is bringing people into the fold and the people who are knocking the doors. A lot of these people, we were talking about this. A lot of these people who wanted Biden to step back, who spoke publicly. Yeah. Also spoke about an open convention.

45:20They did. They thought Galloway being one. Yes. And I said, that's ridiculous. here and have like town halls or all of these. That's not how it worked out. And it has been interesting seeing them come around to, I don't know what, I don't think it's vibes. I just don't think it's TikTok alone that put Kamala Harris in this position. Let me just say, youth has something. She seemed at 60, she's young. She feels vibrant. She runs off of things. She feels fun and then she picked up she can converse she can come about cultural moments and ideas right and her silliness that people made fun of the laugh that trump's trying to make happen which isn't happening anymore because it's funny it's i am interested to see how um the republican kind of movement to counter will evolve because i am hearing now it's been it hasn't but there is a world of people who are like oh you can't say anything about her because they'll call you racist They'll call you this.

46:16They'll call you that. And remember, the anti-woke movement is about that feeling of feeling like, why am I being treated like a pariah? Because I don't agree with you. And I do think those people are still out there. If you have the candidate saying she's beautiful, that's a. Wait, the candidate didn't say a message? No, no. I'm saying he has a problem with her because he finds her attractive and it's weird. It is weird, but you can circumvent a bad candidate or an undisciplined candidate like Trump with a lot of advertising. And there's going to be millions of dollars spent after Labor Day going after her on policy.

46:50They may not be able to get him to go after her on policy, but they can do it in their ads. They can talk about immigration. They can talk about the economy. They're going to do that. That's going to have some effect. But I think the thing that's different about Kamala Harris now compared to Kamala Harris in 2021 is just the confidence that you're talking about. the ability to be out there and seem comfortable in her own skin when, you know, in that first year, it was real bumpy. You just got the sense that she might not be comfortable in the role. She might not be comfortable with the West Wing and the president, his team and all of these things.

47:20There were a lot of growing pains. And it feels like now she has built relationships. She has a team around her that she trusts. You have the sort of old trusted hands of the Democratic Party coming in to help. Everyone is pulling in the same direction. Californian, we kind of experienced this person. Like one of the things that I always talk about, I'm like, this is the person I remember as DA. I remember as senator. I dealt with her a lot. I dealt with her a lot as AG. And when she launched her campaign before that massive crowd in Oakland, right? Like there's a glimmer of this that was there, but she was still a novice politician in a lot of ways.

47:55And maybe she took advantage of her time as vice president to learn. Like that could be another theory here. Yes, let's get to defining this. Obviously, Roe v. Wade helped her quite a bit because the scenario she's very sharp on, But she hasn't done a major interview or held a press conference. She's been doing these gaggles where she's not necessarily hiding. She doesn't feel hiding, but she's not out since becoming the Democratic nominee. And defending, depending on who you ask, might be a problem. I'm not so sure it is. The lack of engagement with the media has become the latest rallying cry of Donald Trump, J.D.

48:25Bannon, some of the Republicans. Personally, I think they talk too much. They should talk a little less. A number of journalists are also voicing concerns, which, of course, that's what you're supposed to do as a journalist. Harris did a brief Q &A with the reporters a few weeks back and saying she wanted to get an interview going. Aides to Harris say their most effective voter outreach comes from TikTok and other social platforms, according to New York Times. Is it getting blown under proportion, an actual problem? I've said I see why they're not doing it. If I were them, I wouldn't necessarily.

48:52That said, she's quite good in interviews. But walk us through that logic. I don't think enough people hear. Right. Why is it you wouldn't? Because she can get through without us. I think Like, I think she should. And I think it's civic duty wise. I think she's capable of it. She just. So what's the but like, what is the downside? Make a mistake. She's done it before. She's done it before another interview. So we say the quiet part out loud. But I've done some reporting on this. And I think the other thing and this is a feeling that the Biden White House also had and not wanting to put him out there.

49:23And that was clearly because putting him out there was problematic in a lot of ways. But, you know, it's also about they don't need the mainstream media. They don't need the traditional reporter, the New York Times, the network interview with George Stephanopoulos, you know, until he's until he's hanging by a thread and trying to hold on to it. For a long time, they just said, you know what? We can go to influencers. We can do podcasts. We can communicate in nontraditional ways because that's how people are getting their media now. Yes, they do the occasional interview with David Muir because ABC gets the biggest audience on their nightly news.

