Harris' Media Blitz

00:00

Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of Why Do I Care? I'm your host Toby Favallora. And I'm Alex Durant. And today we'll be talking about Kamala Harris's recent media blitz. So without further ado, let's get right to it.

00:15

What kind of guns you own and when and why did you get it? I have a Glock and I've had it for quite some time and I mean look Bill my background is in law enforcement and so there you go. So that clip that you guys just heard that was Kamala Harris on 60 Minutes discussing that she does in fact own a Glock which is something that I didn't even think I'd ever be saying but

00:43

I think it's a good strategy, at least she's honest. Yeah, I mean, as someone who's progressive in the party, I don't really like that our Democratic candidates are talking about owning guns. I think that if we look back to 2016, you could never even fathom Hillary Clinton saying such a thing. But it's part of this appeal to populism that I guess we are running with to try to win this election. Yeah. So the main.

01:10

The main point of the episode today is we're going to talk about Kamala Harris and her recent media strategy. At the beginning of the campaign, really since Joe Biden dropped out, and honestly even before that, since she became vice president, people keep saying, where's Kamala? I don't know where she is. Who is she? What does she stand for? She hasn't really been too aggressive in the media. And this is her now responding to the polling, which honestly has not looked great in her favor as to people knowing who she is, in knowing

01:39

what she stands for that's kind of been her biggest weakness. What she's doing is now recently, you know, the last week she's done just an aggressive media blitz. She's been on all sorts of platforms and that's the key issue. So normally we would see candidates go on very traditional mainstream media. They would do a sit down interview on CNN like she did. They would do, you know, like a town hall, the debates.

02:08

And that's kind of most of the media that they would do through the news. They kind of rely on this paid media, this advertising. However, what Kamala Harris, her campaign is kind of shifting to is she wants to do more diverse media platforms, some different forms, you know, your TikTok, your podcasts, other news segments, other ways, ways to reach voters that aren't necessarily going to be engaged because the issue with this mainstream media is in the current day and age.

02:38

the people that watch this mainstream media already know who they're voting for. It's the people who don't know who they're voting for that aren't gonna be tuning in, which is why it's important for her to go try to find those votes. Well yeah, and I think part of it is also a huge appeal to try to get young voters off their couches and you know, to the polls. And I mean, totally she is the brat candidate, right? Like this is the first time that we have seen like a candidate, I would say, in the last, you know.

03:06

12, 14 years, ever since the internet has really become a thing, use it in a way that's not like that cringy, that like is still very millennial coded, but at least like it's an understanding of what's going on with digital media, with social media, which is probably going to be the norm in politics now for, you know, forever. So like the mummification of our political campaigns really has begun.

03:29

Yeah, you kind of talked about how it's millennial coded. It very much is. They're trying their best. Not a shot at millennials, but kind of a shot at millennials. But it is interesting that Kamala Harris, a bunch of momentum was sparked by what the Republicans thought was going to be an attack on her, her whole coconut tree thing. That is something that the campaign kind of ran with. And online Democrats, they ran with. And it's important to understand that most people aren't going to find out.

03:59

who Connola Harris is by watching her, you know, sit down and interview or watching her in the debates or watching any of her addresses as she greets a foreign leader or anything like that. Because most of the voters that don't know who they're voting for yet, they're low information voters and that's kind of the important thing to wrap our heads around. So what did the Harris campaign do? She has made some several, you know.

04:27

very key appearances. She went on 60 Minutes, she went on the Stephen Colbert's Late Night Show, she went on The View, and she also, probably the biggest is, she went on the podcast called Her Daddy. Maybe next time she'll go on Why Do I Care, but until then, we have to kind of talk about another podcast on our podcast, which hurts the eagle a little bit. But...

04:50

The important part of her going on this podcast is this is how you can reach voters and reach people who aren't going to tune into her otherwise. This is a podcast that doesn't really talk about politics that much. It's a very large, one of the biggest podcasts currently, very big podcast. It's definitely the friendliest of the big podcasts I've heard her to go on. She's not going to go on Joe Rogan or any of those other podcasts. This is a very...

05:21

It's important because the audience that listens to Call or Daddy is, believe it or not, it's going to be the younger female audiences. This is who is going to be listening to this podcast. This is going to be who isn't necessarily seeking out much.

