40. The Surge for Kamala Harris

0:28This episode is brought to you by Jack Daniels. is helping Americans innovate in ways both big and small. From improving emergency response times to protecting against cyber attacks, local, state, and federal governments are innovating with Google AI. This is a new era of American innovation. Find out more at g.co slash American Innovation. Lemu, Lemu! And Doug. Lemu and I always tell you to customize your car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. But now, we want you to feel it. Cue the emu music, Lemu. Save yourself money today. Increase your wealth. Customize and save, we say. That may have been too much feeling.

1:10Only pay for what you need at LibertyMutual.com. Liberty, Liberty, Liberty, Liberty. Savings vary. Underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts. it.

1:25Hello and welcome to The Rest is Politics U.S. with me, Katty Kaye, on Election Eve. And me, Anthony Scaramucci. You know, we're just one day out from Election Day, and I just want to remind you that I'll be covering the U.S. presidential election through the night on November the 5th, live in studio from New York City. I'll be joined by Rory and Alistair from The Rest is Politics, Dominic Sandbrook from The Rest is History, and Marina Hyde from The Rest is Entertainment. What a blockbuster lineup. We'll be live on YouTube from 3 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday afternoon and back again at midnight through to the early hours of Wednesday morning.

2:06For those of you in the UK, that's 8 p.m. on Tuesday evening and back again on Wednesday morning at 5 a.m. UK time. So don't forget to tune in. Just search The Rest is Politics America Decides on YouTube. The shows will also be available to watch afterwards on Spotify. Search The Rest is Politics election video special. Okay, Cady, if you're cool with it, I'd like to get right into it with the Iowa polls because I think you just interviewed Ann Seltzer who did that poll and obviously she's a well-regarded pollster. What are your thoughts on the Iowa poll that came out? And of course, for viewers and listeners, that was a surprise poll.

2:48Vice President Harris, 47, Donald Trump, 44. A lot of pushback from the Trump campaign on that. What are your thoughts on it, Katty? Yeah. So we'll talk about this Des Moines Register poll. And I did just interview Ann Seltzer, so I've got a bit more detail from her. It's a poll that has surprised people because Iowa, as you've been hearing, if you've been following Anthony and me for the last few months, is not on anyone's list of battleground states. People are not expecting Kamala Harris necessarily to win Iowa. Barack Obama won it in 2008. He won it again in 2012, but a Democrat hasn't won it since then.

3:22But why people are focused on this Des Moines Register poll, which was conducted by Ann Seltzer, which is a very reputable poll. Ann Seltzer is a very good pollster. She's widely recognized as somebody who understands Iowa very well and has very thorough methodologies. people are focused on this poll because it shows a swing towards Kamala Harris since the summer and even since September, and now has Kamala Harris ahead in Iowa. So it's not necessarily that people think Kamala Harris will win Iowa. What Ann Seltzer is showing is momentum towards Kamala Harris. And I think that's what you and I have been feeling when we've been texting over the last few days, right, Anthony, that's what we've been feeling is that Kamala Harris seems to be closing this with momentum.

4:07And I can tell you a bit more about Seltzer's poll in a second, but I want to hear what you've been hearing about momentum. So the campaign is saying yesterday in Pennsylvania, 807 ,000 doors were knocked. Wow. 940 ,000 people were called in Pennsylvania from their phone bank. Now, some people think those calls are annoying, but the campaigns believe that these calls are very effective. They actually pull people out and they get people to the polls. You're laughing because you don't like those calls, right, Katya? You don't want to get a call like that. Those calls are up there with somebody trying to sell me a new dishwasher.

4:39I mean, you know, I don't want to take those calls, but I do know they think they are effective. I would try to sell you a new dishwasher. I mean, you know, you'd probably hang up on me. Sell me a Lamborghini and I might buy one. There you go. You know what? You looked a little bit too good in the Lamborghini. Okay. I'm getting a lot of feedback on this. Okay. It's a little crazy. And for those people who are listening in, our members only got treated to the Caddy K in Lambeau special. Okay. This was a special episode that we did for founding members. And I got to tell you, Caddy, it was quite fun.

