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Hey, pull up a chair. It's Hacks on Tap with David Axelrod and Mike Murphy. Before I was elected as vice president, before I was elected as United States senator, I was the elected attorney general, as I've mentioned, of California. Before that, I was a courtroom prosecutor.
In those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds. Fraudsters who ripped off consumers. Cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump's type. Welcome Kamala Harris to the presidential race. Mike Murphy, like, my head is spinning, man. It's been some 10 days here, huh?
Yeah. You know, who would have thunk it? I mean, I remember a couple of weeks for the debate. We had some blowhard on this show was predicting a really bad debate and there'd be a big onslaught of criticism and Biden might've been forced to drop out. And, you know, we scoffed. We'll never have that asshole again. Yeah.
No, no. Wait, that was you? Yes. I think it was you. I don't know how it happened. So I've avenged my Nikki Haley prediction by calling this thing like Crescent, despite the scoffs of disbelief from many other experts. But anyway, here we are. The campaign has done a neck-snapping 180, at least in terms of enthusiasm. On the other hand, this is going to be a high-velocity rocket, and we needed a high-velocity pundit to help us figure this out, a reporter, a bon-bon-bon.
writes for a great new online site named after Don Rickles. I mean, who could it be? And since we couldn't find anybody like that, we just had to settle for John Heilman. Yeah, well, we have his number. Hey, John. Hey, you guys. I heard Kamala Harris talking about perpetrators of all kinds, and now here I am.
surrounded by perpetrators of all kinds since we have a trio of perpetrators of all purpose perpetrators here it's fantastic we're actually doing this as we're doing this as our community service actually now that you mentioned it yeah yeah later we got to paint some parking meters and then we're done for the week
I keep thinking we're just a lovely bunch of coconuts. I'm trying to get familiar with all these new memes. I think also we're all brat now. Is that what we are? Brat? Yes. What's the name of that performer who endorsed her? I can't even. You are our link to the cultural world here, Heilman. What's the name of that woman, the performer who endorsed her and called her brat?
It's got a bunch of Roman numerals in it. I don't know, but I just think of this should be, it's Charlie XCX, I believe is her name. And she's, we were like the Bratz on tap here. That's what this is. You should rename the show. That'd be like a Bratz on tap. I've just been in Milwaukee. So I feel like I'm very connected to Bratz culture right now. But you know what? This is actually when you assess the change in the race,
The fact that she has these links to contemporary culture is like not a small thing, you know, in the TikTok world. And people, I said something in my column on Sunday. I said that she had youth and vigor and I got trashed on the right. They're like, she's 60 years old. I'm like, hey guys, number one, I'm 58 and I'm loving this whole thing.
Kamala's young thing. I love it. She's 59. We call you kid over here. And secondly, compared to fucking Donald Trump, she's like a teenager. She's a teenager. That's all that matters. There's been a big boomerang snap here because the Democrats went from, my God, we got the mummy and we're doomed and nobody seems to care about Trump's age. And then Joe Biden, and by the way, salute to Joe Biden. He did something we have not seen in American politics for many years.
He put the country and the party above his own career and his own needs. And that is a rare damn thing. Thank you, Mr. President. Yeah, exactly. A real president move there. So salute to him. But now the big rubber band has snapped the other way. Now Trump is the old guy, 23, and she plays younger than she even is.
So the age monster that was eating Trump is now going to pivot around and we're going to see what it does to hopeless throwback to Queens in 1961, Donald Trump on their argument, every issue too. And I know we're going to get into all this, but that power is tremendous. And you can tell that,
It's shaking Donald Trump. We've talked a lot about how the Trump campaign has been well-managed by Suzy Wiles and Chris LaCivita, but now for the first time they're going to have Bucking Branco ready to go out and do dumb things, Trump, really out of control. So that's one of the many things to watch here because the energy has done a massive, massive 180. There's danger in it too, but it's a whole new campaign now. Yeah, I'm at $100 million in the first day.
She raised 60,000 volunteers. And there is a palpable, a palpable sense of excitement among Democrats who were moribund before, you know, the day before that. The question is, how long does that last? How far does it go? Is it a sugar high or is it a sustainable thing?
I keep thinking a couple of things. One, you know, people have gotten in the habit of trashing big donors of late because they're, you know, in the period when, when many number of people were saying that, that for a variety of reasons and none of them ever having to do with any, uh,
or disrespect for Joe Biden, but just for like looking at the situation and saying, guys, like this is not a tenable situation here. And look, is the vice president risky? Yeah. And is sticking with Joe Biden riskier? Yes. When people were saying that, you got in this kind of because Joe Biden for a little while was trashing elites, right?
You know, people started trashing big donors who were trying to force them off the ticket. Hey, look, the donor class was right about this. And I'll note, David, in addition to all this great grassroots money that they've raised, I saw a thing yesterday, $150 million pledged to the main by the Super PAC, also in that same period. So you're talking about a quarter of a billion dollars.
That has been either raised or committed in the span of less than 48 hours. That alone, I mean, it's not nothing. I mean, these are not, it's not true. It's a measure of all the energy that was dissipating is now focused. In fact, we've started high and low, right? We've started citizens against stupid haters. Make your check payable to cash and just send it to us at Axe on Tap because we're seriously in the fight too. But this is, this kind of energy is a real deal.
It counts. And I would just say that we are in this – I guess the analogy has been drawn by some people. We're in this kind of British snap election mode here or European snap election. A lot of countries are used to this, and we've never seen anything like it. So do you guys point sugar high?
Hey, you know, sugar highs can last for a little while and they don't need the sugar high. This doesn't have to. Yes, it's going to be. We're going to get. It is a sprint. We're going to get. It's going to be October. I had a Snickers right before this podcast. So we're going to test that proposition. We're waiting for it to kick in.
