Today, Explained - Kamala

Episode Date: August 12, 2020

Biden picked Harris. Vox’s Fabiola Cineas explains the role race is already playing in the election, and Ezra Klein argues Donald Trump is making things easy for his opponents. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. My fellow Americans, now let me introduce to you, for the first time, your next Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris. Kamala, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Joe. Thank you. As I said, Joe, when you called me, I am incredibly honored by this responsibility, and I'm ready to get to work. I am ready to get to work. Kamala Devi Harris. Kamala, that's a Hindi name, as in she's half South Asian, Tamil to be specific. Who can relate? I can. I'm half Tamil too. Epity. The Harris half is Jamaican. Her Indian mother and Jamaican father met in Berkeley, California in

the 60s. Kamala was born a few years later in Oakland. You're probably at least a little familiar with her story from there. Howard University Law School back in California, prosecutor, San Francisco DA, California Attorney General. And then she becomes the first South Asian to serve in the U.S. Senate and only the second Black woman. And now she's the first ever Black woman and the first South Asian woman to make it onto the presidential ticket of a major American political party. The civil rights struggle is nothing new to Joe. It's why he got into public service. It's why he helped reauthorize the Voting Rights Act and restore unemployment discrimination and employment discrimination laws. And today he takes his place in the ongoing story of America's march toward equality and justice as only, as the only, as the only,

who has served alongside the first black president and has chosen the first Black woman as his running mate. On today's show, we're going to talk about the significance of Biden's choice and whether these two can take down President Donald Trump. Fabiola Sineas, you report on race for Vox. There's going to be a lot of focus on Kamala Harris's identity in the next few weeks. How does she identify herself? I'd say lately Kamala identifies as American, but the way she identifies has definitely changed over time.

So when she became the second Black woman ever to be elected to the U.S. Senate, she proudly claimed that she was an African-American woman, but she also said that she was a South Asian-American woman. But now I think over time, as she has done more interviews, as she announced her candidacy for the presidency, she basically just says, I'm American. Of course, we'd like to believe that in 2020, no one would even care that she's a, you know, half South Asian, half Black politician, and that it wouldn't really make a difference because she is just an American. But of course, if 2020 has taught us anything, that won't be the case. What are the challenges she's facing because of her identity?

So just within the last 24 hours, people have already been debating whether Kamala is Black, right? Or is she Black enough? She has really played up this idea that she's a traditional Black American like myself and so many others who count ourselves among the millions of Black people who are descended from slaves. But she's not descended from slaves. She's descended from slave owners. We've seen this happen, right, when it comes to politicians with mixed ancestry, with mixed heritage, right? Just look at Barack Obama. And the right has actually already launched a campaign basically saying that Kamala is not African-American. And so there's one commentator, Mark Levin,

who got on his show last night and said, Kamala Harris is not an African-American. She is Indian and Jamaican. Jamaica is part of the Caribbean. India is out there near China. I only point that out because if you dare raise that, you're attacked. But the truth is she's not. And so I just wanted to make that clear. Her ancestry does not go back to American slavery. Also, he completely ignored the fact that Kamala was born in the United States. And that's already

a question that people are asking and Googling, was she born in the United States? Like that one guy who was born in Kenya. Exactly. So birtherism is already a thing that's even happening with Kamala Harris. If they're already coming up with ways to say she was born somewhere else, is this just going to be like the beginning of lots of disinformation about her? Yes, because black women have historically been cast as others. There's ample opportunity for people to craft these campaigns around Kamala being this shadowy figure, Kamala being this other. There's an expert that I interviewed. They said that black female politicians are more prone to disinformation attacks because of their status

as Black women and people being more willing to believe falsehoods about them. Last night on Fox News, we saw another example of the kind of criticism that Kamala is going to face. Tucker Carlson kept mispronouncing her name and someone corrected him and say, hey, we should show Kamala more respect by actually pronouncing her name correctly. But Tucker Carlson took offense to that, saying he took offense to pronouncing her name correctly. He took offense to someone saying, hey, you're pronouncing her name incorrectly. Out of respect for somebody who's going to be on the national ticket, pronouncing her name right is actually not. It's kind of a. So I'm disrespecting her by mispronouncing her name unintentionally so it begins you're not allowed to criticize

kamala harris or kamala harris or whatever no because of kamala harris whatever that's just another thing that kamala is going to face right when people are trying to say hey you're talking about her in a way that's sexist or you're talking about her in a way that's racist, folks on the right, we're already seeing them saying, hey, she should be criticized, right? She has a right to be criticized. No one is above criticism, especially someone who is the VP nominee for the Democratic Party. Of course, President Trump has wasted no time calling her a nasty woman, an adjective he sometimes seems to reserve for women of color. She was extraordinarily nasty to Kavanaugh, Judge Kavanaugh then, now Justice Kavanaugh. She was nasty to a level that was just a horrible thing the way she was, the way she treated now Justice Kavanaugh.

