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"The ads that defined 2020." · Pod Save America

0:20
Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
0:22
Speaker 2: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
0:22
Speaker 1: Today on the pod, the crossover event of the year
0:27
Speaker 1: that none of you asked for. Campaign Experts React and
0:31
Speaker 1: Pod Save America together in one podcast.
0:35
Speaker 2: Look, two hugely successful franchises. I was resistant to being
0:40
Speaker 2: dragged down by this Pod Save America thing, but I
0:43
Speaker 2: agreed to do it.
0:44
Speaker 1: It's fine. YouTube biggest star of the year from YouTube.
0:49
Speaker 1: YouTube breakout star, Dan Pfeiffer. That's what I call you.
0:51
Speaker 2: I am recording this from my own hype house somewhere
0:54
Speaker 2: in the valley.
0:56
Speaker 1: So... You're all going to hear a version of Campaign
1:00
Speaker 1: Experts React, which is Dan's hit show on YouTube. You
1:04
Speaker 1: can watch it there, youtube.com slash Cricut Media. Dan, what's
1:07
Speaker 1: in store for pod listeners for this episode?
1:11
Speaker 2: This is our election end special where we're looking at
1:15
Speaker 2: the ads from the Biden and Trump campaigns that best
1:18
Speaker 2: define their messages and strategies. And we look at them
1:21
Speaker 2: from the perspective of what we know now. knowing what
1:24
Speaker 2: we know about how much closer the race was, where
1:25
Speaker 2: the polling might have been wrong, to both assess whether
1:28
Speaker 2: they were more effective than we thought, less effective, and
1:31
Speaker 2: what role they might have played. And we tried to
1:33
Speaker 2: take it as an opportunity to have a broader conversation
1:36
Speaker 2: about the role of advertising and messaging in this very
1:40
Speaker 2: highly polarized environment in which we operate.
1:43
Speaker 1: So if you would like to watch the Trump section
1:46
Speaker 1: of this episode, we're going to do some Trump ads first.
1:49
Speaker 1: It is already up on YouTube. If you'd like to
1:51
Speaker 1: watch the Biden section of this episode, we talk about
1:53
Speaker 1: the Biden ads. The video version will be up on
1:55
Speaker 1: YouTube on Tuesday, December 8th. So you can, of course,
1:59
Speaker 1: watch the entire series in all its glory at youtube.com
2:02
Speaker 1: slash crooked media. But first, before we dive in, just
2:05
Speaker 1: one quick housekeeping note. The Crooked store is freshly stocked
2:08
Speaker 1: with new holiday merch from all your favorite Crooked pods.
2:12
Speaker 1: Make sure to check it out this weekend for Black
2:13
Speaker 1: Friday and Cyber Monday deals. Head to crooked.com slash store
2:17
Speaker 1: now to shop. Dan, I should tell you that I
2:19
Speaker 1: noticed a few people on Twitter have been they have
2:21
Speaker 1: their it's not great Dan merch and they're crossing out
2:25
Speaker 1: the not.
2:26
Speaker 2: It's very important to do it with tape, because if
2:29
Speaker 2: you if you market permanently, you want to give yourself
2:31
Speaker 2: the opportunity to revert.
2:33
Speaker 1: Things are definitely not going to be great again. Right.
2:36
Speaker 2: Like you want to be like you don't want to.
2:37
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess maybe it's better for business to
2:38
Speaker 2: have to buy a second shirt. But generally for your
2:40
Speaker 2: own life, you want to be able to rip that
2:41
Speaker 2: tape off and get right back to pessimism. That opportunity
2:44
Speaker 2: is there for you.
2:46
Speaker 1: Without further ado, here's the YouTube sensation, Campaign Experts React.
2:52
Speaker 1: I just read what's written for me.
3:00
Speaker 2: John Favreau, welcome to Campaign Experts React. The campaign is over,
3:04
Speaker 2: but like Trump, we can't let it go and we
3:06
Speaker 2: are still here.
3:08
Speaker 1: Highlight of my life.
3:10
Speaker 2: Yes. As I told you, this was going to be
3:12
Speaker 2: similar in audience and influence to your Insta Live with
3:15
Speaker 2: Kendall Jenner. So just be prepared for that.
3:19
Speaker 1: Perfect.
3:21
Speaker 2: The purpose of this episode is, this is our campaign
3:24
Speaker 2: and review episode where we're going to look at the
3:26
Speaker 2: best ads from the Biden and Trump sides that best
3:30
Speaker 2: personified their strategies and message and reflect on how that
3:33
Speaker 2: worked given what we know about how the election went.
3:36
Speaker 2: But before we get into that, I want to ask
3:37
Speaker 2: you about How the campaign results, the much closer than
3:42
Speaker 2: expected race in particular, influences your view of the importance
3:48
Speaker 2: of paid advertising in campaigns?
3:50
Speaker 1: I don't know. Because in general, I am trying to,
3:56
Speaker 1: because the polls were so shitty for this election, and
4:01
Speaker 1: because we only have exit poll data, which is also shitty,
4:05
Speaker 1: I have been reluctant to offer confident takes about what happened.
4:11
Speaker 1: I do have a lot of questions, which I feel
4:13
Speaker 1: like I'll be asking throughout this episode. But, you know,
4:17
Speaker 1: on one hand, in an election where Joe Biden's lead
4:22
Speaker 1: in the closest battleground states was tens of thousands of votes. And,
4:28
Speaker 1: you know, if you take the three states that made
4:30
Speaker 1: him president, it's basically like, you know, he won them
4:33
Speaker 1: by 50,000 votes, right? So in that sense, everything mattered.
4:38
Speaker 1: And then paid advertising, of course mattered. On the other hand,
4:42
Speaker 1: in a high turnout election where everyone was paying incredibly
4:48
Speaker 1: close attention to the news and to political news about
4:52
Speaker 1: the election, I wonder how much ads had an impact
4:57
Speaker 1: if most people were making their decisions based on the
4:59
Speaker 1: news that they were paying such close attention to.
5:03
Speaker 2: We had our old friend, Obama strategist and resident hack
5:06
Speaker 2: on tap David Axelrod in this series a few months ago.
5:10
Speaker 2: And he made a point that in his experience, and
5:12
Speaker 2: this is coming from the perspective of someone who was
5:14
Speaker 2: a political ad maker for decades, that the importance of
5:17
Speaker 2: political ads is inversely proportional to the amount of press
5:21
Speaker 2: attention that a campaign gets. So in a congressional race
5:25
Speaker 2: where both candidates have low name ID, it gets a
5:26
Speaker 2: little press coverage, the ads are very influential. It's maybe
5:28
Speaker 2: the only way in which voters ever learn anything of
5:31
Speaker 2: substance about the candidate or their opponent. in a presidential race,
5:35
Speaker 2: they matter, but it's much more on the margins. And
5:37
Speaker 2: what matters more is the larger conversation that is happening
5:41
Speaker 2: in the free media and in this day and age
5:42
Speaker 2: in social media. And I think that's probably even more
5:46
Speaker 2: true in this race, which was the most highly engaged,
5:48
Speaker 2: most highly covered race in American history. I mean, we basically,
5:53
Speaker 2: politics has become a national conversation for four years under
5:57
Speaker 2: the Trump era, which it never had before. But like
6:00
Speaker 2: you said, everything matters. And I think If you look
6:05
Speaker 2: at the fact that Joe Biden started actually underwater with
6:09
Speaker 2: his favorability, I recognize we're operating with bad polls, but
6:12
Speaker 2: that's our baseline, right? Operating within that baseline. And he
6:14
Speaker 2: improved over the course of time and was able to
6:17
Speaker 2: stop the Trump campaign from demonizing him. His huge ad
6:21
Speaker 2: and research advantage probably played some significant role in that,
6:24
Speaker 2: given the disparity in press coverage between Biden and Trump.
6:27
Speaker 2: The place where I have real questions is the down ballots,
6:30
Speaker 2: particularly the Senate races, where Democrats had massive resource advantage
6:34
Speaker 2: and all their money was on the campaign side, which
6:36
Speaker 2: means that they were running more ads than the Republicans
6:39
Speaker 2: because by law, television stations have to charge campaigns the
6:44
Speaker 2: lowest available rate and they can gouge the shit out
6:46
Speaker 2: of super PACs. And so Republicans were spending similar amounts
6:49
Speaker 2: of money, but getting much fewer ads, yet that seemed
6:51
Speaker 2: to matter zero. And I think that raises real questions
6:55
Speaker 2: about where we spend our money when we have resource
6:58
Speaker 2: advantage and recognizing, of course, that in this campaign, There
7:01
Speaker 2: was very limited on the ground organizing, but were there
7:05
Speaker 2: better ways to spend that money that would have had
7:07
Speaker 2: more impact? And then the other question is, and this
7:10
Speaker 2: is why these are somewhat unanswerable, is maybe it wasn't
7:14
Speaker 2: the fact of the TV ads, but maybe it's what
7:16
Speaker 2: the TV ads were about or the digital ads were about.
