forward. >> congressman allred, i know you have a tough campaign ahead. great talking about you with so many issues. that does it for me. i'll be back with a special edition of inside with jen psaki. we have a great list of guests including pete buttigieg. that is sunday at noon right here on msnbc. but first, alex wagner tonight starts right now. hi alex. >> you are burning the midnight oil sister,. >> so are you! >> but i'm so grateful to. well, yeah. kind of. i mean i am. i will take that. but i just want to say thank you for focusing on down ballot races because the senate and the house matter very much. >> so important. er very much. >> so important.

biden announced he was running for re-election last year he decided the theme for his campaign would boil down to just one word >> freedom personal freedoms fundamental to who we are as americans. there's nothing more important, nothing more sacred. >> that was how president biden's re-election effort began, centering freedom at the fundamental american valuethat would drive his campaign, a concept that united all the major fights in this election including the fight for democracy and the fight for bodily autonomy. it all came down to freedom. when president biden gave his widely praised "state of the

union" speech earlier this year freedom was once again the central theme. over the course of his one-hour speech biden used the word freedom more than a dozen times. and now president biden has passed the torch to his vice president, kamala harris well, today vice president harris released her first solo campaign ad for the presidency, and just like joe biden did in his first ad, kamala harris is putting freedom at the center of her message, this time with a little help from beyonce >> in this election we each face a question what kind of country do we want to live in there are some people who think we should be a country of chaos, of fear, of hate but us, we choose somethin we choose freedom. ♪ freedom, freedom i can't move,

freedom cut me loose ♪ ♪ freedom where are you because i need freedom too ♪ >> theed freedom not to just ge by but get ahead. the freedom to be safe from gun violence. the freedom to make decisions about your own body. >> the harris for president campaign is now operating at full tilt and has its first sign of real lift. a new poll out today from "the new york times" shows kamala harris in a statistical tie with donald trump trailing him by 1 point within the margin of error among likely voters nationwide. by way of comparison trump led biden by 6 points in that same poll earlier this month. today vice president harris spoke to one of the country's biggest teachers unions, the american federation of teachers, whichat is one of first unions endorse her campaign, and she used thatai speech to take the fightee directly to her opponen.

>> donald trump and his extreme allies wants to take our natio back to failed trickle down economic policies. back to union busting, back to tax breaks for billionaires. donald trump and his allies want to cut medicare and social security, to stop student loan forgiveness for teachers and other public servants. and i say to aft, they even want to eliminate the department of education. >> now, that was a preview of what we might see in a future debate between kamala harris and donald trump. but whether or not they actually debate, whether trump actually says, yes, i will debate kamala harris, that i is an open question. trump had previously o agreed ta second debate with president biden hosted by abc news in

september. but after it became clear that vice president harris might succeed joe biden as a democratic nominee, trump started to walk back his commitment saying he wanted to havehe multiple debates hosted instead byte pro-trump right-wi news outlets instead. on her way back to washington this afternoon vice president harris had this to say. >> i'mno ready to debate donald trump. i have agreed to the previously agreed upon september 10th debate. he agreed to that previously. now it appears he's back pedaling, but i'm ready. and i think the voters deserve to see the split screen that exists in this race on a debate stage. and so i'm ready, let's go. >> i'm ready, let's go. the trump r campaign has since responded by pointing to comments trump made on tuesday saying he intends to debate vice president harris, but they've also said just an hour ago that they won't finalize details

until democrats formally decide on their nominee, so we shall see. put a pin in that one. in the meantime harris' supporters are mobilizing on the heels ofhe sunday night's wildl successful black women for harrissf organizing call, harri supporters held twoll more organizing callste this evening. one for white women who support the harrisr campaign and anoth for men from all walks of life who alsoal support the harris campaign. next week vice president harris will head to georgia where the campaign is hoping to keep up that momentum from the standing room only event they held in washington earlier this week -- i'm sorry, wisconsin earlier this week. we also expect vice president harris will choose a running mate w in the next two weeks ju ahead of the virtual nominatingn convention. soat buckle up, everyone, becau this thing is just getting started and there are only 103 days to go. joining me now is dan fifer and

