America's Talking - Harris Accepts Democratic Presidential Nomination, Setting up Showdown With Trump

Episode Date: August 23, 2024

Vice President and now-Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris formally accepted the party’s nomination on the final day of the Democratic National Convention Thursday night in Chicago. Harris’ comments come after several days of speeches at the convention from party leaders, including former President Barack Obama and current President Joe Biden. The event sets the stage for the remaining weeks in the race with Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump heading into November. Harris began her speech by telling her life story, from her Indian mother and Jamaican father meeting, to moving often as a child, including a handful of family anecdotes. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings, everyone, and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. We are recording this on Friday, August 23rd. The Democratic National Convention concluded Thursday night with Vice President Kamala Harris, formally accepting the Democratic Party's nomination for president. With former President Donald Trump embedded as the Republican presidential nominee, it's now a sprint to the November election.

Joining me to discuss the race is Casey Harper, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief for the Center Square. Casey, you covered Harris's convention speech. What are your takeaways? Yeah, I mean, it was a bright moment for Harris' campaign. In my view, there's been a lot of, a big question mark hanging over her campaign. You know, what kind of presidential candidate will she be? What kind of policies will she have? what kind of tone will she strike?

And will it be the same as when she was vice president? Because honestly, she was not a very popular vice president. And so in this speech and in this new campaign, she had an opportunity to rebrand herself. Now, it's pretty hard to rebrand yourself in politics, but she had this kind of a sudden dropout of Biden and his endorsement of her give her that opportunity. And the entire party machine just kind of,

re-mechanized to support her, essentially. And so it gave her this opportunity, especially with the endorsement of former president Barack Obama, who's really still the leader, the emotional leader of the party. It gave her an opportunity to rebrand herself. And I think so far, she sort of did that. She came out wearing all black. At times, she had a very authoritative presidential tone, I thought. And so, which was important because much of the meme about Kamala Harris so far is kind of that she's sort of this bumbling fool, honestly, because many of her speeches or remarks with reporters are kind of incoherent.

She says a lot of words, but it doesn't make sense. And so she came out strong. I thought her speech was very well done. It was very personal. It wasn't too long. You know, if you remember, Trump's R&C speech was like 90 minutes. which was just very felt very long. Harris's was,

you know, much shorter. And she did, you know, introduce herself on a personal level, talking about her family, her upbringing, and then,

you know, her vision for the country. She was still pretty, very light on policy details, Stan, which I think is a strategic decision. You know, we talked about on the show last week, whether Harris can really avoid

laying out policy plans or talking, taking hard questions from reporters. And so far, she's still, you know, aiming to do that it looks like. But I thought she did well. She executed the speech well. She rallied the entire party behind her. And the polling shows she's in a dead heat with Trump now.

So now it's just two months of them of them battling it out heading into November. Let's talk about that a little bit. It does appear to be a very close race, which means the swing states, the states that could go either way. as per usual, are going to be key to who wins this election come November. You mentioned policy issues. She has been criticized for not talking about specific policies, laying out very general, very vague policy issues. Right now, I think, correct me if I'm wrong,

Harris and Trump are committed to one debate officially, with Trump calling for at least one more. Do you think we're going to get a debate about policy issues? Do you think Harris is going to give more details on her policy proposals in the weeks to come? Well, I think we're definitely going to have that debate. But whether it's about policy is a good question. I think Harris would love for that debate to be about Trump's felony convictions and how Trump appointed justices to the Supreme Court,

that overturned Roe v. Wade. I mean, Harris is going to, as much as she can, I think this is the vibe candidacy. And she wants to have a better vibe than Trump and to bring up all of his mistakes and just kind of vibe her way into the White House. I really think that is her plan. She's talked so much about joy being the focus. And of course, I mean, there's nothing less policy-centric than an emotion joy. I mean, but I think it's working for, at least for now, Tim Walls is kind of an interesting character, but he does seem to have the joy. He fits the joy mold that they're trying to create. And so I think she just wants to smile more, laugh more, have a better attitude than Trump,

and to make him look kind of grumpy. And then that, combined with the coverage of the media, you know, bring her into the White House and get the suburban women that she needs to put her there, many of whom, you know, J.D. Vance and Trump have angered over the years. But I think they'll be forced to talk some about policy. I think, you know, Harris, she just speaks in very vague terms. But, I mean, as we all know, you can get away with that sometimes in elections. Last night, you know, at the at the DNC, she talked about creating jobs and lowering costs, but didn't really explain how she would do that.

She talked about, right. I mean, anytime she laid out a specific policy, she chose one that was very safe because she referenced a Senate bill that already had some kind of broad Democrat support. So she voiced her support for the, you know, the immigration reform bill that failed in the Senate earlier this year. She referenced, you know, a voting, a sort of voting rights bill that's been in Congress for a while. And she supports that. But there was no big, bold, new policy vision of unique, original ideas of how I'm going to change the country. It's more just, I think, for Harris, she's pitching a vibe shift for the country. Polling also shows, and this is including the Center Square Voters Voice poll, one of the most expansive polls across the country, but polls from other polling companies and other media outlets, that voters trust Donald Trump way more on the economy, on border security, on foreign affairs.

on the other hand, voters, voters trust Kamala Harris, much more on abortion rights, education issues, et cetera. Is that even matter at this point? Is this an election about personality? I think it does matter. What we're seeing here is that the last, you know, three months of this election have been very much about personality and not about policy, because a lot of the policy fronts have quieted down. inflation has slowed down. These, you know, overseas conflicts, Ukraine and, you know, Hamas and Israel, they're still raging, but in the American mind, the media, they've kind of gotten boring.

I mean, not huge updates. They're just still going. And so they've kind of faded from memory. So the economy, it's not doing amazing, but it's not, you know, there's nothing terribly bad. We had stock market dip. We had, you know, jobs, weren't nearly as many jobs created as we previously believe. So there's things going on there. Americans do still feel higher cost.

But the problem is that both Democrats and Republicans made this election about personality long before Harris stepped in. I mean, Democrats have made it all about Trump from the beginning and his personality. And they're taking that to the man, win or lose. That is their game plan. And then, you know, the way that Republicans got Biden out of the race is they made it all about his age and his mental competence, not his policies at all. And that ended up winning. So Harris steps into this race that has been all about the individual, the personality. They're, you know, just how they appear.

Like, you know, for Biden, it was he appeared old. He appeared like he was mentally fading. So she comes in and she's like, well, I'm going to appear joyful. I'm going to appear vibrant and normal and kind of a counterbalance to Trump's intensity. And so I think, yeah, it is a personality election in a particular unique way. But it's only going to take a shakeup could affect that. I mean, if there's some big economic dip again, Harris is going to be possibly holding the bag on that.

If China invades Taiwan in the next few weeks, I mean, that'll change everything. If something nuclear happens or escalation with Iran and Israel, you know, that could affect things. But if the policy issues remain status quo for the next couple months, it will remain an election about personality. And it's unclear who will win. and if it remains in that way. Thank you for joining us today.

Listeners can keep up with all of the news surrounding the presidential election at the center square.com.