What's Kamala Harris' Campaign Strategy Down the Stretch?

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We talked to the lead singer of The Midnight yesterday.
You can find that on the Emory Songer podcast page
as well at kaffybe dot com and also the free
iHeartRadio app.

Speaker 3 (00:06):
Yeah, it was a great interview.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
It's cool to hear him talk about the instruments that
they use and how they kind of found some of
those instruments and some of those electronic like pads and
things from old like eighties commercials and repurposed them.

Speaker 3 (00:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
And that's the thing, right, It's just you know, like
when we sit here as a collective unit society, right,
is there a more powerful thing than nostalgia? Is there
something more powerful to us that we enjoy than sitting
and reminiscing about days that we either lived or wished

(00:42):
we would have lived. I could tell you I'm not
an eighties baby. I'm a nineties kid. But I love
everything eighties. The esthetic of the eighties, the big hair,
the music, the outfits, the way the world seemed to be.
I know that we look back and look fondly at
the good stuff. We don't think or talk to much
about stuff that might have been bad that happened. But

(01:04):
you know, for the most part, I look back at
the eighties and the cars and all that stuff. It
just felt like a fun time to be alive, you know.
And these guys the Midnight really because they utilize some
of those technologies today's technology to replicate a sound from
that time period. You could listen to it and get
nostalgic for a time period you didn't even live in. Yeah,

(01:26):
there's something cool about that. Anyway, there you go. I'm
excited for that. I'm going to be rushing out of
here so I can go do that, And I'm trying
to keep myself like focused. Kamala Harris is at Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania.
That's a real place, and she's speaking in front of
what looks like to be a big barn, and the
barn above it says country over Party. Do you believe that?

(01:49):
How many people? How many people say that these days?
Country over party? And is it legit?

Speaker 3 (01:55):
Now?

Speaker 1 (01:55):
I'm sure, I'm sure there's plenty of people out there
that say that they believe that, But do they actually
practice that? Do people think about their constituents or the
country as a whole before they act, or are they
thinking about themselves in their own personal agendas. It's hard
to know. What's interesting is Kamala Harris has gotten a
little bit more candid about this stuff. Recently, she was
with Charlemagne the God, which is a rapper turned radio host,

(02:18):
and talked to him in Detroit. He coasts the Breakfast Club,
which you can listen to on the free iHeartRadio app as.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
Well, very popular reaches.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
You know the demographic that I think Kamala feels like
she's missing, and that is minorities, people of color, and
charl Mane the God, you know, he asked some pointed questions,
just like it sounds like you just rattle off the
same talking points over and over again, like how do
you respond to somebody who accuses you of that? And
she's like, well, it's important to repeat myself because people

(02:46):
aren't going to remember what they don't hear over and
over again. It's like, okay, well we've done that. We've
produced commercials. You and I it's important for a commercial
to you know, have the name of the business or
something in it. At least three times. I agree with that.
That's in a thirty second commercial that you're try trying
to get people to remember in case they need something.
She's saying this with cameras with microphones at these rallies.

(03:08):
She's literally just spouting off kind of the same lines
over and over again. She's not changing it up, she's
not talking about things differently. She's literally like this was
mark Rubio's fault, right, Like the big problem with Marko
Rubio was Donald Trump called him out for being a
robot when he's on stage and just going through talking points,
and then he kept accidentally falling into those talking points,

(03:30):
like he just wasn't ready to kind of be fluid
and be on the fly. Now is that wrong?

Speaker 3 (03:37):
Is that right? I'm not sure.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
But when you're a pro at those lines, how much
do we know you've practiced that or how much do
you actually believe those That's the question of politics in general,
especially with this person. Now she's going to have to
probably play a little bit differently with Brett Bayer. That
is a pre recorded live to tape interview. They say
the only edits that they will make, and again I
can't prove this, I'm not in the editing room, But

(04:00):
the only edits of that conversation they are making are
going to be her, are going to be anything to
do with her answers it's going to be to fit
it into the show format, and you know, with the
breaks and all that stuff for time, they're not going
to edit things specifically. And if there's anything that I
would trust, and I know Donald Trump has called out
Fox News and says giving democrats time, and I've had

(04:22):
people do that to me too, Just say, hey, talking
two Democrats at all and letting them talk on your
radio show, that makes you like a quasi communist.

