The Daily - The Harris Campaign Is Born

Episode Date: July 25, 2024

Over the past 48 hours, as the nomination of Vice President Kamala Harris went from theoretical to inevitable, she has delivered the first glimpses of how her campaign will run.Reid J. Epstein, who covers politics for The Times, discusses what we’ve learned from her debut.Guest: Reid J. Epstein, who covers politics for The New York Times.Background reading: Ms. Harris gave her first speech as the de facto Democratic nominee to a deafening crowd.Her presidential bid is getting a pop music rollout online.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Over the past 48 hours, as the nomination of Vice President Kamala Harris went from theoretical to inevitable, she delivered the first glimpse of what her campaign would look like and sound like over the next 100 days. Today, my colleague Reed Epstein on what exactly we've learned from her debut. It's Thursday, July 25th. Reid, it has been just one day since you were on the show, but that's a lifetime in this presidential campaign. So just to start, catch us up on what's happened to the vice president's candidacy since you and I last spoke.

Well, it seems like every few hours that the Harris campaign announced, she's shattered some other fundraising record. The cash and the calls are flooding in for Vice President Kamala Harris. The latest number on Wednesday morning was that she'd raised $126 million since the campaign launched on Sunday. In just three days. In less than three days. On her first full day in the race, the vice president securing the support

of the more than 1,976 delegates she would need to win the Democratic nomination. You know, we have seen the entire Democratic Party embrace her. So now that the process has played out from the grassroots bottom up, we are here today to throw our support behind Vice President Kamala Harris. The only holdouts in elected office when we last spoke were the Democratic leaders of the House and Senate, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer of New York. They have since endorsed her. The memification of the Harris campaign went into overdrive Sunday when singer Charlie

XCX tweeted, Kamala is brat. And we've also seen sort of a viral onslaught. And she's been part of the culture almost immediately in a way that Barack Obama did in 2008. Democrats everywhere are feeling the comalamentum. eight. Democrats everywhere are feeling the comalamentum. It's a powerful thing for a Democratic political candidate and it's something that Joe Biden never had. So at this point, Reed, Harris has

the money, the delegates, and the memes, and the question has been, what would be the message? You know, that's the question we'd all been asking. And we first started to get our answers on Tuesday afternoon when she traveled to the Milwaukee suburb of West Allis, Wisconsin, for her first rally as the Democratic de facto nominee. West Allis is a swing city and a swing state and the part of the country

where she will have to do well if she is going to defeat Donald Trump in November. This was an event that had already been on the books for her before Biden stepped aside when she was running

as the vice presidential candidate. Once she became the presidential candidate, they had to move it to a larger venue. It wound up being in a 3,800-seat high school gymnasium, and it drew attendees from out of state to come see her, which was really not something that had ever happened for Joe Biden. So when I tuned in to watch Harris speak on Tuesday afternoon, I wanted to see what her message was going to be and how it looked and how she presented herself as the presidential candidate, because it wasn't just important what she said, but really how she said it and what the campaign wanted her to look like saying it. Okay, so take us to this rally and this speech that Harris gives in this high school gymnasium.

You know, the first thing you noticed was the crowd, which was much bigger than any Joe Biden event on this campaign, and very loud. Please welcome Governor Tony Evers. Let's go, man! You could see watching the warm-up speakers that there was more noise in the room than there had been for any Biden event. I love all of you.

Thank you, West Atlas. Our colleague who was in the press area was saying that his ears hurt even before Harris took the stage. There were was in the press area was saying that his ears hurt even before Harris took the stage. There were women in the audience with homemade glasses with coconuts taped to them. Coconuts is sort of part of the meme language around Harris. Right. Comes from a speech in which she talks about how her mom always asked her and her siblings, did you fall out of a coconut tree? did you fall out of a coconut tree?

Yeah, and so this was really a moment of collective enthusiasm for Democrats that they had not participated in in more than four years. And now it is my distinct honor to introduce the first woman elected Vice President of the United States and the next President of the United States, Kamala Harris. Harris comes to the stage and the crowd is deafening. You could tell even watching on TV Thank you.