ashley atian. first, dan, let me ask you about this polling we have. it's clear vice president harris has made up some ground, but there's obviously still more to do. i wonder where you think she should be focusing geographically on picking up that support because there's a pretty big debate about whether it's about opening up the map or focusing on so-called blue wall states of pennsylvania and michigan. >> i think it is and/or. a it is no question for any democrat pennsylvania, michigan, and wisconsin are the clearest quickest path to 270. because of her strength we've seen in early polling with younger voters, black voters, latinote voters where she's performing 5, 6 points where president biden was performing, georgia, arizona should be back in play. so we're back to where this campaign should have been a year ago with these six core

battleground states with possibly north carolina coming into play. she's going to play in all those states to open up as many paths as possible to the presidency. >> can you talk about the new direction of what is called the obama coalition because it will be the harris coalition. but the in roads do you think are possible in communities of color and specifically communities that have shown interest in donald trumpth late. that would be hispanic men and black men. how do you think she is best positioned or should best position herself to bring them back into the democratic tent? >> you know, honestly i think this whole issue of black men and hispanic men supporting donald trump has just been a bunch of hype. bearing out in any sort of real way that's a threat to kamala harris in the numbers. i was just recently talking about the usa today poll that they polly black men who suppo tump, and they ask them would

you support trump if you put a black man on the ticket, if they chose aey black men and they sa, no, they wouldn't. it reminds me of my favorite harriet tubman line that said i would have saved more if i knew they were slaves. the reality is the one thing i think makes kamala harris the right leader for this moment is something she used to tell us when i worked in the white house and that wasin when you go into these rooms, when you go into the oval office ornt go into th roosevelt room, you take people into thoseyo rooms that don't en know that the rooms exist. she would always say she sees people. she said that today when talking about the israel, palestine issue. she sees people. unique to black women in particular. we're often looking up and considering people okeven befor our own selves, also consistent with who she is, the way she was raised by two immigrant parents

in a very multiracial neighborhood. her first memories were of her in a w stroller marching for freedom for all people. and so her ethos is to see people. and so i think what she's doing, she has to do more of it, and that is be very authentic, you know, engage black men and hispanic men where they are, on the issues that they care about. and tactically you've seen her do this. she did the quaveo event on criminal justice reform. she has the ability to see and hearil people in a way most leadersay don't. i've worked for everyone from president obama to speakerer pelosi, and i think that is what makes her unique. i think if they can do more of that you'll see m gains. also looking at these campaign' internal polling she's plus maybe 45 among african americans over donald trump, so i don't think thater this is a huge iss.

i think that there's clear energy and momentum. you said it at the top of the show, people are t engaged and excited about kamala harris in ways even more so than they were barack obama. so this is going to be a pretty exciting race. i think she's transformed not only the map but possibilities to build on that biden coalition. >> yeah, that's such a good point, dan, that there's so much new and invigorating about the harris campaign. and i guess to what extent do you think the campaign needs to be thinking strategically about the old problems the biden campaign and b specifically immigration and inflation? thean campaign's four days old, but in those four days there has not been a lot of talk about those two issues. and i wonder if you think does there need to be? how directly does she need to comeed at those issues head on? >>os she is. she'll get there. the most important thing she has to do now is introduce herself

to the nation. they don't know her story, her values, they don't know her record. there's a race to define her now. the question is who's going to win that race? is it going to be kamala harris and the democrats and/or donald trump and the maga media? that's the first step. to get people to say and do on issue that matter to people like immigration, inflation, they have to know who you are. they have to know your values to believe you. step one is reintroduce herself to the nation and do it in this new context of her as presidential candidate, the democratic standard bearer. >> can ind add to that? do you mind if i add to that? i think the other thing she has to do is really tell the story because the story is being told for her not from her. and the story is that republicans had a deal on the d table. it was o a bipartisan deal, it s the most conservative deal ever cooked up, a lot of concessions democrats made to get this bill passed. they walkedt is away from the b