Halfway through. But, you know, I think there's some... I honestly really do think there's some advantage. In some ways, there are people who've said, and I think, look, there are a lot of Democrats who would say, and I think everyone on this show right now, would have rather...
Not gone through the agony of those three weeks of Joe Biden resisting and digging in his heels and everyone I thought some level you thought, well, it's platonic ideal. He wakes up, you know, 72 hours after the debate and says, you know what? I watched the debate. People are right. I'm going to make a graceful exit. But.
Yeah. Well, that's the Swedish Joe Biden. We have the Irish one. So that wasn't going to happen. And he told George he didn't watch the debate. So maybe they should have made him. But the waiting for these three weeks, actually shortening, foreshortening the time that the sprint gets shorter, in some ways, him delaying could be an advantage.
Although, you know, I think that also, well, it certainly was an advantage for her because the shorter the timetable, the more obvious a choice she was and the less feasible kind of open convention scenario that some had talked about would be. This played out too.
To her advantage. And they were ready. I mean, they, it was, it was, it was shock and awe to see those endorsements rolling in by the minute after. And she was making the calls and they were pushing the right button.
Yeah. One phone call done, you know, one phone call done. Now, now all this said, there's a lot of, I mean, kudos to them for, but this is a stampede. It's not, was not a thoughtful, like who's the strongest candidate in the party and how do we win? This is an emotional stampede. If we got to solve this in two days and it's gotta be her going, going gone. But Mike, let me see. I saw Mike. I saw you, you were tweeting about this and I totally, I had great sympathy for your point of view about this, which was,
Are you guys going too fast? Are you stampeding? Shouldn't you sit and think about it for a little bit? And I had great sympathy for that point of view because obviously she has certain, which I'm sure we're going to talk about, certain distinct political liabilities.
But honestly, if you're the Democratic Party collectively, if you're the hive mind of the Democratic Party, and you've just undertaken this incredibly risky venture, which is to take down a sitting president out of his position at the top of the ticket. Right, right. You want to land it, zip it up, be done. Yes. And she's a known quantity. I mean, after all that risk, you want to try to de-risk, right? And she has liabilities. She has assets. But they're all pretty much known. We understand she's got a...
She got a low ceiling, also has a high floor. I mean, you look at her and go, at least we know we're getting here. There's going to be no Jack in the Box surprises popping out of the closet on her. Actually, we don't, you know, among the assets that I think are undervalued here, having done a bunch of these, is like she has, is it swum? In the deep end of the pool. Yeah.
And no one else has. I mean, that's what I mean. No, no, but nobody understands just how hard these presidential races are. And any other office you've run for is double a maybe triple a. But it's completely different when you get to the major leagues and you're playing in the World Series. And in a short run up, I mean, if you had a primary campaign, people could hone their skills and get used to the deep end of the pool.
There is no time for that. And she does know, you know, she almost drowned in the deep end of the pool. She ran a terrible campaign in 2019. She wasn't ready for that race. She kind of did drown. And then the first half, she got to a dog paddle. We have not... Yesterday might have been the first real...
You know what I think, Mike? I think, yes, yesterday she gave the best speech. You know, it was it was her reintroduction to the nation and she wove her biography together into a really devastating comparative with Trump. And then she pushed the thing into a question of past and future.
in a way I thought was very, very effective. I think she's been doing a lot better for some time. It's just people haven't been paying attention. Which is great because if she's actually better than the perception, than the expectations thing, and if she can have a good 10-day run here,
Because she's got to be defined. I agree with you. She's been in the wind tunnel, kind of the AAA baseball wind tunnel of VP. But now, if she performs, it's going to compound upon itself and do really well. The thing that plagued her in the last campaign was she didn't feel comfortable. She wasn't comfortable when she spoke. She didn't seem authentic.
And, uh, and, uh, this, this time when, you know, what we saw yesterday was a candidate who seemed absolutely, uh,
comfortable and relaxed and you know knew what she wanted to say and uh was comfortable with what she was she she was the words seem more organic to who she is and that's what you need to compete here but look let's okay now can i just get let me get one quick thing in just very quick just to play just to use the sports and have the baseball analogy a little bit more right
There's no question that she was not a good presidential candidate. I have seen her. I've known her since about 1998. So I've seen her play in the California, in the Bush leagues, as a San Francisco prosecutor. I've seen her play as an attorney general, as a senator, as a bad presidential candidate, except for a couple of moments. But what's really, I think, is missed is
that she as vice president, which is not the world series at Yankee stadium, but it's major league pitching, right? After Dobbs, she became, she's better. I mean, I traveled with her on a post Dobbs event for the circus and I was struck by now is that that's not, again, it's not the world series. It's not what she's going to go through right now.
But it's not the Grand Rapids Rotary Club either. It's not, not to diss Gretchen Whitmer, but it's not what Josh Shapiro does or Gretchen Whitmer does or Bashir or any of these other people. She's been playing at post-Dobbs as the tip of the spear for the administration on that. She has done a lot of travel. She's been in a lot of places. She's the first president or vice president to ever go to an abortion clinic. She's got national coverage everywhere.
in this ramp up the last year and she has been getting progressively better is she going to be flawless she's not going to be flawless but she's better than people she has gotten better and a little bit under the radar but above the radar at the same time over this last year she's yeah you know if she's undervalued we're now gonna she's gonna go on the scale in the x-ray and we're gonna find out what worries me to be you know we've we've done the upside and she had a great day yesterday and they've written that speech well by the way i don't love
The prosecutor thing is, I think, more of an inside message of the party. I'm going to win. I'm ready to fight this guy. I like the second half of her speech better. What worries me about the prosecutor thing, she was the moderate San Francisco prosecutor. Oh.