7:19
Speaker 2: Was it the wrong message? Because if all of the
7:21
Speaker 2: polling was off, you were giving poor guidance about what
7:25
Speaker 2: voters wanted to hear. And so I think that's a
7:27
Speaker 2: theme we're going to come through throughout all of these
7:29
Speaker 2: ads is, Maybe our prior analysis of what we thought
7:34
Speaker 2: worked and didn't is incorrect because it was based on
7:37
Speaker 2: incorrect information. So the first ad we're going to look
7:41
Speaker 2: at is a positive spot from the Trump campaign.
7:43
Speaker 3: In the race for a vaccine, the finish line is approaching,
7:48
Speaker 3: safety protocols in place, and the greatest economy the world
7:52
Speaker 3: has ever seen coming back to life. But Joe Biden
7:55
Speaker 3: wants to change that. I would shut it down. Why
7:59
Speaker 3: would we ever let Biden kill countless American businesses, jobs,
8:03
Speaker 3: and our economic future when President Trump's great American comeback
8:08
Speaker 3: is now underway?
8:10
Speaker 2: I'm Donald J. Trump, and I approve this message. John,
8:13
Speaker 2: what do you think of this ad?
8:15
Speaker 1: So this is one of the ads that, in retrospect,
8:19
Speaker 1: I wonder if it was more effective than I originally thought.
8:24
Speaker 1: I will say this about this particular Trump ad and
8:28
Speaker 1: most Trump ads. The gap between the crazy shit that
8:32
Speaker 1: Trump says on the campaign trail and tweets every day
8:35
Speaker 1: and his advertising was quite large. His ads were created
8:41
Speaker 1: and produced by your typical Republican strategist who knows that
8:45
Speaker 1: you need an actual message. Trump did not really have
8:48
Speaker 1: a message. But looking back on that ad, I wonder
8:53
Speaker 1: if it appealed to a segment of people who ended
8:57
Speaker 1: up voting for Trump, who had lockdown fatigue or pandemic fatigue.
9:04
Speaker 1: And because maybe the pandemic didn't affect them directly, they
9:08
Speaker 1: cared more about the economy than they did the pandemic.
9:12
Speaker 1: And now, again, I think the question is, did that
9:16
Speaker 1: sway anyone? Or did that just appeal to people who
9:20
Speaker 1: were already going to vote for Trump because they didn't
9:22
Speaker 1: give a shit about the virus, which when you looked at, again,
9:27
Speaker 1: the exit polls, the limited data we have, like, if
9:30
Speaker 1: you really cared about the pandemic, you voted for Biden.
9:32
Speaker 1: If not, you voted for Trump. That is too simplistic.
9:35
Speaker 1: But that is generally, it generally seems like that is
9:38
Speaker 1: what happened.
9:40
Speaker 2: When I saw this ad the first time, I thought
9:42
Speaker 2: it was probably one of, if not the most effective
9:46
Speaker 2: ad the Trump campaign ran. But it is effective in
9:49
Speaker 2: a different way than I thought. Because I thought that
9:54
Speaker 2: there was this giant elephant in the room throughout the
9:55
Speaker 2: campaign that the Trump campaign never talked about COVID. It's
9:58
Speaker 2: the single biggest issue in America, whether you are a
10:00
Speaker 2: afraid of it or you're deeply afraid of people being
10:02
Speaker 2: too afraid of it, you can't afford it. It's on
10:04
Speaker 2: the news. It's all anyone talks about. And the Trump
10:06
Speaker 2: campaign just never discussed it throughout the summer. And then
10:10
Speaker 2: in their sort of post-campaign shakeup advertising shift, they started
10:14
Speaker 2: talking about COVID. And I thought that was smart and
10:17
Speaker 2: talking about vaccine smart. And there's You are correct. I
10:20
Speaker 2: think this is an ad made by an average Republican
10:24
Speaker 2: ad consultant. There's nothing ingenious about it. It's pretty cookie cutter.
10:27
Speaker 2: But compared to the ads that were done under Brad Parscale,
10:31
Speaker 2: which were just Sean Hannity fever dreams, were insane, this
10:35
Speaker 2: one I think is pretty good. But I was very,
10:37
Speaker 2: very dismissive the first time around of the attack on
10:40
Speaker 2: Biden for saying, shut it down, because of all of
10:42
Speaker 2: this polling I saw that said that people were much
10:46
Speaker 2: more concerned about opening up too soon than staying closed
10:50
Speaker 2: for too long. And I think that polling was clearly wrong.
10:54
Speaker 2: If the polling was oversampling college educated white voters, then
10:58
Speaker 2: you were oversampling people who care the most about COVID
11:02
Speaker 2: or the most concerned about it. And I think this
11:04
Speaker 2: ad probably is more effective than we thought. It is
11:07
Speaker 2: a permission structure ad. It is trying to get people
11:11
Speaker 2: who they believe want to support Trump to give them
11:13
Speaker 2: some fig leaf to hang on to to do it.
11:16
Speaker 2: And I think the other thing about given the turnout
11:18
Speaker 2: in this election being so gigantically high on both sides,
11:22
Speaker 2: that the persuasion that we talked about throughout this series
11:24
Speaker 2: was mostly between can you get these people who were
11:27
Speaker 2: skeptical of Trump to vote for Biden or for Trump?
11:30
Speaker 2: I think this is what we were really looking at
11:31
Speaker 2: is persuasion between voting and not voting. I don't know
11:34
Speaker 2: whether this shifted a person out from Biden's column to
11:36
Speaker 2: Trump's column, but I think it probably shifted some people
11:39
Speaker 2: who were maybe not going to vote for Trump to
11:42
Speaker 2: do vote because it gave them, for the first time,
11:44
Speaker 2: he gave them a reason to do that.
11:46
Speaker 1: Again, also like the message of this ad was very
11:49
Speaker 1: different than Trump's message on the coronavirus. Trump's message on
11:54
Speaker 1: COVID is COVID's not real. You can't really get sick.
11:58
Speaker 1: It's going to go away on its own. Here's some
12:01
Speaker 1: of my snake oil, your hydrochloroquine and your bleach and
12:05
Speaker 1: all this kind of shit. Everything will be fine. Like
12:07
Speaker 1: his message was extreme and crazy.
12:10
Speaker 4: Right.
12:11
Speaker 1: Joe Biden's message sort of occupied the middle, which was,
12:15
Speaker 1: you know, we need to take precautions now. And we
12:19
Speaker 1: need to defeat this virus and we can defeat this virus.
12:22
Speaker 1: And if we take sort of common sense steps to
12:25
Speaker 1: protect ourselves, then we can both defeat the virus and
12:28
Speaker 1: fix the economy.
12:29
Speaker 4: Right.
12:30
Speaker 1: But what this ad does is it makes Trump's message
12:33
Speaker 1: seem like the sort of moderate middle message, which is
12:36
Speaker 1: like the vaccine's coming. We want a vaccine. We're coming
12:39
Speaker 1: out of this and we can't lock everything down now
12:43
Speaker 1: because we're so close and the economy is coming back.
12:46
Speaker 1: And Joe Biden wants, wants everything to shut down completely,
12:49
Speaker 1: which is not really Joe Biden's message. But it's interesting
12:51
Speaker 1: that the message of this ad is much more like
12:54
Speaker 1: the Trump people tried to occupy the middle ground on
12:57
Speaker 1: the virus with this ad, which is not what Trump
13:00
Speaker 1: himself occupied throughout the entire campaign. And Biden's message was
13:04
Speaker 1: much more of the middle ground throughout the entire campaign.
13:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's important not to throw too much
13:09
Speaker 2: weight behind the influence of this ad because the Trump
13:11
Speaker 2: campaign didn't have a ton of money. They weren't running
13:14
Speaker 2: these ads at a giant volume. And it really was
13:17
Speaker 2: spitting in the ocean compared to the conversation on all
13:20
Speaker 2: the other things that Trump did. If you saw this ad,
13:22
Speaker 2: you probably saw this ad the same time that you
13:24
Speaker 2: were reading a gazillion stories or seeing tweets or Facebook posts, whatever,
13:27
Speaker 2: about Trump getting COVID, acting like a lunatic, not wearing
13:30
Speaker 2: a mask, all of those things. But just as one
13:34
Speaker 2: piece of political content, I think it was probably one
13:38
Speaker 2: of the more effective things they did and effective in
13:40
Speaker 2: ways that we did not assume based on the incorrect
13:42
Speaker 2: polling we had. The next ad we're going to look
13:44
Speaker 2: at is an appeal to Black voters from the Trump campaign.
