290. JOE BIDEN DROPS OUT

What happens next as Joe Biden withdraws from the 2024 US presidential race? Should the Democrats have an open convention? Would Kamala Harris be able to take on Donald Trump? Rory and Alastair and joined by Katty Kay and Anthony Scaramucci in today’s episode as they answer all these questions and more. TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. TRIP FIRST 100 DAYS TOUR: To buy tickets for our October Election Tour, just head to www.therestispolitics.com 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/restispolitics It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Video Editor: Teo Ayodeji-Ansell Social Producer: Jess Kidson Assistant Producer: India Dunkley Producer: Fiona Douglas + Nicole Maslen Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

  And I must thank NordVPN because on my Grand European Tour with Fiona, I was away from the Hawthorns for West Bromwich against Burnley, but I managed to watch it. There you go.

• 0:19Rory Stewart?

  I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Creve, and of course, the thing flashed up, saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN. It was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're in all those cafes and things, which is actually genuinely, people can do all kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying if you don't have a virtual private network when you're sitting in that Starbucks.

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think, are you not really sort of proud of me that I managed to do this? Or should I say Fiona managed to do this?

• 0:49Rory Stewart?

  I'm incredibly proud of you. That's a tech transformation. So to get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com/restispolitics. That's nordvpn.com/restispolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

• 1:43Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome to an emergency episode of The Rest is Politics with The Rest is Politics US. That's me in France. Rory Stewart is there in New Jersey. And Anthony Scaramucci is in Long Island. And we're hoping that at some point, Katty Kay will join us as well. And the reason we're having this podcast is the, I'm sure there's barely anybody that will be... Anybody who's interested in politics anywhere in the world will know by now that Joe Biden has announced he is not standing as the Democrat candidate in the November five presidential election. He has announced that though he's going to stay on as president, he will not be standing in the election. He is throwing his weight behind his vice president Kamala Harris.

• 2:25Alastair Campbell?

  Other big names have come in straight behind her, including the Clintons, including some of the big PACs, the big sort of donors, but also interestingly, others who are sort of suggesting, maybe we need to take a bit of time.

• 2:38Rory Stewart?

  Okay, so just take, take the story back one, one step. I think the first thing is to understand what an amazing momentous thing this is to get Joe Biden to step down at all. So obviously the pressure's been building up, but he has been very, very resistant and in particular, a very tight circle around him, including people like Ron Klain, who've been with him on the Judiciary Committee since the early 1990s, holding out to try to keep him in place. And finally that dam broke and he agreed to step down. Now we are facing a big choice, which is, is there a coronation of Kamala Harris or do we go to an open convention? And an open convention is something the Democratic Party hasn't done for a long time. That basically means that the different delegates would be able to vote and they would be

• 3:23Rory Stewart?

  lobbied by the different candidates as opposed to it happening through a primary process. And there is a huge divide, it seems already, within the Democratic Party on this. It seems that President Biden and the Clintons are trying very strongly to say it must be Kamala Harris. But the latest tweet from President Obama, just came out a few minutes ago, implies that he is more in favor of going to an open convention process, which would allow many other people to come in and other people to compete. And the question that we're facing is legitimacy firstly, what makes you a more legitimate candidate? Is it being crowned or is it coming in having beaten the other candidates in the race?

• 4:05Rory Stewart?

  What is it that shows in your polling, are you the person that's likely to win if you get selected? And finally, this question of the unity of the Democratic Party. Are you going to take the risk of dividing the party? So unity, legitimacy polling, over to Anthony.

• 4:18Anthony Scaramucci?

  So, you know, listen, this is be somewhat controversial for people, and I apologize, but there's identity politics at play in the Democratic Party, and so they wanted to, needed to pick an African American woman to be on the ticket. First African American woman, first woman vice president. And what's interesting is that the first African American president is not endorsing her. And so I think there's a little bit of a tug of war going on between identity politics and performance politics. So Barack Obama is tipping his cards here. He's telling people he doesn't think the black woman can beat the very white or very orange Donald Trump. And so the cards have been tipped by Obama. But I'll make a few predictions here.

• 5:02Anthony Scaramucci?

  I'll be bold to say that she gets that nomination. The Clintons have galvanized around her. They own a big piece of that party. And I think she is way more formidable. I just want to be on record saying this to you guys. I traveled with her to Israel in November of 2017. Her and Doug were on the trip with me. And she's way more impressive and way more formidable than the right wing media has boxed her and social media in terms of clicking, you know, chopping her up and making her look like she's laughing all the time and this sort of thing. Trust me, she's got a good record, and she's got a lot of energy, and she's not going to be malaproping like Donald Trump or Joe Biden.

• 5:41Alastair Campbell?

  There's a couple of things I think worth saying about Kamala Harris. I don't know if you saw Rory and Anthony, I reposted on social media, and a campaign video suddenly emerged this afternoon. And it wasn't totally clear who was posting it, but it was a film of how Kamala Harris would take on Trump. And it's a really, really good piece of work. It sort of says, he's this, she's this, he's this, she's this. And I reposted it and just part of me thought, I wonder if something is going on. And then if you think about what's happened since Joe Biden made the announcement, first of all, he's come out very loud and strong for her. Other big, big players in the Democrat family have come out big and strong for her. And I agree with you.

