Latest / Stephanomics / Can Kamala Harris Win? The Obstacles Facing Her Candidacy

Transcript

Can Kamala Harris Win? The Obstacles Facing Her Candidacy · Stephanomics

0:03
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
0:17
Speaker 2: Welcome to voter Nomics, where politics and markets collide. This year,
0:21
Speaker 2: voters around the world have the ability to move markets, countries,
0:24
Speaker 2: and economies like never before, so we created this series
0:28
Speaker 2: to help you make sense of it all. I'm Stephanie Flanders.
0:31
Speaker 3: And I'm Adrian Woodridge.
0:32
Speaker 2: And as I know we all know by now, President
0:36
Speaker 2: Joe Biden has confirmed he will not seek nomination for
0:39
Speaker 2: the twenty twenty four presidential campaign. That statement was released
0:44
Speaker 2: on Sunday afternoon US Time, led to an outpouring of
0:50
Speaker 2: respect and thanks to him for making this decision, which
0:53
Speaker 2: an awful lot of people have been begging him to
0:55
Speaker 2: make for several weeks since that terrible performance in the debate.
1:00
Speaker 2: Going to try, Adrian to avoid telling people loads of
1:03
Speaker 2: things that they already know, but we did think we
1:05
Speaker 2: should focus this episode on this major change in the
1:09
Speaker 2: US presidential race and start to think about some of
1:12
Speaker 2: what might happen next. But your first thoughts on what
1:16
Speaker 2: happened on Sunday and the path forward.
1:18
Speaker 3: Well, I think the crowning of Joe Biden has sort
1:22
Speaker 3: of Cincinnatus as this great figure who has sacrificed himself
1:26
Speaker 3: for on his sword for the good of the republic.
1:30
Speaker 3: Is rather annoying, I must say, because he fought as
1:33
Speaker 3: long as he could and as hard as he had
1:35
Speaker 3: to be virtually leave it out of the position. But
1:38
Speaker 3: he was inevitable. It was just a matter of time.
1:41
Speaker 3: And it does seem as though the script is playing
1:43
Speaker 3: itself out in a fairly controlled way, in the sense
1:46
Speaker 3: that Kamala Harris will be the nominee in as something
1:50
Speaker 3: very strange or very unpredictable happens, and the Democratic Party
1:55
Speaker 3: will unite behind her. And she does look on paper
1:59
Speaker 3: at least like quite strong candidate, partly because she's a woman,
2:01
Speaker 3: partly because he's ethnic minority, partly because he's young. She's
2:05
Speaker 3: fifty nine against a seventy year old seventy eight year
2:09
Speaker 3: old Trump. So it'll be the Democrats playing the age card,
2:12
Speaker 3: which that the Republicans have been playing, and partly because
2:15
Speaker 3: the Democratic Party does sort of have a spring in
2:18
Speaker 3: except at the moment the money is pouring in. There's
2:21
Speaker 3: a lot of good will towards her, and the sense
2:26
Speaker 3: that they looked at defeat and decided that victory was
2:30
Speaker 3: a better.
2:30
Speaker 2: Option, and We're going to say more about the situation
2:34
Speaker 2: with donors a bit later on. It were certainly stunning.
2:37
Speaker 2: There was just under fifty million dollars in grassroots do
2:40
Speaker 2: nation in the less than twenty four hours since Joe
2:44
Speaker 2: Biden made that statement, and we know that there had
2:48
Speaker 2: been a very much, very little money coming in over
2:51
Speaker 2: the last few weeks as we saw this debate over
2:54
Speaker 2: his performance play out. The interesting thing, though, I mean,
2:58
Speaker 2: when a lot of the big donor I had heard
3:01
Speaker 2: saying over the last few weeks that they were nervous
3:06
Speaker 2: about the Carmela stage of the process, that they quite
3:10
Speaker 2: wanted to get to an open process. They wanted to
3:12
Speaker 2: get to those exciting, new, shiny candidates who had less
3:15
Speaker 2: of the baggage of the Biden administration hanging off them.
3:18
Speaker 2: You know, it now seems you know a lot of
3:20
Speaker 2: those candidates that get talked about, whether it's Gavin Newsom
3:23
Speaker 2: or the Michigan governor Gritch and Whitmer immediately said that
3:29
Speaker 2: they were came out in support of Carmela when Biden
3:34
Speaker 2: endorsed her, and a lot of that seems to be
3:37
Speaker 2: shut off. There are certainly some sort of significant senior
3:40
Speaker 2: voices who've not endorsed her, not least former President Barack Obaba,
3:45
Speaker 2: but there does seem to be a head of steam
3:46
Speaker 2: around app the sort of wild cards for the next
3:49
Speaker 2: few weeks, if you think about the sort of barely
3:52
Speaker 2: four weeks till the Democrat convention in Chicago. There is
3:57
Speaker 2: a lot of talk on the Republican side about legal challenges.
4:01
Speaker 2: The Heritage Foundation that the conservative think tank has been
4:04
Speaker 2: saying for a few days that there will be grassroots
4:08
Speaker 2: challenged to removing Biden from the ticket. Very hard to
4:11
Speaker 2: see how those get very far, given that he's not
4:15
Speaker 2: the formal nominee yet in any state, but that doesn't
4:19
Speaker 2: mean that they won't happen and maybe delay things a bit.