05:37

of the election, and that's why it's so important to go on and talk about these issues on such a popular podcast. Yeah, I mean, with that specific interview too, part of it was very much trying to humanize her with these younger demographics and trying to talk about things that weren't necessarily only political, right? Talking about issues that are actually going to matter to people, but taking them out of the context of politics and putting them into the context of life instead, which I think is a really powerful strategy.

06:07

said it's reaching people who might not be like watching the news or might be getting their news from Sigma TikTok edits. You know, like that's kind of the reality we live in today. Yeah. And you mentioned that she wants to be seen as someone that's relatable, someone that you can kind of, you know, have a beer with. And that's exactly what she did with Stephen Colbert. So Colbert said at the beginning that it's been a while since we've had a president that drinks. Biden doesn't drink. Trump doesn't drink. Obama. Obama.

06:37

not drinking, that has always scared me because this man has made every decision in his life stone cold sober, wild, absolutely insane, but you can't keep going. Yeah, no, I mean, to build off of that, a part of me kind of wishes I could be like, oh.

06:53

Like, he wasn't fully sober, but no, he's fully sober making these stupid decisions that are ruining our country. That being said, Kamala Harris was able to enjoy what she called the Champagne of Beers, another high life on Colbert's show. They, you know, they just talked. And this is something that you're able to see, and this is a trend that... Not a trend, this is a clip that will be able to go around and go semi-viral, right? If people in the Harris campaign say, okay...

07:21

People don't know Kamala Harris that well. They don't know her policies. They don't know much about her. How do you kind of combat that is you do stuff like this where sure people are gonna see her, you know, having some beer with Colbert, but then they might watch a little bit longer in the clip where she talks about these other issues that are important to her, where she mentions, you know, actual policy and what she wants to do. And that's something that's important because in, you know,

07:50

modern world in the modern news cycle. Everything moves so unbelievably quickly. In people's attention spans, I hate to say it, are getting shorter and shorter and shorter. So

08:01

If you have a 30 second clip that you're gonna pay attention to, the first 20 seconds are of her having B.R. Colbert, but then the last 10 seconds of her talking policy, that's a big win for the campaign. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, part of it also feels like it's a little bit out of, like, the Obama playbook. I remember later in his presidency, he started doing kind of the more viral media stuff. Like, he was on, you know, Between Two Ferns with Zach Galvanakis to talk about Obamacare. You know, he was with Anthony Bourdain in Vietnam, and then he went on, you know, Comedians and Cars and Coffee with Seinfeld.

08:31

But again, it's trying to be relatable, it's trying to talk to the people and really meet them where they are. Because that's kind of where we are in modern politics. You have to come to the voters. The voters are never, never going to come to you. Yeah, that's the biggest thing is that...

08:48

Kamala Harris and the Democrats, kind of more broadly, they have been trying to not necessarily persuade voters, but to win people who weren't going to vote. That's where the Democrats are able to have the most success is if you go after people who agree with you on all these issues, but they don't think voting is important or they don't, they don't feel the motivation. They don't care. They ask themselves, why do I care? And no one answered that. So what the Harris campaign and what Democrats have been doing since.

09:18

I don't even know 2010s maybe a little bit more recently is they try to convince voters to vote and by doing that increasing turnout is more important to them than getting people around the margins and that's why she's doing this because if you wanted people on the margins who were like yeah I'm gonna vote but I don't know who for yet

09:42

This isn't necessarily the best way to get them. You're going to want to get them on more traditional platform because that's where they're going to be looking because they decided to vote. And this is something that the younger generations, especially our Gen Z is kind of struggling with is that the idea that voting doesn't matter is something that's very prevalent today. And the idea that it doesn't actually really matter who you vote for.

10:12

means that people, A, don't even bother voting or they don't look too deeply into the candidates because they don't think it's that impactful. So this is how Harris is able to kind of cut through this idea and someone's listening to their favorite podcasts or somebody's on TikTok or, you know, I saw it on Twitter. And this is the news that I see. And this is something that it kind of hits people when they haven't even begun looking for this content.

10:40

Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, you made a great point earlier about driving turnout to get votes. The reality is that in high turnout elections, Democrats win. In low turnout elections, Republicans win. Right? That's political reality. And seeing us actually try.

