The Race to Define Kamala Harris
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Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, Kamala Harris races to define herself before Donald Trump does it first, and the new Democratic nominee surges in the polls with just over 100 days left until Election Day. Then, former U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice joins the show to talk with Dan about the attacks on Harris as a DEI candidate and what the VP selection process is really like, since Susan went through it four years ago. But first...

When Joe Biden announced on Sunday that he was bowing out of the presidential race, he promised to speak to the nation about his decision and his vision for the remainder of his term. That explanation came last night in the form of an Oval Office address. 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 in 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.

in 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?

I think I probably process this differently than you did or a lot of other people because I was thinking about this. And other than the years of 2017 to 2021, Joe Biden has been my senator, my vice president, or my president every single day of my life. Wow. Like there is no period of time where I knew anything about politics where Joe Biden wasn't a singular figure in it. And so to see him begin the process of saying goodbye,

It's just incredibly – it's sad, right? It is because it's clearly not the ending he would have written for himself, right? 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 as well 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, or 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

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 it was just it was a very meaningful and poignant moment to watch.

One thing I took away from the speech and his delivery, his tone, is that he clearly still believes with every fiber of his being that he could have won, that he deserves to win, that he could serve another term. And I only say that because to me, it makes his decision impossible.

that much more admirable and patriotic and true to who he's always been because this is someone who still has such confidence that he can do the job and also such affection for the job. He tweeted afterwards that it just brings him joy

and purpose to serve people. And there was a picture of him that he walked out after the speech and just this look on his face when he saw everyone, he just like completely lit up, you know? And people talk about like putting your ambition aside and it's yeah, everyone has ambition in politics, right? That's normal. 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 criticize 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 bittersweet for sure. All right. Let's talk about the brand new race for the presidency with about 100 days to go.

It's wild. 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 $126 million from over a million donors, 64% of whom donated for the first time this cycle, and

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 Sienna poll has Trump at 48% and Vice President Harris at 47%.

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' stump speech. And here she is on Thursday speaking to the American Federation of Teachers convention in Houston. Let's listen. So Project 2025...

is a plan to return America to a dark past. He intends to give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations and make working families foot the bill. And he intends to end the Affordable Care Act. So we want to ban assault weapons and they want to ban books.

And we, who believe in reproductive freedom, will restore the freedom of a woman to make decisions about her own body and not have her government telling her what to do. In this moment, we are in a fight for our most fundamental freedoms. And to this room of leaders, I say, bring it on. Bring it on.

Bring it on. First of all, I don't know about you, but I'm still having trouble processing the fact that with 100 days to go, we literally have a brand new race, a brand new nominee, and so far, everything has gone incredibly well.

Still an incredibly close race. Still going to be tough. 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. Thank goodness that she could inherit the campaign team. She did, right? There are a lot of arguments here.

based on her political skills or popularity, her resume as to why Vice President Harris was the obvious person to replace President Biden were he to step aside. But a less discussed fact is she got to inherit this campaign staff because if there had been this wave of excitement and all she had was one single piece of paper that said she'd filed Harris for president, you couldn't have captured any of that enthusiasm. 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 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, 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

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 teachers union in Houston. Couldn't cancel that, so she had to go do that and she nailed that too. 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.

And to think about the staff that has had to go through some of the worst weeks anyone's had to go through on a campaign and then to just turn on a dime and put this together and like get this thing going in a week and to not just get it going, but to get it going like almost flawlessly is like...

tip my cap to the to the to the Harris campaign staff and the former Biden campaign staff that is now that Harris like we've never seen that in politics before either I mean just think about this they woke up on Sunday morning getting ready to do a bunch of things to for Joe Biden campaign events next week by lunchtime they're googling the shade of green for brat right it's just it is it

It is amazing. I was thinking about what David Axelrod used to say, which is that a presidential campaign is like you're shot out of a cannon. And he said you don't have a lot of time to do off-Broadway practice performances before you just are on Broadway. And...

I do think that is certainly true 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 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 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. Amazing. Yeah.

