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Today: Harris To Interview Shapiro, Kelly, Walz For VP Pick; Trump Unleashes Attacks On Harris In Georgia Rally; How Vulnerable Dem Senator is Reacting to Harris Candidacy; Harris' Path to 270; High- Stakes Election. Aired 8-9a ET
Aired August 04, 2024 - 08:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ALLISON CHINCHAR, AMS METEOROLOGIST: -- upcoming week, because it's essentially going to stall out in some of these areas.
[08:00:03]
That would be record breaking for a tropical system, for states like South Carolina and Georgia if they end up getting some of those totals, you've also got a very rare high risk issued for Tuesday for a lot of these same areas, just simply because of the sheer volume of rain that's expected.
AMARA WALKER, CNN ANCHOR: All right. A lot of concern for the low- lying areas.
Thank you so much, Allison.
And thank you for hanging with us this weekend. It was good to have you, Danny.
DANNY FREEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Thanks, Amara. I really appreciate it.
Thank you all for having me as well.
INSIDE POLITICS SUNDAY starts right now.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(MUSIC)
MANU RAJU, CNN HOST (voice-over): Moment of truth. The VP meets behind closed doors to decide on her own VP pick.
KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We are the underdogs in this race.
RAJU: With finalist interviews happening today.
GOV. JOSH SHAPIRO (D), PENNSYLVANIA: Folks are excited wherever I go.
SEN. MARK KELLY (D-AZ): The contrast can't be more significant.
RAJU: Who will she choose?
And on offense. Trump unleashes new attacks in Georgia.
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT & 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: She is a lunatic.
RAJU: But as Trump lashes out at the Republican governor, and stokes divides over race and gender.
TRUMP: Is she Indian or is she Black?
HARRIS: The American people deserve better.
RAJU: Has the momentum swung to Harris?
Plus, Buckeye battleground. We go inside a key race that could decide control of the U.S. Senate.
SEN. SHERROD BROWN (D-OH): I just do my job every day.
BERNIE MORENO (R), OHIO U.S. SENATE CANDIDATE: We're going to talk about the future.
RAJU: But is the top of the ticket helping or hurting?
INSIDE POLITICS -- the best reporting from inside the corridors of power -- starts now.
(MUSIC)
(END VIDEOTAPE)
RAJU (on camera): Good morning.
And welcome to INSIDE POLITICS SUNDAY. I m Manu Raju.
Vice President Kamala Harris is zeroing in on a crucial, high stakes decision that could make or break her path to the presidency and redefine the Democratic Party for years to come.
Who will be her running mate and what impact will her choice have on the final 93 days before the elections? Now, the news will be revealed by Tuesday, if not earlier.
Harris is expected to meet with at least three top finalists. And sources tell CNN these are the six men she's considering: with Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz so far, getting interviewed today.
Now it comes after Harris spent yesterday behind closed doors grilling aides on scores of pages of vetting documents, including potential controversies from the candidate's records. Harris and her pick will hit the trail Tuesday in Philadelphia, kicking off a multi-day blitz across seven battleground states.
Meanwhile Donald Trump stumped with J.D. Vance in Atlanta last night at the same arena where Harris held a rally earlier in the week. He spent much of the time targeting the Republican governor of Georgia, but he also lashed out at Harris.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We're going to defeat crazy Kamala -- Kamala. You know, there's about 19 different ways of saying it. She only likes three.
She was here a week ago. Lots of empty seats, but the crowd she got was because she had entertainers.
By the way, I'd like to congratulate Vladimir Putin for having made yet another great deal.
She refuses to even say the words illegal alien or radical Islamic terrorists. She is considered more left wing than crazy Bernie Sanders. Look at her. She's worse than Bernie and she happens to be really a low IQ individual.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RAJU: All right. So who is the best VP pick to help Harris push back?
Now let's break this all down with a great panel. This morning, we have Margaret Talev of Axios ; CNN's Harry Enten; Laura Barron-Lopez from PBS NewsHour , and Politico's Eli Stokols.
Good morning to you all. Thank you so much for joining me.
A lot to digest. A busy weekend with the vice president and these meetings, just some sense of what's happening behind the scenes. We understand from our reporting, from others reporting as well that there have been extensive briefings on each candidate so far. They've been vetting materials. They've been looking at. We do expect Josh Shapiro, Governor Walz of Minnesota, and Mark Kelly, the Arizona senator, to get these interviews today.
What are you hearing from your sources about where the vice president is, who she's leaning to, or is it still murky at this point?
ELI STOKOLS, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, POLITICO: I don't know, it may still be undecided in these final interviews, may really be decisive, ultimately, in terms of figuring out who she has a rapport with, who she feels comfortable with.