13:47
Speaker 1: I was a big Obama supporter.
13:49
Speaker 5: It's okay to be Obama and a Trump supporter because
13:52
Speaker 5: President Trump literally created the best job market and economy
13:55
Speaker 5: for black Americans and Americans of all races. Joe Biden's
13:59
Speaker 5: America was mass incarcerating black men.
14:02
Speaker 1: President Trump set them free.
14:04
Speaker 5: President Trump believes in rehabilitation, not just incarceration. He wants
14:09
Speaker 5: everyone in America to have the opportunity towards success. That's
14:12
Speaker 5: the type of president that we need.
14:14
Speaker 2: I'm Donald J. Trump, and I approve this message. I'm
14:17
Speaker 2: very curious about how you think about this ad now
14:20
Speaker 2: knowing Trump's performance among non-white voters in the most recent election.
14:26
Speaker 1: I still think that this was another permission structure ad, right?
14:30
Speaker 1: This is, I mean, he literally, this was Jack Brewer,
14:32
Speaker 1: he's a former NFL player, literally says in the ad,
14:36
Speaker 1: it's okay to be an Obama Trump supporter. And he
14:40
Speaker 1: is a black man saying this. I think the analysis
14:42
Speaker 1: at the time was that a lot of these ads were,
14:45
Speaker 1: were not necessarily about winning over black voters, but about
14:50
Speaker 1: letting white voters know that their choice for Trump wasn't
14:53
Speaker 1: a racist choice because there are black Americans supporting Donald Trump.
14:58
Speaker 1: And so if that's the case, you can't be racist
15:01
Speaker 1: for supporting Donald Trump, and it's okay to vote for
15:03
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. That was the analysis then. I still wonder
15:05
Speaker 1: if that analysis is correct, and it may be, but
15:08
Speaker 1: some of the results give us an early indication that
15:11
Speaker 1: Trump did a lot better with Latinos than Among black voters,
15:15
Speaker 1: he didn't do any better among black women, but he
15:18
Speaker 1: did do slightly better among black men than he did
15:23
Speaker 1: in 2016. So I do wonder if ads like this,
15:27
Speaker 1: and again, this is one ad, but this was their,
15:30
Speaker 1: the Republican convention play, right? Like they had a lot
15:33
Speaker 1: of speakers that delivered this message at the Republican convention
15:37
Speaker 1: for four days straight, testimonials, all kinds of stuff. And
15:40
Speaker 1: I do, you know, it was sort of a big
15:43
Speaker 1: play for them.
15:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm very torn on this one as well. I
15:46
Speaker 2: think it's very easy to overread the small shift in
15:51
Speaker 2: the black vote as some gigantic seismic thing. It's something
15:54
Speaker 2: that the Democratic Party has to look very serious about.
15:55
Speaker 2: We've got to analyze. We've got to understand why it
15:57
Speaker 2: happened because I think it has real long-term consequences that
16:01
Speaker 2: we have to look at. In the context of this ad,
16:05
Speaker 2: I still believe this is primarily about convincing white people
16:09
Speaker 2: that it's okay to vote for Trump and not be
16:11
Speaker 2: a racist.
16:12
Speaker 1: I think I do too.
16:14
Speaker 2: You've seen that. We've seen that in focus groups. You
16:16
Speaker 2: saw it in voters that you talked to in the wilderness.
16:19
Speaker 2: This is a hang-up for a lot of people. Some
16:21
Speaker 2: of the most sentimental moments of Trump's presidency where he
16:23
Speaker 2: did the most poorly in the polling were the moments
16:25
Speaker 2: where he polarized things on racial issues after Charlottesville and
16:29
Speaker 2: the neo-Nazi fine people comment, his behavior after the George
16:33
Speaker 2: Floyd protests throughout the summer during the reckoning over structural
16:38
Speaker 2: racism were some of his worst moments. And So I
16:41
Speaker 2: think this is going to fix that at some level.
16:45
Speaker 2: So I don't want to overread into it too much,
16:48
Speaker 2: but the Trump campaign had a clear– they were pretty
16:52
Speaker 2: explicit about the strategy. And I think we mostly thought
16:54
Speaker 2: it was bullshit that if they could just shave a
16:55
Speaker 2: few points off of Biden's margin among African-American voters, then
16:58
Speaker 2: they could flip some of these states. They actually came
17:01
Speaker 2: pretty close to doing it, certainly in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania less so.
17:05
Speaker 2: But the gains they made with non-white voters in most cases,
17:10
Speaker 2: other than Florida and Texas, were massively overrun by Trump's
17:14
Speaker 2: losses among suburban voters. So it didn't end up mattering
17:18
Speaker 2: in the end. We should be very clear that the
17:21
Speaker 2: overwhelming strategy of Trump and the Republican Party was to
17:23
Speaker 2: keep black people from voting. That was voter suppression. There
17:27
Speaker 2: was massive amounts of misinformation spent at Black and Latino voters,
17:31
Speaker 2: only some of which we're beginning to understand now. And
17:34
Speaker 2: so I don't think we want to give them a
17:35
Speaker 2: ton of credit for this because their real strategy for
17:38
Speaker 2: winning was not to improve the margins between Biden and Trump,
17:42
Speaker 2: but to reduce the raw turnout among voters of color.
17:45
Speaker 2: So this one ad or this slight improvement here or
17:48
Speaker 2: there or what happened to Miami-Dade or the Rio Grande
17:51
Speaker 2: Valley does not somehow absolve them of a racist white
17:55
Speaker 2: supremacist political strategy to win an election, if that makes sense.
17:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, it does. even if we stipulate that Trump may
18:03
Speaker 1: have done slightly better and it, and it definitely seems
18:06
Speaker 1: like at most it's slightly, slightly better among black men.
18:10
Speaker 1: We don't know what message moved black men towards Trump or,
18:15
Speaker 1: or just why they voted for Trump. Our old boss,
18:18
Speaker 1: Barack Obama said in his Atlantic interview, uh, when he
18:21
Speaker 1: was talking about his new book that he had talked
18:23
Speaker 1: to an organizer who was canvassing in a, uh, majority
18:27
Speaker 1: black Philadelphia neighborhood. And, uh, when he was talking to voters,
18:32
Speaker 1: they were talking about QAnon conspiracies about Joe Biden. Nothing
18:36
Speaker 1: to do with the message of that ad. So again,
18:39
Speaker 1: we just, it's hard to tell exactly what worked, but
18:43
Speaker 1: I do think the original analysis that it's about giving
18:45
Speaker 1: a permission structure to white people to vote for Trump
18:48
Speaker 1: is probably still on the mark.
18:58
Speaker 2: The next ad we're going to look at is an
19:00
Speaker 2: attack on defund the police from the Trump campaign.
19:04
Speaker 4: You have reached the 911 police emergency line due to
19:07
Speaker 4: defunding of the police department. We're sorry, but no one
19:10
Speaker 4: is here to take your call. If you're calling to
19:13
Speaker 4: report a rape, please press one. To report a murder,
19:17
Speaker 4: press 2. To report a home invasion, press 3. For
19:21
Speaker 4: all other crimes, leave your name and number, and someone
19:24
Speaker 4: will get back to you. Our estimated wait time is
19:26
Speaker 4: currently 5 days.
19:28
Speaker 3: Goodbye.
19:29
Speaker 2: I'm Donald J. Trump, and I approve this message.
19:32
Speaker 1: So, looking back at this ad.
19:36
Speaker 1: I think it was probably effective in turning people against
19:40
Speaker 1: the idea of defunding the police I still don't believe
19:44
Speaker 1: it was effective at connecting the policy position of defunding
19:49
Speaker 1: the police to something that Joe Biden would do as president.
19:54
Speaker 1: You know, there's images in that ad of, you know,
19:57
Speaker 1: Joe Biden's America, and there were riots and all that
19:59
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. And we said at the time, like,
20:02
Speaker 1: that's not Joe Biden's America, that's Donald Trump's America. And
20:06
Speaker 1: Joe Biden made it clear that numerous times that he
20:09
Speaker 1: was definitely not for defunding the police. In fact, sometimes
20:11
Speaker 1: he said Donald Trump is closer to defunding the police
20:14
Speaker 1: because he's starving state and local governments of funding and
20:17
Speaker 1: they're laying off police officers. So I don't know that
20:20
Speaker 1: it was effective in tying it to Joe Biden, but
20:21
Speaker 1: I do think if you did not know what the
20:26
Speaker 1: actual policy proposals around shifting funding from police departments to,
20:32
Speaker 1: you know, substance abuse counselors, mental health counselors, and all that,
20:36
Speaker 1: if you didn't know the actual policy and you just
20:39
Speaker 1: heard that ad and you think that defund the police
20:41
Speaker 1: means that if you fucking call 911, no one's going
20:44
Speaker 1: to be there, then, you know, it could have been
20:47
Speaker 1: effective at sort of turning people against that policy.
