Welcome to the beat I'm Ari Melber and thanks to you for joining us to start a very big week.

The first voting in key states begins in just 21 days and the first Harris Trump debate is actually scheduled for 15 days from now.

So tonight we will be looking down the road to these big campaign events.

We also have Professor Michael Eric Dyson and Jalani Cobb coming up this hour.

The Democrats new musical star, DJ Cassidy, will also join us by the end of the hour.

So I invite you to get comfortable. We have a lot cooking for you.

Right now we begin with new signs that Kamala Harris is gaining momentum from

the DNC. All the speeches delivered, all the balloons dropped, all the points made and hammered home again and the political

question then becomes this week how this convention is or is not shaping the

race. But we know more about that as we begin the week.

Trump's convention, of course, was his first speech since narrowly avoiding that horrific

assassination.

There was huge interest going into the RNC, and it did draw an audience but the DNC we can now tell

you narrowly beat the RNC in the total traditional TV audience with 28 million

plus viewers watching Harris's finale speech. That is high, that is big

interest. And that means that while you may follow the news or listen to Harris pretty

regularly, we now know and we can tell you this today is a fact,

more people heard her last week

than any time since October 2020.

That's the last time she had that large a live TV audience and it was during the debate with Mike Pence.

There are also signs that Harris and the Convention's key points reached tens of millions more people through streaming in social media.

I've mentioned this to you before.

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