The energy and enthusiasm of this week was infectious, but with the fanfare of the Democratic National Convention in the rearview, the campaign is gearing up for the battle to come. The Bulwark’s Tim Miller joins former Senator Claire McCaskill to reflect on their favorite moments of the week, as they talk through strategies the vice president should consider as she moves forward with momentum well earned. Then, Harris-Walz campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond stops by for some perspective from inside the campaign.
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Note: This is a rough transcript. Please excuse any typos.
(BEGIN AUDIO)
Kamala Harris: And I want to kick us off by celebrating our incredible President Joe Biden.
Joe Biden: I love the job, but I love my country more.
Hillary Clinton: So it is no surprise, is it, that he is lying about Kamala’s record? He’s mocking her name and her laugh.
Barack Obama: We have a chance to elect someone who has spent her entire life trying to give people the same chances America gave her.
Doug Emhoff: Wherever she’s needed, however she’s needed, Kamala rises to the occasion.
Michelle Obama: Of the two major candidates in this race, only Kamala Harris truly understands the unseen labor and unwavering commitment that has always made America great.
Tim Walz: It’s the honor of my life to accept your nomination for Vice President of the United States.
Kamala Harris: On behalf of everyone whose story could only be written in the greatest nation on earth, I accept your nomination to be president of the United States of America.
(END AUDIO)
Claire McCaskill: Hello and welcome to “How to Win 2024.” It’s Friday morning, I think. I’m not sure what day it is. It’s been a weird week. August 23rd, I’m Claire McCaskill and I’m here with my guest co-pilot today, the “Bulwark’s” one and only Tim Miller, which I’m excited about. He’s funny and he’s good and he’s smart and he used to be a Republican. He’s host of the “Bulwark’s” podcast, which is terrific. You should listen to it. He and Sam Stein did a thing on RFK’s trip with the bear carcass that I sent to everybody I know because I couldn’t stop laughing.
Tim Miller: Well, that’s wonderful. That was, I think, the highlight of our whole oomph, so thank you.
Claire McCaskill: Oh my god, it was so good. He’s also an MSNBC analyst with me. We traveled together to the debate in Atlanta to talk about that mess. And he’s the author of “Why We Did It,” a travelogue from the Republican road to hell. Good morning, Tim.
Tim Miller: Hey, Claire. I was just saying to the suits last night, maybe don’t send me and Claire to the next debate. Maybe just one of us or maybe a new team, a new duo. I’m happy to go wherever, but just let’s change up the juju a little bit.
Claire McCaskill: You know, I got to tell you though, I really remember walking away from the building and you telling me that your husband said that I went there and how glad he was that I went there the night after the debate. And when you said that, it was so oddly reassuring to me as somebody who has taken incoming for 40 years as a politician in a really tough state to get that kind of reassurance that I spoke my truth, but I knew a lot of shit was going to fly because of what I’d said. So you just giving me that little bit of reassurance as we were walking late that night was nice. And so tell your husband thank you too.
Tim Miller: I will pass that along to him. And I’m happy about that because look at where we are now. We’re in the coconut grove —
Claire McCaskill: I know.
Tim Miller: — and we’re unburdened by what has been. Now, things are wonderful.
Claire McCaskill: I’m F’ing drinking pina coladas. I don’t know about you, but it is —
Tim Miller: Same. Me and Jen Psaki we’re having a coconut cocktail last night around 2:15 a.m.
Claire McCaskill: Perfect, perfect. We’re also gonna have Cedric Richmond. After Tim and I finished talking, we’re gonna have the former Louisiana congressman and a Harris-Walz campaign co-chair join me to spend a little bit of time unpacking from the campaign’s perspective, what they accomplished and what they are seeing down the road. But let’s first dig into how the week went. We got, you know, less than 75 days, 74 to be exact. I’ve been here since Monday. I thought it would be fun to talk about how it looked from the outside as somebody who’s been to a lot of conventions, certainly some on the Republican side, which I’ve never attended, and then how it felt like on the inside. So let’s start with you. Why don’t you give us what you think was your overall takeaway impression after watching this thing for a week?
Tim Miller: Yeah. I mean, number one, you know, we can nitpick and talk about the goods and the bads, but just as a biggest picture, especially the last three nights, phenomenal. They had three weeks to turn this thing around from when she was the nominee. And it’s a lot harder than maybe it seems, you know, it’s like, oh, you have politicians, give speeches. Like there are a lot of pitfalls. And, you know, I think back to the Romney 2012 convention, which was the last Republican one where I was really in good standing with the party and like, we fucked up a couple of things, pretty bad excuse my language. Like there was the Clint Eastwood thing. There was one of the nights it had a weird theme.
Claire McCaskill: Well, that was brutal. Everybody needs to remember that was that really bizarre thing. He was out there with an empty chair.
