303. The speech Joe Biden never wanted to give (Live from the Democratic National Convention)

25:58So that's in there. And that's interesting because this Trump convention that just happened is the first time that the Republicans, this time they had a manifesto, they haven't recently, but it's the first time a Republican manifesto has been produced without a huge emphasis on free trade. I mean, he's a protectionist, leaves in tariff barriers 110 % on Chinese vehicles, tempers, and love vehicles, etc. I'm interested in this because it's probably the most fundamental problem that Trump will face if he gets selected. And as a huge opportunity for the Democrats campaign against him, he's pushing on costs of living.

26:35But putting up tariff and trade barriers will almost certainly raise prices for Americans on lower incomes and it's completely against most right wing thought, which was always traditionally about free trade in the United States. We're just interesting that Milton Friedman gets quoted lots in this book, but not about the economy. It's quite about education. The guy who makes the case for free trade is called Kent Lassman. And he starts, I was saying, our economy is not in decline. We've had two centuries of good growth. Productivity is pretty good. Tariffs in the Trump era account productive, he produces research that says that the tariffs on steel lost 75 ,000 jobs for 1000 that were gained.

27:18So it's not a holy kind of pro -Trump thing. It's kind of having the conservative argument. And what that bit shows is this is where this big argument is going on with this lot. Whereas the other guy, the one thing I did find very interesting again on China, the guy who makes the case for what he calls fair trade supports Trump is a guy called Peter Navarro. And he has this very, very, very long list of stuff that the Chinese do to give themselves a competitive advantage. And I hadn't realized within the WTO, which these guys, by the way, say America should come out of, that China is still treated as a developing nation.

27:55And therefore is able to get away with a lot more than say America, the United Kingdom, or Canada, whatever it might be. Well, the rational thing there, I think, is not a trade war with China, but trying to push for fair trade with China rather than the trade war. Just before we go to the break, just to give people another little picture of where we are given that we're in Chicago at the moment at this convention. One of the biggest issues, which will absolutely resonate with international listeners, is Chicago feels as though it's in the middle of a migrant crisis, rightly or wrongly, some debate about this.

28:28But an enormous number of migrants have moved to Chicago relatively recently. And Chicago is spending a lot of money on housing them. So some of the most iconic hotels in the central city have now been given over to migrants. And you are now getting a lot of opposition here in Chicago from African Americans and from the Mexican community who are very, very angry at migrants turning up and getting very generous treatment. People beginning to mutter about how community centers used to provide services for the African American Mexican community are now being handed over to migrants. In other words, there's some things going on around this here in Chicago, which are a little bit reminiscent.

29:08Unfortunately, there's some of the stuff that was lying behind the rights in Britain. And of course, that we see right across Europe. Yeah. Well, listen, immigration is a huge issue and it's going to be a big issue in this campaign. The question for the Democrats is whether they can show that they have a plan that is better than the kind of waffle or the bluster that Trump comes over. And presumed the challenge if you were working for Kamala Harris is the republic is going to say you as vice president had the immigration brief and you're on record three, four years ago making very friendly comments about immigration and attacking Trump.

29:40Now you're saying you're tough on immigration. But as Trump keeps saying, where's your record on this? How would you flip that around? How would you if you were heard? How would you deal with that attack line? You know what? I was thinking this morning that when I couldn't sleep, I was three this morning. I was thinking, well, one, I would love to help Kamala Harris. But this is a classic for me. You know, I said you've all lost done lots to do lots to lose. This is a classic. Yeah. Lots done lots to do lots to lose. You have to show you that you're serious about having a plan. You have to show that you get.

30:11So I think you've got to be careful not to pander to the sort of stuff you're talking about, not to exaggerate, not allow it to be exaggerated, but to accept that it's real and have a plan to deal with it. But I think where she's where I feel the mood on this is and it's, you know, you've got to be very, very careful and people talk about the vibe. But it does feel very, very powerful at the moment. So walking around the place, it feels pretty busy. Yeah. It feels pretty confident. In a way that I think when you're looking at Trump's events at the moment, they just don't. There was one the other day I was watching on television and the camera kept flicking to more and more seats emptying out as he carried on.

