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Inside Politics
Harris Says She'll Unveil Economic Agenda This Week; Trump Bizarrely Claims Harris Rally Crowd In Michigan Was Fake; Inside The Gen Z Operation Powering Harris' Online Campaign; Biden Ready To Campaign For New Dem Ticket. Aired 12:30-1p ET
Aired August 12, 2024 - 12:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[12:33:26]
DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: The Harris campaign so far has been big on vibes, light on policy. The Vice President said that is going to change soon.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When can we expect you to roll out your policy platform?
KAMALA HARRIS (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Next week. And it'll be focused on the economy and what we need to do to bring down costs and also strengthen the economy overall.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: CNN's Eva McKend joins me now. Eva, what do we know about those economic policies that Kamala Harris says she's going to be running on?
EVA MCKEND, CNN NATIONAL POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: You know, Dana, this is set to roll out soon, in the coming days. And she previewed her economic vision at a worker focused rally in Nevada this weekend. And what I can glean from listening to her on the trail, she says that this is going to be a plan that tackles high prices.
She also says our economy is the strongest in the world. But while inflation is down, wages are up, prices are still too high. She'll pledge to take on price gouging and ban hidden fees and surprise late charges that she argues banks and other companies use to pad their profits. And she'll pledge to take on corporate landlords and cap unfair rent increases.
But it's her position on eliminating taxes on tips for hospitality workers that's getting the most attention. Let's listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: When I am president, we will continue our fight for working families of America.
(CHEERING)
HARRIS: Including to raise the minimum wage.
(CHEERING)
HARRIS: And eliminate tax on tips for service and hospitality workers.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[12:35:04]
MCKEND: Now, Dana, the reason why this is getting so much attention is because it's a policy first offered by former President Donald Trump. It comes as the Vice President seeks to coalesce support from the sizable coalition of service industry workers in Nevada. She did get that all important endorsement from the Culinary Union, but her campaign notes that the proposal would require legislation and working with Congress. Dana?
BASH: Always easy to work with Congress these days. Eva, thank you so much. Appreciate that.
Joining me now is a senior member of Congress, the senior senator from Michigan, Debbie Stabenow. Thank you so much for being here. I appreciate it. You just heard Eva's report about the Vice President rolling out her economic agenda this week. What do you think that Kamala Harris needs to do to reassure swing voters in your crucial state of Michigan, where you are right now to convince them to trust her more than Donald Trump on the economy?
SEN. DEBBIE STABENOW (D), MICHIGAN: Well, Dana, first of all, it's always great to be with you. I really appreciate your good work. I have to say that we've been, what, three weeks, two weeks since she has come into this role. And they're moving very quickly, and she'll have an agenda rolled out very soon, but it's going to be based on a foundation that was put in place in the last four years.
You know, what, the Biden-Harris administration did 15 million new jobs, more small business startups than ever in 50 years. We took on the drug companies to bring down costs. You know, Donald Trump gave the drug companies a 40 percent tax cut when he was in office, and we've been able to bring down costs for seniors by more than 40 percent and some areas, and they're going to keep doing it.
I know that the Vice President is going to focus on the next steps on medicine so that people aren't choosing between food and medicine. So there's a whole range of things I could go through that, you know, that have been accomplished and she's going to build on that.
And so I think it's going to be an easy comparison. Donald Trump talked a lot about infrastructure and the Vice President's leadership helped get that done. We're rebuilding America. We're bringing jobs home. And now they -- she's going to take the next steps.
BASH: So --
STABENOW: And I'm very confident that it's going to be focused on growing the middle class and bringing down costs.
BASH: So do you think -- we've talked about this, it's not a secret that the big frustration of the Biden campaign was all of the accomplishments that you just listed there and the voters not giving him credit for it. Do you think that her at the top of the ticket, maybe with the same policies, will lead to a different result or understanding or level of support from voters?
STABENOW: I think it has been frustrating for me as well when we've looked at what we've accomplished when Democrats were completely in charge for the first two years of the administration and seeing incredible things happening. Health care expanded for veterans, and I could go on and on, CHIPS and Science Act and so on.
And so it was -- it's been frustrating, but I think people have gone through such a funk coming out of COVID. It's been really hard and frankly, we've seen price gouging that's not bring bringing prices down even though costs have been going down.
What I see from the Vice President is basically building on an economic strategy focused on the middle class. We've got this big ship at this big economy in the United States. And for years, it's been trickledown economics.
If you listen to Donald Trump, give it all the top and it'll trickle down. And people in Michigan are still waiting for it to trickle down. And so it's taking time to move the ship and she's going to move it even farther to make sure that we're making things in America, that we're growing the middle class. That we really are seeing costs in every area go down and she's going to build on a foundation that's been put in place.
BASH: I know you have been campaigning with, last week, mostly with the woman, the Democrat, who was running to fill your seat because you are retiring from the Senate, Elissa Slotkin, but you did go to a rally with Vice President Harris and Governor Tim Walz.
As you know, Donald Trump accused Vice President --
STABENOW: I can't hear you.
BASH: Can you hear me now? Oh, she can't hear me now. OK --
STABENOW: I didn't hear her total question.
BASH: Senator, can you hear me now?
STABENOW: I can hear you now.
BASH: OK.