(BEGIN AUDIO)
Clint Eastwood: So. Mr. President, how do you handle promises that you made when you were running for election? Do you just, you know, I know people were wondering, you don’t —
(END AUDIO)
Tim Miller: He was talking to the chair.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, that was not good, Tim. That was not good.
Tim Miller: Yeah, I know. So there were multiple nights and Paul Ryan wasn’t really that good at driving a message. So anyway. Just being able to do the minimum in three weeks of drive a clear message, build up Kamala, explain what the contrast is between her and Trump and offer something that’s appealing to a broad swath of Americans. Like that’s a minimum bar and they just cleared it, I think with flying colors. The other thing that just really struck me especially as a former Republican was how much effort was put in across the board by every speaker up to and including the vice president and the presidential nominee to reach out to people from different perspectives politically to say, everyone is welcome here no matter if you’re a conservative. Barack Obama really focusing on how they’re good people, you know, you know these types of people in your life that have these American values and maybe they’ve been Republicans, but they believe in decency and respect and working hard and playing by the rules, all that sort of stuff. And it was in almost every speech, religious tones, focus on patriotism, USA chance, and it was really an effort that culminated in the vice president’s speech last night that said, this is a campaign for everybody and it’s also a campaign for the people in the room, for Democrats, you know, but we’re welcoming everybody to it. And just one observation on that, in her speech last night, she mentioned America or Americans 34 times. She mentioned the Democratic Party zero times. You know, it was really an intentional effort to be as broad and as big as possible and that really came through.
Claire McCaskill: Well, and what a contrast between —
Tim Miller: Yes, oh my gosh.
Claire McCaskill: — our convention and the Republican convention, there was no effort. In fact, it was the opposite.
Tim Miller: Yes.
Claire McCaskill: You almost felt like if you were a woman, you weren’t welcome.
Tim Miller: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: The Hulk Hogan ripping the shirt, which was beyond weird. I think he was drunk, don’t you?
Tim Miller: He was partying. I don’t know. It might just be CTE so, I don’t know. I’m not a doctor.
Claire McCaskill: Well, there you go. And Trump coming in, it’s a man’s world and the fact that I have no recollection. There might have been some women speakers that I don’t remember women at all at their convention.
Tim Miller: Certainly not the last night.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, no. So it was such a contrast of reaching out. And you’re right. It happened.
Tim Miller: Just on that point, could you just imagine? It’s hard to even imagine in your mind a Republican speaker at that convention going up and saying, progressives love America too. Muslims love America too. You know what I mean? And that was happening, right, like we welcome it. There was just none of that. Not only was there none of it, you almost couldn’t even imagine it because it’s anathema to what they were arguing.
Claire McCaskill: Right. Their whole thesis is America is dead and dying and everyone who doesn’t agree with us is horrible. And by the way, we know there are more of you out there. So if you believe in our view that America is in the trash can, come and hang out in the trash can with us and we’ll put everybody else in jail.
Tim Miller: Yeah. I mean —
Claire McCaskill: Right?
Tim Miller: — in order to save Trump.
Claire McCaskill: All about one guy.
Tim Miller: Yeah, the Harris speech was basically, in this room, we love America as it is, the diversity, all of the different elements, the gumbo of America. You’ve got Cedric Richmond coming on and we want to do some work to make it a little bit better for everybody. They over there hate America as it is and are happy to tear it apart to just make Donald Trump’s life a little bit better. And the Trump convention played right into that. It was all about him. He sat up in the box. It’s like you almost could imagine him like in a royal box holding out his fingers for people to kiss, you know, as they come by.
Claire McCaskill: He was like on a throne.
Tim Miller: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: He was seated in a white leather throne.
Tim Miller: It was bizarre.
Claire McCaskill: It was weird. Okay. So here’s the other thing I noticed. Besides the fact that we were very disciplined about reaching out, we also stole your shit. I mean, your former party shit, right? We stole it. We stole the flag.
Tim Miller: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: We stole freedom and we even stole football.
Tim Miller: Yes.
Claire McCaskill: I mean, we now have the triumvirate. We have the three Fs. And I remember back in the day when I used to like meekly say, hey, could we spend more time talking about, you know, how we love America and we all go to church and all of those things. And we were so busy drilling down to the 14th paragraph of the policy that we were going to enact as it related to whatever policy thing we were doing that year that we never really got to that emotional place. And so everybody in the Republican Party who is saying, well, where are their policies? I’m saying I am so happy that we did not dwell on the details of our policy and actually drove a theme.
Tim Miller: Same. And you mentioned, there’s a fourth F there, faith. Also, there’s a lot of references to —
Claire McCaskill: Faith, right.
Tim Miller: — kind of religious faith during this and comfort with it and the USA chance. Look, I was feeling this could have been a 1988 Reagan-Bush convention at times, not on the policy, but just on the thematic side of it, right, about American exceptionalism and excellence with a very modern twist, right? Like part of why it’s exceptional is Kamala Harris’s story, right? This could happen here, right? That we could have an immigrant mother —
Claire McCaskill: Right.
