Those are the only two cranes in Janesville right now.
It's on airplane.
I think Andrew just asked him.
One minute.
You
.
I'm senior political reporter Zach Schultz
and I'm joined as always by our political pundits,
Bill McCosh and Scott Ross.
Gentlemen, thank you again for coming back for one more week
of exciting talk.
Thanks for having us.
Fabulous to be here.
Are you just as hell?
Absolutely.
First Tony Evers reference of the day.
Should we put a tracker on the board?
All right.
Just a few weeks ago, Scott, we were closing out the RNC
and Milwaukee.
We were talking about Democrat after Democrat saying
Joe Biden needed to drop off the race.
What has happened since then?
What have you seen that makes the difference between there
and today?
Well, I can say first and foremost, we're in the windy city
and the wind is now at the Democrats back.
This race has completely turned around.
The enthusiasm is off the chart.
The excitement is off the chart.
The opportunity is off the chart because with Kamala Harris
and Tim Walz, you have joy and hope coming back to the feelings
of where we're going to move this country.
That maybe this eight years of national nightmare with Trump
is going to be finally over once and for all.
They're going to put a stake in this once and for all.
And I think that it's going to be great for not just Kamala Harris
and Tim Walz.
It's going to be great for Democrats across the board.
Most importantly, it's going to be good for the American people.
All right.
So a few weeks ago, we never saw the Republican Party
more united around Donald Trump.
The enthusiasm was off the charts.
Where do you feel today?
Well, I think Scott's got some good points here.
The energy on the Democratic side has changed dramatically
since we were last together on July 19th.
Joe Biden dropped out on July 21st.
That is the latest of any presidential candidate
in modern politics.
Lyndon B. Johnson got out on March 31st.
So Biden gets out with 107 days to go.
Democrats quickly coalesce around Harris,
so there isn't a messy sort of mini primary.
And I give them credit for that.
They did that very, very well.
And they've been able to keep her sort of out of the media
and sort of set the narrative the way they want to set it.
I would say it was 78 days to go.
There's a lot of water that's going to go under this political bridge.
And yeah, there's some energy on the Democratic side.
But I think once America gets to see Tim Walz and Kamala Harris
and how dangerously liberal they are, they're going to say no.
Is there room for the Democrats to grow an enthusiasm
or is this the peak?
Are we going to see a post-convention bump like we usually do?
Or have we already seen it?
I think once America sees what the Democrats are offering,
again, fighting for you, protecting freedom,
as opposed to what we saw with the RNC,
which was basically two guys who are out for themselves.
And to quote Tim Walz, where does heck?
So I think that there was going to be a huge bump
for the Democrats off it.
But again, first rule of politics set the bar low enough
you're bound to succeed.
And so expectations, I think, or I think people are excited
because it's something we've not really seen before.
We're going to have the first black woman standing as the nominee
of a major party in American history.
And I think that's something that we have to honor.
And I think that's something that the American people are going to say,
it's time.
I think one thing that voters are going to see here
is we now have a base-on-base election.
JD Vance clearly didn't add to what Trump was bringing as far as the MAGA base.
I don't think Tim Walz adds to Kamala Harris' record
as a hardcore progressive.
I think they just sort of amplify those things.
So neither campaign sort of tried to bring in the middle through their VP picks.
So we're going to have a base-on-base and then it's going to be who can decide
that sliver of undecided and independence in the middle at the end to get the victory.
So it was last spring, which feels like years ago.
Yeah.
Nikki Haley said, whichever party gets rid of their old candidate first is going to win.
Was she seeing the future?
Was she right?
Well, she was right in the sense that they got a nice bump out of it.
And they were able to go from five to seven points behind with Joe Biden at the top of the ticket
to many polls, now have them up one or two.
Swing states are a little bit different.
The polls are fluctuating, but there's no question that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz
have been able to bring the Democratic base back underneath them.
Was there any chance that Democrats would be this enthusiastic if Biden was still the nominee?
I mean, there was a real challenge.
And again, you're seeing it over and over again.