10:55

to drive some turnout is good. I think there are many more things we could be doing. I think a lot of, you know, Kamala's kind of media appearances have been, yes, geared at meeting people where they are, but she's still saying things that are more about winning those voters in the margins. Whether it was a clip from her 60 minutes interview about talking about having a Republican in her cabinet. Right? That's obviously a move to appeal to the Nikki Haley type voter. You know, the Liz Cheney ass voter, the people who are just anti-Trump

11:25

reason they would think about voting for Kamala. And I think that she has to do things to really rally support within her base, right? She cannot only restrict herself to talking like a Republican. She needs to be able to fire up her base and abortion can't be the only thing that does it. There have to be like some real hard economic policies that are really going to make impacts in people's lives who aren't small business owners, who aren't homeowners, right? Just kind of normal Americans living paycheck to paycheck. I think that's kind of

11:55

to the last missing stone that would hopefully get her elected. Yeah, I completely agree with everything you said. And circling back to when you mentioned that she's kind of trying to appeal to these, like, never Trump Republicans, say, oh, you know what, I'll put a Republican in the cabinet.

12:13

Who votes for a president based on who they might potentially put in the cabinet? Like, come on, guys. This is just like, there's all this hype around the VP picks and people don't vote for president based on the VP. It barely moves anything. So this whole Republican in the cabinet stunt, honestly, if she goes through with it, bitch, she will because she made the claim and you can't back out of that. It's just, it's not going to do anything politically and it's just going to make her life harder in America's life harder because she's trying to enact democratic policies, but there's

12:43

in her cabinet. And that's just, you know, that goes back to this age-old dilemma that Democrats keep having. It's like Democrats keep, you know, sticking their hand out saying, hey, let's work together on this. Republicans grab their hand and just throw them to the ground. And that's what's happening. And at a certain point we have to realize that bipartisanship isn't dead, but it's different.

13:06

We're not going to get these compromises. Something's going to be bipartisan if everybody sees a political benefit to it. We're not going to see the old, what we think politics is, like, oh, I'll give you funding for your district and building a school if you vote for me on this. We're not going to really see that much anymore because bipartisanship, by and large, is slowly dying, especially in Congress. And this is something that I don't really think Harris should have done.

13:35

And I know we're getting away from the point of her media blitz, but the fact that she's using her platform to say that, I kind of wish that we... she used it for something a little bit more productive. Yeah, and like that was an active choice, and the campaign knew that that would become one of, if not, probably the most viral clip from this last week.

13:57

of what she's been talking about, right? It's gonna cover up the things she talks about on Call Her Daddy, it's gonna cover up her appearance in The View. It's kind of like, that's what people are gonna talk about. And it's not something that you need to be talking about when you're 28 days away from an election. There need to be other things your campaign has to be focused on. Yeah, I totally agree. And...

14:21

Like you said earlier that the only thing that fires voters up can't be abortion for Democrats and that's true. However, it's a very helpful tool for Democrats because it's so unbelievably important to so many voters, especially these younger female voters who have lived their entire life with this idea that they have control over their own body and then suddenly it's like, what do you mean? I don't have control over my body. So this is something that she really heavily did target on Call Her Daddy. She focused on...

14:51

these young, the issues that matter to these younger women. And that includes abortion, but also notably, it's housing. Because that's something that we see, it's very important with all these younger voters is that it's so expensive to get somewhere to live. Rent is expensive. Buying a house is expensive. Mortgage.

15:15

All these things are just more and more expensive when salaries aren't necessarily increased. So by her making the choice to talk about something that isn't as flashy but still super important is so unbelievably important. I think she needs to heavily advertise her economic plan. I think she heavily needs to talk about her foreign policy a little bit more. I like that her campaign is very strong on abortion.

15:45

But like you said, that can't be the only thing. There are other policies, but she's not talking about it. Notably, she hasn't really mentioned much on the climate. Because I don't know what the calculus in her campaign was. Maybe they were like, oh, OK, we can either mobilize and energize these younger voters with the climate or with abortion. Abortion's a little bit of a stronger issue for us. I don't really know what they thought. But I think that there are some of the less sexy.

16:15

policies that do need to be discussed and do need to be talked about because that's what voters

16:22

are afraid of with electing Kamala is that she doesn't have any policies that are her own and that differ for Biden's. Yeah, I mean allegedly she's pro-fracking now, which is like that's kind of unconscionable for Democratic Canada. But um, you know going back to the housing thing you were talking about and her commitment was three million new units, which is again something we haven't seen before. I think we touched on this last episode last time we talked about her. But like yeah, like it's really important that we build new housing in this country and that we do it very soon.

