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The Path to Defeat Donald Trump (Ep. 1) · Pod Save America

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Speaker 1: Hey everyone, it's John here. I am excited to share
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Speaker 1: the first episode of season four of The Wilderness. This season,
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Speaker 1: I'm joined by some of the smartest strategists, pollsters, and
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Speaker 1: organizers in politics today to explore what resonates with voters
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Speaker 1: who are disenchanted, disengaged, and otherwise uncommitted. And we're gonna
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Speaker 1: find out how we can convince them that democracy is
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Speaker 1: on the line in 2024. Because I don't know if
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Speaker 1: you've looked around lately, but it really is. Tune in
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Speaker 1: to new episodes every other Sunday right here on the
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Speaker 1: Pod Save America feed throughout the summer to get the
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Speaker 1: goods you need to convince every last person in your
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Speaker 1: life to show up this election year. Yes, even your
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Speaker 1: Zoomer cousin who gets their news from TikTok and your
0:39
Speaker 1: Boomer uncle who gets their news from Facebook. So enjoy
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Speaker 1: episode one.
0:52
Speaker 2: Donald Trump is the next president of the United States.
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Speaker 2: This time, he is coming bent on revenge. He knows
1:01
Speaker 2: how government works. He knows how he was thwarted the
1:04
Speaker 2: last time. I, Donald John Trump, Do solemnly swear. No
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Speaker 2: more people keeping him in check.
1:09
Speaker 3: That I will faithfully execute the office of president.
1:13
Speaker 4: That would deploy the U.S.
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Speaker 5: Military domestically under the Insurrection Act.
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Speaker 6: And will, to the best of my ability.
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Speaker 2: Ending birthright citizenship, purging the federal government of tens of
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Speaker 2: thousands of civil servants.
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Speaker 7: Preserve, protect, and defend.
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Speaker 4: Terminate the Constitution.
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Speaker 1: Jail political opponents.
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Speaker 8: Execute generals who are insufficiently loyal. Create mass internment camps
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Speaker 8: to send immigrants there.
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Speaker 1: This might be the last presidential election.
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Speaker 6: In our lifetimes.
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Speaker 1: He is just president until his death. Okay, I realize
1:55
Speaker 1: that may have been a tough listen. But I can
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Speaker 1: promise you it'll be even tougher to live through if
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Speaker 1: Donald Trump wins this election. And I don't think most
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Speaker 1: voters are sufficiently alarmed about the likelihood of that outcome.
2:06
Speaker 1: So here we are with another season of The Wilderness.
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Speaker 1: Not to panic you, but to empower you. To give
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Speaker 1: you insights from voters and advice from experts that can
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Speaker 1: help you persuade as many people as possible to be
2:16
Speaker 1: part of the anti-MAGA majority that defeated Trump four years ago. Yes,
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Speaker 1: this is primarily the job of Joe Biden, his campaign,
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Speaker 1: and the thousands of Democratic candidates, strategists, and organizers who
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Speaker 1: do politics for a living. But they need our help.
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Speaker 1: They can't win this alone. Trust me, I've been there.
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Speaker 1: A campaign is much more likely to succeed when its
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Speaker 1: voters become its volunteers. And that's truer today than it's
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Speaker 1: ever been. Because even if many news outlets actually believed
2:44
Speaker 1: it was their job to help defend democracy, they simply
2:47
Speaker 1: don't have the power to reach or persuade as many
2:50
Speaker 1: Americans as they once did. There's too little trust, too
2:53
Speaker 1: many choices, too many different realities, and too many people
2:56
Speaker 1: who've decided to tune out altogether. That leaves us, the
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Speaker 1: people who are paying attention and who are absolutely certain
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Speaker 1: that Donald Trump must not return to power. If you
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Speaker 1: love Joe Biden, that's great. If you don't, if you
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Speaker 1: aren't happy with everything he's done, or even if you're
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Speaker 1: pissed at him, but you know that he's the better option,
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Speaker 1: that's okay too. In fact, you may be even more
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Speaker 1: persuasive to voters who feel like you do, but haven't
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Speaker 1: yet landed in the same place. It's sometimes hard to
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Speaker 1: remember that voting isn't primarily about rewarding or punishing Joe
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Speaker 1: Biden or Donald Trump. It's about much, much more than
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Speaker 1: those two men. It's about us. It's a choice between
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Speaker 1: two very different futures for America. And no matter who
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Speaker 1: you are or where you live, I promise you, it'll
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Speaker 1: be nearly impossible to escape the consequences of what Trump
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Speaker 1: has planned for a second term.
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Speaker 8: You know, Trump is in two respects talking about using
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Speaker 8: federal force to impose kind of the red state vision
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Speaker 8: on blue America.
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Speaker 1: That's Ron Brownstein, a political analyst at The Atlantic and CNN,
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Speaker 1: who's done some of the most extensive reporting on what
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Speaker 1: a second Trump term would look like.
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Speaker 8: So one track in all of this is basically using
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Speaker 8: control of the federal government to force blue states to
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Speaker 8: live under the rights rollbacks that have proliferated in red states,
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Speaker 8: whether it's you know, ban on gender affirming care for minors,
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Speaker 8: national voter ID and national bans on voting by mail,
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Speaker 8: a national don't say gay bill, national concealed carry legislation.
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Speaker 8: And of course, kind of the, you know, the pinnacle
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Speaker 8: here would be some kind of national abortion ban.
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Speaker 6: Do you believe in punishment for abortion? Yes or no,
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Speaker 6: as a principal?
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Speaker 3: The answer is that There has to be some form
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Speaker 3: of punishment.
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Speaker 8: For the woman?
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Speaker 9: Yeah, there has to be some form.
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Speaker 10: Donald Trump's new comments on abortion, saying that some states
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Speaker 10: might choose to monitor women's pregnancies to possibly prosecute women
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Speaker 10: who violate abortion bans.
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Speaker 2: Do you support any restrictions on a person's right to contraception?
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Speaker 3: Well, we're looking at that, and I'm going to have
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Speaker 3: a policy on that very shortly.
