Transcript

Joe Biden Is Old · Politix

0:00
SPEAKER_01: Biden sticks with the status quo.
0:02
SPEAKER_01: And then the day before the convention, he just like chaotically withdraws at the last minute.
0:08
SPEAKER_01: And then you have a completely unstructured floor flight.
0:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that'd be fun.
0:11
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he could order a SEAL Team 6 to murder Donald Trump and then I'll just, I just won't care who wins the election anymore for the most part.
0:26
SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to a special free episode of Politix, the podcast.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: I'm Brian Boyler.
0:32
SPEAKER_01: And I'm Matthew Iglesias.
0:33
SPEAKER_00: And that's Susan over my left shoulder.
0:39
SPEAKER_00: So after last week's episode, something pretty consequential happened in politics, you probably heard.
0:45
SPEAKER_00: There's a prosecutor named Robert Herr who was a senior Trump Justice Department official
0:51
SPEAKER_00: who Merrick Garland, the current attorney general in his infinite wisdom, appointed to be special counsel to investigate how classified documents ended up in Joe Biden's archives.
1:04
SPEAKER_00: And so he released his report last week and it found no basis to charge anyone with a crime.
1:09
SPEAKER_00: He even noted in his report how much more ethically
1:15
SPEAKER_00: A Serious And Above Board
1:44
SPEAKER_00: Presenting As An Old Forgetful Man.
1:47
SPEAKER_00: And since Democrats in the media and the broader public were already fixated on Biden's appearance as an old person, this kind of served like as a big independent confirmation of everyone's doubts.
2:01
SPEAKER_00: And so all hell broke loose.
2:02
SPEAKER_00: There's been lots of lashing out.
2:04
SPEAKER_00: Democrats are in damage control mode.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: And of course, it's just renewed questions about Biden's viability as a candidate against Trump.
2:13
SPEAKER_01: That sounds correct.
2:14
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
2:15
SPEAKER_00: Well, we should not, we should like, I think, stipulate, we don't want to do a regular conversation about like, is Joe Biden too old per se?
2:26
SPEAKER_00: Everyone's been hashing that question out for, well, since like 2020 basically.
2:33
SPEAKER_01: Interestingly, as far as I can tell, Biden's polling got slightly better after after hers report came out.
2:41
SPEAKER_01: You know, but I mean, I do think we should try to talk about Biden's age, I guess, in a serious way.
2:48
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
2:50
SPEAKER_01: To me, part of what set the stage for the Her freakout was actually the announcement several days earlier that Biden had declined the opportunity to do a Super Bowl pregame show interview with CBS News.
3:08
SPEAKER_01: The president normally does an interview during the Super Bowl pregame show.
3:12
SPEAKER_01: That had been going on for years.
3:13
SPEAKER_01: It didn't happen last year because the White House sort of tried to
3:19
SPEAKER_01: It was a Fox Super Bowl.
3:22
SPEAKER_01: It was their year.
3:23
SPEAKER_01: And so they were trying to have Fox News personnel do it.
3:26
SPEAKER_01: The White House tried to sort of like strong arm against Fox News and say they wanted to do it with a journalist from the Fox Soul sub-brand, which is like African-American focused media.
3:38
SPEAKER_01: Fox wouldn't back down.
3:39
SPEAKER_01: The White House wouldn't back down.
3:40
SPEAKER_01: It
3:41
SPEAKER_01: It all seemed sort of reasonable, like I could see everybody's point of view on this.
3:45
SPEAKER_01: There was no really good explanation for why Biden didn't want to do the CBS interview, other than the fact that the White House clearly has a general strategic philosophy of making Joe Biden available for a smaller number of interviews than
4:04
SPEAKER_01: Prior Presidents Have Done.
4:07
SPEAKER_01: And this then manifested itself after Herr's report came out based on reporting like Joe Biden personally said that he wanted to do a press conference to address questions about this, that he got pushback from his staff who didn't think that was a good idea.
4:23
SPEAKER_01: He insisted.
4:24
SPEAKER_01: He went out.
4:24
SPEAKER_01: He took questions from reporters.
4:26
SPEAKER_01: He did, in the course of answering a bunch of different questions, like mix up
4:33
SPEAKER_01: A Serious And Above Board
4:49
SPEAKER_01: A Serious And Above Board Conversation
5:07
SPEAKER_00: Egypt Shares A Border With Gaza And We Share A Border With Mexico.
5:11
SPEAKER_00: Was that like the locus of the- I mean, sure.
5:14
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think that's what was going on.
5:17
SPEAKER_01: But I mean, just to clarify that, like, this is one of these things where, you know, and Libs pointed this out, like Michael Johnson two days earlier had gone on television and mixed up the names of two countries.
5:30
SPEAKER_01: Trump Does It All The Time
5:49
SPEAKER_01: The mode of expression in the podcast is much slipperier.
5:51
SPEAKER_01: Like that's how oral culture works, right?
5:54
SPEAKER_01: And so he was describing his efforts to address the situation at the Rafah Crossing, which is the southern border of the Gaza Strip rather than the southern border of the United States.
6:06
SPEAKER_01: And he said, I was on the phone with the president of Mexico, Al-Sisi, and I told him, da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
6:12
SPEAKER_01: And like, Al-Sisi is the name of the president of Egypt.
6:15
SPEAKER_01: And he just correctly described the contents of a
6:18
SPEAKER_01: A Telephone Conversation With Him.
6:19
SPEAKER_01: Now, you also, I cannot off the top of my head recall what is Al-Sisi's first name.
6:25
SPEAKER_01: I know that we call the president of Mexico AMLO, but if I was the president of the United States addressing a formal press conference in the West Wing, it would probably occur to me that I shouldn't call him AMLO, that I should refer to him respectfully as President
6:41
SPEAKER_01: But I actually don't know if the correct term is, is it President Obrador?
6:46
SPEAKER_01: Is it President Lopez?
6:48
SPEAKER_01: Because it's like, I know in my head that Spanish naming conventions are a little bit different from American ones.
6:54
SPEAKER_01: But despite my Latinx heritage personally, I just like, I don't know, right?
6:58
SPEAKER_01: And that's not because I'm old.
7:01
SPEAKER_01: And it's not even because I don't know who the president of Mexico is.
7:04
SPEAKER_01: That's just what happens when people speak.
7:07
SPEAKER_01: But the truth underlying all of this is that Joe Biden is not the kind of vigorous presence in the media that most presidents have been and that
7:25
SPEAKER_01: They have described this consistently as a philosophy, a contrast with the annoyingness of Donald Trump, that Joe Biden is going to run a low-key presidency that focuses on taking care of business.
7:42
SPEAKER_01: And that's not a totally insane idea or anything, but it absolutely
7:49
SPEAKER_01: A Serious And Above Board Conversation
8:15
SPEAKER_00: that will generate yet another round of discussion about his age, right?
8:18
SPEAKER_00: Because it is true that White Houses have good reason to be frustrated with the White House press corps and the kinds of people who tend to do these big marquee interviews, right?
8:30
SPEAKER_00: Like Biden did one with John Harwood, who's
8:34
SPEAKER_00: A friend of this pod and like I think we're both fond of and think is a good journalist.
8:38
SPEAKER_00: But most of the people who have John Harwood's profiles don't ask the kind of questions that Harwood asks, right?
8:44
SPEAKER_00: Like they would sit down with Joe Biden and even if this report hadn't come out, they would have asked him about Hunter Biden.
8:52
SPEAKER_00: They would have asked him about just a bunch of stuff about his age probably.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: A bunch of stuff that Biden's aides rightly understand is just not helpful to talk about.
