An Evening with David Axelrod

[Music] good evening and welcome everyone I'm excited that you can join us tonight in our conversation with David oxel rod and Professor Nicole hemmer my name is Andrew kyung I'm a senior from demeris New Jersey on campus I'm the president of the college Democrats and the editor and chief of the Vanderbilt political review I also serve on the dialogue Vanderbilt student Advisory Board this past summer I was an intern in Washington DC at the United States Treasury Department where I heard the name David Axelrod more than a few times during informal conversation when I learned that he would be on campus this semester I was elated it's now my pleasure to introduce Vanderbilt University Chancellor Daniel dearer an internationally recognized political scientist management scholar and Visionary leader dear Meer is Vanderbilt's ninth Chancellor since 20120 Chancellor dear Meer has had has led a number of ambitious initiatives to increase Vanderbilt's impact and reached to expand its Global presence and reputation a nationally recognized leader in free expression and civil discourse he drives efforts to create a culture of radical collaboration open dialogue and personal growth that Embraces wide ranging points of view so that Vanderbilt students and faculty can realize their potential and lead in a complex everchanging world before arriving at Vanderbilt Chancellor dimar served in faculty and Leadership roles at Stanford Northwestern University and the University of Chicago where he served as the dean of the Harris School of public policy and later as Provost Chancellor deer Meer is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the gugenheim and the and the gugenheim Foundation he has written five books and more than 100 research articles in various Fields but mostly in fields of political science economics and management please welcome Chancellor [Applause] dear well good evening everyone we have a we have a full house here it's wonderful to see so welcome to the first dialog vanderbild speaker event of this new Academic Year a year ago we launched dialog Vander with a goal of visibly and consistently demonstrating our core values of free expression and civil discourse the term dialogue originates from Greek meaning through word and it reminds us of the power of reason and the force of of the better argument in its inaugural year through a series of interconnected programs events training and research we explored topics ranging from generative Ai and the conflict in the Middle East to the role of faith in civil discourse author authoritarianism around the globe and the state of democratic institutions right here in the United States we send students to Global debating championships in Vietnam welcome Faith leaders from a variet of different backgrounds and diplomats from geopolitical vital regions we also hosted debates between vander's College Democrats you just saw a representative and college Republicans a series that will continue this fall along with corresponding inside debates these sessions give students across campus the opportunity to participate themselves and learn the important skills of crafting the better argument and importantly listening to perspectives that differ from their own this year we're ready to do even more we will host more speakers with different viewpoints offer more opportunities to engage in structured conversation and debate and provide more support for having challenging conversations I began the Year by speaking with all first year students about the vital importance of our culture of free expression here at Vanderbilt and how they can engage in civil discourse in their time here on campus in the coming months students faculty staff and community members alike will have the chance to engage with a compelling series of programs and speakers Vanderbilt professors Dana Nelson and Sarah AO will work with faculty to integrate novel pedagogies into our classrooms to help students learn to engage with dialogue debate and research on difficult topics with openness and curiosity we'll launch a partnership with Story cors one step one small step initiative hosting and Publishing conversations between community members with different beliefs backgrounds and points of view to better understand each other and hopefully the world will host the inaugural Global Free Speech Summit where you will hear from the world's leading Minds on Free Speech including the acclaimed Salman rushi masi aliad an Iranian journalist activist and dissent columnist James Bennett and David French and many many more and we will teach the largest elective class it's really not elective anymore in vanable history on the 20 24 election as it unfolds in real time more than 1,100 students will learn from vander's own pitza prize winning author and professor John meum and celebrated experts in political science election polling and presidential history John gear George Clinton and nobody else than Nicole Hammer this may sound like a lot but this is a moment when a lot is warranted As We Gather this fall it is Paramount that we do so in the spirit of unity and mutual respect our nation is politically polarized world events inflame passions and we are just a few months away from a contentious presidential election amid these pressures it is essential that we resist division ours is a university community United in common purpose and rooted in shared fundamental values and as one Vanderbuilt we can demonstrate how universities are uniquely positioned to offer the space and structure for constructive debates on the most important issues of the day thank you all for being here today and for recommitting to the values inherent in dialogue Vanderbilt and it's now my pleasure to introduce David axod I had the pleasure of working with David at the University of Chicago where he launched the Institute of politics in 2012 now 12 years later The Institute is inextricably woven into the fair fabric of the University because of David's leadership The Institute is decidedly nonpartisan unafraid to create open forums for students in discuss with expert practitioners from across the political spectrum and it always as he so aptly puts it brings light at opposed to heat to discourse his passion for The Institute Mission and for our country means that he's always innovating just one example I remember well when I was Provost at the univers of Chicago in 