I was talking to a delegate at the Delegate Breakfast today from Osaka County.
And she talked about how, you know, their pre-debate turnout for a party with Joe Biden on the ticket
was challenging.
And after this change was made, they sold out the place.
And then, you know, again, in conjunction with that, they went 50-50 on the referendums that we just passed
or just were killed in the state of Wisconsin.
So I think that that sort of enthusiasm, you know, definitely works.
And again, let us not forget the number one issue in this race.
The number one issue in this race is abortion.
And as Governor Tim Walz passed the first post-Dobs protection of abortion rights in the entire state,
Kamala Harris, who has been a nonstop champion for abortion rights, you know?
And so I think with that being the number one issue, economy, of course, incredibly important,
but abortion is about the economy because it's about women being able to challenge, have control of their body
so they can thrive in the workplace like men.
Joe Biden's supposed to speak tonight.
Yeah.
Will this be, what kind of send-off do you imagine is going to be in this building for him when he comes out
to address the delegates?
Oh, I think he's given his own eulogy tonight.
This is the end of his political career.
We know that the House Oversight Committee today issued a 292-page report saying that he did commit impeachable
offenses as president.
I'm not calling for his impeachment prior to the election, but I think it's something that the Republicans will
strongly consider in the lame duck session.
I don't think Joe Biden's going to write off into the sunset with this great glow around him the way
Democrats hope.
I think this thing, the chickens are coming home to roost on the Biden family.
How do Democrats going to welcome Joe Biden tonight?
They are going to give him the best reception, maybe other than of Kamala Harris in this entire
convention tonight because they know what Joe Biden did.
Nobody has ever put the American people before themselves as an elected official than Joe Biden did.
He saw what was happening.
He saw the threat to our democracy, the threat to women, the threat to kids was so stark if he remained on the
ticket that he said I'm going to pass on to the next generation.
I could not be as a Gen X or more excited about the fact that we are going to have our first Gen X ticket of Kamala Harris
and Tim Walz be the President and Vice President, so I think the ovation is going to be long,
it's going to be sustained, and the thing is it's going to be heartfelt.
The guy gave 52 years in elected office and worked every day for the people going through personal tragedies,
and the results speak for themselves.
Under he and Kamala Harris, 16 million more jobs created, 21 million more people have access to health care.
If you're a senior, you're paying $35 for insulin costs, that's 950,000 people in the state of Wisconsin.
The biggest investment in student debt reduction in American history, the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years,
and the best investment in the best gun bill we've gotten in 30 years.
We know that Joe got pushed off the stage by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to a lesser degree,
or maybe to a greater degree, Barack Obama.
They knew he couldn't win.
All the polling showed he couldn't win. He was dogmatic. He and his wife were dogmatic about staying in the race.
There was finally a meeting of the mines after the 19th of July and said,
either you're going to get out or we're going to push you out.
And so I don't think it's going to end as rosy as my good friend Scott has said,
but they're going to give it a try, for sure.
So when we look at the amount of enthusiasm out there, specifically on the Democratic side, Scott,
with 2008 Obama being the peak, 2016 Hillary Clinton being about the Nadir,
where do you expect it to be this fall?
I think we could have higher than Obama numbers.
Obama 2008.
Obama 2008.
And the reason I think that is because we are doing something that America hasn't done in its 249 years,
and that is have a woman be our leader in its time.
And especially when we have had the attack on women that we had under the Trump Supreme Court,
under the Trump administration, in states all across the country.
And that is why I believe that there is going to be a wave election.
And again, there's a lot going on in the state of Wisconsin.
I think we'll talk a lot about that this week, so people should tune back in all week.
But I think that it's going to bode very, very well for up and down the ticket in the state of Wisconsin.
I still do think that Tammy Baldwin is going to be at the top of the ticket,
but right underneath is going to be Kamala Harris with, I think, the most votes ever received
by a statewide candidate in Wisconsin history.
We're going to see.
I mean, voters truthfully don't know a lot about Kamala Harris.
