What A Day - The DNC Says Farewell To Biden, Hello To Harris

Episode Date: August 20, 2024

On Monday night, President Joe Biden kicked off the Democratic National Convention. In his speech, a political swan song, Biden looked back on his major accomplishments during his term as president. And, somewhat awkwardly, many people clapping and cheering on Monday were the same people who pressured Biden to drop his re-election bid. The party is moving on with Vice President Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket while Biden winds down his political career. Franklin Foer, a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of "The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future," discusses Biden's legacy.While the GOP had to settle for Kid Rock and Hulk Hogan, the Democrats will have no problem bringing the star power to the DNC. Olivia Craighead, a writer covering pop culture and celebrity for The Cut, highlights the famous folks throwing their support behind the Harris-Walz campaign this week.Show Notes:Check out Franklin's reporting – https://tinyurl.com/3vdn8cpbSubscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/3kk4nyz8What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcastFollow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday

It's Tuesday, August 20th. I'm Josie Duffy Rice. And I'm Trevelle Anderson, and this is What A Day, the show where we're giving you the highlights from the first night of the DNC as President Joe Biden ceremonially passed the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris. We're lowering the Cut the Malarkey flag to half-m mast in his honor. I want that flag. If anybody has one. On today's show, we're forgoing the headlines to bring you two conversations about this week's Democratic National Convention, or in other words, Crooked Media Super Bowl. Yes, a little later, I'm going to get the tea about all the celebrity action at the DNC, including if Beyonce and Taylor Swift might be involved because the streets are talking, Josie. They are talking. The streets rarely know what they're talking about, but maybe this time they do.

But first, President Joe Biden kicked off the convention Monday night with a reflection on his four years in office. With a grateful heart, I stand before you now on this August night to report that democracy has prevailed. Democracy, democracy has delivered. And now democracy must be preserved. In his speech, Biden also ticked off some of his major accomplishments during his first, and now only, term as president. He noted that he ushered the nation out of the COVID pandemic. He passed major legislation to improve infrastructure, address climate change, and strengthen gun control. He played an instrumental role in uniting NATO to respond to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. And he said he led the charge to stabilize American democracy

in the face of deep political divisions. But it's a little awkward, right? A month ago, the convention was supposed to be all about Biden and his vision for a second term. Instead, Monday's speech was kind of his political swan song. And many of the people clapping and cheering were the same people who pressured him to drop his reelection bid. Now the party is moving on with Harris at the top of the ticket while he winds down

his political career. It's a lot for someone who spent the last half century in politics, who never made any secret about his ambition to be president, and who clearly hoped for a second term. So for more on Biden's legacy as president, I spoke with someone who literally wrote the book on it. Franklin Foer is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of The Last Politician Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future. It's a behind the scenes account of the first two years of Biden's presidency, from a swearing in a few weeks after the January 6th riots to the 2022 midterms and everything in between. Here's our conversation. Biden, especially during the primary, right? Like

he was the moderate. He was appealing to the centrist, to the never Trump Republicans, but he's been a pretty progressive president, especially up until Gaza. Of course, it's debatable, but in four years, his administration relaxed laws around birth control and medication abortion. They pushed to extend Title Nine protections to cover LGBTQ students, he lowered some prescription drug costs, he wiped out 10s of billions of dollars in student debt, aggressively pursued antitrust litigation against tech companies, they bolstered unions, like it goes on and on and on. Obviously, it's not totally binary. But do you think that this is who he imagined he'd be as president, that this is the agenda he envisioned?

Not quite. Largely because in his own head, he's a great man in history. And I think he wanted to have an accomplishment that you would set next to the New Deal or the Great Society. And he came so close to getting that. If Joe Manchin had gone along with Build Back Better and you got the extension of the social safety net in all of those directions, he would have cemented that place. I think in your list of accomplishments, I would also point to

the Inflation Reduction Act, which I think is maybe potentially the biggest of them all. And so much of that actually depends on its implementation over the course of the next four years. Right now, it looks like Obamacare. It looks like after the first couple of years, you weren't sure whether it would be judged a success or not. But if the Harris administration is able to finish implementing the Inflation Reduction Act, you then have this massive jumpstart to a green economy where he basically took a big chunk of the Green New Deal and he made it happen.

