Bakari Sellers and Elaina Plott Calabro: The Case for Riding with Biden

hello and welcome to the bulwark podcast i'm your host tim miller all right y'all we got a double header today we'll have elena plot calabro did a profile on kamala harris in part two but up first my man bakari ratings sellers he's a c political analyst. He's an attorney.
His latest book, The Moment,

Thoughts on the Race Reckoning That Wasn't

and How We Can All Move Forward Now.

He also has the distinction of being the last grown man

to make me cry in the last five minutes

of our most recent podcast.

And he agreed to come back a little sooner

maybe than he would have

to kind of set me straight on some things.

Right, Bakari?

Thanks for doing this, man.

I'm not setting you straight. You have enough people at home to set you straight, but I'm looking forward to the conversation.
That's true. I appreciate it.
We might have some toddlers in the background. It's summer vacation.
All right. We got toddlers everywhere in our two households.
All right. I do have one bone to pick with you before we get down to business, if that's okay.
Sure. I saw you mention that you went to Essence Fest in my town this week.
I didn't get a text. I didn't get a call.
Are you scared to be seen with me right now because of my traitorous opinions? Or do we have a beef? What's happening? No, no. Part of it is my fear to be seen with you, especially at Essence Fest.
I didn't know you were in New Orleans. I thought you were in DC.
You're in New Orleans? I'm I'm in New Orleans full time, baby. Oh, my goodness.
I had no idea. We could have gone out.
We came down and enjoyed ourselves. My wife and I got there Tuesday.
We hosted an event for the next mayor of the great city of New Orleans, Helena Moreno, on Wednesday night. And then I came back to spend time with the kids at Fourth of July.
And then I went back to do a book talk on Saturday. Got out of there Saturday night.
All right, baby. Well, next time you have to call me, if I would have seen it live, I would have texted you.
We might have another disagreement. I'm on the fence on Helena.
So you can pitch me on that offline. I don't think the listeners need to hear about the New Orleans mayor.
She's amazing. You need to get to know her.
She's amazing. She's a special person.
I like her. Okay.
There's some other people in the mix. We're thinking about it down here.
All right, here we go. We're talking about Joe Biden.
I told the folks yesterday, you've been out there saying, we got to stay the course. He's in the race.
He's the man. We got to get behind him.
And so I've obviously, and many of us at the Bulldog have been having a different take on the situation. And so I just want to start here just to make sure we're on the same page on some mutual facts.
We both are deeply fundamentally concerned about a Donald Trump second administration. Yes.
Right? Yeah. Agreed.
We both agree that Joe Biden was losing to Donald Trump before the debate started and he asked for the debate. The team asked for the debate because they wanted to allay concerns that voters had about his age.
Do we both agree on that? Or are you not sure about that? I'm not sure about the latter part of that. I mean, I will concur that they asked for the debate.
I'm not sure that was the reasoning behind the ask, but yes. Okay.
And then what about the polls? Do we have a poll trutherism that we need to do here? Or you concur that directionally Joe Biden's losing the race? Directionally Joe Biden's losing the race. And I do think the election is closer than the polls dictate, but that's objective.
That's not an objective fact. All right.
Okay. So that's good.
That's a good place to start from. That's a good beachhead for us to go from.
All right. So then from there, make the pitch for why the right thing to do in this situation, if you have a candidate that's losing that has demonstrated not the best ability to offer a coherent contrast to his opponent, why is the right thing to do at this moment not to discuss whether there are better approaches for defeating the threat that we both agree on? Well, I think that a lot of people, including yourself, are engaging in what I'd call fan fiction, mainly because of the fact that you have to deal with the facts as they are.
We started off with a set of facts. Like, for example, the only person who can inherit the $240 million that they have is Kamala Harris.
There's not anybody else who has any type of infrastructure out there. Who is Gretchen Whitmer or Wes Moore or Raphael Warnock or Gavin Newsom? Who's their chair of the campaign in Nevada or Georgia or Arizona.
They don't have one. The infrastructure is not in place.
There's only one person who can determine whether or not they are on the ballot or not, because they are literally the presumptive nominee. They won the primary.
You can talk about the primary system and how it was won, or you can talk about the fact that Dean Phillips got abused, rightfully so. He wasn't necessarily the right candidate, but you could talk about the fact that it was a truncated primary system or whatever you want to say, but the fact is he won that primary system and he will be the nominee on August 5th.
And the reason it's August 5th and not when we go to the convention, which is the third week in August, is because of the way that the Ohio legislature has moved up their requirement for ballot certification to be on the Ohio ballot. And so there will be a call to make the presumptive nominee the nominee on August 5th.
And so I went down to Essence and talked to a lot of voters. I didn't talk to them as voters.
I just talked to them as normal people. And usually they engage me with the conversation.
I also went fishing with my son last Saturday. We went out and caught some brim with my homeboy, Jared Lodehote, out in Orangeburg County with his uncle.
His uncle's probably, I don't know, probably 70. Jared's daddy's probably 70.
And so we were just out there talking and fishing with our kids. And everybody understood the same thing, that we understand the gravity of a Donald Trump administration, and we're all on board to beat him.
We also understand that Joe Biden got his ass kicked in a debate, but we don't really have time to waffle or play games or try to pontificate about who will be better when, where, how, because for a lot of us, there's too much at stake. And so, you know, is Joe Biden the best candidate? You know, I don't know.
Is he the candidate? The answer is yes. And is there a way to remove him from that? The answer is no.
Yeah, I'm not for removing him. And I don't think that somebody should challenge him at the convention.
I do think that's fantasy. I do think that Joe Biden owes all of us his honest assessment about whether he can do this race and beat Donald Trump, an honest assessment.
And I think that there's a lot of this conversation has been about Joe Biden, what we owe to Joe Biden. And he's our representative, right? We voted him in.
Some people might not include me in the we since I used to be a Republican, but I voted for Hillary. I voted for Joe Biden.
I worked for a super PAC to elect Joe Biden. So to me, I went out and recruited grassroots people to make videos to talk about why they were going to cast their first vote for a Democrat in 2020.
Joe Biden owes all of those people who put their faith in him his best and honest assessment. And if he's not up for it, given those stakes, given the stakes that you're talking about, if what we saw in that debate is going to happen again and again when it's too late in September and October, then why is the right thing to rally behind him? Shouldn't the right thing be to take this off-ramp while we got it and find somebody who can do it? That's my point.
One, there is no off-ramp. And two, you've asked two different questions.
And I think that you've merged the questions and a lot of people merge the questions. Let's take them one at a time.
Yeah. I mean,