4:22
Speaker 2: I think more concerning, perhaps for the Democrats, will be
4:26
Speaker 2: the worry that the sort of continued pressure and accusations
4:30
Speaker 2: from the Republican side about how long President Biden's condition
4:36
Speaker 2: was kept from the public and who is implicated in that,
4:39
Speaker 2: not least Vice President Kamala Harris, and whether or not
4:43
Speaker 2: you know, questions about whether President Biden should stay as
4:46
Speaker 2: president until November or indeed January, if he is unfit
4:51
Speaker 2: as he appears to be. Do you think either of
4:53
Speaker 2: those have legs.
4:55
Speaker 3: I think the Republicans have two very powerful arguments to make.
4:59
Speaker 3: One is the argument that if he's not capable of
5:01
Speaker 3: running for the job, he shouldn't be doing it now.
5:05
Speaker 3: And the second is that this is a sort of
5:06
Speaker 3: establishment stitch up which is excluding ordinary people and is
5:11
Speaker 3: a sort of an elite conspiracy. And we have, you know,
5:13
Speaker 3: back the Republican Party is now a populist party, and
5:16
Speaker 3: that's a very good populist case to make. I don't
5:19
Speaker 3: think it will get anywhere in terms of the legal challenges.
5:23
Speaker 3: I think the legal challenge cites me is nonsense. I mean,
5:26
Speaker 3: a candidate has the freedom to withdraw their name, and
5:29
Speaker 3: you know they're part of a ticket, and the funds
5:31
Speaker 3: should go to the other part of that ticket. That
5:33
Speaker 3: strikes me it's a very difficult thing to challenge. I
5:35
Speaker 3: think she's now the inevitable candidate. I don't think the
5:38
Speaker 3: Democratic Party can say to a black woman who has
5:43
Speaker 3: been serving as vice president, we don't want you to run. However,
5:46
Speaker 3: I think she's a weak candidate. She she shouldn't have
5:48
Speaker 3: been the vice president for an aging, aging president. She's
5:52
Speaker 3: not very ocular, she's not got a very substantial political career.
5:56
Speaker 3: She's not done very much as vice president. Her team's
6:00
Speaker 3: around her seemed to disappear or fall out. She's not
6:03
Speaker 3: really good at managing people. She's not an impressive debater.
6:07
Speaker 3: She may surprise us all, but when she ran for
6:10
Speaker 3: president in her own right, it was a disaster.
6:13
Speaker 2: Okay. So the pushback to that, which obviously we've heard
6:15
Speaker 2: more of in the last few weeks as a lot
6:17
Speaker 2: of Democrats have sort of thought about the implications of
6:21
Speaker 2: going further, going beyond Carmala Harris. One is, even if
6:25
Speaker 2: we think on paper that they're a better candidate scretch
6:28
Speaker 2: on Whitma, for example, or Gavin Newsom, is the incremental
6:32
Speaker 2: benefit of those lesser known but fresh faces large enough
6:38
Speaker 2: to justify the risk of sort of chaos on the
6:41
Speaker 2: path to getting that. I think the answer that's probably now.
6:44
Speaker 2: I think there's also if you look back at the
6:45
Speaker 2: sort of Carmela's underrated argument says, if you go back
6:50
Speaker 2: to that campaign, that was indeed a very weak campaign
6:54
Speaker 2: and she didn't get very far in the primaries. Remember
6:57
Speaker 2: that the twenty twenty election campaign was a very peculiar one.
7:01
Speaker 2: It was dominated by not least COVID, but black lives matter,
7:05
Speaker 2: and she had this reputation as a prosecutor who'd been
7:09
Speaker 2: very tough on crime, was controversial in California as a
7:14
Speaker 2: prosecutor in that feverish environment, in that kind of anti
7:18
Speaker 2: police environment, and so she was in a peculiarly kind
7:21
Speaker 2: of weak old position as an African American in that
7:25
Speaker 2: in that she never quite hit her stride in that campaign.
7:28
Speaker 2: The other argument is she's got a lot better. You know,
7:30
Speaker 2: people say she's learnt in office. She was inexperience then,
7:33
Speaker 2: so she's become a more seasoned campaigner.
7:36
Speaker 3: Sure, but she's had sometimes as vice president, and as
7:38
Speaker 3: vice president a record is quite dubious. She's not very articulate,
7:43
Speaker 3: she's repeatedly you know, underperformed in public fora and she's
7:49
Speaker 3: not very good at running things. You know, her staff
7:51
Speaker 3: seemed sort of disappeared like the snow on a hot
7:55
Speaker 3: summer's day.
7:55
Speaker 2: It's a pretty awful job. It's a it is awful dog.
8:00
Speaker 3: But you know, Dick Cheney did it in where that
8:04
Speaker 3: made a big made a big difference. It is possible
8:06
Speaker 3: to do it well, particularly if your president is somebody
8:10
Speaker 3: who is somewhat tiring in the job. However, you know,
8:14
Speaker 3: to say something positive about her. At the moment, she's
8:16
Speaker 3: two points I think behind in polls for what they're
8:19
Speaker 3: worth at the moment. In Donald Trump she has she
8:22
Speaker 3: could improve that by a lot as the party unites
8:27
Speaker 3: behind her and starts talking about her. Her merits, she
8:29
Speaker 3: does mobilize important demographics for the party and above all,
8:34
Speaker 3: it looked as though this election was going to be
8:37
Speaker 3: a referendum on Joe Biden and his various failures. Now
8:42
Speaker 3: it's much more a referendum on Donald Trump. You know,
8:45
Speaker 3: she she is not the person in the spotlight. Trump
8:48
Speaker 3: will be the person in the spotlight. He will be
8:51
Speaker 3: the galvanizing figure, and he has a lot of weaknesses.
8:54
Speaker 3: There's no doubt about that that she will be able
8:56
Speaker 3: to exploit.