And then she pivoted more to the center as attorney general. Now, being the moderate San Francisco means you're only a communist five days out of seven. They're going to find some Willie Horton, let a killer out of jail stuff with her. Believe me, the Republicans know that playbook.
The communists, by the way, the communists seem pretty draconian in their justice system there. Yes, I used to walk around Moscow in the old days waving $100 bills. No crime at all, except thought crime, which they love to prosecute. So my point is, I wouldn't bet the ranch on that because she's going to get a second look into all that stuff now. I like the other stuff she did. Future, past.
That's where it all fits together beautifully. And I'm on your side. He's on his side, which Biden had started to prosecute. So, and Dobbs, man, she can bang that gong every day of the week. He's going to take you back to 1955 where men make all the decisions for women. You know, there is a golden campaign there and we saw the hint of it in the second half. Yeah.
Go ahead. No, no, no. Yeah, but on the prosecutorial thing, listen, I always thought in 2020 that she should have leaned into her record, not away from it. And she did. She ran away from her prosecutorial record because...
It was a left primary and she was worried about it. Interestingly, the Trump people have signaled that they're going to attack her from the left, at least in their communications to young black voters who they're trying to appeal to. Yeah, that's too clever by half. Yeah, well, but in any case, her work there, but particularly as attorney general, when she went off after these big interests, you know, on housing and health care and other issues, those set her up.
very, very well. The thing that worries me is a couple. One is she is not a clean turn-the-page candidate. And let's listen to a little of the Trump. This was the Trump media that was aired hours after it became clear that she was going to be
the candidate.
They created this mess. They know Kamala owns this failed record. Make America Great Again, Inc. is responsible for the content of this advertising. That's kind of a green room ad to me. You know, it'll feed the Washington echo chamber about the cover up and all that. Go ahead. I can tell you that I think...
From folks out there that I've talked to who have actually, who are already testing these ads. This has been an argument that actually resonates more than I thought it would. The whole idea that they knew all along that, you know, it was a weekend at Bernie's thing and she was in on it. But the bigger thing is them tying her to these issues. And, you know, there's a, there was another video, another video that I thought I had sent earlier.
uh, in which they really went after her on the immigration thing in a very, very brutal way. So, you know, she can't, this is, she is not a turn the page candidate in the way that would be cleaner. And she's going to have to figure out how to navigate that and fire back. And in some places may, maybe she charts her own course here moving forward. Uh,
Well, that's just quickly. And then John, of course, weigh in. That's the biggest thing for all the talk about. And it's, it's legitimate that, Oh, she's played at the big league. She's semi vetted. A governor would turn the page. This is the, the, the junior partner of the Biden Harris administration, which means the inflation and the border. She's going to, it's going to be there. And it's a legit attack. The question is, can she get the new, fresh,
Dobbs and her stuff to eclipse that. Because if we're still doing the economy referendum on Biden, that's quicksand for her too. And that was the biggest downside, that and performance skills are a question mark in picking her, I think.
I always wanted to be in a situation where a vice president could, who was in the situation like, you know, an Al Gore or whoever, could come forward and basically be sort of like, you know, for the last four years, there have been stories written about how all these snipey stories written about how there's tension between me and the president. And we've always denied them and said, we're really close. And I have my weekly lunch and everything. Okay, guys, time to come clean.
I barely know the president. It's all true. I can't stand the president. The president fucking hates me. I barely know him. I've been pissed at him the whole time. I've been trying to poison his food for the last month. I'm finally ready to come clean. All the shit he did wrong, I don't own that stuff at all. I had nothing to do with it. If it were up to me, we would have done a whole different thing. The border seems like the biggest problem. I think there's a way at least you could message around. I mean, look, the notion that inflation, I mean, inflation is obviously a huge problem for this administration as a political matter. We've talked about it a hundred times.
Economic management, I don't think, and maybe this is too much of a green room argument, but the notion that now the Harris economy strikes me as a little bit hard to sell. The border, though, you'll see lots of, there's lots of video out there where I think early on, because someone will check me on this, I think she did an interview recently.
at some point early in the administration where after he had said that she was, that he, he, Joe Biden had said to the vice president, you know, you're in charge of the border. And she did an interview. She, where she admitted she'd never been to the border. I mean, it was like, no, there's, there's, there's more, there's, there's, there's tougher video out there on, on her because that was very much a thing he put on her plate and,
And then she, you know, there's going to be a lot more grist to that mill, grist for that mill, I think, than there is necessarily on the economic stuff. But yeah, I agree with you, Mike. It's this is the thing. She got to figure out a way to untie that knot where it doesn't look too much where everything doesn't become the Biden Harris, this, the Biden Harris, that. I'm interested in what Axe said, though, about this issue.
The cover-up notion, whether that actually cuts. I don't know whether it does or not. See, I think it cuts right now, but I think the whole issue of Joe Biden and age is fading fast. Now, the Republican is going to try. We need him out of the Oval. He just tried to attack Canada, thinking he was pushing the button for applesauce. But that's horseshit. And I think the grip, Biden's relevance every day to the headlines should be supplanted
by her campaign of energy and change if they're good. And I think they figure that out. Yeah. So I think the teeth of the whole Biden thing will fade in the rearview mirror. We'll see. But the border stuff is serious and they need to have an answer. To Heilman's point, this is the other video that they began airing like pretty quickly after Harris surfaced as the candidate.
If you ever wondered how Joe Biden could get the border so screwed up, remember, he had help. Here's Biden appointing Kamala Harris to be his border czar to deal with illegal immigration. And here are a record number of illegal immigrants, 10 million and counting, flooding over the border after Harris was put in charge of stopping illegal immigration.
To be fair, Harris got off to a rough start by ignoring the border. Do you have any plans to visit the border? I'm here in Guatemala today. At some point, you know, we are going to the border. We've been to the border. So this whole this whole this whole thing about the border, we've been to the border. We've been to the border. You haven't been to the border.
