Dr. Jason Johnson on Kamala Harris, Tim Walz in Michigan

And in this fight, as Tim Walz likes to point out, we are joyful warriors. Joyful warriors. Kamala quoting her new running mate in Wisconsin. Today we're joined by Isa Mills, a political strategist, longtime beat guest, and she ran the LGBTQ Victory Fund, and Jason Johnson, politics professor and MSNBC analyst. Nice to see you. Nice to see you, Ari. What do you see in this enthusiasm out there for the new ticket?

Well, I think it's less about what you see and more about what you feel, which is what we're all talking about. Right? I personally am stoked and have been looking for something to get excited about. And I think that that's exactly what Tim Walz brings along with Kamala Harris: enthusiasm. We finally feel connected again as Americans. Remember, we are coming off of a PTSD really from all the way back, certainly to Trump being elected, but then we went through COVID and we went through George Floyd and we've gone through so much. And so now to have really an opportunity to have joy and to just feel together and to smile and laugh, I think that is really what's going to move this.

PTSD, the T stands for trauma or Trump? They anonymous, right? It's your acronym. I'm just here. Let me show you the joy that they've been talking about, which is interesting because we've talked about this before. You can't separate culture from American life, news, or politics. And yet there was a period where the right-wing interestingly seemed to be able to drive and seize culture and internet conversations with their own style, some as trolling and negative, but more so than the left. And now you're seeing it kind of come back. Here's some headlines: Kamala Harris's vice presidential pick Tim Walz, a quote certified Swifty. So that means not just a casual listener, he has some sort of documentation. And a Beyhive member. Swift fans celebrating this. Tim Walz, certified Swifty VP. Not a bad headline in a lot of parts of the country. And now we've got the documentation on the Beyoncé side. This is a proclamation issued by the governor July 26th, became a Beyoncé Day. Where do you see this fitting into people in the summer looking over and saying, wow, I might want to talk about politics or engage in this? It's not all gloom and doom.

All you have to do is log into TikTok and you can see where this is taking us. We are literally reliant upon a meme generation, I think right now, to move people to the polls. And that's a great thing. Think about all the Gen Z who've come online as voters, all the Millennials who are still the younger Millennials who like, yeah, maybe sat it out last time, who are now really invigorated by connection points that make them feel good, that are absolutely culturally based. I think that this is something you cannot overestimate the power of: getting younger people, people who are more part of the digital electorate if you will, excited and actually moving offline into the polls. And I think that that's what all this is going to do.

Yeah, fascinating. Let me bring in Jason. You could take your pick, Jason. You could talk Beyoncé and Swifties, you could talk Lil Jon, you could talk about the actual ticket. It's, what do they say? It's your oyster. Grab it.

It's my oyster. It's my oyster. I am amazed at how effective a decision this was by the Harris campaign. Like I said, we'll be studying this in 30 years. They really haven't made many stumbles for a campaign that's only been going for two weeks. And when you think about culturally what comes to mind with Minnesota that Tim Walz can play off of, okay, it's Minnesota. It's the purple one. It's, you know, you, I would vote for you. Prince music, anything, any memes you can do with Prince, which work for him. Right? He's been associated with that. He was a high school football coach. It's giving Friday Night Lights. And the Golden Gophers of Minnesota are playing in three swing states: they're playing in Michigan, they're playing in Pennsylvania, and they're playing in North Carolina before the election this fall. And then you've got for the older generation, A Prairie Home Companion. I used to listen to that on NPR. It's Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. All of these things are in Walz, and he can take that to Garrison Keillor. Exactly. Listening to that, you know what they say? Oh yes, you know what they say in Lake Wobegon, Jason: all the students are above average. Oh gosh, all the students are above average. Yeah, I mean, this is what he brings to the table. And so if you think about if you just go from the culture to the math, right, because these things are always connected, the Harris campaign has to hit 39 to 40% white voters across America in order to win. Tim Walz helps with that. They have to get 65 to 68% turnout amongst African-American women. She can probably bring that to the table. They've got young people who are excited. You have a candidate who, at the end of the day, the race is still about Trump and Harris, but you just want a VP that's not going to be a net negative. And the fact that people are so excited about Walz brings a positive to her campaign that I don't think anybody could have imagined three weeks ago, let alone four months ago.

Yeah. One more item on the front here: Teen Vogue reporting on a little scoop about these hats. The Harris-Walz campaign telling Teen Vogue they've already moved over nearly a million dollars worth of camouflage hats in a day. That isn't what people always think of as the first Democratic merch to move, but I always say profiling is wrong. It also doesn't work. What do you think about so many Democrats, whether or not they actually want to use the camo to hunt or they just want to say something about everybody get on board?

First of all, I love that camo is the first thing to go and to move out this campaign. I'm going to get myself one of those, Ari. Okay? If you hunt, you hunt. I do not hunt per se, but what is interesting is that we're going to have a vice president presumably who is boldly proud of hunting, who also is a gun owner, and who as governor put forth some really rigid and strict gun safety provisions. You can do both, right? You can chew gum and walk. And I think that that's also what we're going to see with those hats is like, look, the radical right does not have a monopoly on all of our constitutional rights, right? And so the kind of taking that Second Amendment and flipping it on its head is interesting.

Yeah, really interesting. Isa Mills, thank you. Jason, stick around. We got a lot going on.