And now from the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago and CNN Audio, the Axe Files, with your host, David Axelrod.
Audie Cornish has made her name telling other people's stories at NPR and now as the host of "The Assignment" podcast on CNN Audio. But her own story is a great one, as well. The child of Jamaican immigrants, she grew up in two worlds in the Boston suburbs, spurring a curiosity, interest and drive that has made her one of America's most probing and insightful journalists. I sat down with Audie this week to explore her story and her cut on the emergence of Kamala Harris in this extraordinary political moment. Here's that conversation. Audie Cornish. It is a pleasure to see you, my friend.
It is good to see you, too.
We are like ships in the night. You're in Washington. I'm in New York sometimes, and yeah, we never get to chat. So I thought, what better place than on the Axe Files?
Well, as a listener to the Axe Files prior to coming to CNN, I'm excited.
Yeah, well, you're a good story, so I wanted it. I just wanted to talk to you about how you got to be Audie Cornish. And I don't mean how you got named Audie Cornish, but how did you get to become Audie Cornish? But yours is a, you know, you have an interesting story because it's not just the story of a striving journalist. It's not just the story of a Black journalist in America. It's also the story, an immigrant story.
Yeah, you're good at this. You should be in politics. Have you ever thought you could help build narratives for campaigns?
Listen, my life is about stories. I love stories.
It is. It is. You just told mine, and I'm like, I'm amazing. This sounds epic.
So tell me about your folks and what brought them to America and the Boston area in the first place, which is where you were born.
'Yeah, yeah. So my parents came to the US from Jamaica in a wave of immigration that happened in the early 80s. There were multiple waves out of Jamaica. There was like a post-World War Two wave, where people who went to the UK and were helping to work and rebuild, you know, Europe in some ways. And then there was this wave in the late 70s, early 80s that came out of the period of political disruption in the Caribbean, where the U.S. was really obviously not wanting any Communists or Socialists next door, but labor unions and socialism and, a lot of movements are growing. But with it came a lot of political instability. And people don't think too much about that because they're just like, Bob Marley, man. Like there isn't like an understanding of sort of Jamaica in, in the region. And, at any rate, they came in the early 80s and they landed in Boston, right, just a few years after the bussing crisis.
Let me just interrupt you and say, what were they doing in Jamaica?
You know, they were a very young couple. My dad was at the start of what he had hoped was going to be an architecture career. And then, of course, you know, you come to the U.S. and you got to readjust expectations. And they had opened up a little, you know, kind of like boutique firm with each other. They met as census takers, which is like my favorite story, because it's like, if it had been one other year, right, I wouldn't have been born. So they. But it was one of those things where things were things were getting dangerous in Jamaica at that time. They Came to the U.S., but they land in the U.S. right after, especially in Massachusetts, especially in Boston, there's this, like, really profound racial turmoil that the city is still settling out.
Exactly. And those bussing fights, like, it's hard for us to imagine now in this period where we're always talking about partisanship and everything. But, you know, we're talking about people, like, were throwing rocks at school busses of kids. You know, the most famous photo from that period of the biggest riots is someone, like, trying to spear someone else with a flag. Like this is iconography that it's just sort of buried in our minds, because it's not quite the civil rights period, and it's in the North, and it seems like a Boston problem when like if you really look at it, and I'm sorry to go off on a tear, Axe, but I know you like history too.
The school bussing crisis of the 70s is like the roots of so much even school activism that we know today. Like there's a straight line between that period and then, like, Moms for Liberty, you know, about, like, these are our kids, you can't do this, whatever that this is.
I think we focus on what happened in the South after the Civil Rights Acts were passed. But there was a tremendous backlash among white ethnic voters in the cities in the north. And, you know, in Chicago, for example, Republicans won three county offices in in 1966 after the Civil Rights Act acts were passed, and which was unheard of, you know.
I have studied this period of history so much, because I also think it's really key to understanding our modern politics in terms of understanding the politics around white ethnic politics in major cities, right. In your Philadelphias, in your Chicagos, in your Detroits and labor union,s and it's, it's it's that voter in a way that we're still always talking to. We're still always pursuing. We're still always trying to appeal to the sort of better angels of. And because they are, especially for reporters in the northeast, their neighbors, I don't think they always process it the same way. But coming out of Boston, growing up there. Growing up also in both an urban environment, and I was for a time a student who was bussed in an integration program, a voluntary integration program, being in wealthy suburban, progressive environments. Then later as a teenager, growing up in a multiracial suburb that was really kind of struggling in that, the Rodney King riots. I just feel like I've somehow, like most people my age, have grown up alongside the messy follow up of integration.
You talk about. I know you were bused to Newton, Massachusetts to go to school, which is a, you know, upscale, large Jewish population there, upscale suburban community. How did that affect you?
Yeah. No, I've talked about this a lot. I actually did a story on that program when it turned 50, and I went back because it was, like, shocking that there were still kids doing it and that the suburbs didn't. It didn't seem they didn't seem to grok the fact that they still needed it. It was like, look at us still doing this program. And I'm like, okay, but why do you still have 0.5% people of color, like living in this town? Like there's some other policies at work here that I don't think we're acknowledging, you know, even as you feel good about being part of this progressive program. And I think it did two things. One, for me personally, at that age, it means you're slapped in the face with, again, the things we talk about now, what is equality versus what is equity. Like, what is class? Why does this kid have access to all these things and I'm getting on a bus to come to it. Like both our parents pay taxes. You know, like there's not a real difference here. I was just exposed to a lifestyle.