20:50
Speaker 2: We looked at this ad earlier this summer when it
20:52
Speaker 2: came out and I was pretty dismissive of and thought
20:56
Speaker 2: it was, you have to make believable attacks. And I
20:59
Speaker 2: don't think you can convince anyone that Joe Biden is
21:01
Speaker 2: going to let people get killed or raped or just
21:05
Speaker 2: commit crimes. That is not a credible attack on him.
21:08
Speaker 2: I still hold to that view. I think this ad,
21:12
Speaker 2: if the goal was to demonize Joe Biden as someone
21:15
Speaker 2: who would defund the police or do those things, the
21:17
Speaker 2: ad failed at that.
21:18
Speaker 3: Agree.
21:18
Speaker 1: Agree.
21:19
Speaker 2: What I think, there are two elements of it, though,
21:21
Speaker 2: that I think now appear more successful in hindsight. And
21:24
Speaker 2: I do want to be clear that I think the
21:25
Speaker 2: people who were in the Trump campaign stumbled ass backwards
21:28
Speaker 2: into this. I don't think they really knew what they
21:29
Speaker 2: were doing. I think they were definitely trying to demonize
21:31
Speaker 2: Joe Biden. Trump's Twitter account makes that very clear that
21:34
Speaker 2: that was what the strategy was here. But raising the
21:38
Speaker 2: salience of law and order issues helped Republicans. It absolutely did.
21:43
Speaker 2: And I think Trump was more successful in doing that
21:45
Speaker 2: than we gave him credit for. Not long after the
21:48
Speaker 2: unrest in Kenosha, the New York Times had these polls
21:50
Speaker 2: come out. And it showed that Law and order in
21:52
Speaker 2: crime had risen near the top of voters' concerns in
21:55
Speaker 2: those states, but they did not trust Donald Trump more
21:58
Speaker 2: than Joe Biden on that issue. So I think it
22:00
Speaker 2: was basically a tie. But I think because the polling
22:02
Speaker 2: was oversampling the wrong voters and undersampling Trump voters, we
22:06
Speaker 2: didn't get the right picture of that. And so this
22:09
Speaker 2: ad did have real success in changing the issue environment.
22:12
Speaker 2: And so therefore, the other part of it, I think
22:14
Speaker 2: we need to explore more, but I think you can
22:17
Speaker 2: at least... credibly suggest that it is not unrelated to
22:22
Speaker 2: the sky-high turnout among Trump's base. Whenever you and I
22:25
Speaker 2: would have conversations about these ads over text or Slack
22:28
Speaker 2: or in person, actually, I take that back. We have
22:31
Speaker 2: not been in person in nine months, so it was
22:33
Speaker 2: not in person, but over in... In whatever virtual forum
22:37
Speaker 2: that we are continuing our friendship, the sort of takeaway
22:44
Speaker 2: from this is this ad is terrible unless it's designed
22:47
Speaker 2: to turn out all of these unregistered white non-college voters
22:53
Speaker 2: in the Midwest that Nate Cohen and Dave Ross are
22:56
Speaker 2: worried about.
22:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, turns out that's what happened.
22:57
Speaker 5: Guess what?
22:57
Speaker 1: Turns out that's what happened.
22:59
Speaker 2: And whether this ad– not this specific ad, but this
23:02
Speaker 2: strategy– Did that or not, we do not have precise
23:05
Speaker 2: info in, but it is certainly something worth exploring. And
23:08
Speaker 2: it bodes very poorly for politics going forward, because if
23:12
Speaker 2: very explicitly racist appeals designed to scare the living shit
23:15
Speaker 2: out of white people turn out to be incredibly effective
23:17
Speaker 2: ways to turn out Republican voters, we're going to see
23:20
Speaker 2: more of that, not less, now that Donald Trump is
23:22
Speaker 2: headed off the scene.
23:23
Speaker 1: Well, and I think the next question, of course, is,
23:26
Speaker 1: so what do Democrats do about that? And I think
23:30
Speaker 1: what happened in this election is you had a group
23:34
Speaker 1: of activists and some politicians call for defunding the police.
23:38
Speaker 1: You had a bunch of other Democrats believing that that
23:41
Speaker 1: is a very unpopular position. And so they did not
23:45
Speaker 1: talk about it, ran away from it, did not contend
23:47
Speaker 1: with it. But I think in this information environment, if
23:53
Speaker 1: there is someone talking about defunding the police, the Republicans
23:57
Speaker 1: are going to use it in ads like this. It's
23:59
Speaker 1: going to be part of the national conversation. And much
24:02
Speaker 1: like with Abolish ICE back in 2018, I think we
24:05
Speaker 1: said this then, you can't really ignore these controversial policy
24:10
Speaker 1: proposals and pretend that they're just going to go away
24:13
Speaker 1: since we know the Republicans are going to use them.
24:15
Speaker 1: You have to find a way to take them on.
24:17
Speaker 1: Like there was a poll that that Data for Progress
24:19
Speaker 1: did when defunding the police first became a slogan where
24:23
Speaker 1: they asked, would you support a new first responder agency
24:26
Speaker 1: that addresses issues of addiction and mental health so that
24:28
Speaker 1: when there's an addiction issue or mental health issue, police
24:31
Speaker 1: aren't showing up with guns, right? That was the question
24:33
Speaker 1: they asked. Overwhelming support for that. 70% of people supported that, right?
24:38
Speaker 1: And again, polls are a little off here and there,
24:40
Speaker 1: but when you get 70%, that's a huge number. But
24:45
Speaker 1: most people don't know that that's, one policy proposal around
24:49
Speaker 1: defunding the police. If you just hear the words defund
24:51
Speaker 1: the police, like, I don't know how you can be
24:54
Speaker 1: blamed for thinking it means that the police are just
24:57
Speaker 1: not going to be there at all. Or the people
25:00
Speaker 1: just want to get rid of police ever, even though
25:01
Speaker 1: the actual policy position that a lot of advocates are
25:04
Speaker 1: talking about are just diverting funds so that police aren't
25:07
Speaker 1: doing the work of people who, you know, doing the
25:11
Speaker 1: work of mental health counselors and substance abuse experts. And
25:14
Speaker 1: so I do think that Democrats have to figure out
25:16
Speaker 1: a way to respond to ads like these as opposed
25:20
Speaker 1: to just ignore them and hope that the issue will
25:22
Speaker 1: go away?
25:23
Speaker 2: I think that's part of it. But I think the
25:25
Speaker 2: thing that I take away from this election, based on
25:29
Speaker 2: all the imprecise and incorrect data that we have, but
25:31
Speaker 2: one of the things that I'm really sort of wrestling
25:33
Speaker 2: with in my head and thinking about is one thing
25:35
Speaker 2: Republicans did very, very effectively in this campaign was they
25:39
Speaker 2: changed the conversation to more favorable issue territory for themselves. So, yes,
25:45
Speaker 2: we need to, you know, like we can't, you can't
25:47
Speaker 2: sit on an edict that says only use poll tested language.
25:50
Speaker 2: We should not try to in any way, shape or
25:53
Speaker 2: form stem the ambitions of activists who want to push
25:55
Speaker 2: the conversation forward. It would be the wrong thing to do.
25:59
Speaker 1: But also it's the wrong thing to do. But also
26:01
Speaker 1: we can't is what I'm trying to say. Even if
26:04
Speaker 1: you want to, you cannot. You can't do it.
26:07
Speaker 2: We have to understand that in our head and be
26:09
Speaker 2: able to push back on it in the right way.
26:11
Speaker 2: And I don't think you can ignore it. But what
26:13
Speaker 2: is the democratic version of the law and order strategy
26:18
Speaker 2: of Republicans? What emotional issue can we tap into that
26:23
Speaker 2: moves the conversation into a place that is more friendly
26:25
Speaker 2: to us? Can you run a ruthlessly effective campaign that
26:30
Speaker 2: is as emotional and taps into people's emotions on economic issues?
26:35
Speaker 2: as Republicans do on race and culture and law and order?