8:57
Speaker 2: She is quite strong and has been campaign on the
9:00
Speaker 2: abortion issue and with jd. Vance, he's in favor of
9:03
Speaker 2: abolishing abortion and in Trump's vice presidential nominee has also
9:08
Speaker 2: said previously been negative about even IVF, so that she
9:13
Speaker 2: could be a very strong campaigner against that if he
9:15
Speaker 2: continues to have that role. I think I know a
9:18
Speaker 2: very big argument against her and a challenge she will
9:21
Speaker 2: have is is the close connection to the Biden administration
9:27
Speaker 2: if in so far as the Biden administration has not
9:30
Speaker 2: made a strong economic case to the electorate, particularly in
9:33
Speaker 2: swing states where economics perhaps features more heavily than things
9:39
Speaker 2: like abortion or indeed sort of democraphea of democracy with president.
9:44
Speaker 2: With a President Trump coming back in, she will have
9:47
Speaker 2: the same problems that Biden had in making that it
9:50
Speaker 2: proving to people that things have been better than they thought.
9:54
Speaker 3: Absolutely, the mood at the moment is anti incumbent right
9:57
Speaker 3: across the world's We've seen again and again in Britain,
10:00
Speaker 3: in India, to some extent in France. And she has
10:03
Speaker 3: the problem not only of being tied to the incumbent,
10:06
Speaker 3: but also as being tied to what the Republicans would
10:08
Speaker 3: no doubt called the cover up. You know, she was
10:10
Speaker 3: there saying he's perfectly all right, He's as sharp as
10:13
Speaker 3: attack he can. He can dance and sing and do
10:16
Speaker 3: and do everything imaginable. Well, it now seems that he's
10:19
Speaker 3: had a problem with cognitive awareness and with physical fitness,
10:25
Speaker 3: and that cover up will be something that Republicans will
10:27
Speaker 3: keep going on about. Biden I think had no chance
10:31
Speaker 3: of winning. She certainly has a significant chance of winning,
10:33
Speaker 3: but I'd still put the betting on Trump rather than her.
10:37
Speaker 3: And I just wanted to add one more thing which
10:39
Speaker 3: worries me, and that is this, so long as the
10:43
Speaker 3: Europeans thought that Trump was pretty bound to win, they
10:47
Speaker 3: were really getting their act together in terms of taking
10:50
Speaker 3: a more responsible role in funding NATO, in PROD, in
10:54
Speaker 3: funding their own defense, in acting as though the world's
10:58
Speaker 3: you know, as though they were responsible for the stage
11:00
Speaker 3: of the world. Now I'm worried that they'll say, well,
11:04
Speaker 3: Trump might well not win. Camala may may may may
11:08
Speaker 3: easily not easily win, but may may well come out
11:11
Speaker 3: on Trump on top of the old world may be preserved.
11:14
Speaker 3: They might They like to do that. They like to delay,
11:17
Speaker 3: and they may take this as an excuse to delay
11:19
Speaker 3: on important things light defense spending, and I think that
11:22
Speaker 3: would be a very bad thing. They should act as
11:25
Speaker 3: though Trump is a certainty, even if he isn't, partly
11:28
Speaker 3: because I think he's more likely than not, Partly because
11:31
Speaker 3: the MAGA straining in Republicanism is important in Congress it
11:34
Speaker 3: will remain important, But partly because I think that the
11:37
Speaker 3: Democratic Party cannot be relied on to be the sort
11:40
Speaker 3: of internationalist party that it was perhaps perhaps traditionally, the
11:46
Speaker 3: protectionist wing is very strong. Biden pushed through quite a
11:50
Speaker 3: lot of protectionists measures, tariffs and things like that. The
11:54
Speaker 3: shift away from taking responsibility for Europe's defense goes back
11:58
Speaker 3: to to to Obama in some ways, the pivots to
12:03
Speaker 3: as things like that, this is a more isolationist country,
12:06
Speaker 3: whoever is on top. Obviously Trump would be a massive
12:10
Speaker 3: game changing, but we cannot rely on America for our
12:14
Speaker 3: defense anymore. Europe needs to take a more responsible role,
12:18
Speaker 3: and in some ways rightly so.
12:19
Speaker 2: Well, that is a very good note of warning from
12:21
Speaker 2: you to Europe, which I hope Europe will listen to.
12:26
Speaker 2: They certainly should. I would have a bit of a
12:28
Speaker 2: sort of related warning to the sort of Trump traders.