16:52

we can keep growing our economy and growing as a nation. And seeing a presidential candidate talk about housing is really powerful for me. I think it might be really powerful for other younger voters. And I think that that is the messaging that she needs to lean into with her shoulder that you gotta talk about housing even more than they already are. Yeah, and she's also young.

17:14

She's so much younger than Biden. She's so much younger than Trump. And it doesn't really, like, her campaign feels young and youthful, but her policies don't. Like, this is her opportunity to say, you know what? Like, this is a new generation. We're gonna be aggressive on X, Y, and Z. This is what we're gonna do. This is how we're gonna do it. But if you walked up to somebody and said, hey, name one Trump policy, they could probably say, oh, you know, build the wall or whatever. Like, don't.

17:42

let Putin be Putin or whatever Trump policy of the day is. But if you say, hey, name a common policy, it's gonna be a lot harder. And that's something that is very important and that this media blitz does help with because now people are at least hearing.

18:01

her policies, whether or not they retain the policies of something different, whether or not she's able to act on these policies is different, whether or not these policies are, those are all different questions, but she's able to say what her policies are, and it's able to be heard by an audience that doesn't necessarily hear this otherwise. Yeah. We're gonna take a quick break, and then after that, we'll be back with the why do I care section of the podcast.

18:24

All right, welcome back. Now we're going to dive into the, why do I care section of the podcast in which we discussed, you guessed it, why do you care about these issues? That's so unbelievably important because this is something that I guess on its head, you don't, you wouldn't really necessarily care about like, why do you care that Harris is kind of campaigning like this? Why you cares? Because it shows how campaigns are adjusting to the 21st century.

18:52

and how they are accepting social media, using social media, and, you know, not necessarily profiting from social media, but it's very helpful to their campaigns. And that's something that's very important because it shows that we have candidates who are young enough to understand media. And that's in and of itself is something that's important. It's a stark contrast to Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

19:15

Yeah, and you know, you should also care because we're bringing media back as a real linkage institution. Right? Like, if you think back to the 2020 campaign, Trump 100% played down the role of the media. He calls them, you know, fake news, the same thing in 2016. Right? He's trying to sow distrust in the systems that have kept us informed about politics since their inception.

19:40

Right? Like the media, you know, think back to like our founding as a nation, you know, the people heard about the Declaration of Independence through their local newspapers, right? Like the media is everything when it comes to messaging and politics. And I would just, it's so refreshing that we maybe are maybe approaching.

19:59

you know, that kind of reform trust. And like, I would like it if we did because too many people get their news from social media. Right? Too many people just scroll on TikTok, look at Twitter and are like, okay, like these are the facts, right? It's important that we have an agreed set of facts once they're informed by fact, by logic. And if it takes, you know, Kamala Harris going on TikTok to do that, let it be that, right? Let that be kind of the new expectation, but at least we have the right people out there

20:29

telling us the truth, telling us what's really going on. Yeah, I fully agree with what you said, that we need to have the facts kind of be facts, because now it's viewed as facts are different people's opinions, which is just not true. Like, how can that be true? Because an opinion is one thing, and a fact is supposed to be unopinionated. And her, you know, kind of using the media again is important because she had it back.

20:57

most of her campaign. She hadn't been doing interviews. She hadn't been aggressively, you know, going out. She's been doing rallies. She's been doing all these things and that could only do so much and it's important to go out and to have tough questions asked. It's important to have people hear your thoughts and challenge your thoughts. It's important that we understand that not everyone's gonna agree with us. Not everyone's supposed to agree with us.

21:24

So we have to talk to them, we have to discuss it with them. That's one of the criticisms I would have, not of the Harris campaign, not necessarily of the Trump campaign, not of any campaigns in general, because obviously it's what campaigns should want to do, but in general, I feel like many of the interviews that are chosen are a little bit too softball. It feels like they aren't really necessarily being challenged too much.

21:48

This is something that I know people thought about with the debate, how they thought that the candidates weren't answering their questions. And that's something that I do honestly kind of agree with. I feel like politicians, and I guess in general politics in America, has to go back to this idea that the media and journalism and the news are going to be a set of facts. They're going to be something that everyone agrees on, everyone respects.