26:38
Speaker 2: That is a big question I think we have to explore,
26:41
Speaker 2: because given how this election played out, we can never
26:44
Speaker 2: assume low Republican turnout again. We have to both persuade
26:49
Speaker 2: and mobilize. And given the constraints of the Senate map
26:54
Speaker 2: and the Electoral College, we don't really have a choice there.
26:57
Speaker 1: So the conventional strategy, if the Republicans raise an issue
27:00
Speaker 1: that's favorable to them, is like you said, how do
27:03
Speaker 1: we change the conversation so it's on territory that's favorable
27:06
Speaker 1: to us. In this election, that was easier than most
27:10
Speaker 1: elections because we were in the middle of a fucking pandemic.
27:14
Speaker 1: And so when Trump tried to make law and order
27:19
Speaker 1: issues the major part of the conversation, I thought it
27:23
Speaker 1: would be different this time around because we're in the
27:26
Speaker 1: middle of a pandemic. People are dying. Obviously, people trust
27:30
Speaker 1: Joe Biden more in the pandemic. People trust Democrats more
27:33
Speaker 1: in healthcare issues in general. So as the news naturally
27:36
Speaker 1: moved to that topic, I thought that the salience of
27:39
Speaker 1: law and order issues would sort of recede. But maybe
27:45
Speaker 1: that didn't happen.
27:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that the real huge thing is, and
27:49
Speaker 2: there are a number of theories about why the polling
27:51
Speaker 2: goes wrong. We don't have to get into here, but
27:54
Speaker 2: we were clearly operating under the wrong impression about the
27:57
Speaker 2: political salience of the pandemic. It was much more of
28:01
Speaker 2: a 50-50 issue or one that just became an issue
28:04
Speaker 2: of political identity. One day, we're going to have a vaccine.
28:07
Speaker 2: We're going to go back to life. We can see
28:08
Speaker 2: our friends and family again. What do Democrats do that
28:13
Speaker 2: moves it back to the things we care about? They
28:16
Speaker 2: really get to that question of identity because I think
28:18
Speaker 2: identity is the most important signifier in politics, more important
28:21
Speaker 2: than policy, more important than ideology. We have to understand
28:26
Speaker 2: it in that way. Identity is not just race and gender.
28:29
Speaker 1: No, it's partisan identity. I mean, we may learn from
28:32
Speaker 1: this election that we've always known that polarization and partisan
28:36
Speaker 1: identity were one of some of the strongest forces in
28:38
Speaker 1: politics in this entire country, and it has been for
28:40
Speaker 1: a while. Polarization and partisan identity may have even been
28:44
Speaker 1: stronger than a global pandemic and terrible recession. It may
28:50
Speaker 1: have been a greater indicator of how you're voting, what
28:53
Speaker 1: your partisan identity is, and where you stand on Donald Trump.
28:56
Speaker 1: That may have been more important than how you felt
28:59
Speaker 1: about the pandemic, or it may have dictated how you
29:01
Speaker 1: looked at the pandemic, which was another, right? Like perhaps
29:04
Speaker 1: people's views of the pandemic and how those views connected
29:07
Speaker 1: to politics didn't actually change with the severity of the pandemic.
29:11
Speaker 1: Perhaps like if you were a person who liked Trump
29:14
Speaker 1: or voted for Trump, you saw the entire pandemic unfold
29:18
Speaker 1: through a different lens than if you were someone who
29:20
Speaker 1: hated Donald Trump. That could be what we end up
29:23
Speaker 1: finding out.
29:25
Speaker 2: This is a pretty depressing finding when you think about
29:28
Speaker 2: how we tackle even bigger challenges like climate change.
29:30
Speaker 1: Well, and it's depressing in what you just said, which
29:33
Speaker 1: is how do Democrats find issues that are more related
29:36
Speaker 1: to identity, particularly around economics, that might help us in
29:40
Speaker 1: the future if Republicans try to demagogue race and law
29:43
Speaker 1: and order issues.
29:44
Speaker 2: The next ad we're going to look at is a
29:46
Speaker 2: positive spot from the Biden campaign.
29:55
Speaker 6: I started this campaign saying we're in the battle for
29:58
Speaker 6: the soul of the nation. I believe that even more
30:01
Speaker 6: deeply today.
30:03
Speaker 3: Who we are.
30:04
Speaker 6: What we stand for. And maybe most importantly, who we
30:08
Speaker 6: are going to be.
30:09
Speaker 1: It's all at stake.
30:11
Speaker 6: Characters on the ballot. The character of the country. And
30:15
Speaker 6: this is our opportunity to leave the dark, angry politics
30:18
Speaker 6: of the past four years behind us. To choose hope
30:21
Speaker 6: over fear. Unity over division. Science over fiction. I believe
30:27
Speaker 6: it's time to unite the country. come together as a nation,
30:31
Speaker 6: but I can't do it without you. So I'm asking
30:33
Speaker 6: for your vote. We need to remember this is the
30:36
Speaker 6: United States of America, and there's never been anything we've
30:40
Speaker 6: been unable to do when we've done it together. I'm
30:45
Speaker 6: Joe Biden, and I approve this message.
30:48
Speaker 1: Here's my question on this ad. I wonder if this
30:54
Speaker 1: ad and this message were the absolute right message to
30:59
Speaker 1: beat Donald Trump, but perhaps the wrong message to sweep
31:04
Speaker 1: in a Democratic majority down ballot. Because we talk about
31:09
Speaker 1: ads as permission structures all the time. I wonder if
31:13
Speaker 1: this ad was offering a permission structure for independents, Republican-leaning independents,
31:19
Speaker 1: even some Republicans, saying, you know what? This election is
31:23
Speaker 1: about character. It's about Donald Trump's character. It's about dark,
31:27
Speaker 1: angry politics that Donald Trump represent. And you can vote
31:32
Speaker 1: for Joe Biden to get rid of that and still
31:35
Speaker 1: maintain your own partisan identity, perhaps by voting for Republicans
31:41
Speaker 1: down ballot. And I don't know. I do not know
31:45
Speaker 1: the answer to that question. That could be wrong, but
31:48
Speaker 1: it's one of the answers I'll be looking for in
31:51
Speaker 1: the months to come.
31:53
Speaker 2: I mean, it is true that Joe Biden over-reformed his party.
31:57
Speaker 2: He did better than Senate. In most cases, it's not
32:00
Speaker 2: exactly the same. And just to be fair, it's not
32:02
Speaker 2: apples to apples because there were some third-party candidates in
32:04
Speaker 2: Senate races that did better than third-party candidates at the
32:09
Speaker 2: presidential level. So there were some people who probably voted
32:11
Speaker 2: Biden and then the libertarian third-party candidate in other states.
32:14
Speaker 2: But there was still a historically low level of ticket splitting,
32:18
Speaker 2: at least between Senate candidates and Biden and congressional candidates
32:22
Speaker 2: and Biden and Trump. And I think there might have
32:25
Speaker 2: been more when you got to your state Senate and
32:27
Speaker 2: state legislative candidates, because some of those candidates in some
32:31
Speaker 2: of the state, like Texas, North Carolina, that we thought
32:33
Speaker 2: would be very close, the margins were greater than the
32:36
Speaker 2: Biden-Trump margins. I mean, this is definitely the right message
32:39
Speaker 2: for Biden. When Biden did his very first ad announcing
32:44
Speaker 2: he was running for president. This was his message. And
32:47
Speaker 2: people like you and I, who are professional political observers,
32:52
Speaker 2: we hate Republicans with the passion of a thousand suns.
32:55
Speaker 2: I did not love this message when it came out, right?
32:58
Speaker 2: And Biden was ultimately right about this. The context changed,
33:01
Speaker 2: but he was right all along. This was, he was
33:04
Speaker 2: where the country was, or at least enough of the
33:06
Speaker 2: country to win. It's where it was authentic to him.
33:09
Speaker 2: And It worked. And I think the other part of
33:12
Speaker 2: this ad that I think is very important to think
33:14
Speaker 2: about is at the beginning of the general election, one
33:18
Speaker 2: of the biggest concerns that a lot of Democrats had
33:20
Speaker 2: was about the ability of Trump, the right-wing media, the
33:23
Speaker 2: Republicans to paint Biden as someone who was not up
33:27
Speaker 2: to the task of being president. There were all these
33:29
Speaker 2: doctored videos circulating. This had become a message of some
33:33
Speaker 2: people on the far left during the primary. And research
33:38
Speaker 2: showed as I understand it from the Biden campaign, that
33:40
Speaker 2: the best way to combat that was just let people
33:43
Speaker 2: see Biden speaking. And this ad was one of his
33:45
Speaker 2: closing argument ads. It's one of the ones they ran
33:47
Speaker 2: at nationally and at big football games and big events
33:50
Speaker 2: at the end. And I think it was quite effective
33:52
Speaker 2: in that. So I think message was good, message worked,
33:56
Speaker 2: and it served a strategic purpose. It was very important
33:59
Speaker 2: to some set of voters. They clearly needed to persuade
34:01
Speaker 2: at the end. And he won.