Speaker 3 (04:30):
And I don't like that. I don't like that viewpoint.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
And again I'm not here to just you know, like
say that Donald Trump shouldn't have that opinion. But equal
time is a thing. Right if you're a true journalist
or you really care about information and not just playing
tribal party politics, you should want to hear from the
person that you don't like or the person you disagree with. Fundamentally,

(04:54):
I think it's important to hear people in different ways.
And this is the one big critique we've had of
Kamalah is that she hasn't gone and done interviews or
hasn't talked to the press, hasn't taken enough questions from
people that might actually challenge her. She's done nothing but
very friendly interviews to this point, Charlemagne, who you would
think that might be a friendly interview. He actually held

(05:15):
her feet to the fire on a couple of things. Now,
he did kind of soften up on certain stances, including
her record as Attorney general in California. But for the
most part, listening back to that, I found that to
be I learned quite a bit about the way that
she reacted to some of the questions in the interview.
She's going to have more of those moments you would
think with a legitimate journalist that is more right leaning

(05:36):
on a right leaning a right politically leaning news network
like Brett Bayer on Fox News, and she is going
to be challenged here. We've been asking for this. How
are we all of a sudden going to condemn Donald
Trump's condemning Fox News for having her on? This is
one of the reasons that we've been complaining about her campaign.
So I'm going to ask you, matt Is, just like,

(05:58):
so I don't have to hear myself talk too much
about these angles. How do you feel about this specifically?
Is this going to be a healthy exercise? And do
you trust that Brett Bayer and Fox News is going
to do a good enough job of trying to expose
some things that we have questions about that nobody else
really has challenged Kamala Harrison during this campaign.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
Yeah, I think it'll be interesting to see if if
there are any questions, you know, I mean, because I
think that everybody's watching for a different reason, Like if
you're like, if you're a Democrat watching, you just want
to see and you're framing how she handles walking into
the hornet's nest, so to speak, right.

Speaker 1 (06:35):
And then it's the same feeling the Republicans had watching
Trump do the debates on CNN, ABC, CBS, right, and
so I think, but flipping it around, it's kind of like, oh,
let's see how Kamala responds whenever she's not lob softballs
as long as is that's not what Brett Bayer does,
which we have no reason to believe that he will.

(06:56):
Now we will have this audio tomorrow. This is actually
happening in the last hour of our today. I'm not
going to hop in there. I'm not going to like
have Brett bay Er take over my five o'clock hour.
I have no idea what he's going to ask. I
think it'll be a better exercise for us to have
a little time to kind of find spots of that
that maybe either we want to play or at least

(07:16):
talk about tomorrow. And that's something that we'll be able
to do. But I do think that this could be
a useful exercise, not to change people's minds, but to
learn more about this candidate that we have literally been
accusing for the last several weeks, I just refusing to
do difficult interviews with people that may challenge her on
a variety of topics. And now that she's actually agreeing
to do something like this, I don't understand why, all

(07:38):
of a sudden we're villainizing that decision. But it's interesting
if you have thoughts on it, You got thoughts on
what you'd like to hear tonight, and if there is
some way that she can change your mind at least
about her as a candidate or her as a politician,
even if you're not going to vote for I think
that's interesting. I'd like to know what you're looking for tonight.
Call us at four h two five five eight eleven

(07:58):
ten four h two five five eight to eleven ten.
It's news radio eleven ten KFAB and where he's singer
to finish this kind of thought process on this as
a conversation. Though early voting is happening in so many
states already, some pushback is this is too little, too
late for me. I'm just going to like, Okay, Yeah,
she's deciding here in the last couple of weeks that

(08:20):
you know, in a majority of America is going to
vote on election Day. And I'm not here to say
that that's not happening. But there have been hundreds of
thousands of people that have already put their vote in,
including one hundred year old Jimmy Carter, which, by the way,
has officially because early voting has started in Georgia. His
family proudly announced that he's already cast his ballot for
Kamala Harris. Now, what would be very sad is to

(08:41):
find out that Jimmy Carter passes away sometime very shortly
after the election and they literally were only keeping him
alive so his vote could count and they could utilize
that as some sort of endorsement for this candidate. We
saw the video of him at his one hundredth birthday.
Not great, not great, Like they're parading this guy still
at this age, in this health around for what political reasons?