So impressive. It seems like we need a few more weeks to let the events of the last few weeks really sink in with voters. But what do you think of the polling so far? We just had the New York Times Siena poll drop right before we started recording. I think it all dovetails with, I think, what we hoped would come from a shift is that

you are seeing the race get back to a toss-up race, right? Where Trump has advantages. He has more paths to 270. That is still true. A tied national race is still one where Trump has a

two-point advantage in the battleground states, you would say. Just reminding people that Biden won the popular vote by four and a half in 2020 and won the battleground states by 40,000 votes. I think that gap between the popular vote and the electoral college has probably narrowed some, but it's still a race where Trump is the favorite, a slight favorite, but you can vary

Yeah, the Times poll has it, you know, 48-47 Trump. When you include third party candidates, Kamala Harris is actually up one.

And it's interesting that RFK Jr.'s support is dropping. And in the five-way now, those third-party candidates are hurting, taking more from Trump than they are from Kamala Harris. And she's getting, you know, 93% of Democrats in the poll, which is what Trump is getting from Republicans. 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 as high a watermark. But that really stood out to me that Donald Trump of all people has that kind of approval. I mean, we said for the last 10 days that we were pretty skeptical that there would be a single voter in the country who was not for Trump, who would see him get shot in the ear and then before him. And then the Times quotes this person. Yeah.

a 2016 Clinton 2020 Biden voter who saw Trump get shot in the ear, saw him stand up and do the fight, fight, fight thing. And his takeaway was he must have something so important to say that they want to silence him. And now he's supporting Trump. So it's like they found that person. I mean, if you look across all the polling, what the real takeaway is, is that all the groups that 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 completely understandable. I mean, she's been in the race for four days, but it just shows that the potential here in her candidacy 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.

Yeah, she's doing better than 2024 Biden, not as good yet as 2020 Biden.

Can you talk a little bit about what's probably been on the top of the to-do list for Kamala Harris, Jen O'Malley Dillon, campaign manager for Biden, who's now campaign manager for Kamala Harris, and the entire Harris for President staff? How do you even begin to get a new campaign up and running with this little time left? What do you think they've been doing all week? Well, I think for most of the campaign, they literally just changed the name in what they were doing.

Right? Like, the people who are knocking doors are now knocking doors for Kamala Harris, not Joe Biden. People who are doing digital content are now doing digital content for Kamala Harris, not Joe Biden. They obviously had to make some real changes to brand and aesthetic. They did that incredibly quickly. The real questions are going to be around message. Yeah. 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 Rove or anything like that. And so who is going to play that role with her? Who's going to be sort of a partner to Jen O'Malley Dillon on that? Because you've got a bunch of people there who have worked for President Biden

for, in some cases, decades. How do you just organize around that? How do you figure out the staffing? 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. How do you move those people? There's some organized stuff around that, but I think the highest priority thing is the research to inform the advertising campaign to come.

Part of what that research needs to inform that is a different task she has or an extra task she has is introducing herself or reintroducing herself or like, because, you know, Joe Biden is an incumbent president and also someone who's been on the scene for most of his life. And so 100% name ID, people have hardened impressions of Joe Biden and who he is. Same thing with Donald Trump. And now you're running a campaign where you want

want to make it a choice. You want to lay out the choice between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. But also, she has some work to do and 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? They've got to know her positions, who she is, what she does, what her bio is. That's going to take a lot. You can't turn that ship around in a week. And this is, even in a normal presidential campaign, this is the busiest three-week period of the whole campaign. You have to pick and announce your vice president. You have to prepare for the convention. You have to manage the convention. Not just what the nominee is going to say, but the entire campaign.

All four nights, who the speakers are, what I can say, 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 mentioned, 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.

Our friend Stephanie Cutter is running the convention and she is not sleeping. 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 1 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? I don't. I don't have concerns there. Because if you were to run ads that are not informed by messaging research, you're lighting money on fire. And what's also interesting is this weekend is the start of the Olympics.

The Olympics are the first big moment where people are going to tune in en masse, where people who do not consume linear television normally will tune in to watch the Olympics. 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 up. They're 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 you should 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...

Yeah. And just so people know what goes into it, like you want to do some research before the ads. Right. So you you field a poll for a day or two. Then you have to write the ad, the creator for the ad. Then you have to, like, produce the ad. You probably need time from Kamala Harris to, like, appear in the ad. Then you need to cut it together, edit it, and then you need to go to the TV state. I mean, it's like it's a it's a process to get it done in a week is a lot. Pod Save America is brought to you by Policy Genius.

