The Democratic national convention was a whole vibe this year. History was made during the electric four-day convention, which culminated with Vice President Harris accepting the Democratic Party’s nomination, the first black woman and person of South Asian decent to do so. Lucky for us, our own Alex Wagner, host of “Alex Wagner Tonight” on MSNBC, joined us fresh off her flight from Chicago to unpack what the “whirlwind” experience was like. Wagner also discusses the people who were there and what they mean for the party, areas of possible trouble or friction ahead that may not have been evident on TV and more.
Note: This is a rough transcript. Please excuse any typos.
Alex Wagner: Democrats, you know, they were in some ways swept away by the narrative of Hillary Clinton beating Donald Trump and electing the first woman president after Barack Obama. There’s just this pent up emotion to sort of see the pivot towards a better, broader, more inclusive America. And Democrats haven’t gotten there and then boom, you have Kamala Harris, right? Offered after, you know, sort of democratic hopes and aspirations for a candidate that better represents the coalition have been so bottled up. And all of a sudden you have a woman of South Asian and Jamaican descent, a woman. Again, I’ll say that again, a woman who may shatter the glass ceiling. And there’s just a sense of like validation and catharsis and like pent up anticipation and desire just all being uncorked in one week in Chicago.
Chris Hayes: Hello. Welcome to “Why Is This Happening?” with me, your host, Chris Hayes.
I’m speaking to you on the Friday after the Democratic National Convention in the City of Chicago, which was, I think, basically a smashing success and a lot of fun to cover. I was in New York with some of my colleagues in 30 Rock, but we had two of our colleagues in the building. Three of them inside the venue, Joy Reid, Alex Wagner, and Jacob Soboroff. And I just thought it was so essential and elemental to our coverage to go to them. And I loved when we would go to them. And To be totally honest, even though I was kind of like doing some dad stuff during the week and taking my son to basketball camp, I was having some pretty intense and acute FOMO about not being in Chicago, A, a city I love, B, just because I’ve gone to numerous conventions. They’re always fascinating and there’s a certain energy around them. And so I just want to digest and debrief the convention with someone who was there and who better than my good friend of decades, Alex Wagner, who literally just stepped in front of a microphone fresh off the flight from LaGuardia and the car to 30 Rock. Thank you, Alex. I’m so appreciative. How you doing, buddy?
Alex Wagner: I am so more than happy to do this with you, my friend, because I myself need to digest what happened. It’s been a whirlwind.
Chris Hayes: Okay, my agenda here is like —
Alex Wagner: Just talk.
Chris Hayes: — talk. Tell me about like how, I don’t know, like top line. What was the experience like? How was it? What was your general vibe?
Alex Wagner: Well, so first of all, like what a summer this has been, right? Like —
Chris Hayes: Yes, I think —
Alex Wagner: I was at the beach with my kids having a picnic when I found out there had been an assassination attempt on Trump’s life. And then, Secondly, on July 21st, which is my now 7-year-old’s birthday. It was his birthday party and we had a bouncy house and a waterslide and I was going down the waterslide, one of the few adults to do so, when two other parents I know came up to me with kind of like a sick, like they felt bad for me a little bit, but they were delighted to deliver the news that something like cataclysmic, seismic —
Chris Hayes: Monumental.
Alex Wagner: — monumental had just happened to the Democratic Party. And I got to say, Chris, like the coalescing around Kamala Harris has been faster and more energetic than anything I could have possibly imagined. So I was teed up to think the convention where she would officially become the nominee would be full of positivity, right? This whole August has been filled with like, things are going so well, it’s almost weird. Like it’s disconcerting how —
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Alex Wagner: — happy everyone is. But man, I was not prepared for the vibrations at the DNC. I mean, people, you couldn’t find —
Chris Hayes: Oh, you’re saying it was better. You had —
Alex Wagner: It was even better.
Chris Hayes: Okay, so high expectations that were far surpassed by the actual experience.
Alex Wagner: Far surpassed.
Chris Hayes: Same way.
Alex Wagner: I mean, just also because it was a Democratic Party like I’ve never seen. It was like, the stagecraft was incredible, the reclamation of America and patriotism and strength and family and football, like I did not expect that part of it, right?
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Alex Wagner: The Republicans on stage, just the tent, which was already bursting with pride, got that much bigger because it enfolded even more of the country within it. And it was just this amazing like sort of emotional confetti that fills the hall every night. And I mean, I have not ever experienced anything like that before in my political life.
Chris Hayes: Were you in Denver in ‘08?
Alex Wagner: I was not in Denver, no.
Chris Hayes: Okay.
Alex Wagner: And I do think that would be, I mean, I remember election night in ‘08 and that felt like VE Day, right?
Chris Hayes: Right.
Alex Wagner: Like people were bending each other over and kissing in the streets, like some Robert Doisneau photograph from the 1945, right? You’re just like —
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Alex Wagner: — sailors fresh off, like their victory overseas are coming back and getting married and on the GI bill, right? Like that was surreal. But this was like, I mean, I think it was a reclamation of the country in a way. It was bigger than the Democratic Party.