9:03
SPEAKER_00: And then you see reporters reacting to the fact that there's very low awareness of Biden's legislative accomplishments in the public.
9:14
SPEAKER_00: And they're the same ones who are like, well, if I had a chance to interview him, I wouldn't ask him about what's in the Inflation Reduction Act or how it's working.
9:21
SPEAKER_00: is the implementation going well, they'd ask him about his gaffes or whatever.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: But like this has been happening forever, right?
9:26
SPEAKER_00: Like Barack Obama, you know, got punchy with the press corps during a period where he wasn't doing a lot of press conferences for the same reason and they eventually wore him down.
9:37
SPEAKER_00: And I remember this clearly, he went to the White House briefing room and he took a bunch of questions about all kinds of things, including the economy.
9:44
SPEAKER_00: And at some point during that press conference, he said,
9:48
SPEAKER_00: He was referring to the fact that the job losses that the country was still recovering from were mostly public sector job losses.
9:53
SPEAKER_00: And he said, the private sector is doing fine.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: And like the assembled reporters all instantly knew Republicans are going to pounce on that quote.
10:02
SPEAKER_00: And so they made that quote.
10:04
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
10:05
SPEAKER_00: The only takeaway from the, it didn't like, yes, that frustrated Barack Obama, but he didn't then decide I'm never doing
10:14
SPEAKER_00: A Serious And Above Board
10:35
SPEAKER_00: A Serious And Above Board Conversation About Biden's Age And Viability As A Candidate
11:04
SPEAKER_01: you know what I mean like you should say I think a better way to communicate would be to do a recording with Robinson Meyer about the Inflation Reduction Act you know to do a recording with you know like pick journalists who you think will ask substantive questions sit down with them and answer their questions and be doing things like that frequently to the point where like
11:28
SPEAKER_01: Some things that are just clear if you watch Biden speak, right, is that he speaks more slowly than he used to.
11:36
SPEAKER_01: He is trying to choose his words carefully, and he is succeeding at it.
11:42
SPEAKER_01: And the way he is succeeding at that is by speaking more slowly.
11:46
SPEAKER_01: Trump has addressed becoming older by not slowing down the pace at which he speaks at all.
11:53
SPEAKER_01: So he's just constantly saying things that are wrong.
11:56
SPEAKER_01: There are these good video compilations about it.
11:58
SPEAKER_01: But when he doesn't know somebody's name when he's sitting around a table, he just calls them the wrong name.
12:05
SPEAKER_01: And like, I don't know.
12:06
SPEAKER_00: Steve Apple.
12:08
SPEAKER_01: No, was it Steve Apple?
12:10
SPEAKER_01: And you're used to it, right?
12:12
SPEAKER_01: Because like that's Trump's performance.
12:13
SPEAKER_01: And like Biden talks slowly.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: Tim Apple.
12:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Tim Apple.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: I had a Biden moment just now.
12:19
SPEAKER_01: But you know, he called Kevin McCarthy Steve because he thought he was Steve Scalise.
12:24
SPEAKER_01: I don't even say because he thought he was Steve Scalise, but because the way human memory works, right?
12:29
SPEAKER_01: You slot people into these categories.
12:31
SPEAKER_01: So Tim Cook is the CEO of Apple.
12:34
SPEAKER_01: Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise are both Republican Party congressional leaders, or at least they were at the time.
12:40
SPEAKER_01: So you get these slips and it's like, people can care or not care.
12:43
SPEAKER_01: I think that if you put yourself in the position of not using the incumbency advantage, that like, people want to do an interview with the President of the United States, right?
12:58
SPEAKER_01: If you're somebody else
12:59
SPEAKER_01: If you are, I don't know who, right, Sheldon Whitehouse, and you would like a high profile interview in which you expound on your thoughts about the Inflation Reduction Act, you like probably can't make that happen.
13:14
SPEAKER_01: but like yeah he might come on the Politix Podcast I would love to talk to him about it but it's like Joe Biden could call up like you me any journalist working in this town and could be like we want you to record at 3 a.m.
13:28
SPEAKER_01: while the president is in Tokyo remotely and ask questions exclusively about dogs
13:33
SPEAKER_01: A Serious And Above Board Conversation
13:54
SPEAKER_01: But, like, actually what happens is that, like, the news cycle exists with or without Joe Biden in it.
14:02
SPEAKER_01: And, like, if you don't take up space in the news cycle, it will get filled with something else, right?
14:09
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
14:09
SPEAKER_01: Because he's the president.
14:11
SPEAKER_01: Now, again, Sheldon Whitehouse can just drop out of the news for, like, months at a time if he wants to.
14:17
SPEAKER_01: It's, like, it's not a big deal.
14:19
SPEAKER_01: Even the local TV stations up in, is it Rhode Island, Delaware, wherever the fuck it is.
14:23
SPEAKER_01: Rhode Island.
14:24
SPEAKER_01: A Serious And Above Board Conversation About Biden's Age And Viability As A Candidate
14:45
SPEAKER_01: Right?
14:46
SPEAKER_01: And like he's just small in the room stuff like it works great.
14:49
SPEAKER_01: He could drop in and out and like it's fine.
14:52
SPEAKER_01: It's fine.
14:52
SPEAKER_01: It's fine.
14:53
SPEAKER_01: But he's president of the United States and like you've got to be in the media.
14:56
SPEAKER_01: And I think that operates on a number of different levels.
14:59
SPEAKER_01: And I also think that this like turning it to just be like a point that we've both made is like Donald Trump is a is a doddering old man who is constantly misstating things, who is constantly forgetting people's names.
15:12
SPEAKER_01: He said Viktor Orban was the president of Turkey.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: A Serious And Above Board Conversation
15:32
SPEAKER_01: Right, and it's a fine point to make because it's like, it's accurate.
15:37
SPEAKER_01: But I read this, there was this like kind of dumb, was it Times article or somewhere, it was like, why age doesn't like hurt Trump as much as Biden.
15:46
SPEAKER_01: And they were like talking about Trump's posture and how he's fat and stuff.
15:50
SPEAKER_01: But like, the issue is that if I watch a Donald Trump speech in which he does all this insane ranting and raving, like I,
16:01
SPEAKER_01: I just like I sincerely don't think oh I'm concerned that the guy isn't energetic enough to pull this all off right like he's like up there and he's like I want to do fascism and open concentration camps around the country I'm not like wow um I don't know man like I I hope he's got the stamina to work the phones and make that happen right like it's it's it's horrifying and like if he had if he had a genuinely like
16:33
SPEAKER_00: Not just, you know, the random bullshit that comes out of his mouth about the escapades and a fantastic death penalty or whatever the weird thing he said the other day was, but just like if he fell asleep or whatever, if he started tweeting covfefe all the time and it seemed like really he was coming down.
16:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:55
SPEAKER_00: Like it might be better.
16:59
SPEAKER_00: Well, it just, it doesn't speak to- We would be like, okay, the guy is like losing an essential attribute that he needs to pull off his
17:10
SPEAKER_00: A Serious And Above Board Conversation About Biden's Age And Viability
17:34
SPEAKER_01: And then they'll be like, he's not actually going to do that stuff, right?
17:37
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this was like a big part of the pre-January 6th discourse, right?
17:40
SPEAKER_01: Was this like, just let him tweet, right?
17:43
SPEAKER_01: Like he's an ineffectual old man.
17:45
SPEAKER_01: That's the defense of Trump, right?
17:47
SPEAKER_01: That's not a critique of Trump.
17:50
SPEAKER_01: You know, and so your criticisms of Trump have to...
17:55
SPEAKER_01: A Serious And Above
18:12
SPEAKER_01: Donald Trump is going to try to overthrow fair elections.
