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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. On today's show, we'll have New York City Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, who is Chair of the House Oversight Committee. Congressman Maloney has agreed to come on for a 10-minute appearance to preview the emergency hearing about voting and the postoffice that she will chair on Monday, the hearing with president Trump's Postmaster General Louis Dejoy. That should be interesting and important today with Carolyn Maloney. We'll also have mayor Francis Suarez from the hot city of Miami. It's politically hot in the 2020 election, and it's a coronavirus hot zone. Mayor Suarez, a Republican, is not saying whether he'll vote for Donald Trump for reelection. Carolyn Maloney and Francis Suarez coming up.

About the convention last night, one of the things that jumped out at me in this year when voting is more complicated than usual was that both Barack Obama and Kamala Harris took time to remind people to learn how to vote in your state. Now, it's only August, but this big push is on already for people to learn how to vote and start the process. In fact, all the media is analyzing Senator Harris' speech at the end of the night, I thought one of the most effective things was probably her brief appearance about voting at the beginning of the night. Here's part of that.

Kamala Harris: Hey, everybody. It's me Kamala. Before I go on stage later tonight, I want to talk about the importance of voting. I know many of you plan to vote this year but amidst the excitement and enthusiasm for this election, you've also heard about obstacles and misinformation, and folks making it harder for you to cast your ballot. I think we need to ask ourselves, why don't they want us to vote? Why is there so much effort to silence our voices? The answer is because when we vote, things change. When we vote, things get better. When we vote, we address the need for all people to be treated with dignity and respect in our country.

Brian: Kamala Harris, part one a little after nine o'clock Eastern Time last night. When she came back for part two at almost twelve o'clock, she gave a different kind of speech than most vice-presidential candidates do. Traditionally, they play the attack dog role against the candidate of the other party. It was actually Barack Obama uncharacteristically, who did the heavy lifting on that last night while Senator Harris was able to introduce herself and try to warm herself up to Americans, just getting to know who she is, viewers who the New York Times today called moderate information voters. Here's a little how she did it.

Kamala: Family is my husband, Doug, who I met on a blind date set up by my best friend. Family is our beautiful children, Cole and Ella, who called me Momala. Family is my sister. Family is my best friend, my nieces, and my godchildren. Family is my uncles, my aunts, and my chitthis. Family is Mrs. Shelton, my second mother, who lived two doors down and helped raise me. Family is my beloved Alpha Kappa Alpha, our divine nine, and my HBCU brothers and sisters. Family is the friends I turned to when my mother, the most important person in my life passed away from cancer.

Brian: Kamala Harris last night. Here's one more, this time on the issues where she does criticize President Trump. She also very explicitly ties together the two big issues of this year, the coronavirus pandemic and racial injustice.

Kamala: Donald Trump's failure of leadership has cost lives and livelihoods. If you're a parent struggling with your child's remote learning, or you're a teacher struggling on the other side of that screen, you know what we're doing right now is not working. We are a nation that is grieving. Grieving the loss of life, the loss of jobs, the loss of opportunities, the loss of normalcy, and yes, the loss of certainty and while this virus touches us all, we got to be honest. It is not an equal opportunity offender.

Black, Latino and indigenous people are suffering and dying disproportionately and this is not a coincidence. It is the effect of structural racism of inequities in education and technology, healthcare and housing, job security and transportation, the injustice in reproductive and maternal health care and the excessive use of force by police and in our broader criminal justice system. This virus, it has no eyes and yet it knows exactly how we see each other and how we treat each other and let's be clear, there is no vaccine for racism. We've got to do the work for George Floyd, for Brianna Taylor, for the lives of too many others to name, for our children and for all of us. We've got to do the work to fulfill that promise of equal justice under law because here's the thing. None of us are free until all of us are free.

Brian: Senator and vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris from last night, that was about two and a half minutes. That's the longest clip we'll play this morning, but it was kind of the policy heart. I thought as well as other than her personal story, the emotional heart of her speech last night, we'll hear more later. With me now covering the Harris' campaign, Wall Street Journal political correspondent Tarini Parti. Tarini, welcome back to WNYC. I noticed that after the convention speeches ran late last night, your latest story got posted at 6:06 this morning. Thanks for doing this with us on what I imagine is very little sleep right now.

Tarini Parti: Thanks for having me. It's been an exhausting week, but happy to be with you.

Brian: I thought one of the lines we heard in that last clip was one of the most memorable of the night. Frankly, I don't hear a lot of other people talking about it in the media this morning. Maybe it was only memorable to me, but it jumped out when she said, "This virus has no eyes and yet it knows exactly how we see each other and how we treat each other." How did you see what Kamala Harris was trying to accomplish last night?