Tim Miller: — a single mother, mixed race, you know, woman taking this nomination. So his grandmother speaks with an accent, whatever the line was. So, that melding of kind of those chest-thumping patriotic themes that you hear from Republicans with, okay, but why are we chest-thumping? You know, this appreciation of diversity in the country. I thought it was really good. One other thing that was stolen, some of the foreign policy stuff, now some of the liberal listeners might get a little triggered by this, so just trigger warning. Some of the foreign policy stuff could have been from the McCain convention.
(BEGIN AUDIO)
Kamala Harris: I will not cozy up to tyrants and dictators like Kim Jong-un who are rooting for Trump —
(CROWD CHEERING)
Kamala Harris: — who are rooting for Trump. Because you know, they know he is easy to manipulate with flattery and favors. They know Trump won’t hold autocrats accountable because he wants to be an autocrat himself.
(END AUDIO)
Tim Miller: I mean, it’s just like standing up to autocrats, standing up to dictators, the dictators are rooting for Trump. I loved that line. They’re rooting for him. They want him to win because he wants to be a dictator. You know, standing up to Iran, standing with our allies, Ukraine against Putin. I’ve been saying this for a while because I went to about maybe about six months ago, I went to a briefing with the vice president and she was so passionate about this, America’s role in the world and our allies. And I’ve been saying to the never Trumpers, I was like, I don’t think you realize how strong she is on these themes. It doesn’t mean she’s going to be a warmonger or to save her rattling, we’re not invading Iraq, right? But I just like this notion of America has a positive role to play in the world and she wants America to be strong on the world stage. I thought she hit that out of the park for Nikki Haley voters, you know. That was really key I think.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, exactly. I mean, that we are the leaders of the free world and it matters. And, you know, I know the overriding sense that she had about this speech. I know this. I know her, was to show strength. And when I heard her use the word lethal, I grinned from ear to ear.
(BEGIN AUDIO)
Kamala Harris: As commander-in-chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.
(CROWD CHEERING)
(END AUDIO)
Claire McCaskill: Because the word lethal in the context of our military is exactly the kind of terminology she should be using. And anybody who watched that speech and thinks that somehow she’s some kind of shrinking violet in front of world leaders, I mean, that just disappeared, instantly disappeared. So quickly before we go to a break. I’d like you to pick on Monday, who was the best speaker on Monday? Who was the best speaker on Tuesday in terms of moving the ball?
Tim Miller: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: Use the coach’s metaphor.
Tim Miller: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: We’re trying to move the ball down the field. Who were the best speakers each night to move the ball down the field?
Tim Miller: Okay. The first night I think was probably Jasmine Crockett. I thought AOC was also pretty good on Monday, even though that wasn’t my politics. I thought she gave an objectively good speech.
(BEGIN AUDIO)
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: In Kamala Harris, we have a chance to elect a president who is for the middle class because she is from the middle class.
(END AUDIO)
Tim Miller: Tuesday, I mean, it was the Obamas. It was just the two of them together. Michelle’s was probably better if I had to pick, but just they worked together. I mean, they were just going to work on that guy with like a blowtorch and pliers between the two of them.
(BEGIN AUDIO)
Michelle Obama: For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us.
(CROWD CHEERING)
Michelle Obama: I wanna know, who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those black jobs?
(END AUDIO)
Tim Miller: It was amazing I thought. Harris obviously last night was the best of Kinzinger. I should shout out Kinzinger.
(BEGIN AUDIO)
Adam Kinzinger: I’ve learned something about the Democratic Party and I want to let my fellow Republicans in on the secret. The Democrats are as patriotic as us.
(CROWD CHEERING)
(END AUDIO)
Tim Miller: And the third night.
Claire McCaskill: That would be Oprah.
(BEGIN AUDIO)
Oprah Winfrey: Common sense tells you that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz can give us decency and respect.
(END AUDIO)
Tim Miller: Oprah.
Claire McCaskill: Oprah.
Tim Miller: Thank you, yeah, Oprah.
Claire McCaskill: Definitely Oprah.
Tim Miller: Oprah was really good on the third night, though. I should shout out Wes Moore too. I thought Wes Moore was also really good on third —
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, Wes Moore’s really good. And I gotta tell you that I thought Doug Emhoff did a really good job too.
Tim Miller: Sam.
(BEGIN AUDIO)
Doug Emhoff: And now that the country needs her, she’s showing you what we already know. She’s ready to lead.
(CROWD CHEERING)
DOUG EMHOFFF: And with your help, she will lead with joy and toughness with that laugh and that look, with compassion and conviction.
