On with Kara Swisher - The DNC Afterparty and What’s Next for the Harris/Walz Campaign

Episode Date: August 26, 2024

Almost 29 million television viewers tuned in to see Vice President Kamala Harris’s historic nomination acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. But does size matter? And what’s next after the raucous, A-list celebrity packed, “joy-filled" DNC for the Harris/Walz campaign? With just 10 weeks left in the campaign, Kara reviews the biggest moments and messages from Chicago with today’s panel (Politico White House correspondent Eugene Daniels, co-author of Politico Playbook; Noel King, co-host of Vox’s Today Explained; political strategist Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark and founder of Republican Voters Against Trump; and V Spehar, independent journalist and host of the TikTok account, Under the Desk News) and discusses strengths and vulnerabilities coming out of the conventions for both campaigns. Plus: how RFK Jr.’s Trump endorsement will likely play out in key swing states. Note: This episode was taped on Friday, Aug 23rd, 2024. Questions? Comments? Email us at [e-mail] or find Kara on Threads/Instagram @karaswisher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's an AI-powered customer platform that builds campaigns for you, tells you which leads are worth knowing, and makes writing blogs, creating videos, and posting on social a breeze. So now, it's easier than ever to be a marketer. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. Hi, everyone, from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. And today, we're going to talk about...

Ladies and gentlemen, we are here tonight to officially nominate Kevin O'Hara for president. Five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 51, 52, 51, 52, 52, 53, 52, 53, 53, 52, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, of shots. DNC, turn out for what? The DNC and what comes next. I think the Democratic National Convention was a lot more than people expected it to be of everything. I thought it was sort of a great follow to the Olympics. It made people feel good. It was great entertainment.

The content was fun. It was well run and it was very disciplined. Drove home many messages. We're not going back. We're not going back. We're not going back. We're not going back. We're not going back. D.P. Harris, coming to war.

There was a rowdy roll call with costumes and a DJ. That was fun, headlining musicians like Lil Jon, The Chicks, Pink, Hollywood celebrities like Mindy Kaling, Kerry Washington, and Tony Goldman, and a lot of regular people who were much more effective than anyone, I think, being there. And it felt like every Democrat who ever lived spoke at some point, the Obamas, the Clintons. There's a lot of energy in this room, just like there is across the country. America, hope is making a comeback. Aren't you proud to be a Democrat? I'm feeling fired up.

And even, of course, Oprah. Let us choose truth. Let us choose honor. And let us choose joy. Not Beyonce, who everyone expected to be there, but actually it was okay that she wasn't. Still, there was a lot of freedom. But now comes the hard part, winning. It's just over 10 weeks to go before Election Day.

And today I want to put all the fanfare into perspective and hear where the party goes from here with my four guests, who are reporting from different vantage points at the DNC. Politico White House correspondent Eugene Daniels, a co-author of Politico Playbook, political strategist Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark, and founder of the PAC, Republican Voters Against Trump. V. Speier, independent journalist and host of the TikTok account, Under the Desk News, who was with the social media influencers on the Creator platform, and my Vox colleague, Noelle King, co-host of Today Explained, who was talking to folks in

Chicago outside the convention. We're going to talk about a lot of things, what we learned about Harris's politics and policies and where the messaging still has holes, how the Democratic Party used the event to reposition itself. A lot of people felt that they were at an old GOP convention and whether that will actually lead to more votes and the role that influencers played, the event to reposition itself. A lot of people felt that they were at an old GOP convention, and whether that will actually lead to more votes, and the role that influencers played and will continue to play in the campaign. The moments and the memes and how the DNC sets the stage for the weeks ahead, that's coming up. It is on. Noelle, Sarah, Vee, and Eugene, welcome.

Thanks for having us. Thank you. Great to be here. Thanks for being on. A week ago, I asked another panel of journalists to give me one word for the vibe going on at the DNC. We had energized, whiplashy, Kamala phenomenon, and happy. So what's your take? What word sums up for you? Eugene, you go first, and Sarah, Noelle, and then Bea.

Head spinning, still. This is all still very head spinning, I think, for me and the people that I was talking to all week. The speed at which it happened, and also just, you know, I've covered Vice President Harris this entire time, and just watching all these people be excited for her is a little confusing because that's not exactly how Democrats were talking about her for a long time. Sarah? America. The thing, look, I'm a former Republican here, and so I've got my ears up all the time, but I was at this convention. I hadn't been at a convention since Mitt Romney's convention in 2012. And listening to the chants of USA, listening to the number of Republicans that they put on stage, listening to the way that they made freedom a theme, the football talk.

I mean, I felt very somatically comfortable there. The flags, don't leave out the flags. Yeah, the flags. No, this was a reclaiming of patriotism for the Democrats. And I think, I just think they really nailed it. America. Okay. Noelle? I would go with joy, since it's a word we heard over and over and over at the convention. Since that's their word. And that's their word. And it's a good, I mean, the thing is, sometimes you say joy,

and you're clearly not feeling it. It's kind of fake. This struck me, I mean, I'm as cynical as anybody else. This struck me as a very joyful convention. Everyone was out acting normal there with their family. Weather was great. Weather was so great. And so I think they nailed joy. You don't always nail it. I think they nailed it. Okay. They? I think it was very cathartic in the end. Like that's how I'm feeling now. I went through a range of emotions, but there were great moments of, like, pause and reflection and steadying and comfort and even feeling some grief about different things, nostalgia. But leaving today, I feel very sound.

Very, like, okay. Sound. Healthy. Healthy. Sound. Okay. All right. Eugene, ahead of the convention, you wrote an article about how DNC organizers scrambling to create a whole new event for Vice President Harris. Do you think they pulled that off? It did not feel like a Biden. I'm sort of shocked by how quickly they shifted the mood. And what did that? Who were the stars from your perspective? I don't mean just stars. perspective, I don't mean just stars. Yeah. I mean, it's, the Monday was Biden, right? It was the, thank you very much. You may go now. You even look at the tags that we had, they still had Biden things on them. There's like ice cream, there's some aviators. So there are things that they couldn't change. But when it came to like the conversation they were trying to have, right,

I assume D.L. Hughley, the actor and comedian, was not going to be on stage talking to Black men if Joe Biden was there, right? He has a special relationship with Vice President Harris. Her family explaining who she is, the attorneys general who were on stage, right, talking about how important it would be for them and for America and their estimation to have an attorney general, a former attorney general in the White House. And the star, from your perspective, the breakout star, was it AOC doing an Obama moment? I mean, it's probably trite, but it's Michelle Obama.