And I haven't been to Europe. And I don't understand the point that you're making. So probably the worst moment of her tenure as vice president. That was even worse than I remembered it. I remember it being pretty bad. Start with the royal we, then stretch all the vowels. Waiter, there's a fly in my suit. And then throw in Europe to cap the thing. So yeah, that's a trifecta there. So, you know, that's a pretty tough...
attack. And I think you're going to see more of that. One of the things that concerns me is as they get organized here, they're basically not on the air, uh, and they are being attacked at a pretty significant, uh, but don't you think they will be? Yeah. But I mean, I'm saying that like, I would, this shouldn't be a matter of weeks. It should be a matter. It should be tomorrow or tonight. Exactly. Exactly. So that's something, uh, to be, uh,
that's something to be concerned about. But,
But, you know, just another point that they have a money cannon now they can probably sustain if they can do the 10 days right. So I would not be conservative and I would blow out the door, spend it all and then raise another hundred if you have. But you know what? They have to have an operation to do that. Mike Donilon, the way the ads work before this president's guy, Mike Donilon, would work with one producer, tell him his ideas. The guy would produce stuff.
And Mike would pick an ad and they put it on the air. They don't Mike's not there. I don't think anymore. And, you know, they've got to very quickly build an operation to do this. Perhaps the super PAC should and will fill in the breach. But listen, guys, there are a couple of things that are coming up that will help.
I think, uh, influence the course of this race. One of them is a pick of a VP. Uh, and generally that's a superfluous thing. This seems more important to me, uh, this time. Yeah. It's her first big decision, the normal definer. Um, and I just want to interject one thing before we pivot the VP, which is important. I, I just think the other here's, here's the scary part with her. I think, uh,
Trump is going to overplay it because, you know, she's already got a big condo in his head. He doesn't do well with women either. Yeah, and he doesn't handle it well. So Trump will. The Republican Party knows in its DNA how to run against a DA from San Francisco. But Trump will go crazy. He already has. She's got to be very careful as Trump interjects race into this thing. She's got to keep her eye on square America.
And if it becomes the hippest, you know, brat and pop stars and all that, and we're with it, you're not. The energy in that is old versus young. But it can get into a bad corner pretty quick that it's a woke paradise. Nobody is better equipped to speak for square America than you, Mike.
Murphy. I am the God King. Yes, exactly. So on behalf of all of us in our shorts and black socks, let me, let me tell you to downtown. Should go though, by the way, I like it. That Murphy Murphy proved it right there by saying brought rather than brat, which I think is really cool. Yeah. Which is really cool. He really was thinking about the sausage. He went for the sausage thing. All right. We're going to leave for a minute to pay the power bill and then we'll be right back.
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In that ad, which I can't see it, right, but I can hear it.
there's a one superfluous layer in there, which is the cackling, like the making fun of her laugh, right? The immigration stuff in there is brutal for her, right? On its own, just terrible. She's terrible in that, in that it's like maybe the worst moment of her vice presidency, right? Right. But then they have to layer on this thing that every woman, you know, is going to see as misogynist, which is like the making fun of her laugh. That's like the extra layer of Trumpy, like, yeah, let's just go a little further and just mock
her. No, it's in a way that's clumsy white guys. I totally agree. And they're going to overplay their hand. I, her smile is great. It says young energy, the audio, not so great, but you know, the campaign should be able to work with that. She's not doing as much anymore, by the way. I think she's, she's, she's learned a few things. But here, go back to this other question that David just raised, which was, you know, she doesn't have a team right now. And I actually, before we, whatever else we're going to be doing here, I want to, I'd like to hear what you guys have to say about this because I,
It seems like she's inheriting the bulk of the Biden operation. You know, you said Mike Don is not there. There's a few people who are obviously going to we're not going to stay there. Dylan is staying at least in title. Yes, at least in title. She doesn't really have. I mean, she has had strategists that she's worked with in the past. There's also famously she's had a lot of.
with staff retention over the course of her career. But so it's not like she's got a Karl Rove or a James Carville or a, take your pick, a Doug Sosnick. She doesn't have somebody, a guru, who she's going to want to bring in and say, this is my new chief strategist, at least to my knowledge. Well, she has her sister. And so that is- Well, that's a different thing, Mike. Don't go- That's scary Beltway talk there because that's the fear and that's the legacy from last time. Maybe she's learned. Yes.
But like yesterday on David Axelrod's least favorite morning show, Morning Joe, you had Joe Scarborough. I'm joking. It was a joke. I always watch to see what the elites are saying. Yes, I know.
But Joe was sort of half kidding, half jokingly, I think, launching the draft pluff campaign, which is like there's a lot of people talking about the notion that how do we bring everybody in all our hands on deck moment? Who are the strategists who could come in to supplement the current team? And David, you and the thing, the core of this that I think is there's a core of truth to it is that
You guys on the Obama team dealt constantly and successfully in the end with the
Young, first African-American nominee, you know, and dealing with all of the race and all of the combination of hot button and divisive racist issues that could be thrown, some sub rosa, some above the ground issues.