Thank you. Thanks. And she starts with her effectively taking the torch from Joe Biden. So, Milwaukee, I want to start by saying a few words, and I could really speak at length, but a few words about our incredible President Joe Biden. She says that it's been an honor to work with him and to serve with him. Joe's legacy of accomplishment over his entire career and over the past three and a half years is unmatched in modern history. and a half years is unmatched in modern history. She says that he's done more in one term than most presidents have done in two and talks about how she and other Democrats are grateful for his

career of service to the country. And it is she wants to project gratitude to Biden and respect for him while also starting to turn the page away from him. the page away from him. Yeah, and it's tricky because everyone in the party and in the country has lived through, you know, not just the last 48 hours at this point, but the last month since his abysmal debate performance. She has to reconcile all these feelings and this experience that everyone in the party has gone through with Joe Biden, while also pivoting to what's next and placing herself at the center of the party as its candidate to run for president. Before I was elected United States Senator, I was elected Attorney General of the state of California, and I was a courtroom prosecutor before then.

So what she does next is she starts to try to define herself, which she does in opposition to Donald Trump. I took on perpetrators of all kinds. She speaks about the types of people that she investigated and prosecuted. Predators who abused women. Fraudsters who ripped off consumers. And the capstone of this section of her speech is she says. So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump's type.

I know Donald Trump's type. And it's a thing that Joe Biden never could really do because his life didn't set him up to be quite so oppositional to Trump's. Not to mention his age and diminished capacity as a public speaker made him incapable of delivering that kind of message. And Wisconsin, this campaign is also about two different visions for our nation. So what we hear next from her... Where we are focused on the future, the other focused on the past. ...is this real contrast between not just herself and Trump, but a policy contrast between Democrats and Republicans. We believe in a future where every person has the opportunity

not just to get by, but to get ahead. And here is where you get sort of the traditional laundry list of policies from her. Where every worker has the freedom to join a union. That all sort of touch the erogenous zones of Democratic voters and consultants because they frankly poll very well. Where every person has affordable health care. Affordable child care. very well. All of these phrases are things that you hear Democratic candidates up and down the ballot talk about, but Biden just could not quite say them in the right order in a way that people believed. But Donald Trump wants to take our country backward. And then she delves into the Trump policies, which Democrats have been begging voters to listen to for much of the past year. He and his extreme Project 2025 agenda

will weaken the middle class. Like, we know we got to take this seriously. Can you believe they put that thing in writing? She talks about Project 2025, which is a 900-page policy document that some of Trump's allies have put together in anticipation of him becoming the president again, and compares that to the vision that Democrats have for the future.

She talks about gun control laws, background checks, and the key part of this And we who believe in reproductive freedom. Is when she talks about abortion. Will stop Donald Trump's extreme abortion bans because we trust women to make decisions about their own body. And not have their government tell them what to do. Which is another thing that Biden was very uncomfortable doing. He rarely said the word abortion. He would always couch it in language about choice or reproductive freedom or whatnot. And that was because we sensed his Catholic religion kind of made him reluctant to

talk in an overly supportive way about abortion, right? Right. And he was and is an 81-year-old Catholic white man who, you know, grew up in a different time when the politics on abortion were different. And Harris is much more of a creature of modern-day democratic politics on abortion were different. And Harris is much more of a creature of modern-day democratic politics on this issue. She's able to speak about abortion in a clearer and more concise way than Biden has ever been able to. I'm curious, Reid, how in this speech

Harris touched on or in any way acknowledged the historic nature of her candidacy, something very much on people's minds right now. Yeah, I mean, this was another thing to watch for because clearly this is part of the undertone of all the enthusiasm about her. She would be the first woman president. She would be the first Black woman president. She would be the first South Asian president. And she doesn't have to articulate those things herself. The shoulders on which we stand, generations of Americans before us led the fight for freedom. And now, Wisconsin, the baton is in our hands. But what she talked about in the speech was about standing on the shoulders of generations of Americans before her leading the fight to freedom.