30:52That's he kept rambling on. And then he said, you know, they're going to say I'm rambling. Yeah. And he says, I'm not rambling. I'm really smart. I'm smarter than she is. And do you know what I think has happened? She has got inside his head in a way that Biden didn't. Trump worked all the time about getting inside the head of the others. Yeah. And he was very successful. Yeah. I don't get the feeling he's inside. Yeah. It doesn't know how to deal with her yet. And I think the fact that she laughs and he calls it the cacol. The fact that she dances and he does that stupid kind of whatever he's done, he nobody's doing.

31:25Well, the all popular suit, you know, Prabowo, the sort of special forces general in Indonesia. He does. Yeah. He basically won the election in Indonesia as president on the basis of really crap, dad danced. Okay. And we have a rehabilitate himself from being like a proper human rights abusing Suhato, Sun and law special forces commander. And then by doing a little bit of dodgy dancing, suddenly becomes the love of a lung called everybody. Is he I think what he will hate is the fact that there was a clip this morning. So she was meeting the fire service. And there was a dog there. And she just started playing with this dog.

32:00Yeah. And it was so sort of natural. Yeah. And somebody said, you can't imagine Donald Trump doing that. And so when she dances, she just looks kind of easy with herself. She seems confident, doesn't she? She somehow got a confidence, which is wonderful. And it is very difficult to replicate. I'm probably a more, and a confidence that doesn't seem patronizing in the way that I'm afraid Hillary Clinton sometimes came across to people. Well, I think the final thing I suggest to finish because it relates to what we're talking about, is that at the core of it, I think, is an idea of mass deportation, isn't it?

32:29Deporting millions of undocumented immigrants. Yeah, they don't quite go that far. You see, they make this very much as sort of, this is how we would change the government machinery. Right. But it's so around by all this kind of mad stuff. Right. And if you look, I'm sure there are some people who really, really, really think that abortion is like the biggest issue in the world and it's terrible. And there are people like that. Yeah. But presumably it's 20 % of the population not enough to win an election. I wouldn't have thought so. But if you read this, you basically think you're reading somebody who deep down what they really care about is abortion.

33:03Yeah. And I think you've got a president in Joe Biden who's been, you know, he's pretty old, practicing Catholic, probably finds a whole abortion issue quite uncomfortable, hasn't really made a big deal. She's going to make a big deal. Yeah. And I think what you're saying, I saw a very interesting interview with Frank Luntz, the pollster, who said he was trying the other day to set up a focus group for undecided women under 27 and you couldn't find them. So if you're a Trump, that's a problem. And if they can vote, and it was interesting to listen to the mooch and Catechaine the other day, saying 50 % of young people did vote last time.

33:40Yeah. That feels low, but actually that sounds quite eye for America. Yeah. If they can get another 5, 10 % on top of that. Yeah. Yeah. They're getting good. Well, I think let's head through to a break. And when we come back, listeners, things may sound a little bit different because we're going to be out and about, out in the convention itself.

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35:15Well, here we are at the at the convention. And we're at the early stages first night. So I'm not to be rude about the speakers behind us, but at the moment, they are relatively junior. We just had a state senator from Michigan speaking. This is a great opportunity for young up and coming politicians for more junior sort to put their name on the Democratic Convention stage. I mean, there's a lot of energy in there already. There's a lot of energy out here, but compared to British party conferences, it's just the scale is so big. I mean, the protests were big. The cues were big, but they're very well organised.