5:12And you were a big hit with Mama Scaramucci. I have to tell you that as well. She greatly enjoyed meeting you. And she said if she was feeling a little bit better, of course, she would have showed you the whole house and told you her whole life story like she does with everybody else. So you were lucky to have avoided that. It was a pleasure to meet her. The drive went well, mostly well. We have released a little bit on the general feed as well, so you can get a taste of it. But do tune in to hear us driving around Anthony's neighborhood because it was so much fun to come and discover where you grew up.

5:42All right. So there's a new 26 model out, Caddy. I'll be sure to message you on that to get you enticed by that. Well, I have a birthday soon, so if you want to send one over, then that's just okay. Yeah, there you go. You have a big birthday coming up, but we won't tell people what your age is because they all think that you're at least 15 years younger than me. Yeah, let's not tell people I'm about to turn 60. That would be much better. Okay, so what have you been hearing from the Kamala campaign? I just think that they are different from the Hillary Clinton campaign. They are very cautious.

6:11They don't want to sound exuberant, but they do believe that they have the momentum. They do believe that she's winning on normalcy. She's winning on value. She's winning on the open tent. I think that she's losing white men. And so this is almost like a battle between all women versus white men that are going to show up for Donald Trump, particularly uneducated white men, people without college degrees. So that's really where the race is right now. But I will say this to you, I don't like the concert in Philadelphia. I thought you wouldn't. If you don't mind, I'll just explain that briefly. I texted five or six people from the campaign, said guys that don't like it.

6:52Three people came back defending it. Two came back to me and said, could you call this person? Could you call that person? Not text them. Could you call them? Because I think you're right because you're going to have 20 ,000 people there that could be running their field operation. So those are 20 ,000 loyal Democrats that are volunteering that they're inviting to this concert. They could be in the field. Okay. And so just for viewers and listeners, This is a concert that's likely going to be at the Wells Fargo Arena again in Philly. Hillary Clinton did something like this in 2016. The very famous Caddy Kay, I think, was present at that concert.

7:33It was a star-studded affair. But, you know, it doesn't play well with the non-elites in that state. And so, Caddy, my family's from that state. The western side of that state feels like Ohio. The eastern side of the state down by Philly feels like New York, but the northeastern part of the state and the center of the state feels a little bit like Kentucky. I think it's a tin ear to be doing a star-studded concert again when that was not a great idea for Secretary Clinton in 2016. But that's just me. I want to point that out to people because if she loses, you and I are going to go through a whole list of things that they did.

8:12We're going to say this is probably why she lost. If she wins, of course, I have that list as well. And she's generally run a very good campaign for somebody that started on July 21st. So I like her odds here. But what do you think? I knew that you wouldn't like the concerts. We don't like star-studded concerts on the rest is politics. And I know that you have a little PTSD from that final night in 2016 when she was there. I was there at that big blowout concert in Philly and you were in a field with Donald Trump where he was saying, she's with the stars and I'm with you. And it worked that time around.

8:43So I'm a little surprised that they're doing that again when they've been so keen to distance themselves as much as possible from all the messaging and the symbolism of Hillary Clinton's campaign. It felt like a little odd choice. Let's talk a bit more about that and Seltzer poll because one of the things she said to me, I interviewed her on Morning Joe this morning, and I asked her about the issue of abortion, because it seems to me that abortion is, it's only polled, Anthony, throughout the year number three after immigration and the economy. And I'm just wondering if it actually, it's more of a sleeper issue, particularly for women than we might have known from the polls.

9:23So in July, Iowa introduced a six-week abortion ban. After six weeks, women can't get abortions. Most women don't know they're pregnant by six weeks. Now, I asked Anne Seltzer this. Some of her polling after July, after that ban was introduced, didn't immediately show Kamala Harris ahead. So what is it? Is it just that this issue has taken a little time for people to hear about, to focus on? And she was really interested in, she said that the majority of Iowa, if you poll people on the issue, the majority of the state thinks that abortion should be legal in most cases. And they don't like this six-week abortion ban.

