In Bed With The Right - Episode 29： Harris

00:00:00.000 Hi, I'm Adrienne Dog.

00:00:06.500 And I'm Moira Donnegan.

00:00:07.720 Whether we like it or not, we're in bed with the right. 0.54

00:00:13.220 So, Adrienne, this is another emergency episode dealing with current events and various emergencies of gender politics that are happening here in the U.S. 0.59

00:00:27.400 because we have a new presidential candidate.

00:00:30.620 Gender happening, now happening in your neighborhood. 0.69

00:00:32.900 Yeah, what it means for your weekend. 0.99

00:00:35.500 This time, the candidate is a woman, Kamala Harris.

00:00:38.340 Maybe you've heard of her, the vice president,

00:00:40.600 former senator from our great state of California.

00:00:43.700 So I wish I had a personal anecdote about Kamala Harris.

00:00:46.920 The only one I have is that my upstairs neighbor,

00:00:49.120 when I first moved to the city,

00:00:50.860 invited me to a fundraiser at her apartment

00:00:53.420 for a woman who was running then,

00:00:55.180 I believe, for San Francisco city attorney or whatever that was.

00:00:59.280 And it was Kamala Harris and I was out of town.

00:01:01.420 So I never met her.

00:01:03.120 That's my personal anecdote.

00:01:04.880 She was in my building and I was not there.

00:01:07.140 So you're telling me you did not meet the person who is decently likely right now

00:01:13.460 to be the first female president of the United States.

00:01:16.600 It would be really lovely if she became that.

00:01:19.100 And it would have been really lovely if I could have met her.

00:01:21.420 You could have gotten the picture to put on Instagram and been a part of history, but instead you're out of town.

00:01:27.640 I was out of town.

00:01:28.560 I got a picture with John Kerry.

00:01:30.760 You can't see like a free stroopwafel or something.

00:01:34.700 So I think the last time we were in our listeners' feeds, at least the last time we were in our listeners' feeds talking about politics,

00:01:41.700 We're talking about the what then seems like Joe Biden's intransigent refusal to step aside, even in the face of his own like sort of diminished capacities and diminished claim to the support of the Democratic Party.

00:01:58.960 It now seems like there has been almost like an old fashioned style party coup to oust him in order to preserve the prospects of the party, both for the presidency and also in like down ballot races where he was seeming to drag down candidates for things like Senate, Congress, governor, state houses, and so on.

00:02:20.080 And now there's a new ticket.

00:02:21.920 It's very, very new.

00:02:24.680 We are recording on Tuesday, July 23rd.

00:02:28.020 So you guys listening will almost certainly have a little more information about how this shakes out.

00:02:33.040 You'll know which white guy it was.

00:02:34.480 Well, I mean, yeah, that does bring us to like one of the new calculations that the party has made almost immediately after Kamala Harris, you know, consolidated support very quickly and moved very swiftly to the top of the ticket following Biden's withdrawal.

00:02:48.120 there then emerged very quickly this conventional wisdom that her vice presidential pick,

00:02:56.620 whoever it was, would necessarily have to be a white man. And it was sort of implied also that

00:03:01.400 it would necessarily have to be a white man who's a little bit more conservative than her.

00:03:04.740 And one of the things that I'm noticing as Kamala Harris emerges as the presumptive nominee is that

00:03:13.640 She's presumed to be further to the left than Joe Biden

00:03:18.380 by virtue of being a black and a woman more.

00:03:23.020 And that I think is actually an assessment of her

00:03:26.500 that is fair when you compare them in terms of policy.

00:03:29.260 I think Kamala Harris is a few ticks to the left of Joe Biden.

00:03:33.800 It's not really hard in today's Democratic primary,

00:03:37.220 which has moved sizably to the left over the past 10 years,

00:03:42.240 especially certainly since Biden's heyday, but people aren't really saying, oh, she's for the

00:03:47.720 left on Biden in terms of her approach to foreign policy. They're not saying she's for the left on

00:03:54.540 Biden in terms of her approach to abortion, both of which appear as of this moment to be true.

00:04:01.100 They're saying she's more liberal and kind of just putting a picture of her next to that statement. 0.93

00:04:08.760 And, you know, it's something that's derived from her race. 0.91

00:04:11.680 Yeah. And I mean, a few things, right?

00:04:13.600 Like it's derived from her being from San Francisco and having risen up in San Francisco politics.

00:04:17.880 And, you know, people just kind of assume that anything coming out of San Francisco has to be crazy left, which like, you know, we do have that.

00:04:26.020 But like our politicians that rise to prominence from San Francisco often are not.

00:04:30.360 Also, I would I would ask them to update their understanding of the San Francisco cultural milieu, because now we're also home to a bunch of tech reactionaries,

00:04:37.060 Some of whom are quite prominent funders of Donald Trump's campaign.

00:04:42.120 The other thing that I think is worth pointing out is that like it is, I mean, someone, of course, like inevitably two seconds after the switch happened, right?

00:04:50.000 You got the first claims that she would be the first DEI president.

00:04:55.420 Like, it's just we are in a political moment where women's and non-white bodies existing in politics at all will get politicized in that way.

00:05:05.440 There is a sizable portion of American politics that think that they can get something out of calling into question the presence of anyone who's not a white man in anything, right? 0.75

00:05:16.900 Whether this be an airplane that loses its fucking fuselage or, you know, a line of code inserted into some kind of safety system, a security system or whatever, right? 0.99

00:05:28.340 Or, you know, any kind of public office, basically, you know, you'll get the same kind of groyper-ass, you know, idiots kind of coming out and making these kinds of points. 0.99

00:05:38.100 So in some way, what she says, I mean, like, you know, Kamala Harris here was, you know, always associated with, you know, being a prosecutor, right? 0.97

00:05:46.240 Like, not the most wishy-washy of professions and not the leftiest of causes.

00:05:52.900 She was not one of those prosecutors, right?

00:05:55.000 No Larry Krasner or something like that.

00:05:56.640 You know, but still, it's just by the by dint of her of who she is, there is a presumption that she sort of embodies leftism in the sense that, you know, yeah, she comes sort of pre-politicized in that way.

00:06:08.340 Yeah, I mean, I think to be a woman at all or to be a person of color whatsoever sort of implies leftist political commitments at this moment where only the left acknowledges people belonging to those identity categories as like legitimate political subjects and legitimate political actors.

00:06:31.960 right? But I would like push back on the notion that this is, this challenge to legitimacy of

00:06:38.120 like women are people of color in public life is like particularly new. I definitely agree with you

00:06:42.780 that like the coinage is new, right? DEI as, you know, functionally a stand-in for the N-word,

00:06:48.920 that is something that has really only emerged over like the past, I don't know, like year

00:06:53.140 before that. It was, it sort of, it has sort of displaced wokeness as the like right-wing

00:06:58.740 pejorative. DEI as being this. DEI has been made into a stand-in for professional incompetence,

00:07:11.060 supposedly exemplified by women and people of color in positions of power or influence

00:07:17.760 or high demanding, high skill jobs. That is something that has emerged just as a phrase

00:07:24.020 very recently, right?

00:07:25.460 And I think it's like

00:07:26.120 pretty explicitly

00:07:26.960 a Christopher Ruffo coinage.

00:07:31.240 Yeah, it's one of his.

00:07:32.840 It's like critical race theory.

00:07:34.360 You know, it's been made as,

00:07:36.460 you know, repurposed

00:07:37.240 as a euphemism, right?

00:07:38.500 But like the idea that 1.00

00:07:39.700 women should not be president

00:07:43.020 is I think an old one. 1.00

00:07:44.620 No, of course.

00:07:45.120 Exemplified at least by the,

00:07:46.200 you know, reality

00:07:47.320 that we've never had one.

00:07:48.400 And, you know,

00:07:48.880 the legitimacy 0.84

00:07:50.300 of Black people in power

00:07:54.220 is something that's been challenged

00:07:55.500 also in various modes.

00:07:58.020 I will be interested

00:07:58.800 into how the racism

00:08:00.180 sort of manages

00:08:02.360 to take account

00:08:03.520 of Harris's Asian heritage,

00:08:07.420 if it does at all. 0.99

00:08:08.660 If we're going to get

00:08:10.760 some anti-Asian racism

00:08:12.460 thrown in there

00:08:13.340 or if her critics

00:08:15.380 and opponents will decide

00:08:16.320 that anti-Blackness

00:08:17.280 and misogyny

00:08:18.460 are their most powerful

00:08:19.540 weapons. But we've seen a few deployments of misogyny and anti-Black racism and what has

00:08:26.760 been coined as misogynoir, the very specific combination of the two. And I would like to

00:08:32.700 dwell on them for a little bit with you, Adrienne, of what has already emerged in attacks on Kamala

00:08:39.300 Harris and on her bid for the presidency. And then maybe we can think a little bit about what's to

00:08:45.920 come. And I'd also really like to talk to you about how you think that this matchup between

00:08:51.860 Donald Trump and a female presidential nominee might be different than the one that we saw in

00:08:57.840 2016, right? Because we, that part of what's going on here is that I think we do have like a very

00:09:04.200 relevant, somewhat recent historical example, right? Like Donald Trump has run against a woman

00:09:10.120 for this job before. Yeah. He's the only, he's the only candidate in American history to have

00:09:14.600 beaten a woman to the presidency? Well, it's not true if you count the primaries.