And were you asking these questions as a kid?
I would say that as a first born immigrant daughter, that's not a question you want to say out loud, right? Because it would be like saying to your parents, why aren't you giving me what the other kids have? What's wrong with you? And as a kid, I think you intuitively know, like, you don't want to say stuff like that to your parents, right? You don't want in a way, it's like they don't want you to know that you're poor, and you don't want them to know that you know that you're poor. And so you get used to living with less because, you know, the answer is going to be no. Whereas like some kid you go to school with is like, the tire on my bike is semi flat. I'm getting a whole new bike. You know, it's like all these things that they take for granted, you quickly realize, like, oh, like I'm not going to have that.
Did you have friendships? Did you feel accepted? Did you? And did you feel like you were living part time in one world and part time in another? And when you in the other world, did that affect your friendships?
'Yeah. And those kids and the kids today felt that, like when I reported on it, they talked about that. Yeah. You don't belong anywhere for a time. Because it's very hard to keep up a social life with people an hour away. You know, the equivalent of an hour commute, like, kids on a bus. And, you aren't, because you're not in school with anyone nearby, you aren't friends with anyone in your neighborhood, right? Like you're riding your bike, you're doing stuff, but you, at a certain point, you aren't building that community within your own community. And I think that's why my parents finally moved, right? They felt that was untenable and they moved to a suburb. A footnote to what you said earlier. You know, Newton in particular, I think it has like $1 billion high school at one point, like this was a very, it's a it's a very well-off community. And in terms of Jewish population, I think that I also later on lived in a town that had a very large Jewish population. And anybody who wants to go down the rabbit hole of Boston history knows that there is like a moving pattern that goes like Irish, Jewish, Black and suburbs sort of change in that order. I think there was literally a book with a title along those lines about.
Yeah, no. And that's not it's that's not unique to Boston. That's been followed in urban areas, northern urban areas.
But again, people don't acknowledge that. Right? Because especially if you're a white ethnic, white ethnic minority, religious or otherwise, at a certain point you do feel you're part of the white community or part of a mainstream community, and you don't see yourself separate. I think in towns like the one I grew up in, which is a town called Randolph, there was such a large community. There's multiple synagogues, there's multiple Catholic churches. Like I was the minority being a kid at a Baptist church, that was the unusual thing. And then I moved as an adult. I moved down South and I was like, oh my God, like half this country's Baptist. Like I had no sort of sense of the world. But it did prepare me in a lot of ways to move in spaces like newsrooms, you know, where people come from a lot of privilege. It definitely helped me in multicultural situations, which was helpful as a kid who, like, didn't even get to travel really. Right. I went to Jamaica or was in Massachusetts. You go to the Cape. Like it's just a very sort of small circuit. And it really helped me not to code switch, but to, I wasn't scared off from rooms that I should have been more scared to be in.
What about the flip side of it, which is the immigrant parent and the sort of striving nature of immigrant parents that often is invested in their kids that, you know, there are expectations of you and that, you know, failure's not an option.
Yeah. Which in a way, I sometimes think is a class thing. I know we talk about it as an immigrant thing in the US culturally, but remember, a lot of immigrants who get the wherewithal, financing and resources to come to the US, especially if you migrate and matriculate through our insane immigration process, you're of a certain class anyway. You would have expected your kids to be great wherever you were.
I often think about this, about, you know, when we have the discussion about charter schools, right. Charter schools, some are great, some are not great. But what is true is that the kid is there because their parents were resourceful enough.
And driven enough to get their kid to that school, which right away gives that kid an advantage.
Signals something. Exactly. And think, I mean, the bussing program that I was in, my parents put me on the waiting list as a baby. I didn't actually get into it until the third grade. So, like, think of them being on this waiting list and like, you know, figuring that out year after year. Yeah, that kind of parent does have a little more umph. What I'll say is that I have excellent parents. I realize they're really amazing, and I still have them with me, and I feel really blessed.
Good. Maybe we'll add a couple of listeners here.
Yeah. Now that I. Oh, we'll talk after. My mom. My dad is that, like, voted Republican for Bush, you know, kind of guy. And my mom is the like Pelosi is a national hero kind of person. You know, it's a little bit of a divided household. But yes, I think that they understood the path to achievement very well. They had been through it and it had not given them what they wanted in the US. I mean, they both had gone to university and they kind of had to do it all over again in the US. But I think they understood that it was something that couldn't be taken away from them. And they walked with a lot of pride in a part of the country where that could have been difficult to do, because they weren't really part of the local immigrant communities at that time, which was very heavily kind of Haitian, Cape Verdean, the Black Boston Brahmin, you know, who goes to the Inkwell, Martha's Vineyard types. They were, like, not in any of it. And they were quite lonely, I think. And they did focus on us a lot, but their approach, which I really admire now, was like, okay, you're going to try everything. Hey, you're playing baseball. Why do I have to play baseball? Why do I have to play softball. This sucks. I'm standing out in the heat. This blows. This is what they do in the States. This is what they do in America. You're doing it. Then after a while, it's like, well, I'd like to play basketball. Great. You're in a league. You know, they just really were like, you try everything and be a part of this world, even if we're not totally part of this world.
And what about the idea of succeeding in this world? I mean, did you feel that pressure?
This is an interesting line of questioning. Did you feel something like this? Did you feel a kind of pressure in your background?
