Convention Kickoff, Kamala Reshapes the Electoral Map, and TimTok Arrives

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Kara Swisher: Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher, and I'm in Chicago.

Scott Galloway: As am I, although we are in different locales. I hit the ground running this morning. I am literally Ferris Bueller if he was older, Jewish, and had erectile dysfunction. But I am here, and I'm really happy to be here.

Kara Swisher: You're here, but you didn't make it to our live podcast. We were supposed to be together at the Democratic National Convention for this episode. But Scott didn't make it. I was at the CNN Grill all by myself this morning because I flew southwest and left at six in the morning. And apparently your Secret Service credentials are being reevaluated. Did you know that?

Scott Galloway: Oh, I didn't know that. You know, that kind of fits, though, right? That kind of fits.

Kara Swisher: It's like. I cleared. Yeah. They're reevaluating you. So I want to understand what the situation is. I didn't. What did you do?

Scott Galloway: I had a similar story. When I went to Israel a couple months ago, my plane got diverted to Cyprus and they held me on the ground and they said, you haven't been cleared. And I said, I thought it was cleared. And they said, no, they're freaked out. You haven't been here in 20 years. They're worried you're a spy. And I said, do me a favor. Just tell them to look at my social media feed. And literally seven minutes later, like, you're cleared. We're taking off. Do you have any idea why we cleared and you didn't?

Kara Swisher: I have literally the cleanest. I know that, but I don't think. I've never been arrested. I don't know. Do you?

Scott Galloway: I don't know what it is. I don't know because I'm too sexy. They're worried I'm going to. It's a penis joke. It's like when a hot woman doesn't want a really hot woman at their wedding to take attention away from them. I think they're worried that I'm going to get all the attention. I think they're going to draft me for the ballot. I'm going to be the veep to the veep. Secretary of Love.

Kara Swisher: Oh, my God.

Scott Galloway: Department of Interior Dysfunction.

Kara Swisher: Oh, my God. Well, okay. All right. We're going to be around at the convention tomorrow once we clear you for whatever. I can't wait to find out what the reason, the delay is. Because we all got cleared. Let me clear that up. Everyone got cleared but Scott, which seems typical for us.

Scott Galloway: It seems fitting. It fits. It fits.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I can't control the weather.

Kara Swisher: And problematic. So how is it so far? How was it over there?

Scott Galloway: It was fun. There's all these T-shirts. There's a verve in the air, Scott.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. By the way, Scott and I had a beautiful time on Friday together, didn't we?

Scott Galloway: We did. We had a little vacation.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, with the entire brood. I want to thank you.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, all different sizes, shapes, ages. You really travel.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. It's sort of like a— Were you surprised?

Scott Galloway: It's sort of a vision of a new nation, kind of. It's, yeah. It was really nice to see you and all your—

Kara Swisher: And Clara dressed up for you and Alex had questions.

Scott Galloway: She did. Alex was very pleased to see you. Alex appreciated your advice, whatever you told him.

Kara Swisher: I'm a little bit nervous now that you've been reevaluated by the Secret Service.

Scott Galloway: That was beautiful. Your children were there, too, and your lovely wife.

Kara Swisher: Yes. And we had a lovely lunch and Scott got a boat for us. We boated.

Scott Galloway: I did. We had a great Nantucket time.

Kara Swisher: And I went back to Martha's Vineyard then.

Scott Galloway: There you go. You went back to your democratic stronghold.

Kara Swisher: That's correct. And it was democratic. We saw fireworks, which was very freedom-loving. Let me ask you, because we're going to wander around tomorrow, but what are your thoughts going into this now that you're here? We can hear the sirens in the background, just for people to know. There's a lot of sirens in Chicago right now because of the convention, as you can hear. Let's leave them in. It's Chicago.

Scott Galloway: So first off, let me just start with the momentum and the excitement and the vibe are nothing short of inspiring. And this is how you run a campaign. And just to see how a well-run campaign is executed in contrast to the Trump's campaign right now, I find it inspiring. You know, I just want to take a moment to talk about how much shit we have received over the last 24 months ago. I said Biden was too old to run again. And then when I put out that piece saying it should drop out, everyone just came for us and everyone came for you because I'm affiliated with you or for you even acknowledging that it was a worthwhile discussion. And I agreed with you, too. And now look what's happened. Because we were about to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Because I think it's more exciting to talk about couches and, you know, come a lot and come up with stories. But I believe the demographics are destiny. And the destiny here, Cara, is that we're likely going to win. When I say we, I mean the Democrats. And it's for the following reason. And it's very boring. Since 2016, when Trump was elected president, 20 million people have died who were voters. And those are mostly older, mostly wider, mostly more Republican voters. And in the same eight years, 32 million new people have been added to the voting rolls. And those are mostly younger, mostly non-white, and mostly more college-educated and mostly lean left. And I just think the numbers, unless we, quite frankly, unless we really fuck this up. And by the way, she's getting shit, Vice President Harris, for not speaking. That is exactly the right thing to do. If your enemy keeps destroying themselves, you don't do anything. You stay out of the way. This is going to be a tightly run, highly messaged. And all the chattering class will get upset that she's not speaking. She shouldn't. This is ours to lose. And right now.

Kara Swisher: She will. She will. She will. She just needs to do two good interviews. That's all. That's it.

Scott Galloway: Highly curated.

Kara Swisher: I think they don't want to, like, make highly, well, maybe even a tough one. Sure. Like, it's okay. She'll handle herself. She's good in that environment. She shows tussle, right? Let him keep talking. Just to contrast the two campaigns here. The first is, I actually think this campaign is strangely or oddly, and I always go here, is about masculinity in different versions or different visions for masculinity. And on the right you have Hulk Hogan and you know the UFC and a version of masculinity where you're very straightforward and candid and say what everyone's thinking and you risk offending people. And I think that version of masculinity worked in 2016 where people felt for 30 or 40 years the establishment had just been lying to them and giving them a bunch of blah blah to make them feel good in the short run and wasn't being honest with them. But the type of masculinity now I just don't think that works. And the type of masculinity that is really resonating is Walls. And for me, the one moment I would run over and over and over is that when he was a high school teacher and a football coach, he rallied the football team to serve as evangelists to protect some of the LGBTQ students who felt they were being bullied. Like that is literally the definition of masculinity. It's a group of young men physically strong.

Kara Swisher: The good guy.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, the good guy. Who probably don't, maybe don't even identify or understand what some of these kids are going through, but their first instinct is protection. They know they're in a position of strength. They were probably the popular kids. And he has just this great, and this goes on to the second thing, you know, the right is trying to be freedom from government, but it's more of a libertarian weirdness kind of thing, I would argue. And their positioning, the Democratic position, which is the right one, is freedom from government in terms of the most personal decisions. And Tim Walz, again, had a great line. He said, in Minnesota, when it comes to decisions like this, we have a saying, mind your own business. And that's exactly the right framing.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. She's taken the word freedom from the Republican Party.

