Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds. And Greg Abbott is defying the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court and continuing to put up razor wire at the
Speaker 1: Texas border. We have such a great show for you today.
Speaker 1: The New Republic's Greg's sergeant stops by to talk to
Speaker 1: us about how the media is covering the twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four election and it's many, many failures. Then we'll talk
Speaker 1: to Semaphore's Dave Weigel about what's happening on the ground
Speaker 1: in New Hampshire and Iowa and soon South Carolina. But
Speaker 1: first we have NBC's National Affairs correspondent John Heilman. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to Fast Politics. John Heilman.
Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast. It's so great to be
Speaker 2: here with you again. In the wake of boy I
Speaker 2: guess what everybody thinks is like the end of the
Speaker 2: Republican nominating contest. I guess you know that's probably that's
Speaker 2: my insensible point of view about it. So, you know,
Speaker 2: are you how are you feeling about the nation with
Speaker 2: Donald Trump? Is another day back to a nominee of
Speaker 2: the party. They're saying that if anybody right the checks
Speaker 2: in Nicky Haley, they're going to be like putting a
Speaker 2: concentration camp or something.
Speaker 1: By the way, where I live in Manhattan, I know
Speaker 1: so many people who are like who come to me
Speaker 1: and they say, Mom, you know, I'm giving Nikki Haley
Speaker 1: some incredible amount of money. And I say, the math
Speaker 1: is not mathing. There's no world in which this works.
Speaker 1: And they say, yeah, yeah, but something could happen.
Speaker 2: Well, they're not wrong. I mean something could happen. The
Speaker 2: thing that this has reminded me of in the last
Speaker 2: couple of days is two thousand and eight and the
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen Democratic nomination flights, where after Super Tuesday, David
Speaker 2: Luffle looked at all of the spreadsheets and was like,
Speaker 2: you know, a world of proportional allocation of delegates, there's
Speaker 2: no world which Hillary Clinton can now come back. And
Speaker 2: they started making this argument about the math that would
Speaker 2: try to convince reporters. They were pretty good. They were
Speaker 2: good at and they were right. I mean it was like,
Speaker 2: you know, they would say, she would have to win,
Speaker 2: you know, the remaining contests sixty five to thirty five,
Speaker 2: and there's no record for winning anything suscebout thirty five
Speaker 2: and so there's no world in which she's going to
Speaker 2: wait all the contests, and there's no math that makes
Speaker 2: it as it makes sense. And the Clintons, who are
Speaker 2: widely described as deluded at this point, were always kind
Speaker 2: of like, well, something could happen, you know, they could
Speaker 2: find the they could find the Whitey tape with Brot
Speaker 2: with Michelle Obama trashing white people. They could find something
Speaker 2: that will destroy back Obama, and you'd be like, well,
Speaker 2: you guys are out of your mind. And then in
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen, if you want to turn this around for
Speaker 2: different ideological purposes, it's like there was a moment that
Speaker 2: came we're Bernie. In the last couple months of that campaign,
Speaker 2: I had had conversations with him aout it. I'd say,
Speaker 2: you know, you would have to win seventy five percent
Speaker 2: of the popular boat in the remaining races to be
Speaker 2: able to come into that commention with the same number
Speaker 2: of delegates as Hilary exliner are more you know, what
Speaker 2: are you doing? His answer was really, I'm leading a
Speaker 2: movement and I can't let go, and his I'm saying
Speaker 2: he didn't say that quite that way. But that was
Speaker 2: the truth of the thing, and his advisors were like,
Speaker 2: we're trying to accumulate delegates, so we have a leverage
Speaker 2: of the convention. People find various reasons to go on,
Speaker 2: and I think is deluded as the as the Clintons were,
Speaker 2: that they were going to find some devastating piece of
Speaker 2: new information that was going to make Barack Obama unelectable
Speaker 2: or completely disqualify him. You know it's Donald Trump if
Speaker 2: you're around Nicky Haley and you have the money to
Speaker 2: go on because as you as you know, well, no
Speaker 2: one quits a presidential race because they're losing. They quit
Speaker 2: a presidential race because the money drives up. If you
Speaker 2: have the money, I will see whether that continues to
Speaker 2: be the case for her. If you have the money
Speaker 2: and you're headed to your home state, and you know,
Speaker 2: people could tell you all day long about how the
Speaker 2: party down, there's maga, there's some more Republicans that all
Speaker 2: the democractics, the maths definitely against her. Donald Trump is
Speaker 2: the all but certain nominee. But it's Donald Trump, right,
Speaker 2: He's legal problems, He's got all.