Who can... I mean, are they... Do you think that they're ready for that? Because he is... Trump is going to both in a vicious way and also in an overplayed way.
who are supporters of her touting the historic nature of her candidacy, saying Dems can't pass her over because she's the first black woman. Right, no, there was an argument about the right to have it. I mean, when the right answer is...
why she's the strongest candidate, right? What are the attributes she's bringing to this that make her the strongest candidate? We spoke about some of them earlier. We didn't talk about that at all in the Obama campaign. We never talked about the historic nature of his candidacy. He used to say, I'm
of the black, I'm proudly of the black community, but I'm not limited to it. I'm running for president of the United States, not to be the first black president of the United States. That's the, you know, to Mike's point, the country is bigger than just the African-American community and, you know, and liberals who, for whom this is a
an incentive. And so I think they have to resist that. To your question, John, I don't know. I mean, I had to say that I was very heartened by the speech she made yesterday because it was right there.
right where it should be uh it was right where it should be it was not about that it was about the work she had done uh you know and how that contrasts with uh trump and you know she didn't do any of that my view is if people are jazzed by the historic nature of her candidacy they've got eyes they can see they know you don't have to make that for free you don't you do and so you know that's uh now you know i don't know what's going to happen over there
You know, I revere David. He was my partner for years. You know, you know, we had a great partnership in that campaign. And I think he would be an asset to any campaign that he was involved in how they use him.
You know, because I do, you know, I don't think Jen O'Malley, Dylan, I know her as well. She's smart and tough and experienced. And I don't think she's hanging around to be a potted plant. She's hanging around to run the campaign. So how they organize and stuff, I don't know, but they've got to make a quick decision.
Are we going to see, do you guys think we're going to see like, is America about to, is America and the Hacks on Tap audience, if they don't already know him, are we all going to get familiar real quick with Ace Smith?
No, I don't think so. I don't know that. I don't think her team, that ace we should point out. There's a lot of turbulence there. He's a regular listener. So ace, if you want to call in, you can. Very successful strategist and formerly an opposition research guy from California. And he and his firm were very deeply involved in her campaign last time. I'm not sure they'd be involved.
This time, but we'll see. I mean, this is the great criminology question, though. And it's not only if Plouffe is the joint, he's a very talented, good friend of the show. Will he have the authority or will people in campaigns say we just need to put him in the window? And he's not dumb enough to fall for that. General Malley Dillon is a worked for and with president.
David in the campaign. And she, I think they have a very good relationship and I don't think David's going to be a part of an effort to kind of shove her out in any way. So we'll, we'll see what happens. Yeah. There just gotta be clear authority, but these things cannot be subtle. There has to be somebody in charge. And the problem last time was nobody was in charge and it changed every week. And so that is candidate driven. Let me just finish. Yeah. So has she changed enough to reward that?
Uh, cause this thing, they're going to have bad days too. I mean, I worry about the stampede a little cause before her speech, I thought, Oh my God, is she's going to get defined as a DEI candidate. I would have got Pritzker to run, just to have somebody to beat. So she had a big win and a credential going into the convention.
So we'll see. The messaging seems pretty good, but she's on definitional thin ice right now, and these are huge decisions. They don't have any time. So it's the first real test. Just one optimistic note on this. I think that speech was written by her communications director, Brian Fallon, who we know from previous campaigns. And I think he's come over. He did a good job. He did a good job on that.
Brian Fallon's a pro. Yeah. So listen, on the VP thing, as we started down this road, you're right, Mike, it's the first presidential decision you make. And it's a signal about how you're going to govern. And, you know, there's a list of people out there. I honestly think that there are two most serious candidates on it today.
And one is Governor Shapiro of Pennsylvania, and the other is Mark Kelly. Astronaut Mark Kelly. I knew you were going to go there. The senator from Arizona. You know, I've talked to him up here. I think some weeks ago I said, boy, if you want to screw Trump, he would be—Kelly would be a good candidate because astronaut, fighter pilot, husband of—
uh gabby giffords that you know who heroically survived an assassination attempt former congresswoman and has become a leader on the gun safety issue he's moderate he's good on the border and he's from a battleground state and he's an expert on uh on national security issues all those things still pertain here and if you want to send a signal of moderation
He would be an excellent choice. Josh Shapiro is a incredibly talented young leader from Pennsylvania, relatively new governor. He would be—you know, I don't think you can win this race without winning Pennsylvania if you're the Democrats. No.
And so he may give her her best. She's not a natural Pennsylvania candidate. He may give her her best chance to win that state. Yeah, I think it's a tricky call. I mean, Kelly on paper is very good. I don't know as an athlete how good he is politically, you know, but he's definitely a contender. You can see the checkerboard there. Shapiro, same thing. I think there's an interesting Buttigieg angle.
Because that ticket is very modern and tomorrow. It might push that envelope too far. Yeah. But, boy, it's a future. Well, you talk about athletes. And a massive athlete. Just put a mic in front of him. Yeah. So I would not underestimate the idea. He's been out here the last.
48 hours or so you know he was on Bill Maher at the end of the week yeah he was fast to endorse her by the way can I just hile me before you go I've got to throw in this at this great exchange when this VP thing was going on with Jared Polis the governor of Colorado if she asked you to be her running mate would you accept
Well, Dan, we're not even there, Dan. I appreciate the question. I love the job I'm doing. You know I love Colorado. It's great. Obviously, if somebody asks, I take a serious look at it, but my phone hasn't rung yet. Look, if they do the polling and it turns out that they need a 49-year-old balding gay Jew from Boulder, Colorado, they got my number. Well, that's it then. We have a VP. The master stroke. No, but yeah, I mean, Buttigieg would be...
If you want someone who can carry a lot of water for you and carry the attack on TV and so on... Yeah, no, a huge athlete and turn the page. But, you know, the issue is, is it too much...
Right. Push the envelope. His game and, you know, so that's a calculation they would have to make. I like the modern power of it, and I like his ability to perform because I think he's a better performer than Kelly, but the Kelly resume, the computer likes it better. I hate to agree with Mike about anything, but...