Scott Galloway: 100%. In lots of different ways. Even this will be, even if you think of 2016 was TikTok, where the algorithm promotes rage, it loves these coarse, provocative statements that Trump was making. Now it's TikTok, which has a happier, lighter, more whimsical feel to it. And I actually think that the technology of this election is actually, strangely enough, is Zoom. I'm calling this the Gen Zoom election. And then I'll just end with, I think the biggest missed opportunity, and they didn't call me on this. But had they called me, the message I would come up with that would just blow everybody away. The one thing Trump is still leading on, actually is down to tide, is the economy. If I were Vice President Harris, I would announce an alternative minimum tax against corporations who are paying their lowest taxes since 1939. The richest Americans who pay an average of 6 to 8 percent. And I would bring up the D word, the deficit. And I would steal the economy from the right. I would say we're going to be the adults in the room and start to get our hands around the deficit. What are your thoughts, Kara?

Kara Swisher: One of the things that I think is interesting is she's got to really, I thought overall, she has a perfect campaign. It's flawless, really, so far. But what she has to do is really define herself here. Who is she? Like, what does she stand for beyond anti-Trump and cool aunt, right? Cool, like, you know, kind of fun, like a real fun lady kind of thing. I think she's got to really say, what does she stand for? And I think, you know, people are trying to compare this. You know, there's some protesting here, I guess. But instead of 1968 Chicago, it's 2008, right? Obama, the Obama era. So what is she? He was hope, right? Which is sort of a, it doesn't have to be highly specific necessarily, but she has to be, what do I, we're not going back is not forward, right? What is forward? And I think she has to say that here in this speech. It'll be a critical speech. But just a couple of things to point out that we talked about later was the amount of people speaking here who are ex-presidents, etc. They're all of them here. And they're going to have someone. They're having Adam Kinzinger on stage. Who knows if Liz Cheney's coming in? Who's the celebrity they're going to bring in? They have a very heavy duty. It's Biden tonight. Then it goes to, I think, Clinton and Hillary Clinton. I think Obama. Bill Clinton. you know it just goes on and on and on Michelle Obama's also talking they've got everybody here kind of thing in unity and despite differences right there's clear differences another contrast

Scott Galloway: yeah that's a huge contrast

Kara Swisher: and better celebrities better entertainment better parties things like that which I don't know if that matters they should probably talk to regular people Tim Walsh is going to give an adorkable speech on Wednesday we all know that And that's on Wednesday. But on Thursday, what she says, I think nobody really knows who she is, but they kind of like her. Right. And so what what does she want to say about herself, who she is? And that'll be interesting. I'll be interested to see that speech and who's written it and stuff. But you called it, you said a month ago, you said that the key word for the campaign, the call sign was freedom. And that was right.

Scott Galloway: That was. November. I said it in November.

Kara Swisher: That was absolutely, that is the theme here. What do you think she has to do here? Because it really is about her. It's about the party as a whole, but it's about who she is. So what do you think the critical thing she has to do and what can she not do here? What should she not do here?

Scott Galloway: I think she needs to be. This is Harris. Yeah, I think she needs to pivot to the center and put, steal their thunder that she's some weird socialist or that she's, because she's not. She's actually a moderate. If you look at her record, I think she's just got to go gangster. You know, I believe in law and order. As attorney general, I did the following things. As senator, I was believing in reaching across the aisle. You know, this is my background. This is why I'm so fortunate to be in America. I would not gender it up. I would let that be unspoken. It's obvious who she is. Just her physical appearance speaks volumes and contrast. And if I were her, I'd be the adult in the room and start talking about boring shit like the economy and the deficit.

Kara Swisher: I think she needs to come across as almost a little bit, I don't want to call it macho or hard ass, but the adult in the room.

Scott Galloway: Well, also, I think a little spiky, too. I think people like the spikiness of her. And one of the things that there was a story going around that was when she was on, I think it was the Senate Intelligence Committee. One of them, one of the Republican senators, and I'm blanking on who it was, kept not mispronouncing her name. And this was, it wasn't meaning to be an asshole like St. Nancy Mace is doing. But he said, oh, I know you told me how to say it, and I'm really sorry, but I think I'll just call you Senator Harris. It was a guy named Richard. So she goes, that's fine. I'm going to call you Dick. Humor always works. And not only that, that's a great idea. I love a penis joke. Branding is all about contrasts. You want to go to where the contrasts are. And someone said something that really struck me. Have you ever seen Donald Trump laugh? No, that's right. I always like to bring stuff back to like a personal or professional learning. And the thing that I love about Vice President Harris is she doesn't even need to be funny. There's two ways to have a great sense of humor. Humor always works. I can't, you know, I don't like them because they have a good sense of humor, said nobody ever. And there's two ways to have a good sense of humor. A, to be really funny. And that's difficult. You're kind of born with that or you're not. But you can also have a great sense of humor by laughing out loud at things you think are funny. And she's not afraid to laugh out loud. And it's infectious. She starts laughing. She's got a beautiful smile. She's very attractive. Great with kids. And she seems like she's having a good time. People are coming out of COVID. So much doom and gloom, so much hate, so much fear. I think they're ready for a little sunshine. I think they're ready for a little disco, right? I mean, it's...

Kara Swisher: Yeah. The people that did show up for the recording, our guests, CNN's Audie Cornish and Politico's Eli Stokels. We have two questions for you.

Scott Galloway: All right. From Eli, how's Antucket?

Kara Swisher: Well, it's good, except because it's so homogenous, there aren't nearly as many hot people, a lot of blotchy people. So we need more hot people in Antucket. That's my only. But, you know, I took I took a just an unexpected visit to the emergency room yesterday. I've been shoving all of these horses up my rectum, and they had to pull them out, but they claim I'm stable now. Get it? I'm stable. I've been waiting to talk. I've been waiting to tell that joke for a while.

Scott Galloway: Okay. That was a dad joke by not Tim Walz. Anyway.

Kara Swisher: Stable. Get it? I'm stable. I'm stable.

Scott Galloway: I got it. I got it. It's so bad. I can't stand it. I cannot stand it.

Kara Swisher: Nantucket is fine. Nantucket is fine. Well, from Audie, people are saying this is a gendered election. and she was talking about men versus women. You've talked about this a lot. What do you think of that, Scott Galloway?

Scott Galloway: Well, we talked about this before. I think Adi is exactly right. And it's probably the reason why after both our shows on CNN Plus got canceled, one of us was asked to join the mothership. And one of us is now here in Chicago doing fucking podcasts. But anyways, I'm not bitter. I'm not bitter. By the way, did I tell you my show had more viewers than Jake Tapper's book club? More views than Jake Tapper's book club.

Kara Swisher: Well, that's a low bar.