Chris Hayes: Okay. So one theory I have that I want to bounce off you from your perch of actually being there and sort of physically inhabiting it because I do think like, Ari had a great line last night about like, we’re all remembering why like a meeting is better than a Zoom. It’s like so true about all this stuff. That the feeling that I had in the weeks, even before the debate and the weeks after as I watched the polling showing that Donald Trump was winning was a little bit of like, I feel like I don’t know my country. Like how is it possible?
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: Like this guy. And again, all these margins are so small. We’re talking about five out of a hundred people flipping one way or the next is like, is the whole thing. So that’s part of what makes all this so weird. But part of what I felt in the DNC was a sense of confidence as opposed to defensiveness, like not in the crouch of like, we have to apologize for who we are and we promise we’re not weirdos. Very tactical, very specific pointed messages to different constituencies in a very smart way, but generally I would say projecting an air of confidence about the Democratic coalition being a majority coalition and that suffused to me much of the program.
Alex Wagner: Yes. I think there are a number of people, Democrats and otherwise, who felt like they had landed on the wrong side of the parallel universe, right?
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Alex Wagner: Like in some other world, Hillary Clinton in one, Donald Trump went down as kind of a laughing stock businessman and none of this ever happened. But for those caught in this other side of reality, there was a feeling like the country had slipped away from —
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Alex Wagner: — Democrats, that, you know, Barack Obama was an aberration, that Donald Trump was actually, you know, and George W. Bush, those were, you know, the white male patriarchy was really the sort of America that would remain dominant and that like an inclusive, multiracial, multicultural America. I’m not saying a post-racial America, but that was just, you know, that had happened, that whole eight years had happened well before their time and that it was, you know, liberals and Democrats were on the back foot. And this really feels like, oh, wait a second, if the chart showing all the presidents has Barack Obama and then Donald Trump and then Kamala Harris, we’re living at the hinge point when everything changes.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Alex Wagner: That in fact, the democratic liberal tribe is the ascendant one. And that the America we thought we knew is actually the one we do know.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Alex Wagner: Like this actually is who we are as a country. What so surprised me about the convention in the context of that, it wasn’t just celebrating the sort of ascendance of Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket. It was sort of reclaiming the country for Democrats and saying, this is ours. And it was no longer we have to apologize for the way we think about the world and our priorities. They are the values of a broad section of the country, if not the outright majority.
Chris Hayes: You know, it’s funny you say that because I said this last night and it’s something that someone noted. It was in January of 2017 when the first Super Bowl ads happened where the Super Bowl was being played while Donald Trump was president. And there were a bunch of Super Bowl ads that were just like, we’re good to each other. We’re Americans. We’re nice and we don’t insult people. And it’s like, all this stuff was being read as this rebuke of Trump. And I forget who it was. Someone noted like, Trump is such a weirdo and such a scoundrel that saying the most cliche trite stuff comes off as a rebuke to him.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: But that was part of what was energizing the convention, was if you get up and you say, we look out for our neighbors, we try to be decent and kind to people. We don’t like bullies. We love our family. We love our friends. It’s like all of that is like a scathing condemnation of Donald Trump.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: Because he’s such a strange, like, odious force.
Alex Wagner: Yes.
Chris Hayes: So, to that point about kind of reclaiming, it’s like, you can kind of just talk about these very basic universally shared values and they then have the extra subtext of being like a knock on your opponent —
Alex Wagner: Totally.
Chris Hayes: — because he’s so weird.
Alex Wagner: Totally. But in that way, it was so brilliant because it’s once a rebuke of Trump and Trumpism, but it’s also a signal to people who are just tired —
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Alex Wagner: — of the infighting and just not being able to go to Thanksgiving and have a normal conversation and just like, hey, just give all that anger up like make it go away. Just do the right thing for yourself and the country. Come back to where people just like watch a football game and can listen to the Chicks do their rendition of the Star Spangled Banner and feel like patriots, but aren’t part of this weird cult that has like bastardized the notion of strength and, you know, a belief in your country, right? I don’t know who had the idea of bringing out all the flags at the end. And by the way, they were of many sizes. There were like little flags, medium sized flags and very large flags.
Chris Hayes: But these are the ones that people were waving in the crowd you’re saying?
Alex Wagner: Yes.
Chris Hayes: Yeah, yeah.
Alex Wagner: Just like, so that when you looked out at Kamala Harris —
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Alex Wagner: — and Tim Walz, it was a sea of red, white and blue and signs that said USA. I mean, it was just a stroke of genius.
Chris Hayes: More of our conversation after this quick break.
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Chris Hayes: Were there moments that, you know, we were taking most of it, and particularly as the week went on, we were taking most of it live, but we weren’t seeing everything. I wonder if there’s moments that hit in that room that maybe felt differently than they came across on TV or that you noticed there, or things that you noticed in the room that we maybe were missing.
Alex Wagner: Honestly, like, we were broadcasting all the stuff.
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Alex Wagner: Like, when you guys weren’t airing it, for the most part, nobody was paying that much attention to it. I will say, I think, abortion was a theme that was woven into every hour of that convention almost.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Alex Wagner: And it didn’t lose its resonance even as the night went on. And when Kamala Harris was talking about the Orwellian abortion and miscarriage monitoring database, that had as much resonance as Amanda Zurawski’s husband the first night talking about miscarriages and going septic. And like just because it is a topic that Democrats have talked about a lot didn’t mean it lost any of its impact in that room. There were audible gasps. There were women crying. There were men crying. Like, that stuff really hits home. And when people sort of wonder, you know, how potent of an issue is abortion in this next election cycle, it’s very evident, at least from the tenor of that room, that it carries a lot of weight.