2018 we were seeing a sharp increase in polarization David initiated a program called Bridging the Divide bringing a group of students from the University of Chicago in urban height Park together with students from Eureka College Ronald Ragan's Alma Mada which was nestled en Ral inois the students spent time in each other's location hearing not only from one another but also from local residents journalists and political leaders the students had their assumptions tested and abended developed a far greater understanding and appreciation for the daily challenges faced in each context and generated ideas for how they could collectively have a positive impact on our most vexing societal challenges this is how we as universities make a difference and that is how we as a country can make progress I'm so delighted that doing what I'm certain is an exhausting election season for him David has taken the time to join us and like you I look forward to what he has to share with us tonight so now please join me in welcoming Nicole Hammer a social professor of history and director of the Caroline key and Robert M Roger center for the American presidency who will formally introduce David and host our conversation this evening thank you so David I should reiterate um our gratitude and for your joining us during what I think was an unexpectedly busy summer yes it wasn't on my bingo card the way it unfolded but uh I just want to say two things one is I've had a delightful day here at Vanderbilt uh but uh a highlight was uh being with Andrew and the students uh uh uh this afternoon The Advisory Board uh to your program and um I left there as I think anybody would feeling better about the future which is why I started the Institute of politics but these young people are skeptical but they're not cynical and they understand that they have a role to play uh in shaping the future and shaping the world and it's just such a pleasure and then I want to say a word about my friend Daniel who was um a force of nature at the University of Chicago and now you're discovering why here at Vanderbilt and he doing remarkable things here and this commitment to free expression to uh civil discourse is something very close to my heart so I'm delighted to be here yeah one of the things that I found teaching here is that the students are an absolute joy for all of us I think for those very reasons um and there are lots of them here tonight big crowd you know that free iPhone thing was not real although check under your seats maybe maybe one of you will have one but you know one thing that I think about a lot when I'm teaching is that um you know the things that we take for granted in terms of our knowledge of political history they haven't experienced and I was thinking about that with this election because RFK Jr is a big player and I know that in your own sort of path to politics his father Bobby Kennedy was really influential and I was wondering if you could talk about what it was about Bobby Kennedy that Drew you into politics and how that shaped how you see politics in the United States well Bobby Kennedy went through his own political Evolution uh from being a young man on the McCarthy Council on Junior Council Roy Con on the McCarthy Committee in Congress uh to his brother's attorney general and then went through a a real existential crisis when he lost his brother and thought deeply about the meaning of uh service and politics and probably with a sense that we're not promised uh uh any amount of time on this planet and he wanted to make it count and he became uh uh such a powerful voice for disenfranchised people from inner cities to Appalachia uh and around the world uh and uh and ultimately a power ful voice against the war in Vietnam so when 1968 came around he really um encouraged a movement around him uh that was so inspiring I was a young kid in New York City I was handing out leaflets for him and so on but he he gave you a sense that together not him but together we had the power to change the world and when Barack Obama decided to run for president when he was well it was after he made the decision I said the most inspirational campaign of my lifetime was the Bobby Kennedy campaign in 1968 which ended tragically uh but which uh really stirred in young people across this country uh uh you know the sense that you could change the world and he challenged young people uh in a way that was really powerful uh including uh young people in universities who were not serving in the military uh and uh as to what their obligations were um it was he was a remarkable figure in American politics and I said to Obama this is our we can we should aspire to be that kind of campaign to Aspire to inspire in young people and in people generally a sense that we actually had the power and the capacity to make a big difference in the world and to help shape the future and I think to a large degree we succeeded in that Campaign which made it such a wonderful experience to be a part of we'll we'll come back to the 2008 campaign but I wanted to spend a minute on some of the campaigns you worked on um in your earlier career particularly you worked on a ton of mayor's races yes um and I think you know we we talk a lot about presidential races and Senate and Congress races yes but we don't talk as much about these local races what was your experience of of working on them how'd that how'd that shape well first of all my background was I grew up in New York City and before I became a strategist and politics I was a journalist and uh at one point the city hall bureau chief for the Chicago Tribune had a very volatile time in the city first a woman named Jane burn toppled the Chicago machine and got elected mayor then be behaved much like a parody of the machine and was beaten by Harold Washington who was the first African-American mayor uh of the city and when I left to go into politics uh one of the first campaigns I did was Harold Washington's reelection uh and I worked on a lot of races across the country for Mayors many of them were African-American Mayors or candidates running to be first time in their in their cities but the thing that struck me about maral races was that um mayor is a is an office that is so close to people I think in some ways it's the closest thing to president there are two offices that I think have unique qualities president and mayor because people really hold Mayors accountable for