The NPR Politics Podcast - Roundup: Obamas Back Harris; Bigoted Tropes Could Irk Voters

Episode Date: July 26, 2024

Vice President Harris continues to pull in fistfuls of money and has secured another key endorsement from Barack and Michelle Obama.And racist tropes helped Trump to dominate his Republican opponents in the 2016 presidential primary, but now some conservatives are warning Republicans to dial back similar attacks against Harris to avoid alienating key general election voters.This episode: voting correspondent Ashley Lopez, national political correspondent Sarah McCammon, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.The podcast is produced by Casey Morell and Kelli Wessinger. Our intern is Bria Suggs. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at AutographCollection.com. Hi, this is Brian and Pam Grbel from Fort Clinton, Ohio. We are in our boat, the Take Five, crossing our wake after completing more than 6,000 miles in one full year on America's Great Loop. This show was recorded on... 12.05 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday, July 26, 2024. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but we will be on our boat enjoying a toast to our accomplishment as we celebrate the conclusion of our Mount Everest

life moment. Enjoy the show. Congratulations. Also, I'm jealous. That sounds fun. Just gonna say, it'd be nice to get away. Yeah, being on the water would be great. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover voting. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the campaign. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. Today on The Roundup, we're talking about Harris's first week as the Democratic Party's apparent choice for presidential nominee and how Donald Trump is adapting his campaign to that new reality. Let's start with this. Harris received what felt

like, you know, an inevitable endorsement at this point, the endorsement of the Obama family. Domenico, not surprising, but it does seem to round out a pretty big onslaught of back-to-back endorsements this week, right? Yeah. And I think, you know, Obama was trying to not appear to be some kind of kingmaker or, you know, being involved in a coronation, which is why he and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi initially had said they thought that the process should be transparent, it should be open. But clearly, what we've now moved into is a general election mode where the party apparatus, the biggest leaders and officials in it are all firmly behind Kamala Harris. And, you know, with a lot of interest groups, too, that have been holding calls to try to rally together a lot of these groups to really

be active and raise money for the next 102 days or so. Yeah, it's just kind of head spinning if you think about it, where we were a week ago versus where we are now. I mean, the amount that has happened in just that time. I mean, a week ago, the RNC was just wrapping up. Biden was still the Democratic candidate. So much has changed. It's a totally, it feels like a totally different campaign. Yeah, you mentioned this, Domenico, but there have been like calls throughout the week,

thousands of people. It's seemingly grassroots support from communities like white women for Harris, black women for Harris, black men, etc. I mean, this kind of groundswell of support, I don't think we saw anything like this at all, you know, since President Biden has been running. I mean, how does this compare, you think, to like the two campaigns at this point? Yeah, I mean, I don't think we need to say don't think we saw, we didn't see it. You know, it didn't exist when, you know, you have these kinds of calls, the grassroots sort of outpouring. A lot of it has to do with the timing of what's gone on, how down Democrats and Democratic base groups felt after that June 27th debate with Biden. And now we've got someone like Harris coming out and who's had a very good, you know, couple to

three days here of campaigning, seeming to have a vision for the future and policy priorities in cleaner, crisper ways than we saw, not just with President Biden, who's really sort of struggling the last few months, but then herself in 2019 when she ran for president. Well, moving forward in the campaign, Sarah, you know, we've been talking about one of the ways in which Vice President Harris has been trying to sort of make a distinction between her and President Biden. That has been on her approach to Gaza. Harris made this statement in front of cameras yesterday following her meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. What has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating. The images of dead children

and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third, or fourth time. We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering, and I will not be silent. Yeah, definitely a distinct tone from President Biden there. Sarah, what are your thoughts on on how Harris has been trying to talk about this issue? Yeah, this is obviously a challenging issue for Democrats. There's a lot of division in the party over Israel and Gaza. And at the same time, you know, Americans historically have largely strongly supported Israel and if not necessarily Netanyahu and the way that this war is being

waged. So it's a line particularly for Democrats to walk. Harris is an interesting person in that regard. You know, her base is younger and more diverse than Biden's base. That's a group that has been much more critical of Netanyahu and the U.S.-Israel policy. You know, her husband, Doug Emhoff, who is Jewish, has been a high-profile surrogate for her, and he spent a lot of time talking about combating anti-Semitism. So you see her trying to speak to the complexity of this issue and the range of views within her party. You know, I thought it was interesting. She sort of walked a very careful line with that decision that we've talked about to, you know, not preside over Netanyahu's visit to Congress, but meet with him. Well, I think the difference is really largely in tone, right? Because I'm not sure that there's

