Latest / Pod Save America / “Nauseously optimistic.” (Election update)

Transcript

“Nauseously optimistic.” (Election update) · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: And today... We're going to talk about what comes next
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: in the most predictably fucking crazy end to the 2020 election,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: where we stand in the race for the Senate, and
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: how the hell all of this happened. How did we
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: get here?
• 0:42
  Speaker 4: Well, you see, Nate Silver was a sports guy.
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: It starts with that.
• 0:49
  Speaker 4: He followed sports closely.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Oh, let's get to the news. Let's just jump right in, guys.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden has won Wisconsin, they just called, the second
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: congressional district of Nebraska, and has been declared the winner
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: in Arizona by Fox News and the Associated Press, though
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: they are still counting a lot of ballots there. By
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: last report, the Arizona Republic said possibly 600,000. He's currently
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: leading in Michigan and Nevada. He looks like he has
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: a very good chance of winning Pennsylvania. He has an
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: outside shot of winning Georgia still. And all this means
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: when the votes are counted and all the lawsuits are finished,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden could very well win the presidency. He is
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: on the path as of right now at 11.06 a.m.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Pacific time on Wednesday. And here's a clip of how
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump has handled this news last night.
• 1:49
  Speaker 5: This is a fraud on the American public. This is
• 1:53
  Speaker 5: an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to
• 1:59
  Speaker 5: win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: We did win.
• 2:08
  Speaker 5: This election. So our goal now is to ensure the
• 2:10
  Speaker 5: integrity for the good of this nation. This is a
• 2:14
  Speaker 5: very big moment. This is a major fraud on our nation.
• 2:19
  Speaker 5: We want the law to be used in a proper manner.
• 2:24
  Speaker 5: So we'll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court. We
• 2:28
  Speaker 5: want all voting to stop. We don't want them to
• 2:32
  Speaker 5: find any ballots at 4 o'clock in the morning and
• 2:36
  Speaker 5: add them to the list.
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: Okay?
• 2:42
  Speaker 5: It's a very sad moment. To me, this is a
• 2:44
  Speaker 5: very sad moment. We will win this. And as far
• 2:48
  Speaker 5: as I'm concerned, we already have won it.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: So that was, he found, first of all, he sounded
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: like a fucking maniac there. The weird tone, the, you know,
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: didn't make any sense whatsoever. Let's start with this. What
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: are Donald Trump's actual options here? What can he do?
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: Nothing.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Dan?
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: I mean, the most he can do is in states
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: where the state law allows a recount if it's within
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: a certain margin, like for example, Wisconsin, if the Margin
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: was within 1%. He can ask for a recount there.
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: But he has no legal authority, no executive authority, no
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: authority at all to stop the counting of ballots. And
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: if he were to stop the counting of ballots right now,
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: at this moment, Joe Biden has 270 electoral votes. So
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: maybe we should be for that.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: Stop.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: You know what?
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: We'll stop counting in Michigan. If you stop counting in
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: Arizona and Georgia, we are done. We'll take it.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: I mean, as usual, though, like what Donald Trump says
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: is not the same as what his campaign is doing.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: So they're seemingly going to try to invalidate provisional and
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: corrected ballots in Pennsylvania by people who were informed before
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: polls closed that there was a problem with their mail-in
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: ballot and they got rejected and then they cured them.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: I just saw an AP headline that the Trump campaign
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: has filed suit in Michigan to halt the vote count,
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: claiming it was denied access to observe the opening of
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: some ballot. So there's There's going to be a lot
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: of shenanigans that you're going to read about in various courts,
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: and it's hard for me to tell how likely any
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: of them are to be successful.
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: But a very important thing is when there are legal cases,
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: you very, very much want to be the person who
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: is ahead in the vote count when those things happen. Right.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: And there's a lot of concern as a Gore guy.
• 4:36
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: As someone who spent 37 days in Florida when Al
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: Gore was down by 530 some votes.
• 4:41
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: You prefer to be the other guy in that situation.
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: And so like if you want he wants to stop
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: counting votes in Michigan, he is losing in Michigan. And recounts. Look,
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: we don't want to take anything for granted, but recounts
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: very rarely move a ton of votes. Right. Even that
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: recount in Florida move like 15 votes in a state
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: much larger than Michigan or Wisconsin. And so he has very,
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: very limited options here other than saying dumb shit and tweeting,
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: unless something were to happen in Arizona and Pennsylvania, which
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: would allow him to get to 270. But other than that,
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: right now, as we stand here today, Joe Biden is
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: leading in enough states to put him at 270.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: I thought that the media and even a lot of Republicans,
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: both Republican pundits and politicians, were fairly responsible in how
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: they handled Trump's insanity last night. Lovett, what did you think?
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree.
• 5:29
  Speaker 4: We talked about this on a previous podcast that Fox
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: News had. We know Fox News has too much power
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: in our democracy, but they had an outsized amount of
• 5:40
  Speaker 4: power last night in determining the way in which Republicans
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: would see the election unfold. And the fact that Fox
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: called Arizona for Joe Biden, that became part of the conversation,
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: was important. I think there really was a successful education
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: campaign around how long it would take to count ballots.
• 5:57
  Speaker 4: I think we saw that from the media. I think
• 5:59
  Speaker 4: we saw that from Democrats. I think we saw that
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: even from a few Republicans that they were, they were
• 6:04
  Speaker 4: the exception that proves the rule. And I was pretty
• 6:08
  Speaker 4: gratified to see that there has been one advantage to
• 6:13
  Speaker 4: Donald Trump not being someone we generally take that seriously.
• 6:18
  Speaker 4: in that he goes out, he says that it was
• 6:21
  Speaker 4: sort of anticipated that he would pull a stunt like that.