35:52And it's just big. Look at it there. There you are. Look at it now inside. Absolutely huge. The size of the thing is enormous. Yeah. Actually, it's not been too bad getting in. It's been good. And just to give a sense of what's going on, which I guess is a little bit like a Tory -O 'Leb of party conference. You've got young activists. We've been interviewing person who's the Connecticut Whip, for example, from the Commonwealth Harris. These are people who are trying to make their mark. There will be people who are volunteers who are hoping to catch the eyes of people get promoted. Lots of donors.

36:24Lots of donors. Various businesses lobbyists, presumably around that. But a little bit so far, a little less commercial than the Conservative conference. CNN has got a little grill going there where Bernie Sanders has been holding force. Yeah, which was nice. And we went in there and had some, we didn't avail ourselves of the free food. It was very nice. So Mark Thompson and Aaron is here, then. And I think we should go inside. Yeah, okay. Let's go and find out what's windy. It's the windy city. Which is not windy. Not cool windy because of the wind, but because you people are you and me talking all the time.

36:54All right. That's why it's that's why I talk it. Yeah. That's okay. All right, let's go inside.

37:04So, Alicet Convention. Pretty amazing. So enormous as you pointed out to us, Alicet, Chicago Bulls stayed in 25 ,000 people. Incredible crowd. We were sitting in terrific seats.

37:29And I'm going to believe now the progress for us in this possible, just as inti -cheelble. And our best days are not behind us. There are before us.

37:57So that was the crowd chanting as they did at many, many, many points. We love Joe. And there was a lot of love for Joe Biden. There was a lot of Camarral Harris from G came on. So it was a pretty amazing event. We're now back at base. So what are your reflections? It was enormous. I noticed towering over our heads in nets were red, white and blue balloons. I think that would be amazing for Thursday, I suppose. Waiting for Thursday. Yeah. And most striking of all I suppose is that all the speakers, we saw a lot of speakers. We must have a lot of speakers. Yeah. Blown up to a tremendously enormous size.

38:32I don't know whether this is going to happen to us when we play the O2 and London. But I calculated that if their bodies were attached to the size of their heads on those screens, their bodies would have filled the entire stadium from the ground floor up to the roof. They would have been people who were like sort of 200 feet tall. And it was an extraordinary thing looking at these giants. So we were in an absolutely perfect seat right at the front of one of the sections, so second section up, looking straight out the speaker. You couldn't identify the speaker from where we were sitting. So you have these giant screens.

39:10It was very well choreographed. There was no debate as such. No, it was literally to speeches and films. But some pretty good succession of kind of mix of big names and small names. Yeah. People from different parts of the party, different parts of the country. And a lot of women. Yeah, a lot of women. So I thought I detected a bit of a narrative which was kind of quite well organized much better than we ever get some sort of Tory conference or something. It was pathetic comparison actually when you look at the scale of the same. But it started with in the section we saw which was the kind of big concluding section we're now on the first day of the convention.

39:46Yeah. And apparently there'd been a couple of hours even before that of kind of rules and procedure and then a few speakers. Even as we were getting in, there was screens outside playing the speeches from inside. So I think we saw a lot of speeches. And we probably got the best. Yeah. Our section started with Gina Raimondo, moves the government red island and is now in Biden's cabinet. And it then moved on to a series of very, very impressive female politicians, the government of New York, Alexandra Karsier -Cortez, O .C., who gave a sort of startlingly brilliant speech which you can come back to.

40:22She was the first one who managed, given that lots of people were coming and going and arriving. She was the first one that managed to the crowd quiet other than when they were cheering and applauding, which was a lot. Yeah. And maybe if you just soften that second before we go to the kind of big structure, for anyone who hasn't seen her speak, we'll try to put a little bit of a clip up of her speaking style. I've never seen a politician like her. I think it's just extraordinary. And particularly the way that she uses her eyes, her smile, her hands, I thought I detected 14 different hand gestures.

