The Chris Cuomo Project - 5 Things Kamala Harris Needs To Beat Donald Trump

Episode Date: August 1, 2024

Chris Cuomo outlines a detailed five-point plan for how Kamala Harris can beat Donald Trump in the 2024 election. Drawing insights from campaign insiders, pollsters, and political strategists, Cuomo outlines how Harris can appeal to independent voters, leverage the “Anyone But Trump” sentiment, harness a potential movement, engage female voters, and dominate in swing state cities. Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday: https://linktr.ee/cuomoproject Join Chris Ad-Free On Substack: http://thechriscuomoproject.substack.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Benefits vary by card, other conditions apply. You wanna know how Kamala Harris can beat Donald Trump? Good. I'm Chris Cuomo. Welcome to the Chris Cuomo Project. I have a five point plan that I would like to say I have, but I've been talking to people that are fundamental around Harris's campaign

because of the infrastructure that was around the Biden campaign. Talking to pollsters, talking to their opinion shapers, their thought leaders on the Democratic side, party officials, and those who study elections past. There are five basic points that could point Harris towards a win. Support for the Chris Cuomo Project comes in part from AG1. Listen, I've been using AG1 for a long time, long before I've been podcasting, and for good reason. It's one and done. One scoop, one cup of water, you're done. Second, I know that they are research-backed. They reflect on studies, they have an in-house team that's constantly tweaking the formula. The studies are there, they're easy to find. And AG1 focuses on gut health and the health support that I need. It's easier, they've done the mixing and matching of what gets absorbed well with what and in what amounts for me,

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go to drinkag1.com slash CCP. I do and I recommend it to you. Check it out. Now, my favorite is the first. The first point is you. Kamala Harris needs to win independent critical thinkers. Okay? The non-college educated has been a stronghold

of the right, specifically the fringe right, specifically the fringe right MAGA movement. I'll talk about that, but the real battleground, we usually use that for states, now counties, is really constituency. Independent voters will determine the outcome of this election. Why? Because neither Republican, to be sure, because they have a registration deficit, right, there are more registered Democrats in the country

than Republicans. Why? Big cities and populations, population centers. But it is believed that the Democrats don't have a big enough registration advantage in cities, in states that matter, swing states, to make a difference from where the needle is right now. There's too much baked in. Okay, so what does that mean? That means you look for the X factors. Now, the traditional reckoning of an election was thirds. A third, a third, a third, I heard, my whole upbringing.

Why? A third of the voters are with you. I heard my whole upbringing. Why? A third of the voters are with you. They're in-party faithful. A third of the voters hate your guts. They are out of party, opposite party haters. Never going to get them. The first third, never going to lose them. Which means what? It's a battle of a third, and that third would shift depending on what constituency, what mood, what moment. Okay? However, right now, the independent voter is the fastest growing part of the electorate, right? A plurality of Americans now self-describe as neither Republican nor Democrat with prejudice. Okay?

So, my first one is the best. You are going to determine this election. Free agents. Free agents. So, whoever focuses on them, and that is Harris' plan to talk to the people who don't vote by party. She's going to talk to the people who don't vote by party. She's going to speak to them directly. She's going to speak to them with propositions that supposedly resonate with independents.

Like what? A lot of the things that we in the media dismiss, fears about democracy, proper functioning of government, how things are staffed, how things work, how much gets done, all that boring shit that people ignore all the time and Trump waves a hand at. Independence care. Okay, does Kamala Harris have challenges with independence? Absolutely. Her background, her disposition, her political history, her political pedigree are all a mixed bag for Harris. A lot of that is optics and for her to correct, but I'm gonna get to a point of how to do that

a little bit from now. But the first one is Kamala Harris beats Donald Trump by winning independence. Okay, number two, the ABT vote is gonna dominate this election, anyone but Trump. Why? People hate Trump so much? He is an unlikable sort for a lot of the country.

What people on the right and some in conservative or faux conservative circles find owning the left and rent free in their head and they're not in on the joke and they get the wink. To a lot of other people, it's none of those things. It's a ridiculously absurdly lowered bar for principle, for character, for personal industry, for personal competency, for personal class for personal competency, for personal class, that Trump falls well below. There are a lot of voters in this country, perhaps enough, who find him to be unacceptable, disqualified in their opinion.