Speaker 1: These things that are ninety one counts.
Speaker 2: Yes, Eddie's got the and some of these trials, you know,
Speaker 2: potentially will start at least potentially Wilson begin not end
Speaker 2: well in the in this period. Is there a chance,
Speaker 2: given the way the chaotic, hectic, shambalic crazy asked way
Speaker 2: that Donald Trump's public life has unfolded, is there a
Speaker 2: chance that something could happen that would break the race
Speaker 2: open in.
Speaker 3: A certain way. There's a chance.
Speaker 2: And to me, it's sort of like not nobody should
Speaker 2: be like, yeah, I think Nicka Haley's really got a shot.
Speaker 2: That's not really the point. The point more is that,
Speaker 2: like if clear, she's in his head that thing on
Speaker 2: Tuesday night. We talked about it on TV on Wednesday morning.
Speaker 2: But I was at her without a concession speak out
Speaker 2: to victory of becha, I am going to the day
Speaker 2: of the race speech up and conquered on Tuesday night.
Speaker 2: And she was better in that speech that I think
Speaker 2: I may have ever seen her in terms of her
Speaker 2: projection of confidence, ease in herself, sense of life. She
Speaker 2: did not seem like a candidate who was trying to
Speaker 2: put on a brave face. She read to me like
Speaker 2: a candidate who was like I've kind of found my
Speaker 2: groove here I'm not probably probably in denial about the
Speaker 2: ultimate likely outcome here. But as long as she has
Speaker 2: cut someone who's willing to give her money, and as
Speaker 2: long as she's got the guts, I do stay guts
Speaker 2: to risk a loss in her home state that could
Speaker 2: really leave a mark on her politically forever. As long
Speaker 2: as she's got those two things, you know, why not?
Speaker 2: Four years ago Joe Biden gave basically that same speech
Speaker 2: on the night in New Hampshire. He finished fourth and
Speaker 2: iow at fits New Hampshire and he said, there's only
Speaker 2: two states that have voted. Let the country speak. Why
Speaker 2: do we have to shut this down right now? I'm
Speaker 2: going to go on and I want to take this
Speaker 2: to bigger and more diverse states. I just don't see
Speaker 2: why if you thought that was okay for Joe Biden's tate,
Speaker 2: that pussure, why you wouldn't think it was okay Nikki
Speaker 2: Elia wants to she has the money and she's willing
Speaker 2: to take the risk. Why would anybody not want to
Speaker 2: see her out there prosecuting some case against Donald Trump?
Speaker 2: If those things are true, and only these two little
Speaker 2: small states in voted.
Speaker 1: Yes, and I think that's right and I think that
Speaker 1: it's a really good point. And I happen to have
Speaker 1: written a piece on the Washington Post opinion page that
Speaker 1: was published quite largely that said that Joe Biden should
Speaker 1: drop out because he wasn't going away, probably one of
Speaker 1: the longest I have ever been in my political career.
Speaker 1: I think that you have a really good point. Now,
Speaker 1: Devil's Advocate is that for the last eight years, we
Speaker 1: have all sort of engaged in group hallucination that Donald
Speaker 1: that something might happen to Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: But this is why I say, let us not engage.