40:54I was trying to record every single angle at which she puts her hands, the way that she turns. And she was the first who wasn't delivering a speech straight to the teleprompter in front of her, but instead her eyes were flicking all the way around. And you really got the impression she's then Hillary Clinton over to you. You were quite impressed by her. I was really impressed. I think you, I think you, I look, AOC has got amazing charisma. Very, very beautiful. She's got a nice voice and she speaks really, really well. And she was hammering maybe points for the left of the party. So she was getting going down very, very well in the audience.

41:26Hillary Clinton got an amazing reception when she came on. I think it was actually quite taken aback by it. She knows she's popular in the Democratic Party, but it went on and on and she kept trying to start the speech and people cheered her again. But I thought, I mean, Hillary is not a kind of barricade barmer style speaker, but I thought the climax of her speech was fantastic. What happened at the climax? Well, it was just like sort of, I mean, you were saying, you know, she's got sort of several endings to this speech, but I think what happened was that the audience worked out when it was going to end.

41:56And she just had this sort of repeating lines that were getting louder and louder and louder applause until the very end. And she was trying to do this, this kind of big message that tied in the story of herself, which is obviously very well known that she was defeated by Donald Trump. But the keep going, we keep going because we have beliefs. And this sense of tying her story to the story of America, I mean, Trump obviously figured large in most of the speeches, but not in a way that made it feel like it was all negative stuff. So I think she was doing a very, very positive, you know, we keep going, we're still here, and we're going to win again.

42:34Lots of the speeches and you, and I didn't do a kind of male V female count, but I got the sense of a more female speaker than certainly of the active politicians. And then we also have this surprise appearance by Vice President Harris herself that was not in the running order. And again, running running order, really exciting for us, for the whole audience. She came on very short, I think AOC spoke about six minutes, she spoke for about three minutes, but again, magical smile, such confidence coming across the moment. You can see why people are excited about her. In terms of the structure of the story they were telling, and I thought it was a really good story telling.

43:09Yeah. First bit was a series of politicians, three of them in turn saying, I come from a modest background, middle class family, my dad worked an ordinary job. And in actually in the case of Ramondo, he lost his job because it was off short, leading up to the punchline, which is delivered, I think, by AOC, which is Kamala Harris understands the middle class because she comes from middle class. Then we moved on to a union section where we were talking about how they cared about the working class and interest in America. This is strangely where they move between saying we're on the side of the middle class.

43:47And it was only the union organizers who actually used the working class. Everybody else says we're from the middle class. But a lot of middle class people in America can serve themselves to be working class. What we would consider to be working class. Or it's the other way around working class people call themselves middle class. Yeah. Exactly. It's only the unions, I think, who still use the working class. Working class and the same way that we do. Yeah. Then they moved on to talking about how important it was that she was a woman, which was your Hillary Clinton speech. There were these videos into spurs.

44:15And quite a lot of them were building up to beginning to understand a little bit more about Kamala Harris, which came from childhood. Exactly. Her childhood and then her childhood friend spoke and her childhood friend mother. I mean, I've never seen her such as this before. And that was all about her being a protector. And Arrange Around actually rather a sweet story about how at the age of four she stood up to all the unions. We then got on to law and January 6th because we then had a speech that you quite liked delivered by a law professor who I thought was a little bit wooden. And now the representative from very much.

44:49It was very, very well crafted speech that at times was very well delivered. Other times less so. But I think they were what they were getting to then. He was talking about what it was like being in Capitol Hill as the mob was kind of descending. That became quite a theme through the evening, which Biden, President Biden also referred to. So there was this kind of section where it was sort of not to us, not that very well known, not very well known, Congress people. Including I hadn't realized, Kati K was there tonight, colleague for the rest of the party's US. And I didn't realize that Chris Coons is one of Biden's very, very close personal friends.

45:31So he then started to get into the Biden story. Because the other thing that was going on was everybody being very, very, very nice about Joe Biden. I think that's why Kamala came on. Other than to sort of get the audience up, I think it was also that was a moment with Biden sort of topping the bill as it were tonight for her to say something very, very nice about him. And so we built up over four and a half hours of speech, video, speech, video, almost without a break. We were trying to record the break. Yeah, I was trying to record a tiny bit to camera. And basically it's applause next person, applause next person, then they brought an abortion.

