316. Why Kamala Harris Still Has a Problem

0:00Thanks for listening to The Restless Politics. Sign up to The Restless Politics plus to enjoy ad -free listening and receive a weekly newsletter. Join our members' chat room again early access to live show tickets. Just go to TheRestlessPolitics .com. That's TheRestlessPolitics .com.

0:36Boring money moves make kind of lame songs, but they sound pretty sweet dear wallet. BNC Bank brilliantly boring since 1865. Right now, with the home depot, you'll find stored solutions made to fit your needs. Grab an HDX tough tilt to protect your tools, or keep your sports equipment contained with reinforced snap fit lids, or stack up and make better use of your space with bins and totes built to last. Whatever your story, we've got the gear to keep it organized and protected at the home depot. How doers get more done? Gatorade is the number one proven electrolyte blend designed to hydrate better than water.

1:20So you can lose more sweat and raise your game. Gatorade is the venue.

1:35Hello and welcome to this edition of The Restless Politics US with me, Katty Kay. And with me, Anthony Scaramucci. You're recovered from the week and, are you still on that massive sugar high that you were on when you were down in the dead? No, I recovered from the week. I had a breakfast this morning of roasted Kat. I'm now looking on the menu for lunch for a girl dog. Don or Trump look like you're eating a cat at the end of that debate. I mean, this stuff is just, you can't even, I mean, listen, it's so crazy. And how many times in your life you said, you can't make it up. But when you have somebody that should be in an insane asylum running for president, but anyway, the cat tasted really good.

2:11We're just, I think the dogs are smarter than the cats, though, they, they heard Trump say that they're getting eaten and they were moving last night, you know, they were moving away from the television and they were running from Trump. Yeah, all the gazillion cat and dog memes that we are now going to have to sit through. Anyway, my cats and dogs are very safe. I can tell you, no one is eating them. The poor birds in my backyard are less safe, but there you go. So look, before we get going, we are very excited to announce that beginning on Monday, we have something a little different for you.

2:41We've recorded a four part series, which takes you behind the scenes of the 2016 presidential election when Donald Trump won the White House. You know, Caddy, it's just, it's just an amazing story, right? He's a reality television store. He's a property developer in New York and then 18 short months later. He's slayed. I don't know if you remember Charles Krautheimer. Charles Krautheimer is now deceased. He was a great conservative speaker. He said the 2016 slate of Republican candidates was the best that he's seen in history. And here comes Donald Trump. He smows down every single one of them.

3:18He defeats a Democratic establishment to win the presidency. And we're going to tick -tock this every step of the way. What happened? All the trials and tribulations. And Caddy, as you know, it creates post -traumatic stress in me, but we've already recorded it, so I'm starting to feel better. Yeah, I was there with you. I mean, I covered that whole campaign, and I got a little post -traumatic stress revisiting it all as well. We will release an episode every Monday for the next four weeks. However, if you want all four of these episodes on Monday the 16th, if you just cannot wait, you can sign up to our brand new membership club.

3:54Just go to the rest ispoliticsus .com to become a founding member of TripUS. It just takes you a couple of minutes. You know, when you read these selling blurbs, I'm like, I think it means she would have been such a good institutional salesperson on Wall Street, you know. I was like, I'm a little bit. Caddy, can I just come and work for you, Anthony? I know what was I doing going into? You know, I started out at the Bank of England. I could have stayed in finance. And what did I do? I went into journalists. You would have been running Goldman Sachs, but now you're stuck with me on the rest is politics US.

4:25And you guys are stuck with us too. Listen, okay, please support us. We're going to have ad -free listening early access to the series. And starting in October, we'll be releasing a bonus episode every week for our founding members. So sign up now for the rest is politicsus .com. Caddy is way better at this. I mean, I thought I was a good salesman, but I got to tell you're just blowing me away with these promos. These Trump mini series episodes will only be going out on our separate the rest is politics US feed. So if you're listening on Rory and Alistair's feed, they very kindly let us share their space for the last few months.

