Front Burner - Kamala Harris for President?

Episode Date: July 23, 2024

After President Biden announced that he was stepping down from the 2024 presidential race, he and other prominent democrats threw their support behind Vice President Kamala Harris. The former prosecutor and senator is no stranger to the campaign trail but hasn’t generally polled well…until now. Is this finally her moment? Vox senior politics reporter, Christian Paz, joins us to talk about Kamala’s track record as a prosecutor and politician, whether she has what it takes to take on Donald Trump and why everyone’s talking about coconuts all of a sudden.For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. I'm not leaving. POTUS is leaving. He's not going to run for a second term.

I'm going to run. I did not see that coming. This is a clip from the HBO show Veep. It is one of my favorite shows. I love it. It's about a fictional vice president played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus. It's so funny. Anyways, it was making the rounds online Sunday night after Biden threw his support behind Kamala Harris.

In the last 24 hours, Kamala has moved to basically lock up the Democratic nomination, as scores of party members endorsed her, making it really tough for anyone to mount a real challenge. There has long been doubt over whether she could lead the Democrats. She did quite badly the last time that she ran to be the Democratic presidential candidate. She has not been a very popular vice president. Having said all of that, polls show she is now in striking distance of Trump. So today, Kamala for president? I am joined by Christian Paz. He's a senior politics reporter at Vox. Hey, Christian, I'm so happy that we have the opportunity to talk to you today. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to have this conversation. I've been looking forward to it all morning. So listen, Kamala Harris has, of course, been

the Vice President of the United States for the last three and a half years. People certainly do have an idea of who she is. But for someone who doesn't know a ton about her previous career and her political leanings, how would you describe her? It's a great question because Kamala Harris has been in the public eye holding office for about two decades. She started off in California as a prosecutor, ran for district attorney in San Francisco, won that race. During such time as I hold the office of district attorney for the city and county of San Francisco. Congratulations. And then in 2010, ran for attorney general of California. That was kind of her launching pad into essentially being viewed as a potential contender as the future of the Democratic Party.

Kamala Harris will be a strong fighter for a healthier California, for a healthier America. Kamala Harris will make a great Attorney General. She ran for Senate after that. As your senator, Kamala Harris will be a fearless fighter for the people of California every single day. Our new U.S. Senator, Kamala Harris! And then was tapped to be vice president after losing or dropping out in the 2020 Democratic primaries once President Biden won the nomination. First of all, is the answer yes? The answer is absolutely yes, Joe, and I am ready to work.

I am ready to do this with you, for you. I just I'm just deeply honored and I'm very excited. The whole arc of her career is definitely one of, based on conversations I've had with folks close to her and just watching her and following her for so long, is one of a pragmatic politician. Somebody who isn't necessarily tied to one particular ideology, isn't necessarily trying to present the most uniform or cohesive stance on issues. And so that opens her up to accusations of flip-flopping or being a little bit confused or lacking clarity on some of these issues. But I can also say that she is somebody who folks have described as being particularly meticulous, particularly focused on the effect of policy, on the specifics of policy on everyday Americans. Her background as a prosecutor and eventually the attorney general in California, how has that informed her politics, you think? It definitely, based off of

some conversations I've had with folks who worked with her at the time, they point to the fact that she has a priority for vulnerable people, whether that's for working class and poor Americans, for women and mothers, and for children and victims of crimes. Growing up, whenever I got upset about something, my mother would look me in the eye and ask, so what are you going to do about it? That's why when I saw a broken justice system, I became a lawyer to try and fix it. The way that that kind of showed up in some of her, some of her work in California, it was through attempts to reform truancy laws. Let's define truancy. It must mean more than just missing a few days from school. Absolutely right. We are not talking about hooky and playing hooky.

And frankly, we all did. OK, what we're talking about is chronic school absenteeism. address the problem of high school dropouts was one clear example that was pointed to, given that she didn't want to see people end up in jail, right? Young people end up committing crimes. As a prosecutor and law enforcement, I have a huge stick. The school district has got to carry it. Let's work in tandem around our collective objective and goal, which is to get those kids in school. It's interesting, though, because she has also been criticized, right, for being very law and order or too law and order in some people's minds, too tough on crime. She's been criticized, you know, for putting a lot of people in jail for marijuana, for example.

And I'm thinking about that clip. Build more schools, less jails. Build more schools, less jails. That often goes around of her, I think it's from 2013, where she's basically pushing back on this idea that society should build more schools and less jails. I agree with that conceptually, but you have not addressed the reason I have three padlocks on my front door.

