JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Kamala Harris makes history.
KAMALA HARRIS, U.S. Vice President, Democratic Presidential Nominee: I accept your nomination to be president of the United States of America.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Becoming the first black woman and the first candidate ever of Asian descent to lead a major party's presidential ticket.
Harris won the affection and support of her party this week in a boisterous, even euphoric convention.
MICHELLE OBAMA, Former U.S. First Lady: America, hope is making a comeback.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: But the question now is this.
Can she convince a small handful of swing voters in states like Michigan, Georgia, and Pennsylvania that she'd make a better president than Donald Trump?
Next.
Good evening and welcome to Washington Week.
So, Thursday night, everyone was buzzing about a surprise guest at the Democratic National Convention.
Would it be Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Mitt Romney, Mitt Romney as one of Beyonce's dancers?
But the surprise guest turned out to be Kamala Harris because this wasn't supposed to be her nomination.
Just cast your minds back to what was probably the most stunning debate in presidential history, and you'll understand why.
So, here we are at the tail end of one of the strangest summers in recent memory, and Harris is the nominee.
The big question before Donald Trump and J.D.
Vance, can they think of a way to stop her momentum apart from insulting her?
Joining me tonight to discuss this and more, Eugene Daniels is Politico's White House correspondent and co author of Playbook, Mark Leibovich is my colleague and a staff writer at The Atlantic, Susan Page is the Washington bureau chief at USA Today, and Ali Vitali is a Capitol Hill correspondent at NBC News and the author of Electable, Why America Hasn't Put a Woman in the White House Yet.
So, yet.
ALI VITALI, Capitol Hill Correspondent, NBC News: My crystal ball was working.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes, no, you were going to be right sooner or later, right?
Well, thank you all for joining me.
Eugene, let's start with you.
I just have sort of a big general question for everybody.
I want to get your -- you're all just off the plane back from the convention.
Your dominant impression of Kamala Harris right now and your dominant understanding of momentum and what it means for the campaign?
How does she translate some obvious momentum out of the last few weeks in this last week, especially into the swing states for the 75 days or so before the general?
EUGENE DANIELS, White House Correspondent, Politico: Yes.
I think, objectively, she was effective in her speech, right?
I think she had to introduce herself to a lot of people who didn't know her.
And as someone who's covered her this entire time as her as vice president, when she was running, she doesn't talk about her family and kind of emotions a lot.
She talked about that quite a bit, but she also did this thing that's really interesting.
And I was on the floor for like five hours waiting for Beyonce, but also Kamala Harris, and she kind of reclaimed patriotism.
They handed out a lot of flags, which is not something you're always thinking about at a Democratic National Convention, the chants of USA.
She talked about this election as one of her and Tim Walz and their stories can only happen here in America, very Barack Obama in 2008, talking about her parents were immigrants that came here and they would only meet in this country in that way.
And then talking to the American people and saying, I'm just like you, the kinds of things that you deal with.
You know, I came from the middle class.
She's definitely not middle class anymore, but I came from the middle class, you know, those kinds of things.
It is trying to draw out the fact that, in her estimation, Donald Trump is not someone that people who are in the middle class should see themselves in.
And she talked about herself as a prosecutor and that he the -- only person who has ever been -- he has ever been his -- that he's ever worked for is himself, right?
She works for the people.
Those are the things that's really interesting.
On the momentum, I've never seen anything like this in the Democratic Party, probably since 2008.
And the excitement that was in there, the excitement that was on that stage is palpable.
And you could like really feel it.
But if those people on the stage don't get out for her, it's one thing to get on stage and you can sell a book, and, you know, you're up there and all of a sudden people are going to be calling you -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: I mean, she had them at hello.
That's not the point.
EUGENE DANIELS: And how they have to keep doing that.
And they need to get out on the road.
And I think they need to do more than just go to big cities.
They have talked about this rule strategy that they have.
They have to actually do something with that.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes.
Susan, momentum?
SUSAN PAGE, Washington Bureau Chief, USA Today: The most surefooted 33 days in modern American political history that we've seen.
She's gone from being -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: That's a big statement.
SUSAN PAGE: No.
In 33 days she went from being number two on a ticket that was trailing and now she has made virtually not a single mistake and has claimed the nomination and momentum, and got the Democrats back to an even up race.
Now she's got some challenges ahead the next 74 days.
She's going to have to do an interview, maybe more.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: We're going to get to that.
SUSAN PAGE: Yes.
