Hello everyone and welcome to the focus group podcast I'm Sarah Longwell publisher of the

bullwork and this week we're taking a spin through

Kamala Harris's shortlist.

Now, conventional wisdom says that Harris needs a moderate white guy and that the country's not

ready for a ticket with two women or a gay man on it.

The focus group people also think this. A lot of names in the shortlist will be familiar to regular focus groupies.

So we're going to walk through what we've heard about

them over the years and what swing voters have been saying lately. My guest today is

Sam Stein, the Bullworks new managing editor.

Sam, thanks for being here.

Thank you so much for having me.

This is why I joined the Bullwork for this very moment.

I'm so pleased that it came to fruition.

Oh, wow, I'm so glad to hear that. Well tell me are you a big

podcaster you were over at Politico so how much what's your podcasting background?

So I didn't do much at Politico I admit that much to my chagrin but I did actually launch a podcast when I was at

Huff Post and the concept was we would interview people who ran for office and

lost only the losers because they make

for better stories and there's a lot more of them.

And they have less to do.

They're a lot to do, easier to book, more candid.

We were initially going to call it losers,

...