Chris Hayes: That point about crying, let’s stay on that for a second. I found a lot of it very emotional. And I was trying to remember, like, I don’t know if I felt this way at other conventions or I felt like my heart strings or I felt close to tears. I mean, there were multiple moments, you know, there were women talking about their experiences trying to get abortion care. There was the survivor of sexual assault who became impregnated by her stepfather at age 12 talking about that experience, which is just totally gutting. There were family members who lost people to gun violence. There was the sort of ecstatic joy of the Walz’s kids rooting on their dad and Tim Walz saying, you’re my whole world. And Gus Walz standing up sobbing, that’s my dad, that’s my dad, which like, I still can’t watch without tearing up. And it really felt like a very emotional convention to me in a way that I don’t know, maybe I’m just emotional. Maybe like everyone’s kind of wrung out emotionally because it’s been such a crazy whirlwind, because the stakes feel so high because the weeks, the three weeks after the debate were so brutal that there’s this kind of like a rawness almost to everyone, but that felt way more emotional a convention than I have ever felt a convention before, just speaking first person.
Alex Wagner: Absolutely. And you know, you saw it in moments like Hillary Clinton getting that —
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Alex Wagner: — epic extended standing ovation when she came out and Elizabeth Warren getting so much applause that she started tearing up. I feel like we talk about celebration as sort of the overarching, like, emotional theme, but it was also gratitude. And I think for people like Warren and Clinton, who never got their hands around the brass ring, the feeling like the party still owes them a thank you —
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Alex Wagner: — and wanted to give it to them, it just filled the room. That emotion filled the room. You know, like Hillary Clinton’s been seen since she lost the election to Donald Trump, but it almost felt like Democrats are saying, this is the time we got them. This is the time we’re going to put a woman in charge, and it’s not you. You’re not going to be the one that takes the hammer to the glassing, but you got us right to the edge of it.
Chris Hayes: That feeling was so palpable. And then there was something else too, which I was realizing as I’m watching them give the applause both to Hillary Clinton, and it also entered my head and Elizabeth Warren, which connects to my overarching unified theory of the last four or five years, which is it’s all suppressed post-COVID trauma because we didn’t have a convention in 2020.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: There was no convention for either. So again, it’s like that applause was eight years in the making. There’s all of this latent stuff because we were all in our homes.
Alex Wagner: Well, I totally think that it’s like that meeting versus Zoom thing that Ari Melber was talking about.
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Alex Wagner: But it’s also like, this isn’t a diss on Biden and the Biden years, but Biden was elevated to the top of the ticket through strategy. I was on the campaign trail with him. He was not electrifying crowds and this was pre-COVID or pre-lockdown.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Alex Wagner: And he was a strategic choice. Democrats, you know, they were in some ways swept away by the narrative of Hillary Clinton beating Donald Trump and electing the first woman president after Barack Obama. There’s just this pent up emotion to sort of see the pivot towards a better, broader, more inclusive America and Democrats haven’t gotten there. And then boom, you have Kamala Harris, right?
Chris Hayes: Right.
Alex Wagner: Offered after like, you know, sort of democratic hopes and aspirations for a candidate that better represents the coalition have been so bottled up. And all of a sudden you have a woman of South Asian and Jamaican descent, a woman. Again, I’ll say that again, a woman who may shatter the glass ceiling. And there’s just a sense of like validation and catharsis and like pent up anticipation and desire just all being uncorked in one week in Chicago.
Chris Hayes: I want to talk about the Harris speech since you sort of brought us there. But I want to start with if you were watching our coverage last night, there was sort of an amazing moment after the speech, we went to you and Joy Reid. You’re both sitting there, and just both talking about your moms and, you know, we all have these stories of like, well, how did I end up being here? And in both of your cases, you both had moms that also came from far away to the U.S. and also were called to the U.S. for some reason. And I just thought it was a very moving moment, I thought, and put the whole thing in a context. And I’d love for you to just talk about that whole first part of the speech was so biographical, you know?
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: It’s like she’s talking about her mom just like trucking off at 19, five feet tall, like never been outside her country to be like, I’m going to the U.S. And like, just the way she talked about it captured the incredible courage and almost insane kinetic optimism that drives a person to take that journey on. That is the origin story for so many fellow Americans, you know, you being one of them and then just how that felt to hear that story.
Alex Wagner: Well, when the network told me that me and Joy were going to be the ones going to the convention, I was of course thrilled. But it wasn’t lost on me that like, oh, I mean, I don’t think this is why they chose us. It was relentless lobbying on my part. No, but my mom is from Southeast Asia. She’s from Burma, which was once part of British India.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Alex Wagner: And Burma was just lumped in with India, even though Burmese are not Indians. And Joy’s mother is Guyanese. And, you know, we have these sorts of twin poles of black and Asian, and here we were going to go to the convention to see the elevation of an Asian black woman to the top of the Democratic ticket. And I thought there was some real poetic symmetry in that. But not just because it’s about us, that just how normal a decision that was for the network to make is so reflective of the America that I think a lot of people are proud to live in, right? That like, I don’t even think that our heritage was a calculation.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Alex Wagner: It’s just that we went and we’re part of this wonderful group of people who cover the news for MSNBC, and they wanted us to go when we went, and it’s not particularly because of the color of our skin, but just because they wanted us there. And that sort of ordinariness of that decision —
Chris Hayes: Yeah, that’s a great point.
