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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Harris, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) Hold First Rally As Democratic Ticket; Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) To Harris At Rally: Thank You For Bringing Back The Joy; Trump And Allies Paint Harris-Walz Ticket As Most Liberal Ever; NewsNight Discusses New Details On How Vice President Kamala Harris Ended Up Making Her Pick; CNN's Van Jones Reminds People That Walz Was The Governor That Made Sure Minnesota A.G. Keith Ellison Could Prosecute The Cop Who Killed George Floyd. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired August 06, 2024 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[22:00:00]
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN HOST: The pick is in.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAMALA HARRIS, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT, DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Coach Walls, the, quote, most inspiring faculty member.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Kamala Harris bets on vibes, Midwest Muscle.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. TIM WALZ (D-MN), VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Is he a danger to society? Yes.
PHILLIP: Straight Talk.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WALZ: Mind your own damn business.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: And Tim Walz.
Plus --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The most far left ticket.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: -- Republicans seek out lines of attack --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Another left wing extremist.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: -- to label Harris' running mate --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. J.D. VANCE (R-OH), VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: It highlights how radical Kamala Harris is.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: -- before America gets to know him.
And a dad-off for Midwest supremacy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VANCE: We're white guys from the Midwest, I guess there are similarities there.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: The Marine, who loves Mountain Dew. I absolutely want to debate Tim Walz.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Versus the former football coach --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WALZ: Corn dog?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm vegetarian.
WALZ: Turkey then.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And Turkey's meat.
WALZ: Not in Minnesota.
PHILLIP: -- are put on a collision course.
Live at the table. Lee Zeldin, Van Jones, Natasha Alford and Coleman Hughes. Welcome to a special edition of NewsNight State of the race.
And good evening, I'm Abby Phillip here in New York. Big day in American politics, let's get right to what you all are talking about at home, and that is Tim Walz. The Minnesota governor debuted as the vice presidential nominee tonight in Philadelphia, and much of the country met him for the very first time and heard Kamala Harris tell his story of a service member turned teacher, turned coach, turned congressman, turned governor, and now he's on the ticket in November.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: Tim Walz was the kind of teacher and mentor that every child in America dreams of having and that every kid deserves, the kind of coach, because he's the kind of person who makes people feel like they belong and then inspires them to dream big.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: So, Harris focused on her running mate's soft edges, but Walz was there to throw some sharp elbows at Donald Trump.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WALZ: He mocks our laws. He sows chaos and division. And that's to say nothing of his record as president.
Make no mistake, violent crime was up under Donald Trump.
That's not even counting the crimes he committed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: CNN Senior Political Analyst Ron Brownstein flew all the way across the country to join us right here at the table. But, Van, man, the Friday night lights references literally, quite literally tonight. Do you buy it?
VAN JONES, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I buy it. I'm in. I listen, the sun came out. The sun came out.
PHILLIP: He doesn't actually look like Eric Taylor, just for the fact.
JONES: It doesn't matter. You know, clear eyes, heart's full, can't lose, like I love it. And the thing is that politics has been too depressing, too distressing. Even on the left, we've been, oh, fascism is coming, authoritarianism. It's been bad. It's been doom and gloom on both sides. And suddenly, the sun came out, this guy is a breath of fresh air, Kamala Harris is a breath of fresh air. And now instead of it being strength versus weakness with Biden versus Trump, now it's old, tired, and sad and decrepit with Trump versus a whole new thing with Kamala Harris and her running mate.
PHILLIP: Let me play a little bit from Tim Walz because he kind of leaned into exactly what you're talking about, this idea of joy.
JONES: Joy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WALZ: Thank you for bringing back the joy.
Don't ever underestimate the power of this. She does it all with a sense of joy.
This compassionate, careful, joyous leader believes in each and every one of you. (END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: By the way, I should say, okay, according to CNN's reporting, so today was day one of using a teleprompter for Tim Walz, but it went pretty well, it went pretty well. And also, it occurs to me, I mean, they're trying to turn the Kamala laugh around. They're turning that -- that used to be a pejorative when it came to her.
[22:05:02]
NATASHA ALFORD, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I think it's brilliant because that pejorative plays on sexist tropes, right? The woman who's unserious, she's silly, she doesn't have any gravitas. And we're showing that being joyful is part of the American identity, that you can be proud of this country.
And when you think of Tim Walz being a former I'm a former teacher, I'm a former teacher, that really resonated with me, someone who I could see actually caring about children, the image of him signing the bill for free breakfast and lunch. I mean, these are tangible things that people say, okay, this is not just a person who talks the talk, but he's walking the walk in his home state.