46:12So there was a very moving, actually very disturbing section where three women who had to have abortions for different reasons, building up to a woman who said, I am the classic American story. I'm a cheerleader. I'm the homecoming queen. I'm a survivor. I was raped repeatedly by my stepfather and found that I was pregnant when I was 12 and led on to say that in her current state, she wouldn't have been able to have an abortion. And other people talking about how they were forced to go to emergency rooms twice as much as this character. It's almost lost their lives because of this. And then as you said, we lend on to the Biden tributes.

46:47Just before we leave abortion, two things to say about that. The first is that just as I was making the point that on the 2025 document, abortion kind of goes right through it. Abortion, women's control over their own bodies, reproductive rights was mentioned again and again and again tonight. But what I thought was interesting. So the first the first story was told by a couple and it was the man who was speaking, whose wife then made the point. This is an issue that has to be fought by men as well as women, which went down really really well with the men and the women in the audience. And then was then followed by the governor of Kentucky, Andy Vashir, from which state the woman who was made pregnant at 12 came.

47:36So I thought that was interesting as well. The main, as it were, just about abortion speech, apart from the three, the couple and the two of the women, was actually from a male politician. I thought that was quite significant. And then as you say, into the next chapter. And then the final chapter I guess was, as you say, these extraordinary tributes to Biden which led into Joe Biden and Ashie Biden, his daughter, and then finally Joe Biden himself giving an hour -long speech. And it was very, I mean, I was sort of mesmerizing because I felt at least that one was watching his age. I guess I was thinking like many people in the audience would he have been able to do another four years, probably a bit of relief that he stepped down, gratitude that he stepped down.

48:19He did fumble and stumble over his words at one point in the audience. He was okay, helped him through all that. But generally speaking, he was pretty good for that. He's got this issue though which I think would have been a problem if he continued for another four years. Partly with his, I'm maybe I'm going to too much to switch his hand gestures. He can't really raise his hand, come to be over his shoulders when he's appointed. He looks a little bit. I mean, why is sent about them? And you can know any of you listening to this podcast, and I really, really can't stand on Trump and I think he's a terrible human being.

48:50But I think when a lot of the stories that we're told about, the vice president Harris, were about her empathy. So there's one speech which I found really quite moving, Texas Congresswoman, Jasmine Crocket, Black female, and she's told the story, she was all about Kamala Harris's empathy. And she told the story about when she first arrived in Congress, she thought she made a terrible mistake. She was unhappy. She couldn't kind of find out her role. I was kind of thinking you should probably certainly hear your book, Rory. And she said that her first meeting with Kamala Harris, her first words were, what's wrong?

49:32And she sent something. And she said that she burst into tears. And then told the story and she started crying into her tele, and she's still trying to stop herself crying. And she said, I couldn't really quite, the most powerful woman in the world was wiping away my tears. And she told, so it sounds schmaltcy, but how it came over was this genuine sense of empathy. And it's a really lovely question. Which I think you see when you see Kamala Harris with people. And likewise, when Donald Trump did it into you recently, and he mentioned Melania, and he was describing what Melania was doing when he was shocked and what she on television, she was wearing.

50:12And then he said, that means she likes me or maybe she loves me. It was just sort of weird. The whole thing was weird. Whereas hearing Jill Biden speak about Joe Biden, and then Joe Biden speak about Jill Biden, and the daughter speak about both, you kind of, you know, it's as you say, it's a show, but that was genuine. That is a genuine couple that's been together 50 years. And I think that humanity just, I think is one of the things that's really driving this going to buzz the risk around them at the moment. Really interesting also. I mean, we talked about the fact that the campaign that Kamala Harris campaign has raised well over 300 million dollars last few weeks.