Speaker 2: I'm the laws person to engage in a wish casting
Speaker 2: and I'm not like some big McKy haliy fan. I'm
Speaker 2: not sitting here saying she should stay in because she
Speaker 2: has a good chance, or she should stay in because
Speaker 2: she has a reasonable chance. I think she has virtually
Speaker 2: no chance, and in the end, there's some harm in
Speaker 2: her going forward if that's the choice she wants to make.
Speaker 2: I kind of applaud her for wanting to stay in
Speaker 2: and make again some sort of case against someone who
Speaker 2: you know is all the things that we know Donald
Speaker 2: Trump is, and I know a lot of people you
Speaker 2: know who would have said to me in the last
Speaker 2: and maybe this would be a controversial point of view.
Speaker 2: But the Democrats who really want to stop Donald Trump,
Speaker 2: who said I don't know I should feel about Nikki
Speaker 2: Haley eight because I think that this is their assertions.
Speaker 2: A lot of people feel this way. I think she
Speaker 2: would be tougher for Joe Biden to beat than Trump
Speaker 2: will be. But I also note that if like Trump's
Speaker 2: the nominee, there's something around the fifty to fifty chance
Speaker 2: that he'll be the next president. And so I don't
Speaker 2: know what to do about this. Nicky Haley would be
Speaker 2: too conservative for my taste as president. She might be
Speaker 2: better at student to beat Biden. Do I really want
Speaker 2: to take that risk?
Speaker 3: Should I?
Speaker 2: How should I play this? If I'm playing it just
Speaker 2: terms of game theory, and my thing is like, if
Speaker 2: you're one of these people, and I myself in this camp,
Speaker 2: for sure, I guess taking to someone who's never cast
Speaker 2: a vote in potential election, but as someone who's covered them,
Speaker 2: I do put myself in the camp of I'm on
Speaker 2: team democracy, right, And if you're one of these people
Speaker 2: who walks around saying Donald Drum is an existential threat
Speaker 2: to American democracy, including on the Biden campaign, Like what's
Speaker 2: your real principled argument in which you'd say Nicki Haley
Speaker 2: should drop out? Because what if the argument is, you know,
Speaker 2: this is an existential threat to democracy Donald Trump. Why
Speaker 2: shouldn't anybody who's trying to take the fight to Donald
Speaker 2: Trump who's not just another autocrat, which I don't think
Speaker 2: anybody think they say Nicki Haley is. You might think
Speaker 2: she's too conservative, but no one thinks she's that. She's
Speaker 2: like missus Hitler. It's like, why would you not? Why
Speaker 2: are you not for anybody who's like leaving it all
Speaker 2: in the field and trying to keep Cheetah Mussolini from
Speaker 2: a retaking power. But don't get that confused with thinking, oh,
Speaker 2: she's got a chance. You know, It's like she's not
Speaker 2: a good chance. Like let's put all of our eggs
Speaker 2: in the Nicki Haley basket. She's looks likely to get
Speaker 2: creamed in South Carolina if she lasts even that law.
Speaker 2: The numbers would say she'll probably get beaten pretty stilely
Speaker 2: in her home state, and then it will then I think,
Speaker 2: probably be over because the money will up and she
Speaker 2: probably won't be too humiliated to go forward, but why
Speaker 2: not spend one more month here and sort of see
Speaker 2: how it plays out in terms of her attractions she
Speaker 2: gets and and what might happen to him? And again
Speaker 2: not like kind of wish upon a star, but just like, hey,
Speaker 2: like what's the dump side? That's ice my feeling about it.