• 6:25Alastair Campbell?

  I think she is somebody who has maybe not been as high profile and visible as some vice presidents have, because Joe Biden perhaps hasn't wanted her to be. But I think if she gets the limelight, I think she'll use it pretty well. And don't forget overnight, the age thing as a handicap for the Democrats has gone. It is now Trump who has the age problem, Rory.

• 6:45Rory Stewart?

  Yes, so let's stick with Kamala Harris maybe for a moment before we get on to the other possibilities, the other candidates that might come through and what might happen in this convention. So just a quick reminder for listeners on Kamala Harris. She's a very, very unusual candidate. She's a candidate from California, and that's something that people are going to talk about a great deal because that's not a swing state. She's not bringing Michigan, she's not bringing Pennsylvania with her. She's an African American woman, and I remember Condoleezza Rice once making a joke saying, the United States will elect an African American, but they'll never elect a woman. So there's going to be some questions around that. She's somebody who was a professional attorney. So she graduated from law school in 1990.

• 7:29Rory Stewart?

  She then spent a good 12 years working as a deputy DA and then assistant DA, first in a county in California, then in San Francisco, where she would have spent a lot of that 10, 12 years actually in the courts prosecuting. And then she went up to these more senior positions, so district attorney San Francisco, and then attorney general in California, which is where she wouldn't have been appearing in court, but she would have been managing these legal cases. The advantage it gives her is that she ought to be able to run on her record on prosecution.

• 8:02Rory Stewart?

  So she, but it was a real problem for her when she was running for the nomination. So remember when she ran in, in 2019, 2020, this was the time of George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, defund the police. And her record as somebody who was seen as being relatively tough on crime, her positions on the death penalty and other things, meant that actually a lot of the left wing progressive Democrats distanced themselves from her. She wasn't able to use her record. She will now be in a better position to use her record, but, and I'd love to hear Anthony's view on that, presumably the Republicans will then try to, as it were, swift base her by pointing to bits of her record as a prosecutor, which will make her look weak on crime. Anthony?

• 8:43Anthony Scaramucci?

  So is it, it's a brilliant assessment by Rory because she's actually not weak on crime, but remember the, the Democrats are ambivalent about crime now. And so she's had to hide some of her prosecutorial record, but she went after people very hard. Remember Joe Biden signed a very tough, very stringent, or he supported at least a crime bill in the mid 90s, which led to a lot of jail sentences for first time offenders and for drug users. She was part of that bandwagon. Her and I are contemporaries, we're exactly the same age. So she's ambivalent now. She doesn't know whether to say I'm a tough prosecutor or I'm not a tough prosecutor because she's got to deal with the woke left. But I think, I don't, I think all of that's notwithstanding.

• 9:27Anthony Scaramucci?

  I'm going to, I'm going to say right here, Pete Buttigieg, and you have an African American woman at the top and you have a outwardly gay man who's married with children on the ticket and one of the most articulate, brightest people in the Republican, I'm sorry, in the Democratic Party, look out because if the Democrats really want to break out and be bold, and I'll just submit to both of you guys, living in this country, when the Democratic Party is bold, Barack Obama against a war veteran, Bill Clinton, 46 years old, against a World War II veteran, when they're bold, they win.

• 10:05Alastair Campbell?

  Pete Buttigieg did an absolutely brilliant interview at the weekend with that guy Mayer. Well, I can't remember what channel it was on, but we'll put it in the show notes. It was absolutely brilliant.

• 10:15Rory Stewart?

  HBO.

• 10:16Alastair Campbell?

  And I agree with you. I think that, that's right. And I, I think this is an opportunity. I think it's a huge opportunity because what we've seen, Rory and I said this on our podcast last week, Anthony, that during the whole process for the last, really for the last couple of years now, nothing much has moved in the American presidential election. These two guys, Biden and Trump are so well known. What happened last weekend with the attempted assassination was a bit of a game changer. You saw that in the outcome of the, of the Republican convention and the way they were pulled together, the sort of eulogies that were being, you know, the, the adoration of Trump and so forth. The only game changer I think the Democrats had left was this change.

• 10:58Alastair Campbell?

  And I, where I, I think that because Kamala, Kamala Harris's poll ratings are not, not being that great, which is the case of virtually every serving politician on the planet right now. But I agree. I think the sort of profile she now gets can be a big advantage to the Democrats for all sorts of reasons. And this point about being a prosecutor, I think she is going to be better placed to prosecute Trump over, for example, his record, his views on abortion, over his links to Project 2025, stuff that frankly, the, the Democrats have not really been able to get up in lights in the way that they want to. Rory?

• 11:32Rory Stewart?

  Let, let's assume it's overwhelmingly likely at the moment that Kamala Harris comes through as the candidate. But let, let me just play devil's advocate for a second and just point to a couple of things that might upset that. So the case for why Kamala Harris could make it is that big heavyweight Democrats are behind her, as we've seen. And other bits, the Democratic Black Caucus, which is quite powerful in Congress and Senate, will be behind her. But in the end, this is a formally open convention. They can't actually tell people how to vote. So there will be over 3,000 delegates. The next question is who will run against her? Many people will say that if you're Gretchen Whitner or your Governor Shapiro from Pennsylvania,

• 12:14Rory Stewart?

  you may not want to run against her because you may think you're going to have a better shot next time. But, but Alistair, Anthony, as we all know.

