podcast
The Assignment with Audie Cornish
Every Monday on The Assignment, host Audie Cornish explores the animating forces of American politics. It’s not about the horserace, it’s about the larger cultural ideas driving the American electorate. Audie draws on the deep well of CNN reporters, editors, and contributors to examine topics like the nuances of building electoral coalitions, and the role the media plays in modern elections. Every Thursday, Audie pulls listeners out of their digital echo chambers to hear from the people whose lives intersect with the news cycle, as well as deep conversations with people driving the headlines. From astrology’s modern renaissance to the free speech wars on campus, no topic is off the table.
How Kamala Harris is Finding Her Voice
The Assignment with Audie Cornish
May 13, 2024
Vice President Kamala Harris thinks about everything as a lawyer first. That's an observation CNN Senior Reporter Edward-Isaac Dovere has made after many interviews with the Veep. Audie talks with Dovere about how Harris has deployed her prosecutorial skills against Wall Street CEOs, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and even President Biden in a debate moment that nearly derailed his campaign. And they talk about how she is using those same prosecutorial skills this election year, especially around the issue of abortion.
Dovere is the author of “Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats' Campaigns to Defeat Trump.”
Episode Transcript
Kamala Harris
00:00:00
We did it. We did it. Know? You're gonna be the next president of the United States.
Audie Cornish
00:00:10
While Trump's V.P. candidates compete for his attention, the sitting vice president, Kamala Harris, has a head start. And she's been busy traveling the country, talking to voters and trying to change perceptions of Democrats and specifically of her before it's too late.
Kamala Harris
00:00:28
'The idea that these so-called leaders would say even no exception for rape or incest, to say to a survivor of a crime of violence to their body, a violation to their body, that you, the survivor of that, don't have a right to make a decision about what happens to your body next. That's immoral.
Audie Cornish
00:00:53
'Polls show her approval ratings are well down in the mid 30s. So today we will talk about how and why that happened and how the vice president has been trying to turn things around. I'm Audie Cornish and this is The Assignment. Joining me today, a reporter who has followed Kamala Harris for years now, Edward-Isaac Dovere, a senior reporter here at CNN who does not go by Edward, I should say.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:01:16
'It's Edward-Isaac or just Isaac.
Audie Cornish
00:01:18
What's the deal with that?
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:01:19
I mean.
Audie Cornish
00:01:20
Is your mom going to be mad at me? We just had Mother's Day.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:01:22
No, we can do a fuller podcast if you want and you go through the whole story. There is one. But, maybe not for today.
Audie Cornish
00:01:29
Today you want to be called Isaac. Okay. Today he is also here because he's the author of the book Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats' Campaigns to Defeat Trump. And also because you just interviewed Kamala Harris a ton. First, I want to tackle abortion. Tell me about how she ended up on the forefront of this issue for the administration. It wasn't just you're a woman. You take care of this.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:01:56
No. She tells the story of, when the Dobbs decision came down in 2022 that she was flying to Chicago for a speech, and read it on Air Force Two and started to process it.
Audie Cornish
00:02:09
So she read the ruling.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:02:10
She read the ruling. I'm sorry. And the next day, or maybe was two days later, she had been scheduled already to speak at an event for Emily's List, the Democratic women's group, and that was still on the schedule. She went and they redid a speech over the course of about 36 hours, then, that took a bunch of swings at the issue and started to put herself there. But she even then was not sure she wanted to be fully identified with the issue.
Audie Cornish
00:02:39
How does the process work if you're a vice president? There were many times where Joe Biden was accused of getting out ahead of his skis, so to speak, right? In front of the Obama administration. Something like this happens. Do you have to call the boss and say, Hey, I think I should talk about this? Do you just ask for forgiveness instead of permission? Like, help us understand this.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:02:59
'There was communication going on about what she was going to say. But I think it's - think about where we were at that point. So it's the spring of 2022. It's after her first full year in office, which had been a very tough year for her. Full of a lot of problems that she had, a lot of public problems, a lot of internal problems, with her staff.
