Tamara Keith and Amy Walter on the sustainability of Harris' campaign momentum

NPR’s Tamara Keith and Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter join Geoff Bennett to discuss the latest political news, including the momentum behind Vice President Harris’ campaign, Democrats labeling Trump and his allies as “weird” and the criticism surrounding the pick of JD Vance as the Republican vice presidential candidate.

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Geoff Bennett: And for some analysis of one of the busiest weeks of the 2024 presidential race so far, it’s our Politics Monday team. That’s Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter and Tamara Keith of NPR.

Hello, hello.

Tamara Keith, National Public Radio: Hello.

Geoff Bennett: So, Vice President Harris’ campaign launch was greeted with enthusiasm, energy, and a ton of money from Democrats, Tam.

The question is, how can her campaign sustain this momentum for the next 99 days into Election Day?

Tamara Keith: Right. Well, the goodness for them is that there’s only 99 days until Election Day.

The campaign says that they got 100 and…

(Coughing)

Tamara Keith: So sorry. You go.

Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report: A hundred and eighty million, right, something like that.

Geoff Bennett: Almost $200 million.

Amy Walter: Two hundred millions dollars to do that.

Look, there has been — we were talking about this before we went on the air.There has been a pent-up enthusiasm among Democrats for someone, anybody who could prosecute the case against Donald Trump. They have that now in Kamala Harris.

But do you want — OK. And then I’m going to keep going. And they finally have that ability in Kamala Harris to make that case. Now, look — that’s — I think that’s not the part that she has to be as concerned about right now, is keeping enthusiasm up among Democrats, because it’s not as — some of it is about her, but it’s really, as it’s long been, about not being Donald Trump and having somebody who can make the case against Donald Trump.

Geoff Bennett: One more question for you, Amy, as, Tam, you recover. How are you doing?

Amy Walter: Yes.

Tamara Keith: Working on it.

(Laughter)

Geoff Bennett: OK. So we have seen this polling shift recently. V.P. Harris is within one point of Trump with likely voters. And this is a major improvement when you look at where President Biden was.

Amy Walter: Yes.

Geoff Bennett: He was behind six points after the debate just a month ago. Is this national shift something that we’re seeing in battleground states as well?

Amy Walter: Yes, not as dramatic as that, but what we’re seeing in some of the battleground state polls that have come out in this last week is a shift two to three points in Harris’ favor, which is good news if you’re Kamala Harris.

But, as we discussed with this enthusiasm question, the real challenge, I think, going forward for Harris, isn’t that she got the base consolidated? Well, actually, let me be fair. It wasn’t always a given that the base would be consolidated.

So, in one week, to go from being the vice president who maybe, could be — we don’t know if she’s going to be able to do this, to she’s now gotten the base behind her is something that I think was surprising to a lot of people, including a lot of Republicans, who were hoping for a more dramatic and less unifying experience.

But now she has to go the next step. So getting you two to three points or, in that national poll, moving four or five points gets you in the margin, but it doesn’t get her ahead. So she’s got to make now the sell to the swing voters.

Geoff Bennett: Got it.

So we are expecting some time in the next week for V.P. Harris to name her running mate. She has to do it before August 7 to get the ticket on all 50 state ballots. Who among the reported short list do you think boosts the Democratic ticket in those battlegrounds?

Amy Walter: Yes, in those — well, it goes back to my previous point about, what do you need to do with your V.P. candidate? Do you need to keep the base energized and excited? I don’t really think so.

Remember, Donald Trump’s pick of Mike Pence was because he had a base problem. Evangelicals were not sold on Donald Trump. They didn’t believe that he was going to follow through on many of the promises that he had made on the campaign trail, so Pence was the person to bring those voters in.

Harris, I don’t think has to worry about, where our Democrats going to be. Is the party unified? Instead, she needs somebody to maybe soften the edges of her record. Now, look, we’re hearing President Trump on the campaign — former President Trump on the campaign trail, Republicans who are running downballot, attacking her as somebody who’s way, way, way to the left.

I think Trump called her the most liberal person who has ever run for president. So getting somebody who’s more of a centrist is what I think becomes more critical, which puts a lot of those names like Mark Kelly and Josh Shapiro in the mix.

Geoff Bennett: Well, let’s talk about Donald Trump’s selection of J.D. Vance, because J.D. Vance is getting a lot of scrutiny now for his controversial comments about women without children. He called them childless cat ladies, said they’re miserable with their own lives.

