The Race to Define Kamala Harris

Let's take a listen. You know, in recent weeks, it's become clear to me that I need to unite my party in this critical endeavor. I believe my record as president, my leadership in the world, my vision for America's future all merit a second term, but nothing, nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition. So I've decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation.

That's the best way to unite our nation.

You know, there is a time and a place. for long years of experience in public life. There's also a time and a place for new voices, fresh voices, yes, younger voices. And that time and place is now. Biden also listed out his priorities for the time that he has left, including lowering costs, protecting abortion rights, making progress on gun violence, ending the war in Gaza and attempting some kind of Supreme Court reform.

He also ticked through his considerable accomplishments from the last four years. Dan, what was your reaction to the speech?

And so I felt sad for him, sad for his family, sad for the staff, who are incredibly loyal to him and love him so much and have so much affection for him. But then, I mean, maybe I guess it's bittersweet, because to see, you got this glimpse in how he was talked about after the remarks and how people responded to the remarks, with the people standing in front of the White House with the signs that said, thank you, President Biden, thank you, Joe, that you're beginning to see the first page of his chapter in history be written. Right. And just a really, I think, meaningful way, for, because he did something, and Susan talks about this in the interview I have with her later. He did something that almost no one in American public life will ever do, right, is to put personal ambition aside and do something for the country and to cede power willingly to do what they think is best for the country.

And I certainly hope he is recognized for that. We should all say thank you to him now for what he did over the last three and a half years and the decision he made, which has obviously been validated by the way. the first, the response to Vice President Harris, right out, right out of the bat here. But I think it was just, it was a very meaningful and poignant moment to watch.

But it's also this, like this deep love of service, that he has been doing it his whole life. And, you know, I know, like we obviously criticized him for not stepping aside earlier and all that kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, he made the decision, and it's a really fucking hard decision to make for someone who genuinely believes, with good reason, that they accomplished so much and have more to offer. So it was. it was bittersweet, for sure.

All right. Let's talk about the brand new race for the presidency. with about 100 days to go. Wild. In one week, we got a new Democratic nominee who, along with Joe Biden's campaign staff, has been able to unite the party, generate a level of organic grassroots enthusiasm we haven't seen since the Obama days, raise one hundred and twenty six million dollars from over a million donors, 64 percent of whom donated for the first time the cycle, and pull even with Trump in the polls just days after his party's convention and an attempt on his life.

The A plus rated New York Times Siena poll has Trump at forty eight percent and Vice President Harris at forty seven percent. Biden was trailing by six in their last poll just a few weeks ago. Swing state polls have her a point or two down, though she's made up significant ground in all these polls with young black and brown voters, which is making states like Georgia competitive again. The campaign is still not up on the air with TV ads, though they released their first digital ad today, based on Harris's stump speech. And here she is on Thursday speaking to the American Federation of Teachers Convention in Houston.

Let's listen.

All the bad stuff is probably still coming. Right. We're starting to see the attack ads. But it's just unprecedented, is an overused word, uncharted waters, whatever you may say. But just the idea, we've been working in politics forever.

The idea that with 100 days to go, you just start from scratch. It's wild.

You couldn't have got the 100,000 volunteers. You wouldn't really had a place to collect information from that 100,000, from the people who, the million donors and all of the above. It's wild what is happening. And over the last few days, and I say this with the foreboding sense of someone who's always waiting for the other shoe to drop, but the last few days have gone better than anyone could possibly have expected. And sometimes you see these things when new candidates come in the race and there's all this excitement, and then they go out and give remarks and then now the Klieg lights are on all the scrutiny and they don't measure up.

She went to that campaign headquarters on Monday, not a highly produced event or anything like that, and just nailed the message perfectly. Then she has to go to, you wouldn't normally schedule a rally on the second day of your campaign, when you just filed papers on Sunday, but she was already scheduled to go to Milwaukee. So she goes there and she nails that. And then she had this previously scheduled official event at the teacher's union in Houston. Couldn't cancel that.