Alex Wagner: — is so, I think, validating for a multicultural society, right? Joy and I had talked about this, and the way in which Kamala Harris’s story is universal felt particularly so with us. My mom came here when she was 19 and she went to school in the United States. And, you know, there’s something about the resilience and the tenacity and the just unyielding optimism of immigrants who come to this country, the belief in the American project. And to have that in your not distant rear view, like my mom talks all about growing up in Burma and Joy’s mom is no longer with us, but they instilled in us, you can hear the same values instilled in Kamala Harris, right? That story of, you know, just the way our moms talk to us, the no-nonsense fashion like, if you’re bored, do something about it. Even you heard it in Michelle Obama’s remarks too. There was so much about sort of family, but specifically motherhood and the sort of emotional intensity of that I think really particularly resonated with me on the floor and I know with Joy too. And it just felt like a moment where, as I said, gratitude was as animating a celebration that night.
And I think when you think about the sacrifices that all of our parents make to raise us, but especially when you’re new to this country and all of its ways and cultural norms, and you raise a child who then goes on to do something, like very public with their life, I felt very deeply thankful to my mom. I know Joy feels the same way about her mom. And I could see that all reflected and echoed in Harris’s words to her mom on the stage.
Chris Hayes: One of the things I loved about that part of the speech was, it’s very rare, I think in that context, that you feel like you learn something new about a person. And partly that’s because by the time a person gets that position, you’ve read their profiles, you’ve read their bios, you could tick through the stuff. And it was actually true of Tim Walz, who by the time he gave that speech, which I thought was a great speech, I kind of knew all those stations that he was going to go through. I knew the coach. I knew the Gay Straight Alliance. I felt like the first 10 minutes of Kamala Harris’s speech, like I learned about her.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: I felt like I was like, genuinely, and that may be on me, honestly. I mean, I’ve researched her and read a lot about her, but there was something about the intimacy of what she was saying, the sort of way that she took us through her biography, where I really felt like, oh, wow, I’m learning about this person in a way I haven’t before, which is a very rare feeling for a political speech, I feel.
Alex Wagner: I also think it has something to do with the way Kamala Harris represents a new kind of female politician, right? Like Hillary Clinton, I mean, she talked about her mother and her grandmother, but she wasn’t as keyed into the sort of feminine, sort of like motherhood, nurturing, emotional, like she wasn’t all about cooking in the way that Kamala Harris, like there are memes all over the internet, right? She just didn’t embrace that part of herself, I think in part because she came of age in an era when it was more like, I am going to talk about my national security program, I’m going to wear my pantsuits. Now everybody still wears pantsuits, much to my chagrin. But like, she felt like she had to be one of the guys in the room and I do feel like Kamala Harris is much more broadly like celebratory of the fact that she’s a woman and that she likes cooking and she likes being a stepmom and she has this maternal instinct that she thinks is not a liability but it is going to serve her really well as a president of the United States.
Chris Hayes: I’m glad you brought this up because I think one of the things I’ve been obsessed with and thinking a lot about in the last month of this new campaign that went zero to a hundred miles an hour and the speech last night is her navigating being a woman because obviously it’s just a huge deal and it informs every choice. I mean, every choice. So here’s one example, Heather McGhee pointed this out both on the program and then on the podcast last week of just the way that she’s navigated the very difficult position she was put in after that debate, she couldn’t seem at all to be disloyal or grasping for it, but had to be ready for it if it was sort of like given to her or sort of room was made for her, right? Very difficult. And I thought it was very interesting last night. She gets up there and the first thing she does, she thanks Doug and she thanks Joe Biden. And at some levels, like that makes sense. People thank their spouse is, and then obviously, but there’s something about that where like, there’s a very deft calculation there, right —
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: — happening. They’re like running the math on all this stuff. You know, she is and her team, I think they’ve executed this flawlessly in dealing with the absolute minefield that she is basically, you know, dancing through.
Alex Wagner: I think her stewardship of her own candidacy, and that includes her vice presidential pick is probably more than any policy piece or single speech she’s going to give is the most qualifying.
Chris Hayes: Totally agree with this.
Alex Wagner: That is the best qualification, I think, that we’ve seen in terms of why she should be president, right? It’s exactly what you say the tension between not seeing, seeming like she’s measuring the drapes or like eager for the job, but then being completely ready strategically for taking Biden’s spot. And then picking someone who was not the preference of many, many people. I mean, I thought it was going to be automatically Josh Shapiro because Pennsylvania is a must win state.
Chris Hayes: I did too.
Alex Wagner: And she picks a guy who so perfectly balances her and they just exude genuine authenticity and warmth. And I think honestly, I mean, there were so many strong performances, but I might have liked the best just because of what I think it did for their chances strategically. It was just a masterstroke, the choice of Tim Walz. The thing I would say, Chris, is like when is the last time you planned a family vacation? Like last nevuary (ph), right?
