As Kamala Harris narrowed down her choices for a running mate, Politico’s influential “Playbook” newsletter posed a timely question Tuesday morning: “Is Walzmentum real?” Later that day, Harris would officially pick Minnesota governor Tim Walz, who joined her that night in Philadelphia and gave a rousing speech before an enthusiastic crowd.

“Something had changed, and we had noticed it in the conversations we were having with folks,” says “Playbook” coauthor Eugene Daniels on this week’s episode of Inside the Hive. Walz became “the dark horse in this, and people were more interested in what he had to say,” Daniels adds. “And part of it came from his ability to go on MSNBC or CNN or whatever and message things that they had been trying to do for a long time.” While Democrats often spoke of Donald Trump or JD Vance “in terms of the danger to democracy,” Walz, he notes, “just said it was weird, that they’re weird. And, you know, that stuck with people.”

Daniels, who also serves as a Politico White House correspondent and is currently president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, has, along with a small group of journalists, been closely covering Harris for years. In recent weeks, he jokes, “we’ve been watching everyone kind of come in our sandbox.”

On this episode, Daniels also discusses the challenges Harris faced inside the Biden White House, her relationship with the news media, and her evolving communication style. He notes how Harris seemed to become more comfortable her second year in office, speaking off-the-cuff about issues like abortion rights following the Dobbs decision.

“The thing that has changed about her communication style is she’s just more [used] to being herself,” Daniels says. “She doesn’t care about the laugh. She is more comfortable making the case. This is a woman who’s a prosecutor. I think if people are trying to understand her, you have to understand that. Because Vice President Harris governing without kind of like someone to prosecute the case against, is a different Vice President Harris. And her team says that she is at her best when she has a case to prosecute or someone to prosecute against. So when abortion comes down and she becomes the lead person on reproductive access for not just the White House, but for Democrats, she now has someone to fight, right?”

Harris demonstrated she could effectively make the case against Trump in appearances on MSNBC and CNN just after Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance, as well as at the Essence Festival in New Orleans. Daniels recalls Democrats calling and texting him after, saying, “It’s weird to have a candidate who can do this. Like, this is why we need to move away from him.”