The Kamala Question with Tressie McMillan Cottom

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Speaker 5 He stepped away from running from president, but he is still president.

Speaker 3 You find out who somebody is where they put their two weeks in. I knew Josh was coming to the point.

Speaker 3 Josh loves. Let me tell you, Josh, before you say it, there are few human beings whose eyes light up more than yours when somebody has quit their job.

Speaker 3 Your eyes light up, Josh, like someone has just been handed the keys to the kingdom. You have, there's a joy in you that cannot be surpassed by anything when it comes to quitting your job.

Speaker 3 You're listening to What Now, the podcast where I chat to interesting people about the conversations taking over our world. And the conversation that's taking over the world this week?

Speaker 3 Joe Biden stepping down from the race and Kamala Harris stepping up. This has never happened in the history of the United States.
Yes, another first.

Speaker 3 And to help us navigate this first and make sense of this moment, I invited writer, sociologist, and all-around amazing person, oh, and also MacArthur genius, Tressie Macmillan-Cottam, to join us on the podcast.

Speaker 3 The day the news broke, Tressie published an opinion article in the New York Times called Kamala or Bust, and it has totally reframed the way people are thinking about this election and what happens next.

Speaker 3 Now, of course, along with Tressie, I'm joined by two of my closest friends: writer and journalist and professional hater Cristiano Mbaque Medina, and comedian and human chill pill, Josh Johnson.

Speaker 3 Hey, Josh, how are you? I've missed your face.

Speaker 5 I'm good, man. How are you?

Speaker 3 I am blessed, my friend.

Speaker 4 Looks like we're recording. Okay.

Speaker 3 This is What Now with Trevor Noah.

Speaker 3 Happy podcast day, everybody. Happy podcast day.
Happy podcast day.

Speaker 3 Just a week ago, we were talking about a former president of the United States essentially

Speaker 3 being asked to drop out in a very violent way, terrible way, not good at all. And then we were like, I wonder which way the race is going to go.
I wonder what's going to happen in America.

Speaker 3 No, things have to get even crazier.

Speaker 3 And so now, as I sit before you, my friends, and everyone who's listening as well, Joe Biden, the president of the United States, has announced that he is 100% not running to be president of the United States again.

Speaker 3 Which, by the way, is what he promised. I don't know if everybody remembers this, but when Joe Biden originally ran against Donald Trump, he was like, President, that's not for me.

Speaker 3 I'm just sleepy old Joe. I'm just trying to help the Republic.
And I'm just here, you know, one white man against the other. I'm going to fight this guy for you.
And then I'm gone. I'm gone.

Speaker 3 And then he got into the White House and he got a little bit of that White House chef and a little bit of that White House masseuse.

Speaker 3 And he was like, mmm.

Speaker 3 And in a way that was reminiscent. for most Africans, he was like, I know I said I was going to leave, but what if I stay a little bit longer?

Speaker 5 When he was running running again, I was like, uh-uh, wait, you said, and you said to me, That's, did he lie?

Speaker 3 Did he, did Joe lie to me?

Speaker 2 He didn't lie. He was telling the truth.
He told the truth eventually.

Speaker 3 He got there in the end. Yes.
Yes. It was a, it was a very delayed telling of the truth.
He got there.

Speaker 5 Yeah. But you know how

Speaker 5 they say that if a mother is in distress and her baby is in distress, she can summon the strength to lift a car to get the car off her baby, right?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 5 I've heard this. They never say that about fathers.

Speaker 5 And so I think that that's exactly what happened. I think that Joe saw the country in distress.

Speaker 3 He saw this like imminent threat, you know, to overall democracy in our institutions.

Speaker 5 And then he ran up to the car and was like,

Speaker 5 and then he was like, we're going to need the jaws of life. We're going to need some firefighters, please.

Speaker 3 I mean, it's once again, America is in

Speaker 3 just uncharted territory. Like, once again,

Speaker 3 everything around Donald Trump

Speaker 3 is not boring. Whatever it is, it is not boring.
Let's just say that.

Speaker 3 Like, if Donald Trump is in your life, like, if Donald Trump came from an African family, they would pray for him because they'd say there are demons in his life.

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 3 yeah.

Speaker 2 Seems pretty reasonable.

Speaker 3 You actually believe that there are demons in his life.

Speaker 3 But we're not going to go down that road. No, really.
Like, people would be praying for him. They'd be like,

Speaker 3 you have to pray for Donald Trump. You have to pray.
Please, every time something in his life, if you know him, if you are next to him, something bad can happen. Something crazy can happen.

Speaker 3 Oh, Lord Jesus, we must pray for Donald Trump. Pray for Donald Trump.
Something is, that's what they would say about you because this is crazy.

Speaker 3 And today, today I want us to try to get to a bunch of things.

Speaker 3 Like, one, I want us to talk about the Joe Biden of it all, like a president who was convinced literally like a week or so ago that he was definitely going to run for re-election.

Speaker 3 And then told us, no, he's not, tweeted that he's not. And then I guess, you know, the Kamala Harris of it all.

Speaker 3 And we're going to be speaking about it with one of my favorite human beings in the entire world, in the entire world. I mean, she's truly one of the smartest people I know.

Speaker 3 Half of everything she's written has informed how I see the world. Her name is Tressie Macmillan Cotton.
First of all, welcome to the podcast. Second of all, Tressie,

Speaker 3 I know you don't live in the news,

Speaker 3 but

Speaker 3 when you heard the news, Biden out, what was the first thing you thought?