The people that have talked to me and my colleagues have said, look, the polling is important. Testing, you know, their -- their video appearances, testing, their interviews, looking at all that that matters. Eric Holder and aides have done that for about a week or so.
But ultimately, they say she is going to need someone that she feels comfortable with. So you can make an argument that, you know, Shapiro or Kelly, really, it's a simple choice. You know, take one of these swing states and try to take it off the board.
But, you know, this is a candidate in Kamala Harris who has not been a Washington her entire career, has relationships with these individuals, but not deep years long relationships, and is trying to make an assessment and knows personally from her own experience of what it's like to be in this job.
And so, you know, she says she wants a governing partner. Who does she feel like she can actually have trust with? It's hard to establish and just, you know, a short interview, three back to back and then have to make a decision.
RAJU: Yeah.
STOKOLS: But it's a bit of a you know, it's a bit of a guess and it's also, I think still also going to come down largely to what is the calculation and how do you get to 270 and who helps the most and who how does the rollout happen.
RAJU: And who -- how does the roll happen, how do you introduce this candidate, how do you define them. And there's a question to put to voters about some of the key, the candidates here, Kelly Shapiro and Bashir, really people don't know much about any of these candidates so far. Kelly a little bit more.
It's really, really early. I m seeing Harry grimace here.
HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR DATA REPORTER: And I m sure that those percentages are even too low on the don't know category. Most of these guys have no clue who Mark Kelly, Josh Shapiro or Andy Beshear.
RAJU: But in a sense, though, you know, people don't know who a lot of people don't have a real sense of Kamala Harris.
ENTEN: That's true.
RAJU: So she's going to have to define both herself and the VP.
ENTEN: This makes for one of the more fascinating campaigns, probably the most fascinating in my lifetime.
Now, I know I m fairly young, but still, because you have basically a presidential candidate who just came out of the scene, you know, rising to the top of the ticket within the last few weeks, then she's quickly picking her VP nominee. It leaves a wonderful process whereby we have this less than 100-day campaign in which the Democrats are going to try to define themselves very quickly. The Republicans are obviously going to try and stop that and define Harris and whoever she chooses as her VP running mate.
And I ll just note in, in terms of who she's picking as her running mate, we obviously have no idea. We know it's amongst these, you know, 5 or 6 finalists. But at the end of the day, the decision comes down to her. And the math is pretty simple, which is do I want to choose somebody who perhaps is a social media star and appeals to the progressive left and a Tim Walsh who's come on strong lately, or do I want to choose a swing state person, either Mark Kelly or Josh Shapiro? And the betting money is on Shapiro at this particular point, those 19 electoral votes from the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. But the truth is --
RAJU: Yeah.
LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yeah, when you're when you're looking at just the math, I mean, Pennsylvania is worth more than Arizona when it comes to the Electoral College.
But she is hearing from a lot of different places, whether it's, you know, some of her longtime close confidants who I ve spoken to, one who's close to Harris, who seem to be more partial to Beshear or to Walz, but then donors really prefer Shapiro. And so, these are all the things that she's weighing in addition to, you know, very built out vetting material about who ultimately will help her the most, who ultimately does she have the best relationship with at the end of the day.
RAJU: And let's before you jump in, let's talk a little bit more about Shapiro, and this is him on the campaign trail, and just get a sense of what he would be like as a VP candidate.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SHAPIRO: You could not have a clearer contrast between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. And let me tell you something, he's pretty afraid.
The chaos that he injected into our lives, we don't want to go back to that, gang.
J.D. Vance is a total phony baloney. He is the most inorganic candidate I think I have ever seen on the national stage.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RAJU: You know, meantime, Shapiro, who is Jewish, has faced some criticism from some folks on the left over his views on Israel and what's happening in Gaza. There have been a lot of reporting of this as recently. There's a Time story here about it. CNN had some reporting about it as well
One Congressman Jared Moskowitz criticized some of these progressives have come after Shapiro, saying, these progressives don't want a Jew. Let's say it out loud.
Is that -- how is that going to play as Kamala Harris is considering all this?
MARGARET TALEV, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I m not sure it matters in Pennsylvania, right? I mean, Governor Shapiro's numbers are so good in his home state. I think his favorability rating --
ENTEN: Sixty-one.
TALEV: And that includes swing voters. ENTEN: Right. It includes swing voters, yeah.
TALEV: Two to one, in terms of favorable, unfavorable.
But what's really interesting is that I think, you know, 30 years ago, if you'd asked, can a Jewish candidate be at the top of the ticket successfully, there would have been a different metric for why that might or might not be difficult. You would have been looking at, how do older voters feel? How do swing voters feel? How might right of center voters feel?
His potential challenge is young voters now, which have always been less of an obstacle for Jewish candidates. And now, it -- and now the tables have kind of turned because of the controversy.
RAJU: You were just in Michigan. I mean, does -- what does Shapiro do for Michigan?
