Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala Harris on Instagram after her debate with Trump, urging her 283M followers to vote, a massive boost for the Dems.
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00:00Welcome back to The Headline.
00:05I'm Dave Briggs.
00:06A debate for the ages now in the rearview mirror and the election just over 50 days
00:11down the road.
00:12What potholes stand in the way and where do things stand in a still neck-and-neck race
00:18between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump?
00:21Barron's Ideas editor Matt Peterson with us now.
00:24Matt, good to see you, sir.
00:25Before we dive into the interesting debate, do you think we'll see another one or is that
00:29it?
00:30Oh, boy.
00:31I kind of do because I think Donald Trump is really motivated by revenge and he's going
00:38to want to get back for the beating he took on Tuesday night.
00:42So my money's on yes, but we'll see.
00:44Yeah.
00:45I mean, after the debate, he talked about Brett Barron, Martha McCallum not even being
00:49acceptable debate host and they are Fox News true news host.
00:54That is not likely to happen as far as a Sean Hannity hosted debate.
00:58That will not happen.
00:5967 million people, though, saw President Harris, Vice President Harris, bait Trump all night
01:06into boasting about crowd size, of course, spreading this Facebook conspiracy theory
01:10about immigrants eating pets.
01:13What is the damage?
01:15And without a debate, how does he recover?
01:18Look, the Harris campaign has been on this mission to show that Trump is just sort of
01:23weird and out of touch.
01:25And boy, they got their moment with the pets thing there, right?
01:29You know, the question is whether that changes any minds.
01:31I doubt that anybody who is going to vote for Trump, you know, change their opinion
01:36after the debate either way.
01:39But you know, it might move some, move the needle a little bit.
01:43This is such a closely fought race in the swing states that, you know, these little
01:47moment to moment gaffes, like if they knock a couple of people off on either side, that'll
01:51matter a little bit.
01:53But you know, the two have plenty to fight about other than that.
01:56I don't know how much more we'll hear about that.
01:58Yeah.
01:59I love to think that these things are about policy.
02:01They often are not.
02:03If there is one policy that matters is certainly the economy.
02:07Have both candidates laid out where they clearly stand and where does that debate go in the
02:12weeks that remain?
02:15The biggest thing that like really matters from a kind of bottom line, moving the money
02:19question is the tariffs thing, because Trump can put tariffs in place himself without really
02:25asking Congress for the most part.
02:28And what we saw on Tuesday, this was the thing that made me as an economics guy interested
02:33and excited, was that Harris is actually pushing back finally in an interesting way on this
02:39question of tariffs.
02:40Right.
02:41You know, Democrats have had years and years and years to figure out how to talk about
02:44this, and they just haven't.
02:45But she's out there calling it a sales tax, right?
02:49And Trump was really on the defensive over that.
02:51That's what got him on the back foot, by the way, in this very first back and forth they
02:56had in that debate.
02:57And so the question from here is whether Harris can successfully make this so unpopular that
03:03Trump even backs off of it.
03:06So far, that's not happening.
03:07But she's been very, very effective on this issue in a way that Democrats have just totally
03:11failed that up until this point.
03:13What do economists say about the impact of tariffs?
03:17Well, economists hate tariffs for the most part.
03:22You know, there's lots of estimates about what this would cost and how much it would
03:28increase cost to U.S. consumers.
03:32The one middle of the road one from the Peterson Institute is that it would cost the average
03:37family about $1,700 a year.
03:39Now, you've got to take into effect stuff like what happens to the dollar and do other
03:43countries retaliate.
03:45And so it's a little hard to know exactly where you would go with this.
03:48But you have to remember that Trump for the most part doesn't like tariffs for the economics.
03:53He likes tariffs because they make him powerful.
03:55He says this all the time.
03:56He wants to go out there and negotiate.
03:58And he's asking for a mandate from the American people to get this power to negotiate some
04:03sort of better global deal on the behalf of the American workers.
04:07So from his perspective, the economics aren't really that important.
04:10The biggest question I think going into this debate was would Kamala Harris explain her
04:15dramatic shifts on some of the issues, including the border, including a whole number of issues
04:20like fracking?
04:22Did she explain some of her pivots or flip flops clearly to the American people?
04:28No, she didn't.
04:30She's owned up to changing her mind.
04:32You know, if you talk to her campaign, they'll tell you where, you know, what she says she
04:36wants to do now and what she says she doesn't.
04:39And she obviously she gave this interview the other day where she said, my values haven't
04:43changed.
04:44And I think this is one of the questions that even liberals are asking about Kamala Harris
04:48is what does she actually believe?