PHILLIP: What do you make of the selection, Ron, from a strategic perspective? I mean, Walz was there really to be the regular guy on the stage. And some people -- I keep hearing about Tim Kaine, who -- great senator, very nice guy, but some people read him as sort of like the safe bet. I mean, does Tim Walz seem like the safe bet for Vice President Harris?
RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Harris has a lot going for her right now. But I think this was a pick that was so safe that it may become risky in its own way. I mean, he is -- Tim Walz is a perfectly solid, respectable vice presidential pick. He's got a good story. He's accomplished a lot on things that Democrats care about. He's personable. As you saw, he's a good campaigner.
But she did leave on the table the candidate who could help her the most in the state that she can least afford to lose. And that was a choice not to pick the governor of Pennsylvania, whether it was politically motivated, you know, in terms of resistance on the left, whether there were personal chemistry issues.
Nonetheless, you know, most models give her a chance of between 5 and 10 percent of winning if she doesn't win Pennsylvania, right?
PHILLIP: That's the whole ballgame.
BROWNSTEIN: And, you know, the political science does not show that the vice presidential nominee guarantees you their home state, but it's more than zero, you know? And if the effect is more than zero in the state, you absolutely have to have, you need a really good reason to bypass that person.
And, look, you saw some potential reasons there. He's a good campaigner. You know, they hope he can culturally relate to voters and states they have to win. But if they get to the finish line and they fall short in Pennsylvania, and thus fall short in the Electoral College, there's going to be a lot of second guessing this moment.
FMR. REP. LEE ZELDIN (R-NY): I mean, I think this is a race that should be decided on issues at the end of the day. And, you know, right now, initially you make an announcement, people get introduced to a V.P. You go through the initial few media cycles. Ultimately, when we get into time for voting in September and October, you ask people, what do they care about? And they're talking about the border, for example. That word wasn't mentioned at all at any point tonight in any of their speeches, Shapiro, Harris, Walz. They didn't mention foreign policy. They didn't mention energy policy.
I'll tell you one other name was a lot about Trump and there was a lot about Vance. We didn't hear the name Biden once. So, when you're out there saying that you just won the nomination and you get a big round of applause for winning the nomination, well, how did that nomination get won? It was actually the sitting president of the United States. It's the leader of your party who went out and got 14 million votes. And at the end of it, that person ended up getting replaced over the course of the last couple of weeks. And now Kamala Harris becomes the nominee.
I would say, you know, it would have been nice, you know, I think it would have been an important message to the Biden supporters, and there still are Biden loyalists in the Democratic Party, to at least mention his name.
PHILLIP: I mean, it sounds like Republicans are upset that Democrats are not more upset about how this played out. That's kind of what it sounds like to me. I don't know.
COLEMAN HUGHES, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: They had a complete winning hand with Biden, and now they don't have such a clear winning hand. And so --
PHILLIP: Wait, I'm sorry. Say that again?
HUGHES: Republicans had a winning hand.
PHILLIP: We all needed to understand that, right.
HUGHES: But to get back to the V.P. choice, I think, you know, obviously, the guy has obvious charisma, obvious likability, right? He's everyone's favorite gym coach, he's everyone's favorite teacher, that's -- all of that is upside. But the downside, you have to acknowledge this, right, the downside about Pennsylvania.
And then the second downside, I would argue, is that it's a missed opportunity for Kamala to signal a pivot to the center. If you're a swing state voter that is worried about Kamala's, you know, very left wing record in the Senate, picking a Tim Walz is not necessarily the signal that Kamala is pivoting to the center, right?
JONES: I think she's making a bet that the center is different than we think. In other words, there's a positive populism that I think is available to this ticket. You have a negative populism from the right. It requires you you're mad at somebody. You got to be mad at immigrants. Like you said, you got to be mad at the immigrants. You got to be scared of the transgender people. It's populist on the right. Trump is a populist. He's a populist, but it's negative. You could be mad at somebody.
[22:10:00]
They've got a positive populism.
And I think that there's a different dimension of politics that they're playing, which is we want you to do better. We want you to be able to send your kids to a good school, we want you to be able to have good health care, and we don't need you to hate anybody to do it. And I think that that might actually trump the old model of, well, what's your tax policy? Are you on the left or the right? So, we're going to see.
I agree. She made a bet. I think she's making a bet that there're different things she can do for America with this guy.
PHILLIP: I think, fundamentally, Lee, though, what Van is saying is that what really Democrats want this to be about is a character test when it comes to Trump, and Walz, in a way, makes that possible. Harris, in a way, makes that possible in a way that it wasn't before.
