Glenn Loury
The Glenn Show
John McWhorter – Is Kamala Harris the Next Obama?
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John McWhorter – Is Kamala Harris the Next Obama?

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After a brief midsummer hiatus, John and I are refreshed and ready to go. This week, we’re talking Kamala Harris, the first black woman to become the presumptive nominee for president. And her blackness is on our minds—not whether she “is” black but how she articulates her blackness, how she attempts to define it, and whether it will have any electoral repercussions.

John, drawing on our experience of Obama’s presidency, hypothesizes that a Harris presidency won’t improve our national discourse on race, just as Obama’s didn’t. Everyone know I’ve got my problems with Obama, but I can’t deny his intelligence and ability to think on his feet. I don’t think Kamala can measure up to that. Still, part of me wishes I could get excited about her, but I just can’t. Perhaps inevitably, she’s being criticized for code switching, but that’s something many, many people do—and not just black people! Two white “affinity groups” had strategy and fundraising calls in support of Harris—you can only imagine how much grief a “White Dudes for Trump” call would have gotten. Tim Walz, Harris’s VP pick, has gone on the offensive against Republican “weirdness.” Democrats are taking his lead—the days of “when they go low, we go high” seem to be over.

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1:05 John: A Kamala Harris presidency won’t improve the discourse on race

9:12 Glenn: Kamala Harris is no Barack Obama

14:44 Why Glenn just can’t excited about a Harris presidency

18:07 Ground News

20:40 How Kamala measures up to Obama under the spotlight

23:07 Kamala’s code switching

25:50 Building the black political persona

33:51 White Ladies and White Dudes for Kamala

40:39 Are there white Sonya Masseys?

45:55 ACTA

48:03 Walz’s war on “weird”

48:14 The Dems get their hands dirty

55:48 Trump’s near-death experience that wasn’t

Recorded August 9, 2024


Links and Readings

Barack Obama’s memoir, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

Trump’s on-stage interview before the National Association of Black Journalists

NYT story about Trump’s alleged helicopter ride


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Glenn Loury
The Glenn Show
Race, inequality, and economics in the US and throughout the world from Glenn Loury, Professor of Economics at Brown University and Paulson Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute