The following is a lightly edited transcript of the October 22 episode of The Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
The other day, Donald Trump traveled to Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and playacted as a McDonald’s worker. His propagandists erupted in delirium, hailing it as akin to the greatest act of political theater in human history. But Trump ran into trouble. He evaded a question about whether he would support a minimum wage hike, producing some pretty scalding headlines, which gets at a larger scam: Trump enjoys public approval on the economy even though his agenda for working people is borderline nonexistent, whereas Harris has a detailed economic agenda for working- and middle-class people alike. HuffPost senior reporter Jonathan Cohn has written a good new piece laying out what this McDonald’s stunt really tells us about that larger story, so we invited him on to talk about all of it. Great to have you on, John.
Johnathan Cohn: Thank you, Greg. Good to be here.
Sargent: Jon, let’s quickly talk about what happened at McDonald’s. This was in Bucks County, classic swing county outside Philadelphia. The whole thing was a Potemkin stunt. The customers were cleared in advance. And there was the minimum wage question, which is going to be important to a lot of service industry workers. Can you walk us through the basics of what happened?
Cohn: You put your candidate in a setting that makes him look relatable, something which has been done in politics for as long as I’ve been around in politics. It’s not an original idea. There was that element of it. There was a second element of it, which is, of course, they’re trying to troll Kamala Harris. I’m sure your listeners know and have probably followed this, but just to review, Kamala Harris has many times talked about working in McDonald’s as a college student to help pay her bills. At some point, people went looking for records of this. They could not find records of it, which is the least surprising thing ever. There’s every reason in the world to think she did work there; the Trump people and his followers, they think this is some lie. By going to McDonald’s, theoretically, he was trolling her.
Then on a third, and what I think was the most important level, which is: Trump is all about the vibe that I’m for the average American, I’m for working-class Americans. Kamala Harris is an elitist, she’s part of this leadership class that is ruining your lives, has ruined your lives.
Sargent: And the minimum wage question comes up, right?
Cohn: Well, it certainly does. That’s where this episode got interesting. You got a question about the minimum wage, Hey, do you support a higher minimum wage?—and, of course, fast food workers at McDonald’s are among those who would benefit from a higher minimum wage—and he totally dodged the question, wouldn’t answer it, and said ... I can’t remember his exact words. It was a classic Trumpism. He didn’t answer, and he said, It was wonderful to be here. These are great people. They’re doing great things, which frankly is a metaphor for the way he’s been running his campaign. He talks about the working class, he talks about loving working-class Americans, but when you dig into his positions on policy, he’s not proposing to do a lot that would help the working class, arguably. In fact, what he does have on his agenda looks like it’s going to hurt the working class.
Sargent: I want to go back to your piece for a second, which I thought did a novel thing. It, as you pointed out earlier, looked at how Kamala Harris actually did work at a McDonald’s as a summer job in her youth. You pointed out that her life experiences actually did inform her economic agenda, whereas Trump does not have life experiences that formed or informed his economic agenda, except maybe when it comes to promising billionaires tax cuts. Can you talk about that difference? It’s a fundamental difference that I think might be lost on some people, but seems critical to me.
Cohn: Harris authentically grew up in a working middle-class neighborhood. She had a single mother who was trying to balance career and child-rearing. As she got older, she was very involved with, among other things, caring for her own mother when her mother was dying from cancer. And she has talked about those experiences a lot. She has said, Hey, I understand what an incredible burden it is to try to balance work and family, and how that burden grows even more when you’re caring for someone, whether it’s a young child or an elderly parent or someone who is sick, which by the way is something I think almost every American will go through in life. I have gone through it. If you haven’t yet, you’re lucky. You will almost certainly. It’s just part of the life cycle. We all do it, and it’s so hard and so difficult. And of course, if you go ahead and take a look at her record and at what she has proposed when she was in the Senate, when she was running for president the first time, what she is proposing now in her campaign, one of the through lines or constants is that she is extremely attuned to this squeeze on middle-class families, on poor families who have to care for relatives.
