--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Anyone watch the DNC last night? Bueller? Bueller? Um, he's sick. If you didn't, let me catch you up. People quoted rappers. In the words of the great American poet, Nelly, it's getting hot in here. People quoted ballers. In the words of the great Steph Curry, we can tell Donald Trump, night, night. And there were way too many people. New York's motto is excelsior, ever upward. And Trump takes us ever downward. What there wasn't a lot of was policy. Not a lot of talk about what kind of president Kamala Harris will be. So on Today Explained, we're going to hear from someone who has some strong opinions on what kind of president Kamala Harris should be. And he thinks she should be more of an Obama than a Biden.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Explained. 2024 Explained. Jonathan Chait is a political columnist at New York Magazine. And any political columnist could tell you it's Kamala time. Yet, Chait just wrote about 6,500 words comparing Barack Obama's presidency to Joe Biden's. So we asked him why.
--:-- Jonathan Chait: I think the Democratic Party made a huge mistake over the last eight years in convincing itself that the Obama presidency was a disappointment or even a failure. And I think this wrong decision that the party made has had a series of unfortunate effects on its decisions that I try to trace over the last eight years and has brought us to the current point where that's the decision point that Harris is facing, whether she should essentially resuscitate the Obama model or embrace the idea that Obama was a failure and chart a course favored by the Obama skeptics.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's interesting to hear you say that. I think a lot of people in our audience may not be aware that within the Democratic Party, conversations around the party, people see the Obama years as some kind of failure. I was in a movie theater last night, Jonathan, and Obama popped up on the screen for a bit in a documentary. And there was like an audible sigh of elation in the theater. Where is the argument that this two-term presidency was somehow a failure? Where is that being had and what's it grounded in?
--:-- Jonathan Chait: It's very interesting because it's a top-down phenomenon that has not filtered into the party rank and file. And that's one of the interesting phenomena that I describe in the story, that the Democratic voters still love Obama, still think Obama was great. It's an elite-driven phenomenon to decide that his presidency was a failure.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He presents himself as this figure, as just faced against these innumerable odds. And I mean, it's just very, very dismissive and absolving really of himself of so many decisions that he made throughout his presidency. And this began during his presidency when Obama had a fairly chilly relationship with what they called the professional left, which was at the time a very embryonic formation of kind of progressive activist groups and intellectuals in their orbit.
--:-- Jonathan Chait: And then when Hillary Clinton lost in 2016, a lot of those people decided that this was an indictment of the entire Obama style, the entire Obama presidency. Why did only 65% of Latino voters vote for Democratic candidate? Well, let me show you the immigrants deported under the last two administrations. Well, George Bush, she deported a lot of people. That's at the bottom, 2 million. Guess who broke his record? Barack Obama.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then the frustrations they had with Obama began to take on a different and more specific form. How does this perception that he was maybe not left enough stack up against some of his major accomplishments, namely Obamacare?
--:-- Jonathan Chait: Yeah. I mean, one of the things I try to argue in this story is that Obama had an incredible array of domestic policy accomplishments. Obamacare is the most well-known. And Obamacare itself is, you know, a whole package of reforms. It's a gigantic expansion of Medicaid. Before expansion, most adults without children or a disability weren't eligible at all, no matter how low their income. It's a regulation and subsidy of the private insurance market. It had a nationalization of the student loan industry. If you tweet, use the hashtag, don't double my rate. Don't double my rate. They closed the Medicare donut hole. Probably there was more in Obamacare than the entire Biden presidency.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Come on.
--:-- Jonathan Chait: But they also had an economic rescue effort, which was of historic size. They bailed out Detroit and probably saved the entire Midwest. They passed the Dodd-Frank reforms. They had at the time the largest green energy stimulus of all time which led to the first global climate treaty and a lot of other sort of medium accomplishments that I think people would be celebrating if they were thinking of them. But a lot of that has kind of faded from memory.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If I had told you eight years ago that America would reverse a Great Recession, reboot our auto industry... And one argument I have is that because there was so much of it, it's kind of like Trump's misconduct. There's so much you can't keep it all in your head, and therefore it's easy to think that there wasn't very much of it.