I felt like her speech out of all of them kind of set the stage for a lot of things. Everyone here, I think, also felt that. It's up to all of us to be the anecdote to the darkness and division. Look, I don't care how you identify politically, whether you're Democrat, Republican, Independent, or none of the above. This is our time to stand up for what we know in our hearts is right. is right. To stand up, not just for our basic freedoms, but for decency and humanity, for basic respect, dignity, and empathy, for the values at the very foundation of this democracy. It was sort of Michelle Obama. Like, I was just,

I'm so struck. So one of the things, I do these focus groups all the time. I listen to voters. And one of the things they always say is they're like, well, so-and-so sounds like a regular politician. And it's like the worst thing you can say about somebody. Michelle Obama could literally save the country right now because if she ran, she would win by 10 points. But she does not like the business of politics. But she got up and spoke as like an American, as a person who understands the gravity of the moment. But even, okay, so Tim Walz is a regular politician. But let me just tell you,

I follow politics as closely as anybody. And when Walz came on the scene as a potential pick, I was like, I do not know who this is. I know nothing about this guy. Because I was very Shapiro-pilled. And I was on the floor the night that Walls gave his speech and I'm now Walls pilled. So there I was, a 40 something high school teacher with little kids, zero political experience and no money running in a deep red district. But you know what? Never underestimate a public school teacher. And the main reason is, is that authenticity is the coin of the realm. That's why when we

build a pack around persuasion, we use regular Republican former Trump voters to make the, to be the messengers as the people who are not going to vote for him because they're the most persuasive. Walt struck me as a guy that people would say this is as the people who are not going to vote for him because they're the most persuasive. Walt struck me as a guy that people would say this is an ordinary person who is not a regular politician. And that was the thing that really made it happen for him. And yes, some of our people spoke, our people who are former Trump voters, who are out on Trump, have decided that he's dangerous. And they were invited in.

Man, I got to tell you, the fact that they gave Kinzinger that slot, that primetime slot. Yeah, Adam Kinzinger. Yeah, Adam Kinzinger, former Republican congressman, to make the case against Donald Trump and to build a permission structure for other Republicans. I've learned something about the Democratic Party, and I want to let my fellow Republicans in on the secret. The Democrats are as patriotic as us. They love this country just and abroad as we conservatives have ever been. Not only did he crush that speech, but Democrats crushed understanding the assignment about who they need to reach by building that tent on the stage.

Right. I thought he was, I've interviewed him before, but I thought he was surprisingly effective in that regard. He kept saying, I'm a Republican, I want to vote Republican, but I'm not going to be able to in that way. V, you were one of those 200 or so accredited content creators, a few of whom even spoke on stage. The DNC had better ratings than the RNC, although older skewed very old, I would say. I was looking at the numbers and I guess it was 20 million and 15 million were over 55. So that's not really, you know, the young people. But how did it play online? And how did you think about the experience?

You did a number of online live events during DNC. And you were getting questions from outside the Democratic bubble. So give me a sense of how it went with the content creators. And by the way, Scott and I were called influencers too. Were you? I gave you a shout out for being a member of the legacy media that was respectful to the creators because we had a lot of trouble actually with them. Really? With who? You know, you'll read all about it.

It was heavily published. I think this was a DNC of a lot of misinformation and chaos when it came to the relationship between legacy media and the creators. I had someone from the New York Times hunting me down to find out how my interview with Kamala Harris and Tim Walswet, and it was like, I didn't have one. They were like, they're getting champagne and prime rib. I'm like, baby, we had hot dogs and beers, and I was happy to have it. So the lore of the creator experience far exceeded the creator experience, although it was incredible. I did the lives each night from upstairs and we had rotating guests every five minutes, congresspeople, other creators, folks who were just first-time attendees of the DNC. And I think we reached, we'll get the

statistics, but we reached millions upon millions of people each night just because people are watching the news from their televisions. They're watching me right before they go to bed or when they're in the bathroom or when they're on break from their job. So we're that second screen for them to sort of reinforce a message. And I understand that role and I think it's an important role. So with the creators,

there were some folks who were activists, leaders of nonprofits, like Carlos Eduardo Espina, who spoke from the stage and I think gave one of the best speeches on immigration. He's an immigration lawyer who owns a nonprofit, Olivia Giuliana, huge figure in reproductive health activations. But our reach was astronomical. And I think definitely what I was seeing in the comments was moving the needle in terms of the same thing. People who were former Trump voters,

most of my audience is saying, my dad is now considering voting for Harris or my dad is rejecting Trump or something like that. It's called Kamala Curious, in case you're interested. Kamala Curious. And we were able to give platform upstairs on the live streams to some folks who didn't make it to the main stage. So Rua Rowan, who is the Georgia state senator and Palestinian American who we were hoping would give a speech from the main stage, she was able to come up to the live stream and talk with people for 10, 15 minutes or so and get that second screen platform. So I think if anything, we just expanded the reach and gave more people the opportunity to be seen and heard maybe as a first step towards next time

getting on that main stage. Right. Absolutely. I'm sorry they were jerks. I'm sorry. But it's interesting because I think most of this will play out online in those little moments because this was the most clippable thing happening. And the power of that is when I'm posting it online, I can immediately put a link. So we continue to use the vote.org link to tell people to check their voter registration and register to vote. So I think, again, reinforcing that second screen and that action somebody could do very quickly, we're helping to increase that voter participation. Which you don't from a passive screen. But Noel, you're reporting from outside the convention. There were Palestinian protests planned, but they weren't as large as expected. They just weren't. I didn't see any. Talk about what you heard from people outside and how they're thinking

about the convention and the Democratic ticket now. Obviously, for people who don't know, there were perimeter after perimeter to get in. So, you had to go through two or three, two maybe, but it was not easy to get in. I heard two main things at the protest, which at the time I went, it was early in the morning. I was just kind of there to sort of take the temperature. There were only maybe about 500 people. But I heard two things that stuck with me. The first was, this is what we want. We want the United States to change its stance on Israel. We want the United States to stop sending weapons to Israel. That's what we've heard for the past six months or so. The thing that was really interesting was when I asked people, so we were expecting Joe Biden to be the nominee, and I would absolutely

expect you guys to be out here, right, given Biden's stance on Israel. But Kamala Harris is now the nominee. Did you think about maybe changing it up? And what I heard was Kamala Harris is not going to trick us with identity politics. She may be a Black woman, but she is not good on Gaza. We don't care what she looks like. We don't care what she comes from. She needs to put her money where her mouth is. And I thought that was genuinely interesting. I also think Biden not being the nominee did take some of the fire out of these protests. I don't think there's any way you can deny that. But I did, in a way, I felt for some of these folks who are quite serious and quite passionate that her being the nominee is a disappointment because some of the support funnels off, right? Right, because it did. It absolutely did. There were several moments when people got up in the hall. I'm trying to think during Hillary Clinton's speech, one of the speeches, maybe it was Biden's speech, but they were quickly called down by other people chanting, like they were out chanted in the hall. Yeah, there's a sense of like, now it's not the time. I mean, again, to go back to this, like, everybody be normal.

