Episode 11: The Colbert Strategy

In their weekly video chat, Claire and Neil talk about why Kamala Harris's campaign has turned to talk shows and alternative media in the home stretch

Image credit: LouiesWorld1/Shutterstock.com

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It’s 24 days until the election, and as Neil and I sat down to talk about Kamala Harris’s small-ball media strategy this week, Nate Silver was giving the Vice President a 55% probability of winning the 2024 presidential race. On the right, CNN pundit and political strategist Ryan Girdusky retains his confidence that Donald J. Trump will retake the presidency—but also seems to be preparing his readers, despite significant Republican gains in blue states, for the possibility of a Trump defeat.

The good news? An Inside Higher Ed poll has Harris ahead among students by a whopping 38 points, with a slightly higher margin in swing states; 1/3 of respondents saying they are voting because she is on the ticket.

People are already voting: my mother mailed in her ballot on Wednesday. Here’s a clip from this week’s episode where I talk about that:

Neil and I then turn to Kamala Harris’s strategy of mostly working around the legacy media, and her efforts to target specific demographics through television talk shows, podcasts, and radio. Some large outlets have been disgruntled about this, but as the WSJ pointed out this week, the strategy may be a savvy response to a “fragmented media landscape” in an election that is a game of inches. The Baltimore Banner, which characterized the Harris strategy as ”working around the mainstream media,” characterized it as “brilliant.”

Meanwhile, Neil and Claire discuss the ramifications of Donald Trump’s retreat into rallies. He has declined to participate in an interview on CBS’s television magazine show, “Sixty Minutes.” He has also declined to participate in another CNN debate, so the network has invited Harris to take part in a town hall broadcast from Pennsylvania on October 23.

Here are links to some of the Harris media appearances we discuss: the Colbert interview, the Sixty Minutes interview, Harris’s conversation with Alex Cooper on the Call Her Daddy podcast, her sit-down with legendary radio shock jock, Howard Stern, and her visit with with the women of The View.

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Your hosts:

Claire Potter is a historian of politics and media, a writer, a podcaster, and the sole author and editor of the Political Junkie Substack. Her most recent book is Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020), and she is currently writing a biography of feminist journalist Susan Brownmiller.

Neil J. Young is a historian of religion and politics, a journalist, and a former co-host of the Past Present podcast. His most recent book is Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right (University of Chicago Press, 2024). 

These weekly chats are a paid subscriber feature (although you can access them on YouTube one week later.) Don’t miss new drops from Claire and Neil by taking out a paid subscription! Only $5 a month, or $50/year and choose Neil’s Coming Out Republican or Claire’s Political Junkies as a welcome bonus.