I do think that also three things. One, I was, was that covered the Mark Kelly reelect reelect and, and got to watch him a little bit close. I think he's tremendous on paper and everything I saw about him as a political athlete in terms of the debates that he did, everything else. I always thought he's not quite, I mean, he's nowhere near as good as Shapiro, for instance, just as a performer. Shapiro is a much better performer, Pennsylvania. I totally agree with you, David, obviously crucial, but,
Is there, do you get dragged into something that we've all forgotten? Democrats were worried about, but one thing that was hurting democratic enthusiasm for a long time, which was the war, you know, you've got, you know, hit your bet. You're now you're in another, you're back to an internecine. He's, it feels like you're having now a discussion about the middle East that you don't really want to have within the party. And you worry about, about young energy at the party, which she is now capturing very quickly. Just, just putting him on the ticket and,
kind of screw that up. And to Mike's point, the thing that I agree with, I was talking to Bob Costa yesterday and I asked Costa about how he, on my podcast, and I asked Costa how he thought about these things. He said, I think about when I think about politicians, I think about their ability to withstand political pain and their capacity for political imagination. And in that category, this is a test of political imagination in some sense. I mean, how far do you want to push political imagination is the question, but Buttigieg is the political imagination pick.
I sat there and watched him on that Bill Maher the other night. He was fucking good. I mean, he did a riff on J.D. Vance. He did a riff on J.D. Vance. And he's ready to take on Vance in a debate, and Vance is good, too. He did a riff on Vance that was cutting and funny and perfectly, like, exquisitely landed. It was like...
it was mean without being too mean. He kind of had, it was like faux kind of concern for him following in the steps of Mike Pence, just beautifully done. And I thought to myself, I hadn't really thought about, honestly, I hadn't thought about Pete for this and watching that. I thought, you know, that would be a, that would be a shoot, shoot the moon kind of, if it's a turn the page campaign, there's a very strong, there's a strong, yes. In almost every, absolutely. At the sort of meta level, uh,
It would be less of a turn the page campaign because he's also in the administration and carries some of that. But but yeah, but she's already got that. But but the but no, no, I'm listen. First of all, he's a great I mean, he's a good friend of mine. And I I've known him since he was, you know, the young mayor of South Bend. And I've been impressed by him from the moment.
I met him, so I would never make an argument. It would be good for Yves. There you go. He's peeled me off Gina Raimondo. All three choices are strong, by the way. There's no clear, obvious home run here, but the big
big message future thing, I think is appealing and a great athlete is appealing, but Kelly can make an argument too. So you can't discount him. Two other names that have been mentioned are governor Cooper of North Carolina. I'm told that he, he wants to run for the Senate in a couple of years. I'm told also that he's really concerned because their constitution allows the lieutenant governor to govern, actually govern while he's at a state.
And they've got, you know, Mark Robinson, the lieutenant governor, is running for the Senate. They're a big MAGA guy. And there's a concern of what he would do when he was out of state. So I don't know that he's going to even want to be in this process. It's kind of a greedy choice. And then Andy Beshear, the very talented governor of Kentucky, has been auditioning the last couple of days. But you know what?
Back to the big, the deep end of the pool. I don't know about throwing him into the deep end of the pool here. And I don't know whether those guys help you win these Northern industrial States, you know?
Yeah. I have doubts about that. I was going to ask you though. I have doubts about that in both those cases. I wouldn't mess with the North Carolina thing. It just seems too, it seems to be too much. They're going to pull a lucky thing there. You don't have to pick a local VP. It's greedy. It's, it's, it doesn't give you much to come back to Kelly. And this is a question. There's only one of us, I believe who lives part-time in, in, in a, in a battleground state. I've been actually, David, you've lived in two in some ways. Yeah. And tell me about it. Yeah.
But in Arizona, like how, this is a question I haven't been to Arizona in calendar year 2024. Is it gone? I don't know. Is it gone? I think that the Southern tier states, the sort of Sunbelt states. The soda states. You know, maybe she gives them a better chance in Arizona.
In North Carolina, a slightly better chance in North Carolina between the African-American population and the sort of, you know, college, you know, tech kind of community that's grown there and so on. But the general I'm asking you about.
I'm asking about Arizona specifically because if Kelly wouldn't get you over the hump in Arizona, I don't think there's much of an argument for Kelly. I mean, I think he's a strong candidate, but if you're not going to be able to win Arizona, what's the point? Well, the point is that he is a guy who signifies moderation, who touches a lot of funny bones with his—and who, frankly, his—
You know, he can't and I'm not making the argument like I would if I were to be pressed against the wall, I'd say, what helps you win Pennsylvania? And I would make that the first the first argument. But Kelly, you know, one thing you want to ask yourself is how is this person going to hold up?
How is this person going to hold up? I think Buddha judge has cleared that bar, you know, dramatically. Um, you know, I think Shapiro is a, is a stud performer, but, uh, hasn't been at that level. Uh, Kelly, you know, my, I guess my theory on Kelly is it's been through tough races, but more than that, if you're, if you're a fighter pilot and an astronaut and you're, and you've survived something terrible with your, uh,
with your wife, you, you, you are comfortable with stress and you know how to handle it. And so, you know, but listen, they're all strong. Yeah. They're all, those are all three good choices. Yeah. Again, what does it do to win Pennsylvania? I agree. And to a lesser extent, Michigan and Wisconsin. But also what does it tell us about her?
Cause it's her, that's the real definition. She's what counts, you know? So the decision is a message and what message does she want to sell? Yes, exactly. That, that becomes frankly, I think a fork in the road between Buddha judge and
and make a big macro move or Shapiro slash Kelly. No, but but it's not that's not obvious. Yes, you're right. That is the fork in the road between them. But the other thing about Kelly is if the immigration thing is going to be a big issue, he's someone who's been, you know, you know, he's been a critic of the administration, but he is, you know, he is he's credentialed
on that issue and he can help certify her. She could say, he's going to run the issue, you know? I mean, so it's weird. The karma of it's weird. Cause it's like, Oh, the old VP on the border trick again, she's doing the, I don't know. It's like a log on an important fire and a good log, but does that fire need more fuel or he can fight it? It's a tricky one, but he can play there. That's everything about everything about the Pete thing feels to me like it reminds me of Clinton picking Gore in a good way.