10:03And as the weeks have gone on, they've actually seen in a poll in September Kamala Harris closing the gap on Donald Trump. And now this final poll on the eve of the election, they see Kamala Harris ahead of Donald Trump. And what she's seeing is women, particularly women 65 years and older, independent women turning out for Kamala Harris at a rate of two to one, which is a huge big bonus for her. And she does think that the whole issue of abortion and Iowa's draconian ban on abortion is what in these final weeks. And I don't know if you've noticed in the press, there's been quite a lot of coverage just in the last few weeks, Anthony, of women who have had reproductive health issues that have got dramatically worse, some women who have even died because they could not get the healthcare they wanted around the country.

10:54And Ann Seltzer's view is that has filtered through to the Iowa electorate. And what's interesting about Iowa is the demographics of Iowa are quite similar to the demographics of Wisconsin. And so the question then becomes in one of the big battleground states, is there a similar movement of women over 65 and independent women in these final days shifting towards Kamala Harris? So I think so. And I have a Roman Catholic mom who goes to church every Sunday, goes to confession on Saturday. So if you're Catholic here, that's a very traditional thing to do. She's turning 88 in January. Who did you vote for?

11:33I voted for Kamala Harris. Why did I vote for Kamala Harris? I want women in this country to have the reproductive freedom. And I'm very, very worried about everything that you just said. Okay. So that's an 88 year old. So interesting. Traditional conservative woman, women, conservative in terms of religious theology, not in terms of her general politics. She's fairly progressive that way. But my point is a lot of women are looking at this issue and saying, whoa, I don't want to take that step. It's too draconian. Something else happened. And I was on a show this morning in Australia. I got up early, which is why I'm wearing my, we're not at a funeral yet, Kat.

12:14We're going to be at a funeral for somebody, metaphorically, but I got this shirt and tie on because I was on a show this morning. I hope you've got your outfit planned, by the way, for election night for your YouTube, you know, because that's going to project. I know you message through your outfit. Black on black. Should I be wearing black on black? I mean, I don't know. Should I, should I have like the rosaries like on my hands like this? But anyway, so the woman said something interesting to me. I want to share with everybody. I was on a show with her. She said, you know, what's interesting is we're immune to Donald Trump's verbiage.

12:44I want to shoot people. I want guns pointed at Liz Cheney. The America is a garbage can. I'm going to go after my political adversaries using the American military. We're immune to him. But something happened at MSG, the Madison Square Garden rally. We're not immune to his minions saying things. So when Steve Miller says America is America for Americans, people are like, whoa. When the comedian says there's a pile of garbage floating in the ocean, it's Puerto Rico. So people are like, whoa, when one of his donors says we're going to slaughter, we want the other slide slaughtered. And she thinks that the MSG thing popped the bubble.

13:25That's so interesting. It's a very hard bubble to pop because Donald Trump has license to say anything that he wants. But there was his highest profile event that he's probably ever had in the eight or nine years that he's been running. 20 ,000 people in his hometown, Madison Square Garden. and his minions with the Trump mind virus were trying to out-Trump Trump. That's such a great point. I hadn't thought of it, that he can get away with saying stuff that people around him cannot get away with saying. Is it just because he's Donald Trump and he's the showman and so people love him, but they don't know who that comedian is and they certainly don't know who Stephen Miller is.

14:03And so when they say things, are they seen as avatars for Donald Trump or what is that? I think so. But I also think people are like, wait a minute, those are his soldiers that are talking like that. They may really mean what they say. Trump is given the pass. Ah, he doesn't really mean that. You could see when he said, I would like to have the bullets shoot through the media towards me. And people behind him were giggling. Yeah. They see that as humorous and they see that as him as a showman. But I just think when they see his minions who are potentially going to be in the cabinet or working in the White House saying the same thing, that's when the fright starts.

14:43Or the event in Michigan over the weekend where his microphone didn't seem to work and he got really angry and he said, I'm seething up here. And I watched the bit of the rally. And at one point he says, do you guys want to see me go backstage and smash people's heads? the idea of him going and beating up the stagehands because the microphone isn't working. I mean, yes, that's super annoying. And he's complaining about how he has a sore throat and these things are so taxing on him and he's already done two. And the least they could do is get the microphone working. And does he want to see people's heads bang together?

