Kamala Harris Wants to Win

[Music] from New York Times opinion this is the Ezra Klein [Music] show it is Thursday August 22nd we are just back from the arena having watched kamla Harris EX Democratic nomination for president she gave a speech I think was quite extraordinary and also quite unusual by the standards of recent Democratic Convention speeches she did quite a lot I think to Define herself to the country but also to Define what kind of campaign she's going to run what her campaign's theory of this election and a victory in it would be I'm joined here by my revered editor Aon Rea Aaron welcome back to the show thanks let's cast our minds back to the Paleolithic Era by which I mean you know July and uh just stop for a second and talk about the Republican convention and where things seemed while that was happening and then we're going to of course turn to the events this week and particularly comma speech tonight how would you contrast first before we get into the nitty-gritty of what she said the overall feeling of the Republican convention when it looked to the Republicans like they were going to win and this week in Chicago Republicans ran a convention like they had already won and Democrats ran a convention like they wanted to win everybody I talked to there I was not myself in Milwaukee said this the dominant mood at the Republican convention was it was like the victory night party right that's what Tim Alberta said on the show from the Atlantic and I think you saw that in Donald Trump's speech you also saw that by the way in Donald Trump's chice of JD Vance which I think has proven to be unwise but you saw it in a speech that night it was self-indulgent it was first and and do remember the context he had just suffered an assassination attempt it was a long retelling of that followed by an extremely long all over the place unfocused rally likee performance by Trump what the convention was not and what Trump's performance in particular was not was aimed at voters he needed to persuade you could not look at that speech and say well Donald Trump sat down with lasv and ws and thought through who it was that he needed to win over who he had not yet won over and decided what it was he needed to say to them by contrast that is exactly what kamla Harris's speech was K Harris's speech was reverse engineered from their theory of who it is they needed to win we could talk about the way she introduced herself which is very much putting herself in in The Narrative of immigrant stories but if you think about what she promised at that speech what she actually said she was going to do is a quite conservative speech she is going to restore Row the protections for Reproductive Freedom as she put it and she's going to pass a quite conservative bipartisan border bill that was negotiated with James lenford of Oklahoma I cannot remember a speech from a Democrat at a convention that in its promises that in its imagery that in its story was as fundamentally conservative and I don't mean that in the sort of modern Republican Party Movement term I mean that in the the sort of original term as this one I'm going to push back on that a little bit later because I think there were a lot of cultural I hate to use this word but cultural signifiers that were there for people who wanted to see them but let's first talk about she started with a love story and an immigrant story when you get a chance to tell your story the way you want to tell it which is what happens at these conventions right you reveal a lot about yourself even though you know people are always talking about you reveal yourself so much Under Pressure but when you have control over the story it's actually very revealing so as you said a minute ago people don't know her that well what did she tell us about herself not necessarily that was new but how did she configure it so that we would think about her differently the core thread of her biography in Her speech and in her sister Maya Harris's speech was her mother and she wrapped herself in I would say the the sort of dual threads of one her mother's work ethic before she could finally afford to buy a home she rented a small apartment in the East Bay in the bay in the bay you either live in the Hills or the flat lands we lived in the flats a beautiful workingclass neighborhood of firefighters nurses and construction workers all who tended their lawns with pride she talked about her mother having a tight budget she talked about the work her mother did but she also talked about her mother and for that matter her father's commitment to civil rights her mother's activism her mother's intolerance for complaint my mother was a brilliant 5 foot tall Brown woman with an accent and as the eldest child as the eldest child I saw how the world would sometimes treat her but my mother never lost her cool she was tough courageous a Trailblazer in the fight for Women's Health and she taught Maya and me a lesson that Michelle mentioned the other night she taught us to never complain about Injustice but do something about it do something about it that was my mother and she taught us and she always she also taught us and she also taught us and never do anything half asked and that is a direct quote I am the son of an immigrant if you have any of that in you this was very recognizable the emphasis on hard work there was a lot of I thought beauty in it and you know it was an Oakland California of a different time that she was describing and I was just reading the book she released for her 2020 campaign and she describes her upbringing in that book in a lot more detail and she talks a lot about what was clearly the sort of Bay Area politics ICS that her family was involved in she talks