Georgia. How do you cast your vote?
The Democratic National Convention has been many things this week a policy debate, a showcase for a rejuvenated party and, an actual party.
We are here tonight to officially nominate Kamala Harris the president. Another round of shots! DNC turn down for what?
And it's been a moment of torch passing from one generation to another. Like, seriously, it's a greatest hits album. Someone on threads called it the Eras tour for liberals Hillary Clinton, Barack and Michelle Obama and of course, President Joe Biden officially handing off the reins to Kamala Harris.
DNC Joe Biden Clip
00:00:43
I love the job, but I love my country more. We need you to beat Donald Trump and elect Kamala and Tim.
I'm Audie Cornish, coming to you this week from the DNC in Chicago, where a new generation of Democratic leaders have been taking the stage and changing the party. So who are they and how are they different? This is The Assignment.
'So I'm here in the CNN, Politico Grill at the DNC, which is our grill that is a food and beverage style establishment it's called, for some reason, not actually called a restaurant. And I'm here with longtime political reporter Evan McMorris-Santoro. Hi there. Evan.
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:01:43
Hello.
Evan is a reporter with notice, which stands for news of the United States, which it's actually a nonprofit news institute. Right?
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:01:52
That's right. Part of the Allbritton Journalism Institute.
'Very nice. Welcome. He's also a former CNNer. We also have drum roll CNN political commentator Van Jones, who is also, of course, former adviser to President Barack Obama. And my, panel-mate-in-crime. You've been so good to me on those panels.
You've been so good on the panels. And the panels have been good because this convention has been off the hook.
Yes, I would say Democrats...
...You embody the change in tone. Yeah. The vibe shifts.
Yes. I am happy happy happy.
Yes. And I because I feel like of all the panelists, you are most inclined to show your emotions, you know, like.
Like what do you feel moved. When you are happy you're prepared to the single tear. I just like he's really bringing a different kind of drama to the CNN panel.
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:02:46
This is the most important famous meme on CNN.
Yeah I agree. Yeah. Like, you know, for me, I do take all this stuff very personally. I mean, it's I, I was it a normal appointee in the first place? I was like, I kind of got plucked out of the grass roots to kind of be in the White House, and, it didn't work out that well. And so...
And didn't work out specifically in the context of culture wars.
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So, you can Google all this is this that is that we're talking about it, but, but I...
I just mean to say you're sort of birthed in the fire.
Yes. Birthed in the fire. But, I take this stuff very personally. I like I know all these people, you know, Gavin and Kamala and I came up together in San Francisco politics. I was a radical outsider. They were the the striving insiders and. But still fresh and new and. Yeah. Known Westmore forever. Cory Booker I missed him by one year in law school. This is this is family to me. This is personal to me. And, I'm not I'm not scared to show it.
Well, we're going to talk about a couple things today, especially because the last two days have been about a handing off. The first night you had this conversation about Joe Biden, the president, he is handing off the ticket. And then there was something very interesting about having the Obamas there doing a handing off of sorts. And I think Obama at one point, the former president says something like, and now we've passed the torch. He said that sentence.
So first of all, I want to talk about the layers of the bench. Evan, everyone has been so focus on the VP contenders, but who else is out there?
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:04:22
Well, I just first want to say, you mentioned I used to be a CNNer. It's been a long time since I've been on CNN's airwaves, and I want to say I'm glad that the one I came back on is the best airwaves the CNN has. The show is great, and I really appreciate being a part of it. Yeah. One of the most interesting things about this cycle has been this change away from a conversation that looked backwards only, right? 2020. Do you like what you did then? Do you want to do it again, which is what the election was? Do something about the future and what's happening now. And when we got into that whole Veep stakes, we're gonna hear from Tim Walz tonight. You know, the guy who was who won those Veep stakes. When we were going through that, I started thinking about what it means to have this VP chosen by the current VP, and it actually unlocks this amazing bench the Democrats have right below the surface in Lieutenant Governor's slot all over the country, 80%, people of color or women like this huge bloc of Democrats you don't hear that much about.
And they're in a group chat, you were writing.