18:18
SPEAKER_01: That's a criticism of Trump that is sincere.
18:22
SPEAKER_01: That's a liberal saying.
18:24
SPEAKER_01: And when you do a policy critique, he's going to take away people's healthcare.
18:28
SPEAKER_01: Those are the things people worry about.
18:30
SPEAKER_01: Trump is going to spend time twiddling his thumbs in the White House basement?
18:34
SPEAKER_01: That's great by all means.
18:37
SPEAKER_00: I think that what you're we're kind of dancing around is that there is in some sort of objective sense I think something unfair about the fact that no matter what happens in the world or no matter how clear it is that Biden is up to the job of president media coverage always returns to his age and it
19:00
SPEAKER_00: A Serious And Above Board
19:20
SPEAKER_00: The coverage is just not fair.
19:23
SPEAKER_00: It's unprofessional almost insofar as if media really does want to fixate on the age question, then they need to have a more balanced kind of coverage in the same way that if the media really did care about document security or retention or whatever in 2016, then they would have covered
19:41
SPEAKER_00: A Serious And Above Board Conversation About Biden's Age And Viability As A Candidate
20:04
SPEAKER_00: Do some media criticism, do some media ref working in part because I think the last few months have borne out that this can work, right?
20:11
SPEAKER_00: Like it was media ref working I think in large part that sort of upended the yearish long cycle of the press reporting on a strong economy in doom and gloom terms.
20:25
SPEAKER_00: It was just like enough
20:26
SPEAKER_00: A Serious And Above Board
20:46
SPEAKER_00: Obsessing About What The Media Is Saying About Biden Age Because There's Like That That's Not Changing And You Know Like My Response Was Sort Of Like It Could Change Like Like We've Seen It Change We've Seen That People Who Have That Kind Of Influence Can Really Change How The People Who Control The Front Pages Are
21:06
SPEAKER_00: And The A Blocks Of Cable Shows Or Whatever Like They Can Be Influenced And I Still Think That's True But I Do Take Your Point That There's A Sort Of Careful What You Wish For Aspect To This Insofar As What Liberals Should Want Is For The Press To Home In On Trump's Actual Liabilities And As You Say It's Not Clear To Me That Trump Is Also Old Is A Real Liability And
21:33
SPEAKER_01: Right.
21:34
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's right.
21:35
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's a kind of like a calling it to question.
21:39
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's a bit of an odd one, I think.
21:42
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's true.
21:43
SPEAKER_01: This is where, you know, something that strikes me because I people people talk all the time about Biden's age, you know, privately, interpersonally.
21:53
SPEAKER_01: It's a it's a frequent topic of discussion among, you know, among Democrats, among swing voters, among, you know, Trump skeptics, et cetera.
22:02
SPEAKER_01: Something that
22:05
SPEAKER_01: I have taken to doing is I try to ask people a little bit more about like, what did they envision being better about like a hypothetical younger Biden?
22:18
SPEAKER_01: Either it's like we're doing a CGI de-aging of Biden or some other person is the nominee, etc.,
22:26
SPEAKER_01: And something that I think is telling about this is that, you know, when I talk to people who are more progressive than I am, who tend to be people who are on the younger side, usually what they are saying is that their imagined younger Joe Biden is going to be more left wing than the actual Joe Biden.
22:49
SPEAKER_01: Part of what they're saying when they say that Biden is too old is that Joe Biden has the values and political ideas of his cohort of Democrats and that they want different, more left-wing ideas that they associate with younger Democrats.
23:07
SPEAKER_01: Then when I talk to my cranky old moderate buddies, they have exactly the opposite of
23:14
SPEAKER_01: A Serious And Above
23:30
SPEAKER_01: of the Left, right?
23:32
SPEAKER_01: Would do less kind of like preconceiving that he's yesterday's man and he needs to have all these Warrenite staffers and be constantly looking over his shoulders.
23:41
SPEAKER_01: And those are both, I think, like plausible hypotheses.
23:46
SPEAKER_01: Like these aren't like stupid ideas that people have in their head.
23:51
SPEAKER_01: I think it goes to show that one reason the age question looms so much over Biden is that it both bridges but also papers over substantive disagreements.
24:07
SPEAKER_01: Or then another thing, a lot of people are really fired up still to this day.
24:12
SPEAKER_01: They feel that Biden badly mishandled withdrawal from Afghanistan.
24:17
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's bullshit.
24:19
SPEAKER_01: I think that's like a bullshit charge against Biden.
24:23
SPEAKER_01: And whenever you ask people about it, you'll be like, I'll say like, well, do you think we should have just had troops in Afghanistan forever?
24:29
SPEAKER_01: And they'll say like, no, no, no, no, no, no.
24:31
SPEAKER_01: That's not what I'm saying, but he handled it so bad.
24:35
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I pushed them on him.
24:36
SPEAKER_01: Like, really?
24:37
SPEAKER_01: Like, is it really?
24:38
SPEAKER_01: Relative to what?
24:39
SPEAKER_01: Right.
24:39
SPEAKER_01: Like, relative to what?
24:40
SPEAKER_01: Like, what evacuation?
24:41
SPEAKER_01: Right.
24:41
SPEAKER_01: And we know it was in the face of opposition from military commanders.
24:44
SPEAKER_01: Like, I think some of the best evidence of Biden's mental acuity and the value of his experience is that, like, he watched both Barack Obama and Donald Trump get boxed out by senior military commanders.
24:58
SPEAKER_01: And he operated from the beginning of his own volition to get out of the box and
25:04
SPEAKER_01: Checkmate them, achieve his policy directive, end a war that needed to be ended, fulfill a campaign promise.
25:12
SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, like, people didn't get away totally clean, but that's because it's impossible.
25:18
SPEAKER_01: But then what people will come back at me with is not like specific, detailed tactical argument of how this could have been better, but just like, well, you can tell he's old.
25:28
SPEAKER_00: Which is a total non-sequitur, right?
25:30
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
25:31
SPEAKER_01: But it's just to say that anyone who is 75% pro-Biden, they just fill in.
25:42
SPEAKER_01: The way he could fulfill all my hopes and dreams is by being quote unquote younger.
25:48
SPEAKER_01: But what they always mean by that is that this younger person would be
25:53
SPEAKER_01: A Serious And Above Board
26:18
SPEAKER_01: by A Serious And Above Board
26:31
SPEAKER_00: Like Biden's age is some sort of like stalking horse for some other thing they don't like about him or that they wish were different in the world, right?
26:40
SPEAKER_00: And like maybe I'm the only liberal in America whose concern about Biden's age is really about what you were just talking about.
26:50
SPEAKER_00: Because yeah, Biden was never like a smooth character, but he had a kind of charisma and he had,
27:01
SPEAKER_00: Rhetorical Chops, right?
27:02
SPEAKER_00: Like he was the, everyone to this day associates Rudy Giuliani with a noun, a verb, a 9-11.
27:08
SPEAKER_00: But the person who came up with that construction was Joe Biden in 2008 when Rudy Giuliani was running in the Republican presidential primary.
27:16
SPEAKER_00: And if you go back and you watch the vice presidential debates from 2008 that Biden did against Sarah Palin and 2012 that he did against Paul Ryan, he had a really high speed fastball.
27:30
SPEAKER_00: He won those debates even though Palin and Ryan were obviously significantly younger than him.
27:35
SPEAKER_00: Even Then, he had quicker recall of the details and precision when he spoke.
27:42
SPEAKER_00: And he's just genuinely lost those things.
27:45
SPEAKER_00: And like, that doesn't mean I worry about him as president, right?