12:31
Speaker 2: You know that we've had a lot in the last
12:33
Speaker 2: few weeks, in particularly as it's become apparently more and
12:36
Speaker 2: more inevitable, certainly more higher probability that President Trump would
12:40
Speaker 2: be re elected. We would have we've seen this kind
12:45
Speaker 2: of optimism in the market. The market reaction since Biden
12:48
Speaker 2: said he wouldn't run has been muted, I think probably
12:51
Speaker 2: because as you suggest, that President Trump winning is still
12:54
Speaker 2: the most likely option if you just look at the world,
12:58
Speaker 2: but also if you look at the betting of But
13:00
Speaker 2: I think there should also be a sort of growing
13:02
Speaker 2: understanding that there has to be a ceiling to this
13:05
Speaker 2: bill market, even nor even especially with Donald Trump, because
13:10
Speaker 2: you look at what his tariff policies mean for inflation,
13:14
Speaker 2: what his approach to renewing his very expensive tax cuts
13:18
Speaker 2: means for US borrowing, certainly, what all of that means
13:23
Speaker 2: for further interest rate cuts. If you think that a
13:25
Speaker 2: large part of the Trump, large part of the enthusiasm
13:28
Speaker 2: around the equity market has been around the prospect of
13:31
Speaker 2: money getting cheaper again. That's not going to happen in
13:33
Speaker 2: a Trump administration where inflations are going up again. The
13:37
Speaker 2: only beneficiary of all that, arguably, which is possibly the
13:40
Speaker 2: strongest Trump trade, is a stronger dollar. But that's precisely
13:44
Speaker 2: what neither Trump nor especially JD. Vance has said he
13:47
Speaker 2: would favor. He thinks that it's been a terrible cost
13:49
Speaker 2: to the nation to have had the currency sort of
13:53
Speaker 2: over strong over these years. So I think all of
13:56
Speaker 2: that ought to play into market considerations, business can considerations,
14:00
Speaker 2: and I know it plays into donor considerations over the
14:03
Speaker 2: next few weeks, and that's something that we want to
14:06
Speaker 2: get into a bit more with our sister podcast, The
14:09
Speaker 2: Big Take in DC. Gregory Corte and Laura Davison are
14:15
Speaker 2: two journalists who cover money and politics for Bloomberg, and
14:18
Speaker 2: they have done a special episode out today trying to
14:22
Speaker 2: answer the question of how much Harris's campaign could cost,
14:26
Speaker 2: what kind of edge she has in fundraising, and how
14:30
Speaker 2: Democratic donors are reacting to the news. We hope you
14:33
Speaker 2: enjoy that. Thank you for joining me, Adrid, giving your
14:35
Speaker 2: wisdom and listen on.
14:49
Speaker 4: After mounting pressure from members of Joe Biden's own party
14:52
Speaker 4: in Congress, and finally reportedly from his former running mate
14:56
Speaker 4: and former President Barack Obama, Biden released a state meant
15:00
Speaker 4: saying he'd drop out of the twenty twenty four US
15:03
Speaker 4: presidential race.
15:05
Speaker 5: Suddenly, on a Sunday afternoon, the dam broke that.
15:09
Speaker 4: Damn broke Via tweet, I called up Gregory Cordy, a
15:12
Speaker 4: White House and Politics reporter, to get his reaction to
15:15
Speaker 4: the news.
15:15
Speaker 5: The decision isn't a surprise, but the sudden timing of.
15:19
Speaker 6: It was, and Sarah, we got an answer to that
15:21
Speaker 6: big question, would Biden drop out? But that only raised
15:25
Speaker 6: more questions.
15:26
Speaker 5: In addition to the decision not to run for reelection,
15:29
Speaker 5: there are a lot of decisions baked in that decision.
15:32
Speaker 5: Does he tap an air apparent? Does he endorse Kamala Harris?
15:36
Speaker 4: Who would donors back to replace him? Where does the
15:39
Speaker 4: Democratic Party go from here?
15:41
Speaker 6: And not long after his first announcement, Biden tweeted an
15:45
Speaker 6: endorsement of Harris. But that endorsement now kicks off an
15:48
Speaker 6: entirely new phase of the election, which means there are
15:51
Speaker 6: even more unknowns.
15:53
Speaker 4: The Democratic National Convention is just one month away. Voters
15:57
Speaker 4: will go to the polls in less than four months.
16:00
Speaker 4: Even if Harris clinges the nomination in Chicago in August,
16:03
Speaker 4: is there time for her to fundraise and advertise herself
16:06
Speaker 4: to the American people? How much money does a candidate
16:09
Speaker 4: really need to campaign successfully if they're taking over the
16:13
Speaker 4: ticket so late in the year.
16:14
Speaker 5: Well, my first thoughts was it's gonna be a long
16:16
Speaker 5: three or four months. Now.
16:21
Speaker 6: This is the big take from Bloomberg News.
16:23
Speaker 4: I'm David Gerratt and I'm Sarah Holder. Today on the show,
16:27
Speaker 4: I dig into these questions with Gregory and with Money
16:30
Speaker 4: and Politics editor Laura Davison. As of Sunday evening, just
16:39
Speaker 4: hours after President Biden's announcement, not much was known about
16:43
Speaker 4: how he made the decision and how he thought about
16:46
Speaker 4: timing its release. I asked Gregory Cordy and Laura Davison
16:49
Speaker 4: about that.
16:50
Speaker 5: It's hard to say because he kept counsel only with
16:53
Speaker 5: a very small inner circle of aids on this. We're
16:56
Speaker 5: getting reporting that even his own campaigns was blindsided by
17:01
Speaker 5: this announcement. He may have been waiting until after the
17:05
Speaker 5: Republican Convention for things to settle. He was in seclusion
17:09
Speaker 5: for the past few days recovering from a COVID infection,
17:12
Speaker 5: so he may have been waiting to see if he
17:15
Speaker 5: could ride that out and come back.
17:16
Speaker 7: But it's really important to note that in the past,
17:19
Speaker 7: you know, essentially three weeks since the debate that really
17:22
Speaker 7: sparked all these concerns, Democratic donors have basically said, look,
17:25
Speaker 7: we are freezing contributions to your campaign. There have been
17:28
Speaker 7: a handful of donors we've come out and said I'm
17:31
Speaker 7: still with the president, but most folks said, look, we're
17:33
Speaker 7: not going to throw good money after bad. We want
17:35
Speaker 7: this guy out, and our leverage is donors is money.
17:38
Speaker 7: So you saw, you know, a bunch of different efforts.