ZELDIN: And, ultimately, again, I'm convinced that this is an issue that at the end of the day is going to get decided on issues.
PHILLIP: Well, I mean, I think that that's what I'm saying, is that you would like it to be decided on issues. But if the terrain is being fought on whether Trump is a good guy or a bad guy, I mean, that might be --
ZELDIN: Let me tell you why I say this, is that when all these polls get done and you ask people what is going to decide your vote for president, people are referencing specific issues as what they are saying is most important to them. You know, and to Van's point, and, you know, Van's a smart guy, the center in these different battlegrounds, it can be different from one state to the next, from one district to the next. You can ask Cori Bush what she thinks is the center of her district in St. Louis as she delivers a concession speech tonight.
I think that, you know, the quality of education in Minnesota has gotten worse over the course of the last few years. Well, no, the performance on tests have gotten worse.
PHILLIP: That's the whole country because of COVID, largely.
ZELDIN: And the COVID lockdowns is something that's going to be important to voters. And, you know, the policies with what happened post-2020 and sitting on your hands for a few days while there were rioters out there and Kamala Harris raising money to bail these people out. These issues are important to American voters.
ALFORD: And it wasn't in two days. The next day, they deployed the National Guard.
BROWNSTEIN: By conventional measures, you're right. I mean, if you look at polling, people say they trust Trump over either Biden or Harris in the economy by 10 or 15 points. They trust Trump over Biden or Harris on the border by 10 or 15 points.
PHILLIP: It's smaller now, according to a new NPR poll on the economy.
BROWNSTEIN: Or, ten, eight or ten, still a substantial lead. And normally, that would be dispositive.
JONES: That's the whole ballgame.
BROWNSTEIN: Right. But what we saw in 2022 was actual proof at the ballot box that an unprecedented number of people who said they trusted Trump or Republicans more on the economy voted against them anyway because they viewed them as a threat to their rights and their values and their freedoms and to democracy, and they find Trump unacceptable as a president.
And the fact that Harris has been even in polls or ahead of Trump in polls, even though he's still ten points ahead on who you trust on the economy says it's not going to be. I mean, you know, if you look at '18, '20 and '22, Democrats believe there is what they call an anti- MAGA majority, you know, that there is a majority of the country that does not want to live under the version of America that Trump is sketching out.
Now, Biden's weaknesses allowed him to surmount that to some extent, but against Harris, it's a different ballgame, and just the advantage on the economy may not be as controlling as it has been in the past.
PHILLIP: I mean, this was the question during the RNC. You know, if the case against the Democrats was, in fact, on the issues, was on the economy, was on, you know, the border, it wouldn't matter who's at the top of the ticket, least of all, the person who is in the White House right now with Joe Biden, and it turns out it did matter quite a lot who was at the top of the ticket.
BROWNSTEIN: The other way too, though, a generic Republican would be running better than Donald Trump is today, if that person existed. I think there's no question about that.
HUGHES: I think people have decided what they think of Trump at this point. Like, you know, you either like him or you don't, you've seen everything there is to see. And that's why I think it really would make more sense for Kamala to really focus in on those issues that matter to the key swing state voters and signal pivot towards those views.
I mean, just one more thing. I think that, you know, regardless of the reality, the perception is that who endorsed Walz when it was still an open question? Bernie Sanders, Jacobin, the socialist magazine, right? That's what Republicans are going to throw at him and say, you say, you picked another far left candidate. JONES: What's so interesting about that is Kamala Harris has somehow been able to unite the entire party. Joe Manchin is also passionately excited about her and her pick. That's a weird thing, because up until now, only one person could unite the Democrats. That was Donald Trump. She's not using Donald Trump to unite the party. She's using a positive vision to unite the party.
And I think there's something happening here that I think is interesting. I remember in 2008, Obama came forward and he was able to kind of rewrite the language of politics. He talked about himself as a skinny kid with a funny name, blah, blah, blah. And it kind of gave people a different way to think about race. I think Kamala Harris, and her pick, defend everybody's freedom.
[22:15:00]
Don't be weird. Mind your own damn business. We won't go back. They're rewriting the language of politics in a way that's creating a permission structure for people to come to them in a new way.
PHILLIP: It's only fair, I guess, to put Tim Walz on the ticket since of the things that you listed, half of them he came up with. So, I mean, really, when it comes to messaging, the stuff that has stuck is the stuff that he put on the table.
ALFORD: And if I may, I mean, he's talking about our neighbors are not our enemies, right? Just because people have maybe voted a certain way in the past, that doesn't mean that the conversation is over. So, as you said, Van, he's opening up those doors.