Speaker 4 Well, first of all, hello, my darling, darling Trevor. So happy to always see you.
So listen, no, I try not to live in the news. I want to be a real human being.
That matters a lot to me.

Speaker 4 But I also have this job, right? And I have to know. And I feel like I take one for the team.
So what I tell my friends is, you don't have to watch it. I'll watch it and I'll filter it back to you.

Speaker 4 I'm like, just watch the housewives and i'll tell you if we have a country tomorrow uh so same i get the you know i get the text message like everyone else i mean i think maybe i get it like 60 seconds early only because of my colleagues at the new york times and um I think I knew by like the week before it wasn't looking good, not because I thought Biden was necessarily on death's door,

Speaker 4 but because he had lost donors. And politics is money.
And when you start losing the donors, I thought the message was

Speaker 3 on the wall.

Speaker 4 I was stunned how they did it on a Sunday with a tweet and a sort of like generally worded sort of statement.

Speaker 4 I thought that was kind of strange. It sounded like someone who still wasn't quite at terms with his decision.
And then my next thought was, oh my God,

Speaker 4 just, oh my God, here we go.

Speaker 4 Right. It's one thing to have to look at Donald Trump for the next election season.
It's another thing to listen to Donald Trump run against a woman of color.

Speaker 3 Oh, damn. I didn't even think of it like that.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I don't know if I can be drunk enough for what's about to happen.

Speaker 3 First of all, before we get into like the nitzy-gritsy, wait, you get news 60 seconds before the rest of us?

Speaker 4 No, yo, that's, I've never said any such thing.

Speaker 3 I said you said, you said I got it like 60 seconds earlier.

Speaker 4 You're on a delay over there. You don't know what you heard.
I simply said I got a text message in a group chat.

Speaker 3 Okay. I heard

Speaker 4 you're on the record about 60 seconds and not.

Speaker 3 I am pretty certain. That's what I can I tell you that you are the most responsible.
I would be using that

Speaker 3 to no end. And if I got the news 60 seconds before the general public because I worked at a newspaper, I would just be like, I just got a bad feeling, man.

Speaker 3 I feel like Trump shouldn't be standing on that podium. I don't know, man.
I would just be texting people the entire time just so I become like the savant of the group.

Speaker 3 But okay,

Speaker 3 you know, can we all admit or do am I the only one who feels like this was handled in a really weird way? Because

Speaker 3 I understand a presidential candidate pulling out. I understand somebody saying that they're not going to run again.

Speaker 3 I don't know about you.

Speaker 3 I'm not even a conspiracy theorist, but it was weird that the president of the United States, who has been very publicly running on every platform, the guy was now doing like TikToks with people, turns around and sends a tweet out that's like, yo, peace out.

Speaker 3 I'm not doing this anymore. And that's it.
Not a video. Yo, even like, even athletes will make a video.

Speaker 3 You know, they'll come up to be like, for 15 years, you've supported me as I've played the beautiful game. And now it is time for me to hang up my boots and spend time with my family.

Speaker 3 Thank you so much. Nothing, guys, we got to chat.

Speaker 2 That

Speaker 2 to me was bizarre, but also the fact he was announcing his retirement from politics, effectively.

Speaker 2 I felt for him because I'm like, oh, you're actually not getting the retirement party, which I think everyone deserves. Everyone deserves like a nice little farewell retirement party.

Speaker 2 But I was like, it was so much to process. And it felt like he, Tressie, to your point, that he hadn't quite metabolized the fact that I'm not just dropping out the race.

Speaker 2 I don't have a job.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah. I think it's a couple of things.

Speaker 4 one they're trying to stay ahead of the gossip right and so you just go to like the quickest medium but i also suspect that no one wanted to see joe biden on camera in that moment and i think his team knew it because you'd need to not only do the statement right he'd have to embody it he would have to look you know confident and presidential in his choice and i i wonder if you couldn't quite pull that off.

Speaker 4 By all accounts, he had only made the decision, you know, shortly before before the news was announced. I think maybe seeing it on film

Speaker 4 might have jeopardized the message.

Speaker 4 And, you know, would you want somebody recording you when you get fired?

Speaker 5 I mean,

Speaker 5 to your point. And also for Christiana and Trevor, I think that one of the things that may it feel weird to you is culturally you come from a different background.

Speaker 5 In the U.S., in the America that we live in, what you do is

Speaker 5 when you send somebody off to the nurse at home, don't act like those grandparents didn't have plans that week.

Speaker 3 They had told people what they were going to do. I'll see you at lunch tomorrow, girl.
Blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 5 And then out of nowhere, they just missing.

Speaker 3 Oh, you see, now you're getting into conspiracy land. Yeah.
You know, going to your analogy, Josh, it is weird for grandpa to send a tweet.

Speaker 3 to the family saying that grandpa's not coming to the cookout when grandpa was like, this is my cookout. Yeah.
We're all invited to the cookout. Yeah.

Speaker 3 and we're doing this thing and I'm going to be there and I'm bringing my world-famous potato salad and everybody's got to come. And it's like, but grandpa, mom says you're too old to be.

Speaker 3 He's like, I'm never too old to run a cookout. I'll always be at the cookout.

Speaker 3 And then the next message you get from your grandfather is, due to unforeseen circumstances, I will no longer be at the cookout. I wish you well.
And your mother will be creating the...

Speaker 3 It doesn't help

Speaker 3 create stability in a country where people already feel like everything they hear and and understand about politics is a lie. That's that's what I feel.

