WSJ What’s News - As Harris Accepts Democratic Nomination, a Look at the Road Ahead

Episode Date: August 23, 2024

A.M. Edition for Aug. 23. Kamala Harris formally accepts the Democratic nomination for president. The WSJ’s Natalie Andrews and Andrew Restuccia join Luke Vargas at the convention in Chicago to discuss how she presented herself and what it will take for her policy pledges to become reality. Plus, why Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s expected exit from the race could be a boon for Donald Trump. And, another senior executive exits Tesla. Kate Bullivant hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With Ecolab Science Certified, we take cleaning off your plate so you can focus on what's most important to your restaurant, your guests, and having them switch from giving your restaurant a go to making it a go-to spot. Ecolab Science Certified. Count on a scientific clean. Learn more at ScienceCertified.com. Carmela Harris takes the stage on the final night of the Democratic Convention. I accept your nomination to be president of the United States of America. Plus Robert F. Kennedy Jr. discusses dropping out of the race and endorsing Donald Trump. And we've got the latest twist in the Paramount saga. It's Friday, August 23rd.

I'm Kate Bullivvant for the Wall Street Journal filling in for Luke Vargas who's in Chicago reporting from the DNC. Here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. Kamala Harris formally accepted the Democratic presidential nomination in front of a boisterous crowd last night, wrapping up the party's national convention by casting herself as someone who would unite the country. Let us show each other and the world who we are and what we stand for freedom opportunity compassion dignity fairness and endless possibilities

Harris also pledged to take action on abortion access, reducing housing costs, securing the southern border and ending the Israel-Hamas war. But what would it take for those policies to come to pass? To break it all down, our Luke Vargas gathered some of the team of Wall Street Journal reporters and editors who are in Chicago covering the event. They are tearing down the convention around us, but there's no rest for the Wall Street Journal's politics team with 73 days of campaigning to go, a Trump-Harris debate just a few short weeks away and a potential endorsement coming Trump's way in the next few hours from Robert

F. Kennedy Jr. But before we turn the page on Chicago, I've convinced journal reporters Natalie Andrews and Andrew Vastucia to squeeze into our little podcast studio here outside of the United Center to look at how Kamala Harris closed out Democrats' big celebration. Good evening, guys. Thanks for having us. Thank you for having us. A big night, a historic one, the first black woman, the first woman of Indian descent to be nominated for president. Despite having been a senator and a VP.

A recent CBS News poll showed over a third of voters say they still don't know what Kamala Harris stands for. Natalie, a unique mission for a politician to kind of walk into an environment like this. How did Harris present herself? After a week of joy, it struck me repeatedly that Kamala Harris presented herself as serious. She presented herself as perhaps presidential to a country that has never seen a woman president. That's something that Hillary Clinton struggled with, is what does a woman leader look like to voters?

And Kamala Harris came out and really delivered a serious speech that talked a lot about what she wanted to do as president. With an unusual start, it was 12 minutes really before we kind of got into the core message of her campaign, that slogan Kamala Harris for the people, but front loaded with a ton of biography. Yeah, she wanted to tell people that she was on their team and in doing so she sort of went through her past and her work, particularly as a prosecutor, where she said that she only had one client and that was the people and she used that to contrast Her message with Donald Trump's who she argued was really out for himself

Who unites us around our highest aspirations a president who leads and listens Who is realistic? aspirations a president who leads and listens Who is realistic? Practical and has common sense Realistic practical common sense a leader who listens are these the words we typically hear politicians using to describe themselves it reminded me of the Kamala Harris that I would see as senator when I would see her in the halls covering Congress,

someone who wants to get work done and get the job done effectively. The job. So what is the job? It wasn't a policy heavy speech, but she did sketch out some priorities. Yeah, I don't think she wanted to deliver a white paper type address, right?