So that's the anyone but Trump vote. Now, some of that dovetails with fears about the democracy. Look, I don't traffic in that much. No disrespect to your feelings, okay? I could be wrong. I just believe that in understanding Trump, understanding the people around him, understanding what he did the last time,

understanding what's motivating him this time, I just don't give him enough credit to be an autocrat or a despot. He wouldn't know what to do with the power. He needs people to blame. He doesn't want it all on his shoulders. He may like the idea of it. He may seem to be attracted to tough guys or whatever he perceives as a tough guy, despots,

autocrats. I mean, I think harshness and meanness is some of the signature human frailties. So I don't see those people as strong. But if you look at them, an examination of people who are autocratic, they have a sense of history. They are students of strategy and tactic. More often than not, he is none of those. So I don't share the fears of Trump as an existential threat to our democracy, but there are many who believe he is, and that's baked into the ABT vote. So point two for Kamala Harris is DBT.

Don't be Trump. Now that sounds easy, but it isn't. You have to be careful about slogans. Whatever her, focused on the future, unburdened by the past, focused on the future, unburdened by the past, focused on the future, whatever that thing is that she says three times every time she says it, gotta stop. Why? That's a positive thing. It's still a cheap, hackneyed play. And voters who want to reject Trump

don't want a lefty facsimile of him. That someone who's playing the same games of messaging, who's one inch deep, they don't want that. Don't be that. Don't be mean. Don't respond in kind. Okay? Now, women have to develop this talent anyway in public life and often in private life.

You don't get to play by the same rules that men do. It's not a fair standard. She gives Trump what he gives her, she'll be seen as a bitch. People won't say it out loud, but that's what they'll be thinking. Especially as a brown woman. There's a lot of animus, there's a lot of prejudice, there's a lot of bias. Real and also, you know, explicit and also implicit. So I think that the debate, she will slap the snot out of Trump. She is a much more capable debater. It's not even a close call. I've examined them both at close range, okay? I've shared a stage with Harris, okay?

I've seen her work the crowd. I've seen her think. I've seen her act in the moment. It's not close. In fact, she may have the burden of too high a bar because it's gonna be too understood that she's to smack the snot out of him. That said, how she does it matters. There is a growing discontent with anger and desperation and hostility and meanness. People don't want it anymore. They're sick of it. They're overwhelmed by it.

It's everywhere. It's all of social media. It's all of politics. All the time. It's leached its way into the media. People don't want it. They want an antidote, not a virus, into the political corpus. That's what Trump is. He is the spirit animal of the aggrieved. He is a virus to the political corpus, not an antidote. He's not something that makes you get well. He makes you so sick that the resulting fever will hopefully burn out all the things that people who want Trump to be the disruptor in chief

believe they need boiled out and that the body will survive, come out of the sweat. Oh, where was I? believe they need boiled out and that the body will survive, come out of the sweat. Where was I? Oh, I'm back to being whatever they think it is. That's not gonna work for Harris. She can't be Trump. She can't play as a demagogue.

She has to do what's harder, which is playing to our interconnectedness, playing to our interdependence, having a message, having a vision that is a positive progressive end that is pragmatic in its approach, not dogmatic. Dogmatic is far left. Dogmatic is she's a radical lefty. Dogmatic is she's the personification of DEI. Now the last one I just think is an unfair

play on the need for diversity, equity, and inclusion in our country. That's all we're about. The idea that those principles are somehow antagonistic to America is nonsense. How they are developed and enforced is a different subject, but that's not what we're talking about today. It will be used on Kamala Harris though that bias against DEI is being forced on the majority and Not about merit not about making us better. Just it's about elevating some better for some not better for all That's gonna be there. She needs an antidote She needs an antidote. She can't just look and say the problem is all these dumb bigoted crackers She can't do that. That's going to be there. She needs an antidote. She needs an antidote. She can't just look and say, the problem is all these dumb bigoted crackers. She can't do that. That's Trump's game. She can't be Trump. She can't respond in kind the same way. She has to be better than him.

And she has to be better than him with decency, not demonstrable condescension or arrogance. Those are kill shots for her. If she comes off, I'm smarter than you and I'm letting you know it. Rachel Maddow, great broadcaster, very smart. I called her the professor when I was up against her when I was at CNN at nine o'clock. Doesn't have a broader audience, why? Condescending, she's the Democrat

that's easy for you to be jealous of and therefore dislike. Kamala Harris can't be that. She can't be Trump. All right. I harp on that because it's layered and it really matters and it's frustrating and it seems unfair. Welcome to politics. If she wants to win, that's how she does it. Number three is the biggest. And Harris is capable of it. Biden was not. And this is why the move makes sense. And to me, the only reason I am not convinced that Biden was going to lose. We're so far away from an election that's so tight. Trump is such a powder keg.