Speaker 2 It doesn't I mean it kind of lended credence to that kind of Trumpy message of the deep state and there's talk of like donations and the billionaire class and the you know, we had the George Clooney's and the entertainment class saying

Speaker 3 that was saying, hey, that was unfortunate.

Speaker 2 So calls are being made. And all the way, by the way, Obama's medium post was so long.
You could tell he had that in the drafts for at least a week, right?

Speaker 2 Because it's like, this is not something that that you're incredibly loquacious and intelligent, but you didn't write this.

Speaker 3 I'm with Christianity. You know, you didn't write this in an hour.
It was like so thoughtful. I'm like, oh, this was in your drafts, and you had done multiple edits.

Speaker 2 So it kind of lent credence to this idea that there are these forces that operate within American politics on a subterranean level. And in the right, they're very explicit about it.

Speaker 2 We think about the Heritage Foundation. We think about the Koch brothers, etc.
But you're like, oh, the progressives have that thing too. They just look a bit different.

Speaker 2 And that was was a thing that I think has made people feel like going to conspiracy land because it feels strange.

Speaker 4 I agree. There's this sense that somebody took Biden's keys away, you know, said, no, this is it.
This is your last day driving. And he didn't know until the keys were gone.

Speaker 4 And that absolutely does give this sense that someone's in control, but it wasn't necessarily Biden.

Speaker 4 And then the inevitable questions are, well, then who? Who gets to make that call, right? Who is the person who gets to push it? And I agree.

Speaker 4 There is a, you know, there is a billionaire political class on both sides. On the right, we are able to name it a little more easily.

Speaker 4 I suspect on the left, it's because there's like an inter-party battle between multiple people trying to be in charge, whereas on the right, they tend to agree who's in charge.

Speaker 3 To your point, then.

Speaker 3 If the keys could be taken away from the commander-in-chief, doesn't it sort of mean then the keys shouldn't be with the commander-in-chief?

Speaker 3 Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 3 I know it's circular logic, but in a way I go, do you want somebody to run for president for another four years if somebody can take the keys away from them and send that message?

Speaker 4 I think it's a really good point. And I think it's a point that had really already settled with a lot of voters, right? So you see the, you know, the polling, really saw the polling in 2020.

Speaker 4 People were already concerned about his age.

Speaker 4 You know, napoleon was already still there ahead of this election but then you know there's the debate performance and i just don't think we can overlook that the debate felt like the last time that biden made a call because he chose to have that debate he pushed for it and

Speaker 4 that decision i think called into question his ability to make precisely those types of decisions. Did you want someone who hadn't quite accurately parsed where the electorate was?

Speaker 4 And everybody goes into panic mode, which again suggests that there were people prepared to do exactly that, which I do think lends some credibility to the idea that there were already concerns within the inner circle.

Speaker 5 Yeah. And I also think as painful as it is, I feel like that debate for Biden was when your mom looks at you and she's like, grandpa got one more time to put that remote in the fridge.

Speaker 3 If you put the remote in the fridge, again,

Speaker 5 he can't be on his own.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Like, I don't know if I can trust grandpa with you if I can't trust him with the remote.
Essentially, that's how America felt in that moment. But

Speaker 3 before we move on to Kamala and

Speaker 3 the new direction conversation and everything that's happening now in the country, I just want to spend a second talking about what you brought up, Tressie, the donor class.

Speaker 3 It is

Speaker 3 pretty wild

Speaker 3 that arguably the most powerful nation in the world, a nation that proudly, proudly touts

Speaker 3 its democracy and its democratic values, as

Speaker 3 liberal and progressive as you want to say the Democratic Party is, the money spoke.

Speaker 3 The people didn't speak in this instance, or the people that spoke as a collective weren't heard as much as the people who spoke with their wallets. Like,

Speaker 3 what does that say about America's democracy and where it stands? Even if this outcome may be what people wanted, what does it say about America and the way the system actually works?

Speaker 4 The American political process, especially running for president, is one of the most

Speaker 4 circumscribed, contrived maybe things that we do that gives you the sense that every individual voter

Speaker 4 is casting a ballot for freedom. But in fact, very few people go into the ballot box box really deciding who they want to vote for.
You go into the ballot box as either a Democrat or a Republican.

Speaker 4 But really where voters have the most sort of leverage

Speaker 4 is in the moment when the donor class hasn't consolidated around a candidate, right? They're sort of looking at the tea leaves, trying to see who people will support.

Speaker 4 After that point, money weighs in on that kind of the, you know, the individual voter's power really is significantly diminished.

Speaker 4 We have got this scenario, which Donald Trump has been able to blow through. It's why his takeover of the Republican Party has been both stunning and almost absolute.
He bucked money and won.

Speaker 4 And in politics, the idea has been for at least 40, 50 years, you don't win without the money. Right.

Speaker 4 And so that's how he was able to bring quote unquote moderate Republicans to heel. He was able to show that he could control the donor class.

Speaker 4 On our side, I think, and I say, all right, let's be, you know, know my politics are probably clear here i don't want to live under donald trump so i don't think i'm giving anything away

Speaker 3 but

Speaker 4 i think we're clear there um but you know on our side i think one we're always so self-conscious that we don't have enough billionaires right like oh the rights got you know tech they've got oil they've got you know and we only have george soros and so we're so panicked about not having enough billionaires that i think we're also more susceptible to um falling in line.

Speaker 4 But the reality is, yeah, money matters.