Scott Galloway: Anyways, Adi is very smart. I think she's exactly right. But I think in a weird way, we have never talked about VPs this much in contrast. And you have one VP who's wearing eyeliner and talking about tracking women who get pregnant. And you have another guy who's a football coach and can fix your car. But at the same time, this is what we want for men. We want a guy who can coach football, who protects his nation for 24 years. his instincts as a man are to protect and be empathetic and to be gentle and to be understanding. And then on the other side, it's much more tactical. And that is the issue that I do think is the big issue here on a very tactical level is one in five women in America now have to leave their state to get to terminate a pregnancy. And you know, it'll never be five and because rich people are always gonna be able to find a way for their daughter to terminate a pregnancy. But I think this is I think she correctly identifies what is in many ways everything the most important issues here whether it the contrast in the campaigns meanness versus protection is how I would describe the distinction of masculinity being portrayed on both sides and bodily autonomy. I think that is absolute, those are the key issues here. But I do think something that is really disturbing and it's more of a social issue is just how conservative young men are getting. And I don't think it's because of ideology. If they were like strong defense and physical responsibility, I would love that. But it's more anger. It's being fueled now by a lack of opportunity for young men that they feel they've been overlooked. And I think that the Harris campaign, if they talked about things like investment in vocational programming, free junior college, I even think the child tax credit is a great move because that affects young families and young men. But there is something – I just hate the fact that young people aren't having sex. I think that's one of the most discouraging things in America right now. And part of it is young men are going so conservative. Women are actually – they're getting a little bit more progressive, but not much. The really big change has been young men are steering much more conservative. Huge bifurcation.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. So we'll see if Kamala can change that, if they can sort of see hope. I hope so. If I ever get into the convention, Jesus Christ.

Scott Galloway: Maybe. Maybe? What's going on here?

Kara Swisher: Maybe you'll have security. I don't get it. Scott, we will find out soon enough when they tackle you and take you off to jail here in Chicago. You're like, what's the Chicago 7? You're the Chicago 1.

Scott Galloway: There you go. Give me your wins and fails very quickly. My win, and it's the most underreported story of 2024, is that the Ukrainian army has captured a thousand square kilometers of territory in Russia. Nobody thought that Putin was going to have to redeploy 150,000 troops to defend Russia. This is just the lesson here. I actually think there's a weird business lesson, and that is you should always on a regular basis ask yourself, what if we just tore up the rule book here and played offense? This is such an interesting lesson in asymmetric strategy and tactics. I'm just care of mind blown. That's my win. My fail is this no tax on tips, populist bullshit. This was a huge missed opportunity. You don't like that. opportunity for Harris to come out and say, this is ridiculous. Let's have a serious conversation around how we put more money in the pockets of low and middle income and younger people, and this is how we're going to do it. It's just a dumb idea.

Kara Swisher: Well, it's a good one. I like that. I think she was trying to kneecap him, but yeah, that's a good one. All right, Scott, are you ready to go around Chicago tomorrow and go to the convention if you get in?

Scott Galloway: Well, if I can.

Kara Swisher: Well, okay, whatever. We'll stand outside. There's a big line. You can interview people in line while I'm inside with the bigs, okay?

Scott Galloway: I look really good here. It's something about the Chicago light. I'm going to trout this line tonight on the Nobu. I'm at the Nobu Hotel on the rooftop. I'm going to trout my favorite line. Do you believe in love at first sight or should I walk by again? Hello, ladies. All right. I'm literally about to come and order thousands of dollars worth of sushi and put it on your account. Or how about breakfast? Should I call you or nudge you? Boom. Do you think that works in the Windy City?

Kara Swisher: Oh, my God. In the Windy City. Please don't. You're going to be arrested again. And then I will be by myself wandering around the convention. Anyway, good to be with you, Scott, on Scott Free August. I miss you, as you know.

Scott Galloway: Maybe I'll see you soon, Kara.

Kara Swisher: Maybe not.

Scott Galloway: Okay. Maybe not.

Kara Swisher: So let's go then to my previously taped conversation with CNN's Audie Cornish and Politico's Eli Stokels. We are live at the CNN Politico Grill at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. I'm joined by CNN's Audie Cornish, host of the podcast The Assignment, and Politico's Eli Stokos, White House reporter and co-author of the West Wing Playbook newsletter. Welcome, Audie and Eli.

Audie Cornish: Hey.

Eli Stokols: Thank you.

Kara Swisher: So Scott is not here. He was supposed to be here. We're going to do a bunch of stuff from the convention. He's on his way here, but he wishes he were here. But if you have anything to say about him, please feel free because he's not here and you can slag on him. We've got a ton to get to today. Just so you know, we're in the CNN grill. Can you explain to me, Audie Cornish of CNN, what I was learning about the CNN life myself. But basically, this is a food and beverage experience. There was also one at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, which there's a lot of like bratwurst and that kind of thing. Beer hall vibe.

Audie Cornish: Yeah. This is a little more snazzy. You broadcast from here. There's another room in there.

Eli Stokols: Well, Politico will be doing a bunch of it.

Audie Cornish: has a lot of programming for folks who are want to duck out of the convention hall and come over here. And it's, you know, a lot of folks, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi will be in conversation with some of our folks.

Kara Swisher: No, he's underselling it just today. You guys are going to have Kathy Hochul, New York governor, Roy Cooper, right. And Schumer and Bernie Sanders. This is all one afternoon and not even in the convention hall itself. And so you're doing like interviews and

Eli Stokols: Yeah, right. Right. And there's a live stream for it. And then folks can come in here, hang out, watch, grab a beer.

Kara Swisher: Right. So let me give you some stats. There are 50,000 total visitors going to the convention. Five thousand of those are delegates and alternates. Fifteen thousand are members of the media. That's quite a bit. We're going to get into everything in a second. But what's the mood for you guys? Did you go to the RNC? You both went to the RNC. I was not at the RNC.

Eli Stokols: I was at the RNC.

Audie Cornish: Well, the RNC was such a it's such a time capsule now because it was happening right after the assassination attempt.

Kara Swisher: Right.

Audie Cornish: So the energy was of you remember in the photo where Trump says fight.

Kara Swisher: Right.

Audie Cornish: And so people felt this kind of I know this will sound weird, but kind of by design.

Kara Swisher: Right.

Audie Cornish: Blessed moment where this person who they believed in had survived this difficult thing.

Kara Swisher: Right.

Audie Cornish: Was triumphantly coming into the week. everyone was wearing maxi pads on their head.

Kara Swisher: Well, a little something to cover the ear and not do.

Audie Cornish: Right. But it was the sense that we are on the march.

Kara Swisher: Right.

Audie Cornish: You know, we as Republicans are doing well, so to speak. The country is going to win. They you it was a feeling of I won't say cruise control, but it's certainly a feeling of like, there's no way the Democrats could catch us now.

Kara Swisher: Right.

Eli Stokols: I thought about what if the timing of these conventions were reversed and circumstance and how well it works out for Democrats that they were able to go second, that Trump could get his convention out of the way and have this kind of good feeling convention around Donald Trump where there's none of the controversy that there was in 2016 in Cleveland. And everyone was convinced they were for sure going to win. And now they're in a panic and you come to Chicago and Democrats are maybe overly convinced that they're going to win. But the change in mood within the Democratic Party from stolen his bump.

Kara Swisher: Right. She still was not.

Eli Stokols: Totally. There was. I mean, remember, one thing about that was that was really interesting about the Republican National Convention is they didn't seem to feel a need to sell.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Eli Stokols: What they were showing was a show of strength and force of Trump and Trumpism. All of the ex Bush people vanquished. Anybody who opposed him in the past has been subsumed. Not there. They just weren't there.

Kara Swisher: Right.

Eli Stokols: So after three cycles, you were seeing the complete and total maturation of the Trump movement. And he was literally sitting back physically and metaphorically, letting people just come to him and tell him how great he was. So he was not positioned as, hey, you voter. We're going to do for the future.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. It's all about the past.

