What the Harris Campaign Needs to Win, with James Carville and Paul Begala
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
WNYC Studios and The New Yorker
4.2 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 17 August 2024
⏱️ 50 minutes
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Summary
The Washington Roundtable discusses the surge of enthusiasm for the Harris-Walz campaign among Democrats in relation to Bill Clinton’s bid for the White House in 1992. They’re joined by the Democratic strategists James Carville and Paul Begala, whose work as architects of that Clinton campaign was portrayed in the 1993 documentary “The War Room.” Plus, a look ahead at next week’s Democratic National Convention.
This week’s reading:
- “Kamala Harris’s Best Campaign Surrogate Is Donald Trump,” by Susan B. Glasser
- “Tim Walz and the Lessons of High-School Football,” by Louisa Thomas
- “Kamala Harris’s Youth-Vote Turnaround,” by E. Tammy Kim
To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to [email protected] with “The Political Scene” in the subject line.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the political scene, a weekly discussion about the big questions in American |
| 0:10.0 | politics. I'm Susan Glasser and I'm joined as ever by my fantastic colleagues Jane |
| 0:14.7 | Mayor and Evan Osnos. Hi Jane. Hey Susan. Hey Evan. Good morning guys. |
| 0:31.6 | The Harris Wall's ticket made its debut in front of an electric crowd of 12,000 in Pennsylvania just last week. Good evening, Philadelphia. |
| 0:35.0 | It was a high energy event unlike anything we've seen from Democrats in recent years. |
| 0:44.0 | And that got us thinking about some previous campaigns, |
| 0:48.2 | especially the 1992 campaign, |
| 0:51.8 | when Democrats were also inspired, although in a very different way. |
| 0:56.9 | So we went back and we were inspired to re-watch the War Room, which is the classic campaign |
| 1:04.3 | documentary going inside the 1992 Clinton campaign, |
| 1:08.6 | day in and day out with the staff, |
| 1:11.4 | not the president or the would be president himself. |
| 1:14.1 | It's really an indispensable movie for anybody who cares about campaigns. |
| 1:18.3 | And wow, it sure spoke a lot to this 2024 campaign as well in ways that surprised me and that I think are why we were so |
| 1:27.5 | excited to have this conversation today with two of the architects of the 1992 Clinton campaign, |
| 1:34.4 | the man who was responsible for the iconic phrase, |
| 1:37.9 | the economy stupid, the rage and cajun himself, |
| 1:40.8 | James Carville James, thank you so much for joining us. |
| 1:43.8 | Hello, great to be here. |
| 1:45.6 | And of course his partner, the campaign strategist Paul Bugala, |
| 1:49.6 | who went on to serve in Clinton's White House |
| 1:51.6 | as counselor to the President. |
... |
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