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Democrats unite around Kamala Harris at Democratic National Convention
FRANCE 24 English
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8/20/2024
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00:00
We can now bring in Todd Belt, professor and director of political management at George
00:05
Washington University. Thank you very much for speaking to us here on France 24. Now,
00:09
this was a bittersweet moment for Joe Biden, wasn't it? Because on one hand,
00:13
his administration had many successes, but he himself was an ineffective messenger,
00:19
and his age got the better of him. Well, thanks for having me on again. It's great to be with you.
00:24
You're absolutely right. Joe Biden was a very successful president. By most measures,
00:28
he passed four landmark bills when he was president. Well, he still is president. And
00:36
two of them were highly bipartisan. I don't think he gets enough recognition for that.
00:41
But, you know, his age really caught up with him. You see him going back and forth. The
00:46
State of the Union address, he was very strong and on message. But the debate, he really faltered.
00:51
Last night, he was better, but there were a couple of slip ups. And you could tell the age was still
00:57
sort of getting to him, even though he did perform pretty well. It was really time for
01:02
that handoff of the baton. As he said, he saw himself as a bridge to the future. But I don't
01:07
think he would have run again if Trump were not running. I think he thinks Trump is a mortal
01:12
threat. I think all of the Democrats made that clear last night. And that's going to be the
01:16
message going forward, as well as trying to get people to know and understand who Kamala Harris
01:22
is and what she stands for. Let's talk about Kamala Harris for a second, because before Biden
01:26
dropped out of the race, pundits on U.S. television channels said putting Kamala Harris
01:31
on the ticket would be a grave mistake. I know she hasn't given many interviews or any interviews
01:37
since she took on that mantle, but her positioning herself as a prosecutor taking on the felon seems
01:44
to have resonated. It really has. I think a lot of this so far, at least the honeymoon period
01:50
that we're having with the voters, particularly young voters and voters of color, that's where
01:55
we've seen the biggest shift and that's where Biden was losing the most, are really excited
02:01
about her. I don't know that it's necessarily the prosecutor thing, but they're certainly leaning
02:05
into that because there are two major weaknesses that Kamala Harris has, and that is immigration
02:11
and crime. They can sort of thwart that by talking about the fact that she was a prosecutor and play
02:17
that up. And they're putting together a bunch of messages on immigration. That's the other real
02:23
weak Achilles heel that she has that they're going to try to get out in front of and message on.
02:29
What about Donald Trump? Because when it was him against Joe Biden, you know, this election was his
02:34
to lose. But things have changed over the past month. Besides him trying to mispronounce Kamala
02:40
Harris's name, questioning her identity, it seems like he's faltering. Absolutely. This has really
02:48
put Donald Trump back on his heels. He's in a place where he never expected to be coming out
02:52
of the Republican convention. They had all the signs made, they had all the ads made, and it was
02:57
just time to unroll it and cruise to victory. But now Donald Trump, like I said, he doesn't know
03:02
exactly how to combat Harris and Waltz, and he's trying to find a way and nothing's really working
03:10
so far. It probably didn't help him that after he picked J.D. Vance, he sent Vance around to the
03:15
swing states and stayed in Mar-a-Lago. He probably should have been out there and trying to get some
03:20
of that shine, the media glare back on him. He's trying to do it now with the counter-programming,
03:25
but that's a hard thing to do with all the media in Chicago. Exactly. And we also have, you know,
03:31
the Democrats who have abortion as their rallying cry, essentially, in this election. And then you
03:38
have J.D. Vance, his vice presidential pick, who's going after a single woman who don't have children.
03:45
It seems like they're not trying to get women on board, just alienating them further.
03:50
It really seems that way. I mean, some of the things that J.D. Vance has said about women
03:55
have really come back to haunt him. And it's just, you know, Donald Trump took credit for
04:01
the abortion overturning of Roe v. Wade with the three justices he appointed. Now he wants to have
04:07
it both ways. He wants to say, leave it up to the states. But we're seeing the states move in ways
04:12
that are not very popular, including even moving into in vitro fertilization. And both Trump and
04:19
Vance are having a really difficult time messaging on this. But Trump's never really been one to try
04:24
to expand his coalition too much. He just, Trump is Trump and he will continue doing what he does.
04:30
I don't think that's going to work very well with him this time. I know we just only had one day of
04:34
the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, but it seems that the Democrats are positioning
04:38
this election as one of hope, looking to the future to what America can be the best of America.
04:46
And it seems that Donald Trump is, it's versus hope and a very dark reality. Is that a fair
04:52
assessment? I think that's a real fair assessment. I think you can also throw the Biden campaign in
04:56
there because when it was Biden and Trump, they were just attacking one another and how bad
05:01
everything was under each other's administration. Now you have someone who's trying to disentangle
05:06
herself from the Biden administration, but taking the good and leaving the bad, that's
05:11
Kamala Harris, of course. And they're trying to turn the page. They're trying to give people
05:16
something to vote for and not just against. After all, elections are about the future
05:21
and you can't beat something with nothing. Exactly. And she has the age clearly on her side.
05:26
And she's the younger candidate in this race. Todd Belft, we're going to have to leave it there.
05:30
Thank you very much for joining us on the program today. Thank you. Great to be with you.
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