a lot of policy difference if you listen to what Harris was saying. And if you listen to what Biden had said and how he sort of evolved on this, he certainly, you know, initially would say things very sharply saying that the United States needs to stand steadfastly behind Israel. But he then sort of emerged later to say that there were real problems with how Israel was conducting this war. But you didn't see that sort of sharp language initially from Harris immediately defending Israel, although she said that Israel will have everything that it needs to defend itself, the United States will always ensure, but that, you know, she'll speak out when she thinks that the way that they're defending themselves isn't correct or in her view. So I think that that's a big difference in tone. And it felt more even handed, certainly for people who are already giving Harris the benefit of the

doubt. Yeah. All right, let's take a quick break. And when we get back, we're going to talk about the GOP's campaign strategy against the Harris campaign, at least so far. And we're back. And Sarah, you've been doing some reporting this week on the sort of specifically identity-based attacks against Harris that have been coming from conservative media. Here's like a little bit of that. 100%. She was a DEI hire. It's this trap they've created for themselves of Kamala, the DEI hire. I think she was a DEI hire, and I think that that's what we're seeing.

So you just heard Congressman Tim Burchett of Tennessee talking with CNN, Trump ally Sebastian Gorka on Newsmax, and then Wyoming Congresswoman Harriet Hageman. That's in a clip posted online by journalist Josh Roltenberg. So this is sort of a drumbeat that Harris is a DEI hire. You know, I spoke to Anjmarie Hancock, who's a political scientist at The Ohio State University. And she said the goal of these attacks is really to try to delegitimize Harris and suggest that she is not qualified for the job, that it's somehow an unearned position. Yeah. And this strategy, Sarah, I would imagine would alienate some voters. It is kind of risky,

right? Yeah. I mean, I was on a call with some progressive female leaders of various progressive groups this week. And I don't want to say they were crowing about this, but they seemed almost gleeful because they take it as a sign that Republicans are running scared. I mean, obviously, they don't appreciate these kinds of attacks, but they see them as kind of predictable to be expected. I've talked to a couple of conservative women this week who are also skeptical of that messaging. And the message from them seems to be focus on the policy. Don't focus on her race and gender. Well, this was always a trap for Republicans.

You know, they really do struggle in running against black candidates and women. I mean, we saw that in 2016 with Hillary Clinton running. Lots of sexism in that race. In 2008 with Barack Obama, the first black president in this country, he faced a big degree of racism, frankly, from the right. And, you know, it's always been something that's really difficult for them. And it's why you see Harris, in the way that she's running, trying to sort of, you know, stiff arm some of that DEI conversation, and focus on the policies and agenda that she wants to run on,

because she's really made this interesting case in trying to say that, yes, we're running against Donald Trump and she can prosecute the case against him, but also point toward the future, the issues and the kind of country that she thinks that Democrats would prefer to have. Things like kitchen table and money issues, reducing income inequality, providing people with fairer wages, affordable housing, things like that. Building up the middle class, she said, would be a defining goal of her presidency. Fighting for voting rights, restricting guns, and fighting for reproductive rights, of course. And that's the kind of case she wants to make squarely and directly to swing state voters and let the right make themselves

look extreme with this kind of DEI rhetoric. And I think we've seen that from her, you know, to a large degree. I mean, Harris does, you know, she spoke to a historically black sorority this week. She does reference her, you know, her mother and her story sometimes, but it's not front and center in the way that policy is. I mean, when, you know, I was reviewing some of her speeches this week, and often when she talks about women, or people of color, she's often talking about things like black maternal mortality, or reproductive rights in general, as opposed to talking about herself. And, you know, the comment that Professor Hancock, the political scientist made, you know, she said, candidates like Harris have to decide how to present themselves,

how to talk about their identity. And some people run what she calls a racialized campaign, which really leans into that. Others, a de-racialized campaign, which sort of backs off from it. And she said Harris is kind of somewhere in the middle. I mean, she doesn't shy away from it, but she doesn't put it front and center. She focuses more on some of these other issues, like Domenico just said. What do you make of this DEI attack from the Trump campaign? I mean, it was just a few months ago, they were sort of touting their increase in support from, you know, communities of color, like black men and Latino men. This seems like it would be at least somewhat alienating to these groups that they were kind of hoping to make inroads with.

