Already and this is the Daily This is the Daily OS. Oh now it makes sense. Good morning and welcome to the Daily OS. It is Friday, the second of August. I'm billy, I'm Zara. We are now less than one hundred days out from the US election in November, and it is nearly time for Kamala Harris to pick her vice presidential candidate. We are expecting an announcement any day now, and so today we wanted to go through who some
of the top contenders are. What exactly is Harris looking for and what kind of difference to her campaign is she hoping a vice presidential pick could make. In today's deep Dive, we are going to tell you what you need to know. But first, Sarah, what is making headlines today?
Prime Minister Anthony Alberizi has reiterated calls for a de escalation of conflict in the Middle East, as tensions between Israel and her Bo and Israel and Humas continued to mount following a series of recent attacks in the region. Albanesi said the government wants to see a ceasefire in
Gaza and the release of hostages taken by Hummas. On the seventh of October, speaking at an event in Sydney on Thursday, the PM also said he wants to see quote a plan for peace and security in the Middle East where both Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace and security with prosperity. Albanesi reiterated calls from Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong for Australians not to travel to Lebanon and for those in Lebanon to return home as soon as possible.
Two Victorian men have been charged over an illegal betting scandal tied to the Australian of the Year awards. According to police, a federal public servant shared confidential information about the twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen award winners with an outside source. A thirty eight year old man placed bets on the ceremonies before receiving a thirteen thousand dollars payout. A thirty nine year old man has been charged with abusing his role in public office, while the
other man has been charged over encouraging criminal acts. Each face five years imprisonment.
Violent far right protests have erupted in England's Northwest after a stabbing attack on a children's dance class. A seventeen year old boy has been charged with murder and attempted murder after three children were killed and several others were injured. A mosque in Southport has been targeted during this escalating violence, which authorities have blamed on misinformation surrounding the attacker's identity.
Local police believe the unrest has been led by supporters of the English Defense League, a far right Islamophobic group.
In today's good news, Australian babies with pean art allergies will be included in a world first treatment initiative. The program aims to safely build patient's tolerance by gradually exposing them to small traces of peaan arts. Over two years. About three in every one hundred Australian children are a lerge to peanuts. The new government funded treatment will be
available in ten children's hospitals across Australia. Professor Kirsten Perrot from the National Allergy Center of Excellence says the program will help quote change the trajectory of peanut allergies so that quote more children can go to school without the risk of a life threatening reaction.
So Billy I wanted to start quite broad my first question what will Kamala Harris be looking for in her vice president.
I think there are two main things that experts are saying Harris will really want for her vice presidential pick, And obviously she knows a lot about this because she is currently the vices. She has a unique So the first will be for her vice presidential pick to be from a battleground state or also known as a swing state. And that is basically just any state in the US that could be won by either the Democratic or the Republican candidate each election. So if we look at history,
you know it's either been Democrat or Republican. It hasn't been safe. And there are states that we call safe states. For example, California is known as a safe state. They are a pretty solid Democratic.
State where Harris is from.
Yes, so at the national level they for a long time now have voted Democrat. But then there are also swing states where each election it really could go either way, either Republican or Democratic. So some of the key ones this year are Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania is a really key one, and Wisconsin. And so those are some of the states where Harris and Trump will be doing a lot of campaigning in the lead up to the election.
So that's the first thing that she will be looking for someone who is popular in one of those key swing states. The second thing that I've seen a lot of reporting on is that Harris might be looking for a vice president who can quote unquote balance is the word that a lot of reporting has been using to balance the voting paper. We know, if Kamala Harris becomes president, she would be the first Black American woman and the
first South Asian American to be elected president. And what a lot of commentators are saying is that to possibly appeal to more conservative voters. You know, there obviously has always been a big topic that we have never had a female president in the US, and a lot of commentators have said that the US wasn't ready for a woman in twenty sixteen. So again, what a lot of commentators are saying now is that to appeal to more conservative voters, Kamala Harris will possibly pick a white man
to again quote unquote balance that ticket. Another way that it can be interpreted is that there has been a lot of criticism from Trump, in particular calling Kamala Harris a radical and saying that she is way too left for the country. Obviously she disagrees with that, but she might consider picking a vice presidential candidate who is more moderate than her to appeal to swing voters, you know, people who aren't tied to a party and aren't yet sure which way they will vote.