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Speaker 8: The other track is probably even more explosive, because... Trump,
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Speaker 8: in a whole series of ways, is talking about using
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Speaker 8: federal force in blue cities to advance his agenda. He's
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Speaker 8: talked about sending federal forces into blue cities to round
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Speaker 8: up the homeless. He's talked about sending the National Guard
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Speaker 8: into blue cities just to fight crime.
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Speaker 3: And in cities where there's been a complete breakdown of
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Speaker 3: public safety, I will send in federal assets including the
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Speaker 3: National Guard until law and order is restored.
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Speaker 8: And then maybe the most expansive of all of these
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Speaker 8: ideas is him talking about massive federal forces executing a
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Speaker 8: deportation drive unprecedented in American history.
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Speaker 11: You go to the red state governors and you say,
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Speaker 11: give us your National Guard. We will deputize them as
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Speaker 11: immigration enforcement officers. They know their states, they know their communities,
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Speaker 11: they know their cities.
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Speaker 1: That's Stephen Miller, who may become Trump's White House chief
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Speaker 1: of staff on The Charlie Kirk Show last November.
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Speaker 11: And if you're going to go into an unfriendly state
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Speaker 11: like Maryland, well, it would just be Virginia doing the
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Speaker 11: arrests in Maryland, right? Very close, very nearby.
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Speaker 8: I think that all of this can get really out
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Speaker 8: of control myself. What does happen if a red state
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Speaker 8: governor really agrees to send their National Guard into a
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Speaker 8: neighboring blue state? I mean, is that really going to
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Speaker 8: end well? You know, I do think that if they
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Speaker 8: do even a portion of this, we are going to
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Speaker 8: face situations that we just have not confronted in this
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Speaker 8: country since, you know, really the Civil War.
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Speaker 1: Some of you might think this sounds a little far-fetched.
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Speaker 4: I get it.
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Speaker 1: I'm always worried about freaking people out too much, especially
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Speaker 1: if it ultimately turns out to be unnecessary. And I
6:54
Speaker 1: suppose there's a chance that Trump could spend his next
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Speaker 1: presidency raging on truth social and figuring out all the
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Speaker 1: ways he can abuse the office to make himself rich.
7:02
Speaker 1: It's possible. But if Trump decides to go ahead with
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Speaker 1: even a fraction of the things he says he'll do,
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Speaker 1: ask yourself, who will stop a vengeful two-term president who
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Speaker 1: will never have to face voters again? The courts he
7:15
Speaker 1: stacked with right-wing judges? The government he plans to purge
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Speaker 1: of nonpartisan public servants and replace with MAGA loyalists? A
7:23
Speaker 1: military that reports to Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Flynn? Not great.
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Speaker 5: Could we write out one term?
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Speaker 9: Maybe, but I don't think we can write out two terms.
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Speaker 9: You can't overcome the erosion of norms. You can't overcome
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Speaker 9: the sort of civil protections that kept in place in
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Speaker 9: the federal government the first time around. Like, it just
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Speaker 9: won't be there the second time around.
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Speaker 1: That's Jen Palmieri, who was Hillary Clinton's 2016 communications director
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Speaker 1: before doing the same job in the Obama White House.
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Speaker 9: It just seems like that that whole bureaucracy could just
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Speaker 9: barrel down. out of control and courts will try to
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Speaker 9: rein him in, but he will continue to act in
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Speaker 9: the vacuum of decisions that are final and enforceable.
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Speaker 1: Jen's point about not being able to count on the
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Speaker 1: courts was echoed by someone with very different politics who
8:10
Speaker 1: I talked to on Pod Save America a few months ago,
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Speaker 1: Liz Cheney. What scares you most about a second Trump term?
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Speaker 12: The extent to which we know that as president, he
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Speaker 12: will refuse to enforce the rulings of our courts. We're
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Speaker 12: only a nation of laws if the president enforces the
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Speaker 12: rulings of the courts. And to have someone like Donald Trump,
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Speaker 12: who we know won't do that, presents an existential threat.
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Speaker 9: I know.
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Speaker 1: Real nightmare fuel from someone who isn't exactly a liberal alarmist.
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Speaker 1: And that's to say nothing of all the very legal
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Speaker 1: power that any president has to make war, control immigration,
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Speaker 1: deploy law enforcement, order surveillance, and respond to crises, real
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Speaker 1: or manufactured. A second Trump term would almost certainly be
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Speaker 1: worse than the first Trump term. And that one ended
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Speaker 1: with an attempted coup after he lost the election because
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Speaker 1: he mismanaged a pandemic that killed a million Americans. But hey,
9:04
Speaker 1: maybe it'll be fine. And even though this time around,
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Speaker 1: no one's really asking if it's possible for Trump to win,
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Speaker 1: a lot of us want to believe it's likely that
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Speaker 1: he won't. I want to believe that. I want to
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Speaker 1: believe that Joe Biden actually has a stable five-point lead
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Speaker 1: over Donald Trump in all of the battleground states he
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Speaker 1: needs to get to 270. And maybe the polling will
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Speaker 1: finally show that lead in the fall. Or maybe we'll
9:26
Speaker 1: just have to wait until the election results. But let's
9:29
Speaker 1: just set all the polling aside for a moment. Because
9:32
Speaker 1: even if we didn't see another poll from now until
9:34
Speaker 1: Election Day, the safest bet you could make about the
9:37
Speaker 1: outcome of the Biden-Trump rematch is how close it's likely
9:40
Speaker 1: to be. We'll tell you why after the break. If
9:52
Speaker 1: you're struggling to convey the stakes of 2024 to someone
9:55
Speaker 1: in your circle, this show is perfect for you. But
9:57
Speaker 1: for those persuadables in your life, it might be better.
10:00
Speaker 1: to give them an actual book they can follow to
10:02
Speaker 1: get ready for this election year. Love it, Tommy and
10:05
Speaker 1: I wrote one. Our first book. It's called Democracy or Else,
10:08
Speaker 1: How to Save America in 10 Easy Steps, coming June 25th.