22:19

But it's also going to challenge your opinions in a way. It's going to push your candidates in a way. But right now, it feels like if Kamala would be able to go on to MSNBC or CNN, and she would get easier questions than if she were to go on Fox News. And it feels like Trump would go on Fox News, but he wouldn't dare ever go on MSNBC. And that's something I'd like to see a little bit more of.

22:49

Some news networks have biases, some more than others. Some report the facts in a selective way, some lie. And I think it would be nice to see Harris go on Fox News and Trump go on MSNBC and have these nice, respectable, proper discussions about the state of what we're doing, how they're doing, and I think that-

23:17

them being challenged intellectually is something that I think would be very helpful for the health of democracy. Yeah, you know, I think that like our candidates should be expected to be able to speak both concisely and at length about certain topics and not just like, you know, their canned answers to their questions. I want people who are able to like speak on the fly, you know, like be able to kind of capture that same like oratorical magic of an Obama, someone who can actually like talk to people. That would be refreshing for me.

23:47

You want someone who talks like Barack Obama? I do not want Josh Shapiro. Boy do I have the guy for you. I do not want Josh Shapiro. I'm okay. No thank you. I do not want Josh Shapiro. I'm good. Speaking of Shapiro's, Donald Trump did go on the Ben Shapiro podcast and this is something that we didn't really touch on but Donald Trump also has not been visible in the media whatsoever. And the fact that him going on the Ben Shapiro podcast is such big news is

24:15

because he doesn't do it. And of course he picks the, I struggled to name a more conservative podcaster, outwardly conservative, very openly biased. And that's okay, but that being the only thing is kind of concerning because after the debate he wasn't answering the questions coherently, he kind of dodged it. And a bunch of his policies are not popular. They're not popular.

24:44

And the issue is Trump lies so much that by going on a friendly show, they're not going to kind of question him. But if you go on some, you know, actual more reputable news source, they will question him and they will say like, no, that is not true. That is something that we've been missing. Donald Trump never really did too much traditional media.

25:13

He never really did it. And he also isn't doing what Congress is doing and doing non-traditional media. He isn't doing anything. And that's something that is very telling about the Trump campaign. That the Trump campaign does not think that he should be out there. They do not think that he should be, you know, getting more publicized for what he says than he already does. And I think that's something that's very concerning for, I guess, America as a whole. Yeah, I mean, I think the real test is gonna be

25:42

which candidate goes on TalkToA first. Just gonna say that's who I'm gonna vote for whoever goes on TalkToA first. Yeah, that's the thing. I mean, like I know we're joking, but also we see these are things with such big audiences. Right, this TalkToA podcast is such a big audience. And we see that some campaigns have been trying to get on streams with popular streamers because they know that's where big audiences are. But there's also been some pushback saying that

26:12

No, we don't want our streamers to be too politicized. We don't want sports to be too politicized. We don't want all these things to be too politicized. And that's some of the criticism that Taylor Swift got when she endorsed Kamala Harris, is that why is my music getting politicized? It shouldn't be politicized, but it's important. And that's something that you do have to balance in choosing which media you wanna do, because if you're too aggressive campaigning in media,

26:42

like certain media places people are going to like that in that kind of backfire but i think the hair is getting a start very good job at this and something that we didn't touch on is how they're using vice president dimwals is that he was at you know the football game the michigan football game and he was shaking hands is talking about it seems fully coached mode and that's something that he's great at is doing stuff like this

27:09

and that's something that got picked up and something that got covered, but it wasn't necessarily traditional media, it was just a very publicized campaign stop, I guess you could say. Yeah, yeah, 100%. So before we leave, just to, in summary, why do you care about these issues? You care about Kamala Harris and her media blitz because it shows how politics has changed and how it's modernized.

27:36

and how politicians are aware of that and how they're trying to reach voters who wouldn't vote otherwise. That's probably the key thing here is they're seeking out voters who are low information who wouldn't vote normally and they're trying to convince them to vote. And that's why you should care because it shows that politicians do actually care about people who are checked out of politics. That they do actually care about you and they do actually care about what you stand for. We care because you have an impact.

28:06

everybody does. Yeah, that's it for this week's episode. Be sure to go to whydoicarepod.com for everything you might need that's Why Do I Care related. We have episode transcripts and all that good stuff. Also be sure to check out the YouTube channel because this episode was recorded with video and it should be up there so you can see our lovely places as well. Thank you guys all so much for listening and have a great rest of your day.