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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. We will begin today at the end. If you want to sound different from Donald Trump, one thing you can do is quote from literature rather than QAnon. That's how Joe Biden ended his acceptance speech last night.

Joe Biden: The Irish poet, Seamus Heaney once wrote, "History says don't hope on this side of the grave, but then once in a lifetime, the long for tidal wave of justice can rise up and hope and history rhyme." This is our moment to make hope and history rhyme with passion and purpose. Let us begin you and I together. One nation under God, united our love for America, united in our love for each other for love is more powerful than hate. Hope is more powerful than fear and light is more powerful than dark. This is our moment. This is our mission. History be able to say at the end of this chapter of American darkness began here tonight as love and hope and light join in the battle for the soul of the nation.

Brian: Joe Biden right near the end of last night acceptance speech. To my eyes and ears, it was a better speech than I thought Joe Biden had in him, to be honest. Even on Fox afterwards, they were giving him credit for a really good speech. I mean, they did it like, Oh, he can read from a teleprompter, so what? They were hoping to go, Joe Biden is losing it and he can't even get two words out of his mouth, but the speech was just too well-written and well-delivered for that. Much of America was crying at times, I'm sure. Maybe inspired. We will see. A good speech doesn't mean you automatically make the best president, but I don't think there's any denying that Biden connected with people at the level of his decency and also his working class roots, which along with the ability to cite Irish poets for sensitivity is something that President Trump can claim working class roots. Will any of this matter to the outcome of the election? That is for the public to decide. The Republicans will certainly argue next week that Biden may come from the working class, originally, but his policies don't benefit working class people today. They'll make that argument. Now, if you only watch the Biden earnestness at the end of the night, you missed how funny things were at the beginning of the night. Here is former presidential hopeful Andrew Yang from right near the start, who far as I know, has never won an Emmy Award. Who reminds the audience that he ran on the one word campaign slogan, math.

Andrew Young: Now we'd like to turn it over to a great Democrat who will be with us throughout the evening. Between the two of us, we have 11 Emmy's. How's that for math? One of my favorite actresses, Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Hey, Julia.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus: Hi, Andrew. I'm so glad to see you. What did you think about Kamala Harris' speech last night?

Andrew: It was tremendous. I was so happy for her.

Julia: I know. Me, too. She was fabulous. I cannot wait to see her debate our current Vice President Mika Pints, or is it Pints?

Andrew: It's pronounced Pints, I believe.

Julia: Oh, some weird foreign name.

Andrew: Not very American sounding.

Julia: That's what people are saying. Strongly.

Brian: Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Andrew Yang purposely mangling Mika Pint's name to make it sound foreign. Like President Trump does with Kamala, I mean, Kamala Harris' name as he does. Will any of this matter? Listeners, we will hear one more excerpt as we go along and we are opening the phones right now to let you be the pundit and let you be the political analysts for the first part of our call. Today react to anything you want from Biden speech or the Democratic convention as a four-night political argument as a whole. People say infomercial, I say it's sometimes for these conventions, but it's really more serious than that. They are four-night political arguments about things that really matter. You be the pundit and tell us how much do you think it will matter to the future of the campaign or the outcome of the election. What happened the last four nights? Remembering that the Republicans get their turn next week. 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280, or you can tweet @brianlehrer. With me now is WNYC's Kai Wright, host of the podcast, the United States of Anxiety. I'm very pleased to announce that beginning this Sunday, there will be a weekly live talk show version of the United States of Anxiety hosted by Kai. It'll be on Sundays at 6:00 PM, right after All Things Considered. Listen to the news then joined Kai to talk about it as well as hear the amazing produce pieces that Kai will always bring. If you like live radio with a political bent like this program, then you should find it a treat for your brain and a treat for your heart that we now have that kind of a show on the weekends. The United States of Anxiety podcast has always taken the very important approach that it's a show about the unfinished business of our history and our history's grip on our future. Now those sensibilities come to a live weekly show. The United States of Anxiety with Kai Wright Sundays at 6:00 PM here on WNYC beginning this weekend. Kai, congratulations on the show and welcome back to this show.

Kai Wright: Thank you so much, Brian. I love the framing of the show and the plug for us. I hope folks will join us.

Brian: You want to frame it a little more before we get into our convention talk, want to tell people a little bit of how you see it and what's going to be on your premiere?

Kai: Well, we're going to start ,of course, talking about this moment will be in this weekend between the end of democratic convention and the start of the Republican convention and in general, what our work has been. We started this project during the 2016 elections, of course, when Donald Trump was taking over the party. We were really genuinely trying to understand where people are at in this unique moment in American history. We hope to introduce folks to each other. That's a lot of the work. It's the same work you do here every day. We're hoping to introduce people to each other and get them thinking about just what their role is in creating the country we've got.