10:12
Speaker 1: And it's the perfect first step to getting your friends
10:14
Speaker 1: and family off the sidelines and engaged. We know that
10:18
Speaker 1: election years can be overwhelming. But that's why we gathered
10:21
Speaker 1: all of our political insights from Pod Save America and
10:23
Speaker 1: our smartest friends in politics to write this funny, useful
10:26
Speaker 1: guide to help you and your friends through 2024. Plus,
10:29
Speaker 1: when you pre-order, you're not just getting a book, you're
10:32
Speaker 1: already making a difference because Crooked is donating all of
10:34
Speaker 1: its profits to Vote Save America and 2024 campaigns. Head
10:39
Speaker 1: to crooked.com slash books now to pre-order your copy. Welcome
10:47
Speaker 1: back to the wilderness. Let's get right back into it.
10:50
Speaker 1: So we know this election is going to be very close,
10:52
Speaker 1: and here's why. In 2020, Joe Biden won more votes
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Speaker 1: than any presidential candidate in history in an election where
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Speaker 1: 155 million people cast their ballots, the highest turnout in
11:04
Speaker 1: the 21st century. But thanks to the Electoral College, Donald
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Speaker 1: Trump still came within just 43,000 votes of winning. 43,000 votes!
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Speaker 1: And that razor-thin margin wasn't unique to the 2020 election.
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Speaker 13: If you look county by county across the country and
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Speaker 13: you look at the Democratic Party share of the two-party
11:25
Speaker 13: vote in 2016, and then you say, how did the
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Speaker 13: Democratic Party do in that county in 2020? On average,
11:33
Speaker 13: across all the counties, the absolute shift in the Democratic
11:37
Speaker 13: vote share was about a point.
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Speaker 5: And a half.
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Speaker 1: That's Lynn Vavrick, a UCLA political scientist who's done years
11:44
Speaker 1: of research on the American electorate. Enough to know that
11:46
Speaker 1: these tiny margins we're seeing weren't always the case.
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Speaker 13: In the 70s and the 80s, some of those elections,
11:53
Speaker 13: votes were really changing. But now, these elections are replays
11:57
Speaker 13: of one another.
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Speaker 1: According to Lynn, it's not just that usual suspect, polarization,
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Speaker 1: that's keeping voters from shifting their votes. It's more than that.
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Speaker 1: Something she calls calcification.
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Speaker 13: Calcification, we think about it as polarization plus. Calcification has
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Speaker 13: four drivers, and the first two are probably very familiar
12:20
Speaker 13: to people. That is an increasing distance between the two
12:24
Speaker 13: political parties. So they want to build very different worlds,
12:28
Speaker 13: possibly more different than in our lifetimes.
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Speaker 5: The second driver of calcification.
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Speaker 13: An increasing homogeneity or a sameness within each political party.
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Speaker 13: So Democrats are more like one another, Republicans are more
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Speaker 13: like one another now than, again, in the recent and
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Speaker 13: not-so-recent past. Third is a shift in what.
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Speaker 5: We're fighting over.
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Speaker 13: So for most of my lifetime, we've been fighting over
12:58
Speaker 13: New Deal issues, the role and size of government, the
13:01
Speaker 13: tax rate. And in 2016, that really shifted. And we
13:07
Speaker 13: started talking about identity-inflected issues.
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Speaker 5: Immigration.
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Speaker 13: Abortion's always been important, but more important now than maybe
13:15
Speaker 13: in the recent past. Things like a Muslim ban or
13:20
Speaker 13: a religious test to enter the country. Same-sex marriage. These
13:24
Speaker 13: issues are different from New Deal issues. They're harder to
13:28
Speaker 13: compromise on. And then the last driver of calcification is
13:34
Speaker 13: we just happened to be at a moment where we're
13:36
Speaker 13: in rough balance in the electorate between people who call
13:40
Speaker 13: themselves Democrats and people who call themselves Republicans. Each side
13:45
Speaker 13: either wins or almost wins every election, presidential elections. And
13:50
Speaker 13: so that really means when you lose, there's no incentive
13:54
Speaker 13: to go back to the drawing board and think about, boy,
13:58
Speaker 13: people aren't really buying what we're selling.
14:00
Speaker 5: So we better change what we're selling.
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Speaker 13: All of that kind of mashes up together and it
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Speaker 13: makes politics feel stuck. It's like calcification in the bones.
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Speaker 5: It's rigid.
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Speaker 1: Lynn's theory makes a lot of sense when you think
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Speaker 1: about the results of every national election in the Trump era.
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Speaker 1: The margins have been very tight, usually tighter than the
14:21
Speaker 1: polls suggested they'd be. So far, 2024 doesn't seem like
14:25
Speaker 1: it'll be any different. And the Democratic strategists whose job
14:27
Speaker 1: it is to reelect Joe Biden basically agree.
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Speaker 6: This is going to be a close race. Like, I
14:32
Speaker 6: don't know which states it's going to be. I don't
14:34
Speaker 6: know how many votes it's going to be. But like,
14:35
Speaker 6: you can write it down in ink. Like, I think
14:37
Speaker 6: this thing is going to be decided by a few
14:39
Speaker 6: thousand votes in a couple swing states.
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Speaker 1: Adisu Demesi is a senior advisor to Future Forward USA,
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Speaker 1: the primary super PAC supporting President Biden's reelection campaign. Before that,
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Speaker 1: he ran successful campaigns for Democrats like New Jersey Senator
14:52
Speaker 1: Cory Booker and California Governor Gavin Newsom. He's confident that
14:56
Speaker 1: Biden can pull this out, but he's not pretending it'll
14:58
Speaker 1: be easy.
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Speaker 6: I am not somebody who tries to convince people the
15:02
Speaker 6: sky is green when the sky is blue. Things are
15:06
Speaker 6: tough out there for people. Joe Biden is 82 years old.
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Speaker 6: It is what it is.
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Speaker 1: Adisu thinks that in addition to the evenly divided electorate
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Speaker 1: Lynn talked about, there are a few other factors that
15:16
Speaker 1: are likely to make this race so uncomfortably close.
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Speaker 6: I think what 2020 proved and why it was so
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Speaker 6: close is that Donald Trump is a strong political figure.
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Speaker 6: He has a strong base that is going to show up.