Audie Cornish
00:03:18
And taking a big public image pummeling from the right, specifically being accused of not doing well on immigration. And she becomes the avatar for the administration's inability to deal with surges of migrants at the border.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:03:35
And there were advisers to her who said from the beginning of when the Dobbs leak came and remember, it leaked about a month before, that this was an opportunity for her. As much as they hated the decision for her to kind of reboot, and she did not, going back to what we we're talking about, want to just be the person talking about reproductive rights and abortion because she happened to be the woman who was there.
Audie Cornish
00:04:02
Yeah.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:04:02
That felt wrong to her. It felt, like, insincere. And she resisted it for a while. But eventually both the political reasoning got through, and she started to see that there was a way that she felt more comfortable talking to people about what was going on.
Kamala Harris
00:04:24
Listen, if you want to know who is to blame for where we are right now, a finger can be directly pointed at the former president.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:04:33
'She has proven to be not so great answering questions on camera and standing behind a podium. She is not good at them, at least not as good at them as other things. And so a lot of her speeches now are shorter. A lot of the interviews she's doing are not with the camera right in her face. She is doing a lot of events where she's sitting on stage and having a conversation with people rather than just speaking for 20 minutes. And that is part of this understanding that she has, I think, developed about herself and that her staff certainly has developed about the way that she operates, that, have her interact with people. She comes across better. She will engage in a conversation. She gets in her own head a lot. That's - I don't think you can spend more than about ten minutes talking with someone who has worked for her or knows her, without one of the points being made that, like, wow, she would just get out of her head on these things. They say that's the phrase that gets used a lot.
Audie Cornish
00:05:33
Yeah. And it's a political phrase too, like, campaign land.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:05:36
And I think that that's, you know, when the word salad type answers come out of her, that is evidence of her getting in her head and thinking like, how is this going to be heard? And how do I change what I'm saying? And that sort of, and on abortion, she finally found a place that she was comfortable talking about this at, which was not, Hey, I'm a woman, I've got a uterus, but essentially prosecuting the case. And that you see much moreso in the way that she is talking about things lately, when she is able to lay the blame directly on Donald Trump.
Audie Cornish
00:06:15
And she uses phrases like evidence, like, she still uses some of that vocabulary.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:06:20
And I have spent a lot of time with her over the years. I remember when she was first getting into the presidential race and it was going to be "the prosecutor for president," and I said to her at one point then, so much of the way you think about everything is as a lawyer. And she actually even pushed back on that at first and then said, I guess you're right. But she's in this space now where if she feels like she can say Donald Trump is the guilty party and the crime that was committed essentially, you know, to extend the prosecutor metaphor, is Roe v Wade being overturned and women not having their abortion rights, that she can make that case.
Kamala Harris
00:07:00
The former president made it very clear and and then did what he intended to do.
'Sherly-Lee Ralph
00:07:06
Yes.
Kamala Harris
00:07:07
He would pick three members of the United States Supreme Court with the intention that they would undo the protections of Roe. And they did exactly as he intended.
Audie Cornish
00:07:18
'There was, at one point, early in her political career here where you asked her like, Hey, what's your thing? You know, like Elizabeth Warren has consumer issues, right? Like, everybody who was in that primary sort of had an issue, a pet issue that connected them to voters. And she - it wasn't that she wasn't able to answer you, but it seemed like her answer was like, I don't need that because I'm...
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:07:44
She was everything. That answer... That's an old story, Audie. You've done your research. But yes, she said, I don't need to be any of those things.
Audie Cornish
00:07:56
But I'm bringing it up because, like, she kind of has found a thing now.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:07:59
Yeah. And the thing that unites it, yes, it's abortion rights, but it's actually being comfortable being the prosecutor again. That's who she is and going at somebody. And in this case, Donald Trump, right, is what she likes to do. Right? Her best moment in her entire presidential campaign was that first debate of the Democratic primary season, when she went after obviously, we know how it all turned out, but when she went after Joe Biden.
Kamala Harris
00:08:28
'We've also heard and I'm going to now direct this at Vice President Biden. I do not believe you are a racist. And I agree with you when you commit yourself to the importance of finding common ground. But I also believe, and it is personal, and I was actually very - it was hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States senators who built their reputations and career on the segregation of race in this country. And it was not...