It's like you're at a wedding and there's like a couple of people in the family. Guys, just be normal. I don't know. That was just such a vibe. As someone who appreciates normalcy, I very much dug that. There are two big goals for the convention. First, to introduce Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz to a broader swath of America. Second, give more of a sense of their policies or at least their values. I think values is probably more what they were trying to do there. Ichi, rate how well they did on these two points. And if you can, pick out a favorite moment where they or the speakers

really hit those notes. Sarah, you go first, then V, Noel, and Eugene. So, look, on the introduction, I thought they both crushed it. I'd give them both A's. A guy was a big Biden's got to step down person. He's got to after the debate. I was just, there's no question. I was listening to voters. They were already like, he's too old to do the job. And after the debate, they were like, what is even happening right now?

But I was really nervous about it being Kamala Harris because I'd listened to voters for years talk about the fact that they don't know her, don't see her, they have no idea what she does. But when it became clear that like she was probably going to be the person, I had to listen with slightly different ears. And actually what I heard them saying is, I don't know her, I don't see her, I don't know what she does. And I was like, okay, that can be the upside, right? They don't know her. So she had all this room to introduce herself and the whole program was geared toward that. Her family members, Doug Emhoff, that was one of the people I was like, not a regular politician, gave an incredible speech that he's been out there just like building this permission structure to love her because he's so genuine about how much he loves her. So on that introduction piece, having the kids and the nieces and nephews calling her auntie and then Tim Walls, I mean, just bringing up the old football team who were a bunch of, like, tubby, middle-aged white dudes. Right, with the shirts that don't fit. And they pulled that off without it looking stupid. Like, there were a bunch of cringe moments.

I mean, let's be honest. Like, especially when the celebrities, except for Oprah, who was amazing. But a lot of the celebrities do some of this stuff, and you're like, okay. But the middle-aged football players just being like, this dude, yes. So, I thought in introductions, I came away liking both of them a ton more. And frankly, with both of them, but especially with Walls, I was coming from a place of a lot less knowledge than I have about a lot of other politicians. On the second thing, on the themes and which themes they hit, for me, I was looking for them to go in and open up this tent, right? Like the big knock on Kamala, the thing that I worry about with swing voters is if you say San Francisco progressive,

man, voters know what that means, even if they don't know what that means, right? Like just intuitively, they're like, that's a bad thing that I don't want. And she had to figure out very quickly how to cast that aside and say, I'm going to be president for everybody. And she had a specific section of her speech where she said, she looked at the camera and she said, I want to talk to people who are not members of this party. And I want to promise you that I will be a president for all Americans and I will abide by the rule of law and the peaceful transfer of power. And like, you can trust me to do that. the rule of law and the peaceful transfer of power. And like, you can trust me to do that. In the courtroom, I stood proudly before a judge and I said five words, Kamala Harris for the people.

And to be clear, and to be clear, my entire career, I've only had one client, the people. And so, on behalf of the people, on behalf of every American, regardless of party, race, gender, or the language your grandmother speaks. On behalf of my mother and everyone who has ever set out on their own unlikely journey, on behalf of Americans like the people I grew up with, people who work hard, chase their dreams, and look out for one another, on behalf of everyone whose story could only be written in the greatest nation on earth. I accept your nomination to be president of the United States of America. And I thought that was so potent to be like, I'm inviting people in, like you can trust me to be there for you. And so I thoughtatically, the Big Ten thing really worked. Okay. V? So I think what I liked about this is that she is leaning into this prosecutor thing.

And I think where I saw that play out best was actually not on the stage but behind the scenes. So going back to protesters versus this uncommitted movement of delegates who say that they are Democrats for Palestinian liberation. And something that I'm not sure if folks caught was on Monday, the DNC hosted a panel for Palestinian rights. And that was with the campaign, and it was a really big deal. And I think that shows that she is willing to create space and listen. And we saw that theme throughout the entire convention on stage. So they talk about how she's a great listener. Emma L. Emhoff said that. She always listened to me. And I think that's what people in America are wanting.

They want to feel seen. They want to feel heard. And I think she made a lot of space for that and reinforced it with the people in her life who put her forth as a safe adult, who sees you, who listens, and who will go to bat for you. And Walls, very briefly.

Tim Walls and Gus, that relationship, I think, did a lot to heal a lot of us. And I think was very important for maybe the white male dad vote, right? People like my dad, who's a former Republican. He wants to be a Republican again someday, but he's down in Florida. He's watching that. And he's like, that Gus kid, when he stood up and said, that's my dad. Wow, what a moment, huh, buddy? And I was like, yeah, Pop, you know, because he and I have a good relationship. And so to see the way he loves his family reflected in the Democratic Party, I think was something he had not seen before and

did not expect to see at the Harris event, right? So I think that was great. I, again, give them both A pluses, especially given that they only had four weeks to put this together. I mean, there's not a lot of time to build a narrative. This feels very true. That's sometimes a good thing. You don't have less-

It was raw. Sorry, consultants telling you what to do. As to the Gus thing, just for people who are aware, there was a lot of pushback on people who insulted him, specifically Ann Coulter, but also Jay Weber from Wisconsin. I love to call them out because they're heinous beasts, talking, saying terrible things about this kid. It was really heinous. I was shocked by it, actually. Noelle?

I thought Tim Walz was a home run, in all honesty. Tim Walz got up there. He reminds me of my cross-country coach, a man I have not thought about in 20 years. But when I saw Tim Walz, he reminds a lot of people. of my cross-country coach, a man I have not thought about in 20 years, but when I saw Tim Walls, I was like, Mr. DeFue. Yeah, exactly, exactly. It's not my dad. My dad was very different. It's my cross-country coach. Once I saw the kids, the daughter,

Hope making the heart hands, and Gus, that's my dad, I actually didn't really care what Tim Walls had to say. I thought it's well-delivered, but I was so gaga over his family. So he was an A+. Kamala was interesting for me. Tell A+. Kamala was interesting for me.

Tell me. Kamala was interesting for me. As a woman who cackles, I like Kamala's big cackling laugh. I like that real extrovert energy. I love the smile. And I thought there was going to be more of that last night. It was a very serious, sober speech. There were a couple of moments from her that I thought were incredibly strong. One of them was when she addressed the people who are not in the party and said, I'd be a president for you too. That used to be a fairly normal statement to make, but in the past 10 years or so, it's become so politicized. I thought that I was really glad that she said that. When she talked about being a prosecutor and prosecuting a case,

not on behalf of the victim, but on behalf of the people. That's her thing. That was, yeah. See, I had not heard that line. Maybe something she says all the time, but I kind of sat up. It was echoed in many speeches. That's a big, that's a story. I really kind of sat up at that and was like, oh, even that means nothing to me.

