Polls show Kamala Harris is having a hard time connecting with voting blocks once considered a stalwart of the Democratic Party’s base, which may explain why she is trying to dazzle with some star power on the campaign trail.
Usher joined the vice president at a rally in Georgia over the weekend, and the Harris-Walz campaign tapped Lizzo to help rally supporters in Michigan. The latter ended up making headlines, but not necessarily for the right reasons.
On Monday’s show Megyn was joined by Emily Jashinsky, host of Undercurrents on UnHerd, and Eliana Johnson, editor-in-chief of The Washington Free Beacon, to discuss Lizzo’s campaign stop and why it likely didn’t resonate as intended.
Lizzo Doesn’t Land
A Detroit native, Lizzo jetted in for a get-out-the-vote rally with Harris in the Motor City on Sunday. She called her home state the “swing state of all swing states, so every last vote here counts” and quipped that “it’s about damn time” for the United States to have a woman president (a reference to her 2022 chart-topper).
The pop star, who has experienced a fall from grace as a result of sexual harassment and toxic workplace allegations, may have been on-message at the event, but Megyn said her social media activity missed the mark. “Somebody didn’t give the message to Lizzo that all we want you to do is come here and read the script we wrote for you where you are talking about how great Detroit is,” Megyn said. “We don’t want you to post. You don’t need to help us by improving on your way here or your way out at the airport.”
As part of a content dump from the day, Lizzo posted a video of herself boarding a private plane with some colorful language:
“This is how a bad bitch saves democracy,” Lizzo said in the clip. “You hoes couldn’t even spell democracy.”
Megyn said the Harris campaign can’t be happy with the video. “She is saying, ‘Trump losers can’t spell democracy,” she noted. “She is going to really have to rethink that. There should be a sternly written letter from Team Harris to Lizzo on, ‘Could you just help in only the ways we ask please?!’”
‘Cosplaying’ Kamala Supporters
When you consider that Harris’ support is lagging among men and non-college educated voters, Megyn wasn’t sure if Lizzo was the right spokesperson. “The Washington Post just reported that Harris is drawing strong support among the college educated in suburban areas of Detroit, but… she faces pressure to bolster her backing among union workers,” she explained. “So, I guess someone thought the solution to this problem might be Lizzo… because she was born in Detroit?”
Johnson believes it missed the mark. “The one major shift that we have seen since Trump arrived on the scene in 2015 is the education gap between the parties just continue to rise,” she said. “The Democratic Party, since then, has increasingly become the parties of the MDs, JDs, PhDs… like the college-educated female voters.”
Depending on how the election goes, Jashinsky said moments like this one with Lizzo could be pointed to as what went wrong for Harris because it speaks to her larger authenticity problem. “I was at the Trump rally in Butler covering it a couple of weeks ago looking around at people wearing faded Mossy Oak hats and old Carhartts non-ironically,” she recalled. “And I just became, like, offended on their behalf by all of the dumb Gen-Z kids I saw roaming around the DNC in those stupid camo Harris-Walz hats… because they have no respect for the people who actually wear those things.”
Megyn agreed. “It’s true. It’s cosplaying putting on the camo and acting like you know anything about how true working class people and hunters live and what is important to them,” she concluded. “You are pretending, and they know all of that.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Jashinsky and Johnson by tuning in to episode 922 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.