The NPR Politics Podcast - What VP Kamala Harris Told Us About Their Post-SCOTUS Strategy

Episode Date: July 3, 2023

The administration sees outrage over Supreme Court rulings as a major force in animating their base voters ahead of next year's presidential election and the vice president has played a central role in the White House response. She spoke to NPR's Michel Martin about their strategy — and whether or not she's ready for the top job.This episode: national political correspondent Sarah McCammon, White House reporter Deepa Shivaram, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.The podcast is produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Kaylee from Milford, Massachusetts. I've just finished unpacking my last box since moving two weeks ago, and we've moved four times in 10 years with the military. Hopefully this will be our last move for a long time. This podcast was recorded at 1 15 p.m. on Monday, July 3rd, 2023. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I'll still be organizing the house for months to come. Okay, here's the show. Okay, I feel that.

I hate moving and I've moved so many times. I was going to say no one likes moving. It is the worst. So Godspeed to that woman. I love the use of that sound though on the taping the box. Yeah. Yeah, that was impressive. She should be a producer.

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover politics. I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. Vice President Kamala Harris is out in the country. She's been talking to voters to mark the one-year anniversary of the Dobbs decision when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed the states to restrict abortion. Harris spoke with Morning Edition's Michelle Martin on Friday in New Orleans about how she sees her role in the White House. I think about my role as vice president of the United States and what that means both in terms of the bully pulpit that I have and the responsibility that comes with that to hopefully inform folks of things I might be aware of, but also to elevate public discourse and hopefully cut through the misinformation. So let's talk about how the White House might proceed after a slew of major Republican wins at the Supreme Court.

Domenico Dobbs was a big motivator, of course, for Democrats in the midterms. And I imagine the administration hopes that these recent decisions will keep that political energy going for them. Yeah, I mean, you know, the 2024 presidential election is going to be the first presidential election that's fought after the Dobbs decision. And we saw that that was a huge motivating factor in the 2022 midterm elections. And, you know, the White House really hopes that that carries over into the presidential election. And when you look at how much has been piled on even since then in the year since Dobbs, when you look at LGBTQ plus rights at the court, the affirmative action ruling that just went down, student loans being essentially nullified, the Biden program ruling that just went down, student loans being essentially

nullified, the Biden program being nullified. Those are some key Democratic pillar groups that the White House is hoping turns out and says that they blame Republicans and the conservative majority at the court and realizes what the, you know, the importance of picking a president who can appoint justices to that court. I guess the question, the big question I've had is, obviously, we've seen indications that voters are, especially female voters, that Democratic voters are energized by the Dobbs decision. The question I've had is how long that will continue, how long the legs will be. But now there are all these new issues right in the mix. Yeah, definitely. I mean, there's, you know, when you think about all of the issues that

are coming together, I mean, obviously, the Dobbs ruling affects a lot of swing voters, women, suburban women in particular, college educated women we've seen in polling. Some of these them are swing groups, independent women who are very much against what the court did with Dobbs. And when you think about affirmative action, you know, really affecting black voters, potentially, especially since, you know, when you talk to black voters and activists in the community, this isn't just about one decision. There are a whole slew of policies across the country, including the Republican candidates using woke, for example, something that started in black activism, where you have a lot of black

Americans feeling like they're really under siege here in this political moment. Now, Deepa, there's some thought that the White House can act unilaterally in some way to take some limited steps to mitigate the impact of these recent court decisions. Since the podcast on Friday, the administration has announced that it will try to address student loan debt in a different way in response to the court's decision to invalidate the first attempt by the Biden administration at loan forgiveness. What will that look like? Yeah, so we heard from the president himself on Friday, like you mentioned, that the White House is essentially trying to go a different

path with this, and that's through what's called the Higher Education Act. And in his remarks, the president said that this route is legally sound, but he warned that it's probably going to take longer. And in the meantime, of course, borrowers are going to have to start paying back those loans again come this fall. So the administration is also trying to establish what is like an on-ramp payment program. So borrowers won't have the threat to default on their loans or have harm to their credit score. So basically, the administration, while they sort through this, is trying to provide a bit of a cushion for people who have to start making those payments again. One of the things, though, one of the big challenges here that the vice president emphasized to Michelle is that with this issue and others,

