Chris just got back from vacation. It just so happened that he was way during one of the most remarkable periods in American presidential political history. There’s a lot to unpack with our guest this week. Heather McGhee is a New York Times bestselling author of “The Sum of Us” and the board chair at Color of Change, the nation’s largest online racial justice group. She joins WITHpod to discuss the most seismic recent political developments, vibes within the Democratic Party and more.
Note: This is a rough transcript. Please excuse any typos.
Heather McGhee: You don’t sit in the seat of the highest, the greatest power in the free world, do what you consider a bang-up job and then just say, you know what, I’m going to walk away from this because some people who don’t sit in this seat think that I can’t cut it. But remembering the projected chaos, right, just in your point of going back, Chris, we were like, is there going to be a mini-primary? Are they obviously going to skip over Kamala Harris? Like really, the idea was it’s going to be all these other people. And it was a shock watching cable news from the United States and seeing how much it was so quickly, all of the visuals were Vice President Harris. You know, there were two different announcements. One was, he’s resigning. I don’t remember how many minutes later, but it wasn’t, I don’t think an hour, when it was full endorsement of Kamala Harris. And then it was it, and we were off to the races.
Chris Hayes: Hello and welcome to “Why Is This Happening?” with me, your host, Chris Hayes. Well, if you watch the television show I host called “All In on MSNBC,” you’ll know that I was away for a little bit for a little family vacation, which was amazing. Went to Iceland, magical, dramatic, fascinating, beautiful place with my family. I got some time to do some stuff like chop wood and clean my garage, which was really genuinely the highlight of the vacation, which is so lame, but so true. Maybe I’ll post some pictures. It looks really nice now. I made a Google doc of where everything is, so it’s searchable, so we know where the batteries are and the roller skates and all that stuff. So, that’s what I was doing for two weeks. But some stuff happened in the world, and it was one of the most remarkable periods in American presidential political history that I happened to be on vacation for. And I came back to a different universe. So, two things. One is, if you listened to the podcast we had this whole, I thought pretty clever like schtick that we were doing on the campaign this year called “WITHpod 2024: The Stakes,” in which we said for the first time, and since the 19th century, two incumbents facing each other, both with presidential records, here’s how the records match up on areas of policy. We did it on immigration, we did it on climate, on taxes. Thought it was interesting and smart, but that just went away. So, we’re going to have to sort of refashion that, for one.
For two, we had some other guests scheduled for this week. But what I wanted to do, just my first day back in the seat, is just be like, well, what’s going on? What did I miss? And so, one of the people that I love to talk politics with the most who was on my show, I think, like the day before I left vacation, which is also two days, I think before Biden dropped out, is the great Heather McGhee, who has worn many hats through her illustrious career. But she’s New York Times bestselling author of a phenomenal book called “The Sum of Us,” which we talked about on the podcast. Before you can look up of that episode, she’s a board chair at the Color of Change, the nation’s largest online racial justice group. She’s writing another book right now. And it’s great to have Heather McGhee on the program. Welcome, Heather.
Heather McGhee: Hey, Chris. Welcome home.
Chris Hayes: Well, I mean, talk about a vibe shift. I mean, I just want to go back because I think we tend to have kind of memory hold there, but there was a news cycle, if I think I’m getting this right, it was the presidential debate, the immunity decision basically saying Donald Trump is immune or at least partially immune, you got to go figure it out. Aileen Cannon throwing out the documents case, J.D. Vance being named the vice president, the RNC, and, oh, yes, in there right before that, an assassination attempt on the President of the United States that missed him by like a quarter inch from possibly killing the man. Like, I mean, that was one of the craziest and darkest, truly darkest three weeks that I have experienced in American politics. Did you feel that way as well?
Heather McGhee: Of course, I did. I mean, the vibe, the mood among Democrats after the debate was so bad. It was terrified. It was a sense of where are the adults in the room because we are obviously not it, we have no control over how to fix this problem. And then the assassination attempt. And it was just very clear, coming out of that, that he could sort of then do no wrong with his base. The media started unbelievably covering him as if he was going to be this transformed, like sanctified by the blood saint. And, you know, it went right into his convention where he got to control the narrative. It was a terrifying time.
Chris Hayes: Truly.
Heather McGhee: And then it was that Friday, six days after the assassination attempt, a night after Trump’s speech, the worst speech in convention history, but it doesn’t matter because as you so, you know —
Chris Hayes: Oh my God, that speech.
Heather McGhee: — aptly put in the show. Right? remember, the speech
Chris Hayes: I forgot the speech. I forgot the speech. The speech was so insane. It just went —
Heather McGhee: It was —
Chris Hayes: — on and on. I mean, oh my God, I completely like blocked —
Heather McGhee: It was so insane.
Chris Hayes: — out the speech.
Heather McGhee: And it was also true that we knew that most Americans did not watch it. They just opened their local —
Chris Hayes: Right.
Heather McGhee: — paper. And it was like coming from the pre-announced written speech and it was all —
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Heather McGhee: — about unity and turning the page. And then I came on your show, Chris, and I gave the strongest case I’d given in public about why even before the debate, Biden did not have what it took. And my case was all about the Democratic base. It was all about saying that he is not doing well enough with women, young people and people of color. People are not excited. People at the grassroots are door knocking and having to avoid using Biden’s name despite his amazing record of accomplishment, and this is what is so scary. And then you add the debate. And then 36 hours later, I mean, I’m not taking credit, I’m not giving you credit.