• 12:24Rory Stewart?

  Politicians don't always think like that. They will worry that over the next four years, some new person will emerge and this is their one shot and they may not get another chance again. They can't be that confident that if they sit it out this time and they'll have people in their families saying, you've got a responsibility, you've got to run, you've got to take on Trump. So I think it's likely that we're underestimating because we haven't seen this since the 1950s, how this worked. It reminds me a little bit of what happens in these conservative leadership runoffs in Britain. They will now have little teams, they'll have their websites ready to go, they'll have their own polling and they'll be reaching out to all these delegates now, testing the water, seeing whether they

• 13:01Anthony Scaramucci?

  And donors.

• 13:02Rory Stewart?

  And testing out donors. And then the final thing, and then I'll hand over to Anthony, the final thing that will matter is that the way the voting's done. Traditionally, this is done that if you don't clear 50% in the first round, you go to subsequent ballots. And the problem for that, for Kamala Harris, is if she loses momentum after the first ballot, we just interviewed a guy called David Davis, who had this problem in the conservative leadership in Britain. If the preferred candidate loses momentum after the first ballot and somebody else is rising fast, you can then stumble as you go into the second and the third rounds and the super delegates then get involved and things can change. So I wouldn't say it's 100% yet for Kamala, although I agree with you, it is very likely. Back to you, Anthony.

• 13:42Anthony Scaramucci?

  Okay, so let me just say a couple of things. And someone's going to push very hard at Barack Obama. Someone's on the phone with him right now saying, so you don't believe in your mission, you think your country's a racist sexist country, I thought your mission was to make that better. How could you not stand with Kamala Harris, who is the obvious number two? And then two questions for Kamala Harris. Madam Vice President, should the President, should President Biden step down? Is his health and cognition impaired enough where he should step down? And follow up question, Madam Vice President, when did you know about the President's health and wellness? Were you lying to the American people? And if you were, how long were you lying to the American people for? She's got some

• 14:27Anthony Scaramucci?

  tough questions that she's got to answer to get her through this right now.

• 14:32Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, but to Anthony, the first one's easy.

• 14:35Alastair Campbell?

  I think they're both quite easy. Yes, he should stay as president. He's elected for a full term. He's going to serve a full term. He could have served the second term. He could have fought the campaign, but he's decided to put country before party. He's going to go. And by the way, you Republicans, only yesterday you were saying how awful it was that people were trying to ask him to leave. And the second point about when she knew, people have been able to see that he's admitted he's had one or two issues, but he's now made this decision. I don't think they're very, very difficult. I think she moves on from them pretty quickly.

• 15:07Speaker 03

  Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all keep the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 15:17Speaker 04

  Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

• 15:23Speaker 05

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You're stalled, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 15:28Speaker 04

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 15:31Speaker 05

  I'm not the first then.

• 15:32Speaker 04

  Digger, see the trailer online, only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R, under 17, not a minute without parent.

• 15:44Alastair Campbell?

  I'm delighted to say that Katty Kay has been able to join us. Yeah, I don't know if you've been able to hear what we've said so far. We've kind of covered our reaction. We've covered some of the things that might happen. But I guess a direct question for you, if I can. If you were minded to challenge Kamala Harris, if you were a Gavin Newsom, if you were a Whitmer, how would you go about that now? And how much time realistically do you have?

• 16:09Katty Kay?

  I think it's really difficult now that you've got, you know, the Congressional Black Caucus, other senior members of the Democratic Party. I mean, we have to wait, you know, to hear from Barack Obama on this, but and the Clintons coming out, the machinery is going to make it hard because what we've been hearing over the last week is that you've got large chunks of the Democratic base, obviously African American voters, voters of color. You've got female voters who are. Going to say that if Kamala Harris is pushed aside, then that's almost a discredit to themselves that they're going to feel that that they have not been taken seriously. And since you have delegates and you were talking about the first and second round of the ballot process, and what I've been hearing is that she wins on the first round of

• 16:54Katty Kay?

  the ballots anyway, because you've got a more liberal ballot delegate base in Chicago than you might have in the population in general. And that may not reflect November, but it might reflect the Democratic delegate base in Chicago. I think it's going to be very hard for Newsom or Whitmer to challenge her. I mean, their best bet is to say, look, we'll be, you know, the vice presidential pick. We know that she's been vetting people. I've been hearing from the White House, from aides at the White House, that she's been already vetting people for a vice presidential pick. I've heard the names Beshear, Cooper, and Evers. If you wanted a shot at power, I guess you would go for the vice president. But don't you think, Antony, it's hard to see how she gets booted out if that's what the Democratic machinery now wants

• 17:38Katty Kay?

  in this short timeframe? I mean, it's just the logistics of mounting a primary between now and Chicago are hard.

• 17:45Anthony Scaramucci?

  So, just quickly, Rory, the sources that I had when we did that first podcast, Catty, describing Kamala Harris getting the nod and him potentially even resigning the presidency to allow her to be the first woman president, that very same source is telling me that this is more or less a fait accompli. So the question I have, I don't understand where Barack Obama is coming from on this. I'm not exactly sure why he didn't endorse her in a domino effect alongside of Biden and Clinton, which would have helped her. So that's a question I don't understand the answer to.