She’s been standing up for those people, trying to help them out to provide assistance, and, at the same time, recognizing that what ends up happening frequently is you end up paying people to provide care for your family. And those people, traditionally, are tremendously underpaid. They don’t have job security. They don’t have benefits. So another focus of her political career, another focus of her proposal is helping the caregivers who are paid caregivers. You see this real link between her lived experience as a child, as an adult, and the way that she sees the world and what she’s trying to do for Americans.
Sargent: I want to get at this big picture that you’re talking about here, which is that, if you step back, Harris’s economic agenda is really all about helping people achieve a stable middle-class or working-class life, or helping them maintain a position in the middle class. There’s assistance for people facing financial strain from buying homes, taking care of children, health care, drug prices, grocery prices, and, something you’ve written about and talked about just a minute ago, a proposal to assist people taking care of the elderly, a big strain on some middle-class people. That’s the through line, right? Everything is about middle-class precarity and what to do about that. Can you talk about that bigger idea?
Cohn: It is a through line. And it’s funny, right? There was all this talk for a while, She doesn’t have a policy vision, we don’t know what she stands for. Even now, there’s people [saying], Oh, I don’t know what she stands for, she hasn’t been detailed. She’s actually, at this point, offered a fairly detailed economic agenda. It includes the pieces that you have, and the unifying theme is security for the middle class, which, of course, has always been a theme of the Democratic Party, at least in my lifetime. There’s a piece of this, too, and it comes up very much in this context and is really important, which is that she talks about dignity. You always hear her talk about dignity for the middle class—and she talks about it in caring for her mother who was sick—but also the dignity of being able to have a job that you can provide for your own family.
One of her economic advisors, who used to work in the Biden White House, used to work in the Obama White House, named Gene Sperling wrote a whole book about this. I don’t know if it was his doing, I think she was talking about it beforehand, but this idea that one of government’s goals should be not to establish equality, make sure everyone has equal outcomes, but [to establish] security. Everyone should be able to provide for their own family. Everyone should have the dignity to be able to go through that in life. That is a theme of her policy. You can agree or disagree with the policies; obviously, there are conservatives who would argue that what she’s proposing will actually harm the middle class. And these are arguments worth having, but in terms of what she is trying to do, it’s so clear that her life experience maps onto what she is proposing.
Sargent: Absolutely. That makes me think that Trump’s stunt was really phoned in. I’m really struck by how haphazard and almost like a joke it was to them. In your piece, you detailed how some of Trump’s propagandists held this as this extraordinary act of political communication. It’s like they’re not even trying, right? Kamala Harris worked at a McDonald’s? Well, Trump can do a five-minute photo op at one, and that’ll erase Harris’s life experiences. They think they’ve got the economic argument won without even trying, and yet Harris has chipped away at Trump’s advantage on this issue in a major way, in part by connecting her biography to her agenda and emphasizing her own middle-class background in a way Trump can’t. She’s gaining on the question of, “Which candidate would help ordinary people?” That, to me, is the key metric. Where do you think the economic argument stands between them right now, in political terms?
Cohn: We’ve seen this in the polls, right? She started with a big gap on the economy. We have seen her close that gap. At this point, it’s pretty close. It depends a little bit on how you ask the question and which poll you’re looking at. But this question of who really gets you and who identifies with you, and she’s really made a lot of progress there. I can tell you myself. I live in Michigan. I’ve been doing a lot of reporting, talking to a lot of voters, and it is making an impression on people. There are people who don’t trust her for one reason or another. They don’t know if she has the best policies. They remember the Trump presidency as a better time for them—whatever you think of that, that’s how they remember it. But, at least in my interviews, I hear a lot of people saying, She’s relatable. I feel like she gets me. She understands my position.
That’s an enormous asset to have in politics. When you look at the winning Democratic presidential candidates in recent history, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, what do they all have in common? Well, they all had that quality, that relative to their opponents, people saw them and said, Hey, this person gets me. This person cares about me. I always thought the key, the best asset in politics to have, is when a voter can say about you, I don’t always agree with them, I’m not sure they have all the answers, but I believe they’re fighting on my behalf.