Well, yeah. Yeah. So so they actually all kind of like friends. And when I called them up. So Peggy Flanagan, she's Tim Walz's lieutenant governor. And should he be elected and become vice president, she'll be the first native woman governor of Minnesota, right? And so I was talking to her and she mentioned the thing that they're all kind of friends, and they all talk about this thing with Kamala Harris taking over, that she was a second in command and lifted all of them up. And they're on their group chat talking about.
Right, because it's a group chat of second in commands.
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:05:55
Right. Thinking about what's going to happen and how it's going to go. And I think it's just like a great embodiment of what this convention has turned into, which is look at all these Democrats that you've never heard of, or you maybe have only heard a little bit about who now you can hear a lot about in the future. Right. It's and so that any governor story which you can read on notus.org I think really captures the spirit of like what has changed since this election has changed.
Can you give me 1 or 2 more names? You mentioned Tim Waltz's lieutenant governor. Who else is out there?
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:06:26
Well, the guy who is Josh Shapiro's...
Lieutenant governor in Pennsylvania.
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:06:32
That's right. He he would be the first, black governor of Pennsylvania named Austin Davis. He's also out there. The lieutenant governor of here in Illinois is Juliana Stratton. And, you know, she's sitting underneath Pritzker. And, you know, when he's done, maybe she runs for governor. She'd be the first black woman governor of Illinois, first governor, I think, anywhere in America, actually. So this moment of looking down one rung below to what a there is, you know, you saw when Biden, this party stalwart, this long running guy, steps aside, elevates his person. The party suddenly locks in and goes nuts for her. This is a kind of storyline that could play out down the line, kind of created by this moment, because guys like Pritzker and guys like Shapiro, you could see them possibly joining a Harris administration. And if that happens, then you elevate this other group of, Democrats and across the country Lieutenant Governors.
Do you know about these guys?
No, and I know about a lot of stuff, but, I mean, I think that this is part of why, some of us were willing as much as we love Joe Biden. And again, people say I was in the Obama administration. That's true, but I worked for Joe Biden. I was a part of his middle class task force. He was a person kind of pick me out of the puppy pile in the first place. So it was very painful for me personally to say that it's time for him to go. But part of it is that I knew how much more good there was in the party that was basically in the refrigerator, curdling like milk, while the masses of people are starving for hope and inspiration. I just knew that if we just got him to do what he did, that something better would happen. I didn't know it would be this. I didn't know that Kamala Harris was going to become Beyonce. I mean, that was not on my bingo card.
Yeah, no, it was on no one's bingo card.
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:08:26
I thought this was Eras tour. Are we saying she's Taylor? Are we saying she's Beyonce?
Oh no, she's...this is...
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:08:29
'Tay-oncé?
Election. I saw some people with some, cowboy Harris. Yeah, yeah, there's some very interesting merch that has come out of it.
And so listen, so I that was not on my bingo card or anybody else's bingo card, but I knew more was possible. Yeah. And the reason I knew more was possible is because you do have a generation of people who, going back to the Obama years, were grassroots folks who felt empowered, inspired by his example, but were frustrated by the lack of progress. And a lot of those people became protesters. And you call those people Black Lives Matter? A lot of those people went into government, and a lot of those people are now starting to emerge. And there is an energy here. And I think that we sometimes forget the reason that, some of the people on the right wing are so aggressive is because I think they see it coming more than we do.
Well. But here, let me challenge you on something. When Barack Obama left the presidency, there was criticism about the fact that across the country, around 900 legislative seats had flipped to the Republican Party.
And in the interim, there's also been criticism of where are the Obamas in lifting up the generation of Obamas I was supposed to follow, right? There was an almost an impatient...Where's the next Obama?
How do you hear that criticism? Because they kind of, I'll talk about him. The former president. Well, he took time off. Yeah, right. He had to rest after that. But we did not see him side by side with people here and there lifting them up.