I mean, in that you're like, what are you doing? You like change that to Mike's point, the big turn the page thing. And it's a generational, you know, it's bold. It doesn't feel calculated in the way that Shapiro and Kelly both are going to be read as past as electoral calculation. Yeah. And I hear all of that. And the question just is, you know, Clinton and Gore were two.
they were young, they were future oriented. They also were from the South. They also were white men. So you're not throwing, they also felt, you know, they were comfortable campaigning in, you know, those kinds of venues. You're throwing a lot of change at people. And the question is, I agree with that, but,
The one thing people ask me during these VP things, because there's always like, well, pick your opposite and create. That's all. Pick yourself. That's what Clinton really did. Another is not an inch at daylight. When you when you go pick somebody young to bounce the ticket or purple, the differences become the story.
You want a buddy movie. And that was the brilliance of the corporate. Some part of it you want. If turn the page is what you're selling, you want a buddy movie. Whereas Obama wanted something different. Bush wanted something different. They needed to have the ballast of an older guy. I used to joke in speeches, if you're Robert Redford's agent and they call you up to do Iron Man 7.
You're going to say, great, Bob's out jogging right now. He's ready for it. Well, this is going to be a two-hander. He's got a sidekick, titanium man. We're thinking Brad Pitt. If you're the agent, you say, well, we love Brad, but we're thinking the sidekick should be Abe Vigoda. Yeah.
You know, you don't want contrast. How many people in this, how many people listen to this podcast? No way. Pagoda is, I'm just curious. It's going to say a lot about your demo. Our listener, Joe Biden is not on our website. And there's like a, a 1980s translator, 1970s, 80s, 70s. Yeah. So, so you can follow along with my, well, you didn't even catch my Rickles poll when I introduced puck.
Yeah. Hockey puck. Get us out of this. So, um,
Two, two things I would, I just want to touch on. We should take a quick, some quick questions cause we haven't been recently. Uh, one is, uh, uh, we should mention what is obvious, but one of the problems that Biden had was this lack of enthusiasm among, uh, young voters, lack of enthusiasm among minority voters. This was implicit in our, uh, conversation before she, she can help bring that base back. Uh,
One advantage that he had was he was doing better with older voters. He was doing better with white, white, white, you know, white. He didn't he wasn't doing great with white working class voters. But, you know, but he picked up a few points there over, say, a Hillary Clinton when he got elected in 2020. These are open questions. So we'll see about that. The last thing is debates.
Now, you know, there was the thought that there probably wouldn't be another debate if Biden stayed on the ticket, that Trump wouldn't do it. Do you think there will be a debate? Will Trump do it? He was saying the other day, well, maybe we should switch to some Fox moderators, which suggested to me that he wanted to bring in some backup for himself. But will there be a debate? And
That seems to me like a great opportunity for Harris. Yeah, if she's strong, there will be because he can't not do it because he'd be losing. If she's imploded...
into the hipster San Francisco liberal campaign, then he can probably, I don't think that's going to happen. I don't think that's going to happen either. I think we're going to, I think we're back to, I think we're back to now, unless there's some catastrophic thing and God knows there could always be. I think we're back to a toss up, a margin of error race again, where she's, she's the underdog. Um, but, but not by a lot. And I can't imagine Trump given his ego, uh,
and what his audience demands of him. I mean, imagine Trump turning to the MAGA base and saying, and making excuses for why he won't go head-to-head with Harris. They should have gone after him, John, yesterday when he said he wanted to switch moderators. I mean, talk about a sign of weakness. They're too busy counting their money right now, David, to worry about Donald Trump. They better be able to do two things at once, you know, or 10 things at once.
But it's a huge tell to Trump because whenever Trump is working the raft and complaining he's fixed is when he's scared and cornered. So they're in his head now, which is worth a lot. They got to stay there.
I still rate him a pretty substantial favorite in this race just because of the electoral challenges. Yeah, I agree with that. But there's a race now. Yeah. Oh, there's no doubt. There's a race today where there wasn't two days ago. You're back to where you were pre-debate, I would say, right? Where he's the leader. A little better.
But, you know, she's now back to, we're back in, as I said, I think she's an underdog, but a slight underdog. And it's a margin of error race where, you know, we've got this sprint and it's going to be a lot more fluid too, which is the key thing. Instead of being set in stone, the thing is now kind of up for grabs again. And so being a slight underdog is like, you can live with that. So Kamala and everybody listening, I have a plot and then we can go to the music. The plot is simple.
Send a couple of gorillas out from DNC headquarters today to whichever of his luxurious retreats Brother Axelrod is at. Snatch him, put him in a room, and he has to program the messaging of the convention. Because the convention could go the wrong way on the celebration of, you know,
one part of America versus another rather than the meat and potato stuff that can win the election. Thank you for the kind words, but I'll tell you your life. I know, but that's a short term assignment you would do very well. It's not necessary because the person who's programming the convention is Stephanie Cutter, our old friend who programmed the 2020 convention, which to my mind was maybe the most effective convention that I've seen. And I was involved in several. So I have no, I have,
no lack of confidence in the convention team. I think the convention is going to really, really be good.
It just occurs to me now, Axe, is it the case that given the fact that you've had those season tickets in that box at the United Center for 100 years, that you're going to still be able to occupy that same box during the convention? But is that like permanently your, like a condo for you? I think I'm going to be in the city, in the CNN box at the convention, yakking about this stuff. But anyway, hit the music. Listener Mail!
If you have a question for the Hacks, send it to us. Use email. Join the future. Hacks on tap at gmail.com. Hacks on tap at gmail.com. Or you can leave a voice message on your phone. Email it to us. Use your name. Or call our secret Chicago line. Just keep it short. We're the blowhards here. And use your name. That number.