Okay. Ambient pressure is not something you think about in a way. It's like it's not an option. And I find myself saying that to my six year old sometime.s he'll do something at school I don't like. I see it.
If your six year old understands what ambient pressure means, I don't think you have to worry about him.
He might, but no, what I would say to him is, honey, that's not an option for you. I understand the other kids are doing X, Y, and Z, but mommy's here to tell you that's not for you. It won't be for you. So let's think of another way for you to approach this situation.
Mine. Mine was a little more unhealthy, which was, which was like, if you succeed, you're loved. And if you don't concede, you're sort of shunned kind of thing. Failure was not an option. So.
Also it was all around me. Like, remember, I was I was in a working class community, and we were in a constant state of working towards upward mobility or being in upward mobility. They were like saving up to buy a home and then were able to buy a home and like so it was all around me what could happen if you could fail. Which was a sliding back. And there's never a going back.
So there's a more tangible incentive to.
Yeah. Yeah. That's it's like I can see it. It's like, do you want to go back to live in this two bedroom apartment with this landlady with three dogs that she, like, won't control? Or do you want to keep moving forward and live in this three bedroom house in a suburb? Like, work towards what we're working to, where everyone's rowing in the same direction.
You went to the University of Massachusetts and you went and you became a journalism student.
I did. What a sucker, huh?
But what was it about journalism that attracted you?
I wanted to do a lot of things. I thought I wanted to do politics, I thought I wanted to do economics, I thought I wanted to do women's studies because, you know, you're a freshman woman in college your first semester, and you're like, what? No one told me any of this. So, like, so there's a lot of things you want to do. And I just lucked out that I met somebody who asked me. They're like, you seem like a good writer. Have you ever thought about journalism? And I hadn't, because I didn't really understand it, you know, I just didn't know what a journalist does. And to this day, I still meet people, and I realize, like, yeah, you actually don't know what we do. Which is why this process, it's so hard for you to critique and understand.
Your folks paid a lot of attention to the news and stuff.
They did, but they were working people. So they absolutely paid attention. We grew up with like, pictures of Clarence Thomas on our walls, or Condoleezza Rice or any Black person of note achieving in the culture.
And watching, what, Ed Bradley and Carole Simpson and some of the some of the pioneering Black broadcasters of that day.
Yes. Carol Simpson, I still talk about, yeah, there was a local newscaster named Liz Walker. She was an icon.
Yeah, yeah. Like it was. Seeing Carol Simpson blew my mind. It just, it did make a difference. It was important. You know, Gwen Ifill. We got Ebony magazine. You know what I mean? Like, we were that family where, you know what the kids now call respectability politics. That was part of the politics, you know.
Let let me ask you something about this. And this is. I don't want to interrupt the flow of your story.
There is no flow. I just like talking to you.
But, you know, one of the things that. I mean, I worked for Barack Obama, and obviously I was always aware of the fact that he was a barrier breaker all his life. And that and I've told this story before here, I'm sure, because this is almost, I'm headed to my 600th podcast. So everybody's heard everything. But he sent me over when he was going to appoint Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. She was there for vetting at the White House. He said, I want you to go over and talk to her. And I said, well, I'm not a lawyer. He said, I can handle that part. He said, I want you to tell me how she'll hold up in the process. And I went over and I loved her from the first minute she opened up her mouth. But I said, what worries you about this process? And she said, I worry about measuring up. And it was very clear to me what she was saying. I think she understood that she would be a pioneer, and that there would be a lot of people with eyes on her. A lot of Hispanics, you know, a lot of Puerto Ricans, a lot of young kids. And so her success in some ways was their, was their future. And, you know, I'm sure that was true of that generation of broadcasters. It gave me an appreciation for what my guy had carried around so gracefully for so long.
But I also think Black voters were acutely aware of the work he had put in to create that entire thing. You know, like I remember there was a lot of writing about the value of Michelle to the campaign and the value of her publicly. Right. It was barely coded, and it was translated as, yes, of course, they were in love, they're two glamazon. Like, yeah, that makes sense also. And does it help for this person who everyone is questioning their background to have someone so rooted in a respectable Black family from Chicago? Like that conversation was.
That was undoubtedly true. What was also true in his case was he was kind of a rootless person.
Of course. Yes, I read the biography, like I read her biography, so she gave him a lot.
But my point is this. Now we have.
But you asked me about respectability politics, David. That's why I said it. It's, you know, you've got to come off a certain way. And, like, we can't talk about The Cosby Show anymore, R.I.P.. But like, that was the model. Two professional people, a bunch of beautiful children, doing work, being the kind of people in the world who were sort of morally and behaviorally unassailable. You have to be unassailable. That's the things you carry with you when you become the first at anything.
'We're going to take a short break and we'll be right back with more of the Axe Files. And now back to the show. It was always interesting to me, and we knew this from focus groups and so on, that this would probably be the case. But, you know, Barack Obama was losing to Hillary Clinton among African-American voters until he won the Iowa caucuses. Now, part of that was because they got, he was suddenly was this huge national figure in a way that, even even as known as he was before he this was now. But the but the bigger thing was there was this fear that you could hear, that African-American voters would articulate, that they didn't think a Black person could win.