Chris Hayes: It was you.
Heather McGhee: I’m saying —
Chris Hayes: It was you.
Heather McGhee: — we had a conversation.
Chris Hayes: Hundred percent. Well —
Heather McGhee: And everything happened.
Chris Hayes: Yes. He did tag you on his Twitter post. It’s like @Heather McGhee. I heard it on Chris Hayes and I just couldn’t go on. Well, okay, so here, I know one part of the reason I want to talk to you is like, I feel like I’ve jumped into the future, but there’s still a little bit of processing that I have to do. And like at one level —
Heather McGhee: Yes.
Chris Hayes: — I’m just happy to be back and the vibes are good, but I do want to like, let’s just go back for a second because one of the things that I was seeing during that period of time, because I really found those three weeks so anguishing, I think it was three weeks. And partly, because it’s anguishing when, A, I felt genuinely cross-pressured like the future seemed unclear to me. It didn’t seem like there was a sure shot one way, one direction another, there was a balance of risks. I ultimately said on air and I think on the podcast multiple times, if I simplified the question to, do I think this man truly have the most stressful job in the world at the age of 85? My answer is obviously not, like that’s clear as day. And if I just try to stop working through the Rubik’s Cube of risk and just say, at the substantive level, do I think that’s a good idea? No, 85% of people basically agree with me on that. They don’t, like, consistently impulse, does not have the ability to serve on a second term, that’s it, like I don’t need to do that much more than to kind of come back to that home base. That said, I found that conversation difficult and anguishing. Weird little factions emerged that had like never existed before like there was like a weird faction of like Biden stands who were like, if you try to get rid of the president for the first Black woman on the ticket, you’re being racist, which I found a little bit of a weird argument, I will admit. But ultimately, one of the things I said was this tension we’re sitting in, this internal intramural conflict, as uncomfortable as it is, is necessary and good and sign of something healthy. And I really genuinely want to revisit that now that it all happened because I genuinely think they are not capable on that other coalition side of having precisely that debate, they’re incapable of like this really tense discourse that was necessary to move to the next seat. I’m trying to sit with that lesson and really cherish it in a way because I found it so unbearable that I need to remind myself that it was necessary.
Heather McGhee: They have the same facts, right? They have the second oldest dude —
Chris Hayes: Worse. Worse facts, yes.
Heather McGhee: — who’s absolutely incoherent most of the time.
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Heather McGhee: Like we don’t actually need to play this game. We all know how unfit Trump is. Eighteen people who used to work for him have just been cut into an ad talking about how bad he is, right? That’s their set of facts. And yet, they have been unable to stop him from being the nominee again and they have been unable to stop him from completely reshaping the party in his image. And you’re absolutely right that what we did by forcing we, broadly we, not you and me, but again. No, I’m just kidding. But broadly, what Democrat —
Chris Hayes: But, I mean, mostly our segment, but then I have a bunch of other stuff.
Heather McGhee: You know, what Democrats did, both elected and people who were activists and online like labor, I mean, really, most people weighed him —
Chris Hayes: Nancy Pelosi.
Heather McGhee: — in some way. Yes, who had some kind of voice in the broad pro-democracy coalition and then what Joe Biden did by ultimately making an extremely difficult decision because in his mind, of course, he could still do it. And, of course, he had aced the exam already and deserved to be promoted to the next grade. And that all shows that we actually are not a cult of personality, but we are a coalition in service of the higher good.
Chris Hayes: I’m so glad you brought that up because that’s the other part that again, like, because I’ve skipped ahead, I haven’t had a chance to talk about, but like I’ve had complicated feelings about Joe Biden for parts of his career. I have pretty negative feelings about the way that he’s managed the conflict in Israel and sometimes a little hard to bracket that. But with that being said, I was genuinely moved by that announcement. I was not expecting it. I was like in a playground in Reykjavik with my six-year-old in a bouncy house when, on the first day we had landed, having not slept at all in jet lag, and the notification comes off, I’m like, Kate. But I was really moved by it because it is essentially unheard of. It just doesn’t really happen. I mean, LBJ in ‘68 is the closest example, but even that’s, you know, 50-plus years ago, like, I was moved by the fact that whatever it took in the end, he did this very, very profoundly selfless thing that I think was genuinely in the service of a higher good and is a genuine sacrifice.
Heather McGhee: It really was. You don’t sit in the seat of the highest, the greatest power in the free world. Do what you consider a bang-up job and then just say, you know what, I’m going to walk away from this because some people who don’t sit in this seat think that I can’t cut it.
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Heather McGhee: But remembering the projected chaos, right? Just in your point of going back, Chris, we were like, is there going to be a mini-primary? Are they obviously —
Chris Hayes: Right.
Heather McGhee: — going to skip over Kamala Harris? Like really, the idea was, it’s going to be all these other people. And it was a shock watching cable news from the United States and seeing how much it was so quickly, all of the visuals were Vice President Harris. You know, there were two different announcements. One was, he’s resigning. I don’t remember how many minutes later, but it wasn’t, I don’t think an hour, when it was full —
Chris Hayes: Yes, half an hour, yes.