Brian: That's great. I saw you seated on Twitter. Call a question, I don't know if you're going to take live calls on this but you were asking people during Democratic convention.

Kai: We sure are.

Brian: What do you want from your party? Did you get any interesting responses to that?

Kai: We have been getting. Some of it is I had urge people not to say beat Donald Trump. Nonetheless, hearing some, like listen to it as much you to win. Then, of course, there's a lot of conversation about that you can expect, healthcare and about just feeling like I am drowning in debt. Be it student debt, be it healthcare debt, be it getting behind on mortgages or rent. I need help. Those are the two things that are coming out. I think that's a surprise to know about it.

Brian: All right. I want to play two clips of Biden from last night and get your reaction to each and your reaction as a whole. I thought he needed to argue last night not just that he's a better person than Trump but that he'll do better for people on the virus, on racial justice, and on the economy, at least those things will play, at least the virus and racial justice parts. Here's the section where he makes this case on the virus.

Joe Biden: We lead the world in confirm cases, we lead the world in deaths, our economies in tatters with Black, Latino, Asian, American, native American communities bearing the brunt of it. After all this time, the president still does not have a plan. Well, I do. If I'm your president, on day one, we'll implement the national strategy I've been laying out since March. We'll develop and deploy rapid test with results available immediately. We'll make the medical supplies and protective equipment that our country needs. We'll make them here in America so we will never again be at the mercy of China or other foreign countries in order to protect our own people. We'll make sure our schools have the resources they need to be open, safe, and effective. We'll put politics aside. We'll take the muzzle off our experts for the public gets the information they need and deserve, honest, unvarnished truth. They can handle it. We'll have a national mandate to wear a mask, not as a burden but as a patriotic duty to protect one another. In short, we'll do what we should have done from the very beginning.

Brian: Joe Biden last night. Kai, what do you think of that? What do you think of the speech as a whole?

Kai: You see it really well at the top of the show. This is the guy, what we fell last night is the guy that Joe Biden supporters and the so-called establishment of the Democratic party. This is who they saw from the beginning and who a lot of people didn't think could show up. He really did what he had to do last night in terms of stepping forward and saying not just, I mean, countering this idea that he's a faded star and then he's this doddering old man at this point. You have to counter that. It was more than that. It was saying in this forceful way that I can be in charge. I can do this double thing that people want from Joe Biden, have both give us the comfort food of the Obama years, right? Like be a good guy who has empathy, who who understands other people, who's interested and curious, but also then charge, be able to lead. I had not seen much of that Joe Biden in the course of this campaign but that's who showed up in this speech last night. I was quite impressed. It was much better speech than I thought he had it as you put it. I think that was remarkable. It's also notable coming at the end of the convention. I don't know about you but as I watched it throughout the week, I kept thinking this is a weird juxtaposition in the way that so much of the messaging was about making it an aspiration for us to join the kind of America that the party represented. This diverse world and all these different ways not just racially but geographically and age. Just all these different forms of diversity and we were aspiring to join that not so much to follow Joe Biden. He seemed to be hanging out on the edge of it. It was because, I mean, he's a 77-year-old straight white guy. He's this strange standard bearer for that idea. For him to come in last night with so forcefully I was quite impressed.

Brian: Let's take a phone call. Gary in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Gary.

Gary: Hey, how are you doing? Thanks so much for highlighting the poetry. I just wanted to do another highlight from last night which was the young guy. [crosstalk]

Brian: We have a terrible line, but I'm going to give you a few seconds to get through it before people get too tortured by all the static. Right to it. Go ahead, Gary. I apologize.

Gary: I just want to say that using Yates poetry to help that kid stutter was a powerful moment for me. Thank you, Brian.

Brian: Gary, thank you very much. I thought showing the kid who has a stutter, Kai, and letting him stutter, not editing him out to shorten the sometimes torturous few seconds where he couldn't get the next word out. This, I think, 10-year-old kid who they showed was a beautiful human moment. We had a call on the show. This is a few years ago now from somebody who had a really bad stutter. As that call was on, I'm thinking, what's the best way to support this person? Is it for me to help him finish his sentences? I decided no, that that would be disrespectful. That would put more pressure on him, just let him be himself. I decided that the best way to respect this person was to ask him a follow-up question at the end of his long difficult to get out statement. It wasn't just okay, wow, we're going to have to listen to this for as long as it takes. That kind of centering, of respect was I thought what they did last night with that kid.

