Nick Hauselman and Jared Yates Sexton break down the final night of the Democratic National Convention. They get into Kamala Harris's speech, their overall impressions, and what they're feeling heading out of Chicago. This is a preview of the patron-exclusive show, head over to Patreon and subscribe today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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| Hey everybody, welcome to the Weekender Edition of the Muckrake Podcast and night four, the finale of the Democratic National Convention. | |
| No, it didn't pop. | |
| No, no, no. | |
| Nick opened a bottle of water and I have bourbon. | |
| Cheers! | |
| We did it. | |
| We made it. | |
| A reminder, if you want to listen to this whole episode and all of our exclusive coverage, go to patreon.com. | |
| Everybody's been doing that lately. | |
| We appreciate it. | |
| We do. | |
| Nick, we have so much to talk about. | |
| The Democratic National Convention as a whole, Kamala Harris' acceptance speech, some truly, absolutely bad shit stuff that explains a lot about our current climate and where the race is going from here. | |
| I just want to say, and by the way, I'm tired. | |
| You're tired. | |
| This has been a marathon in every sense of the word, and it finished. | |
| Now, Kamala Harris' speech, I thought, was effective. | |
| We'll get into what was positive about it, what was problematic about it, but man, what an absolutely dismal final night of the Democratic National Convention. | |
| You know, I guess it depends on your perspective. | |
| That is my perspective, yes. | |
| From the political sicko, yes. | |
| And even from an event planner standpoint, to some degree, it was a problematic structure. | |
| Can we point out, and I'm so glad that you put it that way, we've talked about this every night. | |
| Logistically, it's been an absolute mess. | |
| In terms of getting people in, but also planning, also in terms of the timing of the thing. | |
| Tonight's event was so poorly thought out and so poorly executed. | |
| It's actually shocking because, and we've sort of talked about this too, Communication-wise, they killed it pretty much the entire time. | |
| Execution-wise, in terms of the way that things move around, man, it's really bizarre. | |
| And I guess this is what happens whenever you have a new candidate who takes over the party like a month before the convention. | |
| Yeah, I mean, in terms of logistics, even getting in, like you mentioned, you know, if you didn't get in or begin the process of entering the arena, you know, by four, then you were probably in for an hour and a half, two hour wait, depending on which side you went in. | |
| So, yes, it was weird, because you'd say, you know, it's natural, a lot of people are converging, it's going to take a while, but I would say two hours is too long. | |
| I have friends who They thought they were really close. | |
| They got really close to the entrance and then it just didn't move for an hour. | |
| You know, so that was a rigmarole. | |
| That was a problematic thing. | |
| I will say that the bathrooms and everything, that went great. | |
| It was never crowded. | |
| The concession stands were never too bad. | |
| Sure. | |
| Not long lines. | |
| By the way, we have a lot to talk about tonight that is not always going to be positive. | |
| What did you eat? | |
| Yeah, so let's paint the picture. | |
| What did you already eat? | |
| Okay, you know what I ate. | |
| I had to get what I had to get. | |
| Did you get chicken tenders? | |
| I got the chicken tenders. | |
| Oh, do you feel terrible? | |
| I somehow, you know, I hadn't eaten since breakfast so I had a long stretch and I somehow didn't want to die. | |
| I didn't feel like I wanted to die afterwards. | |
| It's a win. | |
| I had some delicious Thai food with your dad. | |
| With Nick's dad, which was wonderful and a memory I'll have forever watching this terrible convention. | |
| Yeah, so let's get into the night because I mean I think the biggest issue I had being there was that it was like they tried to make it into a dance party. | |
| They had so many breaks with a DJ playing songs. | |
| And the songs weren't even like, you know, they were kind of like old hits and whatever. | |
| So if you were a fan and you were really jazzed and it's the end of the week and you want to get up and dance and move around, like there was something there for you. | |
| But like a lot of the sections didn't get up and dance. | |
| Like you had one person and that one person was like, come on, everybody. | |
| And we're all just kind of everyone else is going to sit in there watching them. | |
| So that was a thing. | |
| And they did it like on purpose, I guess. | |
| And there was so many of those breaks. | |
| It was crazy. | |
| Well, and by the way, if you think that we're not going to talk about the rumor of the special guest, the Beyonce, the Taylor Swift, we absolutely are because it's a microcosm, again, of everything that's wrong with our current political climate. | |
| And I have thoughts about it. | |
| But Nick, it... | |
| It was such a mess of a program. | |
| I watched from the Billy Goat Tavern, I watched Elizabeth Warren give a rushed five-minute speech. | |
| Elizabeth Warren, one of the leaders of the Democratic Party, who was slotted in at Like six, like central time. | |
| Then we get into the thing, and I made this note earlier. | |
| Are you ready, Nick? | |
| This was the stretch that we had for about 30 or 40 minutes. | |
| We had the drumline that performs at Chicago Bowl games. | |
| We had the Chicks performing the National Anthem. | |
| We then had Kerry Washington, who had, I don't know, five, six, seven different segments, including an extensive selfie On top of that, we had Kamala Harris's niece, her stepdaughter, her goddaughter. | |
| D.L. | |
| Hughley came out. | |
| Shocking, the D.L. | |
| Hughley's there. | |
| Then we had a cop who just came out and who even knows what happened. | |
