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Inside Politics

Democratic Unity On Display As Biden Passes Torch To Harris; Tonight: Doug Emhoff, Barack Obama; Michelle Obama To Address DNC; Former Trump Press Secretary To Speak At DNC Tonight; Biden On Dropping Out: "I Love The Job, But I Love My Country More"; Biden: "I Promise I'll Be The Best Volunteer" For Harris Campaign. Aired 12- 12:30p ET

Aired August 20, 2024 - 12:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[12:00:00]

DANA BASH, CNN HOST: Welcome to Inside Politics. I'm Dana Bash, live from the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where tonight, two of the party's biggest stars and the man who hopes to be the country's first first gentleman will take that stage right behind me.

We are told that Barack Obama and Michelle Obama will underscore just how high the stakes are heading into November, while Doug Emhoff focuses on the personal side of his wife, Kamala Harris.

We'll also hear from Senator Bernie Sanders, and this might be a first Donald Trump's former Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham, will speak in support of the woman trying to defeat the man she wants to work for. As for the candidate herself, she will be nearly 100 miles north, holding her own rally in Milwaukee, which we are told will be coordinated with the programming in this hall.

It comes on the heels of an emotional night with Joe Biden fighting back tears after a heartfelt introduction from his daughter Ashley, and thousands chanting their thanks over and over again. This entire arena, you can see it there on their feet after almost every speaker expressed gratitude for his leadership, and though no one said it outright for dropping out and endorsing Kamala Harris.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Selecting Kamala was the very first decision I made before I became -- when I became our nominee, and it was the best decision I made my whole career. I promise I'll be the best volunteer Harrison and Walz's camp have ever seen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: At points, it felt like President Biden was maybe giving the speech he planned to give about a month ago, especially when he took on Donald Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BIDEN: Donald Trump promised infrastructure week, every week for four years, and he never built a damn thing. He says, we're losing. He's the loser. He's dead wrong. Brave service members who gave their lives in this country. He called them suckers and losers. Who in the hell does he think he is? Who does he think he is?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: And I am here in Chicago at the convention hall with some of the most fantastic reporters here. CNN's Jeff Zeleny, Astead Herndon of The New York Times, NPR's Tamara Keith and Peter Hamby of Puck News and Snapshot. Happy day two. Although, I think most of us were here when day two started, last night, yes, but that's OK. We're totally awake and we're fine. Everything's fine.

What are your thoughts? Let's just look ahead for a moment at what we expect tonight and how you think it's going.

ASTEAD HERNDON, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Yeah. I think you laid it out perfectly, Barack and Michelle Obama, the stars the party will point to the future. And I think, more represent the future versus past, kind of dichotomy that Harris wants to present. Because, you know, for all of yesterday's kind of legacy building of Joe Biden, it was -- it was a reminder, frankly, of the where the party was just a month ago.

You have people like Hillary Clinton saying that there was such energy in the country. But it was also a reminder that some of the very people on the stage were actually advocating against kind of unleashing that energy, when they were supporting Joe Biden staying in the race.

Now that he has had his legacy moment in terms of Monday night, I think you're going to see Tuesday through Thursday. Really point towards the future, really point towards Harris's bio, and I think prior to -- so I think, try to reintroduce her to the country in a way that goes beyond the kind of good vibes that we had yesterday.

I think it has to happen on the policy front, but it also has to happen, I think, on just the presidential readiness front, to say that this is not someone who's kind of just stashed in the administration for four years, but this is someone who is better than the presidential candidate you remember three four years ago.

Barack Obama will make that case. Michelle Obama make that case. I think Bernie Sanders will be an interesting person, too. I interviewed him a week ago, and he was talking about how this administration's populist economic messaging, the things that she rolled out yesterday, has won people like him over. He'll make that case also.

BASH: You have some great reporting about the Obama, Harris relationship. I want to get to that in one second, though, because I want to stay on this kind of big picture idea. You wrote about this, Peter, about rose-colored glasses.

[12:05:00] Michael Kapp, a DNC member from California, said, while Democrats here are giddy, they're also more focused and ready to work than they were in 2016. It's the same level of excitement and momentum that I've seen in smaller groups and over the phone and online, just with much bigger crowds, Kapp said. There is a willingness to take the fight to the Republicans, but no rose-colored glasses that -- that I and many others have had in Philadelphia in 2016.

That is really interesting. Meaning, in 2016 everybody was excited, but there was a complacency because everybody thought, wait, there's no way Donald Trump will be president. They don't think that anymore.

PETER HAMBY. PARTNER, PUCK NEWS: I mean, all of us who covered 2008 too we hear this from people. This feels like 2008 with Democrats are excited. There is memes, there's grassroots energy. People are really excited. But Michael Kapp, that DNC member, I'm sure all of you guys have talked to members this week.

