These Key Weaknesses Were Highlighted In Harris's CNN Interview With Dana Bash: Political Scientist

[Music] hi everybody I'm Britney Lewis a breaking news reporter here at Forbes joining me now is Charles Lipson professor ameritus at the University of Chicago Charles thanks so much for joining me my pleasure my answers will be completely different uh from last time Brittney my values haven't changed but I've read the polls I see what you're doing and you're alluding to vice president kamla Harris's first media interview with Governor walls since President Biden dropped out of the race try to say that three times fast but big night last night it was an almost 30 minute overall interview what are some of your takeaways uh my uh first takeaway is that I've read a lot of conservative commentary that it was a disaster I didn't think so I thought it was close to a nothing Burger she made a uh one or uh she made only one word salad uh but I thought it was uh really embarrassing for Dana Bash I thought it was just an awful interview on her part now I'll tell you why uh I once gave a talk at a a university where uh prosperous kids that uh weren't all that bright went to uh college and and they would ask me I gave it a little talk to a seminar and they would ask a question and then you would give an answer and I've given this this kind of a talk at many different universities and when the kids are smarter and more engaged they would ask a followup question you're listening to me right now if I said something that was interesting or provocative or raised a question you as a serious interviewer would ask the followup you would press on it not in a negative way but that's your job as a journalist I thought that Dana Bash just let the first answer which was always a canned answer from kamla haris she's she's more polished now than she used to be she would give a canned answer it demand handed a followup and Dana uh bash would just move on to the next question so I thought it was in effect pretty close to a nothing Burger but that was because of a bad interviewer I know that obviously I watched the interview and she asked a few follow-ups on the economy a few about the flipflop and fracking but one of my biggest takeaways is kamla Harris's version of the of turning the page on the last decade she said she was talking about Trump she was saying that she wants to move on from this 10 years but I mean she has been serving in the administration for the last three and a half so what do you think is her message about change and something new and a new way forward when she's been serving the White House most previously that's exactly right except for the four years of the Trump presidency this whole era was uh Democratic uh presidency so she's skipping over uh her Senate years and her White House years um that that has two purposes one is to excuse her from any connection with uh the Biden White House without actually saying that because it would be implausible to say it and the second is to point out that Trump is the candidate of the past Trump should embrace that and say but it was a past that was better it was are you better off now than you were four years ago that that should be his response but uh but he he has yet to settle on his main themes of his attack on kamla Harris and I don't know that he will until after the SE September 10th interview but I thought that you're right she did uh Dana Bash did ask uh two or three uh follow-up questions but she didn't really press on the inadequacies of certain answers I'm not saying that in a partisan way I'm saying that uh just in terms of what a journalist's responsibility should be and I thought Tim Waltz Tim Waltz is a very presentable guy he's he's warm and he's friendly in a way that I don't know that most voters would think that kamla Harris is there's an authenticity about him but he was basically there as an em an emotional support vice president what did he make of that because CNN posted the um the interview in three parts I believe the first part he might have had one question I don't know if anymore the second part maybe one question and then the third part he was asked about his service record amongst other things amongst that and then the moment at the DNC with his son do you think this moved the needle in terms of him at all well I thought that his purpose there was partly to introduce him more uh to the nation but I thought his bigger purpose was to divert some of the questions so that she wouldn't have to answer answer as many questions and on this I uh I congratulate uh Dana Bash for basically staying focused on the number one candidate uh I thought that uh Waltz handled the fact that he had been deceitful on uh some of his public statements I thought he handled that very well that is th those were polished answers he skipped around uh the real issues and uh got away with it uh but that's uh that's to his credit and uh but in general I would say that vice president people don't vote on vice presidents and I thought it was right that Dana Bash focused on o on kamla Harris and I think if you had had that interview you wouldn't have directed many uh questions at Walt you would have had questions for uh uh vice president Harris and I think that the main two questions are how do you escape responsibility for this Administration and in particular for the areas that you had primary responsibility such as the border and uh how uh do you what is the actual underlying reason other than political expediency that you've actually changed so many of the positions you're on the record uh as advocating those are the two main questions Trump will need to push those uh questions in the upcoming interview before we move on to her before we move on to her I just want to finish up with walls before we um just go full out um talking about kamla Harris do you think that his response to the question about his service record and whether he inflated that do you think that came off as a Dodge what do you think that looked like because essentially he said for that and the IUI IVF question you know I I don't speak correctly sometimes my wife says I have poor grammar but people know what I mean it was a total Dodge it wasn't an answer to the question he well how do you explain uh to somebody that you actually lied uh uh he also had and she didn't push on this he had a DUI uh conviction um and I just think and she didn't ask about his response and hers to all the uh black lives matter aftermath with the burning of the city and and so forth uh that Minneapolis used to be basically a crime-free city and uh that but that was two decades ago and now things have deteriorated very badly for a number of reasons but in uh he's part of the problem not part of the solution but again I don't uh I think she should have pressed on some of those issues if she was going to ask him anything at all she should have pressed on those issues uh but uh but again the the big dog is kamla and and that was it was right to concentrate on her and so now let's concentrate on her too for questions