Brian Laird on WNYC.

We want to take a close look now at a major speech that Kamala Harris gave in Pittsburgh on Wednesday,

that she hopes will be a turning point in her campaign. We were going

to talk about the speech yesterday, but the indictment of Mayor Eric Adams kind of overwhelmed

everything else. But we're coming back to it today. We don't want to fall into the trap that the

news cycle on a daily show is only things that happened in the last 24 hours, right? So we'll play what I think

are some key clips from the speech, invite your reactions, and get analysis from Washington

Post economics columnist Heather Long. Here's the context. As we discussed a couple of days ago,

Harris, since she got the nomination, has already succeeded in energizing the Democratic base to

donate, volunteer, and probably show up to vote. We all know that. But the race is tight,

and the voters most being identified as undecided tend to cite the cost of living as their top

concern, tend not to be enthusiastic about either Trump or

Harris, but tend to think that Donald Trump is the better candidate to help with inflation.

However, Trump's lead on the economy has been shrinking in recent polls, and as the Washington

Post puts it, Harris's speech sought to further

erode Trump's advantage on economic issues. So let's start with a few clips. First, we know Trump is

out there calling Harris a Marxist and a communist that may be ridiculous on its face, if you know what

actual communism and Marxism are, but in American politics, and not just

with Trump. If you think government has any kind of role to play in helping poor people or the

middle class, someone on the right is going to say, you belong in the Soviet Union. So one of the first

things that Harris did on Wednesday was to try to plant her flag by using the C word.

Look, I'm a capitalist.

...