--:-- Jonathan Chait: If I had told you that we would win marriage equality and secure the right to health insurance for another 20 million of our fellow citizens, if I had told you all that, you might have said our sights were set a little too high. I'm not writing this piece, you know, for Barack Obama. So I'm not saying in this piece that everything Obama did was right. One of his major mistakes was to get behind Hillary Clinton in 2016 instead of Joe Biden. Joe Biden thinks he would have won in 2016, and I think Biden is right about that. So that was a significant error on Obama's part.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But the conclusion was that Hillary Clinton was repudiated as a repudiation of Obama. As if Obama himself was on the ballot in 2016. And a lot of the indictments I've read of Obama read almost as if Trump literally beat Barack Obama in 2016. But of course, if Obama had been permitted to run by the Constitution, he would have wiped the floor with Donald Trump.
--:-- Jonathan Chait: By the way, I would have voted for Obama for a third term if I could. It's just that Hillary Clinton was a very poor politician, and Obama was a good one. So that error is on Obama's shoulders. But it doesn't, I don't think, negate any of the accomplishments of the administration itself. But it indicts his succession management.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Since you mentioned Joe Biden running against Donald Trump in 2020 briefly here. Did he do it as a Obama moderate? Did he do it as, you know, left of Obama? And if so, how did that sort of evolution transpire?
--:-- Jonathan Chait: This is a good point to pick up the story of where the anti-Obama campaign went during the Trump era. So it started off with this intellectual campaign to argue against Obama and argue for a different way. And there was a lot of money going into think tanks, universities, magazines, opinion writing, pressing this argument against Obama and in quote unquote neoliberalism.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And this had a huge effect on the environment of the Democratic primary in 2020. All the candidates assumed as a result of this campaign that the party had totally repudiated Obama liberalism and was now racing left. And the whole primary was this race to the left to, in some ways, explicitly or implicitly repudiate what Obama had done and just go as far left as they could.
--:-- Jonathan Chait: My plan also includes getting rid of Section 1325 of the Immigration and Nationality Act. When somebody comes across the border not to criminalize desperation, to treat that as a civil violation. And a lot of the positions they adopted were toxic, just extraordinarily unpopular. Raise your hand if your government plan would provide coverage for undocumented immigrants.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can even see the damage of that to Kamala Harris. She was probably the greatest victim of this campaign because she was pulled way, way to the left of where she started in the campaign. She had to repudiate her history as a prosecutor. The bottom line is the buck stops with me and I take full responsibility for what my office did. Then she started talking about defunding the police.
--:-- Jonathan Chait: When you have many cities that have one third of their entire city budget focused on policing, we know that is not the smart way and the best way or the right way to achieve safety. Those are, to this day, her greatest liabilities. The survivor of that episode was Joe Biden. Joe Biden was offline. Joe Biden was too uncool to even know what everyone else thought they knew about the future of the Democratic Party.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the activists all assumed that Joe Biden was yesterday's news anyway, so they weren't even really bothering to pressure him because they just assumed he was going to fade away because he was yesterday's man. But he wasn't yesterday's man. The Democratic Party's base hadn't moved very far. They still were in the same kind of center-left place for the most part as they were under Obama, and they still liked Obama a lot.
--:-- Jonathan Chait: So Biden, in his connection to Obama and Obama liberalism, made him the most popular candidate in the race. And Biden won handily. But then he made this kind of strange decision to act as if he had been defeated. So whereas almost every candidate moves to the center after the primary, Biden moved away from the center.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: One thing they did was to start using race-conscious rhetoric. So I'll give you a counterexample first. When Obama passed the stimulus, someone came up to Michelle Obama and said, hey, this is the greatest anti-poverty legislation we've had in decades. And she said, shh. And the reason she said that was they didn't want this to be seen as something for poor people. They wanted to portray it as something for the broad middle class.
--:-- Jonathan Chait: With those workers who make the least benefiting the most. The same was true of Obama's approach on race issues. He knew that a lot of his measures had a really important racial equity focus, right? Black people are underprivileged compared to white people by almost every major social and economic dimension. So anything you do that transfers resources from rich to the poor, and Obama did quite a bit of that, benefits black people. But he wasn't saying that. The people who were saying that were his enemies.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It was like Rush Limbaugh saying health care is reparations, health care is for black people, health care is punishing the white people. Obama didn't want to say anything like that because he knew the politics were bad under Biden they started following the advice of people on the left and specifically saying we are advancing racial equity in all these policies when the goals could just as easily have been sold in different terms.