Yes. And I've talked about this. I've talked about this a lot because I covered that campaign, as well, as a reporter, and I was covering it in the South. And so I could hear the pragmatism, the cynicism, the fear. It was a combination of things. It was okay, settle down. We don't know what these white people are going to do. Right? And Iowa did make everyone, a lot of voters in the Black community go, oh, okay. Okay. I guess I guess we're doing this. And like it became but prior to that point, you know, people have grown up with like, Jesse Jackson or grown up with whatever. You'd grown up with politicians who looked like you being treated like a joke.
And running more as movement politicians.
But even that, it's like, what's the difference between a movement politician and a winning politician? It's just like the movement becoming votes, like it has to become votes at a certain point.
I'll tell you what the difference is.
The movement politician very much frames their candidacy around breaking down these barriers, and that's different. You know, Obama used to say, I'm proudly of the Black community, but I'm not limited to it. And I'm running for president of the United States. I'm not running to be the Black president of the United States.
But it. There wouldn't be a Barack Obama if there weren't movement candidates.
No, you know what I'm saying? And so that's how I look at it.
No, we were always aware. Listen, the most moving.
He was able to take advantage of many decades of people having.
Oh there's no. He would be the first to say that. And the one of the most moving scenes on election night in 2008 for me standing, you know, by the, near the podium, and I'm looking out into the audience, and there's Jesse Jackson and there are tears streaming down his face. And it reminded me that he was part of, you know, decades and decades and decades of struggle and, you know, was there the night that Doctor King was killed. And.
Right. And it's sometimes people think that that that pragmatism, cynicism, fear that will sometimes have Black voters saying, and you hear them saying it now. They're not going to vote for a black woman, they're not going to vote, like that. That's obviously changing because it's insane energy, but it's there. And even Jackson, the Congressional Black Caucus, you'll remember, they didn't jump on, they didn't jump on right away because they had a sense of like, well, we've seen this movie before.
Tell me about the phenomenon that is this Harris thing that that is just ten days old or whatever as we speak today, where people, a bunch of the constituencies that were lost to Biden are rushing back, including younger voters and younger voters of color, Black and Hispanic. A, do you anticipate that that is going to continue and that they are firmly in her corner now and B, I was really interested in the pressures on the candidates bearing that knowledge that they are path breakers. The thing that Barack Obama said to me, Audie, not to me, but to a small group when we were talking about whether he should run in the late 2006, Michelle asked him, well, what do you think you can bring that Hillary and the others could can't bring in? He says, look, it it's a complicated question, but one thing I know for sure, the day I'm inaugurated and put my hand up in the air, there are a lot of young kids around this country who are going to look at themselves differently than they did, and the limits that they see today will be much broader tomorrow. And I think that turned out to be true. But it also speaks to the cost of failure. You know, after that conversation with Sotomayor, I had a greater appreciation for the burdens that he carried and that all kind of barrier breakers carry. So I'm wondering whether those pressures are on her. And then were they on those early Black journalists who influenced people like you?
I'm going to answer these questions, but then I have a question for you that I've been waiting to ask many weeks.
All right. Well, take your time. Maybe maybe we'll run the time out and I won't have to answer.
'Okay. So. Question number one. Or I'll take them in mixed order. To be upwardly mobile in this country when you are not from the kind of ruling, I don't know how good of a word to use it, race and class is to break barriers. So I often have young women come up to me and say, you know, I'm really interested in journalism, but, like, what is it like for you as a Black woman to, like, occupy the space? They're very interested in occupying spaces. And I'm like, I don't know, what's it like for a Black pilot, you know, like, what's it like for, like, the list is pretty long, just about. If you strive and you make it there, the odds are you may or may not have someone there who can mentor you who looks like you. That is just table stakes. That doesn't stop any of us for striving, or else especially Black Americans would not rise the way they have in the amount of time that they have given their start in this country. So that's the gene pool. It's like people who are pushing, even if the push back is hard. So I don't. We all, as I said, ambient pressure. And I'm sure there's some like corny Instagram grid phrase that's like pressure makes diamonds or something like that. But like it can happen, you know, it's ambient pressure, you become the person who pushes through, and then you push through. Then you have to do it. Then you have to be it. Then you can't fail. Then there's another whole host of things that create another kind of pressure that's both self-imposed and culturally imposed.
When you're publicly visible, of course, and when you're contending for the most privileged and powerful positions on the planet, and everything you say, do, have done is now being microscopically examined for the whole world to see. That's a special kind of pressure.
It is. You know him better than me. I mean, you did it, but.
Oh, no, no, but I think it takes a special kind of person to to do it.
Like I said, there's no doubt that he was the right person for that moment. Everything about him.
What about this moment? What can what can she anticipate?
So here's here's how it ties together, David. He was the right person for the moment. He also met the prerequisite to break barriers in that moment in time. Okay. The resume, the family, the skill set, the Harvard, all of it. Already, because he was there, it's a little bit different for Kamala Harris, right? Like stepchildren, you know, you like. Already, you don't have the Bill Cosby family. You don't have the perfect family. You have a perfect family, but you don't have the family that needs to come out of Ebony magazine. Right? Like that era of politics is done. So in that way, she can be herself. You know, being attorney, no one's looking at her like some sort of egret that walked into the sidewalk. It's like we're more familiar with seeing women of color in these jobs, in these positions. A lot has changed. And that came at the same time as him. It's not like a causality thing. It there's a generation of Black and brown professionals that are Obama. They, they came up at the same time, you know what I mean? Like, and they are running things and they had kids and they had like it's I know people see him as kind of singular, but he wasn't singular. He was representative. There are a lot of ways that his perfection was perfect for that period, the way her imperfection is perfect for this period and this generation, which is also responding to it. And by imperfection, again, I mean just not like the way we think of a family, nuclear family. Like it's just something that feels very modern and that feels probably quite familiar to especially Gen Z, which in so many ways has renewed the energy in this election by kind of waking up to her and her campaign.
