Kamala Harris Isn’t Playing by The Rules On Her Media Tour — That’s A Good Thing

With only a month before the 2024 election, Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for President, is on quite the media tour as she talks to voters on a range of platforms. In line with a longstanding tradition, Harris recently appeared on CBS’ “60 Minutes” for a hard-hitting conversation that tackled immigration, economic policy, foreign policy, and bipartisanship. The day before that conversation, Harris had another equally rigorous conversation with host Alex Cooper on her popular Call Her Daddy podcast where she discussed sexual violence, abortion access, and attacking student and medical debt.

Call Her Daddy is Spotify’s second most-listened-to podcast, and number one when it comes to women listeners (most popular among Gen Z and millennial women with nearly 8 in 10 of the show's listeners being under 35, according to Edison Research). Harris was able to dig deeper than she has in weeks about the fears, hopes, and concerns women uniquely face. It was a refreshing conversation, but the content of the interview was somewhat eclipsed by the controversy over whether Harris should have joined the podcast at all.

Vice President Harris came under fire by many pundits and traditional journalists for her decision to join the podcast so close to the election. They chided her team’s choice to waste energy on a podcast with mostly young women for listeners. Though Call Her Daddy has an undeniably large reach, this audience was dismissed as not as strategic to engage with at this stage. Critics of Harris encouraged her to prioritize “serious” sit downs with more reputable legacy publications in the future. One longtime Democratic advisor cautioned Harris against leaning on “friendly interviews.” The language is subtle but in reading between the lines, the message comes through clearly: women voters are not worth investing in and that, generally-speaking, candidates are expected to “play by the rules” of elites. In particular, many called on her to focus more on where she stands with men of all races. This line of thinking has been parroted across right and left-leaning spaces and signals the sexist and lazy approach to politics that has erased women from halls of power for so long. 

The first President of the United States and the 45 people to hold the position since 1789 have all been men. For a long time, these men were installed and confirmed by exclusively male voters, male delegates to the Electoral College, and an all-male Congress. Men answering to and delivering policy for men. Only in the last several decades have women been able to exert our collective political power and demand to be part of the agenda. We’ve had to build cross-gender coalitions and find ways to be seen by male politicians hell-bent on governing us without actually talking to us. Yet, whenever a woman runs for office she’s accused of not being able to represent the full constituency and is bullied into ignoring the very women and gender-marginalized people who have been politically sidelined for centuries. 

The other problematic element of this Call Her Daddy discourse is the misbelief that Harris (or any woman running for office) inherently has women’s votes in the bag and, thus, that candidate should spend their time on voters who are more on the fence. This framing is factually inaccurate and treats women as monolithic when we know that women from different racial, socioeconomic, disability, sexuality, and religious backgrounds are motivated by and vote in favor of very different things. If women voting for women was assured, I quite literally wouldn’t be writing this piece because Hillary Clinton would have won in 2016. But she didn’t, in part because at least 47 per cent of white women voters cast their ballots for Trump.

Cooper has access to a demographic of women that Harris needs: white women in middle America. These are people who have historically voted in line with the men in their lives but who (one would hope) can be pushed to break ties and embrace more progressive policies and a political party that reflects their womanhood. White women make up a major part of the electorate and are in no way a shoo-in for any Democratic candidate. So often, the onus is put on Black women to "save" democracy or to do the heavy lifting when it comes to progressivism. White women need to step up, and in targeting them specifically, Kamala Harris — a Black woman — is issuing an important message: put your vote where your values are.

This is a bloc that needs to be organized around progressive policies and more political imagination, which Cooper's Call Her Daddy podcast may be subversively doing. Though the podcast host claims to not talk about politics on her show, she has covered abortion bans through direct interviews with women unable to access the care they need without traveling out of state. Yet, the accessible and inviting tone she uses makes those important episodes feel like a group chat conversation. That’s where Harris was able to enter into and make her case.

Women are affected by all of the issues that every American is: housing, employment, climate change, public safety, policing, immigration, and more. Women are also disproportionately affected by decisions made on reproductive justice, healthcare, and education though we are often excluded from those conversations. As Harris said on Call Her Daddy, “One of the best ways to communicate with people is to be real and to talk about the things that people really care about.” People want to be seen and heard, not only through symbolic gestures like nominations but also through nitty-gritty conversations about what we need to survive and thrive. Not in a debate when each candidate has two minutes at a time to speak. Not in an advertisement or at a pep rally. People deserve to be engaged on the merits of their concerns and to have their answers questioned in culturally relevant ways. What better way to do that than by meeting people on their trusted platforms and showing up where they’re at?

For an audience of women jaded about politics, Cooper’s relaxed mood and organic moderation allowed for a smooth entrance into some contentious discussions. Harris was speaking directly to women when she said that one third of all abortion seekers are already mothers. “You don't have to abandon your faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government shouldn't be telling her what to do. If she chooses, she'll talk to her priest, her pastor, her rabbi, her mom, but not the government,” Harris said with grace for a range of perspectives. Cooper also asked Harris about the accusations that not having biological children makes Harris less relatable or humble. “I don't think she understands that there are a whole lot of women out here who, one, are not aspiring to be humble,” Harris said and it felt as though she were speaking to so many women who have silenced themselves for male gaze. Harris succinctly rejected the myth that ambition isn’t “feminine” or that women have to look and act a certain way to be accepted, or, that leaning into the caricatures drawn out for white women by white men will somehow save them from patriarchy. It was a great moment for her campaign and one that wouldn’t have resonated as deeply in most other spaces. Call Her Daddy listeners “get it” even when they’re afraid to admit it and Harris gave them permission to step into their power… with her.    

The backlash to this interview seems illogical in the face of the overwhelming positives that come from her appearance. But this isn’t the first time that traditional journalists have looked down on emerging spaces for covering politics. Social and digital media spaces have opened up and democratized how the average person seeks out information. That is a good thing! For far too long a handful of media conglomerates and elites have had complete say over what made headlines, how policies were framed, and what context Americans received. That landscape has radically changed and an interview with Alex Cooper of Call Her Daddy or iHeart Radio’s The Breakfast Club is just as significant as profiles with The New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, or Fox. I don’t believe traditional media is being made obsolete because we do need investigative journalism and resourced reporting but that is no longer the only way to talk to Americans.

Traditional media is rarely carving out space to discuss the concerns of women, LGBTQ people, BIPOC people, and others who have been historically marginalized. Candidates are thrown one to two questions that center us, before returning to their investigation of how each candidate would affect wealthy white men. Cooper was candid about her listeners — who feel politicians are overcommitting and under delivering — and asked questions in a way her listeners could understand. Meanwhile, many traditional interviews seem to require a degree in political science. Media can’t drown people with information and hope it cancels out the disinformation. We must also check for resonance and comprehension, something that is infinitely easier to do when your audience is engaged authentically. 

Talking to women — young women specifically — about women’s issues is not a waste of time. Spending forty minutes with a well-respected podcast host to talk about Amber Thurman, gendered expectations of women politicians, and rising costs of living for young people is a small investment in millions of voters getting to hear more than a sound bite. When consultants, journalists, and “experts” decry these decisions as imprudent, they are also talking about the same people they want to turn out on Election Day. Those people should rethink their advice and stop taking voters of any demographic for granted.