And he's also not a cookie cutter leftist candidate. I mean, he was endorsed by the NRA at one point, right? He didn't sign on to defund the police when people were calling for that. So, I think he actually is kind of bucking what you would expect he can bring some people in.
ZELDIN: He was (INAUDIBLE) loving your neighbors. During COVID to snitch on your neighbors, it was 10,000 of these complaints that were coming in. And I would say, you know, as the weird argument and keep throwing this weird around, I mean, he was signing legislation that was requiring taxpayer-funded distribution of tampons in boys bathrooms in elementary schools. So, if you want to go there, and we're going to have a debate about weird, I mean, it's not like he has clean hands here.
Again, I think at the end of the day though, rather than going back and forth on what's weirder, I think we should just talk about who's going to solve the issues that voters say are their top issues for the future of this country.
PHILLIP: All right, stick around everyone. Coming up next, we've got a special guest joining the conversation. Former Senator Al Franken is going to join us live. He's Walz's fellow Minnesotan. We'll ask him what he thinks of that pick and all the attacks, and also who he thinks should play Walz on Saturday Night Live.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [22:20:00]
PHILLIP: The reactions to the official Democratic ticket being set are pouring in tonight. Senator Bernie Sanders called Governor Walz a great asset. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she called him an excellent decision. Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill, says the ticket is a new hope. And former Minnesota Senator Al Franken tweeting a picture of himself with Walz writing that he is quote a great choice with an impressive record in Minnesota, and he's not weird.
Joining the conversation is Al Franken himself. Senator, thanks for joining us. So, what do you make of this decision? I mean, what do you make of the critique that this is doubling down on the left when, really, what Vice President Harris needs to be doing is reaching out to the political center of the country?
FMR. SEN. AL FRANKEN (D-MN): Well, I think some of the things have been described as left are really just common sense things. For example, free breakfast and lunch for kids at school. That's just making sure that kids have enough nutrition to learn. That seems pretty common sense to me. Making -- requiring that we get to a zero carbon footprint in electric utilities in 2040. If you believe that the Earth is warming, which I think we witness pretty much all the time, then that is just a common sense thing to do.
PHILLIP: What do you make of the comparison or the contrast with J.D. Vance? I want to play a little bit from what Walz had to say about his new opponent on the other side today during his speech.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JESSE WATTERS, FOX NEWS HOST: If Shapiro were not Jewish, would he have been chosen?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. I can say that unequivocally, without any data.
REP. BYRON DONALDS (R-FL): The Democrat Party has a massive anti- Semitism problem. That is why they did not pick Josh Shapiro.
SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): The pro-Hamas radical left of the Democrat Party said, no, you're not allowed to be Jewish, and on the Democrat ticket.
If Josh Shapiro's name were Josh Smith, he'd be the V.P. nominee named right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: That is not the bite that I was going to play for you, but since it's there --
FRANKEN: That's hilarious, though. I enjoyed it.
PHILLIP: Well, let's talk about it.
FRANKEN: Who was that? Fox? PHILLIP: Let's talk about that, because that's, that was a mash up of a lot of Fox commentators with Republican lawmakers basically saying that the reason that we're talking about Tim Walz and not Josh Shapiro is because Josh Shapiro is Jewish. Do you think that there's any truth to that at all?
FRANKEN: None. You know, you had three guys that were the finalists, Mark Kelly and Josh Shapiro and Tim Walz. And you had to pick one of them. You couldn't have two running mates. And if you had -- you know, it doesn't make any sense to me that that is the conclusion you come to.
PHILLIP: Lee Zeldin is also here. He's got a question for you as well.
ZELDIN: Senator, great to see you. Josh Shapiro and Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, they all gave what was about an hour-and-a-half worth of remarks. There was no mention of Israel. There was no mention of anti Semitism. I don't think that was by accident. What are your thoughts on that?
[22:25:00]
FRANKEN: Well, I think they were talking to the issues that they think play most strongly. That's what you usually do in speeches like this. They weren't covering every issue around, like a State of the Union address or something. So, I think that just made sense to me. Those are divisive issues to some degree. And, you know, they're going with their strengths.
PHILLIP: Senator, so what do you think the debate would look like between J.D. Vance and Tim Walz? I should note, Tim Walz, according to our reporting, said himself he is not a great debater. So, there's that. But you've got two guys who are claiming to have a claim on what it really means to be from the Midwest. What's the debate going to look like?
