Latest / Pod Save America / “Trump’s lost summer.”

Transcript

“Trump’s lost summer.” · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:24
  Speaker 3: We're back. Hello.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Good job, Lovett. Good job in our absence. A lot
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: of pods. Alyssa was fantastic. Good job, Alyssa.
• 0:30
  Speaker 4: Good job.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you over the pod. I haven't told you
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: in person yet.
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: The chemistry with you and Dan was electric.
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: Electric.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: You could boil water on it.
• 0:39
  Speaker 5: I can't pretend I listened.
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: I was on vacation.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Welcome back, guys.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Great to see you.
• 0:46
  Speaker 5: We missed you.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: Two pods and a de Blasio.
• 0:49
  Speaker 4: Oh, yeah.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: How was Bill?
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: You know, he's very tall. No, we had a great conversation.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: It'll be out on Wednesday.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Out on Wednesday.
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: Great.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Later in this pod, my interview with the hosts of
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: the political podcast Hacks on Tap, our friend David Axelrod
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: and Republican strategist Mike Murphy.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Love Hacks on Top.
• 1:06
  Speaker 4: On Top?
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: What did you say?
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: But first, we're going to talk about all the latest news,
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: including Donald Trump's lost summer and a deep dive into
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: what the electoral map will look like in 2020. A
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: few quick housekeeping notes. We already did the de Blasio one. Remember,
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: that's Wednesday that pod will come out. Also, Pod Save
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: America and Love It or Leave It are on tour
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: this month again. Some tickets are still available for our
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: shows in New York City, San Jose, and Portland. Check
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: out Crooked.com events for details and tickets. How's that Love
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: It or Leave It Radio City show? Almost sold out.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: Almost sold out. And this week we are going to
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: be announcing the guests. And guess what? We finally got
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: some yeses.
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: I don't even know who to guess. That's exciting.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: We have some very big yes, so get those tickets.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Finally, our good friend Adi Barkin is out with an
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: excellent new video series called Uncovered, where he interviews the
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Democratic presidential candidates about health care. No one better to
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: talk to them about health care. Today, he's released interviews
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: with Bernie Sanders and Cory Booker, which you can find
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: at crooked.com slash be a hero. All one word, be
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: a hero. And be sure to follow Adi on Twitter
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: for more episodes as they're released in the coming weeks.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: He'll be on this pod talking about the series and
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: his new book on Thursday. So you don't want to
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: miss that. Check it out.
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: Let's get to the news. Over Labor Day weekend, President
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Trump canceled a trip to Europe with other world leaders
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: to commemorate World War II so he could stay home
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: and monitor Hurricane Dorian, a Category 5 storm that's already
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: caused catastrophic damage to the Bahamas and and is still
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: threatening the east coast of the United States. Trump's hurricane
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: monitoring included two rounds of golf and more than 120
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: tweets where he attacked the media, Jim Comey, Deborah Messing,
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: and others. The Deborah Messing one.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: What a morning for her to watch. You're just minding
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: your own business.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: It was a whole news cycle with Deborah Messing. Missed
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: that one.
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: What did he say?
• 3:09
  Speaker 5: She congratulated me when The Apprentice got picked up or something.
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: I don't even remember.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: It's just beyond parody. I saw it on Twitter all over.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Over vacation, I saw two things on Twitter that I
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: was glad I wasn't a part of. Something about bedbugs
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: and Bret Stephens, and then Debra Messing popped up, and
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: then I threw my phone in the ocean and was like, great.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: I will say one of my regrets, it's a small
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: regret in my life, but I was at the upfronts
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: promoting a little show called 1600 Penn, and Trump was
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: there promoting The Apprentice, and he was on the other
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: side of the room. And I really did at the
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: moment be like, I'm going to walk up to that
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: motherfucker and basically... you know, launch in because of the
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: birther stuff. And, you know, I just didn't.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: Cool story about how you were almost a hero.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: I wasn't even close. Listen, I'll have conversations at a
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: cocktail party. I'll do it. I just didn't do it
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: that day.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: So he was golfing. He sent all these tweets out.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Some of Trump's angriest tweets were in response to a
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: Washington Post story about how the president's own advisors and
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: allies characterized these last few months as a lost summer.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: That was a quote. filled with what they described as, quote,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: squandered opportunities, self-inflicted controversies, self-sabotage, and a president who was, quote,
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: crashed through the remaining guardrails. Doesn't sound like the Trump
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: we know, does it, guys?
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: No.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: I'm trying to think of something like Rot Boy Summer.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: You know? Something like that? Dumb Trump Summer?
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Workshop it. See if you can get it sometime during
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: the podcast.
• 4:36
  Speaker 5: Isn't it cuffing time now? Isn't that the new thing
• 4:38
  Speaker 5: everyone's saying?
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: I don't know what that means.
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: Google it. Okay.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: So I want to spend some time on the lost
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: summer story. But first, I know that we never liked
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: the media's obsession with optics when Obama was president. But
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: how much should it matter that Trump was playing golf
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: and rage tweeting in the midst of a hurricane threat?
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: And we haven't talked about yet another mass shooting in Odessa, Texas,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: that left seven people dead.
• 5:03
  Speaker 5: I mean, the old rules of politics said it mattered
• 5:06
  Speaker 5: a lot.
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 5:07
  Speaker 5: You know, I mean, listen, can you monitor the track
• 5:11
  Speaker 5: of a hurricane from a golf cart?
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely.
• 5:15
  Speaker 5: But it's also true that when the president in the
• 5:17
  Speaker 5: United States gets all the relevant people in a room
• 5:19
  Speaker 5: and is barking orders at them and is demanding to
• 5:22
  Speaker 5: know like what what's been done to make sure that
• 5:25
  Speaker 5: the people of Florida have taken care of things get
• 5:27
  Speaker 5: done faster. And he's obviously not doing that. He also
• 5:30
  Speaker 5: canceled a trip to commemorate World War Two. and then
• 5:34
  Speaker 5: congratulated the people of Poland for being invaded.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: Did you guys see this?
• 5:39
  Speaker 5: So it's like the guy's just banging around through the world,
• 5:42
  Speaker 5: screwing things up left and right, and then fucking around
• 5:45
  Speaker 5: on the golf course. I mean, it does speak to
• 5:48
  Speaker 5: the fact that he just doesn't care about the job.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and there was him saying that he'd never heard
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: of a Category 5 hurricane before, multiple times, saying like, oh,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: we've never seen that one before, which is crazy since
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: there's been multiple Category 5 hurricanes since he's been president.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: And he also... wrote false information about the storm when
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: he said that Alabama was in the path, even though
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: Alabama was about 250 miles away.
• 6:10
  Speaker 5: The National Weather Service corrected him.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: The exact tweet was, look out, look out, Missouri. The
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: storm is coming for you. Don't vaccinate your children.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: I think that the tweets are probably as bad or
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: worse than the actual golfing. You know, it's as usual
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: with Trump when he actually sometimes when he doing nothing
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: is better than doing something because when he does something,
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: it's always damaging.
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 6:34
  Speaker 5: I mean, I'm slightly torn here about my own analysis
• 6:37
  Speaker 5: because he could be in a meeting demanding that we
• 6:39
  Speaker 5: nuke the hurricane. I know this is another stupid controversy
• 6:42
  Speaker 5: that happened when we were gone. Or he could be
• 6:45
  Speaker 5: tweeting classified satellite images of Iran's, you know, missile program.