He's so divisive. He's so easy to dislike. I think it made the Democratic Party look weak, like they went bad on their own, which they continually do. And yes, I do have a bias when it comes to that, because I watched it happen with my brother. I'm not saying he didn't have anything to answer for. I'm saying the way they handled it was not the way that the Republican Party would have handled it. Now you may say, good, that's why we think Democrats are better. Fine. I think that it's more complicated, but it doesn't matter. They made the switch and Harris has an advantage that Biden did not. You could argue she has many, but you could also argue that she has negatives. Here's the point. Number three, a movement.

Harris has a chance at a movement. Now, some in the media and the cognoscenti, the chattering class, will say, oh Cuomo got duped by those Zoom calls. Here's how I see it. Black men for Harris, black women for Harris, white men for white dudes, whatever you call it, for Harris, 100,000, 200,000, 150,000. Never seen calls like that before of that volume. Well, nobody's really ever wanted to do that before. And that's because it doesn't really matter. You need tens of millions here, or you need millions, and not 100,000. That's silly window dressing.

Let me take you back, my friends, nine years ago to 2015 when Chris Cuomo was part of a cadre of journalists covering Donald Trump's early rallies, where I, sooner than many, realized, oh shit, I forgot what a big celebrity this guy is to the rest of the country, because I always saw him through the lens of New York City, where he was a joke, where he was lampooned, where he was infamous more than famous. One, I forgot that that line doesn't matter to a lot of Americans anymore, hence Kim Kardashian, right? You know, this generation of reality stars that are known for bad things but still famous and still sell things.

Big celebrity, 30,000 here, 40,000 there, 50,000 there. And we'd be like, yeah, but they're just big crowds. Yeah, but so what? They were evidence of a movement that was underway. I see the same suspicion with these calls of Harris. Now, not as easy to distill. Why? Because with Trump, it was grievance.

Okay? What is it motivating these people with Harris? Well, I think arguably, okay, though not as receptive, though not as radioactive, though not as simple, though not as easy, there is reaction formation to Trump and the harshness and the dominance of magnified minority voices by the majority. I believe it. And I think there's a movement in that. I think there is a movement of the reasonable of past left and right who want to get back to things that make sense. Just the way the right says it makes sense. But remember, what's the difference? The right is being sold a series of propositions

that the culture is in decay because of the radical left. Now, a lot of it is bullshit and taking single episodes and things that are real but discreet and blowing them up into trends. That doesn't need to be done. So it's easier to do that. It's harder to do the movement that I think may be coalescing around a Harris candidacy

bigger than her, just like MAGA is. The mistake is in believing that Donald Trump is bigger than MAGA. It's not true. And I'll prove it to you. If Donald Trump were to come out and say, all you people who say that taking the vaccine was stupid and that it's hurt more people than it's helped, you're idiots. Don't vote for me. He'd lose the election immediately because that fear and that anxiety

around the anti-vaxxers is bigger than Trump. He's their spirit animal. Okay. Not their master. There's a difference. Now, similarly, Harris has to recognize that, that she is an agent of a cause, that she is a convenience for these people. She is not the way, she is not the embodiment of who they want to be and what they want to be. It's not it. So she's got to be careful about it. But there's a chance of a movement.

And I learned it in 2015. A movement is real and possible. If Donald Trump, you know, not exactly the number, you know, the biggest virtue signaler I've ever seen in my life, you know, if he could get one behind him, Harris can too. Social media feeds media cycles now. And that's why social media is so important for Harris

and why she's all over TikTok and why it's killing Trump. That even though you can say the far right owns the internet and all that, they're not as coalesced behind him. They may be, we'll see. This is not a foolproof five-point plan. But social media spurs the media cycles and Harris is putting energy there that Biden's team hadn't even contemplated and it's working. It's working with younger voters, especially. They don't come out and vote, but what if they do? But what if they do? Idiots who can't pronounce the word Thailand don't usually become President of the United States. An alternative or an alternate pronunciation, spelling of potato, killed Dan Quayle's political career.