about really lovely sounding but but if you know that area sort of utopian and communal sort of arrangements and activist spaces right you you know if I find it very recognizable but that was not the version of it really that she told tonight the version of it she told tonight introducing herself to the American people who know her but don't know her was the extremely hardworking daughter of socially committed immigrants who was lit by Injustice she saw around her she told a story she often tells it's quite moving you see when I was in high school I started to notice something about my best friend Wanda she was sad at school and there were times she didn't want to go home so one day I asked if everything was all right and she confided in me that she was being sexually abused by her stepfather and I immediately told her she had to come stay with us and she did this is one of the reasons I became a prosecutor to protect people like Wanda because I believe everyone has a right to safety to dignity and to [Applause] Justice let's talk about the prosecu computer aspect of all this throughout the week they've really been hammering that home she's been talking a lot about it on the road when she ran in 2020 she didn't get to 2020 in part because she was a prosecutor and the idea you know K as a cop how much do you think that she is now oddly freed by the chance to talk about herself as a Law and Order person you use the word conservative before but it almost seemed like moving into that framework which might seem restrictive actually was kind of liberating for her I think that's right it's true that if your whole political experience everything you have done the person you have made yourself into is suddenly judged politically lethal and yet people still want you to run for office that's going to be a very hard problem to solve in 2020 she couldn't solve it because there wasn't actually a solution now there is a solution which is it it's not a problem anymore and in fact is an asset and so you see her up there with a tremendous amount of natural ease right you see much more the person that when her star was initially Rising people were looking for I'll say one more thing on this because it had occurred to me while reading her book which is one way that Harris is very different than Obama and different than what we sometimes see in in Democratic politics and and liberal politics is that a lot of people get into Politics as liberals get into it to confront power Barack Obama was famously a community organizer organizing people to confront power Harris what she did was become power she didn't become a public defender she became a prosecutor she didn't go work for a legal nonprofit she became a prosecutor and she tells a story very early in in this book about I think it was when she was an intern in the prosecutor's office there was a case coming and um or at least a proceeding coming and she's like pushing to get the judge back because this woman who was sort of involved in this but but not necessarily at the center of it if the judge wouldn't come back for like five minutes weekend story right she would be held all weekend and she probably had kids and and she talks about realizing just how important it was that you could use power compassionately and so I think something you see with Harris which is not true for all kinds of different people is she's quite comfortable in the position of being the person who wields power that's what she actually intended to do she wasn't there to like her rise and her the way she got herself involved in politics was not as somebody trying to compassionately challenge the power structure it was somebody trying to become the power structure from a compassionate place so she is the first presidential candidate on the Democratic side from California ever she presented a kind of California story today and she's presenting a California that is not the dystopian hell that the right-wing media that Trump himself and really quite a lot of people are trying to push now you're of course uh yourself a product of California and I was thinking a lot tonight about how here is a vision of California as the leading light in the United States right as the future she didn't talk a ton about that but I was feeling it kind of like the sunniness like she's not Reagan obviously but like there was an reaganesque element to it and they've been talking endlessly about joy and I was wondering what you thought about that presentation right what that does politically and also just again in terms of making haris comfortable with the job that she's now chosen to do I'm not sure that as much as I love my home state I think we have a monopoly on on Joy on happiness on that kind of politics of pleasure even but I do think there's something important about the California Roots and you can see it in a couple ways tonight one is it C in general and here you know I'm talking specifically about Los Angeles but really specifically about San Francisco the politics of San Francisco from the outside that you get on Fox News are not the politics on the inside San Francisco's politics have a very core attention to them which is that San Francisco is a very very very tolerant place that's what Fox News is getting at that is constantly consumed by political anger or over the tolerated level of disorder and not San Francisco but Oakland which is where Harris grew up has been at times and and and has been in recent times too a very violent place and politicians who come up through San Francisco are very liberal on one level but they also have to be able to manage the absolute Fury the defin Francisco politics towards the level of disorder around them the level of crime around them more