Tamara Keith and Amy Walter on why Democrats quickly lined up behind Kamala Harris

NPR’s Tamara Keith and Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter join Amna Nawaz to discuss the latest political news, including the future of the presidential race with President Biden dropping out and Democrats lining up to support Vice President Kamala Harris.

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Amna Nawaz: To discuss the future of the presidential race now, I’m joined by our Politics Monday team. That is Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter and Tamara Keith of NPR, who joins us from Rehoboth Beach with the pool of reporters covering President Biden.

Great to see you both.

So, Amy, you saw there Laura reported earlier on just the deluge of support from Democratic lawmakers lining up behind Vice President Harris. And a lot of the names who’d been previously floated as potential challengers, Governor Gavin Newsom of California, Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, have all endorsed her now.

Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report: Yes.

Amna Nawaz: Why do you think the party coalesced around her so quickly?

Amy Walter: I think they realized that it was getting late very quickly. It’s not Yogi Berra, it’s getting late early, and that there’s only three weeks until the convention. We only have four months until Election Day, and that they had spent three weeks basically wringing their hands after the June 27 debate about what to do about Joe Biden, watching their poll numbers really sink very deeply and downballot candidates really starting to get incredibly nervous about the impact of the top of the ticket on their own races.

So I think what they saw was that they needed to line up immediately behind a different candidate and put all their effort into making that work.

Amna Nawaz: And, Tam, we have seen, she’s hit the ground running. Vice President Harris visited the campaign headquarters earlier today, addressed the staff. That is now her team.

And she delivered this message about how she plans to take a powerful message directly to former President Trump. Take a listen.

Kamala Harris, Vice President of the United States (D) and U.S. Presidential Candidate: Predators who abused women,fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So, hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type.

Amna Nawaz: Tam, there is the taking on Donald Trump part of this, and there’s also the potentially shoring up parts of the voting blocs where President Biden had been weak. What’s the Harris strategy there? Can she do that?

Tamara Keith, National Public Radio: Already, young voters are more excited than they were before. She is a very memeable candidate, and her videos are all over TikTok, and young people are excited.

You’re seeing — and I will be honest, I can’t fully explain it, but you are seeing coconut emojis all over the place because of something she said a year ago that has become a meme.

So she is bringing new life to this campaign for Democrats. As we have talked about many times before, and even before that very bad debate that President Biden had, Democrats had an unease with him. There were worries that he was too old. Democrats told pollsters. They said it in focus groups. They said that they hoped that the party would have another candidate.

I don’t think many people imagined that it would happen exactly this way, but this is what has happened. President Biden had said he is a big believer in fate. Fate intervened with that debate, and then the three weeks of just growing concern and anxiety among Democrats.

And you saw it with the fund-raising; $81 million in the first 24 hours, that is record-breaking fund-raising coming from small-dollar donors. These are people — 60 percent of them were new, according to the campaign. These were people who had been holding back, who weren’t excited, and there was some sort of a pent-up demand among Democrats to show that excitement.

She’s also certainly reaching out to African American voters, the Divine Nine Black sororities and fraternities. There is a well of energy that exists for Harris and who she is and the history she could make. Of course, Republicans also want to tap into that and paint her as extreme.

Amna Nawaz: So, Amy, from what we know about why voters had been backing away from the Biden/Harris campaign in the last several months, the donor support is one thing, party officials and lawmakers lining up behind her is another.

Does all of that translate to the polls? Do we know?

Amy Walter: Well, that is a question.

And so just to get a little bit wonky for one second, but — I think we have to be careful not to look at polls taken before Sunday as indicative of where Kamala Harris is in terms of her matchup with Donald Trump or even how people feel about her.

Now, they may have answered polls in which they said, when asked, what do you think about Kamala Harris being the president or running up against…

Amna Nawaz: These are hypothetical matchups, right?

Amy Walter: But they’re hypothetical. In the same way that I could ask you about something theoretical about like a meal you’re going to have, but until you actually have it, you can’t really tell me what the experience was.

So I think it’s going to be an interesting few weeks as people start to digest this. And you’re right. I think, at minimum, what it does, though, it does energize both the donor base and voter base that has been sort of depressed, for lack of a better term. So what this does is, it helps to raise her floor, in other words.