773-389-4471. I'll repeat it because who can remember that? 773-389-4471.
Mike Murphy, Paul wants to know, I keep hearing how MAGA is the future of my Republican Party, but can MAGA really survive if it's not winning general elections? MAGA has a terrible track record in general elections. What if Trump and other MAGA candidates lose badly this fall? You're like tickling...
All his erogenous zones here. Oh, Paul. Let's go off camera for that. I don't want to see Mike tickle his erogenous zones on camera. Turn off the Zoom. Paul, great question. And it's true. Losing doesn't work. So if Trump's a two-time America's biggest loser,
And he even got beat by a girl. Yeah, I think some of the mega populism is here to stay, but there won't be the cult of orangutan personality. And parties are ultimately pragmatic or they go away. So, yeah, I think an outcome of Republican rubble, which is a conservative, it's hard to get excited about, but it's the price of no more Trump.
I do it. I'm reminded of a friend of mine in the car business who said, yeah, you know, when we bombed Germany into rubble, they built all brand new plants. So did Japan. And next thing you know, they're our biggest competitors. So I think there will be a Republican reset if Trump blows this election. And I would give him the edge right now. But we'll see if this campaign really takes off. I thought you were going to make a Barney rubble reference from the Flintstones and going back to the Stone Age. But anyway, go ahead. Yeah, give me one.
All right, for David Axelrod from Drew. Can you discuss the pros and cons of Biden withdrawing from the campaign versus resigning the presidency? Oh, good question. This is, Drew, you know, something that the Republicans are pounding. Well, if he can't run, he shouldn't be president. I think it's a ridiculous argument because just because you say I'm not going to run to serve another four years doesn't mean you can't finish the next four.
But the you know, if he had resigned, then Kamala Harris would be president and that would invest her with, you know, the stature and perhaps some of the advantages of incumbency, but also the disadvantages of incumbency. And so.
She would have to govern to boot between now and November. So on balance, I'm not sure that it would have netted out.
uh that well in any case uh it was a lot for him to withdraw from uh this race i do think he wants to finish things most notably uh some sort of uh peace deal uh in gaza between now and when he leaves uh and he deserves the right to do that david don't you think that it's a that that argument is
On the merits, there are counter arguments to it, but on the way the Republicans are making it is it's clearly the argument they're just using that argument. Well, if he's not fit to run, he's not fit to serve as a kind of
pretext for the other argument they want to make, which is that she was involved. Yeah, that she was complicit. Absolutely. That's all it is. That's all this is, right? Is that, and, and from that standpoint, you know, the, the reality of course, is that, you know, Joe Biden has proved as so far, we have no evidence. Joe Biden's not pretty good at being president and his performance skills in under pressure. I, and, and, and,
on television are terrible in front of cameras are terrible, but we have no evidence to suggest that he's not with, with the support of the whole executive branch, that he's not making decisions well on the other. And she can attest to that. I don't, you know, I don't think, you know, we'll see how far that goes. As I said, I think that's somewhat of a vulnerability for everyone involved, but you know, I think she can handle that. John Heilman, Brian Hale,
asks an interesting question since we were talking about the VP. As a registered independent in Maricopa County, Arizona, which is the county, the major county around Phoenix, 62% of the vote there. I'd love to hear your thoughts on a Harris ticket that includes a reasonable Republican like Charlie Baker, who now runs the NCAA, Larry Hogan, who's now running for the Senate in Maryland, or similar candidates.
I know it makes more sense to tap a Dem from a swing state, e.g. Shapiro, but a kid can dream, can't he?
A kid can dream. We're all entitled to our dreams in America, Brian. But I would say, here's what I'd say. You know, the kind of fantasies of these kind of crossover tickets appeal to a very slim number of kind of probably in theory would appeal to a whole bunch of people. There's a lot of people in the country who like the idea of bipartisanship and easing the kind of bitterness of the partisan divide that we've seen in America.
I don't think that is a voting matter, but I mean, start with the fact that nobody votes for the bottom of the ticket. So how many votes does it actually get you? Probably none. It gets you a lot of kind of the high concept praise in the, from the, from people like in the, in the, in the press, you get a lot of the filter would love that kind of a pick.
But I'll tell you what you'd lose is you'd lose a lot of Democratic enthusiasm. And the thing that Kamala Harris has going for her right now is the fact that she's got the party after all these months of being dispirited. In fact, I'd say months, the last three years lacking in Democratic enthusiasm. She suddenly, for the first time in this entire presidential cycle, has the Democratic Party jazzed.
And the best way to kill that buzz would be to go pick a Republican and put them on the bottom of the ticket. I see the appeal at the high concept level. I, there in terms of what it would do to your, your debt, your, your grassroots fundraising, uh, your boots on the ground, uh, the democratic, uh, enthusiasm and energy right now, it'd be, it'd be really pissing all over that. And I think it's for that reason alone is a non-starter. Yeah. Look, I think that in a race that, uh, at one level is about, uh,
and how it functions about bringing the country together. I understand the appeal of that, but a fusion ticket can very quickly become a confusion ticket if you try and pair people who are...
uh on many issues uh quite different and um as we i mean take take hacks and tack yeah hacks on tap is a good point you put you and murphy together what's that just a fucking train right there it's a train that's the thing that's that's why you don't want to do this yeah actually brian in a nutshell that's that's a good answer there
Heilman, thank you so much. Axe, great to talk to you. What a big historic week. We're going to have a lot to talk about. We'll see you next time. See you, Mikey. Murphy, Heilman, been a pleasure. We're going to have a lot to talk about in the weeks and months to come. So stay tuned and fasten your seatbelts. It's like paradise for hacks now. Yes.