Do you think they'll be rallying around her as the Trump campaign steps up its attacks and makes the kind of cultural insinuations?
Yeah. I mean, this is where I get to ask you the question I wanted to ask, which is.
Are you happy with this outcome? When you were on my show, you were defending raising the age issue. I know in many other places you've talked about this publicly, but like now that I have you one on one, is this where you wanted to be?
I think it's where if the Democratic Party was going to win, it had to be. It had to be, I think.
But it wasn't clear. You know, Carville, other people, there was a little bit of if we do this, it needs to be open. If we do this, there are all these other people on the bench.
Oh, you're talking about the.
Yeah, like where we have arrived. There was a lot of people who thought Biden needs to, who needs to talk about this age issue, address it, and maybe he should not even have run. Those same people did not say, because Kamala Harris should definitely be doing it. And it does look like we've arrived at a different place.
We have. But I think for a variety of reasons. One is it's quite late. Secondly, I mean, yes, I think that there was an argument that an open process, from which I'm almost certain she would have emerged anyway for a variety of reasons, would would strengthen her. She actually won the competition in like six hours. It was like a TKO kind of thing, as they say in boxing.
Through her own operation. I think a lot of people thought that, like Nancy Pelosi waved her want further. Like, no, you got to hit the phones and she hit the phones.
No, she the what, what, that was masterful. And then her the way she hit the ground was masterful. Her first appearances. So. Yeah, I'm super satisfied with the result. I think there are a lot of challenges. I think she's still the underdog.
But you can see why I'm asking, righ?. There was a little bit of chatter in a way, not from you, but others that to me sounded a bit like, if we just got Biden out of there, like the ghost of Bill Clinton's politics will rise up and appeal to white swing voters and we'll really take this thing. And they are not getting that.
No. But, Audie, there was another, to be fair, there was another element of this, which is that she's run for president before.
And it wasn't good. I mean, and I think, you know, as I look back on it, I think it's because she didn't run in an authentic way. And I think that she was given the advice that, just head left on everything. And, and, you know, I think that was unnecessary and unwise. And I don't think.
But Democrats have struggled with their left flank coming out of the Clinton years, the same way Republicans have struggled coming out of the compassionate conservatism or sustaining this thing that did not feel natural to them. I feel like Democrats came out of the Clinton years with a persistent sense that the center left is the default, a good and right position, and is where most of the country is. And when a lot of people came out and said, well, what if I had a different kind of politics? Why can't we give this a chance? Why couldn't this be our base? There's just been a real still pushback to that. And it's only, I think, maturing into something different, embodied by AOC. Right?
Well, listen, let me just stop you for a second. You glided by a kind of important phrase, which is because that's where most of the country is.
No, it's not, it's it's not a well.
It's not that I don't think most of the country is there. What I'm questioning is Democrats seem to be of the sense. Republicans have decided that their base matters, what their base thinks matters, and the further right that basis isn't a problem, because that base is active and it's going to do the work that needs to be done. And I think what I've heard from progressives, that they feel like they are not taken seriously the same way by the Democratic Party.
They're certainly taken seriously. But I will point out that the Republican model failed spectacularly in 2022 because they they did the work and they elected their nominees, and a lot of them lost because they weren't where the mainstream of the country was. And in terms of Kamala Harris, look, Bernie Sanders ran as Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders has been saying the same things for 50 years or 60 years. You know, Elizabeth Warren ran as Elizabeth Warren. Kamala Harris had a different profile and a different kind of record. And the one thing I can tell you for sure from my experience is you have to run as who you are. You have to be comfortable with what you're saying. You have to be invested in why you're doing what you're doing. And, she didn't seem that way in that race. I mean, she had spent most of her life as a prosecutor and an attorney general. That was most of her public career. And she wouldn't talk. She barely talked about it, about those experiences. You have to build on who you are.
But you were also during the Black Lives Matter movement.
But so would you. The start of this question was you asking me about these other voter groups that will or will they not embrace her? The reason why I'm talking about. This reason why I was asking you that question is because what she has brought to the campaign to wake those people up again is very different from what a Biden brought, and I would argue different from what some of these like white, moderate governor types that everyone wants to be her partner could have brought if they were on the top of the ticket. And I think that she is not the same person she was four years ago.
Yes, that that clearly is true.
I know I'm not. No one is, because that was the before times, like it was just such a different time. And she has. And I say this as a person who, like, I covered that campaign as well. I was like, woof, if you can't run a campaign, you can't run a country. And everyone kind of, we moved on. But the truth is, in the years since, and especially in the last 18 months, she, her whole thing has been going out to the groups where the president wasn't doing so well and just talking to them. Right. She decided, I'm going to go out and talk about abortion everywhere. I'm going to like, so there's this idea that she sort of came out of nowhere. She actually.
No, but I want to address this for the audience because it is overwhelming. I woke up to a social media feed that seemed nuts as well, but I had also, as a reporter, been to some, like off the record lunch at the Vice President's residence with just a bunch of podcasters where she was asking, you know, what, what we thought of what was going on in the race. We were asking her, what are the things we that Biden could be doing better? She had actually been doing this kind of conversation with all kinds of groups. This is stuff, you know, David, but the audience doesn't know this, how much work she has been doing behind the scenes that is retail politics, that is network building, and that made her uniquely positioned to jump into action in the last ten days.