Right. Like as a person, I'm not in the criminal justice system, but like, damn, that's a smart thing to say. And I thought that she handled Israel-Gaza well by giving each side about five strong sentences and then being done with it. I maybe expected a little more flash, a little more fun. And I'm probably a terrible person for saying that, but I thought it was in A. I feel like she can't.

She had to show strength. She had to look like a president and a TV president, right? Like what a president should look like, and she did. See, I can look at Kamala and believe her as a president, but I understand that there are people who need to not see her left. Yeah, especially, even down to the clothes she wore. Eugene? That last part, Cara, is exactly right, the clothes that she wore. And I hate to be talking about a woman's clothes, but I will be very clear.

I talk about men's clothes, too. Head to Taramani for Obama's, you know, so I panted to turn off for all of the boys, too. But I think, like, you know, there were a lot of women in white. Some of her staffers were in white. None of her family members were in white, right? She was not in white. None of her family members were in white, right? She was not in white. And I think, you know, she has not leaned into, I'm a woman, I'm a Black woman. I was talking to LaFonza Butler, the senator and very close ally and former aide to Vice President Harris since like 2010,

when she ran for attorney general. And what she said is, Black women do not have to remind people that they are Black women. You will remind us that we are Black women. And so, the royal us. And so, I thought that was really fascinating. I think on Harris's speech, it was more personal than before. I've been, you know, paying attention and watching speeches of hers for a very long time. And she doesn't lean into all the aspects of her family, right? That story about going to the park and her mom being like, be safe.

And her dad, who she does not talk about a lot. She finally did. They have a very complicated relationship. And she used him to say, no, run and do everything, right? And so that kind of storyline is something that people probably wanted to hear and needed to hear from her. At the park, my mother would say, stay close. But my father would say, as he smiled, run, Kamala, run. Don't be afraid. Don't let anything stop you.

And all the patriotism that Sarah was talking about, right? Like, she talked about her, it was very Obama-esque. Like, her story could only happen here in America. And the, you know, two immigrants who came here, who found each other, got together, had these kids, and also divorced. I can't remember how many times that there's been the conversation of what's very normal in society right now is divorce on a stage, right? Doug Emhoff talked about getting divorced from his wife, his former wife,

who was on stage also at the end and who has supported Vice President Harris for a very long time. She made a movie. She made the movie about Doug Emhoff. Yeah, yeah. So it tells you a lot about them. And on Walls, I think a lot of people

who were unsure of why she chose Walls finally understood why. You can tell when a family actually loves each other, when a couple actually love each other, when kids, even if they have complicated relationships with their parents, when they respect and love them. And his kids clearly do, right? The way that they even hug, like how tightly they hug. These are the kinds of things that idiot political journalists like me pay attention to. But that do mean a lot, right? When you think about how the Trump family kind of interacts on stage after speeches, there's not a lot of like hard hugging.

You know, there's not a lot of kisses on the lips. It's usually pushing Tiffany this way. Everyone's always watching for the Melania slap and the Tiffany push. There's several patented Trump. And Eric and John Jr. trying to get a hug and not being able to do it. Yeah, that's because they're a business family. They're in the business of politics. And these other people are real families. And I think it is quite notable when the ex-wife of your current husband seems to like you more than the current wife of Donald Trump likes him. We'll be back in a minute.

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All backed by Constant Contact's expert live customer support. Ready, set, grow. Go to ConstantContact.ca and start your free trial today. Go to ConstantContact.ca for your free trial. ConstantContact.ca Let's talk about what's going to come next. for your free trial. Constantcontact.ca. Let's talk about what's going to come next. I'd love each of you to talk about that. How do you expect she's going to spin it out? So let me start with Sarah and then V and Eugene, and then Noel have a very specific question for you. I mean, look, the big next thing, they're going to

barnstorm. They're going to go to the swing states. I hope that they deploy walls in some of the more rural areas, not because I think the Democrats are going to win in rural areas, but because they need to lose less badly in those areas. And I think that he might be able to really help there. In an RV. I think the walls should get in an RV. Yeah. Like National Lampoon's vacation. That's my feeling. With nothing on the side, just like a regular RV. Yeah, him driving. But the next real inflection point is going to be the debate, right? So, like, everybody got to make their own sort of singular, have their show, have their time.

But, like, we're heading into mono, a mono, excuse the phrase because it's wrong. excuse the phrase because it's wrong. But, you know, Donald Trump and Joe Biden had set up with both voters and perception a strong, weak frame, right? The idea was, okay, Trump is strong and Biden is weak and frail. And voters were really seeing that. And so I thought to Noelle's point earlier about how Kamala delivered this speech, they understand that they are trying to, they have to, she has to be strong, right? They have to break out of this strong, weak frame. But nothing is going to matter more than doing that when she is on stage with Donald Trump. And the opportunity to make him look old, to get him back on his heels, which he clearly is, that's the next big inflection point. All right. V, you go next, and then Eugene.

I agree. I think it's taking the momentum and the excitement that we have and trying to keep that up. And how do we keep that up? Does she continue to release merch collabs with really cool designers as she did right before? I mean, the Harris Walls hat was like the hottest thing to possibly try and get right now. And for me personally, having the experience I did, and I think the creators having the experience they did at the DNC with traditional media, there is a little bit of a competition being set up now where we're like, well, are we going to do our own live streams? Are we going to create competitive content for what we typically see from a debate on television? And so for me, September 10th in Philadelphia is the place

that I plan to be. We're going to try and do the live streams again, maybe with our own kind of interactive games, making a little bit more fun. I understand that the folks on TV have to keep a real straight face, but I don't think anybody's looking for a straight face right now. They want that sort of like, for lack of a better word, WWE showmanship to the debate stage. We want to be able to cheer or make comments back or take a shot or play your bingo card or wear your merch or whatever. The thing that we did at this convention was build community in a way that I don't think that we ever had the opportunity before. And I will exemplify that by the friendship bracelet stations. So all throughout the convention center

were places to make a friendship bracelet. And if you sat down and made one, you had about 20 minutes to talk to whoever else was there. And I met a ton of people making bracelets. And I think that is the kind of fun stuff that we want to keep up. And we want to keep creating these moments of community and in-person connection. It's almost like maybe because Coach Walls is in there,

I'm looking forward to the next like political tailgate. So that's what I'm looking forward to. I don't even like football. And now I still don't like football. But I wish he had had said the one football trope he didn't use by the way was now give her the ball and let's get her to the end zone he didn't do that that was the only one he was waiting for he did all of them but that one which I was like oh I know that's true um uh Noel you've been doing a lot of—oh, no, Eugene. Sorry, Eugene.

Go ahead. Yeah. I mean, the thing that I thought was just so interesting about all of this is that the excitement in this party is insane. I don't know how else to describe it. Like, for people who have been coming to the convention since the 70s, they said they have only seen this in 2008. This is Obama. That was Obama. This is Obama-esque. And they're trying not to compare the two Black people.