all these quality of life issues and Mayors can't get away they see them wherever they go in the grocery store you know so you you you're accountable and Mayors know every inch of their City they know if there's an abandoned building they know if there's you know lights are out they and they they and they hear you know they're they they feel accountable for safety so if someone is killed or if a police officer is kill you know they're the ones who get the call at 3: in the morning and it's just a very vital vital role so I was jazzed by Municipal races I don't think they get enough attention but they probably have more to do with the quality of life that people lead than any other office you worked on the campaigns of lots of people who were firsts and that seems like a tricky thing to navigate in a campaign and something we're facing in 201 24 as well how do you think about building the campaign around somebody who will be a historic first is it something you emphasize or shy away from how do you deal with it you know my inclination is to shy away from it because you know we used to for example when I know you want to get to 2008 later but this applied to these mayor's races too U like if you have a African-American candidate people notice right this is not this is not news and the fact that it's a historic candidacy is not news what people want to know is what is this going to mean for my life and uh so uh my advice to candidates who are trying to break these barriers is generally not to lean in but lean away from that and create as big a circle as you can to invite as many people as you can uh into that uh campaign and um you know with Harold Washington we we really emphasized um his commitment to neighborhoods and all neighborhoods and those kind of day-to-day issues that make a different parks and schools and and safety and so on and um you know people who are motivated by uh race one way or the other uh understood where they were but there were a lot of people who were you know as you mentioned be voting for someone for the first time who they voting for an African-American for the first time this became a a major obviously element of the Obama campaigns both for the Senate and for uh president and also I work for dval Patrick who was the first African-American governor of Massachusetts is in a state that doesn't have a very large black population so um we didn't run away from it and the fact that these were people who were s of that were had overcome barriers in their lives was an inspiration to people but it wasn't the essence of the campaigns I do want to turn to 2008 and kind of maybe a place to start is you had worked on the the Edwards campaign John Edwards campaign in 2004 yeah and we I think we could pass over that it's all just buildup and of course you you were close to the clintons what was it that Drew you to the Obama Campaign given that you could have easily sat that out well let me just say first of all I I worked on my first presidential race in 1988 Paul Simon who was my first client out of the newspaper business when I crossed over from covering politics to working in politics was the US senator from Illinois and I did his campaign in 1988 um I helped out a little in the Clinton campaign but I don't claim any major role in that campaign um and then yes I I worked in 20 4 in the uh Edwards campaign at the same time I was doing Obama's race which was a very uphill fight for the US Senate in Illinois uh which was interesting to to deal with both of them at the same time because John Edwards was a very gifted speaker and so on but um he was a trial lawyer get very gifted he just wanted to see the brief and you know then he'd go out Obama used to drill three or four levels deep and the race that we had for the senate in Illinois was just like a magical race that was a Prelude to 2008 he had been by the way a friend of mine from the time he returned from Law School uh in Chicago and you know clearly a special talent but that was revealed in that 2004 race that included the speech at the convention um but one thing I learned from the Edwards race I came in late in the Edwards race his consultant left to go to work for John kery he was desperate for a consultant they call me and uh uh I was probably too quick to jump into that race um and because you know sometimes when you're a consultant especially a young consultant you approach this like I want to I want to ride in the derby and you shouldn't approach it that way I thought he could be a vehicle for message that I thought could be a winning message uh but um what I learned very um very intensely in that races unless you have a real kinship with the candidate unless there's a bond of trust um and unless you know them very very well don't do it because you you you know you you end up being disappointed and you don't end up being you can't play the role that you want to play I had a deep friendship with Barack Obama and I wasn't planning to be involved in the 2008 campaign uh even though I had at one time done a campaign for five of the candidates who ultimately ran four of them I I just decided I was going to sit the race out and I said to all of them the only thing that would get me in this race is if Barack Obama ran and I wasn't encouraging him to run uh but when he decided to run um you know I was I was all in and I felt like he was the right person at that moment in history for a range of reasons but this country was in a very much of a Turn the Page moment a Turn the Page moment on the war in Iraq a Turn the Page moment on a politics that had become very course and partisan to the point where gridlock in Washington was the norm and uh and a lot of big issues were piling up uh Health Care reform and the climate uh uh action and a number of others that required us to pull together and try and attack those problems big way people wanted that and Obama was a fresh start a fresh start and uh and he was as big as the moment he grew during the course of that campaign in ways that were really exhilarating to see uh but um uh I really you know I wrote a memo to him in 2000 late 2006 as to why I thought he could win the race and um uh laid it out and I also had concerns and I told him I like he we were way ahead by the end of that Senate race and through were some weird things that happened in Illinois on the Republican side we ended up running against Alan Keys you may remember I don't know