Eli Stokols: And there wasn't a bump that he got polling wise out of that convention, but she has erased his lead. He was sitting on a lead. He was playing like he had the ball in the fourth quarter with a big lead. And it didn't, you know, he just basked in that. That's why he picked J.D. Vance. I always said it was someone who thought he was going to win would only pick and not even at the time.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, people said that in the moment was, oh, this is a pick that's not designed to appeal to what people were calling the Nikki Haley voter.

Eli Stokols: Yeah. Seems like she would have been a better choice at this point. But this race was static for a year. He's now picked J.D. Vance. That's the choice. And the Democrats have completely reformed the entire ticket. And she has erased his polling advantage. polls show her with not just the national lead now, but a lead in the Electoral College, even though a lot of those states are very close and it's hard to put too much into the polling. There's clearly a trend line in this campaign that has changed. It was static for over a year. And now it's completely changed.

Kara Swisher: Well, let's get into it. It's been a month since Joe Biden announced he's dropping out of the race and Kamala Harris became the Democratic presidential candidate. In that time, she's raised massive amounts of money and is spending it, drawing huge crowds at rallies, reset, as you said, the electoral college map. The mood has been one of irrational exuberances, David Axelrod said, who was one of the ones pushing for this to happen. Not necessarily Kamala, but a shift. What do they need to accomplish at this convention? Audie, you first, and then Eli.

Audie Cornish: Well, I guess they need to put to bed the whole story about Biden. And you can see they're trying to rewrite that narrative into a thank you, Joe, for your service.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Audie Cornish: And not, we definitely didn't want you to be running because we thought you were losing. So it's going to be a moment to kind of maybe polish that rough edge a little bit.

Kara Swisher: Which she's done well, even if others have it. You know, from Nancy Pelosi on, people have always spoken about how she handled those couple of days. Not just that she was able to get the money and the delegates in a day and spend the day on the phone, but that she didn't throw him under the bus on the way.

Audie Cornish: No, that was Nancy's job.

Kara Swisher: That she was loyal. But even Nancy said, look, they were disciplined.

Audie Cornish: Right.

Kara Swisher: And I think that was the first glimmer of what we came to understand and what we're talking about now of Harris and our campaign being disciplined instead of the way we were talking about it back in 2019 of like, does she know what she's doing?

Audie Cornish: Right.

Eli Stokols: I think they're going to do all the things you always see at conventions. They're going to speak to their own constituencies. They're going to try to speak to Republicans. They're going to, without centering Trump, they're going to talk about reminding people about January 6th. They're going to have Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican congressman, on the stage. There may be other speakers like that. But I think if you think about this in the bigger picture, the macro sense of this, this race now is all about Kamala Harris in a way that 2016 was all about Donald Trump. She has the attention. She is the new thing. That is something he can't fix at this point. This is third run. His act is kind of tired. She is the new thing generating excitement, but she is still a new thing. And the eyeballs of people this week will be on her who maybe don't always watch politics or maybe watching her for the first time. I think generally in this race, she just needs to convince people that she is a credible president, that she is capable, that she knows her stuff, that people can picture her in the office. And I think that her speech, Walls' speech, especially, you know, if they do that, if they come out of here and people say, yeah, I can see it. I think that more than, oh, you know, winning Republicans, exciting the base. The base is excited. Republicans are there for the taking. But it comes down to her performance. They seem open to her. And there are going to be some little Easter eggs along the way. Like if a Barack Obama is speaking, for instance, that's a scenario where everyone will look on stage and think, oh, I remember when we weren't sure if that guy could be president. You know what I mean?

Eli Stokols: I remember what it was like to be like, is this person ready? That's another thing she's got to do, a big sale of her. All of them do. But I think it's really showing that they believe in her.

Kara Swisher: Right. Right. One of the things I suggested last November, the Democrats embraced the word "freedom" in their messaging. Like, take all the Republican words. And she has done that in her ads and her speeches. The Beyonce song. I feel good about this, even though I'm not a political person.

Audie Cornish: That is someone. We're still getting this grill together. I'll be polishing glasses. Harris is staying away from breaking the glass ceiling talk. She's staying away. She's emphasizing being a first woman president, but she's not really reacting to Donald Trump. Her social media is in a funny way. Talk a little bit about that, because she's taking the stage on Thursday. And we'll talk about the other speakers in a minute. But how do you assess those messages? How she's very controlled. It's smart.

Eli Stokols: I think, you know, they're learning. When Obama ran in 2008, everybody knew he'd be the first black president. He didn't have to talk about that in every speech. And I think, you know, a lot has happened since 2016. Right. We've had Dobbs overturned. We've had Me Too. There's a lot of reasons why women are looking at politics maybe in a different way than they did before. And it kind of goes without saying that she will be the first woman president if she's elected.

Kara Swisher: And you know, I'll tell my wife's story. My wife Elena Schneider, who I work with at Politico, she just wrote a piece on why she's underplaying her race and gender. It kind of just not something she needs to say to excite people. And I think in a really short campaign, the point is convincing people, "I can be president. I care about what you care about." Right. This is where I want to take the country. Those other things are pretty obvious and you don't need to redo the Hillary campaign. It's much more the Obama template in 2008 because you're trying to get the voters in the middle to win, not to make history.

Audie Cornish: The people who I think really care about that history, most of them are probably already with her. But they weren't necessarily with Biden. And they weren't even necessarily with Hillary. I mean, these are candidates who could not recreate the Obama coalition because they couldn't bring out the low propensity voters who are in the multiracial, right, the way Trump could bring out white, low propensity voters. And so now here's where you talk about the map being opened up. It's because of her.

Kara Swisher: Well, one of the things she's going to do, does she have to say "I'm the first woman of color to be president"? Do you think she does?

Eli Stokols: No. But remember, it's not 1996. It's not 2016. As you said, I think everyone post-awokening is more aware of the tokenism of those terms and they don't actually need them to accomplish.

Kara Swisher: She does have some big names. President Biden is speaking tonight. President Barack Obama is tomorrow night. And Bill Clinton, former speaker Nancy Pelosi, as well as Hillary Clinton. No ex-presidents at the RNC.

Audie Cornish: Right. No, all of them here.

Kara Swisher: Right. And Jimmy Carter's grandson is coming. She, Michelle Obama is also speaking, who famously told Democrats "when they go low, we go high." Actually, Kamala's social media goes low, which I kind of like.

Audie Cornish: Yeah. And I. And also lots of people wanted Michelle Obama to run. Like of all the Democratic fan fiction I heard over the last year, that was the most prominent.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. But also rising stars of the party like Josh Shapiro, who was vice president, the number two vice presidential candidate, I guess now. Pete Buttigieg, AOC, will have a moment in the spotlight. There's always a breakout moment. Teddy Kennedy in 1980, Mario Cuomo in 1984, Barack Obama in 2004. Or is there anyone you have the moment you mentioned Adam Kinzinger? He'll appear at the convention. Anyone you're predicting very briefly?

Eli Stokols: It's hard to predict. I mean, I think one person nobody would ever talk about. Joe Neguse is a member of Congress from Colorado. He's a wonderful speaker. I think, you know, it depends how much people are paying attention to those undercard speakers who are not going to be on TV speaking in primetime. I think the big speeches, what they tell you about this party, this Democratic Party, is that it is a big tent party and that they are all now pulling together in the same direction, even though they went through a really difficult growing pain a month ago. Here they are all pulling for Kamala Harris.