from donald trump. she and joe biden took action that they made investments on the border. the border crossings are down. she's got to tell that part of the story. we've got to lean into the issue, not lean out of the issue. then she also has to the invite republicans into the conversation. she's got to remind people the president can't solve such a major problem that's, you know, has baffled us for so many years and so many presidencies that's been around for such a long time. she's got to actually invite republicans in and remind people it's only going to happen one way if we do this through a bipartisan way and legislation. the add onto what dan said, i think those are two additional things she needs to do. >> dan, as we talk about both the introduction and going on offense, probably happeningng t some degree simultaneously given

the fact there are 103 days left in this ray. you talk in your newsletter on substack today the organic pro-harris content and how you would haveon been hard-pressed have found that for joe biden not because he wasn't a very competentca leader and, you kno an incredible executive and legislative record but just because the culture wasn't where the biden campaign was. that has all changed now, and i wonder how much stock you put into things like -- i mean it sounds ridiculous to say a meme could swing an election, but in terms of helping people understand this woman and how she is different and how she is culturally relevant, like how much does it matter beyonce is giving her the music? how much does it matter charlie xcx is saying kamala is brat? what is the weight we should attach to that when we're looking at the strength of these campaigns? >> i wouldse attach a lot to it. politics is information warfare, and we have been getting

hammered. it's powered by fox news but there's a ton of right-wing influencers on facebook, particularly tiktok who are part of this maga culture that really dominates that platform. for the firstth time in this election with kamala harris we have a candidate that connects to the people who power the algorithms onr tiktok and instagram rooms. you are seeing organic content because it's so hard to reach people in this media environment. people who are watching my podcast are notmy watching your show. tiktok you cannot buy ads. it has to be organic, and the fact that's happeningic and people's algorithms pages are flooded with positive, funny, charming, culturally connective content about her is powerful because it lets people know her and engage with the process, which have been struggling with on our side for over a year now. i think it's hugely important, and we now have a chance to win the information warfare in this

election. if you have a chance to do that, you have to chance to win itself. >> please come back and talk to me at great length about all this again. thanks for your time tonight. coming up trump's vice presidential pick j.d. vance has somean really weird ideas about families and children. we're going to take a look at why he might think what he thinks with a reporter who went deep in the vance archives. but first how kamala harris navigate the very, very big tent politics of the democratic party. congresswoman caucus chair pramila jayapal joins me on that coming up next. a jayapal joins t coming up next

ever since vice president kamala harris became the de facto democratic presidential nominee conservative networks have tried to suggest harris is way outside the mainstream.

except once you leave the right-wing bubble it's clear that way outside their main stream is really just sort of smack-dab in the center. here are some of the on-screen headlines that news max aired during vice president harris' first campaign speech in milwaukee this week. harris facts, supports massive corporate tax hike. shh, don't tell news max that polls show most americans regardless of party affiliation want corporations and the wealthy to pay their fair share. then there's "harris backs tax funded medicare for all," which have literally years now polls show a majority of americans actually support. and then there's "harris wanted to cap rent and utility payments." here's the thing, we are in the middle of a housing affordability crisis. rent has jumped an average of 30% since the pandemic. a rent and utility cap is

broadly popular. the shocking radical left agenda is actually mainstream economic populism. and then there's donald trump who has literally gone behind closed doors and told wealthy donors you're rich as hell, and we're going to give you tax cuts. joining me now is washington congresswoman pramila jayapal who of course serves as the chairwoman of the progressive caucus. congresswoman jayapal, i found myself chuckling kind of in disbelief this was an attack on harris, policies that are broadly popular. do you think the right-wing understands how much they've uncalibrated what centrist economic policy is? >> no, i really don't. and i hope they keep showing those screens because that will win us the election. i mean the reality is that we have a real contrast here. we have donald trump who is literally bowing down and kissing the feet of these fossil