And what she's done. I couldn't agree more. She's improved dramatically. And, you know, she's grown, which is something you look for in anybody in public life. I mean, she's shown the ability to learn and grow and strengthen and and get more. And More than anything, she seems comfortable in her own skin in a way she didn't in that campaign. And frankly, in the first, in the first couple of years of the the administration.
But it's a combination of the two things. We are different. We're post MeToo, we're post Awokening, we're post Obama and we're post Trump. This culture and society has changed dramatically. She and these two things are meeting in the moment. The question is always going to be sustained. Can you retain the momentum you have? And no one can answer that question but her.
'We're going to take a short break and we'll be right back with more of the Axe Files. And now back to the show. To your point, I think what she has done immediately is re-energize elements of the Democratic base that had been despairing, that had been disinterested, that didn't feel a stake in the election. She has done that.
Yeah. I mean, can you blame them? I think that the last couple of months felt moribund because people were looking at the same two men arguing in the same ways about the same things at the same pace. And it was more, but it was not interesting. The last 30 days have been fascinating, like the last 30 days, which is crazy because it's, the days before that there was a criminal conviction. But the last 30 days woke everybody up.
Well, listen, she is a turn the page candidate. They will that the the. And that is the thing that I think the Trump campaign feared, because neither of these. You, we saw how many polls that reflected how many focus groups of people saying, well, this isn't the choice we want. This isn't a choice about the future.
I heard so many bad comments about her from voters. I mean, it was pretty constant.
About her, about Kamala? Yeah. But now I think that she looks and feels like a turn the page candidate and the question. And then I gotta get back to you.
Yeah, I do. No matter how hard you try to stop me, I will. The challenge for her is to how to press out from this now energized base to, into constituencies and places where there are still where there's an openness, but still questions. And, you know, that that will be her challenge. I think she's done a splendid job of introducing herself.
And, you know, but it's a little like Olympic swimmers who get who took a tremendous dive to get the race started. And they've been, like, coasting through, you know, they've got a thrust to get the race started. She's got that thrust, and now she has to swimmer as hard as she can to maintain it. And that's, you know, listen in presidential politics that that bar is lifted every day. The better you do the better you have to do. And that that's the interesting part of this process.
But I do want to throw out the fact that even with the novelty, even with the internet meme energy. You can't meme your way to $200 million, right? Like, that's not really how it works. So the fact that, like, right away this. I was looking for a couple things in the vein of what you're talking about. Like, okay, is the messaging there? What are we seeing with the messaging? Okay. Weirdly, the messaging gets a lift from the internet. She's got some juice there. And then I was paying attention to the money and I was like, oh, okay. Like, this is rolling. This is the voter saying, we heard all your chatter, pundits about what we want and what we don't want, and we're putting in some money to say, we want this. Let's move on. Right. Like there wasn't this groundswell that's like, you've dismissed our primary votes. Instead there was money. And it wasn't from George Clooney, like it was from a lot of regular people who told the public and told the party, we're fine with this. We're putting in our dollars to support it. And I do think that that's significant. I don't think people would just do that being like being like, I don't really like her, but I'm just going to do that.
That is significant. But that is base support and that is important. And it is it is essential. The thing about messaging is that it gets more involved and more challenging the more the.
She's late here in the race.
And the time is an element here.
She's laying a good foundation, and how she builds on it will be the challenge. Listen, I got to ask you these things and it's out of.
You did the thing. You thing you you have done the the thing that actually candidates do very well, which is you have seized the initiative.
I really wanted an answer. You were out on a limb there talking about it.
I know. Well, I gave you an I hope I gave you one.
Okay. So that asking this now as a former journalist, and sort of one who has some, a foot in both camps now. You chose broadcast. You've done print. You've written. You chose broadcast journalism, and particularly radio as a medium. Talk to me about radio versus print. And I include podcasting in radio, radio as a print and television journalism. And you're doing some TV now as a commentator. But fair to say that you are famed for your work on radio and now your great podcast, "The Assignment. "
Yeah. And at NPR, which is.
Yeah, yeah. Well, at NPR for sure, which is a huge, a huge, huge outlet. Talk to me about why audio works for you, and not just because it recalls your name.
I tried all three. Like in college, I worked at a the college radio station. I did some writing, like. And then when I got out of college, I worked for the Associated Press, and I was writing and I liked it. I also realized that I missed voices. I could not describe a voice as good as someone else hearing it, and I don't think quotes live the same. There's lots of times when people go to edit an audio piece and they're like, well, I was looking at the transcript and I'm like, I don't want to hear this. Stop talking. Like you need to listen to this to know what this person was saying. And that really stuck with me. And I could never break free of that joy I get from talking to people and hearing their voices and then presenting them in context the way they said it to me. That felt really important. And of course, as a young journalist of color, you're realizing like, oh, like I can put people on air that aren't going to be the first phone call. Because I'm going to think of them as my first phone call. But lots of other people in the newsroom won't, and you really get excited at that, at that vision of being being able to participate in how the nation's stories are told of so many people are in the footnotes or in the sidelines or not mentioned. The other thing is that I feel like. The power of television is amazing. It's really intense. There's also a way you have to simplify to convey message on television. That is been a work in progress for me. It just has. Like saying the conversation we just had to me is way richer than anything they'll do putting us on a panel for three minutes in two boxes. Like, it's just harder and it feels reductive and it feels like like, oh, I'm going to say something that just sounds so simple when this isn't simple. Especially when you're talking about race and class and some of these more complicated things. So I think that I've tried to keep a foot in the different places because instead of saying, I don't like this, I do like that, what I've said to myself is there's different ways to tell a story. You know, it's one diamond with a lot of facets, and your job is to like just, you know, make it shine in each place. But it doesn't. It doesn't have to be the same thing. You and I will have a better panel discussion the next time we're on air, because we have a rhythm, we have a relationship. We know each how our brains are working. It will be good to watch and it will be rich in its own way.