Audie Cornish: You think about the RNC. I remember the night that Donald Trump Jr. was essentially the primetime speaker. And it was just a wasted opportunity to speak to the country. And I just did not understand that speech.

Kara Swisher: Right. So the contrast between these parties with former presidents, a deep bench of governors and senators and representatives speaking here. But again, it's just very different. They saw it as showing primacy. Right. They saw it. They didn't think they needed to pull in different people. They didn't need to try.

Eli Stokols: You know, one thing we don't talk about enough. Everyone is so focused on the attention Kamala Harris got through social media and that very quick charisma kind of roller coaster. Donald Trump and the Trump campaign are not used to their candidate not being able to completely seize the media spotlight.

Kara Swisher: Right, she's good at it. With little to no effort. Remember even his criminal trials, like the whole thing, he took advantage of it. It was a constant. Even now he's able to call a press conference and hold forth for an hour publicly. But it's not scoring the same points that it was in the past. And the number of times you see something on the screen that says "Trump defends," "J.D. Vance defends," they are spending that post-convention bump time they could have had completely on the defense.

Eli Stokols: I remember the story I wrote in 2015, 2016 in the primary season about how Trump did it. And there was a bit about how he told advisors years before that he was actually going to run for president. People who were trying to convince him to run for governor of New York, he said, "No, I'm going to run for president and you won't, you just watch, the cameras will not be able to take their eyes off of me." And that turned out to be the case in 2016. And that is not the case.

Kara Swisher: But weirdly, just in this 30 days, like all of a sudden, even not a fresh new character.

Audie Cornish: No, the drama of how it came to be. Right. Yeah. And about Biden. Yeah. You're right. Nobody wanted to go look at the person who had just captured their nomination.

Eli Stokols: No, it's a great story. It was done. And I think he's really struggled with that.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. So tens of thousands of protesters are expected to converge on Chicago this week. Obviously there's memories of 1968. It's happened before with the majority focused on Palestinian rights, ending the war in Gaza, reducing U.S. aid to Israel. Activists said the elevation of Harris to the top of the ticket has not lessened their outrage. Violence erupted between police and protesters, as I said, in 1968. Should Democrats be worried about it? She handled hecklers pretty well so far. She's handled them better and better.

Eli Stokols: I think there might be some minor concerns about this, but my reporting is not that the campaign or the people who are working on this convention are really too preoccupied with that. I think the fact that Biden is president, he's the one who the protesters have really been frustrated with in terms of driving the policy, not maybe being tough enough on the Israeli government. I mean, they are selling a lot of the administration's work now as Biden and Harris together. But I just don't know if that has taken some of the wind out of the sails of some of the protesters or the fact that they are closer maybe now to a ceasefire than they have been, even though it's not done yet. I mean, I just, I saw protesters in the streets yesterday. There are going to be some. These things always draw protesters, but I just don't think we're getting to 1968 levels.

Audie Cornish: It's a confluence of things. First of all, school is out, right? So there isn't this campus organizing space. Right. Also, quite similar to the abortion issue, Kamala Harris over the year prior to becoming nominee had always talked about this with a slightly different tenor and tone.

Kara Swisher: Right. Right. So whereas Joe Biden on abortion is Catholic, talked about his concerns, but also support for rights, she was like at the clinic, you know what I mean, and out there talking about it. And when it came to this, she was, you know, a person who came out. I always talk about the speech at Selma where she first talked about the idea of a ceasefire. Right. But specifically around the humanity of Gazans and Palestinian women and victims. She has. She used that language early and often, even though policy wise, there is no difference there.

Eli Stokols: There's no meaningful difference. There's like a generational difference where she thinks about the Middle East in maybe a fresher way than a politician like Joe Biden, whose reflexive reaction initially was not that. It was to talk about Israel's right to defend itself and only that. And it was kind of almost had to be dragged into recognizing the Palestinian orientation.

Audie Cornish: But, you know, Kara, it's so hard to protest these things now. You probably remember the perimeters. This is not 1997 Seattle WTO. There's a lot of perimeters. The way security works now at any large or soft event, whether it's this or a Taylor Swift concert, it is created to deter any kind of real disturbance. So the question I'll have is, one, what happens outside of this perimeter in and around Chicago? And two, the uncommitted delegates and the people who were concerned, how will they show their displeasure, even if they don't want to pull away from Harris completely?

Kara Swisher: Well, the Minnesota delegation has quite a few of them. They'll have a prominent position. They'll find a way. They actually have a prominent position because of Walz, which will be interesting. Anyway, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, the Kamala effect on Electoral College map and Tim Walz brings his dad jokes to TikTok.

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Kara Swisher: We're back. I'm joined again by CNN's Audie Cornish and Politico's Eli Stokols. Kamala Harris now has multiple paths to victory in the Electoral College, according to the latest analysis from The Washington Post. The Post believes Harris could get to the White House by winning the Rust Belt states or the Sun Belt states, where Donald Trump needs both to win both regions. Harris's impact is being felt down ballot. Congressional Democrats are reportedly seeing upticks in their latest polling numbers post-Biden dropping out. House Speaker Mike Johnson warned in a private call with members last week that some of the numbers were ominous, according to Politico. I know they were just talking. Some Trump people are saying Trump will get California and that's all he needs, which I was laughing quite handily about that, which is he's not getting California. Sorry, Donald. I'm pretty sure the RNC at the Politico, CNN Politico Grill.

Audie Cornish: Yeah. La Savita was on stage in an interview talking about the numerous paths they thought they had through the electoral college or not at that time. So explain what is heresy? First, you need to do to maintain the momentum. And then Eli, how dramatically has she reopened this? First, you, Audie.

Audie Cornish: You know, I think one of Clinton's old advisers has been out talking about Bill Clinton's old advisers talking about how this is you can be a moment or a movement. And at what point do you become a movement? Barack Obama became a movement of sorts. Trump became a movement. So the question is not so much like, can she just sustain this? It's a short time period in such a short. It's like, can she convince the whole country that even though she is in an incumbent administration, she's a change candidate somehow? That it's a change, even though it's same policies, etc. And also, is there a bigger idea to her that people want to coalesce and get behind?

Kara Swisher: Well, there is the gender gap factor. Harris has a 14 point lead among likely women voters in the latest New York Times Siena poll. Trump has a 17 point lead among men, which is interesting.

Audie Cornish: Yeah, the gender gap is huge.

Kara Swisher: Talk about the electoral college and what the gender gap plays into it.

Eli Stokols: Well, I just think it's hard to see Donald Trump winning a lot of these states if he loses women by more than 15 points. And there are polls showing him showing a 17 point gender gap in a lot of places. I mean, that is huge. That is huge. And they're not really doing themselves any favors by the way Donald Trump is going out and talking about this. Even though vice presidents don't matter. I actually think that has affected him. But, you know, this idea that Donald Trump was a better candidate because he had a better team around him. No, they're bringing in Corey Lewandowski to layer over and throw more controversy onto that team. Donald Trump has shown us whether it was the speech at the NABJ where he questioned... Yes. Never mind the fact that he's a convicted felon. But all of those issues with women already. But the way he talks about Kamala Harris questioning her race and talking about her looks. I mean, that is telling an electorate of women who are already frustrated, broadly speaking, by what has happened with reproductive rights. They've been galvanized by the Me Too movement. That is just adding on to their problems and exacerbating the Republican deficit and Trump's personal deficit with women.