• 18:21Rory Stewart?

  Well, let me try to play devil's advocate for a second, because I think one of the things that's throwing everybody's off balance is we haven't had a formally open convention like this. It's not the way that US politics works. We're used to people coming through the primary process. In the end, this is still just over 3,000 delegates and they get to vote as they choose. They don't get to be told who to, what to do. And the Democratic Party is not what it was. When we talk about the Democratic Party, it's much weaker than it was historically. It's much less clear that people control it. So yes, the Clintons are big names, yes, Obama's big names, yes, some of the donors are big names. But I was, I've just spent the weekend with a number of Democratic congresspeople and a couple of senators. And they were very frank about the fact that when you say to them, what is the Democratic Party?

• 19:06Rory Stewart?

  Who is the Democratic Party? Is it the Black Caucus? Is it you guys, the congress and senators? Is it the officials? Is it the donors? Their answer tends to be, we're not quite sure. The party feels very weak. We're not very used to this. We don't really know how this operates. It's not like the way the Labour or the Conservative Party operates, where they've done this stuff millions of times. So there's a lot of uncertainty here. And just, just one more push at this. I think what Obama may be doing, and we don't know, he may change his mind. And as, as Anthony says, presumably a lot of people shouting at him. But I guess his position is that even if Kamala Harris comes through this, it's better for her legitimacy that she comes through this in an open contest where she proves she can defeat the other candidates rather than being crowned.

• 19:48Rory Stewart?

  And there's a hope, of course, in the back of everybody's mind, this great heroic moment where Abraham Lincoln famously came through in the Republican Convention, out of nowhere, came through, won over the crowd and led something great. And, and I, I suppose the hope there would be that you're going to have a candidate who brings the state that matters. You're going to have a candidate who can deliver Michigan for you or deliver Pennsylvania for you, rather than a candidate who delivers California, which you don't need.

• 20:12Alastair Campbell?

  Rory, it was interesting in Kamala Harris, the, the very few words that she's put out so far. She used this phrase about how she's going to earn and win the nomination. And I must admit, one of the things that crossed my mind, I think if, if she was confident... And I think if she was really smart, she'd actually set in train a process that led to the nomination, which would be a contest. Now, that may be naive. But I kind of agree with you that maybe what Obama was doing was saying that this is better done, even though we haven't got much time, if somebody emerges through a contest. And don't forget, the other thing, Trump has said to CNN, apparently, that he's really happy, he thinks Kamala Harris

• 20:54Alastair Campbell?

  will be an easier opponent than Joe Biden. That sounds to me like his usual bluster. This is a genuine game-changing moment, where the dynamic of the entire campaign changes. Katya, you want to come in?

• 21:05Katty Kay?

  Yeah, so I mean, I've been texting, as I was on the taxi, back to where I am, texting people in Trump world. And that's exactly, what you're saying, Alistair, is exactly the talking points that they're putting out. I mean, these are pretty smart people that I tend to get a fairly good steer from. Text I got was, now we beat Kamala, it's the same record. And then I asked, is it any harder to beat Kamala than to beat Biden? And he says, no, the thing is, California is such a polarizing state for lots of people in the country. Even the image of California is a polarizing state, but they describe her specifically as being beyond liberal, dangerously liberal. So that's the message that they're going to run on with Kamala Harris. Now, let's see, because this does

• 21:49Katty Kay?

  give, the risk with Biden, obviously, was that the party, that it was a stasis, and that the party felt it had no chance of winning. This does give them, I've had a couple of donors texting me already this evening, saying, we can win with Kamala Harris, and the money will start coming back again. One of them pointed out that Vance is weak, and that they think that that was a weak pick for Trump, the very issue that they can run with on Kamala Harris, the issue of abortion, that Joe Biden had this kind of strange difficulty with. He just didn't like saying the word. This is something Kamala Harris is instantly going to revive that as an issue. Vance has been very tough on abortion, not wanting abortion rights, even in the case of rape or incest, only in the case of the life of

• 22:34Katty Kay?

  the mother. He suggested that women in abusive marriages should, would have been happier staying in those marriages than getting out of those marriages. I'm just giving you some of where the Democratic Party feel they can run against Vance. And I think Kamala Harris being at the top of the ticket as a woman elevates those issues even higher. So I think the donors, the donors will start coming back again quite quickly into the Democratic Party, so it gives them this shot. Now, I don't know, I can't tell you whether Kamala Harris is the person that can beat Donald Trump or not in November, but I do think that it gives them a shot of energy and it gives them a shot of money coming back into the party, which is important, Alistair.

• 23:10Alastair Campbell?

  Anthony, just on this fundraising stuff, you've done a lot of fundraising in your time. The fact, if I've given money to the Biden-Harris campaign, that's who I've given that money to. Are there legal issues related to the funds that you give over? If Biden and Harris were no longer involved, if let's say Gavin Newsom did mount a challenge and he became the candidate, does that money have to be, as it were, re-raised?

• 23:34Anthony Scaramucci?