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Toyota, let's go places. Harris has a strong stump speech right now. We just heard some of it at the teachers 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?

recognizing that this is the stump speech written without all the research that would be done. I think it's actually pretty darn close to exactly what you would want. They have grabbed onto what was a core tenant of president Biden's message, which is that she is going to be the one that will protect your freedoms from extremist MAGA Republicans like Donald Trump, abortion, IVF, contraception, freedom of speech, right? You know, freedom to marry all of those things.

And she is just a much more natural vessel for that than President Biden was because she is a more future-oriented candidate. She obviously speaks more fluently and more passionately on some of these issues than he has. And so I think that that's the right message. There's a lot of parsing this, like, is she running a base play? Is she looking for a swing vote? 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, this was running for the nomination of the Democratic Party. I was going to say she had some work to do with the party. If just give her like, you know, 24, 48 hours to do that work just to show people that she can take on Trump, that she is the right person to do it, which was that the court of that prosecutor versus the perpetrator riff in that very first set of remarks, which I think is something she's been doing kind of a little bit in some of these events as vice president. But now that she is the top of the ticket, it makes more sense.

And so I think it is, we're going to see, we're going to know more in the convention speech, I think about the exact kind of campaign she's running, who the exact target groups are, but we kind of know who those voters are because we, you just have to rebuild the anti-MAGA majority in this country. And we know who those groups are. And I think thinking about it on an ideological spectrum is a mistake.

Yeah, I think that she the other part of her message that fits right in with what Biden's was is, you know, she's for the people. Kamala Harris for the people. That's been her. That was like her slogan way back in her 2020 campaign. And Donald Trump is for himself. Right. So that was a you know, that was a Biden message.

The new aspect to the message that she is uniquely suited to deliver is like she's ready to turn the page and get us beyond the politics of the Trump era and Donald Trump will take us back. I mean, she's had this line a couple of times over the last week where she said, we're not going back.

which is a great, great line. And again, this one's tougher because you want to talk about turning the page. It's implicitly about 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. And I think President Biden made that easier for her by using the pass the torch line in his remarks on Wednesday night. Yes.

Yeah. I've also been happy to hear her really dig in on the economy and being like a fighter for working people and the middle class. And even to the extent we're going to talk about Project 2025, when she mentions that, she connects it to sort of like they want to cut Social Security and Medicare. They want to cut child care. And so she's trying to make the message tangible to people, which I think is important. So one of the Biden campaign's big successes,

Maybe one of its biggest was getting Trump on defense over Project 2025. You heard it feature prominently in the VP's pitch today. Trump was on Fox & 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 a document that many of the points are...

Fine. Many of the points are absolutely ridiculous. I have nothing to do with the document. I've never seen the document. I've seen certain things that are said in it. 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.

I don't know nothing about it. I haven't seen it. Some things I like, some things I don't like, but I know nothing about it. I promise I know nothing about it. My VP wrote the foreword to a book about Project 2025. 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.

Yeah, I think that says that they're really worried about Project 2025 and they were trying to give him the opportunity to tell everyone that he had nothing to do with it. And he really just they threw a batting practice pitch at him and he swung and missed on that one pretty hard. But it was very telling. They felt the need to give him a chance to wiggle out of it.

I am. I before this, I just did this weekend's episode of the wilderness. Tune in. I'll be on your pod. Save America feed. Talk to our pal Sarah Longwell. 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.

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 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. 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 people?

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 sort of all of the above. Just anecdotally, we were all in Madison over the weekend for after being at the Republican convention in Milwaukee. And we all went door knocking for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and Tammy Baldwin. And Tommy and I were at a door and asked the woman at the door what she thought this election was about. And she said, stopping Project 2025. We were

I'm like, okay, good. I think we got that vote. Amazing. I think that this is a gift from 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 about abortion and the evangelical Christian anti-abortion person there thinks 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 any time to 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 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 broadly in your stump speeches, pick 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 behalf of the campaign, either as field organizers or influencers or whatever

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. I would also err towards both the policies in there that are most unpopular, but also the policies that Donald Trump has in some way endorsed in the past, even if it's just rambling about how it's a good idea here and there, because I do think

You don't want to give him a lot of space to point out specifics in there and say, I don't agree with that. I don't agree with that. He has obviously a credibility problem anyway. Most people know he's a liar, but I think it's even more useful and more effective if you can point to stuff in Project 2025 that he has explicitly in some way endorsed in the past.