if any of you remember Alan keys but Alan all right is Alan Keys here but he uh he was uh you know sort of a right-wing provocator who actually was from Maryland wasn't from Illinois he was recruited by the Republican party because they thought well they've got a black guy we'll get a black guy it was insane and so we were like 50 points ahead and yet uh alen Keys had an amazing facility for getting on Obama's nerves and getting him to react to his jbes and uh and um I said to Obama in this memo I don't know if you're this is a refer this is a dated boxing reference so I don't expect most people in this room to understand it but I don't know if you're going to be Muhammad Ali or you're going to be Floyd Patterson Floyd Patterson was a great boxer who had this one liability which is if people hit him on the chin he would fall down and never get up Muhammad Ali was Muhammad Ali it turned out he was Muhammad Ali but it took him a while to learn how to take all of that and to learn about the challenges of running for president which is like none other I mean everybody thinks they understand it but unless you've run for that office there's no pressure like it I feel like in 2008 the place where a lot of that learning happened was in Iowa yes when I talk to people who worked on the campaign they talk about that year in Iowa as the most magical moment magical yeah what was your experience with that well we had always believed that we had one chance to win and and you know at that point remember the the race was really between between us and and we had to overcome Hillary Clinton who was the Far and Away the front runner for the nomination and we thought the only way to do that was to win in Iowa and and and we thought that would unlock a lot of vote in the rest of the country particularly African-American votes um and we were from the neighboring state uh Obama was um a very comfortable in the small towns of Southern Illinois downstate Illinois very Sim ilar to Iowa he they had an adjoining media Market we thought there were a lot of reasons to believe that he could compete there and the research that we did suggested there was an opening um there but um uh there there also was something else we you know you cannot win a presidential race by trying to be what you're not and a lot of people have tried and all of them have failed um authenticity is sort of the coin of the realm when you're running for president of the United States uh and uh I mean even Donald Trump nobody ever says GE I wish he'd speak his mind you know that's never an issue um so um and we ran as what Barack Obama was which was a kind of Center left uh pragmatic Progressive uh yes we emphasized the war we also ran ads in Iowa that kind of befuddled some of our opponents that were um endorsements by Republicans in Illinois who had worked with them in the state senate or testimonials they weren't endorsements per se about his ability to work across the aisle and um to solve problems and there was a lot of there were there's a lot of like why would you do that in this very left caucus and what we discovered was there was a real audience for this that was part of the hunger of getting past the incumbent politics of Washington where everybody was you know shaking their fists across a jagged edge and here was a guy who uh seemed to know how to work with people to get significant things uh done uh so um we started off we we sent a a we hire a lot of young organizers who came from out of the woodwor frankly to work for him and um we had some fallow months in in Iowa the polls were not great for us he was not performing well and I think if he were sitting here he would say that it took him a while to sort of find his footing um and the national press Corps was deriding us for investing all this time he spent 87 days in Iowa during the year uh 2007 I'm not sure he may have qualified to vote there I think in Chicago you're allowed to do that anyway uh but but he um uh and uh but by the summer there was a series of debates uh and the thing that was sort of a turned a light switch on was he was asked a question in a debate and the question was would you sit down with you know hostile leaders uh without preconditions and he said I'm not afraid to sit down with anyone uh you know in the in in the cause of uh moving our interest forward and bringing about you know a more peaceful world and so on he was then set upon by all his opponents Hillary Clinton leading the charge Joe Biden Chris Dodd people who are very much senior in National Security saying this is naive this is and the next morning we're uh I'm sorry you put the quarter in now you're getting 10 plays the next morning we're uh leaving the debate and um uh and there was this sense in the Press Corp maybe he made a big mistake maybe this is and he got on our morning call we were in a limo together he like give me that phone he gets on the call and he never got on our strategy calls he would meet with us on a periodic basis to review what we were doing and he said I don't want anybody to run away but from what I said yesterday he said these are the people who delivered us the war in Iraq and and this is the that was the state-of-the-art wisdom of the Washington National Security establishment and um uh and and I'm not going to uh take a backseat them and then there was a subsequent debate where he said that he he made a speech and then he got beaten up for saying that if he knew where Bin Laden was that he would go after him even if it wasn't Pakistan which was you know heresy among the National Security uh environment but what it did to him for him was to say I know what my role here is I'm not here to be a different a different uh version of the status quo I'm here to challenge the status quo and he just picked up momentum both on on uh National Security issues but on domestic issues um and by the Fall he had really found his footing and polling started to show us moving and um we had a series of debates and then there was this Jefferson Jackson they don't call it this any more dinner in Iowa you know which is like a Roman Coliseum kind of 3,000 people in a big Auditorium and each candidate gets 11 minutes to speak without notes or a teleprompter and um he we worked hard with him uh on what he wanted to say what we thought he should say and he just blew the doors off the place and it was basically a Manifesto for Change and uh it was not all that vaguely