fuel billionaires and selling the destruction of our planet off for some money for his campaign. we have donald trump who wants to rip away our freedoms and wants to have total control over our bodies. we have donald trump who actually believes that his trump project 2025 where we get rid of all checks and balances, where we have a complete takeover of the government with his political appointees in every single place, that is the donald trump that i believe that americans will find too extreme because, you know what? he is too extreme. and then we've got kamala harris who's now going to be able to really take the case and the contrast directly to the people. she's been an incredible advocate on abortion and reproductive freedom, a very important issue. and on this populist working class economic agenda, that is

the biden/harris administration agenda, and that is the biden/harris 100-day agenda, which is now the harris presidential campaign agenda. you can see it in the enthusiasm across the country that has just exploded in the last several days. >> i want to focus on the economic piece of this a little bit because there hasn't been that much talk about it in recent days, and we know it had been in the biden campaign to some degree. i do wonder if you think vice president harris is positioned considerably better to articulate the case for her agenda, which is obviously the harris/biden agenda. and specifically i wonder if you think she can do it better with the asian american community. we haven't talked that much this week about the asian vote, but it is critical in several swing states. and as a representative of the aapi community i wonder if you

think she'll do better. i think biden was losing 8 points among asian american voters from his numbers in 2020. obviously this is not a monolithic group of people, but i wonder if you have thoughts about it. >> no, absolutely. first of all, i'm thrilled we are going to, i believe, have our first black and aapi woman president of the united states. and i think the reason that's going to happen is as i've said on your show, alex, i've always believed that it is our base of aapi voters of black voters, of women voters, of young people and working class and poor people who aren't always feeling like they're engaged in a campaign. that if we can get those folks to come out, that is actually how we won in 2020. it wasn't just the suburban swing voters who are important, but it was also that we have this incredible turnout of the base, this fragile coalition that came together so that we

could win. i do think having been on a call yesterday, south asian american womens call yesterday, there's several more happening tomorrow, i'm going to georgia where i'll be with young voters, aapi voters, black voters, women voters, that there's this incredible sense of seeing ourselves in the agenda. it is true that women of color, for example, and aa andpi women as part of that are disproportionately burdened by the family whether you're thinking about workers, moms, across the board you see that is where there's a pain and suffering for the economy, and lot of injustice. and kamala harris is uniquely positioned to talk about that. she's actually the lead sponsor of my domestic workers bill of rights when she was in the

senate. so she understands what this means, and i think she can call people in in a very different way that is authentic to her identity, to her skills, to her experience, and to her legislative acumen, which she has continued to develop over her term as vice president. >> you know, when you talk about the tent it bears mentioning this has been a huge week in terms of foreign policy, with prime minister netanyahu's address to a joint session of congress. vice president harris met with prime minister netanyahu today and came out of that meeting saying israel has a right to defend itself but also urging the need for a cease-fire and saying we cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering of palestinians, i will not be silent. do you think she's going to take a meaningfully different stance on this issue than president biden? and do you foresee that changing the dynamics in the democratic

party? >> i think you're seeing it with people feeling there's more hope for tougher u.s. policy towards netanyahu. i think that's why you see this incredible new group of voters registering to vote, 18 to 34 48,000 people in the last five hours. this was authentic. it happened naturally with people feeling perhaps there's more hope she'll be empathetic, sympathetic to the suffering of people across gaza and to the families who are here. i also think on this particular issue, and i've had a chance to talk to her at length about 45 minutes a couple weeks ago she understands it's not just muslim americans, arab americans who