Chris Hayes: Right.
Alex Wagner: Like your wife probably did. I talk about this all the time.
Chris Hayes: Okay.
Alex Wagner: You know what? No, it’s true, women, I’m going to say this, and I’m not trying to be overly gendered, she figured it out.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Alex Wagner: She planned it, she did it, she like kept her head down.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Alex Wagner: She stayed quiet. She knocked it out of the park.
Chris Hayes: I totally agree. And in terms of this, I mean, there’s this fascinating theme about masculinity and femininity and the roles of men and women and the sort of alternate vision in that DNC, both through Walz and through Harris and through the stories they told and the people on stage, particularly because the RNC was so weirdly one note on this. You know, it was like, we have Hulk Hogan, we have Dana White of the UFC is like almost a caricature. It would be like the DNC being like, we’re going to have like a drum circle where like we talk about mother earth. You know, like the equivalent of that, like what’s the most sort of overdetermined stereotypes someone has about this? Here it is. Like that’s what they chose. The DNC does a very textured thing all throughout. Walz’s performance of masculinity, Harris’s performance of femininity, like all this stuff. But I also thought last night, I have to say, I thought she was literally flawless in that speech. And I don’t say this as like, I have no reason to say that other than I thought it. You know, like some speeches are good, some are bad. I think I’ve seen examples of her being like a genuinely bad public communicator in the past, like for sure. I thought she didn’t run a great campaign in 2020 when she ran the primary. I thought she executed perfectly on the last night.
Alex Wagner: I think she did. Listen, I remember her Oakland campaign launch and that was also quite flawless. Like she can absolutely nail it. The primary process was brutalizing for her for a number of reasons. She was not able to navigate the sort of crosswinds effectively at all.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Alex Wagner: I mean, we don’t need to do a whole postmortem, but she didn’t know. I think she just had a really hard time finding her center, not like the center of the democratic platform, but like —
Chris Hayes: Hundred percent agree with that.
Alex Wagner: — she didn’t know where she was and what she was about. And it seems very clear in the intervening years that she has figured out a lot. She’s gone through a sort of number of battles inside the Biden administration as the vice president. She’s learned from Joe Biden too, I think, about how you sort of deal with the left flank, you sort of stay in the center, but you can remain a populist. I mean, there’s a lot of sorts of —
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Alex Wagner: — alchemy that goes into figuring that real estate out that I think Biden was very, very helpful in showing her. And like she didn’t have to go to primary process and there’s 75, there’s like two minutes left before the election. These things have all conspired to give her like an incredible advantage. And you know, she was the New York A.G., right? She was the D.A. of San Francisco. She can land a punch when she needs to, right?
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Alex Wagner: Like she can close. And it was quite a formidable close last night. I agree with you.
Chris Hayes: Formidable is exactly the right word. And that point about being centered or grounded is the most striking thing to me in her performance and particularly last night, because it’s like a textural thing. And I think it’s something that I’m extremely attuned to because of the jobs that you and I both do where we public communication for a living, you know, broadcasting. There are certain things you can do that are technique things, slow down, you know, make sure that the prompt or font is the right size so that you’re not struggling with it. I mean, there are little craft things, but fundamentally there’s something very deep in you that either people have a natural aptitude for or comes with repetition or both, I think in most cases, of just being comfortable and grounded. And when you see it on the stage, Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, you’re like, whoa, you can’t look away. This person is centered there, commanding the room. And other people are along the huge spectrum of that.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: You know, people can be effective speakers and be good in some ways. And she has gotten to that level very quickly and was at that level in the speech where it was just like everything dropped away. She was in control. She was comfortable. The worst feeling in a speech, the reason I don’t like improv, watching improv is like I hate the roller coaster feeling of like white knuckling your way through like, are you going to do it? Like, whenever you’re seeing like at first this, it’s like so uncomfortable for the audience. Whereas when you see as someone like Kamala Harris on Thursday night or Barack Obama or Michelle Obama or Oprah Winfrey or a number of others, you just know you’re in good hands.
Alex Wagner: Yeah. Can I say something that is pretty controversial, I’m sure?
Chris Hayes: Whoa.
Alex Wagner: I do think —
Chris Hayes: Let’s go.
Alex Wagner: — there is a way in which Trump has contributed to a very effective form of plain speak that would not have characterized previous democratic convention speeches. When she’s talking about these monitoring databases that are going to monitor women’s abortions and miscarriages and says, simply put, they are out of their minds.
Chris Hayes: Best line of the night.
Alex Wagner: Best line of the night. This desire to just like go for the solar plexus and just say it, call it like it is, not in some kind of hammy Bill Clinton, I’m a man of the people, like we can talk about Bill Clinton another time, but in its kind of just like, this is bonkers.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Alex Wagner: Like there was always this veneer of kind of like intellectual statesmanship, like that I think that was part of the worst parts of democratic rhetoric and on the stump. And I feel like Trump kind of just watered everything down and made it so guttural and like basic. If there’s a silver lining to that, it’s like that Tim Walz can be like, these people are weird.
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Alex Wagner: Like what’s going on? And like they’re out of their minds.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Alex Wagner: That’s the best legacy of Trumpism, that people just can call it.