So she had to go do that and she nailed that too. It's just, it's, it is incredibly impressive from the staff side, the organizational side, and particularly from a performance perspective from the vice president. She is nailing this.

with Kamala Harris. The only like, sort of off Broadway time she had was maybe like the last couple of years as vice president. Right. And she had some, you know, she had some tough times as early on in vice president, she had some like bad news cycles. And then I do think that people sort of then just paid more attention to the presidential race and Biden and Trump.

But in the last year or so, I just think that she's had a lot of practice and she's gotten so good. Right. And she's like so much more comfortable in her skin, more than I think she ever has been. And she speaks really well and she's just very sure of herself. But even with all that, it's still like, with the amount of pressure that's on her now, right?

It's, she's just, you know, she hasn't, she hasn't shrunk from it at all. It's amazing.

I think that that gap between the popular vote and the electoral college has probably narrowed some, but it's still a race. where Trump is, the is the favorite, a slight favorite. But you can very easily see in chart what a path to victory for Kamala Harris looks like. And that was not the case. But it was hard with President Biden before the debate, it felt nearly impossible after the debate.

And now we are, this is a very winnable, it's a close but very winnable race.

Her approval is 46, 49, which, in this era of polarization, is a pretty good place to start from. Trump's approval in this poll is 48% approval, 51% disapprove. I'm guessing that has something to do with the assassination attempt followed by the Republican Convention. And that's why it's this high watermark. But that really stood out to me that that Donald Trump, of all people is, has that kind of approval.

they found that person. I mean, all. if you look across all the polling, what the real takeaway is, is that all the groups of President Biden was struggling with who are core to the Democratic coalition, younger voters, black voters, Latino voters, Kamala Harris is doing better than President Biden was by a few points, but she is not yet at the 2020 numbers that she needs to be to win, which is, it's really understandable, and she's been in the race for four days. But it just shows that the potential here in her candidacy is, is tremendous, and it gets us right back in the game and where we thought we were going to be this whole race. And then it felt like we weren't going to be the last few months.

We're back there now.

What do you think they've been doing all week?

They did that incredibly quickly. The real questions are going to be around message. That Biden campaign, for all the obvious reasons, had some research on Vice President Harris as vice president, but they hadn't tested her against Trump. Right. And what the right message would be.

They haven't done sort of the, in a normal world, you would have spent months doing research before you ever announced, understanding how the electorate perceives who you are at the moment. What are the best messages for you? What are your biggest vulnerabilities? How do you adjust for those? And so they have to do all that in a compressed period of time.

I think there's probably some work to do to figure out who her team is, right? She obviously has, Jen O'Malley-Dillon is going to lead that team and she's the exact right person to do it. But I was listening to our old friend, David Axelrod on Hacks on Tap, and she doesn't have a political person who's traveled with her her whole career, like a David Axelrod or Mike Donilon or Karl Rover, anything like that. And so who is going to play that role, but there's going to be sort of a partner to Jen O'Malley-Dillon on that, because you get a bunch of people there who have worked for President Biden for, in some cases, decades, right? And how do you get some, how do you just sort of organize around that?

How do you figure out the staffing? Like, she has some people who would staff her, but in the structure of a presidential campaign, those people would theoretically just be waiting now for Josh Shapiro or Mark Kelly. Like how do you move those people? So there's some organizing around that, but I think the highest priority thing is the research to inform the advertising campaign to come.

You want to lay out the choice between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, but also she has some work to do in the campaign, has some work to do, letting people know who she is, what she stands for, what her policies are, how they may differ from Joe Biden, what her proposals are. You were talking about how the staff that's knocking on doors just starts knocking on doors for Kamala Harris. But that's like even that, right? There's got to be, they've got to know her positions, who she is, what she does, what her bio is like. That's going to take a lot.

You can't turn that ship around in a week.

There was an entire process that was in place for a year to do that for Joe Biden. And now, in three weeks, they have to do that for Kamala Harris. It'll be a lot of the same people. Like you, imagine, like President Obama would still speak. I imagine President Biden would still speak, but the roles are different.