oppositional to um Senator Clinton who was U spoke right before us and that changed everything and we were just then on a on a a a steady ride up and the end was just my wife is sitting here Susan and she came to work in Iowa with my son Ethan when my youngest son for the last week in the campaign and um it was an unbelievable spirit and they were sitting in a sort of room that was added on to the campaign headquarters that had no Heating and a restroom that nobody wanted to use and U uh and the night of the caucuses um I was confident we were going to win and I was going over to do television interviews and I said why don't you to come over to the hall with me and she said I'm not leaving until I make my last call and um when the news came in that we were winning the caucuses um she was on her way over and I will never ever forget searching for my wife in the crowd and seeing her and we came together and we both had tears in our eyes and it felt and then he made that wonderful speech and it it was the purest moment that I've ever experienced in politics it gave you a sense that anything was possible and I will cherish that for the rest of my life [Applause] Iowa is is in my mind the the place where the Obama campaign found its heart and I'm curious fast wording now to 2024 you have the Harris campaign and there are probably a lot of benefits to having about a 100 days to put together a campaign but it strikes me that this is one of the deficiencies um what is lost when you don't have those that year in Iowa to build a campaign yeah well look um there are pluses and minuses I don't think Barack Obama could have been elected president without the two years he ran for president because in a way what these presidential races are are like the most exacting oral exam in the world and people want to see you tested especially a young guy who had just been out of the Illinois state senate for 3 years you know you're applying for the most difficult job on the planet and they want to see how you deal with different kinds of challenges different kinds of pressures you know we had the Reverend Wright Challenge and other challenges during that period and we had the challenge of of overcoming uh a very formidable candidate in in in Hillary Clinton and a very for formidable political machine in the Clinton machine and there were all kinds of tests uh and so we certified ourselves or he certified himself self through these challenges now the thing about kamla Harris is she's she has run for president before she didn't run well in 2019 but she's had the experience of running I think she learned a lot from that campaign you know Barack Obama two years before he ran for the Senate ran for or four years ran for Congress and lost you know narrowly by 30 points uh and he would tell you that you learn as much from losing as from winning um I think she's learned a lot uh and then she ran through an and I'll talk about that if you'd like in a second but she she's um she uh had the experience of running in a national campaign participating in a national debate for a vice presidential uh debate uh with vice president Pence and um and then she served at that level and so she and the with all the pressures of that and I think she's grown through that process but really by the time the change was made by the time President Biden made his announcement and sort of uh and embraced her as the nominee uh you know she has um shown a level of Acumen and ease and comfort that we never saw in 2019 the lightning fast way in which she secured the nomination uh the as I said the comfort and confid confidence that she's expressed uh that she's sort of uh emanated from her from uh you know from that from the time that she started running and the messaging which is very different you know and Republicans will say well yeah I mean that's the problem it's different than although it's hard to imagine that Donald Trump's going to win a race that's about constancy uh I don't think that's going to happen but but I I think that what's happened is is that she um in 2019 I don't think she was prepared to run in the way you need to be prepared to run and I think that she got um bad advice that if you just keep taking left turns you'll get to where you want to go which for any of you drivers out there is bad advice and uh and uh she was uncomfortable doing it and she never seemed connected to her words she seems connected to her words that authenticity thing she feels like an authentic candidate and it comes at a time when I think we we went through a year where the country said again and again and again I don't want this choice I want something else I want something newer I want something fresher I want something that's about the future and she looks very much like that candidate now she feels like that candidate and I think that has energized her campaign and um you know M millions of volunteers across the country a lot of donors the challenge is you are building a plane in midair and for those of you who are pilots that's hard to do uh so um you know and she's she's uh sort of merging a lot of elements of the Biden campaign with a new group of people who she's brought in and everybody is sort of getting comfortable in their roles and how they work together and you don't have that time to develop the cohesion that we had for example in our campaign that said so far so good I mean the the convention last week I thought was astonishingly good considering the fact that the organizers of the convention had three weeks to turn the battleship around from a Biden convention to a Harris convention and they very much told Harris's story it reflected her values uh I think people learn a lot and one of the things about being vice president is people know you but they don't really know you and um in many ways it's a it is a belittling role because you're standby equipment and you're there behind the president kind of a spectral presence uh but you don't really have that much you don't have authority it's kind of now the Republican message seems to be uh well she was the co-pilot on all of this and they're inflating her role beyond what I think people are willing to believe if you said well she's going to be continuation of Biden's policies that that is a colorable argument uh I don't know that they'd win on it but the idea that she actually was The Mastermind behind the policies doesn't you know nobody talks about the