04:50Right.
04:51And again, you know, as an econ focused guy, I want to know, did she learn a lesson about
04:57inflation from the past couple of years?
04:59You know, does she think that that should change how we should respond to another emergency?
05:04Right.
05:05I mean, you know, people are starting to get nervous again about a recession.
05:09You know, so how do you respond to a recession when the response to the last one went too
05:14far and ignited this inflation question?
05:16Right.
05:17These are questions about sort of what how she understands the world and how she applies
05:22her principles that we just don't really know yet.
05:24You know, yes, she's not going to ban fracking, but, you know, she would be president for
05:28four, maybe eight years.
05:29And so it kind of matters what she thinks about these things.
05:32And a disciplined Donald Trump would have focused on that.
05:36That is clearly not what we saw.
05:37All right.
05:38What state or states do you think ultimately decide this race?
05:43Oh, it's I mean, it's all about Pennsylvania.
05:46Right.
05:47You know, Pennsylvania is Pittsburgh in particular is an amazing place.
05:50My dad is a professor at Carnegie Mellon.
05:53So I have I have a vested interest in this issue.
05:55But, you know, that city, Pittsburgh, really exemplifies, you know, what's at stake here.
06:01You've got a kind of booming tech industry in a, you know, former industrial place that's
06:09really suffered from the loss of the steel industry.
06:12Right.
06:13You know, U.S. steel.
06:14People are fighting about what happens to this company.
06:16But that's not really what moves the needle on that economy anymore.
06:20So anyway, there's a very interesting question about, you know, what is the future of the
06:23economy for a state like like Pennsylvania and a place like Pittsburgh?
06:28And, you know, fracking is a part of it.
06:30How we support the tech industry is a part of it.
06:33And so they're both, you know, spending a huge amount of time there to try to figure
06:36it out.
06:37Of course, the debate was in Pennsylvania and one Taylor Swift is also from Pennsylvania.
06:43And look what you made me do.
06:44The debate made her come out on Instagram and endorse Kamala Harris and really push
06:50her supporters to get out and vote.
06:52I asked my 18 year old Swifty daughter soon to vote for the first time.
06:56What do you think the impact is?
06:58And she said, look, I think anyone who loves Taylor Swift already knew who she was going
07:03to vote for in this election.
07:06What do you think the impact could be?
07:10It matters because you what we've seen with Kamala Harris, you know, even from the very
07:14first moments of her campaign is excitement among Democrats that she is giving them something
07:21to care about and something to go out for and fight for and be interested in.
07:25Right.
07:26You know, you started with Charlie XCX saying Kamala Harris is brat.
07:30You know, now she's worked her way all the way up to Taylor Swift.
07:32I don't know if she could go any bigger than Taylor Swift.
07:36But, you know, that enthusiasm matters.
07:37It matters that that, you know, one side's supporters are riled up and interested and
07:42excited and are hearing about it all the time and are hearing it from, you know, the people
07:46that they follow when they're not thinking about politics.
07:49Right.
07:50That kind of stuff, again, super, super tight race could make a difference.
07:53Yeah.
07:54Look, the youth vote does not typically turn out.
07:57And I think in 2016, it was in the high 30s.
08:002020, it did go to north of 50 percent, which is a massive number historically.
08:05And if it continues to shift in that direction, could clearly impact it.
08:09Other demographics, this really looks like white men for Trump and women strongly supporting
08:16Kamala Harris.
08:18Is that the dynamic that decides the election?
08:21Yeah.
08:22And I think the Harris people think that, too.
08:24Certainly the Biden folks did.
08:26They thought that abortion was the issue that is going to determine the election.
08:31You know, the Democrats will point to 2022 midterms, this moment when they were expected
08:35to lose badly and really didn't.
08:39And they say that that's because of abortion, because that issue is suddenly animating huge
08:44amounts of women to turn out to vote.
08:46And so they think that that's going to come back again in the debate, which we'll probably
08:51forget very soon.
08:52But we could talk about it for another second or two.
08:54Kamala Harris, when offered the opportunity to talk about student loans, an issue that
08:59she I'm sure has strong opinions about, switched topics and talked about abortion.
09:04Right.
09:05They know that this is the thing that they need to put front and center in front of women
09:09voters.
09:10And they're going to keep doing that at every chance they have.
09:12Yeah.
09:13Expect them to hammer that issue down the stretch.
09:14Women vote in far greater numbers than do men historically.
09:17All right.
09:18Good stuff again from Matt Peterson, Barron's ideas editor.
09:21Good to see you, sir.