• 6:24
  Speaker 4: Even for him, he was lethargic and didn't really put
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: his full body into it. And by the time you
• 6:32
  Speaker 4: got to the morning, it felt like it had been
• 6:34
  Speaker 4: a fart in the wind. And so we started tweeting
• 6:36
  Speaker 4: the same message over and over again. I don't think
• 6:38
  Speaker 4: it is having the impact that he would hope it
• 6:40
  Speaker 4: would have had. So that I think is ultimately a
• 6:42
  Speaker 4: good sign. Just one other point too, is I think
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: what Trump is trying to do, which we shouldn't allow
• 6:46
  Speaker 4: him to do, and I don't think we are, is
• 6:48
  Speaker 4: conflating uncertainty around the final counting of the ballots that
• 6:52
  Speaker 4: are in and uncertainty around the legal challenges, right? Like,
• 6:54
  Speaker 4: I think the uncertainty we feel now is around just
• 6:56
  Speaker 4: the counting. We just have to finish the counting in Arizona,
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: finish the counting in Michigan, finish the counting in Pennsylvania.
• 7:02
  Speaker 4: The legal challenges are another matter altogether. I will feel
• 7:05
  Speaker 4: a lot more relief. I feel, you know, we all,
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: I think, feel pretty relieved this morning, but I think
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: relief will set in when we get to the final
• 7:12
  Speaker 4: count in Pennsylvania, regardless of the challenges that Donald Trump
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: tries to mount.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought it was notable that even Mike Pence,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: who spoke right after Donald Trump, did not parrot his
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: language on we have won and they stole it. And
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: instead sounded like Joe Biden sounded and said, we believe
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: we're going to win. We're on a path to victory,
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: which is a perfectly fine thing to say, right? You
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: look at your votes, you model your votes like both
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: campaigns say, I think I'm going to win, right?
• 7:38
  Speaker 4: Even in Trump's own language, he said some version of,
• 7:41
  Speaker 4: in my opinion, I think we have one, right? It's like,
• 7:42
  Speaker 4: even for him, it was not the, it was late
• 7:45
  Speaker 4: and it took them a long time to get him
• 7:46
  Speaker 4: out there. And it was not the kind of, I
• 7:48
  Speaker 4: don't know, there is a worse version of Donald Trump
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: in that moment. Not that this one is great, it's awful,
• 7:53
  Speaker 4: but even his heart did not seem fully in it.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about like, does he have a chance
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: to win legitimately right now? Like what's happening in, I
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: think the states that are out still counting are Nevada, California, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania,
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: and Georgia. It does look like he is on the
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: path to defeat in Michigan. Feels like that's probably the
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: most confident. Nevada is counting mail-in ballots still, which have
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: been skewing very Democrat. So that's a good sign. Pennsylvania
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: has counted almost like very few mail-in ballots. Dan, do
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: you know what's going on in Pennsylvania? How many ballots?
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: I mean, when I went to bed, which is not
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: that long ago, or that distant from when I woke up,
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: it was nearing 2 million. I think I saw somewhere
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: it was 1.4 million. That's obviously going to change by
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: the time you listen to this. But it's over a million.
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: And the overwhelming bulk of them being from Philadelphia County,
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: which is a place where Joe Biden is going to
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: do very, very, very well.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: The Geno Valley Bob Bauer Biden campaign call this morning
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: on the election results and the various legal challenges said
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: that they expect to win Pennsylvania. At the time, there
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: were 1.4 million outstanding ballots, and they were not only
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: from heavy Democratic areas, but they were also vote by
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: mail ballots, which makes you think that they're probably even
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: more likely to lean Democrat.
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: And that's the lesson from what happened in Wisconsin last night,
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: which is the mail ballots are much, much more Democratic
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: than the overall vote because Biden picked up margin in Wisconsin,
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: even in more Republican areas when the mail-in ballot came
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: in because that was the bulk of his votes. And
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: so that is a very positive sign.
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: It's pretty extraordinary, by the way. This is something we
• 9:48
  Speaker 4: talked about. This was something that we said could happen, right?
• 9:51
  Speaker 4: This was the exact conversation we had that the mail-in
• 9:53
  Speaker 4: ballots will come in later.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: There will be a red mirage.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: We did a whole video on it. We put out
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: a whole video.
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: But it is a, look, it's just a reality of
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: what it was like to go through. I think there's
• 10:03
  Speaker 4: trauma from 2016. And look, we still don't know what's
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: going to happen. This is not done by any stretch,
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: not suggesting it is. But there's obviously a difference between
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: knowing something could happen and experiencing it happening.
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: It was a tough experience.
• 10:15
  Speaker 4: But again, like, This we are heading towards one of
• 10:18
  Speaker 4: the many outcomes that we would have considered good in
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: terms of the presidential vote.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: And if you want more in Pennsylvania, Senator Bob Casey,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: he actually he if you go on Twitter on his
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: Twitter account, he had like a map of Pennsylvania and
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: just like dug into the map late last night at
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: like two in the morning. Actually, in the East Coast,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: it was probably like four or five in the morning
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: East Coast. And he's like talking about exactly why he
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: thinks the vote's going to come in for Biden in
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: the right way. Look, this is a guy who won
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: Pennsylvania by a very large margin in 2018 in his reelect.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: So Bob Casey knows Pennsylvania well, but he feels good
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: about that. You know, Arizona, the mail-in ballots there should
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: favor Democrats. They have been favoring Democrats, though that is
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: a state where most of the state is used to mail.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: Male voting. So they could be a little more Republicans.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: It's a little more up in the air in Arizona, though.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: I think the Biden campaign feels good there, too. And
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: then Georgia is the one. What do you guys think
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: about Georgia? I keep forgetting that Georgia is still out
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: and it's still possible for Joe Biden to win.
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: It is quite possible. Let's put it this way. I
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: think it is more possible looking at the vote in
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: and the vote out for Joe Biden to win Georgia
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: than it is for Trump to win Pennsylvania. Now, we
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: know less about Pennsylvania because we're outstanding ballot, but I
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: think it's an 83,000 or 84,000 margin as we're recording this.
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: All the ballots left are in the greater Atlanta metropolitan area.
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: I can't do the math on this exactly, but my
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: suspicion is that if they come in. at a similar
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: way that the Milwaukee mail ballots did in Wisconsin, that
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: Biden could come very close, if not exceed that margin.
