Democratic leaders have issued a stern warning to the Party – Stop being mean to Vice President Kamala Harris, or else! But the Party doesn’t seem to understand that Harris is hugely unpopular and could cost them the next election. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: Democratic leaders have issued a stern warning to the party. Stop, stop being mean to Vice President Kamala Harris, or else. Well, but the party doesn’t seem to understand that she’s hugely unpopular, Farron, and she could cost them the next election. Here’s the problem, here’s the visuals on it. You got a guy who’s gonna be what, 82 or 83 by the time the next term would be over?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: You got her making decisions. And if you just take a little, take a little walk down her history, it’s pretty scary. Because first of all, when it came to the presidential election, the primaries, what she get get 1% of the vote in California? She was the attorney general for God’s sakes and she had such a ridiculous history of screw ups that she got 1% of the California vote in the primaries. So now people are looking at this and saying, wait, she’s one heartbeat away from the president. An 83 year old guy walking around eating ice cream cones, maybe doesn’t even know where he is a lot of part, a lot of the time. But she’s one heartbeat away from that. What’s your take on this story?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. This is really bizarre. And it’s important. Like, this came from CNN, so it’s not a far right website talking about this.
Mike Papantonio: Well, they’re trying to move far right to try to get their, they’re trying to get their audience back.
Farron Cousins: Right. But I think it is important to say this is national mainstream news at this point.
Mike Papantonio: Yes, yes.
Farron Cousins: And you had Elizabeth Warren who made a comment recently who said, hey, you know, you’re good with Joe Biden as president. You good with Kamala Harris as vice president? She said, well, I’ll leave that up to Joe. So then the party leaders got furious with Elizabeth Warren.
Mike Papantonio: I’ll leave that up to Joe was not strong enough.
Farron Cousins: Right. And so they’re calling her saying, you gotta apologize. So now Elizabeth Warren has had to leave voicemails and messages.
Mike Papantonio: Why is she doing that?
Farron Cousins: To apologize.
Mike Papantonio: But why? If anything, she should be running for president. She should be a vice presidential candidate.
Farron Cousins: She should be.
Mike Papantonio: Elizabeth Warren is fabulous as a political, as a political candidate. And she’s having to apologize to Kamala Harris who’s lost what, three quarters of her staff? And her staff, the criticism is that she was lazy. She’s disorganized. She’s over her head. She’s petty and mean. Those are just a few of the things that are coming from the staff as they move away from this woman. And Elizabeth Warren is apologizing. Don’t you wanna say Elizabeth, you don’t have to apologize. You know, jump into the race, run.
Farron Cousins: You know what stuck out to me though, reading through this article, because you see the arguments that the party leadership is making for don’t attack Kamala. And it’s the same arguments that we would get in emails and phone calls and Twitter messages in 2016 saying, how dare you call out the bad things Hillary Clinton has done because you could cost the Democrats the election.
Mike Papantonio: I know, really.
Farron Cousins: But, it’s verbatim what these Democratic insiders are saying now. Like, no, you can’t attack the vice president. You can’t call her out because we’re in the fight of our lives and by God, we’ve gotta win. And that’s their mentality. It’s their job to make sure they win. But at the same time, it’s okay as people to say, listen, yeah, I like this party, but do they screw up a lot? Yeah, they do.
Mike Papantonio: Look, there’s an interesting article I saw that we have visuals, that everything is visual where it comes to the American public when they’re evaluating politics. You know, if I were to say to you, what is the visual of Dukakis? What would you, what comes to your mind?
Farron Cousins: He’s the tank guy.
Mike Papantonio: The tank, the helmet, right? He’s driving in the tank. If I were to say, what is the visual of Bush when you go, oh my God, what a nutcase, what would it be?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Well, depending on which Bush, you had HW, which would be the.
Mike Papantonio: You know, the crazy, the goofy Bush. The real goofy Bush.
Farron Cousins: The little one is just this guy is, you know, he can’t add two plus two. The Bushisms.
Mike Papantonio: That’s right.
Farron Cousins: The tripping.
Mike Papantonio: I think of him landing on the carrier. And it’s over. The war is over.
Farron Cousins: Mission accomplished.
Mike Papantonio: Mission accomplished. And so you go on with all of these visuals, her visual is word salad. That’s her visual. Because when she speaks it’s word salad most of the time, and they’ve tried to correct her, they’ve tried to say, please don’t talk so much. You know, they’ve tried to say, don’t do these interviews, just sua sponte. Don’t do that. It’s word salad. But the point is, there are so many great female politicians that could step into that, those shoes. Name a couple. Elizabeth Warren, I”ll start.
Farron Cousins: Elizabeth Warren, Katie Porter.
Mike Papantonio: Katie Porter would be great.
Farron Cousins: She would be phenomenal.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, she can speak. It’s not word salad, you know.
Farron Cousins: And she, unlike Harris here, takes on those corporate interests. I mean, Harris, let’s not forget as Attorney General of California, she’s the one who lets Steve Mnuchin and these other criminal bankers walk away.
Mike Papantonio: That’s right. Yeah. Stole billions.
Farron Cousins: They had them cold.
Mike Papantonio: Stole billions of dollars. Yeah.
Farron Cousins: They had all that evidence. Spent years compiling it. She refused to do anything about it. Look, she’s got a negative 10 approval rating with the public.
Mike Papantonio: I forgot about that.
Farron Cousins: She’s underwater by 10 points. She hasn’t been in media recently. So we know the administration, they’re trying to keep her back.
Mike Papantonio: Of course.
Farron Cousins: And if you wanna use her to her strengths, send her out there to be the happy, smiling face and Biden can be the fighter.
Mike Papantonio: What is the first attack that we are gonna get for talking about her? What are the commenters gonna be?
Farron Cousins: It’s misogynism, misogyny and then racism.
Mike Papantonio: Misogyny and racism. Rather than thinking about what are we really saying, that’s the easy go-to. Well, you know what, we’re gonna say it anyway. It’s not that. It’s not racism, it’s not the fact that she’s a woman. There are plenty of women of color that could do a great job in that, in that position. But it ain’t her. I can tell you that. She’s like an albatross around the neck of the Democratic party and they can’t get rid of the bird.