(END AUDIO)
Claire McCaskill: Because women of America fell in love with that guy at that moment. They saw how much he loved her. They saw a guy whose masculinity wasn’t threatened by not only taking a step back from his career, but just taking a step back and being there to hold her hand and tell everybody how great she is. And also the faith thing. It was obvious that this is a faithful Jewish man who is steeped in his faith. And I thought the way he wove that into the speech without it feeling like he was doing anything, but just telling you about how he grew up and why he loved her. It really was very good. And Walz was pretty good too. You know why I loved Walz? I loved Walz because he was 15 minutes long.
Tim Miller: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: Who does that?
Tim Miller: He was eight minutes shorter than Bill Clinton.
(BEGIN AUDIO)
Tim Walz: It’s the fourth quarter. We’re down a field goal, but we’re on offense and we’ve got the ball. We’re driving down the field and boy, do we have the right team. Kamala Harris is tough. Kamala Harris is experienced and Kamala Harris is ready.
(END AUDIO)
Claire McCaskill: Okay.
Tim Miller: It was good.
Claire McCaskill: All right. So let’s take a little break here. We’ll pause and up next. Tim and I are going to look at what lies ahead for the vice president’s campaign post-convention and into the lion’s den of the next two months. We’ll be back in a moment.
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Claire McCaskill: Welcome back. My co-host, former Republican operative and “Bulwark” writer-at-large, Tim Miller is still with me. By the way, before we start what we got to do now, the campaign has to do now, my favorite line from a Republican was, if you vote for Kamala Harris, you’re not a Democrat, you’re a patriot.
Tim Miller: Yes. Geoff Duncan.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, Geoff Duncan. That was really a strong line. So what now?
Tim Miller: Geoff Duncan was so good. I mean, I love Kinzinger, his speech was good. But Geoff Duncan, both of that, and the other thing, just one sentence on it, the line that his son told him, you know, it’s never the wrong time to do the right thing.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah.
Tim Miller: I’m taking that little line and I’m sending it to every Republican in my life that was like, where have you been? All right, there’s 70 days left. It’s never the wrong time to do the right thing. Like you can come out now. You can speak. There was a couple of Republicans, I think, that should have been speaking this week that weren’t.
Claire McCaskill: I agree.
Tim Miller: Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, Mark Esper, et cetera. So I’m hoping that some of them get off the sidelines.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, Mark Esper should have been there instead of Leon Panetta.
Tim Miller: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: I mean, I love Leon and he did a perfectly great job and the message came through loud and clear, but it would have been better coming from Mark Esper.
Tim Miller: Yes, absolutely.
Claire McCaskill: Or even McMaster.
Tim Miller: Yeah, any of them, any of them. Where were they? Where are they? John Kelly, what are you doing?
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, where is John Kelly and Mattis? Where are they? I agree. All right, so what’s going to happen now? What do you think this addled brain that sounded like the neighbor down the street that’s weird that you can’t get off the phone when he called into Fox last night. What does Civita’s and Susie, what’s her name have?
Tim Miller: Susie Wiles.
Claire McCaskill: And Corey Lewandowski, what do they have in store?
Tim Miller: I don’t know if you’re intentionally mispronouncing all three of their names, but I’m going to pretend that you are just as a troll.
Claire McCaskill: I am. I am.
Tim Miller: Unfortunately, well, not Lewandowski because he was never actually a strategist, but the other two I’ve worked with. Look, I mean, Trump obviously is freelancing a lot of this himself. I mean, last night he calls into Fox. He’s like hitting the keys by accident, like an old man on the phone. You can hear it beeping. So, you know, it’s not exactly a tight ship over there. And the speech in, I guess it was in North Carolina, he’s like pulling the crowd saying, my advisors want me to focus on policy, but I want to be mean, what do you think? And the crowd’s like, mean, you know. So, I don’t know. Does it matter what (inaudible) loves to be the one?
Claire McCaskill: You can’t make it up.
Tim Miller: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: You can’t make this shit up. You just can’t make it up.
Tim Miller: No, it’s totally out of ideocracy and like, it’s just straight out of Hector or Mountain Dew Camacho. And so I think that Trump’s going to keep being Trump. So the question is, what’s Harris going to do? I mean, there are a couple of debates, right? And it’s keeping this same broad message, positive momentum going forward because, you know, it’s not like the Trumps have a secret plan up their sleeve. I mean, what’s going to happen is they’re going to run ads that try to turn her into socialist leftists from California and then Trump’s going to say mean things about her. That’s their campaign.
Claire McCaskill: I would love it if the Harris campaign started pulling some tape of all the times Trump has said, I’m going to have a really good policy on that in two weeks. He does it over and over again. I mean, he told us he was going to get his healthcare plan that was going to be bigger and better and perfect in two weeks, back in 2016, and we still have not seen this elusive health care plan. He was just asked this week about medical abortions.
Tim Miller: Yes.