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: Now there's some other votes out there, but 83,000 with
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: that many, with several hundred thousand ballots left to go
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: is something that would make me very nervous. That was
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: the Trump campaign. And North Carolina is definitely leading, like
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: leading Trump's way, but There are still a lot of
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: outstanding ballots, and we don't know how many are outstanding
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: because North Carolina counts ballots for a few days after,
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: that are postmarked before Election Day but come afterwards. And
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: so there is outstanding vote there, and we have no
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: way of knowing how much that is.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: Of course, the count in Atlanta in Fulton County was
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: delayed because a pipe burst in the room where the
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: ballots were being stored. So that makes sense. Got it.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: That's cool.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: And just I'm sure a lot of you have done
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: the math, but just in case you haven't. So now
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: that Joe Biden has Wisconsin, the Nebraska second, and it
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: looks like Michigan, he needs either Arizona or Pennsylvania or
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: Georgia to win the presidency to hit 270. He doesn't
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: need all of them. He just needs one at this point.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: And he needs to hold Nevada. So a few things
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: need to happen, but he is close. He is definitely
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: much closer at this point than Donald Trump is. So
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: we will keep counting the ballots because we like counting
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: ballots here. That's what you do in a democracy. You
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: count the ballots and then the winner wins.
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: As long as they do it in a randomly arranged
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: set of states that get up to 270 instead of
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: the overall votes, because then this would be over.
• 13:27
  Speaker 5: Yeah, right. Right.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: Which is very, very American.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: Okay. Okay.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about how the fuck this all happened. Because
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: we are in a tight situation that a lot of
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: people did not expect we would be in. For example,
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: in Florida, the final 538 average was Biden plus 2.5.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: He lost by 3.4. In Wisconsin, the polling had Biden
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: up 8.4. And he just barely squeaked it out by
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: less than a point. In Michigan, he was up 7.9.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: He's also leading now by less than a point and
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: so on and so on and so on in most
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: of the battleground states. A gigantic fucking polling miss.
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: Can I just flag a couple of fun ones? October
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: 20th through 25th, ABC News Washington Post poll of Wisconsin.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: Biden plus 17.
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: Biden, plus 17. In Maine, the last polls were Gideon,
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: plus 8, plus 4, plus 2, plus 2, plus 1.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: You have to go back to July 2nd to find
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: a poll where Susan Collins was winning. This is upsetting
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: to me.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: I will also say, too, like, obviously the ABC Washington
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: Post one in Wisconsin was fucking crazy. You know, the
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: Marquette Law School poll is like a gold standard poll
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: in Wisconsin. It basically nailed the 2018 result. but it
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: did not nail, famously, the 2016 result. There is something
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: big going on with polling that is problematic here around
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump and Donald Trump electorates that we should probably...
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: Most pollsters have known since 2016. Many of them, to
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: their credit, tried to fix it. They have failed. Not
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: just public pollsters, private Democratic pollsters, a lot of private
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: Republican pollsters. Donald Trump's pollsters sort of saw this coming
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: in fairness to them. But a lot of Republican pollsters
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: that were working for a lot of Republican campaigns did not.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: They did too. So like, what the fuck's going on
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: with polling? Anyone want to hazard a guess?
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: Well, it's a funny, it's a sort of a philosophical
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: question because how do you figure out, how do you
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: figure out what's wrong with a process that we use
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: to divine what people think when what we're learning is
• 15:43
  Speaker 4: that the polls were wrong about what people think?
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: The problem isn't the polling is wrong. It's the polling
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: is wrong in one direction every time. You're going to
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: hear a lot from these pollsters who are going to say, well,
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: the margin of error is 2.5. But the margin of error,
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: that means that we should get sometimes polling that is
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: good for Trump and sometimes polling that is good for Biden.
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: And then in the end, the average will put us
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: in the middle. That's not what happened. We are addicted
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: to polling. We love the public polls. It lets us
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: pretend to be political strategists. We get in the crosstabs.
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: We get into every little word that Nate Cohn writes.
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: But none of that matters. Who gives a shit? That
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: affects the narrative on election night. If we had accurate polling,
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: we would not have spent so much time focusing on
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: Ohio to break our hearts or thinking that a loss
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: in Florida was a downside surprise for Biden. But Nate
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: Cohn having a functioning needle does not matter. There is
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: a real concern that Democratic polling is struggling to understand
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: what the electorate looks like with Trump on the ballot
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: in a presidential election year. We were wrong everywhere. Senate
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: races are shocked by what happened. I'm sure the Gideon
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: campaign is absolutely shocked about the result. Cal Cunningham is
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: probably greatly surprised by the result. Democratic House races, like
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: we've been talking about Dave Wasserman, how he kept saying
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: throughout the time that the district level polls were showing
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: Trump was struggling. Those are not media polls. Those are
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: campaign polls that are being shared with him as the
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: editor of the Cook Report. And so it's the campaign
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: polling that is wrong. And that's a huge problem. I
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: will say, though, to the Biden campaign's credit, while I
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: think their model may have been a little rosy in
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: some ways, they had the states in the right order.
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: Like if you saw the presentation that Jen O'Malley Dillon
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: did on election day, they basically said, we feel good
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: about Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Nebraska too. Florida, North Carolina,
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: Georgia toss-ups, Texas, and Ohio stretches. Now, they're off by
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: a few points, right? Because I think they thought they
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: were two points. Maybe they're five points or seven points.
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: But we have to fix this because we cannot make
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: good strategic decisions about where to invest resources, where to
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: send candidates, if we have an incorrect picture of the electorate, right?
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: It's like trying to choose your, which plays to run.
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: If you don't, if you have the wrong idea of
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: what the score is in a football game. And this
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: absolutely has to, this is a big project. Like there's
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: going to be a huge, like Nate's conference about how
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: to figure this out for media polling. That does not matter.
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: We should not give a shit about that. How the
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: pollsters and the people who do data for democratic campaigns
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: figure this out is very, very important. And that has
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: to get fixed sooner rather than later.
• 18:11
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: It was also, but just one for like Minnesota. They,
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: I think the, the five 38 average was like Biden
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: plus nine and he won by 7.2. So there are states,
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: including Midwestern states that are like analogous to some of
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: the other places we're talking about that were accurate. But
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: then on top of that, look, I put zero stock
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: in exit polls, especially this year when the methodology was
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: all different. But those numbers were way too rosy, way
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: too rosy for Joe Biden as well. And those are
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: supposed to be like massive surveys, 50,000 people, like lower
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: margins of error. Yeah, there's something just completely broken here.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: And like, you're also seeing demographics that or traditionally more democratic,
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: either not turn out, break the wrong direction. I mean,
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: there's a lot to unpack. I think in a month,
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: this conversation will be a hell of a lot better
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: informed and we'll understand things just because people will pull
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: together precinct level data and we'll actually be able to
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: compare it. But right now, I do feel like we're
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: all in the wilderness.