You had a challenge during the Obama years in that, they went around the Clintons, they went around Hillary Clinton. And so there was a need to make sure that the Clintons got their turn, that Hillary Clinton got her turn. And there was a felt sense that everybody else was kind of not being taken seriously because nobody could eclipse Hillary. That was this the scuttlebutt inside the party. And so then Hillary gets her opportunity. We wound up with Trump, and then Biden went up against Trump. And so you have almost a decade where you just you've been waiting for who is the true successor to Obama? I think people put too much weight on the Obamas. They actually have done some things that they set up their foundation. They have picked young people to bet on and to help and support.
Yeah, but you sound like you've heard the criticism.
I've heard it. And, you know, sometimes I felt that because because, you know, it's like every everybody would love more love from the Obamas, but they actually are human beings.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know.
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:11:04
The thing that makes this election so interesting, because that story you're telling about this idea of who's next in line, whose turn is it? This is exactly what was turning voters off right when I was going around the country all year before, Biden did step down. They didn't look at the Democratic Party as like a dynamic party of interesting rising talent. They're like, okay, well, I guess it'll be Biden and then this person, then this. And it's all sort of like, locked in...
Jokes about it being a gerontocracy.
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:11:32
And this is, you know what, right. The party leadership is very old. Talk about Pelosi. You talk about Joe Biden, these people, Schumer, they did not feel the voters did when they were annoyed of the Democratic Party. One of the reasons they were annoyed is that they feel like the whole thing is being controlled. Yes, by people at the top. And this moment now we're sort of everyone in America. I mean, inside politics, right? The idea was that Harris was maybe not capable of doing this. Right. And they were seeing, I mean, and we're seeing how well it's gone for so far, which has been a surprise to the insider types. And I think the people who are the regular voters that I've spoken with since this change has happened, they're like, what you this this was available. What are we doing?
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:12:15
And it really is a huge moment for the Democratic Party to think about this, because this thing that van is talking about of Clinton, I mean, Obama then goes to Clinton and then we did the Biden. And this was like, yeah, maybe looked really good. On like a Cafe Milano napkin when it was sketched out in Washington, D.C..
For all the normal people listening to this. That is an incredibly inside reference to a restaurant in D.C. that all the politicos hang out in.
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:12:39
But it may have looked good on that, but it did not look good to voters.
All right. So I want to jump in on one more idea that you're saying about how the Obamas, tread carefully in support of Hillary Clinton. That was a fraught relationship because of their primary fight in the years before. And then they came around. But last night on air. I took a little guff from people online for something I said about this being a moment of torch passing for President Obama rather than President Biden. And it the two aren't exclusive. What I should have said on air that essentially Obama, he never got that chance to stand up and say, this is who we are. This is where we're going forward. He immediately had to cede that to Clinton. She had to do that. And she was doing it against Trump, who the campaign at the time was portraying as an existential threat.
So it it felt weirdly like we entered an alternate timeline last night. That's true.
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:13:39
A lot of people who loved Obama were there to support Bernie Sanders and not support Clinton. So it was this is what you're interesting about this convention to me, is the first time I think Democrats have been able to get together and all be on the same page since like 2012, really, because like, they didn't have a convention in 2020 and 2016. They were fighting with each other.
Yeah. It's it's been it's been a long time. Well, look, I mean, just say one more thing about Obama and then to say things about others. I think that Obama was a movement leader at first. He was challenging the Clintons, challenging the Clinton establishment, and he had to run against, frankly, the black establishment. Don't forget that most Black People...
Not enough people, talk about that.
Most black leaders were with the Clintons and have been with the Clintons for a long time and saw Obama as a, as a, as a whippersnapper, an upstart, and kind.
And definitely jumping the line over the Clintons. And it wasn't until white folks started voting for him in Iowa that the Black establishment even embraced, Obama. The challenge was Obama was a movement leader who then became head of state. I was a movement leader, now I'm head of state and I have to run the government. And what that meant was the the hope part of hope and change was kind of lost, because once you start trying to govern and you're trying to get all these bills pass, a lot of energy is it's kind of left to float around. Some of that energy became Black Lives Matter. The difference with Trump. Trump says no, I'm a movement leader who sometimes happens to be head of state. But I'm going to keep the rallies going. I'm going to keep the energy going. I'm going to keep beating my base. Well, it's been a while, though, since you had Obama. Then you had Trump. It's been a while since the soul of the party has been nourished. It's been a while. It's been a minute. Some people might say it's been since 2008, that the soul of the party has been nourished. Nobody here is saying, oh, this has 2012 vibes or 2013 people saying 2008 vibes.