there's not a lot the administration can do on its own. There is work that we can do. But ultimately, for a lot of these issues, look, we have three branches of government. The court took rights from the people of America. Congress can put those rights back in place. We cannot through executive action. Congress can. rights. And the way that you hear the White House, the way that you hear Biden and particularly Harris talk about things like abortion, talk about things like gay rights, is that there are rights, and the key word here is freedoms, that are being taken away. And that's something that, you know, when Harris went down to Florida, for example, right in Ron DeSantis' backyard, you know, he talks about how Florida is the home for, you know, freedom for Americans and they're fighting for freedom. And what the White House is trying to argue, and in particular, what Harris is trying to argue, is that these are rights that are being taken away. So you'll hear that thread throughout all of these issues that they're trying to hit throughout the campaign trail as well. You know, Harris, when she started as vice president,

really had this sort of wide portfolio of things that she had to work on and really hadn't found her lane. This has really given her an opportunity to be the person who really speaks from the White House, who's identifiable with this issue, and has given her something to, for lack of a better term, run on. Right. And this also goes back to part of Harris's history, too, as a politician back in 2004, when she was a DA in San Francisco, she came up into Attorney General of California. These are issues that she really focused on then. So she has more of a comfort here and more of a history here of talking about gay rights, talking about freedoms for women, rights for women. These are all things

that she has a long history in talking about. And you kind of see that come through. Whereas like issues like immigration that she was tasked with, some of these more other topics that the White House said, OK, this is what your project is going to be. She struggled a lot. She didn't really have a footing there. But these conversations that she's having now being the face of this topic for the administration, you can see her be a lot more confident as she talks about it. And when she says here that the courts took these rights away, Congress can give them back.

I mean, the take home message here is is what it's vote, right? Yes. It's get out the vote next year. Right. It's show up, look at the things that we're fighting for, look at what we've already delivered for you. That is the message that they really want to push through. It was like, you voted for us, you showed up in 2020, you showed up in 2022, and look what we have already done. So in addition to talking about how all of these freedoms are being rolled back in their mind, they're also trying to obviously tell all of their successes and try to advertise that to the American people. Okay, time for a quick break. More in just a second.

And we are back. Vice President Harris and President Biden are running once again as a team. There was speculation in 2020 that Biden might be trying to lay the groundwork to serve one term and then tee up Harris to replace him. That, of course, has not happened. But the idea that Harris has to be ready to step in at any moment and become president, it feels even more real, right? I mean, if Biden is reelected next year, he will be days away from turning 82. Michelle Martin asked Harris about this and about whether she's had a big enough role in the administration to demonstrate her readiness. Here's what she said. I am running for reelection with him as vice president.

And that is my focus. I'm traveling around the country to make sure that people know not only what they have received because they stood in line for hours during the height of a pandemic in 2020 demanding these things, but also what is yet to come. Deepa, has the White House shifted the way it's positioning Harris or the types of roles she's being given? No, you know, they would argue that she's been doing the work that she's essentially been doing since the midterms, obviously taking on that leadership position as the face of the abortion discussion. Obviously, we know, though, that age is a big concern among voters. You've heard the president himself in recent weeks and months almost poke fun at himself a lot more often, joking that he and Jimmy Carter go way back, that he and James Madison, one of the founding

fathers, are best friends. He's made a lot of jokes poking fun at his age because he knows that that's been a pretty top of mind issue for a lot of voters. And obviously, you know, it keeps coming up. But I would say that people in the White House when it comes to Harris say the role of the vice president has always been, always been to be prepared to be president at any given moment. And what they're really harping on is that she is going to be doing the work, like she said in that bite you just heard, that she is running as vice president. And you hear, obviously, Republicans, people like Ted Cruz, people like Nikki Haley, who are running for president, say that a vote for Biden is essentially a vote for a Harris administration. And folks I've talked to, Democratic operatives, will say, you know, that's the same exact argument

people made in 2020 when Biden picked Harris as his running mate. That's the exact same kind of conversation we were having almost four years ago or three and a half years ago around. And, you know, that didn't really work is their point. It's an interesting dance that Democrats are going to have to try to do because everybody knows that Biden is the oldest person to ever hold office. You know, obviously, for all intents and purposes, he's healthy for an 80 year old, right. But you know, 80 year olds, you know, that's there's a lot of health issues that come along with that. And that's going to mean an increased focus on Harris's job as vice president, her readiness to be president, a lot of the more intangible factors, like her favorability ratings, which have suffered and haven't been as good as Biden's or some other