• 19:07
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, I just had one more thing on this.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: After 2016, David Shore, who's still work at Civis Analytics,
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: and you should read his interview with Eric Levitz about
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: this from New York Magazine. You know, their theory was,
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: there's the shy Trump voter theory, which a lot of
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: people dismiss because you see a lot of Trump supporters
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: out there, they don't seem very shy. But there's another theory,
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: which is like people who have low social trust in
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: institutions in general, who don't trust the media, who don't
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: trust institutions, don't want to pick up a call from
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: a pollster. don't want to talk to a media organization.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: And it's not necessarily that they're shy about saying that
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: they want to vote for Donald Trump. They just don't
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: want to talk to these people. They don't want to
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: take the survey. And if you have low social trust,
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: you are more likely to be a Donald Trump supporter.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: And so that's how do you fix that? I don't
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: think anyone has a good idea. But I do think
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: like it's I am very angry about the systemic polling error.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: I do not think the answer is to like throw
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: out all polling because like you said, Dan, we need
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: to have a good gauge of public opinion if we're
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: going to do politics, not just to win races, but
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: as we talk about issues and say like, this position
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: is popular, this legislation is popular. You know, like everyone
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: from across the ideological spectrum benefits from that. And if
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: you are basing it on numbers and data that doesn't
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: mean anything, then we're all sort of fucking in the.
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: Dark, you know? Yeah, I also think too, it's like,
• 20:35
  Speaker 4: Part of, I think, the lesson, I think we have
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: to figure out what's going on with the polling, obviously.
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: One other point about sort of shy Trump voters, everybody's
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: shy when it comes to answering the phone and doing
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: polls now, right?
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: Like response rates are low across the board.
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: But also there's a part of this that's about how
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: do we, I see people doing the recriminations, which are
• 20:51
  Speaker 4: incredibly premature about like how we should not use polling
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: at all, disregard it, right? We need to, the diner
• 20:56
  Speaker 4: conversations are not the answer either. But there is a
• 20:59
  Speaker 4: kind of balance of figuring, thinking about how to be
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: data driven without being data obsessed, right? Like thinking through
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: the way data plus common sense can impact our decisions
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: as we move forward when we have been confronted by
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: such a big polling error. And like one thing we
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: had all talked about, and when I received texts from
• 21:13
  Speaker 4: like cynical friends weeks ago, was that unlike 2016, there
• 21:17
  Speaker 4: was real comportment across the board, right? From national polls
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: to state level polls to local polls, right? Like there
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: was a consistent problem all the way down that was
• 21:25
  Speaker 4: reassuring when it shouldn't.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: Polls aside, we got ourselves a very close race. I
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: don't want to draw broad conclusions before all the votes
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: are in and we get reliable data on who actually
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: voted and why. That could take, as it often does,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: after elections, weeks, maybe even a month to really dig in,
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: especially since the exit polls are trashed. But what are
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: some of the things we know right now about why
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: this ended up so close and why we're in the
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: situation we're in right now?
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: It looks like Latino voters, especially in the Miami area,
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: broke much harder for Trump than I think even the
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: conservative estimates thought and or didn't turn out for Biden.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: I think that is something that people are going to
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: be looking at closely, which is building on a trend
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: from 16, which we saw again in 18.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: And that is certainly true in Miami and certainly true
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: in parts of Texas. You know, the interesting thing, and
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: at key polling, Carlos Odio and Stephanie Valencia, and we've
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: had Carlos on the pod before, they sent out a
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: memo afterwards. And, you know, they noted that one person
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: challenge is the Latino community isn't a monolith.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: And that in Arizona and Colorado and New Mexico, Biden
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: did very well with Latinos.
• 23:00
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: And did very poorly in Texas, very poorly in Texas.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: And then, of course, with the Cuban American community in Florida.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: And so, yeah, that's that is absolutely one thing to
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: look at. I think the other big thing is like
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: Trump just got and we all said this might happen.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: This was a fear that I talked about this fear
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: in our last pod before the election. Trump got just
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: un-fucking-believable turnout. Joe Biden got unbelievable turnout. Joe Biden turned
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: out more voters than Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama in
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: either of his two races. More young voters, more black voters,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: more voters of all groups of all ages across the board.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: And yet, Donald Trump, like, just juiced his turnout from
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: 2016 and did exactly what we had thought we were
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: worried about, which is found a bunch of non-college-educated white voters...
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: registered them and who didn't vote in 2016 and brought
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: them out to vote in 2020, that combined with doing
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: slightly better among non-white voters was enough to get him
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: to where he is, right? Am I missing anything else?
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: No, I mean, look, just to add to, you know,
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: it's just not a Miami, not a Cuba problem. I mean,
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: Patrick Svitek, a Texas reporter, pointed out that Zapata County,
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: which is just north of the Rio Grande Valley along
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: the border, Trump won that by six points. It was
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: 53 to 47. The last two presidential elections there were
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: Hillary Clinton plus 33, Barack Obama plus 43. So there
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: is a broader challenge with the Democratic Party earning the
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: votes of Latino voters.
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: We need to– we should not base these assessments broadly
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: on exit polls because that is often proven to be wrong.
