The Journal. - The Week That Changed the Presidential Race

Episode Date: July 26, 2024

The 2024 presidential election has taken a major turn after Biden dropped out of the race. WSJ’s Molly Ball charts how the 2024 political election has hit a reset and what Harris’s candidacy could mean for her party and the country.  Further Listening: - Takeaways from the RNC: Trump Is in Control  Further Reading: - Biden Withdrawal Caps Weeks of Epic Political Turbulence  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So, last Sunday at, what was it, I don't know, like 1.45 p.m. or whatever, I was at the Yankee game and I was like holding my toddler and a beer and I see a text message from my friend who's like, it's happening. I was like, what? So that's where I was when I heard the news about Joe Biden dropping his reelection campaign. What were you doing? I was at the container store.

The container store? What were you trying to contain? Well, as you know, these last few weeks have been somewhat busy with news. And so I was way past my personal deadline for getting my kids packed up for summer camp. That's our colleague, senior political correspondent Molly Ball. And she says Kamala Harris's entry into the race has changed everything. So this is just another chapter in that sort of roller coaster ride that has been our politics for the last few years.

So you can feel, and of course, it's concentrated on the Democratic side, but you can feel that new sense of sort of optimism and hope in a lot of the conversation around the presidential race now, where before it really struck people as just this sort of dismal slog. It is, to borrow a term from the youth, a total vibe shift, isn't it? Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knudson. It's Friday, July 26th. Coming up on the show, Molly Ball on the new race for the White House. What is dedication? People ask, how your children learn how to ride a bike and you didn't.

I just created an environment where they taught themselves and all I had to do was be there. That's dedication. Visit fatherhood.gov to hear more. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. So the last time you and I spoke, which was a week ago, last Friday, it was at the end of the RNC and it felt like Trump and the Republicans had all this momentum. But now there's been a vibe shift, as you said. So what's your sense of where things stand now?

It really feels like the attention in this campaign has totally shifted because now the Democrats have something bright and shiny and new to offer to an electorate that has been really burned out and disenchanted and unhappy with our sort of collective choices in this election. But in the early polling that we've seen, Trump is still ahead. So or at the very least, this race is still pretty much tied. So it is not the case that, you know, Harris has vaulted into a ginormous lead.

It's just that she has all this energy around her, and that's a real change from where the energy seemed to be before. And you're certainly seeing in the numbers and the money that Harris has been able to raise, the number of volunteers have been signing up in a very short period of time. Yeah, they had this Zoom last night, Thursday night, that basically broke Zoom, right? More than 100,000 people on this fundraising Zoom call. So yeah, it really has ginned up a lot of excitement. You wrote a big profile of Harris back in 2019. It was on the cover of Time Magazine. What were your impressions of her then?

I spent quite a bit of time with Harris and talking to her and looking at her 2020 campaign, which didn't go very well. But she was a very interesting candidate at that time because she was sort of a celebrity inside the party. And then people sort of started drifting away from her when she couldn't really articulate why she was running and what she stood for. And there was a lot of scrutiny on her past as a prosecutor. She'd written this book, Smart on Crime, that attempted to cast her as sort of in between the progressive prosecutor and the more traditional prosecutors. But that was sort of indicative of the way people saw her

as sort of trying to have it both ways. One issue that I discussed with Kamala Harris when I interviewed her back in 2019, I think really shed some light on where she's coming from on a lot of these issues. She was getting a lot of guff from liberal activists for one of the things that she'd done as San Francisco DA, which was threatened to put parents in jail if their kids were long-term absent from school.

And it was viewed as her, you know, not being with the program when it came to more liberal approaches to criminal justice reform. It was viewed as overly punitive. She was, you know, threatening mostly minority parents with jail time. But she was very impassioned when I asked her about this. And she said, look, she said, I looked at the data and this absenteeism from school or dropping out of school was the number one predictor for particularly young black kids becoming involved in crime, becoming victims or perpetrators of homicide in particular. She said, I was trying to keep these kids on the right path and this was a way to do

that. She said, I never actually put any parents in jail, but I had to find a way to get these kids off the street. She said, nobody else was looking out for these kids. And I thought that that was very interesting and powerful. And it spoke to the way she was coming to these issues from what she viewed as a more pragmatic but still caring point of view.