That's how long it's been. And yet what was so beautiful about what the Obamas did so masterfully? You can hand over, as Biden did, the machinery of the party. That's, that's that's a that's the technical function. How do you hand over the stewardship of the soul of the party that takes...shamanism. I mean, like, that's a very hard thing to do.
Or at the very least, vision.
It doesn't have to be full on magic always.
But but no, no, no, but the Obamas did it. Yeah, they they brought a magical wallet. You could feel something shifting. So there was a a magic wand that was passed. It was a torch pass from Biden, and it was a magic wand that was passed from the Obamas. And so we'll see what Kamala Harris does with it. But I thought what happened yesterday was the completing of a certain cycle. And now I think we can have the movement back that we that we loved in 2008 and have been missing for so long.
'Okay. So we are talking to CNN political commentator Van Jones and also Evan McMorris-Santoro, reporter from NOTUS, nonprofit news organization. This is The Assignment. We'll be back in a moment.
'All right. Welcome back to The Assignment here at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. So we talked a lot about the big picture, right. The hand off. I want to talk about the emergence of these new leaders. Number one, I don't want to ignore, for instance, the women of the squad in Congress. That was a generation that came up, sort of post-Bernie Sanders, bringing a different energy and direction. Evan, do we know where this new crop of executive leaders, how they lean? Are they more moderate the way I think Obama's a moderate? I know some people don't like when you say that. Or are they more in the vein of the progressive wing of the party? Like what, what are we, what does it look like?
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:17:49
Well, sure depends on who you're talking about, right? I mean, we we just had this in this veepstakes, right? Josh Shapiro is a rising star. People call him moderate. Tim Walz is a rising star
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:17:58
People call. Well,
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:18:01
People, you know, people call, Tim Walz a progressive. But when he was in Congress, people call him a centrist. So it's like, you know, there's a whole thing.
But also went to Camp Wellstone, right? He's a person who literally graduated from a progressive campaign camp based on, like, one of the most revered figures on the left.
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:18:19
So I'll say this. I, here at the convention, I've been speaking with a lot of people, and I've been very interested in speaking with the group of influencers and creators that the Democratic Party has brought in, because this is sort of a really good way to figure out what this party wants to be, message wise, is.
'Right, who they're micro-targeting.
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:18:37
They brought in people who have an audience, and they want those people to sort of feed the audience content. And I was speaking to two women, yesterday who, do reproductive rights content, and they see the big shift coming in in the future is that Democrats are not, afraid of the issue of abortion, and they're not afraid to talk about it. They're not afraid to embrace it. They you know, we remember back in the Clinton era, you know, it was like abortion. You could say it, but it was like, you know, safe, legal and rare, this kind of, like, weird thing.
And even before that, it could I don't know, I'm remembering Dukakis. I, you don't know how old I am, but, like, just it was a thing where you had to be careful. You could be for it to support those as a right. As a Democrat, it was hard.
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:19:26
'But. So you see Democrats going away from that now, right? You know, there aren't a lot of anti-choice Democrats left. And there are definitely, that's not the way they talk about it anymore. And then you see, you know, even in, in, in Harris's policy proposals, you're seeing, a real embrace of some, economic policies that in 2008 would have been seen as incredibly progressive, like shifts to the left in some cases. I think that the most interesting difference about the new generation, we we talk about the this hand-off from Obama, is that 2008 era, was a very idealistic era in the sense that after Obama won came the work with the Republican Party in Congress at the time that was, I think a lot of Democrats like very stridently oppositional to this, to this guy Obama, that he had a lot of great ideas. And all of a sudden the Republicans said, we're going to say no to everything. We're the party of no. That's what we're going to do.
Instead of trying to emulate it, right? Because after Mitt Romney's loss, the sense was we, there, from some, was to write a memo there autopsy that said, we need to change. We as a party, we need to change. And that is not actually what happened.