50:52And that this is going to be a billion dollar campaign. And you can see in that convention, some of the ways in which real money is spent. And one of the ways in which it spent is, I think astonishing script writers thinking very carefully about exactly the sequence between each speaker and who's coming on when and how they hand over to next speaker, you get the example of the government Kentucky coming over after the woman from Kentucky. And I guess the question is, is it worth it? Because very few people would have sat through the four and a half hours in the way that we did. And very few people would have watched it like that.

51:24But what I've noticed, of course, on social media is that almost every story that we've spoken about has been picked up. So Slate has picked up one. Huffington Post has picked up the story of the man with his wife who had to have the abortion. Another one has picked up the woman crying. Another one has picked up the comments from Joe Biden. Hillary Clinton's quotes, comments about glass ceiling has appeared in another website. So it's all, somebody's also thought very carefully about how to give almost exclusives, I guess, to different news organizations, previously, speeches so they can go out immediately.

51:56One speech we haven't mentioned, which I thought was a really good speech. As a speech was the speech by Steve Kerr, who's the guy who coached the American basketball team in Paris. Because he speaks. That's one question on that, though, because I mean, he got a gold medal for basketball. But am I not right? The Americans always get a gold medal for basketball, because they're the only people who really play basketball. So they've never not got a gold medal for basketball in the Olympics. The America is very good at basketball, right? But they were in Paris against the French. You were also quite good about that.

52:27But the point is he was making the point that, if you like him, he said, you know, I know they're already beyond Twitter saying stick to blowing your whistle, whatever you do. So he's putting his head above the parapet. But essentially saying he feels he had a duty to do that. But then more than I thought was really interesting, as he talked about leadership from the context of being a leader and what he wants to see in a leader. And he didn't really, he did put the boot in directly to Trump at one point, but essentially he was saying the quality is good leaders need. And I don't know if you were, but I was thinking every single one, I was thinking, well, Trump doesn't know that.

53:02And the one he led one was being able to laugh for itself. Yeah. And honesty. And loving the team. And understanding that sometimes the best ideas come from the team, not from yourself. So I thought that was a very, very effective part. So that was about leadership. And then so yeah, you're right. It was sort of framed in chapters. The other thing you saw was the production values. I mean, look, you know, I was involved in not sort of party conferences with the Labour Party. And we were very, very professional, and very well organised and well have you. But when you looked at the scale of the the televisual organisation of tonight, it was huge.

53:39It was like, it was more like a rock concert. And they were changing their their speak and their costumes as quickly as Taylor Swift. I mean, it's quite a kind of shift in through. I mean, I don't know whether you did. I sort of pretending to be a kind of independent minded observer. I wasn't taking any of the placards, but every single speech, they came around with new placards. So you knew Jill was about to speak, because you said I would be playing a real black card. Yeah. And Jill placard, you know, we fight to win. And again, that's Cory, that's Cory graph to what the speech is going to say.

54:12Some of those placards were quite useful, because the only moments of uncertainty in the thing was when some people unveiled a banner saying, stop the armings to Israel. Yeah. At which point, another group of delegates moved there. We love Joe Banners in front of it to try to hide it from the cameras. There was a bit sort of tussle. I was from Joe Biden's perspective. I was a little bit nervous at that point, because it was getting quite noisy at one point. The people unfurling the banner were getting quite loud. And I could see he was kind of just a little bit edgy, but then I noticed he just didn't look there again.

54:46Right. And he just carried on to it. I don't think he's got a lovely man. He's got a fabulous smile. Incredible. Are those all his own teeth? Incredible. Wait. Well, they're teeth that have obviously had quite a lot of work. I think I don't know whether there is a lot of them. Good teeth. Yes. He's got a lovely, slightly lopsided smile. And he's got these interesting habits, which I think you only see if you do watch him at length like that. So he uses his phrase a lot. That's not hyperbole. Yeah. Right. So you'll say something. You'll say, you know, Donald Trump's the worst president. That's not hyperbole.