BARRON-LOPEZ: Well, the thing that he maybe does in Michigan is win over some of those more independent center voters, the swing voters, I mean, young voters appear to be starting to come back to Kamala Harris. I was also just in Georgia for her rally there, and I spoke to some young voters there, and they sounded much more excited about her than they had about President Biden.
[08:10:03]
So if she were to pick Shapiro, you could think that maybe she would offset some of Shapiro when it comes to those young voters.
ENTEN: Yeah, I think it's about balancing the ticket, right? Harris you know, seems to have that appeal. Young voters, perhaps those on the progressive left, they've seemed to have rallied around her. While Shapiro can reassure those in the middle. And I will note, at least in the political science literature, VP nominees don't tend to have that much of an effect. People vote for the top of the ticket, not the bottom.
The one measurable effect that does seem to be consistent, although it is quite small, is that home state effect. And wouldn't it be nice if you're a Democrat? They had, say, half a point or a point to your margin in a state that Joe Biden won last time around by 1.2 points?
That's the math that Harris is dealing with right now. Of course, we'll see if she's doing the same math I am or she's just in a completely different equation.
RAJU: I -- in the meantime, over the weekend, there's been a push on the left for the governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz. They seem to think that he would be the person that could go after Trump. But what is Walz give if Harris adds him to her ticket?
STOKOLS: Well, you know, he's not from a tipping point state exactly. But he codes Midwest in a way that, you know, he could have appealed to the same voters that you're talking about, even though he's not from Pennsylvania or Arizona. You know, he reads far more sort of middle of the country. I mean, he gives her that geographic diversity.
He doesn't code progressive, even though he is progressive. And you see Bernie Sanders coming out for him. You see Representative Jayapal, the progressive caucus leader, coming out for him and getting hints that Nancy Pelosi thinks he'd be a good pick.
So there is a push for Walz, I think largely based on how effective he's been in his TV appearances over the last week or ten days or so. But is that still something of a long shot?
I mean, ultimately, you don't need excitement. You don't need to excite the progressive base. Harris has done that, right? You're raising $300 million in effectively a couple of weeks.
You don't really have to worry about excitement. You have to worry about getting to 270 and --
RAJU: And so -- and also the big part here for a VP candidate is do no harm, right? If we saw Sarah Palin, she did harm. We'll see how J.D. Vance is he doing harm. You know, he had he's had a stumble when he's come out of the gates, the resurfaced childless cat lady comments talking about people in power who don't have kids, criticizing them. And I put the question to Republicans this past week about the number two on their ticket.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. LISA MURKOWSKI (R-AK): It was offensive to me as a woman, women make their own determinations as to whether or not they're going to have children or cats or dogs, or how many kids are going to have.
SEN. JOHN THUNE (R-SD): I think most people understand what he was trying to say, and that is that Republicans support policies that are good for families.
RAJU: Was he the right choice?
SEN. THOM TILLIS (R-NC): I -- you know, I -- I ve never been in a selection pool for VP. So I don't necessarily I m not going to opine on that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(LAUGHTER)
RAJU: Is he hurting or helping Donald Trump right now.
ENTEN: Oh god. He's not helping. I mean, I -- you know, if you look at the net favorable ratings, they're now in net double -- negative double digits. He's the least popular VP nominee coming out of his party's convention since 1980, the first in the negative territory.
Look, I said that people vote for the top of the ticket. If there's any example of someone who might hurt a ticket coming two weeks out of the convention, it's this guy. Whether or not he's doing it, I don't know. BARRON-LOPEZ: And one thing that the Harris campaign is super excited
about with J.D. Vance is that they feel as though he's given them a big in when it comes to reproductive rights, one that, you know, Donald Trump was trying to moderate a bit by saying, I don't support a national 15-week ban. But now, with all of J.D. Vance's past comments, Harris's campaign feels like there's a lot of stuff to play with there.
TALEV: I think the center, center-right Republican women, suburban vote this is problematic for. But on the other side of the coin, these are not voters that are flocking to Kamala Harris right now also. So I think this may be more of a turnout energization question than it is a swing voter question.
STOKOLS: But this mood music, it is playing out while she's in this very condensed process of picking a VP, and they are seeing these stories and they are thinking as they look over the oppo files of Shapiro or Kelly or Wallace and thinking, what kind of news cycles are we going to have to endure over the next couple of days? And I don't think they want to be in the same position of having to defend comments like J.D. Vance and Trump are having.
RAJU: No question about it.
What will the debate look like? Is there going to be a debate? The other thing we will discuss coming up next.
Trump tries to hone in on his attacks on Harris as he takes the stage in Atlanta.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: She wants the government to stop people from eating red meat. She wants to get rid of your cows. No more cows.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[08:19:02]
RAJU: It was only two weeks ago when an energetic Republican Party emerged from their party's convention, more united than they ever have been in the Trump era. Now it's a brand new race, and Republicans are on edge as Trump is back to saying things that is making many in the party recoil.