Speaker 2: And I will say one last thing about the difference
Speaker 2: between the Biden thing, the one thing that Biden people
Speaker 2: will tell you that I have to give them just
Speaker 2: say it out loud. They would say, well, even though
Speaker 2: Joe Biden has become coming fourth in Iowa and comes
Speaker 2: just in New Hampshire, there was a path for us
Speaker 2: even then that doesn't exist for her in the data,
Speaker 2: which was to say they were like, we had always
Speaker 2: been in the number of one or number two positions
Speaker 2: in South Carolina because we had a kind of popularity
Speaker 2: with black voters, which is the key constituency of the
Speaker 2: Democratic Party. We didn't know whether that would collapse after
Speaker 2: Iowa New Hampshire. But we had a path in a way,
Speaker 2: a theoretical path in a way that Nikki Hilly does
Speaker 2: not right now. And that's true, But again that was
Speaker 2: not his public argument. It was why are you trying
Speaker 2: to shut down democracy. We've only had these two more
Speaker 2: states voted, so let's hear from some more people. And
Speaker 2: I think if you basically buy that, you know, you've
Speaker 2: got to kind of apply it both to Haley and
Speaker 2: to Biden in the same way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, Nikki Haley is serving the same purpose
Speaker 1: that George Conway is and that Egene Carroll is right.
Speaker 1: They're driving Donald Trump crazy.
Speaker 2: Yes, And if you believe if you look at all
Speaker 2: this data that we've seen now out of Iowa and
Speaker 2: New Hampshire, which is people are finding different ways and
Speaker 2: angles into it. I'm with Joe Scarro on the you know,
Speaker 2: if Barack Obama ran the Iowa caucuses in twenty sixteen
Speaker 2: after he was on his way out presidency, if he
Speaker 2: ran the Ilocacca's third time as an incumbent quasi company
Speaker 2: he came back, now, you know, he'd get ninety percent
Speaker 2: of the Democratic votes. It is striking that Trump is
Speaker 2: kind of just a little over fifty with the voting
Speaker 2: electorates that he's had. There is a lot of those
Speaker 2: people who voted against him, Republicans who voted against him.
Speaker 2: Although in New Hampshire twenty five percent of them who did.
Speaker 2: A lot of those people will end up voting for
Speaker 2: him in the general election, but not all. And to
Speaker 2: the extent that Nikki Haley is out there publicly in
Speaker 2: front of Republican audience, on Republican media in other places,
Speaker 2: highlighting his increasingly aduled mental state, his increasingly obvious unsuitability, unfitness,
Speaker 2: inability to just mentally handle the job. Again, if you
Speaker 2: think he's an existential threat to democracy, She's gonna have
Speaker 2: a big public platform for the next month or harberlonga
Speaker 2: she states in if she changes five Republican voters' minds
Speaker 2: over the course of the next month. From my point
Speaker 2: of view, she making an important argument. Diana, Yes, Diana,
Speaker 2: exactly right.
Speaker 1: This was I thought a little bit shitty of her.
Speaker 1: There were so many Democrats and also never Trump Republicans
Speaker 1: or not Democrats, but New Hampshire's estate with a lot
Speaker 1: of undeclared voters. A lot of those undeclared voters voted
Speaker 1: for her, maybe not so much because they loved her,
Speaker 1: but because they saw Trump as an existential threat to democracy,
Speaker 1: as we all do. And she then was sort of
Speaker 1: not so grateful for it. But I do think that
Speaker 1: makes your point.
Speaker 2: Was when you say she was not grateful for what
Speaker 2: do you mean by that? I'm not challenging him. What
Speaker 2: are you keying off of there?
Speaker 1: She said something to the effect of something negative about
Speaker 1: Democrats in the state, and I can't remember exactly what
Speaker 1: it was. They were people who really went out of
Speaker 1: their way, and maybe they didn't vote for her as
Speaker 1: much as they voted against Trump.