Chris Hayes: That’s a very astute point the way that his distinct rhetorical style, if we can call it, which it is. I mean, it really is. And it can be wildly effective. Sometimes it really is very effective. I mean, there are moments when Trump is super effective, and there are moments like long, you know, discourses on, you know, sharks and batteries and things like that.
Alex Wagner: Hannibal Lecter.
Chris Hayes: Yeah, Hannibal Lecter was less effective. But you’re totally right about that. And it is funny also the gravitational pull of him, which is another thing that you have to navigate, which I thought it was very interesting how much to talk about Trump, not talk about Trump, talk about Trump, not talk about Trump. And I actually think this is actually one of the things that is so useful and potent about Project 2025. because it is a new way of talking about Republican governance that’s not about Trump. It is about Trump because it’s what his people will do, but I don’t know, there’s something narratively enticing about it that took off virally and they really hammered. Like that moment that you’re talking about where she says Trump and his allies want to and she lists, that’s all project 2025 stuff.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: And they hammered the holy hell out of that all week long.
Alex Wagner: The Democrats have done such a good job raising the profile of Project 2025, which is good because it is, as you say, strategically a way to talk about Trump without having to rehash all the Trump of it all. But it’s also a 900 or 700 or whatever 100 page treatise, filled chock-a-block with totally bonkers, batshit, insane end of days policy —
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Alex Wagner: — that they would like to enact, right? It is a treasure trove —
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Alex Wagner: — of like, apocalyptia, if that’s even a word. So, I mean, that part I think absolutely makes sense. You know, I was actually struck by how much she did mention Trump proper in the speech.
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Alex Wagner: Like she went back to his criminal liabilities and his indictments. I mean, he was very present in that speech in a way that I don’t think other candidates necessarily are. And I read that as indicative of, and this is something that was a true for the entire convention, they want Democrats to be happy, but they want them to understand that the work is real and that the hill still exists and everybody’s going to have to climb it starting today. And like the reminder of Trump, the existential threat he poses, the entreaties for Republicans and independents to come into the tent, because this guy’s totally insane, like they never lost sight of that. And in every single big time convention speech, nobody was resting on their laurels. Nobody was saying, this is like our new tomorrow. It’s just about joy in the morning. It was, you got to go through the darkness at night before you get to joy in the morning.
Chris Hayes: And Tim Walz saying, you know, in his football metaphor, we’re down a field goal, but we have the ball and we’re marching.
Alex Wagner: Yes.
Chris Hayes: That this idea like we’re behind. Like we are not winning.
Alex Wagner: Right.
Chris Hayes: We have a shot at winning if everyone keeps it together. And partly that’s because the way the Electoral College works is they can’t squeak it out. In the national popular vote, they’re going to have to win by two and a half to three points.
Alex Wagner: Maybe five.
Chris Hayes: And maybe five. And let’s be clear, like, what do you think Trump and Republican party officials in Georgia are going to get up to or in the Omaha congressional district, which is worth what could be a crucial electoral vote. I mean, in all these places, what kind of havoc they’re going to wreak? Like everyone I think is aware, you know, you have to beat him in this sort of definitive way, which it shouldn’t be that way, just to be clear.
Alex Wagner: No, it’s fundamentally anti-democratic.
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Alex Wagner: You can only win by a certain margin before someone concedes defeat.
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Alex Wagner: I mean, like, hello, that’s not how it works.
Chris Hayes: We’ll be right back after we take this quick break.
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Chris Hayes: You just said the term big tent. I want to just stay on that for a second. That’ll sort of segue us to some of the Gaza stuff, but someone was making this point. It’s very funny, like there are all these moments of big tent almost to a like ludicrous degree. So one was Bernie Sanders comes out and he rails against the billionaire class. And then the next speaker was JB Pritzker, who was like, I’m a real billionaire and Donald Trump isn’t. There was the Central Park Five coming out to talk about Donald Trump and their wrongful conviction. And again, Donald Trump, played a role, but like they were wrongly convicted by prosecutors, immediately followed by prosecutors.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: There was like progressive activists who work with ex-offenders and police officers. There was progressive activists and sort of like, you know, Shawn Fain, union president, and lieutenant governor of Georgia, who’s a Republican. It was like a real big tent event.
Alex Wagner: Yeah. And I have to say, Jerusalem Demsas has a piece in “The Atlantic” saying like the bigness of the tent, the vagueness of the platform as it stands right now, and I look at it, I’m not begrudging Kamala Harris any of this. I think strategically, this is the soundest move. It is going to hold probably until November 5th. And then after that, it’s anyone’s game. The degree to which there is real, you know, internal debate within the Democratic Party about what specifically a Harris administration means. But right now the tent is so big. Like, are there even flaps? You know?
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Alex Wagner: It’s just kind of like an overhang that a whole bunch of people are crowded under with no walls, right? But like, again, I think that is the beauty of this moment, you know, and I think it’s not wrong to let Democrats marinate in that feeling of good vibes for many, many reasons, but also because it’s the thing that’s most likely to get them over the finish line in November.
Chris Hayes: Yeah, and I would just say, I totally agree. I mean, one of the things you want to do in politics is make up. You basically want the tent as big as it can be without collapsing.
Alex Wagner: Correct.
Chris Hayes: Like, there is some level that’s too big where it collapses and you basically want to push it out until —
Alex Wagner: Until, like, right.