Tarini: That was a very good line. What we saw in her speech and what we've seen her do in her campaign and with the hard legislation is that she's tried to point out the, uh, the disproportion of fact that policies have in America on minority communities. We saw her do that with the Coronavirus yesterday and also talk about the country that she envisioned, the more inclusive country where everyone is treated equally and brought up the racial injustices that a lot of people are calling out in recent months. That was a good line that sort of encompassed what she believes in, the issues facing the country from the Coronavirus to just the broader racial tensions and other problems and divisions in the country.

Brian: Listeners, your reactions to anything from the DNC last night. Welcome here. Anyone who started the week undecided getting turned on or turned off to this ticket or anyone else? (646) 435-7286 any Monday morning or I guess we could call it Thursday morning quarterbacks for how the convention should be programmed or anything, (646) 435-7280 with Tarini Parti, political reporter for the Wall Street Journal. Tarini it seems to me that this ticket and therefore this convention programming is different from the usual, not just because of the virus in the virtual presentations, obviously, but also because the main attraction what's most exciting about the ticket is the vice presidential nominee, not the presidential. Tim Cain was supposed to feed into the woodwork behind Hillary Clinton, Biden behind Obama, Mike Pence behind Donald Trump. Al Gore behind Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney behind George W. Bush. Eventually Cheney took over, but that's a different show. Maybe we could say it was true. The last time the Dems had a woman on the ticket, Geraldine Ferraro, more exciting that Walter Mondale maybe way back in 1984, I don't think it quite applied to Sarah Pailin over John McCain who large groups of Republicans left but that's how rare it is. If you agree, how do you see Senator Harris' job last night in that context?

Tarini: We saw Senator Harris and Democrats who spoke last night really lean into the historic nature of her nomination. They brought it up several times. We also had the first Black president speak passing the torch onto Harris the way they ordered it last night. They're doing this in part because they've learned after 2016 that it's not enough to just persuade voters, you have to mobilize them. We heard that narrative over and over last night from Hillary Clinton acknowledging that look, Take it from me, you can win the popular vote and still lose the presidency."

She said that voters don't need to just come out and vote for whoever the nominee is, they need to show up in overwhelming numbers. Part of the way they're doing that is by highlighting the historic nature of this ticket and hoping that helps energize a different demographics from Black voters to Indian Americans, to women voters, to really show up in large numbers to make a difference.

Brian: Taking the two speech clips that we played together though in the context of what you said about who they're trying to energize, would you say Harris' job was to simultaneously reassure white swing voters that she is a regular person who loves her family. That was her family's story clip just like them and at the same time energize the base coalition of people you were just referring to.

Tarini: I think that's a good way to put it. I think they wanted to just introduce her to the people, the more moderate persuadable voters who might not know her as well in a pretty safe way talking about her blended family. Then also mobilize Black voters and South Asian voters. She used the word Chittis in her speech which means aunts in Kemo. I noticed a lot of Indian Americans in particular are very excited to see that form of representation in such a big speech.

Brian: Do you think an Indian American vote could matter? I was looking through your own press clips and I saw you wrote as early as 2010 I think it was about the rise of the Indian American politician in America where the big one that year was the governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley Republican who went on to serve in the Bush administration too. I think I've seen that Indian Americans are maybe 1% of the population of the country. Is there a vote there that could matter in a swing state?

Tarini: There is. We know that there are 1.5 million Indian Americans that are eligible to vote in just nine battleground states. This is a vote that both parties have increasingly started to focus on. You've seen the president use his relationship with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi to really try to target some of these voters who like some of the nationalist agenda that Modi is following in India and try to sway some of those voters in Trump's favor. The block as a whole has been pretty democratic over the years.

What we've also seen in those last 10 years that you mentioned we saw Nikki Haley early rising in 2010 but in more recent years we're seeing democratic Indian-American politicians very progressive leaders becoming prominent figures. We've seen Pramila Jayapal we've seen Ro Khanna in California. The Bobby Jindal and Nikki Haley were the only known Indian politicians early on but that's been changing as well.

Brian: Let's take a phone call Jody in Clifton, you're are on WNYC. Hello Jody.

 Jody: Hi thanks for taking my call. I get your show downloaded every day so I never miss a segment and you are just terrific. The first night of the convention, I expected it to be poem but I have really been enjoying it and I was really riveted last night. I was brought to tears several times at the thought of what's happening to our democracy. I think it was Kamala who said that the election will change history and I believe after the election we're either going to continue in the democracy that people risk their lives for and sometimes died or we're going to watch it crumble under a man who has no decency, no compassion, no regard for truth or people or the constitution. I really think if people care about the country and their children and grandchildren, as I do, you want to choose democracy.