recently towards the level of Housing and affordability around them and you saw uh Harris tonight get huge huge huge Applause for calling for building more homes right the the yiz of the democratic party which Barack Obama also talked about but this is coming through California right the the sort of yimi movement that has influenced Democratic party is a San Francisco based movement let's tell people what yimi is I think yes in my backyard this is my podcast they know what Y is yeah you never know someone might be listening who hasn't listened before but so I think all that was there but what I do think is sort of important is that on the one hand the the union you see in a politician like Harris that I think is maybe not only Californian but but reads to me as distinctively Californian you see a version of it by the way in Gin Newsome too is this mixture of quite liberal particularly in its symbolic politics but quite intolerant of disorder quite aware of the anger that disorder crime lawlessness creates in the population that is the particular strain of politics that she comes up in when she runs for attorney general in California she runs against a a quite popular republican from Los Angeles and is a very very very close race but he was popular because he was a known as a strong Law and Order candidate the way she knocked off an incumbent in San Francisco and then ran against this popular republican from Los Angeles was by arguing that she was going to be a tougher and more effective prosecutor district attorney Attorney General than they were so this is a very natural politics for her which I think is then something she's bringing to the way she's talking here about foreign policy and the way she's talking here about Donald Trump kamla Harris is a candidate a politician who knows both the importance of looking strong and knows how to perform looking strong and I think you saw both tonight you've talked a couple times now about her being in some sense conservative with the speech and it's already being applauded by the kind of democratic analysts who want the party to swing toward the center what was her projected electorate from the speech and talk a little bit about how she did that so it's worth thinking about who preceded her on the stage you had a little bit to my surprise lean Panetta the politician living who is closest to what Leo McGary was on The West Wing uh lean Panetta former Congressman important member of the Clinton administration I believe a budget director for a period later though a secretary of defense and lean paneda gives a searing speech about Donald Trump's disrespect to the Troops to Veterans to our allies look Donald Trump does not understand the world and he does not understand the service and sacrifice of our military our fallen veterans are not suckers they are not losers they are our heroes you also have Adam kinzinger former Republican Congressman who's become a searing critic of Donald Trump and and sort of gives a speech welcoming Republicans into the Patriotic Embrace of the democratic party saying you know there are things that are Beyond partisanship I've learned something about the Dem ratic party and I want to let my fellow Republicans in on the secret the Democrats are as patriotic as us they love this country just as much as we do you have my Harris uh who's of course kamla Harris's sister it's a more sort of biographical speech and you have Roy Cooper of North Carolina who talks about Harris's toughness in negotiating with the banks she went toe to- Toe with some of the world's most powerful Executives and she refused to give in let me tell you this was a huge risk but she knew it was a risk worth taking that's KLA and we all know what happened the banks came that 4 billion for California families became 20 billion and so first you had this sort of runup that was about foreign policy reaching out to Republicans and a kind of nonpartisan populism and then you get the speech which Beyond it its biographical Dimensions when you think about what the Democratic party wants to do what it runs on what it is trying to win power to achieve what is it on that huge laundry list of things Democrats want what did she say about climate in this speech not a lot basically nothing what did she say about healthc care I mean she touched it but for like a second did she promise a universal Child Care policy no Universal prek no there are a million things Democrats promise and care about and that she care about that if she gets a governing Trifecta I think she will try to do but this speech did not really spent time on any of that it was about Shoring up what might have been her weaknesses the Border you saw her pushing the bipartisan border Bill not comprehensive immigration reform right she gave an immigrant story but the immigration policy she offered was tightening the Border in the Asylum system well I refuse to play politics with our security and here is my pledge to you as president I will bring back the bipartisan bard of security bill that he killed and I will sign it into law she showed a lot of Steal on foreign policy the message that she was offering on foreign policy but she was tough I will not cozy up to tyrants and dictators like Kim Jong-un who are rooting for Trump who are rooting for Trump should a very I think again effective line that dictators understand that Donald Trump is easily manipulated and easily flattered but that she was going to stand with Ukraine and stand with our allies and stand against autocrats accountable because he wants to be an autocrat himself and as president I will never waver in defense of American security and ideals because in the enduring struggle between democracy and tyranny I know where I