Harris Goes Big On Night 4 Of The DNC
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It really was, like, the talk of the arena. TMZ was like, it's going to be Beyonce. And then, like, there was, like, a ripple. Everybody around you was like, oh, like, Beyonce's happening. It's happening, guys. And then there was the report that, like, nope, Beyonce's people say she's not coming. And then everybody was like, what the heck? We're going to tell them that it's going to turn into a Beyonce concert. And then the special guest is actually going to be Leon Panetta.

Hello and welcome to this late night, final night of the DNC edition of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast. I'm Galen Druk.

Vice President Kamala Harris just ramped up her nomination acceptance speech. And so did a wild, energetic Beyonce concert that really just brought the house down. Right, Nathaniel? Right, Galen. It really was the highlight of my life.

For folks who haven't spent the entire day on Twitter, there were rumors flying around that there was going to be a surprise special guest. TMZ reported that it was Beyonce. That did not end up happening. But let's not get too sidetracked. I should say, first and foremost, that

This was a big night for the Democratic Party. I think a month ago, this tonight was expected to have the energy of a wake, perhaps. I don't know. Maybe that's an exaggeration. A shotgun wedding, perhaps. And tonight was anything but. It was American flags everywhere and Bruce Springsteen in primetime. It was a speech from Harris that...

covered pretty much all of the ground that I think you would have expected her to cover. All of the different bases speaking to both Democrats and the middle of the road and Republicans. We heard from stars in the party like Elizabeth Warren, who got a pretty overwhelming round of applause. We heard from, uh,

current Republicans, not just former Republicans, Adam Kinzinger, who said that he would be voting for Kamala Harris. He was in prime time. We heard a really rousing speech from Roy Cooper, the governor of North Carolina. They covered topics like

law enforcement and gun violence. They talked about climate change, national security, and there was quite a bit of patriotism as well, particularly towards the end of Kamala Harris's speech. And like I mentioned, those American flags and Bruce Springsteen right as the clock struck 9am.

nine o'clock on the East Coast. So let's get into all of it. And here with me to do it is our trusty DNC correspondent who has been helping us through this week, senior elections analyst Nathaniel Rakich, who's back in the Media File Center. Welcome to the podcast, Nathaniel. Hi, Galen. And also here with us is professor of political science at Marquette University, who is also an expert on the presidency, the whole thing, the presidency, Julia Azari. Welcome to the podcast, Julia. It's great to have you. Thank

Thank you so much. And you are also, of course, representing the tipping point state of the past two presidential elections, joining us from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Could you hear the Beyonce concert from Milwaukee? Yes, it was just, you know, just vibrating in the air. I was very pleased with special guest Leon Panetta. So...

You know, I'm the audience. I'm the target audience for the Leon Panetta. I'm here for it. He'll always be Nixon's head of civil rights to me. Deep, deep, deep cut. Once again, to act as some sort of translator for people who didn't spend the evening on Twitter, the response to Leon Panetta's speech right in primetime was pretty sarcastic and critical.

But let's focus on sort of the matter at hand first and foremost. Harris just wrapped up her nomination acceptance speech. Julia, what do we usually expect from a moment like this? And how did she meet it or not?

Sure. I mean, I think there's a couple things going on with Harris. With these kinds of moments, there's different things we need from different nominees, right? Sometimes they need to introduce themselves, and sometimes they need to sort of establish what they want the themes of the election to be and how they want to kind of move forward. With Harris, there's kind of really high expectations for both because of the unusual circumstances of her nomination.

One of the things that really struck me was that she had quite a long kind of biographical section at the beginning where she was really introducing herself to the country in a way that wouldn't necessarily be the case had she just gone through a long primary season. And the other piece of that is laying out what will the campaign themes be. And again, this is maybe different, but also similar to what we would expect with had President Biden stayed on the ticket. One

One of the things that Democrats will want to do is try to frame this election in prospective terms looking forward and talking about what a Trump administration will do and what they would do differently, as opposed to trying making a referendum on the Biden presidency. I think in that sense for Harris, her task was actually easier than it would have been for Biden or really for any incumbent in kind of more troubled political circumstances. Yeah.

Yeah, I thought it was a really strong speech. I agree with Julia. She kind of hit on all the things, the biographical part of it, the positive part of it, the negative hits on Trump. She hit basically all of the main issues. What I kind of thought the theme of it was, was that like she really kind of went for the jugular on everything, right? There wasn't anything tentative about it. Like I think it was very notable that she had like an extended section on Trump

Israel and Gaza, right? She could have just kind of had like, you know, a line that said something nice about both sides and kind of moved on. But like, she's had like a few sentences on Israel kind of waited for applause, then a few sentences on Gaza and like really kind of like went for it. And what could have been a pretty dicey situation. And like, there were a couple of people in the hall. I don't know if you could pick it up. Um,

from TV, but when she was talking about Gaza, a couple of, like, a lone voice from a couple of corners of the arena shouted some pro-Gaza sentiment.

