Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "ELECTION DAY: SNL, MSG, OMG! An Autopsy of Two Campaigns" with Chas Licciardello

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"ELECTION DAY: SNL, MSG, OMG! An Autopsy of Two Campaigns" with Chas Licciardello · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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  G'day, humans, welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas.
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  It is election day, at least in some parts of the world.
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  I'm currently in London, England, which I know is the wrong place to be, really, for US
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  election.
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  But it's also very interesting.
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  I'm doing some podcasts over here.
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  I've got some fancy Suarez to go to.
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  But joining me from Australia is the man who knows more about US politics in Australia
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  than arguably anybody, or at least is able to articulate it with a twinkle in his eye
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  and a grin and some interesting perspectives.
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  Oh, and humans, don't forget to check out Magic Mind.
• 0:39
  You'll be doing us and yourself a favor.
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  You can find the link in the show description.
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  You've heard him here on the show before, Charles Lechardt, L.O., thanks for joining us
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  on this august of days.
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  Hello, Josh.
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  This is also not the place to be on American election day, but we're all good.
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  That's right.
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  I got about probably 80% of the way to Washington from Sydney.
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  So I'm doing pretty well.
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  I mean, you can practically swim the Atlantic, so I'm good.
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  What's your view from afar at the moment, what do you have to say to our American counterparts
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  today?
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  Well, first of all, I'm quite relaxed here.
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  You say this is especially uncomfortable conversation.
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  It's actually very comfortable for me.
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  I'm quite stretched out because everyone in the ABC is currently in America except for
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  me, the person who holds the American politics show.
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  So that works out quite well.
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  For people who haven't heard the last episode that you are on, and so I haven't bothered
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  to do an entire introduction of you right now.
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  But you have a television show called Planet America in Australia.
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  Did it ever come up that you might go to America as an aside to do it?
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  No, no, no.
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  And to be honest, I'm just making jokes about it.
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  There's been no point me being in America because the way I prepare is just by reading
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  the internet.
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  I could be an anti-the-cut.
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  It doesn't matter.
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  So there would be just a massive waste of taxpayer's money.
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  And just for once, maybe it says not worth that money.
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  Yeah, no, I mean, there is actually a point in a kernel of profundity and what you just
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  said, which is that it used to be the case that reporting was like, you'd go out to
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  the local bar and you do some hard reporting by talking to people and you'd find out
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  about local corruption and someone would know something about some local member who was
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  doing something wrong.
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  Now that everything's online, it is just like what stupid viral thing has caught everybody's
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  attention that is potentially going to swing 20,000 soccer mums in Pennsylvania to vote
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  the other way, which is sort of depressing, but also refreshing in the sense that you don't
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  have to rely on what I would characterize as the Thomas Friedman School of Reporting
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  where he goes to the cab driver.
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  He's 36 hours, yeah, talking to the cab driver and then pronounces what everybody on the
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  Arab street believes and summarizes a billion people's points of view on the basis of one
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  conversation.
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  So tell me, on the basis of your analysis from a far space man standing on planet Moon
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  Australia, looking back at the United States.
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  Where are we?
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  Yeah, look, I think that the more than any other election that I am aware of, including
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  the year 2000, which was, you know, a bit of a squeaker, I am in complete flux about
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  this one.
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  I think it's just so unknown, the analogy I've been drawing over and over again to anyone
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  who will listen is that I feel like all the things we're talking about are the top of
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  the iceberg and we're not going to know what's underwater until the results start to come
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  in.
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  It's just unheard of how close this is and what I'm referring to there is that yes, there
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  have been elections before, which have been 50, 50 elections like 2000, but in that case,
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  you can at least project slightly in your head, even if you're wrong, you can think
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  you're right because you know what the plane field is.
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  The plane field is Florida.
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  You knew that from the beginning in 2000, there was going to be one close state and it was
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  going to be Florida and that was the critical state.
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  In this case, we have seven states that could be the critical.
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  I mean, don't we kind of think that we know that about Pennsylvania?
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  Well, they say, if it comes down to a 50, 50 situation, then yes, Pennsylvania is likely
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  to be a tipping point state, although according to the five to eight for memory, it was only
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  a 23% chance that would be the tipping point state.
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  But that was the most likely out of the states.
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  But having said that, having said that, we are nervous going to be a landslide.
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  It really could.
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  All seven states go to one or the other, which is only a point either way, then the
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  electoral college is going to look like a comfortable win, a bigger win than in previous
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  the last two elections.