Amy Walter: Right.

Geoff Bennett: He said this years ago while he was running for the Ohio Senate seat.

Amy Walter: Right.

Geoff Bennett: But he has not disavowed the comments, and he said in a podcast just the other day that he stands by the substance of what he said.

There are lots of Democrats now who are more than happy to target J.D. Vance…

Amy Walter: Yes.

Geoff Bennett: including the Senate Majority Leader — Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY): Vance seems to be more erratic and more extreme than President Trump, and I will bet President Trump is sitting there scratching his head and wondering, why did I pick this guy? The choice may be one of the best things he ever did for Democrats.

Geoff Bennett: And Chuck Schumer, we should say, is the majority leader. I have a lot in my head at the moment.

(Laughter)

Geoff Bennett: So I was trying to think, what year is this? Who actually controls the Senate?

(Crosstalk)

Amy Walter: Yes.

Geoff Bennett: In any case, has J.D. Vance — how you doing, Tam?

Tamara Keith: I think I’m better.

Geoff Bennett: All right, there we go.

Tamara Keith: I had some warm water, some cold water, and we’re going to make it.

Geoff Bennett: Our viewers were concerned, so…

(Laughter)

Geoff Bennett: Has J.D. Vance become a liability for Republicans?

Tamara Keith: He has had a really terrible, no good week. He has somehow galvanized people who own cats.

At the — I went to — I covered Harris at this fund-raiser she went to. There were people outside of her fund-raiser holding up signs that said “Cat Ladies for Kamala Harris.” This is after he — essentially, he has a long file of things that he has said back when it didn’t matter what he said, because he wasn’t going to be vice president.

He was the author of a book and a guy running for the Senate in a Republican primary. And so at one point, he had said that people who — I think he called Harris, a woman without children, a cat lady, and others who don’t have children, who should somehow have less political power than those who do.

And that just set people off. Now, maybe those people were never going to vote for Trump. But, generally speaking, with your vice presidential pick, you — either you want it to be additive or you want it to be a wash. You don’t want it to be negative.

And what Trump now has is voters, everyone, the media, very focused on Vice President Harris and this huge amount of fund-raising she had, and then all the remaining oxygen is going to his vice presidential pick and his very bad, no good week and all the crazy things he’s saying or said five years ago that have now become memes.

Amy Walter: Yes.

Geoff Bennett: Yes. And it allows Democrats to settle on this new messaging, where it’s not just offensive; it’s also really weird. We keep hearing like the Democrats like Tim Walz and Brian Schatz and even Vice President Kamala Harris have said on the stump that the things that Trump and Vance and other Republicans have said are just weird.

Dissect that as a strategy.

Amy Walter: Well, we talked about this so much when we were at the convention together, Geoff. Like, his pick of J.D. Vance was a sign of supreme confidence. Like, we got this in the bag. We don’t need to reach out to swing voters. I’m not really worried about those, because we’re winning.

hand he wasn’t put on the ticket to make up for some deficits that Trump may have or to win over new voters. He was put on as an additive onto Trump. And so, of course he’s turned off swing voters, because he was never brought on to appeal to swing voters, and he’s never had to.

Remember, his race in Ohio, this is a race he did win pretty handily, and yet not — for a state as Republican as that, he didn’t have to ever kind of tack to the middle. And he did not win by as big of a percentage as — given where the state is, as he could have or should have.

Geoff Bennett: Tam, earlier we were talking about the — Vice President Harris’ short list for running mates.

Tamara Keith: Yes.

Geoff Bennett: Based on your reporting, who’s on the shortest of short lists at this point?

Tamara Keith: Well, the short list is still quite long, is what my reporting tells me.

Geoff Bennett: OK.

Tamara Keith: We have two sources we have spoken to who are familiar with Harris’ thinking, and they say that she hasn’t narrowed the list down. It’s about a dozen people, that that decision will be made quite soon, though, and that the qualities she’s looking for, among others, are executive experience and the ability to be a governing partner with her, as she sees herself as a governing partner with President Biden.

That could be a lot of people, but it certainly points in the direction of governors, who have executive experience.

Geoff Bennett: All right. Well, Tamara Keith and Amy Walter, thanks, as always.

Amy Walter: You’re welcome.

Tamara Keith: You’re welcome.