Sargent: Absolutely. I think what gets voters to that point is an appreciation of the life arc of the candidate. I remember talking to swing voters outside of Denver during the 2012 race, when there was a very similar competition going on. Mitt Romney had the advantage on the narrow question of who would better manage the economy, because we were fighting our way back from a recession, you may remember. But what I was struck by talking to voters in swing territory was that they just had this sense of who Obama was, his life cycle, his arc in life, that he had a tough time early on and had worked himself up. That was extremely important to these voters. That’s how they see or map out these candidates and their proposals: through that prism.
Cohn: I agree. Obviously, lots of people identify with Trump and think he relates to them more. We wouldn’t be in this election if they weren’t. I’m sure the Trump people thought putting him in a McDonald’s would project this image. And if you believe all the social media boosters who went out there instantly with these messages of how this was the greatest thing ever, then who knows? Maybe that resonated with some people. Personally, I wonder if this thing could backfire. There is a world in which it’s cosplaying, right? It’s like, Look, I’m going to be a McDonald’s guy. It’s almost too casual, it’s a bit insulting. For 15 minutes, I ran the frying machine, and, for 15 minutes, I handed some things out the drive-through window. There is a real danger for Trump, especially now because a lot of people noticed he took that dodge on the minimum wage [question]. We’ll see how this plays out, but you could see this backfiring. We have examples for that in American political history too.
Sargent: Absolutely. Dukakis and the tank come to mind. We saw some pretty brutal headlines already out of Trump’s McDonald’s stunt. Philadelphia Inquirer had a headline about the event that read, “Trump evasive about raising Pa. minimum wage while pretending to work at McDonald’s.” Obviously, his propagandists went out there and pulled a whole North Korea thing where it was the greatest thing ever, although I don’t know how every single thing Trump does can be the greatest thing ever. Is one greater than the other? I don’t know how that works exactly. Anyway, it’s already backfiring. Not in MAGAland or in the MAGA information universe, but those are bad headlines.
Cohn: That is not the headline you want running in the most influential daily newspaper in the most important swing state two weeks before Election Day.
Sargent: By the way, this whole difference in their story arcs is the reason Trump keeps saying Harris is lying about her stint working at McDonald’s. He knows she’s gaining on him on the question of who’s more in touch with regular people’s problems.
Cohn: Yes, it would not surprise me at all. The Trump campaign in general is not that hard to read. It’s pretty obvious what they’re reacting to and what they’re trying to do. I wonder sometimes: There is this phenomenon on the right side of the conversation right now where, in their echo chamber, they get very excited when you troll on social media and they feel like that’s a win. You go on ex-Twitter, whatever we’re calling it, and you see Elon Musk is magnifying all this stuff. You would think that’s the case, but I don’t know how it plays outside of that world. And if The Philadelphia Inquirer headline is indicative, a lot of people are going to look at this with raised eyebrows at best.
Sargent: Agreed. This whole saga highlights something else as well, which is how complicated the battle for working-class voters is in this election. You’re from Michigan, you probably see it up close. In a weird shift, Harris is actually pulling working-class whites away from Trump. CNN’s Harry Enten did this interesting analysis, finding that Trump’s margins with working-class whites, particularly in the blue wall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin are shrinking. Flip side of this though is Harris is still not where she needs to be with working-class nonwhites. There’s this battle underway for service industry workers as opposed to the manufacturing workers we constantly valorize, isn’t there? Can you talk about those complexities, and how the McDonald’s visit plays into all that?
Cohn: Look, this is a super complex election. There’s multiple levels to the challenge for Harris. Number one, she’s fighting the baggage from the Democratic Party from generations in Michigan: the memories of free trade agreements that are laid at the feet of both parties, but very much at the Democrats right now. Those memories still linger. People remember the offshoring of factories, the lost jobs. She is now making inroads there, but as you say, the polls say she’s having struggles. Struggling is the wrong word, but she’s not getting the margins that Joe Biden did, that Barack Obama did among Black voters, among Hispanic voters. A lot of this is because we’re seeing the same dynamics we’ve seen with white voters. There’s an education and a class divide. I will tell you, living in a swing state, that [the point of] those ads that involve immigration, crime, transgender (I’m a football fan; that’s all you see on these games, it’s unbelievable. They will go one after another, and they’re probably resonating) is to say, She can’t relate to you.