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: It sort of locks us into bad narratives. But it
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: is very possible that when this is all said and done,
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: Donald Trump– We've gotten a higher percentage of the non-white
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: vote than any Republican since Richard Nixon. And that is
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: something that we need to explore very deeply as a
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: party because it upends all of our priors and narratives
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: that we put forward. And we have to figure that
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: out because the entire idea that we are just biding
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: time until demographics give Democrats this gigantic advantage depends on
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: holding our margins right. with black and Latino voters. And
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: if we are not going to do that, and Donald
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: Trump is going to hold his margins with white working
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: class voters, we're in serious trouble at every level. And
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: so there has to be, like, we have to get this,
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: these votes counted, get Joe Biden in the White House,
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: and then we have to begin the project of figuring
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: out what this election told us and how we go
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: about addressing those problems before 2022 or 2024.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: So the worst outcome of the night so far is
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: the Senate, where Democrats needed to net three seats to
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: take control of the chamber. We've so far flipped Republican
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: seats in Arizona and Colorado, where Mark Kelly and John
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: Hickenlooper won their respective races and are heading to the Senate. Unfortunately,
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: Doug Jones lost his Senate seat in Alabama. Gary Peters
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: has just pulled ahead of John James in Michigan. So
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: that's good. Hopefully he pulls it out when all the
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: votes are counted. But Cal Cunningham in North Carolina, Steve
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: Bullock in Montana, Teresa Greenfield in Iowa, Jamie Harrison in
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: South Carolina, MJ Hager in Texas, Amy McGrath in Kentucky,
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: Sarah Gideon in Maine. and Barbara Bollier in Kansas all
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: lost their races. John Ossoff is trailing David Perdue in Georgia,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: though there's an outside shot that goes to a runoff.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: And Reverend Raphael Warnock in Georgia will be facing Kelly
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: Loeffler in a runoff. What happened with the Senate?
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think the Gideon race in Maine is
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: the one that is baffling because the public polling showed
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: her so far ahead. She had tons of money. She
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: seems a great candidate. It was a top target and
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: it just completely broke the wrong direction. The rest of
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: the races you listed were pretty significant stretches. The one
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: that we had hope in down the stretch was Cal
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: Cunningham in North Carolina. Now, I don't know if the
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: very lame, very public sexting scandal hobbled him in the
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: last few weeks. That was one of the areas where
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: there was a local race that had sort of a
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: big news story that might have changed things. But South Carolina, Kentucky, Kansas,
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: those were all very, very You know, we're trying to
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: expand the map, and it's very difficult to do that.
• 27:05
  Speaker 5: Love it.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: What do you think?
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, look, I think, you know, some of
• 27:08
  Speaker 4: these races were places we had hoped we'd win if
• 27:11
  Speaker 4: the ultimate outcome had reflected public polling and we saw
• 27:14
  Speaker 4: something in between what happened and a wave, right? There
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: were some places we could get in a big wave.
• 27:19
  Speaker 4: That was the hope for something like South Carolina or Iowa.
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: There was Cal Cunningham's race, which we hope if the
• 27:25
  Speaker 4: numbers were a little bit better that he would be
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: someone that could be swept in. But, you know, it's hard...
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: It's hard right now to go race by race. That
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: will take time, especially when any individual conclusion seems to
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: be overwhelmed by what we're seeing in the House races
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: where we face trouble, in Senate races across the country.
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: It just wasn't as good a night as we hoped
• 27:46
  Speaker 4: it was going to be, and that affected us just
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: about everywhere.
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: Well, the challenge is that split-ticket voting is mostly dead.
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: And the Republicans won in the states that Donald Trump won,
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: and Democrats won in the states that Joe Biden won.
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: Which is why, I mean, I say this.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: With the big exception. Of Maine.
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: The big exception of Maine. There is a lot to
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: figure out with Maine there. I was actually surprised that
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: Sarah Gideon conceded because, I mean, they must know that
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: Collins is going to end up at over 50%. Because
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: in Maine, if you get under 50%, it goes to
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: ranked choice voting. But the outstanding votes must be in
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: the second district and the more Trumpy parts of Maine.
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: This speaks to the Senate and it speaks to everything else.
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: I think we should talk about the consequences of not
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: winning the Senate because- They're pretty devastating.
• 28:30
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: But if you were to ask us the day after
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: Super Tuesday when Joe Biden essentially becomes the nominee, like
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: what this is going to look like, we would have
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: said Joe Biden's path is– the only way this race
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: is going to play itself out is Biden has a
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: chance to flip the three blue wall states that Trump
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: won and maybe win Arizona and maybe win Nebraska too.
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: If you remember the beginning of the cycle, priorities famously
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: did not put Florida on their list of competitive states.
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: Ohio was never in the conversation. Iowa was never in
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: the conversation. North Carolina was a stretch. Georgia was never
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: in the conversation. Texas was never in the conversation. That
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: all shifted over the course of the summer. In the Senate,
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: we felt, and this didn't turn out to be correct,
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: but we felt Doug Jones was going to be in
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: real trouble. Gary Peters would probably be OK. We thought
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: we had a really good shot at Collins. Great shout
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: out to Martha McSally, in part because Arizona is moving
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: blue and Mark Kelly is such a great candidate for
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: that state. Cal Cunningham, North Carolina is a tough one,
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: but he's a good candidate. And so it's sort of–
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: we lived in this fake reality politically for months because
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: we were all consuming garbage polls. So it's like garbage in,
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: garbage out. And so we thought these things that were
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: not true because of how polling was done in this pandemic.
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: And it sort of played out the way we thought.
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: I mean, it is devastating that we did not win
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: the Senate, right? It is going to have consequences for
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: for years to come. There are consequences for down ballot
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: losses that are going to be devastating. We did not
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: get the Texas House. We lost some of the legislatures.
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: But Trump's voters came out. And we were playing a
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: lot on Trump's territory. And you do not win. Democrats
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: do not win in Republican states when Republicans turn out
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: at the highest level in any presidential race in more
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: than a century.
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: Another weird thing, though, guys, was the Colorado Senate polls
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: were spot on. Cory Gardner got smoked. Hickenlooper is going
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: to be a senator. Those polls were accurate. The state-by-state
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: accuracy and then completely off nature of these polls is
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: just driving me crazy.
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: One thing that we may find out over time is
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: that there is a legitimate impact when a state is
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: told they are an incredibly important swing state in which
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: turning out may determine the presidency, right? Minnesota didn't get
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: a lot of that noise for a while, and Colorado
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: didn't either by the time we got to the end.
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: But Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida, they did. Georgia didn't, right?
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: And we have a real shot at Georgia.
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: I said the other thing about Colorado, Tommy, is Colorado
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: is one of the only apples to apples comparisons we
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: can have because their election ran exactly the same as
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: it would without a pandemic because they've been doing mail
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: voting since 2014. So if there was a pandemic-related polling error,
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: the one place where it is unlikely to show up
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: would be Colorado.