  So I've looked into this very carefully now with several election attorneys. Yes is the answer. That money could be deployed into a political action committee. Unfortunately, political action committees have to spend higher rack rates for advertising. With her at the top of the ticket, it just goes into the general election campaign. I had breakfast this morning with two very prominent New York Democratic fundraisers. We're expecting this to happen today, and we're told by many people, we need you to lock and load on more money once the nomination is there, and they're ready to go, as is many others. I just want

• 24:14Anthony Scaramucci?

  to make two very quick points. She has been under a shroud, okay? She, it's been very difficult for her to break out and show the full form of her personality. So look out now that she's going to be able to break out of that shroud. She got to where she is for a reason. And then the second thing is she has a tireless amount of energy, and you guys know politicians perhaps better than me, but she has a tireless amount of ambition too. So I would not underestimate her, and she's benefiting from low expectations, guys, which you know helps politicians.

• 24:50Rory Stewart?

  Quick one for me.

• 24:51Alastair Campbell?

  Rory, and then Cathy.

• 24:53Rory Stewart?

  So, watch out for immigration being a problem for her. She was given the task of dealing with immigration as VP, and of course, immigration has not been going well for Biden, at least from the point of view of Republican voters. But the polls are still winnable for her. It still can be done. These polls are tight. I mean, remember, 2016, people were predicting confidently that Trump wouldn't win, and he ended up winning. We still don't know what's going to happen with turnout. And the whole turnout calculations are going to be very, very different with a new candidate. There will have been a lot of people who would have preferred sitting on the couch to going to the polls when they had this aged two candidates in place. That may change now, for better or for worse, and that will change a lot of the polling.

• 25:37Rory Stewart?

  It seems to me it's doable. It's within the margin of error. Trump is still in the lead. But the great thing, and Alistair, I'd love to, just after we hear from Cathy, love to hear from you about this. There seems to be a fantastic opportunity to change the narrative. You take the attention away from Trump and his assassination and make it about this exciting process of generating a new candidate. Cathy?

• 25:57Katty Kay?

  Yeah, I mean, they're going to dominate the news cycle, as they are doing tonight. Here we all are on Sunday night. They're going to dominate the news cycle with this for the next few weeks, way beyond the convention. A couple of things on immigration. One, she was given a kind of poison chalice. There's not a lot of love lost between the West Wing and the Vice President's office in this administration. I've heard a lot of grumbling that the White House didn't set her up to succeed. And that we, and as Anthony was saying, we haven't necessarily seen her for full capability. I mean, I've always been surprised by the degree to which people, even in the kind of center, old-style Republican, country club Republican bit of the party, will say they really hate Kamala Harris and that she's dangerously liberal and that, you know, she's a danger to the country.

• 26:40Katty Kay?

  Some of that is that she hasn't had a chance really to do anything that was going to succeed. I'm just thinking way out of the kind of box here. But look, you've just had a new female president elected in Mexico. One of the reasons we've had a 40% decrease in the number of migrants crossing the border in the last few months is because the Mexican government decided to not have them come across the border. There was always a fear in the Democratic Party, in the Biden campaign, that the new president, Claudia Scheinbaum, might start playing politics with migration and boost the numbers of migrants coming into America in October, which would have made Migration, a massive issue, even more of a big issue in the campaign. Let's see, I don't know that Claudia Scheinbaum is going to have a particular love for Kamala Harris,

• 27:22Katty Kay?

  but it's going to be interesting, two women, one already president, another running for president in North America. So let's see where that relationship goes. I agree with Antony that we haven't really seen her, her political capabilities, partly because she was just, you know, whether it came to staffing, whether it came to immigration. I know somebody that has worked, that works in the vice president's office, who told me there was a day where she had good press around Gaza. She was one of the first to come out and say that there should be a question about war crimes. And the next day, there was a call from the president's office saying, we don't want the vice president getting out far out on this and getting this kind of good publicity. So it's possible that she, like you say, Antony, she's been kind of in a shroud. And let's see how she can, you know, how she actually manages to perform.

• 28:07Alastair Campbell?

  Well, the point of the narrative, I think, is, is absolutely crucial because Trump, it seems to me, has been getting away with his usual stuff. The fact that nobody talked about his lies in the debate, they all talked about how ill Biden looked and how much he stumbled. The fact that he then had the assassination attempt and all this sort of, the kind of cult stuff around his ear and he's just been utterly dominant of the agenda. And meanwhile, all the talk has been about Biden being too old to run. That is a boil that has grown and grown and grown, it's now lanced. The story now is can the Democrats beat Trump and Vance? I agree with Kathy, I think Vance is a, is an interesting pick for all sorts of reasons,

• 28:49Alastair Campbell?

  but I'm not convinced that he, that he helps Trump in the way that maybe he thinks it does. And maybe that's something we can talk about another time. But I think that for now, if you go through my mantra about campaigning, what have we done, what have we got to do, and what is the threat if we lose? In all of those, I think Kamala Harris is a good story to tell. She can tell the Biden record better than Biden can, because it's not so boastful if she's doing it. She then has to have a big plan for the future, which can be different to what Biden stands for. And then she has to represent, you know, set out what the risk is to America if Trump Vance wins. And that third part is so easy, but he needs new drive, new energy and a new team, I think will help.

• 29:28Rory Stewart?

  Can I just be, just to continue to be the grumpy devil's advocate here?

• 29:34Rory Stewart?