(09:03):
Of course, because politics is all these people have to
cling to. It's really sad now anyway, the pushback would
be too little, too late. Kamala, you waited until you
have a bunch of people who are already early voting.
You waited until weeks after the only time we got
a chance to watch you debate Donald Trump. You've waited
until literally less than three weeks until election day. I'm

(09:27):
not even going to give you a chance to those
to those people. I mean, almost everybody's already made up
their mind. Why would she do this?

Speaker 3 (09:33):
Now?

Speaker 1 (09:33):
What does she stand to gain by doing this except
getting people off of her back? What do you think,
Matt Case doing this interview? Yeah, like is there is it?
What does she stand to gain? Realistically? Knowing that ninety
eight percent of Americans have probably made up their mind
and people are either going to hate watch this or
they're going to be like curiosity. It's going to be

(09:53):
curiosity watch for them like me, you know, it's just like, Okay,
So what's she going to get asked and how she
going to handle those questions? Will Retbayer kind of like reiterate, No,
this was what the question was Is that going to
make a factor or a dent into something. Is something
strange going to happen that's going to actually change people's mind?
Is there anything to gain from that for her? Or

(10:13):
is there a chance that maybe there's a blunder in
here that could actually cost her more than it could
gain her And that would just reiterate a lot of
people's opinions from the get go. Is that she was
just ducking these kinds of interviews to begin with.

Speaker 2 (10:26):
Because of that, I would guess that there's a lot
of behind the scenes chatter in democratic circles trying to
figure out, Man, how does this Trump guy keep sticking around?
You know, like, look at all this stuff we've done
to get rid of him, and he just keeps sticking around,
and he keeps gaining in popularity.

Speaker 1 (10:44):
And he's I mean, they had to be feeling really
good a month ago. Looking at what the polls were doing.
It looked like they were kind of pulling ahead, not
just olll polling Mamala of the country, but taking the
country back. This fetch isn't going to happen. Isn't going
to happen? Stop trying to make fetch happen.

Speaker 3 (11:04):
What's that? What's that from mean girls?

Speaker 1 (11:06):
Oh, one of the girls is trying to say it's
so fetch, and then the other girls like, shut up,
fetch is not going to happen. Stop making fetch happen.
So is that you telling me that the Mamma is
not happening? But it needs no, it doesn't need it
does need to Noma of the Country is the weant
to be a TV show on pas TV, PAXTV is

(11:27):
no more So that's hilarious. But anyway, the point that
I'm trying to make here for from her as a
from a candidacy perspective, right is you thought you had
him where you wanted him up by like six five
or six points in these swing states. All of a
sudden it really felt like maybe all seven of them
could be kind of leaning Democrat, and that momentum stalled

(11:50):
out because that's what politics does. And then people on
the right I think got a little bit remobilized, knowing, hey,
this is not a thing like where or not. Too
many people I think just assume Donald Trump is going
to win that don't pay attention to any legitimate news sources.
So when all of a sudden they were being told
from too many people that this was either very close

(12:11):
or Kamala was winning. All of a sudden, the polls
started to rebound in Trump's favor. Now again, it completely
depends on where you're looking and what sources that you trust,
and too many people just get kind of locked into
these little corners on both sides and refuse to see
what the other side might be saying, or what maybe
people in the middle are saying. What I'm saying is
if there was ever a question as to the resiliency

(12:33):
of not necessarily just Donald Trump as a candidate, but
the conservative movement, whether it's you can say it's make
America great Again or MAGA, you can say it is
just we want change in this country that is more
localized government, more states in charge, more us not giving
a ton of money to people that aren't ourselves, tax cuts,

(12:54):
things like that. Even if they're not totally understanding the
plans that Donald Trump may have or what Kamala Harris
may have, the resiliency is, no matter what you think
is going to happen, forty five percent of this country
is going to be voting for each party at least
and that's just a fact of life. We lost an
opportunity to have, you know, a pretty big third party presence.

