The Journal. - Hope, Unity (and Some Nerves) at the DNC

Episode Date: August 23, 2024

Last night, Vice President Kamala Harris formally accepted the Democratic presidential nomination. It capped off a boisterous, speaker-packed week in Chicago as the Harris campaign tries to reach a broad swath of American voters. Molly Ball reports from Chicago.  Further Listening: - Is the Trump Campaign Going Off Track?   - Takeaways from the RNC: Trump Is in Control  Further Reading: - Kamala Harris Defines the Democrats’ New Normal  - Democrats’ Upbeat Convention Has Nancy Pelosi to Thank  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the final night of the Democratic National Convention. This week, our colleague Molly Ball has been at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. We are walking around Chicago near the United Center where Michael Jordan once played, watching the delegates stream in for the final night of the Democratic convention. The energy was high, and the people Molly spoke with said they felt a sense of joy, unity, and optimism about their candidate Kamala Harris. So what has been the highlight of the convention for you so far? The unity. There's no dissent. There's no tension. Harris. So what has been the highlight of the convention for you so far? The

unity. There's no dissent. There's no tension. Everyone is here coming together. We're getting in formation. To quote Beyonce. I mean the historic nature of this is phenomenal. I never thought I possibly would see this in my lifetime. I'm a 55 year old black woman in America and you know we had President Obama which was whoo you know about the country together and we're all we're excited about that. So it sounds like you think she's gonna win. Oh she got this. With women behind her she got this locked up. Now the party is gearing up for the tough and final stretch of this election.

Literally I've met people from all over the world this week they're really excited because you know I think people support what they help build and they think that they're part of something special and now it's our job to sustain this for the next 74 days. Democrats are feeling very, very good. Democrats are euphoric, verging on, ecstatic. They have all felt this dramatic reversal in their political fortunes since Joe Biden stepped off the ticket and Kamala Harris became the candidate. And I would also say it is an excitement tinged with a little bit of anxiety, a little bit of dread. People are definitely aware that this remains a close, really tied race, and that there's a lot of work to do

if they're going to bring it home. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knudson. It's Friday, August 23rd. Coming up on the show, Kamala Harris and the Democrats try to movement to end hunger at feedingamerica.org slash act now. Brought to you by Feeding America and the Ad Council. Last night, Vice President Kamala Harris closed out the Democratic National Convention and made her pitch to the nation.

She leaned hard into her career as a lawyer. As a prosecutor, when I had a case, I charged it not in the name of the victim, but in the name of the people. For a simple reason, in our system of justice, a harm against any one of us is a harm against all of us. And she promised to be a candidate for everyone. And let me say, I know there are people of various political views watching tonight, and I want you to know, I promise to be a president for all Americans. You can always trust me to put country above party and self.

My biggest takeaway is that she is trying to communicate to the American electorate that she is a serious person who is capable of being president. That to me was the top line. I think a lot of people were expecting some kind of surprise, something flashy, something glitzy, something soaring and emotional and really, you know, full of the poetry of high political oratory. And instead, I think it was a very normal political speech that was intended to communicate a sort of gravitas. And I think that was intentional.

I think her campaign has seen, whether from data or anecdotally, that the hurdle for some of the voters that she needs to reach is whether she is serious and is capable of doing the job. So I think that's what the speech was aimed at. So, you know, it was very interesting watching the setup on the stage, right? She had this brown backdrop with the images of, like, standing flags. And it's a projection, it's not real, but it seemed like they were trying to evoke a courtroom. The idea being that she's tough, that she's serious, that she has gravitas, and that I think is the message they're trying to drive home. One of the themes that I noticed from watching a lot of the speeches this week is like, just

this idea of freedom, that the Democratic Party is like the party of freedom now, which seems like really broad for one thing and also not something that like the Democrats typically hang their hat on, so to speak. So what do you think? Where do you think that's coming from? A couple things. First of all, I wrote about this late last year, specific to the abortion issue. Democrats have spent, or advocates, I guess, have spent about a decade researching how

best to talk about abortion to swing voters. And so they were able to put that research into practice after Roe v. Wade was overturned. And something that they found was by framing reproductive rights as a matter of freedom, it appeals to voters across the political spectrum. So they've taken that frame for abortion rights and they've expanded it. The other reason they like this freedom idea is that yes, when you talk about freedom, liberty, patriotism, these are terms that more voters tend to associate with Republicans than with Democrats. But by taking that framing on abortion, they feel that they can expand the freedom idea to talk

about, you know, freedom from book bans, freedom from hunger, freedom from all kinds of other things. And in Kamala Harris's speech, and really a lot of the speeches, but in hers in particular, it seemed like she was just really trying to present herself as a moderate, middle-of-the-road candidate who's trying to reach as broad a swath of Americans as possible. You know what we should do, Ryan? We should take an AI and feed it the text of Kamala Harris's speech. Take out the parts that are specific to her biography, right? Like where she grew up and the stuff about her mother.