She eventually, like, when she got to the end of the line, particularly the one about, you know, the people of Palestine will get the rights to freedom and self-determination and all that, and that was a huge applause line, and it obviously drowned out any kind of dissent. But there was that part. There was the part, like, immigration. She wasn't afraid. She, like, went straight for it again. Like, she was like...

if I am president, I will revive this bill and I will sign it. Like, no ambiguity. And this is for a campaign that has kind of been criticized to the extent there has been criticism of her campaign so far. It has been that, like, she's kind of coasted on this goodwill and hasn't gotten into specifics yet and that was starting to do that. And I know I'm rambling, but I'll also just end on, like, I think,

again, like we've talked many times on like some of Democrats strongest issues when you look at the polls and like what Americans trust them on are abortion and democracy. And she went kind of straight for the jugular on both of that. She specifically like called out like January 6th and all the stuff that happened after quote after the 2020 election and like called him a threat to democracy and then had an extended section on abortion rights, which would not have happened with Joe Biden with his kind of complicated history, personal history with abortion, being a Catholic and all that

stuff. And again, so she just kind of really seized the bull by the horns with all these issues. And I thought it came across very strong. Yeah, that's an interesting point, Nathaniel. Now that you say that, I made a list of every topic that she touched on. You know, first, she mentioned that it was her anniversary, her wedding anniversary with Doug Emhoff.

And she thanked Joe Biden. And then she acknowledged straight up explicitly, I know that this is the unexpected result of this primary process. This has been an unlikely journey. Let me tell you about my unlikely journey. And then when she got to the biographical part, she also said sort of straight up, my mother, who was, you know, a short brown woman with an accent and talked about how sort of life wasn't always kind to her as a result. And

And this is coming from somebody who, at least before she entered the political scene as vice president, shied away from identity politics. You know, our former colleague Claire Malone wrote a whole piece about Kamala Harris back in the 2020 primary about how she really tried to avoid talking about her biography and herself and her identity as a Black woman or a South Asian woman in politics. And she sort of

came out of the gates talking about that, which is somewhat risky, you know, reminding Americans in prime time about the divides in American life when you're trying to unite people. But she's sort of balanced everything

it all out by hitting on everything explicitly. So she went for the sort of like jingoism and the patriotism also really explicitly. We live in the greatest country on Earth. Like, the greatest privilege on Earth is to be an American. She talked about like the axis of evil and Kim Jong-un and Iran. And so...

in a way, she spoke in ways that would probably be more exciting for the base, but she also then spoke in ways that you wouldn't expect somebody who's talking to a Democratic base. There's always this sort of pressing need to present yourself in this kind of speech, both as someone who will unite the nation and lead the nation, and

articulate national priorities, but also as kind of a party leader. And I think Harris sort of had a formula laid out for that. She used a line about, you know, I will be your president too, I'll be president for all of America. But then also really laying out and not being afraid to kind of lean into this sort of partisan conflict and distinction, specifically distinction from Trump.

One of the things I also think we're thinking about kind of Harris defining herself. I keep thinking back. I kind of can't get away from her 2019 campaign for the Democratic nomination and how high expectations were for that and how, you know, how it sort of petered out. And part of that, I think, is that she had not.

gotten out in front of defining herself as a prosecutor. And doing that in a field of other Democrats, I think, was really challenging. But she's sort of found this message doing that with Trump, and she's found a way to emphasize the things that she did as Attorney General of California, talking about housing and her role in sort of justice around the housing crisis, talking about in terms of justice for sexual assault victims, and

A moment that was, you know, the other thing I thought was interesting that we haven't really talked about here is gender. I thought that was one of the ways that she and also the whole convention have really sort of performed that is by putting some of these issues associated with women's experiences front and center and not really necessarily calling it that.

and also sometimes having men weigh in on those issues. But really, these aren't issues that 20 years ago you were going to see at a national convention or expect to hear in a national convention speech. And she did it in a way that was very clear and, again, kind of related to her background. And so trying to define her career line

as a prosecutor and an attorney general in a way that is resonant with the progressive base of the Democratic Party. Right. I think that's true. I think this may be hasty, right? It is still early. There is a two-month campaign left to go. She will probably have stumbles. But I think the

the early look is that maybe she's just a stronger general election candidate than a primary candidate, right? And she didn't know how to position herself in that primary where she famously kind of embraced Medicare for All and then didn't and was kind of wishy-washy about it, trying to strike the...

the balance between the progressive side and the kind of quote unquote moderate side, or maybe just like the Biden-esque side. I don't know if I would call it moderate. But in this campaign, she doesn't have to do that, right? And she can just like run toward the center or kind of appeal to the median voter, or maybe even just be herself. And she's able to do that. In terms of the gender aspect, a

A lot of the theme of the evening entirely, but including her speech, was like how tough she is. I think it was Gretchen Whitmer, right, who called her a badass. And that obviously is something that I think female candidates need to do. And especially when you're running against Trump, who's all about kind of the machismo and toughness and stuff like that. I think she did a really successful job of painting herself as tough, which can help to cut against some of those gender stereotypes.