You know, in some ways, it's like that he aimed for so much with this thin majority meant that there was inevitably disappointment when he failed to shoot the moon. But on the other hand, by pushing so hard for so much, he was able to get what he was able to get. So, I mean, I think you're also probably alluding to the bipartisan nature of what he was able to accomplish in the CHIPS Act and the infrastructure bill and the like. And that surprised me because I had so dismissed Senate Republicans as useless that the fact that he was able to rally at least 10 of them to get on board for those pieces of legislation is something. This is interesting because I hear what you're

saying to be that he tried to do so much. He decided, hey, I'm going to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. More than maybe we realize stuck. But also that has kind of hurt him in some way because people also realize what didn't stick. Am I hearing that correctly? Yeah, it doesn't feel as good as it should. Because he bloated expectations by creating the possibility of doing a successor to the New Deal Great Society. Let's talk a little bit about his failure.

So Gaza, I feel like, is definitely the biggest one in the sense of how it's kind of shaped the politics of the country in some ways. But there is also Afghanistan. And then obviously, inflation is up. I don't know if we would consider that his failure, but it has happened under his watch. What do you take from that? How do you think that that kind of has affected his legacy, if it has affected it at watch. What do you take from that? How do you think that that kind of has affected his legacy, if it has affected it at all? I think it's affected the perceptions of Joe Biden. So you look at all of these things,

you look at Afghanistan, you look at inflation, you look at Gaza, you look at the border. I think the way that people perceive these things, a lot of people perceive things is that the world is spinning out of control. And that there was this old guy who just didn't have the energy to put a cork in it. He couldn't stop the world from descending into chaos. And maybe the world descended into chaos because he was old and people perceived his weakness. And I can't say that there's maybe not some truth to that on some level. But just to go item by item, I think with Afghanistan, I think that's a decision that may look much better with time.

Everybody said on the day that this was evidence of America's weakness. Nobody would ever trust America again. But America was able to, and Biden especially, was able to rally a coalition to try to stymie Putin pretty effectively. American leadership hasn't disappeared because of Afghanistan. And he was able to effectively turn the page on America's longest war and on the war on terror and pivot American foreign policy in a different direction. When it comes to inflation, there was a trade-off in what he did. He kept America running at full employment. And so people paid higher prices in exchange for having jobs. People don't think in that sort of way. They just think about how they experience the economy. And Gaza is a mess. I mean, the question that I think fairly gets asked is if he had been more active and taking harsher steps to try to bend Netanyahu to his will, could he have meaningfully changed the way that Israel prosecuted its war or not even prosecuted the war at all?

And I think that there's maybe even some wishful thinking that happens there because Israel is an independent nation that has its own interests. And I mean, in his thinking, I think if you cut off Israel altogether, then you'd have zero leverage. I think it's fair to say, okay, well, you have this leverage, you haven't effectively been able to deploy it. The thing that's interesting, and you kind of touched on this with like thinking about the world of possibility, right? But it is true that Biden did some pretty big things. It's not to say he didn't make any mistakes, but he accomplished a lot. And it didn't really translate to voter enthusiasm. What is that about? Like, was it really just his age? Was there something else? Because even before the debate, people weren't excited.

Yeah, they weren't buying what he was selling. There's no doubt about it. He wasn't making an argument. I mean, that's the frustrating thing. When Harris first appeared as the nominee, what was so refreshing, I mean, it was the basics. She was making arguments. She was attacking her opponent. She was packaging her positions. So I think he wasn't actually even running a campaign before. I mean, there was nothing for people to latch on to. I think age is hugely significant. I've gone back and I've tried to talk to people in the administration as best I can to just ask the question. Because I wrote about his first two years and age was there in the story, but it didn't feel like he was unable to do the job. And I was like, wait, did I miss something in the story, but it didn't feel like he was unable to do the job. And I was like, wait,

did I miss something in the course of this? And people are like, no, in the first couple of years of the administration, he's different than he is now. Age comes on you incredibly quickly. And six months when you're rounding 80 matters in pretty extraordinary ways a lot of the time. And I think that decline has hit him harder because you know what's really stressful and takes a lot out of you? Running for president. You argue in your book, or the premise of your book is basically that Biden is essentially the last of a dying breed of politician. Can you tell us a little bit what you mean by that? What I meant was that we've gone through this cycle where both Trump and Obama were anti-politicians who ran against the system, who thought that the system was somehow inherently corrupt. And Biden had this underlying faith