Speaker 5 It definitely feels,

Speaker 5 this is maybe a bit contrived of an analogy, but it does feel a lot like wrestling now. And it's just more out in the open because wrestling, a very specific type, is fake.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 5 the thing that happens, though, is that those narratives are written. It's written who's going to be the champ.
It's written who's all that stuff.

Speaker 5 But what people don't realize is that those narratives are written off of crowd reaction.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 the crowd literally

Speaker 3 does control

Speaker 5 for a little while, they control everything because then they see where the crowd is cheering and they're like, okay, let's write it for this guy to win his next couple matches.

Speaker 5 But if the crowd says, oh, this is all pre-written and no one cares what we think, now the writers don't know what to do.

Speaker 5 And that feels like where we're at right now, where it's like, I think some people have already have this like foregone conclusion to hopelessness because Kamala is a black woman and because Donald Trump's a white guy.

Speaker 5 And I think that that is also lending itself a little bit to like the counterintuitive thing with wrestling, where it's like, if you just show up and you don't even clap, you just stare and watch and you're like, this is fake.

Speaker 5 Now, now the thing is in a tales form.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 We'll be right back after this.

Speaker 3 Christiana, what you and I spoke about the other day was how there was the initial shock that Joe Biden's instantly out. There was an overwhelming feeling of despair.

Speaker 3 And then Joe Biden endorses Kamala Harris and people go, but what does that even mean? Does it count? Does it not count?

Speaker 3 But I don't know who phoned whom. And I don't know.
Can we talk about the black girl Zoom?

Speaker 2 Can we talk about it?

Speaker 3 I was about to say it was the black girl. Can we talk about the black girl Zoom?

Speaker 2 Tressie, I'm sure you were on there on Sunday.

Speaker 3 I was on there.

Speaker 2 black the black girl magic yep tell me a little bit about the the call because i can't say too much can we

Speaker 3 it was officially it was off the record yeah yeah but it's everywhere yeah everywhere social media is talking about everywhere it like everyone is talking not about the contents of the call but people are talking about the sentiment and how many people joined in and the fact that a million dollars was raised on a zoom call normally people pay to go off a zoom call i do want to say that zoom has a cap to how many people allowed on a call i think it's like 10 000.

Speaker 2 the coo of zoom is a south asian woman and she made some calls so the cap was raised and that was why 44 000 black women and some allies were able to be on that call so that tells you there's something happening there's something in the air um i'll let tracy talk about the organizing aspect of the call but what i will say is that joe biden blacked backed out and black women said you're not going to step over karma that's what happened like everyone else was hopeless and confused and we were like, oh, no, no, no, there's an option.

Speaker 2 And you're not going to do that thing that happens in offices all the time. When a white man leaves a job, we know who's the most qualified.
We know who's been doing the work.

Speaker 2 We know who's been overlooked. Everyone knows the hyper-competent black woman in the office, right? Who never really gets to be COO, makes a C-suite.

Speaker 2 And I think there was just something in our consciousness that said, you're not going to step over her.

Speaker 3 And that's for people that don't, I don't particularly like her that much.

Speaker 2 You know, honestly,

Speaker 2 she's not my shit. I'm with you.

Speaker 3 Yeah, we would never be homegirls. My hair is too natural, I'm too loud.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you know, I'm not bullish enough.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, I'm like, I don't have the silk press, yeah.

Speaker 3 However, hello, I said,

Speaker 2 we are behind her, and I think that's the important thing to realize.

Speaker 2 That like all black women don't see themselves in her, don't necessarily agree with her past, but we're like, you're not about to get him out the way and step over her.

Speaker 3 That's right.

Speaker 2 But, Tressie, let me let me let you go ahead.

Speaker 4 No, I could not agree with any of that more. What they did was they activated Voltron when they started floating any other name, right?

Speaker 4 It became impossible for any black woman I know, again, including myself. I'm like Christiana.
I am not a Silk Press girl, right? So I'm not invited to the Cotillions and that's okay.

Speaker 4 I'm not, you know, I don't spend my summers at the venue and all that kind of stuff, but every black woman who has ever worked and every black woman has worked has been in a room where she has the answers the experience right and is expected to train her replacement to support the people who have less education than her and to earn less while she's doing it and so when you saw this calling up of people who have been trying to be in that inner circle for years and haven't made it a gavin newsom are you kidding me big grets love her if you like in michigan but she's brand new

Speaker 4 and everybody going no every black woman felt that moment and the call that goes out is sort of like, you know, a cross between word of mouth and tapping into black organizations, sororities, and church groups, and et cetera.

Speaker 4 So the infrastructure had was there. But what really happened, I think, was this,

Speaker 4 you know, this collective recognition among Black women that, oh, we know how this story goes. And listen, Kamala win or lose has earned her shot.
to run.

Speaker 4 If Kamala is good enough to be vice president, she's good enough to be president. And if you have an argument against that, you have to make it explicitly.

Speaker 4 And you don't just get to slide in the guy with the white guy with the good hair.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 That would be Gavin.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 5 I also think that, yeah, it's like if she's good enough to be vice president, she's good enough to be president. And she was one more COVID away anyway.

Speaker 3 Wow.

Speaker 3 Damn.

Speaker 3 One more COVID away.

Speaker 3 Okay, I'll say this, though.

