President Biden is officially out of the presidential race now, and Vice President Harris is likely to be the nominee without any pushback. But that’s not what the Democratic Party needs right now, and an open convention could be the key to victory in November. 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: President Biden is officially out of the presidential race now, and Vice President Harris is likely to be the nominee without any pushback, but that’s not what the Democratic Party needs right now and an open convention could be the key to victory in November. I’ve got Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins with me to talk about that. You know, big news, obviously. Of course, we were so criticized before saying he’s gotta step down. He’s gotta step down. It was absurd. The people, you know, he’s my guy. He’s fine. No, he wasn’t fine. And now he steps down, does the right thing for this country. And I think that’s what everybody’s, they’re not really talking about what a big step that was for this country, for him to do that. And I’m proud of him for doing it, frankly.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: So now everybody’s attention turns to Kamala Harris. Pick it up.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. So what we’ve seen, really in just the last few days is, well, really in the hours after Biden made the announcement, he then immediately endorsed Harris as the heir apparent. Then immediately all of the Democrats start coalescing around her and say, okay, she’s gonna be the nominee. Who’s gonna be the vp? They already moved on and accepted the fact that, nope, she’s got it. She’s our person. Now who’s the vp? And so that’s where the media immediately moved. But hold up now. We have time. We do not need to make any rash decisions. We do not have to say, yes, we’re gonna do this, or no, we’re not gonna do that. Can we at least, and this is what we talked about with Biden, can we at least for the love of God, have a conversation first? Before we make these massive decisions, let’s think for just a second and the Democratic Party said, no, no, no, no. We’re good to go. We got it.
Mike Papantonio: It’s not the way the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. The power that they wield over the American voters. Okay. And so now we’ve got this candidate that Trump is delighted to run against. And maybe you can make heads or tails of it. I don’t. New York Times, she is least electable. New York Times, she’s the most risky candidate. I’m not really seeing that right now. I think they have time, if this is their choice, they have time to make her competitive. If the numbers are right now, she’s not even remotely competitive. But what’s occurred here is that you had the Democrats really were threatening Biden with we’re gonna vote the 25th Amendment here if you don’t do something. We’re gonna join the Republicans and you gotta step down. But it looked like this has been laid out in place for at least three to four weeks. Don’t you think?
Farron Cousins: Oh, yeah. I don’t think Biden would’ve come to this decision if they didn’t already have this apparatus in place behind the scenes knowing that, okay, Harris is gonna take over. And I will say, if you look at the polls right now, Trump is still winning. But in the aggregates, he’s winning by two points over Harris and that is typically well within the margin of error because we’re seeing margins of error of four to 5%. So it is still a toss up, and it is a statistical tie, but she does poll better, obviously, than Biden does against Trump. The last poll we had for Biden, Sunday morning, losing Michigan by seven points.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. It was disaster.
Farron Cousins: And so the writing was on the wall for Biden. And of course, in the few days since Harris has already taken over as the potential nominee here, more than a hundred million dollars in 36 hours, the Democratic party raised. That is insane. And you now have a poll, earlier this week, 80% of Democrats say, yep, we’re good with Harris. So it does seem like, okay, I know the Democrats, we should have a conversation. But I think at this point, even if we do have the conversations, I think everybody is already coalesced around Harris to the point where this is what they’ve got.
Mike Papantonio: There’s no turning back. And so it is what it is. And when you look at what the, both sides of it, the critics, she was terrible on border immigration, the surge of migrant problems. She was supposed to figure out the root cause, she didn’t do it. She had so little visibility. I don’t know whether they did that on purpose, but she had very little visibility.
Farron Cousins: Well, big reports too, from the first two years of the Biden administration that these two were not getting along.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, right.
Farron Cousins: And Biden was not happy with her.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Her ability to speak. It’s awkward. It’s unclear. This isn’t me. Just so you know, this is coming directly from the Washington Post, New York Times, all these various places. She’s awkward, she’s unclear. She can’t convey a message. The thing of staff turnover, that keeps coming up, where 90% of her staff turned over. Is that important? First of all, is it an issue people even really care about? But I’m going through the hits on her that we’re seeing in the press and that’s one of ’em. What do you think?