Claire McCaskill: And he said, well, there’s going to be some specifics on that, but generally, and he really tried to straddle it so hard, it made me hurt how hard he was trying to straddle to keep the extreme anti-choice folks happy, but knowing that politically, he couldn’t go there. And so he won’t even answer that question cleanly or plainly and yet they’re yammering about how we don’t have policy. I mean, I just think she should say, we’ll give you details on policy as soon as you show us your health care plan. Right?
Tim Miller: Yeah, I just think that shows the weakness of all this. It’s like, yeah, like, what are you talking about? What’s Trump’s policy? Like, you had no platform four years ago. Trump’s policy is whatever, you know, comes out of his pie hole at any given moment. So, I don’t think that that is a real vulnerability. I think the more that the Republicans are hyperventilating and being like, Kamala hasn’t done interviews, Kamala has no policy, whatever. Just ignore that, stay focused. I thought she did just enough policy last night and she gave a clear economic policy message that was kind of in the Clinton mold, you know, very sort of middle class focused. The immigration, she did some immigration last night, she did some foreign policy. That’s all she needs to do. She doesn’t need to be putting out five page white papers.
Claire McCaskill: Right.
Tim Miller: Nobody cares about that.
Claire McCaskill: Nobody cares about it. And frankly, this was usually our downfall.
Tim Miller: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: Usually our downfall, that we get so caught up in the weeds that we forget the message. I got to just mention it just because I’m so happy today that I believe RFK is endorsing Trump. I mean, you know, it is like officially now Looney Tunes all the way around. Tim Miller: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: Do you think on any stretch this actually hurts Kamala Harris? The bear carcass man with the worm in his brain is going to go with his conspiracy theorist buddy, Trump. I mean —
Tim Miller: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: — should she worry a bit about that?
Tim Miller: I don’t think she should worry about it. I have a kind of two minds about this because RFK was a huge threat when Biden was in the race, right, because he was picking up a lot of the double haters. Those people have all coalesced around Kamala now. So in a lot of ways, having a smaller third party number is good because of the structural disadvantages Democrats have in the electoral college. If Trump has a ceiling of 47, 48, maybe at most, you know, you want to be able to get as high as possible, 51, 51 and a half. So just mathematically, I don’t think it hurts that much and I certainly, thematically, it doesn’t hurt having the anti-vax crazies all in one boat. I had a slight kind of wish that maybe RFK was going to cleave off. It was going to do like a reverse Jill Stein to Hillary to Trump, like kind of an accidentally hurt him by cleaving off like 1%. So, that’s the only downside, I think, to him endorsing.
Claire McCaskill: So the operation on the other side —
Tim Miller: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: — the counter-programming piece. I noticed their counter-programming yesterday, the advance team was so good, they walked into a bakery with Vance. The people there didn’t know who he was. He didn’t know what to say. The woman says, I’m J.D. Vance. I went for vice president. She goes, okay. Like —
Tim Miller: Okay.
Claire McCaskill: — it was —
Tim Miller: Cool bro.
Claire McCaskill: They didn’t even —
Tim Miller: Can you turn the camera down?
(BEGIN AUDIO)
J.D. Vance: I’m J.D. Vance. I’m running for vice president. Good to see you.
Unknown: Okay.
J.D. Vance: We’re going to do two dozen.
Unknown: Okay.
J.D. Vance: Yeah. Just a random sort of stuff here. Just everything. Yeah, a lot of glazed here, some sprinkle stuff, some of these cinnamon rolls, just whatever makes sense.
(END AUDIO)
Claire McCaskill: They didn’t even have fillers. I mean, the basics of an advanced stop by in presidential is you have supporters as fillers. So there are people around that are looking adoringly at your candidate. And this guy looked like somebody get me out of here. Clearly, these people don’t like me and I don’t know what to say. I mean, what is going on over there?
Tim Miller: Yeah, he’s bad at small talk too. And just contrast it with how awesome the advance was of the Harris-Walz event in Milwaukee where they cut from the convention up to Milwaukee —
Claire McCaskill: Yeah.
Tim Miller: — and it just looked amazing in their full stadium. So what are they doing? Well, I think that Trump is lazy and tired and old. And so he’s only doing like two or three events a week and he barely even leaves his house. I mean, he has two press conferences, one at Mar-a-Lago, one at Bedminster in the last two weeks. So what they have is Vance doing a lot of heavy lifting as far as multiple events a day, going out there, going to the swing states, trying to get local news coverage. The problem with that is that he’s not that good at this.
Claire McCaskill: Right.
Tim Miller: Pretty awkward. People don’t like him. He’s off-pudding. He’s grumpy. And so I think that the theory of the case is, okay, well, we’re going to work J.D. who’s young and we can tell him what to do and get onto the local news in all these various markets and fly him around. But the downside of that is you’re going to have these awkward encounters because he’s J.D.