I talked to Levar Stoney from my hometown of Richmond, the mayor, who said the same thing, that the cloud of Trump winning again does hang over this as excited as they are for this new burst of energy and momentum, they feel like they have to keep working.

I mean, Kamala Harris has increased her lead over Joe Biden. She is beating Donald Trump in key states, but it's still a jump ball. She's not at Biden's 2020 levels, with certain subgroups, with black and Hispanic voters. In particular, she still has to keep working. And to what you -- what Astead was just saying, like she also introduced herself and her validators here have to as well.

I mean, one thing I want to talk about Biden speech going late, and people on the East Coast didn't see it because it was after midnight. I haven't talked a lot of Democrats were like, he didn't talk about Kamala enough. He was just a valedictory speech for him.

I talked to one person who, you know, from the Obama University said, you can expect Obama tonight to give a much more formal -- sorry, much more forceful outline for what Kamala Harris will do compared to Joe Biden.

BASH: Yeah. Anita Dunn sat right in your chair yesterday, and she said, this is not going to be a legacy speech looking ahead to Joe Biden, yeah, it was, which, you know, OK, but there's going to be a lot more as you said about Kamala Harris tonight.

And on that, Jeff Zeleny, your story, after two decades of crossing paths, Obama will deliver a forceful affirmation for Harris at the DNC. Harris' rise to presidential nominee amounts to a continuation of the arc that began with Obama on that summer evening in Boston two decades ago. The energy fueling her candidacy and thunderous crowds chanting her name have drawn comparisons to Obama's history making 2008 run.

That's your story with Kevin Liptak, of course, two decades ago in Boston. We were just talking about this before coming on the air. It was 20 years ago that this state senator from nowhere, as he says, with his -- with his funny name, gave a speech that put him very much on the map.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely, he was running for U.S. Senate that year. And by the time he reached Boston, he was on the cusp of almost winning his Beyonce freedom --

BASH: I didn't know you had same thought too.

(CROSSTALK)

ZELENY: But I think one thing is interesting, doing some reporting this, my friend and colleague, Kevin Liptak and I realized that Kamala Harris was in the audience that speech in Austin. And she was a very young district attorney from California, 35 or so. But Obama does not have a recollection of meeting her until later that fall, when he was out in California for a fundraiser.

There are paths across. They weren't that close necessarily. They have become close. He has become a trusted adviser to her. He was speaking to her throughout the vice-presidential selection process. And he cut ads for her when she was running for attorney general, when she was running for the Senate in California.

But look, the bottom line is this moment tonight, he's only four years older than her. This is a passing of the torch in a different way. There's been an interlude with Donald Trump, with Joe Biden, but this is a moment where -- to Peter's point, he is going to make the case for her.

A senior adviser says that this speech is going to be sort of a roadmap for Democrats what they need to do. And watching Hillary Clinton last night, the 2016 campaign hangs over this in so many ways. A, the division among Democrats at that convention, there was still a deep divide among Bernie Sanders and that include Democrats, that does not exist.

Bernie Sanders exhibit a being on this podium tonight, and also the need to campaign, whereas Vice President Harris tonight in Wisconsin. Hillary Clinton did not go to Wisconsin the entire general election campaign.

So, I think all those lessons of that loss still hang over this party in ways that nothing else does. It guides all the strategy. It guides every decision making in terms of ads and message. So, that's what is different from eight years ago.

BASH: And you know what we had here Hillary Clinton last night. Let's just listen before I bring you in to a little bit of what she said when she gave a very, very rousing speech here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER UNITED STATES SECRETARY OF STATE: I want to tell you what I see through all those cracks and why it matters for each and every one of us. What do I see? I see freedom and the other side of that glass ceiling is Kamala Harris raising her hand and taking the oath of office as our 47th president of the United States. This is our time America. This is when we stand up. This is when we break through. The future is here. It's in our grasp. Let's go with it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[12:10:00]

BASH: I mean, that was quite a speech. So, not only was 2016 hanging over, 2016 was in the room addressing them.

TAMARA KEITH, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, NPR: Yes. And Hillary Clinton was talking about that highest hardest class ceiling that she didn't break. Kamala Harris doesn't talk about it. She doesn't talk about it in the same way that Clinton talked about it during Clinton's campaign. And you know, Clinton would always wear, as she did last night, suffragette white, tying her candidacy all the way back to the effort to get women the right to vote 100 years ago.

And she is putting Harris in that line of history and saying, this is the step forward. This is the future. Let's do this. It was extremely well received in the room. All the way through, people were standing, and in some ways, I think there was an effort to exercise the ghosts of 2016. The other thing is, we were talking about Vice President Harris. Every speech says, I'm the underdog. We are the underdogs. We have to work for this.