27:51
SPEAKER_00: Like, I slept poorly through most of the Trump presidency, not because Trump was old, but because he was –
28:00
SPEAKER_00: A Serious And Above Board Conversation
28:29
SPEAKER_00: And that leaves me really cold because especially in the Trump era where the partisan politics, where the politics against the opposition is all really in the mud.
28:43
SPEAKER_00: It's all like really dirty, almost like unfair play levels of dirty, like slander and stuff like that.
28:53
SPEAKER_00: A Serious And Above Board
29:08
SPEAKER_00: You know, I got to assume that age was part of the reason why Biden and his entourage decided he would have a more withdrawn presidency.
29:17
SPEAKER_00: I think some of it was, I want to be the anti-Trump.
29:19
SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't want to impose myself on an exhausted public.
29:23
SPEAKER_01: But it's definitely a big part of the reason they haven't pivoted off that.
29:26
SPEAKER_00: Yes, exactly, exactly.
29:28
SPEAKER_01: You try things, and I think that thing has clearly not worked.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: And I realize it sounds a little meta, but I do think it's important.
29:35
SPEAKER_00: Like, I think it's wrong to say Biden is too old to be president, but I think it's maybe right to say Biden is too old to run for president against Donald Trump.
29:47
SPEAKER_00: And that's a big problem because it looks like the 2024 election is going to be Joe Biden versus Donald Trump.
29:52
SPEAKER_01: But so I do want to keep like,
29:54
SPEAKER_01: Pressing on the the connective tissue between this and other kind of tensions in the coalition because like you you brought up right like Biden's great noun verb 9-11 uh movement right I I think it's interesting to watch that clip you know on a number of levels because like yes it shows you a younger Joe Biden who talks faster um and sort of pivots more but here's what he says
30:21
SPEAKER_01: Rudy Giuliani, I mean, think about it.
30:22
SPEAKER_01: Rudy Giuliani, there's only three things he mentions in a sentence, a noun, a verb, and 9-11.
30:27
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's nothing else.
30:29
SPEAKER_01: There's nothing else.
30:29
SPEAKER_01: And I mean this sincerely.
30:31
SPEAKER_01: He is not qualified to be president.
30:33
SPEAKER_01: Here's a man who brags about how he made the city safe.
30:35
SPEAKER_01: It was the Biden crime bill that became the Clinton crime bill that allowed him to do that.
30:40
SPEAKER_01: They wipe it out and he remains silent.
30:44
SPEAKER_01: The thing about that is that it's not just a question of Joe Biden's verbal fluency.
30:54
SPEAKER_01: If Joe Biden said that tomorrow,
30:58
SPEAKER_01: That would be construed on progressive Twitter by the leaders of progressive interest groups, by many Democratic Party members of Congress, and possibly by large swaths of his own team as a huge gaffe.
31:18
SPEAKER_01: A Serious And Above
31:40
SPEAKER_01: Part of Joe Biden's thing is that he's like a party guy and he tries to be where the party median is.
31:50
SPEAKER_01: But the party median is just like it has moved a lot since Joe Biden's heyday.
31:57
SPEAKER_01: And it creates, Joe Biden often has a complicated relationship with himself, right, in the positions he takes on a lot of contested issues.
32:07
SPEAKER_01: He gave a speech back, I mean, I was quoting a debate from 2007, but if you go back to 1995 when they were talking about that legislation,
32:19
SPEAKER_01: there's this speech of him on the floor it's like kind of a barnstormer barn burner rather see everybody misspeaks and he's talking about how many more people are going to be executed uh thanks to this legislation and he's rebutting accusations this is a liberal bill by talking about how they've expanded the categories that are eligible for the death penalty how they've reduced the appeals you know it's just like we're gonna hang them high with this Biden crime bill
32:48
SPEAKER_01: And like, that's not Joe Biden's, like, current policy as president of the United States, right?
32:55
SPEAKER_01: Like, it's not reflective of his, the stated positions of his administration.
33:02
SPEAKER_01: Or I think that he has himself, like, earnestly...
33:07
SPEAKER_01: I mean, he's moved.
33:08
SPEAKER_01: I mean, who knows?
33:09
SPEAKER_01: Or then at a fundraiser, I think the day before Heard's report came out, Biden said, you know, he was talking to Democratic donors and he said, like, I'm not for abortion on demand, but I think the Supreme Court got it right with Roe v. Wade.
33:26
SPEAKER_01: I think that's a totally good abortion rights message.
33:29
SPEAKER_01: It's a normal Catholic Democrat abortion rights message for a person of his age.
33:35
SPEAKER_01: It reflects the fact that he is personally a church-going Catholic who is experiencing a little bit of a conflict between the tenets of his religion and his commitments as public policy.
33:47
SPEAKER_01: But that is a message that NARAL and other organizations have spent decades successfully getting Democrats to drop.
33:56
SPEAKER_01: Like Nancy Pelosi used to say that because she's also an old Catholic Democrat, but she stopped saying that.
34:04
SPEAKER_01: Ted Kennedy used to say that, but he's dead now and
34:08
SPEAKER_01: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
34:28
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
34:29
SPEAKER_01: Like she was not prepared to back up Joe Biden's off the cuff remarks about abortion with like, here's the policy of this administration.
34:42
SPEAKER_01: and I feel like this like it is both true that these are problems that are downstream of Biden being old but there's also just a question of like what what is the way to fix the problem right because it's like you can wish cast various things but feasible things that could be done I think are like Joe Biden could stand aside in favor of Kamala Harris
35:08
SPEAKER_01: Or the Biden team could accept that they have to put Joe Biden out there more and they themselves have to do what Trump's people do, right?
35:19
SPEAKER_01: Like when Trump comes up and he's, when Trump says, if Democrats win, they're going to rename Pennsylvania.
35:26
SPEAKER_01: And then I say like, that doesn't seem true to me.
35:30
SPEAKER_01: What Trump's people do is they say that he was referring to a controversy about whether or not there should be a statue of William Penn in some national park, which like it is true.
35:41
SPEAKER_01: Some NPS bureaucrat like tried to cancel William Penn.
35:45
SPEAKER_01: Then Josh Shapiro and the National Park Service were like, no, we're not going to cancel it.
35:49
SPEAKER_01: But like that did occur in the news.
35:51
SPEAKER_01: It's like vaguely relates to what Donald Trump said.
35:54
SPEAKER_01: And they just like they go with it.
35:56
SPEAKER_01: They're like, he's right.
35:58
SPEAKER_01: He's the leader.
35:59
SPEAKER_00: and it's a it's morally unattractive but like that's like your job as a press flack is to just like get on the fucking bandwagon I think that there is there is a a degree to which Biden's more moderate instincts are the impediment here but it's a smaller degree than than I think you're stipulating right like I think
36:25
SPEAKER_00: I think for the most part, I think that if somehow through just being more present in the political sphere, Joe Biden pulled ahead of Donald Trump, that would be just infectious in the progressive world and progressives would be happy and would stop fixating on aspects of Joe Biden's policy agenda that they don't like, right?
36:50
SPEAKER_00: I guess the counterpoint that sticks out to me right now is there was like a subset of graduate students who are members of the United Auto Workers Union for weird union reasons and they got upset that the union endorsed Joe Biden because they thought that that was like wasting leverage that they could have used to move Joe Biden on the war in Gaza.
37:13
SPEAKER_00: But in general, what I think is
37:16
SPEAKER_00: If Joe Biden used the fact that there was a violent crime and murder surge under Donald Trump that went down under him to hurt Donald Trump and it worked, progressives would be pretty happy about it in general.