You know, she's talking about abolitionists and suffragists. But she doesn't have to use those words because the people in the Democratic Party that she's talking to know what she means. in the Democratic Party that she's talking to know what she means. We who believe in the sacred freedom to vote will make sure every American has the ability to cast their ballot and have it counted. And that it is their responsibility to win the election, to continue to advance civil rights and voting rights, not just in Wisconsin, but across the country. So she's placing herself in a continuum that dates back centuries for racial justice and

justice for women. Right. But she's talking about it in the context of voting rights, which is a very important issue locally in Wisconsin, where they've had innumerable fights about voting access over the last 15 years. And so it works both as a line speaking to Democrats across the country and a line that the people in the room will understand applies to them specifically. Right. And it feels like as with Harris's ability to speak as a prosecutor when she talks about Trump, her ability to talk about racial justice is something that Joe Biden cannot

do as naturally because his biography isn't the same as hers. Yeah. And this, like abortion too, this is just much more personal for her than it ever has been for Biden. How does this speech ultimately end? I mean, it ends like it began, with contrasts between her and Trump. So Wisconsin, ultimately in this election, we each face a question. What kind of country do we want to live in?

She asks the audience and the listeners if they want freedom, compassion, and the rule of law, or chaos, fear, and hate, which she ascribes to Trump. And here's the beauty of this moment. We each have the power to answer that question. The power is with the people. We each have the power to answer that question. And she reminds Democrats that are watching that they have a limited time to make this reality that she's envisioning happen. So Wisconsin, today I ask you, are you ready to get to work? Do we believe in freedom? Do we believe in freedom? Do we believe in opportunity? Do we believe in the promise of America?

And are we ready to fight for it? And when we fight, we win! God bless you! And it ends in this big finish and another raucous ovation for her as she walks off the stage to Beyoncé. Freedom, freedom, I can't move. Freedom, cut me loose. When the speech was over, Reed,

I wrote down a bunch of adjectives really quickly on my computer in my little notes file, and the words were, I'm just going to read them to you, punchy, loud, lucid, energetic, tight, right? And not to beat a dead horse here, but those are not words that apply to a Joe Biden speech. Yeah, you know, when the speech ended, I got a text from a person who is helping to elect Joe Biden and now is helping to elect Kamala Harris, who just expressed their own astonishment at what it was like to watch a campaign speech where they didn't have to worry

about the candidate falling down and about how much their own expectations had been diminished by years of watching Biden. And seeing a candidate who brought just a totally different energy, it gave Democrats a reason to be hopeful and a reason to be

proud of their candidate in a way that they hadn't had since the beginning of the Biden campaign. We'll be right back. So, Reid, I want to talk about what wasn't in this first Kamala Harris rally as de facto nominee and what that may reveal about the challenges that she faces despite all the enthusiasm, all the money, all the endorsements, all the delegates. Right. She didn't talk about two of the biggest challenges she's going to face. And frankly, were two of the biggest challenges that Joe Biden faced. The economy, which includes inflation and immigration at the border.

Right. Let's start with economy and immigration. I mean, I noticed that Harris did not mention the word economy or for that matter, inflation once in the speech. So, you know, Michael, the first rule of campaigning is you want to talk about issues that are good for you and not issues that are good for your opponent. And that's what this was about. So to do that, she talked about abortion rights and gun control and comparing herself to Donald Trump and avoided issues that polls show voters prefer Republicans and Trump on, like immigration and the economy. And that really is the calculus that went into the issues that she addressed and the issues that she didn't address. Well, let's talk about why she wouldn't want to talk about the economy at all. Because as we've

talked about on the show, Reid, you know, there's a lot that happened under Biden in the American economy that is pretty good for the Democrats. Unemployment is really low. There's been a lot of job creation, especially if you take the data back to the moment Biden takes office after the pandemic. But there is, of course, the problem of inflation going up in part because of Biden's response to the inflation, all that stimulus spending. So you're saying that there's no version of a threaded needle that Harris wants to even attempt when it comes to the economy. Well, they do have an economic story to tell. The problem is voters don't believe it. You know, we have seen this over and over again when Joe Biden tried to