FRANKEN: Well, okay, if you look at the two guys and how Midwest they are, Tim grew up in Nebraska, then, as an adult, moved to Mankato, Minnesota and became a high school teacher. Also he had joined the National Guard first and was in the National Guard for 24 years or something. It was the highest ranking non--enlisted officer in the history of the Congress, was a football coach, then ran for the House, and then ran for governor.
Let's see. The other guy, Vance, he joined -- I think he was in the military.
PHILLIP: He was, yes.
FRANKEN: Good for him, yes. And then he went to -- I think, I'm not sure which order he went to the military, went to college, but then he went to Yale Law School. And then out of Yale Law School, Peter Thiel found him and started him as kind of a venture capitalist in San Francisco. And he wrote a book, a very good book about Hillbilly Elegy, which ultimately kind of I think sold out his culture that he grew up in and but, basically, moved to San Francisco and calls Walz a San Francisco liberal, where Walz has never been -- really, I'm sure he's been to San Francisco, but he's never lived there.
So, I like the matchup in terms of who seems genuine and who doesn't. The Walz story was pretty cool today, I thought.
PHILLIP: Van Jones is here as well. Van?
JONES: I wonder how you see this going forward now. People from your part of the world don't usually get on the national stage. You are probably the most famous person from your part of the world. Any advice for Walz's going forward? Should he be more visible, less visible? How should he play it?
FRANKEN: Oh, I think he's going to be very visible, and I think that's a good thing. I think that, you saw him today, I think that he came off as very --
PHILLIP: He had jokes.
FRANKEN: What he presented was very popular.
PHILLIP: Yes, he had jokes almost as good as your jokes. Were you jealous? Did you feel like he was stepping on your --
FRANKEN: No, I was very proud of him. It was how the crime rate has gone up during Trump, and not even counting the crimes he committed.
JONES: Yes, that was good.
FRANKEN: I thought that was a good joke.
PHILLIP: All right. So, speaking of jokes, this is the most important question of the night. Who should play Tim Walz on SNL. Vanity Fair put your name on the list, by the way, Senator. So, you're up there.
FRANKEN: I can do the accent.
PHILLIP: There is a striking resemblance to Steve Martin, I have to say. What do you think?
FRANKEN: Steve would be a possibility. Steve is a little on the slender side.
PHILLIP: Would you do it?
FRANKEN: Well, I'm a little on the slender side, too. You know, I heard this in the lead-in to this segment. And I went, well, thanks a lot. I have to figure this out. And, Tim, again, is not even Portly (ph). He's not anywhere near, anywhere. But Farley would have done him great.
PHILLIP: Oh, yes, that's true.
[22:30:00]
All right, what about J.D. Vance? Who should play Vance?
FRANKEN: Oh, some jerk. Somebody that people don't like.
PHILLIP: We'll come back to you on that. Get some names out of you for that one. All right, former senator. Yeah, okay.
FRANKEN: Bill Hader.
PHILLIP: Okay, all right, we got it.
FRANKEN: Not right.
PHILLIP: Former Senator Al Franken, thank you very much for joining us. We'll have you back on the show.
FRANKEN: Sure.
PHILLIP: You can do your Tim Walz impression right here on "NewsNight." You can debut it here for us. Thank you.
FRANKEN: Well, Tim doesn't have a pure Minnesota accent, you know. That's Nebraska. That's Nebraska.
PHILLIP: Yeah, all right. Thank you so much, Senator. Appreciate it. And up next for us, former President Barack Obama praising the choice of Governor Tim Walz. What influence did he ultimately have in Vice President Harris' selection? We've got some new reporting on that tonight.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:35:24]
PHILLIP: New details tonight about how Vice President Kamala Harris ended up making her pick, including with the guidance of former President Barack Obama. Obama praising Walz, saying in part, he has the values and integrity to make us proud. We're told that while Obama served as a sounding board for Harris, he didn't tip the scales in any particular direction.
With us now at the table, former Deputy Press Secretary for Obama, Bill Burton, who joins us here in our fifth seat. So, Bill, what do you make of where we ended up? And what role do you think Obama did play, if he had any, in passing along some advice on this process that he went through himself?
BILL BURTON, PRESIDENT, BRYSON GILLETTE: Well, look, I think just to start at the end, I think that we ended up with an awesome nominee who is going to bring a lot to the ticket and who Vice President Harris is very confident in.
And I think the process that she went through to get here was one that brought her a lot of confidence in Governor Tim Walz and what he can bring to the ticket. You know, for President Obama, he's one of the most important people in the party for our whole generation, right? And so, the --
VAN JONES, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: What a -- BURTON: The -- and so, the fact that Vice President Harris went to him, they talked about it, I think that President Obama knows how important this and personal this decision is. And I can't imagine that he would have put his finger on the scale, his thumb on the scale quite so much that it would have tipped it in one way or another.
