In this preview of the Patreon exclusive, Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss Night 2 of the Democratic National Convention, analyze the speeches by Michelle and Barack Obama, intrigue within the party, and a whole lot more. To access the full episode, and exclusive coverage this whole week, head over to Patreon and become a patron. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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|---|---|
| Hey, everybody. | |
| It's Jerry Dave Sexton. | |
| Nick Hausman. | |
| How you doing, bud? | |
| I'm good. | |
| I'm good, too. | |
| We're hanging out in person. | |
| We're in Chicago, Illinois. | |
| We're reporting from the Democratic National Convention, night two. | |
| This is a Patreon-exclusive episode. | |
| Nick was in the arena. | |
| We had a great conversation. | |
| We had a ton of analysis from all this stuff. | |
| Where do you think the people need to go, Nick? | |
| Well, they have to go to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast to get the full episode. | |
| That's right. | |
| We're going to be doing this not just tonight, but also tomorrow night, Wednesday, night three of the Democratic National Convention. | |
| And Nick, if I'm not incorrect, also night four of the Democratic National Convention. | |
| We're here all week, folks. | |
| We're here all week. | |
| This only happens rarely. | |
| Actually, I was figuring this out the other day. | |
| I think this is our third in-person show, correct? | |
| It sounds good to me. | |
| It sounds good to me. | |
| So go over to patreon.com slash mccraigpodcast. | |
| You're going to listen to a preview of this episode. | |
| You're going to want to go over there. | |
| You're going to want to subscribe. | |
| You want to listen to the whole thing. | |
| I promise you we have a very, very interesting discussion about what happened tonight, what's happening with the Democratic Party. | |
| patreon.com slash mccraigpodcast. | |
| All right, everybody, let's do it. | |
| Cheers, buddy. | |
| Cheers. | |
| Oh, let me get mine open. | |
| There we go. | |
| Cheers. | |
| Jerry J. Sexton, Nick Hausman at the Democratic National Convention in Nick Hausman's dad's house. | |
| It's lovely. | |
| It's comfortable. | |
| We're hanging out. | |
| The boys are in town. | |
| Absolutely. | |
| The boys are back and it's nice. | |
| Chicago in the summer, there isn't many places better. | |
| Can we talk about the fact, so I'm sitting here, just to give a little bit of ambiance, I'm sitting here in like a t-shirt hoodie. | |
| I feel so good. | |
| The air is crisp. | |
| It feels nice. | |
| Early autumn. | |
| I'm digging it. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Well, luckily you didn't get some of the humidity that was here earlier this week, but you might get some tomorrow, but we'll find out. | |
| Yeah, you don't need to put that on me. | |
| Everybody, you are listening to Patreon-exclusive coverage of the Democratic National Convention. | |
| Night 2 is in the books. | |
| We have a ton to talk about. | |
| We have a Michelle Obama speech. | |
| We have a Barack Obama speech. | |
| They have a whole host of speeches to go over. | |
| Before we get into it, Nick, you were in the arena tonight. | |
| Can you give the audience an idea of what it was like to be there night two of the Democratic National Convention? | |
| Well, it's funny because we talked yesterday about how they're going to balance out the big hitters. | |
| And did they shoot their wad a little bit, maybe on Monday? | |
| Do we have enough power, you know, going forward? | |
| This was the night where they were going to kind of bury some of the people who weren't. | |
| I completely agree. | |
| They had a murderer's row. | |
| It was probably just two in a row. | |
| We had Schumer and we had Bernie. | |
| And people weren't even, I mean, barely listening. | |
| So, the numbers have come in from night one. | |
| 20 million Americans watched the night one of the Democratic National Convention, which is a huge audience for a convention. | |
| Sure. | |
| Right? | |
| Usually it's political sickos like us and our listeners. | |
| We talked last night. | |
| It had a really good, coherent message last night. | |
| It was about the passing of the torch from the old generation to the new generation. | |
| It was top-heavy with Barack Obama and Michelle Obama. | |
| Tonight, message-wise, was kind of a mess. | |
| Do you agree with that? | |
| It wasn't as focused. | |
| It wasn't as put together. | |
| I think the end of the night finished kind of stronger and different, of course, from the Biden address, but it was kind of a big jumbled mess. | |
| Yeah, I mean, if you had to pick, like, what the focus could have been, and I think I might have given him too much credit yesterday, because to me, I felt like, great, the speechwriters are all writing them for individual speakers, but they're also, you know, connecting with each other to make sure they don't have redundancies and there's a theme. | |
| I don't know, man. | |
| I don't know. | |
| It didn't happen tonight. | |
| And so the theme could have been like, hey, we're going to compare and contrast Kamala and us to Trump. | |
| So that was sort of in the background. | |
| And like, we're going to hit Trump. | |
| Right. | |
| So there was that, at least with Michelle and Barack Obama. | |
| But, you know, I am digging the we go high kind of. | |
| I feel like we're going back to going high again. | |
| And it feels good to try and capture the imagination, especially when it seems like it's working for some of the The Republican people who we're seeing more and more are peeling off, not only saying that they're just going to abstain from voting, which would be a fine, but it sounds like a lot of these Republican voters are going to vote actively for Kamala, and that's exciting. | |
| Yeah, so one of the things, there's been a couple of developing stories that have taken place in the past couple of days from the absurd stuff, which we'll finish up tonight's episode with. | |