She's never received a vote for President in her life.
She was the first one out of the 2020 race.
She didn't receive any votes this time.
So I think as voters get to know her, there are going to be some serious concerns about
whether or not that's the progressive way we want to go forward.
And I think the debate on September 10th is going to be determinative.
Just like the debate on June 27th was.
I think people are going to get to see.
I disagree with Scott.
Abortion's a top three issue.
It's number three.
On most polls, economy and immigration are one and two.
Trump's got huge leads on all polling on those two issues.
I think Harris made a very big mistake on Friday with her price controls for economic security plan.
And the more she has to define or defend that plan going forward, the worse off it's going to be for her.
So I like where we sit.
Let's talk about the economy for a second.
Because inflation has been a huge issue.
We've talked about it on here and now time and time again.
Let's look at what happened.
Of the G7 countries in America.
We have the lowest inflation rate of all of them around 2%.
At one point, there were a couple that were higher than us.
We topped out at about 10%.
I think is where it was at.
There were ones that were higher.
We're lower than all of them.
What's the difference between those countries and our country?
We passed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris's inflation reduction act.
That made all the difference.
The investment in people.
That's what they're going to get with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.
Investment in America.
Tim Walz did it as governor.
Kamala Harris was fought for it in the U.S. Senate and as the Vice President.
What we're going to get with Trump is the same old same old.
Two trillion dollars in tax breaks.
They already passed, which gave gazillion dollars to richest people in the state of Wisconsin.
Two trillion dollars, they want to pass five trillion dollars more by keeping those in effect.
That is money that cannot be spent on the American people.
Joe Biden made all the difference.
Kamala Harris made all the difference.
Democrats made all the difference and they're going to get rewarded for it.
I think voters are going to find out that Kamala Harris was uniquely involved in the increase in inflation.
She was the deciding vote as the president or the overseeing the United States Senate
on the inflation reduction act and two massive spending budget bills
that kicked off inflation here in the United States.
In her remarks on Friday when she talked about her new economic plan,
she herself said bread was 50% more.
Ground beef was 50% more than it was during the pandemic.
Before the pandemic.
Well, who's been in office that term of office?
It's been her and Joe Biden.
So I don't think she can run from her record and inflation is cumulative.
Scott and I are struggle with our weight from time to time.
It was 9% in year one.
It was 6% in year two.
It was 5% in year three and now it's 3% now.
Well, that's still 19 pounds heavier than you were four years ago.
Scott, I want to talk about that because when you talk about the inflation reduction act,
it's one thing to say it could be a lot worse.
That's ephemeral, but it is easy for people to say it was a lot better.
And whether you want to give credit to anyone or blame for anyone,
there is a difference between the end of the Trump era and where we are today.
But again, there was the pent up, you know, the pandemic caused a lot of pent up buying
and let us not kid ourselves.
There are American war profiteers out there who raise their prices in food, in gas,
you know, and they gouged the American people.
God record profits.
God record buybacks to their stockholders at the expense of the American people.
Because you know what?
They felt like they could do it.
And so they did it and they weren't going to get any help from the Republicans
because the Republicans have done nothing other than say,
let's give more tax cuts to rich people.
That's going to somehow reduce inflation.
And our inflation rate is now it's same as when it was George W. Bush.
But when it comes to messaging, the messaging from Republicans seems to be winning
in terms of the minds of the public.
100%.
Man on the street interviews, it doesn't matter who conducts them.
The average citizen thinks inflation is hurting them in their monthly pocketbook.
There is no question about that.
One of the mistakes, one of the several mistakes Kamala Harris made on Friday
was she talked about price gouging by grocery chains.
Grocery chains operate on a 1 to 2% margin.
They make their money on volume.
They don't inflate bread 50%.
But one of the largest in lowering some of those prices.
Good.
And they buy their bulk purchasers.
They're one of the biggest purchasers in the country.
So they might have a little extra wiggle room that a Kroger's or a festival foods
or even a Woodman's may not have.