She's going to have to she's going to have to do a debate.
I think she goes into that with some real advantages against Donald Trump.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Oh, talk about that.
SUSAN PAGE: Well, you know, I moderated the last debate, she did, which was the vice presidential debate in 2020.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: I mean, we all did but, we don't talk about it.
SUSAN PAGE: And, you know, that was a campaign where she was -- didn't show nearly as much surefootedness as she has now, but she is a good debater.
She chose her prosecutorial chops.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes.
Let's go to the blue team.
Mark?
MARK LEIBOVICH, Staff Writer, The Atlantic: Yes.
I mean, I think I agree with what you, everything you just said, Susan, about Kamala Harris.
I think she is propelled by forces well beyond herself, one, the sort of pent up release around the unhappiness around the Biden at the top of the ticket.
I mean, that was such a tense and unhappy, you know, and really kind of moribund feeling at the beginning of the summer, kind of came to a head around the debate.
I mean, this is all why there will be documentaries and books about this summer entirely.
But I think she clearly benefited from that.
She clearly benefited from the choice of Tim Walz to this point.
But also just the release, I mean, I think the, this week was a culmination -- has been a culmination of that.
The question is you can't be -- it can't be a culmination.
It has to continue.
I mean, the question is, will this propel her forward?
It looks like everyone's on board.
I think the week went really well.
I think there was some awkwardness around Biden's sort of, you know, keynote, goodbye, good riddance whatever you want to say it was.
But that kind of had to be dealt with and they dispatched with it on Monday night.
And, you know, I think this will all be defined by what happens in November.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.
ALI VITALI: It propels you forward until it doesn't, right?
Like, we're going to find out what the ceilings are.
We already know where Trump's ceiling is, where his floor is.
It's somewhere in the low 30s.
That's all the conventional knowledge.
For her, she's untested, even in the way of, yes, she's been on the ballot as a vice president, but she dropped out in 2020 before anyone could vote for her or not vote for her.
And I remember thinking when I was covering that campaign that that's a blessing to her and also hard for journalists who are trying to make sense of what a Kamala coalition actually looks like.
I do think she has shaken off any of the ghosts of the 2020 debate cycle, all of that.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Quick question for you, and whoever wants to jump in.
Remind us why it didn't go well for her in that.
ALI VITALI: How much time do we have?
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Give me the 30-second version.
ALI VITALI: I do think that the short answer there was she was directionless in a field where people had clearly established lanes, clearly established brands, and she herself seemed at times, and I'm sure you guys would agree, confused as to what her policy positions were.
She ended up in these circular spirals of, okay, but is your health care policy good with private insurance or is it not good with private insurance?
What do you mean when you say you want a public option?
I remember we would just go round in circles.
The campaign apparatus didn't have a clear strategy within it.
I reported that partially in my book, or a hierarchy, which of course was part of the problem.
But I think the one thing that really struck me about Harris last night was that's gone, but she's letting it -- SUSAN PAGE: She pays a price for that campaign because she took some positions, like banning fracking.
Oh, yes, that's like a great idea.
Yes, at the end, I was for Medicare for all.
These are positions she doesn't want to hold now.
So, she can either be targeted as somebody who is super liberal with these positions or someone who flip flopped on.
MARK LEIBOVICH: Yes, but she hasn't to this point and that I think underscores one that you know she might be a little bit bulletproof on this, but also this all is predicated on the other side having some kind of discipline messaging machine and the guy at the top of the ticket is leading it and it has not been focused.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Let me pivot to something interesting about the Democratic National Convention versus the Republican.
I mean, so the RNC, you had the one living ex-Republican president, George W. Bush, not there, 2012 standard bearer Mitt Romney not there.
No living Republican former vice president there Including Donald Trump's former vice president, who won't endorse him.
DNC felt like a kind of a gangs all here moment.
Watch -- Michelle Obama sort of set the tone for what I'm talking about.
Let's watch this for a second.
OBAMA: She understands that most of us will never be afforded the grace of failing forward.
We will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth.
If we bankrupt a business or choke in a crisis, we don't get a second, third, or fourth chance.
If things don't go our way, we don't have the luxury of whining or cheating others to get further ahead, no.
We don't get to change the rules so we always win.
If we see a mountain in front of us, we don't expect there to be an escalator waiting to take us to the top, no.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: By the way, just noting for the record that the gap between her, Michelle Obama's political talent and her lack of desire to be in politics, is the greatest gap in American life.