Brian: Obviously, you're a Democrat. What was it about the convention?

Jody: I wasn't a Democrat until a while ago. I've always tried to maintain my independence, but I do mean that way. I have to say, I am definitely a Democrat now. As my husband said, I will never vote for another Republican again and voted for several Republicans. I think the choice is easy. If you want decency and democracy, vote for Biden. If you want the seat and destruction, you vote for the other guy like Jonathan Capehart said yesterday, it's irresponsible not to vote and I don't know how you can remain undecided when the two sides are so tremendously different.

Brian: In that context of your politics of the moment in your political ark you said you thought the convention format would be whole harm, but you found it riveting. What did you expect?

Jody: I don't know what I expected. Since this is so different I thought it would be a little bit like the ones in the past where people would be standing around in their own homes or whatever and just saying, "Oh yes, we're going for this guy, we're going for Biden," but the way they did that with the 50 States and the outlying territory I thought was great. I also liked the fact that they were more like people talking to us rather than giving these speeches that were constantly in the past interrupted with applause and whatnot. I really felt more like they were talking from their hearts.

Brian: Jody. Thank you so much. In that context, Tarini and my guest is Tarini Parti, political correspondent for the Wall Street Journal covering Kamala Harris. Do you get the sense or do you have any numbers showing that ambivalent people were watching? I haven't seen ratings from last night yet, but I read that the TV viewership on the first night was down more than 25% compared to the first night of the democratic convention in 2016. It's possible that we journalists watching professionally are finding the virtual convention intriguing and we're respecting the production effort and people who are committed Democrats, like our last caller might be finding it. Many potential voters who they're trying to reach are finding it not entertaining enough, any indication?

Tarini: I don't think we have numbers yet on that, but I do think that is a big question because especially since the DNC has focused a lot of its time really on talking to persuadable voters and in bringing in Republicans like John Casick and getting some heat from Progressive's on giving as much time as they have on broadening the tent of the democratic party as they've been saying. I think it will be interesting to see some numbers, whether that actually holds up, whether people who are undecided are actually tuning in, my guess is that it's been more about mobilizing democratic voters, mobilizing the base. That's been more effective rather than reaching out to voters beyond the democratic party.

Brian: Intuitively, that makes sense. We have a caller to that point who I think is going to say some version of swing voters, white swing voters, Costa in Flushing, you're on WNYC. Thank you so much for calling in. Hi.

Costa: Hi Brian. Thank you so much for your coverage. basically what I wanted to say was, I don't understand how you can be undecided after almost four years of Trump and I'm an extremely open minded person, but after everything we've seen him say and do about minorities, women, the gay community, I don't understand how you can possibly think how anyone can possibly think that this man represents the values of America. To that point, I believe that UNC is important to mobilize democrats to vote, but I do not think that it's going to have an effect on so quote undecided voters. I don't think that will exist.

Brian: I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Costa: I think basically there are covert Trump supporters who maybe don't want to come out to their families and there are Democrats and full blown Trump supporters who are out and are happy to be Trump supporters and that's it.

Brian: Costa, thank you very much. There are still what, 40% as a baseline of Trump supporters in the polls that do exist. There's at least that many people who are willing to say they support Donald Trump or approve of the job that he's doing. On the swing voters Tarini, I'm curious how you use a political correspondent covering this this year are looking at this because I think it's fair to say that we saw in 2018 when the Democrats took the house that both things happen that there was a larger turnout of Democrats who maybe sat it out in 2016 because they weren't thrilled about Hillary Clinton or whatever. In addition to the base, there were suburban swing voters who got grossed out by Donald Trump in one way or another and really did change their mind or at least went from abstainers to voting for Democrats in their local congressional delegations. How do you see those two things interacting this year?

Tarini: I think rather than looking at swing voters the way I like to think about it is thinking about it as a ongoing political realignment under the Trump administration. What we're seeing is suburban women moving more towards the democratic side than they have been. They've been traditionally a part of the Republican coalition and what we're seeing. We're seeing rural voters who some of them had gone from Obama to Trump. We're seeing them more decidedly moved towards the right. We're seeing this is especially playing out in a state like North Carolina, battleground state where you can clearly see the division. You're also seeing it in Pennsylvania.