What other stereotypes might she be facing as she enters this race in earnest? Definitely. So I think the main one that's already coming out is this age-old stereotype that we call the sapphire. The sapphire? The sapphire, yeah. That stereotype has given rise to what we call today as the angry Black woman. Stubborn, overbearing, characterizes loud, and even emasculating. During the very first debate, she challenged Joe Biden about his position on school busing. You know, there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools. And she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me. So I will tell you that on this

subject, it cannot be an intellectual debate among Democrats. We have to take it seriously. We have to act swiftly. And people characterized her challenge of Joe Biden as a vicious attack. People said that she was fierce. However, when I, for example, looked at what Kamala said, I was just like, this is a woman who is trying to say, hey, Joe, your stance on this as a Black woman who desegregated my public schools growing up, your stance on this really hurt me. How does Kamala Harris battle all of this sort of disinformation campaigns, you know, assertions that she'll be beyond criticism just because she's a Black woman and a half South Asian woman at that, that there'll be these allegations that she's a sapphire and that she's like an angry Black woman.

What is, what does she do when so much of this stuff sounds just totally unfounded? Yeah, I think Kamala, right, what we've seen from her on the campaign trail is that she's very direct and she will call people out directly. And I think that's one of her strong suits is that she doesn't back down from speaking the truth and trying to correct misinformation. And so, again, she's going to need help is the problem. So I'm looking forward to see how the Biden campaign actually works to fight this misinformation and fiercely defend Kamala Harris. Well, at least, you know, her partner in crime here, Vice President Joe Biden, has a way with words.

Exactly. What you all know, but most people don't know, unlike the African-American community with notable exceptions, the Latino community is an incredibly diverse community with incredibly different attitudes about different things. The Democrats are really going to need Joe Biden to talk less and really just stick to the script, because when he gets too casual, that's when the blunders come out. And yeah, we've seen people on his campaign right now, Simone Sanders, just having to say, no, this is what he actually meant. But Joe Biden will have to say less, but also have a script where he's able to protect and defend Kamala Harris. After the break, I'll talk to Ezra Klein about what Kamala and Joe will need to do to defeat Donald. I'm Sean Ramos for him. It's Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura. Aura believes that sharing pictures is a great way to keep up with family.

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Terms and conditions do apply. Ezra Klein, you wrote about Joe picking com love for Vox.com today. Does it really matter who Joe picks? I mean, apart from COVID, Mike Pence has mostly seemed like a cheerleader in a suit for four years. Does the Veep matter? It depends what you mean by matter. So definitely for governance, the vice president matters if the president wants them to matter. Mike Pence has mattered. He has staffed the entire Trump administration, right? The reason so much of the Trump administration ends up following Koch brother policies is because Mike Pence is there putting people into the key positions. Joe Biden mattered in the Obama administration because Barack Obama trusted him. Now, other vice presidents have not mattered, right? Lyndon Johnson famously didn't matter in John F. Kennedy's administration. But right there, you see the way they also can matter. That's a big but.

Sometimes the president dies or has to leave for some other reason or potentially even, and there have been rumors of this, simply declines to run for a second term, right? Joe Biden is 77, I believe. There have been rumors that even if he wins, he might see himself as a transitional figure and decline to run again, in which case his vice president would be the heir apparent. So yes, in those two ways, vice presidents matter tremendously for governance for who governs in the future. The thing people often mean when they say, do vice presidents matter, is do they swing the election? And the evidence there is overwhelmingly no. They may matter a little bit in their home state. And so I think it is safe to say that Joe Biden is now going to win California. His odds are very, very good in California. But beyond that, there would not be reason to look at history and say that putting Kamala Harris on the ticket is going to substantially change the votes Joe Biden does or doesn't get.