• 6:50
  Speaker 4: I don't know.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: It's, yes. It made me think, and, you know, Ax
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: always talks about this, talks about this during our interview,
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: is it's like the exhaustion theory of Trump. You know,
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: that at some point a lot of voters are just
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: going to be like, you know, however they feel about
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: issues and ideology, they're just going to be like, can
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: we just wake up to a president when there's a
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: storm coming and there's a mass shooting who is at
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: least quiet about it, tries to bring the country together,
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: tries to talk like a normal person and doesn't just
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: create 15 other fucking problems, you know, just because he's
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: like angry and tweeting.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty amazing how not boring he is and
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: how much of this is happening all the time. You know,
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: there was a there's a story and we'll talk about it,
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: but that that that talked about how bad Trump's summer
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: has been. But one thing that was so just surprising
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: to me is it said, you know, it's been a
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: long time since Trump's July 4th military parade.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: And I just sort of.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: Sat back and I realized two years ago that was July.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: That was eight weeks ago. That feels like a lifetime ago.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: There have been so many mini scandals since that mini scandal.
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 7:59
  Speaker 5: I mean, the Post story captures the fact that when
• 8:02
  Speaker 5: you're elected president, you have four years to accomplish things
• 8:04
  Speaker 5: and put points on the board. Really, you have about
• 8:06
  Speaker 5: half that amount of time, but technically you have four years.
• 8:09
  Speaker 5: And not only is he not doing smart strategic things
• 8:13
  Speaker 5: in this summer, this August recess period or any other time,
• 8:17
  Speaker 5: he's actively upsetting people who might otherwise support him. I mean,
• 8:21
  Speaker 5: I was trying to think of things he could do
• 8:23
  Speaker 5: that would make sense in He could go do a
• 8:26
  Speaker 5: whole bunch of events in right-leaning states about all the
• 8:30
  Speaker 5: conservative judges he got through. It seems like he would
• 8:32
  Speaker 5: enjoy that. It's something that his base would get behind.
• 8:36
  Speaker 5: Or go to some of these swing districts where Democrats
• 8:39
  Speaker 5: just got elected and put pressure on them to vote
• 8:41
  Speaker 5: your way on immigration. There's so many obvious things he
• 8:43
  Speaker 5: could do. And I'm not even trying to like... you know,
• 8:47
  Speaker 5: do the thing where you say president Trump, if he
• 8:49
  Speaker 5: acts like a normal president, these are like basic things
• 8:51
  Speaker 5: that he might even enjoy in his little addled brain
• 8:54
  Speaker 5: because he likes getting adulation.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So let's get into this piece. I mean, I agree.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: I thought it was really smart and well-reported because, you know,
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: it notes how the summer and fall before an election
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: year is a critical time for president to notch some
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: legislative and political victories and also build a case for
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: his reelection campaign. Um, Trump has used the time to
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: go on racist tirades against various members of Congress and
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: the city of Baltimore, botch the response to white nationalist
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: terrorism that was inspired in part by his racist talk
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: of an invasion, flip-flop on gun safety, and continue losing
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: a trade war that is now threatening our entire economy.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: So the question is, how much does all of this matter?
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: The Post said that according to an average of seven
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: polls that they did, Trump's approval rating slipped from 43%
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: in June to 41%. But as you just pointed out, Tommy,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: it's not just about the things he's done wrong or badly,
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: but it's sort of about missed opportunities.
• 9:50
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it's an opportunity cost question. I mean, I think
• 9:52
  Speaker 5: that people don't like the erratic tweeting and they don't
• 9:54
  Speaker 5: like the unpresidential behavior. And that's just something that we've
• 9:57
  Speaker 5: seen show up in polls for a long time. even
• 10:00
  Speaker 5: while his approval rating has held pretty steady. The thing
• 10:03
  Speaker 5: that would really worry me if I were in the
• 10:05
  Speaker 5: White House or in Trump's reelection campaign is the trade war,
• 10:08
  Speaker 5: because you're seeing real economic indicators that manufacturing might be down,
• 10:12
  Speaker 5: that the trade war is impacting like Germany, for example,
• 10:15
  Speaker 5: and other countries, and that there might be some global
• 10:17
  Speaker 5: repercussions to what's happening. So If I'm Trump and I
• 10:19
  Speaker 5: think a percentage point could get shaved off of GDP
• 10:23
  Speaker 5: because of this trade war that I've launched for no
• 10:25
  Speaker 5: reason with no end game, that's like an existential threat
• 10:29
  Speaker 5: to his reelection.
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: And look, you can overstate the importance of this summer
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: before an election year because we all remember in 2011,
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: the summer before Obama's reelect in 2012, it was probably
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: Obama's worst summer of his presidency. It was the debt
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: ceiling crisis. The U.S. credit was downgraded partly because of
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: the debt crisis. His fight with the Republicans, his approval
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: rating was at its lowest. And, of course, he went
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: on to go win re-election. But one of the reasons
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Obama went on to win is because he began to
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: lay the case for his re-election. And he basically did
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: two things. One, we introduced a jobs bill in the fall.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: And we knew that that jobs bill probably wouldn't pass
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Congress because the Republicans were obstructing everything. But it looked
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: like Obama was fighting like hell to fix the economy
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: and to help people. I mean, he had that refrain
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: in the job speech, pass this bill, pass this bill,
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: do something for people, you know. And then we decided
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: to lay out the case for his reelection early and
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: said that the defining issue of the election was going
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: to be economic inequality in an economy that still wasn't
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: working for people. Even before we knew that Mitt Romney
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: would be the opponent, but we suspected maybe he would be.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: And Obama sort of set the tone for what that
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: campaign would be like by saying, this is going to
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: be my message. This is the contrast I'm going to
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: draw with the nominee. And you do think that some
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: barely competent set of advisors in the Trump White House
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: and barely competent president would at least be thinking, OK,
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: let's use the summer and this fall while all the
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: Democrats are fighting each other in a primary to set
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: up what the message is going to be for the
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: Trump campaign going into 2020.
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: And they just....
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: Don't seem like they're able to do this.
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: Well, I don't, even if they wanted to, they don't
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: have the ability to do it with Trump. I think
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: there's two things happening. One, you know, this is a
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: flip side of the coin to what happened in 2016
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: in that Donald Trump takes all the oxygen out of
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: the room. So Hillary Clinton gives a long speech about
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: the economy, but what they take is the fight she
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: had with Trump over whatever the crisis of the week is.
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: You know, Trump does go on these rallies and he
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: gives a very lengthy speech and he does mention judges.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: He does issue I think what is the kind of 30,000-foot
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: message for his campaign, which is love me or hate me,
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: you have to vote for me because of the economy,
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: because of all these things I did, because the other
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: side is crazy, the other side is the squad. There
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: is a kind of message he's trying to put out there,
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: but he stands at that podium and speaks for two hours,
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: and five or six of the things he says, whether
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: they're semi-prepared or off the cuff, are so controversial that
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: they become the story for a couple of days. That's
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: the first thing.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: Message never breaks through.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: Message never breaks through. And then the second part is,
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: core to his message is the fact that, you know,
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: even if you can't stand me, look how good the
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: economy is doing, but in part because of the trade war,
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: in part because of larger dynamics in the economy, he
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: may not have that, he may not be able to
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: make that argument successfully. So I think those are the
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: two political problems that anyone trying to get Trump to
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: campaign is going to face, even if they did have
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: some master plan.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: Tommy, you mentioned a few things he could do or
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: could have done to make the summer better. What are
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: some other sort of steps that Trump could have taken
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: on some of these issues that would have made us
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: even more nervous than we are heading into 2020? Or
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: what might he still do? I mean, we could go
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: through some of the issues like just on guns, for example.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so guns is, I think, a signal example of
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: what has been kind of a repeated Trump pattern from
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: the beginning. I think that there was a fear a
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: lot of us had in the early days of the administration,
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: which is what happens if he really does deliver on
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: this idea of an unorthodox populist Republican president, right? What
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: if he comes in and does an infrastructure bill? What
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: if he comes in and does make a grand bargain
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: on immigration? And what's been fascinating is I think he
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: changed the Republican orthodoxy on immigration. He has bucked the
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: Republican orthodoxy on trade, but otherwise he's been pretty lockstep.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: So what happens is there's a terrible shooting Trump starts
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: talking about background checks. He starts sounding like he's going
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: to pursue some kind of moderate deal with Democrats and
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: he's going to buck the NRA. But of course, that
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: doesn't last. And he ends up walking it back, which
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: he's done on a host of issues. I mean, fundamentally,
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: Trump has never been willing to buck the conservative base
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: of the party to get a win. And I think
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: we are politically, I think that that has been valuable.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: It's sad for the country on issues like guns, but
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: I think politically it has put him in a box.