5:02To make sure we're not confusing you about which version of trip you're listening to will also be moving our weekly Friday episode over to the trip US separate feed to. So once you finish this episode, make sure you search the episode. Are you going to say anything nice about Alistair before we get out of this promo? Oh, Alistair and Rory who have hosted. I'm going to miss them. I feel like we've been tenants living in their basement for the last four months. I promise to say something nice about Alistair every 10 seconds, but not these 10 seconds. You just you just want to be teachers, but I'm afraid that spot is already taken Mr.

5:40Scaramucci. Okay, on with today's show, both of us Anthony have had a couple of days to digest that debate. You may have come off your sugar high. We'll probably have to have another look at the Scaramucci Lollipop by the end of this episode, which is fine. I will give you one more week to show it off, but I've had a really interesting few conversations over the last two days since the debate with democratic strategists with a very interesting woman who is actually a Labour party pollster for Kia Stammer in the UK who has been Deborah Matinson who's been over in the US helping the Harris campaign with some focus groups.

6:18And also with a couple of American strategists, I know. And, you know, I think there was a strong sense that Kamala Harris won that debate. There's questions about the impact the debate will have on the actual election. And there is also a kind of awareness, I think, that Donald Trump lost the debate as well as Kamala Harris winning it and that there were certain areas of her messaging, which she still has not got right, got strong and kind of forceful and crisp enough to make a sale to that whatever they are, 100 ,000 voters who are going to make the difference in this election. I mean, this is going to be such a tight election.

6:59And there's kind of whatever we used to say. There's a couple of Taylor Swift's concerts worth of people who are going to make the final choice. And the area that I feel, and I'd love your take on this because I know you've been kind of in contact a lot with the campaign, is that she just has not really finalized that message on the single biggest issue of this election. And that's the economy. And that Kamala Harris's background as a prosecutor has made her very comfortable on some areas. She was very comfortable on abortion. She's very comfortable on kind of justice and law issues, gun control.

7:35But she doesn't really have the background of kind of economics as her sort of political passion point. And I think that's still something she's going to have to work on if she's going to persuade those voters who are sitting on the fence. I do feel like I'm sort of the Democrats' angel of doom at the moment. You know, I don't think you're the Democratic angel of doom. And I'm going to say some things. And this is why we'll probably end up getting canceled at some point, Cadi, because I'm going to say things that people don't like in our current culture. But Donald Trump got elected, because we had a black man by the name of Barack Obama as president for eight years.

8:13And Van Jones, you and I both know Van, he worked for Obama. He's now a CNN comment. They're the night that Trump got elected. He said this was a white lash. And so Donald Trump blew the dog whistles and said, come out for me. If you're mad that a black man was in the white house, right? We named it the white house. So white people are supposed to live in the white house. So Donald Trump blows the dog whistle. Come out and vote for me. He wins the presidency. It was a white lash. Van Jones' words, not mine. So Donald Trump has great political instincts. And everything I'm about to say is totally inappropriate, but I want you to hear it.

8:50So Donald Trump goes back after getting destroyed in that debate because he was ill prepared. And he says, okay, I've got Roy Cohn's playbook. Okay. And so for listeners outside the United States, who is Roy Cohn? Roy Cohn was Donald Trump's lawyer. He was a very, very ruthless man. He was the lawyer for Joe McCarthy during the Red Scare in the 1950s. And he was a take no presiders attitude. And Fred Trump, Donald Trump's father said, go to Roy Cohn, he's going to mentor you. And Roy Cohn turned him into a ruthless SOB. And three things that Roy said to Donald Trump. Never apologize to anyone about anything.

9:28Never admit defeat under any circumstances. No matter what happens. It's 21 to zero. Don't admit defeat. I deny the fact that you lost an election. And then the third thing is no matter what other people are saying about you, go with your instincts. So let me tell you what Trump's instincts are right now. It's a team of one. He's talking to himself. There's probably like five people inside of his brain. And they're all having a committee meeting right now. And he's saying, you know what? This is a sexist country. I didn't win that debate. But I'm going to tell all my base that I won the debate.