  There's a real problem with Kamala Harris. And I think they probably would have a better shot. Running Gretchen Whitmer or Josh Shapiro. Now, the reason why it's going to be problematic is all the internal Democratic Party politics. And potentially, there may be identity politics issues, too. I mean, people worry that, you know, a Jewish candidate or a female candidate problematic as well. But there's no doubt that Michigan and Pennsylvania are the states that really matter. And if you have a presidential candidate coming from those states, you'll bring those states over with you. I think that Kamala Harris is running against a really nasty headwind. I think there are a lot of people who don't want a black woman, I'm afraid, to be elected in the US.

• 30:16Rory Stewart?

  I think her record has not been great since she's been a senator, even if it was great when she was a prosecutor. And I think the Democrats are at risk here. I think there may be a risk that in order to placate bits of the internal party, they're going to go ahead with somebody who's not going to win. I think they would be better being brave, going for a full open primary. And that's where I think, if that's Obama's instincts, I'm with him.

• 30:42Alastair Campbell?

  Anthony, we've heard what the Trump team are saying. But what do you think they're actually thinking genuinely about what's happened today?

• 30:50Anthony Scaramucci?

  So I think they're super worried about it. I think the insiders in that campaign were very upset with Vance's speech, the vice presidential nomination speech. Trump didn't like the speech, you could tell from his body language. You know, Trump doesn't like smart people. He particularly doesn't like people that could potentially outshine him. And the speech was more presidential than it was vice presidential. And I predict that Trump will try to figure out a way to fire the guy, which of course is impossible if they win. But I, you know, Catty just texted me something, what am I thinking? And I'm going to answer it right here on the air. If she gets this nomination and she shows up as Condoleezza Rice, she's going to win the election. If she shows up as Vice President Kamala Harris over the last three and a half years,

• 31:35Anthony Scaramucci?

  she's going to get trounced. She's going to speak in these incoherent word salads, and she's going to lose by a landslide. But if she shows up, and she shows up as capable as I know she is, unguarded and unintimidated, she's going to have a historic win. And because, you know, the universe is set up for Trump to lose to a black woman, okay? I know what Rory's saying, and I appreciate that. Stuff like this happens.

• 32:02Katty Kay?

  I think that Condoleezza Rice, I've always thought that a black Republican woman was probably going to have a better chance than a black Democratic woman of being the first president of the United States who was black and female. And Condoleezza Rice is probably the right image. I don't think Kamala Harris is going to be Condoleezza Rice. I mean, she's not, she hasn't got those hawkish national security credentials for a start that Condoleezza Rice has. She's not a conservative. She is a liberal. So to kind of change her spots entirely would be difficult. To Rory's point about an open convention, the thinking on the Democratic side, from what I'm hearing, you know, going through my messages that are coming in this evening, is that even if we had an open convention, a kind of totally open convention now, the

• 32:44Katty Kay?

  chances are, given the delegate base, heavily labor, heavily black, heavily Latino, disproportionately so compared to the rest of the American population, she'd win anyway on the first ballot. So why go through the process of knocking her down? I mean, speed is of the essence here. If Joe Biden had dropped out in March, we'd be having a very different conversation. If he dropped out last summer, we'd be having a very different conversation. The Democrats have to get their act together, and they have to get their act together really fast. And they can't afford for her to be knocked down. So the other thing I think that's important is that because the VP selection now is what the real race is going to be about, whether it is Shapiro or somebody else, Andy Beshear from Kentucky, those people are going to keep their powder dry at the moment. They're either thinking about 2028 and their own chances in 2028,

• 33:28Katty Kay?

  or they're thinking that they might have a chance of being VP.

• 33:32Rory Stewart?

  So I think this comes down to this question of legitimacy. And there are two types of, sorry, it's a pompous word, but what is the, what is the basis on which she's claiming to be the candidate?

• 33:46Rory Stewart?

  Is she going to say, well, I was on Biden's ticket through the primary process? And therefore I was voted for by the great American people through the primary process? Or is she going to say, I won through an open convention where I was prepared to challenge other people and I got a new boost in the arm because I was elected by these delegates? The problem with coronations that we've seen certainly in Britain where we have similar problems is that people like Theresa May, who make it through these things unopposed, then face a problem of people saying, there wasn't a proper competition, we didn't properly get behind you. So I think Cathy's right, but it's a fine balance, right? There's the question of the unity of the party, there's a question of how much time you've got, and there's a question of what gives you that legitimacy, what gives you

• 34:31Rory Stewart?

  the support base and the boost to go forward. Final thing on Kamala Harris, and I think I should probably stop talking because you guys know much more about her than me, but she's, her background is as an attorney. She doesn't know much about foreign policy, she doesn't know much about trade, she's not somebody who was a big glad-handing politician, she wasn't in the Senate very long, in fact, she was barely in the Senate before she was becoming Vice President. She's a very interesting candidate. When she was in the Senate, what she was good at was the kind of prosecutorial stuff. She was good at cross-examining people because that's her background, she's a lawyer, like Anthony, right? But the question is, is she going to be able to take the big reach to become somebody who can become a better retail politician?

• 35:13Rory Stewart?

  And can she become someone who can reach into areas that go well beyond her background, which was her background for 20, 30 years? I mean, she's very unusual, the amount of time she's spent in that specialist world. Okay, over to you guys.