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  So it is interesting.
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  Yeah.
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  It's also interesting that Nate Silver, you know, previously who founded five, 38, was
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  saying that although it's really close, if you, if one candidate wins three or four
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  of the swing states, then it's likely that it's quite likely they could take all of them
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  because it will mean that the polling has been inaccurate in some way.
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  And even if they're only a half a percent further ahead in the, you know, then the polls
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  were picking up.
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  He gave it, I think it was a 40% chance that one candidate would take all seven swing
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  states, either of those candidates.
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  So if people, you know, if it ends up being an electoral college, quote, unquote, landslide,
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  it's going to be like, oh, the polls were wrong again.
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  And he's saying, well, actually, just get ahead of, just to get ahead of you, that won't
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  mean the polls were wrong.
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  It will, it will just mean that they were, you know, predictably, predictably close in
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  a, predictably inaccurate way.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  I was going to say five, 38, according to them, there's a 60% chance that one candidate is
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  going to get more than 300 electoral college votes, but which candidate we don't know.
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  So that's what I'm saying.
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  All the options are on the table here, which hasn't been the case in the past, where, like,
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  because there are so many states where it's essentially 50, 50, I mean, on the weekend,
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  we had a poll about Iowa, like where Harris was ahead in Iowa.
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  And now, now, if Harris is, now, I don't think there's a much chance of Harris-wing
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  Iowa, but if Harris did win Iowa, that would be a massive, a massive landslide.
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  So there is so much uncertainty, more uncertainty than I've ever seen before in American
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  election.
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  So the main thing that I'd like to focus with you on today is sort of how we've been
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  covering this and how the campaigns have been trying to frame this and how the media
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  has reported on this and kind of what the big stakes are, because any talk about the
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  horse race is going to become instantaneously out of date within 12 hours or so, but hopefully
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  this will still be useful for people to listen back to after the election anyway.
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  I mean, one thing that is forefront for me at the moment is that I, it's amazing that
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  it's so close.
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  B, what's interesting, what's been interesting to me watching the campaigns and watching
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  the media response and watching some of the campaign ads is that a lot of this has to
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  do with, like, who's weird and who's not?
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  Who's outside the mainstream and who's not?
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  Like, who cares about you and who doesn't?
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  It's like there are these parallel tracks where it depends what metric you're using.
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  If you're talking about policies, like traditional left versus right wing policies, then a lot
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  of the Trump stuff seems to be like, you know what?
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  It's like we are the normal people where the, you know, you listen to JD Vance talk and
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  it's like the left has gone crazy with all this woke stuff and, you know, like giving,
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  you know, sex change operations to illegal immigrants in prison is that shit crazy and
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  where they're sort of the party of fairly normal mainstream policies.
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  And it's probably true that if you just went down a checklist of policies that Americans
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  are just generally sent to right people who kind of sort of agree with most of the things
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  that, you know, Trump believes when it comes to tax cuts and not getting too entangled
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  in foreign wars and stuff.
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  But if you use the other metric, which is, I suppose, the Tim World's metric of like who
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  actually is just a normal person who believes in American democracy and in the institutions
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  that undergird it, then Kamala Harris wins the, who's outside the mainstream argument.
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  Like she and the Democratic Party, other party of the establishment, they are not counter
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  revolutionaries, they don't want to overthrow the system, they want a strength in it.
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  And so that, I guess that's sort of where I am.
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  I'm like, I think this election is a fascinating referendum on how voters will code what's
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  normal.
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  Like, you know, who is the one who's outside the mainstream and who's not?
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  Yeah, look, well, I would say to that, I mean, I think you're right, but what I would
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  say to that is that there are the conventional wisdom of two weeks, two weeks time is not
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  going to be visible for until we start getting some results because there actually are a lot
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  of potential, what I call them, pre-hine sites that we could talk about now where we go.
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  Like, for instance, this might end up being the abortion election.
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  We may, we may end up in, in two days time, go, oh my God, women turned out, especially
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  white women turned out in greater numbers than we could ever possibly imagine and swept
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  Kamala Harris to victory, which case, or people talk about in two weeks time will be abortion.
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  It could be the election where the Republicans finally made ground on the non-white voter.