Speaker 2: Right, I don't know exactly what you're referring to, but
Speaker 2: I will say this. You know, politics, as they say Plalie,
Speaker 2: as you know, is not bean bag. And if you
Speaker 2: were Nikki Haley and you wake up the day after
Speaker 2: the dam sure primary and you see that Donald Trump
Speaker 2: has beating you among Republicans by fifty points, and you
Speaker 2: know that any chance was a one percent chance, infantestinal
Speaker 2: chance to beat Donald Trump and and to go deep
Speaker 2: into the primaries against him, because that never has to change.
Speaker 2: Most of these primaries coming forward are just are just Republicans.
Speaker 2: And if you get beat seventy five to twenty five
Speaker 2: in other states among Republicans, I mean, you really are
Speaker 2: look like kind of moron to go forward. So if
Speaker 2: your fundamental political imperative going forward is how do I
Speaker 2: get more Republicans to vote for me. There is some
Speaker 2: political logic, even though it seems a little ungrateful and
Speaker 2: maybe even more the little lollaigrateful, but there is some
Speaker 2: political logic in trying to basically change is trying to
Speaker 2: project the notion not that you're like shitting on Democrats
Speaker 2: who voted for you, who decided to come out for
Speaker 2: the primary, but that like, you can't allow yourself to
Speaker 2: be cast in the minds of South Carolina Republicans as
Speaker 2: the candidate of never Trump Democrats in New Hampshire, right,
Speaker 2: and so the idea that you have some imperative to
Speaker 2: rhetorically put some distance between yourself and those people who
Speaker 2: supported you. I understand that. I mean again, I don't
Speaker 2: you have to YEA, she could do it in a
Speaker 2: shittier way or a less shitty way, but I at
Speaker 2: least understand why she feels like she needs to not
Speaker 2: basically wear the mantle of you. You can't walk out of
Speaker 2: your Hampshire with a big, giant blue overcoat on, you know.
Speaker 2: It's like, you know, with the big with the ad
Speaker 2: on the back, and that's not going to help her
Speaker 2: in her cause of beating Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: It is interesting to me though, that Donald Trump is
Speaker 1: threatening to blacklist mega donors who donate to Nikki Haley.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a guy who really needs money,
Speaker 1: and a lot of it he needs for his legal challenges.
Speaker 2: Tim Miller and I did this interview with ann On
Speaker 2: for the last episode in Out of Las bi Us
Speaker 2: where he did this without with Cary Lake. This all
Speaker 2: turned into a whole thing, but we're Bannon basically said
Speaker 2: not basically, I mean really said, believing that and none
Speaker 2: seeing the view that the twenty twenty election was stolen
Speaker 2: is now a necessity a litmus test for being in
Speaker 2: the MAGA movement, right. He was like, if you don't
Speaker 2: believe that, if you want to test to that publicly,
Speaker 2: you're out right. I tried to get carry Lake to
Speaker 2: say on camera. I just kept asking you, this is
Speaker 2: what our fight on camera about this. I was like,
Speaker 2: will you just say, with Steve Bennis, is that your
Speaker 2: review that if if you don't believe the twenty twenty
Speaker 2: election was stolen, you're not a member of a good
Speaker 2: standing up the Maga movement slash Republican Party. And she
Speaker 2: because she has some sense of like what she's going
Speaker 2: to need to do if she's going to be a
Speaker 2: successful at Arizona, would not go that spar And the
Speaker 2: reason I raised that whole thing is that there's a
Speaker 2: flavor of this in a lot of things that are
Speaker 2: coming out of them now, whether it's the things that
Speaker 2: Marjorie Taylor Greenen said on stage on Tuesday or this
Speaker 2: Trump thing about the donors, which is the purity test,
Speaker 2: the litmus test. And we're the opposite of a big
Speaker 2: ten Republicanism. We are not interested in a broader and
Speaker 2: broadening the coalition or welcoming Republicans who are on the fence,
Speaker 2: Republicans who are for somebody else work for Like if
Speaker 2: you're not in the cult, and not just in the cult,
Speaker 2: but like you know, someone who is like whatever, they
Speaker 2: have the Scout rankings, so like you know, there's like
Speaker 2: boy scout, you know. But if you're not like an eagle,
Speaker 2: if you don't, we're like an eagle scout pin of maga.