about the economy uh she said she agreed that prices were too high I mean then was she was asked well you're in charge right now essentially so what do you do about it now what do you do when people say hey let's go back to the Trump economy do you think her answer was sufficient there well no because she doesn't have an answer um it uh if you bought something um for a dollar at your local uh big Supermarket right and uh the supermarket didn't get any profit at all it would sell for about 98 cents not a not a dollar okay uh and if you go all the way back through the food chain literally the food chain uh and squeezed out all the profits you wouldn't get down very far it's a very competitive business and prices have gone up because the Biden Administration flooded the economy with money and their answer to why they did it is that there was a covid crisis but the covid crisis had had passed by the time they flooded the economy and um they uh now Trump trump mishandled the covid crisis in a number of ways as well so I'm not excusing him but they the inflation is on their wi and her main responses on the economy are uh typical Democratic responses we're going to do big government programs we're going to spend a huge amount of money it's going to help the poor people most and there's uh there's a magical uh unicorn that will lower prices in the midst of all this it's just it it's it's incredible it it doesn't work and it never has and it won't work this time it's it's not as if by the way Trump doesn't have uh proposals that would also bust the budget but their Republican programs in effect they ask you to spend your money not not for you to give the money to me the government and I will spend it for you so these are two different uh approaches to the way she's going to do things but to the extent that she says um that um that she's going to bring inflation down it's just all smoking mirrors she she hasn't said how she's going to do it she's not going to spend less money so how exactly another thing that she was asked about a flip-flopping position was fracking she's also had a changing stance on immigration do you think that she answered either of those questions sufficiently because we know fracking is a huge issue in Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania will be a must win for her and obviously immigration is one of the top issues facing the country well her answer on fracking was dishonest she said I've never you know uh she she tried to pretend that she wasn't on record against fracking by the way when any politician says uh I've been perfectly clear that it means they haven't been it when they say to be honest what are they referring to about their previous answers were those dishonest she she's saying I uh I've always been uh uh in favor of a fracking just just look at the record well look at the record she was very clear not just once but repeatedly and um so I thought she was in uh I thought that was a a problem and should have been uh pressed but but but her answer is kind of now on the record on immigration she's um she's right to press Trump for helping kill a compromise bill but the correct response by the interviewer to press that is we have something like between 8 and 10 million people who've entered the country illegally during the Biden Harris Administration almost all of those entered illegally During the period before this compromise bill so you might be right that there was a partial solution going forward but how do you explain the fact that you're Administration and what you and your role in it uh allowed this many people into the country and now your Administration is pushing for ways to let them all become voters going forward so there's a lot to press there and Dana Bash just let it all uh hang out without any really serious followup so I again I thought KLA Harris is being a professional she's getting away with uh Twist and Shout um but um but but that's what that's her job she's she's a politician she's not necessarily going to tell you the truth she's going to give you the most uh effective answer by the way I want to say one thing about energy costs because she's a big green New Deal person and there are two issues that could have been pressed there one is that Detroit is going bankrupt over these EV mandates and she hasn't changed her position that she's moving uh toward a a a future where there will be no internal combustion cars at all okay and Detroit is losing huge amounts so she needs to be able to defend that to the voters in Michigan and the second thing is that uh their essentially their anti- uh fossil fuels um approach has revved up the price of gasoline and a lot of the cost in a grocery she's all in favor of squeezing out these uh this price gou she can't Define what price gouging is but she's in favor she's against it whatever it is GRA show marks had a song Whatever it is I'm against it well that's her position but moving a can of soup uh from uh from the uh uh tomatoes in the in the field to the cble Factory and then putting it in making a can putting it in the can and moving that can to the supermarket entails a lot of fuel and so part of the cost that the consumers are feeling is the cost uh of all those 18 wheelers on the highway paying more for their gas I do want to make some comparisons now between 2016 and 2024 because if we remember in 2016 Hillary Clinton was running against Donald Trump and a part of Hillary Clinton's campaign was that she could be the first female president and it feels like now 8 years later uh vice president kamla Harris isn't really leaning into her her identity as much when she was asked about Donald Trump questioning her race she simply said this same old tired Playbook next question and had nothing else to add she also said at the end of the interview when um Dana Bash asked what gender and race means to her she said that she was the best person to do the job regardless of race and gender what do you make of this strategy first of all I thought her answer on same old tired you know basically same old tired Donald Trump was an excellent answer I thought that that she did exactly what she needed to do in that answer she's called uh his approach where he said you know I didn't know she was black and so forth uh was uh a a mistake in in the way he framed it and so forth um she the Democratic party is an identity politics party all the way down right that's been a major part of what they're doing and they must have tested a lot of stuff on whether people think there's a glass ceiling that's holding back women from being elected to high office but you can see throughout the Senate there is you know huge number of women it doesn't seem to be an issue uh and so she must have tested that and uh I think in general and I give her credit for this she's not running for high office as a victim and uh I think that that's that's part of it and I don't I think that the idea that I'm the torch eror for women um may have uh sort of um women already know that by the way there's a huge gender gap and you can