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:20:35
Specifically on issues like, immigration, like sounding like more, you know, tolerant on immigration, things like that. But what I'm saying is that these current crop of Democrats, it's not a purple America conversation that much, it's that there is a lot of people who actually like progressive values, those who are Democrats and are not heard and not listened to. And we need to fight for them and we to fight hard for what we believe in. That is a bit of, that is, I think the shift you hear from Democrats now on this future crop of people is that they're really, like, forged in an era of real battle that has been happening sort of since Obama's election. And these people, when they think about how to do their job, it's like we have to win. We have to convince people that what we're, our ideas are right, and we got to push, push, push, as opposed to this kind of idea of we can really find some common ground, right? We're all Americans. Right? It's a very different conversation.
Because they're not Mitt Romney, the Republican Party or the John McCain Republican.
Yeah, fighting a very different kind of party. You know, I think, Congresswoman Crockett from Texas is an example of somebody who I don't know if she's a moderate or progressive. I know she's a fighter.
Yes. And for background, for people listening, this is the lawmaker who went viral for tangling with Marjorie Taylor Greene at a committee hearing with an insult that went viral. Google it, if you want to know more.
Yes. But, to your to your point, from an attitudinal point of view, I don't know if she's I don't know what her position is on, I don't know Medicare. I know she's a fighter and that
She had a prominent slot.
And she had a very prominent slot and did very, very well. And and I think of there's some other people who are coming along. I think Wes Moore is someone who is as yet undefined, but he does represent
And this is the Democrat from Maryland.
'Yes, I'm sorry, Wes Moore, that the new governor of Maryland, an African-American governor, former military. Big smile, bigger biceps. You know, he is like, you know, from Hollywood central casting. The bridge got knocked down in his state, and everybody on both sides of the aisle says he has handled that brilliantly. Also, the first bill that he passes is called the Enough Act to deal with child poverty. And he starts with Republicans, with poor kids in the Red counties and then starts talking to the Democrats with poor kids in the blue cities and passes that thing on a bipartisan basis. So is he left? Is he right? He's fresh. He's new. He's he brings something to the table. I love, coming from California, Lateefah Simon. I've known her since she was literally a teenage activist in San Francisco. She was mentored by Kamala Harris. She's kind of one of the more famous young people that Kamala Harris kind of brought in from the cold when she was trying to get kids out of trouble. She is now on her way to becoming a congresswoman. Taking Barbara Lee's seat in the in the East Bay. And she is just an amazing human being. She was a single mom. She's, you know, she worked on the BART's board, which is like our subway system board, and she is just an unusually passionate person to help people. She does not look like anyone that you expect to come from, you know, the kind of high falutin classes. But she's going to be a powerhouse. She will be a worthy heir to Barbara Lee. I've known her since she was a teenager. So you've got a whole new set of people, their last name is not Obama. It's not Clinton, it's not Biden, it's not Kennedy. And it's going to be a very exciting decade.
It was also it's interesting to think about, and I'll say this quickly, the way that Obama fit a certain mold, right. He presented, kind of, a morally unassailable picture, like the wife, the kids, the mother in law. Like, everyone's beautiful, like their lawyers. It was a very, picturesque vision because, of course, you're the first. Right. And I think that is a pressure and high bar for black Americans in terms of upward mobility. I feel like it's less pressure for people now to be that, like, it was sort of interesting to see Kamala Harris be presented as like a woman who married a guy who had been through a divorce. And, you know, the single mom. It was a very different biography. So I have some criticisms here I want to throw at you guys. So Van, first you, what I hear from conservatives is what you're telling us is you're presenting a bunch of people on style. And they don't actually represent anything. They don't mean anything. They're empty vessels of identity and ideas and memes and be serious.
Yeah. Look. Sounds like some bitter, jealous people that are not invited to the cool kids' table.
Do you hear this? Did I make this up?
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:25:21
No, I you know, this is what the Republicans have talked about, I think, since, Harris has ascended. Right? Because she, you know
Right, she's the avatar for this to them.