Democrats as well. And there have been lots of stories written about that and whether or not Harris is the person who best gives Democrats the chance to win. You know, you could argue, and I've talked to a lot of Democratic strategists about this, that if Harris were polling better, that Biden might step aside, but he's not because his team feels that he gives the Democratic Party the best chance to win. And that is a lot of the subtext here that's going on and why you continue to see the White House trying to elevate Harris in certain ways, but also keeping her as Biden is the one and her is the 1A. But this is a different situation, right? I mean, he, as you said,

he is the oldest president in history. Do you think that that answer is going to work for most voters? You know, I think most voters don't care. I don't think that they sit there and speculate and say, you know, why is the White House messaging it this way or not talking about it that way? I think that they look at it the way it is. You know, what policies are, is this administration putting forward? Do they like the policies that this administration is putting forward versus whatever the alternative is from Republicans who've really had a hard time of it appealing to the middle because they haven't really expanded their base? They're running to the right in their primary. And it gives Democrats a lot of time to sort out some of these questions of how Biden and Harris are going to run together as a team, because Republicans are going to be beating each other up for months and months and months running to the

right in a primary. Now, Deepa, I did want to ask, we talked about the White House and how the White House is positioning Harris, but what about Harris herself? I mean, you've covered her for a few years. What, if anything, have you noticed about how she is tackling this challenge, how she is sort of framing her role? Yeah, there's definitely like she does a lot better when she's out and about, when she's traveling, when she's in front of crowds, when she's interacting with people, that enthusiasm comes out, that authenticity comes out from her. She does get really fired up. And that's what's been really interesting watching her take on the abortion topic is because she's mad. She's angry. And you see her going out again and again and again to talk about this. And the White House continuing to put her out because

that rage for her is very, it's rooted very deep. She is a woman. She's the first woman vice president. You know, even if Biden was talking about this, that kind of genuine reaction that she has on this topic really fires people up in the rooms that she's in. And you really see a change in how she speaks and how she interacts. There was an event she did a couple weeks ago where she was talking about abortion, where she was standing behind a podium and she kind of pulled a Biden where she took the mic out of the stand and started walking around and interacting with the crowd. She's doing a lot, obviously, with voters of color. That's something I think you'll continue

to see, especially, of course, as we know, Democrats can't win an election without Black voters. That's something, a community, of course, that she's very connected to, that she's very involved in when it comes to campaigning. So you're going to see a lot of that, almost more energy come out from her. And that's something that we're already starting to see as she travels more around the country. I would say also, I think one fact that you guys might remember, one moment you might remember from the campaign trail in 2020, this is the first trip she went on

once Biden had tapped her as his VP nominee. She came out onto the tarmac wearing Converse shoes. And like everybody blew up. They're like, oh, the vice president's so trendy. Like she's so young and hip and cool. And I think there's like gonna be some more of that kind of energy. Like there's a video they just put out where she went to Stonewall, obviously celebrating Pride Month.

She was hanging out with Andy Cohen. So I think you're going to see a little bit more from the White House trying to, you know, channel that, that like, yes, you know, she is the vice president, but also she can relate to young people and she is really checked in and knows these things. So that might be something to keep an eye out for. Well, I think it says something about our politics that young and hip is in your 50s. Yeah, well, I was thinking the same thing. You know, not to speak as somebody who might be somewhat approaching that. Right. I feel like Gen Z is going to shame all of us throughout this entire election.

So I'm prepared for that. Well, we are going to leave it right there for today. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover politics. I'm Deepa Shibaram. I cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.