(13:15):
With RFK losing all of his steam throughout the year
and then eventually just dropping out of the race and
endorsing Donald Trump. We lost an opportunity there, I think,
to have a third party that could you know, mix
that up a little bit.

Speaker 3 (13:27):
But looking at it.

Speaker 1 (13:28):
Right now, you can say, oh no, you know, most
of the country is is liberal, absolutely one percent. There's
no way a Republican should ever win. We need to
get rid of the electoral college because the popular votes
all that matters. The people on the left that say
that they don't get it, and the people on the
right to say I can't. I don't know a single
person that votes for the Democrats. I don't know any

(13:49):
single person that would do this. If the Democrats win,
it's a phony election. It does, it shouldn't count, and
they cheated. You're not paying attention either. There are very
easily forty five percent of America on both sides of this.
It's the ten percent in the middle that generally is
flippy floppy, and maybe it's even more than that, to
be honest with you, in certain elections, but it feels

(14:10):
like more people than ever have been kind of convicted
and convinced that one side is better than the other
through the last couple of election cycles.

Speaker 3 (14:19):
But at least ten.

Speaker 1 (14:19):
Percent of the country sits there on the fence trying
to figure this stuff out. And that's what decides elections,
especially in very specific locales like the seven swing states
that we continuously are talking about. So what happens when
you have a candidate like Kamala Harris that you know,
we don't know too much about what she would be
like as a leader because she was never a governor,
She spent very little time as a state as a

(14:40):
senator in Washington, DC, she was only an attorney general
before that. She wasn't even the mayor of anything. We
don't know what she would be like as like a
legitimate leader. Never ran legitimately and got caucused or primary
for the only time she did that, she got knocked
out of the race well before the Iowa caucus in
the start of the actual process. She got appointed Vice
the president essentially, and then they waited too long to

(15:02):
find a replacement for Biden, so she got handed the
keys to the kingdom essentially. In this campaign, we know
nothing about this person. And then they were protecting her
from debates, They were protecting her from questionable interviews with
legitimate journalism from the opposite side of the aisle, and
those are the things that concerned a lot of people
are like, she's being protected here. We don't even know

(15:25):
what she believes in because we've never been told, Well,
you want to know. The answer to that question is
did they have much of a choice. Did they even
know what they were sitting on? They may not have,
And maybe that was the thing. We're going to run
the ball. We're not even going to take any chance.
We're running the ball or playing strong defense. And then
once we kind of understand what kind of talent we have,
maybe we start chucking it around a little bit and

(15:45):
I think we're gonna get into the Hey, we need
to start throwing some short passes part of the campaign here.
So is this interview a short pass or a long pass?
We're too late for long passes, too late for that.
Can you trust a quarterback that we've literally just been
handing them like he's been handing the ball off. He's
been the Iowa quarterbacking situation for the last five years
and now all of a sudden, we're going to start
throwing forty five yard bombs. There's no reason to do that.

(16:10):
We cannot make that assumption that this is a trust.
There's not enough people to win left for us to
be able to throw a long pass. This is a
short pass.

Speaker 2 (16:19):
So what you're saying is mamaa of the Country is
a bit of a game manager.

Speaker 3 (16:24):
Yes she is, and no she's not. Mamla.

Speaker 1 (16:30):
She's a game manager, and the Democrats are making her
a game manager. Even if she may want to go
out and about and do this stuff. There's just not
enough of a ripple effect that'll come from an interview
like this at this stage of the game for me
to think that this is actually going to matter at
the end of the day. It's going to be interesting
for curiosity's sake, but I'm just not sure that it's
actually going to make any difference when it comes to

(16:51):
the actual votes.

Speaker 3 (16:51):
Does that make sense? Yeah, So yeah, we're down.

Speaker 1 (16:54):
They're down by twenty five points in the fourth quarter,
and they want to make it look like, hey, we're
trying everything and them trying everything is you know, five
yard en routes and Leonard throw the ball a little bit.

Speaker 3 (17:07):
That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (17:07):
I see break out, the option have ten walls at tailback.
There we go a little half back pass. Hopefully this
analogy landed with some people. I'm not so sure it did.