But you have not addressed the reason I have three padlocks on my front door. So part of the discussion about reform of criminal justice policy has to be an acknowledgement that crime does occur. And especially when it is violent crime and serious crime, there should be a broad consensus that there should be serious and severe and swift consequence to crime. Flesh that out for me a little bit. Absolutely. And that's a really, really important thing to point out, because even with that truancy reform that she pushed, that she achieved within the Bay Area when it became law, it ended up having unintended consequences that she describes. And there was a lot of reporting after the fact of mothers who ended up being jailed for not being able to get their kids into school as regularly as some of those reforms called for. And she apologized and walked a little bit of that back. Because my regret is that I have now heard stories that where in some jurisdictions, DAs have criminalized the parents. Right.

And I regret that that has happened and that the thought that anything that I did could have led to that because that certainly was not the intention. Never was the intention. Never was the intention. And it's true that at the time when she faced a lot of this criticism, she was trying to back away from what she called a smart on crime approach. That was the name of one of her early books where she tried to explain that policy and that thinking, which was essentially, and you mentioned this with that clip, the idea that there is no society where you can exist without having jail for folks who need to be jailed. And she was trying to present that case at the time, at a time when that was essentially what voters in California wanted. It's basically saying if we're going to really get tough on crime, we also have to address the underlying causes of crime and get tough on those. But then you fast forward to how she tries to run in the Democratic primary for 2020. And that's not where the majority of Democratic voters are.

That's not where the majority of the country feels like it's at. And it's not where Democratic candidates want to position themselves either. They don't want to be viewed as tough on crime. They want to be viewed as reformers. And in some ways, progressive prosecutors became the new model. And that was something that she was trying to adapt to, but couldn't really. Do you think that was part of the explanation why she did so poorly in that primary? She dropped out, of course, before there were ever any votes cast, right?

But I think she was polling around 4% when she did. And then as vice president, she's also been quite unpopular as vice president. And just do you think that's part of the reason? What other reasons might there be? That's definitely the right reading there. She was kind of mismatched in terms of the candidate and the moment. The party wasn't necessarily looking for someone like her. And then at the same time, she was trying to adapt and become a version of herself

that voters would want. But in the process, you know, this is why it's important to remember that pragmatic kind of mindset. She was willing to move to the left and then move to the right and then move to the center. But when you combine that with a field that was so big with very established and trusted names with a bit longer, you bit longer track records and better reputations on specific issues like healthcare or policing, then it was just the wrong time for her. And add on that the fact that she wasn't the most natural campaigner in some of these settings, and also that her campaign team had a lot of chaos, a lot of internal divisions. It all kind of doomed her then. But then you fast forward to the vice presidency and there she's struggling as well because now she's not

just, you know, free to run a campaign or, you know, position herself however she wants. Her primary duty is loyalty to the president. Her primary duty is to help advance his agenda and to defend the administration's records, since she's now part of that administration. And so she's boxed in. There's very little that she can do by herself. All the power that the vice president has in the U.S. is essentially derived from whatever the president,

his inner circle, kind of assign or dole out. Yeah, and just tell me a little bit more about how that goes for her. You know, what is she given? What does she do with it? How does it play out for her? with the president are essentially given some authority, some power to lead on something. And she does eventually get given two portfolio issues, pushing for voting rights reform in Congress and then handling diplomatic relations with Mexico and Central American countries to address the, quote, root causes of migration, since that was kind of what President Biden was responsible for when he was vice president. Both those issues were doomed from the start. The first one, voting rights legislation, because Democrats did not have a majority in Congress. They had a

majority in the House, but they had a deadlock Senate. Senate Republicans have exploited arcane rules to block these bills. Nowhere does the Constitution give a minority the right to unilaterally block legislation. And then on the migration issues, this was also at the time when crossings at the southern border were beginning to increase. This was also at the time when crossings at the southern border were beginning to increase. And at first, those were crossings fueled primarily from Central American migrants, but then that shifted to being primarily South American migrants. So any of these root causes wasn't necessarily going to have a direct and immediate impact on what was happening at the southern border. But it's already such a complicated issue that it was difficult to make that distinction clear that she wasn't in charge of the border. She was in charge of diplomacy, essentially,

and overseeing foreign investment in these countries. That's why I've asked the Vice President of the United States yesterday to be the lead person on dealing with focusing on the fundamental reasons why people leave Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador in the first place. The press, the people, Republican politicians, all essentially didn't really understand or exploited that lack of clarity. And that's how you get to terms that are used today, like border czar Kamala Harris, even though she was never in charge of the border.

Right, right. The Republicans are loving that right now. Now remember, Vice President Harris was appointed the border czar. Whatever happened to that? Where is the border czar? Vice President Harris. Tomorrow will mark the sixth month since she was appointed to this role.