• 35:24Alastair Campbell?

  Cathy, just before you and Anthony answer that, can I add to that? I've been listening to, on the drive down through France, we've been listening to J.D. Vance's book, Hillbilly Elegy, and which is very interesting to read, but it strikes me that when he gets to his assessment of why his part of the world turned from Democrat to Republican, he understates the racism that was attached to the dismissal of Obama as President, and probably the sexism that was, the misogyny that was damaging to Hillary. So I suppose my question is, can Kamala Harris win and move the dial in those states, those swing states where it's moved backwards against Joe Biden?

• 36:09Alastair Campbell?

  Can she, can she drag it back?

• 36:13Anthony Scaramucci?

  I don't know the answer to that, so I'm not gonna even pretend to know the answer to that, but you said something earlier that I want to address. It's not that I'm deflecting the question, I would just rather be honest with our viewers and listeners, but I honestly don't know the answer. What I do know is that she's a woman that can bring out the vote of other women. What I do know is Rory is correct, that party is weaker, but let me tell you the party that's really weaker is the Republican Party. There's still 15 to 20% of those people despite Nikki Haley's bad body language and tepid endorsement that don't want to vote for Donald Trump. Donald Trump has alienated natural allies, and so they may or may not show up for him, but I think women are gonna show up for Kamala

• 36:54Anthony Scaramucci?

  Harris. And so, we're never gonna, you know, we're in a racist sexist country, I'll stipulate that, I've lived here for 60 years, I know that, but Barack Obama won because of his coalition, and I believe that she can put together a coalition at a time when J.D. Vance is talking about a post constitutional America. Donald Trump is talking about deporting 15 million people, and so to Rory's comment about immigration, excuse me, Mr. Trump, I rebut that, there are 15 million people in this country you're gonna try to deport, their family members don't want them deported. I'm gonna go into every one of their precincts and get them to line up to vote against you. Okay, so this is gonna be a monumental task

• 37:36Anthony Scaramucci?

  for her, but I think she can create an Obama-like mosaic, particularly where they just want to let, one last point, 14 states in the United States, you've now lost your reproductive freedoms. Okay, women of this country, wake up, and I'm here to be your advocate and your champion, let's go against these white supremacists.

• 37:57Alastair Campbell?

  Luke, you've got to get involved in the campaign.

• 38:00Anthony Scaramucci?

  What's that?

• 38:01Alastair Campbell?

  You've got to get involved in Kamala's campaign.

• 38:03Anthony Scaramucci?

  Let me tell you something, I'm just running for reelection in my marriage, Alistair. My wife has like a cash ration on her platform, you know, she just finished her convention. Cash rations on her platform.

• 38:14Alastair Campbell?

  You were going to come in there on, let me try and get you, Kathy, on whether you think Kamala Harris can move, win back some of those people that Joe Biden seems to have lost.

• 38:23Katty Kay?

  So everyone who meets Kamala Harris in private, I've met her a couple of times, I've interviewed her a couple of times, say she's very impressive, very warm, very accessible, much more impressive in smaller groups than she is in public. I think Kamala Harris's biggest problem, and I know she's had a ton of media training, is that she's really bad at reading autocue. I mean, she's, she's just not good at giving a speech. And that is a problem when you're running for president of the United States and people are going to be listening to you give speeches every night between now and November. And however much energy you have, it's just unfortunate that she's just not very good at it. I don't think that means she's not capable of governing. I don't think that means that she's not capable of being president. And can she win back?

• 39:02Katty Kay?

  I think she can do a good job on suburban women because Kamala Harris puts abortion right back in the center of this race, just by virtue of the fact of who she is. When you've got hospitals in Idaho having to helicopter women out of the state because the doctors are asking themselves, is she bleeding enough? If she infected enough? That's the kind of thing that you can run on much more easily with Kamala Harris. So I think that helps. Are there some states? I, I think it helps a state like Georgia. A lot of, it was black women that delivered Georgia for Joe Biden. A state like Arizona, a lot of Hispanic voters who I think will have some affinity

• 39:41Katty Kay?

  with Kamala Harris. Don't forget Asian Americans. They've become, they're, they're the fastest growing minority in the United States at the moment, and they vote in big numbers. So they can also move the dial in some of those, in some of those swing states as well. So there are going to be constituents that she can access that Joe Biden certainly couldn't access. Are there enough of them to defeat Donald Trump in those, in those swing states? Let's see. I think it probably puts Virginia back out of play. Huge number of Asian Americans in Northern Virginia, just across the river from where I live in Washington DC. They're going to vote for Kamala Harris. They're going to, they're the first Indian, part half Indian woman to run for president of the United States. They're absolute, I think that takes Virginia off the map for, even if it was ever on the map for Republicans.

• 40:22Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, Rory?

• 40:24Rory Stewart?

  So let's, let's assume for the moment Kamala Harris is the presidential candidate, although I, I keep putting in a footnote here saying, I don't think this is guaranteed. The question then is, who's her vice president going to be? And there will be a lot of pressure to try to get somebody like Josh Shapiro to try to deliver Pennsylvania as a vice presidential candidate. My guess is that they will be tempted, people like Shapiro and Whitmer, to sit this one out. They may not want to run as vice president on this ticket and be defeated, and they may feel they're in a better position to go next time. So there's a possibility she may not be able to convince them to do it. And if she can't convince these big hitters to do it, she's going to have to be really inventive about who she brings on.