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:25:28
'You know, remember back when was Obama? Oh, yeah. More of that hope-y, change-y stuff right
Biggest celebrity in the world, Barack Obama.
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:25:34
But let us not forget that the real people dealing with that challenge when it comes to voters is the GOP currently. Because you wanna talk about somebody who appears to be a vessel full of whatever ideas are the ones that are popular at the moment. Look at the Republican vice presidential nominee, JD Vance. Right. They, one of the challenges that they have in that party right now when it comes to getting outside that core, that extremely strong core of MAGA supporters that they have is that people don't totally seem to believe that they believe what they're saying, that maybe they'll say different things or do different things or different directions.
Or they are afraid that they do believe what they're saying. But either way, you know, tripling down and quadrupling down on on marginal, unpopular ideas turned out not to be very smart.
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:26:21
And your party stalwarts will just sort of shift wherever the wind blows or whatever. Like, this is sort of like that thing where you.
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:26:28
It's a classic political move. You criticize your opponent with your own problem. Right.
But, but but I do want to take seriously your question. I do I do think on the one hand it's because they don't have that, they're not cool. They don't have any pop fizz, but they're not wrong. The Trump, the conservative critique of what progressives are. They're not wrong in that at this moment Kamala Harris is not defined. We know what she's not. She said that she says by, you know, her advisors, she's not where she was in 2020 when she was trying to out, you know, run everyone to the left. But we don't actually know where she is yet. I think that's a fair criticism. And then some of the ideas that have been put forward are at some of the economic ideas are vulnerable. Now, I'm not mad at Kamala Harris for saying she wants to go after people who are ripping off Americans, corporations that are ripping off Americans. I think that is good. And in fact, Joe Biden had a and he still has a process by which the, FTC and the DOJ are looking at price gouging. Right. But Biden was not comfortable talking about that. Now, to me, it was weird because as a Californian, watching all of our technology companies get beat up by Democrats. Oh come on, how come you guys aren't beating up the grocery stores that are, you know? But Kamala doesn't. It seems that she's not afraid to lean in as a prosecutor saying, I'm going to stop corporations from ripping people off. I think that's a good thing. However, that is not by itself going to be enough to deal with inflation. And I think that what Democrats have to be honest about, and we have not been honest about, it turns out the stuff we like is expensive. It turns out the stuff we like is inflationary. It turns out if you want higher wages and a lot more environmental protection and people to be able to sue corporations, that is expensive. And by not being honest about that and by not saying what did we learn the last round where we did stuff and we had inflation? I think it leaves us very, very vulnerable to these charges from the right that hold on a second. It seems to me that you guys are just trying to pretty up some stuff that may not work out very well, and then maybe you don't know what you're doing. Yeah, and maybe we should take the wheel. Maybe we should take the wheel from you. So I do think that right now it is a valid criticism, but I think it's coming more from a place of jealousy than, because their party so screwed up, I think it's coming more from a place of jealousy. But honest people should be honest about the remaining problems of this party.
I've been thinking about how this compares to the RNC, and because there was this effort to, coalesce behind Donald Trump, who in the minds of Republicans had literally taken a bullet. You know, the way they talk about it, for the country, there was, and because it was the third cycle of him being the nominee, it was so consolidated and and a little, on stage, the key slots went to people with the last name Trump.
'There was a sense of like, and here are the next people, because they were busy trying to show, we're united behind him. We have finally purged our party of the ex-Bushes and the ex-this and the ex-that. So behold, you know, the Trump party. But do Republican voters, and, Evan, I don't know if you're talking to a lot of Republican voters, do they feel like they have a deep bench of rising stars?
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:29:53
I'm talking to all different kinds of voters and, Republicans. This is the challenge. You kind of. Yeah.
Because they have to meet the MAGA benchmarks, right? And so it's not easy being survive that test.
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:30:07
Meeting the MAGA benchmarks can be very successful. I mean, they have a very powerful, potent party machinery over there. Some of these people that they, you know, you know, they they replace, you know, a more moderate candidate with a MAGA candidate. That candidate does extremely well. These things can be sometimes not I mean, these they've had trouble with some of these Senate races,
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:30:25
Sometimes it can work.