37:34
SPEAKER_00: I think that if
37:37
SPEAKER_00: This like bait and switch, this like dirty trick that Republicans pulled on the border security bill.
37:44
SPEAKER_00: If Democrats are able to persuade lots of people that Republicans are sabotage artists who are trying to hurt the country to help Donald Trump and they'll do it across issue spaces and it hurts Republicans, like progressives will be
38:03
SPEAKER_00: will overlook their misgivings about that bill and feel good about it.
38:08
SPEAKER_00: On the other hand, but here's where I do think that this can run into like a space where I kind of agree with you, which is that if you turn it slightly differently, if Biden were to go out there and say, I'm the real tough on borders guy, I'm the real law and order guy, I want the police out there cracking skulls.
38:29
SPEAKER_00: and Trump is just an imposter, like I own this issue space, that might hurt him.
38:36
SPEAKER_00: You know, that might get people like, we didn't sign up to rally behind a president who supports the most vicious forms of policing or is just like indifferent to the plight of migrants.
38:48
SPEAKER_00: We support somebody who is willing to beat Donald Trump.
38:51
SPEAKER_00: And you know,
38:56
SPEAKER_00: It's a small rhetorical difference, but it matters a lot.
39:00
SPEAKER_00: And maybe the issue is...
39:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but like- The staff doesn't know what Biden's going to say.
39:05
SPEAKER_01: Well, but it's, you know, because I want to draw actually a distinction between those two issues, right?
39:11
SPEAKER_01: Because, so on the border bill, I think if you look at what like, what are quote unquote Democrats saying about the border bill, they are saying what you think they should be saying.
39:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, mostly.
39:22
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I mean, there's always variation, but like that is their message.
39:26
SPEAKER_01: And if the president of the United States was just like more present also saying that-
39:32
SPEAKER_01: like that would amplify the message right and that would be good what's interesting to me about crime is that it's not just that like Joe Biden isn't on a Super Bowl interview talking about how murder went up under Trump and down under Biden it's like genuinely not the case that the Democrats are saying that right like that's not
39:56
SPEAKER_01: That's not like an argument that is being advanced like on the White House Twitter account.
40:03
SPEAKER_01: It's not being advanced by Hakeem Jeffries, you know, who isn't old, right?
40:08
SPEAKER_01: Like there's just some like, I don't know why.
40:12
SPEAKER_01: I have not asked anybody.
40:13
SPEAKER_01: I ask people about certain things.
40:15
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I have a theory.
40:17
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I can have theories too, but it's like...
40:20
SPEAKER_00: But the theory is not that they're scared that progressive activists are going to freak out if they if Democrats seem like they're on the side of police.
40:30
SPEAKER_00: I think the issue is that they understand what issues how issues are coded and that because of race, essentially, policing and border security are coded Republican.
40:42
SPEAKER_00: And even if they point this out, it's not
40:46
SPEAKER_00: A Serious And Above Board Conversation About Biden's Age And Viability
41:09
SPEAKER_01: When They Make These Kinds Of Criticism.
41:11
SPEAKER_01: I'm thinking a lot about, you know, so like Nate Silver has like been on a tear about how Democrats, quote unquote, have like fouled up by not mounting a serious challenge to Joe Biden.
41:24
SPEAKER_01: And like, you know, it just, it's important.
41:27
SPEAKER_01: I think this is like the biggest mistake that like 100% of people make when they talk about American politics.
41:32
SPEAKER_01: Like Democrats who,
41:35
SPEAKER_01: Right?
41:35
SPEAKER_01: Like, who?
41:36
SPEAKER_01: What?
41:36
SPEAKER_01: Right?
41:37
SPEAKER_01: And so you can ask yourself, do you wish that the governor, an incumbent governor or senator had mounted a primary challenge to Joe Biden?
41:47
SPEAKER_01: That's like, that's a thing to say that's specific.
41:50
SPEAKER_01: So then the question is like, which one?
41:52
SPEAKER_01: Right?
41:53
SPEAKER_01: And what does that person say during the campaign?
41:57
SPEAKER_01: And like opinions will differ on this, but like knowing his takes on other things, I don't think that Nate.
42:03
SPEAKER_01: So I think that if a viable campaign had been mounted against Biden, it would have been a challenge to Biden from the left and that like Nate Silver would have ended up supporting Biden.
42:16
SPEAKER_01: in that kind of challenge.
42:17
SPEAKER_01: Now, when left-wing people tell me they wish somebody had challenged Biden, I'm like, well, I don't agree with you, but I do think that you are making sense that somebody could be running against Biden now on a platform of cutting off aid to Israel, of being more aggressive in...
42:37
SPEAKER_01: You know, tamping down on oil and gas production, you know, and various other like championing of progressive causes.
42:45
SPEAKER_01: And I think you could gain some real traction with that because Biden would want to offer an electability argument, which was big for him in 2020.
42:54
SPEAKER_01: But he's like down in the polls to Trump.
42:56
SPEAKER_01: So I don't think arguing electability would get him very far.
42:59
SPEAKER_01: And he might very well lose to a challenge like that.
43:04
SPEAKER_01: But if that's the thing you're saying, like, that's what people should say.
43:09
SPEAKER_01: Or alternatively, if you think what nobody seems to think, which is that, like, I would like to see Joe Biden give a speech in which he says, you know, I am 100% up for the job of President of the United States, but that is a full-time job, and I do not have the energy to also be a presidential candidate.
43:28
SPEAKER_01: and that is also an incredibly important job so I am giving that job to my friend and partner Kamala Harris like I just like I never hear anybody saying that that's the thing that they want either so then it's like well I wish Joe Biden had four arms I wish he could grow wings I wish he had laser beams shining over his eyes so it's just like what is it what is it that we unless you're saying that like
43:57
SPEAKER_01: You Want to Vote for Donald Trump.
44:02
SPEAKER_01: What does anybody want to happen here?
44:05
SPEAKER_01: I wish people had listened to me about Kamala Harris back in July of 2020.
44:09
SPEAKER_01: And I don't know what's going on.
44:12
SPEAKER_01: And I've written this take not just about her, but multiple cycles.
44:17
SPEAKER_01: If you look at Abraham Lincoln, fucking awesome president, his successor was terrible.
44:22
SPEAKER_01: His successor was also handpicked by Abraham Lincoln.
44:25
SPEAKER_01: for Very Short-Term Superficial Political Reasons.
44:29
SPEAKER_01: And it's the biggest mistake that presidents make is not taking their VP selection seriously.
44:36
SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, it's very straightforward from here is that Biden has to accept Merrick Garland's resignation.
44:42
SPEAKER_00: He's got to appoint Kamala Harris attorney general and then step aside and problem will be solved.
44:49
SPEAKER_00: So look, I took- Wait, and then Michael Johnson becomes president?
44:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
44:52
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, just not run for re-election.
44:55
SPEAKER_00: You know, he could try to get a VP appointed by the Senate or whatever, but just like, I will not be running for re-election.
45:01
SPEAKER_00: There is no vice president to be an incumbent.
45:04
SPEAKER_00: In fact, the vice president that I had is now attorney general, which is a non-political position for the most part.
45:09
SPEAKER_00: So she, you know, it would be inappropriate for her to simultaneously be AG and run for president.
45:15
SPEAKER_00: So the field is open.
45:15
SPEAKER_01: But don't you think that would be tricky to pull off?
45:18
SPEAKER_01: No, but I mean like in all seriousness, like,
45:22
SPEAKER_01: Now, the most fun scenario from like a sheer wouldn't this be cool would be Biden sticks with the status quo.
45:31
SPEAKER_01: And then the day before the convention, he just like chaotically withdraws at the last minute.