9:59I'm going to go on Sean handed. He's shown immediately after the debate because I obviously lost it. And I'm going to say that I crushed her and her campaign is over. And he's going to use the prop that, oh, she's asking for the rematch only losing fighters or UFC fighters would ask for a rematch. She didn't win the debate. Why would you be asking for a rematch? And then the last thing he's saying is I'm going to go hard. Super hard at my base. And I'm going to find moderates that are actually sexist that don't like the idea that there could be a woman running the United States. And so whether people like this or not, that is Trump's strategy.

10:35Okay. And I'm going to say two last things quickly. The assassination attempt, if I'm being brutally honest and I'm grading both of us, we both got it wrong. We sat there in July, looked at each other and said, this is going to change the election. That picture of him, it's going to ascend him to the presidency. Cadi K, it had virtually no impact on the polling. It said virtually no impact on anything. And now we're at the debate. And some people like Frank Lundz, a famous political pollster here in the United States said this debate is going to win Kamala Harris the election. But I'm here to tell you that that debate is like the assassination attempt.

11:14It's going to last a few moments in time. It's helped her. It's helped her with the fun raising. And something happened this morning that we need to tell people, democratic registrations are off. They were boom when she got the nomination and they were rising. But in the last three days, they've trended downward. That's a problem for her. And she needs whether she likes it or not. She and Walt need more media time. They got to get out there more. This guy, JD Vance, I was trading the PPI numbers this morning because I do have a day job. And so I'm watching JD Vance on CNBC. And I said, this son of a bitch, I got to give him credit.

11:54He's on CNBC. He's lying through his teeth, the Trump won the debate. And he's lying through his teeth about the tariffs. And he's lying through his teeth about the economic policies. And by the way, he knows better. Yeah, of course he knows better. And he's lying through his teeth about all these ridiculous things. But the goal to go on CNBC and lie through his teeth and push back on the journalists is a winning strategy, Cadi. So guys, if you want to win this thing, you got to get in the flow. One thing that JD Vance said this morning that was true, he said to Joe Curtin, the anchor, he said, she's got to come into the process, the American journalism process, and answer questions.

12:34Easy questions, hard questions, medium questions. Just get out there. Any questions you got to do because if you don't do it, people are like, what is she doing? I agree. We got it wrong on that assassination. And I think we were both kind of, you know, we looked at that photo and it was such an iconic photo and his moment of strength and the fight, fight, fight. And also, by the way, that was when he was up against Joe Biden. So to give us a little bit of slack there, it was a kind of different era in politics. But I had this text, I flew over night from the States to London and I had this text from a very good, Dennis Kratik Stretter, just who basically texted me, same swing states, same undecided voters and same lack of clarity.

13:13And that was her kind of, you know, couple of days later analysis of Kamala Harris's problem. And it's true. There are still those undecided voters. And as we know, not very many Americans will watch the whole 90 minutes. I know this had record ratings and they said it had 60 million. But obviously what they're seeing are the clips afterwards. And what I'm hearing from people who really want her to win. I mean, Jim Messina, who famously managed Barack Obama's re -election against you and Mitt Romney, you personally and Mitt Romney back in 2012. They ate our lunch, actually. They ate your lunch.

13:49I was on Morning Joe with him the day after the debate and, you know, he was obviously saying she did a great job and we were all very impressed by her performance. And like you said, Anthony, she went through the playbook and she remembered everything and she prosecuted the case against him. But what his concern was was still that the lack of clarity on the single issue that ever since this election campaign has started, there has not been a single poll that has not showed us that cost of living inflation, affordability, whatever you want to call it, is Americans number one concern. So why is she not doing that, Kati?

14:25Look, it's not her wheelhouse. Her wheelhouse is law and justice and abortion rights. She's not Bernie Sanders who had Medicare for all, right? He had a very strong, clear, populist economic message. She's not Elizabeth Warren who had corporate greed. Again, strong, clear economic message. She's not Donald Trump who had immigration, strong, clear kind of message that he tied, yes, to cultural issues, but he's also tying it to the economy. And she has not developed. And maybe it's just because she's only been there for six weeks. Maybe it's because her team does not get how critical this is. And yet focus group after focus group, Deborah Madison, who's one of Kiss, Dumbass, Polsters and advisors, said she had had focus groups with people who are going through supermarkets.

15:12And as they're putting stuff into their basket, they're putting in orange juice, they're putting in milk, they're putting in eggs, and they're calculating on their phones how much it costs. And they get to the checkout and they put stuff back because they can't afford it. And that's the reality that a lot of these voters who are going to decide this election are dealing with. And until she comes up with a clear and crisp and passionate message. And I think standing there on stage saying, I believe in the middle class, I grew up in the middle class, I have a plan. It's not enough. Now, the one thing that Deborah Madison said when she focused group people, and I asked her, you know, okay, so of the proposals that Kamala Harris has laid out so far, are there any of them that are resonating with these, what she calls hero voters, the voters who will decide the election?

15:59Are there any of those proposals? And the one that she said, which I don't think you're going to like very much because a lot of economists and finance people don't like it, was the promise to stop price gouging by supermarkets, which got slammed by, you know, by democratic economists, who worked for Barack Obama. Centrist Democrats didn't like that plan at all, but it is the single proposal that she has come up with, the $25 ,000 for new homeowners, apparently is not resonating with them. It's not an easy one for her because her background is not in that field, but she's surrounded by smart people.

16:35And I think if they don't come up with a clear answer to this one compelling question, then however much people dislike Donald Trump's character, they have a nostalgia for the economy under Donald Trump. I mean, fair or unfair, they look back and they think, oh, price, you know, I could go to the supermarket and put stuff in my basket and I didn't have to take some of it out again at the end of the shopping run. So let me, let me test you. Damn, I hate these moments. Yeah, but not bad testing like the way you embarrass me with all these trivia things. I mean, just like I don't want to. Well, actually, I think I need another trivia.

17:09I want you to respond to some of these things. Okay. Yes. Who's fault is the inflation? And so I know that it's the situational. I know that if Trump had won the election, we'd have Trump inflation. I know that these things are cyclical. Does the American public know that? Who's fault is the inflation? It gets pinned on whoever's in government and it doesn't really matter who's fault it is. Yeah. Of course, it's supply chain. Of course, it's high interest rates. Of course, it's pumping. And to some extent, yeah, maybe it is the Biden administration because they pumped so much money into the American economy.

17:40There may be an element of that to which they hold on that. The pump started in March of 2020 under the Trump administration. So so you can't blame it on Biden himself. But I don't think it matters whose fault it is. It exists under them and therefore they own it. Let me say it differently then. If it doesn't matter whose fault it is. I mean, of course, it matters. It just doesn't matter to voters as they're deciding who to pull. I understand. But but if I'm if I'm on watch and inflation is happening on my watch and I pinned with it, yes or no? Yes. Okay. And so therefore, can I unpin myself with the American voters?

18:16Can I come up with a strategy to unpin myself with the American voters? And so I believe you can't. Okay. And I believe that you could message the people and I believe you can go on Bloomberg, CNN, MSU, you picked the measures. So okay, guys, here's the chart. The federal government put $3 trillion of cash into the economy to save people when they were locked in their homes. The federal reserve dropped interest rates to zero, which caused another $4 trillion to get dumped into the economy. The supply chain broke. Supply chain broke. And so we had less goods and services in the economy and more money in the economy.

18:52Of course, we were going to get inflation. This started in the Trump administration. No fault of Donald Trump's, by the way, I'm out here to blame him. And it's no really no fault of ours. We were trying to save the economy. Here are the things that Joe Biden and I have done to slow down the inflation. And here are the things that we've done to improve your bridges, rows, and tunnels. And we put $250 billion into manufacturing and reshoring. And oh, by the way, let me show you this wage data for lower and middle income people. Okay. And she's not doing that. And she's got to get out there and do that.