17:41
Speaker 7: You know, some donors start different super PACs that they said,
17:44
Speaker 7: would you know, start collecting money that would go to
17:46
Speaker 7: whoever the eventual new nominee is. And this all came
17:49
Speaker 7: at a very critical moment when Trump had a ton
17:52
Speaker 7: of new donor support. You know, folks like Elon Musk
17:54
Speaker 7: and Timothy Mellon were coming in with really large donations,
17:58
Speaker 7: and they realized that, look, this is not a tenable
18:00
Speaker 7: situation here, this.
18:02
Speaker 4: Moment feels unprecedented, and people are already reacting all around
18:06
Speaker 4: the world. How do you expect markets to react?
18:09
Speaker 7: We do know that in the past couple weeks, as
18:11
Speaker 7: Trump has seemingly grown stronger in his bid, that markets
18:14
Speaker 7: has started to price a Trump win in. So that
18:16
Speaker 7: looks like, you know, a potential increase in tariffs, particularly
18:20
Speaker 7: targeted Chinese goods, but all sorts of goods. Markets are
18:23
Speaker 7: also anticipating a pretty large tax cut if it's Trump.
18:26
Speaker 7: Anytime there is a seismic shift in what US leadership
18:30
Speaker 7: looks like, there will be market reactions.
18:32
Speaker 4: So as part of his announcement, Biden endorsed Kamala Harris
18:35
Speaker 4: as the Democratic Party nominee. Does it mean Biden's campaign
18:38
Speaker 4: is shutting down immediately and Harris's is now jumping into action.
18:42
Speaker 4: What happens next, Gregory?
18:43
Speaker 5: Presumably if Biden has his way and Vice President Harris
18:47
Speaker 5: has hers, she will take now the top spot of
18:50
Speaker 5: that ticket and recommend to the delegates at the convention
18:53
Speaker 5: next month who her choice for vice president would be
18:56
Speaker 5: her running mate. She would get to keep that sizeable
18:59
Speaker 5: war chat that Biden has built, but he started to
19:03
Speaker 5: burn through cash in the past month or so and
19:07
Speaker 5: it's not quite as formidable as they would like. So
19:09
Speaker 5: the first order of business is to rebuild that war chest,
19:13
Speaker 5: get some big donors on board through super packs, and
19:17
Speaker 5: then it will be up to the Vice president, if
19:20
Speaker 5: it is her as a nominee, to decide how she
19:23
Speaker 5: wants to structure her campaign. But there's really not a
19:26
Speaker 5: whole lot of time right to completely blow up the campaign.
19:29
Speaker 5: It already has field offices, it's already bought a lot
19:32
Speaker 5: of ad time. That strategy is going to have to
19:34
Speaker 5: change very quickly, of course, now that there's a new
19:36
Speaker 5: Canada the top of the ticket, so a lot of
19:38
Speaker 5: these things we're going to just have to see in
19:40
Speaker 5: the coming days. How that all comes to pass.
19:43
Speaker 4: Just how much money is currently in the Biden campaign
19:46
Speaker 4: coffers compared to Trump.
19:48
Speaker 7: So just on the raw dollar total, they're not too
19:51
Speaker 7: far apart. So the Biden campaign has ninety six million dollars.
19:54
Speaker 7: The Trump campaign has one hundred and twenty eight million dollars.
19:56
Speaker 7: So Trump is ahead, not a massive amount. The thing
20:00
Speaker 7: think that's the real differentiator here is that Biden's fundraising
20:03
Speaker 7: has totally fallen off a cliff. The other thing is
20:05
Speaker 7: just how much they're spending. In the month of June.
20:08
Speaker 7: This is even you know, before a lot of the
20:10
Speaker 7: debate stuff started percolating, Democrats spent ninety three percent of
20:14
Speaker 7: the money that they brought in compared to Trump, who
20:16
Speaker 7: was spending less than half. So just the burn rate,
20:18
Speaker 7: there is a massive difference.
20:20
Speaker 5: The Trump forces have been spending next to nothing. They
20:23
Speaker 5: have a super pac that spent money in Pennsylvania, Georgia
20:27
Speaker 5: and now has just gone into Arizona. But they've been
20:31
Speaker 5: marshaling their resources, really sort of hoarding their cash, while
20:34
Speaker 5: Biden has gotten out early. All that money. Now, I
20:37
Speaker 5: don't want to say it's wasted money, because it helped
20:40
Speaker 5: perhaps the Democratic brand, but it was money that was
20:43
Speaker 5: spent to promote Biden. And now Democrats have to figure
20:46
Speaker 5: out a new branding, a new message now that the
20:48
Speaker 5: nominee will be somebody else.
20:50
Speaker 4: And Laura, how is the Trump camp reacting to this news.
20:53
Speaker 7: There's a couple different schools of thought within the Trump campaign.
20:56
Speaker 7: Just last night he had a rally in Michigan where
20:59
Speaker 7: he talked about some of the array that was happening
21:01
Speaker 7: with Democrats. Of course, this was before Biden announced that
21:03
Speaker 7: he would be dropping out. But Trump, at the top
21:05
Speaker 7: of his rally essentially like pulled the crowd and said,
21:08
Speaker 7: you know, basically, who do you want to be? You
21:11
Speaker 7: know our opponent. Do you want it to be Joe Biden?
21:12
Speaker 7: Do you want it to be Kamala Harris? And so
21:14
Speaker 7: the crowd overwhelmingly, by a show of voices, indicated that
21:17
Speaker 7: they wanted Biden to be the nominee. You know, a
21:20
Speaker 7: clear sign that at least, you know, Trump supporters think
21:22
Speaker 7: that he is an easier candidate to be. However, we
21:26
Speaker 7: know that the Trump campaign for weeks has been preparing
21:29
Speaker 7: that it may be Kamala or it may be someone
21:31
Speaker 7: else in the race that they're running against So they've
21:33
Speaker 7: started working on messaging.