45:36
SPEAKER_01: And then you have a completely unstructured floor flight.
45:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that'd be fun.
45:42
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you could order SEAL Team 6 to murder Donald Trump and then I'll just, I just won't care who wins the election anymore for the most part.
45:55
SPEAKER_00: No, Mike, you can leave that in.
45:56
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I take the, I take and have always taken and I still mostly take this critique seriously that Biden,
46:08
SPEAKER_00: A Serious And Above Board Conversation
46:26
SPEAKER_00: is he's too old and nobody thinks that that's good enough a basis for a presidential primary campaign against an incumbent president and so nobody's done it and like nobody agrees with me on this but I was pretty pissed at Biden and I still think it was a big mistake when he negotiated
46:46
SPEAKER_00: by Kevin McCarthy.
47:03
SPEAKER_00: A Serious And Above Board Conversation
47:31
SPEAKER_00: Style of politics, his view about dealing with Republicans in the 21st century is rooted in the 20th century and it's outmoded and it's dangerous to have a president who doesn't realize that he needs to draw hard lines with these guys.
47:47
SPEAKER_00: And I think that that would have been like reasonably viable.
47:51
SPEAKER_00: Like people would have said, okay, there's a real critique there, but now we're like moving...
47:58
SPEAKER_00: A Serious And Above
48:13
SPEAKER_00: A Serious And Above Board Conversation
48:34
SPEAKER_00: Dean Phillips kind of a clown and like didn't want to like root his candidacy in something bigger than that.
48:42
SPEAKER_00: And so he just flailed around trying to find it.
48:44
SPEAKER_00: If he had just said, it's just unfair.
48:47
SPEAKER_00: I understand it.
48:48
SPEAKER_00: But like, I don't want to lose to Donald Trump.
48:50
SPEAKER_00: I think that that suddenly you're in a more compelling place.
48:55
SPEAKER_00: And like the thing about Kamala Harris even is that she could say, yes, my polling against Donald Trump has always stunk.
49:05
SPEAKER_00: But like, I know how to mix it up because I'm not 21 years old and- Okay, but here's where I get to the substance of this.
49:17
SPEAKER_01: I think that Democrats are struggling due to some fundamental like issue positioning type considerations and that this fixating on Biden's age is in part like a cope around that and part of the
49:39
SPEAKER_01: Evidence that I see for that, right, is like, Harris polls worse against Trump than Biden does.
49:46
SPEAKER_01: And specifically the reason that she polls worse, or she is perceived as more liberal than Joe Biden, right?
49:53
SPEAKER_01: And she polls worse than him.
49:56
SPEAKER_01: The testing of Whitmer and other kind of figures has been scarce on the ground, but it generally shows them doing a little bit worse than Biden.
50:07
SPEAKER_01: Whereas like when they test Nikki Haley against Biden, she does way better than Trump, right?
50:14
SPEAKER_01: Like the doubts that people have, there are like multiple percentage points of Americans who don't just like express certain kinds of concerns about Donald Trump, but who like move in the polls when you give them a different Republican option.
50:32
SPEAKER_01: And we just don't really see that among Democrats, with the exception of the one guy who I have seen polls does clearly better than Biden in a head to head matchup is Joe Manchin.
50:47
SPEAKER_01: And like, I would be thrilled.
50:51
SPEAKER_01: If Democrats Ran Joe Manchin Instead Of Joe Biden As President But Like I'm Not Even Gonna Suggest That As An Idea Because It's Absurd I Mean It's Not Absurd To Me But Like People Don't Want That Like I Think That You Democrats Are Really Angry At Joe Manchin I Think That You Have A Liberal Enough Somewhat Hyper Literalist Conception About How
51:13
SPEAKER_00: I do.
51:14
SPEAKER_01: I am incredibly literal.
51:15
SPEAKER_01: People can ask me that in all walks of life.
51:18
SPEAKER_01: And like, I think that, no, no, but I mean, you know, when I saw NBC News did a poll where they asked people,
51:29
SPEAKER_01: You know, did Trump's presidency, like, go surprisingly well or surprisingly poorly?
51:34
SPEAKER_01: And they asked the same about Biden.
51:36
SPEAKER_01: And Biden did worse on that metric.
51:38
SPEAKER_01: And they put up, like, a word cloud to ask people, like, why were they disappointed by Biden?
51:44
SPEAKER_01: And he's too old was on there, you know, as a thing, as was, like, he's not as liberal as I thought he would be.
51:53
SPEAKER_01: But those are both relatively small things.
51:55
SPEAKER_01: The big ones that popped out were inflation is bad, border security is bad, and he hasn't been bipartisan enough.
52:06
SPEAKER_01: It's not that that's a newsflash.
52:09
SPEAKER_01: As you said, people have known that border security is a Republican-owned issue forever.
52:16
SPEAKER_01: Crime was also on there, but in a small way.
52:19
SPEAKER_01: That's another GOP-coded issue.
52:21
SPEAKER_01: But it's just people...
52:24
SPEAKER_01: Look at the news environment, because I have read my Will Stancil.
52:29
SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to say that people have an unmediated look at reality.
52:32
SPEAKER_01: But the impression that people get from news coverage is that the main problems in American life today relate to border security, crime and disorder in American cities, and the kind of ongoing struggle against inflation.
52:48
SPEAKER_01: And those are all Republican-coded issues.
52:52
SPEAKER_01: Biden continues to have a strong advantage on climate change, on abortion rights, and on healthcare, which are like the classic Dem issues.
53:01
SPEAKER_01: So you can do some razzmatazz to make people care more about those things.
53:08
SPEAKER_01: We've seen the Dobbs effect is very, very real.
53:11
SPEAKER_01: I think that if we had left wing protesters up in Republicans faces talking about abortion rights rather than up in Democrats faces talking about Gaza, that like that would shift the news environment in a more constructive direction.
53:26
SPEAKER_01: A Serious And Above Board Conversation About Biden's Age And Viability As A Candidate
53:43
SPEAKER_01: It's not just, well, you would be out there and you would be answering questions more rapidly.
53:48
SPEAKER_01: Like, I think you would have to say something different than what Democrats are currently saying.
53:54
SPEAKER_01: And we can debate what that would be, but like, it's not, it's...
54:01
SPEAKER_01: People do these jokes, right?
54:02
SPEAKER_01: These AI-generated images of Joe Biden with a beard, and he looks way better.
54:09
SPEAKER_01: But I don't actually think that bearded Joe Biden would perform dramatically better.
54:14
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
54:17
SPEAKER_00: Maybe.
54:21
SPEAKER_00: If he threw a cane into the mix.
54:26
SPEAKER_00: My thinking about this is that
54:30
SPEAKER_00: In actuality, inflation has been basically at target for a few months now, right?
54:36
SPEAKER_00: And Joe Biden really did call Republicans bluff on the border.
54:45
SPEAKER_00: And you know, I'm willing to give it more time.
54:52
SPEAKER_00: I have no say.
54:53
SPEAKER_00: I'm willing to give it all the time in the world because even if I decide Joe Biden shouldn't be the Democratic nominee, there's nothing I can do about it.
55:02
SPEAKER_00: But maybe those two things will move his poll numbers.
55:07
SPEAKER_00: I just don't think that he could say yes to liquefied natural gas.
55:15
SPEAKER_00: projects and go even farther on the border.
55:19
SPEAKER_00: And I just don't honestly think that that is what's happening in the mush of American brains when they're deciding what to tell pollsters they think about candidates, right?
55:32
SPEAKER_00: Like Joe Biden outperforms Whitmer because nobody knows who Gretchen Whitmer is.