Audie Cornish: I think the other thing to note is these polls have completely shifted. And, you know, you're right. Acevedo was definitely looking at all these different paths and thinking big about an electoral landslide just a month or so ago. The Biden campaign at the same time was acknowledging that its path to victory with him was narrowing. And it was just those blue wall states in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. Now they have many paths. They're doing much better in the Sun Belt. There's Senator Jackie Rosen in Nevada. Her team has private polling showing them up far outside the margin of error. And maybe not as much as some public polls have suggested. But if she's up five or six points in Nevada, then Harris is up in Nevada.

Kara Swisher: Making North Carolina a fight. Exactly.

Eli Stokols: And I think that's bringing more. I mean, people who are registering voters are talking about the enthusiasm that they're now seeing because it's real. It's organic. They're not having to drag people to register to vote for Joe Biden.

Kara Swisher: Weird people are telling me they're voting for people I never thought would. Trump people that I think.

Audie Cornish: Yes. Are those the Nikki Haley voters?

Kara Swisher: Yes. They're the Nikki Haley voters. They're not voting for Trump. But I think the other thing that people may not look at when we're focusing so much on vibes is organization. Right. Obama in 2008 was a movement, but he was also an organizer who built a campaign around organizing. And the Biden people, when this was Biden's campaign, they invested a lot of money in these swing states because they knew we have a candidate who himself is not going to really excite people to vote. It's not going to broaden the electorate. We're going to have to do it on our own. And now that system, that infrastructure that exists is being utilized by a candidate who is popular, who is bringing people into the fold and the people who are knocking the doors. A lot of these people, we were talking about this, a lot of these people who wanted Biden to step back, who spoke publicly, also spoke about an open convention. They did. They thought, Scott Galloway being one of them. Yes, we're going to come here and have town halls or all of those. That's not how it worked out. And it has been interesting seeing them come around to, I don't know what, I don't think it's vibes. I just don't think it's TikTok alone that put Kamala Harris in this position.

Audie Cornish: Let me just say, youth has something. She seemed at 60, she's young. She feels vibrant. She runs off of things. She feels fun. And then she picked up. She can converse about cultural moments and ideas. Right. And her silliness that people made fun of, the laugh that Trump's trying to make happen, which isn't happening anymore because it's funny. It is. I am interested to see how the Republican kind of movement to counter will evolve because I am hearing now. It's been, it hasn't. But there is a world of people who are like, "Oh, you can't say anything about her because they'll call you racist. They'll call you this. They'll call you that." And remember, the anti-woke movement is about that feeling of feeling like, "Why am I being treated like a pariah because I don't agree with you?" And I do think those people are still out there.

Kara Swisher: If you have the candidate saying she's beautiful, that's a...

Audie Cornish: Wait, the candidate didn't say a message?

Kara Swisher: No, no. I'm saying he has a problem with her because he finds her attractive and it's weird. That is weird.

Eli Stokols: But you can circumvent a bad candidate or an undisciplined candidate like Trump with a lot of advertising. And there's going to be millions of dollars spent after Labor Day going after her on policy. They may not be able to get him to go after her on policy, but they can do it in their ads. They can talk about immigration. They can talk about the economy. They're going to do that. That's going to have some effect. But I think the thing that's different about Kamala Harris now as compared to Kamala Harris in 2021 is just the confidence that you're talking about, the ability to be out there and seem comfortable in her own skin. When, you know, in that first year, it was real bumpy. You just got the sense that she might not be comfortable in the role. She might not be comfortable with the West Wing and the president, his team and all of these things. There were a lot of growing pains. And it feels like now she has built relationships. She has a team around her that she trusts. You have the sort of old trusted hands of the Democratic Party coming in to help. Everyone is pulling in the same direction.

Kara Swisher: Californian. We kind of experienced this person. Like one of the things that I always say about, I'm like, this is the person I remember as D.A. I remember as senator. I dealt with her a lot. I dealt with a lot as a. And when she launched her campaign before that massive crowd in Oakland. Yeah. Right. Like there's a glimmer of this that was there.

Audie Cornish: Yeah. But she was still a novice politician in a lot of ways. Right. And maybe she took advantage of her time as vice president to learn. Like that could be another theory here.

Kara Swisher: Yes. Let's get to defining this. Obviously, Roe v. Wade helped her quite a bit. A scenario she's very sharp on. But she hasn't done a major interview or held a press conference. She's been doing these gaggles where she's not necessarily hiding. She doesn't feel hiding, but she's not out since becoming the Democratic nominee and defending, depending on who you ask, might be a problem. I'm not so sure it is. The lack of engagement with the media has become the latest rallying cry of Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, Steve Bannon, and the Republicans. Personally, I think they talk too much. They should talk a little less. A number of journalists are also voicing concerns, which, of course, that's what you're supposed to do as a journalist. Harris did a brief Q&A with reporters a few weeks back and saying she wanted to get an interview going. Aides to Harris say their most effective voter outreach comes from TikTok and other social platforms, according to New York Times. Is it getting blown out of proportion, an actual problem? I've said, I see why they're not doing it. If I were them, I wouldn't necessarily. That said, she's quite good in interviews. But walk us through that logic.

Audie Cornish: I don't think enough people here. Right. Why is it you wouldn't? Because she can get through without us. I think she should. And I think it's civic duty wise. I think she's capable of it. She just.

Kara Swisher: So what's the but like, what is the downside? Make a mistake. She's done it before. She's done it before in another interview. So we say the quiet part out loud.

Eli Stokols: But I've done some reporting on this. And I think the other thing and this is a feeling that the Biden White House also had and not wanting to put him out there. And that was clearly because putting him out there was problematic in a lot of ways. But, you know, it's also about they don't need the mainstream media. They don't need the traditional reporter, the New York Times, the network interview with George Stephanopoulos, you know, until he's hanging by a thread and trying to hold on to it. For a long time, they just said, you know what, we can go to influencers. We can do podcasts. We can communicate in nontraditional ways because that's how people are getting their media now. Yes, they do the occasional interview with David Muir because ABC gets the biggest audience on their nightly news. But really, and I think the Harris people, I know the Harris people think similarly about this. They just don't think the upside is worth the risk when there are all these other ways that they can go out and try to reach people.

Audie Cornish: Because you and I would both like to get interviews. Of course. And, you know, I'm aware that my bias as a journalist is like, I want to ask questions. I think that obviously, if more people had asked more questions of Joe Biden publicly, maybe this conversation would have been different. You know, I think that I don't love the explanation of there's no upside for her to being in a free ranging conversation where she can show that she can parry, answer questions, et cetera. I do think that Trump is getting that experience. It may not be helping him. He's going to walk into a debate with that experience. And they are, I understand, working on setting up an interview. There may be some, she's done something already kind of in the works that hasn't been announced. She said she's going to do a sit down interview by the end of this month. Because TikTok doesn't take questions. I love you all in TikTok, but the comments aren't the same as taking questions.