Heather McGhee: — endorsement of Kamala Harris, and then it was it, and we were off to the races.
Chris Hayes: That’s the other part of it, too, which, again, to like, just go in the time machine for a second, because I do think there was a real sticking point. You heard this, like I talked to, it like, when you listened to AOC, who had sort of been like, I don’t think Biden should drop out and Jasmine Crockett, you know, there are a number of politicos whose judgment I trust and generally, you know, find interesting and insightful. It was very clear that part of the calculation was a fear that he would step aside and then some process would be contrived maybe by like powerful donors that would skip over the woman who was elected to be there if he can’t do the job by both the voters of America and Democratic primary voters who has —
Heather McGhee: Yes.
Chris Hayes: — the actual small D democratic legitimacy to play the role —
Heather McGhee: Yes.
Chris Hayes: — would be skipped over in a way that would destroy the party basically. And I think that fear —
Heather McGhee: Yes.
Chris Hayes: — really loomed over a lot of the calculations.
Heather McGhee: Absolutely. Nobody was taking it for granted that it was going to be Vice President Harris. Nobody was saying that that would even be right, right? There was this whole narrative about how the fair and democratic thing to do would be some kind of open primary. And people who you would think would line up behind her were saying that. So it was very —
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Heather McGhee: — uncertain. I was shocked washing the way it quickly became and it’s Harris.
Chris Hayes: Yes. And I think that’s my position when Jemele (ph) and I talked about this, you know, a few weeks before I left for vacation after that debate, like my position was always that it’s Biden or Harris, always, like we’re not doing fantasy football here. Everyone’s going to see, you know, all these donors sitting around with their little card being like, well, what about a Newsom-Whitmer? You know, I was like, no. Like, see, that’s not the way this works. So, I was also from afar sort of surprised by it, but it also like has this sort of an exorable (ph) logic. And then I have to say, this is something that you got to say, is that I’ve interviewed the vice president multiple times. I went with her on a campaign stop in California back when she was running for a Senate. I think I had her on as Attorney General. I’ve talked to her a bunch. And she’s obviously formidable, incredibly smart, accomplished. I think that like she didn’t run a great campaign in that 2020 primary. I think there have been communicative stumbles that happened. I think the vice presidential job is super hard and basically kind of boxes in everyone. But she has done a pretty damn good job, just not even just substance, it’s just like tactical stylistic like executing in a very difficult set of circumstances, a genuinely unprecedented set of circumstances. And it’s a little taken for granted, I think, how much her flawlessly executing has been facilitating the goodness of the vibes, but that I have been pretty darn impressed just, again, at a political level. None of this has anything to do yet with policy really. It’s just about doing politics under very —
Heather McGhee: Yes.
Chris Hayes: — high stress, high stakes and difficult circumstances.
Heather McGhee: I think flawless is the right word, and I want to say, same. You know, she was not my candidate in 2020. I’ve had tremendous respect for her. She’s obviously extraordinarily, politically talented to be who she is, where she is to have accomplished —
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Heather McGhee: — a lifetime in public service. But the narrative about her was bad. It was bad.
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Heather McGhee: And imagine how difficult it was to sit back, not be part of the conversation, in fact, be thrust more —
Chris Hayes: You can’t be.
Heather McGhee: — into the spotlight —
Chris Hayes: You must. Yes, right, yes.
Heather McGhee: — during the, will he, won’t he, you know, she’s being pushed onto these donor calls. She’s doing fundraiser after fundraiser where she’s out there saying, you know, President Biden has decided he will stay in the race and that is it, and you know?
Chris Hayes: Right.
Heather McGhee: And fielding all this animosity and anxiety from all of these donors, that’s what she was doing in the weeks before.
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Heather McGhee: And then she has to sort of graciously, you know, kind of bat her eyelashes and say like, gee me, why thank you.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Heather McGhee: And then be —
Chris Hayes: Right.
Heather McGhee: — commander-in-chief like the next day, right?
Chris Hayes: Totally, yes. Right, yes.
Heather McGhee: And do it as a woman, and we are all so allergic to seeing a woman grasp for power, that it had to be this weird thing where it’s like she was handed it, she didn’t ask for it, but, of course, she deserves it.
Chris Hayes: Oh, got you.
Heather McGhee: And she have it. I mean, it’s so —
Chris Hayes: Totally.
Heather McGhee: — complicated and it was just like, boom, boom, boom, excellent. The question of, is she going to make all the people in Delaware at the campaign headquarters move, right? Like, that was a question.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Heather McGhee: That I was with a bunch of politicos on Sunday and it was like, who’s going to be the campaign staff? What’s going to happen. No, seamlessly, she’s like, you, guys, all still have your jobs.
Chris Hayes: I just want to stay on this point because that’s such a great point that I hadn’t quite thought of in that way of like the tortured and fraught way that gendered expectations and patriarchy attached to female ambition, making this like particularly fraught like wildly in a way at like just an nth level of complexity. And to manage that so deathly so there’s not some weird psycho sexist Lady Macbeth, you know, like narrative there that you’re so right that that was so hard to pull off, and she pulled it off genuinely perfectly. And I hadn’t quite thought of it in those terms, but, of course, that’s a huge part of it.
Heather McGhee: And that was like, you know, 72 hours and then it was the next moment and then it was the next moment. And you look at her now and it’s like, oh, she’s been the president all along, right? There’s also this amazing thing.