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

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 in North Carolina. Let's listen.

So now we have a new victim to defeat, Lyon Kamala Harris. Lyon. I was supposed to be nice. They say something happened to me when I got shot. I became nice.

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 okay? Kamala Harris is the most liberal elected politician in American history. Did you know that? Borders are. Kamala threw open our borders and allowed 20 million illegal aliens to stampede into our country from all over the world.

As vice president, she cast the tie-breaking 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 wound healed, he stopped being nice again. Is that maybe that's what's happening? Yeah, I mean... He gets shot in the ear, becomes nice, gets better, back to normal. Is that where we're... I guess. I mean, just...

I always just think back to the people who wrote all those very credulous stories in the 48 hours afterwards about what a changed man he was and how getting shot should change someone. And it would change anyone, except apparently this guy. Unity. I love that he also just says what all of his people are trying to avoid, right? He's like, oh yeah, they told me I'm supposed to be nice now and I'm supposed to be a changed man. They're full of shit. I'm going to be me. Can you believe those assholes believe that?

All right. So which of these attacks do you think are most dangerous for the vice president? Liberal from San Francisco is the most dangerous, I think. This is the classic Republican playbook on candidates of color, women candidates, and particularly women of color. And it is to try to paint them outside of mainstream American values, to make them see, to otherize them in the most racist, misogynistic, and devious ways.

As you pointed out earlier, she is not well known by the public. She has high name ID, but there's very little depth of knowledge about her story, her values, her policies. 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 we've seen it work in statewide races. We've seen it tried against President Obama very aggressively in 2008 and 2012. And they're going to try it again here. And I think that is the one that worries me the most. And-

The 2020 primary, like, obviously it has more of an impact because they do it and there's, you know, sort of racial and sexist dog whistles. But they could run this kind of campaign against a white liberal dude. And it would still, like, the positions that were taken in the 2020 primary by a lot of the candidates...

from Kamala Harris to Elizabeth Warren to Joe Biden took a lot of them to better or whoever, right, Pete? It is interesting to hear that we didn't play the McCormick ad. This was Dave McCormick, who's the Republican Senate candidate who's running against Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, sort of cut an ad with all the highlights from 2020 and 2019 when it was like, you know, everything from Green New Deal to like decriminalizing border crossings to like banning plastic straws. They were saying that like,

I just, what do you think the best defense against that is? Is certainly not to play whack-a-mole on your pass positions. It is to articulate a vision for the future.

Right. And you can see how you would handle this, right? The attack is that you supported Medicare for all, ending private health insurance, access to undocumented immigrants. And you say, my position is that we will never cut Social Security and Medicare. 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 pre-existing conditions have access to coverage.

On immigration, you lean right into – instead of going back and doing the punch bowl version of legislative history on the border security bill, that is now your forward-looking policy. This is the bill that I – this is what I want to do. And it is a bipartisan bill supported by these law enforcement officials.

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 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

defense here is a strong offense. I think this is all well and good for her speeches, her ads. I think where it becomes tricky is interviews, how you answer a question in an interview, and then how this comes up at the debate, right? Because then you've got the moderator pushing and you've got Donald Trump pushing. And so when you say, well, here's what I stand for, then you say, okay, well,

But what about this thing that you said back in 2019 and 2020? What do you think about that? And they're just going to keep pushing her. Like, 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 that. And so it like implicitly says that, you know, she has learned that.

as a national figure and as someone who has governed nationwide with Joe Biden that like, you know, 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. Yeah, I think that's smart. Use the vice presidency as the pivot point. You know, because you can say, I had a chance to see all this stuff up front. I sat in meetings with world leaders or experts in all of these things and, you know,

and I learned a lot and it's helped me understand some of the problems facing all parts of this country and here's how I'm going to govern. Yep.

