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How Kamala Harris Can Use the Debate to Win Big

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Joshua A. Cohen aka Ettingermentum on the state of the presidential race.

Jeet Heer

September 8, 2024

Senator Kamala Harris at the vice presidential debate, in Salt Lake City, Utah.(Eric Baradat / AFP via Getty Images)

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How Kamala Harris Can Use the Debate to Win Big w/ Ettingermentum | Time of Monsters
byThe Nation Magazine

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Jeet Heer is joined by Joshua A. Cohen a.k.a. Ettingermentum to discuss the state of the presidential race.

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After the convention and on the cusp of a debate, the presidential election is a near–dead heat. The polls show Kamala Harris has a slight edge, but this is well within the margin of error. This is a massive improvement over the performance of Joe Biden, who was on a path to a major defeat, but it is by no means a guarantee of victory. To take up the state of the race, I talk to analyst Joshua A. Cohen, who writes for The Nation and runs the Ettingermentum newsletter.We take up both what Harris has been doing right (which explains her quick rise in the polls) but also weaknesses in the Democratic Party’s messaging (which explain why the Democratic National Convention didn’t produce a significant bump). We then look toward the debate as a chance for Harris to more clearly define herself against Donald Trump and increase the size of her lead to win big.

The Nation Podcasts

Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.

Matthew Yglesias and the Problems of Popularism | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer
byThe Nation Magazine

Matthew Yglesias, a very influential journalist and proprietor of the Slow Boring substack, has emerged as a divisive figure within the Democratic party. To admirers, he’s a compelling advocate of popularism, the view the Democratic party needing to moderate its message to win over undecided voters. To critics, he’s a glib attention seeker who has achieved prominence by coming up with clever ways to justify the status quo. 

For this episode of the podcast, I talked to David Klion, frequent guest of the show and Nation contributor, about Yglesias, the centrist view of the 2024 election, the role of progressives and leftists in the Democratic party coalition, and the class formation of technocratic pundits, among other connected matters. 

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Jeet HeerTwitterJeet Heer is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters. He also pens the monthly column “Morbid Symptoms.” The author of In Love with Art: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: Reviews, Essays and Profiles (2014), Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American Prospect, The GuardianThe New Republic, and The Boston Globe.


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