♪ our live coverage of the democratic national convention continues tonight with congresswoman alexandria ok ceeo cortez, former president bill clinton, and jill biden. live coverage of the democratic national convention at 9 p.m. eastern on c-span, live streaming and on demand at www.c-span.org/dnc or listen with the free c-span radio app. c-span, your unfiltered view of politics. ♪ ♪ >> you are watching c-span, your unfiltered view of government, created by america's cable television companies as a public service and brought to you today by your television provider. e events of the convention,ational

jennifer epstein, from bloomberg, thank you for joining us. rating, what was the what is the sense of those watching or those reporting like you about how the first night went? itst: you know, i think depends on the perspective that somebody has, if they are a political insider they might say that this was not enough leastcians speaking, at until the end of the evening, i think both bernie sanders and michelle obama have gotten high marks for their speeches, which were a bit complementary and kind of both talking about the ultimate goal of defeating donald trump, michelle obama talked about the line that was kind of central to her convention speech in 2016 when they go low, we go high, and saying that still applies despite everything that has

happened in these last four years, and she stands by it. so, it was also just a mix of different people from around the country, which you will see a little bit less over the next few days, but there were powerful moments in there as well. there is the woman whose father was a trump supporter and ignored all the warnings around the coronavirus and he died a couple of months ago and she said that the only reason he is gone because of the president, and i'm going to vote provide and because of in his memory. and that was a striking emotional moment. so, it was a mix of things. i think you will see more focus on the politicians in the days coming forward. bidenbviously, harris and will be the central. and former president barack obama will be the core of the

next couple of days. caller: in -- host: in the lead up to yesterday you talked about senator sanders and posted a story about his role turning a sand from the firebrand role as a party unifier. is there any sense that what he said last night made any impressions about the bernie's supporters that may have not come to supporting joe biden yet? it is a process, a lot of them have been unhappy with the dnc or the process for four or five years, and they have deeper place aboutrns in the democratic party, but at the same time, sanders has been working since he endorsed biden in mid april to bring those people on board as much as he can because he is aware of the people who voted for jill stein in wisconsin, and that that

really affected the margins and could have been the difference in some places between hillary clinton winning or losing the state. and, he is trying to convey to his supporters that there is a clear choice in his view in this election, and that does not include voting for anyone other than joe biden. host: jennifer epstein joining us to talk about the events of last night. if you want to ask a question. 1 -- 202-748-8000 for republicans -- for democrats. facebook alsond available. a story about going forward. you also wrote a story about joe biden, and i will read you the first line and you can expand. "joe biden will send a message about the vision for the democratic party tuesday night and it will sound a lot more like him that his party's progressive wing." can you go forward from that? guest: yes.

the keynote address will be different than recent ones. people remember barack obama's a little bit further and richard gave a memorable speech a couple decades -- decades ago. they have 17 young leaders. stacey abrams is the oldest at 46 and the most well-known of the group. a lot of them are state legislatures with a couple of mayors. is, the idea behind that really for the biting campaign and the democratic party to lift up young leaders, but we are seeing in the mix of people that they have chosen are a lot of people who are not may be as moderate as joe biden is on policy issues, but they were not people who were endorsed by democrats for the most part, or are really aligned with bernie sanders, these are people who

largely endorsed joe biden before the iowa caucus, people who were -- you will sound a bit more like him. the speech will be a quick speech where they are all doing a line at a time, so you will not really get that much of these people's individual personalities, but if someone is intrigued and google someone they will see that these people moderate, iy more do not want to single anybody who is not or are. but just that it really is joe biden's vision of a democratic party versus bernie sanders, elizabeth warren, the justice democrats, or sunrise movement. it is a way for the biden campaign to reward some of the people who went out on a limb and supported biden when it was not popular with young voters or even in their state to be

supporting him, but they were on board. vision, peopleof will be watching alexandria ocasio-cortez for the time that she will get, any sense of what she will address? guest: i think she just has a minute so i do not think there will be a whole lot that she is able to say, which is something that has productive -- provoke some protest, there is a petition effort to get her more time, and just some general complaints that she is not getting more time considering how she has helped galvanize the movement of younger people, so i think that will have -- we will have to wait and see how she uses that, i guess to try and inspire young people to engage in the process. host: joining us from wilmington, delaware is jennifer epstein of bloomberg year to talk to us about the democratic national convention. the first is from frank,

democrat line. you are on with your guest -- with our guest, go ahead. caller: thank you. if our country stands half a wence of staying on top, have to get rid of this president. he is just no good for this country. i heard him just yesterday saying that if he should lose the presidency and the election has been reg. who else could rig it against -- but him. anything that man says is the opposite of the truth. there's is just no truth in him. god bless you all and thank you. please do not vote for mr. trump. host: thank you. of whatoint, how much we will see going forward is about getting president trump out of office, and then the other side the idea that the democratic party has -- or what