Chris Hayes: Totally. It’s funny, I had a kind of “Rip Van Winkle” experience of it because I was away and because like the first time I got to sit down and watch her as the candidate for a full rally, like for, you know, the whole thing, was the Tim Walz introduction, which happened, you know, when you hear this podcast last week. And I was just so struck by that, by the comfort level. And it’s funny, this is a thing I have a little bit of insight into. In my own tiny little way, you can be naturally good at communicating, and in different context, that natural skill is either elevated or it’s diminished, sometimes based on whether you’ve been set up for success or not, sometimes based on where you are internally and psychologically. And one of the things that happens, this happens to baseball hitters who are in a slump and it’s happened to me as a public communicator, which is what I do for a job, if you feel unsteady or insecure or not supported, you press. And when you press, people hear the effort. And the effort is a little off-putting. And I do think that was a little bit of the Vice President Harris issue, was she was in a position where she was pressing. And what I was struck with, yes, when I watched the rally, was how she was not pressing. She was relaxed, calm and in control. And that is all the difference in this stuff, all the difference in the world. And it’s such a small thing. It’s the same person with the same abilities, the same intellect, the same, you know, all that stuff. But that thing makes a huge difference, and that was what really struck me in watching her for the first time as a candidate.
Heather McGhee: You’re really right. And, again, that is no small feat as a Black South Asian woman to feel so comfortable —
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Heather McGhee: — in having the hopes and dreams of a massive pro-democracy coalition, right? I mean —
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Heather McGhee: — she’s still the underdog, right? She’s still —
Chris Hayes: She said that.
Heather McGhee: — unbelievable.
Chris Hayes: She said that in the rally, Walz, yes, I thought it was good, yes.
Heather McGhee: Losing in the polls in five out of seven swing states, right, it is still very, very scary. And she’s the only thing standing between us and all the parade of horribles that will come domestically and globally if Donald Trump is allowed to walk through those doors again. And she’s like, I got this, guys.
Chris Hayes: Yes, right, yes.
Heather McGhee: And it’s a really beautiful thing to behold.
Chris Hayes: More of our conversation after this quick break.
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Chris Hayes: So, let’s talk a little bit about the Walz pick, and I love the coalitional politics aspect of this. I do think it’s very funny how conservatives gets so angry when Joe Biden said, I’m going to put a Black woman on the Supreme Court. And they’re like, oh, what about the most qualified? And yet, like everyone takes for granted that the vice president was going to be a white guy like its own very explicit sort of like, not even just DEI, like a quota, like it’s a literal quota system, like there will be a white guy who’s going to have this job. And, of course, it’s just a funny inversion in that way.
Heather McGhee: And the Republicans don’t care that 83% of their party are white people, right? I mean —
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Heather McGhee: — you know, that’s not a quota.
Chris Hayes: None of the Republicans are running around being like, Well, what about Raphael Warnock? Why wasn’t he considered? Like, which genuinely is like, it’s true because if it were another candidate in a different situation, Raphael Warnock would 100%. The guy has won like four races in like one year, two years in like the hardest terrain electorally in the country.
Heather McGhee: He’s a Southern preacher.
Chris Hayes: Like he’s really —
Heather McGhee: Yes.
Chris Hayes: And a Southern preacher, he’s pulled off a political miracle like absolutely would be top tier, you know, person you would think about for that position. But the coalitional politics of it are so interesting to me. And I’m just curious how you’re thinking about them and about the Walz pick and just about what it takes to keep this very complex Democratic Party together.
Heather McGhee: So, in my book, I make the argument that there are millions of people who want progressive policies, want the nice things that a functioning society should have, paid family leave, universal healthcare, clean air and clean water. And the reason we can’t get them is basically because of racism in our politics and our policymaking. And electorally, what that has meant has been white people, and especially white men, have left the Democratic new deal coalition over the racial, cultural grievance politics, masterfully spun by the Republican Party. And so, that means that in terms of this, because folks like Tim Walz, but without Tim Walz’ values and backbone and politics, but gun-owning, hunting, fishing, former soldier, you know, churchgoers from rural areas like Tim Walz have left the Democratic Party, we all can’t have nice things.
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Heather McGhee: And so, it’s not a small deal that we finally have as one of the main images of our party, the kind of prairie populist, rural small town, white guy who nonetheless stands up for an astonishing list of nice things that every family, no matter where they’re from or what their background, deserves to have. It’s a huge deal. And the fact that he’s an excellent communicator and a deeply —
Chris Hayes: He really is.
Heather McGhee: — nice guy, and you can tell that within seconds of hearing him talk, and like a real guy, like a real dad figure, like he wears his masculinity, my mom was like, now, that’s a man’s man, you know? I mean, like, I —
Chris Hayes: Have you seen the video with the headlight plug thing? Have you seen that one?
Heather McGhee: No, which one?
Chris Hayes: He’s like sitting in a car and he is just like, little tip of the day, this is a Ford 2014, whatever, headlight burned down on this. You’re going to just go to NAPA Auto Parts, for about $8, you just take off that wrapping, put the wrapping back in, plug that back in. And it’s just so good.
Heather McGhee: So good. We’ve all needed our dads to tell us that, you know?
