Kamala Vs. Trump, Election Potholes & The Taylor Swift Effect

Cheddar News

Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala Harris on Instagram after her debate with Trump, urging her 283M followers to vote, a massive boost for the Dems.

Transcript

00:00Welcome back to The Headline.

00:05I'm Dave Briggs.

00:06A debate for the ages now in the rearview mirror and the election just over 50 days

00:11down the road.

00:12What potholes stand in the way and where do things stand in a still neck-and-neck race

00:18between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump?

00:21Barron's Ideas editor Matt Peterson with us now.

00:24Matt, good to see you, sir.

00:25Before we dive into the interesting debate, do you think we'll see another one or is that

00:29it?

00:30Oh, boy.

00:31I kind of do because I think Donald Trump is really motivated by revenge and he's going

00:38to want to get back for the beating he took on Tuesday night.

00:42So my money's on yes, but we'll see.

00:44Yeah.

00:45I mean, after the debate, he talked about Brett Barron, Martha McCallum not even being

00:49acceptable debate host and they are Fox News true news host.

00:54That is not likely to happen as far as a Sean Hannity hosted debate.

00:58That will not happen.

00:5967 million people, though, saw President Harris, Vice President Harris, bait Trump all night

01:06into boasting about crowd size, of course, spreading this Facebook conspiracy theory

01:10about immigrants eating pets.

01:13What is the damage?

01:15And without a debate, how does he recover?

01:18Look, the Harris campaign has been on this mission to show that Trump is just sort of

01:23weird and out of touch.

01:25And boy, they got their moment with the pets thing there, right?

01:29You know, the question is whether that changes any minds.

01:31I doubt that anybody who is going to vote for Trump, you know, change their opinion

01:36after the debate either way.

01:39But you know, it might move some, move the needle a little bit.

01:43This is such a closely fought race in the swing states that, you know, these little

01:47moment to moment gaffes, like if they knock a couple of people off on either side, that'll

01:51matter a little bit.

01:53But you know, the two have plenty to fight about other than that.

01:56I don't know how much more we'll hear about that.

01:58Yeah.

01:59I love to think that these things are about policy.

02:01They often are not.

02:03If there is one policy that matters is certainly the economy.

02:07Have both candidates laid out where they clearly stand and where does that debate go in the

02:12weeks that remain?

02:15The biggest thing that like really matters from a kind of bottom line, moving the money

02:19question is the tariffs thing, because Trump can put tariffs in place himself without really

02:25asking Congress for the most part.

02:28And what we saw on Tuesday, this was the thing that made me as an economics guy interested

02:33and excited, was that Harris is actually pushing back finally in an interesting way on this

02:39question of tariffs.

02:40Right.

02:41You know, Democrats have had years and years and years to figure out how to talk about

02:44this, and they just haven't.

02:45But she's out there calling it a sales tax, right?

02:49And Trump was really on the defensive over that.

02:51That's what got him on the back foot, by the way, in this very first back and forth they

02:56had in that debate.

02:57And so the question from here is whether Harris can successfully make this so unpopular that

03:03Trump even backs off of it.

03:06So far, that's not happening.

03:07But she's been very, very effective on this issue in a way that Democrats have just totally

03:11failed that up until this point.

03:13What do economists say about the impact of tariffs?

03:17Well, economists hate tariffs for the most part.

03:22You know, there's lots of estimates about what this would cost and how much it would

03:28increase cost to U.S. consumers.

03:32The one middle of the road one from the Peterson Institute is that it would cost the average

03:37family about $1,700 a year.

03:39Now, you've got to take into effect stuff like what happens to the dollar and do other

03:43countries retaliate.

03:45And so it's a little hard to know exactly where you would go with this.

03:48But you have to remember that Trump for the most part doesn't like tariffs for the economics.

03:53He likes tariffs because they make him powerful.

03:55He says this all the time.

03:56He wants to go out there and negotiate.

03:58And he's asking for a mandate from the American people to get this power to negotiate some

04:03sort of better global deal on the behalf of the American workers.

04:07So from his perspective, the economics aren't really that important.

04:10The biggest question I think going into this debate was would Kamala Harris explain her

04:15dramatic shifts on some of the issues, including the border, including a whole number of issues

04:20like fracking?

04:22Did she explain some of her pivots or flip flops clearly to the American people?

04:28No, she didn't.

04:30She's owned up to changing her mind.

04:32You know, if you talk to her campaign, they'll tell you where, you know, what she says she

04:36wants to do now and what she says she doesn't.

04:39And she obviously she gave this interview the other day where she said, my values haven't

04:43changed.