Yeah, I think also on a night where they sort of brought up national security for the first time, you know, it's been absent from most of the convention so far. It also, for what it's worth, just doesn't rank particularly highly on issue priority polling lists. In a Politico morning consult poll, for example, when they asked, you know, would you probably or definitely trust Harris to handle foreign policy? 39% of respondents said yes, 49%

percent said they would definitely or probably not trust her. Eleven percent said they don't know. That was one of her worst, if not worst, issues overall. So even on an issue that Democrats are not generally trusted on, like immigration, for example, she did a bit better on the economy. She also did better. I will say at the same time in ABC News polling that

where we're able to compare sort of before Biden dropped out to after Biden dropped out. It looks like Harris improves a little bit on where Biden was in terms of Americans' estimation of how she does on the issue of crime and safety. So to your point, Julia, maybe the prosecutor piece is breaking through or maybe Americans just like her more. And so they're more inclined to trust her on a whole host of issues. And it doesn't really matter which one

It is. It sounds like we're concluding that this was a pretty successful presentation by Harris. Does it matter? And I've already asked Nathaniel this question, but Julia, as the presidential expert here, does it matter?

My kind of line on this is that the convention bounce that candidates have typically had does prove to have some durability. I think that what it does is it sort of filters out into broader media coverage. So the big question is, will some of these themes kind of shape the coverage of her candidacy? And will she be sort of conducting her candidacy on those terms that she's set forth?

talk about the issues that she wants to talk about, talk about them in the frames that she wants to talk about them. So they've really, you know, stressed this freedom frame. And will then Republicans have to kind of respond...

to that? Will Trump have to talk about the issues on her terms? Or will things continue to be framed in ways that are more favorable to the Republicans? I think that's one of the big questions going forward in terms of the media. The other one is, you know, thinking about Harris defining herself as a candidate is that she's had kind of a, you know, kind of a tumultuous

tenure as vice president. To say the least, almost, Julia, right? She went from being a meme of Selina Meyer on Veep to being a meme of sort of badass or whatever. I don't know how exactly you would describe it today, practically overnight. It's kind of a wild journey that her image has been on over the past month or so. Yeah, it's quite wild. I mean, some of that, I think,

the answer to that puzzle, I've really thought a lot about this and I've written about this too, is that as vice president, one of the trickier things to do is define yourself because actually as vice president that you don't necessarily want to be the person who's doing the thing with the issue. You kind of want to be like a top advisor to the president more generally.

You know, so she was kind of stuck in the middle of that. And people are kind of saying you haven't defined yourself. You haven't defined yourself. Well, that's not really the job of vice president. But as presidential candidate, she's had more opportunities to define herself. So I think she's been able to answer some of that. But it's also the thing I keep thinking about and will probably never know.

is how this will play out on these sort of newer forms of social media that younger voters are consuming and, you know, kind of what will be some of the key soundbites. And it does seem like one thing that was picking up that is resonant to younger voters was the statement that she made balancing out the sort of imperatives of the U.S. relationship with Israel with Palestinian self-determination, which I think is something that landed with at least some audiences. So we'll kind of see, you know, what...

what the kind of little sound bites are that go out on forms of social media, as well as framing the coverage in more traditional forms of media.

Okay, so Julia's coming down on the side of, it matters. I think the party line for FiveThirtyEight has been that numerically, these convention bounces fade quickly. Nathaniel, is that the side that you're going to take, or have you been convinced by Julia? Yeah, I mean, I think when Kamala Harris is such a new candidate, right, and in many ways her brand is still being formed, I can see some of the themes from tonight sticking, but

but they've also kind of been themes of the last four weeks anyway. So in that sense, sure, that it kind of filters into the general conversation, I could buy that. But I do think like numerically, yeah,

A, we live in an era of intense polarization. So conventions bounces aren't what they used to be. B, yes, they do tend to fade within a week or two. I think there's an interesting conversation to be had about whether there's even going to be a convention bounce because you could argue that she's having a bounce right now or has already been having a bounce, like a honeymoon period of sorts as the new candidate. And so you, you like the, the convention bounce of course is, is generated by kind of like, you know, like increased enthusiasm and stuff like that. And that,

is arguably already present. You're saying the enthusiasm has maxed out? It could be. I honestly don't know whether to expect a convention bump or not. We'll have an answer soon enough.