Speaker 3 I've had conversations with like every time i would meet a ceo like a really you know a ceo of a huge company i would always ask them the same question how did you get here why did you get here what were the things that got you here etc etc and can i tell you if i was to distill it down in my little amateur you know anecdotal experiment that i've run with ceos of major major corporations around the world

Speaker 3 The number one thing that has come across from all of them is that somebody gave them a shot and just said, you know what, kid, why don't you come work for me? Because I see myself in you.

Speaker 3 That phrase, I see myself in you, has made me realize that the real privilege or disadvantage in this world to being a black woman, particularly, by the way, versus a white man, is that people think it's worth taking a shot on you.

Speaker 3 And your success or failure doesn't determine the perception of everybody else in that space. We see that with CEOs all the time.
You know how many CEOs, Josh and I talk about this all the time.

Speaker 3 You know how many CEOs take over a company, lose hundreds and millions, if not billions of dollars in value for the company, leave the company with a massive severance, and then go on to another company to become CEO where they might repeat the same thing.

Speaker 3 And nobody goes, oh, these white men just got hired because they're just like, yeah, no, that sucks. And here's their severance.

Speaker 3 And to what you're saying, Tracy and Christiana, I go, if anything kamala harris has shown that she's as qualified as as many if not more qualified by the way than many of the people who have been assumed qualified for the job she has shown that she's definitely she has a right to at least get in the driver's seat because if it was only about being qualified half of these people would wouldn't have even been allowed in the White House.

Speaker 3 Does that make sense? Yeah.

Speaker 3 It's interesting how, it's interesting how like black women in particular have to justify like the nitty-gritties of their qualifications to be considered for the conversation when most people do not.

Speaker 3 If you're too old, they're like, no, this person is seasoned. If you're too young, they're like, this person is fresh.
But when you're a black woman, those are all black marks.

Speaker 3 And excuse the pun on your resume where they go, ah, but I don't know. Could you be the first black woman? You've never been a black woman president, so I don't know if you could do it.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 I don't know if you could do it.

Speaker 5 I also think that very few people have a level of emotional intelligence to see themselves in another person. I think what's actually happening is I see myself on you.

Speaker 5 And that's why it's so hard to transfer that to anyone who's not like you. Does that make sense?

Speaker 3 Oh, damn. Explain more, Josh.

Speaker 3 So, like,

Speaker 3 I think I know what you mean, yeah.

Speaker 5 Like, like, I, let's say, let's say I roll with a bunch of comedians all the time, and they're all different colors, different backgrounds.

Speaker 5 But the ones I gravitate towards the most and the ones that I, that I like sort of usher in and try to help the most are, just happen to be the black men. Because I don't see myself in them.

Speaker 5 I see myself on them. I see myself as like, oh, yeah, I know how to fix that struggle because that's the exact struggle I want.

Speaker 5 Meanwhile,

Speaker 5 meanwhile, even not meaning to, whether it's a white woman or a white guy, what I'm like, oh, yeah, I don't know what to do when people are mad at you for showing up because that version of that hasn't happened to me.

Speaker 5 When really an emotionally intelligent person would be able to transfer the fact that anybody, Anybody who has your hustle has your hustle, no matter what they look like or no matter what background they are.

Speaker 5 But we tend to, that's why people, you know, oh, I, I see myself in this young kid caddying at the country club. It's like, yeah, but this kid already has ties to the country club.

Speaker 5 Like, like, yeah, do you know what I mean? You don't, you, you somehow see yourself in the caddy.

Speaker 5 You don't see yourself in this kid that's hustling on a street corner in the inner city who's really doing the same hustle that you did back in the day.

Speaker 2 For me, I think that's why she's actually, I'm excited about her, because for a lot of white people, she's very familiar. You know, she's very palatable.
Like, we can't get beyond the beauty politics.

Speaker 2 She's an attractive, light-skinned woman who wears her hair straight. She is culturally familiar.
They all know every one of them has someone in their family who's biracial.

Speaker 2 Like, most of these people have just one. And that's what Barack had.

Speaker 2 He was just like, oh, we, you know, so-and-so's grandson is like him, you know, you know, his dad is black, but, you know, she's incredibly palatable.

Speaker 2 That they, there's enough enough familiarity that perhaps if it was someone like myself or Tressie, they'd be like alarm bells because they're like, well, that is unambiguous blackness and we can't deal with that.

Speaker 2 That's natural hair. But Kamala in many ways fits a role and she has a white husband.
So they're like, okay, well, she goes home to us.

Speaker 2 She is the person that you'd invite to your wedding or you would socialize with.

Speaker 3 That is true.

Speaker 2 And for me, that's why I'm like, we got to get behind this one because it's more likely her to me than anyone else.

Speaker 4 And yeah, it's not not a Stacey Abrams, to Christiana's point, right? Where people look at that figure and that unambiguous blackness is terrifying.

Speaker 4 I think the intersection here of what Josh has said and what Christiana is explicating is like the sweet spot for me, which is we like to think that we can identify talent and grit or whatever in other people.

Speaker 4 It's almost always a projection of our ego. Right.

Speaker 4 I remember someone telling me once that she had to stop going to her gym class because they had switched out the class leader.

Speaker 4 And the one before used to be a light-skinned Dominican like her, but the new one was darker skinned and Puerto Rican. And so she couldn't identify anymore.

Speaker 3 And I just remember thinking, So the moves didn't hit the same?

Speaker 4 The moves don't hit the same when he goes from the DR to the PR. I don't know how it worked, but she was just like so like, oh, this person used to look exactly like me.
And so I could project my ego.