Yep. I think that's, I think that's right. One other line of attack I wanted to ask you about this idea that Kamala Harris was part of a coverup of Biden's health, even implying that this whole thing was like a preordained coup. Do you think that's worrisome? Obviously, uh, that has a lot of purchase with the Fox news viewing Trump base. But, um, do you think that, uh, is, has, gives her problems beyond, uh, the Republican base? I don't think so. It's not something I would worry about. It's,

I just think that you've already seen it. It's only been like 96 hours since Joe Biden withdrew. And he obviously gave the speech. It was watched by 29 million people last night, which is, I think, pretty phenomenal. But this race is very quickly Kamala Harris versus Donald Trump and Joe Biden. His presidency is going to matter. The accomplishments, the things that they did together are going to matter. Some of the things he does over the next six months 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.

I think the more time they want to spend on Joe Biden, the better at this point. And I also think that it is sort of just...

a legacy of the fact that we're only a week out from all of this. And so Sarah did say that in some of the groups, not that there was like, there wasn't concern that there was like a coverup or something like that, but there, there was like, how did she get to be the nominee? When did this happen? This is just, there was no process. 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 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. 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. 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. Before a playbook. That's one of our slogans. That's it, right? And some amazing news here. You can head to cricket.com slash yeswedan.

That's right. We have set up crooked.com slash yes, we Dan. There was a vigorous debate about this with the marketing team as we were trying to figure out how to have a webpage where we could have Polar Coaster and MessageBox.

And Gabby, who is incredible on the marketing team, told me to just lean into the cringe. And we have. And we have. I have a Yes We Dan mug at home, by the way. I don't see you using it on the show. I keep reminding you. We probably bought two of them one day to try to explain to our children what this was because they're going to be so confused by it. The only thing I'd say about both of these, just for everyone, is the point of Polar Coaster and MessageBox is to take all the sort of political analysis and advice that

I gave to candidates and still give to candidates sometimes over the last few years and give it to all of our listeners. Because my theory of politics, our theory of politics of green media is the way we win this election is by one-on-one conversations with the voters in our lives. And my goal here is to make you as smart as you possibly can be to understand what's going on with actual message-tested language to win those arguments with your

You know, I used to say you're Biden's skeptical cousin, but now it's your RFK curious cousin or you're just simply curious about who Kamala Harris is and what she stands for. This is to help you do that. So hence the Crooked.com slash YesWeDan for this special offer of one month free. One month free trial offer for both Friends of the Pod and MessageBox. Again, it's Crooked.com slash YesWeDan. Check it out, guys. When we come back, Susan Rice.

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Joining me now is an old friend, someone with one of the best resumes in all of Washington. She served as the Chief Domestic Policy Advisor to President Biden and was the Ambassador to the United Nations and National Security Advisor to President Obama. Ambassador Susan Rice, welcome back to Positive America. How are you? I'm great. It's good to be with you, Dan. It's good to be back on the pod.

It is. It's good to see you. I want to start with getting your reflections as someone who worked with President Biden in the White House for several years, and then obviously for many years during the Obama-Biden administration.

Just your reaction to the speech last night, his decision to step aside and endorse Vice President Harris. How are you feeling about all of that? Very mixed emotions, to be honest. I was really proud to work with President Biden, both in the Obama administration and for two and a half years in his administration, leading domestic policy.

We got an enormous amount done for the American people under his leadership. And he really was the captain that was ensuring that we pursued an ambitious agenda, whether it was on climate, racial justice, health care, education, student debt relief, you name it. And we've gotten an enormous amount done. And I think it's fair to say, as I have, that a

President Biden has been, you know, 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

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.

So President Biden has about six months left in his term. He brought up some issues that he was going to work on in his remarks on Wednesday night. He talked about Middle East peace. He talked about the cancer moonshot. He talked about Supreme Court reform. 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. He's absolutely going to run through the tape. And he's going to get

as much done as possible. And I remember working in the Obama administration in the last six months, and we were not leaving anything on the field. We were running as hard and as fast as we can or could at the time. And that's exactly what this team is going to do, I have no doubt.

And I think the fact is, you know, as has already been demonstrated, you know, 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

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,

You know, 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. You know, 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 maybe 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

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.