Claire McCaskill: And now they’re viral. You know, back in the day, you had one bad stop by, you know, he would get buried pretty quickly. But what’s going on now —
Tim Miller: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: — organically in social media, and this isn’t the campaign. These are folks out there that are talented, the content creators that were treated like heroes at our convention. It was really interesting. They had their own rooms. They had their own lounges. They had their own podium. I mean, it was all about these content creators and I had a bunch of them come up and talk to me and I recognized, you know, once they told me what the handles were, I recognize these people —
Tim Miller: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: — but I’d never met them, of course. And they were all there and they’re all creating this stuff and the campaign doesn’t have to do anything.
Tim Miller: Yeah, no. And J.D. makes it easy on them.
Claire McCaskill: He does. Okay. So let me ask you this. Do you think they’re smart to continue to bang on Project 2025 or are we spending too much time on it and should we let it go or should they continue to try to make this the boogie man that America should be afraid of?
Tim Miller: I think it’s good. The way they’ve done it is they’ve kind of put some pretty traditional democratic attacks underneath the Project 2025 label and I like that as a strategy, you know. And so I think that that works and I think that just focusing on the extremism, you know, the extremism of the people that would go work for Trump is compelling.
Claire McCaskill: The last thing I wanted to talk to you about today before I let you go, because I know you’ve got lots to do and I’d like to get home and go to bed. I’m still in the hotel room in Chicago. So here’s the thing. I don’t really know if Kamala Harris and Tim Walz can continue to be the cheerful warriors with all the incoming. What would be the big pep talk you would give them if you were in the room with them?
Tim Miller: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: What would you tell them that they needed to make sure they did what to win every single day for 74 days?
Tim Miller: Yeah. Well, look, I think they can continue to be happy warriors. I love how they’ve had the kind of brush off the shoulder response to the racist and gross attacks on the family. You know, you could get defensive, get bogged down in that, and the Republicans are gonna be gross. They’re gonna go after Tim Walz’s kid. They’re gonna say Kamala Harris just turned black. And like, they should be called out from that by all of us. But the campaign really, I like they kind of laughing at it, diminishing it. You can talk about how pathetic and sad it is. So I think that’s a way to kind of continue to have the happy warrior image. I think we have two jobs basically over the next 70 days. One is continue to activate the base voters. These people that haven’t paid as close of attention, younger voters, you know, voters of color in particular that like don’t watch MSNBC, right? Like the people that just are not as engaged in the news. How are you getting them excited for Kamala Harris? That is going to mean getting Taylor Swift out there, you know, doing the stuff, getting the TikTok’s, working with these influencers, right? Like she’s gotta keep that momentum going for 70 days as having this be a cultural movement. Simultaneously, rhetorically, I always use as my North Star. In Georgia in 2022, Brian Kemp, the conservative governor, won in a pretty landslide. Raphael Warnock won in a landslide, right? There was like 15% of Georgia that voted for Brian Kemp and Raphael Warnock. These are people that have traditional values. A lot of people voted for you back in the day, Claire, that type of person.
Claire McCaskill: Right.
Tim Miller: And I think this convention, a lot of the messaging was reaching out to that person. All that stuff we’re talking about, faith, freedom, patriotism, they got to keep doing that and, you know, rhetorically. And so sometimes those two things are intention, right? Like how do you excite the base while also reaching out to the Brian Kemp voter? I think that’s like their big challenge and they’ve managed it pretty good so far. And I think that’s what they got to be focused on.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah. It’s called persuasion versus getting your folks to vote.
Tim Miller: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: And that is the tension of the last 60 days. Well, I hope that we have a chance to talk either again on this podcast or maybe on the air about the wonderful fundraiser that Trump is having for the J6 criminals at Bedminster.
Tim Miller: I don’t get it. And speaking of one more thing you’ve stolen from the Republicans, we’ve. I can call us we now. The police, she was out there going, he sent rioters to attack police, right? So yeah, we can talk about that more.
Claire McCaskill: All right. Well, you’re the best. Thank you for joining me today. I know you were busy this morning. Former Republican operative now on the side of the force and the force is with him. He’s the host of the “Bulwark” podcast. If you haven’t listened to, it’s really good. And author of “Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell.” Thanks a bunch, Tim.
Tim Miller: Thanks, Claire.
Claire McCaskill: Up next, we’re going to have Cedric Richmond, the former Louisiana congressman and a Harris-Walz campaign co-chair join me to spend a little bit of time unpacking from the campaign’s perspective what they accomplished and what they are seeing down the road. We’ll be back in a moment.
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Claire McCaskill: Welcome back. Now that Tim Miller and I have laid out how the convention was perceived, both in person and on screen, I wanted to get a perspective from inside the campaign. How are they feeling? What are they excited about? What are they worried about? And joining me now for an inside look is the perfect person to discuss this with, Cedric Richmond. He’s the former Louisiana congressman and former advisor to President Biden, and he is now a Harris-Walz campaign co-chair. Welcome Cedric. I’m really honored you’re here.