So for a candidate who I think has trouble through defining herself ideologically, I think that really gives you a sense of where she's coming from. So Harris's campaign did not generate much excitement back when she started running in 2019 and she dropped out before any votes were even cast. Why do you think there seems to be so much more organic, grassroots support for her now? Like, these memes that are going viral with the Charlie XCX Brat album, where they're

remixing her speeches. Why do you think there seems to be so much more energy around her now? I think it's a couple of things. I think first of all, it's a lot of pent up excitement on the part of a democratic base that had been deeply demoralized by the Biden candidacy. All of the attention on Biden,

particularly since the debate, but even before that, you had a majority of Democrats in many polls saying they wished that Biden weren't running for re-election. And this is, you know, a Democratic base that very deeply wants to defeat Donald Trump. So that's one thing, it's just they were dying to have someone to rally around that felt inspiring, and Biden was not that person. So, you know, you look at polls now,

and it's like 90% of American voters approve inspiring and Biden was not that person. So you know you look at polls now and it's like 90% of American voters approve of Biden's decision to step off the ticket and his approval rating has even gone up in the wake of it. And then you know in 2020 Democrats had a lot of other options for candidates to be excited about. But by not having to be in a competitive primary, Kamala is really the only vessel for that democratic enthusiasm. And I think there's a lot of enthusiasm too about the fact that she has the potential to be the first woman president, the first black and South Asian woman in that Oval Office.

That makes Democrats very excited, the prospect of making history. So you know a lot about politics in D.C. and Washington. Did you have to Google what the Brat-Kamala-is-Brat summer is, or did you get that right away? I hate that you're making me admit this. But yeah, I am not. I'm too old to have previously known about this phenomenon. I did know who Charlie XCX was, but I did have to be educated on the whole brat thing.

How hard do you think it'll be for her to maintain this momentum? I wouldn't be surprised if the momentum does continue. I mean, presidential elections are like the Olympics, right? There's a lot of people who don't follow politics on a regular basis, but they tune in very late in the game every four years and make a choice based kind of on vibes.

And Democrats really did not have vibes until now. And now they kind of do. So let's talk now about her vice presidential options. There's been a list of names that people put forward. Mark Kelly, the Senator from Arizona, Josh Shapiro, the Governor of Pennsylvania, Andy Beshear, who's the Governor of Kentucky. Who do you think seems to be most likely?

Well, I don't make predictions, but I think that you can see in that list the profile that she's looking for, right, to sort of balance the ticket. So Kamala Harris, a younger woman of color, is looking for, in most cases that we're hearing about, a sort of moderate-coded white, probably male, who will reassure maybe potentially some of those swing voters who do view her as more liberal and are concerned about that.

So by bringing in someone who reads as more of a moderate, like a Mark Kelly, like an Andy Beshear, like a Josh Shapiro, that's a way of saying that this is not an administration that's gonna go full Bernie Sanders progressive. How Republicans are responding to there. That's dedication. Visit fatherhood.gov to hear more. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. So I want to talk about the Republican reaction to Harris so far. Last week when we talked, you mentioned

that there were talk among Republicans about the possibility of a landslide for Trump. Do you think that Republicans are still feeling that way, given how things have started off for Harris? I think they're waiting for the race to settle, but they're certainly concerned. This has changed the contours of the race. And look, the reason they were looking at a landslide was because of Joe

Biden's deficiencies. Biden had unique weaknesses as a candidate. And you could see that by the way that all of these other Democratic candidates were doing better than him, right? You have Democratic candidates in all of these swing states doing much better than the Democratic presidential candidate when that was Joe Biden, the problem isn't necessarily Democratic policies. Even though Biden gets very low marks from voters on the way he's handled things like immigration and the economy, then voters look at the Democrats who have been an equal partner in pursuing that agenda and don't blame them for it. And that seems to be true of Vice President Harris as well,

even though she obviously has been a part of this administration and Republicans are working very hard to tie her to the administration's policies. There is some evidence that, at least in this sort of very early going, voters don't look at her and pin the things that they don't like about how America is being governed on her. So she does have an opportunity

to sort of make a fresh start. So to go back to your question about the Republicans, I think there's a lot of concern on the Republican side that this has become far more unpredictable and maybe a closer race or just a different map than they were looking at before. How has Trump personally responded to Harris so far? He has insulted her in very nasty and personal terms.

So now we have a new victim to defeat, Lion Kamala Harris, Lion, L-Y-I-N apostrophe. L-Y-I-N apostrophe. The most incompetent and far left vice president in American history. By the way, they did a poll. And it's a lot of the same way he talked about Biden too, is calling him part of, you know, this radical left, calling them radical left lunatics who can't be allowed to govern the country. Trump's political instincts are often to attack people very personally. But do you think that'll work as well against Kamala Harris, who is somebody who

has a lot less political baggage than Trump's past two rivals and Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden? I don't think we know yet. I think we're going to find out in the coming weeks as again, some of this polling starts to settle sort of where the new contours of this race are. But look, I mean, on the one hand, most voters already perceive Harris as further to the left than Biden and further to the left than where most voters put themselves. So it could be effective for Trump to double down on that

attack and portray her chiefly as, you know, a doctrinaire, ideological San Francisco liberal. On the other hand, it is sort of an all-purpose attack that they use for every Democrat, so maybe it will strike people as kind of stale. I think both parties are really racing to define Kamala Harris because she is somewhat unknown to voters overall. And they realize there's a short window here to either cement or reverse those initial preconceptions that people have. And they very much want to shape the way that she's seen.