You obviously had an opportunity to work very closely with Vice President Harris. What can you tell us about the work you guys did together and what it tells you about the kind of president that she would be? Vice President Harris is somebody who cares deeply about the issues that matter to everyday Americans. She's someone I've seen roll up her sleeves and dig into the substance and help to try to guide policy in a direction that is carefree

caring and humane and deals with the everyday challenges and hopes and fears that ordinary people are facing. She's a voice for caring about humans on a human level. And I think that's really important, whether it's national security or domestic policy. And I've seen her contribute on both. So I have every confidence that she's going to bring her deep experience, her

you know, 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. Now let's get to something I know you have very strong feelings about. The Republicans have wasted no time in going after Vice President Harris.

They're doing it in ways that I know are very familiar to you. You have been attacked in this way in your time in the public life. You've seen President Obama with similar attacks. You've seen Secretary Clinton attack similar ways. They're calling her crazy Kamala. They're even saying she's the quote unquote DEI vice president. What's your reaction to all of this? I mean, it's profoundly offensive and insulting to

They're basically trying to dehumanize her and all of us. I mean, this is not about Kamala Harris. This is about saying to every woman in this country, regardless of your background, every person of color, every immigrant, every LGBTQ person, every person who may have a disability,

or was a veteran, was a beneficiary of a veteran's preference, that somehow any success we've had, any leadership role we've achieved, we didn't earn it by dint of hard work, experience, education, capacity. We got there because of some unfair advantage. Not only is that incredibly dishonest and denigrating, it's basically saying to veterans,

the vast majority of Americans in this country, if you're not a white Christian man, then any success you've had, you got without merit because of some unfair preference. That is crap. And it's absolutely unacceptable in 2024. And the thing people need to understand about this is not only is it, you know, 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, you know, aren't able to decide, you know, 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, you know, and if we don't have children, we're somehow even less worthy.

It's in 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.

And they, you know, they run away from it because they realize that when, you know, you put it that way, oh, that's going to be a problem politically. But that's what their agenda is. And when you combine that with, you know, 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 and that's why, you know, as offensive as this is to me on a personal level because of, you know, 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 having, 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. And with, you know, Vice President Harris leading the ticket

you know, they can't help themselves. They can't, you know, they can't help but say the quiet part out loud. You know, I would just note that when President Biden chose Kamala Harris to be his vice president, she had been in the Senate for four years. She had been the chief law enforcement officer of the largest state. She'd been a district attorney. And when she

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 done nothing. And done nothing except, you know, pursue a very narrow, vindictive agenda. Look, you're absolutely right. You cannot...

in all seriousness, question Kamala Harris's experience or competence. And now she has been the vice president of the United States for three and a half years and sat in every national security briefing, been at the table for every difficult policy and national security decision. And she is more qualified to be president than any of the four people before Joe Biden who were president of the United States. So this is just, you know, it's crap.

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 win. 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, you know,

where we come from, who we love, what we look like, whether or not we want to have children when some guy says it's time to have children or not. 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.

Yeah, it should be like Project 1955, right? No, it's worse than that. It's pre-Civil War vision. That's right. 1855, right? Project 1855 is what they're going for.

Now, Vice President Harris has to pick her own vice president in the coming weeks. There are 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 obviously, you know, I'm not sure I'd be the one they called since I didn't have the possible success. No. You know, I can tell you, Dan, it's a really, really intensive process. The vetting, I've been confirmed by the Senate twice unanimously. I've been nominated and vetted. I've served in the cabinet.

I've never seen anything like the vice presidential vetting process. I mean, it is...

intense, every aspect of your personal medical history, every aspect of your taxes, everything you've ever said in public. They even interviewed my kids who were not even over 21. It's insane, right? Now, they're going to have to do this process in an extraordinarily compressed timeframe. When it was 2020, it was over more than two months.

They're having to do it in a little less than two weeks. And, you know, my biggest advice, and, you know, I don't know that anybody should take my advice, 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.