care about this. it is the black clergy. seven major labor unions sent a letter just a couple of days before netanyahu's visit saying this was important to the labor movement. and so i think she is much more innately tuned to the suffering of palestinian people and of israelis. and i think she is fog to have to walk that line carefully. i don't think it's going to be easy because obviously we still have a president, and his name is joe biden. she is still the vice president, and she is also our presidential nominee for the democratic party. so i think it will be complicated. i think she is trying to send some signals that she would like to have some shift. i can't say what that is, and our think our movement has to continue to make it clear to her that this is a critical issue, and everything from, you know, her -- her statements that she makes, the fact she wasn't at netanyahu's speech yesterday to

her choices that she makes down the road including with her vice presidential pick, these are all going to be critically important to signaling what direction she's going to take on the economic agenda, on gaza, on all of these issues. >> congresswoman pramila jayapal, there's always a lot to talk about. thank you for your time tonight. >> thank you, alex. still ahead tonight, sam stein joins me to put some betting odds on the biden/harris veep stakes contest but first get to j.d. vance house cats and the women who raised them. that's next. nce house cats and the women who raised them. that's next.

there's a clip from ohio senator j.d. vance's old senate campaign going around. have you seen this yet? >> we are effectively run in this country via the democrats, via our corporate oligarchs by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable in their own lives and the choices they've made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too. it's just a basic fact. you look at kamala harris, pete buttigieg, the aoc it's controlled by people without children. they've played their entire lives to win the status game and they hate normal americans for choosing family over these ridiculous d.c. and new york

status games. >> since donald trump picked j.d. vance, a 39-year-old first term senator who seems pretty obsessed with his career, since trump picked vance's running mate several of vance's past comments on gender and family have resurfaced, comments that have been called weird, which is probably an understatement. >> i want to take aim at the left, specifically the childless left because i think the rejection of the american family is perhaps the most pernicious and most evil thing that the left has done in this country. what you find consistently is that many of the most unhappy and most miserable and most angry people in our media are childless adults. >> women taking care of cats instead of kids is apparently everything that is wrong with america and something that exists entirely because of democrats. now, beyond being a really weird belief, vance's view here has a

distinctlia thorrian vent. he's praised this policy from viktor orban one that encourages native mothers to have four or more children. the idea there is to repopulate the country with white criztions christians instead of muslim immigrants. j.d. vance also thinks if you don't have children, your vote shouldn't count as much as those who do, which is a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy assuming all childless cat ladies are democrats. >> you must give control over those votes to the parents of those children. when you go to the polls in this country as a parent, you should have more power, you should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our democratic republic

than people who don't have kids. >> vance has also advocated for creating an economic system that reinvigorates jobs specifically for american men because according to j.d. vance families suffer more when men are employed than they do when women are. >> the decline of manufacturing hit male employment much harder than it hit female employment. and one of the things you see consistently is that when men are unemployed, it's very hard for them to maintain, to build families themselves. and so i do think -- maybe it makes some people uncomfortable in the audience -- the fact that we lost a lot of stable male employment was a catastrophe for the american family. >> throughout his political career j.d. vance has pushed under an economic populism premised on men working and women being married and staying married and having children whether they want to or not. >> the question really to me is about the baby.

we want women to have opportunities. we want women to have choices, but above all we want women and young boys in the womb to have the right to life. this is one of the great tricks that i think the sexual revolution pulled on the american populous which is the idea that, well, okay these marriages were fundamentally, they were maybe even violent but certainly they were unhappy, and so getting rid of them can make it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear, that's going to make people happier in the long-term. and maybe it worked out for the moms and dads although i'm skeptical, but it really didn't work out for the kids of those marriages. >> i have a lot of questions here. but two of them are why is j.d. vance like this? and are donald trump and the republican party at all concerned that this guy is on their ticket? our next guest, jessica winter, has a new piece out in "the new

yorker" that goes a long way towards explaining. stay with us. wards explaining stay with us r and sell more. much more. take your business to the next stage when you switch to shopify.