in the ability to use politics as a way of bridging disagreements. And so you had to prove that persuasion was still possible, that compromise was still possible, that it was still possible to accept defeats when you were legitimately defeated. One of the things that I've thought about Harris as she's emerged, and I thought about this as I was reporting the book, because one very top White House

aide once told me that she'd had a conversation with the vice president where she was like, you know, you and the president, despite appearances and despite everything, are much more alike than anybody in the world appreciates. Wow, that's so interesting. And what she meant by that was that actually when it comes down to sitting in a meeting, the type of questions that they asked were very similar, that they both have a very gritty understanding of how policy works. And so it's not about academic questions or about abstractions. It's always about, okay,

so this policy is going to happen. How are people going to know about it? How are they going to be able to access this? If I'm on an Indian reservation, how am I going to be able to receive these benefits? And Biden would ask variations of the same questions. And then I also just as I've watched her unfold in the way that she's navigated all of the inherent complexities of this debut moment, I've thought they have a lot of the same tendencies to seek out broader ground in terms of how they have crafted their political personas. So maybe it could turn out that Biden is not the last politician, that he's played some role in her elevation in her education as a politician. But it could also be that she manages to take a lot of his skills, talents and instincts and manages to execute them better.

That was my conversation with Franklin Foer, staff writer at The Atlantic and author of the book The Last Politician, Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future. Thanks for that, Josie. We'll talk about all the star power at the DNC in a moment, but if you like our show, make sure to subscribe and share it with your friends. We'll be back after some ads. And we are back with more on this week's DNC. It's basically a send-off party for President Biden and a welcome party for VP Harris. And you know the Democrats aren't going to throw a party without inviting a bunch of their celebrity friends. Yeah, that's, you know, we need some party in the party, you know?

So who are some of the A-list guests that people are thinking are going to show up this week? Everybody's talking about Beyonce, Josie. Look. That's who the streets want to see. That is who the streets want to see. That is true. I also heard, like, Taylor Swift might show up. People love her.

Taylor Swift is also out in the streets. Absolutely. Gowns, gowns, beautiful gowns. Very much so no matter who comes through though it'll be much better than hulk hogan and kid rock celebrating trump at the rnc a few weeks ago and speaking of over the weekend y'all's little former president was over on truth social posting ai generated images of women wearing swifties for Trump shirts. And he also included an AI picture of Taylor Swift in an Uncle Sam costume captioned, quote, Taylor wants you to vote for Donald Trump. He said he, quote,

unquote, accepted this fake endorsement. So definitely not beating those weird allegations now. Anyway, I wanted to find out more about the real famous folks throwing their support behind the Harris Walls campaign this week. I spoke with Olivia Craighead. She's a writer covering pop culture and celebrity for The Cut. And she began by telling me about some of the notables hosting the DNC through Thursday. What we knew for sure is that every night there's going to be a different host for the event. So Monday night, Tony Goldwyn from Scandal. Tuesday night, Anna Navarro from The View. Wednesday night will be Mindy Kaling. And then Thursday night for the big show, it's going to be Kerry Washington. So two different Scandal actors

are confirmed for the DNC. Shout out to Shonda. What's going on there, Olivia? Why is Shonda Rhimes all up in the DNC? What's going on? Those two, Tony Goldwyn and Kerry Washington, just kind of like love a little GOTV moment. They're like some of our biggest Democrats, I guess. And they've worked their way up to DNC level. Kerry has been in the DNC a couple of times. She's an old pro at this point. Certainly, certainly. Now, there are some rumors swirling about potential appearances this Carrie has been in the DNC a couple times. She's an old pro at this point. Certainly, certainly. Now, there are some rumors swirling about potential appearances this week by a one Beyonce Gisele Knowles-Carter, perhaps a Taylor Swift. What is the likelihood of these megastars showing up in Chicago?