Roy Cooper apparently, tell me if I'm wrong about this. Didn't really want to put his name in to be Vice President with Kamala Harris because he didn't want to leave behind a lieutenant governor there who is a rising star of the Republican Party.
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:30:40
This is the challenge for the GOP that I like in this moment that they're having, where they literally this election on paper, was written out by people who know what they're doing as, let's do a referendum on 2020. Do you wish, actually, you had voted for Trump and not Biden. From where you're sitting now, do you wish you'd, you know, voted for Biden, not Trump. Like this is sort of like they this is the whole conversation. And so their entire operation has been we were great. Trump is great. You want to go backwards, do the same thing that we did before that we're not promise you anything that we're going to be we're going to do the exact same thing we did. That's it. That's what we're going to do. Because that's the argument that they thought they were having to make. And now they're stuck with a situation where their opponents are saying, the future is over there. There's something new. It's not 2020, it's 2024. It's different. Things are changing. Look forward. And the Republican Party has had a really hard time so far. Shifting gears, because they do have this bench of all these MAGA candidates who foundationally their job is to defend Trump against people who don't like Trump, and then they have to do that while running in a world in which the country seems to be thinking, maybe we don't have to think about what happened before so much anymore, we can do something different, and they're trapped in this like, but we built this beautiful machine to talk about the past. It's really tough.
And I think it's also that you're seeing the perils of negative populism versus the promise of positive populism, so
Even though Democrats in so many ways are fueled by negative partisanship, right?
Yeah, yes but. But I think in terms of the valence of it all, so if you are on the Trump side, you're the future is mainly we are going to attack a bunch of enemies. We're going to attack a bunch of immigrants who are coming here and stealing your jobs. 50 million people coming in here who may all be terrorists. We're going to attack liberals who are trying to have, you know, women and men beat up women in sports. We got it. We they're a bunch of enemies that we're going to take care of for you. And you need to be as mad at them as we are. But that's how we're going to give you a better future. There's a little bit of that on the left. Like, we don't like white nationalist and like racist, crazy people. But what you're seeing, I think, from the progressives, is there's a positive future out there that you don't have to really hate anybody to get. That you can imagine a world where working families have childcare and health care, and there's all this kind of positive stuff. And the negative valence is mainly targeted against Trump. It's not targeted against a bunch of white people are a bunch of this. And I think that that is.
Which is a little bit of a different vibe from the 2020
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:33:11
Well and even.
White fragility, you know, really going after people who are in your, in your everyday life who don't understand trans issues, like there was a real kind of
Yeah yeah, oh the left was obnoxious. Let me I mean, seriously then for a long time the left was like, if you if you haven't kept up with the change of language in the past six weeks, you're a bigot. I mean, it was really tough. I'm saying that Kamala doesn't seem to represent that. She seems to be letting a lot of that. That part of it go. She's not doesn't seem to be focused on that. She does seem to be focused on working kitchen table better future for for everybody. She's inclusive without being obnoxious. And I think it's harder for the Republicans to fight.
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:33:51
'But it's also the biggest risk that the Democrats are taking because, you know, when Biden was running on this idea that this is about democracy, it's about it doesn't matter who, you really sort of like, what you're the policy issues. Democracy's in the balance. This is an existential threat to America, this election. That was a message that, erased a lot of that tough stuff that Van was just talking about. That was a message. There was like, look, maybe this isn't your dream person, but like, what we're doing here is like stopping something very bad. And the Democrats are now leaning back into, you know, we have ideas and we have things that we want to do and things that we want to say. And, and, and this makes, you know, this, that makes it harder because, like, I mean, because now they're saying, this is this is what we want to do. We're running that kind of election. So I think that's what's so fascinating about this convention is that this is a plane being built in mid-air that we are sitting in and we are watching the party figure out what it's going to do and how it's going to talk about things and what it's going to do. While it really is like almost it has to land very soon.
Yeah, the voting starts soon.
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:35:01
We've never seen anything like this. And so that is what, everything Van is saying is so cool, because like he's like, it's this is all true. Like all these conversations about like, what do we do? Did things go too far then? Or if we're doing this wrong, it's all being had like sort of in front of our faces, really.