34:02
Speaker 3: So, you know.
34:03
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, you know, you said we're political professionals
34:06
Speaker 1: who hate Republican politicians, and we do. But we've also
34:09
Speaker 1: seen focus groups and polling data for a decade now
34:15
Speaker 1: where people in the country, a vast majority of people
34:19
Speaker 1: in this country, want unity. They want politicians to come together.
34:23
Speaker 1: They want bipartisanship. And this is like the conundrum that
34:27
Speaker 1: we face right now. You and I know that that
34:30
Speaker 1: is bullshit and not going to happen because the Republican
34:32
Speaker 1: Party is not going to let it happen. Mitch McConnell
34:37
Speaker 1: and the Republicans are getting ready to gum up the works,
34:40
Speaker 1: prevent Joe Biden from doing anything, gridlock all the way.
34:44
Speaker 1: And yet that never changes voters' feelings, especially the median voter,
34:49
Speaker 1: swing voters' feelings. from their feelings of like wanting politicians
34:53
Speaker 1: to work together, wanting unity in this country. It works
34:57
Speaker 1: as an ad quite effectively. It works as a message
35:00
Speaker 1: quite effectively from Joe Biden. It worked quite effectively for
35:02
Speaker 1: Barack Obama for two terms. I think the challenge is
35:07
Speaker 1: you have a country where voters want both parties to
35:09
Speaker 1: work together. You have one party that's willing to do that.
35:12
Speaker 1: And you have another party that's not willing to do
35:15
Speaker 1: that and knows that if they obstruct All the time,
35:20
Speaker 1: then they will cause the other party to fail.
35:24
Speaker 2: This is going to be the challenge for Biden is
35:29
Speaker 2: to do two things once he assumes office. One is
35:32
Speaker 2: he's going to have to make it clear that healing
35:34
Speaker 2: the soul of the country is not the same thing
35:37
Speaker 2: as healing Washington, D.C. You can help– when American people
35:41
Speaker 2: want unity, they obviously want bipartisanship. They would like it
35:44
Speaker 2: if Washington, D.C. worked better. But they also want to
35:47
Speaker 2: be able to go to Thanksgiving and not get in
35:48
Speaker 2: a scrimmy match with their uncle. They also want to
35:51
Speaker 2: not have to go on Facebook and see that their
35:52
Speaker 2: dentist is a member of QAnon. They want a more
35:55
Speaker 2: unified country and they want to feel better about being American.
35:58
Speaker 2: That's not just getting Mitch McConnell to do better things
36:01
Speaker 2: than Mitch McConnell was.
36:02
Speaker 1: Maybe you can heal the soul of the country. You're
36:04
Speaker 1: not going to heal the soul of Mitch McConnell.
36:06
Speaker 2: For one reason.
36:07
Speaker 4: No soul.
36:07
Speaker 1: No soul.
36:07
Speaker 2: That's right.
36:09
Speaker 1: Set you up for that.
36:11
Speaker 2: But the other part is he's going to have to
36:13
Speaker 2: make clear, and this is something that I think we
36:14
Speaker 2: missed the boat on in the early days of the
36:16
Speaker 2: Obama administration, is bipartisanship is a two-way street. Joe Biden
36:20
Speaker 2: should get caught trying.
36:21
Speaker 1: Yes.
36:22
Speaker 2: But ultimately, it's up to Mitch McConnell. And so if
36:24
Speaker 2: he chooses not to reach out to Joe Biden's outstretched
36:28
Speaker 2: hand to work together on things like COVID relief, healthcare,
36:31
Speaker 2: other things, that's on Mitch McConnell. And then it's incumbent
36:34
Speaker 2: upon Democrats to make Republicans pay a political price for
36:36
Speaker 2: doing that. And that's a very, very important thing. Joe
36:39
Speaker 2: Biden cannot make Mitch McConnell do the right thing for
36:42
Speaker 2: the country. Only Mitch McConnell can do that. But Joe
36:44
Speaker 2: Biden and Democrats can make Mitch McConnell pay a political price,
36:47
Speaker 2: or at least his incumbent senators in states Joe Biden won,
36:50
Speaker 2: pay a political price for not doing The next ad
37:01
Speaker 2: we're going to look at is an economic message from
37:03
Speaker 2: the Biden campaign.
37:04
Speaker 1: When you walked.
37:05
Speaker 7: In to that mill, you had a good wage. You
37:08
Speaker 7: had good benefits. You were able to take care of
37:10
Speaker 7: your family. I worked 47 years in a steel mill.
37:14
Speaker 7: Trump said he was going to save the steel industry
37:15
Speaker 7: and the auto workers. But in April this year, my
37:18
Speaker 7: steel mill closed. He said, elect me and you'll see
37:22
Speaker 7: the best days yet.
37:23
Speaker 3: And all I'm.
37:23
Speaker 1: Seeing is the worst days. This is his economy.
37:26
Speaker 2: This is his problem right now. And he keeps telling
37:29
Speaker 2: how great it is.
37:31
Speaker 7: We lost 1,300 good-paying jobs.
37:33
Speaker 1: I lost my job.
37:35
Speaker 7: That was on his watch.
37:36
Speaker 2: Joe Biden is what American manufacturers need.
37:39
Speaker 5: Joe grew up in the 90s.
37:40
Speaker 2: He comes from a family that are hardworking Americans, union people.
37:44
Speaker 7: He knows what manufacturing jobs are, and he's going to
37:47
Speaker 7: be the one that brings them back and make them stronger.
37:50
Speaker 7: He's got a plan.
37:50
Speaker 1: He's done it before.
37:52
Speaker 2: He comes from a blue collar background.
37:54
Speaker 3: He is one of us.
37:56
Speaker 2: Joe is one of us.
37:57
Speaker 7: You can debate him all you want, but you can't
37:59
Speaker 7: take away his character.
38:04
Speaker 2: What do you think?
38:05
Speaker 1: I thought it was a great ad. I thought it
38:06
Speaker 1: was a great message. It is your traditional economically populist
38:11
Speaker 1: message from a Democratic politician running for office that we
38:14
Speaker 1: have seen for many years now. The question I have
38:17
Speaker 1: about this is, so, you know, the polling that's now
38:23
Speaker 1: bad showed that Joe Biden was doing better than Hillary
38:27
Speaker 1: Clinton among non-college educated white voters. It turns out from
38:31
Speaker 1: the results that he did not do that much better
38:34
Speaker 1: than if at all, in some places than Hillary Clinton
38:37
Speaker 1: among white non-college voters. But in certain counties, because we
38:42
Speaker 1: do have county level results, even though we don't have
38:44
Speaker 1: reliable exit polls yet, in certain counties that are made
38:47
Speaker 1: up predominantly of non-college educated white voters, particularly in Pennsylvania,
38:53
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin, in Michigan, and especially in Pennsylvania, it does
38:56
Speaker 1: appear that Joe Biden at least didn't do worse and
39:00
Speaker 1: held enough of those voters to to put him over
39:03
Speaker 1: the top and the margins, of course, were very, very thin.
39:06
Speaker 1: And as we were saying earlier, like politics now is
39:10
Speaker 1: so much about identity. And that ad towards the end
39:15
Speaker 1: there was about identity when that guy said, he comes
39:17
Speaker 1: from a blue collar background, he's one of us. That
39:20
Speaker 1: was the message of that ad, right? That Joe Biden
39:23
Speaker 1: is not sort of the, whether you believe a QAnon conspiracy,
39:28
Speaker 1: whether you believe the dementia stuff, whether you believe that
39:30
Speaker 1: he's been in Washington too long, whether you believe he's
39:33
Speaker 1: leading Antifa, whatever the attack against Joe Biden is, here's
39:37
Speaker 1: a guy who's just like sort of a working class
39:40
Speaker 1: guy from the Midwest who's validating Joe Biden as a
39:45
Speaker 1: working class hero. He's one of us. And I think
39:47
Speaker 1: that's probably very effective.
39:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's right. You're right. It is an
39:53
Speaker 2: identity ad. It is saying that you're hearing all these
39:56
Speaker 2: things about Democrats, right? They're the party of the elites.
39:59
Speaker 2: They're the party of the rich. They're the party of Hollywood.