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: And I think, I mean, the two issues you just,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: where you just said he has bucked Republican party orthodoxy,
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: he's bucked the moderate part of the orthodoxy on both
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: immigration and, and trade. He hasn't bucked it in a
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: way that would lead him towards getting something done with Democrats,
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: you know, on immigration. Like he's gone further to the
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: right than a lot of the Republicans were on immigration
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: during the Obama era, or at least maybe half the
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: party at that point. And On trade, I mean, you
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: can see right now he's trying to negotiate with Pelosi
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: and the Democrats the NAFTA 2 deal.
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: And like you could see him getting some trade deal
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: and that would help him out. But I don't know
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: that that's going to happen.
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 15:41
  Speaker 5: I mean, the trade is an interesting one. I mean,
• 15:43
  Speaker 5: he he ran around saying that NAFTA was the worst
• 15:47
  Speaker 5: deal ever negotiated and that he alone could fix it.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: And they.
• 15:50
  Speaker 5: They renegotiated some like really minor changes to the bill
• 15:54
  Speaker 5: that might help like dairy farmers or, you know, change
• 15:57
  Speaker 5: the way auto manufacturing standards are in Mexico. But then
• 16:01
  Speaker 5: now he doesn't seem to give a shit about the thing.
• 16:02
  Speaker 5: He's not pushing for it to get passed in Congress.
• 16:04
  Speaker 5: He's not pressuring Democrats to fix it. And the China
• 16:07
  Speaker 5: trade war is the same thing. I mean, the things
• 16:09
  Speaker 5: that I assume we're fighting for when it comes to
• 16:13
  Speaker 5: our trade relations with China are like protecting intellectual property
• 16:17
  Speaker 5: for corporations. That doesn't help. some guy in wisconsin that
• 16:21
  Speaker 5: helps like apple it helps major corporations and shareholders and
• 16:25
  Speaker 5: other rich people so the the things he's doing are
• 16:28
  Speaker 5: misaligned with the priorities of working people who might have
• 16:31
  Speaker 5: actually been hurt by the policies of the past when
• 16:34
  Speaker 5: it comes to trade but he's not doing shit.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: For them yeah it feels like we've zoomed past that
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: exit on the highway of the like deal you know
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: haggling over intellectual property issues and trade wars you know
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: like i mean he could I suppose he could still
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: back down from this trade war with China. But I
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: don't even know if he has the capacity to do
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: that on his own anymore because the Chinese are probably thinking, well,
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: we're winning this thing and we're winning the politics in
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: the United States. So why would the Chinese back down
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: at this point?
• 16:59
  Speaker 5: No, I don't think I mean, I think that they
• 17:02
  Speaker 5: are I think they've walked away from some of these
• 17:05
  Speaker 5: negotiations and are actively like giving him the finger and
• 17:08
  Speaker 5: making it clear that they're not going to they're not
• 17:11
  Speaker 5: going to do what Mexico did. Which would be seen
• 17:13
  Speaker 5: as pliant when it comes to these demands. The other
• 17:15
  Speaker 5: thing that I think Matt Iglesias and Ezra Klein pointed
• 17:18
  Speaker 5: out that a lot of the things Trump is fighting
• 17:20
  Speaker 5: for when it comes to rule changes with China would
• 17:22
  Speaker 5: actually are likely to lead to more jobs being outsourced
• 17:26
  Speaker 5: and sent abroad, not fewer because they're just helping corporations.
• 17:30
  Speaker 5: So in a sense, what he's fighting for would likely
• 17:32
  Speaker 5: harm workers.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's, I think, part of it. Yeah, that as
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: long as the trade war is ongoing, the trade war
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: is the source of all of these ills. It's the
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: source of job losses. It's the source of economic dislocation.
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: It's the source of your misery. It is a scapegoat
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: for him to point to, along with immigrants. And if
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: he does back down or achieve any kind of a deal,
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden, that's the victory. And who's the
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: victory for? All of a sudden, the thing you claimed
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: was a solution turns out to not have been one.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: So he really is stuck in that As long as
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: it's ongoing, he's in his comfort zone, which is attacking China,
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: claiming he's fighting. But to Tommy's point, to others' points,
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: it's not possible for him to win because he's promised
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: a bunch of different things that are actually in contradiction,
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: like keeping jobs in the United States and then achieving
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: a victory on IP. These are things that don't help everybody.
• 18:22
  Speaker 5: Ultimately, I think his whole goal is just to look
• 18:24
  Speaker 5: tough and look like he's attacking somebody. But when looking
• 18:28
  Speaker 5: tough leads to the economy faltering and people actually getting hurt,
• 18:32
  Speaker 5: I don't think that's going to work. It doesn't work.
• 18:34
  Speaker 5: And then you're to come around on the back end
• 18:36
  Speaker 5: and say, well, actually, it's Jay Powell, the chairman of
• 18:38
  Speaker 5: the Fed's fault here. Like, no one knows what the
• 18:41
  Speaker 5: hell he's talking about.
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: So we've talked about this before, but it almost seems
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: like Trump and his campaign have sort of given up
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: on trying to improve the president's political standing. And they're
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: just hoping to win by disqualifying his opponents. And Maggie
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: Haberman reported this weekend that a Trump advisor recently told
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: her that Trump wants voters to feel negatively not just
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: about his opponents, but about longstanding institutions like the media. And,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: you know, most of his rage tweets over the past
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: couple of days have been directed towards the media. What
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: do you think about that strategy?
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: I can't win, but you can lose, is the strategy, basically,
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: is what he's doing now.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: Right, and, you know, I think this is... If you're inside...
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: Trump campaign and you're trying to figure out how to
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: be useful, it's not going to be making Trump different.
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: It's not going to be about making Trump more popular.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: It's going to be about tearing down your opponents. It's
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: going to be about dragging everybody down to his level
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: because that's what he did in 2016. It's the only
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: path for him. It's the only way because the other
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: option is for Trump to become a different person. And
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: that's been promised for a long time.
• 19:44
  Speaker 5: Yeah, that tweet about attacking institutions rang very true to me,
• 19:48
  Speaker 5: but it also didn't seem pertinent.
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: New.
• 19:51
  Speaker 5: You know, I mean, they're literally funding organizations, apparently the
• 19:55
  Speaker 5: Trump people, to dig up things journalists said and feed
• 19:58
  Speaker 5: them to fucking Breitbart so they can, you know, try
• 20:00
  Speaker 5: to take the Washington Post down a peg. And, you know,
• 20:03
  Speaker 5: they know this is an asymmetric fight because then you
• 20:05
  Speaker 5: have a bunch of journalists on Twitter complaining that Beto
• 20:09
  Speaker 5: O'Rourke didn't let Breitbart into one event as if it's
• 20:12
  Speaker 5: sort of like a, you know, as if they're an
• 20:14
  Speaker 5: actual news gathering organization and not just an arm of
• 20:17
  Speaker 5: the Republican Party. Like the Trump people are telling us,
• 20:20
  Speaker 5: I mean, Steve Bannon worked there, right? It doesn't matter.