Do you think Trump and Harris will debate? And like, what are the pros and cons for each side of doing so or not doing so? I do think they will. I think it's in both candidates' interests to debate. I think for Harris, she needs that introduction to people, and she needs to convince people that she's presidential. And she has a lot of confidence in the debate setting. She's viewed as doing well in her debate with Mike Pence last cycle. And Trump, I think needs to prove that he can stand up to her, right?

Uh, given how easy the debate with Biden ended up being, it wasn't much of a test for him. And while Biden obviously was the loser of that debate, it wasn't much of a test for him. And while Biden obviously was the loser of that debate, Trump wasn't necessarily perceived as doing spectacularly well. So I think particularly if he starts to fall behind, he's going to have an interest in agreeing to debate her and giving people a chance to see them matched up against each other. One other thing I'm curious about is Biden himself in this campaign.

How much do you think we'll see of him until the election? I am really wondering about that too. I am very interested to see because he's even started ceding some sort of presidential responsibilities to Harris, right? When Biden and Harris met with the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu on Thursday, it was Harris who came out and made a presidential-ish statement about the administration's position on Gaza and what had come out of those conversations. So I just had a frank and constructive meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu. I told him that

I will always ensure that Israel is able to defend itself, including from Iran and Iran backed militias such as Hamas and Hezbollah. So clearly the administration is seeking to put her out front and position her as a quasi incumbent so that she can benefit politically from that. But I don't think she could have gotten here had Biden not willingly bowed out and given her his strong endorsement. So I think there's no reason to believe that he won't be out there enthusiastically backing her. Because look, this is a referendum on his leadership to some degree as well. Whether she is successful is going to be the last sort of verdict the electorate renders on Joe Biden's governance and on his decisions. And in stepping off the ticket, he said on Wednesday night that he did this because he

thinks that saving democracy is more important than his ambitions, his personal preferences. I revere this office, but I love my country more. It's been the honor of my life to serve as your president. But in the defense of democracy, which is at stake, I think is more important than any title. So before we let you go, we asked our listeners at the end of last week's episode to send us questions that they have for you about the election, And we got this one that I'm going to play for you. This is Charles Briggs in Limerick, Pennsylvania.

I have a question regarding the Ohio voting laws. And is there some sort of deadline here the first week of August? I've seen some connections in the news to online voting for the Democratic nomination. I'm really not sure, too, how it impacts Kamala Harris and her bid for the Democratic nomination. I'm really not sure too how it impacts Kamala Harris and her bid for the White House. All right, Molly, so what do you think?

Do you think this Ohio deadline is gonna impact things for Harris? So the short answer is no, there isn't a deadline. But the longer answer is there was a deadline and the Ohio legislature changed it. So Ohio previously did have this law on the books that basically said that candidates had to be certified by their respective parties so that the Secretary of State could start printing ballots and preparing for November by August 7th. Now they came under pressure to change that because the Democratic convention is unusually late this year.

It's not happening until mid August. So because of that wrinkle, there was a possibility that the Democratic presidential nominee would not appear on ballots in Ohio. appear on ballots in Ohio. So that is why the Democrats first started talking about having this early roll call where basically they get the Democratic delegates together on like a zoom instead of in person at the convention and have them vote that way. So that's the electronic voting that you're talking about. That would have been Democratic delegates registering their preferences for the party's nominee in some kind of virtual process rather than in person at the convention. Now, the Ohio legislature changed the law, got rid of the August 7th deadline,

but the Democrats have chosen to go ahead with this virtual process sometime in August just to make sure. Got it. Great. Alright, Molly, thanks so much for this. We'll see you again next week. Looking forward to it. Thanks, Ryan. Have a great week. Great. Thanks. Thank you to Charles in Pennsylvania

for sending us that question. If you have an election-related question you'd like Molly to answer in a future episode, send us an email to thejournal at wsj.com. That's all for today, Friday, July 26th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. The show is made by Catherine Brewer, Maria Byrne, Jonathan Davis, Victoria Dominguez, Pia Gadkari, Rachel Humphries, Matt Kwong, Kate Leimbach, Jessica Mendoza, Annie Minoff, Laura Morris, Enrique Perez de la Rosa, Sarah Platt, Alan Rodriguez Espinosa, Heather Rogers, Pierce Singie, Layne Tong, Jeevika Verma, Lisa Wang, Katherine Whalen, Tatiana Zamis, and me, Ryan Knudson.

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