00:09:18.820 Oh, yeah. Okay. In a general. We have very specific precedent in terms of what happened

00:09:24.140 Hillary Clinton, right? And I think there will be a lot of rush to claim that whatever happens

00:09:32.860 to Kamala Harris is necessarily different, right? And some of it will be different, right? A lot of

00:09:36.900 what happened in 2016 was determined really by the specific historical position of Hillary Clinton

00:09:43.520 herself. And also, I think Trump's phenomenon and the power of novelty that it had in that cycle.

00:09:51.220 And a lot of what happens to Kamala Harris this time will be the result of misogynist 0.99

00:09:56.880 antagonism combining with racial antagonism. Yeah. I mean, I think it's worth pointing out 1.00

00:10:00.540 that a lot of people who are like, oh, I could totally see a woman president, just not Hillary

00:10:03.840 Clinton, seem to be coming out to be like, I could totally imagine a female president,

00:10:07.940 just not Kamala Harris. It's like, I don't know. It's like an N of two. And each time it was just 0.83

00:10:12.280 like, she's not the right woman. It's like, I don't know. It feels like, you know, a third one,

00:10:17.220 third one, and it feels generalizable. I got to tell you.

00:10:20.100 They didn't like Elizabeth Warren in 2020 either. So, you know, we actually do have a lot of

00:10:24.180 examples. I'm sure that some of these people are old enough to have said that they would vote for

00:10:28.600 a woman, just not Shirley Chisholm. You know, there's a lot of this. But, you know, I also

00:10:33.240 think that gender politics have changed tremendously since 2016.

00:10:38.740 Yeah. So let me ask you about that, because in some way, the fact that we're kind of so our friend of the pod, Kate Mann, wrote a very nice piece about sort of predicting what the attacks on Kamala Harris were going to look like.

00:10:50.640 And it's interesting, right, because the very mode of prediction, I think, is new.

00:10:55.740 It's a post-2016 and it's a post-MeToo kind of thing.

00:10:58.860 In 2016, we just didn't know what it would look like for a major political party to run a candidate.

00:11:05.500 date, now we're all shell-shocked from having run the test.

00:11:10.340 I'm like, oh, brother, this is bad.

00:11:12.720 But it's kind of interesting, right?

00:11:14.500 Like we can now predict, and not just, you know, you and me as podcasters, but like I

00:11:22.080 think a lot of voters kind of have a sense of how they think this is going to go, right?

00:11:26.300 We have a pretty clear expectation of how Mr. Genoire is going to play into things.

00:11:31.280 And I do wonder whether this predictive mode is going to have some kind of impact, right?

00:11:34.860 post Me Too, post Hillary, there's not necessarily like readiness for what's happening, but there is

00:11:42.860 a kind of unwillingness to mime surprise, right? Like we are not, no one's going to be shocked

00:11:47.860 by this. It's like, you know, we're all just going to like point at the sign and be like,

00:11:52.420 yeah, we knew that was going to happen. We didn't know what week, but it was going to happen,

00:11:56.740 right? Like, so I think that's, how do you feel that's going to play out? Like the fact that

00:12:01.580 that we've been to this movie before now

00:12:04.020 and we're kind of expecting

00:12:05.400 some of the certain beats

00:12:06.540 and are ready for them.

00:12:09.100 Does that dull them any?

00:12:11.360 Is that a source of comfort

00:12:13.780 or what does that mean?

00:12:15.320 I do think there is a degree

00:12:17.060 to which the American public

00:12:19.120 and certainly American pundits

00:12:20.960 who do do a degree of shaping

00:12:24.820 of public perception

00:12:26.620 of these developments,

00:12:29.140 you know, they are a lot less naive.

00:12:31.580 they were in 2016, right? In 2016, there was this like rubbernecking fascination with Donald Trump

00:12:40.380 and his willingness to make subtext text, as it was said at the time, right? There was a degree

00:12:46.900 to which the frankness of his misogyny, which in other politicians had been very present, but often

00:12:53.060 like quite buried or issued as dog whistles, had its own appeal, right? There is this

00:12:59.820 almost giddy delight and fascination with Trump's vulgarity and with the avowedness of his bigotry

00:13:09.260 that I think has faded. Yeah. First of all, you have a lot of other people doing that.

00:13:17.660 Like at the time in 2016, Donald Trump seemed to be giving voice to sort of like the white male

00:13:26.040 American id. And now that is a very crowded field. That is something that has been imitated

00:13:34.360 and monetized. And so he has like a degree of competition, right? Like I would say that like

00:13:40.420 Donald Trump as an entertainer is having to not just influence and feed off of,

00:13:47.600 but actually sort of compete in a market sense with people like Andrew Tate.

00:13:51.040 and these like manosphere influencers.

00:13:54.000 And that kind of misogynist contempt

00:13:58.020 that can harden, you know,

00:14:01.660 like a booger wiped above the head of your twin bed

00:14:05.240 in mom's basement into an ideological stance,

00:14:09.060 that's just a much more crowded field now, right?

00:14:12.900 Which also means that like Donald Trump

00:14:15.880 has lost the appeal of his novelty.

00:14:18.280 You know that like old Onion headline

00:14:20.140 that just says, you know, Marilyn Manson

00:14:22.480 now going door to door trying to shock people.

00:14:24.820 A photo of Marilyn Manson looking kind of defeated

00:14:27.680 on the front stoop of this suburban like tract house.

00:14:31.960 It's just, he doesn't quite have the same shock value

00:14:35.820 that he did, but he is really leaning hard

00:14:39.880 into misogyny in a way that will definitely become

00:14:44.940 more pronounced in this election.

00:14:46.800 I think that can really be seen

00:14:49.120 in the appointment of J.D. Vance.

00:14:51.200 I was gonna say.

00:14:52.060 We talked about him

00:14:52.800 with the great Gabe Winant

00:14:54.240 on this show a couple of weeks ago,

00:14:57.340 but we didn't really get a chance

00:14:59.140 to dive in as deeply

00:15:00.580 as I would have liked to

00:15:01.580 in that episode

00:15:02.480 to J.D. Vance's gender politics 0.97

00:15:05.120 and specifically to his misogyny,

00:15:07.880 which seems to be like

00:15:08.760 the one constant through line.

00:15:11.340 And the other thing

00:15:11.960 that I think will be different

00:15:13.380 is that post-MeToo 0.92

00:15:16.140 and post-Dobbs

00:15:18.540 the stakes of Donald Trump's personal misogyny

00:15:22.320 have moved beyond sort of like bad taste and disgust

00:15:27.300 into something that really affects

00:15:30.120 people's ordinary lives, right?

00:15:31.860 People now know what it means

00:15:34.960 to come forward about sexual assault

00:15:36.900 and have your life ruined, right?

00:15:38.140 Because that's happened to a lot of people they know

00:15:40.920 and it's happened to a lot of people

00:15:42.220 they've seen in the public eye.

00:15:43.540 And people now know what it means

00:15:45.480 to not be able to get an abortion.

00:15:46.900 They know about that as a public health emergency, as Biden was at least willing to talk about,

00:15:54.000 but they also know about it as a civil rights issue and as a dignity harm,

00:15:58.420 which Kamala Harris is much better at talking about, right? 0.94

00:16:01.640 So I think in 2016, people had this kind of perennial delusion that feminism was no longer 0.94

00:16:11.580 necessary because it had won. And that's not really a delusion anymore, right? They're talking

00:16:18.600 very frankly about the Republican Party, Donald Trump, J.D. Vance personally, the Heritage

00:16:25.780 Foundation and Project 2025. They have very specific and maximalist notions of gender

00:16:33.580 aggressivism. And Dobbs has proved that they are willing and able to enact those visions into law,

00:16:41.780 right? So I think the stakes seem higher for voters. So a couple of things about that. So

00:16:46.200 first of all, I think you're exactly right that like in some way, it almost seems like from what

00:16:51.280 we know of the first, what is it, 48 hours of the Trump campaign having to grapple with their

00:16:58.080 opponent no longer being named Joe Biden, but being Kamala Harris, it's J.D. Vance who's riding

00:17:02.860 on the attack, it seems, right?

00:17:04.280 Like it's surrogates.

00:17:06.260 And two things about J.D. Vance's misogyny

00:17:08.740 that we can talk about a little bit more later.

00:17:11.520 One is it is a far more traditionalist bend

00:17:14.880 than Donald Trump's.

00:17:16.360 In our famous classification,

00:17:18.160 he would not be a pervert.

00:17:19.380 He'd at best, well, he'd be a mixture 0.94

00:17:21.560 of a priest and a creep, right?

00:17:23.140 And that's the other part.

00:17:24.440 It's a misogyny that is very schooled in

00:17:26.800 and probably developed through,

00:17:29.440 you mentioned Andrew Tate.

00:17:30.400 It is a internet-generated misogyny.

00:17:34.900 It's the misogyny of the very online, right?