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:09:02
And that was it. It was give her a mission to take that man down. And she did. And if you remember that night after that debate, a lot of people thought that was the end of Joe Biden's career.
Audie Cornish
00:09:11
Right.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:09:12
It obviously was not. But that's because of some other things that happened.
Audie Cornish
00:09:17
Another key speech that I kind of cocked my head when I saw it was her remarks on the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. This was in Selma, Alabama. I have been here. I've been to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and she gives this speech. It was, in March of 2024. And she speaks very specifically about the war in Gaza in two remarkable ways. One, she says, before I begin today, I must address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. And she starts describing very viscerally what the Palestinian families there are going through.
Kamala Harris
00:09:58
We have seen reports of families eating leaves or animal feed, women giving birth to malnourished babies with little or no medical care, and children dying from malnutrition and dehydration. As I have said many times, too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.
Audie Cornish
00:10:24
And she continues talking about people starving and how there needs to be aid to the region. And she follows that up with a conversation about Israel's right to defend itself. Am I reading too much, though, in how those comments were structured and and that that moment was striking for that administration and her?
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:10:46
I don't think you're reading too much, like, that was a speech that, other people, and the White House administration had seen beforehand. A lot of it was in the delivery, of it, the moment that caught, a number of people by surprise. Even those who had seen the text was calling for an immediate ceasefire.
Kamala Harris
00:11:07
There must be an immediate ceasefire.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:11:10
She is a person who has been doing this for 20 years. She knew what was going to be the takeaway from that. And when she did that, it got a lot of people in the administration pretty frustrated because they felt like she was maybe trying to stake out ground that was different from the president. Whereas if you look at the text of the the remarks, they matched exactly where Joe Biden's position was.
Audie Cornish
00:11:38
It's all about the delivery. Yeah. I, in audio, know about this. The transcript will not tell you.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:11:44
Yeah.
Audie Cornish
00:11:45
Exactly how something has been said.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:11:47
And the other thing that made people in the White House, and the president's staff not so happy about that is they did not like that some people who worked for the vice president had flagged to a number of reporters that they should watch the speech.
Audie Cornish
00:12:01
'Now, in fairness to her, she's said a bunch of speeches that people ignore, like, just really ignore-ignore.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:12:08
True. And I have been told by people who work for many politicians, maybe you should watch a speech. Sometimes they're wrong because they're just kind of boring. This one was not.
Audie Cornish
00:12:23
My guest is Edward Isaac Dovere. We're discussing his reporting on Vice President Kamala Harris.
Audie Cornish
00:12:36
'Welcome back to The Assignment. I'm Audie Cornish. I'm here with Edward-Isaac Dovere. We're talking about Vice President Kamala Harris. I want to talk about the parts of her persona that have become either a problem or confusing or like, it's a little bit of a mess, pop-culture-wise. So the first thing is she's weirdly meme-able. Like the image of her saying, "We did it, Joe."
Kamala Harris
00:13:03
We did it! We did it, Joe.
Audie Cornish
00:13:06
'Right? She's out jogging. She gets the call saying that they've won. That became an instant classic gif. It's pronounced gif. Don't @ me, people. To symbolize something. You have Drew Barrymore just a few weeks ago on her talk show.
Drew Barrymore
00:13:23
I keep thinking in my head that we all need a mom.
Audie Cornish
00:13:30
Leaning into the Vice President the way she does and asking her to be.
Drew Barrymore
00:13:36
We need you to be "Momala" of the country.
Audie Cornish
00:13:41
I see your eyebrows. You have second hand embarrassment.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:13:43
Well, I mean, the momala the thing comes from, that's what her stepchildren called her when she got married to Doug Emhoff. And that's where that comes from.
Audie Cornish
00:13:50
Isaac. Is Drew Barrymore the stepchild of Kamala Harris?
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:13:52
No.
Audie Cornish
00:13:53
Still awkward. Appreciate you. Still profoundly awkward.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:13:59
No, I thought it was strange when Drew Barrymore...