Speaker 2: You know, we don't want a part of you. In fact,
Speaker 2: we're going to read you out of the party. There's
Speaker 2: part of that that you look at and you go
Speaker 2: that is worrying and dangerous and symptomatic of a kind
Speaker 2: of fascist impulse and a cult impulse. And also the
Speaker 2: way I look at it is it's just like politically
Speaker 2: self defeating, because you know, in twenty twenty, Trump's and
Speaker 2: his team surprised us all because we often we analysts,
Speaker 2: by pundits whoever, we would often point out that it
Speaker 2: between twenty seventeen and twenty twenty eight, Trump had done
Speaker 2: nothing to expand his coalition, and we're like, how is
Speaker 2: he ever going to win against the twenty twenty Democratic
Speaker 2: nominee if he's brought no one in nobody who had
Speaker 2: didn't vote from a twenty sixteen And they would say,
Speaker 2: that's not where we're going to get our votes. We're
Speaker 2: going to get our votes from people who are maga,
Speaker 2: just didn't vote in twenty sixteen. We're going to go
Speaker 2: out and find the voters who didn't. We're going to
Speaker 2: turn those people out. And a lot of us were
Speaker 2: skeptical and we were wrong. They found a lot of
Speaker 2: those millions. There's but that is a population now that
Speaker 2: I don't think there's anybody in Trump's world. It is
Speaker 2: in his increasingly actual, real, sophisticated campaign. I don't think
Speaker 2: anybody who would say that there's a lot of untapped
Speaker 2: from that boat total in twenty twenty, that there's a
Speaker 2: ton millions more of Trump voters who didn't vote from
Speaker 2: in sixty and didn't vote from in twenty, which means
Speaker 2: that if you're going to beat Biden, you're going to
Speaker 2: have to get some of voters, not necessarily from the middle,
Speaker 2: but certainly like some of these mainstream Republican voters who
Speaker 2: Trump is now saying, if you write a check to
Speaker 2: Nikiy Hiley are out, you know we're going to send
Speaker 2: you off to an internment camp. I just think like
Speaker 2: that's not the way to win. It strikes me as
Speaker 2: letting your cultish and authoritarian and autocratic and fascistic kind
Speaker 2: of impulses overcome self interest in terms of putting together
Speaker 2: the vote totals they're going to need in these in
Speaker 2: these battlegrin states to actually beat Biden. Although you know,
Speaker 2: someone who is being really conspiratorial could say it doesn't
Speaker 2: really matter because they're just going to try to steal
Speaker 2: the election by force anyway. But I think he's paying
Speaker 2: himself into a corner. Both your point, which is he
Speaker 2: needs the money, that's true, he also needs the votes
Speaker 2: and Neither one of those things is terbed by reading
Speaker 2: the Riot Act, reading, you know, by expelling, expunging, purging
Speaker 2: anybody who dares to utter a word of support from
Speaker 2: bird braiding. I mean sarcastic when I say that bird
Speaker 2: braid Nicki Haley or what does he call her down? Nimbre.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's back and forth between the two.
Speaker 2: I liked what he had, Like he couldn't really get
Speaker 2: nimrata out, so he went for like a slightly more
Speaker 2: vaguely I'm not sure how that's even more big racist thing,
Speaker 2: which is the Nimbre thing. And he says he Nimbre.
Speaker 2: That's an email like to call her. I'm like, you know,
Speaker 2: I think about the talking head song I Zimbra. I
Speaker 2: don't know this this weird.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, John.
Speaker 2: I hope you'll come back always, always, to the extent
Speaker 2: that I'm physically able. I'm I'm always precious.
Speaker 1: Greg Sargent is a reporter at The New Republic. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to Fast Politics, my body.