00:17:37.600 His concerns are those of like Silicon Valley, 0.81

00:17:41.400 yeah, gay guys, honestly, right? 0.69

00:17:43.900 Who have like really profound issues with their mothers.

00:17:47.180 Exactly.

00:17:47.720 We're not naming anyone here in particular.

00:17:49.540 Please don't sue us.

00:17:50.940 You know who you are.

00:17:51.840 Don't send Hulk Hogan to sue us.

00:17:54.460 Right, but so that's important that like in some way,

00:17:57.880 there's a passing of the baton, right?

00:17:59.380 Like between a kind of like, I don't know, borscht, belty, shticky, misogyny to the like, to groiper masculinity basically here, I think like, and, and, and of course, like Donald Trump will not be able to control himself.

00:18:14.360 Like this, this will also add, but like, clearly like they got a little, they were caught flat footed by this whole thing.

00:18:20.240 And it is significant that like they were like, J.D., you go out and you start talking about how she's like, I'm grateful to be an American, how she didn't work for it.

00:18:30.320 Right. Like you have like Lara Loomer.

00:18:33.260 Will Chamberlain, both attacking her for being childless.

00:18:36.860 Right. Richard Grinnell going after her.

00:18:39.540 Right. So like it's it's it's very noticeably kind of it's a younger coalition kind of going after her.

00:18:45.240 And I think it's noticeable.

00:18:48.000 There's a new misogyny sheriff in town and they're letting that loose.

00:18:53.240 The second thing I wanted to kind of flag for listeners, because this is something that you've talked about on this podcast before, but a couple of episodes ago, which is, you know, one of the things that we're seeing that you've been drawing attention to in your writing and on this podcast is there is a kind of gendered realignment going on here, right?

00:19:13.660 Like the parties are being gendered sort of as we go through these iterative cycles, right?

00:19:20.400 And one of the interesting questions that I have, that I think raises is like, does misogyny still have electoral potency?

00:19:28.420 We know it's potent politically, right?

00:19:29.840 We know that it moves people.

00:19:31.820 But in order to be electorally efficacious, of course, it also has to move the right people towards a preferred position.

00:19:38.680 Someone has to change their mind about something.

00:19:41.200 And that's a separate question, it seems to me. Are there Democratic voters who dislike Trump, who rejected Dobbs, but then get turned off by the fact that Kamala Harris slept with her boss or whatever, right? I'm not saying that that person doesn't exist, but I'm just not entirely sure that's a huge swath of voters in Western Pennsylvania.

00:20:04.100 And then the other thing that this does, I mean, especially combined with the misogynoir, is it's really about like fracturing an old democratic coalition along racial lines and rebuilding a new one around gender lines.

00:20:16.920 Would you say that that's true?

00:20:18.100 Yes, I think that what the Trump team is beginning to do and what I expect they will continue to do about and towards Harris is on the one hand, to your first point, less about persuading, persuadable or swing voters of whom there's like 15 anyway.

00:20:39.620 They're all hanging on the same diner in Ohio.

00:20:42.080 Right. And they're really idiosyncratic and stupid. 1.00

00:20:45.120 They'll be like, well, you know, I listened to the audio book of Hillary Clinton's memoir, and now I regret having voted against her. 1.00

00:20:53.840 You know, like that kind of thing.

00:20:55.080 They are impossible to predict.

00:20:57.360 People who listen to a lot of audio books should just be deprived of the right to vote.

00:21:01.500 That's my take.

00:21:02.600 I'm kidding.

00:21:03.140 I'm a huge audio book listener myself.

00:21:04.600 But like, we're weird.

00:21:06.040 We're weird people.

00:21:07.200 Well, you know, but like they're the undecided voter.

00:21:10.460 Yeah. 0.96

00:21:10.960 Is a weirdo.

00:21:11.960 About Trump, right?

00:21:13.220 And undecided about Trump.

00:21:14.580 Right.

00:21:15.120 I have no opinion on Mitt Romney.

00:21:17.460 Like, okay, fair enough.

00:21:18.560 Like, his wife probably doesn't have an opinion

00:21:19.880 about Mitt Romney, but like Donald Trump.

00:21:22.860 But like, also, I don't,

00:21:24.180 so I don't think they're trying to persuade people.

00:21:25.860 I think they're trying to do a turnout effort

00:21:28.700 for young men and specifically young white men

00:21:32.740 who have been really radicalized against feminism.

00:21:36.940 So I think they're going for,

00:21:38.340 like, candidly, the incel vote.

00:21:40.060 People who famously leave their basement 1.00

00:21:41.640 and will not masturbate into a tube suck 1.00

00:21:43.920 instead of voting. 0.99

00:21:45.120 You know, but like I and I'd say that not just in terms of like specific like dictionary definition incels. 0.99

00:21:52.200 I'm thinking of like misogynist, odious little shits who are like, you know, when they were kids, they were like, look at me. 0.99

00:22:00.300 I pulled the legs off this frog. 0.99

00:22:01.980 Those kind of guys like the mass shooter vote, as several editors have stopped me from calling it.

00:22:07.240 Elon Musk, right?

00:22:08.440 Like the divorced dads of America who aren't handling it so well.

00:22:12.040 I mean, there are many divorced dads who are handling it well, but Elon Musk is not.

00:22:15.220 And that's the that's the pitch.

00:22:17.060 Yeah, there's a tremendous amount of gendered resentment among young American men.

00:22:21.320 And I think that's not exclusively a white phenomenon.

00:22:26.340 No, it's not.

00:22:26.760 This is something that that J.D., I believe it was J.D. Vance said about his gendered

00:22:32.460 electoral strategy or the Republicans gender electoral strategy after the 2022 midterms

00:22:38.740 when it was clear that Dobbs was really moving white women to vote in Democratic downstate 0.98

00:22:45.260 elections for, particularly whenever there was a ballot measure, as there are in several 0.98

00:22:49.940 states coming up in November, regarding abortion.

00:22:53.720 And he said, for every Karen you lose, you gain a Jamal or a Jose, which is a really

00:23:01.800 vulgar and gross way of saying that they think that they can make up for their losses among

00:23:07.960 white women voters by gaining men of color. I think that that is way overstated, right?

00:23:14.940 The movement of men of color to the Republican Party, it's marginal, but it is a real movement,

00:23:23.180 right? And I think that one thing we might see is that men of color are more receptive

00:23:29.740 to a gender grievance argument when a woman of color is at the top of the ticket than they

00:23:35.280 might have been if it was a white woman yeah i mean so just to give some numbers like that that

00:23:40.200 this is true right like the the supposed right there's there are a lot of articles about the

00:23:44.280 quote-unquote weakness of the democratic party or the the fraction of the democratic coalition

00:23:48.400 when it comes to voters of color if you drill down to the cross tabs that is a decline almost

00:23:54.520 entirely among male voters so that's very important and just to hear this is for instance a national

00:24:01.000 poll by the institute of politics this is just it's not broken down by race unfortunately a lot

00:24:04.820 places break it down only by race or by gender, which like, why would you do that? Anyway.

00:24:09.600 That sucks. It's like, it's, it obscures so much. Anyway, go on. 0.99

00:24:13.300 Biden's lead, this was, I think from, from March was plus 33 points. And among young men,

00:24:19.640 it was plus six points. Right. And, and this was not the case in 2020. There was 35 to 26,

00:24:26.180 which is interesting, right? So like it, what, what that Harvard Kennedy School

00:24:30.060 Institute of Politics survey

00:24:32.480 or national poll suggests

00:24:34.600 is that Democrats are hitting

00:24:36.700 their ceiling with women. 1.00

00:24:39.360 The persuadable ones 1.00

00:24:40.480 are so outraged by Dobbs,

00:24:42.500 basically, that they're turning out.

00:24:46.000 But among men, exactly,

00:24:47.320 you have this kind of

00:24:48.560 offer of grievance politics.

00:24:50.560 Now, we should say that,

00:24:52.020 you know, I think you're

00:24:53.900 absolutely right to say, like,

00:24:55.780 you know, Republicans have this way.

00:24:57.100 Like, we get this narrative

00:24:58.060 all the time, like,

00:24:58.640 Democrats are weak with this or that particular group. And then you find out that it goes from

00:25:02.680 like 84% to like 74%, which like, it's not nothing, but like, you know, not sure, like,

00:25:09.680 oh, the Democrats have to go within themselves. Like maybe you should go within yourself if you

00:25:13.680 lose 80% of a demographic. Like that is, that's not, it's not a side that you're running a very

00:25:19.060 inclusive party, but still, like, I do think that you're absolutely right. That like, we're,

00:25:24.020 headed into a position where the GOP is going to double down on this hope for a gendered

00:25:29.220 realignment, that they're hoping that young men, including men of color, will deliver 0.67

00:25:33.800 this election for them, partly, I mean, out of necessity, because like they can't run

00:25:41.840 on a, hey, forget we did that.