I mean, that is a talented -- SUSAN PAGE: And that was the greatest speech of the -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: That was a -- well, this goes to my question.
Do you think Tim Walz?
We'll vote later.
Well, this is my question.
They brought the whole team and very effective advocacy for Kamala Harris.
Trump was alone at his convention.
It was the Trump family production.
Does that matter that there was one pretty effective, hard-hitting speech after another against Trump.
What does it pretend?
EUGENE DANIELS: I think it tells you for voters who are like trying to figure out Vice President Harris, everybody told a different aspect of her, right?
And that is something -- when you're trying to reintroduce yourself, you need these validators over and over again.
Michelle Obama continues to be the most admired woman on Earth, right?
There's no one better to have on Earth, on the planet, and maybe other planets too.
I don't know.
I haven't talked to Mars.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Taylor Swift?
No?
EUGENE DANIELS: I don't want to start that fight.
ALI VITALI: I'm for Taylor Swift.
EUGENE DANIELS: (INAUDIBLE) all the Swifties here.
But you also have Barack Obama who goes for a long time and has talked about and been affected by Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, all of these folks who were mainstays in our culture but also talking about different things.
You had Hillary Clinton talking about the glass ceiling again, but Vice President Harris not doing that.
Donald Trump not having anyone but kind of like his vanquished enemies and his family members doing the validating for him, I think swing voters are paying attention to that.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Go ahead.
ALI VITALI: Validators are essential for all the obvious reasons, but for women candidates specifically, and there are so many studies that point to this.
And so having those people on stage, yes, that's the point of a convention, but it's also something that so many of the people who work in the Harris orbit and in the larger Democratic Party have studied this, they have lived this in '16, in '20.
They are living the result of Hillary Clinton's loss.
And it's striking to me, everyone I think was looking for Kamala Harris to have a moment where, will she wear the white suit, will she go to the suffragettes, will she lean in on her firstness, on her historic nature, and she did it on purpose, because everyone who looks at her knows that she is historic.
They know that she occupies spaces that no black woman has ever occupied before, and that she's like breaking glass ceilings.
But the way that they spoke to it Michelle Obama did this.
Kamala Harris did this.
Maya Harris did this.
They told their stories through the women who were powerful and impactful in their lives.
Matriarchy was such a thread that ran through this.
When Michelle Obama talks about the cliff that women and people of color can fall off of because of their non-white, non-maleness, there are people who feel extremely seen and heard in that.
You don't have to say, I'm first.
You just have to say that people know what you're talking about and it's just as impactful and just as important.
EUGENE DANIELS: California Senator Laphonza Butler, I did an interview with her while I was there, and I asked her about this.
And I said, is she going to do that?
Should she?
And she said, black women do not need to remind you all we are black women.
You all will remind us that we're black women.
I thought that was such an interesting point because they don't have to go out there and say that, because the world will remind black women over and over and over again that they are black, that they are a woman, that they are a black woman.
And that is something that Vice President Harris clearly knows.
The choice of a dark color, Symone Sanders, her former aide and now at MSNBC, talked about it as a point to saying to people, no, we need to get to work.
I'll wear the white later.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.
No, that's interesting.
You raise another aspect of the convention, which, in my mind, I was thinking it's kind of the normie convention, normie in the sense that -- I mean, look, the attacks on Trump were direct.
They were not demure at all.
They went, no, they went right at it.
But the normie quality is Thursday night, Adam Kinzinger, a Republican coming out and saying, hey, I met these Democrats, my fellow Republicans, they're normal, they're just like you and me, veteran after veteran after veteran.
Kamala Harris talking very tough about America's adversaries, talking about the lethality of American armed forces, not just sad stories about veterans, right, which are important and, but are the traditional comfort area for.
But this is hard-hitting, USA, USA, which is not a chant that you would think, as you know, you would hear.
So, like I'm wondering if you can speak to the question of whether that would matter for the Nikki Haley voters that -- MARK LEIBOVICH: Yes, I think it would.
Because I think you see a -- not just so much a piecing together.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: You say that with such urgency.
MARK LEIBOVICH: No.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: As a Nikki Haley voter.
ALI VITALI: We spent a lot of time out there together, you and I.
MARK LEIBOVICH: I will say this.
We will - - I mean, there is a coalition that, first of all, there's a reassembling of a coalition of black and brown voters, younger voters that Joe Biden was having real trouble with.