55:21And then the other thing he does, when he says something bad about Donald Trump, and the audience regularly boo. Yeah. It's obviously he feels he has to engage in them as though they're booing his point. Yeah. No, no, listen to me. Listen to me. This is serious. This is serious. This is true. So he's got these little sort of ticks and mannerisms. But listen, they loved it. They did love it. And just to finish from my point of view, as we get late in time, I also thought there was a sort of terrible pathos to it. The sense of this man who is visibly aging, reflecting on his incredible career, you know, he entered the Senate was elected to the Senate at 29, young as you could possibly get in.

56:00And the sense also of America's power potentially waning. You know, he was saying again and again, this is the greatest country on earth. There's no country on earth that can beat us. And you could feel, I felt anyway, a world changing between beneath his feet that America's position in the world is not what it was in the 1990s. And here was this very old man speaking almost like a kind of strange profit that his sort of vision of the kind of incredible, undimmed brilliance of the United States. And I felt there was a certain kind of edge in pathos to that. Yeah. Where I felt the pathos was in the fact that he is the president.

56:43He's got five months to go. He's incredibly popular with that audience. But the truth is, even tonight, though it was largely about him, it was actually much more about Kamala Harris. And when you talk about the story that the the strategies want to tell from this convention, the story they want to tell is her story. And what I think Joe Biden did really well and it's part of his kind of whole generosity was the way that he talked about her the whole way through. Every time that the crowd started just singing, thank you, Joe, and you go and thank you Kamala. You know, he was very the true kind of thing.

57:22And getting her credit for things honestly that she didn't have that much to do with. But I, so what I felt was that almost in the in the kind of the love and sympathy that was going towards him, part of the fact is the understanding that actually the power is moving away and it's moving to a different place. I also think and maybe you feel this is somebody who is very much part of this, the intense family tribal loyalty of the Democratic Party. I mean, that is a riven party. AOC very much on the progressive left, very different views on Gaza to present Biden. And yet when it counted, all the key bits of the different leadership, all the sides of the party stand up.

58:02They sing from the same hymnsy. They're pushing the same message. It doesn't matter, you know, that their rebels doesn't matter that they annoy the party leadership. When the crisis comes, they're all standing up and saying exactly the lines they're supposed to be saying exactly the way. It's probably true that people won't necessarily have watched in the numbers that maybe they would have done a few years ago. But if I think about when I got up this morning, very, very early in the hotel and went down to the gym and whichever TV station it was was billing all day non -stop coverage from the convention.

58:38Dan Balsow mentioned who works with Washington Post, was telling me they got about 80 people here. So this is a huge event and there'll be very, very few people in America tomorrow who don't know at least some of what's gone on. And you will get the sense that this was very well organised. She was at the centre of it. Joe Biden was really bigging her up as was Hillary, as was AOC, as they all were. And I think a much clearer attack line that's developing about Trump. And I think it does actually relate to what we were talking about in the first part. It's this kind of extreme agenda, which their identifying is being kind of, they really were identifying Trump, I felt, was kind of so obsessed with himself and he's actually anti -American and anti -American values.

59:28We in the kind of left of the conservative party always liked to describe ourselves as kind of American Democrats because we see them as quite a right wing. But actually on show tonight was a reminder of the fact that they do have proper left wing routes. So big thing, a million workers from the automobile union. There was Joe Biden saying I'm proud of being the first president on a picket line. The middle class made America and the unions made the middle class, one of his lines. Not Wall Street. Not Wall Street. An enormous amount about building factories. We're going to put factories back in all those towns.

1:00:04We used to export jobs and import goods. Now we're going to import jobs and export goods. Quite a lot about putting up taxes. But above all, I suppose, I think maybe this might think to finish with a question to you. We heard a lot today from different people, including posters, that the aim of Kamala Harris in this election needs to be to reassure the independent voters that she's got the young people, she's got the progressive left on side. Can she win over the sort of center ground swing voters and reassure them that she's not too progressive and she's a sort of solid stable pair of hands? Do you think today did enough to do that or she's got more work to do?