Pence years okay and he you know he made one sort of independent judgment and it that was very hard m as you'll remember and God bless him for it by the way I'm serious but uh uh so I think she has a lot of room she's she has had and continues to have a lot of room to introduce herself to the American people as a Turn the Page candidate and the next big test assuming everybody shows up will be the debate on September 10th and I think that's a different challenge because um you don't control that the way you've controlled the event she's already been a part of and um it's like you know this is like a decathlon there are a lot of different events this is an important one and uh I think it'll have a lot to say about how it goes from there I remember in 2012 for the campaign that first debate by Barack Obama was not the Home Run you all were hoping for so they can that's very generous imp um one of one of the places we've seen a ton of enthusiasm for Harris has been in places like Tik Tok and um particularly like jenz social media yes this might be the first Tik Tok election but your's campaign was probably the first social media election how did you think about social media as this kind of new communications platform well in 2008 it was really primitive you know I think Twitter just started and it was mostly email we used email you know and meetups I don't know if you guys remember meetups but that was a big organizational tool from us I mean we stole a lot of ideas and then built on ideas from the Howard Dean campaign of 2004 which was kind of a revolutionary campaign in that regard by 2012 you know one of the things we did was we surveyed all the sort of state-of-the-art things that were going on in in in Industry to kind of figure out what are the tools that we could use and we hired 57 analytics people uh we had one guy who sort of part-time field part-time analytics in 2008 and you know data Big Data had become so much more of a thing that we um we were able to employ it in many many different ways that were useful in social media and very many different ways and we our social media Communications team uh was was you know as large as our conventional media Communications team by 2012 but now it's you know obviously even much it's much more pervasive and yes you make an important point you know Joe Biden was not a good Tick Tock candidate I mean that's just I don't mean it as a joke it as he would say I'm not joking uh that he was uh you know he just he wasn't he wasn't a he was he was out they were outgunned on TiK ToK by dramatic measures you know in terms of the content that was being circulated a lot of ridiculing of him over age issues the Gaza issue played big on uh Tick Tock and um he just wasn't you know a a kind of hip and contemporary figure now all of a sudden the thing is completely turned around and uh she is and that been a huge thing in terms of you know we see how reinvigorated young people are about this campaign and you know um and that has more than a little to do about it and she has to a large degree uh reassembled like the kind of what has become the Democratic base of younger voters um she's doing far better than Biden was with African-American voters this time uh Hispanic voters Asian voters which I think is overlooked sometimes um and um you know not there's still work to do for her and I caution everyone and I get heckled for this for saying but don't feel like you have to um that you know one should not be if you're a KLA Harris supporter you should not be uh kind of carried away with irrational exuberance um it she is in the fight she can win this race but it is a very much of a coin toss race right now and there's work to be done particularly in these Battleground States and um that's why I think events like this debate are going to take on outsized importance and of course what you can build in the field and what how enthusiasm translates into turnout and whether Trump can recreate the kind of enthusiasm among his base that result in in turnout that eclipsed what suggested it would all of these things are yet to be known I wonder if we can return to the Coalition question because that was the other big Legacy of 2008 the emergence of what was called at the time the Coalition of the ascendant yeah and then it kind of like that phrase I don't like that phrase the Obama Coalition yeah but I I mean you know I think my friend Ron Brown Brownstein coined that phrase and it's you know I mean for journalists it might be um uh important as we've seen um it wasn't entirely descriptive because um the non- ascendant took some offense to that and you know one of the things uh I was um saying earlier um to a number of different groups was one of my complaints about the Democratic party and I think we did not do this uh in those campaigns is the the Democratic party has become very much a uh more a college education Suburban centered kind of Cosmopolitan party and with that comes there's still this I think fundamental uh alliance with workingclass uh sympathy for workingclass voters perhap empathy for workingclass voters but we we tend to uh approach workingclass voters like Margaret me approached the natives uh and we say we're here to help you we're here to help you become more like us uh we want you to go to college we want you to get those kind of jobs because you know they're actually better than the jobs you have and the people who they're talking to have a lot of uh pride in the jobs they're doing which happened by the way to be many of the jobs that keep this country going and we uh we you know we we we honor them when there's a pandemic and we say thank God for the essential workers who have to go out and expose themselves to you mortal illness to help us while we sit in our uh apartments on Zoom uh but then the pandemic passes and they become invisible people again and you know there is a a kind of unspoken message of uh if not distain of lack of respect and I think that the Coalition of the ascendant Carri with it some implication that I think plays into that remember we we had a very uh we we honored hard work that was a fundamental element of the Obama uh message and we carried the state of Indiana for the first time you're from there I'm from Indiana yeah yeah you bet with my Dad yeah in 19 uh the first time since 1964 I think we may have carried Virginia for the first time since 1964 we carried North Carolina um we we did that