can he do the job, right? It's kind of the first question that people ask. Does he have the fitness to do the job? And the only way you can highlight someone's fitness to do the job is to look at the successes that they've had, right? And so no one can argue the successes that this administration's had over the last three and a half years, dragging us out of COVID, Bipartisan Inflation Reduction Act, Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill.
I mean, we can go on and on with the litany of achievements, the number of judges that they've approved on the federal bench, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right? So that's first. Well, hold on.
But isn't his job right now, though, not getting legislation passed, not doing that? His job right now is beating Donald Trump so that he or someone else can serve for the next four years. He has one job right now, which is beating Donald Trump.

So that's the merging of the question. So your next question is, can you serve for four years? Right.
Like beating Donald Trump is imperative to serving for the next four years.

And that is a legitimate question to ask. But he is trying to answer that question.
And I believe that you're right by saying that he has to come outside more. He has to campaign more.
He has to do those things, which every candidate should do. We haven't seen Donald Trump in public for the last 11 days, but you also mentioned this off-ramp.
What off-ramp is there? Explain to me the context and contours of an off-ramp. He could take the off-ramp.
He could say, you know what? I sat down with Jill. I sat down with my advisors.
I re-watched the debate, which he might not have done apparently, per his George Stephanopoulos interview. I've re-watched the debate and I've said to myself, I can't do this.
I'm a different person than I was four years ago. It doesn't mean I'm a bad person.
It doesn't mean that my accomplishments are negated, but my skills as a candidate are different than they were when I debated Paul Ryan, when I took out Donald Trump 2020. We appreciate that.
And I need to be honest with myself that there's a reason why I had the worst debate in presidential history. There's a reason why there's a poll out today that has Tammy Baldwin up by six while I'm down by five in Wisconsin.
And it's not all this other stuff. It's like, it's, it's that people are judging my age and I can't do it.
Why isn't that an off ramp for him? It's a nice off ramp. It's a salutatory off ramp.
It's like, thank you for your service. Now it's time to pass the torch.
I honestly think that's part of the reason why Joe Biden is probably still going to win this race. And I think a lot of people discount it.
I think one of the things that's happened during this MAGA experience is the inability to recruit downbound candidates worth anything. And I think uniquely enough, when you usually have a president drag people across the ticket, I think it's going to be inversely.
I think Ruben Gallego, I think Rosen, I think Josh Stein in North Carolina, who's running for governor. I think Casey, et cetera, Baldwin are going to help pull him across the ticket.
I also think that you're still engaging in fantasy fiction because when has a man who literally has been the most powerful man in the world just ceded his power to anyone else because of the simple fact that if he's not going to run for reelection,lection, he literally has to resign the office of presidency. There's no finishing your term.
It's a tough ask. I know.
If you're not fit to run for president, then you're not fit to be president. I know.
It's a tough ask, man. But everybody, we've all had to go through this.
I mean, it's a silly example I keep using on the podcast, but it's like, I home for christmas i live in new york i'm from denver we're gonna go skiing i you don't think that my dad still wants to go down the double diamonds you don't think that he still wants to like do jumps on the snowboard and grab the front of the thing he can't do it anymore like when you're in your 60s and 70s you can't ski you can't do that like you can't dunk any i quit out you can we can use can use whatever sport. I've never fucking been skiing.
Okay. So let's do a different example.

Let's do a different example. I don't know what a double diamond is, but I hope he lands it

successfully. We'll do a different cultural example.
But you know what I mean? Like,

hey, man, you can't run the 40 at the same speed. Sometimes time comes for all of us, man.