--:-- Jonathan Chait: Black and Latino Americans are dying of COVID at rates nearly three times that of white Americans. And it's not white Americans' fault, but just a fact. And the Americans now know it, especially younger Americans. I mean, there's Democrats out there, even, you know, reporters out there who claim that Joe Biden may have accomplished as much as any Democrat since FDR.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I saw Nancy Pelosi argue that he should have a place on Mount Rushmore. Such a consequential president of the United States, a Mount Rushmore kind of president of the United States. I take it you disagree.
--:-- Jonathan Chait: That would be kind of ridiculous. I mean, so he moved rhetorically to the left, but he didn't actually achieve very much. So progressives seem to want to believe that he did what he said or are sort of acting as if he had the FDR-sized presidency that he hoped to build, but it's just not the case.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, and one thing we should acknowledge here is that he's a pretty unpopular president. He's a deeply unpopular president. Some of that is his fault. Some of that isn't his fault. But one of the really strange things about the way the critique has played out in the current election is that progressives are acting as if he's super popular.
--:-- Jonathan Chait: They've been writing a flurry of columns warning Kamala Harris not to abandon Bidenomics and not to make the mistake of doing what Obama did, as if Obama had been a failure and as if Biden had been a success, when I think the evidence suggests the reverse.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're going to talk to Jonathan about Kamala when we come back on Today Explained. This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Each Apple product, like the iPhone, is thoughtfully designed by skilled designers. The titanium Apple Card is no different. It's laser etched, has no numbers, and it earns you daily cash on everything you buy, including 3% back on everything at Apple. Apply for Apple Card on your iPhone in minutes. Subject to credit approval, Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch. Terms and more at AppleCard.com.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: From Pushkin Industries, I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and Heavyweight is back. The new season is bigger than ever. Bigger hopes. I keep waiting for this moment when he says, Mom, I get it. I'm sorry. Bigger dreams. Tom Hanks wants to meet with you. This is a real chance. And bigger heartbreaks. I thought it would be my movie moment. And maybe he would even whisper in my ear, I've always been in love with you. Check out new episodes of Heavyweight on Apple Podcasts. 2020, 2020, four. Today Explained is back with Jonathan Chait from New York Magazine and Intelligencer. Wherever you land on these legacies, Obamas, Bidens, this conversation that you've, you know, helped kick up into a higher gear, it feels like a healthy one to be having right now because somewhere in Chicago, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz and their teams are deciding where to take this party. Where do you think they should go? I mean, I want to argue that it's a fitting topic to discuss right now because Obama really is the closest thing we have for a model for how a politician like Kamala Harris can present herself to the public and how she can govern.
--:-- Jonathan Chait: Obama understood that he would read as culturally scary or new or different to a lot of Americans. But his way of handling that was to engage in, you know, what some leftists would disparage as, you know, respectability politics. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles, and cousins of every race and every hue scattered across three continents. And for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on earth is my story even possible.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He was trying to empathize with traditional values. He would always, you know, express patriotism. He would always express the value of hard work. He'd say, I don't want the government to solve all our problems. He had this habit that people almost made fun of at the time, of every time he explained his position, he would try to articulate what the conservative objection was and to the degree to which he understood it and it incorporated it into his own thinking.
--:-- Jonathan Chait: I think one of the proposals that has been focused on by the Republicans as a way to reduce costs is allowing insurance companies to sell across state lines. We actually include that as part of our approach. But the caveat is we've got to do so with some minimum standards because otherwise...
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And this was effective. This was one of the reasons why he won two overwhelming elections and was able to get so much done. He didn't go around saying, I'm fundamentally transforming the country. It was his opponents who went around saying he's fundamentally transforming the country. And he's saying, no, I'm just trying to implement some common sense solutions.
--:-- Jonathan Chait: So I think this question of what is the best model for a Democrat is very alive. So that's one reason why my editors and I decided that this, you know, was the question that had been burbling beneath the surface for eight years. And we wanted to bring the whole story to the surface and just present the question right up front.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Do you think we've seen Kamala Harris do anything so far in this I don't know month of campaigning or so that suggests she's going to hew closer to Biden or Obama?