Kara Swisher: That said, this is an experienced litigator. So it's not like she can't move fast. Right. But it's not that it still the tone and tenor. What will you be? How are you coming off? And especially for black women, there's a higher bar for us in terms of like how we speak to people. So just what does she look like now in that environment? We don't actually. And what does a year or more of media coaching with Stephanie Cutter and others? Yes. You know, what does that look like now? I think she is more confident now, but this is a format that has been problematic for her in the last few years.

Audie Cornish: So that's a friendly audience. Elon Musk and extraordinarily ridiculously. He didn't. They've been trying to spin their National Association of Black Journalists conversation into, look, he went into a, quote unquote, hostile environment and answered questions. Badly.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. I'm not spinning it. I'm just saying the campaign is saying, well, at least he did. His own campaign doesn't think that went well. I mean, that's a cautionary tale for Kamala Harris. He turned something going into, I personally think she should go right over to Fox News immediately. That's what I would do if I were her. Just to show off, you know, and be really prepared. Not necessarily Hannity, but someone there.

Audie Cornish: It would be interesting if she did something like that because would they pronounce her name correctly? Right. Like, would you, in the moment, face to face? What is wrong with that?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, well. She said, "I'm going to mispronounce it," which to me. As someone with a weird name.

Audie Cornish: Yeah. You get people who mess up your name all the time.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Not like this. Been there. No, no. But it's the idea of disrespect. And the other day you talked about Nancy Mace on CNN. There were some black commentators trying to counter to her. And like, of course, a country with a history of referring to adult women and men of color as "boy" or taking your name away. Yes, that's true. Like that means something to us. We notice that. Yeah. And this insistence because they think it sticks it to the libs seems is yet another thing to me that comes off to other kinds of voters as irritated. What's the point? So let me ask you, what's just a few more things to get through. What's the number one question? Very briefly, you would ask Kamala Harris if you got the first sit down interview first.

Audie Cornish: Oh, you're passing the. You know, I mean, I think what I would say, your first year, let's say you have a Democratic Congress. What is your first priority? What do you when you have the Capitol and you have the votes and you can really get something done in that first legislating window? What do you want to do? Because, you know, Biden could have done a lot of things, could have done immigration. But he went with COVID relief and then he went to infrastructure. And that told us a lot about what he valued. Bipartisan, you know, that was important. I would want to know clearly what do you want to do? Not just in the first hundred days, but the first six months.

Kara Swisher: No, that's a good one. You stole mine as an ex-congressional reporter because Congress is where it's at. And at the end of the day, no matter what you think of Joe Biden, legislation got passed. Right. It just did. And part of that was because of his team. Part of that was him having 40 years plus knowing the institution. She knows that she has been a senator. But Joe Biden was the Senate in and out, you know, for many years. So it's really about like, what is that? Are you prepared for those battles?

Eli Stokols: I think I would do something broader. What do you stand for? What do you, what is what do you stand?

Kara Swisher: Good question. What do you stand for? Like, what are you? Who are you? That kind of thing. In a broader sense. Last question here, and then we'll get to wins and fails. Could the next big TikTok influencer be none other than vice presidential candidate Tim Walz? Let's talk really briefly about him. He's now on TikTok.

Audie Cornish: You mean coach? K-Coach. Big dad energy. Got it.

Kara Swisher: As Axios wrote. Walz appeared in his first video, or "Tim Talk," as he called it on Friday. I cannot.

Audie Cornish: I know, but it works. It works.

Kara Swisher: Does it? It did. Timder. Come on, it does. It does. It does with a lot of people. I know. They're not aiming at you. Along with his dog, Scout. And he did that very funny video about not shooting his dog. But when Kristi Noem did, I thought that was quite brilliant. The jokes write themselves. The campaign has used a new account to display his authenticity as a Midwestern dad, football coach, and to draw a contrast with J.D. Vance, which is easy.

Eli Stokols: I mean, it certainly made it hard for Republicans who had spent the last year saying, like, TikTok needs to go. And then all of a sudden they were like, oh, wait, we need this. And also Trump shifted because of money. But what do you, how do you, how is Walz coming up? I know vice presidents don't matter, but this guy's not doing a bad job.

Audie Cornish: No, I think he's exactly what she wanted and needed to kind of calm fears that she was something extreme or outside of the mainstream or a coastal candidate, coastal elitist, you know, a prosecutor married to a lawyer. I think he plays in the middle of the country. He plays with the kinds of voters who she may not be as natural. It may not have as strong a reaction to her. And I think, look, the dad energy that he's very comfortable in his own skin. His experience speaks to a lot of different people. So I think tapping that, you know, letting him be loose on social media. I mean, again, new ways of communicating, reaching younger voters. Younger voters are not the deficit they are for Democrats that they would have been had Biden still been the top of the ticket. But you still need to turn them out. That's no guarantee.

Kara Swisher: And it's obviously less complicated for her and Walz to be on TikTok than it is for Biden, who's setting U.S. policy.

Audie Cornish: He's the dad you lost to Fox News. That was a big thing I saw, I think, online.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Also, he's proven to have an ability to deflect some of the picking at his weaknesses. So it's like you went to China a lot. Well, I took high school students there, you know, like every year. Like, did you have a DIY?

Kara Swisher: Like, well, people have had these trouble, you know, like what my son was like, I liked him for that. Exactly. I was like, what? He goes, well, he seems like a guy who could like be.

Scott Galloway: Or another one I'm hearing is like, why doesn't he have any money? What does that?

Kara Swisher: And then I've heard this response. Have you met a teacher? You know, like there's always this kind of pithy response to things that are supposed to be weaknesses for him. And he's whatever, whoever's working for him, I think they have done a good job of finding ways to re-textualize each one of these. Gretchen Whitmer has the same vibe, right?

Scott Galloway: Yeah. The aw shucks vibe, which may be annoying to us.

Kara Swisher: She doesn't give aw shucks to me. She's very, maybe because I'm seeing her on Bookdoor. Yeah. She's super polished.

Eli Stokols: A lot of these folks who are in the bench and are fantastic and very good political players, I think they were very, very, very polished. And the idea that he would come to them and be like, "I just want to work really hard for you. And also I'm not good at prompter." They're like, great. I mean, like he's no hayseed. I mean, the fact that he's going into runs in Nebraska and, you know, playing that up, like he gets it. This is a savvy and very capable politician. I mean, he won a tough district in a tough election cycle in 2006 and came into Congress on the sort of anti-war wave and has won that district over and over again. You know, he's elected governor. This is a guy who knows what he's doing and his personality may not read quite as ambitious or quite as polished as, say, a Gavin Newsom or a Josh Shapiro. But this is a very smart and successful politician.

Kara Swisher: Oh, clearly. He's very quick. He's much quicker than his daddy.

Audie Cornish: But I think at the end of the day, it's do no harm with your choices. And also, can it be complimentary? And I think she found a match that was complimentary. The military thing didn't really stick. And at the end of the day, J.B. Vance and Trump, they're not complimentary. One doesn't bring anything to the other.