15:26
Speaker 6: He motivates the hell out of them. And because of
15:29
Speaker 6: the way that the Republican electorate is just distributed by
15:33
Speaker 6: population in battleground states, it gives Donald Trump an advantage
15:39
Speaker 6: in the electoral college.
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Speaker 1: So we should absolutely plan for the MAGA base turning
15:43
Speaker 1: out in the states that will decide the election. But
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Speaker 1: Adisu points out that there's also another factor that's making
15:48
Speaker 1: this race even tougher for Joe Biden.
15:53
Speaker 6: When you are the sitting president, you have a bully
15:56
Speaker 6: pulpit and you also have... at least the perceived responsibility
15:59
Speaker 6: for the state of the country. And, you know, and
16:01
Speaker 6: some actual responsibility, sure. So Joe Biden is the incumbent president.
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Speaker 6: Donald Trump was the incumbent president last time. And that
16:09
Speaker 6: is a significantly different dynamic.
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Speaker 1: Adisu's pointing out something that I think has been underappreciated.
16:15
Speaker 1: The political advantage that was once associated with being an
16:18
Speaker 1: incumbent president has almost disappeared. In fact, the last time
16:22
Speaker 1: an incumbent president won his second term with a bigger
16:25
Speaker 1: margin than the first was 20 years ago when George W.
16:29
Speaker 1: Bush beat John Kerry. One reason incumbent presidents don't have
16:32
Speaker 1: the advantage they once did is because most voters have
16:35
Speaker 1: become disillusioned with politics and unhappy with the state of
16:38
Speaker 1: the country, no matter who's in charge. As Jen Palmieri
16:42
Speaker 1: points out, Trump is uniquely suited to benefit from the
16:45
Speaker 1: fact that he's now a challenger who's also a former incumbent.
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Speaker 5: You can talk about like, oh, I delivered a lot.
16:51
Speaker 9: I did get a lot of stuff done when I
16:53
Speaker 9: was president. And you're able to say, like, and if
16:56
Speaker 9: I was president again, everything would be magically fixed. You
16:59
Speaker 9: don't have to own what's happening now. And I do
17:01
Speaker 9: think that he has the benefits of incumbency, but also
17:06
Speaker 9: the benefits, the sort of freedom and dreamscape that comes
17:11
Speaker 9: with being a challenger.
17:14
Speaker 1: Basically, Trump gets to pretend he has the experience to
17:17
Speaker 1: come back and fix everything people have been angry about
17:19
Speaker 1: during the four years that Joe Biden has been president. Now,
17:22
Speaker 1: you might be wondering, Why have people been so unhappy
17:25
Speaker 1: over the last four years? Here's what Lynn Vavrick told me.
17:29
Speaker 13: I looked the other day at this time series the
17:32
Speaker 13: General Social Survey has been asking since 1972. The question
17:38
Speaker 13: goes something like this. Taken all together, how would you
17:41
Speaker 13: say things are these days? And this is not about
17:44
Speaker 13: the economy. This comes in a battery of questions where
17:46
Speaker 13: they're asking people about their personal lives. So this is
17:49
Speaker 13: really meant to be a question about how happy are you?
17:51
Speaker 13: And man, this thing is like steady. Since 1970, like
17:55
Speaker 13: there's not a lot that makes huge changes.
17:59
Speaker 5: But the difference.
18:00
Speaker 13: Between 2019 and 2021 is the biggest difference that there's
18:05
Speaker 13: ever been. And people are less happy after, I'm going
18:12
Speaker 13: to say, COVID. significantly less happy with how things are
18:16
Speaker 13: these days than they were at any point since 1972.
18:19
Speaker 5: You know, I just.
18:21
Speaker 13: Think that that COVID year and a half was really,
18:27
Speaker 13: really hard. And, you know, people might not be able
18:31
Speaker 13: to articulate that they're still in this COVID malaise. So
18:36
Speaker 13: let's complain about these guys are uninspiring and the election
18:39
Speaker 13: is uninteresting and I'm so sick of it. And I
18:41
Speaker 13: And I think a lot of that is this moment
18:45
Speaker 13: in time.
18:47
Speaker 1: I thought for a while now that the post COVID
18:48
Speaker 1: malaise Lynn talks about might explain a lot about the
18:51
Speaker 1: country's grumpy mood. Then you layer on all the other
18:54
Speaker 1: issues that voters say they're very worried or upset about
18:57
Speaker 1: high prices, high interest rates, immigration, abortion, Gaza, democracy itself.
19:02
Speaker 1: It would be a hard political environment for any incumbent president,
19:06
Speaker 1: no matter how much they'd accomplish or what kind of
19:08
Speaker 1: political talents they had. In fact, Incumbents all over the
19:11
Speaker 1: world are quite unpopular right now, and that's true across
19:15
Speaker 1: the political spectrum. And yet, despite how dreary and challenging
19:21
Speaker 1: this political environment is, despite how much more difficult the
19:25
Speaker 1: path to victory appears than it did in 2020, that
19:28
Speaker 1: path absolutely exists. In fact, Joe Biden and the Democratic
19:33
Speaker 1: Party go into this race with some fairly significant advantages
19:36
Speaker 1: of their own.
19:37
Speaker 7: The most powerful force in our politics today isn't disappointment
19:41
Speaker 7: in Joe Biden or discontent of the economy. It's fear
19:45
Speaker 7: and opposition to MAGA. And if you are already fearful
19:48
Speaker 7: and scared of MAGA. in those previous elections, the MAGA
19:52
Speaker 7: that's on the ballot in 2024 is far more dangerous,
19:56
Speaker 7: far more extreme than it was in earlier iterations.
20:00
Speaker 1: That's Simon Rosenberg, a longtime Democratic strategist who got his
20:03
Speaker 1: start in Bill Clinton's war room back in 1992. Today,
20:06
Speaker 1: he writes a very popular substack called the Hopium Chronicles,
20:10
Speaker 1: a name that makes sense after you talk to Simon
20:12
Speaker 1: for a few minutes. The guy is more bullish on
20:14
Speaker 1: Democrats' chances than anyone I've talked to, and that includes
20:17
Speaker 1: the actual Biden campaign.