--:-- Jonathan Chait: Yeah, I think most of her decisions, just about everything other than picking Tim Walz, really is the kind of decision making that I would like to see from her. Kamala Harris has spent decades fighting violent crime. As a border state prosecutor, she took on drug cartels and jailed gang members. She's done almost everything right. Fixing the border is tough. So is Kamala Harris.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: She has ditched all the positions that progressives forced her to take in 2020. She's re-embraced her identity as a prosecutor, which progressives forced her to abandon. As a prosecutor, I specialized in cases involving sexual abuse. Well, Trump was found liable for committing sexual abuse. You know, I think she's really trying to carefully tailor her rhetoric to actually existing public opinion, rather than just assume that she can, you know, whip up progressives to turn out by getting all these, you know, left-wing voters who haven't been wanting to vote, which I don't think is a realistic model of how to win elections.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You said everything but picking Tim Walz, who's got this super liberal reputation from his time as governor in Minnesota, but he also seems really good at selling his liberal positions. I'm surrounded by states who are spending their time figuring out how to ban Charlotte's Web in their schools while we're banishing hunger from ours with free breakfast and lunch.
--:-- Jonathan Chait: Do you think he could help her sell a more liberal agenda or policies?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't think the vice presidential pick matters a ton, but I think Walls represents a little bit of the opposing view. Don't ever shy away from our progressive values. One person's socialism is another person's neighborliness. We don't need to actually pay any respects to conservative beliefs. All we need is someone who has a background that we think conservatives can relate to.
--:-- Jonathan Chait: My first car, it's the summer of 1980, been saving up. I buy a 1973 orange Chevy Camaro. Got an eight-track player in it. Oh, wow. Previous owner left Bob Seger's Night Moves in there. And then they can, their positions could be as liberal as they want, and the redder can be as liberal as they want.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So today, I am directing my state agencies to take action to protect and support the rights of Minnesota's LGBTQIA plus community. Protecting and supporting access to gender affirming health care is essential to being a welcoming and supportive state. They believe there won't be a backlash. I don't think that's really true. And I think if you look at Wall's record as governor, he basically is just, you know, gets everyone who's a Democrat and is opposed by everyone who's a Republican. I don't think he really expands beyond the Democratic base.
--:-- Jonathan Chait: Enthusiasm for Walls, in some ways, is one of the ways in which this left-wing impulse has been redirected. This idea that you can use character and biography as a substitute for any kind of substantive concessions or even rhetorical concessions to the left, right? When you ask Tim Walls, he doesn't say, like, you know, I understand why some people have concerns about abortion. He just says, Even if we wouldn't make the same choice for ourselves, there's a golden rule. Mind your own damn business.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, this piece that you've written, it's about policy. It's about policy accomplishments. It's about policy positions. Does policy matter in this election, or is everyone voting on vibes?
--:-- Jonathan Chait: I think, you know, American politics is very, very polarized, and the vast majority of voters are just for one party or another. But they're so closely balanced that even though there's a diminishing number of persuadable voters, the decisions that those voters make pretty much determine the election. And some of those voters, you know, only go by appearances or how is the economy doing. But there really are some of them who have opinions that are somewhere between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Or maybe they have some issues that line up with one party and other issues that line up with another party.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think people on the left have underestimated the degree to which one element of Trump's success in 2016 was that he abandoned the most unpopular positions of the Republican Party. How did Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney in 2012? By running against the right-wing, unpopular Paul Ryan plan to cut taxes for the rich and cut spending on Medicare and Medicaid. And Trump instead said, no, I'm not going to cut Medicare. That's stupid. Like those Republicans who did that are idiots and I'm not going to touch Medicare and Social Security.
--:-- Jonathan Chait: And he at least said he would raise taxes on the rich even though he wound up doing the opposite. And of course, when he did the opposite, that was unpopular and contributed to him losing. So I don't think any of this tells us that policy doesn't matter. I think taking positions that voters agree with make it easier to win elections.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Jonathan Chait, Intelligencer at New York Magazine. You can subscribe at nymag.com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Miles Bryan produced the program today. He was edited by Matthew Collette. We were fact-checked by Laura Bullard with help from Amanda Llewellyn and mixed by Patrick Boyd and Andrea Christensdottir. I'm Sean Rameswaram from Noelle's Got More for You from the DNC tomorrow on Today Explained. Thank you. It's more than a wire. It's payroll for your team. It's more than a deposit. It's landing your fundraise. The truth is, banking can do more. Mercury brings all the ways you use money into a single product that feels extraordinary to use. Visit mercury.com to join over 200,000 entrepreneurs who use Mercury to do more for their business. Mercury, banking that does more.