49:53But really, and I think the Harris people, I know the Harris people think similarly about this. They just don't think the upside is worth the risk when there are all these other ways that they can go out and try to reach people. Because you and I would both like to get interviews. Of course. And, you know, I'm aware that my bias as a journalist is like I want to ask questions. I think that obviously if more people had asked more questions of Joe Biden publicly, maybe this conversation would have been different. You know, I think that I don't love the explanation of there's no upside for her to being in a free ranging conversation where she can show that she can parry, answer questions, etc.

50:36I do think that Trump is getting that experience. It may not be helping him. He's going to walk into a debate with that experience. And they are, I understand, working on setting up an interview. There may be something already kind of in the works that hasn't been announced. She said she's going to do a sit down interview by the end of this month. Because TikTok doesn't take questions. I love you all in TikTok, but the comments aren't the same as taking questions. That said, this is an experienced litigator. So it's not like she doesn't can't move fast. Right. But it's not that it's still the tone and tenor.

51:05What will you be? How are you coming off? And especially for black women, there's a higher bar for us in terms of like how we speak to people. So just what does she look like now in that environment? We don't actually. And what does a year or more of media coaching with Stephanie Cutter and others, you know, what does that look like now? I think she is more confident now, but this is a format that has been problematic for her in the last few years. So that's a friendly audience. Elon Musk and extraordinarily, ridiculously, he didn't. They've been trying to spin their National Association of Black Journalists conversation into, look, he went into a, quote unquote, hostile environment and answered questions.

51:42Badly. Yeah. I'm not spinning it. I'm just saying the campaign is saying, at least he did it. His own campaign doesn't think that went well. Oh, I mean, that's the cautionary tale for Kamala Harris. Like, he turned something going into, I personally think she should go right over to Fox News immediately. That's what I do if I were her. Just to show off, you know, and be really prepared to do, not necessarily Hannity, but someone there. It would be interesting if she did something like that, because would they pronounce her name correctly? Right. No, no. Like, would you in the moment face to face?

52:13What is wrong with that? Well, I'm going to mispronounce it, which to me as someone with a weird name. Yeah. You get people who mess up your name all the time. Not like this. Been there. No, no. But it's the idea of disrespect. And the other day you talked about Nancy Mace on CNN. There were some black commentators trying to counter to her. And like, of course, a country with a history of referring to adult women and men of color as boy or taking your name away. That's like that means something to us. We notice that. Yeah. And this insistence because they think it sticks it to the libs seems is yet another thing to me that comes off to other kinds of voters as irritated.

52:55What's the point? So let me ask you what's just a few more things to get through. What's the number one question? Very briefly, you would ask Kamala Harris if you got the first sit down interview. First, you're passing the. You know, I mean, I think what I think I would say your first year, let's say you have a Democratic Congress. What what is your first priority? What do you when you have the Capitol and you have the votes and you can really get something done in that first legislating window? What do you want to do? What's because, you know, Biden could have done a lot of things, could have done immigration.

53:22But he went with COVID relief and then he went to infrastructure. And that told us a lot about what he valued, bipartisan. You know, that was that was important. I would I would want to know clearly what do you want to do? Not just in the first hundred days, but the first six months. No, that's a good one. You stole mine as an ex-congressional reporter because Congress is where it's at. And at the end of the day, no matter what you think of Joe Biden, legislation got passed. Right. It just did. And part of that was because of his team. Part of that was him having 40 years plus knowing the institution.

53:52She knows that she has been a senator, but Joe Biden was the Senate in and out, you know, for many years. So it's really about like, what is that? Are you prepared for those battles? I think I would do something broader. What do you stand for? What do you what is what do you stand for? Good question. What do you stand for? Like, what do you who are you? That kind of thing in a broader sense. Last question here, and then we'll get to wins and fails. Could the next big talk influencer be none other than vice presidential candidate Tim Walz? Let's talk really briefly about him. He's now on TikTok.

54:23You mean coach? K-Coach. Big dad energy. Got it. As Axios Bukrain. Waltz appeared in his first video, or Tim Talk, as he called it on Friday. I cannot. I know, but it works. It works. Does it? It did. Timder. Come on, it does. It does. It does with a lot of people. I know. Not you. They're not aiming at you. Along with his dog, Scout. And he did that very funny video about not shooting his dog when Kristi Noem did. I thought that was quite brilliant. The jokes write themselves. The camp at Plants has used the new account to display his authenticity as a Midwestern dad, football coach, and to draw a contrast with J.D.