The message is different. There's so much work has been done that's going to be ripped up and redone in a record amount of time.

And she's one of the hardest working people in politics, I know, so she's really not sleeping. The campaign isn't running TV ads just yet, and is currently being outspent 25 to one by the Trump folks. We're going to talk about some of the ads that the Trump folks are running later. But is that just because creating and producing campaign ads takes time? Like, do you have any concerns there that the Harris campaign isn't up on television yet?

Both the Biden and Trump campaigns have long planned this to be the real big launch of their major stretch run advertising campaigns. So what's going to happen over the next three or four days here? Not worth worrying about. Don't light money on fire. But starting this weekend, you're going to have to have your first ads out there, informed by that polling and that you've tested the ads, you know they work.

And so, I'm sure in their head, probably Monday is the deadline, because this is political. advertising on linear television is still pretty antiquated, but usually I have to get the ads in on Friday to get them up. And so I imagine that probably Monday would be when you would start to see new ads. Maybe, if they're lucky, they can get some up this weekend, but.

I mean, it's like, it's a process. to get it done in a week is a lot.

Harris has a strong, stump speech right now. We just heard some of it at the teacher's conference on Thursday. What does the message tell you at this point about how she and her team see the race and how they see Trump?

There's a lot of like sort of parsing this, like. is she running a base play? Is she looking for a swing voter? I think that it is too early to dig into that. She obviously has some appeal with core Democratic constituencies that had abandoned Biden.

But there's this assumption that all those Black voters or Latino voters, even young voters, that were not planning to vote for President Biden, are not planning to vote for him because they thought he wasn't progressive enough or they were just so much more liberal. And it's not that. In many cases, they're more moderate or just simply less ideological. And so I think she's right now trying to demonstrate, sort of lay out a theme. She's still kind of, at least for the first couple of days of this, was running for the nomination of the Democratic Party.

And again, this, this one's tougher because, like you want to, you want to talk about turning the page. It's like implicitly about, you know, sort of people who weren't happy with the Trump or Biden choice, but obviously she's not going to explicitly say that. But I think just talking about turning the page future, moving forward, not going back is going to probably be a hallmark of the message.

Trump was on Fox and Friends Thursday morning and once again, tried to distance himself from project 2025, saying he has no idea what it is, except for the parts that he likes. Take a listen.

They wrote something that I disagree with in many cases, and in some cases you agree. Are you ready? I know nothing about project 25.. I haven't seen the document. I don't intend to really see the document.

But again, I know nothing about it. I've taken many of the positions in there. Some of them. I haven't. Kind of surprising to hear him asked about this on his favorite TV show from his favorite hosts.

She has been doing focus groups nonstop over the last week. And she's, I asked her about project 2025.. She said it has come up more organically in all of these focus groups over the last week, over the last month, uh, especially after the debate when everyone was like, why isn't them? Why is the media talking about Joe Biden's age? Why aren't they covering 2025??

She was like, since then it has been coming up in all these groups. And it's like, it's, it's wild. People are just, it's this like conspiratorial. What is it? It seems scary.

Now, when you press people and you ask them like, well, what's in it? What's scary about it? They don't necessarily know. They just think it's like really bad. So I do wonder, like how you think the Harris campaign should handle that going forward?

Like, can it stay as this, like boogeyman? Should you like pick out a few of the worst planks of project 2025? Or should you pick out different policies based on the different groups of voters you're talking to? Like, how do you think about this?

I think that this is a gift from the political heavens for Democrats, because one of Donald Trump's great political assets is his ability to just speak so incomprehensibly that no one knows what he stands for. And so you can see this. I mean, you've seen this in focus groups. You know, you ask, uh, about abortion and the evangelical Christian anti-abortion person there. I think Donald Trump is one of the great warriors against abortion.