stand and I know where the United States belongs and you had her pushing for the restoration of she wasn't super specific about what this bill would include but the restoration of of Reproductive Rights of reproductive Freedom there was just nothing in there that was part of the liberal list Beyond again restoring row but that is going back to where we were a couple of years ago it's not going to somewhere the country has not yet been when you think about how she ran in 2020 having endorsed Medicare for all and then come out with a slightly triangulated but very expansive Medicare expansion plan when you think about the immigration politics of that year right where the Democratic party is most of the people on that stage including her but not Joe Biden are saying they would decriminalize border crossing she was not doing any work to get liberals excited by offering a list of the big things she would do that they've always wanted done she was doing work to say to somebody who you know maybe is leans a little right maybe doesn't like Joe Biden that much actually but is sort of uncomfortable with Donald Trump she was working to make herself a safe home for them she used an interesting word talking about Trump she said he was unserious and then went on to talk about all the serious consequences of his unseriousness she talked about obviously respecting the rule of law and the peaceful transfer of power do you think that that depiction of trump is a more effective way of framing him as her opponent she had a lot of framings of trump and I thought that one was effective and one of the things I thought was interesting throughout the week of the convention was that both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama's speeches in their own ways I thought were arguments to kamla Harris and the rising generation of the democratic party about how to run against Donald Trump so I thought one of the best lines of the convention was Bill Clinton's line don't count Donald Trump's line count his eyes Clinton's argument there being stop obsessing over factchecking Donald Trump the point of Donald Trump is he's a self-centered narcissist who's going to line his own pockets and will care for you not at all and Harris picked up the exact same theme at real length she didn't attack Donald Trump as a liar or not primarily or just a liar she attacked him is self-centered both Obama and Clinton made a point of talking about how to talk to and reach out to voters who don't agree with you and she definitely made a point in the speech of of talking about and this is cliche in American politics but it's not a cliche that you heard Donald Trump spending a lot of time on about being a president for all Americans about putting country first again hear an an echo of of Adam kininger and let me say I know there are people of various political views watching tonight and I want you to know I promise to be a president for all Amer Americans you can always trust me to put country above party and self to hold sacred America's fundamental principles from the rule of law to free and fair elections to the peaceful transfer of power one thing that I thought was important about the speech is that she left Vibes for Tik Tok there's been such an explosion of vibe around her coconut tree memes right the endless memes weird from Tim Walls brat right she didn't play with any of that here she didn't even allude to any of that there wasn't a joke about JD Vance on the couch one of the things that I had heard people worry about because it was connected to worries they had about her in the past was that they would mistake the enthusiasm they were getting online for what you needed to do to win over 53-year-old suburbanites in Pennsylvania and she just didn't whether they're right about what wins those voters over I don't know I've never won an election in Pennsylvania or in Wisconsin or anywhere else but this was not a campaign that was so to speak high on its own digital Supply it was not mistaking engagement for what you need to do to actually achieve persuasion it was instead assuming and I think correctly that the engagement enthusiasm The Vibes it was getting on the left actually gave her room to not Pander or even worry all that much about the left or even about liberals but to aim her appeal at you could call them moderates but I would call them sort of just less political and less bot in voters I do think the one place that there is a important Divergence from that is on Israel and Gaza where I thought this was a very not just effective part of the speech but I thought just substantively from where I sit an important and very well done part of the speech within the administration she is to Joe Biden's left on this issue she's not on the left on this issue right she's a two-state solution person she's but she spoke about both the horrors of October 7th and what Hamas has done and represents quite eloquently and let me be clear I will always stand up for Israel's right to defend itself and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself because the people of Israel must never again face the horror that a terrorist organization called Hamas caused on October 7 including unspeakable sexual violence and the massacre of young people at a music festival but also spoke about the devastation in Gaza and the need to take the Palestinian right to self-determination and safety as seriously as the Israeli right to security I'm not saying Joe Biden doesn't believe it but when he talks about it you don't feel it and when she did you could feel it what has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating so many innocent lives lost desperate hungry people fleeing for safety over and over again