| Like, we have had so many speakers at the Democratic National Convention, Gavin Newsom didn't get to talk because, as we've talked about, him and Kamala Harris hate each other. | |
| Like, the fact that this thing was so jam-packed with speakers the first three nights, and this night, it just felt like special entertainment night! | |
| It sucked! | |
| You know, my daughter had a graduation ceremony from high school, and in order to be fair, they allowed anybody who wanted to play a song Play a song. | |
| Yes, absolutely. | |
| Imagine that, like we're sitting there and the guy, it was a little bit like, if you remember in Say Anything, when he's singing I Believe the Children Are Our Future, like that was happening multiple times in a row. | |
| They were like, hey everybody, we're a little low on speakers tonight, anybody want to, Leon Panetta's like, I will say something. | |
| As soon as Leon Panetta came out, I'm like, okay, Gavin Newsom is going to primary her. | |
| Do you know what I wrote? | |
| I tweeted, and listen, I don't like to quote my tweets on this podcast, but I just imagine Gavin Newsom angrily chewing on icing Leon fucking Panetta. | |
| Without question. | |
| And we were texting, like, Leon Panetta, all caps, and it was like, what? | |
| You know? | |
| And I'm like, great, talk about how you hit that phishing email and got hacked in 2016. | |
| It was ridiculous. | |
| Dude, praising Ronald Reagan, people are like, yes, absolutely, let's do it. | |
| Just abysmal planning. | |
| And by the way, we'll go through the speeches here, but there are some real humdinger awful speeches. | |
| Before we do all this, we have to talk about the main event of the night. | |
| Kamala Harris giving her acceptance speech. | |
| I have my thoughts. | |
| Can you tell me what it was like in the room? | |
| And we'll get into what was effective and what was missing in this thing. | |
| Yeah, I mean, it was a little bit surprising. | |
| She came on early, certainly earlier. | |
| She needed to. | |
| Yeah. | |
| She needed to. | |
| It was about a half an hour earlier than anybody else had come on as the final speaker. | |
| Which was poor planning the last few nights. | |
| For sure. | |
| Terrible planning. | |
| And so, you know, it didn't make sense to me because I thought with all these weird speakers that were popping up and all these music breaks, she'd go on at like 11 o'clock local time. | |
| Like, that's what I thought. | |
| So it turned out 9.45 maybe she came on? | |
| Roughly. | |
| They had nothing tonight. | |
| Yeah, it was strange. | |
| Now, her speech, it was a really great reception. | |
| I was filming some of the stuff. | |
| I really wanted to catch her in the crowd and what that was like. | |
| So, extended ovation, extended energy to finally have her there. | |
| That was all done really well. | |
| We got some policy, Jared. | |
| Did we? | |
| What policy did we get, Nick? | |
| She at least brushed upon, and when I say this, It is, since it was more than anything else we had from anybody. | |
| See, that's the thing. | |
| You're being kind here in contrast to what else we've gotten, which is absolutely no policy whatsoever. | |
| Right. | |
| So, but you did touch upon a little bit of how important it's going to be to make more, you know, more affordable housing for people. | |
| Sure. | |
| And all the greatest issues she's been going out and laying out, too, which she's been laying out in more detail in some of the press conferences, whatever she's doing now, that are getting kind of ripped to shreds by the Republicans with math. | |
| And I don't think rightfully so. | |
| But she touched on that. | |
| And I think, I mean, the highlight for me for her speech was when she centered on Israel. | |
| And she laid out a very neocon, that's the word I'm not defining of Israel, but defense of Israel. | |
| Sure. | |
| And then I thought she very artfully pivoted to make it clear that they need to have a ceasefire and that innocent Gazans need to be protected as well. | |
| She might even mention the West Bank too, but either way, there was that notion, because they're getting hit hard by not having a Palestinian speaker. | |
| It actually was a major developing story that not a lot of the media touched on. | |
| I think it was actually a really big mistake for them not to have a Palestinian-American speaker. | |
| Because here's the thing, Nick. | |
| Would it have been uncomfortable? | |
| Absolutely it would have. | |
| But I don't think it would have created like a big firestorm. | |
| I know strategically why they didn't do it. | |
| It was a bad move. | |
| So, because what are they worried about, right? | |
| Like, you know, nobody spoke out of turn. | |
| Anybody that spoke at that stage had a speech that was written and locked in and you're gonna read off that teleprompter, right? | |
| You don't, you don't want, the reason why in the room you don't do it, and again I think it's a mistake, is you don't want somebody going off script and saying, Genocide Joe. | |
| You don't want that, right? | |
| So that's a fear. | |
| But that's the fear, but that's also not a big enough fear to not do this. | |
| Like, And again, I don't want to be in the room. | |
| I don't want to do this. | |
| I do think a Palestinian American should have spoken at the DNC. | |
| If you're so worried about it, you slot him in at 6 p.m. | |
| Right. | |
| I agree. | |
| I thought it would not have been a problem at all to give somebody a platform. | |
| It should have happened yesterday. | |
| And now, Ilhan Omar, we ran into her the day before. | |
| What is time? | |
| And, you know, she's angry. | |
| She should be. | |
| Yeah, and so, and they're probably worried about it, because this is all about vibes, right? | |
| And all about joy. | |
| And they don't want to have anger. | |
| Now, they did have, you know, my family friend, Rachel and John, spoke last night on stage about their son, who is still a hostage. | |
| And so, not that they don't want anything that, you know, poignant or melancholy or sad, because they certainly had some of that, a lot of that. |