Former Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison is stepping back into the political arena with a new podcast as he — and his party — look to bounce back from losing the White House last year.
In a wide-ranging conversation with NBC News ahead of the launch of the podcast, Harrison framed himself as unshackled from the “straitjacket” of the sensitivities of leading the national party and argued that one way Democrats can rebuild trust with Americans is by embracing their more authentic selves.
“We need more voices that are anchored in the Democratic Party, because some of the podcasts that are out there are more often criticizing the Democratic Party instead of really promoting the assets and the leaders that we have,” he said.
The early episodes of “At Our Table” feature interviews with three well-known party leaders: Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn. But the roster of Harrison’s first guests also includes Hunter Biden — the son of President Joe Biden whose business dealings, drug addiction and legal woes were part of the political attacks on the former president. The then-president’s decision to pardon his son after he was found guilty on three felony gun charges also drew condemnation across the political spectrum.
Asked why he wanted to interview Biden, who many Democrats saw as a political vulnerability for the then-president and his party, Harrison told NBC News that he wanted to push back on the “caricature” of the ex-president’s son. The episode will come out next week.
“When I look at Hunter and the conversations I’ve had with him over the last four years, this guy is really bright, he’s smart, he’s very passionate about the things about service and helping people,” Harrison said. “But you know, I only got a chance to see it because of my interactions with him. When you ask most people, they have no clue. All they know is what [Georgia GOP Rep.] Marjorie Taylor Green would say about Hunter or or what either his political allies or his political opponents would say.”
“He’s been made into probably one of the biggest caricatures in politics today,” Harrison continued. “And I thought it’d be interesting for folks to get a real understanding of who Hunter Biden is, or what makes him tick.”
While Harrison said he was proud of his work leading the national party, he hopes that he will be “an even better post-chair than I was chair.”
“When President Carter passed away, you do a lot of reflecting, and the one thing that I learned from his years is that I think he saw himself as a better post-president than he was a president,” he said.
“And as I reflect on my time as chair, I hope I can be an even better post-chair than I was chair, and to really do the things that I’m very passionate about, which is to see a reemergence of a new South, to see the Democratic Party reinstitute its foothold in the southern states,” Harrison continued.
One way Harrison plans to work toward that goal is through jumpstarting the efforts of his Dirt Road Democrats PAC, his political group that still retains the fundraising list that powered his 2020 Senate bid, which set fundraising records at the time.
Loyalty to Biden
The decision to host Hunter Biden on one of his inaugural podcast episodes speaks to the loyalty Harrison continues to show toward the former president. In an excerpt from Hunter Biden’s interview, he tells Harrison that Democrats “lost the [2024] election because we did not remain loyal to the leader of the party.”
Asked whether he agreed with Biden’s son, Harrison criticized Democrats for being so quick to kick the then-president to the curb after his widely panned debate performance last June, comparing them to how Republicans continued to rally around President Donald Trump even when he was convicted on felony charges.
“If the waters get a little choppy some of the folks in our party are the fastest to abandon ship, get off in a hurry and then torch the damn ship when they get off,” Harrison said.
“Not to say that it’s always the right thing that Republicans have done but sometimes Democrats need to sit back and pause and think about the long-term ramifications of that early abandonment because I can tell you, it did not sit well with the base of the party, particularly Black voters,” Harrison continued. “I remember a rally in Georgia right after the debate and people were pissed off. These are middle-aged, older Black men and women who were so upset the party was almost shivving Joe Biden, stabbing him in the back.”
Harrison didn’t directly say whether he agreed with Hunter Biden that Democrats lost “because” of the lack of loyalty to Biden. But as he repeatedly praised former Vice President Kamala Harris both as a candidate (comparing her to basketball megastar Michael Jordan) and a loyal vice president, he also gave a passionate defense of Biden’s legacy amid the decision by many top Democrats to call for him to step aside.
“We saw probably the greatest legislative president we had since LBJ, and that’s just objectively speaking,” Harrison said, adding that Biden was more focused on “rebuilding the Democratic Party” than any president in a “long time.”
He added: “There was a reason that we needed to be loyal to the president. Sure, was he old? Hell yeah, he was old, and he knew he was old like we all knew he was old. But you don’t elect a president because they are young or they look good in a suit or what have you. You elect them to get shit done.”
The state of the party
Harrison is one of the many Democratic politicians who have started podcasts in the wake of the 2024 election, at a time when the party’s image has dropped to a historic low and when Democrats have lamented their party’s inability to gain traction in the podcast sphere, particularly young men.
Harrison told NBC News that he believes the party needs more voices in new media spaces “anchored in the Democratic Party because some of the podcasts that are out there are more often criticizing the Democratic Party instead of really promoting the assets and the leaders we have.”
But he also admitted that the Democratic Party can be overly reliant on “talking points that aren’t grounded in any emotion,” a strategy that can lead to voters feeling disconnected from them.
He connected that discussion to his “frustration” with Harris’ campaign’s media strategy, framing the decision not to have her sit for more interviews in the early weeks of her presidential candidacy as “political malpractice” and lamenting the decision to put “handcuffs” on Walz after he joined the ticket.
“We are so scared of our shadows sometimes in our party that we lose that, we get into our own heads, we get so academic and cerebral,” Harrison said, arguing Democrats should strive to level with voters and be “real.”
“That makes you more relatable in spaces that you may not have been relatable to, right? Because people see a side of you that they normally don’t get an opportunity to see. They see your passion, they see the things that give you joy, they see the things that frustrate you. And that’s really important, that you aren’t just some caricature.”