You know, there was all these reports that he was pushing for Shapiro because they were so close. And there were reports he was pushing for other people. I think at the end of the day, he was just like, you need someone in this job who you want to govern with, who you want to be your partner and who you believe could be president if something horrible happens. And I think that's where they ended up.
JONES: To me, what's so interesting is that it winds up being an echo of the choice he made. You know, Obama comes on the scene, he's a phenomenon just like Kamala Harris. But who are you going to pair this phenomenon with?
And you go, you get a Joe Biden because he's grounded in the kind of heart land of the country. He bounces it out. And then Kamala also does a very similar move. So, I think that's why it felt kind of Obama-esque, even if it wasn't, because it's an echo. It rhymes with his decision-making.
PHILLIP: Here's the other thing.
BURTON: And the truth is that in the modern age, it's very rare that a nominee gets picked because of their electoral help, right? It's really going back to 1960, like you were saying earlier on T.V. It was when JFK picked LBJ and helped bring on Texas, after that, there really hasn't been a lot of picking vice presidential nominees for the electoral power of the move. It's more been, who do you want to govern?
PHILLIP: All right, well, speaking of Obama-esque, the other thing that was kind of in the environment today was Shapiro, who gave a pretty stemwinder of a speech on that stage in Philadelphia. And this is a key moment, I think, that really kind of struck people as reminiscent of former President Obama. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. JOSH SHAPIRO (D) PENNSYLVANIA: Donald Trump? Well, he's now got a partner with him. You all see that guy? Yeah. If I hear you right, and I think I do, you're chanting, he's a weirdo. Which means -- man, I love you, Philly -- which means, if you're chanting, he's a weirdo, then you heard of my good friend and our next vice president, Tim Walz.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Bill, did you get some chills there?
BURTON: Chills are the right word. But it is interesting to watch politicians who come up in certain ages, right? Like, if you listen to Gavin Newsom, he sounds a lot like Bill Clinton in how he gives speeches.
PHILLIP: Yeah.
BURTON: And with Josh Shapiro, very similar to Obama.
PHILLIP: Well, Jon Favreau, who you know well, one of Obama's former speechwriters, said, "Wild. I hadn't realized it was the mannerisms, too." Because it is, like the way he--
BURTON: The finger wag.
PHILLIP: The finger wag, the way he is at the podium, physically at the podium.
JONES: He comes off of it, comes back on. Yeah.
PHILLIP: Yeah. I mean, it really struck a lot of people today.
JONES: I don't mind it, though.
ZELDIN: I would just -- I would just say, I mean, he is -- I saw it as well, but, you know, Barack Obama was the type of guy who could just walk up seven feet behind the three-point line, drain a three-nothing but net, first attempt and walk out.
PHILLIP: He did that. Shapiro did that last week, literally.
ZELDIN: Yeah, but he missed three times. He missed three times before he hit one, that's what I'm saying. The difference is, you know, Josh is the type of guy who, at least I thought Josh would actually be a better choice than Tim Walz would be.
[22:40:00]
The Pennsylvania thing we were talking about earlier, I think that's a real dynamic as far as the electoral map goes. We'll see how it plays out, but Josh Shapiro came with a whole lot of energy that you could see has the potential to upstage Kamala Harris.
PHILLIP: Let me, let me just put on the table what CNN's reporting is tonight about why Shapiro didn't end up being it. It says, "Shapiro, who was favored by some of the Democratic Party and anti-Trump Republicans as a more moderate selection, did not go over well with Harris' team during his vetting interview, sources familiar with the process told CNN. Walz came across as deferential and cooperative. Shapiro struck some as overly ambitious, with a lot of questions about what the role of the V.P. would be."
I mean, the other thing is this speech tonight really kind of showed you this, as I said earlier, he's got a lot of main character energy, and that's not really what you go for, for a V.P. pick.
ALFORD: I think the culture also rewards authenticity, and you cannot fake that energy and that vibe that you have with someone. When we think about Obama and Biden, you know, running down the hallway or eating ice cream or whatever made them memes, those are real moments. And I think that she certainly had to be thinking about who she was comfortable with, who lifted her up.
It's not, you know, being a woman leader, there's going to be so many eyes on her. Who can actually be man enough to uplift her and support her without having to take center stage? Walz has that humility, and I think, you know, some of the dad and husband energy too, where he understands when to step back and when to step up. I thought it was great.