in a new piece titled "j.d. vance's sad strange politics of family" jessica winter unpacks vance's newly resurfaced concerns about childless cat ladies by taking a look at vance's own family. winter writes a close read of vance's grandmother's plight reveals striking similarities between vance's guardian angel

and the ideal matriarch who emerges on vance's political platform. what results is a blinkered grotesquely narcissistic vision of the social contract, an identity politics of one grown child. joining me now are jessica winter, contributing editor at "the new yorker," and sam stein, managing editor at the bulwark. jessica, first, let me tell you i very much enjoyed this read. and i wonder if you can explain the way j.d. vance's grandmother's story is in a way the are rosetta stone for his political and cultural outlook? >> absolutely. and thanks for having me on the program, alex. yeah, j.d. vance talks about his grandparents as the best thing that ever happened to him and that they rescued him from being a statistic. j.d. vance's mom struggled with

drug abuse. the household he was raised ipwas often unstable. she cycled through a lot of boyfriends and husbands, and she was a tad neglectful or even abusive. and his grandparents, his grandmother in particular provided him a refuge from that chaos and instability. and what's funny about that is that his grandparents had also created a very volatile, sometimes violent, unstable household for his own mother. so there's kind of generational trauma that's being handed down. but i think what's really interesting and what comes into sharp belief into one of the clips you played during the break is there's an essential difference between his parents and grandmother, which is that his grandparents stayed married. and i think that because his grandparents were so important to him, because they saved him

from being a statistic as he has put it, i think he's inscribed a lot of importance in their marriage and how they stuck it out through thick and thin. and i think that's gone a great deal towards shaping his ideology, his politics, and even some of his policy preferences. >> yeah, his idea that people should stay married no matter whether they're in violent relationships or not. i do want to ask, jessica, in terms of the way he thinks of marriage and childbearing, he thinks of the family as a kind of uniquely conservative phenomenon. his wife worked for a san francisco law firm until not even 2 minutes ago. it seems very asymmetrical to be euphemistic about it. >> yeah, absolutely. he absolutely sees the traditional nuclear family of, you know, the mid-20th century dad goes to work and mom stays home with the kids and everyone's getting by on a

single income. that is the ideal that he wants to strive for. and the notion that, you know, a mother, a woman would want to work -- would need to work out of economic necessity or perhaps just want to work for her own personal fulfillment at a white shoe law firm, perhaps, that doesn't really enter the position when it comes to his political views and his economic outlook. >> sam, i am struck by how far outside the mainstream -- i think people have paid some attention to j.d. vance or people interested in senate politics have, but the more you hear from this individual, he's someone who said universal day care -- this is right before he announced the senate run. universal day care is class war against normal people. i just want to make the point that his wife and he have three

children, and at her law firm they offer 12-hour on site day care. the disconnect, i mean do you have a thought about this? >> i have multiple thoughts about it. i would say a couple things. one is it wasn't always this way. when you look at his biography when he was a law student at yale for instance and he was writing on his little blog, he had a personal blog back then but he was also writing on conservative sites, the glimpse you get of j.d. vance is a different person. someone socially liberal, more moderate and republican -- in its republicanism. it's not that he's cosmopolitan or anything. he obviously had written his memoirs and that was the root of his political beliefs. but instead he's projecting that persona. i think what happened was if i had to guess he began to get

involved in national politics and saw that the way the wind was blowing, he recognized the sort of heart of the party was with this ideology, and that's been personified not just in his politics but what you see for instance on tucker carlson's show for a while, and the nuclear family central and being rapidly deteriorated by democrats. that's where he's coming from. it's part political mission. i don't think it's all political mission. i think he believes some of these things genuinely. now it's being thrust in front of a national audience it lands differently. this is not ohio, this is not rural ohio, this is not fox news or tucker carlson. this is a national audience and i think a vast majority of not just women but men sort of recoil at the idea, you know, if you're childless somehow you're lesser. >> well, yeah, it's not only if you're childless if you're lesser, step moms aren't really moms, women should be staying in