Time comes for all of us. Doesn't that call for an extraordinary responsibility to maybe do something that you wouldn't do otherwise? Yes.
We just view that responsibility to be totally different. We view that responsibility to just show some fortitude, put your feet down, 10 toes down, get to work, register more voters, go out there and do the work necessary.
Because at the end of the day, let's say August 5th comes and goes. Let's say Joe Biden is still in the race.
Right. Yeah.
The words and the remarks and the work that that you and Van and David Axelrod, as noble and as respectable as it may be, would do nothing but prove to hurt our nominee because that's who he is. Yeah.
Okay. Let's play that up.
Because I just, I think the Joe Biden's words are what is going to hurt the nominee. Do you really think in the Donald Trump's campaign in October is going to have Van Jones in his ads? Or do you think he's going to have Joe Biden's own inability to speak in his ads? I would actually splice you, Van, Axe, and Joe Biden all together and make all of you all celebrities.
That's what I would do. Okay, maybe.
I don't think that's going to land with folks. Folks can see what's happening for themselves.
And I don't know. I hear you.
If it was a closer call, I would say I agree with you. If it was a closer call and me or Axe or anybody is out there being gratuitous about something, I think that's a fair criticism.
People see this. The people have rendered their judgment.
That's the thing that is frustrating. This isn't about me and Axe and Van Jones or the Pod Bros or James Carville.
It's what people are saying. The people are putting their plight in this country above candidates right now.
That's what I want you all to be able to see. The people at Essence Festival I talked to, many of the overwhelming majority of whom were black women, they're not out here voting per se for Joe Biden.
That's not what they're doing. They're voting for what they believe in.
They're voting to prevent. I've actually had more people talk to me about Project 25 than I've had people talk to me about Joe Biden and the debate.
So, okay. So here's where I'm getting in trouble.
And after Bakari came to my defense, I don't need you to be my, my shining knight in shining armor. But there's some black folks on the internet that are mad at me because I was saying this, what I'm about to say now, the same thing I'm saying on the internet, which is that's all anecdotal.
Like we have data, you can look at data and here's the post debate poll, New York Times-Siena. Should Joe Biden stay or leave? 43% of black voters said stay, 47% leave.
Is he too old among black voters? 53% strongly or somewhat agrees, too old. 44% strongly or somewhat disagree.
You mentioned Van Jones, Van Latham, Jerusalem, Texas. We have done focus groups of black voters.
It's very mixed. We did one last night.
I watched it. I sat there and listened.
I didn't talk. I listened and watched.
And people had very different views. Like people are mixed.
Everybody's got mixed views. But that question is, who are they voting for? Donald Trump? Are they voting for the old guy? Are they voting for the sociopath who wants to bring us back into a place where we don't want to be? Or are they going to vote for the old guy? Most of them are going to vote for Joe Biden, I would say.
And the overall majority are. But what if some don't? You have three choices in this race, right? You have Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and the couch.
Those are the three choices you have, right? And our job is to make sure that we mitigate the couch. That is our job.
The rest is going to take care of itself. Can't Kamala? Why can't Kamala be one of the choices? That's what I don't understand.
So I want to go back to your other point, that Kamala is the only person who can take it. I love Kamala.
We played on yesterday's podcast, Kamala's Remarks for Messence Fest. I watched.
I've seen her speak. I've met with Kamala.
Is she the perfect candidate? No. Is there concerns about racism and misogyny? Sure.
But she could deliver a fucking message against Donald Trump that the current guy can't. She's not one of the choices.
She is the choice. I think the only day that matters between now and August 5th to not engage in this fan fiction that everybody thinks Joe Biden is going to drop out the race.
So we're going to keep yelling at the top of our lungs. But if Thursday goes extremely poorly, which is his press conference and it's his NATO press conference, it's unscripted.
It's, you know, 45 minutes of just questions and answers with that individual. If he falls asleep or falls down or something happens, then there may be a move or push.
But other than that, everybody, the CBC, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the leaders of whomever, and he's going to speak to the NAACP next week. I mean, this is the horse that we have.
I don't know if I like it or not. I really don't care.
That's not my choice. I'm going to work as hard as I can to beat Donald Trump in November instead of trying to like the person that I'm voting for.
Yeah, same. I guess my question is, isn't it, look, if 80%, 70, 80% of the country think he's too old, I mean, you're saying it's going to hurt to have people out there saying, criticizing Joe Biden, saying that he's too old.
I don't know. Might it be helpful to have people out there that are saying, yeah, I thought he was too old too.
I wish he would have stepped aside, but even still, I have the same concerns you do, but even still, I'm going to go out and vote for Joe Biden. That's what I plan on saying in October.
What's wrong with that? Nothing's wrong with that. That's where we are.
I mean, that's fine. I don't want to be flippant when I say fan fiction, although it is a very flippant statement.
No, be flippant. No, no, no.
But it was not to you. It's not addressed to you, but it's to others.
Is that like there is no other alternative like Kamala until Joe Biden says that he's not running for president of the United States. There is no other alternative.
I agree. Kamala is the only person who can replace him.
But that is not happening like that. There is no world where that is happening.
Never in the history of history has a white man had the most power in the entire world in giving it away, let alone giving it- This is the time. This is the moment to do that.
Do it for me, Joe Biden. Do it for me.
Let alone giving it to a black woman. That's never happened in the history of history.
I'm the most powerful person in the world. I'm going to go home and I'm going to give it to this black woman.
You have to point out a historical example where that's happened. I have to know it hasn't.
But this is my moment. This is time.
We're in unprecedented times. Okay.
Real quick, two rapid fires. What is Joe Biden's message right now? Because I listened to his morning Joe appearance.
I don't know what Joe Biden's message is. Do you know what Joe Biden's message is? He's not Donald Trump.
Okay. Don't we think we can come up with something a little better than that? Probably, but right now he's fighting off everybody to his left and right and front.
I would say, Joe Biden has a vigorous message contrasting himself from David Axelrod. I saw passion in that man's eyes that I haven't seen in months talking about David Axelrod, but talking about Donald Trump, not as good.
He said who? That was the funniest thing ever. When they were talking about David Axelrod, but like, but, but talking about Donald Trump, not as good.