Farron Cousins: Yeah, you gotta be able to weather the storm, obviously, and the staff turnover thing, that’s something even you and I had talked about within the last couple years, which does indicate some kind of issue with the leadership taking place at that office. But I think at this point, Harris may have matured as a candidate. I’m not saying she was immature, but just as a candidate, it’s a different world. So we could be looking at somebody who’s a little different than what we saw in 2020. She does have a little more experience under her belt at this point on the national level. But you bring up a good point. She hasn’t done a whole lot other than the last six months or so, once Biden like, okay, let’s not have him out there. She finally did start coming out more where it was a little bit better than what we saw.
Mike Papantonio: They almost hid her. I mean, some of these articles talk about they just kept her in hiding.
Farron Cousins: For the first few years, really. And now it’s the opposite. Now, we haven’t seen Biden in a week.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. One of these weird, these conspiracy nuts are so freaking crazy. Like, no, Trump wasn’t shot in the ear. The one on Biden is, is Biden alive? I mean, really? How freaking crazy have we become? But as I’m looking at the pros and the cons, they talk about the problem that Harris had when she was running for president, that in Iowa and New Hampshire, she was in low single digits. Had to pull out, even in California, she was around 12%. And her, the newest thing is that she helped cover up the story about how bad Biden was. But on the positive side, let’s talk about negatives and positives. There are some positives out there. First of all, she was tough on crime. She supported the death penalty, from a conservative standpoint, they’re gonna like this. She supported the death penalty. She supported the three strike rule. She tried cases. I think she tried 37 drug cases. She’s young. She’s, if she could learn how to speak, she would have some of that young charisma. But somebody’s gotta work with her on it. Somebody has to sit her down and say, what is this? Why do you always sound like you’re in la la land when you speak?
Farron Cousins: She to me, appears to have a lot of nervous energy. That’s what I get when you see her. She doesn’t feel comfortable. She feels like it is kind of awkward for her to be here. So, again, now that she is at the top of the ticket, essentially, she’s gonna get all the best advisors. She’s gonna get all the best coaches, and they can work with her and be like, hey, okay, listen, first of all, let’s relax a little bit. We don’t always have to have that crazy kind of, like, just, we’ll tone it done.
Mike Papantonio: That crazy laugh and the craziness.
Farron Cousins: Well, she didn’t interview actually, where she explained the laugh and she says that is something, obviously, people have talked about for her whole career. But she says, it’s almost, she told a really good story about it, how it goes all the way back through her family. The women in her family have always had that laugh and it’s something that they now embrace.
Mike Papantonio: Well, it doesn’t bother me. It doesn’t bother me. It shouldn’t bother people.
Farron Cousins: Well, it’s becomes such a thing that she actually had to talk about it. But, I do think, again, with a little bit of coaching, the problem is do you have the time?
Mike Papantonio: Well, you’re a Democrat. Do you feel warm and fuzzy about this?
Farron Cousins: Um, wouldn’t have been my first choice. But I do think based on what we’ve seen in this last week, there seems to be enthusiasm, which we haven’t seen in over a year. There seems to be optimism, which had gone out the window when Biden was on the ticket. So I think the people are feeling good. And so, okay, let’s go with it. Look, I would love it, and I think the winning ticket would be if Harris were to pick Bernie Sanders as the running mate. I know he’s old, but as the vice president, the age doesn’t matter as much. And you’re gonna bring all those Bernie people back. You’re going to, I just think that would be the winning ticket. They won’t ever do it. But I’m not anti Harris. I really am not. I think this could work.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. Well, the point is, you do feel a little bit warm and fuzzy about her being your candidate. I mean, I think that’s what I’m hearing.
Farron Cousins: To a degree I do. Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. Well, and course with the right vice president, governor from Pennsylvania.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, that’s the first place.
Farron Cousins: That’s also very strong.
Mike Papantonio: That’s the first place I’d go. Hopefully they’re looking at that. But we’ll see how it plays out. All this, of course, just like everything that happens with the Democrats and the Republicans, it all begins in a smoke-filled dark room where people are making decisions for the American voters.