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  And that might be all we talk about in two weeks, Donald Trump won because he finally,
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  he finally cracked open 10, 15% of the black vote extra than Republicans have ever done
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  before. And what we're saying is a realignment where the non-white working class is joining
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  the white working class as becoming a Republican consistency. That may be what we're talking
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  about in two weeks. We're just not going to know until we see those exit polls. Like, it's
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  right now, it's just too uncertain, but to address your point, I think what we have is
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  we have two candidates here who are particularly unideological, especially for recent times
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  in politics. Donald Trump has no ideology at all. He says what everything is going to
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  be popular, right? The guy doesn't believe in anything he says other than I don't like immigrants.
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  That's the only thing that I like tariffs. They're the only two things he believes in.
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  Everything else, he doesn't care. He'll just say whatever he needs to say to win an election.
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  So he is like a magnet for what is popular and what is invercomers normal. But the same
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  time, Kamala Harris is not ideological at all. There's a reason why she ran almost left
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  of Bernie Sanders five years ago. And now she's a tough talking prosecutor, you know,
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  being almost said to write she's going so far to lean over on some issues because I don't
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  think she has any core values either. I think she also is a politician. He'll say what she needs
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  to say to win. In many ways, I see her as a more modern version of Joe Biden, who was always like
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  that as well. Joe Biden, you give him, you give him a couple of months and he can, he can,
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  he can advocate for any position, depending on what he thinks is popular. He was always just
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  in the middle of the Democratic Party, wherever they were. And I think Kamala Harris is like that.
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  I don't get that from Kamala. I don't, yeah, I get, I read her a bit differently than you do.
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  I get more of a Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton vibe where yes, there's a kind of
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  pragmat, a surface pragmatism where she'll do whatever she has to to get elected. But there's
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  like a core set of quite progressive beliefs that she wants to enact. I mean, she's certainly not
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  as transactional and unideological as Donald Trump. And I think the concern about
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  what her ideology actually is is fueling a lot of the hand wringing on the right and on the
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  even on the center right about like, is she actually a Manchurian candidate who's going to get in
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  and do all of the things that she probably deep down thinks should be done, you know, like focus
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  a lot more on identity politics and make sure that traditionally disadvantaged communities
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  on the basis of their identity are given a leg up that could disadvantage working class white
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  men or something like that. But I mean, there's a, yeah, sorry jumping on it.
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  No, I was just saying, you may be right about that. You may be right about it. We'll find that.
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  If she becomes president, we'll know pretty quickly. I feel like the fact that she's been consistently
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  in her entire career so unwilling to actually speak about policy at any point in time. And when she
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  does talk about policy, she talks in soundbites, suggest to me that she doesn't actually believe
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  but having said that, I might be wrong. Having said that, but what I'm saying is that regardless
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  of what you believe, the way she is campaigning is she's campaigning to say what she needs to say.
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  And what that means is a liability, isn't it? I mean, that in itself leaves her open to the
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  accusation that she has no values and has no principles and has no, you know, it just says what
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  she needs to to get elected. Sure. I mean, that does leave her open to that, but I'm not
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  criticizing that because politicians have done that for as long as they've been politicians. And
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  it often works. So I'm not actually criticizing her. What I'm saying is to your point about
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  what's normal and who's normal and who's not, who's weird and who's not is what we've got is
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  we've got two politicians who are trying to be the middle ground. They're trying to be the normal,
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  right? But the difference is one of them is a white man, a white old man and he's trying to be
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  normal for a man. And she is a non-white, less old woman and she's trying to be normal for a woman.
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  And so what you've got is this super-gendered election where Donald Trump does represent the norm
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  for the group that he's going for absolutely represents them. He speaks for them, but they're not
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  the whole country. They are essentially men and color Harris is representing the norm for who she's
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  speaking for and they are essentially women. And we are going to have, I think, the most gendered
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  election possibly in American history as a result. So it's not going to be who's most normal.
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  It's going to be who turns out more of the side that they are normal for that determines this
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  election. I mean, you are that's a very good insight. It also though aligns itself with only one
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  of the two metrics of normality that I was just articulating, which is basically a policy one
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  because there's this other parallel track of normality, which is respect for American institutions
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  on which and on that track, you know, you don't have to be a woman, you don't even have to be
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  a lefty to find Donald Trump beyond the pale. And, you know, there are plenty of center-right
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  people, David Frums coming up on the podcast soon. You know, these very, you don't have to say
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  well, he's been on the show before I'd generate his house, Chaz. I mean, when you roll in the elite
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  circles that I do, a from is a mere bag of tell. You should be an American. There are people
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  like him who would never contemplate voting for the third Donald Trump because of what he
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  represents as being essentially a counter-revolutionary. And so normal is not in the lexicon of somebody
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  who behaves towards the military and towards elections and towards democratic institutions
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  the way Donald Trump does. Ezra Klein, I just want to quote, makes a really interesting point in
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  his op-ed in the New York Times yesterday, where he says, imagine telling yourself in 2012
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  that in three elections time, the following people would all endorse the same candidate. Barack
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  Obama, Dick Cheney, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Alberto Gonzalez, who if you don't remember him, was the
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  attorney general under George W. Bush and was incredibly right-wing. Barbara Lee, who's an
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  incredibly left-wing black female representative and Elizabeth Warren, you know, he says, and that
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  to me like really puts its finger on the fact that the Kamala Harris coalition is a sort of a popular
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  front that is not united by specific policy goals, but by a defense of American institutions.