He said,

who?

That was the funniest thing ever.

When they were talking about David Axelrod and his response was who,

that was hilarious to me.

It was funny.

That's what I'm saying.

It was the best moment of his thing,

but I would like him to channel that energy a little bit.

I agree.

I think that he's having to waste too much fire on his friends instead of training that

fire on his foes.

Yeah.

All right.

You're also a lawyer.

So I got you.

Last question.

Since we last talked, maybe unbelievable is not the right word, but a shocking Supreme

Court decision.

I'm just wondering how you took the immunity decision and put a quarter on the machine.

You riff on it.

There is a narrow pathway to still be prosecuted.

I think that they have established the fact that there is somebody who's above the law in the United States and it's a president or former president. I think that official acts is going to be interesting to see how that kind of susses out to see what that looks like.
I do think that Chutkin is probably going to have a pathway for him to be prosecuted. It will just be more narrow on all of these issues.
I don't think there's going to be an issue in New York, although the judge is taking it into consideration. I think it's going to pose a huge issue in Atlanta, and I'm not sure it poses any issue down with the Confederate, Confederate, Lord, with the classified documents cases.
I mean, we're just asking questions about that down there. There may be some Confederate elements happening.
We don't know. Lord, I don't know.
And so, yeah, I will tell everybody that the more disturbing ruling was the Chevron ruling. And I think more people need to go and read the dissent of that than any dissent.
Give us one minute on that. One minute on the Chevron ruling.
We haven't talked about that at all on this podcast because of the debate. Well, I mean, let's actually, I think we need to flesh it out.
And I would love to come on with somebody like Ellie Mistel or somebody to come up and really, really hashed out. I mean, this court has done something that no courts have done before them now twice, which is overturned decades of precedent.
And in Chevron, I mean, basically not only overturning precedent, but the role government plays in society, how that can be adjudicated, how that can be limited or restricted. And basically you can go out there and be as unhealthy as you want to be if a private entity decides to do that to you.
And I just think that's much more of a dangerous, slippery slope than what happens to one man in the White House. Let's do that after August 5th, because I don't want to argue with you again.
After August 5th, we can get Ellie on here and we can do Chevron and we can do courts and Project 2025. There'll be three full months left.
The French have had, as Jon Stewart said, the French had two elections in one month. All right.
We can, I think the American people are capable of focusing on Joe Biden or my fan fiction between August 5th and November and coming up with the right solution. And I, and I, and I will be one of the people doing it.
I love all of you guys. You know, I got a, you guys.
Axe gave me one of the pricks for Biden buttons that he got. So I'm all on board.
I love all you guys. So after August 5th, after you guys get all of this out of your system, I guess you'll be like, that's my old guy.
I'm with the old guy. I'm with the old guy.
I think that's much more compelling than I think he's killing it. All right.
I'm with the old guy. Oh, I've never said that now.
He's what we have. When you're growing up and you're not doing well on a test and a teacher comes over and you may not be the smartest or the quickest and the teacher looks at you and she just simply says, you got to work with what you got.
And that's what we're doing. All right.
Bakari Sellers, some of our listeners who've been annoyed with me are going to be throwing flowers at your feet on social media.

Thank you for coming on. And next year, next year, you're texting me for Essence Fest, assuming we're

allowed to have an Essence Fest in the Donald Trump 2.0 regime, who knows exactly what the

rules are going to be around that. But assuming we have it and assuming, you know, I'm welcome.

I'll see you down here next year. All right, brother.
Bye-bye. All right.
Thanks so much to Bakari Sellers. Up next, Elena Plot Calabro.
All right. We are back with Elena Plot Calabro from The Atlantic.
Welcome back to the Borg Podcast. Been wanting to chat with you.
How are you doing, girl? Hey, thanks so much for having me, Tim. I've missed you all.
You know, you, who would have thought? Here you are, Kamala Harris expert.

We're bringing you on for your Kamala Harris expertise in this moment of uncertainty.

You had written two, I guess you wrote one profile called the Kamala Harris problem,

what, about six months ago?