Well, I think it really shows that the Trump campaign was on their back foot when Kamala Harris sort of emerged as the consensus candidate, because you would have thought that there would have been the talking points, the message would have been down, because that's something that Republicans in general have been very good at through the years in doing that. And you're only starting this week to see some of those strategy memos, you know, where Republicans are telling their candidates not to go there with DEI, talk about some of these other things about Harris, her policies, try to paint her as a quote-unquote radical liberal, you know. And the Harris campaign, though, has taken that and run

and tried to invert the campaign and invert the message, the attacks that the Trump campaign was using against Biden and saying that he's too old, he doesn't know where he is, all this stuff. And now saying, you know, that you can't have somebody in the White House who would be 83 at the end of this term, being able to, you know, taking this attack on Harris, where they call her weird, the one of the strategy groups had said, because of her laugh and other things. And they're trying to paint Trump as weird and incoherent. So we're starting to see the messages flip the script a little bit from the Harris folks toward Trump.

We'll see what winds up solidifying. All right. Well, time for another quick break. And when we get back, it's time for Can't Let It Go. And we get back, it's time for Can't Let It Go. And we're back. And if you're hearing this and haven't followed us yet, please go ahead and hit the follow button in whatever app you use to listen to us. And now it is time to end the week like we always do with Can't Let It Go,

the segment of the show where we talk about things we just can't stop thinking about, politics or otherwise. Sarah, why don't we start with you? What can't you let go of this week? Okay, there was this fashion story in the Washington Post about this dress called the Tucker Nook, which is really popular on Capitol Hill. It's an A-line tweed. Sorry if anybody has it, but I think it's kind of ugly. And it's almost $300, which I know is not that much for like a nice dress in this day and age. But as somebody who still shops clearance and thrift stores just because it was like

baked into me and who gets a lot of my stuff online because I'm a mom, I just like I don't get it. I'm trying to think of the dress. It's like kind of like it's very conservative, obviously. It's like a little dowdy, like very structured. I mean, it's the kind of thing you would only be able to pull off in like a cocktail party in DC. Well, I've never worn a tuckernuck tweed dress or a dress generally. But, you know, I mean, if this is what you want to do and that's your fashion, right? I mean, I'm sure there's some fast fashion way to get this. To be fair,

the article said there's a cheap knockoff, so I should stop being so judgy. How about you, Ashley? Well, what I can't let go of this week is, of course, Olympics related. The past few days, athletes have been training and staying in the Olympic Village and presumably resting up, except for the fact that some of the athletes are not happy with the beds that were set up for them in Paris. I don't know if you guys have seen pictures of this. There's been a lot about the beds, the air conditioning. Yeah. Apparently everyone in the Olympic Village has been given a cardboard bed. It kind of looks like a couple of boxes stacked side by side with like, it looks like a kind of

thin layer of foam on top. I mean, the beds look sturdy. People were jumping on them on TikTok. But the thing that I keep asking myself is like, I cannot imagine LeBron James sleeping in those beds. Like there's just like no way in which that seems like that would work. And I got my answer because apparently since the 1992 Dream Team, the Olympic men's, the USA Olympic men's basketball team has not been sleeping in the Olympic village. Yeah, it almost starts to feel like French sabotage of other athletes. You know, are the French athletes really sleeping on cardboard and in hot rooms? I don't know.

Seems something fishy going on. Okay, Domenico, what can't you let go of this week? I'm going to stick with your Olympics theme because I am so excited to be able to watch Team USA in this Olympics. I think it will be a great palate cleanser from politics. And one part of the Olympics that I've already sort of been laughing at is watching Snoop Dogg carry the torch. Oh, yeah. And watching him dance with it, watching him very gingerly, sort of carefully walk with it. And I will say, forgive me ahead of time,

but we can confirm that he did not drop it like a top. Such a good joke. Anyways. All right, let's leave it there for today. We'll be back on your feeds on Monday. Our executive producer is Mithoni Maturi. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our producers are John Yoon Han, Casey Morrell, Kelly Wessinger. Our intern is Bria Suggs. Special thanks to Lexi Shapiro. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover voting. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the campaign.

And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.