40:01
Speaker 2: They're the party of black people and brown people and
40:03
Speaker 2: the most base, morally offensive, racist appeals that have been
40:07
Speaker 2: really at the center of the Republican messaging about Democrats
40:09
Speaker 2: going back to Reagan, right? And before that, it's Nixon
40:12
Speaker 2: and on. And this is an ad that is defending
40:16
Speaker 2: Joe Biden against a vision of Democrats that easily fits
40:21
Speaker 2: within the strategy of people like Lee Atwater and Karl
40:23
Speaker 2: Roof and others. And I think Cooley was effective. The
40:26
Speaker 2: tiny shifts in places like Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin
40:31
Speaker 2: show that it worked. And it arrested the slide, as
40:35
Speaker 2: far as we know, with Democrats and white working class voters.
40:40
Speaker 2: The question over the long term for Democrats is, if
40:43
Speaker 2: Joe Biden can't outperform Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama with
40:46
Speaker 2: these voters... what Democrat can, right? Here you have someone
40:51
Speaker 2: who is a older white guy from Scranton of humble beginnings. Like,
40:57
Speaker 2: what does that look like over the long term? It's
40:58
Speaker 2: a very interesting question, but this, like, they had a
41:01
Speaker 2: very clear strategy and it worked. And one thing I'd
41:04
Speaker 2: say about all of these Biden's ads is I have
41:06
Speaker 2: watched hours of Biden ads over the course of this
41:09
Speaker 2: campaign for this series and otherwise, and there is a,
41:12
Speaker 2: just a straight line of message and and strategy, and
41:17
Speaker 2: really even aesthetics through all of them about who their
41:20
Speaker 2: targets were. And their targets in most of their paid
41:22
Speaker 2: advertising looked a lot like that guy who was testifying
41:25
Speaker 2: to Joe Biden's blue-collar credentials.
41:28
Speaker 1: And again, arresting the slide of non-college-educated white voters away
41:34
Speaker 1: from the Democratic Party may not be candidate-dependent, right? The
41:38
Speaker 1: black guy from Chicago named Barack Hussein Obama did better
41:42
Speaker 1: Much better among non-college educated white voters than Hillary Clinton
41:46
Speaker 1: and then Joe Biden. And so like it may not
41:49
Speaker 1: be it may not be the candidate. We have to
41:52
Speaker 1: be open to that, that there are larger forces at
41:54
Speaker 1: play here that are pushing non-college educated white voters away
41:58
Speaker 1: from the Democratic Party. And it may not be a
42:01
Speaker 1: simple message or candidate quality from Democrats that gets them back.
42:06
Speaker 1: And that's sort of what we have to look into now,
42:09
Speaker 1: because it just may be larger forces at play.
42:12
Speaker 2: Well, if we don't solve that problem, we are not
42:16
Speaker 2: going to win the Senate. And we're going to really
42:17
Speaker 2: struggle in the Electoral College for a very long time.
42:20
Speaker 1: I think what happens is, and this happened after 2016,
42:22
Speaker 1: Aaron's like, why is there so much focus on non-college
42:25
Speaker 1: educated white voters? These are Trump voters. A lot of
42:28
Speaker 1: them have racist views. Why are we spending so much
42:31
Speaker 1: time trying to get them back? It's not because it's
42:34
Speaker 1: like out of the goodness of our hearts that we
42:36
Speaker 1: want to get them back. It's a math problem. And
42:39
Speaker 1: the math problem is that, and we saw that very
42:41
Speaker 1: clearly in this election, is that we boosted turnout by
42:46
Speaker 1: a ton. Joe Biden turned out more Democrats, more Democratic
42:49
Speaker 1: voters than any presidential candidate in history. And that's true
42:54
Speaker 1: across the Democratic coalitions. But Donald Trump did the same thing.
42:59
Speaker 1: He boosted turnout. So in a high turnout election, when
43:02
Speaker 1: you have just a ton of non-college white voters coming
43:04
Speaker 1: out and you have high turnout, astronomically high turnout among
43:08
Speaker 1: the Democratic side, like you can't win some of these
43:12
Speaker 1: states that add up to 270 without persuading some of
43:16
Speaker 1: those non-college educated white voters to vote Democrat. And that's
43:19
Speaker 1: just the reality of the math. And you can go
43:21
Speaker 1: looking for more voters that should vote Democrat, younger voters,
43:27
Speaker 1: voters of color, women. But we did that in 2020.
43:31
Speaker 1: We registered a ton of them. They all turned out
43:34
Speaker 1: and it was still close. And that I think is
43:36
Speaker 1: the big challenge going forward.
43:37
Speaker 2: I mean, this is a question of having to do both, right?
43:42
Speaker 2: And I think you and I have talked about this
43:44
Speaker 2: many times. You made this point a few times on
43:46
Speaker 2: the pod is the media, politicians, everyone needs to pay
43:51
Speaker 2: as much attention to Black, Hispanic, Asian American non-voters as
43:58
Speaker 2: they do the Trump voters, right? These are the people
44:00
Speaker 2: who decide elections. And the focus of attention is there.
44:05
Speaker 2: The lesson of this election is Democrats have to do both.
44:07
Speaker 2: We have to mobilize more voters. We have to find
44:08
Speaker 2: even more voters than we found this time. We have
44:10
Speaker 2: to turn them out. We have to improve our margins
44:13
Speaker 2: with Latinos and other groups where we've lost some ground
44:15
Speaker 2: in some states. But we also cannot continue to lose
44:20
Speaker 2: the white non-college vote by the same amount. So Barack
44:22
Speaker 2: Obama won, I think, 34% of the vote, according to
44:25
Speaker 2: exit polls at the time. Hillary Clinton won 29. I
44:28
Speaker 2: can't do the math in my head, but if Joe
44:31
Speaker 2: Biden won 27, we lose this election. If that number
44:35
Speaker 2: dropped by the same amount it dropped from Obama to Clinton,
44:38
Speaker 2: Joe Biden would lose in a pretty significant electoral college landslide.
44:41
Speaker 2: And we have to watch that.
44:43
Speaker 1: Well, and again, this goes back to my point that
44:45
Speaker 1: everything mattered in a close election, right? Like, Black voters
44:49
Speaker 1: don't register and turn out at the levels they did
44:52
Speaker 1: in this election, Joe Biden loses. If Latino voters, even
44:56
Speaker 1: though there was a big swing towards Trump, we still
44:58
Speaker 1: had incredibly high Latino turnout for Joe Biden and other Democrats.
45:04
Speaker 1: You don't have that turnout, Joe Biden loses the election.
45:06
Speaker 1: You don't have Native American turnout at the level it
45:09
Speaker 1: was in Arizona, Joe Biden loses the election. You don't
45:11
Speaker 1: have Asian American turnout to the level it was in 2020,
45:14
Speaker 1: Joe Biden loses the election. So you're absolutely right. We
45:16
Speaker 1: cannot sacrifice mobilizing and persuading one demographic group at the
45:21
Speaker 1: expense of another as we think about how to broaden
45:25
Speaker 1: the Democratic coalition. We cannot afford to do that. It
45:28
Speaker 1: has to be addition and not trading one group for another.
45:32
Speaker 1: That's also math.
45:34
Speaker 2: The next ad we're going to look at is an
45:36
Speaker 2: attack on Trump's COVID response from the Biden campaign.
45:41
Speaker 6: Now it's turning out it's not just old people, Bob,
45:43
Speaker 6: it's just today and yesterday and Some startling facts came out.
45:48
Speaker 3: It's not just old people.
45:50
Speaker 2: To plenty of young people.
45:52
Speaker 3: Well, I think, Bob, really, to be honest.
45:54
Speaker 2: With you, I wanted to always play it down.
46:00
Speaker 3: I still like playing it down because.
46:02
Speaker 2: I don't want to create a panic. This, I would note,
46:09
Speaker 2: was a digital spot that came out right after the
46:14
Speaker 2: release of the Woodward tapes related to Bob Woodward's book
46:17
Speaker 2: about Trump.
46:18
Speaker 1: So it was obviously a horrific thing for Donald Trump
46:23
Speaker 1: to say, to admit that he was purposely playing down
46:28
Speaker 1: the pandemic for political purposes. It is one of the
46:31
Speaker 1: most disgusting things I've ever heard at the time. We
46:33
Speaker 1: were all shocked, maybe not surprised, but certainly shocked. I
46:38
Speaker 1: wonder how much this ad changed any opinions on Donald Trump.