21:35
Speaker 4: What are we hearing about how Democratic donors are reacting
21:37
Speaker 4: to Biden's announcement and whether they'll rally behind Kamala Harris
21:42
Speaker 4: versus someone else.
21:44
Speaker 7: So there's really two camps of donors right now. One
21:47
Speaker 7: some of the major donors who are coming out and saying, look,
21:49
Speaker 7: we support Harris. These are folks like George Soros and
21:52
Speaker 7: his son Alexander Soros saying we're going to support Harris
21:55
Speaker 7: and you know what, she needs to run. There's another
21:57
Speaker 7: group of donors. I'll note that these are less made donors.
22:00
Speaker 7: These are people who give maybe up to a million
22:02
Speaker 7: dollars but still have an influential voice within the party
22:05
Speaker 7: and are very vocal, and they're saying, hold on a second,
22:08
Speaker 7: we want to make sure there's some sort of open
22:09
Speaker 7: nominating process. We want to have either a primary or
22:12
Speaker 7: an open convention. And this is going to be a
22:14
Speaker 7: debate that plays out over the next couple of days
22:16
Speaker 7: and whether those loud vocal voices saying they want some
22:20
Speaker 7: sort of way to choose the nominee versus have it
22:23
Speaker 7: just going to Harris automatically. If they went out, this
22:26
Speaker 7: could be very messy, and you could have a lot
22:28
Speaker 7: of different candidates rise to the four, you know, each
22:30
Speaker 7: siphoning off a little bit of donor money, but not
22:32
Speaker 7: having donors unite behind one candidate. This is the exact
22:36
Speaker 7: problem that Republicans had on their side of after twenty
22:38
Speaker 7: twenty two, the major party donor said, we don't want
22:41
Speaker 7: to have Trump as our nominee. We should all pick
22:43
Speaker 7: a candidate and you know, give to that candidate and
22:45
Speaker 7: we could defeat Trump. That never happened. First looked like
22:48
Speaker 7: it might be DeSantis, then maybe Nikki Haley, but Trump
22:51
Speaker 7: at that point was too powerful and had enough support
22:54
Speaker 7: within the party base. A similar thing could happen with
22:56
Speaker 7: Harris if donors don't decide and that it is clear
22:59
Speaker 7: that the party leadership and the base of the party
23:01
Speaker 7: is moving with Harris, she could be the nominee and
23:03
Speaker 7: donors are going to have to line behind because they
23:05
Speaker 7: just won't have any options at that point.
23:08
Speaker 4: After the break, we dig into what an open convention
23:11
Speaker 4: could look like and the financial problems that could face
23:13
Speaker 4: the eventual nominee, including how much money a new candidate
23:17
Speaker 4: would need to launch a successful campaign in under four months.
23:28
Speaker 4: We're back I've been talking with White House and Politics
23:31
Speaker 4: reporter Gregory Cordy and Money and Politics editor Laura Davison
23:35
Speaker 4: about what we currently know about President Biden's decision to
23:38
Speaker 4: drop out of the twenty twenty four race. But what
23:42
Speaker 4: comes next? The open convention scenario sounds chaotic perhaps, but
23:47
Speaker 4: could any of this upheaval actually energize donors. Could donors
23:51
Speaker 4: who have thus far sat on the sidelines get activated
23:55
Speaker 4: to actually start donating more to the Democratic Party.
23:59
Speaker 7: That's the argument that some of these donors make and say, look,
24:02
Speaker 7: you know, they're particularly arguing for a more moderate candidate.
24:05
Speaker 7: Have someone who's maybe a little bit more business friendly,
24:07
Speaker 7: Have someone who appeals to some of those people who
24:10
Speaker 7: are never Trumpers on the Republican side. You could bring
24:12
Speaker 7: a lot of money in right now. That's all theoretical.
24:15
Speaker 7: There's no one who's coming forth and saying, look, I'm
24:17
Speaker 7: going to pledge you know, X million dollars if it
24:20
Speaker 7: is a certain candidate. Everyone is sort of seeing where
24:22
Speaker 7: the political wins are blowing, and just the way that
24:25
Speaker 7: the calendar moves, these decisions have to be made soon.
24:28
Speaker 7: This is not something that can play out over a
24:30
Speaker 7: couple weeks. Or months. You know, it's almost a first
24:32
Speaker 7: mover advantage here.
24:34
Speaker 5: One of the games that modern campaigns play is that
24:37
Speaker 5: they try to raise a lot of money around events
24:40
Speaker 5: to kind of signal that they have the momentum. So
24:43
Speaker 5: I would expect the Paris campaign, now that there is one,
24:48
Speaker 5: to come out in the next few days and give
24:50
Speaker 5: us a total of exactly how many millions of dollars
24:53
Speaker 5: she's raised in a very short period of time to
24:55
Speaker 5: kind of give the impression that there's a snowball effect
24:58
Speaker 5: that people are rallying around her campaign, that she does
25:01
Speaker 5: have the ability to raise that small dollar donor, and
25:04
Speaker 5: sometimes small dollar donors follow small dollar donors. If people
25:07
Speaker 5: see that there is momentum behind a candidate, that might
25:10
Speaker 5: encourage even more people to jump in.
