Why Kamala Did the Call Her Daddy Interview

It was a smart move

Before we dive into today’s newsletter I have a quick public service announcement. 

Four states Illinois, New Mexico, Missouri and Nevada, all have voter registration deadlines later this week.

If you know anyone in these states, now is the time to make sure their voter registration is up to date and, if not, take action TODAY to change that. You can check anyone’s voter registration status at iwillvote.com

It can feel overwhelming as we get closer and closer to Election Day, but there are still plenty of concrete things we can all do to have an impact. Making sure our friends and family are registered to vote is so important - now is the time. Once you've confirmed that your friends and family are registered, use the sample texts on ripplevote.org to make sure they know what's on their ballot. 

On Sunday Vice President Kamala Harris was interviewed on the podcast Call Her Daddy with Alex Cooper, a show with 5 million loyal listeners. Alex has the second biggest audience for a podcast, only beat out by Joe Rogan. 

This was an unconventional decision, but ultimately a smart one. 

The media elites have been griping about how Harris hasn’t sat down for a big interview with enough of them.  Now she’s starting a media tour by speaking directly with the women who will likely be deciding the election.

Kamala is no longer preaching to the choir. The choir has made their decision. What she is doing now is absolutely the most efficient use of her time, reaching the largest swathe of potentially undecided, or swayable voters as possible.

She’s also appearing on Howard Stern’s radio show, 60 minutes, Stephen Colbert and The View. Tim Walz was on Fox News Sunday.  

There’s been a lot of discussion about the Harris team’s focus on retail politics and not sit-down interviews. I’ve worked in D.C. for a long time and I get it. I think a lot about this quote:“in a town full of narcissists, nobody has a bigger sense of entitlement than D.C. journalists. And it’s particularly rich to snipe at the campaign for not doing enough interviews the very week she’s sitting down with the most revered news program in all of television [60 Minutes],” former Obama White House spokesperson Eric Schultz.

I think going on Call Her Daddy was incredibly smart, if Harris goes on Face the Nation will any of those viewers be undecided voters?  NOPE.

Check out this Atlantic piece about how conventional news outlets just do not have the reach out Cooper with young middle American women. Writer Helen Lewis had this to say:

“Cooper reaches an audience that does not follow politics closely, and her own background is more small-c conservative than you might imagine from the podcast’s empowered-raunch vibe. She was raised Catholic, in Pennsylvania, and her story follows a familiar pattern for Gen Z and Millennials. Its listeners are neither anarchist feminists nor aspiring tradwives, but the great middle of American Gen Z straight(ish) women, who think sex before marriage is fun but also dream of settling down with Mr. Right. This group definitely leans Democrat, but Cooper’s Barstool connection means there will be conservatives listening too, as well as many women who might not vote at all.”

Alex Cooper is an everygirl and she asked a lot of the questions you or I would ask.  The two women talked about tampons. They talked about IVF and abortion. They talked about access to contraception.

There’s the pervasive belief amongst the informed commentariat that more talk about the nuances of policy will decide this election.That’s not the case. It’s about reaching those undecided voters with key persuasive messages. Of course I think the media plays an incredibly important role in asking key questions to our sitting politicians about their policies, their plans and their impact. That’s different from a campaign. For better or worse a campaign’s job is to court voters. 

Once a politician is in office they need to more regularly be held accountable to the mainstream press. Trump is never going to do that. Do you remember when the Trump Administration went almost a year without an official press briefing?

Alex put out a post saying that she would welcome Donald Trump on the podcast if he were interested in talking about women’s issues.  We know he’s comfortable with podcasters, he’s been on quite a few bro podcasts including Theo Von and Lex Friedman, though not Joe Rogan (they apparently have a beef, though Rogan is a big RFK Jr. stan).  

He obviously won’t do it, he can’t answer questions about women. 

Here are my top Harris quotes  from the interview and why I like them:

1. “I think you and your listeners have really got this thing right, which is one of the best ways to communicate with people is to be real, you know, and to talk about the things that people really care about.”