46:44
Speaker 1: or on the pandemic. I think if you thought that
46:46
Speaker 1: Donald Trump was mismanaging the pandemic before this ad, you
46:49
Speaker 1: continue to think he mismanaged the pandemic. If you thought
46:52
Speaker 1: that it was just something that happened to him and
46:54
Speaker 1: he was doing the best he could before this ad,
46:57
Speaker 1: you might have continued to think that as well. I just,
47:00
Speaker 1: I'm now wondering if opinions on the pandemic and Donald
47:04
Speaker 1: Trump's handling of the pandemic were so polarized that another
47:08
Speaker 1: one of these ads about what Donald Trump knew and
47:11
Speaker 1: when he knew it, I wonder if it moved any voters. Maybe,
47:14
Speaker 1: but I just, I'm a little more doubtful now than
47:16
Speaker 1: I was before.
47:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that, I think that's right. We just,
47:20
Speaker 2: we just can't get a real handle on how important
47:23
Speaker 2: the pandemic was to people's votes. It is clearly less
47:26
Speaker 2: important than we thought, given who turned out by the results.
47:31
Speaker 2: That is very clear.
47:31
Speaker 1: Yes.
47:32
Speaker 2: Because it is just very different than what the pre-election
47:34
Speaker 2: polling told us, which, like the margins, was also different
47:37
Speaker 2: than the pre-election polling. But what I think about this
47:40
Speaker 2: ad is it should be thought of not just in
47:44
Speaker 2: the way we think of these television commercials that air
47:45
Speaker 2: during the Michigan-Ohio State game. And it needs to be
47:48
Speaker 2: thought of as part of their communication strategy, right? Which is,
47:52
Speaker 2: here you have a story that you believe, based on
47:55
Speaker 2: your polling, right or wrong, could hurt Trump with voters.
47:59
Speaker 2: Because of the limited reach of the media and the
48:01
Speaker 2: hyperkinetic media environment we live in, a lot of the
48:04
Speaker 2: voters you're trying to persuade who are less engaged followers
48:07
Speaker 2: of the news than we certainly are will miss this story.
48:12
Speaker 2: Like to us, Bob Woodward tapes about Trump as the
48:14
Speaker 2: biggest deal. It's on the cover of the Washington Post.
48:17
Speaker 2: Anderson Cooper led his show with it, right? Bob Woodward
48:20
Speaker 2: sat right there on the Morning Joe roundtable and talked
48:23
Speaker 2: about it. But most voters will have no idea who
48:26
Speaker 2: that is or what it is. or anything. They probably
48:29
Speaker 2: think Bob Woodward, if they even know who he is,
48:31
Speaker 2: may think he's a fictional character from a movie.
48:33
Speaker 1: Even in our very engaged universe, this story was over.
48:37
Speaker 1: The Woodward story was over in two or three days,
48:40
Speaker 1: maybe less.
48:40
Speaker 3: Right. Yeah.
48:42
Speaker 2: And so the smart thing to do, the Biden campaign,
48:44
Speaker 2: I thought, did very well down the stretch of this
48:47
Speaker 2: campaign was they took stories that were happening in elite
48:51
Speaker 2: media circles and paid to put them in front of
48:54
Speaker 2: voters who might not otherwise see them. They did the
48:55
Speaker 2: exact same thing with the story in The Atlantic, which
48:58
Speaker 2: is the personification of elite media circles about Trump's comments
49:01
Speaker 2: about the troops. They did a number of different videos,
49:04
Speaker 2: one with just images and Trump's quotes. They did some
49:10
Speaker 2: videos submitted by veterans reacting to the news and put
49:13
Speaker 2: it on Instagram and showed it to people. And so
49:15
Speaker 2: this is, I think, the future of how political campaigns
49:18
Speaker 2: are going to operate, which is you are paying to
49:21
Speaker 2: put things that happen in the news in front of
49:23
Speaker 2: voters you think they're going to care about. Whether this
49:25
Speaker 2: was a thing enough voters cared about, we have no idea.
49:28
Speaker 2: But I think it's a sign of the future and
49:31
Speaker 2: something I was very impressed by what they did down
49:33
Speaker 2: the stretch.
49:33
Speaker 1: And again, if your theory of the case is that
49:37
Speaker 1: this election will come down to a referendum on Donald
49:40
Speaker 1: Trump's character and that you can win enough voters, both,
49:44
Speaker 1: you know, in your own base and swing voters and
49:47
Speaker 1: also voters who don't pay much attention to the news
49:49
Speaker 1: and are sporadic voters and don't come out that much.
49:51
Speaker 1: And the way that you can build the largest coalition
49:54
Speaker 1: is by making people believe that Donald Trump is unfit
49:58
Speaker 1: for the job and his unfitness for the job has
50:00
Speaker 1: caused death and destruction in this country. Then that ad is,
50:05
Speaker 1: fits very well with that strategy. And guess what? That
50:08
Speaker 1: is the coalition that Joe Biden built and won.
50:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is exactly that. Ultimately, in the end, we
50:14
Speaker 2: don't know what was the tipping point, ad message, direct
50:18
Speaker 2: mail piece, whatever it is. But Joe Biden built a
50:22
Speaker 2: coalition that won a huge popular vote margin and won
50:25
Speaker 2: a very significant electoral college margin flipping to critical Sunbelt states.
50:29
Speaker 2: And so you can't say that everything worked, but their
50:32
Speaker 2: view of what the electorate wanted and who the key
50:36
Speaker 2: people were to persuade and mobilize and get out was correct.
50:40
Speaker 1: And how Joe Biden and his identity and his career
50:44
Speaker 1: and his experience fit within that message. It was exactly right.
50:49
Speaker 2: I would say this about the entire messaging of the campaign,
50:51
Speaker 2: whether it is his tweets or whether it is the
50:54
Speaker 2: speeches he gave, the press conferences, all the ads, is
50:57
Speaker 2: they were all of a coherent piece. There was one message.
51:02
Speaker 2: It never deviated. The circumstances behind it and the context changed,
51:06
Speaker 2: but the message did not. And I think that is
51:09
Speaker 2: to the tremendous credit of their campaign. It was a
51:11
Speaker 2: remarkably disciplined campaign. There were, as we know, a lot
51:15
Speaker 2: of concerns among a lot of Democrats about what kind
51:18
Speaker 2: of general election candidate he would be. And he turned
51:20
Speaker 2: out to be a great one. Right. And I don't,
51:24
Speaker 2: he may be the only one who could have pulled
51:26
Speaker 2: any of this off.
51:27
Speaker 1: And by the way, if, as we were saying earlier,
51:30
Speaker 1: the pandemic wasn't as determinative in this election because people's
51:35
Speaker 1: views were polarized before the pandemic, it's even more impressive
51:40
Speaker 1: what the Biden campaign pulled off.
51:43
Speaker 5: Right.
51:43
Speaker 1: Because like if, if views were that divided more divided
51:47
Speaker 1: than we thought because of the polls and they were
51:50
Speaker 1: still able to drive this message and right up until
51:53
Speaker 1: election day, and then make it the same consistent message
51:56
Speaker 1: and build a coalition that won 270 with it, that's
51:59
Speaker 1: pretty damn impressive.
52:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was this way of thinking about this, that
52:04
Speaker 2: Biden was going to have all of these political tailwinds
52:06
Speaker 2: behind him, a recession, a pandemic that was dividing people,
52:09
Speaker 2: Trump getting COVID at the end. And then you thought, oh,
52:12
Speaker 2: if he barely won, then that would be sort of
52:15
Speaker 2: him kind of tripping over the finish line. But that
52:17
Speaker 2: is absolutely not what happened. He turned out every voter
52:19
Speaker 2: that wants to turn out at more, and Trump did
52:21
Speaker 2: exactly that too.
52:22
Speaker 1: The asset they had was a very unpopular president. Now,
52:26
Speaker 1: still popular enough that, you know, 47% of the country
52:29
Speaker 1: turned out for him. But for an incumbent running for reelection,
52:33
Speaker 1: he was polarizing, divisive, and relatively unpopular compared to other
52:39
Speaker 1: incumbent presidents running for a second term. And that's the
52:43
Speaker 1: asset they had more than anything else. And they recognize
52:45
Speaker 1: that they had that asset. All right, that's our show
52:52
Speaker 1: for today. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Hope you're enjoying the holiday,
52:57
Speaker 1: even though it's a little different this year, and hope
52:59
Speaker 1: that you're all staying safe.
53:01
Speaker 2: I hope you have the opportunity to rub it in
53:03
Speaker 2: your Trump-loving uncle's face via Zoom.
53:06
Speaker 1: Bye everyone. Bye. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production.
53:15
Speaker 1: The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is
53:19
Speaker 1: Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle
53:22
Speaker 1: Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somenator, Katie Long,
53:26
Speaker 1: Roman Papadimitriou, Quinn Lewis, Caroline Rustin, and Justine Howe for
53:30
Speaker 1: production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Narmal Konian,
53:34
Speaker 1: Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these
53:37
Speaker 1: episodes as videos every week.