25:12
Speaker 4: Already, we're seeing that tactic in action. As of nine
25:16
Speaker 4: pm Eastern on Sunday night, the Democratic fundraising platform Act
25:19
Speaker 4: Blue announced it received over forty six million dollars in
25:23
Speaker 4: donations from small dollar donors just since Biden officially endorsed
25:28
Speaker 4: Harris Laura. Supporters of Harris have been saying that one
25:31
Speaker 4: of her biggest assets is her access to Biden's war
25:34
Speaker 4: chest that ninety six million dollars we were talking about earlier.
25:38
Speaker 4: How does the process work now? Does the Harris campaign
25:42
Speaker 4: inherit all that money automatically or could it go to
25:46
Speaker 4: another nominee.
25:47
Speaker 7: If it is Harris as the nominee, yes, she would
25:49
Speaker 7: be able to inherit the ninety six million dollars or
25:52
Speaker 7: so that is left in the account. She's able to
25:54
Speaker 7: operate a lot more seamlessly than if it's another candidate,
25:57
Speaker 7: So she is able to keep on staff, people could
25:59
Speaker 7: keep their email addresses. If in fact it is another candidate,
26:02
Speaker 7: they have to start a campaign committee, essentially the thing
26:05
Speaker 7: you file with the FEC to say hey, I'm running
26:07
Speaker 7: for president. They have to start a brand new campaign.
26:10
Speaker 7: That campaign will have zero dollars in it. The ninety
26:13
Speaker 7: six million that's left in the Biden campaign. They can
26:15
Speaker 7: either donate that to the Democratic National Committee or to
26:18
Speaker 7: a super pack, which presumably would then go to support
26:21
Speaker 7: that new candidate ultimately, but you know, at least in
26:23
Speaker 7: their campaign account they'll have zero dollars, so they'll immediately
26:26
Speaker 7: have to start fundraising. There are a bunch of fundraising limitations,
26:29
Speaker 7: so for just an individual donor, the most they could
26:32
Speaker 7: give to that campaign is just a couple thousand dollars,
26:35
Speaker 7: so that you've got to go out and bring in
26:36
Speaker 7: a lot of money. You need to bring in a
26:37
Speaker 7: lot of grassroots money. You'd need to have all of
26:40
Speaker 7: the super PACs working with you. Imagine a startup. This
26:43
Speaker 7: is what the campaign would be doing of just you know,
26:45
Speaker 7: getting staff hired, getting off a space, doing all of
26:47
Speaker 7: these things. And it would take them weeks to just
26:49
Speaker 7: get up on the ground and running you know, stuff
26:51
Speaker 7: that the campaign when a normal year would have been doing,
26:53
Speaker 7: you know, a year or even two years ago.
26:55
Speaker 4: How much money will they need to run an effective
26:58
Speaker 4: campaign over them the next few months.
27:01
Speaker 7: So Biden and his team you know and kind of
27:03
Speaker 7: allies we're talking about that they need at least a billion,
27:06
Speaker 7: if not more to run this campaign. Biden and his
27:08
Speaker 7: you know, allies raised about a billion dollars in twenty twenty.
27:12
Speaker 7: So far the Biden campaign you know, to date, and
27:14
Speaker 7: you know, along with the DNC, you know, has spent
27:17
Speaker 7: just a little bit over three hundred and fifty million dollars.
27:19
Speaker 7: But of course the spending really really ramps up, you know,
27:22
Speaker 7: as you head into election day. The Democrats have created
27:25
Speaker 7: a strategy that's pretty expensive. They have a lot of
27:27
Speaker 7: field offices with a lot of staff. They are running
27:29
Speaker 7: a lot of advertising, you know, tens of millions of dollars.
27:32
Speaker 7: You know, in any given month or week. They're going
27:34
Speaker 7: to need a lot of money if they're going to
27:35
Speaker 7: continue the strategy. And because they're going to be introducing
27:38
Speaker 7: a new candidate and a new vice presidential candidate to
27:40
Speaker 7: the public, they're going to need to continue that money.
27:42
Speaker 4: Bloomberg has reported that Harris has been having meetings with
27:45
Speaker 4: Wall Street executives recently, and from her days in California politics,
27:49
Speaker 4: she has her own ties to Silicon Valley and the
27:51
Speaker 4: tech industry. How might to leverage those relationships.
27:55
Speaker 7: Harris is very lucky because she comes from California, which
27:58
Speaker 7: is called a donor state in that you know, it's
28:01
Speaker 7: California really funds democratic runs across the country, So she
28:05
Speaker 7: has close ties to Silicon Valley. She is a known
28:08
Speaker 7: entity there. People know her name being vice president. She's
28:10
Speaker 7: also been able to operate a little bit more under
28:12
Speaker 7: the radar than Biden. So she's been taking these meetings
28:14
Speaker 7: with folks on Wall Street to explain some of the
28:17
Speaker 7: Biden policies. She started to build those relationships.
28:20
Speaker 4: You know.
28:20
Speaker 7: Remember she's only fifty nine years old, so she's always
28:22
Speaker 7: had an eye to what she would do after she
28:25
Speaker 7: was Biden's vice president, knowing that she needs to have
28:27
Speaker 7: Wall Street support, she needs to have some of these
28:29
Speaker 7: ties to the business community, at.
28:31
Speaker 5: Least among some of the Wall Street donors. There is
28:35
Speaker 5: an ideological divide here that Harris is perceived as perhaps
28:40
Speaker 5: to the left of Biden. When she ran in twenty twenty,
28:43
Speaker 5: there was a concerted effort among some Democratic donors to
28:48
Speaker 5: find a more moderate candidate. Remember, Bernie Sanders was in
28:51
Speaker 5: that race, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris was somewhere on
28:55
Speaker 5: the spectrum between Biden and those more liberal candidates, probably
28:59
Speaker 5: a little bit more towards the progressive side. She was
29:02
Speaker 5: for Medicare for all, for example. She was for a
29:05
Speaker 5: number of different policies that she's now had to subsume
29:09
Speaker 5: Biden's policies as his vice president. But there might be
29:13
Speaker 5: some concern from some Wall Street donors of what they're
29:16
Speaker 5: going to get in a future Harris administration.