Take last week's remarks when he questioned Kamala Harris's racial identity and many Republicans instead urged him to focus on Harris's policy agenda.
Now, last night, he did stay quiet on her racial identity, but he acknowledged his campaign still needs to figure out what sticks on Harris.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: So we have to work hard to define her. We -- I don't want to even define her. I just want to say who she is. She's a horror show.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RAJU: So admitting that they're still trying to define her, but his strategy, what is his strategy right now, besides throwing the kitchen sink at her?
TALEV: See if 2016 works again. I think is the strategy distract people, try to redefine it, regain control of the narrative.
[08:20:01]
The problem is that the landscape really has changed since 2016. Like the demographic landscape has changed since 2016. You've got at least 10 percent of Americans who identify as multiracial, much larger numbers who would identify as multicultural, multiethnic, four out of ten Americans either are stepparents or stepchildren or live in a step house.
So the numbers don't, you know, land quite the same way. I think he's trying to figure out before we get into Labor Day, before we cross the Rubicon into the final stretch of early voting and voting, what works and what doesn't work?
RAJU: Have you studied the numbers? Have you seen anything that does work in, in terms of defining her?
ENTEN: No, I don't -- I -- we don't know what he's doing because he doesn't know what he's doing. And so trying to analyze what's cooking in his head, that's a very difficult thing oftentimes.
But you know, the big difference between this in 2016 was there was already a visceral dislike of Hillary Clinton. He was just able to pick up the ball and run with it. This time around, there isn't that same amount of dislike for Harris.
Obviously, she's not as well defined, but the fact is, in a number of polls, she's actually popping favorable ratings among above her unfavorable rating. You never saw that in 2016. So Donald Trump at this particular point has his work cut out for him.
RAJU: Meantime, instead of maybe just focusing exclusively on his opponent, Kamala Harris, he spent a lot of time last night going after the Republican governor of Georgia.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Kemp is very bad for the Republican Party. He wouldn't do anything. I won the state twice, in my opinion, once -- once I won, and I did much better the second time, he could have ended the travesty with a phone call because I did nothing wrong, and neither did all of those good people.
He's a bad guy. He's a disloyal guy, and he's a very average governor. Little Brian, little Brian Kemp.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RAJU: Little Brian who has a significant amount of Republican support in Georgia.
BARRON-LOPEZ: Yeah, a popular governor in a swing state. And you saw the number of Republicans that rushed in that state to defend Kemp and to defend Raffensperger because -- because Kemp is popular.
I mean, I was just at Trump's rally in Pennsylvania. And one thing I ll say is that that -- that election denialism, him lying about the 2020 election, him lying about the 2024 election, it is just it feeds to his base. I mean, the voters that I spoke to there are fully convinced, not just that 2020 was stolen, but that 2024 is going to be rigged.
They're even convinced that Democrats were a part of the assassination attempt, which --
RAJU: Which he kind of suggested almost last night. He said, we don't really know the motive of the shooter, but he suggested that perhaps this democracy -- anti-democracy argument fueled this.
BARRON-LOPEZ: His -- his base voters truly believe that. The thing is, is, though, the voters that he needs to add to his coalition, they aren't okay with him spreading those lies.
STOKOLS: And the other thing I m glad you mentioned in the setup, the RNC, because that was, what, three weeks ago, and not only the unity that that you could feel at that convention, but also this idea that was just days after the assassination attempt, that this was a changed, changed man, Donald Trump watched the rally.
You watched the rally. You watched the NABJ speech last week. This is the same guy. And I think a big problem, a fundamental problem for him in this race, now that Harris has replaced Biden, is that he is the same guy doing the same move, telling the same jokes that he was telling, not just in 2020, but in 2016.
This is his third campaign for president. And now, instead of running against an 81 year old who does not look fit to do the job for another four years, he's running against someone a complete generation younger, and he is the one who looks stale.
RAJU: Yeah.
STOKOLS: Because nothing has changed, and he's talking about 2024 and he's not talking about what he's going to do for people. He's talking about his own excuse narrative for why he lost in 2020.
And I just think to Laura's point, you know, the base may cheer some of that, but the people in the middle who are newly open now to Kamala Harris, in a way they weren't with Joe Biden, they're going to hear that and say, why is he talking about this? RAJU: Hey, look, they're not just not the swing voters, but even
people in his own party. They were going back to the pattern that we have seen throughout the Trump era. Trump saying something, Republicans reacting, saying, I didn't see the tweet or I didn't hear it, or I don't want to respond to it, including last week.