And then you ask the independent voter who's maybe doesn't like either candidate. and they think Donald Trump is probably secretly pro-choice. So you know, he gets, he gets anytimes the best of both worlds, right? Some of the assholes on wall street think he'll cut their taxes and some of the working class voters in Scranton thinks he will raise taxes on the rich. And project 2025 is the opportunity to not make Donald Trump's agenda be something specific, not a Rorschach test.

And so that, that is great. And so I think the way you do it is there's going to have to be some definition around it. So I would pick the three, you know, broadly in your sub speeches, pick, you know, two or three most damning, most broadly unpopular things to cite. And then you can, as you're doing your constituency work, as you are empowering the either messengers on the, on behalf of the campaign, either as field organizers or influencers, or anything like that, like, what are the issues that matter most to a specific group of people, teachers, this community, veterans, et cetera. And I mean, it's just, it is a, it's a catalog to pick from and message off of.

So let's talk about how Trump and the Republicans are responding to Harris's candidacy. There's been a lot of focus on some of the really gross, really stupid shit said about the vice president by some house Republicans and right-wing media types. But it seems like the Trump campaign and Republican candidates are circling around a message that Harris is a radical San Francisco liberal. They're using a litany of soundbites from her time in the Senate as vice president and from her 2020 primary campaign. Hannity did it on his show Wednesday night.

Republican Senate candidates are cutting ads with this message. It looks like the Trump campaign is as well. Trump himself did his best to deliver the message at a rally in Charlotte on Wednesday, North Carolina. Uh, let's listen.

And when you're dealing with these people, they're very dangerous people. When you're dealing with them, you can't be too nice. You really can't be. So if you don't mind, I'm not going to be nice. Is that OK?

Kamala Harris is the most liberal elected politician in American history. Did you know that? Borders are Kamala through open our borders? that allowed 20 million illegal aliens to stampede into our country from all over the world. As vice president, she cast the tiebreaking votes that created the worst inflation in a half a century, decimating middle class families and hurting very badly.

As you know, all people in North Carolina, I guess as his, uh, as his wound healed, um,

She's in a race to define herself before Trump defines her. And they sort of have what their initial attack is going to be. And it has, we've seen it work in statewide races. We've seen it tried against president Obama, um, very aggressively in 2008 and 2012.. And they're going to, they're going to try it again here.

And this, I think that is the one that worries me the most.

I support the Affordable Care Act. I support strengthening it to making it more affordable, to hold insurance companies more accountable. And what Donald Trump wants to do is repeal that law so that even people without preexisting conditions have access to coverage, right. On immigration, you lean right into, instead of going back and doing like the punch bowl version of legislative history on the border security bill, you just, you put, that is now your forward-looking policy, right. This is the bill that I, this is what I want to do, right.

And it is a bipartisan bill supported by these law enforcement officials and unions, and just have a, this is what the urgency of the convention speech is, is this is your proactive, forward-looking agenda that you are running on. You want to know what I think about healthcare? This is what I think. You want to know about immigration? This is what I think.

You want to know what I think about climate? This is what I think, right. And you, you just got to do that because you're just, you can't, it's too hard to try to explain all that stuff away. You just, you have to have a forward-looking agenda and be aggressive about it. And it, everything has to be contrast.

It is your position and why his is bad. Your position, why his is bad, instead of just playing defense, like the best defense here is a strong offense.

Like I, I just wonder, obviously you can't relitigate everything, but if you're pushed on it, I do wonder if there's a moment where it's like, you know, I have been vice president for the last four years. And I, in that experience, I worked with Joe Biden, with Democrats in Congress and Republicans in Congress, to govern on behalf of the entire country, right. All 50 states. And we did some things that people never thought we could do. We, you know, infrastructure, whatever you want to do, then you can actually use it as a way to talk about your accomplishments and all the, and, and so it, like implicitly says that, you know, she has learned, as a national figure and as someone who has governed nationwide with Joe Biden, that, like, you know, it's, it's good to compromise and it's good to meet people where they are and you can get things done that way.

I almost think that's like a, you kind of have to make that turn at some point, because she in the speeches, it's fine, but she will get pressed on it in interviews.