they should do should they gain the white house. that is something that the democrats and abiding campaign and all of the outside groups involved are very sensitive to. they do not want to be seen as the party of being against trump, you heard a little bit of joe biden's biography last night and you will continue to get more of that. biden, his wife is speaking tonight. there was a video about amtrak and how he commuted back and forth from washington, and respected and was kind to the workers on amtrak, and i think you will see more about the pieces of his personality that is well known to us who pay a lot of attention to politics but may not be as well-known to people who are not as engaged on it. just give a sense of really the key piece of biden's political brand, that he is a good guy, a

guy with a heart and empathy that he is going to work hard to fight for every single working person and not just for the rich or other elite. that is at the core of how he is running. host: pittsburgh, pennsylvania, barbara, democrat's line. barbara, good morning. sorry, thanki am you very much. i want to get my thoughts about the convention last night, which i would say in my words, polite. not the usual screaming, and i will be doing that and that. thathing was, the photos they give you this polite message was that the photos of the common people throughout that program last night were were's,, because they

they were me and, the ending of misses obama's touching words were especially helpful to the ending on that convention for last night. common people only want a civil life of education, work, livelihood,a good and definitely no war. this president's administration and its leaders have done a very bad job of providing any of that. and, especially this representative presidents who says nothing but terrible

language, embarrassing simple people, in my day, i am 88 years , a lot of is a saying talk, nothing said. host: thank you. jennifer epstein, i think we have seen how the dnc will incorporate those faces of people across america as the nights go on and as the vice president and senator harris will be set to give their speeches later this week. guest: yes. we saw a lot of different kinds of faces. that was one piece of it to show that it creates diversity in people who support the democratic party, and that is -- it is not just a white party and shows young and old and all sorts of situations, and you could tell a little bit of the

socioeconomic background from the homes that were shot in this. you also saw some of the other real faces in this where people who died of the coronavirus. memorial montage, different from what you would see at the oscars or something like that. people, nurses, doctors, workers and grocery stores, and all of the rest, and that was another way real people were brought in, and i guess it was unlikely that the republican convention will draw attention to people who died of the virus while donald trump has been in office. host: you covered hillary clinton's campaign and the 2012 campaign of president obama, candidate obama. do you see any fundamental changes in joe biden's approach it versus the others you have

covered? thing that is different is that hillary clinton spent a lot of time boarding voters that donald dangerous, donald trump will do this thing that you will hate and this other thing that you will hate. to some extent, i think the voters or people leaning away from donald trump did not believe that he would win that so, she came off sometimes as just delivering a and negativeoom, worst-case scenario, and some people really did think that the presidency would bring dashwood rein -- would rein donald trump thes he has exploded out of traditional position of the presidency. joe biden is able to campaign on all of the ways that the things that hillary clinton predicted

that he might be driven by his personal interest in making certain decisions or that he might take decisions without deep knowledge of foreign policy issues, all of that we have seen now over the last few years, and that is what a big piece of the biden campaign is about. biggest obviously, the difference between this campaign and every previous one in the course of u.s. history is the pandemic and the lack of in person campaigning, which i think has been difficult for joe biden, because i think that, like barack obama, is someone who feeds off the energy of crowds, and people. then really enjoys one-on-one interactions, meeting somebody, taking their cell phone, calling their mother or grandmother. none of that is possible and i think he has had trouble with

that. they have tried to replicate it by doing photo lines via zoom, but it is not the same. continuallyhe is starved for that energy and you have seen him a few times that he went to church near his beach house and he was taking selfies they are couple of weeks ago, and you could see how excited he was to be in person with senator harris last week, and that is obviously a big change as well. host: beverly in pennsylvania, independent line. go ahead. jennifer appreciate mentioning how people have , and is about the dnc say on categorical he that they are -- categorically that they corrupt organization and the strings are being pulled somewhere. i was a huge bernie supporter in

2016 and i lived in philadelphia, and i saw the democratic convention up close and personal. how hillary was a burial -- was able to steal so many states from bernie. then i finddone and that bernie was controlled opposition. he has a nice puppet out they are to bring in people who think that he is actually anti-corporation. he certainly stopped talking about citizens united along the way. but, he was big on that for a while. and theirnc machinations are unbelievably corrupt and, to think that anybody could support this party is just beyond me. they have complete amnesia, and i would like to know what jennifer thinks about the murder

employeeich, the dnc in the summer of 2016, in july when he was shot in the back in washington, d.c., and they proclaimed that it was a robbery. nothing was stolen from the young man, and -- host: we will -- host: we will let her answer as she pleases. certainlyhink there has been a lot of energy, you have just heard it. i am not going to areinto the theories accurate or not, that is not something that i really studied or dog in on. -- dug and on. i believe there is no real evidence, and maybe i am wrong about this. complicatedas any