Like liberals are like, I don't want you to think I'm comparing them, but like actually it does feel similar. And how you continue that is all of those people that were on stage, it is very kind of easy to get on stage. You get five to 10 minutes to talk to a huge audience. That means that maybe you, if you're a politician, will get some money thrown your way from voters who are paying attention. Maybe you get a book deal out of it. But getting on the road and going to like a crappy coffee shop and talking to voters on behalf of the campaign, that's a different thing, right? So how do they get out and utilize the most popular Democrats in the party, first of all, with the Obamas? What does that actually look like?

So the Obamas, what do they do with walls? One Democrat told me every Friday he should go to a swing state, pick a city, and go to the Friday night football game, do a speech at the beginning, have a rally on Saturday, and then do it again the next week. And just do that over and over and over again because it will feel authentic to him. Friday Night Lights. Friday Night Lights. I played college football. People are always surprised because I wear nail polish and heels now, but I did play college football. So, you know, I understand it. The attacks are coming and how they bounce those off also is going to be really fascinating, right? Republicans have done a really poor job of attacking Harris. They're not sure what to do.

Donald Trump can't stay focused on what his campaign wants him to do. Which is why he's attacking walls. Which is why he's attacking walls. He can only attack a white man. And his attack was that he's not, he wasn't a coach. He was an assistant coach, is what he truthed on the night that Harris gave her speech. But also, you know, and I know that everyone's going to roll their eyes because of a reporter talking about her doing an interview.

But I think that that is an important aspect of this because voters do want to see her not just doing interviews, but doing things that are a little more off the cuff, that are a little more unscripted. I don't know how much that matters with 70-something days, but I think it matters for the narrative of all of this, right? But, Noelle, you've been doing a lot of reporting

on how various coalitions that Harris might be expecting to tap into are reacting. It's not all great. She talked about immigration and border security in her speech and blamed Donald Trump for killing the bipartisan border bill, which that was a big theme at the event. You spoke to folks on the Chicago South Side, it's a predominantly Black neighborhood.

I want to play a clip from Corey Brooks, senior pastor at New Beginnings Church in Chicago. How do you feel about Kamala Harris? Well, you know, I think that her policies are lacking. I think she has not spelled out enough. And then a lot of people feel as if, too, she was the immigration czar, but they're pushing that in. How do you think her immigration policy impacts November, for example? to remind people that there was a bipartisan bill that was Democrats and conservative Republicans came together and then Donald Trump blew it up. That was smart. Pastor Cory Brooks was probably not listening last night. He's a very conservative man. He's voting for Donald Trump. He's always voted for Republicans. He doesn't really care what she has to say. But I'll tell you what I found on the south side of Chicago. So I was reporting from outside of the convention on this

dynamic happening in the southern part of the city. This is a majority Black, highly disinvested, high crime area. And Governor Greg Abbott has been sending buses of migrants to Chicago for exactly two years. He started this in August two years ago. Many of those people have ended up on the south side, where the people who already live there are saying, these folks are coming in and the city government, the state government, and the federal government are doing a lot more for them than they are for us. They're getting housing, they're

getting cars, they're getting gift cars for clothes. Now, not all of this is true, but it is the impression that people have. So I did a lot of calling and walking around the South Side. And one thing that I heard, and I was kind of surprised, was almost everybody I spoke to was Black. Almost everybody I spoke to said, I think I'm going to vote Republican this year. And a couple of people were really, really almost hyperbolic. I think Chicago is going to go red this year because we are so frustrated by immigration. We are so frustrated by the fact that the Biden administration hasn't done anything. Now, what's super interesting is at this convention, Greg Abbott had threatened to send more buses of migrants to Chicago. Like, he really wanted to do it. But my understanding

is he couldn't find enough because Joe Biden's sort of ban on asylum dating back to June has made it so that the situation at the border really has calmed down quite a bit. So, Greg Abbott didn't get his win this week. but what I heard was just an enormous amount of frustration. Not even, you know, most of the people I was talking to, I was in a church setting, a lot of people are Christians. It wasn't like a, we hate these people. It was, we're sympathetic to them.

We understand that they're coming here, you know, for some very real reasons, but why is the federal government giving them all this stuff when we've been on the south side of Chicago in this highly disinvested area for, you know, 20, 40, 30, 50 years and can't get the federal government to even look our way. Do you think Chicago could go red? Yeah, I mean, now, look, I asked an analyst about that, and this man cackled at me. He was like, no, ma'am, not in a million years. But what I think it speaks to— That's what Eugene Daniels is cackling at. There's a real—Eugene also cackling. There's a sense of frustration. And you know, you guys know how.

I'm not a political reporter. I'm a generalist. But you know how sometimes everybody is saying the same thing. And there's a sense that even if these people aren't like sitting down and talking to each other, there is a conversation in which everybody is saying the same thing. So you hear one person say the South Side is going to turn red. Okay, it's nonsense. But then you hear like 12 or 13 people say it and they're all in different spaces. And that's when it gets kind of interesting, you know? Yeah. Or say the same thing that's incorrect. In 2015, I was at a party

where all the political reporters were saying, Donald Trump's a clown, and he's in entertainment. And I was like, I've watched all the apprentices. I think he's going to win. He's very charming. He's very funny. And he's a poor person's idea of a rich person. Speaking of online reactions, both V and Sarah, Donald Trump was ranting about Kamala Harris's speech in real time on True Social. It seemed, I don't know if it's unprecedented, it was certainly weird. Then he immediately called into Fox to complain some more and they actually cut him off. They kept trying to, it was rambly as usual. How do you think this goes over with people following him? There was a lot of attacks on him. And he had, of course, because he's such a narcissist,

he had to respond. But Sarah, you talk first about this, because I think it was obviously a strategy to get under his skin, which worked beautifully. Yeah, I mean, it's easy to get under this guy's skin because he's got so thin. Donald Trump is obviously racist and obviously sexist. And a Black woman dominating him, the best line of that convention last night, actually, was D.L. Hughley saying, he was talking about the Republicans for Harris, and he was saying,

now Donald Trump's going to know what it feels like to be left for a younger woman. Man, that was a good line. But a Black woman beating him is making him crazy. And his campaign doesn't know how to respond, doesn't know how to control him in this situation. Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita do not look smart in this moment. It looks like they had no idea how to anticipate this change and don't know how to run a campaign in this new environment. So him being online, what does that do? Because that's where he sort of lives

and agrees besides his rallies. The thing that's happening right now is because he's doing that thing where he picks up the phone to call Fox News. And so Martha McCallum and Brett Baier, this thing is interesting. Not only is he rambling, not only do they look kind of bored, but they're like, hey, she's doing better with Hispanics. She's doing better with Black voters. She's picking up momentum. Like, what do you think of that? And he's like, she's not doing great. I'm doing great. And I'll tell you, when you talk to swing voters who went from Trump to Biden, and you ask why, or even now, people who voted for Trump even twice, and they're out on him now. Yes, why? And it's like, he's a jerk. I don't like him. I'm sick of him. You know, it's just, sometimes they say January 6th.