because we went everywhere and we treated people with the respect that they deserved so um I think that one of the things I liked about the convention last week was I think there was a lot of recognition of that I actually think that um uh Tim Waltz speaks to that and um you know he he um in many ways uh you know is a testimonial to um the values of um middle American communities where not everybody you know is is college educated but everybody is is uh doing something valuable and and where the you know culture of good neighbors and uh respect for each other is practiced um but there are a lot of folks who spoke at at that convention who I thought got it I want to give you a chance to talk a little bit on that subject about the 2012 campaign because I think we forget how much of an economic populist campaign you all ran in 2012 um and that seems significant um in the context of this year's campaign um talk about the you know everything from the O talk to you because you you didn't no one mentioned this I think that you were involved in the uh or um interviews from or the interviews the the oral history oral oral history of the uh Obama years and so I'm sure you've heard a lot about this look in the summer of 2011 we were in a world of hurt um people still were very depressed about the economy even though we were in recovery we had gone through this terrible fight uh with the Congress over the debt ceiling and what uh emerged from that was were some Draconian cuts that we weren't that excited about but had to accept and uh all of it conspired to make the president look weak and uh we were looking down the barrel of a campaign we were pretty certain that Mitt Romney was going to be the nominee who was a guy who could I think in credibly boast of economic competence and Mastery and um so we had to regroup and um we made a we we basically our whole campaign from the September of 2011 through election day of 2012 was about sort of the Dignity of work and what people who do it who work hard deserve in this country and the inequality in the economy uh we made a speech at aaany where uh in Kansas where Teddy Roosevelt did his New Nationalism speech uh with very much popular themes uh we gave a speech in Congress to Congress that was a job speech but it was really sort of a populist speech in September of 2011 that kicked this whole thing off and as best as we could we tried to keep the focus on those issues from uh that over those 14 months when you're president you don't have the luxury of of of of of sort of dictating every you know events help dictate what you need to deal with but I think by the end of that campaign what was very very clear clear was people saw Obama as someone who was going to fight for them uh they may have seen Romney as someone who had uh you know more competence to run the macroeconomy but they weren't convinced that he was going to fight for them and that became the most important thing and we knew that that if we could accomplish that that that would Trump the no pun intended that would that would uh beat uh the sort of macroeconomy profile and um you know uh so yes the economy was the Paramount issue in that election but it wasn't about you know who can be the master of the economy it was like who's going to fight for me who's going to fight for an economy where my hard work is going to be rewarded uh and where I'm not going to be uh you know uh cast aside because you know uh folks on Wall Street have some you know money uh moving scheme that will disadvantage AG my community and my the bus my small business or my factory job or whatever um and um you know Obama it was not a hard thing because he really did feel that way remember he began as a community organizer in the shadow of steel mills that had been closed down uh in the 80s in Chicago and he saw all the devastation that rought uh it was it was easy for him it was an authentic uh message for him but there is a parallel and you're you're super smart so I know where you're going um there there there is a parallel where we are today um there's still a lot of jaundice about the economy there's some there is a uh uh some desire or not desire but there's a inclination to blame President Biden for I think unfairly in some ways in many ways uh for the inflation that we've seen which has envelop the whole world uh but um uh but we're back to a point where the the question is who's going to fight for you in this economy who's going to honor hard work and fight for people not just you know people uh you know on the you know on the coast and the Sea Suites and on Wall Street and so on but people uh throughout this country who work hard every day and have struggled in this economy and worry about the future for their kids and I think they've you know they're working hard to uh to wrap their arms around that and she seems very comfortable with that message and if they're successful I think it's going to and she wins this election that's going to be a lot of the reason and obviously Waltz is a guy who speaks to that so as we start to close I mean one of the things that I'm struck by is that the Obama campaign was centered around a message of hope you talked about the inspiration that you got from Harold Washington and Bobby Kennedy but the politics of the last eight years or so have really been centered on cynicism yeah and I'm wondering where you find Hope looking around at politics today well first of all I always say that democracy is a battle between hope and cynicism I mean it's an improb it was an improbable experiment to start with and it remains an experiment I mean we're seeing that you know that we can't just assume that this democracy is self-perpetuating and it it involves engagement on our part and a commitment to it um but um you know and this will sound like pandering but uh as I I I'll I'll say this as I said at the beginning I see hope in the in these rooms with these young people who really believe they have the capacity to change the world and they can use the tools that Poli I affords them uh to do that um and it's so important to me that's so hopeful because we are doomed if young people fall victim to cynicism if young I mean that's what the cynics want that's what the people who are not really invested in democracy want they want uh young people uh and the rest of us but young people to walk away and uh in in in in a sense that that there's no purpose in it it is a