• 20:23
  Speaker 5: But the broader fight against institutions has basically been what
• 20:26
  Speaker 5: Republicans have done for decades, right? They want to undercut
• 20:28
  Speaker 5: our faith in government. They want to make it harder
• 20:31
  Speaker 5: to participate in democracy and And in so doing, they
• 20:34
  Speaker 5: can win with a smaller and smaller group of people
• 20:36
  Speaker 5: actually voting for them.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I do think that within this strategy of trying
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: to disqualify his opponents and the media and saying, don't
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: believe anything bad that you hear about me is basically
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: his strategy. There's a clue for how Democrats need to
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: take him on, which is like, this is not about
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: whether what Trump is saying is true or not, whether
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: the media is lying about him or not. Just forget
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: about what you're hearing. Believe your own eyes. What is
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: your life like? This trade war, and we saw this
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: when we were testing messages in Wisconsin in our change poll,
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: talking about Trump starting a trade war with China, losing it,
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: and then trying to bail out big agribusinesses, including some
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: in foreign countries because he's fucked up this trade war
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: so badly and hurting dairy farmers in Wisconsin, was one
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: of the most powerful messages because whatever Trump says, whatever
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: he's lying about, whatever he's yelling about, whatever other people
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: are saying about Trump, he can't avoid what people are
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: feeling in their own lives and what people have seen
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: in their own lives. And so people know that he
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: hasn't gotten anything done on guns, even though 90% of
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: the country wants background checks. People are going to know
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: if the economy starts turning south because they're going to
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: feel it, right? People are going to know when they
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: read stories about some of the more extreme things he's
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: done on immigration, that those things are happening. At some point,
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: he can keep telling us that everything the media is
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: saying about him is a lie, but he can't fully
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: avoid the effects of his policies on actual people.
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 22:13
  Speaker 5: And you can tell he knows that and he's a
• 22:15
  Speaker 5: little bit worried about it because he will, for example,
• 22:18
  Speaker 5: tweet a lie about the China negotiations to briefly juice
• 22:23
  Speaker 5: the stock market and try to, you know, fix the
• 22:26
  Speaker 5: general impression about the state of the economy.
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 22:28
  Speaker 5: So like there's little windows into his psyche here.
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: But I think it's incumbent upon Democrats to continue to
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: draw the lines between what Trump is saying and doing
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: with the actual effects on people's lives. We were just
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: talking about this before the pod, but, you know, that
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: whole situation last week about Trump promising pardons to aides
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: who do whatever it takes to get the border wall built.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, my first reaction was, yes, this is another
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: impeachable offense. Yes, the pardons are outrageous. But I think
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: what's probably most politically effective in talking about this is
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: Trump wants to go steal your land. Like, if you
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: live on the border.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: Illegally. He wants to illegally steal your land and pardon
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: anyone who does the crime.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: Right, but we sort of get into these, like, it's
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: impeachable and it's bad conduct and it's the pardons and
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: all this kind of stuff, which is all important, I agree.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: But we've got to start talking about the real effects
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: on people's lives. Like, you live by the border and
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: you're just going about your business. The federal government, under
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump, might just want to come and steal your
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: land with no due process, nothing whatsoever. Like, those are
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: the connections that I think that Democrats have to keep
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: drawing if we... we hope to be successful. All right,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: let's talk about 2020. The Washington Post's Dan Balz had
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: an excellent piece over the weekend about the electoral map
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: and which states matter most. He writes, quote, just four
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: states are likely to determine the outcome in 2020. Each
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: flipped to the Republicans in 2016, but President Trump won
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: each by only a percentage point or less. The four
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: are Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Florida. Many analysts point to
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: Wisconsin as the single state upon which the election could turn.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: So the piece quotes former Obama campaign manager Jim Messina,
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: who we all worked with, saying, quote, because of the
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: partisanship of the country and the president, we're now looking
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: at the smallest map in modern political history. First, what
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: is actually, just so people know, When people are talking
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: about the map and which states campaigns are going to
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: play in, what does that mean to sort of play
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: in a state, just so people know?
• 24:32
  Speaker 5: Oh, like actually go there, spend time, spend money, put
• 24:36
  Speaker 5: up TV ads, have a full field staff in the state.
• 24:40
  Speaker 5: It's a significant expenditure of resources, basically.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think what people might not realize is a
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: campaign has finite resources, right? You can't just look at
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: a map and say, oh, yeah, all these states look good,
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: so I want to compete in all these states. You
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: have to decide where are we going to put our organization,
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: where are we going to put our candidate. And then
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: how much money are we going to spend on television ads? And,
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: you know, in certain states, in certain media markets, it's
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: very expensive to run television ads. And in other states,
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: it's relatively inexpensive. So it's not like you get to
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: choose everything. You do have to make decisions on a
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: campaign about which states you want to bet on to win.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: So what do you think? Do you agree with Jim's
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: assessment that we are down to these four states?
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: I actually was thinking about it, and I actually just,
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: philosophically don't totally understand what it means in this sense.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: It is true that there will be kind of maximal
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: campaigns in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, probably also Arizona, right? There
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: will be huge amounts of resources devoted to those. The
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: candidates will go there. And then the question is, well,
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: what will happen in other states? And that will play
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: out in part because the campaigns will do a dance
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: with each other about where they put money, where they
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: match each other. So, you know, It is quite possible
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: that it will boil down to a very small number
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: of states, but it is also quite possible, depending on
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: what each campaign decides to do, that we will end
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: up with tens, hundreds of millions of dollars spent across 12, 13,
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: 14 states. I think we just don't know. The field
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: of competition will be based on a kind of a
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: game theory theory. a version of game theory that plays
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: out over the course of the next year. You know,
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: head fakes, trips, things like that. And over time, we
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: will come to see, based on polls, where candidates will
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: go and where they won't, where their money will go,
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: where it won't go. Right?
• 26:27
  Speaker 5: I mean, I think it's certainly safe to say that
• 26:29
  Speaker 5: it won't start that narrow, which is why it was
• 26:31
  Speaker 5: surprising to me to see people predicting with such confidence
• 26:34
  Speaker 5: that it will be this tiny map. I was also
• 26:36
  Speaker 5: surprised that Dan, who's one of the smartest reporters out there,
• 26:40
  Speaker 5: didn't have Arizona higher up in his discussion of what
• 26:44
  Speaker 5: the Democratic strategy will be. I'm also, look, it's a
• 26:49
  Speaker 5: tough pill to swallow that Florida is potentially the centerpiece
• 26:52
  Speaker 5: of this whole thing. Florida is where you can see
• 26:54
  Speaker 5: Trump has actually had a pretty clear, concerted, and probably
• 26:59
  Speaker 5: smart strategy to peel off Democratic voters, right? I mean,
• 27:01
  Speaker 5: they're trying to scare the shit out of older Jewish voters.