Remember, he said at the NABJ conference. A Black journalist conference asked. He brought it up, he said. Harris turned black. He said he questioned her racial identity. That is exactly what Republicans say he should not be talking about.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RAJU: Was it appropriate for Trump to go after Harris's racial identity?
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): I don't know, I don't think so. My problem with, Vice President Harris is the policy choices she's made.
TILLIS: Anything that takes us away from the failure in the economy, the failure at the border, and the failure on national security, in my opinion, is a distraction.
SEN. KEVIN CRAMER (R-ND): The fact that Donald Trump uses satire to point that out, you know, it's misunderstood by a lot of people. It provides an opportunity for people to attack them.
[08:25:02]
He shouldn't do it.
RAJU: Do you think it was appropriate for the former president to question Kamala Harris's racial identity?
SEN. JOHN CORNYN (R-TX): I really don't have anything to say about that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TALEV: Well, I -- what's so interesting is that just on the merits, Trump has a really big baked in advantage, which is that inflation has taken a toll on people's psyche and pocketbooks. And Harris is going to run as -- as the other half of the incumbent ticket. I mean, she's the new incumbent, right?
And so, I don't -- I don't know why. Like I don't know what the purpose of this is, because when you look at the polling, yes, she's come up. It's a closer race than it was against President Biden just a few weeks ago. But within the margin of error, Trump is still ahead in every state.
RAJU: But there's no question about it. As we've all been saying, this is a new race. The fundraising, the numbers that just came out staggering, really. I mean, Kamala Harris, her July fundraising totals, she's been in the race for a couple of weeks now, $310 million in July. And her cash on hand advantage is about $50 million. Really erasing what had been a deficit for the Biden campaign.
ENTEN: It just feels like the Donald Trump campaign was on a nice straight track. And that RNC it just it seems like everything from that last night onward, where Trump's speech literally lasted until the next day in the Eastern Time zone, has been going downhill.
You know, it's just he doesn't seem to know exactly what he wants to be doing. And it just almost kind of feels bizarro, whereby, you know, you mentioned inflation, but also we had a jobs report this week which wasn't that great.
RAJU: It weren t good.
ENTEN: It wasn't good. If you're just going by the fundamentals, the fundamentals almost seem to be going back toward Trump. But Trump himself just can't keep it on the track.
TALEV: I talk about the recession, talk about inflation.
RAJU: And, meantime they've been fighting all weekend about whether they're actually going to have a debate in the fall. Trump had agreed to the ABC debate and then now he says he doesn't want to do it. He wants to do it on Fox. Harris says she will not do it on Fox.
Do we think Trump really wants to have a debate? Does Harris really want to have a debate or is this not going to happen?
BARRON-LOPEZ: I think Harris wants to have a debate. I m not sure that Donald Trump wants to have a debate, which is why he backed out of the ABC, one that was already agreed to, and then said, let's go do it on Fox with a live rally audience.
And so, whether we're going to see one, I don't know, I think the racial identity stuff is interesting because of the fact that Republicans all the time say Democrats are trying to make everything about identity and politics, and yet they are the ones. Trump is the one that injected this into politics right now, when Harris has not been talking about her background.
STOKOLS: Yeah, it's the same white identity politics that he's been practicing for eight years. And again, I just he, you know, he could make Harris the incumbent, but right now she's the one who feels new. And he's a former president who is doing the same thing again and again and again.
RAJU: And we'll see how the voters react. A lot to digest.
But coming up next, I just took a trip to Ohio to take a look at a race that could decide control of the U.S. Senate. How one vulnerable Senate Democrat is walking a tightrope after the shakeup at the top of his ticket.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: It's not who you vote for president. It's who stands up for people in this state. (END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[08:32:20]
MANU RAJU, CNN HOST: Democrats are facing an uphill battle to keep control of the United States Senate with multiple sitting senators at risk of losing their seats in red and purple states.
The big question: has Kamala Harris at the top of the tickets made things easier or harder? I went to Ohio this week to dig into one of the nation's marquee races between Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown and his GOP opponent Bernie Moreno.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RAJU: As Democrats, rallied behind Kamala Harris, in red states it's more complicated. Like in Ohio, where Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown faces a stiff challenge from Trump-backed Republican Bernie Moreno, a race central to the fight for the Senate majority.
Are you able to defend Kamala Harris' record?
SEN. SHERROD BROWN (D-OH): My job is to fight for Ohio workers. You can talk about the presidential race, that's your job. My job is --
RAJU: But it will have an impact on this race.
BROWN: That's your opinion. I know that what will matter is people vote for me because I stand up for workers and will continue to fight for workers.
RAJU: Ohio has become a GOP stronghold. With Trump carrying the state in 2020 by eight points and the heavy favorite this fall.
Plus Brown is trying to defy this daunting trend. In 68 of the 69 Senate races in 2016 and 2020, voters elected a senator from the same party as the preferred presidential candidate.