Cedric Richmond: Thank you, Senator, for having me.
Claire McCaskill: You bet. So I just got to start and I know I’ve already tweeted something at Stephanie this morning. People don’t really know about the talent behind the scenes that make the production value of conventions. Excellent. But man, that was really well done, Cedric. The campaign should be really proud of that convention. I think a new gold standard has been set.
Cedric Richmond: Well, I’ll tell you, I think that it starts at the top. Minyon Moore was an excellent chair. Stephanie Cutter coming in to do the production and then Alex’s CEO, our executive director. I think not only was it a great production, but you have to realize three weeks ago everything changed on what the convention is and what they had to produce. And so they probably did this in two and a half weeks and I think that they pulled it off. It was a miracle but it just goes to show the talent that they have.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, and I think the other thing the convention did, which is so good for our party, is that we showcase the talent that we have on the bench from local officials to law enforcement officials to just regular folks that contributed and then all of the members of Congress and the senators and the governors and the other statewide officials. And Cedric, how did you get them all to be so disciplined about message? I have never seen that kind of discipline from folks who run for office before in my life.
Cedric Richmond: Well, some of them were more disciplined than others.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah.
Cedric Richmond: But in the general sense and theme, I think that most people realized how serious this is. So they stayed on the messages that they wanted to deliver. But the other extraordinary part, and Senator, I think you were dead right in your assessment, was how broad the speakers were from very young people to law enforcement to veterans to teachers to ordinary Americans that just want something different. And I think that the entire convention was wrapped in love of country and I think that that’s going to resonate and I think that people are going to recognize what’s at stake.
Claire McCaskill: Are you at all worried? It is so smart the way that every night of the convention, the message came through loud and clear, come join us. If you love your country, come join us. We don’t care what party you have been or you are. We don’t care how you feel about any certain issue we just want you, because of the values of our country, to join us at this important moment in this really delicious, diverse coalition of folks that want to stop a really dangerous guy from stepping back in the Oval. Are you worried that the base is, I mean, you guys got to do two things, right, over the next two months? You’ve got to keep the base at a fever pitch to drive out a high level of voting amongst our traditional coalition, but you also have to keep persuading people in these swing states. They’re called that for a reason because they have voters that go back and forth from Democrat to Republican, from Democrat to Republican. How are you going to manage that tension over the next 60 days?
Cedric Richmond: Well, on the turnout and the GOTV and enthusiasm, I think that we continue to try to build it. We’re not under the illusion that you’re gonna keep this excitement up from a convention all the way to Election Day. So we expect it to go down and then we build back up with Election Day as the goal. And to the extent that we have early voting and voting by mail wrapped up in between, we will continue to reach out and inspire those voters to get involved. And so the way I look at it is you have to inspire people and you have to remind them, why bother go out and vote? Why bother wait in line? Why bother do all of those things? And really you do that by answering the question, what’s in it for me? And we’ll continue to do that. And then we’ll continue to make our case to undecided voters that there’s a place for you in this party, but at the end of the day, this administration will wake up every day, trying to figure out how to make your life better.
Claire McCaskill: It was artfully and deftly done that so many speakers took apart Donald Trump without ever saying his name. It was remarkable. The Obamas did it. Oprah Winfrey did it. Tim Walz did it and the vice president did it. And one of the ways that is happening is through the use of Project 2025. How big a piece is 2025, that project, going to have in the paid advertising? Do you see that as a continuing vessel for the anti-Trump stuff without going after him personally?
Cedric Richmond: When we need to draw contrast with our policy versus his, that’s what we will go to. And elections are about contrast. And it’s a binary choice between two people and we’re gonna make that case and we’re gonna continue to show the dangers of Project 2025 and how for most American families, it is very detrimental.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, and he is really trying to weasel away from it, but I think you guys even have video of him, don’t you, at that dinner? I know you’ve got the transcript of what he said at the dinner in April of 2022 when he said just straight out, they are putting together the framework of what we’re going to do in the next administration. I just hope you guys don’t let him weasel out, which I know you won’t. There are so many good people on the campaign. I mean, you are part of an amazing team. I don’t think there’s ever been a team put together quite like this since I’ve been around politics and I’m old, Cedric. I’m really old. Okay. So were you worried about not giving uncommitted delegates a chance to speak? Was there a lot of discussion about that? I know it had to be a difficult decision, and I know that everyone is taking very seriously the concerns that so many in our party have about what is going on in Gaza in terms of the innocent lives that are being lost. Is there anything you can tell us about that decision and how it was made?