I was talking to Robby Mook, who was the campaign manager for Hillary Clinton. And he said one of the big mistakes they made was not letting on how worried they were about losing. Because, you know, in retrospect, if people had thought they could lose, maybe they would have voted instead of staying home.

HERNDON: Interesting. I mean, they had all the opportunity to choose that but --

KEITH: They did. No, it was a choice, and they made the wrong choice.

ZELENY: Before go to Wisconsin.

HERNDON: Yeah. I mean, the confidence that was flowing through Democrats at the time, I do think it's night and day to now, they feel as if they have to work and earn it, because those ghosts of 2016 still exist. To Jeff's point, I was thinking about the torch pass from Obama to Harris. Harris in 2008 was fueled by being seen as someone who was in that mold.

I remember (inaudible) win on David Letterman, and said, you know, there are other people coming up. There's this person, Kamala Harris. And so, we've actually --

BASH: Did she call him, like female of Obama?

(CROSSTALK)

HERNDON: She called female of Obama.

BASH: Yeah.

HERNDON: And so, we've had a kind of windy road to this path that, I think particularly when she ran for president, and kind of disappointed. I think folks may have thought that this moment not -- may not have been realized. But what we're seeing now is a kind of culmination of what people have always thought Harris could put together, right?

And there was -- you know, she might have been people's first choice in 2019, '20, but she was a lot of people second or third choice. People liked her. There was good will there. And now the reason for that was because there was always the prospect of the unity that we're now seeing.

BASH: I just want to get to one quick thing before we take a break. And Peter, I want to ask you about what we're going to see tonight with regard to former Republicans or maybe they're current Republicans, in some cases, but former Trump supporters, I should say.

One big Trump supporter, Stephanie Grisham, who was his communications' person. And Jake Tapper spoke to her, and she told him, my speech tonight touches on who really is behind the scenes. Who he is really behind the scenes is someone who was with the family for six years. How critical is that speech going to be?

HAMBY: I mean, I think pretty critical because I think the Harris campaign, unlike 2019 and 2020, when she ran their North Star. They're pretty open about this is the normie, moderate, middle. I think NBC News knows. In the New York Times polling, actually, recently, only 6 percent of voters think that Kamala Harris, like isn't liberal enough, but a plurality of voters think she's too liberal, too progressive.

So, I think some of these conservative validators are going to be important. When I walked on this set, Dana, you're my big sister (Ph) on the 2008 campaign with McCain, they had a country --

BASH: No. I was just looking to see if it was still there.

HAMBY: Yeah. They had a country first little logo going on up there, that was John McCain's campaign slogan back in 2008. So, the whole like patriotism and you're going to start to hear more of you already are. But all of these, you know, former Republicans coming out that this may be kind of inside baseball, like Donald Trump's former press secretary.

But you know, I -- you know, I do think maybe there's some, you know, moms and dads out there in suburban counties who might not know the story of Stephanie Grisham. And she gets up there for two minutes and says, I was in the room with Donald Trump. That guy's nuts. They might listen.

KEITH: The great irony of Stephanie Grisham is she was a press secretary who never spoke, who was never at the lectern in the White House. She was the silent press secretary. At that period, Trump said --

BASH: It sounds like she found her voice.

KEITH: She found her voice at the Democratic convention.

[12:15:00]

BASH: Yeah. That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me. I was your big sister on the campus. Coming up. It wasn't the speech he wanted to give, but he did it with humility and pride. President Biden reflects on his legacy at the DNC last night, and he did look ahead toward an America, the future that he is fighting for, he said.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:20:00]

BASH: For President Biden a bittersweet exit as the party's leader that happened here at the DNC last night. He received a standing ovation that lasted more than four minutes as Democrats waved, we love Joe signs and chanted, thank you, Joe.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: America, I love you. It's been the honor of my lifetime to serve as your president. I love the job, but I love my country more.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Biden's speech last night, there you see all those signs. It acted as a swan song, not just for the campaign he ended a month ago, but for a lifetime spent in American politics.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: What shall our legacy -- our legacy be? What will our children say? Let me know in my heart when my days are through America, America, I gave my best to you. I made a lot of mistakes in my career, but I gave my best to you. For 50 years, like many of you, I give my heart and soul to our nation. And I've been blessed a million times in return the support of the American people. I hope you know how grateful I am to all of you. I can honestly say, and I mean this in the bottom, giving my word as a Biden.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Our panel is great -- our great panel is back here. Tamara, you covered the White House. You were president of the White House Correspondents association during his tenure.

KEITH: Yes.

BASH: Yes. Can you just talk about knowing him and knowing the people around him as well as you do about that speech last night and what it meant.

KEITH: So, I actually go back to 1987 when he dropped out of the presidential race. BASH: No.