the scale of suffering is heartbreaking 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 yeah where we were sitting with uh you know people who would not necessarily seem to be super interested in that issue when she was talking about it people were really into it right they were talking back to her and with her as she went through that which I thought was very interesting she announced no break with Administration policy here and it felt like a complete break with the administration and I think it actually is in a way because just the truth is that Joe Biden's heart is very deeply with Israel and I think the criticism of him that the I'm not saying he does not care about Palestinians or Palestinian lives but his fundamental identification is with Israel and Israel's security and you could feel in this that Harris is more balanced than he is that she was where she really is I don't know I don't know her that well she may also just be reading party better right but it is a from everything I mean this is based on some reporting but she is in a different place than him I think she does feel this differently I think it does read to her differently for a lot of different reasons not least of them again that her mother is an Indian immigrant the rest of the world looks at this very differently I'm not saying this was a huge Topic in in her house growing up but to the degree that Joe Biden has felt himself wrapped in the Israeli story it's possible she just does not does not have that identification and usually in American policy Israeli security is a non-negotiable and Palestinian security or self-determination is completely negotiable it's contingent and that is not how I don't know what her policy will be in office because there's a whole state apparatus right and she has to Congress and she has to win but that is not how she presented it it did not feel like lip service to the two-state solution as it does with so many politicians I mean if you're I mean I'm a little older than you if you're my age seeing any politician talk with compassion about the Palestinians and about a Palestinian State and that they deserve it that it's not just a subset of what Israel needs in addition to I think her trying to bridge a divide a lot of people feel inside themselves and that exists in her own party she was also trying to show that she had a a strong perspective that she would forcefully pursue she was like trying to clear that bar of could you imagine her in the commander-in-chief role could you imagine you know the AIDS coming to her to say that the war had just expanded right she had a whole section on Iran and you know Madame President what do you want to do she was trying to help people imagine her into that situation room it was interesting also because if you think that part of what's needed is some kind of like metnick type solution where everyone you know all the top leaders or most of them go to Cypress and they just stay there until they figure it out she kind of gave the feeling that that was something she might push yeah look like I know that Joe Biden is working hard for a ceasefire right I have really very complicated feelings on on this situation I think he has given Netanyahu much too much room at this point if the is military establishment felt that American armaments were actually at risk that would be calculus changing for them I mean we are in a very important way their Armory and Netanyahu has been stalling this out and has been defying the bid Administration functionally completely I think that the support Biden offered early on was important and um needed and there was a pivot that needed to be made at some point that he didn't fully make and one consequence of that is that we have completely lost credibility with Palestinians we are considered completely on the Israeli side of this and not a credible broker at all and maybe that's fine because maybe other Arab states would be involved in this right when you talk about that kind of solution but if America is going to be the country that sort of brings us together you probably need a president who is viewed with somewhat more trust and viewed as somewhat more fundamentally sympathetic by the Palestinian side and I think for where this now is and where it's going Harris is presenting herself and I don't mean this politically I think substantively as as more credible not in a way that Israel might like but there's not going to be a deal that only Israel likes I was hinting earlier at the question of what is the imagined electorate of this speech this race is very very close right the enthusiasm for Harris has brought it back to parody it hasn't made I mean maybe she's ahead in some places where Trump was ahead before but it's nothing like a slam dunk that she's going to win far from it I guess I'm also wondering how you think the speech reflects how she sees the contest you know the real contest is in five to seven states right look there's a theory a long running theory of the election I think I associate with Michael poor or the former aflci political director that there is a MAA Coalition and an antia Coalition and the anti-a Coalition is a set of factions you it's bigger than the Democratic party that in the right circumstances come together to beat back Maga candidates they beat back all kinds of Senate candidates and governatori candidates and in 2020 they beat Donald Trump and I think this was a speech that reflected that theory of politics right there are other theories of politics right now Bernie Sanders's theory of politics for instance is you beat Donald Trump's fake economic populism with real economic populism you make bigger Bolder stronger promises you make him out to be a liar and a