The way I see it, it's much more likely that Beyonce shows up than Taylor shows up. That is kind of how I see it. I think Beyonce is a little more politically engaged than Taylor is. Taylor is also currently, as we're talking, in London, like wrapping up the European leg of the ERAs tour. So she might honestly be tired. But I don't think Beyonce would miss out on the opportunity to perform for what might be the first black woman president. I feel that she understands the importance of the moment. Yeah, yeah. I also have to ask, what would be the significance if someone like a Beyonce or a Taylor Swift do not just show up, but perform at the DNC? If I were planning the DNC, what I would be hoping for was a big, huge moment that really got people excited about the idea of voting Democrat. And that is exactly what a big moment like that would do. No offense to boomers

but I know that James Taylor is performing and that is not exactly the same thing as Beyonce as Taylor. At all. Now TMZ recently reported that the Harris-Walls campaign is trying not to overdo it with celebrities at the DNC this year. I wonder from your vantage point what some of the risks might be of too much celeb presence in this or any election. So in 2020, it was a COVID convention. So everything was a little more scaled back. But I don't know if you remember 2016. That was a celebrity bonanza of a convention. And it felt out of touch, is what I would say. It felt like, why was Lenny Kravitz performing at the DNC?

Why did we have to have Katy Perry get up and say, Let's roar for Hillary! I think some of those moments can be cheesy. Especially, do you remember that video of all the celebrities singing fight song acapella from 2016. I do. Yes, I do. It's stuff like that that I think is easy to clown on that they, Harris Wall's campaign, would be smart to sort of shy away from and focus on like actual issues that they're trying to get out right now. Yeah. And also, I mean, just generally speaking, in what ways have you seen celebrity involvement in elections change over time? When I was a kid, it was all about rocking the vote. And there was less of a connection from celebrity to regular person.

So you'd see a celebrity in a rock the vote t-shirt and you'd think, I guess they are politically engaged and that was kind of it. That was all they had to do to be present. And now I feel like there is a greater level of pressure on famous people to be informed and to be engaged. And I think something like going to the DNC is a little more effort to book a flight to Chicago and sit through speeches from mayors and union presidents and all of that. Yeah. Do you think celebrity endorsements even matter anymore to voters? I really don't know. I think what is almost more important is celebrities telling people to register to vote. You know, I think you see that when Taylor Swift posts a link on her Instagram stories,

you can see that 30,000 people, new voters are registered. And that is very important. Do I think people should be voting the way that their favorite celebrity is voting? No, I think that's silly. But you know, if that's what gets my candidate elected, like, sure, go for it. But I do think that young voters will change their minds about celebrities, if they don't have what that person perceives as good politics. So you know, you have, let's say, sexy red being sort of a pro-Trumper. People are going to turn on her because of those opinions. But I don't know that she is out here convincing people to vote for Trump in the 2024 election. So I think it actually behooves celebrities more than it does actual young people to be outspoken and to have opinions that are

for the greater good. Yeah, well, I'm so glad nobody are taking their political news from sexy red of all people. Okay. Me too. That was my conversation with Olivia Craighead from The Cut. Josie, I have to imagine that you also are glad people aren't taking their political advice from Sexy Red. That isn't even a possibility I had considered. So I'm glad to know it's not happening, I hope. We can only hope. We can only hope. We can only hope. One more thing before we go.

We all know this election year is not the time to throw away your vote and crawl into a corner hoping the presidential election flies by. It is exactly the time to get involved, get moving, and convince you and all the other undecided voters in your life to show up to the ballot box this November. So tune in to season four of The Wilderness, where Pods of America host Jon Favreau talks to some of the smartest strategists, pollsters, and organizers in politics. He also explores the thought processes of voters who are slipping away and dives into what we can do between now and November to secure our democracy. The full series is out now, so head on over to the Wilderness feed to listen. That is all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, try to act chill if Beyonce shows up at the DNC, and tell your friends to listen.

And if you're into reading and not just the lineup of DNC speakers like me, well, today's also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Cricut.com slash subscribe. I'm Trevelle Anderson. I'm Josie Duffy Rice. And Washington Goldwyn, 2028. We're starting early, people, okay? He'd be a great VP.

All you have to do is just look hot all the time. Can you picture two white men more different than Tony Goldwyn and Tim Walz? Well, beauty is in the eyes of the behold. Well, today is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Bill Lantz. Our associate producer is Raven Yamamoto.

We had production help today from Michelle Alloy, Ethan Oberman, John Milstein, Greg Walters, and Julia Clare. Our showrunner is Erica Morrison, and our executive producer is Adrienne Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gillyard and Kashaka.