00:25:46.340 It's very hard to be like, like, I guess they could have been like, honey, I still think

00:25:51.080 of you as a person. Not one with rights, but a person. Yeah, you know, I think there's only so

00:25:57.500 much the GOP can do with a exclusive electorate of white men, right? Like they have to try and

00:26:10.100 branch out. There are certainly anti-choice women out there. There's a lot of white women who 1.00

00:26:17.520 basically either are themselves avowed conservatives or sort of apolitical and just vote however their 1.00

00:26:23.360 husband tells them to. That's actually a pretty big demographic. Women who are not watching the

00:26:28.720 news because they're raising children and working full time and cleaning up after their shitty 1.00

00:26:32.540 husband who's sitting on the couch, scratching his ass and belching and watching Newsmax and 1.00

00:26:36.420 then barking at them to vote for Trump. And they say, okay, well, I trust you. I don't really have 1.00

00:26:41.600 time to look into this. That's actually like a lot of people, which is not to excuse white women's 1.00

00:26:46.800 complicity in the Republicans' rightward shift. But they do also have structural advantages, 1.00

00:26:54.420 right? We live in a system with Senate malapportionment and Electoral College 0.88

00:26:58.960 malapportionment, which functionally means that white men's votes overall count more,

00:27:05.100 especially in a presidential and senatorial elections, right? So that is, I think, why 0.53

00:27:10.580 they are not as worried, right?

00:27:13.520 And we should say like,

00:27:14.780 as of now, the polls

00:27:15.800 have not budged too much.

00:27:17.780 Like Kamala Harris does not

00:27:19.020 really need to ascend

00:27:20.940 and replace Biden. 1.00

00:27:22.100 She now needs to sort of make up 1.00

00:27:23.980 for the polling deficit

00:27:26.200 that the Democrats are suffering

00:27:28.000 because they have not had a candidate

00:27:29.700 who was able to campaign, really.

00:27:31.680 So I think that her campaign,

00:27:37.280 if they're smart,

00:27:37.980 will be very, very aggressive

00:27:39.180 about putting her in front of the public all the time.

00:27:42.280 And, you know, that carries its own risks

00:27:45.280 because there are some broad discomforts 1.00

00:27:49.820 that people have with women in power. 0.74

00:27:53.060 And I think this is something that we saw 0.65

00:27:54.940 in the 2016 election, right?

00:27:57.560 Do you want to talk a little bit

00:27:58.520 about your memory of that time?

00:28:00.480 No.

00:28:02.840 Yeah, nobody saw us.

00:28:04.460 It was the worst.

00:28:07.100 It was the pits, you know.

00:28:08.400 it was the worst of times it was the worst of times i mean like basically i mean the the one

00:28:16.040 thing that i think is going to be better in 2024 is that kamala harris does not go into it as the

00:28:19.500 presumptive winner i think that was what made the the clinton campaign really so frustrating to

00:28:26.640 behold that on the one hand they didn't put every foot right they certainly made some mistakes but

00:28:31.080 On the other hand, they were treated both just horribly by the media, while at the same time kind of getting, you know, all the sort of sideswipes and, you know, the hyper careful scrutiny that you give to someone you think is going to basically waltz to victory, right?

00:28:53.760 Our friend Michael Hobbs did a rundown for his podcast, If Books Could Kill, on the number of email articles, articles about Hillary Clinton's emails, which turned out to be kind of a non-scandal, like so many of the Clinton scandals.

00:29:11.280 And, you know, I think that, you know, it was way more about that in the New York Times than about stuff like the Access Hollywood tape, right?

00:29:18.300 here is a credibly accused by now proven sexual assaulter all but stipulating to his sexual

00:29:26.700 assaults to his pattern of sexual assault on well a camera on on tape and you know it was not worth

00:29:34.340 nearly as much column inch as you know i mean i think hillary clinton stumbles this is something

00:29:41.060 that people i think forget like there were health concerns quote unquote about her like she was 1.00

00:29:44.960 she got like she got too hot one day apparently right like and like and she like almost fainted

00:29:51.060 I believe uh some sort of like 9-11 memorial in New York I think yeah it's like I mean like

00:29:56.600 I don't know like the idea that that a that a woman in her 60s might might not you know be able

00:30:03.620 to put away 16-hour work days day after day after day without like having you know a day where she's 0.89

00:30:10.020 a little tired, not exactly a shocker, but like, yeah, that's the way that was covered.

00:30:15.000 And I mean, you know, you started by sort of pointing out that Biden, you know, gave

00:30:20.520 in and I think did a very honorable thing in withdrawing.

00:30:24.800 And I think part of his reluctance, part of the reluctance of people around him was certainly

00:30:28.160 about the fact that it was impossible for them to see the very, very genuine and legitimate 0.96

00:30:33.900 concerns that people were having through the midst of the very fucking people who were 0.98

00:30:38.000 like, did Hillary Clinton fall down, right? 0.99

00:30:39.780 like throwing up concerns about Joe Biden's age is like, it's the same fucking tune eight years 0.99

00:30:45.480 later. Like it happened to be true this time, but like, it's a little weird when like, you know, 0.97

00:30:51.480 it's the, it's the fucking New York times again, being like, you know, this guy should maybe drop 0.93

00:30:55.900 out. Right. Like meanwhile, the other guy is like, yeah, I grabbed it. And like, it's just like, 0.99

00:31:00.160 yeah, but he, you know, like that's, that's not a thing that, that is ever going to get any

00:31:05.320 attention from, you know, our media leaders or our chattering classes, right?

00:31:09.800 So I think that that's sort of my memory of it.

00:31:12.040 It's just, you know, a really kind of fatal combination of misogynistic tropes, kind of

00:31:19.240 double standards leveled at, you know, an admittedly imperfect candidate, while at the

00:31:24.220 same time, like giving her this kind of, always sort of falling back on this veneer of invincibility

00:31:29.440 and inevitability in order to kind of justify that.

00:31:32.440 If I have hope that 2024 is not just a replay of that, it is that Kamala Harris is, she would be a come from behind. 0.99

00:31:39.880 It would be the better story if she turns this shit around right now. 0.90

00:31:42.660 It would be kind of cool for the media to follow her, take this, take this, this ship that is clearly sinking and do something, make it, make it a tough, make it, make it a close race, which is the opposite. 0.99

00:31:58.180 You know, it's the same impulse that they followed in 2016, except that that time it cut against the Democratic nominee, cut against Hillary Clinton.

00:32:06.540 Right. In 2016, the best story was for this improbable, seemingly wildly inappropriate, long shot, dark horse candidate of Donald Trump to beat the establishment.

00:32:19.420 Right. And now there is the guy who really you can tell that Donald Trump really didn't think he was going to have to campaign.

00:32:27.500 This is his posts on True Social have all been outraged at the unfairness that now he has to spend more money and campaign in more states and networks are putting Harris surrogates on TV, even from states where he thinks he's up and should win.

00:32:43.620 You know, it's there's an outrage at the unfairness that he is being meaningfully challenged for the presidency, which he really was not being by Joe Biden.

00:32:51.860 I hear you about Biden's sense of frustration at the media narrative around his weakness before he did choose to withdraw.

00:33:03.760 There's a lot of people who are from the sort of pro-Biden camp who are very eagerly and repeatedly comparing it to buffer emails.

00:33:12.820 You know, that like classic reference to the media's creation of a real scandal about something that was really functionally not that scandalous, which was Hillary Clinton's use of our private email server, which, you know, in retrospect seems to have been a function of the fact that she like didn't really understand technology very well and didn't want to give up her BlackBerry.

00:33:37.120 And they went through all her emails and it was mostly like she only emailed like 10 people, which is insane to me. 0.99

00:33:42.820 But it's because she's a boomer.

00:33:44.280 She's old, yeah. 1.00

00:33:46.080 She's a boomer.

00:33:46.940 And in 2016, what was happening

00:33:48.760 was her emails were being sent

00:33:50.440 to an account that she did not run

00:33:53.220 or look at.

00:33:55.560 And they were being printed out

00:33:57.440 and read to her by assistants, right?

00:34:00.440 Like that's most of how she was functioning

00:34:01.960 was by fax and phone. 1.00

00:34:05.420 Boomers do all of their work over the phone.

00:34:09.140 They don't want to do it by email. 1.00

00:34:10.860 They don't want to text you.

00:34:11.880 And the actual people she was emailing was like, 1.00

00:34:14.660 Chelsea Clinton to schedule a fucking yoga class. 0.99

00:34:17.140 You know, it was like, 1.00

00:34:19.160 and by the way, Colin Powell did the exact same thing.

00:34:23.780 But you know, what happened was 0.81

00:34:26.140 because she was and seemed so arrogant 0.99

00:34:30.860 in her sense of entitlement to the presidency. 0.68

00:34:34.880 And because that arrogance was morally magnified 0.80

00:34:38.740 by the fact that it was coming from a woman, right?

00:34:41.880 because she was judged more harshly

00:34:43.700 for being arrogant than a man would have been.

00:34:46.580 That created a media narrative

00:34:49.860 and also, frankly, a public desire

00:34:53.520 to see her brought down a notch, right?

00:34:55.560 There are incentives,

00:34:56.920 both in the people who are writing those stories

00:34:59.360 and in the people who are reading them.

00:35:00.940 We could see something similar happen to Harris.