Audie Cornish
00:14:02
And she wasn't able, she was like, What? Like, she doesn't have a poker face about that, right? And so, how does she think about how she's perceived?
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:14:10
She has often struggled with feeling that a lot of the ways that she is perceived are, excuse the phrase, in a way, but colored by racism and sexism. And I think that there are, at least in certain cases, good reason to believe that.
Audie Cornish
00:14:28
For example, what? Well, just give me one example.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:14:31
I mean, the focus on her laugh.
Kamala Harris
00:14:33
We should always find times to express how we feel about the moment that is a reflection of joy, because, you know, it comes in the morning. (laughter)
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:14:43
On the one hand, it's because it's a woman's laugh. And we're actually not used to hearing that in politics. Right? But the other part of it is that the laugh, she sometimes deploys it in moments where she's sort of uncomfortable what she's saying, and she'll start laughing. It does not feel like a natural place to laugh.
Audie Cornish
00:15:02
So you hear a nervous laugh.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:15:04
Yeah, or a tactical laugh is the way that I would say it. It's like, that's a way to get through something and sort of win over some people in the crowd. But it can it can feel off.
Audie Cornish
00:15:14
Well, it's very easy to slice, dice it and send it across the internet as a propaganda missive.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:15:19
Yeah.
Audie Cornish
00:15:21
If people don't think you're up to par.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:15:23
Right. And the "We did it, Joe" one, I think, just broke through in the way that it did because remember, that was at the end of that long week, Tuesday through Saturday waiting for the election results to come in. And many people, by the time the election was called, at least among Biden supporters, felt like it was clear where things were. And just that she had been out on a run and whatever.
Audie Cornish
00:15:45
And I don't want to spend that much time talking about the hieroglyphics that are the modern gif culture, right?But the meme has come to represent like, oh, we've been waiting forever. We, like, finally accomplished something, even if it's exhausting.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:15:54
'But I think in that way part of the reason is, fairly or unfairly, the "we" did it, Joe. It was sort of like, well, like, what was your role in it? Like, there was some of that going on, sort of making fun of her for it. And then some people felt like it was like, yes, like, we all did it. And Kamala Harris and Joe Biden did it, and and all the Democrats and all the Americans who voted for Joe Biden did it. And after this long election and long week of waiting for the results. But it is a constant thing with her that she both earns some of the negatives that come around her because of what she does or what she doesn't do, and also that I think we do need to think about how much our preconceived notions of how a politician acts and how a woman acts, and how a person of color and all those things. Jennifer Palmieri, who is the communications director for Hillary Clinton, she has something that she said after the - Clinton lost in 2016, said, you know, we don't know what it looks like for a woman to be president because we've never seen one. I think that the other part of it, though, for Harris is that she would like to be the president of the United States, right? She's run for president. She's the incoming vice president. I think it is safe to assume, without making any hard prediction, that she will at least take a real hard look at running for president again at some point in the future. It does not seem like the way to get the support that she would need to either be the nominee or get elected will be there if her approach is that if you don't support her, it's either because you're a racist or sexist or both. And so she's having to both deal with the actual racism and sexism that's there and deal with being vice president, a tough job, running for reelection, tough job, and then figure out how to not just be seen as any of those things, but as something that's all of those things and more.
Audie Cornish
00:17:56
So the last part of our conversation is how she's been able to appeal to the groups that President Biden or that the Biden administration is allegedly seeing a softening of support or enthusiasm with. So we talked about abortion. I think that makes a lot of sense, especially as the administration is very much felt like those are political wins where it's put before voters. You and I talked about her speaking out in at least a very public moment about Gaza. How is she trying to shore up the support that's reportedly lacking?
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:18:31
Well, a big part of what she's focused on is Black voters, which we see as an issue for biden's reelection.
Audie Cornish
00:18:42
Isn't it more young voters?
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:18:44
Well, it's it's Black voters and young voters, and then especially younger Black voters that are that the venn diagram.
Audie Cornish
00:18:49
Men.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:18:49
And then men. Yes. Young Black men. Then that's really where, a lot of it ends up being. But it's not as much of an issue of whether they will vote for Trump rather than Biden. It's whether they will vote at all.