Chris Hayes: Well, I completely agree with you on all of that, I think there was two other things that I thought about him. One was that when I talked to George Goehl, who you know well, of course, a mutual long friend of ours, you know, he said the thing that always sort of stuck with me when we were having conversations, talking about rural America and organizing there, that like, even when you look at a map electorally, that’s, you know, let’s say, it’s a county of 10,000 people and it goes 65-35, right? And you look at that, you’re like, well, you know, 30 points is like, you can’t win a race there. But in raw terms, there’s still 3,500 people in that county that voted in a way that even in their context was itself kind of like a — and like that’s a lot of people. Like the people are out there, it’s genuinely the fact that like those, you know, white rural men particularly have left the Democratic Party. But it’s not a hundred to zero and it’s like, there are people and they’re going to barbecues and they’re hunting and they’re doing all the things that people do. So that was a reminder. And then the other thing I really loved about, I loved the way that he talks about stuff in this, you know, the thing I said yesterday is sort of patriotic pluralism, which I think the kind of foundational text of this is the Obama 2004 convention speech, which is, I think, like a canonical piece of American political oratory for a reason. And Obama, I think, was just exceptional. But this idea of grounding what our liberal values in basic, civic creed connections, we look out for each other, we stand up to bullies, we don’t want people to struggle when they don’t have to. We believe in freedom, we believe in minding your own damn business. Just a way of taking what are fundamentally liberal progressive values, translating them into the sort of common sense wisdom of like being a good person and looking out for your neighbor, to me, that’s the rhetorical sweet spot for our politics. And —
Heather McGhee: Yes.
Chris Hayes: — he’s got a knack for it like he’s got an intuitive sense for it that is very striking whenever you encounter him.
Heather McGhee: It is what we have been missing. And to have it be articulated by a guy who wears Carhartts and camo hats. Listen, in some ways, it’s like, you can sound condescending to say it matters, this kind of stylistic representational stuff, but young voters couldn’t connect with Biden not because the administration didn’t cancel their student debt but because they felt —
Chris Hayes: Right.
Heather McGhee: — zero cultural connection to him, right?
Chris Hayes: Yes, it does matter.
Heather McGhee: This is just real.
Chris Hayes: Doing —
Heather McGhee: I mean —
Chris Hayes: — politics matters. It’s like, yes, all that stuff matters. This is a thing that’s like, that’s what’s so weird when I come back after two weeks where it’s like, it felt like a bunch of people trying to tell us that like, none of this matters. And it’s like, well, no, it all —
Heather McGhee: Yes.
Chris Hayes: — does matter. It all matters, enthusiasm, energy, cultural cliche, like none of it is dispositive, none of it’s like, well, then, you win. It’s like, this is a 50-50 race.
Heather McGhee: Yes.
Chris Hayes: Like it’s —
Heather McGhee: Yes.
Chris Hayes: — going to be right margin, but because it’s 50-50, everything matters at the margin.
Heather McGhee: That’s right.
Chris Hayes: And this stuff all does matter.
Heather McGhee: It’s the margin of effort, not the margin of error, right?
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Heather McGhee: That is really true. That’s where we are. I do want to come back to his communication skills though because, you know, there’s this whole thing about how he’s, you know, stood for 20 years in front of a classroom and that’s where he gets his ability to think on his feet. He’s never used a teleprompter before.
Chris Hayes: I love that detail.
Heather McGhee: And say, in fact, right?
Chris Hayes: Great detail, yes.
Heather McGhee: He uses words that I’m obsessed with like “neighbor,” which is exactly how we want to talk, because you don’t want to say like, my fellow citizens, and it’s like, well, but sometimes, they’re not citizens. And that’s not really —
Chris Hayes: Right.
Heather McGhee: — what we’re saying. We’re not saying, it’s because they vote. We’re saying it’s because we share literally like a water system together and our kids went to school together.
Chris Hayes: Physical proximity, yes.
Heather McGhee: Yes. Right, it’s proximity. So quotes like this. They see people, they, Republicans, see people less fortunate as scapegoats and punchlines for their jokes. We see them as neighbors. It’s fabulous, right?
Chris Hayes: Ten-ten, no notes.
Heather McGhee: And there’s no notes. right? There’s the, is it pro-choice, is it pro-abortion, is it reproductive freedom? He says, it’s mind your own damn business. I mean, it’s just so good. And I think the fact that he’s able to ground this ability to truly communicate that is not only with values and sort of wrapped in our civic creed, but it’s actually not highfalutin. I mean, President Obama is highfalutin, God bless him. He’s a constitutional scholar.
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Heather McGhee: This is the first —
Chris Hayes: Yes, totally.
Heather McGhee: — non-lawyer on the Democratic ticket in some ridiculous number of years. I don’t remember how many. But it was a lot. I was like, oh.
Chris Hayes: Yes. And also, I will say, and I say this, I’m — obviously, I think, I’m a pretty ambitious person, that’s definitely been like, I’ve definitely in my youth been a young man in a hurry. And that’s recognizably true of —
Heather McGhee: Yes.
Chris Hayes: — most politicians, Kamala Harris, Josh Shapiro, Barack Obama, for sure.
Heather McGhee: Yes.
Chris Hayes: Joe Biden, you know, ran for Senate at 29. This guy really does seem like he kind of came through the side door into politics, right? Like —
Heather McGhee: Yes.