Kai: That's what I'm talking about. That thing happened all week long in terms of just demonstrating both the just wild diversity of people that exist in the country and then demonstrating how we can all be in the same space together and respect each other and be kind and loving. Obviously, that was meant to be a start counterpoint to to the Trump movement. I think it was quite effective.

Brian: We remember the time in 2016, of course, it didn't matter to his election as it turned out, but Trump did that horrible caricature mocking a New York Times reporter who has, I forget what exactly the disease was, that makes his arms move in what appears to most people as a funny way and Trump was mocking his arm movements and mocking his voice. They didn't have to say it last night, or maybe they should have been more explicit about it. I don't know, but I thought they were making that particular contrast.

Kai: Well, they didn't have to say it. I actually think-- Oh sorry, go ahead.

Brian: Go ahead. No, you go.

Kai: I actually think that it's interesting that they didn't say it because part of what, I think, was effective throughout the week was again, not making the point about diversity as a political weapon. It wasn't an attack on Donald Trump, but rather as an aspirational thing that you would watch and say, I want to be part of that. That's what I want to be in. I aspire to join that. I think about even the roll call of the states, you'd have to be whatever your political base is. It'd be hard not to have been harmed by those 57 roll calls. It showed such a range of humanity that I think a lot of people watching would say, I want to be in that team.

Brian: Marsha in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Marsha.

Marsha: Hi. I so appreciated not otherizing the stutterer and showing people how one is in that way, and learns to open up and accept people from where they're at. I appreciated the personal stories, but I also did not appreciate what from my perspective is four days of wasted air time and not highlighting any of the contested 23 Republican Senate seats that have a whole gamut of democratic, highly likable to win contestants from Maine to Colorado to States that Hillary Clinton won throughout the country, Kentucky and Amy McGrath, not a progressive but a Democrat and a veteran looking to ditch Mitch. There was not one iota of education to the public about how it is the Senate that will help determine our future in terms of the Republicans having blocked all of Obama's appointees and in terms of the horrific appointees to the federal judiciary that had been made during the orange regimes takeover. I'd like to hear you comment on that.

Brian: That's a really interesting point. Frankly, I wasn't thinking about it during the week, but that is a really interesting point. After Kai, in our next half hour, we're going to have DNC vice chair, Grace Meng, who's also a Democratic congresswoman from Queens. I'll definitely put that question to her, but Kai she raises an interesting point and it makes me remember that when Barack Obama rose to national prominence through his 2004 Democratic convention speech, his role at that moment was candidate for US Senate from Illinois.

Kai: Yes, it's true. I think that there's a few things like this, I follow a lot of people in my world on Twitter saying, "Hey how come nobody's talking about the court?" I think, in general, what they seem to have decided was that the primary goal for this convention and where they were going to just keep repeating was that you should, one, just vote period. The idea like that, they're going to try to keep you from voting and you have to vote. To this party is, as I've been saying, a place for everybody to come join, whether you're Republican, whether you're Black, whether you're white, whether you are a Latino, whether you're in the urban areas, whether suburban areas, they just kept repeating and keep messaging that this is everybody's party. It seemed like that was the priority message as opposed to a whole range of policy debates, a whole range of electoral debates, a whole range- things like the Senate races and the court races. It seems like that was the strategic choice. I would imagine that anybody who texted the number that they kept giving out all week is probably going to get bombarded with messages about Senate races from here on out. That does seem to have been the strategic choice. I'll be interested to hear what your next guest says about it too.

Brian: I know. I'll admit that I almost texted to that number because of the way they were pitching it. As we're going to tell you how to vote effectively in your state and I was curious how they would do that, but then I decided I'm going to be getting unsolicited text messages from the campaign [laugh] for the rest of the year. I'll find out how they're pitching the voting strategy some other way. To your point, most of the analysis this morning is about Biden making his case on character and unity and less on the issues. Hillary, too, ran on America being stronger together, that was her theme while Trump tried to divide and she ran on Donald Trump having reprehensible personal character, and it didn't work. We all know who he is. They even acknowledge it on Fox like you don't have to approve of everything the guy says or does in his life just ask yourself who is on your side How much do you question making character so much of the emphasis again?

Kai: Well, I don't know. We are at a different place than we were four years ago. First off, as Hillary Clinton said, as Michelle Obama said, all of these big speakers made some version of the point I was like, well, if you didn't think it could get worse, take a look around you. Much about the last four years but certainly, the coronavirus, it's in a different place is the calculation in terms of whether or not the character matters as much.