You also have -- I mean, we haven't even mentioned AOC.
We've only mentioned Kinzinger once, Jeff just mentioned it here.
But, I mean, yes, there is actually quite a bit of like sort of centrist Republican energy or potential growth there.
Where is the Trump growth strategy?
I mean, yes, the base is energized, but is that base tired?
And does RFK's endorsement count as a growth strategy?
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Susan, where is the growth?
Is there growth?
SUSAN PAGE: For Trump?
No.
I think we know that Trump has a ceiling, as you mentioned.
And the question is can you put together a coalition that's bigger than that.
And that's her task.
I thought it was interesting that her speech last night was directed not at the people in the hall.
It was not a speech designed to get them all ginned up, although they were just on their own.
It was designed for people watching in the watching T.V.
at home, or on social media, who are not avid Democrats, who are thinking about, can she address questions about the border that's it's been raised, can she address questions about inflation, can I see her as a credible commander-in-chief.
And that's why I think you saw so many military people up there on this convention.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: So, watch this -- this is one excerpt from her speech, where she's going at something, which is obviously an important issue, the constitutional challenge posed by post-January 6th Donald Trump.
But I always wonder if -- compared to inflation and other issues, if this matters.
Listen to this.
I want to hear your reaction.
HARRIS: In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man.
But the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious.
Consider the power he will have, especially after the United States Supreme Court just ruled that he would be immune from criminal prosecution.
Just imagine, Donald Trump with no guardrails.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: The question is, does this discourse matter to pocketbook voters?
EUGENE DANIELS: I think it does.
And the reason is because the way that she is describing Donald Trump is as not the scary, you know, democracy-shaking person who's going to destroy all the things as Joe Biden did, but as someone who's unserious, right, and that if you put him in there, it's going to be bad.
She didn't talk about it in terms of democracy.
She's framed this election as a question of freedom, which is completely different than I think for voters, black and brown voters, young voters, poor voters.
The idea of being free to do what they want is something that hits stronger than like protecting the world from Donald Trump because he's a danger to democracy in the way that Joe Biden was doing it.
MARK LEIBOVICH: Yes.
I mean, I would agree with that.
I mean, I also think that, I mean, the unserious word I think was very effective.
It was understated.
It was dismissive at the same time.
And then she kind of juxtaposed that with the catastrophic consequences of it.
I mean, that was a very plain spoken.
And as I was sitting in the hall, I mean, it was deathly quiet in that moment.
And I also I wanted for you to use the word catastrophic rather than very dangerous.
But that's just me as an editor.
No, but I -- thank you.
No, I actually thought that was her best moment.
And in the hall, I mean, everyone was like, that's a homerun.
I thought in the hall it felt more like a double, maybe.
But when I saw it digested on video and in clips and so forth, it certainly seemed elevated.
And that seemed to be where people clung to, which I thought was very effective.
SUSAN PAGE: And so effective in getting under Trump's skin.
MARK LEIBOVICH: Yes.
SUSAN PAGE: I mean, you saw that from a flood of tweets that he posted during the speech, including things like, where's Hunter?
Well, you know, Hunter may be in Santa Barbara vacationing with Joe Biden, who was almost unmentioned among convention delegates once he had left the hall.
Trump, I think, is still struggling to figure out how to respond to this very sly attack that doesn't make him the risk to democracy, it makes him -- mocks him as a kind of comical figure.
ALI VITALI: Can I also just add that word, freedom, you know where it started being successful?
In the early referendums on abortion and reproductive access.
Democrats found success in red states because they were able to reclaim that word and speak to the people who, party aside, say, hey, I just want to do what I want to do.
I don't want the government involved.
That transcends partisanship, and we've seen it.
I keep thinking back to covering an Ohio ballot measure in the dog days of August, in an off-year that got put on the ballot mere weeks beforehand, and millions of people turned out for a race that was about abortion, but didn't have that word on the ballot.
And it, to me, spoke volumes about where we're going in this first post-Roe presidential -- SUSAN PAGE: Mind your own damn business.
That is the essence of -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: I've got to ask about talking about things that could help Donald Trump's campaign, which is a little bit sputtering, everybody agrees.
RFK Jr. endorsement, does it matter?
SUSAN PAGE: A little bit.
You know, I think it's helped.
But I don't think it's a big deal because his support doesn't all go to Trump.
But I think, you know, if we're going to have a very close election, which are the only elections we seem to have anymore, even at 1 percent support and in a swing state can tip it.