Cedric Richmond: Well, we want to hear from everybody in the party, but you know, and I know that this convention came together very quick with a bunch of moving parts. And to the extent that Vice President Harris has strong opinions on what’s happening in the Middle East, we wanted it to be her voice. We wanted her to address the issue. And we take all our delegates seriously. And the one thing I will say is we took uncommitted seriously. But it just didn’t happen that they were on the platform and that they had to speak. But I think what was most important is that the American people got to hear from the person that will be in the Oval Office, the person that will set the policy on what she believes, what she wants and where her values are.
Claire McCaskill: I’ve had people that have said to me, you know, I would volunteer, but you know, I just don’t know that I want to do what they’re going to ask me to do. And I don’t know that I want to knock on a stranger’s door. Can you just briefly let folks know about the variety of things that you could do as volunteers that it doesn’t require that you go door to door and knock on strangers doors? I’m afraid we’re losing some foot soldiers because they think the only thing that people are going to ask him to do is something that they’re just uncomfortable with.
Cedric Richmond: Well, look, it is a very divided country and it’s very volatile time. I understand that. I understand their concerns, but there are multiple ways to do it, some are through official ways of going and volunteering in a campaign. Look, there’ll be states like Louisiana, which is my state, which will be a donor state. We’re going to register people to vote with all of our activity and most of our energy will be geared towards those states that will decide this presidency. And that’s the blue wall of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. And then we’ll go out to the sunbelt, Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, Georgia, all of those states. So what you could do is anytime you’re just home and you’re really feeling antsy about this election, you could go to the headquarters, pick up postcards and drop postcards to everybody, you know, that lives in those states because one, they will see how serious it is to you that you took the time to drop them a postcard. But the truth is you could call them, you can text them, you can e-mail them. But we just have to remind people what’s at stake and we have to make sure that we take this excitement and we turn it into action.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, I have a grandson that’s starting at the University of Wisconsin next week and I told him, listen, you need to transfer your registration to Wisconsin, which you certainly legally can do. There’s no issue with that whatsoever. And people need to think about that. Are there college students in your world that are going to school in one of those states? I mean, we do voter stuff on campuses, obviously, but there are many kids that just keep their registration at home. And if they’re from a bright blue place and they’re going to school in one of the battleground states, they need to move that registration. And isn’t it fun that we got North Carolina on the map, Cedric?
Cedric Richmond: North Carolina’s on the map.
Claire McCaskill: It’s on the map.
Cedric Richmond: And I had to go back the other day to realize that President Obama won it, so.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, absolutely.
Cedric Richmond: We know what to do. We know how to do it. And I think with that gubernatorial race going on over there, that’s as much contrast as you can ever have, so —
Claire McCaskill: Yeah.
Cedric Richmond: — I’m excited about North Carolina. And look, in four years, I think we’re going to have more states in play. And so it’s continued to grow the map for us into purple states and continue to articulate our values. And I think that between our coach and our VP, we have a wonderful team.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, we do. I’m glad you’re on it and I’m really, really honored and glad you took a few minutes to spend some time with us this morning. Tell everybody on the team that they really did a great job this week, especially all the folks on the team, Cedric, that don’t get the public love. You know who they are. You know the ones that are running digital. You know the ones that they know their way around because they started working in campaigns when they were teenagers. Tell all those kids for me how proud we are of them and their commitment to this cause.
Cedric Richmond: Well, certainly, we’re doing that. We’ll also tell you that keep doing what you’re doing. It’s critically important. We’re so proud of what you’re doing and it makes me very happy that as a freshman legislator, I went out to campaign for you and your re-election bid. So, you know, things happen for a reason, but you are where you are and I think you’re going to help us save this country.
Claire McCaskill: Well, listen, there’s a lot of karma in this thing and I think maybe, I mean, I know it’s negative and I’m not supposed to say this in this campaign, but I’m not on the campaign so I can say it. I just want you to know the ultimate karma is Donald Trump getting dusted by Kamala Harris.
Cedric Richmond: Absolutely.
Claire McCaskill: That is great karma and you helping me back in the campaign and you helping me out this morning shows you got a lot of good karma coming your way too. Cedric, thanks so much for your time. We really appreciate having you. Cedric Richmond is a former congressman from Louisiana, former advisor to President Biden, and now a Harris-Walz campaign co-chair.
Cedric Richmond: Thank you.
Claire McCaskill: And thanks for joining us for today’s installment of “How to Win 2024.” And a big thanks to my co-host today, the “Bulwark’s” Tim Miller, and our great guest, Cedric Richmond. Remember to subscribe to MSNBC Premium for ad free episodes of “How to Win 2024” on Apple podcasts, as well as exclusive bonus content from all your favorite MSNBC podcasts and shows. This show is produced by Vicki Vergolina. Janmaris Perez is our associate producer. Catherine Anderson and Bob Mallory our audio engineers. Our head of audio production is Bryson Barnes. Aisha Turner is the executive producer for MSNBC Audio. And Rebecca Kutler is the senior vice president for content strategy at MSNBC. Search for “How to Win 2024” wherever you get your podcasts and follow the series.