But, um, do you think that, uh, is, has, it gives her problems beyond the Republican base?

His presidency is going to matter. The accomplished, the things that they did together are going to matter. Some of the things he does over the next six months will, will affect the campaign, but it's about these two people and I don't think, I just, I would be shocked if that really matters to anyone in our target voter universe.

Suddenly she's the nominee. Where's Joe Biden? So there is like just a little education maybe to be done on, on the insanity of the last couple of weeks. But I think, beyond that, I don't think that the, the coverup, uh, attack is, is really going to land that much. Okay.

When we come back from break, Dan is going to talk to former UN ambassador and national security advisor, Susan Rice, about how Harris should respond to these new attacks and what it's like to be vetted as a VP contender. Before we do that, you know what? We got to plug for some Dan content. Uh, if, if you are dying to know the latest on the polls and how to feel about them, you can WhatsApp Dan at four in the morning, like I do, or you can check out Dan's subscription show, Polar Coaster. Uh, and with all these attacks coming in, if you want to be as informed as possible and equipped to fight back, Dan's message box newsletter is indispensable.

It is my first read in the morning. Days when the message box is out, even before a playbook, I read message box first.

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How are you feeling about all of that?

And I think it's fair to say, as I have, that president Biden has been one of the most successful presidents in less than four terms than anybody really since Lyndon Johnson and maybe beyond, going back further than that. So he's been a great president. And I think he cemented his legacy, quite honestly, by having the selflessness and the guts to recognize that, as he said last night, that it's in the best interest of the country for him to step aside. It's hard to think of any politician at that level, certainly not one that's ever won all the delegates to be the nominee, who had the decency and the commitment to country and over his own self-interest to make that extremely difficult decision. So I'm super proud to have had the opportunity to serve him in different capacities and work under his leadership.

I think he will go down in the history books as one of our best presidents. But it's also sad because I think we all felt that his agenda was worthy of him contesting the election and that he had a lot more to do. that would be beneficial. But I'm grateful to him for making that tough decision. And I'm very excited about Vice President Harris and getting her elected president of the United States.

How do you sort of think he's going to handle these next six months? I sort of get the sense he's going to run through the tape, but you know him a lot better than I do.

And that's exactly what this team is going to do, I have no doubt. And I think the fact is, as has already been demonstrated, the big legislative burst of President Biden's tenure, or what would have been his first term, was really in the first two years when we controlled both houses of Congress for the Democrats. And we just were able to do an enormous amount, some much on a bipartisan basis, but some on a party line basis. So we are past, anyway, the period of great legislative progress. And we've continued to see important executive actions, including on things like immigration most recently, and some innovative policy proposals.

For example, a really important initiative to lower housing costs that was recently unveiled, something that's plaguing everybody. And yet, I think there's a real opportunity, particularly on the foreign policy and national security side, to try to get as much done as possible. We've got to end the war in Gaza and bring hugely overdue relief to the Palestinian people and ensure that the hostages come home and that Israel's security is ensured. And the best way to do that is to achieve this agreement as quickly as possible. Have a ceasefire in place and take down the threats to Israel that are coming from Lebanon and Hezbollah, from the Houthis, et cetera, in addition to Hamas.

I think the president's uniquely suited to do that and may be more unfettered in his ability to do that, ironically, as somebody who knows that this is his last six months. Obviously, we have to continue to deal with the challenges we face from Russia and China, shore up our alliances and partnerships. So there's a lot of work still to be done. And I have every confidence he's going to get it done.

So I have every confidence that she's going to bring her deep experience, her vital role in helping to craft and shape President Biden's successful agenda, and then be able to present an affirmative vision of where she wants to take the country. That is hopeful, that is optimistic, and quite concrete. You know, we got an enormous amount done in the Biden administration. But this is more than about finishing the job. This is about being able to communicate an America that is exciting and hopeful, and better even than the one we have today.

You've seen Secretary Clinton attack similar ways. They're calling her a crazy Kamala. They're even saying she's the quote-unquote DEI, Vice President. What's your reaction to all of this?