Sometimes they talk about how he talks about women, but mostly it's like this guy sucks. And the more that they see of him, the more they remember this guy sucks. And so her baiting him into being the absolute worst version of himself. Why did he do so well with Biden? He just let Biden kind of crater himself. And Donald Trump was just, they had him chilled. He wasn't saying much. And that is the best version of Trump that you can get for the American people.

But right now he's the worst version. And I think that's the part that Kamala Harris can accentuate going into the rest of this election. So, V, you know, they've been doing that. They've been baiting him. They've been baiting J.D. Vance. And J.D. Vance keeps giving them material. The donut thing was so painful. For people to know, he went to a donut store and couldn't order a donut. And the woman there was unimpressed with his donut skills, which everyone should have donut skills, I feel like. I think that's one commonality. For him to say, yeah, just give me whatever makes sense. Who doesn't have a favorite donut? He's just not a person, you know what I mean? Name your favorite donut and then tell me, how does this play out online? Because most of it I've noticed is quite anti-Trump fans, quite positive, fun.

Her. It is absolutely that. My favorite thing of last night was when Donald Trump was tweeting, and they called him Captain Caps Lock, because it was like all Caps Lock stuff. And he's like, is she talking about me? And that was the tweet. And then Kamala HQ reposted it and was like, well, yes. And also, where's Hunter?

Where's Hunter was one that got thrown out there. I mean, this man is out of control because he didn't think he was going to have to ever truly address her. Because to address her, he has to recognize that she is his equal and his peer. And that is something that a racist, sexist man like Donald Trump will not do. He will not accept that it's him and a strong Black woman. And also, she's a prosecutor, and he's a criminal, and she's likable and cool and has the culture, and he can't get one person other than Lee Greenwood to allow him to use his music. I think everything she has done has hit nerves on him, both directly and indirectly. It was no mistake that every single state had a song.

And this was saying, I have the culture. I have the music. I have the people. People are excited to party and show up with me. The songs that you want to play at your rallies, there was a bunch of like Yacht Rocky stuff in there too. They won't let you play, but they let me play because they're at my party. I think she is doing such an incredible job of meeting him and shutting it down in a way that like... Yeah, Kamala HQ is fantastic. And it's the other creators who are jumping in on it. It is also helping us with the trolls, right? So while she's meeting Donald Trump, right, and the Tim Wall stuff and the J.D. Vann stuff is going, we are able to deal with a lot of the trolls and the right-wing creators and

provocateurs in the same way because she's creating kind of like a model for how to handle them. And it's not to be afraid of them or to call them out or to try and like scold them. It's to make fun of them and call them weird. And nothing has been more effective. And so it's been quite a joy. So one of the things that the days of they go low, we go high are pretty clearly over. I'd love each of you to talk very briefly about there were a lot of personal attacks and they were accurate personal attacks, I think, is the problem. It's saying they're out of their damn mind or, you know, what's wrong with them kind of thing. But what they are portraying him is larger than life democracy killing villain anymore. Right. Although she did reference it.

He's an unserious man, yet he's dangerous, right? So that I thought was very deft. We talked about how people call him small and serious. Barack Obama with the penis joke was epic, you know, with the use of his hands. Shocking. Shocking, but fantastic. I couldn't believe it.

I couldn't believe it. I believe it. But he also said he was a neighbor who keeps running a leaf blower outside your window, which I think more people can relate to. And I think the part

of saying that, you know, democracy, democracy's on the line, you're like, oh man, fuck, I've got to like feed my kids this morning. I can't save democracy.

Maybe later, I need an app, like kind of thing. It seems okay to be insulting as long as it's funny, correct? I think that's probably right. I think it's also like if it feels true, right? Like when Donald Trump goes around and calls Vice President

Harris dumb, like she clearly isn't, right? Like, you know, that is an objective fact that she's like not, right? Like that's not like a thing that people will believe. And kind of the diminishing aspect of it is really interesting. The frame of they are weird and dangerous is something that Vice President Harris hasn't been saying explicitly, but if you pay attention to how she's been talking about this election, even when she was the running mate, she wasn't using the word democracy. She was using the word freedom from jump, right? She had been talking about the freedom to do X, Y, and Z for a very long time. It's something that she's been talking about even before. When Dobbs came down and she went out on stage at that event,

she talked about freedom. And that became kind of a core part of the campaign. But President Biden talks about it as democracy. And when I talk to her allies in AIDS, folks that are on the campaign, and even in the White House, what they say is that the word democracy means different things to different people, right? Like, when you say democracy to Black and brown people or poor people, they are probably like, well, democracy hasn't been working for me. This is what we got? Like, I don't know. I still can't feed my damn kids. The cops give me a hard time. I can't put gas in my car. They're saying democracy is not working for them. When you say we want to give you freedom, this is something Republicans used to really understand. Those serotonin head

is bursting because the idea that Democrats have kind of been able to take the word freedom and utilize it in this really kind of fascinating way for a political reporter, is completely opposite of how this party used to work. And so her, in Walls, when he says, you know, basically just stay out of people's damn business. And so for her to be talking about freedom and not democracy, I think it is more easily understandable. And you tie that with these guys are just weird. Like, she does believe that he's a danger to democracy. She does believe that, right?

She talked about how he wants to be a dictator on day one and that the Supreme Court, in her estimation, has given him everything he needs to do whatever he wants. But then you have to make it digestible for people. Does that messaging work, both funny and also easier? I know it sounds crazy, but she sounded a little like Reagan there for a minute. You know, she had a Reagan-esque kind of messaging, which was interesting. I'm telling you guys, I felt very at home at this convention in a way that was surprising to me thematically. Democrats like flags and lesbians now. So, so listen, I gotta, I gotta tell you, I gave a whole TED talk about this and I'm just going to

give you the top line of my TED talk. And it was about how voters do not understand what democracy is when you say it, that it does mean different things to different people. And it's also polarized this word. It's this esoteric word that's polarized. Like Democrats think Republicans are a threat to democracy because they stormed the Capitol and wouldn't accept the election results. But Republicans think Democrats are a threat to democracy because they think they stole the election. And so it doesn't matter when you do that. You have to talk about the specifics. And also, if you want to tell a better story about democracy, it's about telling a better story about America, right? Because voters don't understand what democracy is, but like they, in their gut, they understand kind of like, it's like

what we do here in America. So like, how are you going to tell them a better story about America? And that is what Kamala Harris did. She grabbed freedom and talked about what it meant for reproductive rights, for who you love. My colleague over at the Bulwark was keeping tabs on this. The terms that were used in Harris's speech, America, American, Americans, she used that 34 times. She used Democrats or Democratic Party zero times. She talked about country or nation 20 times, freedom 12 times, family or families eight times, opportunity six times, race or gender once, and the freeze was regardless of party, race, or gender. She was nailing it in terms of how do you talk to everyday people? And I'll tell you one of the things people always underestimate about Donald Trump. Donald Trump has the vocabulary of a 10

