Background Briefing: July 23, 2024
The Contours of a Kamala Harris Campaign Emerges Contrasting the Felon With the Prosecutor Who Went After For-Profit College Ripoffs Like Trump University and Investigated Big Oil While Trump Invited Them to Bribe Him
We begin with the contours of the presidential campaign of Kamala Harris emerging as the prosecutor Harris compares herself to the convicted felon Trump, with her record a direct contrast with Trump as we head into an assuredly nasty election season. Harris has prosecuted for-profit colleges; Trump created one. Harris investigated Big Oil; Trump invited them to bribe him, and so on. Joining us is Gil Duran, a San Francisco journalist who previously served as editorial page editor of The Sacramento Bee and The San Francisco Examiner. He currently writes the FrameLab Newsletter on Substack and regularly contributes to the San Francisco Chronicle and other publications. He served as Press Secretary for Kamala Harris when she was the Attorney General of California.
Kamala Harris Campaigns in Wisconsin Today Which Trump Barely Won in 2016 and Biden in 2020
Then, with Kamala Harris campaigning in the key swing state of Wisconsin today, which Trump barely won in 2016 and Biden in 2020, we speak with Ruth Conniff, the Editor-in-chief of the Wisconsin Examiner who formerly served as Editor-in-chief of The Progressive Magazine where she worked for many years from both Madison and Washington, DC. She is the author of Milked: How an American Crisis Brought Together Midwestern Dairy Farmers and Mexican Workers, and we discuss her latest article at The Wisconsin Examiner, “Wisconsin Democrats endorse Kamala Harris after Biden drops out.”
Project 2025 Is More of a Corporate Wishlist Than a MAGA Manifesto and Trump and Vance Are Running Away From Its Unpopularity
Then finally we look into how the Heritage Foundation’s Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, better known as “Project 2025″ which Trump and Vance are running away from because it is politically radioactive, is more of a corporate wishlist than a MAGA manifesto. Joining us is Nelson Lichtenstein, Research Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he directs the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy. He is the author or editor of 17 books, including a biography of the labor leader Walter Reuther and The Right and Labor in America: Politics, Ideology, and Imagination. His latest book, coauthored with the late Judith Stein, is A Fabulous Failure: The Clinton Presidency and the Transformation of American Capitalism and we discuss his article at The American Prospect “A Grand Old Party for Workers? How corporate conservatism trumps MAGA gestures on behalf of the working class.”