But she did say that she wanted to create what she called an opportunity economy, which is her sort of term of art for her agenda. And that means lowering the cost of housing, lowering the cost of groceries, growing the economy and giving opportunities to small businesses to grow, ending the housing shortage

and protecting social Security and Medicare. So those are the sort of big top line domestic policy things she talked about. When she talked about wanting women to be in control of their health, not necessarily their bodies, she wasn't going deep into abortion, but saying that she'd sign that. She talked about immigration.

She talked about the Senate bill, and said she would call for it to be brought to a vote. Well, I refuse to play politics with our security, and here is my pledge to you. As president, I will bring back the bipartisan border security bill that he killed, and I will sign it into law. Natalie, signing that into law or passing several other key elements of what Harris mentioned

is going to require support in Congress. You cover Congress. Is there a path forward there? In order for her to be able to accomplish any of these things, Democrats are going to need to keep the Senate, which is going to be really, really hard because of the map, and they're going to need to net four seats in the House. And then in order to do things like, say, pass a sweeping abortion law, allowing abortion in the country, they're going to need to get rid of the filibuster, which will be controversial.

But I think with the makeup of the Senate, you would have support among Democrats to do that. Andrew, were you expecting more? Our polling shows Kamala Harris trails Donald Trump by a 12 point margin on who's viewed as being better able to handle the economy. To say I'm striving for a growing middle class, I wanna lower prices broadly, is that enough? Us Washington policy types are always gonna want

a little bit more detail, but she's not talking to us, right? She's talking to regular people who just wanna know that she's out there, and this is her big message, right? Protecting and defending the middle class. And she did say that she would provide a major middle class tax break, which she didn't quite define. We'll be following up with that as well.

She really just needed to show people that she was in it for them and that she was a serious person that would protect their interests. And I think she accomplished that. Most Democrats I've talked to feel like there's still time for her to talk details, but right now they wanna reach those swing voters.

Those suburban women who might've soured on Donald Trump may have thought about going back to him. Does Kamala Harris win them over? Both of you were in the arena for the speech. The war in Gaza. This was surprising to me. We've heard discontent outside the arena from uncommitted delegates. They don't think the party's accommodating them. And yet, it sounded like that was one of the biggest lines of the night when she says how she'll defend Israel but also deal with the

humanitarian situation try to end the war. Harris has been able to sort of really thread this needle in a way that Joe Biden hasn't been able to do. In part through her rhetoric which has shown at least a public empathy and sympathy for the Palestinian people perhaps in a way that others in the administration haven't done. That was one of the biggest applause lines in the speech. President Biden and I are working to end this war such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released,

the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination. Okay, so finally let's talk about the campaign to come. It may only be 73 days, but 73 days could feel like an eternity still. What are you guys watching for next? I mean, I think the big question question is can she maintain this momentum? Will we look back on this as sort of the peak of a campaign that went downhill from here or can she maintain this sort of joy and happiness and energy that we're seeing in Chicago this week? Everything to this point almost has been totally scripted and they've done a great job with it being totally scripted and produced but

she's going to have a lot more moments, every eye is going to be on her. And if she makes flubs, if she makes awkward moments, they will go viral. The Trump campaign will make sure of it. Natalie Andrews and Andrew Rastusia, thank you guys for putting in a late shift for us. Of course. Thanks. Coming up, Skydance tells Paramount to stop negotiating with Edgar Bronfman Jr. and why Robert F. Kennedy's expected exit from the White House race could help Trump. Those stories and much more after the break. With Ecolab Science Certified, we take cleaning off your plate so you can focus on what's

most important to your restaurant, your guests, and having them switch from giving your restaurant a go to making it a go-to spot. Ecolab Science Certified. Count on a scientific clean. Learn more at sciencecertified.com. As you heard Luke mention earlier in the show, Robert F Kennedy Jr. could soon endorse Donald Trump for president. That's because, according to our reporting, the independent candidate is discussing dropping out of the race. Kennedy yesterday filed to remove himself from the ballot in Arizona,

and he has scheduled an event today close to where Trump will also be holding a rally. In a national poll for the presidential contest released late last month after Kamala Harris entered the race, Kennedy had 4% support, down from 7% in early July. Though he has failed to gain more momentum, his departure still stands to shake up a tight race with pollsters saying Trump would likely benefit from it. In our late July poll, voters supporting independent candidates had a negative view of Trump, but an even worse perception of Harris. And as we head closer to the presidential election, we're learning more about how