Brian: I want to play another segment. Here's Joe Biden again on racial justice.

Joe Biden: One of most important conversations I've had this entire campaign, it was someone who was much too young to vote. I met with six-year-old Giana Floyd, the day before her daddy George Floyd was laid to rest. She's an incredibly brave little girl. I'll never forget it when I leaned down to speak to her, she looked in my eyes and she said and I quote, "Daddy changed the world. Daddy changed the world." Her words burrow deep into my heart. Maybe George Floyd's murder was a breaking point, maybe John Lewis' passing the inspiration, but however, has come to be, however, it's happened, America's ready in John's words to lay down "the heavy burden of state at last" and then the hard work of rooting out our systemic racism.

Brian: Joe Biden last night. Kai, you want to give us your take on that?

Kai: Yes, it was a powerful moment and it's, I think, again, part of-- It was a powerful coda to what we had been hearing all week on racial justice. Again, it's this weird thing that has happened with the democratic party where we're in this moment where we have seen such so much clarity from so many people about the need for stark change on racial justice between the coronavirus and George Floyd's death, George Floyd's murder and yet the candidate that has risen to the pack of the party of reform is someone with a spotty history on the subject to someone who, again, just in his person does not really represent that kind of change. It was important for him to make a real case for this is important that I too can be a change agent on racial justice. It was important for him to do that. He reached for his most powerful political tool which is empathy, that's what he is so good at, that he really genuinely can connect with you on your pain. Not notably policy questions about this, that would be a complicated path for Joe Biden if we start talking about the crime bill. On an emotional level for him to say, "Emotionally I have connected around this", which is really important to people, I think it was a wise choice and I think it probably landed for a lot of folks.

Brian: What about the policies, were you hoping to hear? It's one thing to land on an emotional level of empathy, but at the end of that clip, where the words to do the hard work of rooting out our systemic racism, and that is hard work. He didn't tell us what he's going to do to minimize or end income and wealth and education and maternal mortality, disparities, and a million other things.

Kai: Well, if you talk to folks who are on the left for a variety of reasons and including racial justice, about-- You asked them this question and we're going to talk about this some on the show on Sunday. What they say is that Joe Biden is an excellent organizing target. That's the phrase I've heard that whatever he has done in the past, he himself is somebody who can be moved. They point to the evidence of that already in the party platform, that there has been a more progressive party platform including on racial justice than they have seen in a very long time, and that Biden opens the door for that over the course of the last few months. The deal that is being struck is like, "Everybody, hey, let's win right now and then afterwards, I promise we're going to be able to work together." A lot of people have said, "Okay, I'm ready to take that deal because what we've got is so far from what we need." I hate to say time will tell but time will tell.

Brian: Well, time will tell.

Kai: That is a wise deal for folks to support racial justice strikes.

Brian: Next week, we're going to hear some version over and over again because we've already been hearing it this week of Joe Biden is a puppet of the left wing of the Democratic party. They'll use the word mob and all of that stuff. Time will tell how these messages play against each other. I'll send in Harlem, here on WNYC. Hi, Asen. Thanks so much for calling in. Is it Asen? Do we have you? Let's try another call, I guess. How about Jeff in long Island City? Jeff, you are on WNYC.

Jeff: Hi. Good morning, Brian, and good morning to your guest. Just wanted to circle back to some earlier comments and that I thought over the course of the four days the convention certainly had many high points. It wasn't perfect. There were some low points. I thought Julia Louis-Dreyfus' shtick that old, very fast. It felt more like a bad version of the Oscars. I think that opens the Democratic party up to some level of criticism fair or not about the liberal elites. Perhaps a more important note, the guests touched on it just a few minutes ago and I know other individuals who have been on WNYC throughout the week as have mentioned it. There was a shockingly appalling absence of dimension of the Supreme Court in the United States of America. Then again, of course, by extension, the role that the Senate plays in that. Ultimately, I think the Republican convention will focus a lot on that and that they have a lot of single voter issues or single voters that vote on one single issue, excuse me, and that they focused on the Supreme Court and they don't care how decent or bad of a person Donald Trump is. They vote because they know he's going to put a conservative justice on the Supreme Court. When a lot of people are dead and buried, those people will still be on the Supreme Court shaping how this country is or isn't. I think it was Elie Mystal who was on WNYC said yesterday or someone like him [crosstalk] We can pass a whole lot of things in the Senate and the president can sign it. If you don't have a Supreme Court that won't strike it down, it really won't matter. It's sort of both appalling that how people just don't understand the importance of that third branch and I think the Democrats as a collective whole awesome play politics like it's in high school and they're electing the cool kids and letting the cool kids run the show. It's like student government and student government passes a whole lot of things but the school board doesn't really care and they just tell the kids to be quiet and turn off their mic. Where the Republicans get that and they understand that and they do play to win and they do play for blood. There's something to be learned in that. Yet, again, the Democrats don't seem to have learned that lesson. It can be really boiled down to SCOTUS and just the utmost importance of it.