HUGHES: Ironically enough, I thought that Trump would not choose Vance as a running mate for this exact reason, because Vance has the potential to be a rising star. He seems like one.
PHILLIP: I feel like that has totally been proven to be untrue. I mean, Vance on the stump is very much not an energetic personality.
HUGHES: Right, yeah. I think that's right. Whereas Shapiro really does have a kind of rising star energy. I mean, the kind of copy of Obama, I'm not sure that charisma will really affect people because, you know, it has to come across as authentic. And if people know you're doing a bit of, you know, a copy of someone else, it doesn't quite hit the way it would.
But at the end of the day, I think that, you know, what really matters is electability. I know it's not been the habit of people to choose V.P.'s that are electable, but if democracy really is on the ballot, then you got to be thinking about winning.
ZELDIN: Sequel is never better than the original.
PHILLIP: Well, I'll tell you, I was in the room, and I mean, he had the advantage of it being home turf, but the crowd was eating it up. Every second of it, many of them standing on their feet for the entirety of his speech. We've got a lot more to discuss on the show. Coming up next, a couch joke and camouflage hats, the cultural impact of Tim Walz and whether that's going to stick.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:47:15]
PHILLIP: New tonight, sources are telling CNN that the Harris campaign staffers are already joking about the, quote, "blue walls," as in those key states that Democrats must win in order to win this election.
Ron Brownstein is joining us because he coined that original phrase, "the blue wall," back in 2009. He is back at the wall to break it all down. So, Ron, tell us, where could this new V.P. pick for Vice President Harris make the most impact?
BROWNSTEIN: Yeah, we're going to talk about Tim Walz and the blue wall at the magic wall, which is a lot of walls to get through. But we're going to start-- the blue wall originally was the 18 states, the phrase that I coined in 2009 for the 18 states that have voted Democratic, ultimately in all six consecutive elections from 1992 to 2012, the most states they'd won that often in the party's history. In 2016, Donald Trump dislodged three states from the blue wall --
Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania by a combined margin of about 80,000 votes. And that's really become the focus. Trump won them in part because he held Hillary Clinton to utterly miserable numbers among working class white voters in those states.
These are states, Abby, that are preponderantly white. Eighty percent of the voters in Michigan, roughly 80 percent in Pennsylvania, ninety percent in Wisconsin. And of those white voters, half or more in each of those states are whites without a college degree. Trump dominated among them, that's why he won those states.
Four years later, Joe Biden improved. These numbers aren't great, but if you notice, they are all significantly better, except for Pennsylvania -- six, seven points better. That allowed him to win these three states by 250,000 votes. It's going to be hard for Harris to match Biden's numbers, but she probably doesn't have to.
The states are continuing to evolve. Like other states, the non- college white share of the electorate is going down. The Democratic vote in the suburbs is going up, but she does need Tim Walz and his kind of cultural affinity to help her stay reasonably close to these numbers.
She can't afford some erosion, but if she goes back to the kind of level that Hillary Clinton was at in 2020, it's very hard for her to get there. And once again, it's worth noting that if she wins those three states and all the other states that Democrats won by three points or more, plus that one C.D. in Omaha, she gets to exactly 270 electoral college votes, that's where they're hoping that Tim Walz will help the most.
PHILLIP: Yeah, that's going to be critically important. But let's talk about, first of all, Ron, thank you very much for all of that. Let's talk about this cultural affinity here. But I want to play a little bit about what Walz said about Vance that had a lot of people talking.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. TIM WALZ (D) VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: And I got to tell you, I can't wait to debate the guy. That is if he's willing to get off the couch and show up.
[22:50:00]
So, you see what I did there?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Okay, so for the uninitiated, this is a couch reference. And people lost their mind that they made a couch reference. I'm not going to go into the nitty gritty details, but the couch reference is a reference to a lewd story about J.D. Vance that is not true. It's a complete fabrication. So, is it really wise to, you know, do that on that stage when you're trying to present yourself as like the reasonable alternative? VANS: Look, I think you can give him one. One off-color, probably ill-
considered thing, the coach versus the couch. It kind of writes itself.
PHILLIP: Oh my God.
VANS: But --but, I don't think they should keep doing it because it actually is a completely -- I just learned today, completely made up, didn't happen, completely wrong. And you shouldn't jump up and down on that pogo stick because we don't want disinformation against our side.
PHILIIP: Yeah, I mean, look, if you talk about, you cannot talk about disinformation and lies in politics and then take something that is completely invented out of cold cloth.
JONES: You don't look like you agree.