conspiracy around this, and i i do that the one thing know, because i know some people who were friends with seth rich because i am the same age, is --t he did not want people to see democracy undermined in any way. he was obviously devoting his life to partisan politics. he believed in the democratic party and what it stood for. and so, i will just believe you on that, that if you want to honor his memory, it is best to think about ways to be constructive in the political world. aboutlet me ask you this the party itself, and its platform. i know it is inside baseball and there have been concerns about the current state of the platform, but what do you sense about the party's unity based on

what is going on with the principles that it is guiding itself on? guest: the platform process was different when it began not really with the formal process that started over the summer but earlier than that in the spring that wereorces created between the sanders campaign in the biden campaign as a way to bring the sanders of and voice into what biden was doing, and this is part of that outreach that i am talking about earlier and that what we wrote about. an biden campaign made effort to bring on board can -- progressives, sanders, and warned supporters. en supporters. that fed into the recommendation for the platform. not everything was adopted, but

that was a way to allow more thought and more aeration of ideas, and that i think was an unusual thing to see and i do not think we will see it again, but it was a way that there was an effort to more fully unify the party and make sanders supporters feel like they were brought on board. ishink, ultimately, this agenda- maybe biden's does not line up perfectly, that it is in general what you are seeing because of the top of the ticket. there is no adore cement of medicare for all and agree new deal. there is more of a discussion for instance around universal health care and that being a goal, which is something that biden supports using a public option to end private insurance. this has been an effort to bring

the party together, but biden was the winner of the primary, so he has the prerogative to direct where the platform went. california, democrat line. go ahead. caller: yes. dncve been watching the from last night, and i was impressed with all of the speakers. been for this whole four years and this is what i knew when president trump was he was, i knew that .oing to lie

-- i support joe biden, and when he was working with obama, everything was -- you know, up and up. they were getting the job done and they were doing things right. i know that this time with kamala harris, i mean she can do, as his vice president, i am sure that they can get the job done. pandemic, we should have gotten an early vaccine instead of waiting too long. in.: california calling

sincele of kamala harris, the announcement that was made, what is her and her team doing? how are they preparing? guest: they are preparing for her big speech tomorrow night which will be a chance for a lot of the country that does not know her to get to know her a little bit better. she has also been doing outreach, particular to black americans. the biden campaign pointed out that the first three interviews she did were with black women journalists, and that was an with theal choice magazine, and" that is what some of what you will be seeing, and that has been a traditional role for a vice presidential running mate or a vice president himself in the past, maybe herself going

forward. that is to be doing a lot of outreach to constituency groups that are important to the party. so, i think you will see more of that from senator harris going forward. reaching out to women's groups and black groups and asian american groups, and latino groups. there is one thing that has not been talked about with hair -- senator harris' alexion -- selection is that she has and there has not been a lot of polling on this yet, but there are latinos drawn to her because of her immigrant story, because of the politics of california are similar to a lot of the western states as far as some of the issues around immigration or people who are first or second generation in the country, and i think that that has been an area

where a dividing campaign -- the biden campaign has struggled. he does not -- he had not done well in the primaries with the latino voters where bernie sanders blew them out of the water in the nevada caucus. you will see more of that from senator harris and see her own in pretty intensely on all of the voting issues, whether it is the vote by mail and the post long lines at polling places, especially because of is pandemic, and because she a member of the senate judiciary committee she has an aggressive prosecutor, she has these appeals to all of these important groups of voters that one way to use her is to say, hey, if you go to a polling place, stay on the line. the same thing michelle obama

did, bring a lunch and breakfast in case you have to stay there all night, and that is a way you will see senator harris speaking. host: north carolina from mike, the republican line. go ahead. caller: i am calling about all of the violence going on, you know. they keep claiming that they will pull everybody together, then why aren't they doing that now? there is a little white child and wilson, north carolina that just got shot in the head by a black man. there was another hate crime -- there was no hate crime charge against the black man. publicity or celebrities out crying about this. and there was the couple that got pulled out in portland and got senseless just because they are white. if the democrats can stop the violence, then why aren't they

doing it that? they are more like encouraging the violence. those are my thoughts. i will let you answer. host: jennifer, we saw black lives matter referenced an george floyd reference. are there any plans from the democratic party to address what is going on in some of these cities? guest: you did see a little bit of it last night with >> speaking from above the spot on 16th street near the white house that has been painted with letters that read "black lives matter." that is much more of the focus what democratsf see as the positive energy of the protests, not getting into violence so much. i do think that there may be references at times to president