Speaker 3: Greg Sargent, Hey, how's it going.
Speaker 1: We're delighted to have you here, but also excited because
Speaker 1: you have a new home. Tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: about that.
Speaker 3: Well, I left the Washington Post after fifteen years there,
Speaker 3: and it was really a great ride. But now I'm
Speaker 3: at the New Republic and I'm really psyched because it's
Speaker 3: edited by Mike Tamaski, who's an old friend of mine
Speaker 3: and is a brilliant guy and a great writer and editor.
Speaker 3: And we are going to have a daily podcast at
Speaker 3: the New Republic, and I really hope your listeners will
Speaker 3: tune in and check it out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we are big fans of the New Republic here
Speaker 1: and also of Mike Tamaski. So let's talk for a
Speaker 1: minute about this was the week of New Hampshire Joe Biden.
Speaker 1: I wanted to like pause for a moment and remind
Speaker 1: everyone of what happened last year, which is like a
Speaker 1: million years ago. Biden decided not to have the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party start its primary process in New Hampshire, a high
Speaker 1: stake scambal really, because it meant that Biden was actually
Speaker 1: not on the New Hampshire ballot. Can we talk about.
Speaker 3: That, well, I mean it looked it obviously worked out
Speaker 3: just fine. I think the big news on the Democratic
Speaker 3: side out of last night is that the primary is
Speaker 3: a big nothing burger. I mean, don't you think that.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, what I think is really interesting about it
Speaker 1: was so Biden had made a promise to Representative Cliburn
Speaker 1: of South Carolina and also, I would add to the
Speaker 1: Democratic base which has been really saved by black women
Speaker 1: and also people of color more generally. New Hampshire's a
Speaker 1: very white state, and he had said, we're going to
Speaker 1: make South Carolina go first, and New Hampshire was basically like,
Speaker 1: fuck you, We're going to go first, and you're not
Speaker 1: going to be on the ballot. You know, there was
Speaker 1: a potential for a disaster here, and in fact, the
Speaker 1: people who were hoping that there would be disaster were
Speaker 1: Dean Phillips and Mary and Williamson went to New Hampshire
Speaker 1: and decided that they were going to take advantage of
Speaker 1: this opportunity, and they spent, you know, the last two
Speaker 1: weeks in New Hampshire eating waffles, talking to the press,
Speaker 1: and it didn't work out for them at all.
Speaker 3: We often, as people who are obsessed to a very
Speaker 3: profound pathological fault with the details of politics, we often
Speaker 3: sort of admit to ourselves that regular people are not
Speaker 3: paying attention to the details the way we are. Here's
Speaker 3: a place where that's really true. Like, if you think
Speaker 3: anyone out there who's normal unlike us, gives a shit
Speaker 3: about primary schedules, you are wrong. Nobody cares about that stuff.
Speaker 1: So Biden got about sixty seven percent of the vote.
Speaker 1: He was the right in candidate, So that is like
Speaker 1: pretty unbelievably spectacular.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: By the way, there's another thing here, right, which I
Speaker 3: think we often get wrong. By we, I mean the
Speaker 3: kind of collective commentariat or whatever, we constantly look at
Speaker 3: this or that poll that seems to show dissension among Democrats, right,
Speaker 3: But the bottom line, Biden is pretty popular with the
Speaker 3: Democratic base. This is a hard thing for a lot
Speaker 3: of pundits to admit, but it's just the truth.