Donald Trump has broken all of the expectations and standards of the proficiencies that you expect from someone who wants to be president. So don't hold on to things too tightly. A lot of things are fungible. A lot of things can change. Social media feed cycles. Young people are there. They may come out and vote. We saw it after Parkland in a lot of elections, certainly in Florida, but around the country.

Young people came out and made their witness. Are you ready to make your witness as an independent? That's a huge part of point number one. So, as part of building this movement or harnessing it, harnessing it is better than building really as a verb because that's what she'd be doing. It's there on its own, it's organic. Forget the past. She cannot defend herself as Senator or as Attorney General or as a prosecutor. Forget it.

Use it where it's convenient. Do not defend your past. Forget the past. Learn from Trump. Now he just lies, defies and denies. That's his troika, that won't work for Harris. I know it's not fair. He gets to play by different rules, okay?

He is owned by a group of people who are more angry at the system than they are at any of the failings of his, so they forgive them or they don't weigh them or they discount them. That won't happen for Harris. She needs to forget her past because she's not gonna win if she's defending it all the time.

And I'm not saying it's a malignant past, but she's got problems there. She's gotta forget it. Border czar, she needs to do a spin on. She was not the border czar, but she's allowed herself to be defined by that. So now she's gotta work her way out of the hole. And the southern border is one of the three major, major obstacles for Harris winning

this election. She's got to figure out what to do with it without pissing off the far left. I think the far left has been shamed by their neglect and ignorance in the name of having a big heart, I guess, on the southern border. And tough love has got to be the minimum standard. And I think they realized that, which is why they've been quiet. Women, women, women, okay? Women, women, women, that's point four.

Could make it number one, but I don't like to limit women to just gender. However, if there were an election that was appropriately timed for women to make their witness, not since the introduction of the ERA, which never fucking passed, with all the awoke-ism, with all the Me Too, with everything that's going on, still don't have it codified as law. Not since then has there been a moment as propitious for women to make their witness. Why? We've never had a class had a right taken away from them before.

The spin on taking away Roe, the spin on taking away a national standard of respect for reproductive rights has been spun as, well, this is about the protection of the baby. It is a baby when it is a person, which means rights and privileges attach under the law. The moment of conception cannot be that moment unless you are religious. I am taught in my religion that that is the moment. Conception. The trick question is, well, when does potential life begin?

When does a human life begin? Of course it's at conception. What else can you make? A cactus. If two human beings do the horizontal mambo, the only thing that can occur is a human being. You're not gonna have a wolf, right? This isn't a movie.

But that's not the question. The question is, when is it a person? For purposes of legal rights and privileges. Is that at day zero? The viability standard said no. I believe that common sense and rationality says no. Religion has different interpretations. Judaism does. Different Eastern religions and philosophies do. Christianity does. It depends

on the sect of Christianity. Most of them say a conception. But that's religion. And that's your religious belief. It's not secular in its understanding. It's not scientific. Well, the science is that at the moment of conception, that's about potential life. That's not when it's a person. That's not when it's a person. So when is that point? Okay, that's the debate to have, but we didn't have it. We took it away from them. And now it's being decided by states that some of them are going crazy harsh. Some of them aren't, but some are. And now it's being decided by states that some of them are going crazy harsh. Some of them aren't, but some are.

And that's why you needed a national standard. And Trump did it. And he brags about it. And he says that women like it. And that's the mistake. We like it. No, we expected it. No, we feared it.

We like it. We like that there's no national standard. We like that men have gotten to say that women don't have domain over their bodies the way men do. Oh, it's different. Men don't make babies. It's a slippery fucking slope, my friends. That's how we got to IVF.

Now you're affecting me. Now you're affecting men all across this country who, with their chosen partner, haven't been able to naturally conceive. And you are saying it's debatable whether they should be able to do it that way. Oh yeah, but Trump said he wouldn't do it. Yeah, well, Trump used to believe in abortions and was rumored to personally believe in them.

And now look where we are. Women, women, women. Donald Trump is the personification of what most women in America detest. If there was someone to come out against, it is this man. This is a man who's not only been found by a jury to have sexually assaulted someone, he is unapologetic. He mocks the idea of cherishing women.