00:35:05.880 The term ungrateful used by J.D. Vance

00:35:09.620 at his first, you know, post-Biden step-down rally.

00:35:13.960 They've got him doing rallies on his own.

00:35:15.960 Yeah, which suggests that they've never heard him speak publicly.

00:35:19.820 I tweeted out that it reminded me of Sweet D from,

00:35:23.520 it's always sunny in Philadelphia.

00:35:24.640 And I'd like, I mean, like he's just gagging up there.

00:35:27.280 It's terrible.

00:35:27.900 It reminds me of that time Jen Bush ran for president,

00:35:31.240 I think in 2016.

00:35:32.640 Please clap.

00:35:33.120 And said, please clap.

00:35:34.180 Yeah, because he could not get any,

00:35:36.280 anybody in that crowd on his side.

00:35:39.080 And, you know, J.D. Vance is a charmless, odious little prick who's just not his own man. 0.96

00:35:44.440 You know, he can't work a crowd on his own because he's not the principal. 0.98

00:35:48.520 He's not the guy in charge.

00:35:49.820 And he has never been in his whole life.

00:35:51.940 He spent his whole adult life and his whole career in service to these kind of more important,

00:35:58.180 more charismatic minds.

00:36:00.960 You know, yeah, it was first Amy Chua and then Peter Thiel and now Donald Trump.

00:36:06.340 Gabe Winant did call them daddies, but he's never been the big man in his own right.

00:36:11.260 And I think it's partly because he doesn't have the juice.

00:36:13.500 But at J.D. Vance's first rally, he said that Kamala Harris was not sufficiently grateful

00:36:19.740 to be an American.

00:36:20.620 This is a reference to a line that a few right wing, quote unquote, legal thinkers like John

00:36:29.780 Eastman, the architect of the January 6th coup, who has since been disbarred, are advancing

00:36:34.920 this notion that Kamala Harris is somehow disqualified from the presidency under the

00:36:40.460 12th Amendment because her parents were not citizens or not naturalized at the time of her

00:36:45.940 birth. That's not how it works. Kamala Harris was born here in sunny California.

00:36:49.920 She was born in the exact same hospital as my daughter.

00:36:53.240 Oh, really?

00:36:54.040 Yeah.

00:36:54.980 One of River's many claims to fame. But she has birthright citizenship, which the right 0.99

00:37:01.740 wants to eliminate as a function of the 14th Amendment, but they have not done that yet.

00:37:06.320 But they're not really saying that she's legally technically not a citizen, right?

00:37:11.640 What they're saying, the way that they-

00:37:13.820 She's a no-

00:37:14.240 Yeah, what they're saying is what they were saying when they tried to

00:37:17.780 further the birther conspiracy about Obama in 2008, right?

00:37:21.860 It's not actually about where these people were born or what the technicalities of the

00:37:28.740 law governing their citizenship is.

00:37:31.440 I mean, Ted Cruz, who they run every couple of years, was born in Canada, for Christ's sake.

00:37:35.420 It's about her race and her sex. 0.72

00:37:37.220 Yeah, yeah. 0.99

00:37:37.900 They're saying she is disqualified by her identity, not by virtue of the location she

00:37:45.140 was born, but by virtue of what she was born as.

00:37:49.120 And that's, I think, something that we're going to see in variously veiled guises.

00:37:53.660 But J.D. Vance also got pretty close at that same rally where he said that Kamala Harris had simply been cashing a government check for 20 years.

00:38:06.760 Yeah, because he called her a welfare queen.

00:38:09.720 Right. He had enough plausible deniability to say that she had only been working for the government.

00:38:14.700 You know, she has spent a lot of her career in government. 0.98

00:38:16.860 That's not what he was fucking saying. 0.98

00:38:17.740 Prosecuting bad guys. 0.98

00:38:18.900 I mean, like, I don't know, like, does J.D. Vance not ostensibly like that?

00:38:24.340 I mean, J.D. Vance actually did grow up on welfare and Kamala Harris didn't.

00:38:28.400 There's nothing wrong with that.

00:38:29.360 It's absolutely fine.

00:38:30.260 Like, it's a good thing.

00:38:31.680 I know.

00:38:32.220 Welfare is, there's nothing wrong with welfare, right? 1.00

00:38:34.540 But what he was saying is this black woman is a burden on society. 0.99

00:38:37.160 Yeah. 1.00

00:38:37.540 And he was reaching back to Round Dragon to do it. 0.99

00:38:40.760 The actual factual counter to this is kind of like politically tricky because like the truth is that Kamala Harris did not grow up on welfare. 0.99

00:38:49.420 She grew up as a child of privilege, as the daughter of two Bay Area professors, a Stanford professor and a Berkeley professor.

00:38:56.380 That's right.

00:38:56.760 Because her mom was a biologist, I believe, at Berkeley.

00:39:00.200 And her father was a Stanford economist, a Marxist economist from Stanford University.

00:39:05.600 I didn't know we had those here.

00:39:06.720 The other thing that's supposedly disqualifying her, and this is a tweet from Laura Loomer from, I think, today or yesterday, right? It's time for Republicans to start about Kamala Harris's sexual history and the reason why she doesn't have any children of her own. I'm willing to bet that she's had so many abortions that she damaged her uterus, right?

00:39:22.080 Like, so this idea of like childlessness being about jobs somehow, like being about access to abortion is like, you know, front and center in these attacks.

00:39:33.500 So like, you know, she's deprived of legitimacy in all these different ways.

00:39:37.700 The question I have for you is like, is any of this, is this going to work?

00:39:42.780 Like, I mean, what's our prediction here?

00:39:44.040 Because on the one hand, so you pointed to the, when you were thinking about talking about like the kind of, you know, the figure that was often sort of invoked in 2016 to describe Hillary Clinton, it was Lisa Simpson, right?

00:39:57.220 Like the idea that there's a kind of, this is someone who like, you know, the straight A student trying to, you know, you know, kind of being almost annoyingly perfect or something like that.

00:40:05.660 I must admit that that's not how I saw Hillary Clinton, but that's true how some of her fans and a lot of her detractors saw her.

00:40:12.400 At the same time, like, right, like there's a reason why the coconut thing became sort of the rallying cry among the left, especially around Kamala Harris, because it's a little daffy. It's a little bit goofy. It's like, it's a bit of a mess in ways that are very endearing. 0.98

00:40:34.520 and and it's sort of it is an anti-Hillary Clinton kind of positionality right it's the one where

00:40:40.500 like you you're dealing with the kind of like this it's hard to say oh this is a person who

00:40:45.480 just who is not genuine like she appears to be kind of a genuine oddball she's just a she's a

00:40:51.360 somewhat strange person and like in ways frankly that mirror almost trumps right who are like

00:40:56.880 who's who's wearing kind of certain aspects of his personality like on his sleeve and like

00:41:03.140 makes it impossible to kind of call out.

00:41:05.320 So I'm wondering, so there's that,

00:41:07.260 like whether or not that puts her

00:41:08.640 in a different position.

00:41:09.760 And in some way, right,

00:41:11.340 the first African-American president 1.00

00:41:13.540 was indeed kind of uncannily perfect, right? 1.00

00:41:17.180 Like was, and you could tell the immense,

00:41:20.660 I mean, there was that joke on Key and Peele

00:41:22.360 back in the day on the sketch show,

00:41:23.620 the Obama anger translator,

00:41:25.260 where the whole idea was, 0.81

00:41:26.640 this is a black man studiously avoiding saying things

00:41:29.980 and now he's hiring this guy to get that out, 0.76

00:41:32.320 like to basically explain what he's really wanting to tell you. And, and it's noticeable

00:41:37.840 that like, to me, that the amount of sublimation you get from Kamala Harris is comparatively

00:41:42.620 minimal. Now, any woman in politics, any woman at her level of accomplishment, obviously has had to 1.00

00:41:48.360 keep her mouth shut when she wanted to scream at someone for sure. But at the same time, like her 1.00

00:41:53.400 primary, her primary affect does not appear to be sublimation, right? She doesn't need an anger

00:41:59.480 translator she doesn't need to be have a weirdness translator Kamala Harris appears to be genuinely

00:42:04.120 odd and it's spilling out and and so I'm wondering like whether or not that might inflect how what

00:42:11.480 people are are able to to project on to her because precisely she's not she's a different

00:42:20.180 she's a different kind of leader different kind of woman of color different kind of politician of

00:42:28.020 color than voters have been exposed to right at least at the presidential level i don't know if

00:42:33.220 that's if that's a fair description but that's certainly how how i read the coconut thing the

00:42:38.140 fact that like the left rallied around one of her other rhetorical moments she has really i mean 0.95

00:42:43.560 she's a prosecutor she has good she's moments are just like spot-on rhetoric i don't think the i

00:42:49.380 don't think the coconut tree was one of them to be quite honest and and yet it was the thing that

00:42:53.180 everyone found endearing i just kind of it it's it was a little excessive and it felt yeah i don't

00:42:59.460 know it it felt you know you're like this is maybe how i would talk if i if i was able to

00:43:04.440 i was supposed to recite retell a story that i'd heard a bunch of times and like

00:43:08.500 sort of like knew the ending to or something like that does that make sense yeah i i will say there's

00:43:13.820 a lot there um there's a lot what you've just covered i do want to go back to the laura loomer

00:43:19.260 tweet because that imagery, I think, is really loaded. And the sexualization of Kamala,

00:43:25.480 the attacks on Kamala as a sexual being, I think are something that are going to get uglier before

00:43:33.320 they get better. However, I do think your comparison to Hillary Clinton is an apt one,

00:43:41.160 right? And I think something that's a big deal between them is that Kamala Harris is about 20 0.95

00:43:46.140 years younger than Hillary Clinton and has been able to benefit from being a woman in the public

00:43:54.280 eye and a woman in politics in an era in which there were just many more of them. And so there

00:44:00.760 was more precedent for a woman to, say, make a joke and be understood as humorous as opposed to 1.00

00:44:09.460 just incredibly stupid, 1.00

00:44:11.420 a woman to be able to present 1.00

00:44:16.360 a sense of entitlement to authority 1.00

00:44:18.540 and not having to be earning it all the time.

