Dispatches From a Kamala Harris Field Office

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 8 August 2024

⏱️ 38 minutes

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Summary

Vice President Kamala Harris’s ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket has transformed the U.S. presidential race. But the real test awaits: Will the party be able to translate that energy into a winning coalition of voters in November? Reid J. Epstein, who covers politics for The Times, discusses a group of skeptical voters in swing states who may post the biggest challenge to the vice president. Our audio producers — Jessica Cheung and Stella Tan — traveled to Wisconsin to speak to some of them.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From New York Times, I'm Michael Bobaro. This is the Daily.
0:05.0	As Kamala Harris successfully re-energizes the Democratic Party.
0:14.0	Her campaign is now trying to figure out how to translate that excitement
0:19.6	into a winning coalition of voters in November.
0:25.0	Today, my colleagues travel to the swing state of Wisconsin
0:30.0	where a group of skeptical voters may represent Harris's single biggest challenge.
0:37.0	It's Thursday, August 8th.
0:49.0	Reed Epstein.
0:50.0	Welcome back.
0:51.0	Hi Michael.
0:52.0	So Reed, from the moment that Joe Biden left this race and Kamala Harris replaced him as the presumptive
0:59.5	Democratic nominee, the promise was that she would do better than Biden never could against
1:04.8	Donald Trump, but the specifics of that, of how she would do better, felt a little
1:10.3	bit vague and that's what we want to talk to you about today. We've had a few weeks to better understand
1:14.9	that proposition. So what does a winning Harris coalition in November look like and how does it compare with the support that
1:26.3	Biden had been getting? So Michael I think the place to start is not two and a half
1:31.3	weeks ago when Biden got out of the race but four years ago
1:34.9	when he defeated Donald Trump and won the White House. In that race he won a bunch of states that Trump had won in 2016.
1:45.0	He won Michigan in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in the Midwestern Blue Wall states
1:50.0	and he won in the Sun Belt in Georgia and Arizona and he held on to Nevada.
1:55.0	In that election, Biden assembled a coalition with three essential elements for any Democrat to win a national election.
2:05.6	He drove up turnout in big cities, particularly among people of color and young voters.
	...

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