cheat and a a billionaire right like a guy on the side of the billionaires because he has one himself or claims to be or whatever there are all kinds of theories of this but Harris's theory was quite clearly making herself a safe harbor for a very large Coalition so I think she has confidence she's going to hold most of the democratic party with her and to the extent that we kind of saw the way she's thinking about this election I think that the speakers who came before her including uh going a little bit further back in the night Mar Kelly and Gabby gords and the thing she's emphasizing is about being a safe harbor for this political tendency to reassemble possibly en llarge but definitely reassemble a coalition that has won in American politics before this was not to me a hope and Change speech this was I mean she does talk about we're not going back you know we're going forward but we're not going back is to Trump and forward is honestly not exactly clear in many ways this was very similar to Joe Biden's theory of politics here she's just able to prosecute that case no call back to her language intended in a way he just no longer had the capability to do when she made the arguments about Trump on January 6 when she made the arguments about his self-dealing when she made the arguments about they're not different substantially than arguments he's been making she's just able to make them much better and so in this way I mean I've talked a lot over these past couple of dispatches about different you know torches being passed in the Democratic party but she was a very strong inheritor of about him saying that she should run free which I thought was interesting but she did seed in all these little things she mentioned arther Franklin she mentioned John col train she mentioned Miles Davis she mentioned thur Good Marshall and uh for the officient Autos she uh mentioned constant sper Malley the last two of whom were instrumental in all kinds of civil rights cases so the stuff was there right but it wasn't highlighted but one of the things that was very interesting about this whole convention if we're looking at the whole thing is and the daughter spoke tonight L mhof and then two days ago Doug mhof spoke do you see any fundamental differences in the way all of these things are being approached whether it's the women's roles the men's roles the way families were presented the way the mixed family the blended family like any of that in a way that I thought the family presentations were really touching right I'm not going to talk about their politics because I don't think they're fundamentally political I loved Doug speech I thought it was charming and in terms of contrasts try to imagine Melania Trump offering that kind of speech about Donald Trump I don't know that I thought any moment in the convention was more moving to me than Gus walz's oh man tears and joy and then later his Embrace of his father these families seem to love each other and that's not an unknown thing in politics but it's just it's quite lovely I think in terms of the presentation that that Harris is offering one thing she's able to do that Obama was able to do before her that Hillary Clinton in a funny way was not able to do was Harris is able to let who she is but also how she is speak very loudly and that then allows her to generate an enthusiasm that means she doesn't have to say other things quite so explicitly Hillary Clinton following after Barack Obama and his Charisma and his movement building and having been in politics for a very long time so simultaneously being this generationally historic figure right if she had won and even just in winning the nomination nevertheless like she had to go quite a bit further left than Obama did in kind of making explicit arguments that that he made implicitly or frankly didn't make at all and she would talk very explicitly about systemic racism and you know I'm with her was the slogan and you know everything was sort of trying to remind you that this was something you were supposed to be excited about right this was something we'd never seen before and Harris is is more in the line of what Obama was able to do which is people have gotten very excited about her it's her performance it's her style it's who she is it is Doug but because that excitement has emerged organically it gives her a lot of room to make other political moves this is also room Obama took and it allows her to allow the enthusiasm to be about her and so she doesn't have to make a ton of promises that might turn off other kinds of Voters there is a sort of implicit contract being drawn up between her and her base right now which is you let me do what I need to do to win over the voters I need to win over to beat Donald Trump and then we'll do this thing this governing together well that seems like a very good place to end Ezra thanks so much for staying up with me to talk about all this yeah Aon thank you for being here what is now almost 1: a.m. we an ongoing conversation but it doesn't usually quite go this late and thank you to the whole team who has worked incredibly hard to put out all of these episodes across the Democratic Convention [Music] week this episode of the E Klein show was produced by CLA Gordon factchecking by Michelle Harris with Jack mccordic our senior engineer is Jeff geld with additional mixing by ammen sahota senior editor is CLA Gordon the show's production team also includes Andy Galvin Roland who Elias isth and Kristen Lynn original music by Isaac Jones audience strategy by Christina samuli and Shannon Busta the executive producer of New York Times opinion audio is Andre ster and special thanks to Sonia Herrero and of course to Aaron reica for joining me [Music]