Although, you know, those panel discussions are richer when there is more time to interact. Because I feel like maybe my best points are made by listening to what other people have to say.
And reacting to what other people have to say. Were you. You left NPR, which stunned people because you were quite young. For NPR, I mean quite young.
That was young for NPR. Yeah. So I'm actually 82. Yeah.
Yes. Which qualifies you to be president.
But people were surprised when you walked away. You were going to CNN plus, which had an illustrious four week life.
It did. And it was glorious. An Icarus of the streaming age.
Was there a moment when when you heard that they were disbanding, this was when CNN changed leadership, and the new folks at discovery decided this was not a happening thing. I think they've come back around full circle now. Did you say to yourself, what the hell did I do to myself?
I mean, I say that every day, but I also said that at NPR, you know, like one of the things we started this conversation talking about ambition and being a striver, is it's never enough. You know, I kept coming up with brass rings to catch at NPR, like, okay, I'm going to be the bureau chief here, okay. After 2 to 3 years. Okay. I really want to cover a campaign. Okay. Now, I've covered three campaigns. All right. How about Congress? I just kept coming up with new. I kept raising the bar for myself until finally I was host of All Things Considered, which was insane, right? Like.
How many people listen to that? Like tens of millions.
But it's also easier to be an NBA player. Like there's there's three jobs. Like the person I replaced at Weekend Edition, Liane Hansen, had had the job for 37 years. You know, when I was working next to Robert Siegel, he had been doing the job cruising into 40 years, the job as an adult. You know what I mean? Like he didn't start the job at one years old, like he was already an adult when he was doing the job. And so I come in at like 30 something and, you know, it's that moment where you're like, not is that all there is, but maybe is that all there is? Like, wait, now, now I'm just going to do this for 40 years, right? I think in 1970, when you got that job, that sounded amazing. In the 2000s in a different generation, nobody is at a job for 40 years. Like that's crazy. Why would you why would you do it? You know, I think my mindset was different.
Yeah. I've always believed that you live one life and it should have a lot of chapters. That you shouldn't do one thing.
But mine didn't have enough chapters, David. People ask why I left. I didn't have enough chapters. You know, I was already I was doing a job you're supposed to do forever where you say your name every single day so people feel like they know you. People name their kids after you. But I'm not. Like I didn't feel like a grown up somehow, you know what I mean? I was like, well, this isn't me. I'm not one of these people. Like, I'm still growing.
Yeah. I just met a child, by the way, named Cornish.
Congratulations. Yes. But, I totally, but it takes courage, frankly, when you have a great job to leave it, it takes courage to do. You're not only leaving the thing that people know you for, but.
Your community. You're leaving a community.
Yeah. So I applaud you for that. I made I've made these decisions in my life and I've never regretted it, but it was hard to do.
I'm naturally cautious. I don't want to take a bunch of risks. So to take an enormous risk, one that became weirdly public and then for it to, quote unquote, fail like that was really hard. It was hard. It was embarrassing. I felt foolish. I, the, my inner critic, that was like, see, you shouldn't have taken that chance. Well, they had a field day, but I can't. It has been the most necessary thing I have ever done in my life. It has transformed me because I did it. Like I survived, you know? And for someone who is an immigrant kid, like, you don't swing until there's another bar to catch, right? Like this idea that you would just, like, take this big risk. It's like, no, I don't do that. So to become a person who did that and to do it at this age felt like, yes, this is the direction I want to take my life.
You're one of the nation's most prominent journalists, Black journalists. And you're. I know you're, a member of the Black Journalists Association. There's a raging controversy right now, because the Black Journalists Association invited Donald Trump. In fact, even as we sit, that interview may be going on.
This has been hugely controversial with some people saying, why are you giving him this platform? And others saying, frankly what I believe, which is no, this is a platform for Black journalists to question him and frankly, challenge him.
But I'm wondering which side of this argument you follow.