Chris Hayes: –there was not some stepping stone game plan. I went to a fancy school. I’m going to do this. And it’s just genuinely rare. And again —
Heather McGhee: Yes.
Chris Hayes: — no shade to people that are driven to do it because I —
Heather McGhee: Yes.
Chris Hayes: — have a fair amount of that myself and people I love have that too. But it is different and you can feel it, I think, particularly compared to J.D. Vance, who is like the ultimate example —
Heather McGhee: Oh,
Chris Hayes: — of that stone stepping, you know, ambition that I was just referring to, and it’s kind of most curdled manifestation.
Heather McGhee: Oh. I’m having a physical reaction to J.D. Vance’s ambition. I mean, it is —
Chris Hayes: Oh, it’s really something.
Heather McGhee: — so raw.
Chris Hayes: Isn’t it? It’s so overpowering.
Heather McGhee: It is. It’s like a really strong cologne that you can smell through the screen.
Chris Hayes: And also, I should —
Heather McGhee: You know, things like him saying to his son, “Will you shut the hell up about Pikachu,” because he’s talking to Donald Trump, like that’s just a great example.
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Heather McGhee: Listen, my kid interrupts me all the time when I’m trying to do something else.
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Heather McGhee: I don’t go to shut the hell up. I just don’t.
Chris Hayes: No.
Heather McGhee: It’s like, oh.
Chris Hayes: No. And also I think like you and I, I don’t want to speak for you, but, you know, we’ve been in spaces around people versions of J.D. Vance, like there’s something recognizable about it. It’s like, well, just the bad feeling, man. Bad vibes, like people that they got their eyes on something and they’re going to crawl over whoever it takes to get there —
Heather McGhee: Yes.
Chris Hayes: — and suck up to whoever’s going to help them.
Heather McGhee: Yes.
Chris Hayes: We’ll be right back after we take this quick break.
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Chris Hayes: To me, it’s like, and I don’t know, I try to really be honest with myself about, I’m not the median voter, I never have been. One of the tr things I really try to do in my punditry is not to pretend I am and not to think that my instincts are representative. Whatever they are, you know, there’s data out there, there’s reporting. My visceral reaction to the guy is just so strong like I just think he’s not appealing, I don’t think he’s particularly talented political communicator. He’s clearly a very smart guy and like he can write. That book is pretty well-written, but this is not some, you know, natural political talent that —
Heather McGhee: No.
Chris Hayes: — we’re seeing.
Heather McGhee: No, politics is a popularity contest and he’s never been a popular guy.
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Heather McGhee: And when Walz said, you know, I don’t know about what kind of small-town guys you know, but mine didn’t go to Yale.
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Heather McGhee: And then work on Wall Street.
Chris Hayes: Yes, yes.
Heather McGhee: And then come back and trash my community.
Chris Hayes: Yes, right.
Heather McGhee: I mean, it was just a perfect —
Chris Hayes: Write a book trashing his community.
Heather McGhee: –like one, two, three.
Chris Hayes: I love that.
Heather McGhee: Yes. Write a best-seller trashing my community.
Chris Hayes: I remember reading the book and thinking “Hillbilly Elegy,” and being impressed by it like it’s a well-written interesting book, but it’s also, the thing I said to someone after I read it, I was like, this is my one-sentence review. I was like, I know this is going to sound weird, but it feels, the book is like racist against poor white people.
Heather McGhee: Oh, yes.
Chris Hayes: So, it had the like exact sort of grossness that my whole life I had encountered the way that people had talked about folks in the Bronx, where I’m from, Black and Latino poor folks, and about how dependent they were and how they screwed up their own lives, and it had all of that mapped onto this population that was a different one, which is poor white folks among whom he grew up, but had all the same kind of, like, oh, cutting grossness to it. And I was like, this is a new one. I haven’t quite encountered this one before.
Heather McGhee: That book has always been, for me, like exactly an example, I’m going to be blunt, of the kind of projection of a conservative narrative that blames individuals and culture for everything wrong —
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Heather McGhee: — that makes anecdote into widespread sociology and that too many people, because it used, you know, excellent sentence structure and because it was from somebody who was now newly in their class thought was fucking excellent.
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Heather McGhee: Too many people gave J.D. Vance of, like, oh, you’re here in the country club with us and that Aspen Ideas, please tell us about what’s wrong with poor white people.
Chris Hayes: Interpret, yes.
Heather McGhee: And it was gross.
Chris Hayes: It was gross, but what’s also really interesting about his trajectory, and I think there’s like two ways you could look at this. One is just like a totally cynical trajectory. He was flattering people that could help them then, which was basically the kind of like country club liberal elite who thought poorly of his folks anyway and he sort of pandered to them and then he started pandering the people that could help them. So that’s one way. But I do think in a weird way, he got skeeved out by it but ended up in the wrong place about it, because he’s now completely changed his view on this, which is that it’s all the fault of other people, the fault being the libs, the immigrants, the globalists, you know, all this is sort of —
Heather McGhee: Yes.
Chris Hayes: — demagogic things. So, it’s no longer like all this sort of individuals, like, no, actually, I have come around to a systemic view of this. Your plate is born of, you did get screwed by someone. You know, it’s the immigrants and the libs basically —
Heather McGhee: Yes.