• 27:04
  Speaker 5: They're trying to be tough on Maduro to appeal to
• 27:08
  Speaker 5: the Venezuelan population. They're even considering giving Venezuelan voters a
• 27:11
  Speaker 5: temporary protected status so they don't get deported So they're
• 27:15
  Speaker 5: undoing everything Obama did on Cuba to reach the older
• 27:18
  Speaker 5: hardline Cuban population. So, like, I can see what they're
• 27:20
  Speaker 5: doing in Florida. If you were to tell me what
• 27:23
  Speaker 5: he's done to improve his chances of winning Michigan again,
• 27:27
  Speaker 5: I couldn't tell you really anything.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: And one other just small point about this, too, is
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: that states move together. You know, Florida, to Tommy's point,
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: if the results are coming in and it looks like
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: the Democrat is winning Florida, I think that augurs really well.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: for a bunch of other states to think, wow, we're
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: performing better than we expected or we're performing well. If
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: it starts to look like we're not winning Florida, that
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: doesn't necessarily mean the election is over.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: So I think that it is true that because of
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: geographic polarization over the last several years, there are far
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: fewer states that are decided by just a couple points
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: than there used to be. There used to be a
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: lot more states that were like five points or less
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: or 10 points or less. And now there's fewer of
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: those states. So that I understand. That said, we all
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: remember that at the beginning of the general election in 2008,
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: David Plouffe sat down, Obama's campaign manager, and said, we
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: are not going to be up on election night waiting
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: for one or two states to come in. We're going
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: to have multiple paths to 270 and try to add
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: up as many states as possible, to play in as
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: many states as possible to get to 270. And I
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: think that's still wise advice right now. And I think
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: partly because, look, there's many different, you know, we've been
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: having this debate in the primary, you know, which demographic
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: groups do Democrats need to win? Do they need to
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: win back the non-college educated white voters in the Midwest
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: and the Obama-Trump voters? Do they need to increase African-American
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: turnout in some of these Midwestern states? Or should they
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: look to the Southwest and the Sun Belt and, you know,
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: rely on more college educated white voters and former Republicans
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: and independents and more Latinos? So, we've been having this
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: debate about, you know, which groups Democrats should go after,
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: and I think the only way to solve that debate
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: is to try to play in as many states as
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: you can that are still within, you know, the realistic
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: scenarios here. So I do think Arizona, which Hillary only
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: lost by three and a half points in 2016, and
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: Kyrsten Sinema just flipped in 2018, has to be in
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: that map. Florida, like you said, which has only been
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: within one point over the last maybe three or four elections,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: obviously is still on that map as well. But look,
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: we were disappointed in Florida in 2018. Gillum and Nelson
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: both lost. So I don't think we could be, you know,
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: I think there's a good argument to be made. Dave
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: Wasserman made this argument on Twitter the other day that
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: Democrats win Arizona before they win Florida. I think North
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: Carolina is another one in there too. Obama won North
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: Carolina in 2008. We know there's more college-educated white voters
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: and African-American voters, especially around the research triangle. That state
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: had been trending blue for a while. Democrats should compete
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: in that state as well.
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: And then I think all of this also boils down
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: to resources. And part of what will determine how big
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: the map is for the Democrat and where the Democrat
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: is competing is how much money they have and how
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: much resources they can devote to states outside of the...
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: There'll be the core few states where everybody will be
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: playing and playing really hard, but then there'll be... can
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: we devote money to North Carolina? Should we devote money
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: to Georgia? What other states people decide to reach out to?
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: And that'll be based on how people are donating, what
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: outside groups are doing, how much money the billionaires like
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: the Kochs are dropping into states across the country. There's
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: just a lot of things that will determine where Democrats
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: are competing.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 30:45
  Speaker 5: And obviously the candidate, right? I mean, like Castro or
• 30:49
  Speaker 5: Beto O'Rourke, they might have a better chance of competing
• 30:51
  Speaker 5: in Texas than some of the other candidates. But You know,
• 30:54
  Speaker 5: so that will go into consideration before you drop 20
• 30:57
  Speaker 5: million to be up on every media market in Texas.
• 31:00
  Speaker 5: You know, the article is interesting. It's an important way
• 31:03
  Speaker 5: to think about the challenge we have ahead of us.
• 31:07
  Speaker 5: I do think it's just too early to know the strategy.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: I do think, I mean, my ranking of states in
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: order of states that we could probably flip back would
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: be Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina. I think
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: the more interesting decisions for Democrats are going to be
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: do you still play seriously in Ohio and Iowa, which
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: have swung pretty hard against us? And very big questions,
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: do you compete in Texas and Georgia? Now, if Texas
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: and Georgia were smaller states with the populations they have,
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: you'd say, yeah, of course you do. But the Atlanta
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: media market is very expensive, and Texas is the most
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: expensive of all. So those are really big bets if
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: you're going to compete seriously there. And then the other
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: interesting thing about that piece is that you know, Democrats
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: will have to play defense or the Trump campaign is
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: going to try to make them play defense in four states.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: The Democrats won in 2016, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Nevada, and
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: New Mexico. I think New Mexico is a little ridiculous
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: there because Hillary Clinton won it by eight points, but
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Nevada were all decided by a
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: closer margin. So you could see, you could see Democrats
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: playing there as well.
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 32:15
  Speaker 5: I hope they spent I hope the Trump people spend
• 32:17
  Speaker 5: mightily in all those other states because they have a
• 32:19
  Speaker 5: big financial advantage and it makes me worried.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: There is also, by the way, and Dan Pfeiffer brought
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: this up the other day, there is such a nightmare
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: scenario where we win back Michigan and Pennsylvania. We don't
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: win Wisconsin, Arizona or anything else. Trump wins that one
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: district in Maine again to get the electoral vote. we
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: win that one district in Nebraska near Omaha to get
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: that electoral vote, and it's 269-269.
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: I can't.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: By the way, there's other scenarios too, right, where now
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: the Senate hinges on a runoff out of Georgia.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: Right, because Isaacson's, yeah.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: So there's all kinds of worst-case scenarios out there for
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: you to ponder as you're falling asleep.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: But I think it goes back to the answer is,
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: you know, Democrats and the candidate and the party need
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: as many resources as possible to play in as many
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: states as possible and have organizations on the ground in
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: as many of these states as possible. So we are
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: not dependent on one or two states, but at least
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: at the outset, we're playing on a very big map
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: and a big field. Okay, when we come back, my
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: interview with David Axelrod and Mike Murphy. Please welcome to
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: the show the host of the excellent and relatively new
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: political podcast, Hacks on Tap, Republican strategist Mike Murphy and
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: my good friend and former boss, David Axelrod. Thanks for
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: being here, guys.
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: Good to be with you, brother.
• 33:46
  Speaker 4: Thank you. Welcome back to the USA.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: It's good to be back. It's good to be back.
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: It doesn't seem like I missed too, too much. So
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: we were just talking about that Trump's lost summer story
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: in the Washington Post from over the weekend. Axe, you
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: remember very well how poorly the summer of 2011 went
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: for Obama.
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: I do, yeah.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: What do you guys think the difference is here with Trump,
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: and what options do you think the Trump campaign has
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: to strengthen the president's position ahead of 2020?
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: You know, back, you remember fast, back in the summer
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: of 2011, I mean, it was the debt ceiling debacle
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: that really pitched Obama to the nadir of his presidency.
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: But even then, his polling number was what is Trump's average,
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: which is basically, it was in the low 40s. It
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: was hovering around 40, 42. Trump has never broken 50%.
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: So that's one difference, which is that was a low point.
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: This is the average for Trump. The other thing is
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: what Murphy just said, which is, I mean, Trump's, I
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: believe increasingly that the way you beat Trump is the
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: Trump exhaustion thing. You know, everybody talks about martial arts,
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: who's tough enough to take on Trump. But I think
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: it's jujitsu that is going to beat Trump using his
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: own negative energy against him. Just the sort of exhaustion
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: that comes with a president who divides every day, who,
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: you know, for profit, who sends out these crazy ass
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: tweets and gets into these ridiculous tantrums and gratuitous fights
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: that produce nothing. And, you know, just the utter chaos
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: that reigns around him. And I think that's going to
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: get worse as the election approaches, not better. So the
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: difference is we saw a problem earlier. and we developed
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: a strategy to deal with it, and we came out
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: that September and made a job speech, and we never
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: looked back. I don't think Trump has that capacity. I
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: don't think he has the capacity to find a remedial
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: strategy and execute it.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I heard you guys talking about this
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: on your podcast, but do you sort of think that
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: Trump and his campaign has sort of given up on
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: improving Trump's political standing, and basically they're hoping to just
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: make the campaign all about the democrat because their only
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: hope is to sort of depressed turnout and and disqualify
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: the democratic.