I'm biased as a journalist because I do believe, like, I want to question the person who has this country roiled in such a way. I have heard, understood and really felt profoundly the arguments in the opposite direction that say he's been particularly disrespectful to Black women journalists. Our highest profile figures, Yamiche Alcindor, Abby Phillip and also April Ryan, who I think is just one of the most important voices in the traditional sense of the Black press, like the way she represents the interest of the Black community and in press spaces. So I can understand that people would say like, what the hell? To me, again, I just come down on the side of like, more is better. You know, I would rather have him on stage with again, people are talking about who's interviewing him. There are three people interviewing him. Only one of them is from Fox. Why do we not think that those other journalists won't be able to speak to him? Won't be able to ask questions? Why do we think that this is an automatic win for him, so to speak? Because the cynical among us believe like, well, if there's just a bunch of images of Black people yelling at him, that's good enough. That's a win for him somehow. I don't think that's true. I think the race has changed. I think there are very few avenues and opportunities to question Donald Trump directly about his actions of the last two years. There's very few people who've gotten the opportunity to question some of the talking points, which start from him and spread obviously throughout the party. And why not? Who's who's more equipped to do it than a member in good standing of the National Association of Black Journalists? I understand why people say this thing, don't put someone to blah, blah blah. He has a platform. There's a vast ecosystem of media that platforms terrible ideas, and it doesn't go away because you occasionally don't feature one. It exists. Okay. That's why he is still nominated a third time in a row. But just the idea that, like, you shouldn't talk to this person and platform their ideas and spread them I think is a little nonsensical in this age when he's perfectly capable of spreading his ideas everywhere, only unquestioned. So why not have it be questioned?
Yeah, well, you know, you can imagine I have this discussion a lot with students at the University of Chicago, where I founded the Institute of Politics, and at Arizona State, where I do some work. And, I think it's so important, even for young people and aspiring young journalists, to want to and feel equipped to challenge authority, challenge power, challenge people who will be in a position to influence events, and ask the questions that need to be asked.
They have a different relationship with information and power, and I think it's really valid, their point of view. I mean, think about one of the compliments you get from a young person. If you say something they agree with, they go facts. That's the compliment. The thing you said is the fact. The idea of platforming means something to them because they realize the power of certain spaces, because they raised in an era where they didn't all gather around the TV and watch one thing, it's meaningful to them. They know that in an era of splintered media, when someone gets one powerful microphone, it has even more impact in this, in this way. And I just think we. And different, different generations have to sometimes acknowledge that, that they know what they're talking about, because they they are raised in this native information age.
Talk to me just very briefly about "The Assignment," which is your podcast, which is really interesting because you have conversations with people that really allow them to talk about what they do in ways that are, that reveal and to challenge you as well about some of your assumptions. But talk to me about the podcast.
The point of view of the podcast and my mission statement is I'm not the voice of God. I'm not an old school podcast, an old school broadcaster. I don't know everything. I don't know it all. And that has been our default position as journalists for a while, that we were a little bit behaving as voice of God. We're in an age now where everyone is a journalist, right, quote unquote. Everyone is putting out their own tiny broadcast. And so there's a lot of people out there with expertise. And so, number one, I'm not the voice of God. Number two, having flexible ideas about what expertise is about knowing something. Like, I could talk to a climate scientist or whatever, we can also talk to a wildland firefighter. Both of them have a view on raging natural disasters that have worsened over the years. It's just whose phone did I call? Right? And so it's breaking some of the rules I learned coming up as a journalist about who to call and when. It was like, what if I didn't do any of that? And then the other thing is to let them speak at length, because honestly, other than cops and doctors who we see on TV constantly, we don't know what people do. You know, that sort of that legacy of Studs Terkel and journalism of like working people and hearing them describe their work, what they do, how it makes them feel, what gives them value, what frustrates them. I wanted to be part of that. And this felt like an opportunity to do it, because the podcast space it's filled with celebrities making money talking to each other, you know, which is great for them. But we're out here. We have a lot to say and letting people say it at length, letting them challenge me. That's a real conversation. Like, yes, you and I could have had a fun profile conversation where you asked me about my childhood.
I also think it's way more fun for people, to be in the clubhouse with us.
I love chatting with you, and I hope people spend some time with your podcast, because the thing that I value the most in politics in some ways, is talking to people and sitting in on these focus groups where people blow your mind by saying things that you never thought of because you're not living their life.
And you know, you're you're looking at pieces of paper with polling numbers on them. It may just be that the pollsters aren't asking the right questions.
And that's meaningful. How a question is phrased.
It's better to hear how people describe their own lives and their own aspirations and their own fears and their own reaction to people and events. And so I really love what you're doing.
'And like growing up in Massachusetts, I was a reporter in the South. I've actually been in places where I've reported and felt hostility or heard slights or all of these things. So I do feel like I'm uniquely positioned to ask questions in the way you're talking about, letting people challenge me, because my stability and self-esteem is not distabled by a person who thinks less of me, because I've already experienced that from childhood on, from being in newsrooms, from hearing even the ways people talk about Kamala Harris. Now, that sense of like, you're not quite right. I don't know what it is. This doesn't work. I've heard it all. And I won't hold that against you. But what I want in a conversation is for you to explain your thinking. How did you arrive at this place? Because once we both understand that, then we can have a real conversation.
Well, I urge everybody to tune in and to follow you on CNN as well. I love having these conversations with you on the air. I hope they give us more time to do it.
They'll give us a show. We got to start agitating for a show, okay?
All right. But, I appreciate your time now. And, look, for I assume you'll be maybe in Chicago for the convention.
'I will, I will, you and I should brainstorm about who we should talk to. Maybe we can have a Axe-Aassignment crossover episode.
Can we get a big guest? That's. I was trying to think of some fantasy guest.
Tean everybody listening in. Let's work on this.
All right, all right. Great to be with you.
Thank you for listening to the Axe Files, brought to you by the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago and CNN Audio. The executive producer of the show is Miriam Finder Annenberg. The show is also produced by Saralena Berry, Jeff Fox, and Hannah Grace McDonald. And special thanks to our partners at CNN, including Steve Lickteig and Haley Thomas. For more programing from the IOP, visit politics dot uChicago dot edu.