Speaker 4 But, you know, it doesn't take much, I think, for people to see someone as distinctly other than them, right?

Speaker 4 What Kamala has is still has in this moment is enough malleability where people can project their ego, especially non-black people, hello, can project their ego onto her without a lot of fear about her difference.

Speaker 4 And I think.

Speaker 4 To Christiana's point, there are not going to be a lot of Black women politicians at that level of competitiveness that are going to have that.

Speaker 4 And if part of what we have to do in this country is break this nation's mental image of what a president looks like, what competence looks like, then you've got to do it with your best shot.

Speaker 3 I do wonder, though,

Speaker 3 how

Speaker 3 being a woman will affect her. You know, I feel like a lot of people are talking about black women.

Speaker 3 And I

Speaker 3 think not enough people are talking about women.

Speaker 3 Again, this is just my perception of America.

Speaker 3 Blackness is tied to so many cool things these days, and it's become so ubiquitous in so many areas of American life that subconsciously, some people,

Speaker 3 like, they're fine with black, even if they may be racist on certain occasions. And they, do you, do you get what I'm saying?

Speaker 3 It's no longer as...

Speaker 3 as, excuse the pun, black and white as it used to be. You know, it's no longer just people who are like, I don't like black people.

Speaker 3 No, it's like someone who goes like, I don't like these N-words, but, you know, and as Lil Wayne, my favorite rapper, says, you know, there's nothing I can do.

Speaker 3 So I've had conversations

Speaker 3 with groups of people and I would say to them, I'd be like, hey, do you think, do you think a woman could do it? And the amount of times women have said to me,

Speaker 3 half joking, but then sometimes very serious, like, I'll be honest, I like the idea, but I don't think a woman could be president.

Speaker 3 I just don't think a woman could be president how much do you think that that'll actually play into them in the booth you know like like josh you've said many times like you like i'll never vote for a woman and i always gone like why not josh why would you do this to me in this moment i i was i was actually minding my own business you said wrestling was fake i went you said wrestling was fake i was listening come on here and say wrestling is fake i was being a good listener uh

Speaker 2 i actually have like a counter to that though i think we should not forget i hope so we should not forget hillary won the popular vote In terms of raw numbers, she got more votes than Donald Trump because of the nature of the American electoral system that waits more votes than others.

Speaker 2 She didn't win the votes that matter.

Speaker 3 The most goddamn system in the world.

Speaker 2 Yeah, she just didn't win the votes that win elections, but she got more votes purely, right?

Speaker 2 And I, to me, like My experience as a black woman, and it may be different for Kamala. Tressie, I'd love to hear you weigh in.
I think people see my blackness more than they see my womanhood.

Speaker 2 I've always felt like defeminized or desexed or oversexualized depending on the context.

Speaker 2 So when I deal with men in professional spaces, they don't see women because what they associate with women are their wives and their daughters. They see black.

Speaker 2 And what is great for me is that they're scared of me. So I think that when Kamala debates Trump, he's going to be scared.
Now, what a white man is going to do to me is much more subterranean.

Speaker 2 It's psychological. It's about my pay.
It's about my treatment. It's about can I be, you know, promoted.

Speaker 2 But I've seen white men treat white women in a way because of the intimacy and familiarity that they do not, black women, we don't experience that.

Speaker 2 And I've always said the best thing about me is that people think I'm angry, and because people think I'm angry, they're scared of me. And that fear is actually very useful politically.

Speaker 2 And if you watch Kamala in debates, she dogwalked Biden. You have to remember that moment when she had the t-shirts ready.

Speaker 2 And it's just like she's a prosecutor, she's a lawyer, she's actually used to dealing with the psychology of a certain type of very powerful white man, whereas he just doesn't know what to do.

Speaker 2 So for me, I think that like actually her blackness neutering her womanhood is going to be the thing that she's able to maneuver this election in a way that actually Hillary never could.

Speaker 2 Because Hillary, they're like, you remind us of our nagging wife. That was it.
That's why those men, they were like, whereas Cameroon's like, I kind of find you hot, I kind of find you hot.

Speaker 2 You're attractive, but you're also smarmy. But then you wear these suits.

Speaker 4 And I think that the mind fuckness of it all is going to be the thing that actually is the beneficial the beneficial element of what intersectionality does to you that makes your life hard in the right occasion and also be positive that's right that's right in some contexts you have intersecting oppressions right that limit your life and then in this other maybe more narrow context it can benefit you we always forget the benefit part and i'm always pushing people on that precisely for the reasons christiana says i have been the black woman.

Speaker 4 I'm still that black woman in the room. I know that the fact that people do not see me as a full woman also conditions them to be, to acquiesce to me in some circumstances of leadership, right?

Speaker 3 Oh, this is interesting.

Speaker 4 The same way they would to a man, especially if I may be dealing with like

Speaker 4 people who have some professional exposure to black women, but not intimate exposure to black women. Let me tell you, one of the things that terrifies me is how TikTok is ruining that for black women.

Speaker 4 They have made us so accessible to white men, they are messing with my superpower.

Speaker 3 I don't need them knowing how I wrap up my hair. I don't need them understanding all of this process.

Speaker 4 So now I'm out there in the world and sometimes white men are like, oh, I know about you. And I'm like, no, no, I did not want.

Speaker 3 I get over on the fear.

Speaker 3 That works for me.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 But there is a latent sort of fear about not being able to anticipate black women that especially a very insular, wealthy white man from the Northeast would feel it's just an unknown quantity, right?