Brian: Jeff, let me run, but I'm going to put that question to DNC Vice-chair Grace Meng who's going to be on in just a couple of minutes. Maybe she's already even listening in on hold and heard you. We will get a response from her on that. Congresswoman from Queens, Grace Meng, who's also a DNC vice chair. Let me take one more caller with Kai before we switch out the guest seat. It's Yamil in The Bronx. Yamil, you're on WNYC. Hi, there.

Female Speaker: Hi, there. Thank you for letting us regular people to speak. At the beginning of the your show, you spoke about will it make a difference? Will his speech make a difference? Will what they did make a difference? In my mind, it's where we make a difference. We the people who are listening to your show, who are the ones that are consuming all this stuff, it's like, will we make a difference, will we stand up for our right to vote, will we make that extra effort to get out there and vote for the local people in government that will actually are the ones who actually change things. Will we be able to find the courage to really get out there and make a difference the way people in the past with civil rights and all these type of acts of activism of all colors have made a difference in past times. It's really a great message that they put out because it is really dire. I'm appalled personally that all this is going on with the post office, the things he's doing, like I heard a clip from him on Fox last night about how he's going to have cops in the army. He didn't say the army. He said Sheriff's and all these things going on at the polling places. You could look that up, he said that. It's like crazy. It's like the way Hitler took over the country when he first over there in Europe, he didn't come out bash. He went in very gently talking, but he was going to do all these great things for the people and then, bam. I'm serious like I just cannot believe that they're letting him do this. Then when I say they, it's those people we've elected in the government and all the different phases, but I do understand why they on it. Why they're doing it, but that's like real deep stuff. I just feel like it's really up to us. It's hard for us working people to really make a difference because there is-- Thanks to Bernie Sanders, he really woke up the nation by talking about the working poor. People have to work two and three jobs, both parents and some families just to have a life. What time those people have to write letters to Congressmen? What time do those people have to go-

Brian: To protest.

Female Speaker: -to city hall or something, or do anything like that. I'm originally from Long Island and I've learned so much. I didn't know really the depthness of the depravity that exists in New York City, but I'm sure it's the whole country. I just happened to have grown up, raise my kids in the North shore Long Island. I just can't believe it and it's so real. I'm so educated. Anyway, I want to thank you very much. If you have a question for me you can ask me

Brian: I don't have time for a follow-up-- Well, I'll ask you a question. Sure. It sounds like you were probably a Bernie Sanders supporter originally, if that's true will you be getting out there and voting with enthusiasm for Biden nonetheless?

Female Speaker: Yes, of course. It's like I voted for Hillary, but I don't like her really. I don't like her politics. She might be a great person, but I really didn't like her politics, but I did vote for her. Of course. Why wouldn't be. [crosstalk] You're welcome. Thank you. Thanks.

Brian: Thank you so much. Please call us again. That was wonderful. Kai, that really was wonderful and it reminds us if we needed reminding that democracy is not just about voting, it's about keeping the democratic pressure on many levels, whether it's letter writing, like she said, or showing up at city hall, like she said, or of course, the protest that had been going on this summer.

Kai: I think that's what's interesting . It's always been what's the paradox of election season is because civic activity and political participation gets so focused and evolves to the singular act of voting. It's at the height of our political awareness that sometimes it's so easy to forget that that's the beginning of political participation, not the end. It is important to constantly be reminded of that fact is that the act of voting is one piece of it. There's a whole bunch more we have to constantly be doing in order to make democracy work.

Brian: WNYC's Kai Wright. Again, Kai's podcast The United States of Anxiety is also a live weekly radio show now. Sundays at 6:00 PM with calls and everything beginning this Sunday night after All Things Considered. I'll just say, and many of the regular listeners to the show know when Kai has filled in on this live show, he's been great. When we've co-hosted live things from time to time and co-interview people, I get a little embarrassed because Kai's usually the smartest person in the room. The United States of Anxiety, the new live weekly show beginning this Sunday night at 6:00. Kai, good luck with it. I, for one, will be listening.

Kai: Thank you so much, Brian. You're much too generous.

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