And did a follow-up here during this potential interregnum or this time of uncertainty. And so I just kind of wanted to go a little bit deeper on her and maybe just start us off with kind of the Reader's Digest version of what your main takeaways were from all the time you get to spend with the VP.
Yeah. So a lot of time is right.
I think over the course of my reporting, my profile of her last year, I traveled with her to Africa, to Nevada, to California, to Georgia, so various states, and then, you know, a bunch of different countries in Africa. So by the end, I certainly had spent a great deal of time with Kamala Harris.
And I think through not just getting to know her, but getting to know people around her, getting to know people in the West Wing, who, you know, would actually speak to me for the story. What I came away feeling pretty clearly is that, and this is sort of what I talk about in my piece that came out this week, is that the Biden administration really kind of fumbled the ball when it came to preparing

her for the presidency or putting her in a position to where if he were to have to step

aside for whatever reason, Americans would have confidence that she could lead this country

capably.

And I was going to ask how you think she found herself in this situation, but I think a more

direct question to that is first talking about the Biden of it all rather than the Kamala. Why do we think he picked her? I think that has been like a fundamental question.
I think as we get through all of this, like as there is these concerns and whispers from Biden world that maybe, you know, she's not up for this and that might be informing, you know, him, you know, not wanting to step aside. In your piece, they, you know, don't provide a lot of color about the president's view on her.
What was your sense for like why she was in the vice presidency in the first place? Unfortunately, I think for the West Wing, the country more broadly, it wasn't really a complicated decision process. So he had set out, he had laid out this marker that he wanted to choose a woman.
And then he had Congressman Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, with whom he's quite close and was quite instrumental in delivering South Carolina, say to him, I'd really encourage you to choose a black woman. And so, you know, it came down to women like Karen Bass, Kamala Harris, and ultimately Kamala Harris just struck the search committee as possibly better prepared.
But I will say to him, the huge impediment to choosing her and one thing that Joe Biden really struggled to get past in particular was just how much Kamala Harris had attacked him on the debate stage. Your listeners will recall, I'm sure, the that little girl is me moment, and bringing up his past support for busing and things of that, or excuse me, opposition to busing and things like that.
So for Jill Biden, especially, that was difficult to get past. And Kamala Harris, I think one way she was really able to win over the search committee was making very, very clear that for her, there was, you know, all she saw as the duty of the vice president was to be incredibly loyal to the president and that she was not, you know, going to go into this job trying to outshine him in any way.
Yeah. You know, he could have put Carol Mosley Braun.
I don't know. There are a lot of black women out there that wouldn't have been an obvious successor.
You know, that's the thing that is flummoxing, right, to me. When it just goes to this question of like Joe Biden's judgment to have like kind of got us into this predicament where it was, you know, he was 78 or whatever was his first running.
Like he knew he was going to be the oldest president ever. You know, he knew that if he picked somebody like vice president Harris, who was seen as a rising star, that they would be seen as the successor.
You say that they said that they were impressed by her preparedness during the vetting process, but then they've done nothing to help her demonstrate that level of preparedness or to demonstrate that they believe that she's prepared or anything. I feel like they've really hung her out to dry in a lot of ways.
And your reporting reveals a lot of that. Talk about that a little bit.
One reason it is so flummoxing was that you know not only were there people Biden could have picked who were not obvious successors to him if that's something that he didn't want to have to deal with the thing is he put out quite clearly that he wanted that dynamic in his administration. He said I want to be a bridge to the next generation of the party.
As I put in my piece he the way he sort of marketed his presidency to voters was like a lawn tending exercise, basically. Let me get things stable again, and then I will step aside, and this will be a generational handoff.
So, you know, ostensibly, Kamala Harris is a great pick for that, if that is in fact actually what you want to do with your presidency. But what we saw

pretty quickly is that Joe Biden, nor the people around him were especially interested in actually

investing the time to prepare Kamala Harris for that kind of generational handoff for just a

moment such as this, right? This is why this moment has been so fascinating to me, because in many

ways, it's what Joe Biden pledged to voters he would be prepared for, that he was almost anticipating in a way, and that stepping aside would just be part of the natural order of things, because he had already sort of cultivated a great profile for this woman who is second in line. Yeah.
So then I guess we get to, she gets picked and she's in the vice presidency. And then there's this kind of opaque chicken and egg question.
It's kind of hard to determine from the outside, which is, did the Biden team not set her up for success? Or, you know, did a couple of her stumbles early on, you kind of shake her own confidence and the Biden team's confidence in her. And, you know, we ended up in a place where she kind of became a little bit removed, you know, because of her own performance skills or abilities, public facing performance abilities, at least.
And that that was not really, you know, kind of remedied until she found something that she could sink her teeth into, like the abortion issue.

Like which one of those frames do you think feels more accurate?

So both.

And I think they relate to each other.

And I'm going to explain to you why.

So if you want to dole to me, here's where I think a counterfactual is actually useful.