Speaker 4 And I think that one of the things that Trump is going to have a problem with, which I think his team is already demonstrating, they don't know how to prep for her.

Speaker 4 He doesn't deal with any black women in his life. And Kamo is not afraid of him, can confuse him, can manipulate the line between, womanness and blackness in a way that gives her the upper hand.

Speaker 4 And I think Kama is very comfortable with that.

Speaker 3 We'll be right back after this short break.

Speaker 3 So, okay, let me ask you this. Just a just a fun game I like to play.
None of this means anything because predictions, in my opinion, are useless, but they are fun. They are fun.

Speaker 3 I think every time you predict the future, you create like an alternate universe. So

Speaker 3 Josh, you looked at me like I'm both crazy and genius at the same time.

Speaker 5 I have $10 million.

Speaker 3 Yeah, but you see, you don't. You don't.
Now,

Speaker 3 Josh in another universe does.

Speaker 3 He also just got a call from the IRS wanting to know how he just got $10 million in his life. How dare you?

Speaker 3 I would love to know this.

Speaker 3 Who do you think is the perfect running mate? Because I feel like every single combination comes with another combination.

Speaker 3 Like, if it's like, if she gets another woman, and if it's a white woman, then it's like, is this, what does this mean? Or what does this say?

Speaker 3 Is this like Andrew Tate's wet dream?

Speaker 3 And then if it's like her and a white man, what does it say? And if it's a black man, is it an older white man? Is it a younger white man?

Speaker 3 Is it a like, what do you think she looks for as a running mate to go up against Donald Trump and the man with the beard, the beautiful beard, J.D. Vance.
Oh, JD. What a beard.

Speaker 3 Oh, what a beard.

Speaker 4 As they say on the internet, if you're going to game theory this thing, yeah. Yeah, yeah, fully game theory.

Speaker 4 I think that you already have, you already have a disruptive ticket if Kamala's at the head. I would hope, I'm actually kind of hoping, a small part of me, that they will lean into being disruptive.

Speaker 4 I think that if you get a white man, a more palatable white man as vice president, the constant optics of that will be the black woman being a white man's boss.

Speaker 4 You see what I'm saying?

Speaker 4 And I think that that is a fear that, you know, that can prime some sort of like anger and anxiety that will actually be greater than they have, the fear they have of Kamala being president.

Speaker 4 I don't think you, I don't, I wouldn't set up those optics. Like if I was in charge, I think you almost, I think you lean into being the most radical ticket.
that there has ever been.

Speaker 4 I'm putting the woman on there. I'm actually going to put like Gretchen on there.
Trust me, I'm not saying

Speaker 4 I'm going to double down on it and say, you've got a future here where it is a Trump and a JD Vance who have a vision of America that's absolutely about patriarchy.

Speaker 4 Or you can do this thing and you can feel cool.

Speaker 2 That's so interesting, Tracy. I never thought of it that way, but your conceptualization is brilliant as always.

Speaker 3 And yeah, the most disposable.

Speaker 2 No, no, no, but I think

Speaker 3 there is something.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.
It's crazy, but America is a crazy, very young country that sometimes will buy into something that is unexpected. Like they made Schwarzenegger the governor of California.

Speaker 4 We're not serious. We're not serious.

Speaker 3 You're not Christianity.

Speaker 2 It's a very unserious. Yeah, so why not? So you might as well go for it.

Speaker 2 And I mean, my instinct, and I said this on Instagram, and maybe this is the part of me that's very British and like a boring political scientist.

Speaker 2 I felt the VP should be like the most precedented thing. White man, 2.5 kids, very attractive and quiet wife, goes to church, drinks once every six months, like as boring as possible.

Speaker 3 She only drinks the blood of Jesus.

Speaker 2 And only drinks the blood of Jesus, the blood of the Lamb during communion. That's right.

Speaker 2 That was my instinct.

Speaker 2 And I guess this is the fear in me as a black woman in this country is that I feel that what Biden was able to do for Obama, because I think Biden was critical to getting Obama elected, You need those kind of undecided voters who are going to go into the, you know, those couple hundred thousand who decide in the morning what they're going to do, they'll be like, oh, well, at least my buddy will be there.

Speaker 2 So you just may need to just capture, just boost turnout in Georgia. And people in Georgia are going to be like, okay, black woman, white man,

Speaker 2 I can go for this.

Speaker 4 No, I think that's the straight political read. And I suspect exactly the conversation that's happening because you are a political scientist.
And that is, I think, how they think about it.

Speaker 4 The vice president historically is supposed to deliver votes that the president can't deliver.

Speaker 4 The only thing that's questionable here is that we don't know if people will vote for a black woman at all. So you don't quite know what votes she can bring.

Speaker 4 And so that complicates choosing, I think, a vice presidential candidate. And I think that yours is the sober

Speaker 4 path to take. Mine is absolutely drunk, right?

Speaker 4 And I just think, however, that because we are so deeply unserious, one of the things this country does is that

Speaker 4 do we progress? Yes, but we don't do it slowly, right? We have these long periods of almost regressive, you know, politics. And then we'll make these huge leaps in like two weeks.

Speaker 3 Everything changes in two weeks.

Speaker 4 I want them to campaign on here's, you know, let's capture lightning in a bottle. But the more sober, I think, assessment is to play it with more familiarity.

Speaker 5 I think that.

Speaker 5 I very much wish that Tressie had gone last because I feel like yours was so good that now mine is going to sound okay.