And in that time, the situation at can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know

their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. I take your point that she was handed files that were deeply problematic, that were lemons, frankly. But would you agree that she she also did some stuff that probably didn't help her very much right like i'm thinking about that uh interview that she did kind of early on in 2021 with uh i think it was lester holt right and he pressed her on why she hadn't been to the u.s mexico border and her answer was it was very bad we are been to the U.S.-Mexico border. And her answer was, it was very bad. We are going to the border.

We've been to the border. So this whole thing about the border, we've been to the border. We've been to the border. You haven't been to the border. And I haven't been to Europe. And I don't understand the point that you're making. I'm not discounting the importance of the border.

You saw a lot of people compare her to, I mentioned that Veep clip in the intro. A lot of people compare her to Julia Louis-Dreyfus's character, which is hilarious, but it's not great, right? It's probably not the character that you want to be compared to. No, absolutely not. I don't know who in VEAP you would want to be compared to, but definitely not. They're all terrible people. Yeah. Definitely not Selina Meyer. And you're right. A lot of this is also because, you know, part of it were missteps from her, from her staff, especially lack of communication with even the White House, where the White House did attempt to clear things up about what her job actually was, but then not necessarily putting as much of an emphasis or privately backing her as much. That interview that you mentioned with Lester Holt, it was disastrous. And she didn't

end up doing another public interview like that for a significant time. Yeah, they sort of hit her after that, it felt like. Exactly. And even that was after she had already received media training on how to handle some of these interviews better, because like you mentioned, she has a little bit of that awkwardness when talking one-on-one in an interview. She's better suited for kind of individual conversations with voters or for round tables type discussions or times when she's just leading a conversation, not necessarily at a major rally, giving a stump speech, trying to use that flowery language that then ends up making her into, you know, meme worthy moments that get shared around the Internet. And they did hide her away for a time. And that obviously changed.

That was in 2021. Things changed significantly in 2022. What changed in 2022? that she was a very capable speaker and communicator when it came to reproductive rights, to the stakes of abortion access and the connections between that and other individual rights. And she didn't have to pitch, you know, becoming the administration's lead spokesperson on that. She showed it on the campaign trail, essentially. campaign trail, essentially. Millions of women in America will go to bed tonight without access to the health care and reproductive care that they had this morning. Since extremist legislators across our nation have passed ban after ban after ban, passed ban after ban after ban. And Trump has not denied, much less shown remorse for his actions.

Instead, he, quote, proudly takes credit for overturning Rome. you mentioned the memes i think we gotta spend some time talking about the memes um so she has a lot of online fans called the k-hive i went down a really big rabbit hole on kamala memes the other week um and first of all, for those who are blessed to be less online than us, why is everybody talking about coconuts? It's such a great question. I think it's so important before we giggle a little more. A lot of these memes come from the fact that, yes, she's an awkward communicator. Everything is in context. My mother used to, she would give us a hard time sometimes and she would say to us, I don't know what's wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you but secondly because so many folks

just have grown to see her uh as you know somebody who's sidelined somebody who's not to be taken super seriously without much power and that's where the the veep comparisons are so apt because um now it's almost by accident she's being given this much, you know, runway space. And so now the memes have circled back almost to be as legitimizers instead of being ways to detract from her. It's ways of showing, oh, wow, she can, you know, be a funny person. What a departure from the campaign that we were going through and that we were expected to sit through for another hundred days. And it's another way of both demonstrating, I think what memes really do capture is a form of soft power that a lot of folks don't necessarily take seriously, but do have,

you know, a way of slowly changing hearts and minds. And I think that's especially true with some of the constituencies that Democrats were having significant trouble with this year. Talking here, obviously, about younger voters, voters of color who are also disproportionately younger. It's a great way of building name ID and, you know, getting folks to just remember, OK, wait, the coconuts, the context the context that you know where does that come from who was it really oh that's the vice president oh what she's up to um it's now been remixed uh to a song from charlie xcx's album brat you exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you i'm just living that life on Dutch. And now Charlie

XCX has endorsed Kamala. It's a whole thing. The singer Charlie XCX tweeted last night, Kamala is brat. So it's the idea that we're all kind of brat and Vice President Harris is brat. I don't know.

I think you aspire to be brat. You don't just become brat. And I love that analysis you're Brad. I think you aspire to be Brad. Right. You don't just become Brad. And I just, I love that analysis you just gave. I feel like you really nailed it. And talking about that idea that people are coming around to her with these memes, like, there's actually a name for it, right? It's coconut pilled. Like, this idea that people are actually finding this stuff a bit charming. And it's not just the coconut line, right?

I'm just going to set our producer up to put some clips in. It's, there's the, we did it, Joe meme. We did it, Joe. There's the wheels on the bus. Wheels on the bus. Oh, round and round. My personal favorite is the turkey recipe where she's explaining to somebody, I think, how to cook turkey.