54:58Vance, which is easy. I mean, it certainly made it hard for Republicans who had spent the last year saying, like, TikTok needs to go. And then all of a sudden they were like, oh, wait, we need this. And also Trump shifted because of money. But how is walls coming up? I know vice presidents don't matter, but this guy's not doing a bad job. No, I think he's exactly what she wanted and needed to kind of calm fears that she was something extreme or outside of the mainstream or a coastal candidate, coastal elitist, you know, a prosecutor married to a lawyer. I think he he plays in the middle of the country.

55:30He plays with the kinds of voters who she may not be as natural. It may not have as strong a reaction to her. And I think, look, the dad energy that he's very comfortable in his own skin. His his experience speaks to a lot of different people. So I think tapping that, you know, letting him be loose on social media. I mean, again, new ways of communicating, reaching younger voters, younger voters, not the deficit they are for Democrats that they would have been had Biden still been the top of the ticket. But you still need to turn them out. That's no guarantee. And it's obviously less complicated for her and Walls to be on TikTok than it is for Biden who's setting U.S.

56:05policy. He's the dad you lost to Fox News. That was a big thing I saw, I think, online. Yeah. Also, he's proven to have an ability to deflect some of the picking at his weaknesses. So it's like you went to China a lot. Well, I took high school students there, you know, like every year. Like, well, people have had these trouble, you know, like what my son was like, I liked him for that. Exactly. I was like, what? He goes, well, he seems like a guy who could like be. Or another one I'm hearing is like, why doesn't he have any money? What does that? And then I've heard this response. Have you met a teacher?

56:42You know, like there's always this kind of pithy response to things that are supposed to be weaknesses for him. Right. And he's whatever whoever is working for him. I think they have done a good job of finding ways to re contextualize each one of these. Right. Yeah. Aw shucks vibe, which may be annoying to us. She doesn't give aw shucks to me. She's very maybe because I'm seeing her on Bookdoor. Yeah. She's super polished. A lot of these folks who are in the bench and are fantastic and very good political players, I think they were very, very, very polished. And the idea that he would come to them and be like, I just want to work really hard for you.

57:21And also, I'm not good at prompter. They're like, great. He's no hayseed. I mean, the fact that he's going into Runza in Nebraska and, you know, playing that up like he gets it. This is a savvy and very capable politician. I mean, he won a tough district in a tough election cycle in 2006 and came into Congress on the sort of anti-war wave. And understands himself. And has won that district over and over again. You know, he's elected governor. This is a guy who knows what he's doing. And his personality may not read quite as ambitious or quite as polished as, say, a Gavin Newsom or a Josh Shapiro.

57:54But this is a very smart and successful politician. Clearly, he's very quick. He's much quicker than daddy. I think at the end of the day, it's do no harm with your choices. And also, can it be complimentary? And I think she found a match that was complimentary. The military thing didn't really stick. And at the end of the day, J.B. Vance and Trump, they're not complimentary. One doesn't bring anything to the other. Right. And I think the thing, I mean, if he's out there doing a lot of things and he's attracting incoming, he's taking, you know, he's like bait. He's taking them away from Harris by being the person.

58:26Oh, let's go after Walls about his military. Let's go after him. I think the Harris campaign is fine with that. Go after Walls. He can handle himself. And, you know, that's just another day that they're attacking the wrong thing. They haven't been fine for it all, which is really interesting. Yeah, not at all. The liberal thing's not working. Yeah, well, she has to define herself. She does. That's correct. And that is still a thing she has to do. She has to do in this speech. All right, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

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1:01:58Okay, Audie and Eli, let's hear some wins and fails. Audie, you go first. Like in all of life or like today? What's going on this week? Wins and fails. Yeah, you can have something else if you want to pick something else. No, no, I actually, nobody's failed yet. This week has just started. Right. Maybe the fail is that Trump has to spend the week counter-programming in a way that clearly says he's going to do, which he says he's going to do. And in the past, that felt like a mighty threat because of his power of television. I think Wynn is the lineup for this week of Democrats, of being able to have a full spectrum of Democrats past and have that build towards her in the next generation.

1:02:40They're telling a proper story this time around. And I think it would have been harder to figure out what that story would be with Biden. I'll single out an individual, and that's Stephanie Cutter, who I mentioned already. But this is a person who I think deserves a lot of credit. If Kamala Harris meets the moment, a lot of that has to do with the fact that... Explain who she is. She is a Democratic strategist, runs Precision. That's a big Democratic firm. But she has been working quietly with the vice president on her communication, her interviews, Her messaging has helped mold a lot of messaging around reproductive rights for the past year.