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: Candidate that's my best guess i mean that the problem
• 36:25
  Speaker 4: being a trump strategist is one trump hates his own
• 36:27
  Speaker 4: strategist he just wants to argue about invoices into we
• 36:31
  Speaker 4: won't listen to anybody so we're sitting around trump headquarters
• 36:34
  Speaker 4: watching the cable tv feed you're sitting there for a
• 36:37
  Speaker 4: bottle of whiskey in a revolver staring at the screen
• 36:39
  Speaker 4: knowing you have very little influence to do anything about it.
• 36:43
  Speaker 4: And most of the grown-ups are gone, too. So you
• 36:45
  Speaker 4: do what campaigns always do, and they can't fix the
• 36:47
  Speaker 4: big problem. You focus on the little stuff. Oh, new
• 36:50
  Speaker 4: refrigerator magnets. What's the new negative ad we're going to run?
• 36:54
  Speaker 4: So I think they're going to do the easy strategy,
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: which is to try to crush the Democrat. And if
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: the Dems go on, at least in my view, a
• 37:02
  Speaker 4: complete joyride to the progressive left to try to win
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: two things, to beat Trump and get a policy agenda
• 37:09
  Speaker 4: that is a lot more to the left than normally
• 37:12
  Speaker 4: we see in presidential elections. They're taking a hell of
• 37:14
  Speaker 4: a lot of risk because they're giving Trump and his
• 37:16
  Speaker 4: campaign something to work with. And one thing Republican campaigns,
• 37:20
  Speaker 4: even ones with no strategy and an insane president, know
• 37:23
  Speaker 4: how to do is scare the hell out of the
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: working class and the middle class by grinding a liberal
• 37:28
  Speaker 4: Democrat into applesauce. So I think that's exactly what you're
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: going to see.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: So I wanted to ask you guys about this, too.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: We know that voters don't choose... you know, based purely
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: on a checklist of issue positions or ideology. You know,
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: I think to myself about like the 2018 race, you know,
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: Kyrsten Sinema flips Arizona. She's a very moderate candidate. So
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: there's a case there. Okay, a moderate Democrat can flip
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: a tough state. But then you see someone like Tammy
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: Baldwin wins in Wisconsin, you know, which Hillary lost and
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: she's Medicare for all, you know, Sherrod Brown's very progressive.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: He wins in Ohio. So how much do you think
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: in the end in a presidential, the ideology of the
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: Democrat matters to voters, or do you think the candidate
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: just needs to sort of present themselves as a candidate
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: who can sort of bring the country together?
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: Well, look, presidential races are different than any other kind
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: of race because you're judged in kind of three-dimensional form.
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: You know, it's the MRI for the soul thing that
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: I said years ago, which is people, you know, judge
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: you not just on the basis of the policies that
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: you espouse, but also on what they see every day.
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: And I think that's going to be particularly important in
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: this race against Trump. I do think I want to
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: answer your question, but I just want to go back
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: one step and say, if you or I or Murphy
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: were advising Trump, in all fairness, you would say you
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: can't win a referendum. And we would say very few
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: incumbents do. The fact is Barack Obama may not have
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: won a referendum in 2012, but we knew it was
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: a comparative race and we knew Mitt Romney would likely
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: be the nominee. And we knew given what happened with
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: Wall Street and everything that we had a comparative advantage
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: and we just went at it relentlessly. And so, you know,
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: it is not unprecedented for Trump to want to demonize
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: the opponent. So, you know, but I do think, if
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: my jujitsu theory is right, it is— I don't think people
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: are going to be looking— Forget about the ideology for
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: more pugilism. I think they're going to be looking for
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: someone who will not do what Trump has done. They'll
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: be looking for the remedy, someone who can bring some
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: calm and reason and empathy and humanity to the presidency.
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: And I think that may trump all the, no pun intended,
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: all the issue stuff. Yeah.
• 40:13
  Speaker 4: And I think this is one of the problems Warren has,
• 40:15
  Speaker 4: who otherwise is quite ascendant and is running the best campaign.
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: Every fifth word of any sentence she'll say in front
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: of a television camera is fighter. And I agree with
• 40:25
  Speaker 4: David that there's going to be a huge market for
• 40:28
  Speaker 4: a huge style contrast to Trump because it's so damn exhausting. But,
• 40:32
  Speaker 4: you know, this is still a fundamental presidential race. The
• 40:35
  Speaker 4: country's been trying to fire Trump since Inauguration Day. Every
• 40:39
  Speaker 4: special election, we Republicans have either done bad or awful things.
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: Uh.
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: the midterms so if that democrats don't get in the
• 40:46
  Speaker 4: way of that in teflon up rather than going kind
• 40:49
  Speaker 4: of narcissistic and trying to make a big point about
• 40:52
  Speaker 4: identity or progressive uh... policy and get out of the
• 40:56
  Speaker 4: way the country will fire trump but if they get
• 40:58
  Speaker 4: out of the way to trump some the work with
• 41:00
  Speaker 4: it'll be like the romney campaign to trump may be
• 41:02
  Speaker 4: able to make it a referendum on the challenger yeah i.
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: Guess what do you what do you think about this
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: because you uh... you know you guys are uh... kind
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: of voice of of rest of progressivism.
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: And you've been kind of, you've been negative on the,
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: you know, let's pick the least offensive of choices strategy.
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: What do you think about that?
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: Well, because I also, I guess, I think there were
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: two parts of the Obama message, right? There was, you know,
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: he would always talk about bringing people together and he
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: would try to inspire the country and call them to,
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: you know, But then at the same time, we always
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: made sure that he had an economically populist message because
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: you know that when, you know, the people that we're
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: trying to reach in places in the Midwest and other
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: places are feeling, you know, economically disadvantaged and they respond
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: to a message about, you know, they respond to economic populism.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: So in that sense, I think Warren's message is giving
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: people something to vote for and to get excited about.
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: But I do, you know, every once in a while,
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: I do wonder if voters are also going to respond,
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: especially some more of the, you know, suburban voters, some
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: of the independents that have come our way to respond
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: to a message that's, all right, aren't you tired of
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: the division and the bullshit from Donald Trump? Don't you
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: want someone who can bring us together?
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: You know, I don't think it's just suburbanites, but you
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: look at the polling, and Trump has a real weakness with...
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: some of the non-college educated, and I always hate that phrase,
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: but it's meaningful, women in rural areas. He's barely above
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: water with them now in terms of his approval, and
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: I think it has a lot to do, his favor,
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: but I think it has a lot to do with that,
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: with just they can't abide him. It's not his policies.
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: They pretty much like his policies, but it is him.
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: And so I think this is a big thing. And
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: the thing I worry about is Trump is a cultural warrior.
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: Even the economic issues are a surrogate for race, for
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: other kinds of cues to people. And so I do
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: think some attention needs to be paid. One of the things,
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: you mentioned Obama. We never... We were very careful about
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: navigating these cultural issues. And he was very, you know,
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: he ran better than many Democrats do in some of
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: these areas you wouldn't expect because he focused on the
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: economy and these larger messages of community. And he navigated
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: around these hot button cultural issues, which are you know,
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: very much at the center of a lot of the
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: Democratic debate right now.
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess there's like two groups of voters that
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: I worry about and that I think Democrats have to
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: really think about. One group is the Obama-Trump voters, right,
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: who voted for Obama once or twice and then went
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: to Trump. And the other group is some of these
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: Obama voters who stayed home in 2016 or voted third
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: party in sort of larger numbers than people voted third
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: party in eight and 12. And those voters tend to
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: be younger. They tend to be people of color. They
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: tend to be poorer. And I wonder if a Democratic
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: candidate who gives people something to vote for that is
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: exciting and inspiring... helps bring some of those people out
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: although i agree with you that you it's a balance
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: right like you need to get both groups of voters
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: so the question is.