STABENOW: Yes, I'm sorry. For a minute --
BASH: That's OK. Live TV, we have technical gremlins sometimes.
STABENOW: Right.
BASH: What I was asking you was about Donald Trump's accusation that Vice President Harris is faking that rally in Detroit using AI. You were there or were you?
[12:40:08]
STABENOW: I, you know, I -- you know, my first thought is, you know, geez, it was really weird to be in an empty airport hangar. I mean, this is nuts. And what I see is desperation built on his longtime instability coupled with aging. And so what we see is, you know, he's just throwing out these things that, of course, of course, can be debunked in five seconds.
I've never seen a crowd like this, and I've seen a lot of crowds and I campaigned with our wonderful President Barack Obama. And I have to say the energy there was even more than I thought we would ever have. And so people were excited. They're signing up in Michigan.
They're volunteering. They want to keep us going forward not backwards. They want to protect their freedoms starting with our reproductive freedoms. And I don't care if it's federal politicians or state politicians like J.D. Vance talks about. We don't want politicians in our lives.
BASH: OK.
STABENOW: We want people making their own healthcare decisions. We want women making their own healthcare decisions.
BASH: OK, Senator, thank you so much for being here. I appreciate it.
STABENOW: Absolutely.
BASH: And ahead, turning viral moments into votes, the Harris campaign has laid the digital groundwork to appeal to Gen Z. New really interesting behind the scenes reporting, next.
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[12:46:09]
BASH: If the weeks old Harris campaign is known for anything yet, it's the viral presence online. Thanks to TikTok videos like these.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: As my friend Quavo would say he does not walk it like he talks it.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No sleep, bus, club, another club, another club, plane, next place.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey Kamala, what are we going to say to Donald Trump in November?
HARRIS: Bye, bye, bye.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: For those of us who are not Gen Z, thank you for including that NSYNC cameo. My colleagues have terrific new reporting on the Gen Z operation that is powering Harris's rise on social media. CNN's Betsy Klein is a part of the team behind this terrific piece.
So Betsy, one of the things that I have been kind of obsessed with and I was talking about it with some of our colleagues over the weekend is this team, and I was affirmed by your reporting, that is doing all of this. It's the same team that worked for Joe Biden.
BETSY KLEIN, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE PRODUCER: That's --
BASH: It's just totally different. Why are they getting such different results now?
KLEIN: It's absolutely right. I mean, it's the same 175 digital staffers at the campaign. It is the same digital strategy, but the difference here is that the campaign believes that they have captured a cool factor. That is that they believe it is cool to talk about Kamala Harris on the internet right now.
And the Biden campaign always believed they were going to need to meet voters where they are. And so they built this robust digital strategy on social media, across platforms to reach voters on non-traditional platforms who get their news maybe on TikTok or on Instagram or Facebook.
And really, this moment, they've been able to be nimble, they communicate and over slack and text with this pitching process in place and are able to really quickly have minimal approval chains and get that content out fast. And Vice President Harris, for her part, she spent years really meeting with young voters, influencers, these grassroots organizations. She sought to build relationships in those areas.
But now it's all led to this moment. The campaign's job is right now to harness that enthusiasm and translate that into votes this November.
BASH: Yes. And that really is the key question and that people are looking at this, amazed. Obviously, the Trump campaign, it's caught their attention too. The question is, how is that going to happen? How do you translate this online phenomenon to getting these people out to vote?
KLEIN: Yes. And let's just look at some of the metrics here. The Biden HQ account, their main TikTok account, converted over to the Kamala HQ account on July 21st when the President stepped aside. That Biden HQ account has been active since February. It averaged about 500,000 views per post. Since Kamala HQ came into play since July 21st, averaged 6 million views per post. And in the 28 days since Kamala HQ has existed, it has doubled the total number of views as Biden HQ. And it's not just about quantity of those views.
I talked to Lauren Kapp, who's one of the staffers who works on the TikTok account, and she told me the way she measures success is this like to view ratio. So if your TikTok gets 5 million views and only gets 500 likes, that's a flop. But she has said that in the last few weeks, it has moved from about 10 percent to 15 percent like to view, now to 15 percent to 25 percent under Kamala HQ.
BASH: So, so interesting. I encourage everyone to read your story on CNN.com. Thanks for sharing part of it with us.
KLEIN: Thank you.
BASH: And up next, President Biden speaks out about his historic departure from the campaign.
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[12:54:15]
BASH: President Biden is offering new insight into his decision to bow out of the 2024 campaign. He said the race was going down to the wire and he admitted that a lot of House and Senate Democrats were worried he would hurt them in their races. In his first TV interview since bowing out, the President also shared his thoughts with Bob Costa at CBS on the new Kamala Harris-Tim Walz ticket.
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JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I talk to her frequently and, by the way, I've known her running mate, he's a great guy as we say. If we grew up in the same neighborhood, we'd have been friends. He's my kind of guy. He's real. He's smart.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: Biden says he's doing his part to support the new ticket, putting together a Pennsylvania campaign tour with his friend, Governor Josh Shapiro, and says he'll hit other key battleground states as well.
[12:55:07]
Biden and Harris will have their first joint campaign event since Biden left the race on Thursday in Maryland.
Thanks so much for joining Inside Politics. CNN New Central starts after the break.
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