The Munk Debates Podcast - Friday Focus: Kamala's "vibes" and a final push for a ceasefire deal

Episode Date: August 23, 2024

Friday Focus provides listeners with a focused, half-hour masterclass on the big issues, events and trends driving the news and current events. The show features Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselling author, in conversation with Rudyard Griffiths, Chair and moderator of the Munk Debates. The following is a sample of the Munk Debates’ weekly current affairs podcast, Friday Focus. Janice and Rudyard start the show by reflecting on the DNC convention and Kamala Harris's ability to speak to a generation of voters via social media. While she might be light on policy she's heavy on "vibes" - will this help her in a race that is a lot tighter than people might realize? In the second half of the show Janice and Rudyard address the ongoing ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas and why much of Secretary of State Antony Blinken's efforts over the past week have been a performative diplomatic relations exercise with the objective of getting through the DNC without any major strikes. Whether a deal is finally agreed upon will likely come down to the personal calculations of two men: Yahya Sinwar and Benjamin Netanyahu. To access full-length editions of the Friday Focus podcast consider becoming a donor to the Munk Debates for as little as $25 annually, or $.50 per episode. Canadian donors receive a charitable tax receipt. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue. More information at www.munkdebates.com.Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The following is a complimentary excerpt of this week's edition of the Friday Focus podcast by the Monk Debates. To access full-length editions of each and every episode, along with all kinds of great additional benefits and perks, become a donor to the Monk debates. You can do that for as little as $25 a year, and you'll receive each and every year 50 Friday Focus episodes at full length. It's all available right now on our website in just a few. simple clicks, triple W the monk debates.com. Look for the Friday Focus option in our navigation bar, the top right of the website. Make your donation and we will send you each and every Friday a link to listen to the full-length edition of this program. Thanks in advance for your generous contribution. Welcome to the Friday Focus podcast. Rudyard Griffiths here, the executive director of the

Monk Debates. I'm joined by Jasgro-stein for today's edition of the show. We're recording this on the 23rd of August, hot on the heels of the Democratic National Convention and the nomination of Kamala Harris as the DNC's candidate for president of the United States. Let's begin the show there, Janice. You watched the speech. What were some of your key takeaways? You know, I watched the whole convention, registered, and after we talk about the speech, maybe we might talk about what you would call the production values of this show.

The speech didn't have a lot of content. It was very careful. I think that's consistent with a whole strategy. She's trying to say as little as possible in order not to make a mistake. She needs to build a big tent here. I understand why people would. find it hard to remember this, this is a close race. And we might want to talk about this.

This is far from a foregone conclusion here, despite all the balloons that went off at the party over the last four days. Yeah, it was quite a production. I guess my takeaway from it was it's really now about what comes next, because it wasn't just a convention. It was a remarkable kind of run up in, uh, Most of the mainstream media in the in the in the preceding weeks, um, from the New York Times to USA Today to CNN, all the big outlets.

Um, I think like many Americans, relieve that there could be a race now. The media always loves a race. It gets eyeballs on to screens and newspapers. Do people still read those things at people's front doors? So the media here, I think has had an interest in building up the Kamala Harris. concept of president of the United States.

I want to talk to you, Janice, though, a bit about the public reaction because it does seem as if there is something going on here that's a little bit different maybe in the past. People have talked about, you know, a moment of joy. Yeah. A moment of joy in American politics.

It just, I haven't heard that a long time. People are talking about this thing called vibes. We can try to explain as people who are not, definitely not Gen X or Gen X. and Z, what the heck vibes are. But I don't know, Janice, is this important? Is there the beginnings here of some, what some people might call a political phenomenon? You know, to level with our listeners, I had to ask Richard earlier this morning what vibes are,

and he explained it to me. So if you don't know, join me who didn't know. But, and Roger will come back and explain it. to you as well as to me. But the politics of joy, you know, look, the Obama campaign was all about the politics of hope. So when do these memes and themes, you know, surface, Richard? Usually when people are pretty gloomy, down, anxious, uncertain, worried.