55:39
SPEAKER_01: No, but that's, I think, relevant and important, right?
55:43
SPEAKER_01: Because people do know who Donald Trump is, and they have a negative impression of Donald Trump.
55:48
SPEAKER_01: And same thing with Harris, even though it's like a little- And people do know who Joe Biden is, and they have a negative impression of Joe Biden.
55:56
SPEAKER_01: To the extent that the concern is genuinely motivated by age, I think, like Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, I don't really have a clear sense of who she is, ought to clearly outperform Biden.
56:11
SPEAKER_01: But, like, I think that these are fundamental doubts that people have about the post-Obama Democratic Party and its ideological dimension.
56:18
SPEAKER_00: And again, like- But Biden underperforms every Democrat in 2022, in special elections.
56:25
SPEAKER_00: Like, the Democratic Party actually seems all right.
56:27
SPEAKER_01: No, but I think that this special elections thing, I think, because I bet we are recording in advance of a special election where I think Democrats will probably do well and Long Island is going to generate another round of this.
56:40
SPEAKER_01: But like, I think Nate Cohn has shown that like the special election electorate, the like super voters are just like a strongly pro-Biden group.
56:49
SPEAKER_01: Biden's Age And Viability
57:10
SPEAKER_01: Right?
57:10
SPEAKER_01: So, like, I think the sense the midterms is misleading people about this.
57:18
SPEAKER_01: But here's where I keep coming back to, right?
57:21
SPEAKER_01: Like, this is my fundamental thing.
57:23
SPEAKER_01: There's this article, you know, in The Hill today.
57:26
SPEAKER_01: And it's just like, these are the articles that are driving me crazy.
57:30
SPEAKER_01: It says, Senate Dems privately fear Biden's age could cost him the White House.
57:35
SPEAKER_01: And they got a quote here, quote, in all of our lunches, it's never been discussed.
57:38
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of amazing, said one Dem senator.
57:41
SPEAKER_01: And this is like, the thing that I keep hearing in the media is this idea that like, nobody is talking about this.
57:51
SPEAKER_01: I find this stupid as well.
57:55
SPEAKER_01: What would they say at the lunch about Biden's age?
57:58
SPEAKER_01: That's my question.
57:59
SPEAKER_01: So we have a lunch, and somebody says, I'm going to stop ragging on Sheldon Whitehouse, so I'll make it somebody else.
58:06
SPEAKER_01: Chris Coons says-
58:08
SPEAKER_01: Hey, I've noticed that Joe Biden's age seems to be hurting us at the polls, right?
58:13
SPEAKER_01: And then the, you know, Patty Murray says, I agree with you, Chris.
58:19
SPEAKER_01: Biden's age does seem like a problem to us.
58:22
SPEAKER_01: And then Chuck Schumer says, as caucus leader, I will take a consensus among us and I will march to the White House and I will deliver the news to the president.
58:33
SPEAKER_01: And so it's like, what do they want Chuck Schumer to say?
58:37
SPEAKER_01: Right.
58:37
SPEAKER_01: Like maybe maybe somebody there.
58:39
SPEAKER_01: Right.
58:40
SPEAKER_01: Somebody like really dumb.
58:42
SPEAKER_01: Like, yeah, I'm not I'm not going to name it.
58:44
SPEAKER_01: Not dumb.
58:45
SPEAKER_01: Somebody who takes it at face value.
58:47
SPEAKER_01: Right.
58:48
SPEAKER_01: Gary Peters will say, given our concerns about the president's age, Chuck, you should tell him to step aside in favor of the vice president, comma, who is younger.
59:00
SPEAKER_01: And then like, is everyone like, that's it, we fixed it.
59:03
SPEAKER_01: By having this conversation about the president's age, we have reasoned our way to a solution.
59:08
SPEAKER_01: And it's like, you know, back when we worked at Vox, Ezra used to give me a hard time because I would show up all the time with like, we got a big problem here, man.
59:18
SPEAKER_01: Like we gotta do something.
59:20
SPEAKER_01: And then after I would whine for five minutes.
59:22
SPEAKER_01: He'd be like, what do you want us to do?
59:24
SPEAKER_01: Like you have to have solutions or there's no purpose of the meeting.
59:29
SPEAKER_01: and like I have ideas about how Joe Biden could do better and they involve becoming more moderate across the broad range of policy issues I'm glad you brought it back and like that could be implemented it might not work but he definitely could do it I I he could try I mean I'm honestly not against it just insofar as like beating Trump is the thing right but like
59:56
SPEAKER_00: We can stipulate that a lot of the discourse around this is extremely stupid.
1:00:01
SPEAKER_00: But I think that there are problems with your assessment, right?
1:00:05
SPEAKER_00: Like it is just true that there are Democrats in very good standing with progressives like, I mean, rest in peace, Harry Reid, who had the same view about abortion as Joe Biden.
1:00:17
SPEAKER_00: And...
1:00:20
SPEAKER_00: And so I don't think that that has much explanatory force.
1:00:23
SPEAKER_00: And then you have this question like, okay, why doesn't Gretchen Whitmer, who nobody knows, and Joe Manchin, who maybe a few more people know just because he's in the mix of some national reporting, why does Biden poll slightly better than Whitmer in the little polling that we have and slightly worse than Manchin in the little... Now, it could be...
1:00:42
SPEAKER_00: A Serious And Above
1:01:04
SPEAKER_00: answer the pollster's question, it's going to be on the merits and it's going to be about where they fall on the ideological spectrum.
1:01:10
SPEAKER_00: I just don't think that that's what happens at all, right?
1:01:13
SPEAKER_00: Like, especially in a situation where we're in right now, where Joe Biden is the incumbent and the people who answered the pollster's questions have some feeling about him and about Trump and about what should happen, right?
1:01:25
SPEAKER_00: Like, pollster says, Joe Biden's
1:01:28
SPEAKER_00: President, do you support him or Trump?
1:01:30
SPEAKER_00: What if it was Gresham Whitmer?
1:01:32
SPEAKER_00: You know, some people might know who Whitmer is and give like a experience-based answer on that.
1:01:39
SPEAKER_00: Some are like, I'm a Joe Biden supporter and I'm gonna say like a negative thing about Whitmer because I don't like this being in the discourse.
1:01:46
SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't like that I'm confronted with this question.
1:01:49
SPEAKER_00: And then like some people are going to say they're going to be like Republican voters and they're going to know that Manchin is like a conservative Democrat.
1:01:58
SPEAKER_00: They're going to say Manchin.
1:02:00
SPEAKER_00: But in reality,
1:02:02
SPEAKER_00: When it comes time to have a Manchin versus Trump election, they're going to come home to Donald Trump and you're going to find that the polling has been defective because it was a stupid poll, right?
1:02:14
SPEAKER_00: And like the way we actually would figure out who was a stronger candidate would be for Gretchen Whitmer to run a campaign and make people know who she is and see that she's got a lot of charisma and a lot of
1:02:28
SPEAKER_00: A Serious And Above Board Conversation
1:02:39
SPEAKER_00: um and that it didn't really and that and that like looking at at polls in this way is is persuading Democrats that there is no problem here or at least a problem that couldn't but but this is what I'm saying like I think this myth that Democrat this is my complaint it's like I think this idea that Democrats don't
1:03:02
SPEAKER_01: A Serious And Above Board Conversation
1:03:25
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think that they might actually rather lose this election.
1:03:28
SPEAKER_00: Like Chuck Schumer, the scenario you painted was hilarious and stupid.