He does everything the women in your life, if you're a man, have taught you not to do. Okay? You mix taking away a right with having someone who is, to a lot of women, the prototype misogynist. Creep. You have women. And Kamala Harris would be the first female president and that matters. She is very, very cogent, very, very coherent, very persuasive when it comes to discussing the ramifications of the removal of Roe and what Dobbs has done and where it can lead for women. She is good at this. As weak as she is on the border,

she is strong on reproductive rights. And that's it, the word abortion should never come out of her mouth because it's about access to healthcare of what's going on in your body. If you're raped, if you're sick, if the fetus isn't well and it may disease the rest of the body, whatever the vagaries are, there's been a restriction. There's been a limitation. And that is motivation for women. More women, more women voters, voters, women vote more by percentage in the swing states.

Women, women, women. Number five, Kamala Harris needs to live in the swing states, specifically in the cities in the swing states from now until election day. Yes, she needs to do a lot more TV with unfriendlies like me. She's got to come on these shows and prove that she can face questions from whomever it is. And she can do so with a class and a dignity that makes her better than Trump. She has to do that, and if she doesn't, it will work against her. She cannot hide. And she can't just pick her friends. It won't work for independent voters. She's got to know that and if she doesn't it will work against her. She cannot hide and she can't just pick her

friends. It won't work for independent voters. She's got to know that. Yes, News Nation has a big hold on independent voters. She should come there. It doesn't have to be with me, but she should come there and she should come there often. Live in the swing states. Live in the cities in the swing states. You're not going to win Trump territories. You're not going to win Trump voters. You're going to beat him in those states because the population centers still matter. Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, maybe. Now you haven't heard me mention VP choice. Why?

I don't think it's a dispositive top five factor in what wins this for her. I think if she were to pick the governor of Minnesota or Senator Mark Kelly from Arizona, one doesn't determine the race versus the other. Minnesota is not as important a battleground. It may be a battleground, which is a sign of bad things to come for Democrats potentially. But Arizona is a real battleground. I don't know that Senator Mark Kelly can deliver it. I don't know that that's fair expectation.

Him being a military person, I don't know that that works with independent voters. I don't think it's a negative. I think it's absolutely a positive and an attribute and a virtue to have military experience and Kelly's the only guy in the mix with it. But I don't think VP. Look, the media will play it like it's a big deal. They'll play what it means. It means even more because the man as a second on the ticket may

loom larger because there's a woman and there's bias and prejudice involved. We'll discuss all of that. I don't think it's a top five factor. Living in the cities, in the swing states from now until election day is fundamentally important for Kamala Harris. She has to beat Trump in those states by overwhelming in the population centers, going to blacks, revitalizing their interest. There's going to be identity politics that will work in her favor more than not, but she's going to need more than that. The pain is real. The disaffection is real.

Saying that the economy is the best we've seen in a long time doesn't work as a narrative. People don't feel it. You have to talk to people's pocketbooks, what they're paying for their daily essentials. They're not thinking investment income. They're not thinking investment economy. They're not thinking asset economy. Speak to people by finding them where they are and what their specific concerns are. The unemployment rate is ridiculously low.

It's been so low for such a long time. I know. But if they're not making enough in the jobs that they have to live the way they want to live, they don't give a fuck about the unemployment rate. You have to know that. Gas being more, meaning they have less to go out and enjoy themselves, matters more than what's happening in the stock market or a 401k. You don't even have a majority of the country yet that's really looking towards a 401k

as their viable retirement plan. And they're worried about now. This is an incredibly short-term society. She has to speak to it that way in the big cities. I know food is too expensive. It's not all our fault, but I can fix it. Trump needs to own some of this, and this is how you know he won't fix it. He's going to do what he did the last time, which is what added to the debt, added to inflationary pressure. That's what he's going to do. He's going to take care of people like me, she should say. Not you.

I'll take care of you. I'll give you a real middle-class tax cut where it's paid for by the top 1%. Those are the five points. Bank on independence. Don't be Trump. Play to the movement that is already afoot. Make women, make their witness and live in the population centers of the swing states. You put those five together and you got a fist that will punch Donald Trump right in the nose and Kamala Harris can win.

can win. What do you think? This is Chris Cuomo. Thank you for joining me, following, subscribing to The Chris Cuomo Project. Thank you for checking me out on NewsNation 8P and 11P every weekday night. You got a question for me? You want to get a little video love going? The Manect app. Find me there. You're a critical thinker. Wear your independence. Find your free agent gear. Be proud. You are going to determine the next election. Let's get after it.