Speaker 5 I'm going to try it anyway. I think you could go Mark Kelly because Mark Kelly is like a former astronaut, current, you know, senator.
He could call JD and Trump dumb to their face and mean it, right?

Speaker 5 Then you also have Andy Bashir, who's like.

Speaker 5 Kentucky governor, who doesn't have enough. He's interesting.

Speaker 5 He doesn't have enough name recognition, but you can see how what I like about him is that he is the most southern version and honestly, like identity politics wise, the most white man version of someone's heart being in the right place.

Speaker 5 Like he, he represents this sort of like white base who's like, who means well and doesn't always get it right, but is like fully on board.

Speaker 4 I think that's actually a really interesting choice, Andy Bashir.

Speaker 3 I'm going to go.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 3 I think Kamala Harris should pick a Latino running mate

Speaker 3 and go balls to the wall, Just basically go like, this is going to be like the ticket of firsts. First, everything is being done here.
It's like a fire sale. One time only, America, one time only.

Speaker 3 November 9th. This is the first of first.
You get a year. And go there, they're like, the Latino caucus has been doing an amazing job.
They've been mobilizing people.

Speaker 3 They've been overlooked for a long time. They're one of the biggest populations in America.
I just think this is the time to think out of the box and be like, you know what?

Speaker 3 Go and get these people who have been like, you know, sort of overlooked and then only spoken about when it comes to the border and all of that.

Speaker 3 Get a Latino person on the ticket and be like, yeah, let's swing. If you swing and miss with that ticket, I mean, what a miss.
That was

Speaker 3 that was that was monumental. And I think if America shipped it all in on that, if Kamala shipped it all in on that, I think that would be the greatest story, win or lose, that America's ever told.

Speaker 3 That's my pitch.

Speaker 3 Final thoughts for everyone

Speaker 3 is

Speaker 3 Biden just like gone now? Is this because Biden stepped away from the campaign,

Speaker 3 but it sort of feels like, you know, to what you said earlier, Christiana, it sort of sort of feels like Biden has stepped away from everything.

Speaker 3 It's a strange feeling to have,

Speaker 3 but does this make him the ultimate lame duck?

Speaker 2 I think unfortunately, you know, Biden's whole life has been marred by tragedy in some ways, like losing his wife and his daughter, losing a son, having another son with addiction challenges.

Speaker 2 And he's done a great job of like overcoming those things and embracing it and making it part of his political rhetoric.

Speaker 2 I think there was so much foreshadowing that now we're seeing that his political career has ended in a tragedy.

Speaker 2 You know, this kind of like an older man battling health issues, battling issues in his family, kind of just being pushed to the side and, you know, also not having a voice that matters.

Speaker 2 And I think this is just an end to a very kind of tragic political career in ways. And And I think he just kind of goes down in history as this tragic figure.

Speaker 2 And it's really, the final image is a tweet, you know, and

Speaker 2 there's no overcoming that. But Tressie, I'd be really curious about how you feel about it.

Speaker 4 I strongly agree. The one thing that we, the one narrative we tend to share in this country across political divide, across class, across race,

Speaker 4 is that age equals

Speaker 4 being feeble.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 unfortunately for Biden, he didn't age after the office. He aged while in office.

Speaker 4 So we saw him in the White House elderly in a way that I think resonates with everyone no matter who they are and unfortunately we don't have a redemption narrative for a person who ages right the only narrative we have for being elderly is that we sort of coddle you into the next stage of your life and that coddling coddling is antithetical to Gravitas, to Christiana's point, right?

Speaker 4 He's now seen as an elderly figure.

Speaker 4 I think we are a media-driven culture. And I think the image of him will supersede, unfortunately, his record for the short term or near term.

Speaker 5 Here's my thing. I disagree slightly only because of the opportunity that I think he has.
He has the opportunity that everyone wishes that they had when they run for office the first time.

Speaker 5 Because anytime somebody runs for office the first time, they're talking all that good stuff. I'm going to do this.
I'm going to do this.

Speaker 3 This guy is like, hey, look, I'm never coming back. I'm almost gone.

Speaker 5 A free school lunch. And y'all can come get me.

Speaker 3 Come get me. Free school lunch for everybody, right?

Speaker 5 But I'm telling you, all he has to do is just 18, 20 executive orders, just like, you know what?

Speaker 5 Maternal leave for everybody. Come get me in court.

Speaker 3 I won't be here, but you could argue with yourself.

Speaker 3 You can argue with my ghost. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Oh, man. Well, I will say that, Josh, you know what? If that, man,

Speaker 3 it might not happen for us, but in the alternate universe you just created, those people are having a really, really good time, my friend. Oh, I was happy to be off.

Speaker 3 Are having a really, really good time. Oh, man.
I just, hold on, hold on. I'm just checking the...

Speaker 3 I've got an app that shows me. In the executive order world that you created, Biden has just taxed everyone who got $10 million or more.
Oh.

Speaker 3 So Josh Johnson has the exact same amount of money that he has in this reality.

Speaker 3 But he gets a free school lunch. He gets a free school lunch.

Speaker 3 What Now with Trevor Noah is produced by Spotify Studios in partnership with Day Zero Productions and Fullwell73.

Speaker 3 The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Ben Winston, Sanaz Yamin, and Jodi Avigan. Our senior producer is Jess Hackle.
Claire Slaughter is our producer.

Speaker 3 Music, Mixing and Mastering by Hannes Brown. Thank you so much for listening.
Join me next Thursday for another episode of What Now?