00:44:21.720 I would say Kamala Harris,

00:44:23.940 her affect is very relaxed. 0.77

00:44:26.620 I have never seen Hillary Clinton relaxed.

00:44:28.760 Hillary Clinton has not let out a fart 1.00

00:44:30.460 since the early 80s. 0.88

00:44:31.680 You know what I mean?

00:44:32.300 It's probably the same one still germinating. 0.96

00:44:34.160 Yeah, she's just so disciplined

00:44:38.040 in a way that reads as anxious.

00:44:41.340 Yeah.

00:44:41.540 It doesn't read to me as a kind of eager competence

00:44:46.520 in the Lita Simpson sense

00:44:48.200 or like a desirous ambition.

00:44:51.780 It always read to me as anxiety.

00:44:54.360 Other people, I'm sure,

00:44:55.680 interpret Hillary Clinton's affect

00:44:57.000 in various different ways.

00:44:58.340 Don't email me about how she's completely calm 1.00

00:45:01.360 and knowingly evil.

00:45:03.480 It's fine, I believe you.

00:45:04.420 um but but kamala seems much much more at ease i think she has a recourse to a posture of coolness 0.95

00:45:14.280 and authenticity both as a member of generation x and as a black woman that like hillary clinton 0.99

00:45:19.880 you know a boomer white lady can never be cool i'm sorry mom but like it's it they are excluded 1.00

00:45:27.600 by virtue of you know no longer being sexually desirable by virtue of having like liberal 1.00

00:45:32.680 politics that can seem eager in this way. They just cringe when it comes from women. There's a 1.00

00:45:36.520 lot of baggage on boomer white women that Kamala Harris does not carry in the same way. I will say 0.99

00:45:42.060 she does at times appear inauthentic to me or as if her, she seems like somebody who's very

00:45:47.060 practiced, right? Which of course she is. She has been in public life and presenting herself

00:45:52.240 as a hyper competent figure of authority for a long time. But I do think the coconut thing is 0.99

00:45:58.500 kind of amazing. It took off. What I love about the coconut tree clip, and for our listeners who

00:46:05.300 have, you know, perhaps just fallen out of a coconut tree, let me explain briefly what this

00:46:08.900 is. There is a video clip of Kamala Harris at a podium. I do not know who she is speaking to. 0.88

00:46:16.880 But she says, you know, my mother, she's recounting this story from her childhood.

00:46:21.300 She goes, my mom used to give us a hard time. I assume when she and her siblings were,

00:46:25.520 you know, scurrying around. And she'd go, she'd tell us, what do you think you just fell out of

00:46:30.840 a coconut tree? And then Kamala Harris gives her Kamala Harris laugh, which is very distinctive,

00:46:35.720 which I also want to talk about. And she goes, still laughing. She goes, you exist in the context

00:46:41.880 of all that you are and that which came before you. Because none of us just live in a silo.

00:46:48.720 Everything is in context. My mother used to, she would give us a hard time sometimes and she would

00:46:54.380 say to us, I don't know what's wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a

00:46:59.180 coconut tree? You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.

00:47:09.780 It is a goofy way of saying, you know, history matters. Right. Which is the exact opposite

00:47:15.900 meaning of the other kind of viral Kamala Harris clip was when she talks about thinking about what

00:47:22.500 can be unburdened by what has been.

00:47:25.540 And like these two like Kamala memes

00:47:28.400 have been ping-ponging back and forth.

00:47:30.380 I'm like, is it historicism or a historicism?

00:47:33.140 Well, one's her mom.

00:47:34.020 In one, she's ventriloquizing her mom.

00:47:37.520 It's important to know.

00:47:38.260 Her mom, the Tamil biologist,

00:47:41.040 an immigrant academic.

00:47:42.840 Yeah, these sort of were unearthed

00:47:44.600 actually as oppo research.

00:47:46.120 Oppo research.

00:47:46.900 By the Republicans.

00:47:47.600 Yeah.

00:47:47.900 Because they put it on the internet 1.00

00:47:49.540 thinking this lady sounds crazy. 1.00

00:47:52.500 frankly, a little drugged. She sounds weird. She is talking about coconut trees, which are this 1.00

00:47:59.920 exotic, kind of fancy, foreign thing that don't appear in many parts of the United States,

00:48:09.060 but it went massively viral and people found it totally delightful because she does seem a little

00:48:13.460 bit like your wacky aunt. Yeah, she has a third, is there still a third hour to the Today Show?

00:48:18.820 because it's got third hour of the TV show vibes, right?

00:48:21.520 Where you're like, oh, people have been drinking in studio.

00:48:24.040 And it's delightful.

00:48:25.280 And it's noticeable, right?

00:48:26.780 That like, maybe it's just my own Twitter experience,

00:48:29.580 but like the first coconuts appearing

00:48:32.100 in people's Twitter bios,

00:48:33.780 those were kind of Bernie bros.

00:48:35.200 I think that kind of like, 0.98

00:48:36.360 she won over the Bernie bros with that.

00:48:39.380 There's a kind of looseness.

00:48:41.240 And I think you're right about the inauthenticity

00:48:43.380 at the same time.

00:48:44.660 You know, inauthenticity, of course, also can,

00:48:46.860 and I think this is the lesson of Hillary Clinton,

00:48:48.520 can occasion recognition from especially voters who have had to code switch, have had to suppress

00:48:57.080 ambition, have had to comfort, you know, lesser qualified people in their own lives that that

00:49:03.340 that they're that they're promoted over or whatever. Have had to had an anger translator.

00:49:08.080 Yes. Right. Like there is there is an element there of like in some way, Donald Trump has the

00:49:14.900 the appeal clearly to his supporters of being kind of this untrammeled, uncontainable person

00:49:25.740 that everyone would like to be if they were as rich as him. Right. I think that there's an

00:49:30.340 aspirational element to that. And his lack of discipline, the fact that he's like, I didn't

00:49:34.940 want to work for this. What the fuck? Right. Like it's actually a pretty relatable thing. And like 1.00

00:49:39.960 it's it's kind of you know that's his that's his particular genius but but i i think that that

00:49:46.380 harris here really works well as a as a foil for that as like you know kind of embodying just like

00:49:53.840 the opposite of that the person who has to kind of clean up after the person who like can't be

00:49:57.920 asked to like do their fucking job right like the fact that like a lot of trump's like i i was gonna

00:50:03.500 i was planning on putting as much work into this particular uh campaign as i did into home alone 0.98

00:50:09.160 too, lost in New York or alone in New York. And now I got shot at. And now they switched

00:50:15.620 candidates on me. I think Donald Trump is actually in the end kind of happy he got shot at and angry

00:50:21.460 that it's not getting as much attention as he wishes it did. To be fair, it is clearly the

00:50:28.780 funniest twist that everybody memory hold. The fact that the president of Canada got

00:50:34.340 grazed by a bullet

00:50:36.420 not like 10 days ago

00:50:37.600 on the other hand

00:50:38.800 I have to say

00:50:39.800 I share his frustration

00:50:41.380 on this one point

00:50:42.540 that like

00:50:43.680 people

00:50:44.720 people

00:50:45.160 have spent

00:50:46.440 weeks

00:50:47.960 like on

00:50:49.240 single remarks on him

00:50:50.600 the man

00:50:51.480 the man

00:50:52.740 like I mean

00:50:53.260 someone died

00:50:54.320 and like

00:50:55.000 and we were like

00:50:55.380 hey

00:50:55.700 we'll move

00:50:56.560 are we still talking about this

00:50:58.400 it's like

00:50:58.660 it kind of

00:50:59.540 it kind of feels like we should

00:51:00.640 it's really bad you guys

00:51:01.920 I think that

00:51:03.420 The assassination attempt on Donald Trump seemed most significant when it appeared to be an ideologically coherent, like politically motivated assassination. 0.98

00:51:14.760 And now it appears to be the product of politically incoherent mental illness. 0.76

00:51:21.080 Like the kid who shot him seems to have looked up also, you know, potential opportunities to shoot the FBI director and to shoot Joe Biden. 0.97

00:51:31.400 You know, he wanted to kill somebody famous and to die in doing so. 0.50

00:51:36.260 And it seems to have been like Sirhan Sirhan vibes, basically. 0.96

00:51:40.960 Right.