Again, I think that what the Democrats should do on this angle
is I think they need to talk about the fact that we help bail these companies out.
During COVID, all the PPP money that was spent to assist businesses large and small.
And they paid us back just like the big banks did after the economic collapse
by sticking it to the taxpayers.
It's not the Democrats' fault.
It's the Republicans' unwillingness to come together
to try and solve these problems, which has been the thing since Barack Obama
took the oath January 20th, 2009.
They have said no to anything related to a Democrat.
The country be damned.
I think the struggle for Democrats is the voters' perception.
Are they better off than they were four years ago?
And most voters would say no, they're not.
And Kamala Harris is going to have to try and overcome that.
And to do that, she's going to have to offer more details.
And we've seen so far, she's pretty light on details.
And when she gets pushed even a little bit, she struggles to go in deep into the details.
Four years ago, we were locked down in COVID because Donald Trump said
we should put bleach in our veins for God's sakes.
You know, we lost 3 million jobs under Trump,
the largest loss in American history.
Joe Biden got a 16 million jobs by the things he was doing,
like the Inflation Reduction Act, like the Investment and Recovery Act.
By the time we do the show on Wednesday, we're going to be lowering those numbers.
There will be new economic numbers out adjusting for the last three months.
And it may be as much as a million fewer than what Scott said.
Let's bring it back to today.
And this morning, Tim Walz spoke to the Wisconsin delegation.
One of the very first things he did at the start of the DNC.
Scott, what does that mean in terms of Wisconsin being the battleground state
that that's the first place he went to?
We remain the thing.
You know, we are the, you know, bell of the ball.
And I was in the convention room yesterday.
We're right up front.
You know, I took a little picture and put it up, like they are right there front and center
because they recognize how important Wisconsin is.
Because Wisconsin got away from us in 2016 and it will not again
and see what they're doing.
You know, under Ben Wickler, the Wisconsin Democratic Party
has raised more money than anyone could have ever expected,
especially Democrats like me who used to shriek, you know,
like as Jimmy Malone said in the Untouchables from here in Chicago,
like a stuck pig.
And, you know, the fact is that the Republicans are hoisted on their own
pitarred because Ben Wickler has found a way to raise ungodly amounts of money.
That money being invested in organization, they've got 47 offices around the state,
well over 200 paid staffers organizing people all over the state.
The candidates are going all over the state.
You know, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are going to be in Milwaukee.
We're here.
They're over there.
Listen, I don't think Tim Walz is going to sell well in Wisconsin.
Minnesota is one of the top states for out migration in the last four years.
He's lost $2 billion in wealth.
People, some people come to Wisconsin, some to Florida or other warm locations.
Nobody's embellished his resume more than Tim Walz other than perhaps George Santos
and I don't think it's going to sell.
The more people get to know Tim Walz, they're going to realize he is dangerous
as Ronald Reagan who is a master at, you know, his team was a master at creating photos
that told the story.
There is no better photo than that photo of Tim Walz surrounded by school children
after making not only the biggest investment in Minnesota history and public education
but giving every student free breakfast and free lunch so that they're,
they've got the resources and they've got, you know, kids who are growing poverty
and go to school hungry, they can't learn he's solving those problems.
That is the most phenomenal visual because he's a good guy.
He's a Wisconsin guy.
And the rich kids are getting it too.
Everybody gets it.
Everyone's getting it.
Oh, so wait.
So tax cuts for rich people are okay.
But these things should be means tested.
They should be means tested.
Meal for a kid whose parents happen to be doctors is bad.
But Republicans in Wisconsin want to take away means testing for private voters.
If we're going to talk about means testing for wealthy families.
Yeah, I don't know.
I'm not aware that they want to do that.
They want to do those bills that would have done that.
That didn't pass Republican controlled legislatures.
Correct.
Well, they knew the Tony was going to.
I do want to go back to one thing that you just mentioned,
talking about Minnesota out migration.
Yeah.
A lot of that is going to Northwest Wisconsin.
St. Croix is one of the fastest parts of the state.
Is that an indictment on Tim Walsh?