1:03:33
SPEAKER_00: But I genuinely do think that if the Democrats who do the math for the party committees and who lead the party committees and who are the party caucus leaders in Congress, if they, without making
1:03:49
SPEAKER_00: The public aware of it, you know, without putting it on their schedules or whatever, went to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and said, this is not working.
1:03:58
SPEAKER_00: And if you guys don't accept the reality that it's not working, we're going to lose the whole country.
1:04:07
SPEAKER_00: And we hope we will not tell anyone that this happened, that we had this meeting, but we hope that you guys will do the responsible thing.
1:04:15
SPEAKER_00: like that is you know out of in some sense it seems like vaguely like cinematic and it only happens in movies I actually don't think it's a crazy thing to expect responsible people to be willing to consider doing I just don't actually think that the people who run the Democratic Party can will themselves to behave that way even though clearly they should I think I mean maybe not today but if it's April and Biden is down 45-50 to Trump
1:04:45
SPEAKER_00: Are we really, like, is it really just the case that, like, the only choice they have is to try to pass more right-wing legislation?
1:04:51
SPEAKER_01: No, I mean, look, I'm not saying that.
1:04:55
SPEAKER_01: Like, I've said at the top, you know, I said in my piece on the site today, like, I think that Biden needs to, like, try harder to run, you know, and, like, do more press and do this kind of stuff.
1:05:07
SPEAKER_01: And, like, I agree that, like, in some sense, it would be good if, like,
1:05:12
SPEAKER_01: by Joe Biden.
1:05:39
SPEAKER_01: you know I mean maybe I don't know you know like maybe Joe Scarborough needs to do a segment where he's like a lot of people say that Joe Biden is too old and then maybe Biden will be like oh shit people say that but like I think you know I think okay people know you know what you know right not stupid is that so I somebody in my house watches Morning Joe and I'm not gonna
1:06:03
SPEAKER_00: for this person under the bus.
1:06:05
SPEAKER_00: But I get to overhear what Joe Biden, or I did it.
1:06:09
SPEAKER_00: Joe Scarborough says about- Boilers too old.
1:06:13
SPEAKER_00: Boilers too old for sure.
1:06:14
SPEAKER_01: Wait, I promise Mike that I would avoid shouting.
1:06:18
SPEAKER_00: We're forgetting everything.
1:06:20
SPEAKER_00: We are proving Joe Biden's case that he's not too old for him by fucking up in the exact same way as he does.
1:06:28
SPEAKER_00: Scarborough's very defensive of Biden when the age issue comes up.
1:06:34
SPEAKER_00: And we know that Joe Biden likes the Morning Joe show.
1:06:37
SPEAKER_00: And I do think that if Scarborough said something like what I just said in April or May, if it looks like sticking with the Biden-Harris ticket is going to return Trump to power, that like Biden, as somebody who I think has...
1:06:55
SPEAKER_00: A fairly standard mixture of vanity, ambition, and civic-mindedness in his heart, right?
1:07:04
SPEAKER_00: He's like a very typical kind of politician who wanted to be president and achieved it.
1:07:10
SPEAKER_00: He might listen.
1:07:11
SPEAKER_00: You know, he might say, as much as it stings my ego to not be able to prove the doubters wrong, I can't in good conscience
1:07:20
SPEAKER_00: Lead My Party To Defeat Against This Guy.
1:07:23
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:07:25
SPEAKER_01: Let me make a pitch for consensus.
1:07:27
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:07:27
SPEAKER_01: Okay, because here, I will raise two points of evidence against me.
1:07:32
SPEAKER_01: It's true that in the head-to-head matchups, Whitmer does not do better than Biden, but she does have a better state-specific approval rating than he does in Michigan, as does Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania.
1:07:47
SPEAKER_01: I think that
1:07:50
SPEAKER_01: A Serious And Above Board Conversation About Biden's Age And Viability As A Candidate
1:08:06
SPEAKER_01: as well as Republicans that like he let this crisis grow but like then he came to the table with good solutions and now Republicans are blocking them but like I'm great you know that might work right it provides you an opportunity to like get out from under the inflation and like say like I didn't do that um and we're here we're here with the health care but I'm still stuck on the fact that like I just don't think this is like
1:08:33
SPEAKER_01: It seems to me like the most kind of like preposterous like Aaron Sorkin wish casting that is like masquerading as like why aren't Democrats getting serious and I'm like why aren't
1:08:51
SPEAKER_01: You're getting serious.
1:08:52
SPEAKER_00: Look, I don't want anyone listening to think I don't understand and I'm not somewhat self-conscious about how silly I feel.
1:09:01
SPEAKER_01: Maybe Republican leaders should point out to Donald Trump that he keeps saying the country is finished unless we stop liberals and that Nikki Haley is a much stronger candidate than he is.
1:09:12
SPEAKER_01: Appeal to his conscience to stay inside.
1:09:15
SPEAKER_00: But there genuinely were Republicans who did.
1:09:17
SPEAKER_00: No, there were.
1:09:18
SPEAKER_00: You know, like before.
1:09:21
SPEAKER_00: Okay, how about this?
1:09:22
SPEAKER_00: How about this as a way to like tie Biden's age to an actual liability in his governing?
1:09:32
SPEAKER_00: Is it because Biden is old, he has an outmoded sense of what is good politics against Republicans.
1:09:39
SPEAKER_00: Because of that, he appointed Merrick Garland to be Attorney General.
1:09:43
SPEAKER_00: Because He Appointed Merrick Garland To Be Attorney General He Got Robert Herr To Be The Special Counsel In This Dumb Classified Documents Case And So He Is Now Reaping The Consequences Of His Old Man Fuddy Duddy View Of Politix And All Kamala Harris Has To Do To Get Joe Biden Out Of The Race Is Pin The Like Victim Blame Joe Biden For The Damage Robert Herr Did To Him
1:10:10
SPEAKER_01: Maybe.
1:10:11
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
1:10:12
SPEAKER_01: I'm skeptical.
1:10:14
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:10:14
SPEAKER_01: I feel like we've aired about as much of this as one realistically can.
1:10:21
SPEAKER_01: But I mean, if Biden's going to run for president, he's got to run for president.
1:10:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:10:29
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:10:29
SPEAKER_01: Because that is what it comes down to.
1:10:31
SPEAKER_01: I do think it's like-
1:10:58
SPEAKER_00: A Serious And Above Board Conversation About Biden's Age And Viability As A Candidate
1:11:22
SPEAKER_00: What if he's younger by then?
1:11:23
SPEAKER_01: Has he reversed the passage of time?
1:11:25
SPEAKER_01: Well, it's my birthday on May 18th, so we can check in after that.
1:11:30
SPEAKER_01: We'll see if the linear passage of time continues once I'm 43.
1:11:34
SPEAKER_01: I think it will.
1:11:37
SPEAKER_01: So we are not, yeah.
1:11:39
SPEAKER_00: What do we got?
1:11:42
SPEAKER_01: He wants hot takes.
1:11:43
SPEAKER_01: No, this is for all free episode.
1:11:44
SPEAKER_01: You're not getting any hot takes.
1:11:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, hot takes are for the paid subscribers only.
1:11:49
SPEAKER_01: Okay, you gonna outro us?
1:11:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sure.
1:11:52
SPEAKER_00: Politix is a Matt Iglesias, Brian Boitler joint.
1:11:55
SPEAKER_00: All episodes are produced by our great producer, Mike Shane.
1:11:59
SPEAKER_00: Follow him on Twitter at Sugar Shane.
1:12:02
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I should spell that because it's a weird spelling and probably tens of people have gone looking.
1:12:07
SPEAKER_00: S-C-H-O-E-N.
1:12:10
SPEAKER_00: All right.
1:12:11
SPEAKER_00: See ya.