Chris Hayes: And it’s at that level.
Alex Wagner: Well, last night there were rumors on the last night of the convention that Beyonce or George W. Bush was going to appear. Neither one ended up coming out.
Chris Hayes: I know.
Alex Wagner: But I remember thinking like, okay, fine, Beyonce would be incredible and this whole place, the roof would be blown off. But like, George W. Bush, are we really going there? Like, are we really going to have the Chicks, who famously like —
Chris Hayes: Yes. Oh my God.
Alex Wagner: — were canceled.
Chris Hayes: Talk about got to hear both sides.
Alex Wagner: We can’t do that. Also, the architect, I get it. George Bush is not Donald Trump. And even Mitt Romney, it was like Barack Obama ran a bruising campaign against a corporate raider named Mitt Romney. And of course, he’s come around on the big central issues of democracy, but he’s still very much a Republican.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Alex Wagner: It’s kind of like at what point are you going to crush the center and the whole thing is going to fall apart? Luckily, that did not happen and Liz Cheney didn’t even show up.
Chris Hayes: No, and that’s a great point. Look, one more thing just on this. I thought there was actually a fair amount of substance in the speech policy wise. And I do think combining this speech with that Friday speech she gave in North Carolina. I’ve got actually a pretty good idea of a Harris economic agenda. One particular thing is like housing, which has not been a priority for Democrats for years is very clearly a priority for her. Barack Obama talked about it. She talked about North Carolina. She talked about it last night. So there’s certain things where I’ve got a sense that if she is elected and she has Democratic majorities in both houses, like the John Lewis Voting Rights Bill, a big housing bill, something more on prescription drugs at extent, I’ve got a decent sense, I feel like, of the agenda. I agree that there’s some vagueness there.
Alex Wagner: Like the price gouging piece —
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Alex Wagner: — both ends of the democratic spectrum are debating like what does that practically mean?
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Alex Wagner: How aggressively are we going to pursue this? Is it to extend beyond food and groceries?
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Alex Wagner: But again, she doesn’t need to answer that stuff right now and Congress would need to be involved. So what’s the point exactly?
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Alex Wagner: I agree with you. There’s one topic that we haven’t talked about.
Chris Hayes: Right. Well, and this to me was the one really discordant note. It was and I’m going to deal with it on my show tonight, which will be in the past by the time you listen to this, but she had, I thought a pretty good section on Gaza. It was threading a needle and I thought well-delivered, choosing to end on a kind of call for Palestinian self-determination, which got huge applause. I thought was a sort of interesting choice. There were the father and mother of one of the hostages addressed the convention. Their son was kidnapped by Hamas. His arm was blown off. He’s been held in Gaza since then. He was at the music festival. I thought they gave a beautiful searing (ph). And also like for people in their position, like a sort of beautifully gracious, large hearted and compassionate call for getting the hostages home and ending the mayhem for the civilians of Gaza. And I thought it was very beautiful and extremely moving. It was also the case that there were no Palestinian Americans who spoke.
Alex Wagner: Yes.
Chris Hayes: I mean, given that we’re talking about this sort of like crazy got to hear both sides, like prosecutors and the wrongly convicted and cops and Republicans, like that was a pretty glaring omission to me, I got to say. And I think a mistake, frankly, in coalition management.
Alex Wagner: I totally agree. And there was a sort of side story that was unfolding about the uncommitted vote, you know, trying to work with the Harris campaign and the DNC to get a Palestinian speaker on the stage. I believe there was, you know, suggestions of people who were still going to endorse Kamala Harris but bring the issue to light. It wasn’t that they were going to stay uncommitted. I do agree that it is an oversight. And I thought, you know, I felt, tense part of the speech. She starts off affirming America’s unwavering support for Israel and its support for Israel to defend herself and speak specifically of Israel. But then in sort of in the passive voice —
Chris Hayes: It’s always that way (ph), yes.
Alex Wagner: — condemns the suffering in Gaza and says it must stop, right?
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Alex Wagner: And it’s like, you know, again, like the semantics of this are very fraught. The Israel line that was in the room did not get the applause that the Palestinian lines did. And so I don’t know what that’s indicative of.
Chris Hayes: One thing that’s interesting, right, is that despite all the fractures in the coalition, and they are profound, just to be clear, like there are Democrats who think that the creation of the state of Israel was a historic crime that never should have happened. There are people who think in the democratic coalition who think Palestinians don’t exist, it’s an invented identity and all these people should just go to Jordan and Egypt, whatever. So there’s genuinely irreconcilable views within the coalition that can’t be brooked by getting the speech language right. There are people who have fundamental —
Alex Wagner: Yeah, totally.
Chris Hayes: — principled, conflicting views. All of that said, it was striking to me, A, that calls to end the war and a ceasefire got enormous applause, no matter who said them. And B, and this was why I thought the two parents of the hostage that spoke were so moving is, it is the case now that both by and large, the families of the hostage members, much of the Israeli security apparatus, much of Israeli public opinion, and folks in Gaza and Palestinian Americans, people sympathetic to them, all want a deal that will exchange hostages or a ceasefire. And even though people are on different sides of the issue ideologically, that actually is a point of unity, which is why I thought there was an opportunity.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: Right? But because you don’t actually have to say we’re in disagreement on this. That’s actually where everyone is, except for Netanyahu, honestly, and probably Sinwar, who is now running Hamas after the political leader was assassinated. But that part of it to me, it was a missed opportunity —
Alex Wagner: It was a missed opportunity, yeah.