What does it look like for a president to actually invest in their vice president and the idea of their readiness to potentially take their job one day? I think Eisenhower is a great model for that. Eisenhower is someone who, when he was supreme commander of the Allied forces, was really horrified by how unprepared Vice President Truman seemed to step into the role of the presidency after FDR died.
I mean, he was kind of traumatized by that. And so when he became president, had Richard Nixon, I mean, don't forget, he hated Nixon personally.
I mean, there was no love lost there. But it felt really incumbent upon him that he'd give Americans the confidence to believe, you know, if something were to happen to me, by the way, at the ripe old age of 62, I believe Eisenhower was the oldest president that we'd had at the time.
What does he do? He immediately sends Richard Nixon, Pat Nixon on a 68-day tour of Asia and the Middle East, like his first task for them, really. And so the Nixons come back and there are all these life spreads and Look magazine spreads about how this is the diplomat in training.
You know, somebody who had right off the bat showcased their ability to hop-knob with world leaders and form these relationships. Now, did he actually accomplish anything? No, but that wasn't really the point.
The optics of it were important. The public saw this as a very, very serious person.
So what does Joe Biden do, his first assignment to Kamala Harris? It is to give her the so-called root causes issue of immigration. So that is, as I'm sure your listeners know, but I'll just repeat, trying to take care of the violence and the poverty and these other conditions in Central American countries that cause migrants to flee North in the first place.
What is the benchmark of success for something like that? I mean, at best- We're going to solve gang violence in rural Guatemala? That's going to be the vice president's job? Kamala Harris is going to fix Honduras by the end of the fiscal quarter. No, of course not.
So he gives her this, you know, impossible issue, really, to where she's not sort of set up for a win to begin with. And then after that, and this is on her, she I mean, she wants the issue of voting rights.
Absolutely no chance that that was ever getting to the president's desk without the elimination of the filibuster. So you have you have this setup.
And I'm getting to the second part of what you said now.

You have this setup where you have a president who is not giving her the portfolio at the outset to demonstrate confidence to the American people that she was the right choice or whatnot.

But then you have Kamala herself who really struggled with communication early on.

Everybody remembers the Lester Holt interview.

To this day, when I talk to people about Kamala Harris, they will bring up the Lester Holt interview. And rather than using that stumble there as an opportunity to say, okay, well, I'm going to blink at the airwaves now and just talk and talk and talk until nobody remembers that interview, she completely retreated from view.
And that became sort of the touchstone by which anyone understood the vice president by the end of that year. And so it was just kind of a mess all around, both for reasons kind of driven by Biden himself, but also Harris herself.
I think that the Lester Holt interview presents an example of some of her weaknesses. And you talk about this and the piece at length.
But before we get that, I do want to go to the Nixon comparison and some of the strengths that I think that she doesn't give a lot of credit for. And you write about this.
And I've had a chance to listen to the vice president talk about foreign affairs. And I think a lot of people probably haven't like really actually listened her talk about it.
And I came away from that being pretty impressed by the seriousness with which she has taken on the diplomatic side of things, by the depth of knowledge about foreign leaders, about passion about America's role in the world. And those aren't the things that go viral.
And I noticed that you also mentioned that in the article. So talk a little bit about kind of the Kamala, the diplomat, and maybe how that might surprise some people.
I mean, I think surprise is a great word. And Tim, the way I reacted to her when I went on the Africa trip with her was exactly as you did sort of listening to her speak in that capacity for the first time.
It was a really utter surprise. I had not covered her much before that.
I'd obviously seen the clips that had gone viral and things like that. And so my impression, what vague impression I had of her was based off of that.
I go on the Africa trip and I remember thinking, have I missed something? I mean, have I just fundamentally misunderstood this person or has this been out there and I just haven't been paying attention. Because what I saw, you know, from Ghana to Zambia to Tanzania, was an incredibly serious world leader, who, you know, was really at ease around others really, you know, spoke directly with leaders in a way I could tell, they really respected and responded to very well.
All of that is to say, I've often wondered, what if moments like that had in fact been at the outset of her vice presidency? What if that had been sort of the first impression Americans had had of their vice president? You know, would we be having this conversation? Is Kamala Harris prepared for the presidency to the degree that we are today? But, you know, beyond Africa, she has represented the

United States at the Munich Security Conference at least twice now. She most recently represented

the United States at the Ukraine summit in Switzerland. And I would venture that most

Americans don't know that at all. I mean, to the extent Americans pay attention to foreign affairs

at all, right? But I guess my point is, if what Americans first understood of Kamala Harris on TV, if the first kind of cable news encounter, social media encounter they ever had of her was a clip of her interacting with a foreign leader and not, you know, the Lester Hold interview or some such, I think her vice presidency could have unfolded a lot

differently. And this is why a lot of this is PR, right? I mean, because people just don't know a lot of the details of a lot of this stuff, right? And, you know, Paul Ryan had the reputation of being a wonky person because he cultivated the reputation of being a wonky person, not because people like really looked at the charts and graphs he put out and like judged that, you know, he's being a good economist right and so in theory like that presents an opportunity for her right to kind of represent herself in a different way the question then is like is she capable of that right i think that is maybe some of the worries that people have not so much like is she smart enough to do the job or some of the sexist nonsense you hear from from some quarters but i think in the democratic world in good faith world there is like can she present in a strong enough way right and you talked about how well how her style is sometimes uh you know exacerbates the concerns particularly in these panel settings so kind of talk about what you saw on the road with her and those challenges.
I think the best way to understand why Kamala Harris can seem to trip over herself quite a bit and seem to leave a lot of these kind of panel discussions with gaps trailing in her wake is useful to understand through the lens of her background. So she was, of course, the attorney of San Francisco.
She was then the attorney general of California. And I want you to think about when you think about your DA, is that the person you're going out to see on the stump when they speak imaginatively about the American experiment or democracy or anything like that? No, you probably don't know their name, first of all, if you're really being honest.
And second, if you're voting for them, it's because you looked online and saw that they had a good conviction rate and not much else. It's very kind of metrics determined, I think, the way that most people historically have