• 31:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I also, you know, one of the things I
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: think I was realizing, I really did try to avoid,
• 31:16
  Speaker 4: just even in my... in my own thinking, like to
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: have a prediction, right? We were really trying to just
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: focus on what would happen without trying to kind of prognosticate.
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: But I realized, you know, my hope was that a
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: terrible pandemic and economic crisis, that it would be enough
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: to overwhelm some of the misinformation forces, the propaganda forces
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: that that have loomed so large throughout this race, that
• 31:42
  Speaker 4: that would be enough to drive enough people away from
• 31:45
  Speaker 4: Donald Trump to overwhelm the incredible turnout that we really
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: did expect Trump to have.
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: Did we know how big it would be? Of course not.
• 31:51
  Speaker 4: But one of the lessons of 2018 was their success
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: in turning out their people, despite Democrats doing a slightly
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: better job of turning out their people in that race.
• 31:58
  Speaker 4: And yet, to me, one of the big lessons as
• 32:00
  Speaker 4: this is unfolding, given how vast the underperformance is that
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: you can't point to any one failure or any one
• 32:07
  Speaker 4: candidate is, We really are in the midst of an
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: incredible threat via Fox news and Facebook and misinformation. That's
• 32:14
  Speaker 4: not just about left versus right. That's not the polarization
• 32:18
  Speaker 4: that may ultimately be the most important. It is between
• 32:20
  Speaker 4: people who pay very close attention and consume a wide
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: array of news and people who don't pay attention and then, or, and,
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: or consume a really narrow band of news via, via
• 32:30
  Speaker 4: right-wing propaganda or their friends and family who were exposed
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: to right-wing propaganda.
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: And that challenge is.
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: I think we always knew was huge, always knew would
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: loom over the next few years, if not longer. But
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: I think we are really confronted by just how big
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: a threat that is.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: I was thinking that this race was, at times it
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: felt like it was 2016 again last night, but really
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: this race was 2018, the midterms with just more Republican turnout.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: And what happened in 2018? We won statewide races in Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: We lost Florida. We didn't have a big one in
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: North Carolina. We almost won in Georgia again in 2018,
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: but we didn't quite get there. Didn't quite get there
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: in Texas. And so it was a replay of that.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: And again, like some of these Wisconsin polls, even that had,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: you know, up five, six, 10, 14, Tony Evers won
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: by a point and a half in 2018 in the
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: midterms against Scott Walker, right? Nothing, despite the fact that
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: we had a pandemic and, you know, demonstrations against racial injustice,
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: a recession, all of these things that happened, it wasn't
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: too much different than the midterms we saw in 2018,
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: only in the midterms, it felt different because we could
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: win a whole bunch of house seats in California and
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: take back the house. And here we needed those statewide
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: races to add up to 270. And that was the
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: real difference, you know, and that's the whole thing about
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: like North Carolina and hoping for Cal as the fourth seat.
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: Because North Carolina, we haven't won since 2008. And I think, again,
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: the difficult thing is we are trapped demographically between these
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: northern battleground states, which are slowly slipping away from us
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: because of the percentage of non-college white voters up there
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and the Sun Belt, which
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: looks attractive to us because Democrats are doing better there.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: You see Joe Biden could win Georgia, very close. That's
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: where he vastly improved on Hillary Clinton's margin in 2016.
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: very possibly wins Arizona. Hillary Clinton lost it by three
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: and a half points. So those states look good, but
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: we're not quite there yet either. So we're sort of
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: trapped in between. And that's what's allowing Republicans to keep winning.
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: I mean, it is interesting that we have treated those
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: Midwestern battleground states as if they were moving in this
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: Republican direction, because we're using as our baseline Obama's numbers
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: in 08 and 12. And what I think one of
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: the takeaways from this is Obama was the abnormal, not
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: the normal. Obama won Wisconsin by 400,000 votes in 2008, 200,000
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: votes in 2012. There was a recount in Wisconsin in
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: 2000 between Gore and Bush. Kerry barely won it. And
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: so it's actually reverted back to normal without Obama. There
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: are some other shifts happening. Obviously, Arizona has moved in
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: our direction. Ohio has moved in the other direction. But
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: they're Like we are back to the Gore-Carrie maps where
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: you were just– it is one state here or there.
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: The wide playing field that happened in 2008, 2012 was
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: the exception, not the rule. So one other thing to
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: say about the Senate races is there's been this like
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: cynical take that why did Democrats waste so much money
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: trying to defeat Lindsey Graham and elect Jimmy Harris? Why
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: did we waste so much money trying to elect John
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: Ossoff in Georgia or Cal Cunningham? in these tough states,
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: or even in Kansas or Alaska. And I think it
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: is fair to say that there were some smart Democrats
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: who knew better, who gave people the absolute wrong impression
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: of the likelihood of success in Kentucky running against McConnell.
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: But other than that, we have to run good, strong
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: races in red states if we ever want to make
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: those states not red anymore. We will have a better
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: chance at the state level in presidential years and everything
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: else in South Carolina because of the money that was
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: invested in Jimmy Harrison's race. We are more likely to
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: turn North Carolina blue in 2022 when there's a Senate
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: race or in 2024 in the presidential because of the
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: organizing that was done there. And so just like you
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: cannot say that every time you lose a race, all
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: that money was wasted. That is not true. That builds
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: up sustainable democratic organization that can be used to change
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: the map.
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: I do think the Booker staff in the Amy McGrath's
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: team in Kentucky probably did a ton of organizing that
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: will pay dividends at the local level and that will
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: also– There were definitely people who were like being silly
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: about how, you know, getting Amy McGrath $ 100 million is
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: the way to win the state. No, that was not true.
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: But those field teams did a lot of really important work,
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: I think, in Kentucky.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: Also, like we know very clearly demographics are not destiny,
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: but you can look to a state with favorable demographics
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: that are getting more favorable. And that is a state
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: where you should absolutely invest a ton of money on
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: organizing every dime. that Stacey Abrams and her organization and
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: everyone else poured into Georgia is well fucking worth it
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: because Georgia is now going to be competitive in every
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: single election. The work that Beto O'Rourke and so many
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: other people have done in Texas is worth it because
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: that state needs, you know, is going to be competitive
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: for future. Like you can look at it, same thing
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: in Arizona, right? Like you can look at these states
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: where the demographic, in South Carolina, where the demographics are
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: getting more favorable and those are good places to invest
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: your time and resources and to organize, right? So let's
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: talk about if Joe Biden wins, what a Biden, McConnell, Pelosi,
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: Washington looks like. Not great, not the best ideal, but
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: what can Democrats get done and what can't we get done?