year old, but as a result, he is also very accessible when he talks to voters. Voters are not thinking about democracy. And so she was talking in ways, they are out of their damn minds. She's talking in ways that connect with people where they are, not just the political media. And I thought that that was what, I was like fist pumping. I've been wanting Democrats for the last nine years. You want to beat Republicans? Donald Trump talks about America right now as a third world country. We are a dark, terrible place. Go grab the optimism of America from him and reclaim it. Man, Dems, take the flag back. Sarah, you tweeted, which you never do, and

everyone was like, you never do things like this. You said Trump was going to lose. Why did you say that? You know, I was in the Aspen Ideas stage when Joe Biden had his debate. And so we'd done a pregame. And I was like, look, guys, voters think he's too old to do this job and he has to disabuse them of that notion tonight and turn this thing around. And when he didn't, I went back up there at the end and I was like, he's got to drop out. Last night, she had to show the American people I can do this job. And I was sitting there being like, she's either going to crush this speech or it's going to be like lackluster. And when she got started, she started a little slow. It was a little bio-y. And I was like, it's cool about your mom, but we're not going to elect your mom. So like,

where is this? And then man, she hit that so hard. The speech was pitch perfect. Everything about it showed she could do that job, that she could leave. She reassured the American people that she could do it. And I just sat there and Donald Trump was so mad and so upset about it. And I was like, you know, I guess League of Their Own is one of my favorite movies. And there's this part where Tom Hanks is just going, we're going to win. We're going to win. And that is how I felt after that speech. And so that's why I think Trump's going to lose. I did something similarly crazy to Sarah's colleague. So I think this weird, this attack, this go low, I think it works if you're going after him. I don't think it works if you're going after his voters. People are sensitive. It's mean. Nobody wants to be hurt. Sure, they're not

doing that. They're not doing that. This morning, I pulled up his transcript, Donald Trump's RNC transcript, and I pulled up hers, and I control left, how often did they say the word they? She used they, I think, 15 times, mostly in relation to her parents. They came here, they did this, they did that. She did not use they to attack Donald Trump's voters. Donald Trump used the word they 220 times all over the place, but frequently about his perceived enemies in the United States, they who will not vote for him. And I thought it was really, really controlled. And I'm not surprised that she knew to control herself, but it was really controlled to say, I will go after him. I'm not going to talk about his voters at all. I'm just going to say, hey, guys, if you're interested in what's going on over here, like, check us out.

The other thing I love that she did is she never talked about the glass ceiling. She didn't talk about her gender or her race. I'm so sick of hearing about the glass ceiling. I think it puts this really difficult visual border on people. And I'm glad that Hillary Clinton had it and sort of finished it out, and now we don't talk about that maybe anymore. And it's just about sort of like breaking the fever dream that has been Trumpism for the last nine years, and saying

like, we actually do like each other. We actually are friends. America is the greatest nation in the world. You know. We'll be back in a minute. and excitement is a really important question. How can AI actually work for you? And where should you even start? Claude from Anthropic may be the answer. Claude is a next-generation AI assistant built to help you work more efficiently without sacrificing safety or reliability. Anthropic's latest model, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, can help you organize thoughts, solve tricky problems, analyze data,

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That's anthropic.com slash Claude. That's right. now features a series hosted by Capital Group CEO, Mike Gitlin. Through the words and experiences of investment professionals, you'll discover what differentiates their investment approach, what learnings have shifted their career trajectories, and how do they find their next great idea. Invest 30 minutes in an episode today. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Published by Capital Client Group, Inc. Paris does have vulnerabilities.

I talked to a number of people in our campaign. It's not just talk of we got to work, we got to work, or the underdog. They really are very worried about Pennsylvania, it seems. I want to talk about these vulnerabilities because the numbers still are very close, right? Eugene, first, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is expected to make the announcement this afternoon to the nation near a Trump campaign event. I bet they'll appear together

to drop out of the race and endorse Trump. Impacts on the race? Eugene first and then Sarah. With RFK, it's been confusing what he does and who he pulls from.

And because he has this Kennedy name, I had a really fascinating conversation with one of my great aunts when I was home earlier this year. And she was like, I like that Kennedy. I was like, why?

I mean, I showed her some of his policies. She was like, never mind. I take it back. Justice is probably going to kill me for telling that story. But I think that he is—posts still have him in kind of mid-single digits in some of these swing states. It's declined precipitously. Exactly. And he's pulling from Trump's support more than Harris in most of these things.

But the margins matter in a lot of these states, right? I don't know that, you know, he's going to tell these people to vote for, his voters to vote for Trump and they're just going to do it. I think probably many of them will stay home. But in margin, in places like Pennsylvania, the Harris campaign has to pay a lot of attention to every single voter. And they say that they are, but you really have to pay much more attention to every little shift because it's going to be a close election, kind of no matter what. They're really feeling good right now. They continue to say, like, we are the underdogs. And they do seem to be operating like that on the behind the scenes.

And when they're saying that, Cara, they're saying it not just to themselves and the, like, we are the underdogs. And they do seem to be operating like that behind the scenes. And when they're saying that, Cara, they're saying it not just to themselves and, like, the don't be complacent on the campaign. They're saying it to Democrats. They're saying, like, this is all fun, and we like that y'all are coconut-pilled, and we like that y'all, you know, y'all wearing, you're saying Kamala's brat. But, like, we need you to get out there and go talk to your friends and family. We need you to actually go to eastern North Carolina, western Pennsylvania, and go knock on doors and do all of those kinds of things. So, Sarah, what about that, the RFK impact? And she does have money. She trounced Trump in July. Extraordinary amounts of money are coming in. So, there is that to help do that. But what are

your thoughts on that? Yeah, look, I think that people are maybe overestimating how important the Kennedy thing is. I was seeing a ton of Kennedy curiosity when it was Biden, because there were a lot of soft Biden voters who were like, this guy's too old to do the job. So like, let me look at this other third party. But once Kamala got in, she basically pulled all those people back. And you've watched Kennedy's numbers drop precipitously, which is why he's getting out now, because he can't even have an impact. He's trying to make a deal with somebody while he's still got a few points to offer in the polling. However, here's the thing about the RFK voters. They're kind of a weirdo mix. Here's the thing. You know what they're mad at Trump about? It's so funny that he did the vaccine. The Trumpier Kennedy voters

are mad that he did the vaccine. And so I think people are thinking, well, Kennedy's got 4% in Michigan. And so Trump's going to suddenly pick up 4% in Michigan. I do not think that's the right math. I think Trump picks up 0.4% in Michigan. Like I think some of those voters do go to him, but I think a lot of them just are like, okay, my third party, you know, thing that I'm into is gone now. I don't care anymore. Going back to Jill Stein. V, talk about that. So, RFK Jr. has been hosting these town halls on TikTok almost every day with leftist creators, and that's fucking over, okay, if he endorses Trump, because he already stepped in it by saying

that he doesn't support Palestine and that he's very pro-Israel. And they sort of like excused that, right, even though Palestine was their biggest thing. And I think they go to Jill Stein if they go anywhere, but I don't know that he actually had the pull of actual people who are registered to vote and show up to vote. so much as he had the edgelords of the internet and the sort of like bros of the internet who like to be malicious and sort of like stir shit up and like try to be important. And the lives on TikTok are over as soon as he's not the candidate and he endorses Trump.