Harris understands that podcasts aren’t just about media.They are about community.  She included the listeners in her complement and she set the stage for how she wants this conversation to be received.  She understands the value of authenticity and immediately connecting to people’s lived realities. 

2. “We have to talk about it. Child sexual assault is something that affects far more people than the public discourse about it acknowledges. And it the more we talk about it, the more we will address it and deal with it, the more we will be equipped to deal with it, be it in terms of schools, in terms of the society at large, right, and to not stigmatize.”

It’s a big deal to have the sitting vice president talking about this important issue. Meanwhile, in Florida some school are rolling back sex education on things like consent, contraceptives, and domestic violence, 

3. “When a woman, and in particular if she has children, if she is economically reliant on her abuser, she's less likely to leave because most women will endure whatever personal physical pain they must in order to make sure their kids have a roof over their head or food.”

When we talk about the importance of women staying in the workforce, it’s not just about fairness and equality, it’s about safety. Women need to be able to earn money to leave. They also need to be able to divorce.  J.D. Vance has called no-fault divorce “one of the great tricks that I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace.” My grandmother had to go to a divorce mill in Las Vegas to get out of a bad first marriage, it’s not that far in the distant past when women were trapped unless they had the means and security to work around draconian laws. And some conservative Christians want to end it: “Oklahoma state Sen. Dusty Deevers, for example, introduced a bill in January to ban his state’s version of no-fault divorce. The Texas Republican Party added a call to end the practice to its 2022 platform (the plank is preserved in the 2024 version). Federal lawmakers like Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) and House Speaker Mike Johnson, as well as former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, have spoken out in favor of tightening divorce laws.”

4. “You don't have to abandon your faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government shouldn't be telling her what to do. If she chooses, she'll talk to her priest, her pastor, her rabbi, her imam, but not the government telling you what to do. And that's what's so outrageous about it is a bunch of these guys up in these state capitals are writing these decisions because they somehow have decided that they're in a better position to tell you what's in your best interest than you are to know what's in your own best interest.”

In this quote Harris is directly talking to the swing voters who are pro choice but say they would never get an abortion. We all know these women. 

5. “So you believe there's an exception that the person should receive abortion care if the life of the mother is at risk. You know what that means in practical terms? She's almost dead before you decide to give her care. What? So we're going to have public health policy that says a doctor, a medical professional waits until you're at death's door before they give you care.”

This is the bleeding out in parking lots of it all. And we saw the Idaho Attorney General make this argument at the Supreme Court this summer, a woman has to be actually dying, not might die, but will die, to receive care.  I know so many women, close personal friends who have had serious medical complications during pregnancy.  This is part of a woman’s lived experience.  We all understand how precarious those moments are and that we can’t be legislating limitations on doctors in this way. 

6. “I think that most Americans want leaders who understand that the measure of their strength is not based on who you beat down.The real measure of the strength of a leader is based on who you lift up.”

Kamala said this regarding JD Vance’s childless cat ladies comments and it had a real Michelle Obama ring to it that will play well in all the soundbites. 

7. “I don't think she understands that there are a whole lot of women out here who are not aspiring to be humble.”

I posted this clip on my instagram and there’s a bit of debate over what Sarah Huckabee Sanders meant when she said her kids keep her “humble.” When you listen to JD talk about women (often framed as ‘young women’) he always talks about women versus family.  Because in JD’s framing of policy issues, a woman’s identity/health/etc always come secondary to that of her family. And when we think about what Sanders was saying, in order to be the ‘right’ type of woman … you need to have biological children.  You need to be her definition of family.

8. What Policies Did Harris Discuss?

1. Reproductive Freedom, which she can do by signing legislation passed by Congress and not appointing more rightwing justices who will overturn Griswold and more & not using Comstock to make abortion inaccessible in this country.

2. That she will work with home builders in the private sector to create tax incentives to build 3,000,000 more housing units 

3.  That they will give $25,000 down payment assistance for first time home buyers

4. They will give 100 million middle class working people tax cuts

5. They will provide $6000 in tax cuts for the first year of their child's life

6. There will be student loan relief

7. They will give small business startups a $50,000 tax deduction

(Details on 2-7 can be found here)