Or is that more reflection on housing in Minnesota versus Wisconsin?
Because most of those people are still driving to Minnesota to work.
No, I think it is a reflection on the policies of Minnesota and,
and people voting with their feet and moving to Wisconsin.
But it's been booming long before Tim Walsh was governor.
St. Croix County is growing faster now than it was five years ago.
It's one of the top five fastest growing counties in the state.
That's the Hudson area.
Pepin County where River Falls is also growing quite a bit.
Even into Dunn County, 60 miles in is growing.
And that's people saying, you know what?
I could probably still work in the Twin Cities metro area,
but I don't have to live there.
I don't have to deal with all those policies.
I don't think they went too far when they got both houses to legislature.
I think the growth happened because of retired Representative Ron Kind,
who I used to work for, getting the Stillwater Bridge.
Let's not kill ourselves.
That was why the growth happened there.
But again, that's, you know, one of the, as a former, you know,
liberal advocate, we used to kill ourselves about how do we penetrate
that Minnesota market with Wisconsin stories.
Because it is, you know, dominated.
You know, there's no, you know, the close TV station,
you've got Superior, you've got Eau Claire, you've got La Crosse.
How do you get TV to the people who get their news from TV?
The people who are most likely to vote are older Wisconsinites.
What they've been getting is they've been getting all the good news
and all the good pictures of Tim Walz and the stuff he's doing.
Like, you know, like gun, you know, like, you know, gun safety legislation.
Like the investments in voting.
Like, you know, the investments in kids.
Like tax cuts.
Like tax cuts.
That's just naughty.
You know, it's true.
It's true.
He's far too liberal for Wisconsin.
He's not going to be the hunter dad, the coach that they think he's
going to be in Northwest Wisconsin where I grew up or in the rural areas.
He's not going to cut into any omega.
I see, I happen to say, you know, he was in Nebraska the other day
and he said this, which I think is so insightful.
You know, and I say this, you know, I went to a state school.
I went to the University of Pittsburgh, up the street is Carnegie Mellon,
which is a very, you know, Tory school.
They used to refer to us as grade 13.
Tim Walz is in Nebraska the other day.
He's like, listen, here in the heartland, we don't have to listen.
We don't have to hear from a Yale educated philosophy graduate
who's financed and bankrolled by billionaire venture capitalist
to know what we know.
We know what we know.
And that's the thing.
So let's talk about JD Vance for a minute.
Because coming out of the RNC, you were mild on what he could bring
to the ticket.
Yeah.
What have you seen since then?
Specifically, as he almost appears to be following Democrats
around Wisconsin, he's going to be in Kenosha again this week.
Tomorrow.
Listen, I've been pleasantly surprised.
I think he's been outstanding on the stump for Trump.
I think he's been way more disciplined than Trump has been.
State on the key issues of the economy and immigration.
And that's what voters want to hear about.
I think he has helped so far.
Is he attracting more independence like a Nikki Haley or a Glenn
Youngkin would?
No.
But I think when he gets on stage with Tim Walz and I'm sorry
that it's not until the first week of October, people are going
to say, wow, one of those guys is really smart and the other guys
got a lot of hot air.
I mean, he could only go up.
I'm not saying he necessarily went up, but this is a guy who
referred to Trump as America's Hitler.
You know, again, we've got a ticket with a guy with 34
felonies and he brings on JD Vance who has the least amount of
experience, you know, that any vice president will have ever
had if they were to win, if they were to win the election.
You know, the things that you say, the same amount of experiences
Obama had when he won the presidency.
That's a big comparison, though.
Neither one had run a company.
The fact Obama was elected president.
JD Vance may be elected vice president.
Listen, if running a company and having five bankruptcies, this
is the standard for like what?
Or run a government, like a governor.
So, I mean, the fact is that JD Vance has no experience.
The things that he has said on abortion are literally disqualifying.
You know, everything from like, there should be no exceptions
for rape and incest, that they're inconvenient.
The things he said about, you know, about single parents, you know,
and I'm sorry about non-parents, right?
