Live from Music Row Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed public affairs strategist Clint Brewer in the studio.
During the third hour, Brewer weighed in on the current CNN poll showing Black and Hispanic voters moving away from Joe Biden after he nominated Kamala Harris as his running mate. He later explained that he thought there were more pressing items important to the American voter citing the economy and COVID.
(Trump clip plays)
Leahy: I think that’s a good message for him, right?
Brewer: It’s his standard message right? (Leahy laughs)
Leahy: People around them are tough and they’re smart. But they are mean and they’re angry. (Laughs)
Brewer: That’s it. You got that right.
Leahy: I did a story last night at Breitbart. It was the lead story. We had 29,000 Facebook shares and it was based upon the CNN poll. So CNN, SSRS conducted a poll. They conducted a poll in June that showed Biden up by 14 points. 55-41.
The poll they conducted from the day after Kamala Harris was announced as the running mate by Joe Biden for three days. It was a three-day poll. The 12th thru the 15th. His lead shrunk by four points. 50 percent to 46 percent. Now I did a deep dive on the cross tabs.
Here’s the headline. Poll: Biden Loses Black and Hispanic Support After Kamala Harris Joins the Ticket. What’s that you say? The lead is basically within the margin of error. Ten percent of Black and Hispanic voters have changed their support from Biden to Trump in just two months.
So before they named Harris it was 74 to 21. And they did this a weird way, people of color. Which is Black and Hispanics together. They didn’t separate Blacks and Hispanics. But after they announced Kamala Harris 10 percent of Blacks and Hispanics that were for Biden switched over to Trump. His percent went from 21 percent to 31 percent. Now, what do you make of that?
Brewer: Well I mean I don’t know that you pin it all on Harris. I think there is some of the race tightening, period. I think it’s going to tighten. Any race like this is going to tighten. I think that Biden’s lead was a little difficult to sustain. Now I’ll say this, Harris does not appeal to anyone who is on the far left. She will appeal to more of the moderate middle. (Chuckles) You have to remember she was a federal prosecutor. She put a lot of people in jail.
Leahy: Was a federal prosecutor?
Brewer: I thought she was federal.
Leahy: She’s a district attorney in San Francisco.
Brewer: Either way she was a prosecutor.
Leahy: She was promoted to that job by her close friend Willie Brown who was her big backer for that. Her very close friend. (Chuckles)
Brewer: Either way, she’s been a person who in her career has been fairly tough on crime. And I don’t know what the cross tabs would show politically for age-wise, gender-wise, and which set of people of color voting block is moving over, right? Are they older people? Are they men?
Leahy: That’s a very good point. You get to these polls, this is my problem with a lot of these polls. This SSRS has conducted the poll and they did it for CNN. But when you try to get those kinds of cross tabs they are not there. It’s not helpful.
Brewer: Yeah, they are not there. No, it’s not. And it doesn’t tell the whole story. And it certainly is not and I would not make the conclusion that adding Kamala Harris to the ticket is driving Blacks and Hispanics to Trump. I think there are a lot of other factors out there that can do that. It’s simply timing. That’s one of them. Just the race tightening. And we are at a weird time too. If you are going to make the assumption that Black and Hispanic voters are automatically voting for the Democratic ticket in this environment you may be wrong.
Leahy: Interesting point. Now the other problem with Kamala Harris from my perspective and you tell me what you think. I’ve talked to many folks about this who have had informal focus groups. She’s not learned that the most important first rule of being a politician that is the ability to fake authenticity. That’s what I hear often.
I was on the phone with somebody who had been talking with a group of women friends about it. And the question is, would you trust her as your friend? Would you want her to be your friend? And apparently this group is a mixture and not statistically significant but they said no. She seems to be a very calculating person.
Brewer: I’d say that. I don’t know that you get to the U.S. Senate without being a calculating person. But you are right. To be able to show a facade or a veneer of vulnerability or trust or authenticity. Those are all important political skills. This is going to come down to a lot of Xs and Os.
I’ve got to be honest with you, I don’t think there will ever be enough analysis before the election or after the election as to how quarantining or COVID-19 are affecting how people feel about things. It would be a very sort of rudimentary and in exact supposition to say, well Kamala Harris is a person of color so obviously people of color are going to rally around the ticket.
I don’t know that that’s the case. I think there are other things out there other than the politics of race that will affect people’s thought processes this year. I think the economy is going to be a huge one. Who looks like they could bring it back? I think it’s going to be the virus.
And what part of the country you are in and how effected is that part of the country been and how much are you hoping and putting your hopes on the presidential nominee to fix this in the U.S.? And at some point, we have to talk about the weakened state of the U.S. We have been hit harder by COVID-19 then any other country.
There are reasons behind that. How do we address those reasons and how do we move forward. Because our vulnerability at this point does hurt our role in the world. And China is another issue. Now I don’t think the average voter is keyed in on China at all. This is not like the Cold War with Russia. I think there are a lot of factors out there that are going to affect the vote and I doubt there will be enough analysis of them on the front end.
Leahy: I think you are probably right about that. I just have a hard time imagining people caring about what’s going on in this weird virtual convention of the Democrats. Or even of the Republicans.
Brewer: No. I think that the people running these campaigns are going to really have to be creative about finding ways to put the candidates and the tickets in settings where they can feel some kind of bump from the formality of it right? Because the conventions were always the big coming-out parties.
Leahy: Yeah.
Brewer: And in the past, Kamala Harris’s speech would have been the speech right? Because everybody else are known players.
Leahy: Let’s just stop for a moment. I want to do a public service here for you so that you don’t get into the same bad territory as Tucker Carlson or even Joe Biden.
Brewer: OK.
Leahy: It’s Ka-ma-la. Remember this.
Brewer: I don’t actually.
Leahy: Ka-ma-la Harris.
Brewer: Ka-ma-la. Thank you.
Leahy: I just don’t want CNN coming in and giving you a hard time.
Brewer: It wouldn’t be the first time.
Leahy: Tucker Carlson said, Kamala Harris. And CNN devoted an entire evening to criticizing how bad he was for saying that. That next day at the announcement Joe Biden said, Kamala Harris. Ka-ma-la. Ka-ma-la.
Brewer: Let me rephrase that. Senator Harris. Normally she would have been the big speech. (Leahy laughs) I think back to the first Obama election and you know Governor Palin was the big speech, right? She was unknown. Everybody wanted to hear from here.
Leahy: I was there.
Brewer: It was a heck of a speech.
Leahy: It was a great speech. (Leahy laughs) It was downhill from there for her. (Chuckles) She should of just stopped campaigning then. Don’t you think?
Brewer: Yes. Yes, it was awful. But my point is you’d be waiting to hear from Senator Harris.
Leahy: Yes. Exactly. By the way, Palin giving advice to Harris, I don’t know. Sarah, your time has come and gone.
Listen to the third hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Latinos for Trump” by Michael Vadon. CC BY 2.0.