19:27And she's got to say, Oh, and you know what? Over the next six months is going to be better. If you stay the course with me in the next two years is going to be even better. If you go with Mr. Tariff, tariff Trump, you're going to have 20 % tariffs, 100 % tariffs. And you want to talk about regressive taxation. If you're lower middle income, he's stealing the money from you. And is going to drive up inflation and crash the dollar potentially. The way they handled the price gouging speech, the only thing people heard were price controls. That's the only thing they heard. So 37 states have price gouging laws.

20:01Many of them are conservative red states. And what are those set up for? Cad, I don't want to bore you with monopoly power and inelastic pricing. But let me just say a few simple things. If I control all of the product and the consumer needs the product and there's no competitor, I can jack the prices on the consumer. That's unfair to the consumer. The monopoly laws came into power actually in the renaissance Italy. People said, okay, we can't allow for that. In 1890s, we had the Sherman Antitrust Act in the United States. We got to bust these things up. They get too big. We had one company. I think you guys had British Telecromb in the UK.

20:42We had AT &T controlled every phone line, every phone call, every phone piece of equipment in the United States up until 1984. It was under the conservative Ronald Reagan. He broke up AT &T. And the great irony is the breaking up of AT &T unleashed all this innovation. And we ended up with Google and Facebook and all this stuff because AT &T was sitting on all that tech. They wouldn't let it out because they had a monopoly and they were controlling prices through the monopoly. Vice President Harris, all she has to say is people's look, when you have a monopoly or you have five food companies controlling the food, they control the prices.

21:21It's not fair to the consumer. I am all about market prices, but they're manipulating the prices on their side. I'm not trying to manipulate the prices. I'm trying to create fairness for the consumer in the freest possible market. You see what I mean? And by the way, my my rhetoric just now probably sucked a little bit, but you got to get reps in. You know, it's like training your mind. You got to get reps in. You okay? That interview sucked. Let me go to the next interview. Let me tighten up my language. And all of a sudden, two weeks from now, bam, she's on point on these messages. She did a week of debate prep and she was good, right?

21:57She was on message. She was sharp. She had her lines down. She was confident. She delivered super well. She didn't forget the lines that she was going to deliver. So it shows that it does work. I mean, I think of the of all of the things that you said that she should go on CNBC and the other business channels and say it's that the thing that actually moves the dial with focus groups and polls is the very last bit. It's it's not what happened beforehand. It's not what they've done up until now. I think keeping telling people that, you know, she could easily get pinned with bi -denomics, stop telling people that what they did has helped them when they're still going through the supermarket and they can't afford to pay for their groceries.

22:35Tell them what is going to make it better in the next six months to a year. And I think that's where she's falling down. Okay. Before we sound like we're getting super negative on what she's doing, there are a couple of things I think that she did well in that debate that she can also carry on with messaging. And I wanted to get your sense of those. One of them was that towards the end of the debate, when Trump was asked about 2020 and whether he thought he had won the election and he clearly said that he thought he had won the election and that he was only being sarcastic when he said that he hadn't.

23:09And she gave a what I thought was a very good rebuke of that because she tied his delusion or lying about the 2020 election to his mental fitness for office. And basically what she said is, listen, this guy either believes genuinely that he won the 2020 election, although all the facts and the lawyers and the courts have said otherwise, or he's pretending to believe it, but he's not up to the job cognitively. Do you trust somebody who is so delusioned about something as clear and obvious as 2020 with the realms of government? And I thought that was her comment on abortion has got so much attention and it was a very powerful comment.

23:52And the fact that he refused to commit himself to saying that he wouldn't veto a national abortion ban, I think is a problem for him. But actually, I think this answer where she kind of brought it home that he either doesn't agrasp or he ignores facts. And therefore, what would he do if he was having to negotiate with Congress? What would he do if he was having to negotiate with Putin? What would he do if he was having to negotiate with Kim Jong Un or with the Iranians? How would you trust him to have the real grasp of the facts if he doesn't get the facts of 2020? How can he govern? And I thought that she, I thought that was one of her most compelling features in this debate.