Childless adults.
I mean, just over and over again, he is the definition of why
Tim Walz got so much traction with the, they're just weird.
So, I do want to switch back and look a little bit to the back again,
and that's the constitutional amendments that were just passed.
Yeah.
You referenced those earlier when we were talking about this.
Are they reflective of what we're going to see in the fall?
Are they a one-off or a relatively, I mean, a high turnout
for an August primary, but still low turnout compared to the fall?
There's been about two dozen statewide elections in Wisconsin
since Trump got Wisconsin's electoral votes in 2016,
and I think Republicans have only lost three, or have only one three of those.
Republicans have only won three of those out of, like, two dozen,
and this, I think, is an extension of that because, again,
what I said, the Democratic Party has people, they are active,
they understand it, they are fundraising to give their organizers the resources,
they're spending the money to talk to people with communications,
they're doing everything right, and plus, the enthusiasm, again,
like, if you want to sign that there's an enthusiasm,
the Republicans tried to pull a fast one on the Wisconsin people twice.
A constitutional amendment in an August primary has never been done before,
and then, on top of that, the odd wording of it designed to specifically be,
you know, confusing, and they got their butts whipped.
You know, again, I was talking to a friend of Ozaki.
So, does he want to come back and do it again?
Well, there is one on the November ballot.
You know, 17 points in Ozaki, the thing lost by between the two things.
I mean, this is, you know, that's a play, or I'm sorry,
they lost statewide. They were tied in 50-50 in Ozaki.
I don't know why I'm fixated on Ozaki.
My wife lives in Washington County.
I guess I should talk about Washington County a little bit more.
Maybe for tomorrow.
So, I'd say this.
The thing to look at were Dane and Milwaukee counties.
The referenda failed by 180,000 votes.
It failed.
They failed by 175,000 in Dane and Milwaukee alone.
So, I would say Republicans have had their work cut out for them
in Dane and Milwaukee County for a long time.
This reinforces that, in my opinion.
But having said that, I mean, Scott's right.
Ben Wickler raised a pile of money.
And they outspent Republicans at least four to one, maybe five to one,
getting their message out, encouraging people to vote no.
It's always easier to get people to vote no on referenda,
especially when they're confusing.
But they don't lose very often in Wisconsin history.
Yeah, and I don't think we'll lose in November
when we have a referendum about only U.S. citizens can vote in Wisconsin elections.
I think Republicans will win that handily.
So, I don't think there's anything to read in an August primary
about what might be, what may come in November because there's 78 days.
It's really going to be about the top of the ticket between Harris and Trump
to a lesser degree in Wisconsin between Baldwin and Hovtey.
And that's what's going to drive turnout.
Money's momentum.
Money's momentum.
Do you think if Robin Voss brings these back again,
they're going to go down again?
I don't know that Robin Voss is going to get the opportunity to do that come January.
You know?
I think there is an entirely decent possibility that the assembly could flip after the selection.
Now, would they come back in the lame duck?
Absolutely.
They tried and did it before.
They did it with voting rights.
They did it with Walker.
They took away, you know, a bunch of the powers that Governor Evers and Josh Call,
you know, that they would have had that they were fine to have Republicans, you know,
using and such.
But again, this is not a constitutional amendment has to pass two successive legislative sessions.
So the only thing they could do is do one in lame duck and the other one in January.
But I'm not sure this one's coming back.
So Tony Evers did say today that he expects to flip the assembly.
He thinks that Robin Voss is out as speaker.
Is that pie in the sky?
Is that fire up the voters or is that actually real possibility right now?
Well, it's taken a thought back to 2008, you know, because that was the last time the assembly was flipped.
In fact, like the two years from 2009 and 2010, I moved here in, I moved to Wisconsin in 1997.
Those are the only two years Democrats have had the assembly in all of my time here.
And so I took a look and like those, a wave election is the kind of thing in competitive seats where you win.
You know, it's as simple as that.
And that's why I feel that that is definitely the assembly is definitely in play.