15:15But the crowd behind him does laugh. You're right. You see all these people laughing. It's part of the show. It's Worldwide Wrestling Federation. It's WWF. He's the WWF candidate, but the other people can't get away with it. And so, again, if he loses, it'll be the abortion issue and it'll be, whoa, he's attracting people. Let me tell you something. General Kelly was never getting to a microphone in Madison Square Garden and saying what Stephen Miller said. Mark Milley, the Joint Chiefs of Stammer, never saying that. Jim Mattis, Rex Tillerson, these men, okay, and even women, Nikki Haley, UN ambassador, not getting to a microphone, talking the way those people were talking at MSG.

15:59But now he's surrounded by people that will do that and they will try to out-trump Trump. And I think it's got people in the last week very nervous about him. Just before we take a break, I just remembered one other thing that I thought it was worth raising in our interview with Ann Seltzer this morning, because she pointed to the fact there are four congressional districts in Iowa. All of them are Republican at the moment, but in two of them, which are in the kind of more populated areas of the states, the Democrats are currently ahead of the Republicans. And she says this is the same phenomenon.

16:32It is women, especially college educated women and older women turning out to vote Democrat right down the ticket. And she says you could have now a situation where in Iowa you go from four Republican members of Congress to two Democrats and two Republicans, which would be, that would help, of course, the Democrats is there in their bid to take back the House. And it's, it was a sort of, I just mentioned it because it was a sleeper race. I hadn't really focused on the Iowa. Full disclosure, I had not been focused on the Iowa House races, but I will now be watching those two on election night. So the most senior member of the House of Representatives that is on the Harris team, he's asked me not to give up his name, but I can share the information, is super tight with the campaign, sees the inners of the campaign, very tight with Paris.

17:21People could probably guess who it is because also from California. I said, okay, give me this great scoop. They have her narrowly winning. They believe that she's going to win based on the data that they're seeing and what Plough has done in terms of the organization. They see the House going to the Democrats, flipping, okay, but they see the Senate. They see them losing the Senate. They see Casey beating McCormick in Pennsylvania, helping Harris in Pennsylvania. So again, that's them. And that is 24 hours ago. I said, okay, give me the straight scoop, pretend I'm the vice president and brief me on what you know from inside the campaign.

18:04And that was his analysis. Okay. We're going to take a quick break. We'll come back with a little bit more on the final push and where the candidates are going to be. And a little bit of what I'm getting from inside the Trump campaign, which is still insisting at least publicly to reporters that they are confident of victory.

18:27This is a paid ad for BetterHelp. In moments of stress, we tend to turn to whoever's in reach, that flatmate in the kitchen, the barista on a slow morning, the stranger who simply asks you how you're doing. It can help, but being heard isn't always enough. And the more confidently people speak, the more we mistake it for wisdom. But if you're dealing with anxiety or loss or something that's been weighing on you, what you need isn't noise, it's actual experience. Somebody who really knows their craft. BetterHelp has spent over a decade helping people find that match. A short questionnaire sets your preferences and they'll connect you with a therapist who fits.

19:03It's completely online, it's fully flexible and if your first counselor doesn't really feel right for you, you can switch at any time. There's no pressure, no extra cost. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp gives you access to credentialed mental health professionals with a wide range of expertise. Our listeners get 10 % off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash TripUS. That's BetterHelp.com slash TripUS.

19:36Welcome back to The Rest is Politics US. as we look at the final push to D-Day. Well, actually, in a way, we say the final push, but you have to remember that 75 million Americans, which is an incredibly high number, have already voted in this election. I love election day itself. Everybody in my family, I'm not an American citizen, but everyone in my family who is an American citizen in a voting age all go off to the polling booth. They really enjoy the actual election day and the kind of atmosphere around it. But clearly, millions of Americans have already decided to vote early. So where are the candidates?

20:10Kamala Harris, very focused on Pennsylvania. She has five stops that she's doing in Pennsylvania today in Scranton, Reading, Allentown, Pittsburgh, ending with a huge big concert that we mentioned earlier in Philadelphia itself. Donald Trump is in North Carolina. He's got a couple of events in Pennsylvania, and then he ends in Michigan, where he's going to hold his final rally in Grand Rapids. That's where he ended in 2016 and 2020. Of course, 2016, you were there with him in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Is that a superstition thing for Donald Trump? We know that he is superstitious. Is that where he does it?