| But to begin with, there has been a lot of polling, both within internal Democratic pollsters, but also national public polls that a lot of Nikki Haley supporters have moved over to actively supporting Kamala Harris. | |
| Then on top of it, an interesting story that has actually been buried. | |
| There was a Pennsylvania County Republican leader who openly endorsed Kamala Harris, despite his position, and then immediately got swatted by right-wing sickos. | |
| It does feel like the momentum has shifted. | |
| There are some things that happened tonight that I think are really, really noteworthy in terms of the way this thing was put together. | |
| It does feel like the momentum is there. | |
| It's hard to have a night two of a convention stick the landing. | |
| It doesn't have the initial punch of it. | |
| I do think that they relied really, really heavily on the Obamas. | |
| They didn't necessarily organize it well, but it does feel like that the momentum from night one and the momentum from the Harris campaign is definitely there. | |
| Uh, yeah. | |
| I think they were able to keep the momentum. | |
| I think nothing's going to get in the way, certainly of anybody in the stadium. | |
| Nothing hurt them tonight. | |
| Right. | |
| Right. | |
| Nothing hurt them tonight. | |
| Right. | |
| Yeah. | |
| And like, you know, I will say it was part of the feeling, which has been really positive and upbeat the whole time for me, was dashed when I was holding seats for people. | |
| Can you tell people, because this is such a Nick Haussleman story. | |
| Nick Haussleman went to the Democratic National Convention and got into a small altercation of manners. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Well, okay. | |
| So, you know, I get there really early because the one thing I don't want to deal with is, you know, it's been a crush both nights. | |
| Some people have waited in line for two hours to get in. | |
| A logistical nightmare all the way around. | |
| Yeah. | |
| And by the way, getting out has been a dream. | |
| Like, you get right on the bus, they get you out of there. | |
| But getting in, and even depending on what side you're on. | |
| So, my friends got stuck on one side. | |
| They said they heard the other side was a breeze. | |
| And I got there early. | |
| I got there, I got dropped off at 4.30. | |
| I was in the stadium by 4.42. | |
| And I, you know, got these front row seats straight on to the stage. | |
| Beautiful. | |
| You know, and I'm holding like five seats because I have people coming. | |
| They're all supposed to be there soon. | |
| But, you know, anyway, at some point, some woman came in there and was just like, I'm like, wait, no, I'm sorry. | |
| I'm holding the seats. | |
| And she's just flat. | |
| I was like, no, you're not. | |
| I'm not. | |
| I'm taking these. | |
| And I'm like, no one's here. | |
| I'm like, they're coming. | |
| They're here. | |
| Whatever. | |
| Anyway, it was it was not even like she said, are those seats taken or do you mind or whatever? | |
| Any kind of thing. | |
| It was just a brusque thing. | |
| And so I got, after a two back and forths, I finally was like, all right, whatever, but just so you know, this is not in the spirit of the event that we're at tonight. | |
| And then I stalked back to my chair and sat there. | |
| Nick, this is the most bum-pa-bum-pa-bum-pa-bum moment that I've heard from you in a very long time. | |
| This is Curb Your Enthusiasm at the DNC. | |
| That's all this is. | |
| But listen, something had to be said at the very end because she was not going to leave. | |
| I have a question, though, and I think I would be remiss as a broadcast journalist, Nick. | |
| When you said out loud, I do not believe this is in the spirit of the event, did you not feel great about yourself in that moment? | |
| You did, right? | |
| You know, it was OK, but then I sat down, and it takes you 20 minutes to get back to emotional equilibrium, and you're like, ugh, now I'm the asshole, right? | |
| I don't want to do that. | |
| You want people to applaud. | |
| You did, right? | |
| You want a slow clap to start, right? | |
| And then her partner comes and kind of menaces me and does the same thing when I'm listening. | |
| And so they sat down and guess how long they sat there? | |
| A couple of minutes. | |
| Yeah. | |
| 20 minutes later, they got up and left and never sat there again. | |
| And someone else took the spot. | |
| So it was like, what am I doing? | |
| Anyway, listen, did I have the notion of, you know, let me just go over there and give him a hug and just sort of let's get this all out of the way? | |
| I kind of thought that. | |
| But, you know, anyway, here we are. | |
| But, yes, there's a determination by the... | |
| everybody there to create this harmony, to create this energy, and we're not going to let it go. | |
| We're not going back is the big phrase and slogan here. | |
| And it's powerful. | |
| Really, they've gotten some good phrases going and back and forth stuff that I really enjoy. | |
| And whoever's come up with them has been smart. | |
| No, it's been good. | |
| I've actually noticed, you know, there was actually a thing that happened. | |
| The we're not going back, and to be honest, like this is actually deeper politics and strategy. | |
| The we're not going back has been an excellent call for chance. | |
| And also a very good summary of what the the Harris-Waltz campaign is about. | |
| But there was an initial criticism which was we can't make the argument, and we've talked about this on the podcast a lot, you can't simply make it about protecting what has come before and they've added we're going forward. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Which I think actually shows that the Harris campaign and the strategists and communication experts around it, they're agile, right? | |
| They're ready to make that on the move, and they made the right choice. | |
| And I guess I would ask this before we get into the actual content of the night. | |
| Did you feel like there was momentum that was built off the first night? | |
| How were people feeling after the Biden situation? | |
| This was obviously an emotionally cathartic situation. |