Not only is that incredibly dishonest and denigrating, it's basically saying to the vast majority of Americans in this country, if you're not a white, Christian male, then any success you've had, you got without merit because of some unfair preference. That is crap.

It's absolutely unacceptable in 2024.. The thing people need to understand about this is not only is it saying that the vast majority of people in this country are inferior and unworthy, but you have to understand how it fits into their larger agenda. Project 2025, which Trump and Vance are deep up into, it is their agenda, despite their efforts to run away from it. It's about taking America back to the 19th century. That's what it's about.

It's about an America where women aren't able to decide how and when they have children. They're not able to decide whether or not to use contraception or have in vitro fertilization. We're back in the kitchen and J.D. Vance is barefoot in the kitchen. If we don't have children, we're somehow even less worthy.

It's an America in Project 2025 where we don't invest in public education because we don't want those people who have to go to public schools to be educated enough to be real participants in our society. It's about going back to a time when only white Christian men were in positions of power and the rest of us were subordinate. That's what they want to do. They run away from it because they realize that when you put it that way, oh, that's going to be a problem politically, but that's what their agenda is. When you combine that with their categorical dismissal of the vast majority of Americans as being unworthy of any form of leadership, which is what exactly they're saying when they talk about DEI hires, it's really quite shocking.

That's why, as offensive as this is to me on a personal level, because of how these sorts of attacks have been leveled at me throughout my career, it is really about whether we are going into the future with an agenda, that is, about everybody in this country who is an American citizen having a voice and a vote and the opportunity to make a better life for themselves, or whether we're going back to a past when only some people count. That's the binary choice, and we've got to be clear about it. With Vice President Harris leading the ticket, they can't help themselves. They can't help but say the quiet part out loud.

When Donald Trump chose J.D. Vance, as you would note, a white Christian man, as his vice president, he'd been in the Senate for less than 18 months. Full stop.

And we need to understand, Dan, why they're doing this. They're doing it because they have nothing other than hate and fear and division as the tools to. They have no positive vision as to where they want to take the country. They just want to rile people up, divide and defeat and dominate. That's what this is about.

And you contrast that with the vision on the Democratic side, which I think Vice President Harris is really articulating effectively. And that is, you know, we're trying to build an America that is not only a vibrant, inclusive democracy, where our freedoms are protected, regardless of, you know,

where we come from, who we love, you know, what we look like, whether or not we want to have children. when some guy says it's time to have children or not. You know, we all get to decide for ourselves. Our fundamental freedoms are protected. But the other piece of the agenda, which is so important, is trying to build an America where people are not just able to scrape by.

But can actually get ahead. And everybody has a chance to get ahead. And we've got work to do to achieve that agenda. But, you know, that's not the other side's agenda. They want one small subset of our society to dominate and everybody else to be subservient.

And, as I said, that's a 19th century vision.

There's some reports that she wants to get it done by August 7th, when the DNC is going to do the virtual roll call. You were on President Biden's shortlist when he was looking for a vice president back in 2020.. Do you have any advice for the Mark Kelly's, Josh Shapiro's, Pete Buttigieg's of the world about how to navigate that process?

Have they called you? Are they looking for help?

I've never seen anything like the vice presidential vetting process. I mean, it is intense. Every aspect of your personal, you know, medical history, every aspect of your taxes, everything you've ever said in public. They even interviewed my kids who were, you know, not even over 21.. It's insane, right?

Now, they're going to have to do this process in an extraordinarily compressed time frame. When it was 2020, it was over, you know, more than two months. They're having to do it in a little less than two weeks.

You know, my biggest advice, and, you know, I don't know that anybody should take my advice, but is be who you are. You know, this is a very, it's as much a personal choice for the president as it is a political choice. You don't want to just pick a running mate. You want to pick a governing partner.