The answer is going to be complicated because we expect RFK Jr. to drop out of the race tomorrow and reportedly likely endorse or potentially endorse Donald Trump. That will also have an effect on the polling because increasingly he's been taking support from Trump as opposed to Harris, Biden.

Of course, when Biden was still in the race, it was a little more even because there were more double haters who looked like Democratic voters. Harris seems to have been able to pull those people into her coalition for the time being. And so what was left of RFK Jr.'s coalition, which was around 4 percent, seems to be pulling more from Trump. Is that reason for concern amongst the Harris campaign?

It seems to me like, I mean, maybe like that's the logical place for that support to go. On the other hand, something that I think is kind of constant since Trump, you know,

won the presidency, is that his support, his approval, his sort of support in polls has generally been like very insensitive to events. It's been very stable, whereas both Biden and seemingly Harris's are much more flexible and much more responsive to events. So I mean, so you're the suggestion would be RFK Jr. dropping out of the race creates a lot of non voters as opposed to necessarily Trump voters.

Yeah, I think that's probably the main prospect or possibility there. Yeah, it creates non-voters or possibly kind of splintering into other fringe candidacies. Yeah, I think that's right. Obviously, people who are voting for RFK or any third party are by definition rejecting the two parties. So it

they aren't necessarily just going to be like, okay, well, now I'm going to go vote for Trump or for Harris or whatever. But yes, but based on the polls that we've had since the Biden withdrawal, Kennedy supporters are looking now more disproportionately Republican. And so you would expect more of them to flow to Trump than flow to Harris. But I do think it is an open question whether either of those numbers will be meaningful.

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Go to GiveWell.org to find out more or make a donation. Select podcast and enter 538 politics at checkout to make sure they know you heard about them from us. Again, that's GiveWell.org to donate or find out more. Is there anything else that stuck out from the night that we want to touch on before we close out our coverage of the Democratic National Convention?

I have two things, Adam Kinzinger's speech and the section on gun violence toward the, it was I think around nine o'clock Eastern. I thought those were two of the highlights, whereas things like the Leon Panetta speech was a little bit of a low light. But Adam Kinzinger spoke in a,

plum primetime spot, obviously former Republican. Current Republican, my friend. Yeah, sorry. Current Republican speaking at the Democratic Convention endorsing Kamala Harris. He just emphasized that, which is why I say he said, I am a Republican. And to my fellow Republicans, my message is

you know, the Republican Party is no longer conservative and continue to refer to himself as conservative. But go ahead. Yeah, no, that's a good catch. I just think it was a very prominent position for him and that we talked on Monday, I think it was, or Tuesday, about the differences between speeches that are received on TV and in the audience. And I think that was obvious

Obviously, a speech that was geared toward the television audience, which is probably why they put it in primetime. You know, he got polite applause and stuff, but he's obviously not a Democrat and isn't going to rile up a Democratic crowd. But yeah, he had a message that was very much geared toward getting those Republicans on board, which I think then Harris kind of tried to close.

with some of her gearing toward the median voter. And then I would say the kind of emotional heart of the night was the gun violence segment. You heard from survivors of...

the Sandy Hook massacre. We heard from the parent of somebody who was killed in Uvalde. We heard from Gabby Giffords. That was extremely emotional. And that was actually something that I was thinking last night when we talked about some of the Democrats focusing on some of those issues that are good for them. I was thinking like, oh, you know, like we haven't actually heard really anything on gun violence. And that's an issue that thankfully has not been at the

front of the discussion lately, but it is another issue where Democrats have the popular opinions and you would maybe think that that would be something to emphasize as well. And lo and behold, they did so. Any final thoughts on the night before we close out for the

the next four years of covering party conventions. Oh my, sad. I guess my other final thought, you kind of mentioned this, but just to put a specific words on it, the emphasis on patriotism, I thought was really interesting. Like they literally handed out giant American flags. People were waving American flags, something. And Adam Kinzinger was talking about new America or Democrats love America just as much as Republicans. And, and,

they were kind of like trying out Republican Republicans on that. And that was interesting. And obviously I think popular because everybody loves America. And with that, everyone loves America. We're going to end things for the night. USA, USA. Can I get a USA check? Julia, Julia, kick us off. USA, USA. USA, USA. All right, there we go.

We're going to leave it there. Thank you, Julia and Nathaniel. Thank you. Thanks, Galen. Good night. And good night. My name is Galen Druk. Our producers are Shane McKeon and Cameron Trotavian. And our intern is Jayla Everett. You can get in touch by emailing us at podcasts at 538.com. You can also, of course, tweet us with questions or comments. If you're a fan of the show, leave us a rating or review in the Apple Podcast Store or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening and we will see you soon.