look at it in that men are voting for Trump and women are voting for kamla Harris but is a huge gender gap and she must have felt that the uh the disadvantages in terms of winning over men may have been greater if she had emphasized that and she doesn't have to emphasize uh being black because uh voters can see that I I think that Trump made a mistake in the way that he framed it uh she's multi-racial and she went to a historically black college and so forth uh I just think that the fact that she emphasizes both parts of her family is something to be proud of As We As Americans should be proud of all of this and all the efforts uh at identity politics are commendable to the extent that they ask us to be proud of who we are and uh reprehensible to the extent that they uh Drive wedges between us uh in our commonalities as Americans in this regard I would like to praise the Democrats at their convention for emphasizing patriotism they emphasized that we are all Americans and I thought that was a good thing and a kind of change of pace uh for the way that the convention did it and to your point I mean in that interview last night she seemed to be making the Democratic party we're the big tent party I'll have a republican in my cabinet this is my proposal um I am I will not ban fracking do you think right now Democrats are being the big tent party where Republicans could take a page from their playbook uh I don't know what that's about uh I think it's probably of a piece with her general idea that she can reposition who she is to the public that she can say I'm not this uh the the far right calls her a communist I think that's wrong I think what she really is Brittany is a European Democratic Socialist very much like the uh Democratic Socialist parties in Europe and like the labor party in Britain they want a big government high taxes a lot of redistribution and um essentially a regulatory administrative state uh that's not uh uh linen that's uh a uh uh a regulatory state with high taxes and a lot of redistribution and I think what Americans uh haven't really come to grips with is that um we used to have a relatively low tax economy um uh until after World War II and we used to have a much more state and local uh governance rather than National governance that's all changed and that presents a major problem uh to conservatives who like to make small changes but if they try only to make small changes um what will happen is that these issues will simply the the centralization and taxing power will All Pause during a Republican Presidential Administration but it won't be rolled back and we won't uh move toward that and uh that's where I felt like uh again kamla Harris could have been pressed much harder on a number of of those issues uh I think she's still in favor uh of all the things that the uh that the Democrats have proposed they'd like to blow up the Supreme Court they'd like to blow up the filibuster in the Senate uh that' like to change a lot of the uh the remaining um powers for the minority and I think they really ought to think harder about that because they may be in the minority uh at various times and uh they may be in the minority in the Senate um uh they may be uh they currently are in the minority kind of on the Supreme Court they've been de trying to delegitimize the Supreme Court so I think these are very big issues this is the starkest difference between the two parties since Franklin Roosevelt ran against Herbert Hoover it's been a century almost this is huge and it is is just political malpractice for the Republicans not to run on these issues because except for abortion they really Republicans have uh huge advantages on the issues and Donald Trump has been making some interesting moves on the abortion fertility front and so forth this advocacy for invitro fertilization was very smart and I think think the right move um and I think also his saying he would support uh uh a uh a referendum in Florida to roll back uh this very restrictive policy on abortions um uh which is I think now six weeks and he would like to make it something on the order of 22 24 weeks these are very smart policies and uh I I think he's right to emphasize you mentioned the Stark party differences in this country and you could really see that on play last night and tonight if you were on Twitter now known as X if you were looking at right leaning commentators they said that was a softball interview full of word salad nothing got accomplished if you were looking at more democratic more left-leaning commentators they were lauding Vice President KLA Harris and as you know not as many people today are watching cable news as they were in previous generations so how is the rest of the media do you think interpreting this interview especially because given the weight of this interview as it was her first one and then explaining it and giving a consensus for those who aren't tuned into cable news every second of their lives well you make a great point which is uh if you just listen to the right-wing uh media you you would have a sense that this is all a disaster and if you listen to the leftwing media you would have a sense that she's the best politician since Franklin Roosevelt uh I think that that simply reflects what our country is like now um and I would say that in the past the mainstream media was worth on the order of four or five points in a general election for their bias to the Democrats uh I don't think I I doubt that's true anymore because the media is now fragmented it's not as if ABC and CBS and so forth aren't doing exactly what they've done uh over the years and it's not like the New York Times And The Washington Post don't write their hard news stories to match their editorial of course they do but uh people just get their news from uh sources that a they think are reliable and B they think they're reliable in part because they already agree with the viewpoints uh that are there so I um uh I think you're right I by the way I thought it was a softball interview but then she hit the softballs correctly so in a way both are right how do I Charles you're right down in the middle you got a little bit from this side a little bit from that side well you know it's funny because I don't know how you do it uh Britney but after an event like that which I can see with my own eyes I uh don't listen to the commentators I I try to think about it myself and then maybe I'll listen to them I haven't listened to them yet I mean that's a really interesting point personally I watch whatever it is first to see it before it get clouded by any type of commentary and then I tune in to see what people are saying which I personally think is the best strategy there's still a lot of questions that need to be asked uh between now and election day of KLA Harris of Governor Tim Walls hopefully people get the opportunity hopefully I even get the opportunity but Charles Lipson we have to leave it there thank you so much for joining me I appreciate the conversation I always enjoy it Britney and you do ask followup questions e