Under the skin with some butter before you're going to cook it. Uh-huh. So that that butter will just melt in there. And then get a nice big bottle of cheap white wine to baste with butter. Yes, hi. There's the one where she always uses the line, what can be unburdened by what has been a lot. She uses it a lot. What can be unburdened by what has been.

What can be unburdened by what has been. What can be unburdened by what has been. What can be. This is fun stuff, as we talked about, and it is driving people to her. But I imagine it can also cut both ways here, right? And do you think that these kind of things could also hinder her campaign, that they might not speak to an undecided voter in Michigan

like they speak to a Gen Z-er in New York? It is a liability in some ways because for a lot of the folks that we were talking about when we talk about the voters that decide the election, those tend to be either your older white voter in Midwest states, the Rust Belt, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, or expanding the pathway through Sun Belt states like Arizona, Nevada, Georgia. Here there is one of those big unknowns that we're facing. Will she come across as serious and as credible to voters in those Rust Belt states, especially? Will voters who have been bearing a pretty significant brunt of inflation in Sun Belt states be willing to look at those memes and look at those jokes and look at the track record of the vice president and say, okay, well, it's not Joe Biden. They did work together. Can I give her a

chance? Or is this just feeling a bit tone deaf to me? Yeah. Does she just seem like kind of a wacky lady, which, you know, I've also heard her described as. It does seem at this point, you and I are talking midday on Monday, that she has all but sewn up the nomination. Many, many, many high-profile Democrats have endorsed her now. Basically all the big names people were talking about as potential challengers have endorsed her. It would be very hard, I think, for somebody to step up and challenge her right now. So assuming she wins the nomination, one thing I did want to talk to you about is who she picks as a running mate. Generally, the strategy with a running mate is to choose someone who makes up for your perceived weaknesses, electorally, politically,

demographically, culturally, geographically. And so what do you think that they're going to be looking for here? That's absolutely right. Traditionally, you're either picking a running mate who will help you govern or who can help you win an election. Sometimes you get the rare combination of both. And I think this time around, they're definitely looking at who can win primarily. There really are four names, it's my understanding, on the list right now. Mark Kelly, the senator from Arizona, Andy Beshear in Kentucky, Roy Cooper in North Carolina, who you heard Harris talking about there, and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania. Whether it's the being unburdened by what has been or it's addressing the concerns about being perceived as a wacky lady, it seems like the consensus is a pretty straight-laced kind of white man from either the Midwest or a swing state is kind of the model here to balance out the ticket, quote unquote.

Right, right. here to balance out the ticket, quote unquote. Right, right. And just lastly, before we go, just play out for me a little bit how you think she's going to do against Trump. You know, I know the polling right now has her within striking distance. Where do you think she's going to have the most trouble? Where do you think she's going to have some real opportunities? It's such an interesting question because I'll caveat whatever I say should be taken with a grain of salt because we don't have any polling on how voters see her as the actual presidential candidate. This is all hypothetical and theoretical in the polling that has been conducted up until now. But she has significant room for growth with voters of color

and with younger voters, especially folks who were primarily disappointed because of Biden's age more so than what used to be concerns over inflation and the economy. I think the debate changed that calculation for a lot of voters very recently. She also has opportunities to, like I mentioned, make those inroads in the Sunbelt states, where you do have concentrations of younger and more diverse communities relative to the Rust Belt states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. I think one of the areas where we can expect a little bit of struggle is with older voters, potentially.

Those are voters over the age of 65. And then there is the question of how she performs with white men, given that that was one advantage that Biden had, is cutting into some of the margins that Donald Trump had with white voters and specifically with white male voters. Yeah. And if anyone was watching the Republican convention last week, it was really unmistakable that they were going after men.

Absolutely. Okay. Final question. What are you gonna be watching for in the days ahead as this all starts to take shape? I'm definitely watching to see the final returns of small dollar donations in the first ahead as this all starts to take shape. I'm definitely watching to see the final returns

of small dollar donations in the first 24 hours, just to see whether we do see signs of sustained enthusiasm from the Democratic base. I'm going to see how- And grassroots. The grassroots, exactly. And just seeing how she's able to consolidate the support of a base that was really splintering

under President Biden's candidacy. And then, of course, I'll be seeing any polling that comes out that asks voters to confront this question of Harris versus Trump. And then taking a look at some of her other, you know, first major interview with a network news whenever that gets announced, if it does get announced, and then how she does on the campaign trail under her own banner. Okay. So lots to watch out for. Thanks so much, Christian. This is great. Thank you. Thank you for having me. All right. That is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening.

Talk to you tomorrow.