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  And Trump's coalition, you know, when you think about it, that is, you know, Robert F. Kennedy,
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  Jr., JD Vance, Elon Musk, like these are very different people, but what they are are people who
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  think that American institutions have failed. And so this is less an election about Democrats versus
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  Republicans and more an election about guardians of the existing order versus counter-revolutionaries.
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  Who want a stage of revolution to take back control of institutions that they feel have been seized
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  by a social justice or left-wing revolution over the course of the past few decades, you know.
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  Yeah, I think that's a very intelligent observation. What I would say is that, I mean, obviously,
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  when I'm talking at the agenda split, it's not like 100% of men are voting for Trump and 100%
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  of women are voting for Kamala Harris. So these are, we're talking about subgroups of people here,
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  but and there is no doubt that there is a subgroup of people on this plane that you're talking
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  about, the democracy plane, like some of whom, and those who do want to protect institutions,
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  you're right, are going to vote for Kamala Harris and those who think the institutions should
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  burn are voting, are going to vote for Donald Trump. That's absolutely true. I just don't think
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  that those people represent a majority of voters. I think they are a subgroup of maybe
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  maybe five to 10 points on either side. And that's by the way, that's a lot of people. I'm not
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  dismissing that. I'm just saying that there is some people who care about that kind of stuff and
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  some people who don't. Surprisingly, back in 2022, if you looked at the exit poll in 2022, democracy
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  ended up being one of the, if not the main issue in the vote in 2022, which is the reason why
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  Democrats did so well, it wasn't abortion. There's a lot of people think if you look at the exit
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  poll and it was democracy. So there are, there are a number, enough voters out there to make a
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  difference along what you're talking about. And once again, there's one of those ones where we're
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  going to need the exit polls to see it remains to be saying if they're going to be the decisive
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  groups because we could, we could draw an outlet, we could draw different, uh, different vectors
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  all day. I could go through, I mean, we haven't talked about age, for instance, that's a, that's
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  a whole another vector. Like if, come, come on Harris could be the first Democrat to win old people
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  for decades. And that would be massive. And similarly, Donald Trump might win so many young
• 19:28
  men that the youth might not be the most democratic constituency, which, and which, or once again,
• 19:35
  for decades has been just lock them in. They're the younger going to vote for the Democrats by 20 or
• 19:40
  25 points. That might end up saying only 10 points for five points this time. And then, and then
• 19:44
  you've also got racial diversity as well, where you've got this phenomenon of, you know, Trump
• 19:50
  being increasingly popular among young Latino males and even a lot more popular among black
• 19:55
  males than he, than, uh, than Republicans previously have been. So there's something about his
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  machismo that I guess that, that also appeals. I mean, do you see it went?
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  Yeah. Sorry. Do you want to finish? Just one more quick thing. The one, the one thing I would say
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  though, the reason why I say that the democracy people are probably only five, 10% of each,
• 20:17
  of each side is because if you go through the people you listed of the Republicans who are supporting,
• 20:25
  supporting Harris for democracy reasons, and you look at the list of the, of the invercomers lefty
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  supporting Trump for, for revolutionary reasons, every single one of them has something in common.
• 20:37
  None of them have a big constituency of their own. David from does not have a big constituency.
• 20:42
  Liz Cheney does not have a big constituency on the Trump side. RFK does not have a big constituency.
• 20:48
  Tulsi Gabba does not have a big constituency. And so they exist. They exist in enough numbers to
• 20:54
  make a difference. But I think they are not going to be the bulk of the electorate. They're just
• 21:00
  cream on top, I think. I mean, that's true. But what's, what's incredible about that is that on
• 21:05
  the Trump side, those perspectives, to hear the rest of this conversation go to uncomfortable
• 21:10
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