EUGENE DANIELS: I think, yes, I agree, okay.
He doesn't have the kind of gravitas of if I go vote for this person, everyone's going to go do that, right?
But the slimmest margins matter.
I think more importantly, not RFK, it's how the economy's going to continue to do, whether or not she has a mistake that looks like something in 2019 or in that first year of the vice presidency.
There are other shoes that Democrats are scared that could drop, and a lot of that is out of her hands.
MARK LEIBOVICH: I would -- yes, I mean, certainly, it could be an -- I mean, we don't really know what the effect is.
But it also though it does sort of fit into the Democratic framing of they're weird.
I mean, if you want to like underscore the other guys are weird strategy, I mean, adding, yes, the bear cub, the ear worm -- no, the brain worm, whatever, I mean, that's going to -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: It was a bear and a brain worm.
MARK LEIBOVICH: Whatever it is -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: It helps in stories, yes.
MARK LEIBOVICH: It feels kind of weird.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes.
MARK LEIBOVICH: Anyway, but I think that helps in that one.
ALI VITALI: It's one less problem, right?
It's one less problem, because you look at the RFK campaign -- I think it is, If you look at the RFK campaign, and I think it was clear to many of us that he would have pulled some of the votes.
And when you're playing a game of tricky margins, you don't want to leave that to chance.
So, okay, it's one less question mark.
MARK LEIBOVICH: Well, unless it tips the entire election.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.
I mean, Jill Stein -- don't forget Jill Stein.
MARK LEIBOVICH: Jill Stein, Ralph Nader, I mean, there's a lot of -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: there are things that can happen.
I mean, if you were Trump, would you be happy about this?
Would you be happy in a kind of -- ALI VITALI: I think it's one less question.
MARK LEIBOVICH: Yes, absolutely.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes.
I mean, I get you think it'd make a meaningful difference.
ALI VITALI: Pen versus pencil.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: I want to ask a -- well, it's sort of a pen and pencil question that I'm about to ask you.
It's a good transition, inadvertently.
ALI VITALI: Such as?
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Something -- thank you - - the -- I'll buy Two copies of this book.
ALI VITALI: Perfect.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: The -- I want to ask you about something that Kamala Harris is not doing, which is talking to the press.
And I know that people think, oh, you guys are just special pleaders or whatever, the mainstream media.
But the only way voters can see a candidate operate without a net, without a script or a teleprompter, is in a professionally-run interview.
And so the question, I'll turn to Eugene as the president of the White House Correspondents' Association, not that it's your problem directly, but it's bothering me that they're holding her back from what I think of as a test, one of many tests that a candidate should go through.
EUGENE DANIELS: No, you're 100 percent right.
She has to do that.
Because it's not just that we're complaining about it.
I'm hearing that from voters.
I'm not asking them, like do you think she should do an interview?
Like I haven't seen her unscripted.
I think that it's great that she's reading off of a teleprompter, that she seems strong and powerful, but I want to see what she's going to do when you guys ask her about -- you know, they called her the border czar.
Why wasn't she -- I want to see you ask her why -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Why are they holding her back?
SUSAN PAGE: Because I think everything is going so well.
Why risk with the risk?
But, you know, one thing that increases the pressure on her to do interviews is the experience with Joe Biden, where there is criticism that they held him back, they protected him, and American voters were unaware of what his mental acuity, what the cost of aging that would have come out, perhaps, if he was doing interviews.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Mark, I'll give you the last 30 seconds.
You're the author of This Town.
You understand the media.
MARK LEIBOVICH: You hold up a cup.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: You're the author of This Town by Ali Vitali.
MARK LEIBOVICH: Both ways.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Last 30 seconds to you.
Does this matter to anyone but us?
MARK LEIBOVICH: Yes.
My journalist bone definitely is aching in that I want her to do this, I want her to be transparent, I want my colleagues, I want, ideally, me or you, to be able to interview her.
On the other hand, I just don't know if there are a lot of people out there who say, I'm not going to vote for her because she's not given a media interview.
ALI VITALI: That's right.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: No, very good point.
Unfortunately, we do need to leave it there for now.
I wish we could go on all night, but I want to thank our panelists for joining us and for sharing their reporting.
And to our viewers at home, I want to thank you for joining us.
For more election coverage, visit theatlantic.com, where you may or may not read an interview by Mark Leibovich of Kamala Harris.
I'm Jeffrey Goldberg.
Good night from Washington.