20:18
Speaker 7: I think Trump could collapse this election. I'm just going
20:21
Speaker 7: to be bold and put this out there, that I
20:23
Speaker 7: think there's a 25% chance that this election's a blowout
20:27
Speaker 7: and that Trump collapses. Because there's nothing really holding him up.
20:31
Speaker 7: He has no rationale to be president. It's my view
20:34
Speaker 7: that our aspiration in 2024— should be to win this
20:37
Speaker 7: election by 8 to 10 points and to make it
20:39
Speaker 7: a clear repudiation of MAGA. Because I think the only
20:41
Speaker 7: way that MAGA starts to leave our bloodstream is if
20:45
Speaker 7: Republicans view it as a political loser.
20:50
Speaker 1: What did I tell you? Straight hopium. Simon's view doesn't
20:53
Speaker 1: line up with what everyone else I spoke to is seeing,
20:56
Speaker 1: another extremely close election in a highly polarized country. But
21:00
Speaker 1: after correctly predicting the Democratic Party's overperformance in the 2022 midterms,
21:05
Speaker 1: It's worth taking his theory of the case seriously.
21:08
Speaker 7: I don't think this is 2020. I think there are,
21:10
Speaker 7: you know, at least two major things that have happened
21:12
Speaker 7: to Trump and Franklin Moore since 2020 that make him
21:17
Speaker 7: a very different candidate. One is the insurrection and the
21:19
Speaker 7: other is Dobbs. And what happened in 2018 and 2020
21:24
Speaker 7: was amazing, right? We unseated a president. We won the
21:27
Speaker 7: House and the Senate. But what's happened since Dobbs may
21:29
Speaker 7: be even more remarkable politically because Rather than losing power,
21:33
Speaker 7: which is usually what happens for a party in power,
21:36
Speaker 7: we've actually gained ground in 2022, 2023, and even in
21:40
Speaker 7: early 2024, we've had very impressive performances.
21:43
Speaker 1: Simon is absolutely right that Democrats have had a string
21:45
Speaker 1: of victories and over-performances in the last few midterm and
21:48
Speaker 1: special elections. The challenge is that the pool of voters
21:52
Speaker 1: in a presidential election is much, much bigger and more diverse.
21:56
Speaker 1: Just to cite the most recent example, there were about
21:59
Speaker 1: 40 million voters in 2020 who just didn't show up
22:02
Speaker 1: at all in 2018. And that was the highest midterm
22:04
Speaker 1: turnout in history. We obviously can't know for sure what
22:08
Speaker 1: all the voters who didn't show up in 2022 will
22:11
Speaker 1: do in 2024. But just about all the polling we
22:14
Speaker 1: have suggests that they tend to be less favorable toward
22:17
Speaker 1: Joe Biden and the Democratic candidates than the people who
22:19
Speaker 1: voted in the specials and midterms. Those midterm voters are,
22:23
Speaker 1: on average, older, whiter, more college-educated, and more tuned into politics.
22:30
Speaker 1: Simon doesn't really buy this argument. And again, we can't
22:32
Speaker 1: know for sure until people actually vote in 2024. But
22:36
Speaker 1: he also sees a silver lining to the dynamic where
22:38
Speaker 1: Democrats in the Trump era have gained more of the
22:41
Speaker 1: highly engaged voters who show up in every election.
22:45
Speaker 7: And I think that what's being underappreciated is that the
22:48
Speaker 7: picking up of these higher-educated, higher-propensity voters is also creating
22:54
Speaker 7: the most powerful democratic machine that we've ever had. Those
22:57
Speaker 7: people are also funding our campaigns at unprecedented levels. Those
23:01
Speaker 7: unprecedentedly large campaigns have, through the money they have and
23:04
Speaker 7: through the volunteers they have, unprecedented tools to reach lower
23:08
Speaker 7: propensity voters and people that we need to reach, both
23:10
Speaker 7: with persuasion and with turnout. And so what we have
23:14
Speaker 7: is we have this extra muscle.
23:19
Speaker 1: You may have already guessed this, but that extra volunteer
23:22
Speaker 1: muscle is you. You probably vote in every election. You've
23:26
Speaker 1: hopefully volunteered, maybe even through an incredible organization like Vote
23:29
Speaker 1: Save America, which you should immediately go check out if
23:32
Speaker 1: for some weird reason you haven't heard of it yet.
23:35
Speaker 1: The point is, you have a huge role to play
23:37
Speaker 1: in this election, and I promise that's not bullshit. You see,
23:41
Speaker 1: the flip side of living through an extremely high-stakes election
23:45
Speaker 1: that's likely to be terrifyingly close is this.
23:48
Speaker 13: Calcification and close elections, it doesn't mean... that, you know,
23:53
Speaker 13: we're stuck in nothing matters, it means everything could be pivotal.
23:59
Speaker 5: Everything could be pivotal.
24:00
Speaker 13: So people often, oh, is this election going to turn
24:03
Speaker 13: on dots? Is it going to turn on the economy?
24:05
Speaker 13: Is it going to turn on their ages? And my
24:08
Speaker 13: answer is always, well, it's not going to be about
24:10
Speaker 13: any one of those things.
24:12
Speaker 5: But yes, probably all of them will be pivotal.
24:17
Speaker 1: Everything matters. Every issue, every ad, every voter, and every
24:22
Speaker 1: person who gets involved. So what does that mean for you?
24:25
Speaker 1: We'll get into it after the break. Welcome back to
24:36
Speaker 1: the wilderness. Years ago, it wasn't all that hard for
24:39
Speaker 1: campaigns and White Houses to communicate with most voters. Jen
24:43
Speaker 1: Palmieri remembers that time well.
24:45
Speaker 9: Imagine this, in the Clinton White House, we'd be like, okay,
24:47
Speaker 9: let's just make sure we get the president's message event
24:50
Speaker 9: of the day done by 2.15 so it can be
24:53
Speaker 9: on the network news. Gotta be done by 2 so
24:58
Speaker 9: it can make the network news at 6.30 that night.
