Manufacturing Key to Growing Economy: Political Analyst Ameshia Cross

Well, Amisha Cross, it's so good to see you here at the DNC. Tell me, what are you seeing happening here today? Electricity. It has been exhilarating. I have been making the rounds. I've seen so many diverse groups, younger voters. There are a lot of people who were the TikTok generation, so to speak, Gen Z. Many of them are actually on the floor. Before I came up here, I was actually on the floor while they were doing the count, and you could not hear anything because of the sheer amount of excitement that was in the room. I think that we've seen voters from all across the country be enthused by this race, which, quite frankly, we weren't able to say a little over a month ago at this point. You're seeing people engage. You're seeing folks want to get out and vote. You're seeing them call their friends, tell them how they can vote. You're seeing voter registration numbers that we have not seen since 2008. This is a very different time. I think a lot of people are excited by it. Let's talk about 2008 for a moment. Do you think that the Harris-Waltz ticket could, in terms of results, perhaps surpass 2008 Obama? What do you think? I think it absolutely has the ability to. One, because social media and digital engagement today is not anywhere where it was then. A lot of digital engagement didn't even exist in 2008. I think that because you have more people that can be reached in this younger population, Gen Z is the largest voting bloc we have. We have more people who are engaged in this. The American population, over 54 percent of them are women, and women are going to be the name in the game when it comes to this election. What we've seen from Kamala Harris and what she recently released in terms of her economic plan is one that includes child tax credits. It's one that includes a path to home ownership for individuals who are in the middle class and have been fighting to reach the American dream for so long. It includes things like making sure that the prescription drugs that people readily need for things like diabetes, heart conditions, high blood pressure, things that occur regularly in the American population, that they will be able to afford those things and not have to worry about maybe not being able to pay their utility bill or to pay their housing costs just to be able to make enough to take care of that life-saving medication. These are things that American voters are taking with them to the polls in November, and in many cases as early as September, because early voting starts a little bit before the actual election. I've been hearing a lot about America re-manufacturing, like recreating the manufacturing base that has been gutted over the last however many decades. Do you see that as a possible path with this ticket? I absolutely do. I like that you asked that question. Earlier today, I went to an event where Sean Payne of the UAW, the United Auto Workers, was speaking. My grandfather, his path to the middle class, his path to leaving Jim Crow-era Mississippi, was to move to Detroit and then Chicago to work in the auto industry. I think that when we talk about bringing back jobs, when we talk about bringing back manufacturing, he also worked in steel mills. These are the types of things that help to build towards that process. The American population is looking towards pathways, i.e. the types of jobs that you can get straight out of high school without having to go into college-level debt, without having to take out student loans. A lot of that is going to fall in the manufacturing industry. Getting back to a nation that has built things with their hands, a nation that understands that the American machine is innovation, and that that innovation starts right here. What sort of role do you see bipartisanship playing with this ticket? We can't make it without bipartisanship. As much as Kamala Harris was very strategic in how she chose Tim Walz as her vice president, somebody who has been known to reach across the aisle, someone who built those relationships when he was in Congress himself, I think that it's going to be extremely important to recognize that you don't get any of this done without Congress as well. And recognizing that, just like the infrastructure package that was a part of the Biden-Harris administration, we had a very tough congressional year, Democrats did, and they were still able to get that passed. These are American goals, and I think that we are bigger than our bipartisanship, and we can come together on those issues.