Audie Cornish
00:19:05
And she has said that, what's the quote?
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:19:06
She says that she doesn't think they'll lose to Trump, but they might lose to the couch.
Audie Cornish
00:19:10
'But she's been doing this in the way, full disclosure, I have been to one of these dinners that she has held for various groups of reporters. I think this was, several audio people, and it is a small setting. She wants a lot of feedback. This is - it's off the record, but, like, it's not off the record that they happen. You've reported that these dinners happen.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:19:34
It's 'cause I wasn't invited to them that I can report on them.
Audie Cornish
00:19:36
Well, there's only. Yeah, exactly. But even I was like, why am I here? You know, like, not in a mean way, but, like, I don't really do that game. But it was very clear that she was trying to connect somehow. And when I read your reporting about these other kinds of dinners, other kinds of roundtables, dinners, it's a kind of retail politics and is it working?
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:20:00
Well, it certainly changed her approach. And one of the sets of dinners that she has in the office, they had been calling them her dinners with Black men, and they felt that they needed another way to describe it.
Audie Cornish
00:20:10
I wasn't at that one. But yeah, for sure.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:20:11
They described these as the dinners with extraordinary gentlemen. And these are black leaders in finance, politics, culture. Whether it's CEOs or Spike Lee or. And she will solicit ideas, but she'll also say, well, how can you be part of helping me here? And one of the things that it has led to is this thing that she calls the Economic Opportunity Tour, which she started in Atlanta two weeks ago and then in Detroit last week.
Audie Cornish
00:20:37
This is interesting because it's a little bit like the Abortion Rights tour.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:20:40
Yeah, she likes these tours.
Audie Cornish
00:20:41
She likes to go on tour.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:20:42
Definitely. Yeah.
Audie Cornish
00:20:43
Get out of the building.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:20:44
Tours like a rock band or something.
Audie Cornish
00:20:46
Yeah.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:20:47
And they all have a name. They're not as spicy as some of the rock tours, but she is going at it. Whereas Joe Biden will often talk about the overview idea of, how much black wealth has increased under his presidency. Things like that. She will say, here are programs that are available through the Department of Commerce or...
Kamala Harris
00:21:09
Evidence.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:21:09
Here's stuff at the Small Business Administration. Here's how to apply and trying to make people feel. And again, specifically Black people, Black men very much on her mind, Black entrepreneurs and small business owners to say this is directly what you can get out of the administration and why the fact that you voted for Joe Biden and me in 2020 matters, and why you should vote for us again. She always says we need to show people why what they got out of voting for us. So it's, like, transactional for them. Less so than for her.
Audie Cornish
00:21:48
'Like it's not necessary. She's not hope and change. This is not an inspiration-based approach.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:21:54
No, it's this is what you got out of voting for us. And I think one of the things that you see as a running thread through her time in politics is a lack of interest in highfalutin talk and big ideas or whatever, and very much about how are we going to deliver $600 in a mortgage credit for somebody? How are we going to try to raise the credit score in this area, right? And that sometimes was a weakness for her when she was running for president, because there would be.
Audie Cornish
00:22:28
It's not bumper sticker material.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:22:29
Right. And there would be these conversations about Medicare for All and all these big things that are big ideas or the the wealth tax from Elizabeth Warren, things like that, and she was like, well, what is actually what can we do that will pass the Senate pass the House, go to the president's desk and get signed? And sometimes that's smaller stuff. But I described in one of the articles, about her outreach to Black voters, that she was having a meeting with staff, and she asked them who was on the Small Business Administration website, like who was going to it, what's it like? And finally she was like, can you just get me the phone number and email address for somebody to call so I can give that to people so they're not filling out forms like just so that very directly here, call this person, get access to that program or to that loan or to the matching grant or whatever it may be. And that is the way she thinks about things. That is, like you said, not always, bumper sticker material.
Audie Cornish
00:23:19
There's something about the panic about Joe Biden's age that seems to be an unspoken panic about her.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:23:30
I mean, I think it's a spoken panic about her in, there has even been an ad that the Trump, SuperPAC, put out about it that was footage of Joe Biden tripping on the stairs to Air Force One, and then went to a picture of Harris. It was something that Nikki Haley would talk about a lot when she was running for president.