25:02
Speaker 9: And the Post and the Times and the AP will
25:04
Speaker 9: write about it and we'll do some.
25:06
Speaker 5: Radio feeds to the local news. And we're done. And
25:09
Speaker 5: we did a fantastic job.
25:10
Speaker 9: And it was super easy to communicate. And It is,
25:14
Speaker 9: you know, that is just the hardest thing, right?
25:17
Speaker 5: It is why all.
25:19
Speaker 9: The disinformation can flourish and why no one knows anything
25:24
Speaker 9: Biden has done is because there's not a good channel
25:27
Speaker 9: that reaches everyone.
25:28
Speaker 1: I'm sure this doesn't come as a surprise to you.
25:31
Speaker 1: It's been decades since most of the country got its
25:33
Speaker 1: news from a few different newspapers and television networks. Now
25:36
Speaker 1: we consume whatever our own personalized algorithms fire into our
25:39
Speaker 1: brains all day long, which is obviously super healthy for everyone.
25:43
Speaker 1: It's also very challenging for candidates and campaigns to actually
25:46
Speaker 1: communicate with the voters they need. And that, dear listeners,
25:50
Speaker 1: is where you come in. Most voters aren't consuming a
25:54
Speaker 1: lot of political news. Most aren't consuming the same political news.
25:58
Speaker 1: And an increasingly high percentage of voters don't trust a
26:01
Speaker 1: lot of the news they're getting. Some for good reason.
26:05
Speaker 1: But you know who voters do trust? The people they know.
26:08
Speaker 1: Adisu Demesi explains.
26:11
Speaker 6: Because of the fracturing of the media environment, I think
26:13
Speaker 6: the importance of peer-to-peer contact is maybe even more important. Meaning, like,
26:18
Speaker 6: people you know. Not just, like, people from your neighborhood
26:21
Speaker 6: or people from your community or people who look like you, but, like,
26:24
Speaker 6: literally people you know. We all get those spam texts
26:27
Speaker 6: from politicians that I write stop to every day. But, like,
26:31
Speaker 6: if my friend texts me about something, I might read it.
26:34
Speaker 1: What Adisu just described is something called relational organizing.
26:38
Speaker 6: Relational organizing is essentially instead of using a voter list,
26:42
Speaker 6: which is what traditionally we did and send maybe people
26:45
Speaker 6: from your neighborhood, maybe people not from your neighborhood to
26:48
Speaker 6: knock doors or make phone calls to voters, you're actually
26:51
Speaker 6: using your contacts list in Apple or Android to contact voters,
26:55
Speaker 6: your own people that you already know.
26:58
Speaker 4: Your audience for real politics should be pretty freaking narrow.
27:02
Speaker 4: Like the people on your block, the people in your.
27:05
Speaker 1: Neighborhood, Eitan Hirsch teaches political science at Tufts University and
27:10
Speaker 1: specializes in U.S. elections and civic participation. He's clearly a
27:14
Speaker 1: big fan of relational organizing. He also believes in another
27:18
Speaker 1: strategy that campaigns and organizers are now using to persuade voters,
27:21
Speaker 1: a practice called deep canvassing.
27:24
Speaker 4: You basically focus on building empathy. in a 15, 20 minute,
27:29
Speaker 4: 30 minute kind of conversation with this person, understanding what
27:33
Speaker 4: their view is, trying to express what your view is
27:35
Speaker 4: and where you come from on the issue. And it's
27:38
Speaker 4: all like a very kind of vulnerable conversation where the
27:41
Speaker 4: person on the other side gets to see you as
27:43
Speaker 4: a real person and what's motivating you deeply about the issue.
27:47
Speaker 4: And by the way, you also get that from them.
27:50
Speaker 4: And so sometimes the conversation just end like, oh, we
27:52
Speaker 4: understand each other better. That's helpful. And sometimes the person
27:55
Speaker 4: on the other end is like, you know what? I
27:58
Speaker 4: never have really given this issue much thought. But now
28:00
Speaker 4: that you've told me how you see it and why
28:03
Speaker 4: it's important to you and you seem like a nice person,
28:05
Speaker 4: like I'm with you. It's a really inefficient way to
28:09
Speaker 4: think about politics, like one 20 minute conversation at a time.
28:13
Speaker 4: But it works and works in a much more durable
28:15
Speaker 4: way than, you know, a postcard or a letter.
28:19
Speaker 7: Or something like that.
28:24
Speaker 1: It's more durable and, according to the research, more effective.
28:28
Speaker 1: It's also the perfect antidote to a problem called political
28:32
Speaker 1: hobbyism that Hirsch wrote an entire book about. Hobbyism is
28:35
Speaker 1: when you follow politics, talk about politics, maybe post and
28:38
Speaker 1: argue about politics online, but aren't engaged all that much
28:42
Speaker 1: in the real work of politics, which involves building power
28:45
Speaker 1: by actually persuading other people to see things your way.
28:48
Speaker 4: Yeah, so when I was looking at this, I asked
28:51
Speaker 4: people about how they spend their time. You know, a
28:54
Speaker 4: third of the country or something like that is spending
28:56
Speaker 4: an hour or two hours a day on political consumption.
29:00
Speaker 4: But this is the group that is not checked out. Okay,
29:02
Speaker 4: so let's just look at the people who care. They
29:05
Speaker 4: say they care. They know a lot of facts.
29:07
Speaker 7: They're learning stuff.
29:08
Speaker 4: What percent of them are doing any kind of volunteer
29:12
Speaker 4: political activity? And it's like 5%. So of the group
29:16
Speaker 4: of people who are cognitively engage in politics. It's only
29:20
Speaker 4: a very small fraction that engage in any kind of volunteerism.
29:24
Speaker 1: Now, obviously, I realize this doesn't describe the habits of
29:28
Speaker 1: anyone listening to this podcast. One of many episodes that
29:31
Speaker 1: our progressive media company has released just this week, along
29:34
Speaker 1: with countless pieces of content we hope you'll engage with.