There are persuadable voters on that side where they're not moving decisively towards one party or another but you're seeing some swings based in part on the way that the president has handled the Coronavirus based in part on the way he tweets, things like that. I think the big question in the future will be if that realignment that we're starting to see, if that holds even after the Trump presidency.

Brian: I want to play a clip from Elizabeth Warren speech last night. She is of course famous for having a plan for things and she used that reputation to highlight a Biden platform proposal designed to hit many families including some of the ones you were just describing where they live during this remote learning era. Here's Senator Warren.

Elizabeth Warren: Let me tell you about one of Joe's plans that's especially close to my heart. Child care. As a little girl growing up in Oklahoma, what I wanted most in the world was to be a teacher. I loved teaching and when I had babies and was juggling my first big teaching job down in Texas, it was hard but I could do hard. The thing that almost sank me, child care. One night my aunt Bee called just to check in and I thought I was fine but then I just broke down and started to cry.

I had tried holding it all together but without reliable child care, working was nearly impossible. When I told aunt Bee I was going to quit my job, I thought my heart would break. Then she said the words that changed my life, "I can't get there tomorrow but I'll come on Thursday." She arrived with seven suitcases and a Pekinese named buddy and stayed for 16 years.

I get to be here tonight because of my aunt Bee. I learned a fundamental truth, nobody makes it on their own and yet here we are, two generations of working parents later. If you have a baby and don't have an aunt Bee, you're on your own and here's why that is wrong. We build infrastructure like roads and bridges and communication systems so that people can work. That infrastructure helps us all because it keeps our economy going. It's time to recognize that child care is part of the basic infrastructure of this nation, it's infrastructure for families, Joe and Kamala will make high quality child care affordable for every family, make preschool universal and raise the wages of every child care worker.

Brian: Elizabeth Warren from last night. Lucky enough I guess for these marketing purposes to have had an actual aunt Bee as maybe she's addressing some of the older white baby boomers who remember aunt Bee from the Andy Griffith show as being the ultimate benign old aunt but Tarini, seriously parents who need to go back to work are freaking out about childcare. This is the conversation in America today, right up there with anything else in the top one or two or three, the Republicans are making the case. I saw this on Fox last night after the speeches that, "Hey, Trump is the one calling for reopening schools, not the Democrats." I'm curious how you see the two sides setting up for that part of the debate as Elizabeth Warren invokes childcare as a democratic advantage.

Tarini: I thought that was a smart use of time by Elizabeth Warren to really focus in on one issue that she knows in this particular moment will especially connect with voters. During the primary we saw that she has this knack of taking big policy ideas and really explaining them well to regular people. I think this issue of reopening schools and childcare is the biggest issue right now in many ways, just because it hits so many different people and the president has made his position clear on this but I think as we're starting to see, even some universities, for example, that have opened and then had to close down and this just this past week alone, we're seeing that his reopen idea isn't quite working out in many places.

I think the Democrats are pushing for a more nuanced view on that. That obviously there needs to be something done, parents can't juggle working and taking care of their kids at the same time. I think the nuance, the details of that are missing in this moment. it's obviously a very tough situation and, I think it'll be important for Joe Biden and for Kamala Harris to talk about that more in quite and explain fully what their plan is and campaign on that more.

Brian: Christopher in Manhattan. You're on WNYC. Hi Christopher.

Christopher: Hi. I wanted to say that, you just a moment ago completely misspoke about the amount of people viewing it. Actually it was 28.9 million Americans tuned in across TV and digital platforms. You just mentioned TV ratings. It was up from 2016 and shattering the previous record for digital streams, which total 10.2 million numbers, even as they still come in. It's not just TV ratings where swing voters and independent voters were watching.

Brian: Fair enough, if those numbers are accurate, and of course more people are watching streaming all the time. There are more cable cord cutters all the time, and things are more available on whatever device you have in your pocket all the time. He's certainly right, Tarini, that the traditional TV ratings would be the only thing to look at. The article I happened to see was just about the TV ratings, but maybe he's right, that it still adds up to more than previous conventions viewership.

Tarini: Online viewership is up and I think the point that Democrats are trying to make is that when they have these digital clips, they can just put out on social media and we can see clips of the speeches like president Obama's and Michelle Obama's go viral and get more viewership in that form as well. I think they're trying to add up those numbers in counting for online viewership.