KEITH: Then again, no. we not -- like I looked it up.

BASH: Oh, I was going to say what --

KEITH: And how I think about, you go back to 1987, you go back to 2008, you go to 2016 when he said he wasn't going to run because he ran out of time. And every one of those times he said, but I have more to say. I'll be back. I'm going to run again, and this time there isn't a next run.

This is it. And yet, in this speech, he wasn't ready to say goodbye. He wasn't this, you know, he wasn't quite ready to do the farewell. And yes, he passed the torch at the end, but it took a long time. And as you said earlier, he did give the speech that we all kind of figured he would have given had he been the nominee.

And you know, his team -- you know, you talk to them, and they say, I asked, you know, is this going to be hard. And his longtime friend Ted Kaufman, said, this isn't hard. Joe Biden's been through a lot of hard things in his life. This doesn't compare to all the other things that he's been through. And if you think about losing his wife and daughter, losing his beloved son, Beau.

All of that that he has been through gave him the defiance and tenacity that meant he hung on for three weeks as his whole party was telling him to go. And meant that he came out here and gave a speech that was as much about Joe Biden as it was about Kamala Harris.

HAMBY: Kaitlan Collins on the floor last night, was talking to Chris Coons, Baden Powell. And basically, he said, the torch is officially passed, but Biden is now officially a lame duck. Like this was his last big moment. Look, there could be a ceasefire deal. There could be some external event that allows him as president to come out and give a speech.

The attention of the nation and Democrats has fully turned to Kamala Harris, already had a few weeks ago. But that was his really last big moment in front of tens of millions of Americans and these lovely TV cameras. Joe Biden loves so much the attention, shifting to Kamala Harris. He's a lame duck.

ZELENY: But his legacy now is the November election. So that is entirely wrapped up. And so, we talk a lot about how he promised four years ago to be a bridge to the future. But if you think about the trajectory of the arc that we talk about a lot with Obama come tonight, that arc is not possible to Kamala Harris without Joe Biden.

Joe Biden, of course, was Obama's vice president for eight years, and Kamala Harris was his vice president. It's obvious, one presidency follows another, but this would not be happening. Kamala Harris' rise would not have happened without Joe Biden. So, I think that he has a, obviously, a long-storied place in this party, in this country, and we'll see if he's done. I mean, the reality is Joe Biden. He's a Senator who can talk for a very long time. He said, I'll be the best volunteer for his campaign. We're going to see him out around the country. The ceasefire is one point, but he may have a few other things up asleep. But look the bottom line, his legacy if she wins, it's enriched. If she does not, it is not.

[12:25:00]

I mean, I think this decision to step aside is going to be a defining piece for him. It has already unleashed the new version of the Democratic Party. And kind of whether he was forced into it or not, he has followed through on that type of bridge promise. I cannot overstate. Over the last couple of years, you've seen a change in talking to electorate about how they feel about Joe Biden.

It was no longer the guy who stopped Donald Trump. It was the guy who stuck around the party for too long. It was the guy who was at the bar and all the lights were up. There was a sense of -- there was a sense of, we could not believe folks where he was running for reelection, because of the way, I think the campaign and the president, frankly, defied a implicit promise they had with people around age.

Now that he has stepped down, there is so much goodwill that I think is there for him. And I think it's really flowing to Kamala Harris, so much so. I think even if she loses, no one will look back at this decision and say, I think few Democrats will look back at this decision say they would have been in a better place with Joe Biden.

In fact, last night, I think, proves both sides of the coin, because while he's running through a real list of policy accomplishments, he is doing it in a way that they're very glad it's happening on Monday night and not Thursday night. And so, his decision to step down --

BASH: Who's glad?

HERNDON: Democrats are glad. And then he is now -- he's not the defining piece of the party in the convention, more so than the first step of what they now see as a it has a higher ceiling. And so, I just think this decision to step down has already fueled his legacy, and even -- and more so in a career that has so many of those moments, I think this will end up being the biggest one.

KEITH: He will be a one term president. The question of whether all that he accomplished in this one term, whether that lasts all depends on whether Vice President Harris is elected. If Donald Trump is elected, if Republicans take Congress, his legacy is wiped out in terms of the legislative accomplishments and in terms of all those executive actions.

BASH: All right, everybody. Such a great conversation. Thank you so much. Don't go anywhere, because coming up. They're young, they know their memes and have tens of millions of followers. I of course, I'm talking about TikTok and Instagram influencers. They got a big spot at the DNC here. But will it help with that Gen Z vote? Both campaigns are vying for that critical voting bloc. We're going to talk to hosts of the popular Pivot Podcast, Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway. They are here next.

Plus, you know him as Republican President Thomas Grant, but scandal star Tony Goldwyn is a Democrat with an important role here at the convention. He's also going to be my guest. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)