29:38
Speaker 1: I'm sure you're much more like me. an occasional news
29:41
Speaker 1: consumer who spends most of my time deep canvassing and
29:44
Speaker 1: organizing my neighborhood. But really, I don't think any of
29:48
Speaker 1: us should feel bad about listening, scrolling, and posting to
29:50
Speaker 1: our heart's content. I do think we should feel bad
29:53
Speaker 1: if that's all we do to stop Trump from winning.
29:56
Speaker 1: If Joe Biden loses in November, we can all fight
29:58
Speaker 1: about why, and we can all blame him for mistakes
30:01
Speaker 1: he made in the White House and on the campaign trail.
30:04
Speaker 1: But we will all have to live with the consequences,
30:07
Speaker 1: as well as the knowledge that each of us could
30:09
Speaker 1: have done more to avoid them. So in this season
30:13
Speaker 1: of The Wilderness, we're going to focus on the messaging
30:15
Speaker 1: that actually persuades. In conversations I hope you have with friends, family, colleagues, neighbors,
30:20
Speaker 1: and perfect strangers who aren't yet certain that they'll vote
30:23
Speaker 1: for Joe Biden. Not diehard fans of Trump or RFK Jr.
30:27
Speaker 1: or other third party candidates. Not Biden stans or Democrats
30:31
Speaker 1: who already vote blue no matter who. I'm talking about
30:34
Speaker 1: the group of people who still aren't sure what they're
30:36
Speaker 1: going to do in November.
30:38
Speaker 13: Typically, an undecided voter is a little less interested in politics.
30:43
Speaker 13: That doesn't mean that they don't have policy preferences, that
30:47
Speaker 13: they don't know what kind of world they want to
30:49
Speaker 13: live in.
30:49
Speaker 5: They're just less interested in it.
30:51
Speaker 1: I asked political scientist Lynn Vavreck what percentage of the
30:54
Speaker 1: electorate is usually made up of undecided voters. And she
30:57
Speaker 1: said that while it varies... It's.
30:59
Speaker 13: Not going to be more than 25%, you know, but
31:02
Speaker 13: it's not going to be five. And so all of
31:04
Speaker 13: these undecided voters, they could have lots of cross positions
31:08
Speaker 13: between the Democrats and the Republicans. Very, very few people
31:13
Speaker 13: are 100% liberal or 100% conservative. There's a big, big,
31:18
Speaker 13: big chunk of the electorate in the middle.
31:20
Speaker 5: And so.
31:21
Speaker 13: Those people have to decide which of these things that
31:25
Speaker 13: I have positions on are the most important to me.
31:28
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean these voters are centrist. It doesn't mean
31:31
Speaker 1: that they're only choosing between Democrats and Republicans. Some may
31:34
Speaker 1: stay home. Some may vote third party. Some may vote
31:37
Speaker 1: for all Democratic candidates and one Republican candidate or vice versa.
31:41
Speaker 1: And because 2024 is a rematch of a race that
31:43
Speaker 1: Biden won by only 43,000 votes, a lot of these
31:47
Speaker 1: voters will be people who supported the president in 2020.
31:50
Speaker 1: Every single one of these voters matter, whether they're excited
31:53
Speaker 1: about Joe Biden in this election or not.
31:56
Speaker 6: There's a lot of people who are coming to grips
31:58
Speaker 6: with the choice that they have and looking around for
32:01
Speaker 6: options that may not even be there, right? Including third
32:05
Speaker 6: party options that like might not even be on their ballot.
32:07
Speaker 6: And that includes some base Democratic voters, that includes some
32:10
Speaker 6: base Republican voters who are just, you know, disaffected with Trump.
32:14
Speaker 6: It's young people who are, you know, a base of
32:17
Speaker 6: the Democratic Party, but like, When the election is going
32:19
Speaker 6: to be decided by 50,000 votes, like they matter. Black folks,
32:23
Speaker 6: if they defect a little bit, they matter. Latino folks,
32:26
Speaker 6: if they defect a little bit, they matter. If swing
32:28
Speaker 6: voters defect a little bit, they matter. So we kind
32:31
Speaker 6: of have this thing where we got to plug a
32:32
Speaker 6: lot of holes in that sense since we won last time.
32:36
Speaker 1: Adisu's job, which is also the Biden campaign's job and
32:39
Speaker 1: our job, is to figure out who these voters are
32:42
Speaker 1: and what might persuade them to make up their minds.
32:45
Speaker 1: And that, my friends, is the real reason that polls
32:47
Speaker 1: and focus groups are actually useful. Maybe the only reason.
32:50
Speaker 6: It's not that I don't. I love polls. Like, I
32:54
Speaker 6: read polls for a living. But when I read a poll,
32:56
Speaker 6: I don't read it to take stock of what the
32:59
Speaker 6: state of the horse race is seven months before an election.
33:02
Speaker 6: I read it to see what do voters care about?
33:05
Speaker 6: How are they thinking? You know, what is actually moving
33:08
Speaker 6: their opinions of people? And that's how private polling and
33:11
Speaker 6: practitioners look at it.
33:13
Speaker 1: That's also how I hope all of you look at
33:15
Speaker 1: it throughout this season. As always on The Wilderness, we're
33:18
Speaker 1: gonna let you hear what's on the minds of undecided
33:20
Speaker 1: voters from all walks of life. But unlike past seasons,
33:23
Speaker 1: we're not conducting our own focus groups. Instead, we're turning
33:26
Speaker 1: to the people who do them for a living. In
33:29
Speaker 1: each episode, I'll have a conversation with political strategists and
33:32
Speaker 1: campaign pollsters about research and focus groups they've conducted with
33:35
Speaker 1: different groups of voters who are up for grabs. I'll
33:38
Speaker 1: also talk to on-the-ground organizers about what they're hearing from
33:41
Speaker 1: these same kinds of voters. The purpose of diving into
33:45
Speaker 1: this focus group content is not to help you predict
33:48
Speaker 1: the outcome of the election. They're not meant to help
33:50
Speaker 1: you figure out who's ahead right now. They're not meant
33:52
Speaker 1: to confirm your own political beliefs or settle any debates
33:55
Speaker 1: about the direction of the Democratic Party or the country.