29:19
Speaker 4: In recent weeks, new packs have popped up that are
29:21
Speaker 4: open about fundraising for a non Biden candidate. Do we
29:25
Speaker 4: know how much money those packs have raised?
29:27
Speaker 7: At this point, we don't know exactly how much money
29:30
Speaker 7: is in them, because they've just sprung up in the
29:32
Speaker 7: past couple of days or weeks. One of the ones,
29:35
Speaker 7: Mike Novagrats of Galaxy Digital his pack, this is a
29:38
Speaker 7: couple weeks old now at this point, but said it
29:40
Speaker 7: raised about two million dollars sort of in the initial
29:42
Speaker 7: days after forming. In the next twenty four to forty
29:44
Speaker 7: eight hours, I anticipate we'll see a lot of donors
29:47
Speaker 7: come forward, either with actual money or with commitments to
29:50
Speaker 7: give to whether it's Vice President Harris or another candidate.
29:53
Speaker 7: Should someone else throw their hat in the ring, and
29:55
Speaker 7: that will be a key determiner of who really has
29:57
Speaker 7: the juice to mount to run.
29:58
Speaker 4: Here I've been talking about. A Harris candidacy is not
30:03
Speaker 4: a foregone conclusion. Despite Biden's announcement that he will endorse her.
30:07
Speaker 4: The Democratic National Convention is in one month. Is there
30:10
Speaker 4: still a chance that Democrats might choose someone besides Harris
30:13
Speaker 4: at the convention?
30:14
Speaker 5: Gregory, That's absolutely possible under the convention rules, But practically speaking,
30:21
Speaker 5: it seems to me that any other candidate would have
30:23
Speaker 5: to get out there relatively quickly before the institutional Democratic
30:27
Speaker 5: Party really rallies around Harris. We're already seeing endorsements from
30:32
Speaker 5: former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton. We're starting to
30:35
Speaker 5: see the Congressional Black Caucus and other really important stakeholders
30:39
Speaker 5: rally around Harris. She has important support from important constituencies
30:43
Speaker 5: in the Democratic Party, and so it would take a
30:46
Speaker 5: lot for somebody to dislodge her from that perch. And
30:51
Speaker 5: somebody's going to have to come in with a pretty
30:53
Speaker 5: aggressive campaign and a lot of money pretty soon to
30:56
Speaker 5: signal that this is going to be an open process.
30:59
Speaker 5: Otherwise I would expect Democrats to really circle the dragons
31:03
Speaker 5: around Harris.
31:04
Speaker 4: Assuming Harris gets the nomination, what is the process for
31:08
Speaker 4: Harris to choose her running mate and how much you
31:10
Speaker 4: try to leverage that decision to bring in additional funding.
31:14
Speaker 5: We saw this on the Republican side just this past
31:17
Speaker 5: week when Donald Trump chose jd Vance as his running mate,
31:22
Speaker 5: and he did so really at almost a last possible
31:25
Speaker 5: moment before the roll call even happened. So there is
31:28
Speaker 5: time for that to happen. We might expect for Harris
31:31
Speaker 5: to wait until close to the convention when it's cleared
31:34
Speaker 5: that she has the votes, although she could come up
31:36
Speaker 5: with a ticket earlier than that to kind of try
31:39
Speaker 5: to figure out how to unify the party, maybe pick
31:42
Speaker 5: somebody from a different wing of the party, maybe a governor.
31:45
Speaker 5: Andy Basheer, the governor of Kentucky's name has come up.
31:48
Speaker 5: The governors from Michigan and Maryland and Pennsylvania and California,
31:54
Speaker 5: all of whom could be potential running mates. One potential
31:59
Speaker 5: path would be to let as a running mate somebody
32:02
Speaker 5: who is already independently wealthy and can write the campaign
32:06
Speaker 5: a big check. You can self fund your campaign, it's
32:09
Speaker 5: not subject to limits. And one name that could come
32:13
Speaker 5: into play in that kind of a scenario as JB. Pritzker,
32:15
Speaker 5: the governor of Illinois, who is independently wealthy, is a
32:19
Speaker 5: billionaire inherited a lot of money from his family's hotel
32:23
Speaker 5: and real estate empire, worked in venture capital, and was
32:27
Speaker 5: very influential in getting the convention to come to Chicago
32:30
Speaker 5: in his home state by helping to support that effort monetarially,
32:35
Speaker 5: and could do the same if he were on the ticket.
32:38
Speaker 4: For more on the political fallout from Biden's decision, the
32:41
Speaker 4: market reaction and the next steps for the Harris campaign.
32:45
Speaker 4: Head to Bloomberg dot com. Thanks for listening to The
32:50
Speaker 4: Big Tig podcast from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder. This
32:54
Speaker 4: episode was produced by Julia Press. It was mixed by
32:57
Speaker 4: Alex Zugera and fact checked by Adriana Tapia. Naomi Shaven
33:01
Speaker 4: is a senior producer and edited this episode. Our senior
33:03
Speaker 4: editor is Elizabeth Ponso. Nicole beamsterbor is our executive producer,
33:08
Speaker 4: and Stage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Please follow
33:11
Speaker 4: and review The Big Take wherever you listen to podcasts.