Like, if she gets the base back, that’s really good news if you are the Harris campaign. The challenge is going to be getting those swing voters onto her side. And that — we don’t know yet how they are going to react either to her, the way she came into this position, and the fact, remember, she brings — she does bring some energy to the Democratic base, but she carries all the same baggage because, as we will hear from Republicans, she was principally sourced to work on the border.

She is in the White House when a whole bunch of other stuff passed, including the Inflation Reduction Act and others that they are no doubt going to remind voters that she can’t separate herself from the actions of the administration as a whole.

Amna Nawaz: Well, Tam, to that point, we have already seen Republicans working very hard to link her to President Biden, to what they call his failed policies.

And if you look at the Republican play, naming J.D. Vance to the ticket was really a doubling down on the base, right? And it’s a straight play for that blue wall, those four states he kept mentioning over and over again of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Ohio at the Republican National Convention.

In the world of potential running mates for a possible Vice — a possible President Harris nomination here, nominee here, where do Dems have the most potential advantage? Who could help her out most, if needed, against these Republican — this Republican ticket?

Tamara Keith: Well, there are some swing state Democratic governors who could certainly help, the governor of Pennsylvania, for instance, or the governor of North Carolina, Roy Cooper, who is someone who is actually quite popular in a swing state, if you’re being generous.

Generally, it’s been a Republican state, but he’s a Democrat who has won twice with Trump on the ballot. That is a state that has been a reach for Democrats and is something they could be looking for.

But I also want to just, like, be realistic about how important the vice presidential pick is. We all love to talk about it. Veepstakes are extremely fun. And it’s great to play those games and think about scenarios.

But, in the end, the president — the nominee is running for president. The vice presidential nominee can only do so much. They can do harm, but they can only help so much.

Amna Nawaz: Amy, you agree with that?

Amy Walter: Absolutely. I mean, it helps around the margins.

Amna Nawaz: Yes.

Amy Walter: But in an era where everything is decided by the margins, I think that’s important.

There’s also the question about sending a message, not just about the candidate, who they are, where they’re from, but what their age is, what their background is. It would be a generational shift to pick somebody like Josh Shapiro, who’s in his late 40s, and having Kamala Harris. It would also sort of make a Gen X argument for the Democrats, versus a baby boom presidential candidate on the Republican side.

Amna Nawaz: I realize there’s still, Amy, some questions ahead. Obviously, Democrats have to work out the rules for the infrastructure moving forward with the nominating process, but you noted as we began this conversation, it was three weeks ago that debate unfolded that led to this whirlwind of activity we have seen in the last few weeks.

And we have basically that exact same time to go before the Democratic Convention begins.

Amy Walter: Right.

Amna Nawaz: Is the chaos portion of this election cycle over, or is there greater uncertainty ahead?

Amy Walter: Yes, I’m never going to say anything’s over now.

(Laughter)

Amy Walter: I think we should feel pretty good about that.

But I do think we have to — as Tam pointed out, and Laura, the campaign infrastructure itself seems to be settling into place. Basically, they’re conveying the Biden campaign to the Harris campaign, but that’s going to be an integration that’s going to take a little bit of time. I’m sure there are going to be some bumps along the way there.

And then Harris has to go out and perform as a candidate. She hasn’t had to do that as a candidate since she was on the — well, not even on the trail in 2020, when they were sort of campaigning remotely, and then before that in her failed bid for the nomination.

So this is a very different experience that she is going to have to get up to speed on.

Amna Nawaz: Different experience for all of us to cover as well.

Amy Walter: Yes.

Tamara Keith: Yes.

Amna Nawaz: Tam, very quickly, a couple seconds left. Go ahead.

Tamara Keith: Yes, I think it’s going to be a race to define Harris between Republicans and the Trump campaign and Harris and her campaign.

Amna Nawaz: All right, that is Tamara Keith and Amy Walter, our Politics Monday team.

Always great to see you both. Thank you.

Amy Walter: You’re welcome.

Tamara Keith: You’re welcome.