33:58
Speaker 1: That's what the election is for. The purpose of hearing
34:01
Speaker 1: from these strategists, pollsters, organizers, and voters is so that
34:05
Speaker 1: you can have access to some of the same information
34:08
Speaker 1: and insights that the campaigns do. One of my great
34:11
Speaker 1: frustrations with Democratic politics is is the huge gap between
34:15
Speaker 1: what campaigns know about voters and what volunteers know about voters.
34:19
Speaker 1: Strategists and pollsters talk to literally thousands of voters every day.
34:24
Speaker 1: Every week, they write really smart memos and give presentations
34:27
Speaker 1: about what undecided voters are thinking and what's most likely
34:30
Speaker 1: to persuade them. And very little of that knowledge makes
34:33
Speaker 1: its way to the volunteers whose conversations with voters will
34:37
Speaker 1: ultimately decide the race. So we're going to try to
34:40
Speaker 1: bridge that gap.
34:41
Speaker 5: You know, it's funny to get.
34:42
Speaker 9: A report on a focus group where you're like, well,
34:45
Speaker 9: we sat with Hispanic men who voted for Biden age
34:49
Speaker 9: 25 to 28. And they didn't know a single thing
34:52
Speaker 9: Biden did, has accomplished. And they're unenthusiastic and they think
34:56
Speaker 9: he's old. And you're like, oh, shit, it's terrible. And
34:59
Speaker 9: then you actually watch a focus group and you're like,
35:02
Speaker 9: give me three minutes of those guys. I can convince
35:04
Speaker 9: them to vote for Biden.
35:07
Speaker 1: That's what I'm talking about. I want you to feel
35:09
Speaker 1: like Jen Palmieri feels after hearing from a focus group,
35:12
Speaker 1: like you're ready to go convince those voters to back Biden.
35:15
Speaker 9: It's so much easier to get people to come back
35:18
Speaker 9: to Biden, people who voted for him before to come
35:20
Speaker 9: back to him, when there is a record of accomplishment.
35:24
Speaker 9: We're not asking them to come back to something that
35:26
Speaker 9: didn't work. It's a much easier endeavor than it is
35:29
Speaker 9: to convince people who didn't vote for him last time
35:32
Speaker 9: to vote for him this time, which is what Trump
35:34
Speaker 9: needs to do.
35:35
Speaker 6: I have seen enough research to know that, you know,
35:38
Speaker 6: black folks, young black folks included. They might be upset
35:43
Speaker 6: with the state of the country. They might be disappointed
35:45
Speaker 6: that things haven't changed as much under Joe Biden as
35:47
Speaker 6: they wanted when they voted for him in 2020. But
35:50
Speaker 6: it's not like they love Donald Trump. In fact, they
35:54
Speaker 6: might dislike him more. And they're just kind of coming
35:57
Speaker 6: to grips with the fact that these are the choices
36:00
Speaker 6: and they may not have to vote for somebody they're
36:01
Speaker 6: not necessarily enthusiastic about. And I think we can move
36:04
Speaker 6: a lot of those folks who might right now be
36:07
Speaker 6: waffling there over the course of the campaign.
36:10
Speaker 8: There is more for Biden to squeeze out in white
36:12
Speaker 8: collar white America, I think, than in 2020. Those voters
36:16
Speaker 8: are frustrated by inflation like everyone else. And a lot
36:19
Speaker 8: of them think Biden is too old to run again
36:20
Speaker 8: like everyone else. But they are the most receptive to
36:23
Speaker 8: the argument that Trump is a threat to democracy. And
36:26
Speaker 8: they are also the most pro-choice, but also the most
36:30
Speaker 8: likely to prioritize that issue.
36:35
Speaker 1: This is going to be a tough one. It's going
36:37
Speaker 1: to be a close one. But that was always going
36:39
Speaker 1: to be the case because America in the Trump era
36:41
Speaker 1: is a place with an evenly divided, calcified electorate. The
36:46
Speaker 1: good news is that there's absolutely a path to win
36:49
Speaker 1: and finally break Trump's stranglehold on our politics. The votes
36:53
Speaker 1: are there and each of us has the ability to
36:56
Speaker 1: go get them.
36:57
Speaker 7: Because this is not about you and me and Joe
36:59
Speaker 7: Biden at the end of the day. It's about the
37:02
Speaker 7: people of the United States deciding that this country is
37:04
Speaker 7: not going down on their watch. Those grassroots warriors, the
37:08
Speaker 7: people who are writing their postcards and giving 10 bucks
37:12
Speaker 7: and fighting with everything they got and leaving it all
37:14
Speaker 7: in the playing field for America and our democracy and
37:17
Speaker 7: our liberties and our freedoms. And at the end of
37:19
Speaker 7: the day, when you ask me why I'm so optimistic,
37:21
Speaker 7: it's because of all of them. And I think it's
37:23
Speaker 7: why we have this extra superpower, this extra gear, this
37:26
Speaker 7: extra muscle that is going to carry us through and
37:29
Speaker 7: help make sure that we win.
37:35
Speaker 1: A hopeful note to end on from Simon. Now it's
37:38
Speaker 1: on us to make it a reality. So let's get
37:40
Speaker 1: into it. The Wilderness is a production of Crooked Media.
37:57
Speaker 1: It's written and hosted by me, Jon Favreau. Our senior
38:00
Speaker 1: producer and editor is Andrea B. Scott. Austin Fisher is
38:04
Speaker 1: our producer. And Farrah Safari is our associate producer. Sound
38:08
Speaker 1: design by Vassilis Fotopoulos. Music by Marty Fowler. Charlotte Landis
38:12
Speaker 1: and Jordan Cantor sound engineered the show. Thanks to Katie Long,
38:16
Speaker 1: Reed Cherlin, Matt DeGrotte, and Madeline Herringer for production support.
38:20
Speaker 1: And to our video team, Rachel Gajewski, Joseph Dutra, Chris Russell,
38:23
Speaker 1: Molly Lobel, and David Tolles, who filmed and edited the show.
38:27
Speaker 1: If the wilderness has inspired you to get involved, head
38:29
Speaker 1: on over to votesaveamerica.com to sign up and find a
38:32
Speaker 1: volunteer shift near you.