• 38:11
  Speaker 4: I mean, I think the first thing is we have
• 38:13
  Speaker 4: the power of the executive order. We will immediately go
• 38:15
  Speaker 4: back into Paris. We will immediately... issue climate executive orders,
• 38:21
  Speaker 4: retract Trump's executive orders that were harmful to the environment,
• 38:24
  Speaker 4: harmful to national parks, harmful to gay people, harmful to
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: trans people, harmful to immigrants. Like there will be a
• 38:31
  Speaker 4: Muslim ban.
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: There will be a host of efforts that will write that.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: Manage the pandemic. How about that? That's number one.
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 38:39
  Speaker 4: The most, but absolutely, you know, it's all of a sudden, like,
• 38:43
  Speaker 4: you know, we're all, This is the first thing. These
• 38:46
  Speaker 4: past 48 hours has so consumed us. All of a
• 38:50
  Speaker 4: sudden this morning, I just saw, you know, we're almost
• 38:52
  Speaker 4: at a thousand deaths again. You know, this is ongoing.
• 38:55
  Speaker 4: The crisis is ongoing. And all of a sudden it
• 38:56
  Speaker 4: struck me that like, oh my God, that's right. Like
• 38:59
  Speaker 4: there's so much on the line. Like the focus on
• 39:01
  Speaker 4: the returns, the focus on all of that, just for
• 39:04
  Speaker 4: a moment, the stakes of the election, I think we're lost.
• 39:06
  Speaker 4: But just the promise of having an administration that takes
• 39:09
  Speaker 4: the pandemic seriously is so important, so central to what
• 39:12
  Speaker 4: happens in the next year. It was just bracing to
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: be reminded of those numbers after a brief moment of
• 39:16
  Speaker 4: focusing on something else.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: Anyone want to do challenges to the test? Joe Biden
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: and Mitch McConnell just after work, sitting together over drinks,
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: solving the world's problems.
• 39:30
  Speaker 4: Hey joe biden hey joe biden you get a lot.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: Um no i think it's like it's mitch mcconnell is
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: going to be mitch mcconnell but like suddenly susan mc
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: the susan mc susan collins and lisa murkowski you know
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: you get those two votes plus all the democrats Maybe
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: you can pass things that are more moderate. And then
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: hope in 2022 you flip a few more seats. That's it.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: That's the path. And it's really fucking tough. And it
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: means that a lot of the democracy reforms that we
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: had hoped for are going to be tough. Obviously, no
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: filibuster reform. Remember, we had a conversation about rebalancing the court.
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: That's not really going to happen. Although, I do think,
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: I guess, if there's another Supreme Court justice appointment, Um,
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: you know, you could get theoretically a Collins and a
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: Murkowski to be on board for that.
• 40:20
  Speaker 5: Maybe.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: I don't know, Dan.
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: I mean, I want to try to find the right
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: balance between being very realistic about the fact this is
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: going to be a game of inches, right? And the
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: things we care most about are going to be very,
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: very hard, if not impossible to get through legislatively. And
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: Biden is going to have to take all of the
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: brainpower he can possibly find in the Democratic Party and
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: policy apparatus and put it towards doing the most aggressive,
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: most impactful executive actions possible. And obviously, that includes undoing
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: all of the terrible shit that Trump has done. And
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: you can do that every day for the first term.
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: If you did one thing a day for the first term,
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: you could have massive impact on the world just by
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: undoing Trump's stuff. But then thinking very creatively, what is
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: the most aggressive, most impactful way to go after climate
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: in this situation? What's the most impactful way to help
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: the economy? There is going to be opportunities, I think,
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: to get some things done economically. This is not exactly 2009.
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: In 2009, Mitch McConnell could tell Barack Obama to go
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: screw himself. Because Democrats controlled all the levers of power.
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: Mitch McConnell has his hand on the knife. And so
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: if he refuses to pass economic relief, right, to try
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: to fix the economy while defending Senate seats in some
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: tough places, that's going to be very hard. He has
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: a different political calculus than he did in the first
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: few years of the Obama administration. So it's going to
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: be very hard. I just want to be honest and
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: be very hard. But I don't want to take away
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: from the fact that if Joe Biden is president of
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: the United States and Donald Trump is no longer president
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: of the United States, that is a gigantic fucking thing
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: that is going to make such a difference in every way, shape,
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: or form.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: And I will say, like, if we knew, like, that
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: the Arizona count was done and that Pennsylvania was done
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: during this podcast, it would be a different tone, right? Like,
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: we are cautiously– as we were saying yesterday, nauseously optimistic
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: that Joe Biden is going to pull this out here.
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: But if we knew that for sure, it would be
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: a lot different, right? Like, yes, we have said from
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: the beginning, right, that Donald Trump is a symptom and
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: not the cause of all the problems facing our democracy.
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: We clearly have some enormous challenges that we are going
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: to face if there is a Joe Biden as president
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: and a Republican Senate. We know that. And especially we
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: haven't even talked about the state legislatures, the courts, all
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: the things that we're facing. Like this battle is here
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: and it is going to be fucking tough. But Donald
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: Trump is an immediate threat to our democracy like none
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: we have seen in a long time. And if we
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: can remove him from office and if Joe Biden wins,
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: that will be to say it's an enormous victory is
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: a fucking understatement. We should be dancing in the streets.
• 42:57
  Speaker 4: I think I think that like I think what we
• 42:59
  Speaker 4: are facing is. is that we are very hopeful at
• 43:03
  Speaker 4: this point that we have removed the symptom, if Donald
• 43:05
  Speaker 4: Trump is a symptom. Our job to tackle some of
• 43:09
  Speaker 4: the underlying causes just got much more difficult, right?
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: It just did, right?