20:46Yeah, he's very superstitious. I think so. I think it was a great way to end the campaign last time because it was super energized. He's gasping towards the finish line this time. As you pointed out, he's complaining about a sore throat. He's limited the number of stops. He's eight years older, and you can clearly tell he was wobbling into the garbage truck. He's having a harder time moving around. But yeah, I think that that's it. I think that Michigan looks like it's going to her. Wisconsin looks like it's going to her. It feels like a dead heat in Pennsylvania. And I would bet that his team is saying, hey, she's in Pennsylvania.

21:30You should be in Pennsylvania. But he's too superstitious for that. So he's going to end up in Grand Rapids. I had dinner last night with somebody who had been to his rally in Pennsylvania yesterday, day, the rally where he said, you know, if you want to shoot me, you'd have to shoot me through the fake news. And this is a visitor over from the UK who's just here on a kind of political tourism week, which is a kind of extraordinary thing in and of itself. They queued for an hour and a half. They waited for him for three hours. She said that by the time he arrived at 11 a.m., the crowd was kind of flat.

22:04He did not manage to re-energize them. Hundreds of people were leaving early. They were kind of streaming out. As soon as he arrived, basically, they wanted to see him, but they didn't want to hang around for an hour's speech because they'd already been waiting for four hours. Her takeaway, and she was quite surprised by this because she'd heard about Donald Trump rallies being great shows, was just how flat it was and how kind of down and low energy was her expression and rather kind of surly he was throughout the thing. She said it just wasn't the fun show she had been expecting. And yet you contrast that, and I wanted to get your take on this, Anthony, with her final days, she does Saturday Night Live on Saturday night, stopped mentioning Donald Trump on purpose.

22:47The campaign has decided they're going to end positive and optimistic and upbeat. And it's in her demeanor as much as anything. I mean, if you took these two candidates just in a study of psychology and took this snapshot of time, it feels to me like there's a big difference. It does. And I agree with everything that you just said, but I want to ask you a question before I give you some of my analysis. if you're waiting four hours and you stream out when he arrives if you're waiting four hours to me it still smells like you're going to go to the polls right if you're there waiting for the guy it's not like you're it's not like you're leaving you know the no that's true the reason why trump is late all the time is he is a little bit of a narcissist doesn't care about your time but the real reason is he pours it on with the people that he's with and so he's a good retail politician again you can hate him but he's a good retail politician so when you're with him the volcano is going the lava is flowing and he wants to stay to the last minute or overstay and you and i both know that president clinton did that was great at that but then it leaves the other people that he's scheduled to meet with uh waiting for him but right if they're going to wait four hours for him in cold weather in northern michigan caddy they're voting for him I mean, you have to just know that, you know.

24:06I mean, she said there were a lot of car number plates from out of state. She felt that not everybody was from Pennsylvania. And it was a bit more of a cold shower than a hot lava show from him, that it was just a bit flat and down. So what are you going to be watching for tomorrow night? One thing, I had some text conversations back and forwards with a senior Trump campaign advisor just last night. And by the way, they are still feeling confident or at least telling reporters like me they're still feeling confidence. This advisor said, look, we have Nevada and Arizona basically locked up already.

24:41We haven't actually had the final vote yet, but they say they've locked up Arizona and Nevada. They think they look good in North Carolina and Georgia. North Carolina is interesting because Trump has actually visited there quite a bit. He's there today. He's been there recently. and you wonder if they think that North Carolina is locked up, why is he still spending his precious time there? But anyway, so I wonder about North Carolina. But here's the state that this Trump official mentioned to me that I hadn't heard about and I'm still a bit skeptical about, which is that they are getting good numbers from New Hampshire, which of course at the moment is a democratically held state, and they think that New Hampshire is in play.

25:22So it could be a fun one to watch for our viewers, you on YouTube, me on the BBC, just to kind of remind people, if you're looking for tells, just if suddenly you see Trump doing super well in New Hampshire, then that would suggest that it was a good night for him. By the way, color me skeptical on that one, but it's interesting. Yeah, exactly. Because I just want to explain to, you know, like we see this and we see poll shifts, but I want to talk about machinery because in the 24 years that I've been involved in presidential campaigns, six campaigns. There's machinery in place. Okay. So Harry Reid, do you remember Harry Reid?