And I think him endorsing Trump just double proves to a lot of folks whose friends got minorly Kennedy-pilled, see, that guy was a liar and he's a jerk just like Trump's a liar and a jerk. And so I don't know that the Kennedy factor factors in. And we have Jack Schlossberg who says, that's my cousin and he's a weirdo. Noelle, talk about your thoughts. And then I have one last question for all of you. What do you think we're going to see her focus on in the campaign right now, the concerns of complacency?

I don't think she's complacent at all by any means. I even saw a video of her at the party and she's like, you all can party, but you better be ready tomorrow morning to fuck it up, like not in a good way, right? What's the next thing besides the debate? Obviously, debate is a big deal and the walls Vance debate, where I think J.D. Vance is going to cry and hug coach. That's what I think is going to happen at that debate. But your thoughtsance is going to cry and hug Coach. That's what I think is going to happen at that debate. But your thoughts on where it goes next and the vulnerability. So here's the thing. I think the big vulnerability for Kamala Harris is how many of Donald Trump's voters go to vote this year, in all honesty.

It's a half and half election. Millions and millions and millions of Americans love Donald Trump. And if every one of them goes out and vote or if most of them go out and vote, we're still talking about 2016, right? It's half and half. What does she do next? Okay. I don't know because I'm not a political strategist, but what I will tell you is this. I would like to see her talk about the economy a lot, a lot, a lot. Because I think at the end of the day, I think that's what a lot of voters vote on when they go out to the polls. Not the people who are like, oh, he's going to end democracy, but the people who are like, I need an act. Right, I'm going to bring your housing costs down, I'm going to bring your drug prices down, I'm going to bring your grocery prices down.

Stop the price gouging. Americans love to hear that price gouging is going to stop. Yeah, I just think the economy is a smart move if she's got a smart message. All right, we started with vibes. Let's end there, too. Conventions are branding moments and marketing moments, obviously, and it was actually a lot of fun. with vibes, let's end there too. Conventions are branding moments and marketing moments, obviously. And it was actually a lot of fun. What messages of all of them, if you had to pick one, we talked about joy, freedom, hope, together, not going back, moving forward, when we fight, we win. Which one is the most resonant to you of all of them? And I'll start, not going back works, but that's not the one I think was good. I think forward was my favorite line. Like,

let's go forward. Because as much as he goes, we're not going back. I'm like, where are you going? Like, you know, like, okay. You standing? I like that. I like that. But where are you going? So I thought forward was for me. Sarah, let's start with you. Then Eugene, Noel, and V, you end it. I think the leaning into the freedom aspect, I think the grabbing the themes that the Republicans seem to have left on the cutting room floor is the right way to go. But I'll tell you one thing, she's got to start putting a little bit of meat on the bones policy-wise.

People are going to want to see that and voters are going to want, they're like, they really are listening. I'm listening to swing voters all the time who are like, hey, I'm here, I'm listening, I'm open to the pitch, what's she got? Tell me. She has got to say, here is what I'm for. And that is part of going forward. And look, she doesn't need a million policy briefs. For God's sake, please keep it nice and tight. But she's got to have some. And I'll tell you, the vulnerability for Democrats on immigration is something they underestimate at their peril all the time, including in these swing states, it's downward pressure on wages. There's just a lot in it. And Democrats have got to figure out how to talk about that. I thought she did a good job last night, but it's downward pressure on wages. Like, there's just a lot in it, and Democrats have got to figure out how to talk about that.

I thought she did a good job last night, but it's still too high level. Eugene? Just on that point really quickly, when they did the state of Black America, you know, I think she's a DA at the time, and they're talking about crime. And she has this, like, really,

a bunch of her allies saying that she was like, this is how we should be talking about crime. Because she talks about it as, we don don't want in kind of a way that most people probably think about it we want to be able to walk down the street as black people and not be accosted by the police but we also want our grandmothers and that's the example she uses

to not be accosted by criminals and so like her how she does that and she has this she wrote this book Smart on Crime and I did an interview with her and she kind that. That's what I was pointing out. Yeah, and she has this, she wrote this book, Smart on Crime. And I did an interview with her, and she kind of laughed that she thought it was going to start a different conversation in the country about crime. And if you will look in there, those policies are kind of how she speaks about these things. But on kind of, like, the frame and the words that work moving forward, I think the freedom one does. Because, one, it's a Beyonce song, so there's that.

And no Beyonce. Do not get me started. Me and TMZ on site, on site. TMZ reported she was there, and she was indeed not. But the freedom aspect of this and telling voters, all I want to do is make it easier for you to do whatever the hell you want. Like, that is something I think that resonates with people no matter who it is. For me, it was Michelle Obama. It was the make your bed, wash your face, put your pants on, and do something.

For the next 70 days, I think do something is a really good way to activate people, and it's quick. It's quick. Right, and it says stop complaining, get going. All right, Vae, you end it all? From the youth vote, I'm going to tell you, based on the bracelets that were made for me, that the theme for them is balls to the walls. In my politics era, they did make me an adult one that says when we fight, we win.

But I think overall, this was the key to the whole thing, which is don't vote weird. Oh, wow. So I think the takeaway for the kids in Gen Z is going to have a huge impact on this because they go in a group. They're making it a group activity. They do vote on vibes is don't vote weird. Balls to the walls.

When we fight, we win. All right. Thank you so much. You guys are great. This has been a really wonderful conversation. Rest up. It's, you know, 70 days. Balls to the wall, I guess.

For all of you. All right. Thank you so much, everybody. Bye, for all of you. All right. Thank you so much, everybody. Bye, guys. Thank you. Bye. Thank you. On with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castro-Russell, Kateri Yochum, Jolie Myers,

Megan Burney, Sheena Ozaki, and Gabriela Bielo. Special thanks to Kate Gallagher, Kate Furby, and Kaylin Lynch. Our engineers are Rick Kwan, Fernando Arruda, and Aaliyah Jackson. And our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you get a Kamala Harris friendship bracelet. If not, balls to the wall and no donuts for you. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine,

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