Russia is trying to influence Americans on social media platform X ahead of November. Journal reporter Alexa Kors told our tech news briefing podcast that Russian troll strategy nowadays involves trying to get noticed by people with big followings. So Russia has been waging influence operations on social media for a long time now and they've tried using these kind of low quality accounts before. But it's harder for Russia to spend a year creating a fake account that could get tons of followers and no one would suspect anything.

So it makes a lot of sense that we're seeing now Russia basically say, let me rely more on just creating a bunch of accounts, be more spammy. It doesn't matter if one gets suspended because I have a ton of accounts, be more spammy, it doesn't matter if one gets suspended because I have a ton of accounts right behind. So it's a bigger part of the playbook now. With AI too, it's much easier to do this kind of thing, right? Just imagine if someone famous had retweeted even one of their posts. That would be a huge payoff in terms of spreading their influence.

X declined to comment for Alexa's recent story on this and says it's dedicated to enforcing its policies which prohibit creating deceptive profiles to mislead others. To hear more about this, check out today's tech news briefing podcast. We've got the latest in the battle for Paramount's media empire. Skydance Media is now demanding that Paramount stop negotiations with Edgar Bronfman Jr, who we previously reported has submitted a rival bid. In a letter viewed by the Wall Street Journal, Skydance accused Paramount's special committee of directors of breaching the terms of the two companies' merger deal by extending the period when it can engage with other bidders. Bronfman and the Paramount special committee declined to comment. Here's Journal reporter

Ben Dummett to help us break down this development. At the centre of this messy takeover is the special committee's mandate in ensuring that Sherry Redstone, the effective controlling shareholder of Paramount through national amusements, doesn't get a sweetheart deal at the expense of Paramount's non-voting shareholders. Now, Skydance would provide more than $4 billion to buy out about 50% would provide more than $4 billion to buy out about 50% of non-voting paramount shares at $15 each, or allow them to roll into the new company. Brockman has countered $1.7 billion to be used for a tender offer that would give non-Redstone non-voting paramount shareholders an option to cash out at a premium $16 a share. So it's going to

be very challenging for Paramount's special committee to weed through these different offers to come up with the one that they think is the most lucrative. Tesla's head of finance operations, an 11-year veteran of the company, has stepped down, saying she would take time off work after her departure. She joins a number of long-standing leaders who have recently left the company. And Canada's government has stepped in to end a railroad stoppage that was disrupting supply chains across North America. Labour Minister Stephen MacKinnon said yesterday that he has sent the labour dispute between Canada's two main railroad companies and the Teamsters Union to binding arbitration and that he expects

operations to resume within days. And now let's take a quick look at what else we're watching in markets today. Consumer prices in Japan rose 2.8% in July, keeping inflation above the Bank of Japan's target and heightening expectations for the central bank to raise interest rates again. In a speech today, the BOJ's governor reaffirmed the bank's intentions of raising rates further. The yen strengthened against the dollar following his comments. Back in the US at Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is set to give a speech on the outlook for the economy at 10 a.m. Eastern.

New home sales for the month of July are also due this morning. And that's it for What's News for Friday morning. Today's show was produced by Daniel Bach and Pierre Bienemé with supervising producer Christina Rokker. And I'm Kate Bullivand for the Wall Street Journal, filling in for Luke Vargas. We'll be back tonight with a new show. Until then, have a good weekend. With Ecolab Science Certified, we take cleaning off your plate so you can focus on what's most important to your restaurant, your guests, and having them switch from giving your restaurant

a go to making it a go-to spot. Ecolab Science Certified. Count on a scientific clean. Learn more at ScienceCertified.com.