tell his economic record that voters just did not buy it. And so this is an issue where, you know, the campaign is operating at some level without regard to the actual situation on the ground and more to what voters feel about it. Got it. And voters never really forgave Biden for the inflation that the country saw as Biden helped drive the country out of the pandemic. And that has stuck to him ever since. Even though the rate of inflation has slowed substantially, the prices are not below where they were four years ago at the start of the pandemic. And that, no matter what the Biden administration, Biden campaign have tried to do to explain that to people, they just never bought into it. And inflation remains a very difficult issue for Democrats

to explain and to campaign on because they started so far behind. And frankly, voters have said they do not believe them on this. Right. So nuance may not be her friend when it comes to talking about the economy. And so she'll just not talk about it as much as she can. Let's turn to immigration and the reason why the vice president didn't talk about it in the speech and how she will eventually talk about it if she decides she needs to. And I suspect at some point she will need to. Yeah, I mean, eventually she will talk about it. You know, it's certain to come up if she and Donald Trump wind up on a debate stage together. She will be asked about it in interviews should she submit to them. But I do not anticipate,

you know, big applause lines for her on immigration in these dumb speeches at her campaign rallies. It's just a fraught issue that is not great for Democrats. It often is without regard to any of the data on the ground about whether border crossings have slowed or any sort of metric that you want to take that might show an improving situation at the border for Biden is just not something that has sunk in with voters. And she doesn't have very much time left in this campaign to explain that. And so what we have seen in the early returns of her as a presidential candidate is not addressing it. Well, Reid, let's assume that Kamala Harris keeps giving this stump speech and keeps energizing room after room after room of Democrats and maybe even some moderate Republicans who show up and

are very interested in her because they have concerns about Trump, you know, and she navigates her way around immigration and the economy in this 100 and so days left in the campaign. Perhaps that will end up being enough. You know, Michael, as energizing as this speech was and as jazzed as Democrats around the country were by it, she still faces a ton of challenges as the presidential candidate. It's not just the message, it's getting the message out. What do you mean? Well, the Biden campaign was built around an 81-year-old candidate who, to this point, had given campaign rallies once or twice a week. He was in his Delaware home every weekend, and it was not a very high-energy operation. It's not built for a 59-year-old candidate who wants to get out there as much as she can, and frankly needs to get out there as

much as she can to introduce herself to voters around there as much as she can to introduce herself to voters around the country so she needs to repeat that kind of speech multiple times a week from now until november you know if you remember when barack obama was campaigning for president he would do three states a day sometimes right and that's the kind of pace that they need to ramp up to for her. And there's no evidence to date, just because they haven't done it, that the Biden campaign, as constituted now, is able to pull that off. I just want to be clear on what you're saying, that Kamala Harris is a different candidate from Biden, different metabolism, and based on where things are in the polls, she needs to be doing a lot more than Biden ever was if she perhaps could get to something like

two or three events a day. But the worry is that the Biden campaign is literally not equipped with the people and the protocols to make that happen because putting on that many events a day is logistically just an enormous undertaking that a campaign either is or isn't designed for. Yeah, and I don't want to besmirch the people who work for the Biden campaign of incapable of doing this. I'm just saying that they haven't done it yet. We haven't seen that they're able to do it. They may well be capable of doing it, but it will be new to them. Mm-hmm. And given where they are in the polls right now, the Harris campaign has to get her out there. They have to get as much visibility on her from voters in the key states and get her in different TV markets in Pittsburgh and Detroit and Milwaukee and Atlanta. and Detroit and Milwaukee and Atlanta, and sometimes many of those places in the same day,

so that people can hear her message both about her own campaign and about Donald Trump. Right. It's interesting that you mentioned those swing states, because that's where I want to turn now. We've been talking about what was in the speech, what wasn't in the speech, the logistics of getting that message out. But a really important question I have to think is, what is the Harris as nominee plan to win the swing voter in the swing states that you just mentioned? The Wisconsin's, Michigan's, Pennsylvania's, given how forceful a message Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are delivering on that front, right? They're talking about economic and social populism, tariffs, China ripping off America, the forgotten working man. Those are all directed to those swing voters in the Midwest, in those states.