tried to understand who they're voting for for DA. And that is a mode, a campaign mode in which Kamala Harris thrives.
So when she was running for DA of San Francisco, her pitch was essentially, I am the incumbent, but I'm better. His conviction rate for felonies is very low.
I'm going to raise it. And she did by like 14 points or something like that.
And that's why she was reelected. So for her, communication was never a matter of kind of gauzy rhetoric, because it was just very easy for her to say, look, here's what I said I would do.
And these are the numbers that show you that I did it. And that to her is, you know, making a pitch, making a case.
Obviously, the further you get from the ground level of politics, once you get up into the White House, that just becomes implausible, essentially, you know, people want to hear from their national leaders about the, you know, the American experiment, they want to hear about the shining city on the hill, they want to hear the finest hour speech. And I remember she said to me once, well, my career has not been about giving lovely speeches.
And I also remember thinking that's a lot of the ballgame as president or vice president at the end of the day when it comes to how your constituents actually feel about you. So I think here's the pattern that emerges then.
You go to panels with her, she gets on a stage, and the first question, whoever's up there with her, is one of those sort of kind of broad, platitudinal questions that's like, tell us about the state of democracy right now, or tell us about, you know, all this administration has done and what you see as the future of this country. And she usually kind of bombs.
It's one of those, you're at the edge of the seat, but not in a good way. And it's uncomfortable because she just gets kind of lost in the woods.
It's just not her forte. But once the talk gets rolling, inevitably what happens is she will metaphorically kind of like take the microphone back from the people she's talking to.
And she'll start asking them questions. They'll be like, how did you get here? What is your American story? And once she gets in control of the conversation in that way, I think she really starts to shine.
And that's when you see, at this point, I know it's such a cliche, but this prosecutor mode come out of Kamala Harris. And that was what fueled her start to begin with, right? Her questioning of Brett Kavanaugh, her questioning of Jeff Sessions, and other Donald Trump nominees for the cabinet, things like that.
So when she can kind of finagle situations where she is back in that mode, I think you really get a glimpse of how she even got this far to begin with. And that's why I think a lot of, you know, Democrats I'm talking to right now who are eager for Biden to step aside, they really think that four months out from the election is really a kind of perfect ideal time for someone like Kamala Harris to be the nominee when it is more about prosecuting the case against someone else.
And that was really the next thing I was going to say. It seems like she has that gear, you know, of making, again, maybe not the finest hour speech, but of making an impassioned plea about making a passion case about something or against something, more to the point and and you can feel her passion at times on specific things right and so in a in a shortened in a truncated race that's less about bio where it's like 10 democrats on stage you know right like wouldn't that play to her strengths don totally.
Because it is, I mean, we're four months out, you're not trying to craft your myth of origin in that time and sell Americans on your American journey or what have you. I could not agree more.
I mean, your profile at this point would be, can you get on a debate stage and make a case against Donald Trump if you're the Democratic nominee? Would be a step up. Right.
In the current situation, the current candidate is not capable of stepping up on a stage and making a case against Donald Trump. That's where we're at right now.
Yeah. Check one.
Let's go to that origin story, though, because it is interesting that in a primary, which we already saw her stumble in, you know, you do kind of have to come up with a myth, right? Or some narrative about yourself, right? Because there are 10 candidates and most of them agree on everything. Maybe there's one or two issues you all disagree on, but you're trying to separate in a certain way.
You know, these candidates have this, you know, the famous ones, you know, McCain is a POW, but just Grant and Joe and, you know, everybody kind of has something. Even Trump's is fake, but you know, the businessman and the, you know, apprentice, right? Did and, you know, everybody kind of has something even Trump's as is fake,

but you know,

the businessman and the,

you know,

apprentice,

right.

Did you glean anything from Kamala?

Because that is the one thing that is notable.

I think that it's that maybe part of the reason why people feel like they're

not connecting with her,

you know,

is,

is not just her,

her performance skills,

but,

but like she isn't showing a lot of herself.

Right.

And that like,

even me as a political obsessive that hosts a political podcast i'm like what i do i like besides the basic like resume stuff like the linkedin bio you know like what else do i know about kamala harris and then there are a few things right she has to cook and their kids call the step kids call her mama all that. There's a few things, but was there anything else from the origin story and the time you spent with her or any other observations along those lines? Well, I'll point out to him that the reason that not even a political obsessive like you can immediately kind of call up moments from this larger bio is that, and this gets to her risk aversion, she learned pretty quickly in the presidential primary that her actual story and what she wanted to tell to voters about her background as a prosecutor, which she is immensely proud of, she was told by several of her advisors that that was not going to fly in today's Democratic Party, in the Democratic Party of 2020, I should say, in particular.
So you saw the Kamala is a cop memes, you know, you know, run reckless abandonment. Another thing that could work in her favor in a three and a half month campaign that went into a Democratic primary, maybe.
Look how much has changed in four years. But I think because of that, she had people around her saying, your actual bio is not going to gel with this space.
And so you need to essentially talk about yourself as someone you are not. And I think when people complain about the inauthenticity of Kamala Harris, what they interpret it to be, all of those racist and sexist undertones aside, I think it is often because they don't believe they're hearing from someone who believes what she herself is saying about her own life.
And I just think that traces back to the primary and the advice she was getting at the time. Well, no matter whether Joe Bynes steps the song letter, you stay as vice president, if you're listening, the vice president or advisors, just shut the fucking advisors up.
Let it rip. Let it rip.
The more Kamala, the better, I think. The more prosecutor Kamala, the better, as far as I'm concerned.
And speaking of let it rip, I would be very remiss if I let you go without asking you to help me diagram a sentence. Here is something that the vice president likes to say.