And I think people underestimate the importance of a governing partner. A vice president, you know, in this modern age, often, as Vice President Harris, has been given real, important responsibilities. You know, she was, people don't know that, in addition to her role on the national security stage, her, you know, the 20 countries she's visited, the 150 foreign leaders that she's met with, you know, she's in charge of the Space Council, space policy. You know, she's been, you know, the leader, not just on reproductive rights, but things like maternal health, worrying about the many women in this country who are dying in childbirth or after childbirth because they don't get the support and care that they need. She's been the leader on issues of labor and support for our union.

She's been an instrumental figure in our efforts to support small business and, you know, and develop economic opportunity for people who have not had the benefits of, you know, big corporate world. That's her portfolio as well. So, you know, she's done a great deal. And picking a governing partner, not just a running mate, is, I think, a very important part of this decision.

Because he is, you know, obviously tremendous experience, smart, but also just a great person, with interesting things to say and interesting perspectives.

Everyone thinks astronauts are cool, right? So if I, if she had, if I had to say today, what I think it's going to be out, Mark would be my guess, but I love, you know, I could watch Pete Buttigieg, you know, if secretary Buttigieg is the pick, 100 million people will watch the vice presidential debate. It would be one of the great moments in television history to watch him take down JD Vance. I'm a huge fan of Josh Shapiro. I've gotten to interview Roy Cooper a number of times in 2020, when I was doing some stuff for North Carolina with Let's Save America.

They're all great. So she is a, one of my takeaways from this whole process is that Democrats have one of the best benches we've ever had. right now. We have just a great list of people. And there's a whole bunch of people who aren't on the vice presidential list who are also great, right?

Raphael Warnock, a bunch of people in the house. It's just, there is a, in part because we went Obama, Clinton, Biden, right? We've just had a bunch of, you know, after Obama, the next, we went kind of back in time for a little bit for a president. So there are a bunch of people who got to rise up, uh, the ranks, and right. You know, and Gretchen Whitmer, exactly.

Um, Gina Raimondo, there's a whole bunch of people who rose up the ranks. Yeah, exactly. Who rose up the ranks? sort of a little bit outside the spotlight because they weren't running for president. and are, you know, just, we have a bunch of superstars.

I think it's just an awesome thing for the party going forward. Like I'm, I was at the Republican convention. I was, I was in Milwaukee with John, John and Tommy, uh, last week. and just, they have no good speakers. There's not a single good speaker in that whole group.

And then, to think about the group of people who will speak in prime time at our convention, or even before prime time, right? You'll have president Obama, you have president Biden, you'll obviously have vice president Harris, but then all the other people who don't, you know, Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer, just so many great voices that we have right now. It's like, I think it's just a super exciting time to be a Democrat. And the fact that a ticket of vice president Harris versus anyone else that we just mentioned is, will be one of the most exciting tickets we've had in a very long time. So I think that's cool.

I, it kept me up at night. I promise you that it kept me up at night. But to wake up on Sunday morning and think that you were proceeding ahead with one candidate, then find out at lunchtime, you're proceeding ahead with a different candidate. And to be able to make that pivot so quickly and to be able to capture the enthusiasm, right. So quickly, all the a hundred thousand new volunteers, a hundred million dollars raised in the first few days.

And to be able to do that and to pivot on a dime with, you know, new messaging, new branding, new logistics, moving that Milwaukee rally on one day's notice to a place that had, you know, more space to accommodate all the excitement. It's just incredibly impressed by what they did. It's, it's, and they, they had an unprecedented challenge in American political history and they handled it beyond anyone's expectations. They're awesome. And she is very lucky to have them and they're very lucky to have her.

We've got Sarah Longwell talking about a whole bunch of swing voters. She has been talking to this last week from all walks of life and how they feel about the Kamala Harris candidacy. Everyone have a great weekend and we will be in your feeds with a new episode on Tuesday.

Our associate producers are Saul Rubin and Farrah Safari. Reed Sherlin is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer, with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Writing support by Hallie Kiefer.

Madeline Herringer is our head of news and programming. Matt DeGroat is our head of production. Andy Taft is our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Mia Kelman, David Toles, Kiril Pelaviv, and Molly Lobel.