00:51:41.460 Or like, I mean, he's frankly, he's a standard mass shooter.

00:51:44.380 And a lot of those guys have an ideological commitment to misogyny.

00:51:49.320 They're often, you know, have been using their girlfriends or their mothers.

00:51:53.220 But we sort of understand that as non-political.

00:51:56.320 Right.

00:51:56.540 And this guy appears to have been in a similar way.

00:51:59.840 Yeah, like non-political in the terms that we are used to identifying politics, right?

00:52:04.920 So at first it seemed like somebody was trying to shoot Donald Trump because they didn't want

00:52:08.200 him to win the November election as he appears likely to do and execute his agenda.

00:52:14.600 And then we were all sort of corrected.

00:52:16.300 Like, no, no, no, that's not what happened.

00:52:17.580 Somebody was not motivated by political opposition to Donald Trump enough to sacrifice their own

00:52:23.820 life and commit murder.

00:52:25.480 I could have told you that right away because AR-15 is not a Democrat's weapon.

00:52:29.080 our weapon, wokeness.

00:52:31.860 We were going to run up

00:52:33.040 and just woke him.

00:52:34.360 Woke him right to death.

00:52:35.700 We would have written

00:52:36.480 a strongly worded op-ed

00:52:38.520 in terms of moral indignation.

00:52:40.360 I will say it back to Kamala.

00:52:42.500 Yeah, sorry. 1.00

00:52:43.740 She is somebody who pitches herself 1.00

00:52:45.820 as having righteous moral anger, right?

00:52:49.800 She does express anger,

00:52:51.100 especially when she is out

00:52:52.980 of the sump talking about Dobbs.

00:52:54.400 Yeah.

00:52:54.800 She conveys anger 0.74

00:52:56.380 and challenges anger. 1.00

00:52:57.660 I think that comes across as less threatening when women do it. 1.00

00:53:02.340 This is something women on the right do all the time. 1.00

00:53:04.560 They express the most virulent anger in a way that does not challenge their dignity 1.00

00:53:11.700 because they're not seem to have any to begin with and doesn't seem as menacing. 0.92

00:53:18.120 So like women on the right do that all the time. 0.99

00:53:19.560 I think women on the left or women in the center haven't done it as much. 0.82

00:53:24.460 But Kamala has been much more willing to be publicly angry than, say, Obama was.

00:53:28.700 Well, two things, two things about that.

00:53:30.140 One is I think she's cribbing a little bit or not cribbing, but she's but she's definitely following in the footsteps of Elizabeth Warren, who had that particular tone of anger, of indignation.

00:53:41.300 It wasn't even just anger.

00:53:42.220 She's like, this is not right.

00:53:43.560 Come on.

00:53:44.240 Right.

00:53:44.440 And like and that clearly really resonated with voters.

00:53:47.120 And I thought that was always very, very effective.

00:53:49.520 It was usually the best part of any debate performance of her is when she got that tone, when she was like, like, come on, what are we doing here, guys?

00:53:56.480 And the other thing, of course, is that that's a prosecutor's weapon.

00:53:58.900 And she's very, very, very clear that, right, she's coming at him as a prosecutor.

00:54:03.500 She's like, this man is a felon. 1.00

00:54:04.920 This man is a, you know, is a admitted sexual assaulter. 0.99

00:54:10.760 He is, I mean, this has been the case she's been making for the last 48 hours. 0.97

00:54:14.840 It's just and there's an anger that that creeps into it, but it's a representative anger, right?

00:54:20.120 It's saying, right, I'm here for the state of California, but I am here to do this thing.

00:54:25.940 Like, it's not a stance that I love, frankly, because it puts, you know, it can easily lead to miscarriages of justice.

00:54:31.680 But it is a it is the prosecutor's bread and butter.

00:54:34.320 And I think that's that's the anger she's she's marshalling there.

00:54:38.220 And it's one that I think Americans are by and large, very, very comfortable with.

00:54:41.540 Right. Her 2020 campaign slogan was for the people, which is what she said when she presented

00:54:46.700 herself in court. Courtroom lawyers are really skilled retorticians. They have to be showmen

00:54:53.320 in this way that your average litigator is not. There's a lot of charmless people with no charisma

00:55:02.000 working in the law, but you can't really be a courtroom prosecutor if you don't have that

00:55:08.600 ability to like sort of manipulate a room. I will say, I think Democrats, and not just Harris,

00:55:15.180 but Democrats in general, are strongest against Trump when they are ventriloquizing

00:55:21.060 the voice of an exasperated and outraged public, right? So like in 2020, during the general election,

00:55:29.540 I think the strongest, I think we've talked about this before, I think the strongest moment

00:55:32.980 that Joe Biden had was in that debate where he goes, oh, will you shut up, man?

00:55:38.200 Right? That frustrated, exasperated pointing out of Trump's ridiculousness 0.99

00:55:43.740 is really good. When Kamala Harris was running in the 2020 primary,

00:55:49.760 this is kind of a famous anecdote, right? They were trying to figure out how she was going to

00:55:54.700 run as a woman in the face of Trump's masculine domination politics, which she used against 0.82

00:55:59.180 Hillary Clinton to great effect several times, right? And her advisors, in this famous story,

00:56:05.880 her advisors come to her and they go, okay, well, what would you do in a situation like the one in

00:56:11.040 the third 2016 debate? Or he's like physically in her space.

00:56:14.480 Right. Hillary, they were not at podiums. They were in a town hall kind of setting where they

00:56:19.240 were supposed to get up and walk around. And Hillary Clinton was answering a question and

00:56:23.520 trying to keep her attention on the question, on the people who had asked it. And Donald Trump is

00:56:28.280 like sort of skulking behind her, leaning over her as he talks. It was really juvenile, right?

00:56:34.540 But what it did on camera was emphasize both his shamelessness and his physical size.

00:56:41.720 Donald Trump, he's older now. You can see him getting a little skinnier and like wasting away

00:56:46.100 a bit. He's a big guy. And that kind of like stupid caveman domination shit, like who's bigger,

00:56:52.700 like that matters to these weird ass median voters 1.00

00:56:56.380 we were talking about. 0.95

00:56:58.400 And so they sort of,

00:56:59.900 and I think it was effective

00:57:01.200 in this like brutal depressing way against Clinton, right?

00:57:04.900 So Harris's advisors come to her and say,

00:57:08.560 what would you do in that situation?

00:57:10.720 And she goes, I would turn around and say,

00:57:12.640 why are you being so weird?

00:57:15.280 And I think that's a much better strategy

00:57:17.380 than Hillary Clinton's strategy

00:57:18.560 of just trying to ignore him, right?

00:57:20.280 You can't pretend he's not doing it.

00:57:22.700 what he's doing. And what you have to do is ventriloquize a regular American voters like

00:57:29.000 disgust and frustration with it. Because people fucking hate that guy. 0.99

00:57:32.700 Yeah. Like the thing about Donald Trump is he is 1.00

00:57:34.980 beatable because people fucking hate his guts. They think he's annoying. They think he's a crook. 1.00

00:57:40.160 They think he's dishonest. And they're right. And he's weird. 0.98

00:57:43.240 And he's fucking weird. 0.99

00:57:44.080 And you're like, this is the least relatable thing I've ever heard. 0.99

00:57:47.600 Right. He wants to sleep with his daughter. And he hired a weirdo as his VP who's going on and on

00:57:55.220 about lowering birth rates and how people who don't have children shouldn't have as many votes

00:58:01.280 and how childless cat ladies. He's pissed off the cat ladies of America. 1.00

00:58:06.420 J.D. Vance also at one point was railing against childless cat ladies who both Democratic enlisted

00:58:10.980 Kamala Harris among them. I don't think she actually owns any pets, but maybe she does.

00:58:15.700 And I'm sure if she has a dog, we'll see a lot of that dog, but I don't think she does.

00:58:21.580 Look, what I was basically saying is that we're effectively run in this country via 0.98

00:58:25.380 the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are 0.89

00:58:30.100 miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made, and so they want to make 1.00

00:58:33.760 the rest of the country miserable too.

00:58:35.320 And it's just a basic fact.

00:58:36.660 You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is 0.97

00:58:42.280 controlled by people without children. 0.93

00:58:43.880 And how does it make any sense that we've turned our country over to people who don't really have a direct stake in it?

00:58:49.480 But, you know, it's this weird, creepy, like sexually obsessive, mouth-breathing odiousness that is incredibly off-putting. 0.97

00:59:03.440 It's the kind of thing, it's like, well, I'm going to need to check all of these teenage girls' genitals before I allow any of them to play softball. 1.00

00:59:09.500 You know, it's creepy shit. 1.00

00:59:10.900 It's off-putting. 1.00

00:59:11.780 It's bullying.

00:59:12.500 It's weird.

00:59:13.040 It's invasive.

00:59:13.880 And I think Americans will respond to its creepiness

00:59:18.040 if they have an energetic alternative

00:59:19.640 that is willing to confront that creepiness.