You back much of the Harris-Biden agenda, so how hard is that going to be to run that far ahead at the top of the ticket.
BROWN: As you know, and I said, I'm not a pundit I'm not a commentator. I don't think of politics as left or right. I think of it as whose side you're on. And Ohioans know I've been on their side.
RAJU: Will you campaign with Kamala Harris if she comes here --
BROWN: I don't -- I have not -- I mean, I have not -- I've got my own schedule. She's got her own schedule. I will focus on my race. My strategy is perhaps different from hers. Talking about the differences on abortion rights and on minimum wage between Bernie Moreno and me and how I fight every day for the dignity of work.
RAJU: With Joe Manchin retiring in West Virginia, Democrats likely have to run the table to keep the Senate at 50-50, hoping to hang on two of their three seats in red states and all six of the competitive seats.
In Ohio Democrats have (INAUDIBLE) nearly $50 million on TV ads since March, including $25 million from Brown's campaign, compared to less than $1 million for Moreno.
[08:34:47]
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Being a car dealer worked out well for Bernie Moreno. But what's it like to work for him?
RAJU: Brown's focus -- Moreno's ownership of 55 car dealerships and a court fight that forced the Republican to pay more than $400,000 to two former employees plus 14 other settlements.
BERNIE MORENO (R), OHIO SENATE CANDIDATE: We follow the law always. We did absolutely nothing wrong.
RAJU: Saying of Brown --
MORENO: The only tool he's gotten his toolbox is to disparage me. I'm extraordinarily proud of the company I've built.
RAJU: But even if you were ordered to pay back money $410,000, you must have gotten something wrong. No?
MORENO: Well, that's what that jury decided. I disagree with the verdict, we paid it.
RAJU: Moreno now hoping to ride the coattails of Trump and fellow Ohioan J.D. Vance. Speaking at the GOP convention --
MORENO: A vote for Trump and Moreno is a vote to put America first.
RAJU: As Brown has no plans to go to his.
Will you go the convention?
BROWN: I'm not going to the convention. I often skipped conventions. I don't plan to.
RAJU: Moreno says there's a reason why Brown is keeping his distance.
What impact does Kamala Harris have down-ticket in this race?
MORENO: Oh, it helps me tremendously. So maybe Scranton Joe had a little bit of credibility here in Ohio, San Francisco Kamala absolutely does not.
RAJU: Moreno has been so aligned with Trump that he even cut a 2022 ad big tech of rigging the 2020 election.
MORENO: President Trump says the election was stolen and he's right.
RAJU: But why did you decide to do that in a primary, cut an ad saying the election was stolen?
MORENO: Well, IT said it was rigged, like I just said because it was true.
RAJU: Do you think that Biden was legitimately elected?
MORENO: He's legitimately the worst president of the United States. Absolutely.
RAJU: I said legitimately elected, that's what I asked --
MORENO: Legitimately the worst president of United States. His reign of terror in America is almost over.
RAJU: To defy the odds Democrats planning a familiar playbook, hammering Moreno on abortion.
MORENO: Absolute pro-life, no exception.
MORENO: Do you still support a 15-week federal abortion ban?
MORENO: Well ban is a word that media and the Democrats use. I've never said the word ban.
RAJU: If you have to vote for 15-week restriction, would you do that?
MORENO: Yes. Common sense restrictions, sure.
RAJU: brown meantime, has been on the defensive on immigration.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ohio knows illegal immigration is a problem. And Brown is the cause.
RAJU: And he criticized the GOP for blocking a bipartisan border security bill.
BROWN: We're here to call the president to step up.
RAJU: Brown also blames the Biden team.
Do you think that the Biden and Harris administration have done a good job at the border?
BROWN: I think presidents of both parties have failed at the border.
RAJU: All as the GOP aims to remind voters of Brown's past rhetoric about Trump.
BROWN: We have a president who's a racist.
RAJU: Do you stand by your past rhetoric?
BROWN: There's -- there's no room in American policy it takes for divisive rhetoric and I will continue to speak out against this kind of device of rhetoric we've seen.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
RAJU: So this is the tightest of tight ropes right here. Of course, he is trying to -- make clear that he's not aligned with Kamala Harris although he voted for the Democratic agenda -- the Biden-Harris agenda for you know most of the time while they're in office, aligning themselves with them.
But can this work? Can this strategy work that he's trying to employ here. He does have a brand in his state -- a blue-collar brand. he has been in the picture in public life for some time.
MARGARET TALEV, AXIOS: I mean, he's doing exactly what he said he would. He wants to try to hang on once again. Ohio -- when we started covering politics -- it was a swing-state. It's increasingly become a red state and it's been trending that way.