Sargent: In a funny flipping of the script, Democrats are actually messaging more on the economy than Trump is. As you say, the way that Trump is trying to prosecute the argument for working-class voters is to talk about cultural stuff. But Democrats have spent tens of millions of dollars on TV ads in October howling Harris’s plans for working in middle-class tax breaks as well as on health care. You often hear from the left, Oh well, Democrats are wounded by their neoliberal past. They only talk about how crazy Trump is. They don’t talk about economics enough. If Harris ends up losing, I don’t think anyone can blame it on any failure to talk about economic issues. You’re on the front lines of all this advertising. You’re seeing a tremendous amount of messaging from Harris and related Democratic groups on economic issues, right?
Cohn: It’s all economics. It’s a very fascinating contrast. The Trump side is all identity politics, all culture. And again, as much as anything else, this is an attempt to say she doesn’t get you, she doesn’t understand you, she’s an extremist. The Democratic messaging is on middle class tax cuts; it’s on, I lowered your prescription drug costs, I’m going to protect Obamacare, I’m going to protect the auto industry, I’m going to help you pay for your home, I’m going to stop price-gouging, I’m going to help with home care for your aging relatives. That is all the advertising I see on the Democratic side.
We’ll see what works. Polls say Michigan is a very close state. It’s same story in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. This is tight. We’ll see how, if it breaks late, one way or the other. Obviously, it’s a very, very contested [race], but certainly when it comes to how the Democrats are messaging and how Kamala Harris is messaging, [it’s] very focused on the economy.
In fact, I will say, just as an aside: The other day, a prominent Republican pollster who I like, and he’s smart guy, tweeted out, Why aren’t the Democrats campaigning on the economy anymore? I tweeted right back, Do you mean like this? He was very specific; he said, It used to be that Democrats would get up on stage with electricians and pipe fitters and industrial workers, they don’t do that anymore. I’m like, You mean like this?, and it was a picture from two days before. She was in Lansing, Michigan, on stage in a union hall with UAW workers at an event that was all about the auto industry. I’m like, This is all they’re doing here, they’re trying.
Sargent: This is something you’ve written about as well, which is that the Biden-Harris agenda actually is a real one for the future of auto work because the investments in green manufacturing jobs—the manufacturing jobs of the future that the Biden-Harris administration has implemented—are actually creating tens of thousands of advanced manufacturing jobs; whereas Trump and Vance would repeal that and destroy untold numbers of jobs of the future. I just feel a little bit like the Trump team just thinks they’ve got this one on the issue and they don’t really have to do anything. They can just do a photo op McDonald’s and they can message about trans people and win it that way. Is there a bit of an overconfidence there, a hubris potentially? Isn’t that what the McDonald’s stunt almost captures very neatly?
Cohn: Yeah, they have to be confident, or they’re desperate, who knows? Maybe that’s their way of compensating for desperation. I do think it’s ironic. The social media thing they always like to say is, Kamala Harris, she’s just running on vibes. Actually, Trump’s running on vibes. The whole campaign is vibes. That’s what McDonald’s is. It’s a vibe. He’s not for the minimum wage, he’s not for helping poor people, people in service jobs, to get health care, he’s not about getting them paid leave. What’s he about? But he’s at McDonald’s, so it’s a vibe. Because we all know he likes McDonald’s. So it’s all vibes. She’s the one coming with policy. She’s the one saying, Hey, I’m going to help you pay for your home, I’m going to make sure you have union protections, I’m going to make sure you have health care. Does it work? I don’t know. We’ll see. But it certainly seems to me, if I could pick one or the other, I would rather pick the one who has an actual record on these policies.
Sargent: Jonathan Cohn, thanks for coming on with us. Really good to talk to you.
Cohn: Thanks for having me on. Good to be here.
Sargent: You’ve been listening to The Daily Blast with me, your host, Greg Sargent. The Daily Blast is a New Republic podcast and is produced by Riley Fessler and the DSR Network.