00:59:21.860 Yeah.

00:59:22.260 That's when Democrats do best.

00:59:24.340 So she doesn't just need to say, you know,

00:59:27.520 I am. 0.99

00:59:28.100 Oh, you're being so fucking weird. 0.98

00:59:28.900 Yeah. 1.00

00:59:29.120 Yeah, she needs to be like, look at these assholes. 1.00

00:59:31.480 Yeah. 1.00

00:59:31.780 And that's what you have her surrogates 1.00

00:59:34.800 in this like deep stakes campaign 1.00

00:59:36.620 that is swept up immediately.

00:59:38.000 All these white men are on TV 1.00

00:59:40.260 saying these guys are assholes. 1.00

00:59:42.220 Like ending this year as a governor of Kentucky 1.00

00:59:43.760 The governors of North Carolina, Minnesota, they're all kind of doing something.

00:59:48.940 Tim Waltz, is that right?

00:59:50.180 Tim Waltz, yeah.

00:59:50.940 Yeah.

00:59:51.420 And of course, the guy who's going to get it, Josh Shapiro.

00:59:54.760 Josh Shapiro.

00:59:55.840 I think it will be Josh Shapiro.

00:59:57.660 It's going to be Josh Shapiro.

00:59:58.600 But yeah, so I would be very surprised.

01:00:01.940 If it wasn't Josh Shapiro.

01:00:02.960 Yeah, I got to say.

01:00:04.580 He can credibly put Pennsylvania back in play and she needs it. 1.00

01:00:09.600 And he's also an anti-union, pro-Israel, you know, real kind of piece of shit that's going to piss off the left. 0.99

01:00:19.080 And I think, you know, I think it'll be a bumpy announcement if that happens. 0.99

01:00:24.660 Yeah.

01:00:24.840 At the same time, we, I often think, especially with a Veep announcement, it's probably better for someone.

01:00:33.540 It's not meant for me, right?

01:00:35.560 A Veep announcement that makes me happy is probably a bad sign.

01:00:39.600 I think that in some way, the Kamala announcement made me very happy.

01:00:44.200 That means I now have to brace myself for a person that I do not very much enjoy being on the other part of that ticket.

01:00:51.280 It's, you know, it's a big country.

01:00:53.560 You know, people are different and I'm fully prepared.

01:00:58.980 And I think the more I go, ooh, the better.

01:01:02.140 You know, I mean, like, don't make it Tim Kaine because I was like, who?

01:01:05.340 Plus he's anti-abortion, which you really don't need right now.

01:01:08.240 No, but Shapiro's not.

01:01:10.640 I would, this might be actually a good place

01:01:13.240 for us to wrap up because, you know,

01:01:15.100 it's been sort of assumed that Harris needs a white man.

01:01:20.620 Yeah.

01:01:20.780 Have you ever heard that?

01:01:21.360 Like, it's a kind of annoying TikTok rap.

01:01:24.080 It's like, I'm looking for a man in finance,

01:01:27.160 trust fund, six, five, blue eyes.

01:01:29.520 And then I saw a fun video of Kamala Harris 0.99

01:01:32.640 like dancing to that song.

01:01:34.540 Wow, like they flashed all the different

01:01:36.420 VP contenders behind her.

01:01:37.860 and they're all like men in finance, frankly.

01:01:40.120 I just tweeted out the box

01:01:42.020 for the Trader Joe's cracker assortment.

01:01:46.260 A lot of people are tweeting like pictures from wine stores.

01:01:49.740 It's like interesting whites, you know.

01:01:51.400 I think there's something about the VP role

01:01:55.260 that is under analyzed,

01:01:57.820 which is that it is a role of supplication, right?

01:02:00.420 And irrelevance.

01:02:02.100 Yeah.

01:02:02.620 And I think, you know, Kamala Harris

01:02:05.440 was the first woman VP,

01:02:09.520 not the first woman to run as VP.

01:02:12.020 That would be Geraldine Ferraro, 0.96

01:02:13.480 great 80s dresses, 1.00

01:02:15.220 but the first woman to actually serve in the VP. 1.00

01:02:17.500 And in that role,

01:02:19.660 you have not a ton of responsibility.

01:02:22.120 Yeah.

01:02:22.880 And visibility only as a sidekick

01:02:25.420 and a service person to the principal, right?

01:02:28.520 And that is a very feminized role, candidly,

01:02:31.900 even though it's been almost uniformly men

01:02:34.500 who have done it.

01:02:35.440 It's the role of the support person to the real politician, the real guy who matters. 1.00

01:02:41.700 And having a man in that position of service, submission, subordination to a Black woman, 0.98

01:02:52.260 I think that could be risky and they're going to have to manage it in a way that doesn't

01:02:57.960 incite further resentment, but can allow the people who are frankly misogynist to feel

01:03:04.380 a little less uncomfortable

01:03:06.100 about a woman being in charge

01:03:08.500 because men hate having women as a boss. 0.89

01:03:11.500 Yeah.

01:03:12.140 I mean, yeah, it's as we,

01:03:13.760 oh, and we didn't mention Mark Kelly,

01:03:15.380 who might also make a lot of sense

01:03:16.640 as a VIP pick.

01:03:18.660 He's in the Senate.

01:03:20.000 And I feel like they're not going to want

01:03:21.000 to take a Democrat out of the Senate,

01:03:22.880 especially from a tough race.

01:03:24.460 I think there's that.

01:03:25.740 But on the other hand,

01:03:26.540 like, you know,

01:03:27.220 astronaut, kind of a team guy, right?

01:03:29.840 Like more known as like

01:03:31.280 kind of a team player.

01:03:32.280 And that, of course, makes

01:03:33.060 for a good vice president. 0.92

01:03:34.980 But as we enter into the veep stakes,

01:03:37.980 it's worth pointing out that, you know,

01:03:40.120 remember John Nance Garner's famous observation

01:03:42.320 that the office, what is it,

01:03:44.220 is not worth a bucket of warm spit or piss,

01:03:46.700 or I've heard different versions of this,

01:03:48.260 but some bodily effluvium.

01:03:50.800 You know, I too was a little struck by the fact

01:03:53.820 that it cannot be, that, I mean,

01:03:55.700 no women are being seriously considered

01:03:57.040 other than I think Gretchen Whitmer, 1.00

01:03:58.340 who's already... 0.59

01:03:58.960 She's already said she doesn't want it.

01:04:00.340 Doesn't want it.

01:04:00.800 Yeah, she's chairing the Harris campaign, and she also co-chaired the Biden campaign before he withdrew.

01:04:07.500 So, I mean, but yeah, it's very, very noticeable.

01:04:10.480 And it's going to be interesting, like, which style of masculinity, like, what they think.

01:04:15.580 It'll give us a sense of what the Democrats think Harris's style is going to be and what their weaknesses are in terms of gender politics, whom they pick as the Veep.

01:04:27.300 because I think that'll give us a sense of like

01:04:30.500 what kind of aggrievements do they think

01:04:33.020 they can still address

01:04:34.020 and which ones do they think are basically baked in 1.00

01:04:36.860 and you're just, you know, you're running a black woman 1.00

01:04:40.860 like this is going to happen. 1.00

01:04:43.300 Fuck it, we're not, we can't mitigate that, right? 1.00

01:04:46.040 Like what do you think is, 1.00

01:04:47.020 what do you think you can mitigate and what can't you?

01:04:49.160 And that'll be interesting to see.

01:04:50.060 I mean, these are people who are looking at

01:04:51.080 a lot of survey data, et cetera, et cetera.

01:04:54.180 Like, so unlike us who are just kind of going

01:04:56.320 from our own, you know, gut and longtime experience observing the gender dynamics of American

01:05:02.940 politics, there is an element here of seeing what the Democratic Party is going to come away with

01:05:08.200 and sort of think what are, yeah, mitigable factors and what aren't. There's going to be

01:05:14.400 more gross gender stuff levied at Kamala Harris. There's going to be more performances of 1.00

01:05:23.540 masculinity, domineering, and otherwise

01:05:25.960 from all sorts of men in politics,

01:05:29.000 it's going to be an exhausting three months.

01:05:32.540 Yeah.

01:05:32.820 But your good friends at In Bed With The Right

01:05:34.900 will be here.

01:05:35.600 Step along the way.

01:05:36.240 To hold your hand through it.

01:05:37.460 Yeah.

01:05:37.860 Thank you so much for listening.

01:05:39.180 Adrian, thank you for hopping on this call

01:05:40.780 and talking about it with me.

01:05:41.900 Thank you.

01:05:42.380 And hope to see you guys next time.

01:05:44.140 See you next time on In Bed With The Right.

01:05:45.840 Oh, wait.

01:05:46.360 Write and review us, please.

01:05:47.500 Write and review.

01:05:48.100 Write and review.

01:05:48.480 Write and review.

01:05:51.540 In Bed With The Right would like to thank

01:05:53.060 the Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research

01:05:55.300 for generous support.

01:05:56.540 Jennifer Portillo for setting up our studio.

01:05:58.960 Our producer is Katie Lau.

In Bed With The Right - July 25, 2024

Episode 29： Harris

Episode Stats

Transcript