Harris is telling a story, for sure, in this first couple of days, but it's not that story. It's a story about how she is good and looking to the future and Trump is bad and taking the country backward. And so that leaves me wondering whether there is a strong winning message from Harris that is emerging or will soon emerge for this key group of voters in these key states? Well, we are going to see as she does more and more events, you know, one thing that you hear from her people in her campaign is sort of a subtle idea that she may change the demographics of who is a Democratic voter. You know, we've already seen an extraordinary amount of excitement for her among Black women.

There were 50,000 people on a Zoom call Sunday night, an organizing call for a group called Win With Black Women. We've seen some evidence that she performs better among Black and Latino voters, that young people are more interested in coming to vote now that she's on the ticket than Biden. And so that may alter the dynamics a little bit more out of that Obama coalition and still hold on to some of these moderate voters who are repelled by Trump, like that is a recipe that can lead a Democratic ticket to win. It's not a guarantee. You know, there is some fear

that she may not do as well with older white voters that were partial to Biden. And so we are going to see as more polling results come in how it changes with her atop the ticket from Joe Biden. Got it. And that is the playbook. It sounds like we saw Kamala Harris begin to pursue with this speech that we've spent this episode talking to you about. She's fighting on different demographic terrain than Trump. That's deliberate. In other words, we shouldn't spend too much time thinking about what wasn't in this speech because what was in the speech is quite revealing about strategy as well.

You know, Michael, the Republican ticket, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are making an economic and cultural argument to their voters. And the polling suggests that they are winning at the moment. But Harris is making her own cultural argument to voters. And it's about young people and people of color and being cool and hip in a way that Barack Obama was when he first ran for office. And she's trying to recreate that energy from 2008. And the early return suggests that she is a reasonable facsimile of that. It remains to be seen how long she and her team can sustain that. And it's going to be a lot of work for them because they are losing at the moment. And Trump has built in advantages in the electoral college. And so they will need to get a lot of these people who had been sour on Joe Biden to come out and vote for her. And we'll see if they're able to do that. start. She has raised an enormous amount of money. She has people in the party excited about her.

They are collectively moved on from Joe Biden without any evident bitterness. And she has united the party in a rapid amount of time to move forward into the general election, which is quite the feat, given where everything was just a couple of days ago. Well, Reid, thank you very much. Thank you, Michael. My fellow Americans, I'm speaking to you tonight from behind the Resolute Des desk in the Oval Office. In an 11-minute speech on Wednesday night, President Biden explained his decision to end his campaign for re-election

and endorsed Kamala Harris as his replacement, saying that it was necessary to pass the torch to a new generation. You know, there is a time and a place for long years of experience in public life. There's also a time and a place for new voices, fresh voices, yes, younger voices. And that time and place is now. We'll be right back. Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister of the State of Israel. Here's what else you need to know today. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank you for giving me the profound honor of addressing this great citadel of democracy for the fourth time.

In a speech on Wednesday to a joint meeting of Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu forcefully defended his country's military campaign in Gaza, praised both President Biden and former President Trump for their support, and described Israel's deadly war against Hamas as a necessary fight between good and evil. This is not a clash of civilizations. It's a clash between barbarism and civilization. civilizations. It's a clash between barbarism and civilization. It's a clash between those who glorify death and those who sanctify life. Netanyahu pointedly scolded pro-Palestinian protesters in the United States, thousands of whom demonstrated against his visit in Washington. Many anti-Israel protesters, many choose to stand with evil. They stand with Hamas.

They stand with rapists and murderers. They should be ashamed of themselves. And he warned that Israel's battle against Hamas and the country that finances it, Iran, was America's battle as well. My friends, if you remember one thing, one thing from the speech, remember this. Our enemies are your enemies. Our fight is your fight. And our victory will be your victory. It was edited by Mark George, with help from Rachel Quester. Contains original music by Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily.

I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.