I love where this is going. And then have it give the speech in Joe Biden's voice. Because I bet you that this would sound believable as a speech that Joe Biden could have given except for, again, the stuff that is specifically about her biography and where she came from, which it was pretty light on, right? She talked a lot about her mom, talked a little bit about how she grew up, but it was not that much personal stuff. It was much more, as you say, about making a case on values and appealing to that middle

of the road voter. One of the things that I also found interesting about the Democratic Party's effort to go big and go broad and try to reach a lot of both moderate voters but also different factions of the Democratic Party, you had these interesting contrasting moments. Like, you know, Bernie Sanders giving a speech who's very anti-billionaire. We need an economy that works for all of us, not just the billionaire class. Being immediately followed by Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, who is a billionaire. And who literally said, I am a real billionaire. And who literally said, I am a real billionaire. Donald Trump thinks that we should trust him on the economy because he claims to be very rich.

But take it from an actual billionaire. What do you make of that? And what does that sort of say about the coalition that Harris is trying to build? She's trying to build a big tent, right? And that's why you put Republicans on stage. And I would point out, you know, that Republicans also put Democrats on stage. And that's a traditional thing to do at a convention.

But this is always something that parties try to do to appeal to voters across the aisle. But given that I think Kamala Harris is still a bit of a blank slate, a bit of an enigma to people. I spent a lot of my week at this convention trying to figure out how people see her in these various ideological factions. So I went to a gathering of centrist Democrats and asked them, do you think Kamala Harris is one of you? And they all said, yes, we think she's basically a moderate. She's a pragmatist. She's someone who wants to get things done.

And then I went to a gathering of progressives and I asked people there, do you think Kamala is a progressive? And they said, yes, we think she's one of us. They said, look at the legislation she sponsored in the Senate to send cash benefits to families. Look at some of the populist economic proposals she's put out.

She's disavowed some of the more liberal positions that she took in that 2020 primary, like Medicare for All and banning fracking. But they look at the fact that those were her impulses at some point and say, you know, we think in her heart, she's with us. All right, so Molly, we're going to take a real quick break. And when we come back, we're going to look at some of the challenges that putting a broad coalition together means for Democrats. I'm Scarlett Johansson.

My family relied on public assistance to help provide meals for us. These meals help fuel my love for acting. When people are fed, futures are nourished. Join the movement to end hunger at feedingamerica.org slash act now. Brought to you by Feeding America and the Ad Council. So there were a lot of speakers, so many that it was hard for me to stay awake to the end of the convention each night. But were there any prominent politicians that weren't at the DNC this week that you think

were notable? The ones that I noticed the most were the two Democratic senators in the toughest reelection races. That would be Montana Senator John Tester and Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown. And what do these men have in common? They are both up for re-election this year and they both come from pretty deep red states. Ohio went for Trump by eight points in 2020.

Used to be a swing state, not so much anymore. And Montana has been a red state for a long time, went for Trump by, by double digits. Both John Tester and Sherrod Brown are trying to communicate to their voters that they don't share the brand of the National Democratic Party because they're not going to be able to win unless they get a lot of Trump voters to split their tickets. So does this mean that like the big tent strategy from Harris

has limits on how big that tent can go? Well, sure. I mean, to belabor the metaphor, you can only stuff so many people in the tent before it starts getting uncomfortable and someone has to leave. And we see this often in politics, where you can try to build a coalition by stacking blocks together,

but at some point they become mutually incompatible because one block dislikes the other block too much and they fight or somebody leaves the tent. One issue that has led to a lot of tension and a bit of infighting within the Democratic big tent is the approach to the war in Gaza. We got a question from a listener about this from Ben Suster in Florida. Hey, Molly. This is Ben from West Palm Beach, Florida, in the center of Trump County, but also still undecided. I'm wondering if voters truly care about Israel and the war in Gaza as much as the media will have us think. This issue seems to be everywhere,

but my suspicion is this might be towards the bottom of the list of what voters are concerned with. What do you think? Thank you for your question, Ben. It's a great question and one that I have given a lot of thought to because you're right. This is an issue that has been given a disproportionate amount of attention

compared to how important it probably is to most American voters. In general, the cliche in politics is that foreign policy doesn't matter. That voters are much more concerned with kitchen table issues and things that affect their lives than they are with what's happening overseas. So in most polls, you see the number of voters who say that foreign policy is A or the top issue tends to be in single digits where you ask voters their top policy issue and it's the same things over and over and over again. It's the economy and or inflation, it's immigration and or the border, and then it's abortion