PHILLIP: I don't understand. I don't understand it.
BURTON: But for context, and I watch every Trump speech, I watch every interview, I watch everything that Vance says, they lie over and over again. Every Trump speech is an hour and 40 minutes of rambling lies about the election, about specific states in the election, about Vice President Harris' race, about a whole myriad of issues related to what's happening in this country.
And so, for Tim Walz to make a side reference to a funny internet meme, it's not the same thing. It's just not the same thing.
HUGHES: This is, in some sense, a nastier lie because it's a lie that rests on a really nasty joke about someone's sexual history and kind of deviance that literally is just made up.
BURTON: It's not a nastier lie than saying the election was stolen from him?
UNKNOWN: Kamala Harris is not actually --
PHILLIP: I don't think it's necessarily --
HUGHES: --a more consequential lie--
PHILLIP: Yeah.
HUGHES: --but this is just something nasty about going to a sexual history.
PHILLIP: It feels unnecessary to even go there. I mean, leave the internet on the internet.
ALFORD: Well, I actually --I was just going to say, I think maybe that's why they did it, to show that their ear is sort of to the streets. I'm not saying if it's right or wrong. I'm just saying that there is a whole culture in which there are people who don't even read the paper, but all they do is scroll on their phones all day. So, maybe they're trying to show their little hip, their ears to the streets. They hear what people are saying. But as Van said, maybe you just leave it there.
ZELDIN: I mean, there are people who are tuning into the rally. And I watched all the speeches. I knew we're going to be on tonight, obviously talking about tonight's rally. And it was said by the vice president that President Trump wants to get rid of coverage for people with preexisting conditions. Governor Walz said that President Trump wants to get rid of IVF.
He says that President Trump wants to gut Social Security and Medicare. So, this happens in these rallies. It's not like it's just one side that says something that afterwards gets fact-checked. And for people at home, like there are seniors, unlike any of those issues, you tell them like Social Security and Medicare, like that will actually influence someone's vote just hearing that one thing.
And I would just say to any campaign, I don't care what you're running for, you could be running for Congress, Statehouse, whoever's on the ballot November 5th. What is the best service to the voter, and this applies to everybody, is just shoot everyone straight on where you stand on these issues. Just speak truth to power and let them make an informed decision.
PHILLIP: All right, everyone. Coming up next, the panel is going to give us their nightcaps. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:58:21]
PHILLIP: We are back and it is time for the "NewsNightcap." You each have 30 seconds to say your piece. Van, you're up.
JONES: I just think that Walz could appeal to African-American men. They're still struggling there because people don't know this. He was the governor that made sure that Keith Ellison, the attorney general in Minnesota, could prosecute the cop that killed George Floyd.
The local prosecutor was blowing that case and Walz reached in and gave the case to Keith Ellison, who's an amazing lawyer, and that is why George Floyd's murderer went to jail. He should brag on that more.
PHILLIP: Lee.
LEE: It is time for Kamala Harris to sit down for a tough interview, to stand up for a tough press conference. She wants to be the President of the United States, it's time to answer some tough questions.
President Trump, you can love him, you can hate him. The fact is that if you tell him that he'd be going around the room answering a whole bunch of questions from a lot of hostile media, he's like, all right, sign me up. He's happy to do it over and over again. I think the time has come for Kamala Harris to face the music.
PHILLIP: I am all for the interview and for the press conference. Bill? BURTON: Do not sleep on Gwen Walz, the first lady in Minnesota. She is a baller. She's the first --she is the first lady in Minnesota to have an office inside the Capitol. She's been an educator for her whole career. She's worked on prison reform. She's worked on getting education inside of prisons in order to, like, cut back on recidivism rates.
She's been fighting for kids and for the community for a long time and LGBTQ plus rights. And she is going to be a secret weapon that people do not see coming.
PHILLIP: All right, Coleman.
HUGHES: I think it's possible that Kamala Harris lost the election today with her decision to forego Josh Shapiro.
[23:00:00]
Can't be stated enough. There's no path to victory really without Pennsylvania. She was handed on a silver-- silver platter, the extremely popular governor of Pennsylvania that could get him -- get her that one extra percentage point that could determine the election. There's a chance we look back on this as a huge mistake.
PHILLIP: We'll see. Natasha.
ALFORD: We'll see. I don't agree with them, but that's okay. My call to action is that more teachers run for office. People who have served, who've served America's children, who know the weight of it, who know the pressure, that's experience that I think qualifies.
PHILLIP: We love teachers around here. Everyone, thank you very much. We appreciate you joining us and thank you for watching "NewsNight." "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.