I think the Senate could be in play. It's a lot tougher.
It's a lot tougher.
There would be a bigger stretch for the Senate to be in play.
Maybe if it happens, we can bring out Michaels into talk about how miracles do happen.
The seats aren't up for the Senate to flip this time.
But they're going to pick up without a doubt.
You know, seats for sure.
On the assembly side, I thought one of the big winners on Tuesday night was Robin Voss.
He was able to beat back sort of the hard right flank.
Some of which tried to recall him twice this summer and then ran a primary against him.
He defeated all that and got most of his incumbents through the primary against some, you know,
people that want to go to Madison to burn the Capitol down.
So I'd say he was one of the big winners on Tuesday night.
But those were seats that Republicans were going to probably keep any house.
So it didn't matter.
So like, so yes, he has less of a hassle.
Yes, he has less of a hassle.
But overall, he loses those in a primary.
Then he doesn't have a governing majority.
So it's a big deal.
It's a big deal for the legislature overall, just in terms of being functional, right?
Yes.
Yes.
If nothing else, no matter who runs the majority to have people that want government to work.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, is the call coming from inside the house?
That was what he was worried about is, you know, do five or six of these people knock off his incumbents
and then he can't pass a budget or a major bill?
Well, he may not be speaker either.
Well, I think that's a little rosy thinking on the Democrats part.
Well, not necessarily from losing the majority, but whether he can find enough Republicans within his own majority.
Oh, I think so.
I think he can.
So talking about the election deniers, what does that mean in terms of questioning the election this fall?
Were they still going to be vocal or if they don't have that platform or being an elected official,
does that change some of those calls?
I think it reinforces a lot of, again, what's the message up at the top of the ticket,
which is the existential crisis to democracy?
You know, we have a president, or my next president, who is on the ticket,
who tried to overturn the results of a democratically decided election.
And that has continued with the election denialism and the culpability and the unindicted Ron Johnson.
Derek Van Orton, who is, you know, a terrorist insurrectionist.
We're going to get to over and over again.
Three more days.
My point is that the party has been taken over by the election deniers.
Whether Janelle Branch and Rampton didn't get back in or got kicked out, it's still a party of that.
If you put a microphone in front of any of the candidates, they're going to say,
there were problems with 2020 when every independent analysis,
including a Republican one, said that's nonsense.
I'd say it's good for the party.
It's time to stop looking backwards and start looking forward.
Voters want to hear about what you're going to do for them in the future.
They don't care about 2020 anymore.
Some in our party may still.
But it's not a deciding issue.
And the more time we spend on that means the less time we spend comparing and contrasting
with our vision for the future versus the Democrats' vision.
I agree.
Listen to Bill McCation.
He's been around a long time.
Look at the gray hair.
Two seconds left.
Very quickly.
Quickly, Scott.
What is the goal for the Dems this week?
What's a good week for them?
The Dems is to show that they are the party that's going to move this country forward.
It's time to move forward.
What are the Republicans hoping comes out of this week?
Well, that people get to see who Kamala Harris is.
I don't know that they will.
I don't know that she's going to get a big bounce.
But we want America to get to know Kamala Harris and Tim Walls in a very personal way.
We're in agreement.
All right.
Bill Scott, thank you for your insights.
We will see you back here tomorrow.
Thank you for watching this special presentation of here and now's 2024 election coverage.
Be sure to come back tomorrow.
You'll find us here each day this week.
Tune into PBS's evening coverage of the convention where here and now we'll have another update
on the day's events.
And finally, join us on Friday to wrap up the week with a special one-hour presentation
of here and now starting at 7 p.m.
I'm Zach Schultz.
Thanks so much for joining us.
Have a great day.
We got more to talk about.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
All right.
Thank you much.
We are clear.
Awesome.
All right.
Good job.
Quickly before you guys run off too far.
I don't know if you heard this update, but we don't have enough of the passes that get
us in the building for all of our people.
Steve and Ethan, who are covering the protest, they only have perimeter passes, which only
let them around.
So if we can...