marriages even if they're violent marriages, and universal day care is for people who are not normal. i just think, jessica, whether we talk about how he came to these views you go back to hillbilly elegy where he's tethered to a reality most people lives in, which is that people need day care. but it also as if he self-radicalizes harkening back to his roots and being on tucker carlson. do you have a sense of how deeply felt these ideals here? >> you know, just to add onto what sam was saying. if you go back to around the time "hillbilly elegy" came out is a really interesting period is a tedtalk he gave. and in that tedtalk he talks about how he got out of the terrible situation he was, and that we should be affording more

chances to more young kids like young j.d. vance to get an education, reach the heights -- aspire to the heights he had attained even at that point in his career. and he's pretty explicit about the fact that he doesn't have policy solutions, that he's posing questions and trying to start a conversation, but he doesn't have the answers. and i think by the time he reached his senate campaign, he'd found some answers. whether or not they earnestly held all that time, whether or not they were exaggerated outgrowths of feelings or instincts he already had, i can't really speak to that. but there's definitely a period where he's searching for where he wanted to land on these issues. >> well, he's landed in a very interesting place. >> he's landed. >> sam stein, you stick around. i have many more questions for

you. jessica winter, thank you for the great reporting. it is a really great read in this week's "the new yorker." thanks for your time tonight. sam, when we come back we're going to talk about the democratic veep stakes which are in full swing. stay with us. we're going to be talking about that next. h us we're going to be talking about that next. with dexcom g7, managing your diabetes just got easier. so, what's your glucose number right now? good thing you don't need a fingerstick. how's all that food affect your glucose? oh, the answers on your phone. what if you're heading low at night? wow, it can alert you?! and you can even track your goals. manage your diabetes with confidence with dexcom g7. the most accurate cgm. learn more at dexcom.com.

normally major party presidential candidates spend months vetting running mates. the good news is she has a deep bench to choose from, and her opponent has picked j.d. vance. i'm back with sam stein, managing editor of the bulwark. sam, where do you think we are

in the horse race that is the democratic running mate contest? who do you think is at the top? >> well, it depends. i mean, obviously, the instinct is to go for a somewhat moderate male white governor. as you can see on the short list there's only one female, gretchen whitmer. what's interesting is we had a piece from elise hoge, deeply involved in women's rights for decades and decades. she made the case kamala harris would be better off going with a male, this is to be crude about it, an election that has a lot of masculinity undertones to it, and kamala harris should not ignore that or do so at her own peril. that being said i talked to operatives who think it made sense to go to whitmer because it would create this contrast and almost would be leaning into what your opponents are going to target. just lean into it almost like clinton chose gore.

at this junction i think the betting money is probably on a governor or on mark kelly who is getting a lot of buzz because obviously he's from an important state, arizona and has been not too subtle about trying to pick fights with j.d. vance the past couple of days. >> yeah, that is true. can we talk about j.d. vance for a moment because i know you had more to say about j.d. vance from our last block. i think there is bubbling discontent from trump world over their choice. a more crazy bonkers tape is played of j.d. vance. do you think he's at any risk here? >> no, i don't think he's at risk, but i do think there is discontent. and the inner trump orbit is not exhibiting that. they seem content with it, but if you talk with republicans outside of that, not too far outside, i think they would admit this has been a rocky start to put it honestly. the convention speech was a little bit low energy, but it was fine. people in the crowd tend to like it, but he hadn't really done

much media. he did a show with don jr. today, which i thought was a curious choice. doesn't expand the audience all that much. some of what's happened he's become almost memified others about cats and childless women, it's created this aura about him that is frankly for lack of a better word that he's weird, and i think that's beginning to stick. and one of the ways to get around is do more media and get out publicly, but he's not been doing it because he's been focusing on fund-raising. >> i've got to stay if the strategy to get him more norm core is have him do a podcast with donald trump jr., think again. sam stein, thank you for staying late and doing over time with me. i appreciate it. that is our show for tonight. "way too early" with jonathan lemire is coming up next. so to everyone who has been calling for a cease-fire and to everyone who