If they were to live in the same time period, perhaps you could catch Richard Nixon on The Joe Rogan Experience and Abraham Lincoln on Pod Save America. These days the Presidential candidate media circuit involves some newer names, as politicians turn to podcasts to reach a broader audience.
On Sunday, Vice President Kamala Harris appeared on the relationship advice and comedy podcast Call Her Daddy. Harris, the Democratic nominee in the coming Presidential Election, is set to continue her tour with appearances on CBS’ 60 Minutes and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, as well as The Howard Stern Show and The View.
Starting off the press frenzy with an appearance on Call Her Daddy— a podcast known for frank discussions about sex and relationships and not for its political punditry—might seem to be an unconventional choice but in reality it’s a calculated, or conscious, one.
Call Her Daddy’s empire
Hosted by millennial Alex Cooper, the show was Spotify’s second most popular podcast in 2023— with the top slot filled by Joe Rogan. Still, the Call Her Daddy podcast remains massively trendy, standing at number one on Apple podcasts and number five on Spotify. Cooper's podcast was the most listened to among women last year, per Variety.
“Clearly there is a well thought out strategy here for the Harris campaign,” Ashley Koning, assistant research professor and director at Rutgers' Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling, told Fortune. Cooper caters mostly to young women, which probably includes an audience of independent or undecided voters, she noted.
This swath is “likely to be a very big vote,” for Harris, said senior fellow at Brookings Elaine Kamarck. Former president Donald Trump’s “only hope of canceling that is to appeal to young men,” she added. Indeed, this summer, Trump made appearances on Logan Paul’s podcast as well as Theo Von’s, likely an attempt to garner such votes. While Call Her Daddy stands at number four in Edison Research’s Q2 ranking of this year’s podcasts, This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von is ranked number nine and Impaulsive with Logan Paul at 40.
In August, Cooper minted a multiyear reported $100 million deal with Sirius XM. President Scott Greenstein attributed Cooper’s 4 million followers to her “fearless, unfiltered approach.” Calling her fans the “Daddy Gang,” Cooper told Fortune in 2022 that her followers are simply on the roller coaster ride with her. “The whole time my goal was for people’s jaws to just drop, and it took off," she added.
Cooper’s deal signified something greater, the profitability and success of the podcast. The ascent of this relatively new media has “been coming, but this is obviously the year of its maturation, because presidential candidates are understanding that this is a way to reach important blocs of voters,” Kamarck, told Fortune.
However, Cooper tried to remain apolitical while she interviewed a politician. In the Harris interview intro, Cooper said she often strays from that genre to make her show “a place that everyone feels comfortable tuning in.” But given that women’s issues are the cornerstone of her podcast, she “couldn't see a world in which one of the main conversations in this election is women and I'm not a part of it.”
It’s a sharp pivot from her comments to the New York Times earlier this year, when she shut down the idea of a political figure on her podcast. “Go on CNN, go on Fox,” she said. “You want to talk about your sex life, [President] Joe [Biden]?”
Noting her “mixed audience when it comes to politics,” Cooper aimed not to change anyone’s affiliation and claimed to also welcome Harris challenger Trump to come on the show and speak about women’s rights.
In speaking to Call Her Daddy, Harris was able to center one of her strongest points: reproductive rights. Some podcast highlights included Harris’ response to Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, as she said it’s “not the 1950s anymore,” and her criticism of Trump’s attack on Roe v. Wade. “Democrats know that when you know abortion is an issue, abortion wins, and we've seen that in the past few election cycles,” said Koning. So “especially with something like Call Her Daddy, she can very easily highlight that.”
The social media press tour
Harris and Trump’s podcasting tour de force is “definitely a departure from what we've seen in the past,” noted Koning, though she added former President Barack Obama went on the iconically awkward comedy talk show Between Two Ferns back in the day to talk about health insurance. The tale of getting out the young vote is not all that fresh, this is just perhaps the newest front.
Amid a broad-scale disillusionment with traditional media, social media becomes king— ascending as a source of news especially among young adults. Politicians from both sides of the aisle are taking note of this distrust of old-guard news. They’re not gaining any points from it given the wide-spread distrust of the media and it’s easier to be asked softball questions than to be grilled by Anderson Cooper, anyway. Harris has been criticized or her lack of media appearances this cycle, having yet to hold a formal news conference since nabbing the candidacy. Trump, too, has a tight fist on his appearances, refusing to appear on 60 Minutes, unlike Harris.
In an ideal world both candidates would sit down with traditional news and talk about their policy, says Koning, “but that's not the way politics works anymore, for the past few election cycles in particular.”
“It's smart on both candidates to not only be going to the sources that are most important to these crucial voting blocs, but also to guard themselves from potential gaffes or criticism that they simply don't have to face,” she said.
The two candidates likely have different reasons for standing back, said Koning. Harris “has to walk a fine line” while differentiating herself from Biden and some of his administration’s policies. She’s also “newer to the national stage,” Koning added. Trump, on the other hand, has proven to be “somewhat of a loose cannon” when off-script and his team is likely managing that as well as rumors of a lack of mental acuity associated with aging, Koning said.
Though, Kamarck doesn’t see the turn to other mediums as an attempt to avoid difficult questions. Rather, politicians are trying to find an audience that “doesn’t depend on traditional media for their news sources.“ One does not necessarily come at the expense of the other. But she adds that Trump “never talks to traditional media,” and he “has changed the game.”
In an age where social media is central, “elections and campaigns have become sound bites and viral clips more than substance,” says Koning. The potential downside of this is severe. Koning called it a “whole era of superficiality” which prioritizes aesthetics and optics over meaningful public policy and discourse.
That’s not to say the race to virality is new to this election cycle. But as both sides see this as potentially a party destiny-determining election, neither are looking to play hard ball.
“There's no risk for these candidates anymore,” says Koning. “And then we don't get kind of a fair adjudication of them, because they are going into favorable environments for themselves.”