reproductive rights. And so another thing you might say is, well, what about young people? Aren't young people in a different place on this issue than the older generation? And that's true to a point. We see young people disproportionately disapproving of the way the administration has handled this issue compared to older voters. But here again, it doesn't seem like a top issue for most young voters. One very respected poll of the youth vote, the Harvard Institute of Politics, 2% of young

people, 18 to 29, said that the conflict in Gaza was a top concern for them in the election, and it was very near the bottom of their ranking of what issues were important to their vote. And then one last thing I'll say about that is another point that often gets raised about this is, well, what about Michigan?

Right, I was just going to bring that up actually, because there was, I think, more than 100,000 people that voted uncommitted in that primary there. So like in an election, it's very close. That's right. So Michigan is the American state with the highest proportion of Muslim and Arab American voters. And it is a state that was very, very closely decided in 2020, about 150,000 votes, very small margin for Joe Biden. And there was this campaign to have people cast a protest vote in the

Democratic primary and vote in the Democratic primary, but vote uncommitted instead of voting for Biden as a means of expressing that discontent. And they did get a hundred thousand votes, which is nothing to sneeze at, but you'll notice it's still smaller than that margin by which Biden won in 2020. And even though Michigan does have the highest proportion of Muslim and Arab American voters of any state, it is still a quite small proportion,

which is not to say that those people don't matter. Of course, everybody matters and every voter demographic we should care about, but it is a very, very small proportion of the vote. So I don't want to wave it away. It's still certainly possible. It's still something the Democrats are quite concerned about.

But in the room when Kamala Harris sort of forcefully took both sides of this issue, right? She issued a forceful statement in support of Israel. And then she issued a forceful statement in support of ending the suffering in Gaza. President Biden and I are working to end this war such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination. And people seem to really like that. And again, I think it was a statement that almost word for word, you could imagine hearing out of Joe Biden's mouth, but it seems to satisfy people a little bit more coming from her.

So the Republican National Convention is over, the Democratic National Convention is over. How would you describe the next phase of the election that we're entering into, and what are you going to be watching most closely for? Yeah, well, we're going into the final stretch. Traditionally, Labor Day marks that intensification of the campaign where stuff gets real.

And by the end of September, a lot of states will be issuing ballots. Early voting starts in my home state of Virginia in late September and in a lot of other states, including swing states as well. So people are going to be voting before you know it. The two things I am most looking forward to in the next couple of weeks,

number one, that next round of polls. People can say, why are you always talking about polls? Are you obsessed with the horse race? Well, elections are about how people vote and polls are the only way we get a snapshot of what people are thinking and how they intend to vote. So I want to see how the electorate, not just the pundits is reacting to this convention.

Does the convention push her further forward or is she in sort of the same place, or even falling behind? Second, the debate. We have seen presidential debates have a really big impact in this campaign. That's like two weeks away, right? Like the 10th of September? It is, it's on September 10th.

Mark your calendars. The big prize fight. Donald Trump v. Kamala Harris. And both sides really pumping this up, right? People on the right talking about how Trump is specifically saying, oh, she's too stupid to talk without a teleprompter and really potentially, you know, lowering expectations for her in a way that is not helpful to him.

But we don't know what to expect, and she has struggled sometimes in those unscripted venues, in media interviews and so forth. So we'd all like to see her give more of an explanation of her plans and take more tough questions. Debate is a good venue for that and I think a lot of people are going to be watching because a lot of people are curious about her candidacy. All right Molly, thank you so much for your time as always. Safe travels back to DC and we'll talk to you next week. Thank you.

Before we go, remember, if you want to ask Molly a question about the election, send us an email or voice message to thejournal at wsj.com. That's thejournal atwsj.com. That's thejournalatwsj.com. That's all for today. Friday, August 23rd. The voices you heard at the start of this episode were Ashley Fadon, Rachel Green, and Tykeen Cooper. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify

and The Wall Street Journal. The show is made by Katherine Brewer, and the show is produced by The Journal. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. The show is made by Katherine Brewer, Maria Byrne, Jonathan Davis, Pia Gadkari, Rachel Humphreys, Matt Kwong, Kate Linebaugh, Jessica Mendoza, Annie Minoff, Laura Morris, Enrique Perez de la Rosa, Sarah Platt, Alan Rodriguez-Espinosa, Heather Rogers, Pier Singhee, Laying Tong, Jeevika Verma, Lisa Wang, Katherine Whalen, Tatiana Zamis, and me, Ryan Knudson.

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