On the LBJ front, on the there's rumors Biden might only do one term here front, on the Biden 77 and maybe not at his best front. I wonder, are you trying to say that he's potentially picking who he thinks could be the next president of the United States, like the next next president of the United States? Yes, he knows that. He has thought about that explicitly through the entire process. Joe Biden has his faults, but he's actually always been very clear-eyed on the strengths and weaknesses of Joe Biden, and he understands that he himself is older. He does not represent directly much of the Democratic Party. Joe Biden is a white man, an old white man in a party that loses white voters, male voters, and old voters. He is not as a liberal or as left in some ways as the party has become and certainly

not as left as the younger generation of the party has become. And when I say he thinks of himself as a transitional figure, I'm not putting words in his mouth. The quote is, I am a transitional candidate. Joe Biden sees himself as the person who can beat Donald Trump. And I think he believes he will do a good job as president. I know he believes that. But Joe Biden understands that he will not carry this forward in the future. And also he himself has this incredibly intense, vivid experience of the way being chosen as vice president might make you, put you in line to be the next president. He's run for president a number of times and has never done well. He did not come in first, second, third, fourth in 2008.

But after becoming Barack Obama's vice president, he became the front runner when he did run in 2020. So Biden, better than most people, has a real sense that being named vice president really vaults you into leadership of a party that maybe would not have made you its leader otherwise. It's pretty obvious seeming what she brings to him just by virtue of being this historic choice. But what about her politics and, you know, ideology? Kamala Harris, in a way that is not often mentioned and is weirdly, like, violated in a lot of political commentary about her, she is one of the most liberal members of the Senate. No matter how you track this, she is like in the five most liberal. It's like Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, and Cory Booker are the most liberal members of the Senate. And yet people kind of peg her as a moderate, huh? It's very weird. The New York

Times called her a moderate just yesterday. The thing is that Kamala Harris does not tend to go with the left on a lot of symbolic issues. And she is a politician who came up in politics in a different era. And so her record as a prosecutor was more mixed between its progressive elements and its more tough on crime elements than her record as a senator, which is much more forthrightly liberal. As a presidential candidate, what she tried to do was exist in between the left and moderate lanes. That's part of why the left doesn't trust her. They don't believe she would be with them in all circumstances, and she probably wouldn't be. But where she sees the country going, and where her own politics tend to be going,

reflect a party that is changing. Joe Biden has moved left because the party is changing. Kamala Harris has moved left because the party is changing. And they both kind of reflect this way in which they want to rhetorically appeal to a country that they don't think is all the way where their party is, but they also want to be where their party is. And they recognize that that has moved quite a bit over the past decade. So how does Biden-Harris beat Trump-Pence in 2020? I mean, Trump-Pence is going to beat Trump-Pence in 2020 to the first approximation. Or if they win, it'll be for that reason too.

But people thought that last time too. People keep saying that, but Donald Trump was not the incumbent in 2016. So he did not own the condition of the country. And he does own the condition of the country right now. When an incumbent is running for re-election as president, practically during a national crisis, the first question in a lot of voters' minds,

practically persuadable voters, is do I like the condition of the country? The single best thing Donald Trump could do to win re-election is do a good job managing coronavirus. And the single most important thing he could do to lose reelection is to continue doing a terrible job of it. So Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will beat him by, to some degree, if they beat him, by keeping the focus on his failures. Donald Trump could beat them by either turning his failures into successes or somehow scaring Americans about what a Biden-Harris presidency would mean. I don't know if you caught this, but Trump put an ad on Twitter, maybe retweeted a video,

but I think it was an ad. It was the Trump war room who put this out. And it pasted Joe Biden's face onto a Trojan horse. And then the Trojan horse from the movie came into Troy. And then out of the Trojan horse came AOC, Ilhan Omar, and Bernie Sanders. And you've seen this a lot on Fox News. This effort to try to frame Joe Biden as somehow simultaneously too senile and sleepy to finish a sentence, but also a puppet for like the socialist wing of the Democratic Party

who's going to socialize a means of production. And it's not working. The thing that is helping Joe Biden right now, if you look at polling, is that Donald Trump himself is extraordinarily mobilizing to Democratic voters. They are very, very excited about voting against him. Joe Biden and we'll see, but potentially Kamala Harris, are not giving him the grist he needs to scare enough of his base into voting for him, which is why he's so far down in the polls. Ezra Klein, great to have you back on the show. I'm sure we'll be hearing more from you soon because I hear there's a convention next week. I hear that too, for our sins. All right. Thanks, Ezra. Thank you.