‘CHEERS!’ Kamala Harris Cracks Open a Beer with Stephen Colbert

Vice President Kamala Harris leaned into the concept of winning political candidates being the one whom voters say they’d like to have a beer with, cracking open a cold Miller High Life with Stephen Colbert on his late-night show.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins introduced the clip from Tuesday’s episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, noting that it was part of a “media blitz” the Democratic nominee was doing — including appearances on The View, hit podcast Call Her Daddy.., and Howard Stern’s SiriusXM radio show — and now Harris was “cracking open a cold one” with Colbert.

In the clip, Colbert commented that some people were calling this a “vibes election,” and he agreed that elections “are won on vibes because one of the old saws is, they just want somebody they can have a beer with — so would you like to have a beer with me, so I can tell people what that’s like?”

As his studio audience cheered, Colbert pulled out two cans of Miller High Life, telling Harris that they had asked ahead of time what she liked “because I can’t just be giving a drink to the Vice President of the United States without asking.”

Harris said that the last time she had one, she was at a baseball game with her husband, Doug Emhoff.

“So, cheers!” said Colbert. “There you go.”

“Cheers!” Harris replied as they clinked the cans and then each took a sip.

“Taste like the beautiful city of Milwaukee,” said Colbert.

“The champagne of beers!” said Harris, quoting the Miller High Life slogan.

Collins jokingly apologized for not having any beer to share with her panel, and then asked what they thought about this and Harris’s other recent media hits.

Karen Finney, who advised Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, said the Harris campaign was making good moves to reach voters in the “very fractured media environment” we have now, including podcasts and social media platforms like Tik Tok — “because that’s where voters are and you have to be where the voters are.”

CNN chief media analyst Brian Stelter concurred, calling it “an all of the above strategy,” and added that it was “interesting” to see Harris drink after the last two candidates from 2020, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, were both teetotalers. “So, in a weird way, we’re back to the George W. Bush test about who you want to have a beer with.”

Collins then asked Alyssa Farah Griffin about Harris’ appearance on The View earlier that day.

Griffin noted that they really do say that “the road to the White House is through The View,” because “every president since George Bush has come on the show that’s gone on to be elected, including Donald Trump.”

The show, she continued, let candidates reach “a different audience,” going to more than 3 million households to an audience that “skews heavily toward women,” and those were women “who don’t necessarily follow politics day in and day out, but they want to know the key stories people are talking about — so it’s about reaching voters who maybe aren’t glued to every detail of this election.”

Griffin said she thought it was “brilliant” that Harris went on the Call Her Daddy podcast. “That’s 5 million downloads a week.”

“I think what they’re realizing is they have to flood the zone, and they’re going for broke at this point,” she concluded. “I think she should have deployed this strategy over a month ago, to be reaching more voters. It feels like it’s a little bit late, but I expect she’s going to keep doing it.”

Watch the clip above via CNN.