Brian: I want to ask you about an article in your paper, The Wall Street Journal by two of your colleagues, Liz Hoffman and Emily Glazer from last week, it was called, "As Kamala Harris joins Biden ticket, Wall Street sighs in relief." A lot of listeners just went, "What?" The Republicans as you know, are making the case over and over that Biden and Harris are captives of a socialist mob, but the Wall Street Journal is writing, "As Kamala Harris joins Biden ticket, Wall Street sighs in relief." Sure enough, since she joined the ticket, the SNP 500 hit an all time high. I think the NASDAQ too, if I'm not mistaken, and I'm not saying the record high is because of Kamala Harris, but the journal is at least saying sigh of relief that lets it keep going. Why do you think that is?

Tarini: I think that, so the story obviously was based on talking to Wall Street executives, a lot of them donors who have given to both parties but more recently given to democratic candidates. I think the point of it was that a lot of people on Wall Street had been worried during the democratic primary about Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and the types of proposals they were putting out there. Kamala Harris, I wouldn't call her a moderate, she's not really that ideological, she had plans as well, that would affect Wall Street, but she was not to the extent as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders did. I think in this conversation of the vice presidential selection process, there was some concern that some of the candidates up for that job were perhaps too progressive. We still had people like Elizabeth Warren on that list.

I think with Kamala Harris, she has ties to Wall Street, donors and Silicon Valley donors. She's seen as someone who's more pragmatic rather than ideological. I think that is something that those executives appreciate. I think they viewed it as someone who would bring stability perhaps rather than systematic change and big structural change as Elizabeth Warren said in her primary campaign,

Brian: Hey, before you go, I want to mention two bits of breaking news that our listeners have probably not heard yet. These are both within the last few minutes and I don't know if you've even seen them yet. I'm going to put you on the spot Tarini as to whether you think there are any campaign implications for you as a political reporter and feel free to say, I don't know if you don't know, but one of them is that Steve Bannon, obviously president Trump's campaign manager for part of 2016 and a big White House official early on has been charged in federal charges. This is Trump's own justice department with fraud for his role in an alleged scheme to defraud donors to a We Build the Wall fundraising effort.

This is saying that Steve Bannon was involved in a fundraising effort that collected more than $25 million, he and three other defendants quote, according to the indictment, defrauded hundreds of thousands of donors capitalizing on their interest in funding a border wall to raise millions of dollars under the false pretense that all of the money would be spent on construction. This is being filed by the US attorney in Manhattan, the acting US attorney, of course, there's a lot of political turmoil between Trump's justice department based in Washington and the US attorney's office here in New York, but Audrey Strauss is the acting US attorney. These are federal charges against Steve Bannon. Have you heard that yet?

Tarini: Yes. I just saw the alert for it actually and I think the one interesting point here is that this indictment makes him the sixth person linked to the leadership of the 2016 Trump campaign to be hit with federal charges. This has just been ongoing since 2016 that we've seen people connected to the Trump campaign be indicted for different reasons. The Bannon-Trump relationship has gone back and forth so much in the past few years. I don't think I've seen the president respond to it yet, but I think it'll be interesting to see what he says, because as we know, if he viewed someone as being loyal to them, he tends to defend them even when they're facing federal charges.

Brian: Of course, Bannon is the ideological heart of Trumpism and this one might even be bigger. This is being reported by our own Andrew Bernstein, who co-hosts our podcast, Trump inc, which follows all things Trump business and how they intersect with the public interest. Here's a tweet from Andrea from a few minutes ago, you're ready for this? Federal judge dismisses Trump versus Vance, meaning Trump's suit to block the subpoenas for his taxes is dismissed and Tarini, I don't know if you've heard that one yet. That's even newer than the Bannon story, in the very last few minutes. This means that Trump's suit to block the subpoena against his tax returns. Subpoena to obtain his tax returns for a New York grand jury has been thrown out.

Presumably, a New York grand jury will now get to see Donald Trump's tax returns as part of the Manhattan DA's investigation into him. I should say that doesn't mean that the public will get to see them before the election because grand jury proceedings are secret, but have you heard that news yet and do you think it has any campaign implications?

Tarini: I have not heard that news yet, but I think if there's any chance that the public gets to see these tax returns before the November election, I think that could be a big deal, but we've already seen the New York Times, of course, did the big investigation a couple years ago into his tax returns or what they could do, I guess and that didn't seem to really move things much, at least within his face, but a fuller view of his tax returns perhaps could before the election.

Brian: Tarini Parti, political correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. Thank you so much for coming on with us this morning after a long night of covering the speeches, and as I said at the beginning, I saw that your article this morning dropped around six o'clock in the morning, thanks for doing double duty with us today.

Tarini: Thanks for having me.

Brian: Quick reminder that we have convention coverage here, of course, tonight, it's Joe Biden's address, starts at nine o'clock here on--

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