04:44And I think this is one of the questions that even liberals are asking about Kamala Harris

04:48is what does she actually believe?

04:50Right.

04:51And again, you know, as an econ focused guy, I want to know, did she learn a lesson about

04:57inflation from the past couple of years?

04:59You know, does she think that that should change how we should respond to another emergency?

05:04Right.

05:05I mean, you know, people are starting to get nervous again about a recession.

05:09You know, so how do you respond to a recession when the response to the last one went too

05:14far and ignited this inflation question?

05:16Right.

05:17These are questions about sort of what how she understands the world and how she applies

05:22her principles that we just don't really know yet.

05:24You know, yes, she's not going to ban fracking, but, you know, she would be president for

05:28four, maybe eight years.

05:29And so it kind of matters what she thinks about these things.

05:32And a disciplined Donald Trump would have focused on that.

05:36That is clearly not what we saw.

05:37All right.

05:38What state or states do you think ultimately decide this race?

05:43Oh, it's I mean, it's all about Pennsylvania.

05:46Right.

05:47You know, Pennsylvania is Pittsburgh in particular is an amazing place.

05:50My dad is a professor at Carnegie Mellon.

05:53So I have I have a vested interest in this issue.

05:55But, you know, that city, Pittsburgh, really exemplifies, you know, what's at stake here.

06:01You've got a kind of booming tech industry in a, you know, former industrial place that's

06:09really suffered from the loss of the steel industry.

06:12Right.

06:13You know, U.S. steel.

06:14People are fighting about what happens to this company.

06:16But that's not really what moves the needle on that economy anymore.

06:20So anyway, there's a very interesting question about, you know, what is the future of the

06:23economy for a state like like Pennsylvania and a place like Pittsburgh?

06:28And, you know, fracking is a part of it.

06:30How we support the tech industry is a part of it.

06:33And so they're both, you know, spending a huge amount of time there to try to figure

06:36it out.

06:37Of course, the debate was in Pennsylvania and one Taylor Swift is also from Pennsylvania.

06:43And look what you made me do.

06:44The debate made her come out on Instagram and endorse Kamala Harris and really push

06:50her supporters to get out and vote.

06:52I asked my 18 year old Swifty daughter soon to vote for the first time.

06:56What do you think the impact is?

06:58And she said, look, I think anyone who loves Taylor Swift already knew who she was going

07:03to vote for in this election.

07:06What do you think the impact could be?

07:10It matters because you what we've seen with Kamala Harris, you know, even from the very

07:14first moments of her campaign is excitement among Democrats that she is giving them something

07:21to care about and something to go out for and fight for and be interested in.

07:25Right.

07:26You know, you started with Charlie XCX saying Kamala Harris is brat.

07:30You know, now she's worked her way all the way up to Taylor Swift.

07:32I don't know if she could go any bigger than Taylor Swift.

07:36But, you know, that enthusiasm matters.

07:37It matters that that, you know, one side's supporters are riled up and interested and

07:42excited and are hearing about it all the time and are hearing it from, you know, the people

07:46that they follow when they're not thinking about politics.

07:49Right.

07:50That kind of stuff, again, super, super tight race could make a difference.

07:53Yeah.

07:54Look, the youth vote does not typically turn out.

07:57And I think in 2016, it was in the high 30s.

08:002020, it did go to north of 50 percent, which is a massive number historically.

08:05And if it continues to shift in that direction, could clearly impact it.

08:09Other demographics, this really looks like white men for Trump and women strongly supporting

08:16Kamala Harris.

08:18Is that the dynamic that decides the election?

08:21Yeah.

08:22And I think the Harris people think that, too.

08:24Certainly the Biden folks did.

08:26They thought that abortion was the issue that is going to determine the election.

08:31You know, the Democrats will point to 2022 midterms, this moment when they were expected

08:35to lose badly and really didn't.

08:39And they say that that's because of abortion, because that issue is suddenly animating huge

08:44amounts of women to turn out to vote.

08:46And so they think that that's going to come back again in the debate, which we'll probably

08:51forget very soon.

08:52But we could talk about it for another second or two.

08:54Kamala Harris, when offered the opportunity to talk about student loans, an issue that

08:59she I'm sure has strong opinions about, switched topics and talked about abortion.

09:04Right.

09:05They know that this is the thing that they need to put front and center in front of women

09:09voters.

09:10And they're going to keep doing that at every chance they have.

09:12Yeah.

09:13Expect them to hammer that issue down the stretch.

09:14Women vote in far greater numbers than do men historically.

09:17All right.

09:18Good stuff again from Matt Peterson, Barron's ideas editor.

09:21Good to see you, sir.

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