She's been 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 develop economic opportunity for people who have not had the benefits of big corporate world. That's her portfolio as well. So she's done a great deal and picking a governing partner

uh, not just a running mate is, is I think a very important part of this decision. I mean, even beyond that, just, I remember thinking about this when, uh, president Biden was making his decision. That's why I thought you were a big favorite for it because I knew you best of the people on the list, but you're also a group, basically the president, vice president, most weeks have lunch together one day. So you're also picking a person you have to have lunch with once a week for the next four to eight years. It seems like you probably ought to get along if you're going to do that, right? Not

Yes, of course. Doctors have lunch with, but want to have lunch with. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And be in every meeting together. I mean, it really is like there is a personal element. It was one of the reasons why I think even though they were very different people with very different life experiences that President Obama picked President Biden to be his vice presidents because he could see everything.

Being in a meeting with him all the time, right? Because he is, obviously, he's trained, he's experienced, he's smart, but also just a great person, right? With interesting things to say and interesting perspectives. And they complimented each other. No, that's exactly, that was a great partnership. And many of us, like you and I, who really worked for Barack Obama and came in who were

You know, we're Obama people. You know, the reason I was willing and eager to serve Joe Biden is because I had seen him serve as vice president and got to know him and work with him in that context and saw, you know, how he, as you said, very different, but extraordinarily capable and turned out to be an incredibly effective and successful president.

It's going to be I'm fascinated to see the decision she makes and I don't and however they pull this off to do the appropriate level of vetting on this very short time. They've got the best team on it. They do. They do. And they're just they're just gonna have to work, you know, around the clock. Do you have a favorite, Dan?

I love all the people on the list. If I have said that if I were to place a bet today on who I thought the choice would be, I would say my pick would be Mark Kelly because I think he adds a ton. He has tremendous gravitas. He's got an incredible bio. There's the Arizona piece, fighter pilot, astronauts are cool. Everyone thinks astronauts are cool, right? So if I had to say today what I think it's going to be, Mark Kelly would be my guess. But I love – I could watch Pete Buttigieg –

If Secretary Buttigieg is the pick, 100 million people will watch the vice presidential debate because it would be one of the great moments in television history to watch him take down J.D. 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 Vote 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 – after Obama, the next – we went kind of back in time for a little bit. So there are a bunch of people who got to rise up.

the ranks and right you know and gretchen whitmer exactly um gina ramondo 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 a

I was at the Republican convention. At least I was in Milwaukee with John, John and Tommy 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'll 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,

that we have right now. 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 will be one of the most exciting tickets we've had in a very long time. So I think that's cool. I think it's great. I think it's great. And I don't know about you, but I...

Everywhere I go, everybody I talk to, I just feel the energy and feel the excitement of her extraordinarily successful launch. And I think a lot of credit, frankly, goes to the team on the campaign that has had to make this pivot so abruptly and support her and

In her early days, I think they really deserve a lot of credit. Jenna Malley Dillon is a good friend of mine. We worked on basically every campaign together for the first 15 years of our career. She's incredibly talented. Just what they went through over the last three weeks and then just to wake up on Sunday. You let them through. It kept me up at night. I promise you that. It kept me up at night the whole time. 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 so quickly, all the 100,000 new volunteers, $100 million raise in the first few days. And to be able to do that and to pivot on a dime with new messaging, new branding, new logistics, moving that Milwaukee rally on one day's notice to a place that had more space to accommodate all the excitement, it's just...

incredibly impressed by what they did. 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. Yeah, and everybody under them. I mean, I really, so many of these folks are friends and colleagues. They go way back in

You know, they've been through it and I'm super proud of them and grateful. Susan Rice, thank you for being on Positive America. It's always great to talk to you. Thanks for sharing your perspective on President Biden, Vice President Harris, and how best to respond to the attacks on our new nominee. Great to be with you, Dan. Take care.

That's our show for today. Thank you so much to Susan Rice for joining. And if you want to really nerd out on the latest polling, Dan did a super deep dive on the latest episode of Polar Coaster, all about Kamala Harris's polling. You can go listen to that episode now through our Friends of the Pod subscription. Sign up through the Apple Pods, Pod Save America page or at crooked.com slash friends. Also, check out The Wilderness this Sunday. It's going to be dropping on your feeds. 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. Bye everyone.

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Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Olivia Martinez and David Toledo. Our associate producers are Saul Rubin and Farrah Safari. Reid Cherlin 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 Tolles, Kiril Pellaviv, and Molly Lobel.

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