Chris Hayes: — because you could frame it in those terms.
Alex Wagner: And should have, right? Whether or not it’s going to decide the election is morally and ethically —
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Alex Wagner: — you got to address this and you got to give them a shot, especially, as you say, if it’s not even going to cost you a moment at the convention.
Chris Hayes: And also, it’s like, what are you saying to these people about who belongs and who doesn’t? You know, it’s like Jeff Duncan, the Lieutenant Governor of Georgia —
Alex Wagner: Exactly.
Chris Hayes: — who like believes that abortion should be illegal, which again, I get it. You know, bring him in. He’s in the pro-democracy coalition. I have no issue with that. But like, it’s just weird to be like everyone but this.
Alex Wagner: Yes, I agree.
Chris Hayes: This is going to be a crazy sprint here. I’m very curious to see, Trump has clearly been wrong footed with all this. In fact, he’s like constantly pining for Joe Biden. Last night, my favorite thing was he literally tweeted in all caps, “WHERE IS HUNTER?” It’s like what, buddy? Hey, dude, did you not get the memo?
Alex Wagner: He’s on vacation in California with his dad, who’s no longer running for president.
Chris Hayes: Who is no longer running for president. That’s where he is. He’s in California. He’s in a vineyard. It looks really nice. It’s going to be a wild 75 days.
Alex Wagner: Yep.
Chris Hayes: And, well, I’m so glad that you got to go.
Alex Wagner: I’m so —
Chris Hayes: When you’re talking about when you’re selected, I was like, I definitely texted you like, hmm, interesting. I was like, I didn’t want to go to Chicago. I hate Chicago.
Alex Wagner: Listen, I sent one of those edible arrangements to our bosses and it worked like a charm.
Chris Hayes: No, I was so annoyed —
Alex Wagner: Don’t include cantaloupe, just honey dew.
Chris Hayes: — because like literally at David’s basketball camp and I was like, well, that’s fun.
Alex Wagner: Dude, I —
Chris Hayes: Anyway, but I was so glad that you were there.
Alex Wagner: You were missed. And can I say, your analysis at the table is always brilliant.
Chris Hayes: Oh, that’s very sweet.
Alex Wagner: And America needs that in New York as well. So like we all have our roles to play here, my dude.
Chris Hayes: Well, really, you guys were amazing. It was so great to have you there. And we should just note, this is a travel day for you. You were up late last night. You got on a plane. You flew to LaGuardia. What an annoying ask from your dear friend. It’d be like —
Alex Wagner: No, no, you’re doing me a service.
Chris Hayes: — well, you also do a podcast on the day that you have to come back to New York and do a show, so.
Alex Wagner: No, it is my pleasure because like I said, you’re going through this stuff. You’re like running around.
Chris Hayes: Right, you’re not going to be able to do all this on your show tonight even.
Alex Wagner: Yeah, but also, you’re my friend. I want to talk to you about it. You know what I mean?
Chris Hayes: Yeah, totally.
Alex Wagner: Like, we just have the benefit of recording it for a podcast.
Chris Hayes: Yeah, great.
Alex Wagner: But this is like, we never get this time together anyway.
Chris Hayes: No.
Alex Wagner: So thank you, Chris Hayes.
Chris Hayes: All right. Love you, dude.
Alex Wagner: Love you, too.
Chris Hayes: Alex Wagner is the host of “Alex Wagner Tonight,” which is on MSNBC Tuesday through Friday night at 9:00 p.m. right after my show, which is on at 8:00 p.m. You can catch both of us four nights a week. You should watch it five nights a week. Obviously, there’s some great people on Monday, but the two of us four nights a week. I just want to be clear.
Alex Wagner: But the really good line up is Tuesday through Friday.
Chris Hayes: Alex, thanks, man.
Alex Wagner: Thank you.
Chris Hayes: Once again, great thanks to the amazing Alex Wagner. That was so fun. I was jonesing to do something like that. I’m so glad that she made it happen. We’d love to hear your feedback on what you thought of the week and the speech and the DNC and where everything stands right now. You can e-mail us at withpod@gmail.com. Get in touch with us using the hashtag #WITHpod. You can follow us on TikTok by searching for WITHpod. And you can follow me on Threads, what used to be known as Twitter and Bluesky, all @chrislhayes.
Be sure to hear new episodes every Tuesday.
“Why Is This Happening?” is presented by MSNBC and NBC News, produced by Doni Holloway and Brendan O’Melia. Engineered by Bob Mallory and featuring music by Eddie Cooper. Aisha Turner is the executive producer of MSNBC Audio. You can see more of our work, including links to things we mentioned here by going to nbcnews.com/whyisthishappening.
“Why Is This Happening?” is presented by MSNBC and NBC News, produced by Doni Holloway and Brendan O’Melia, engineered by Bob Mallory, and featuring music by Eddie Cooper. Aisha Turner is the executive producer of MSNBC Audio. You can see more of our work, including links to things we mentioned here, by going to nbcnews.com/whyisthishappening.