Back to the fact that she was Joe Biden's vice president, still is Joe Biden's vice president. It's almost what she did for him. Yeah, he was a white man who was deemed to be this kind of moderate Democrat, and he brought on Kamala Harris, who was a black woman who appealed to again, that left voter base. And it's interesting now that she's doing exactly the same thing exactly for her VP. So on that topic, who are the strong contenders that might be in the running for VP here?
So I'd say that there are three main top contenders that are being thrown around, and all of them are no surprise men.
So let's go through each of those.
So the first one is Mark Kelly, who is an Arizona Senator. And remember Arizona is one of those key swing states that I mentioned before Tick there, yes, and so they were actually one of the key states that helped Biden win in twenty twenty. Now, a few things to know about Mark Kelly. Fun fact, he's actually a former astronaut for Nasal. He's been too space.
Well there you go, but it's not fun fact.
But I'll get to the politics. So he is particularly strong on campaigning for stricter gun control, and that comes after his wife, who is a fellow politician but who is now retired. Her name is Gabby Giffords. She survived an assassination attempt in twenty eleven. Now he is seen as a moderate, which, as we said before, is possibly what she could be looking for. He has a bit of a reputation for working across the aisle on policies,
so working with Republicans on some policies. He's also particularly strong on immigration. He believes that Democrats should adopt a tougher stance on border issues, which we know is one of the key issues in this election that Trump has been really attacking Democrats on. He's especially strong on this because Arizona has a border with Mexico.
Okay, so that's Mark Kelly. Who else are we looking at here?
The next one is Minnesota Governor Tim Waltz. He has been the governor of Minnesota since twenty nineteen. Now, Minnesota isn't really considered a swing state. In fact, the last Republican who win Minnesota was Richard Nixon in nineteen seventy two.
But importantly, it is somewhat considered to still be competitive and somewhat of a swing state because Trump is saying that he plans, In fact, he says that he promises to win Minnesota, and he has still been visiting the state for campaign, so there's definitely still some competition there. And one other thing to note about Waltz is that he has gained a lot of attention recently after he called Trump and JD. Vance quote unquote weird.
These are weird people on the other side. They want to take books away, they want to be in your exam room.
That's what it comes down to it.
Don't you get sugar coating this.
These are weird ideas.
I love politics.
Now, you might have heard this around because it's kind of this new strategy that a lot of Democrats are adopting of calling Trump and Vance weird, and it's really created this shift in how the Democrats are talking about them. So just to give you an example of this shift, So in twenty sixteen, Hillary Clinton, who was then the Democratic candidate, she used the word to play horrible a
lot to describe Trump. Obviously, we know that that didn't work, and so there's this shift to now just calling them simply weird.
It is almost Trumpian, like that's what Donald Trump does. He calls them one word and like fixates on that. And now the Democrats are using that in their own campaigning.
Yeah, and they're really using it a lot. A number of high profile Democrats have been adopting the language, including Kamala Harris. One other thing to note about Wolves is that he was the governor of Minnesota at the time of the murder of George Floyd by police in twenty twenty, and Wolls has been criticized quite a bit for his response to the protests that occurred after that murder, and there has been criticism that he didn't do enough to prevent the damage that followed.
It's really interesting, and so we've got these two men so far. Who is the third contender.
The third is the governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro. Now, Pennsylvania is one of the really, really important swing states. It is an absolute must win. When election day rolls around, you'll be hearing about Pennsylvania a lot. So Josh Shapiro. He rose to prominence when he beat his Republican opponent by a significant margin in twenty twenty two in the race for governor. I saw this so much when I
was researching this. He's often praised for overseeing a quick repair of a bridge that collapsed last year, and just generally he has really quite relatively strong approval ratings in Pennsylvania, which again is a must win for Harris this election. If Harris does pick Shapiro and then they go on to win in November, he would be the first Jewish vice president of the US. And I'll also add that he has voiced strong support for Israel in the war in Gaza.