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: Don't you think trump does that though brings them out.
• 44:50
  Speaker 4: Of the argument i mean if you got to make
• 44:52
  Speaker 4: a bet that i'm trump to drive everybody crazy because
• 44:55
  Speaker 4: we know he's great at that yeah the question is
• 44:58
  Speaker 4: how do you forever away voters from trump who might
• 45:01
  Speaker 4: be populist who bought into obama but not hillary clinton
• 45:04
  Speaker 4: one way is not to send the subtext signal that
• 45:08
  Speaker 4: if you voted for Trump, you're a racist, redneck idiot.
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 45:11
  Speaker 4: Because then you just give Trump something to work with.
• 45:13
  Speaker 4: So that's why the Dems need to get better from
• 45:16
  Speaker 4: even how they think about staffing their campaigns at attracting
• 45:21
  Speaker 4: the voters that they have the lowest contempt for, the
• 45:23
  Speaker 4: voters they need, people who eat fried food and live
• 45:26
  Speaker 4: in Macomb County, Michigan and like Trump.
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 45:28
  Speaker 4: And aren't that woke and aren't that green. You know,
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: they've got to go play on the other sides of
• 45:34
  Speaker 4: the football field in their end zone. And shave a
• 45:37
  Speaker 4: few of them. And they can do that, but not
• 45:39
  Speaker 4: if the campaign message is so internal in the progressive
• 45:43
  Speaker 4: culture that it's off-putting.
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, my view on this is, I think it's less
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: about the actual issue positions you take, and it's more
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: of a tonal message issue. You know, it's how you
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: speak to the country every single day.
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: Can I just ask you one thing? Sure. We were
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: talking about this earlier on our own podcast. Bernie and Elizabeth... who, uh,
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: you know, are very much in contention up here with Biden, um,
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: but also in contention with each other, uh, for, uh,
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: progressive votes and for the votes of young people, how
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: does that sort itself out? And if it doesn't sort
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: itself out and both of them may have the resources
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: to go deep into this race, um, if they don't
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: sort it out, doesn't that further strengthen Biden?
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it does. I think that's one of
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: the challenges both of them have, and I think that
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: neither one of them wants to blink on this because
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: they both have, you know, Bernie sort of has this
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: base of people who are very excited about him, and
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: obviously he's lost some support from 2016, but, you know,
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: that was probably a group of people who were just
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: anti-Hillary voters than pro-Bernie voters, but he still has this
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: 20-something percent of of voters with him who I don't
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: know will leave him. And then the challenge that Warren
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: faces is she's competing. People think it's like, oh, she's
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: just competing with Bernie for voters, but it's these college
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: educated white liberals that she's sort of competing with, with
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg and even others in the
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: race as well. And so I wonder if she can
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: sort of enlarge that pie. And I don't know if they'll,
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: I don't know what the difference, like if they've, you know,
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: if they've talked about the difference between them or they
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: will at this debate. I mean, she doesn't seem like
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: she wants to draw the contrast at the debate.
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: She said yesterday she wasn't.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: She said yesterday she, or she hinted that she wasn't
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: going to do that. I think their view is that
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: she doesn't have to bludgeon Bernie. She just has to
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: outperform him. Right. And I suspect they think if she
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: wins Iowa.
• 47:51
  Speaker 4: If you're Bernie, it's time to bludgeon her. She's the
• 47:54
  Speaker 4: better product there, and you're flatlined to going slightly down.
• 47:58
  Speaker 4: She's growing every day with the superior campaign. You cannot
• 48:01
  Speaker 4: let that equation continue on the timeline.
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: But I think the question, and you guys have talked
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: about this too, I think the question there is not
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: one candidate in this race has drawn a contrast, really,
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: none of the major candidates, with Elizabeth Warren. And I
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: wonder what Bernie's argument against Warren is.
• 48:19
  Speaker 4: I think you can go after her on purity. We've
• 48:22
  Speaker 4: talked about this on Hacks on Tap. She has started
• 48:24
  Speaker 4: to leave breadcrumbs a little bit on Medicare for All
• 48:29
  Speaker 4: and some of that stuff. I think go at her
• 48:31
  Speaker 4: on purity. She used to be a Republican. Then she
• 48:33
  Speaker 4: was kind of a neocon on some social policy in
• 48:36
  Speaker 4: her book. David Brooks had a good column on this
• 48:38
  Speaker 4: we talked about today. So, you know, go at her
• 48:40
  Speaker 4: on the one thing Bernie has, purity. He believes every
• 48:43
  Speaker 4: word of it. Does she?
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I asked on this point, I was in Iowa
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: for my CNN show, and I asked them both about
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: Medicare for All. And she had been roughed up the
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: night before by a questioner who was unhappy about, you know,
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: taking the choice of private insurance away. And I said,
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: does that influence your thinking? She says, of course it does.
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: You know, we're going to have to manage this transition carefully.
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: We need all the stakeholders at the table and so on.
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: I asked Bernie the same sort of question, and he said,
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: you know, I'll tell you what seismic is. Seismic is 400,000
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: people going to lose their health care or a go
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: bankrupt this year because of health care and so on. And,
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: you know, and he described his four-year transition to Medicare
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: for all, eliminating private insurance, and he said, I don't
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: think that's radical at all. So, You know, I think
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: that at the end of the day, he's going to
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: try and make the case, if he makes a case,
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: that he's the real deal and she, you know, she
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: is hedging. Yeah. So, you know, we'll see. But I
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: think the people who make the contrast with Elizabeth next
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: week potentially is not Bernie, but other candidates, Biden perhaps,
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: but also a Buttigieg, a Harris, people who are looking
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: to carve into The less populated lane that Biden seems
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: to occupy largely by himself, which is this center-left, sort
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: of moderate.
• 50:14
  Speaker 4: Lane.
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: And if those guys don't start carving out some of
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: that turf, I think they're going to get squeezed because
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: there's not a lot of room on the left. in
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: this race.
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: So both of you have been in plenty of debate prep.
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: What advice would you be giving to Joe Biden right
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: now if you were on his campaign for what to
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: do in the next debate?
• 50:36
  Speaker 4: Oh, that's a great question. Well, I think Biden, the
• 50:41
  Speaker 4: Biden campaign's weakness is sometimes they decide they want to
• 50:44
  Speaker 4: put a wall around Biden because they're afraid of Biden's Biden-ness.
• 50:48
  Speaker 4: They've got nothing else. They ought to bottle it. It's
• 50:50
  Speaker 4: all they have. He's all heart and he's all normalcy.
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: So they just need to add a little romance to
• 50:55
  Speaker 4: that and make a thing out of the fact that
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: Biden flies about in that because he is the most
• 51:00
  Speaker 4: authentic guy in the race. Elizabeth Warren has a staff
• 51:03
  Speaker 4: of 28 figuring out those clever words. Pete's a McKinsey
• 51:07
  Speaker 4: consultant who's here to explain why replacing him for robots
• 51:09
  Speaker 4: is a good idea in tone. So let Biden sweat, bleed,
• 51:13
  Speaker 4: be Biden, and bottle that and bet on it because
• 51:17
  Speaker 4: it's all you have. And so I think... They need to,
• 51:22
  Speaker 4: you know, he needs some discipline in how he speaks
• 51:24
  Speaker 4: and everything, but I would let Joe do the naked
• 51:27
  Speaker 4: on a rock strategy and just be Joe, because it's
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: all they have, so be great at it.
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: What do you.