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: Like we were hoping- But less so now that Donald
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: Trump isn't there.
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: Of course, of course.
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely. Also, not to be morbid, but like things happen.
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: Like Congress is full of very old people. They retire.
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: When Ted Kennedy passed away in 2010, that dramatically changed
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: our political fortunes when we lost that Senate seat in Massachusetts.
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: There's like a lot of ways the ball could bounce
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: that we can't predict right now. And so what's going
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: to be needed to be there to take, you know,
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: those opportunities when they come? Sustained activism, paying attention, fighting
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: for things you care about. That's our only option.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: And people should be proud.
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: Just for everyone listening, we're talking like there's a little
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: bit of uncertainty right now. Everything is unbelievably close. With
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: an election this close, what you should all realize is
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: that Every single phone call or door knocking shift or
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: text bank you did made a difference. In fact, the
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: text bank shift or phone bank you did might have
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: been the difference between winning and losing. So the difference
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: in some ways between 16, I think, in this cycle
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: is there were a shitload of people, a lot of
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: them listened to the show, who were wide awake, paying attention,
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: volunteering their time, donating their money, and really, really, really engaged.
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: And that could be the reason Joe Biden is president.
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: I just want to make sure people get that.
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, that is the margin in Wisconsin. That
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: is the margin in Michigan, Arizona, maybe Pennsylvania. Like what
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: happened was the turnout in Milwaukee and in Dane County,
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: where Madison is, was much higher because people, many of them,
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: listeners to the show, have been organizing that state since
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: the day Donald Trump won. And that is why we won.
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: And so one of the lessons from this is polling
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: is wrong, but activism works.
• 44:49
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: No, I do. You know, we're going to, because we have...
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: So little info still. And this is, you know, this
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: is still a live ball. We don't have too much
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: more to say today, but we'll have more in the
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: weeks to come. But I do just want to reiterate that, like,
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, think about Ben Wickler in Wisconsin
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: last night, our friend Ben, the Democratic chair in Wisconsin.
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: And like all the times everyone, you know, all the
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: organizing he did in that state. and all the money
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: that everyone donated, and all the phone banks that went
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: into that state, and same thing with Michigan, and same
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: thing with Arizona. All of these little acts of organizing
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: and volunteerism added up to a very small margin of
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: victory in some of these states. And everyone should feel
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: enormously proud of that.
• 45:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and I also, one thing that I think will
• 45:45
  Speaker 4: be clear is We are going to have, over the
• 45:50
  Speaker 4: next year, some of the biggest political fights we have
• 45:52
  Speaker 4: ever seen in our lives.
• 45:53
  Speaker 5: We are.
• 45:54
  Speaker 4: They're going to be enormous over keeping the government open,
• 45:57
  Speaker 4: over taxes, over responding to the pandemic, over the courts,
• 46:00
  Speaker 4: what have you. A real knockdown, drag out fight. And
• 46:05
  Speaker 4: I hope people stay engaged through this period of time
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: because what we said before this election, I think continues
• 46:12
  Speaker 4: to be true, which is that once Trump is gone,
• 46:15
  Speaker 4: The next year, the first year of this Democratic administration
• 46:19
  Speaker 4: can be one of the most consequential and important ones
• 46:22
  Speaker 4: we face as we head into a midterm in which
• 46:24
  Speaker 4: we will once again be fighting for a majority. And
• 46:26
  Speaker 4: I just hope that everybody understands that their work really mattered.
• 46:30
  Speaker 4: And while removing Donald Trump is one of the great
• 46:33
  Speaker 4: reliefs and achievements that anyone could ever point to in politics,
• 46:37
  Speaker 4: not winning the Senate means that there's a fucking ton
• 46:39
  Speaker 4: of work we're going to have to do.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: No one's going back to brunch.
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: It's true.
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: But everyone, hopefully, once this is called, can take a
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: fucking breather. Because everyone deserves it.
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: You know that? Brunch is just overpriced eggs.
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: Let's go to lunch.
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: Or dinner.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: Which we can't have together because we're in the middle
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: of a fucking pandemic.
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: Again.
• 47:04
  Speaker 5: Again.
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: But, you know, if Joe Biden pulls this out and
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: we are... And again, this is the other thing, too.
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: Everyone should feel like we don't know what the final
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: tally is, but fucking... Feel confident. Put on a happy
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: face out there, guys. Because, like, when you were in
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: a recount situation like this, a post-election, you know, the
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: team that exudes confidence is often the team that prevails. Right, Dan?
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: Gore Bush 2000?
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: Is that what you saw on the other side? Confidence?
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: I saw tremendous confidence from little whippersnapper Republican attorneys like
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett. LAUGHTER I mean,
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: but it's also, it's- Oh, man. The math is in
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: our favor here, right? We have, you would much.
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: Rather be- It's not just a wish and a hope here.
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: We are leading in more, in enough states to get
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: to 270. So feel good about that. But also, we
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: cannot allow the trauma of 2016 to make us hide
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: under our desks until this is called because the Republicans
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: are out there and they are questioning the legitimacy of
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: this election. They're spreading misinformation. And that's not just about
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: helping Donald Trump win. That is trying to neuter Joe
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: Biden's ability to govern before he even gets to the
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: White House. And so we have to go out there
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: and we have to trust the process. We have to
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: exude patient confidence about what is going to happen here.
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: Seem serious, seem right. Cause that we have every right
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: to feel that way. We should feel it internally and
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: we should feel it externally.
• 48:28
  Speaker 4: I also, and just one last point, which of course
• 48:30
  Speaker 4: is lost in all of this. Joe Biden got more
• 48:32
  Speaker 4: votes than any person in the history of this country.
• 48:35
  Speaker 3: And that does matter. That matters. It just matters.
• 48:37
  Speaker 4: He has that mandate.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: The fight goes on. The fight goes on. All right.
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: We will, uh, We'll talk to you guys soon. Hopefully
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: we'll have more of a vote count by then. We
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: don't know when.
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: Could be any time.
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: Don't know.
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: Stay tuned. Bye.
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Jordan Waller.
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Sominator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou,
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: Quinn Lewis, Brian Semel, Caroline Reston, and Elisa Gutierrez for
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: production support. Into our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian,
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: episodes as videos every week.