Chris Hayes: — in “Hollyweird”.
Heather McGhee: I mean, those are just two sides of a conservative worldview. It’s either personal irresponsibility —
Chris Hayes: Yes, exactly, yes, they’re different.
Heather McGhee: — or it’s a —
Chris Hayes: Totally.
Heather McGhee: — scapegoated other. So, he’s just not that interesting. He’s just not that interesting.
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Heather McGhee: Tim Walz on the other hand is extremely interesting.
Chris Hayes: Well, no, but I totally agree with that. Okay, wait. Someone was saying that the Tim Walz bio is becoming like Chuck Norris facts, which I think is really true. But one of the craziest things is, did you see the genocide Rwanda stuff?
Heather McGhee: No. Give me a new reason to love Tim Walz right now.
Chris Hayes: Okay, new Tim Walz facts. So, first of all, one of the things that’s interesting, he wrote a master’s thesis on the holocaust and holocaust education, and he’s always been very focused on that. He is a huge map and geography nerd and like a real map and geography nerd, like early, like, using GIS stuff in his classes. One of the things that he did, and “The New York Times” actually wrote this up in 2008 or ’09, I think, and they actually went back to factchecked this, was that he would have an assignment that was in the Holocaust portion of the curriculum for students to look at indicators geographically of places that could have that kind of genocide in the world they were living in. And that the students actually identified Rwanda in one of these classes as a candidate before the Rwandan genocide. I know this sounds made up, but “The New York Times” actually factchecked this and went back and interviewed the students. Like I know this sounds like a fabrication on the Internet, but they actually went and interviewed the students and they talked about it and, like, I was just like, wow, like this guy also sounds like he was a really innovative educator, like a genuinely really good teacher. And he also like got this like China thing, which is fascinating, which is that he’s really interested in China and has been doing exchange trips into China. He’s been to China dozens of times and he’s taken students there and he’s talked to other high school like then exchanges with Chinese high school. I was like, wow, man, what an interesting dude. Like every detail I learned, like this guy’s really an interesting dude.
Heather McGhee: I do think it’s really important for us to remember what policies he signed into law. Many of them —
Chris Hayes: Agreed.
Heather McGhee: — in this first 100 days of the trifecta, because there’s like, you know, a couple that have been quickly rattled off, as you know, part of his kind of bio, paid family leave, the first governor to protect abortion rights as it was before the fall of Roe v. Wade. But Minnesota is moving faster to clean energy than California. It wouldn’t have that.
Chris Hayes: This is the one that I’m the most obsessed with. They’ve got a genuine deadline. And can I just say one more thing about that? They got a 20-40 all carbon-free electricity generation and then they move to permitting reform bill because they weren’t going to hit the targets, which I also love because, again, people sort of like, this is a thing that can be really thorny and even with traditional liberal constituencies can be hard, but they realize it like, unless they changed their permitting system, they weren’t going to hit that target, and they also signed that, which I love.
Heather McGhee: Huge union package, a huge investment in K-12 education, not surprising for a long-time teacher, married to a long-time teacher, free public college for families making less than $80,000 a year, what? Driver’s license for immigrants, land back to tribal nations, legalized adult use of cannabis, the biggest child tax credit at the state level, huge criminal justice reform package, taxes on corporate profits, automatic voter registration, pre-registration of 16 and 17-year-olds, background checks on guns and red flag laws made Minnesota a trans refuge state. And then the other crazy thing, a bunch of new money, half a billion dollars for public transit, which is really important in a state like Minnesota. And then just a small thing, which is that when and if he becomes vice president, he’s lieutenant governor —
Chris Hayes: Oh, yes.
Heather McGhee: — is going to be the first Native American woman to run a state. And I just feel like, we need to understand both who he is and what made him who he is and who the voters are and the coalitional politics in Minnesota that made all of that possible. And we need to be telling the story of this because for so long, the Dem versus Republican has been about personalities. And we know that the ability to actually improve people’s lives is what so many of the struggling economically voters and young voters, which is kind of synonymous, were just not sure of. They were just not sure that Democrats would get shit done when they were in office.
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Heather McGhee: Right? There was this sense of Trump’s appeal that he would actually just do it. He has the power, he had the ability to not make a bunch of —
Chris Hayes: It’s a great point.
Heather McGhee: — excuses, right? Like Trump’s brand was just, I’m going to do it for good or bad.
Chris Hayes: Yes. It’s a good point.
Heather McGhee: It’s going to get done. I’m going to cut the checks. I’m going to stop the loan payments. You know, like, honestly, the only time I thought that Walz’ speech rang a little flat was when he was saying that Trump drove the economy into the ground because I was like, people don’t believe that. Even in the —
Chris Hayes: Yes, right.
Heather McGhee: — pandemic, there was a sense that Trump was doing things that hadn’t even ever been done to help —
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Heather McGhee: — ordinary people get ahead. And I just think that there’s been this like Democrats say a lot but they don’t actually do anything, and I think that’s a big piece of the brand that Walz can bring forward.
Chris Hayes: That’s a great point. One detail about Peggy Flanagan, his Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota, which I love, and I think speaks to the great politics, political tradition, one of the great senators of all time, Paul Wellstone, who is this progressive populace from Minnesota, died tragically in a plane crash, I got to meet the guy a few times in my youth, the real political hero of mine, they started this thing called Wellstone Action to train people. So when Walz is a Mankato teacher in 2005, going to run in 2006, he does the Wellstone training, do you know this story?