Elena, you think you just fell out of a coconut tree.

No, you exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.

Talk to us about that.

Why is she like saying that so much?

Well, her mother said it to her, first of all.

She was very, very close with her late mother. And the message for her was, don't forget where you came from.
And so another line she likes to say often is, I stand always recognizing the broad shoulders upon which I stand. That's another commonalism that when you're with her long enough, that one will come out a lot.
I would have liked that better if it wasn't for the fact that Mike Pence talked about Trump's broad shoulders all the time. And so just hearing broad shoulders gives me the heebie-jeebies now, but that's not really her fault.
That's a personal thing. I'm sorry.
Well, now you're going to do that to me. Now I'm going to think about that.
What I find interesting though, and people have pointed this out, is the message of you didn't just fall out of a coconut tree. There's no context of all in which you live and what came before you.
There's also her line that is thinking about what can be unburdened by what has been. They do seem a little bit in conflict, that you didn't fall out of a coconut tree.
But maybe we're waiting for that secret third thing that just kind of fuses it all together. Yeah.
Maybe it's aspirational. That's what I think.
I think that what she's trying to do is say aspirational, which is in reality, you think that you fell out of a coconut tree, but you didn't. You didn't.
You are a product of everything that came before you. But aspirationally, we want to live in a future that is unburdened by all of the sins of the coconut tree.
That's how I would like to define it. I think both of these messages are very good.
Yeah. We're just trying to work out how they work in concert with one another.
Yeah. I do appreciate, though, how these sort of newcomers in the k-hive call themselves coconut pilled that is sort of their i might be getting i don't know i don't know if i'm in the k-hive but i might be slowly getting coconut pilled i'm not sure because i'm just i guess my final point is part of the reason i'm getting coconut pilled is because part of the context from which we came that maybe i didn't appreciate enough was that i i do think that the president has left her in a really bad situation and going back to reread your article this lame quotes they gave about her and like the unwillingness to put her forward it was astonishing given the danger that they all knew that they were placing us in with an aging president, I just think it was really irresponsible.

And I don't know.

Now I'm kind of thinking that I might be coconut-pilled, that maybe she might be able to stand up to the moment.

But anyway, final thought on that, as we just think about the Biden of this all. because I do think it hangs up.

I think we would be remiss to just not acknowledge the reality

that the Biden team's feelings about Kamala

hang over the questions about his candidacy right now in a real way. Yeah.
And as you pointed out, when I would try to talk with them about her, I mean, even the White House chief of staff, when you go into those calls and you've been in a long time, Tim, you need your candidate prepared with like one or two anecdotes. When they say X, Y, Z, okay, give me a moment when that felt true.
Okay, here's one. And then reporters love that.
We love the detail. We love to show the lead anecdote or whatever.
And when I asked White House Chief of Staff Jeff Sainz, who's talking about, oh, Biden really considers her a governing partner. He really relies on her advice for just about everything.
I said, okay, can you tell me about a time when he noticeably relied on her for guidance? And he did mention, he was like, well, she was essential to putting equity at the forefront of our COVID response. At that time, you know, COVID was really ebbing.
And okay, tell me about another time. Is there another issue? And it was like, okay, I, you know, I'll, there's so many, I'll have to get back to you on that.
And I followed up and I just never got that anecdote. So even just from a sheer optics perspective, you're not even willing to invest the time.
I don't know. She's as much of a governing partner as you're saying that she is.
I mean, to me, it's irresponsible, not just to this vice president that you purport to really care about and her future that you really purport to care about, but also just the country. I agree.
Frustrating. Okay.
Thank you so much for coming back. Are you working on anything else fun? Yeah.
Are we still? Is it a secret? Weing okay how about that we'll leave that we'll leave that in the green room alina will tell me what she's working on and i will get to keep it as a secret and uh we'll have her back well you know what i'm working we'll have her back to talk to all the rest of you about it um uh pretty soon i hope uh thank you so much yeah and thanks to bakari sellers for trying to set me straight on the Biden question. And we'll see you all back here tomorrow.
Peace. My coconuts.
You can put them in your mouth. Right now, right now.
Right now, right now. My coconuts.
Watch it bounce up and down. Bounce up and down.
Bounce up and down. Cocoa, watch hand and lotion.
Sunsets over the ocean. Look up, hot air balloons.
All good things come in two. Work them out at the gym.
Dive in and take a swim. Everybody love the twins.
Everybody love the twins. So juicy and so ripe.

You wouldn't believe.

I'd give them different names.

Matt McCade and Ashley.

They ask me what's my size.

Just give them a squeeze.