How Kamala Harris is preparing for the moment

One name dominated nearly every conversation and debate at the “MSNBC Live: Democracy 2024” event in Brooklyn on Saturday: Kamala Harris. The vice president’s unexpected entry into the presidential race — and the renewed sense of unity it inspired among Democrats — came up like a refrain, and was the topic that immediately generated the most excitement in the 2,000-person auditorium.

On Saturday afternoon, MSNBC anchors, pundits and 4,000 devoted viewers stormed the Brooklyn Academy of Music for a first-of-its-kind live event. experience that Debates, discussions and analysis on the extremely high stakes of the upcoming election were in depth. Harris’ historic candidacy was the main topic of these conversations over two sessions.

“One of the things that has happened in the last five or six weeks is that America has come to understand how underestimated Harris has been,” Claire McCaskill told the crowd to loud applause.

“(Harris) really stepped into this moment in a way that a lot of people didn’t anticipate,” Reid said in a later discussion with fellow anchor Alex Wagner.

But it wasn’t just surprise that allowed Harris to revive the Democratic Party. “Harris’ candidacy is confirmation that the path Obama has blazed for the country may be its destiny,” Wagner said. “There’s a growing sense that Trump may be the aberration.”

Public enthusiasm for Harris has been heightened by collective anticipation for the biggest test of the vice president’s abbreviated campaign yet: her first face-off with the former president. Donald Trump at Tuesday’s presidential debate. “She’s not panicking,” Jen Psaki speculated about Harris’ likely state of mind during an onstage “editorial meeting” with McCaskill and longtime debate moderator Andrea Mitchell about how Harris should prepare. “She’s focused,” McCaskill agreed, “but she’s also (probably) thinking about how she can annoy him.”

But the question of how much this debate could shape the course of the campaign is more controversial. “We just had the most important debate in American history, which ended Joe Biden’s candidacy just a month before the convention,” Maddow asked Lawrence O’Donnell. “Is this next debate going to be very important?”

“I don’t think it’s going to change much,” O’Donnell said. “It’s incredibly difficult to reach those swing voters with this kind of activity.”

The upcoming debate is just one of many unknown factors at play at this stage of the race. Despite polls that Kornacki said should satisfy Democrats, the overall picture “is one of extremely tight, narrow margins,” he said.

The future of the Republican Party after the election remains an unknown. Asked by an audience member whether Harris’ victory could finally dismantle the MAGA movement, McCaskill pointed to her own experience. “I won an election by 15 points in 2012 and I lost by six points in 2018 to a guy who hugged Trump,” the former Democratic senator from Missouri recalled. “What happened? Well, the centralization of grievances … and I’m not sure that’s going away.”

“There are many members of the House and Senate who believe they are going to be the next Donald Trump,” McCaskill continued, citing Sens. Josh Hawley and J.D. Vance as examples. “Whether that cult of personality is transferable remains to be seen.”

Kornacki also shared her views on the dire consequences of Trump’s continued presence on national politics. “Do you see us as an irredeemably polarized, irredeemably red and blue United States?” Katy Tur asked Kornacki.

He admitted it’s a question he’s been asked a lot. “Pessimistically, I think there’s a tribal impulse in all of us,” he said. “But I have an optimistic note: Maybe… maybe we’ve all had enough, collectively.”

To wrap up the day, Maddow and O’Donnell took a moment to highlight the challenges and opportunities of covering such a historic election on MSNBC. “I appreciate the editorial freedom we have,” Maddow said. “It’s a blessing. And something worth protecting and defending. It’s the art of what we do, not the science — and I love that.”