depiction of Politics as squalid and corrupt uh and uh you know sort of an illegitimate way toh bring about uh real constructive change and let me tell you something um uh and if indulge me here as if you haven't already uh but um one of the great honors of My Life One of the most satisfying things in my life was um the um the privilege of working to help past the Affordable Care Act and this meant a lot to me um for not abstract reasons my daughter Lauren who's now an adult uh started having seizures when she was 7 months old and um they told us it would pass in a couple of days We Were released from the hospital a month later um she was still having 10 seizures a day um and she had epilepsy and she continued to have uh seizures uh in clusters for the next 19 years and we tried all kinds of things but at the time and nothing work we thought we were going to lose her but at that time when she got sick I was a young reporter at the Chicago Tribune I had insurance and I got got a lesson in the insurance system because we they wouldn't cover her prescriptions and the more exotic the diagnosis became more expensive the medications we were trying uh we had to pay that out of pocket they wanted they said they wanted to do brain surgery and we wanted a second opinion before they cut into our three-year-old daughter's head and they said well we're not going to pay for that that was $20,000 that we didn't have and uh we were it was a desperate thing to to worry about that in the health of your child and your you know keep your family whole and so I really understood why we needed Health reform but I was also the president's political adviser and so when he wanted to take this up in the winter of 2009 when we were in the midst of this great economic crisis um you know I said look seven presidents have tried this seven presidents have failed maybe we should defer this and he said um to his Everlasting credit he said look if we defer it it's not going to get done and because we're probably not going to have as favorable a congress two years from now which was the understatement and uh and he said um uh and you know 10 millions millions more people will not have health coverage we'll still have lifetime caps we'll still have year annual limits on insurance so the sick will be screwed out of their coverage and um we'll still have people with pre-existing conditions like my daughter CU we couldn't switch Insurance uh and he said what are we supposed to do put our approval rating on the shelf and admire it for the next eight years or are we supposed to draw down in it to do things that are going to make a lasting difference in the lives of people so I always say I loved him so much because he listened to me so little and and uh and uh you know it was as hard as I thought you know I went into his office one day and I showed him the poing I wasn't trying to get him to stop I just wanted him to know we were taking on water and he said yeah but I just got back from Green Bay Wisconsin I met a woman who was 36 years old she had uh she has two children a husband they both have jobs but she has stage four I think I said earlier uh uterine but I think it was a bre cancer and he said now she's worried she's going to die and leave her family bankrupt he said that's not the country we believe in so let's keep fighting and then in the summer people were trying to some folks in our team were saying maybe we should go for something smaller maybe we should stop he turns to his uh legislative director Phil shello and he says Phil where do you think the odds are and Phil says well it depends how lucky you feel Mr President and he's sitting under the picture of George Washington portrait which I always love the portrait of George Washington the first president and Bar Barack Obama the 44th president and he said I know we're going to run out of time here but cancel your evenings because I want to finish this story um so he uh he said uh he said um Phil he said my name is Barack Hussein Obama and I'm pres I'm a black guy and I'm president of the United States I feel lucky all the time so in in March of uh 2010 the the night we pass finally passed the Affordable Care House act through the house and it became law um we were all gathered in the Roosevelt room uh across from the Oval Office and across from my office and um the vice president was there and the president and everybody worked on the issue and everybody was exalting and I got up as the votes were being tallied and I walked into my office and I closed the door I didn't even turn the TV on and I heard everybody cheering which I knew the votes had come into pass the thing and I broke down and I cried and I cried hard and I was like embarrassed you know I'm supposed to be the hard-bitten political guy and I'm sitting there and I was really thinking about why am I so emotional and I realized I was emotional because I was thinking about my own experience my daughter's experience my wife's experience and I thought there are a bunch of families who aren't going to have millions that won't have to go through what we went through and I went and I found the president and I thanked him on behalf of families like mine and he said he put his hand on my shoulder he said that's why we do the work and it was the single most uh important sort of thing that anybody's ever said to me about politics because at the end of the day it is not about whether the red team wins or the blue team wins or who's up or Who's down it's about what can you do with that power that you have to make a difference in the lives of people and we were able to do that and I hear from to this day from people whose lives were saved by the Affordable Care Act or whose children were saved by the Affordable Care Act um and it's such an awesome thing and so I can't help but be hopeful and I just want to encourage us to have a new season uh in which uh we focus on what we can do for the country and not how we can destroy each other and I think the country's hungry hungry for it which is why I think KLA Harris has fair chance to win this thing there couldn't be a there couldn't be a more beautiful reminder of the stakes of politics and elections there are 69 days until the 20124 election more than enough time to volunteer for your candidates and your causes of choice um please help me in thanking David alod for this wonderful conversation thank you so much thank you thank you you [Music]