• 41:07Rory Stewart?

  And this is where I'm a little bit resisting Antony's idea of Pete Buttigieg. Pete Buttigieg doesn't deliver the key swing states that she needs to bring on board. Remember, we had Joe Biden, who was from Scranton, Pennsylvania. That was a huge asset. This is an election that comes down to Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. If we're going to run as the presidential candidate, or if the Democrats are going to run as presidential candidate, somebody from California, she's really going to have to balance that out to win those swing states over.

• 41:34Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, right. We're going to bring this to an end now, and I think it's time to sort of put our money where our mouths are. Mooch, first time we had you on the podcast, you said, no way is Donald Trump going to be president after the next election. Do you still stand by that?

• 41:50Anthony Scaramucci?

  I do.

• 41:51Alastair Campbell?

  And Kathy, what is your take? First of all, who will the Democrat nominee be? And who will win on November 5th?

• 41:58Katty Kay?

  I think it'll be Kamala Harris, and I think the vice presidential pick might well be Josh Shapiro. And I think that's, I think that's a very strong ticket for the Democrats, and I think that with Vance, Donald Trump is beatable. Yeah. Unlike Antony, and I've said this on our podcast, no one can tell you what's going to happen in that first week of November, but I think it certainly puts the Democrats in a much stronger position.

• 42:20Anthony Scaramucci?

  Well, listen, I'm not, listen, I don't know for certain, but my, in my life experience here, the coalition around Trump will weather by the end, and the coalition around her, whoever it's going to be, her and her ticket will, will coalesce. And by the way, the assassination feels like it was assassination attempt, thank God it was just an attempt, it feels like it was four months ago, felt. That was like yesterday's news, man. Forget it. Okay, now we're into, we have the first African American woman, potentially the first African American woman nominee for the presidency. Okay, so I think it's gonna be Cooper, okay, who's the, uh, who's the governor of North Carolina. They need to win that state. He is an incredible guy. If you meet him, he's a great debater. He's a great campaigner.

• 43:06Anthony Scaramucci?

  And I think he'll, he'll racetrack JD Vance. And so for me, I'm going with Harris Cooper. They win North Carolina, they bring Cooper up to Michigan and Wisconsin. They enlist the surrogates, including people like Chris Christie and others to go up there and help them. And I think they beat Trump. And I think, and Rory's smiling because he's a conservative, I think the universe deserves this.

• 43:28Katty Kay?

  This is why you want the Obamas to be all in, because you want Michelle Obama and Barack Obama in every state, every campaign.

• 43:35Anthony Scaramucci?

  Snap out of it, you know, he's.

• 43:36Katty Kay?

  And he'll do it.

• 43:37Anthony Scaramucci?

  Let me tell you something. I went to law school with him. They, the, the, the white cab drivers on Massachusetts Avenue used to pass him by. Okay, because he was black and he used to really upset him and he deserved to be upset by that. But enough now, okay? It's a racist country, but it's better than it was 30 years ago. It's better than it was 60 years ago. Let's give her a chance to win against a lunatic that wants to deport 15 million people. Okay, and wants to take away your reproductive freedoms. Okay, let, let, let's give it a shot here.

• 44:07Alastair Campbell?

  Anthony, I'm going to give you a little bit of soccer education, something that Rory will not know. Two of the dirtiest fullbacks in the history of English football were called Harris and Cooper. So that, that sounds to me, Ron, Ron Harris and Terry Cooper, they were, I liked it, not get past them. So I think that is a good, Rory, who's gonna win?

• 44:31Rory Stewart?

  Um, I, I'm afraid, uh, the conventional wisdom is probably right. I mean, Kathy and Anthony know an enormous amount of they're reflecting the dominant view in the US, which is that this is Kamala Harris's. But I think it's a big mistake. I think they should take the risk. They should spin the dice. They should have a genuinely open convention. If she wins it, so much the better for her, stronger for her. But it's an opportunity for other candidates to show themselves and come through. And I think Democratic Party would be fresher, more exciting. And your narrative point, it would mean the next few weeks running through to Chicago will be full of the American people looking at exciting, dynamic, new Democratic candidates, completely take the energy off Trump and could be a very exciting story. And I'll be very, very disappointed if they do a coronation of Cameron.

• 45:14Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, although they would perhaps be fighting. And as you've seen with your old party in the UK, people don't like seeing parties fighting in the run up to election. Listen, thanks for being Catty. Thank you for making such an effort to get to us. Anthony likewise, Rory, give our best to New Jersey. If you bump into any of the Soprano family, tell them that we're still thinking of them.

• 45:34Anthony Scaramucci?

  Your Soprano still lives out there, Rory. Be careful out there, okay? If you need anything in Jersey, give me a call. You have my stuff.

• 45:41Alastair Campbell?

  We'll both be doing our own episodes of The Rest Is Politics and The Rest Is Politics US. So look out for those. Thank you, Catty. Thank you, Rory. Thank you, the mooch. See you soon.

• 45:51Rory Stewart?

  Bye bye, guys. Thanks. Bye.

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• 46:18Speaker 05

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• 46:19Speaker 04

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