Heather McGhee: Yes. I know the Wellstone training, I don’t know the story.
Chris Hayes: There’s like a two-day candidate training. His trainer was Peggy Flanagan.
Heather McGhee: Wow.
Chris Hayes: She was running the training. Isn’t that great? So, she was a Wellstone person, she was like a Wellstone person. She was running it, I mean, young. I mean, I think she’s 20 years younger, so she’s probably, you know, 21, 22 or something like that. But I encountered that yesterday, I was like, man, Minnesota politics.
Heather McGhee: Well, so there is a story and there’s a great YouTube video, people can look it up from Dohrn Trans (ph). She sort of explains the kind of Minnesota miracle and how the faith groups, the labor groups, the grassroots organizations, the immigrant rights groups in Minnesota got together, put aside their differences and made a plan to take over the state and to, you know, center values and to have this big bold agenda. It’s not an accident. It really is about ordinary people coming together across race and making a plan and seeing it through. But I also think there is something specifically about Walz that we need to, again, just sort of elevate as we’re building out and frankly, hopefully, in this election cycle, doing a little bit of, and I know this sounds corporate, but a rebrand of the Democratic Party, right? People, even Democrats, don’t like the brand of Democrats, right? There’s something about Walz as a listener and someone who grows and keeps evolving, like the idea that he could have been impacted by a training by a young native woman, you know, when he was already a teacher and a soldier and, you know —
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Heather McGhee: — all of that. The idea of someone in 1999, like remember the national politics around homosexuality in 1999.
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Heather McGhee: Right? I mean, it was crazy. The Democrats —
Chris Hayes: Yes, it’s exactly that way.
Heather McGhee: — have been running away. You know, it was exactly that. And this, you know, gun-owning, hunter, coach of the football team, most popular —
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Heather McGhee: — teacher on campus —
Chris Hayes: It’s an awesome story.
Heather McGhee: — said, I will sponsor, be the faculty sponsor for the gay-straight alliance. And that’s probably it’s not because he’s gay but it’s because he knew —
Chris Hayes: Right.
Heather McGhee: — that it mattered and he knew and he was —
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Heather McGhee: — listening to his neighbor, right, to the most vulnerable neighbor around him, these kids who really needed somebody. And he was like, yes, I’m going to stand up for you. I’m going to have your back. That is the definition of solidarity and it’s what people with cultural and political and economic power should do. And he modeled it and he’s continuing it to model it by saying, I’m really here to have Kamala Harris’ back. Right? That’s my job here. I’m not someone who felt like they were born to be the President of the United States. I’m here, you know, to serve.
Chris Hayes: Yes. That’s such a great point. And the last point I just want to make about the sort of Minnesota miracle, which I think is also really important for this sort of rebranding is that, it’s consistently ranked as one of the best states to live in. I mean, like particularly last years, U.S. news ranking right now, like it’s number four in the one that I just pulled up, it’s ranked very high as a state to do business in, like it’s like it actually has a very good business environment because, like, it turns out that, like, the labor protections and the sort of the social safety net, like, are not completely in tension with, like, a growing business environment. The fact that they’ve invested in housing, which has been a huge blind spot for a lot of blue states and liberal governance, like particularly in Minneapolis, they’ve been doing some really innovative stuff, like front-edge stuff on housing supply. Like it also is the case of the point of all this alongside equity, right? It’s just flourishing like to be in places that you can, like, take time off to be with your kid, that you can enjoy the place you’re living. Like that, to me, is always the goal to keep in mind. You know, Lula —
Heather McGhee: Yes.
Chris Hayes: — when he’s running in his last election just talked about like, yes, this campaign speech, where he said like, just to have a day off and to do a cookout with your family and like your backyard and, like, it’s just like what we’re trying to fight for here, like, keep it in those terms of like let’s have communities that are safe and welcoming or we could afford to do things and take time off and be with our family. We need to be in jobs that give us dignity. And that is the model here above and any sort of jargon or anything. Like I just think that’s the sort of winning message. And I like you, I’m feeling more optimistic about the ability to do that. But you, Heather McGhee, if you haven’t read “The Sum of Us,” it’s a genuinely phenomenal book with a real, like, key-in-a-lock turning feeling when you read it, which is the sort of, to me, like the highest thing a non-fiction book can achieve is that sensation that sort of conceptual unlocking. “The Sum of Us” does that so I really recommend people to read that, and I think it’s a good companion to our conversation today with the one and only, the great Heather McGhee. Thank you, Heather.
Heather McGhee: Thank you, Chris.
Chris Hayes: Once again, a good thanks to my buddy, Heather McGhee, who is just a great person and a great thinker and talker. And you should definitely check out “The Sum of Us.” I’d love to hear your thoughts on all those takes that I had pent up on the coastal planes of Iceland during the most eventful political news cycle arguably of our lifetimes. You can email us at withpod@gmail.com. Get in touch with us using the hashtag #WITHpod. Search for us on TikTok by searching for WITHpod. You can also follow me on Threads, Bluesky and what used to be known as Twitter with the name @chrislhayes.
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“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.