And I think what her campaign has really tapped into is what moves. is what mood reflectors call the age of anxiety that people have come through. COVID, inflation, jobs, cost of living. These are the things that people have been focused on wars relentlessly for the last four years. And along comes somebody with a big smile who laughs in public and is positive and optimistic. and that's where I think the politics of joy coming. People want to feel better. They don't want to be warned about the next danger around the corner all the time

and told how unprepared they are to face it. And it is, let's put it this way, the antithesis to Donald Trump's campaign who tells Americans every day that it's never been worse in America than it is right now. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. And so it kind of plays against and two kind of Trump's greatest hits. The vibes thing, though, does interest me because her-

Tell me what a vibe is again, right? Yeah, so as I've had it explained to me by people who really know what vibes are, which are mostly Gen Z friends, is it's a kind of attitude of just good feelings that come with being with people that you like, and it's not for, and it's kind of hanging out and just, you know, quote, enjoying vibes. Somebody described it to me, you know, perfect vibes is sitting in a park on a sunny summer afternoon, having a few alcoholic beverages with your friends. Not too many, though, because it's critical that you maintain the state of vibes,

not a state of inebriation. So it's a whole kind of calibrated thing. And I think it's to, you know, you can say, well, what the heck is this? I don't know if I'm vibing or not, but to me it speaks to maybe the reality of a kind of increasingly TikTok-guised world where testing and interacting with content in a very, very different way, not just personally amongst their friends and peer groups, but now politically, that people are ingesting these short video messages that because it's video, it's not print anymore. It's not print on your screen or print on your newspaper. It's much more full spectrum. It's much more visual. It's much more about the mood of the person presenting,

about how they look, what their tone of their voices, all these different things that are now a generation who are being kind of wired to political discourse and imagery that's painted on a much bigger canvas that I think in generations in the past. And if I was just to make a completely subjective analysis here, I'd say that Kamala Harris, you know, while she's not in any way, part of that generationally as a candidate, she compared to Trump, can play in that space way more than he can, as you say,

with the fact that she's physically a very attractive person. I don't think that's a... The smile. Anything other than, you know, an objective assessment. She's a very beautiful woman. She has a way of comporting herself. She has the laugh. She has all these things that I think translate into these new medium that are really shaping an entire generation, not just their political attitudes and what they feel, but how they actually access and process information.

She is that full bandwidth candidate. So, Roger, would you say, and I think that's your analysis is spot on, frankly, would you, and so much of that. was evident in the convention, the visual, the performances, the entertainment. If you compare the entertainment at the Democratic convention, oh, wow, hands down wind over what the Republicans put on and just they were great visuals. So in a sense, elections are about the visuals now. They're not about the policy anymore. It's the, you know, it's the wanks in the room who will fight about what's in the platform and get exercised and get worked up about it. But it is not that next generation of political activists.

And they certainly are. They come. They care. They're engaged. They're not tuned out. But they're focused on the visuals. They're not paying attention to the policy. So the whole critique of Camel Harris, well, what does she stand for?

What are her positions? I think what would have come back from the floor of that convention is, who cares? She makes me feel good. I'm in the moment with her. Yeah, I've got vibes. Again, I'm not saying this pejoratively. I think this is a real political phenomenon. Now, whether that will translate to all these critical battleground states to, you know,

as few as 70 or 90,000 voters who could determine the election, many of them who may not be vibing in Pennsylvania and Michigan and those key swing states. I think, you know, one of the big questions I had. When I was watching the convention, it's a tough one, frankly, is this was a great convention for women. It really was a great convention. You could see the place was packed with women, and they had an enormous amount to feel good about. And two big things stand out. You know, a woman candidate, and nobody was really talking about the fact that she was a woman, at least in the speeches.

Unlike the Hillary campaign, where that was hammered home. You know, Hillary herself in her speech talked about breaking a glass ceiling. Nobody else did. Nobody, that's gone, right? Which is a great thing that it's gone. So Camelaharis can run on anything she wants to, but she's not boxed in as the first woman that might be present of the United States. That just didn't come up. But the emphasis on reproductive rights. That was, you know, the women in that room, it didn't matter. We're cheering. The men, if you actually watched when the cameras were scanning the room, they were not on their feet cheering in the same way, frankly, that the women were. And this campaign, to be blunt, is all about getting men voters to the polls. So that's what it is. And it's younger men, it's men. And if the campaign can't succeed in doing that, they are not going to win. So when I watched it all, I thought, wow, maybe a bit of a miss here on the lack of attention to some of the challenges that men are facing.

They've got the same worries about jobs and how much a dozen eggs cost. But you didn't hear it in quite that way. Yeah, we will see. We'll keep following it here on Friday Focus for you each and every week. Let's say goodbye now, Janice, to our free complimentary listeners and join our much-valued. Monk supporters and monk curators on the other side of this break for the paid portion of the Friday Focus podcast. Back to you shortly. Thanks for listening to this excerpt of the Friday Focus podcast.

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