And I think what you heard from the Republican side, the San Francisco Kamala label, you'll be hearing that a lot in a lot of states, not just Ohio, in Virginia, you're going to be hearing that, you know.
RAJU: Is ticket splitting -- is that just doesn't happen anymore?
HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR DATA REPORTER: If my memory is correct, there have been 69 Senate races that have taken place when Trump was at the top of the ticket in 2016 and 2020 in all but one, the same party won the Senate and the presidential race.
RAJU: That was Susan Collins.
ENTEN: Correct. That's the one exception. It's tough math.
LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, PBS NEWSHOUR: If anyone's going to do it, I do feel like Sherrod Brown is one of the senators that appears the best position to do it. I mean, when I covered his -- the last time he was up, he does have his own brand in that state that can't be denied.
I think that what's interesting is that one of the things I think that could be the most effective for him is his argument on abortion because we saw where when there was, you know, the initiative there in Ohio that there was high turnout --
RAJU: That was last year.
BARRON-LOPEZ: It was last year, it was in an off-year, but that's something thing that could potentially mobilize more voters.
RAJU: And meantime, Bernie Moreno very much aligning himself with Trump, speaking at the convention. He would not say Biden was a legitimately-elected president.
ELI STOKOLS, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, POLITICO Right. And that may appear on ads. I mean, I don't know where this is going to go, right? Sherrod Brown has been pretty effective winning that state again and again.
This may be really tough because this is a presidential year. If this was 2022 and he was on the ballot, right? Everybody was expecting Democrats to lose. They didn't. Why? Because there was a reaction by voters to Republican extremism, to political violence, but also to abortion.
That was the first midterm after the Dobbs ruling. And this is the first presidential after the Dobbs ruling. I think we all believe the electorate will be much different in a presidential than in a midterm when smaller, more educated voters voting.
[08:39:53]
STOKOLS: Here you're going to have all the Trump voters coming out.
RAJU: Yes.
STOKOLS: That may be enough for Bernie Moreno. But this is also still the first time we're seeing a presidential take place in this environment with the abortion issue really, you know, top of mind for a lot of voters.
So it's going to be interesting the kind of messaging they run down the stretch.
RAJU: Yes. And will Trump go to Ohio. We do know he's going to Montana this coming week to help Jon Tester's opponent, Tim Sheehy. So he's clearly got the down-ticket races on his mind, at least there.
All right. Coming up, what is Harris' electoral to 270 Harry Enten sitting right here. We're going to be at the Magic Wall.
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[08:44:49]
RAJU: Vice President Harris and her yet to be named running mate will hit the road this week, hitting seven battleground states that could give us some clues on how they view their path to the White House.
But what is that realistic path for Harris?
One person may have that answer and he's standing right here. CNN's Harry --
ENTEN: Expectations are high.
RAJU: Yes. It's Harry Enten, of course, here at the Magic Wall.
Ok. So we hear a lot about the different paths. Rust Belt versus Sun Belt.
Let's start with the Rust Belt. What does that path look like for Harris?
ENTEN: Yes. You know, we'll start off with the Rust Belt, you know. Or as I call the Great Lake battleground. And what we see here is -- look, the math is pretty simple. This was
Joe Biden's path to 270. Win in Pennsylvania, win in Michigan, win in Wisconsin.
You could lose in those Sun Belt battleground states -- Georgia, Arizona, Nevada -- which obviously Joe Biden carried last time around, and you get to exactly 270 electoral votes. Of course, you have to carry that second congressional district in Nebraska.
It's the thinnest of margins, but the path would work. The question is, is the polling there to support it? Well, take a look at this. I mean these were just tight polls. These were polls that were taken by Fox News after Kamala Harris became the likely Democratic nominee. She's obviously now the presumptive Democratic nominee. Look how tight these races are.
In Wisconsin --
RAJU: All within the margin of error.
ENTEN: All what's -- look, look at this. We have it up here. No clear leader, no clear leader. That's what you should take away from this. No clear leader.
Won in Wisconsin, tied in Michigan, tied in Pennsylvania. So the fact is this pathway is wide open for Kamala Harris, but it is a tight pathway. I'll be interested to see as we get more polls going forward whether or not these polls shift a little bit more in a direction as the national polling seems to have done.
But the fact that this pathway wide-open. It was closing for Biden, but it is wide open for Harris.
RAJU: Still no margin for error --
ENTEN: No margin for error.
RAJU: So then, what about the Sun Belt and how realistic is that?
ENTEN: Yes. Ok. So let's talk about the Sun Belt pathway. All right. Let's say in this particular case, we're actually going to give all of those Great Lake or Rust Belt battlegrounds to Donald Trump. We're talking about all these. They're all pink on the top of your screen.