Audie Cornish
00:23:51
But Democrats have not countered with, What? Are you crazy? Biden's awesome. And also Kamala Harris is awesome. Right? Like that has not been the defense. Instead, they started talking about whether there should be a new nominee altogether. Now all that's calmed down. But again, it just felt like something was being said there. It was not a moment where people came to her defense.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:24:15
I think it is very fair and empirically justified to say the Democrats have not fallen in love with Kamala Harris. Whether they will in the future?
Audie Cornish
00:24:23
You mean the class, the sort of political class?
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:24:25
'And Democratic voters, overall. You look at the polls, she's in the 30s. And that is consistent. I don't know enough to tell you how that compares to other up-and-coming vice presidents in history because it gets complicated when you, both over time and and the specific circumstances, but clearly there is not a love for her. And I think there's also, what we are seeing is there has never been this sort of passionate love for Joe Biden. That obviously didn't stop them from getting elected in the first place. In 2020. They are statistically tied, at least at the moment, to win a second term, so it may not get in their way this time around. Or it may be the thing that gets in their way. But one of the things that consistently comes up in focus groups and polling about Harris is, then I've spoken to the people who have conducted these polls and focus groups, and they say when people are told more about her, then they tend to like her more. Now that is a huge hill to climb and a potentially too huge hill to climb to get to the point of maybe getting reelected vice president in November and whatever the future may hold for her if she's going to run for president.
Audie Cornish
00:25:40
So what will you be listening for in the coming months?
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:25:43
'When it comes to her, I think it's a question of do her numbers start to move? Does she continue to show more of the ease and looseness that she has very clearly been showing in the last few weeks? One of the things that from observing her before she was vice president, as vice president, and now in these last couple of months that I have noted in my reporting, is that she, personality-wise, is sort of poorly suited to the job of vice president because it is so amorphous and unstructured. But she has been better suited to the role of running for vice president, because it is with a clear direction and plan to go to these states, go meet these people. Let's make sure we get this number of voters that are there. And she's been doing that, and it makes her feel more comfortable when she's out and about. She also feels more comfortable and she knows what to do. She's sort of a performance player in that way that she will if you tell her what she needs to do. She wants to always know what's the plan? One of the expression she'll use in meetings is, what business are we accomplishing here? Right? And then she can do it. But if you're like, Hey, we need to, like, improve your standing and like, well, how? What do we need to do to do that? So we'll see how that continues to play out. I don't think that this election is ever going to be about the running mates. It rarely is very much about the running mates.
Audie Cornish
00:27:09
That's fair. Yeah.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:27:10
But when Donald Trump and Joe Biden are the candidates, in some ways, when Donald Trump is one of the candidates, it might just end up being a referendum on Donald Trump. But her place in that, and she will presumably have a debate with whoever Trump picks as his running mate. And she had a pretty good debate performance in 2020 against Mike Pence. Those are things that will matter for her. Where that leaves her if they do get reelected is enough of a question mark that I think most people would assume that, yeah, that's a lot of hypotheticals on top of each other, but if she and Biden are reelected and gearing up for the 2028 race, that she will not have an unchallenged run for the nomination, that that she will have some some clear competition, and that in itself is a statement about her and her standing in the party.
Audie Cornish
00:28:00
'Edward-Isaac Dovere is senior reporter at CNN. He's also author of a book called "Battle for the Soul Inside the Democrats' Campaigns to Defeat Trump." Thank you so much for talking with us.
'Edward-Isaac Dovere
00:28:11
Thank you.
Audie Cornish
00:28:12
And this episode of The Assignment, a production of CNN audio, was produced by Dan Bloom. Our senior producer is Matt Martinez, and the executive producer of CNN audio is Steve Licketig. We got support from Haley Thomas, Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, Jon Dianora, Leni Steinhardt, Jamus Andrest, Nichole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow. Thanks, as always to Katie Hinman. I'm Audie Cornish. Thank you for listening.