• 51:34
  Speaker 3: Think, Axe? You know, I think, John, that he has to,
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: he has a theory of the case, and it may
• 51:43
  Speaker 3: be right and it may be wrong, and that theory is,
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: that the thing that unifies Democrats is a fundamental desire
• 51:50
  Speaker 3: to replace Donald Trump and to restore a sense of decency, empathy,
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: you know, humanity to the presidency. And, you know, I
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: think he has to cleave closely to that. You know,
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: last time he needed to kind of spar with every
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: candidate in order to prove that he could after the
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: first debate. But it wasn't a great look. And if
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: he wants to advance his message, that he should lean
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: into his message. And that is his message, that he
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: represents a return to decency. I don't think normalcy is
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: necessarily the word you want to use, because that has
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: a backward sounding kind of normal. As Buttigieg points out,
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: normal is not necessarily appealing to everybody. But Decency is.
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: Empathy is. I would, as much as possible, try and
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: run my debate against Trump less against the others. He
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: may want to have a tete-a-tete with Elizabeth about Medicare
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: for All or with Bernie, but by and large, I
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: think the more he's debating Trump, the better off he is.
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: So on the other side, what advice would you be
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: giving one of the candidates like Warren, who hasn't quite
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: made a real dent in Biden's frontrunner status yet? I mean, like,
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: you know, Kamala Harris, you could argue that she had
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: sort of a short-term gain from going after Biden. Didn't capitalize.
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: Didn't really capitalize. Like, no one has really sort of
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: found the message yet. against Biden that really works. And then,
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: you know, on Twitter, it's like every gap is magnified.
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: And I don't know if that's really worked against him either.
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: So what is the message against Biden for some of
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: these candidates?
• 53:43
  Speaker 4: Well, if you're Elizabeth Warren, you have the formula that's working.
• 53:46
  Speaker 4: Because the only thing that's happened in the race, really,
• 53:48
  Speaker 4: is you've gone up, other than the early blip that
• 53:51
  Speaker 4: kind of put Pete in the race. And she knows
• 53:54
  Speaker 4: her message. She's good at it. And I don't think
• 53:56
  Speaker 4: she has to worry about knocking Biden out in a debate.
• 53:59
  Speaker 4: She has to beat him in Iowa and New Hampshire,
• 54:01
  Speaker 4: which she could be on a trajectory to do. So
• 54:03
  Speaker 4: I would just do more of what I've been doing,
• 54:06
  Speaker 4: which is strength, strength, strength, fighter, fighter, fighter, and trying
• 54:10
  Speaker 4: to do the pivot from the terror of the Harvard
• 54:12
  Speaker 4: faculty lounge to the fighting grandma from Oklahoma and maybe
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: add a little of that. But I think there's not
• 54:19
  Speaker 4: a lot to fix there. She just tactically has to
• 54:21
  Speaker 4: stay in the center of the debate and not be
• 54:25
  Speaker 4: jolted by all these other people who wish her ill
• 54:27
  Speaker 4: because she is now in the way to any hope
• 54:29
  Speaker 4: they have. You might see a death rattle thing going on, too,
• 54:32
  Speaker 4: with some of the Amy Klobuchar's and the Cory Booker's
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: who just haven't gotten any traction, though Cory's done a
• 54:38
  Speaker 4: little better, where they're desperately trying to break out because
• 54:41
  Speaker 4: they know the clock's ticking. So there could be some
• 54:43
  Speaker 4: bizarro fireworks from that, but I don't think there's a
• 54:46
  Speaker 4: lot she needs to change.
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: I agree with that, although one thing I think she
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: needs to focus on, she's done really well, as you
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: point out, Favs, with college-educated, very liberal voters who She's
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: done very well with young voters, though she's vying with
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: Bernie for a lot of them. But she hasn't broken
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: through with working-class whites, even though her message is very
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: much geared that way. And she hasn't broken through with
• 55:17
  Speaker 3: African-American voters. And I think she needs to be more
• 55:21
  Speaker 3: Betsy from Norman, Oklahoma, than Professor Warren from Cambridge. And
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: a little more bio... a a little more revealing about
• 55:31
  Speaker 3: herself I think would be really useful here yeah.
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: Which she doesn't a stump very well to I'm last
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: question acts you were you were just in Iowa talking
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: all the candidates for your acts file special on CNN
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: I'm who or what surprised you there.
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: Um you know I knew that Warren was doing well
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: I was a I was even more impressed a when
• 55:54
  Speaker 3: I got there to see just the that did the
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: degree of organization that she has there. You know, she
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: started very early, even earlier than Obama did in 2007.
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: You know, she grabbed Emily Parcell, who's someone you probably remember,
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: was our political director in Iowa in 2007 and 2008,
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: who is an Iowa organizational whiz. And I think she's
• 56:18
  Speaker 3: just doing everything right. I was surprised that I did
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: a focus group with voters, and we spoke for an
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: hour together, And Joe Biden's name didn't come up until
• 56:28
  Speaker 3: I introduced it. And what I found in Iowa was
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: that people have a great deal of affection for him,
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: a great deal of respect for him, but there's not
• 56:37
  Speaker 3: a lot of enthusiasm. And I think that's a real
• 56:40
  Speaker 3: problem in a state where you're asking people to come
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: out on a snowy, cold night in February and stand
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: up in front of their neighbors and declare their preferences.
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: He needs to find a way to ignite change. some
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: of these voters. Bernie has his group. But I was
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: surprised also at the Wing Ding, which is a big
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: event up in northern Iowa that all the candidates attended,
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: at the amount of visibility for Kamala and Buttigieg, which
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: suggests to me that they're beginning to develop organizations there.
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: And if they can catch fire, they may ultimately be
• 57:22
  Speaker 3: able to build the infrastructure they need to make a
• 57:25
  Speaker 3: move in Iowa. And, you know, beyond that, I think
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: the top five are the top five, and it's going
• 57:32
  Speaker 3: to be hard for others. Booker has a great infrastructure,
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: hasn't quite caught fire there. Others are lagging behind. I
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: think you're going to see potentially some shifting among those
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: top five. I'd be surprised if.
• 57:47
  Speaker 4: I'll put one crazy prediction, which is Biden will come
• 57:51
  Speaker 4: down not to Iowa, but New Hampshire. I think he's
• 57:53
  Speaker 4: going to get hurt in Iowa probably by Warren. A
• 57:56
  Speaker 4: lot can happen in the last few weeks, Serge. You
• 57:57
  Speaker 4: guys know well. But if in those eight days between,
• 58:00
  Speaker 4: or eight or nine days between Iowa and New Hampshire,
• 58:03
  Speaker 4: New Hampshire gives Biden the dramatic comeback, he'll be the nominee.
• 58:08
  Speaker 4: If not, I think it'll be somebody else.
• 58:10
  Speaker 3: He loses, too. He's got a real problem.
• 58:12
  Speaker 4: I think Joe Biden in New Hampshire is going to
• 58:14
  Speaker 4: be the moment.
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was thinking that, too. Axe, Murphy, thank you
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: so much for doing this. This was really fun. Everyone
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: go subscribe and listen to Hacks on Tap. It's fantastic.
• 58:25
  Speaker 3: Thanks, John.
• 58:25
  Speaker 4: Appreciate that.
• 58:26
  Speaker 3: Good to be with you.
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Axe and Murphy for joining us today. We'll
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: see you on Thursday.
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: Bye, guys. Bye.
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: Bye.
• 58:46
  Speaker 5: Pod Save America is a product of Crooked Media. The
• 58:49
  Speaker 5: show is produced by Michael Martinez. It's mixed and edited
• 58:51
  Speaker 5: by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks
• 58:55
  Speaker 5: to Caroline Reston, Tanya Somanator, and Katie Long for production support,
• 58:58
  Speaker 5: and to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian, and
• 59:02
  Speaker 5: Milo Kim, who film and upload these bad boys every week.