So what can Harris do? Well she could win in Nevada. She wins in Arizona. She wins in Georgia. And then you might notice here, she also needs to win in North Carolina in order for this Sun Belt path to work. And of course, no Democrat has carried the state of North Carolina since Barack Obama back in 2008.
So it's a very tight pathway. The question though is Manu, does this pathway -- interestingly enough, we don't actually have a ton of polling from the Sun Belt. In fact, none since Harris entered the race as the likely and now presumptive Democrat nominee.
So the question is, why do we think this might work? Well, want to take a look here. This is our last national poll. Choice for president.
I want you to know how much better Harris was doing with black voters. Joe Biden was just at 70 percent in April and June. Look at where Harris was up to in July, up to 78 percent.
How about Hispanic voters? Look how much better Harris is doing than Biden -- doing them than did in April and June. Biden was just at 41 percent. Look at Harris up to 47 percent.
Some of the polling suggests he's even doing better than that. Why is that so important? Well, if you know anything about the Sun Belt, you know that it's very, very diverse.
So let's take a look at the --
RAJU: Nevada, Arizona -- yes, absolutely.
ENTEN: You've got it right. So we'll start with black voters and we'll do Georgia and North Carolina. Look at this. 34 percent in Georgia, 21 percent in North Carolina. Compare that to the national percentage, 12 percent. So nearly double in North Carolina. Well more than double in Georgia.
How about Hispanic voters? Take a look here. Arizona, Hispanic voters, 21 percent; in Nevada 19 percent. Way more than the national average of 10.
The fact is with the Harris coalition being more diverse, they believe that they can potentially be very competitive in these states. And if she is, all of a sudden she has a second, third, fourth pathway instead of just relying on the Great Lakes.
RAJU: So as we know, today's big day in the VP pick. Who does she decide to pick? How does that factor in here and who's going to help her in those key states?
ENTEN: Yes.
So let's take a look. Let's take a look at the states, all right. Which of these states are most important? We talked about the Great Lakes battleground path. We talked about the Sun Belt battleground path.
The chance that Harris -- this state put Harris or Trump over the top in the electoral college, look at the number one state. It's here, it's obvious, its Pennsylvania. 35 percent chance that that's a state that put you over the top.
Wisconsin way lower than that at 14 percent. Michigan way lower than that at 12 percent. Fact is none of the Sun Belt battleground states are particularly close.
So who is the VP pick who could potentially help you the most? How much they outperform Biden's 2020 margin in their last election.
Look at Josh Shapiro outperformed his margin by 14 points. Kelly by five, that's not half bad. Walz was just 0.6. And of course, as we were noting, one of our earlier segments, Manu what is Josh Shapiro's favorable rating in the great commonwealth of Pennsylvania? It is 61 percent.
This is the guy, if you want to choose somebody. He seems to be the guy that can help you carry the state. We'll see if ultimately --
RAJU: Yes. They're betting on her. Although he, you know, his candidate that he faced was pretty weak.
(CROSSTALKING)
ENTEN: Pretty weak but you remember in 2020 as an AG, he ran at the top of the ticket as well.
[08:49:47]
RAJU: Yes. All right.
Well, we'll see. We'll see if that factors in to Harris' decision.
Up next, could primary voters deliver a blow to another squad member.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
RAJU: Congresswoman Cori Bush is one of the most outspoken members of the far-left flank of the House Democratic Caucus. But how much longer will she be in office.
Now on Tuesday, Bush will face off against county prosecutor Wesley Bell in the primary for Missouri's first congressional district. In particular, bush has been outspoken over the war in Gaza, calling the Israeli offensive a genocide.
And now an APAC-aligned super PAC has injected close to $9 million in the race in the hopes of ousting her.
[08:54:48]
RAJU: The group was already successful in defeating its first squad member, New York Jamaal Bowman, spending nearly $15 million to push him out in large part because of his anti-Israel rhetoric.
Now Bush has also had other controversies including being the subject of a Justice Department investigation over allegedly misusing campaign funds and security services. She has denied any wrongdoing.
Democrats for their part have been divided at how much to help Bush. The number two House Democrat Katherine Clark is campaigning on her behalf though leader Hakeem Jeffries has not done so despite his endorsement of her reelection bid.
Polls close at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Tuesday and you can file CNN for the results.
Up next "STATE OF THE UNION WITH JAKE TAPPER AND DANA BASH". Dana will interview deputy national security adviser Jon Finer, plus former Harris adviser, now, California senator Laphonza Butler, and close Trump ally Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin.
And before we go, we have some exciting news in the INSIDE POLITICS SUNDAY family. Supervising producer Ben and his wife Rachel, and big brother Noah welcomed a new daughter to their family this week. Zoe Eliza was born on Tuesday. congratulations to Ben and Rachel. We cannot wait to meet her.
And thanks again for sharing your Sunday morning with us. We'll see you next time.
[08:56:06]
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