Meanwhile, it's happening in a party where you can literally have Bernie Sanders come out and say, down with the billionaires. And then the very next person is Governor Pritzker, who's a billionaire.
Yeah, yeah, it was a wild moment. Wild swings.
All right. So because people do not watch every second of these, conventions,
They don't see all the speeches. They're not the hyper partisans. I'm wondering if each of you can say a speech or a person who kind of struck you, right? Who? Maybe it was one of these rising stars who, you were just like, hey, they're on the program. And that's interesting. I'll give you a minute to think. For me, it is, Angela Alsobrooks, who is running for Senate in Maryland, she's running against Larry Hogan, and she had a, who's the former Maryland governor. She had a plum spot. Yes. Just before the Obamas, practically, or Doug Emhoff. But the idea is that here's a person not not many people really know on the national stage, but because she is in a vulnerable Senate seat that Democrats are legit worried about it flipping to Republicans, they give her a good spot.
Yeah, I mean, that's that's kind of how Obama got his spot. And
But it's not the spot that matters, right? It's like, yeah, it's what's at stake.
In putting this, this younger, this newer face forward.
'I thought, that she did a phenomenal job. Again, I would say, Congresswoman Crockett from Texas is just a rising star, and she is charismatic, and she's funny and she's interesting, and she has some of the squad-like, appeal and that she's, like, young and feisty, but she's not so defined by also left wing positions. So I think that she's very, very interesting. Again, I'm very curious to see how people respond to Lateefah Simon, Kamala Harris's protege, who's taking over Barbara Lee's seat in California. We'll see. I, I've seen her light up, small venues. We'll see how she does. But I'm a I like I said, I'm also a really big Wes Moore fan.
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:37:31
I would say that, the most interesting speaker in terms of talking us about this conversation about what this convention is about and what we're seeing in the Democratic Party, UAW President Shawn Fain.
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:37:43
This is a
Who has like an old school profile. Well, this is this is like a union.
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:37:49
This is what I was going to say, there wasn't there was a time not that long ago that Democrats would be nervous about a person who is as sort of vehemently oppositional with corporate leadership, with the notion of how foundational parts of capitalism work, really an old school kind of union voice that, you know, maybe you would have heard the, you know, in 1968 Chicago convention.
And the closest to Hulk Hogan with the t shirt reveal
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:38:18
Yeah.
That said, Trump is a scab. I was like, whoa.
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:38:22
But this but this is a thing where, like, this party is not afraid to stand next to Shawn Fain or have him come and speak at their convention. This is that thing that Van was talking about, different kinds of populism. This is a kind of populism that Democrats not long ago were absolutely terrified of and now are perfect, seem perfectly happy to embrace. And I think that this is a guy who you're going to hear a lot more from. But I was just struck by this moment of. This is the kind of thing that divided the party in 2016, when that one that, you know, the Bernie Bros versus the Hillary supporters at that convention. That was really a rough convention for Democrats in a lot of ways. Now everyone's everyone's saying, yeah, Trump's a scab. This is great. We love this guy. Huge change. I think it's really fascinating person.
'Well, you guys, this was so fun to tease out because this is the stuff people don't see in prime time. This is the stuff that people don't really know is percolating at these events. And in a way, this is kind of what these big party platforms are for, right, in terms of sharing your vision for the country. Van Jones is a CNN political commentator. Thank you for being here. And Evan McMorris-Santoro, reporter for NONUS, which is News of the United States. Thank you for being here.
'Evan McMorris-Santoro
00:39:38
So great. Thank you so much, Audie.
This episode of The Assignment, a production of CNN audio, was produced by Lori Galarreta with a solid assist here at the CNN Politico Grill from the host of CNN's One Thing podcast, David Rind. Our senior producer is Matt Martinez. Dan Dzula is our technical director, and Steve Lickteig is executive producer of CNN audio. We had support from Haley Thomas, Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, John Dianora, Leni Steinhardt, Jamus Andrest, Nicole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow. Shout out to Katie Hinman. Thanks you all.