1:03:11She's helped her get more comfortable in who she is and being that person publicly. And so if Harris has a strong convention and she gives a great speech on Thursday night, I think a lot of that worked. It's like when a hitting coach gets a little credit when someone wins the batting title. It's like you have to give her some credit for that. And she's also the person who the DNC hired to figure out the lineup. And so over the last month, she's had to completely reformulate this convention around a new nominee at the top of the ticket. So she's been working very hard. And I think just as a person who, you know, we don't all talk about people like that all the time.

1:03:43But as an operative, she has been in the middle of everything this campaign has been doing, this candidate has been doing and this convention has been doing. And I think that's a name to know. Washington's worked for Ted Kennedy. Like some of the things you're talking about, why isn't Kamala Harris talking about X or Y? There's people in the background who have earned a couple lessons from the last 15 years. Talking too much, actually. And she was very good about that. When she was turning black, she hardly said anything. Oh my goodness. Yeah. When did you turn black? I don't know. Oh my God. Oh my God.

1:04:15America. America. This is America. My win and fail. My win is San Francisco. I love San Francisco. So on a roll with Kamala Harris there, we got we had Outerlands, which was a huge success. We had Skrillex there. The city's cleaning up its homeless problem. I think it's on a AI is really causing the whole area to economically. So it's really hard to attack San Francisco as much now. They'll try. They're trying right now. But I'll tell you, give me a review I haven't heard before. I'm just telling you, there's a lot going on in San Francisco now. And it's all forward and up and to the right, especially around the homeless issue, which Gavin Newsom.

1:04:50Yeah, I'm intrigued. The new Supreme Court decision. There's a lot going on. There's a lot they couldn't do for a while, but now they can. So I say San Francisco because I'm from there and I love San Francisco. The fail is Donald Trump tweeting or threading or social whatever the wherever he was. I'm probably truthing that Taylor Swift wants from. He's in huge, enormous trouble now for that. That was a bad situation. He put up a thing saying. even that's a retread from the super bowl period talking about taylor swift no it just everything is she's not gonna like that she's very good at legal and swifties won't like it swifties won't like it and she her legal team that especially both beyonce with her everybody like he's using all their music nobody wants celine dion he's got a troika he's got a troika of people celine dion beyonce taylor swift pissed at him i don't think that's a good hashtag cease and desist Hashtag you're new Trump.

1:05:44Same as the old Trump. Hashtag you're fucked. These ladies, ladies said that these ladies don't play. So anyway, I really appreciate you, too. What's your next stop? What's your next stop, Audie? Next stop will be primetime tonight. Yeah. First night of speeches, which I think are going to be fascinating. Are they good interviews for your wonderful podcast? Actually, you know, I like coming to conventions and figuring it out because they are one of the last few spaces of like true kind of spontaneous conversation. I mean, yes, everybody here, you know where they stand. Yeah. But you can get into the nuances of the people who are here, what they care about, where they think things are going.

1:06:24And they're in a positive attitude. It's a little more fun for reporters than just general man on the street, you know, where you're standing on a street corner. Oh, the music's starting now. What about you? What are you playing? Just jamming out right here, I guess. I'll be writing the newsletter all week. We'll be watching and writing off of the president's speech. Who is this? They're playing. I can't hear. Is it Taylor? This is giving Baron Morris new album. Oh, it is. Yep, that is. We don't know it anyway. Go ahead. You know, we'll be here at the political grill, political CNN grill tomorrow.

1:06:55My co-author, Lauren Egan, and I will be interviewing Anita Dunn. So that could get spicy. Yeah. And, you know, just. Yeah, we'll be just floating around, seeing who we can bump into. And I think, you know, we can work in a tiny bit of deep dish or medium dish Pequod's. I know there's a lot of controversy about Chicago pizza this week already. Stop, stop, stop. And again, tonight. I'll be here at the Politico Grill. Tonight is Joe Biden. Tonight is Joe Biden. Yeah. Give him a nice send off. Good luck. He will get a very enthusiastic. It'll be dreamy. I don't know if that'll make up for a days and days of news reporting of saying, people are more enthusiastic now that you're gone.

1:07:37But you're going to get a round of applause no matter what. He's going to do this speech and fly off to Santa Barbara wine country for a few days and probably just rest and maybe he'll watch some of this. Maybe he won't watch all of it. Well, thank you, Joe, I guess. That's what we should say at the end. We want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business, tech, or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. Okay, that's the show. Today's show is produced by Lara Neiman, Zoe Marcus, Brandon McFarlane, and Taylor Griffin.

1:08:06Ernie Andergett engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Mia Silveria, and Kate Gallagher. Nishat Kuro is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Thank you, too. I appreciate it. Thank you. Now get out there and do some reporting.

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