Kara Swisher: Right. And I think the thing I mean, if he's out there doing a lot of things and he's attracting incoming, he's taking, you know, he's like bait. He's taking them away from Harris by being the person. "Oh, let's go after Walls about his military. Let's go after him." And then I think the Harris campaign is fine with that. Go after Walls. He can handle himself. And, you know, that's just another day that they're attacking the wrong.

Scott Galloway: Fine for it all, which is really interesting.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Not at all. The liberal thing's not working. Yeah. Well, she has to define herself. And that's the thing for this week. And that is still a thing she has to do. She has to do in this speech.

[Break]

Kara Swisher: All right, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

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Kara Swisher: Okay, Audie and Eli, let's hear some wins and fails. Audie, you go first.

Audie Cornish: Like in all of life or like today?

Kara Swisher: What's going on this week? Wins and fails.

Audie Cornish: Yeah, you can have something else if you want to pick something else. No, no, I actually, nobody's failed yet. This week has just started.

Kara Swisher: Right.

Audie Cornish: Maybe the fail is that Trump has to spend the week counter-programming in a way that clearly says he's going to do, which he says he's going to do. And in the past, that felt like a mighty threat because of his power of television. I think Wynn is the lineup for this week of Democrats, of being able to have a full spectrum of Democrats past and have that build towards her in the next generation. They're telling a proper story this time around. And I think it would have been harder to figure out what that story would be with Biden.

Kara Swisher: With Biden.

Audie Cornish: I'll single out an individual, and that's Stephanie Cutter, who I mentioned already. But this is a person who I think deserves a lot of credit. If Kamala Harris meets the moment, a lot of that has to do with the fact that...

Kara Swisher: Explain who she is.

Audie Cornish: She is a Democratic strategist, runs Precision. That's a big Democratic firm. But she has been working quietly with the vice president on her communication, her interviews, her messaging. She has helped mold a lot of messaging around reproductive rights for the past year. She's helped her get more comfortable in who she is and being that person publicly. And so if Harris has a strong convention and she gives a great speech on Thursday night, I think a lot of that work. It's like when a hitting coach gets a little credit when someone wins the batting title. It's like you have to give her some credit for that. And she's also the person who the DNC hired to figure out the lineup. And so over the last month, she's had to completely reformulate this convention around a new nominee at the top of the ticket. So she's been working very hard. And I think just as a person who, you know, we don't all talk about people like that all the time. But as an operative, she has been in the middle of everything this campaign has been doing, this candidate has been doing and this convention has been doing. And I think that's a name to know.

Scott Galloway: Washington's worked for Ted Kennedy. Like some of the things you're talking about, why isn't Kamala Harris talking about X or Y? There's people in the background who have earned a couple lessons from the last 15 years. Talking too much, actually. And she was very good about that. When she was turning black, she hardly said anything.

Kara Swisher: Oh my goodness.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: When did you turn black? I don't know. Oh my God. Oh my God. America. America.

[Laughter]

Kara Swisher: My win and fail. My win is San Francisco. I love San Francisco. So on a roll with Kamala Harris there, we got we had Outerlands, which was a huge success. We had Skrillex there. The city's cleaning up its homeless problem. I think it's on a AI is really causing the whole area to economically. So it's really hard to attack San Francisco as much now. They'll try. They're trying right now.

Audie Cornish: But I'll tell you, you're giving me a review I haven't heard before.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I'm just telling you, there's a lot going on in San Francisco now. And it's all forward and up and to the right, especially around the homeless issue, which Gavin Newsom...

Scott Galloway: Yeah. Walk.

Kara Swisher: I'm intrigued. The new Supreme Court decision. There's a lot going on. There's a lot they couldn't do for a while, but now they can. So I say San Francisco because I'm from there and I love San Francisco. The fail is Donald Trump tweeting or threading or social whatever the wherever he was. I'm probably true thing that Taylor Swift wants from. He's in huge, enormous trouble now for that. That was a bad situation. He put up a thing saying...

Scott Galloway: Even that's a retread from the Super Bowl period, talking about Taylor Swift.

Kara Swisher: No, it just everything is. She's not going to like that. She's very good at legal. And Swifties won't like it.

Scott Galloway: Swifties won't like it. And her legal team, especially both Beyonce with her, everybody like he's using all their music. Nobody wants Celine Dion. He's got a he's got a troika of people. Celine Dion, Beyonce, Taylor Swift. Kissed at him.

Kara Swisher: I don't think that's a good hashtag. Cease and dissent. New Trump. Same as the old Trump. Hashtag you're fucked. These ladies. He said that. These ladies don't play.

[Laughter]

Kara Swisher: So anyway, I really appreciate you too. What's your next stop? What's your next stop, Audie?

Audie Cornish: Next stop will be primetime tonight. First night of speeches, which I think are going to be fascinating.

Kara Swisher: Are they good interviews for your wonderful podcast?

Audie Cornish: Actually, you know, I like coming to conventions and figuring it out because they are one of the last few spaces of like true kind of spontaneous conversation. I mean, yes, everybody here, you know where they stand. Yeah. But you can get into the nuances of the people who are here, what they care about, where they think things are going. And they're in a positive attitude. It's a little more fun for reporters than just general man on the street, you know, where you're standing on a street corner. And oh, the music's starting now.

Kara Swisher: What about you? What are you playing? Just jamming out right here, I guess.

Eli Stokols: I'll be writing the newsletter all week. We'll be watching and writing off of the president's speech.

Kara Swisher: Who is this? They're playing. I can't hear. Is it Taylor?

Audie Cornish: This is giving Maren Morris' new album.

Kara Swisher: Oh, it is. Yep, that is. We don't know it anyway. Go ahead.

Eli Stokols: You know, we'll be here at the Politico CNN Grill tomorrow. My co-author, Lauren Egan, and I will be interviewing Anita Dunn, so that could get spicy.

Kara Swisher: Oh, we just saw her on this one.

Eli Stokols: Yeah, and, you know, just...

Kara Swisher: The Biden advisor.

Eli Stokols: Yeah, we'll be just floating around, seeing who we can bump into, and I think, you know, we can work in a tiny bit of deep dish or medium dish Pequod's. I know there's a lot of controversy about Chicago pizza this week already.

Kara Swisher: Oh, come on. Stop, stop, stop.

Eli Stokols: And again, tonight. I'll be here at the Politico Grill. Tonight is Joe Biden.

Kara Swisher: Tonight is Joe Biden. Yeah. Let's give him a nice send off. Good luck. He will get a very enthusiastic.

Scott Galloway: It'll be dreamy.

Kara Swisher: I don't know if that'll make up for a days. Will have like days and days of news reporting of saying people are more enthusiastic now that you're gone but you're gonna get a round of applause no matter what he's gonna do this speech and fly off to santa barbara wine country for a few days and probably put you know just rest and maybe maybe he'll watch some of this maybe uh he won't watch all of it

Scott Galloway: yeah well thank you joe

Kara Swisher: i guess at the end we want to hear from you send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT

[Outro music begins]

Kara Swisher: Okay, that's the show. Today's show is produced by Lara Neiman, Zoe Marcus, Brandon McFarlane, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Anderjot engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Mia Silveria, and Kate Gallagher. Nishat Kuro is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

Scott Galloway: Thank you, too. I appreciate it.

Kara Swisher: Thank you. Now get out there and do some reporting.