Are there any other names being mentioned or is it just the three that you've spoken about?
No, there are so many other options. Also, this week we've had two high profile candidates dropping out. There are so many names going around in this podcast, so I won't go through them, but just two others to quickly mention as Kentucky governor and I Bishiah. Now Kentucky is actually a pretty safe Republican state, so the fact that he's a Democratic governor has always been seen as quite impressive and potentially something that Kamala Harris might be attracted to.
And then there's also Pete Boudagitch, who is currently the Secretary of Transportation under the Biden administration, so he has worked with Kamala Harris in that role. He's quite often seen as one of the most effective communicators from the Democratic Party.
He has been everywhere, like they have really wheeled him out in the last couple of days and he's been everywhere.
Ye, he's really doing the media rounds at the moment. If he is picked, he would be the first openly gay person to be nominated for vice president. Like I said, there's a whole list of other potential ones. I would say those are the five of the current front runners, and I'm sure, no matter what, we will likely be hearing those names come up as future Democratic presidential candidates in either twenty twenty eight or twenty thirty two.
I think that this is always a really interesting process. As you said, it identifies who the up and coming stars are and from here it's hard to tell, so it's good to kind of get that straight from the sows. When are we expecting to hear from Harris about who she'll pick.
We know it will be in the next few days. So Harris's campaign has told media outlets that her first rally with whoever the new vice presidential nominee will be will be next Tuesday. So she's planning to go to a rally with the vice presidential pick on Tuesday.
So it'll be quite soon, Okay, And just quickly before we go, Billy, the last time we did an episode on the US was just when Biden had dropped out. So much has happened since then. A day is like a year in US politics. Can you give us a sense of what else has happened with Kamala Harris's campaign since that last episode we did.
Yeah, I think at the time of that episode being recorded, it wasn't even certain yet if Kamala Harris would definitely be the Democratic nominee. Now it definitely is certain. She has definitely gained enough support and there's been this significant shift in you know, the Democratic Party really uniting and
getting around her. She has actually raised two hundred million dollars in the week since she became the Democratic presidential candidate, and that is more than Biden raised in the first three months of the year, So you compare one week to three months, that really gives you an idea of just this shift that we've seen. And she's also signed up one hundred and seventy thousand new volunteers for her campaign, so that's been quite positive for her. The campaign has, though,
as we have likely expected, it has become quite ugly. Yesterday, Trump questioned Kamala Harris's racial identity while speaking at a convention for black journalists. He basically said that she has only become a black person recently.
She was always of Indian heritage and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn't know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black, and now she wants to be known as black. So I don't know is she Indian or.
Is she black?
She has always.
Black college either one, but she obviously doesn't.
Just to be clear, Harris's mother was born in India and her father was born in Jamaica, and her official White House profile says she's the first Black American and the first South Asian American to be elected to the position of vice president.
And just on the topic of Donald Trump, what's the latest with him?
So Trump has continued his campaigning. He's obviously ramped up his attacks on Kamala Harris since she became the Democratic candidate, and as we just heard, he has started questioning her racial identity, which has been making a lot of headlines. The polls, though, they show that Trump is still ahead
in this race. So the latest New York Times poll shows that Trump leads Harris by one point, although she has tightened the gap with Trump compared to when Biden was the Democratic nominee, but Trump is still ahead.
Certainly one that we will be keeping a keen eye on and can't wait to see who Kamala Harris pixes her VP as we go through another twist and turn of this election cycle. Now, before we go, we just wanted to shout out all the wonderful episodes that we have covered this week on the Daily OS. So it's been quite an array of topics here. We've had a deep dive into tourism, but most importantly over tourism. Then
we had the latest on Hezbollah and Israel. We had another episode on Rex the Airline that has gone into voluntary administration. This week and yesterday we covered off on the government's response to the Disability Royal Commission, with Harry answering whether anything will change for Australians with disabilities. We will throw all of those links in today's show notes. Thank you for supporting the Daily Oas. We hope you have a great weekend and we'll be back again on Monday.
My name is Lily Madden and I'm a proud Arunda bungelung Caalgotin woman from Gadighl Country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.