1:00:47I think today is day one of a four -day presentation to the American public of a new candidate. Everybody was talking about her. She was mentioned in every single speech. So I think what today was about was thanking Joe Biden and giving him the stage was as long as he wanted it. And he took an hour to sort of say what he'd done and why he'd done it and then pass on the baton. I think if the next three days go as well as today has done from their perspective, I think they will feel that they've delivered on that. Is there any risk at all that by focusing on unions and things like that? That isn't exactly the language that's going to appeal to the president more.

1:01:32Yeah, I can see you. When you mentioned the kind of... So the guy just to tell, I don't suppose this one, it made much in the European media. So the guy from the car workers' union at one point took his jacket off and had this red t -shirt, which is a Donald Trump is a scab. And then Joe Biden himself, and as he said it, I was saying to myself, well, I can't imagine Tony Blair having said that, he said, you know, I'm proud to be called the most pro -union president we've ever had. So I think that is partly about signalling to the party. We're still the Democratic party, and this is stuff we believe.

1:02:08And partly blue -collivators in Pennsylvania. Yeah. And then I think for... But I suspect when we get to Kamala Harris, I think she'll be tough for the knee was in relation to Israel. Even though he did the whole end of the war, hostage his back, etc. But I think she'll be slightly calibrate that. But I think that what she has to do is to inspire, motivate, because they're talking about campaign here, but also reassure. The inspiration of the motivation bit is vital for what's happening in that hall, and vital for people who are pressing that number to give donations, which will be all over their laptops and phones and why view.

1:02:51And the reassurance is the bit that says somebody who's not following this stuff as close as we are, but sees it on the tally through the week and thinks, yeah, I can see it. I can see it doing it. And yeah, I think she will be okay. Yeah, she seems all right. I mean, I think that's... And getting that balance right is quite tricky. But thus far, in all of her communications, since she got the nomination, I think that's what she's been doing. And now I'm leaving you, and you're going to have a very exciting time, because the amazing thing about American politics is that there are just so many stars.

1:03:22So we saw O .C. and Biden today. You're going to see Michelle Obama. Yeah. You're going to see and maybe some celebrity singer, although you're a bit doubtful about that. Well, James Taylor was on the schedule for today, but he'd never appeared. I just wonder if they'd write out a time. But there is this buzz going around about Beyonce and whether that happens or not. Do you know, I've got here's a left field one, because you have the Steve Kerr, the basketball guy. When someone's Biles might come out and just do a little kind of, you know, traipsing across the stage. But I just think that there wasn't actually that much music.

1:04:03Famously in Tori -Pada conferences, they're always coming on with ridiculous tunes. They weren't really going with the music, were they? And yeah, there was a band. There was a huge band just off to the right of the stage. Yeah. No, there was a bit of music, but not much. Anyway, listen, it was pretty well choreographed. I thought it was fantastic. I'm really pleased I was here with you. And again, enormous respect for keeping going at what is now nearly 8 in the morning, your time. We've done, we should also tell listeners, we've done several interviews today, not with the big names, but with different aspects of the convention, which we'll be putting out over the next few days.

1:04:38Yes, people, I hope people can listen and enjoy this on leading. So we've got, we've got a veteran congresswoman, we've got a young elector who's the the whip for Kamala Harris from Connecticut. We've got an amazing attack dog, an ancient attack dog who's been produced from California. And we've got a poster, a loyal democratic poster. And I think those four voices probably give a better idea of the real substance, the convention, the other thing you'll pick up anywhere else. And if I bump into any Tim Maul's tomorrow or Barack Obama, and I'll say, normally I do these interviews with Roy Stewart, but he's I just I just I just I'm done.

1:05:11I'm done. Thank you. Bye. Bye.