Speaker 1: Right, And in fact, during the New Hampshire primary, there
Speaker 1: was a lot of punditry on CNN. I'm just going
Speaker 1: to call it what it is that said that no
Speaker 1: one wants Biden and that these two eighty year olds
Speaker 1: are both as unpopular as each other, which again is
Speaker 1: like it really is ultimately medium malpractice to compare a
Speaker 1: guy with ninety one criminal counts to a guy who
Speaker 1: has brought manufacturing back and is building chipsy They might
Speaker 1: both be old but that's where it ends, and I
Speaker 1: thought it was interesting. I'm just going to read you
Speaker 1: this one tweet, which I think from Kyle Griffin, who's
Speaker 1: a producer at MSNBC. Biden is on track to win
Speaker 1: more votes in New Hampshire as a writing candidate than
Speaker 1: Barack Obama did when he ran for reelection in twenty twelve,
Speaker 1: and Obama ran unopposed and was on the ballot.
Speaker 3: There, wow, yeah, you see there you go right. I
Speaker 3: want to say that I think the media worm is
Speaker 3: turning a little bit. Yeah, explain so, as you say,
Speaker 3: there was all this kind of media obsessing about how
Speaker 3: there's some sort of equivalence between Trump and Biden in
Speaker 3: the sense that, oh, they're both old, they're both despised.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm exaggerating a little. That wasn't quite what
Speaker 3: the press said, but it was almost. But the real
Speaker 3: truth of the matter is that what we're really seeing
Speaker 3: in these primaries is that Republicans are the party with
Speaker 3: the problem, and that Playbook actually got at this today
Speaker 3: and they're kind of media I think that reporters and
Speaker 3: commentators really pay close attention to what Playbook and Punchbowl
Speaker 3: and all those news news or sheets say, and they said,
Speaker 3: the story out of the exit polls is that Republicans
Speaker 3: are the party that's divided and suffering from dissension. I mean, look,
Speaker 3: it's actually starting to dawn on people that a fairly
Speaker 3: non trivial swath of Republican and GOP leaning independent voters
Speaker 3: actually thinks it's a problem to have a criminalized the nominee, right,
Speaker 3: which you would think that people would have figured that
Speaker 3: one out earlier. But there's just this weird built in
Speaker 3: tendency in our discourse which just kind of treats Trump
Speaker 3: as invincible. Everything makes him stronger. He's using the trials
Speaker 3: to reach voters, He's owning us all with all these
Speaker 3: clever maneuvers. He's got us all completely baffled at has
Speaker 3: continued iron grip on the party, that sort of stuff,
Speaker 3: and it's smoking mirrors a lot of it. We're going
Speaker 3: to be talking a lot like this on the podcast,
Speaker 3: by the way, a lot of meeting.
Speaker 1: I'm a New Republic podcast with Greg Sargent.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: I think that's a really good point. And the thing
Speaker 1: that I am just completely struck by is, yeah, Trump
Speaker 1: has this power, but also Trump, you know, the mainstream
Speaker 1: media is just obsessed with letting Trump get away with it.
Speaker 3: We had a great peace on that recently.
Speaker 1: Oh thank you there.
Speaker 3: About the press just really not being up to this moment.
Speaker 1: It's so depressing. I mean, I have to say there's
Speaker 1: nothing that there is literally absolutely nothing about it that
Speaker 1: doesn't just make me so upset. So let's talk for
Speaker 1: a minute about what the Republican primary looks like. There
Speaker 1: was a lot of excitement about Nikki Haley. I, as
Speaker 1: a person who live in New York City and am
Speaker 1: surrounded by people who are text cut enthusiasts, had this
Speaker 1: moment where they were like, Nikki Haley is going to
Speaker 1: be our savior, and I was like, you guys, the
Speaker 1: math is not mathing. So Nikki Haley came in third
Speaker 1: in Iowa, came in second in New Hampshire, and Donald
Speaker 1: Trump got to give it to him. He had a
Speaker 1: good point. She didn't come in second, She came in last.
Speaker 3: Right, although I do think her showing was significantly stronger
Speaker 3: than Trump himself expected it to be. And that matter,
Speaker 3: and he was just he was yet again melting down
Speaker 3: about it in spectacular fashion.
Speaker 1: For sure, he was absolutely melting down about it. And
Speaker 1: the polls were wrong again, right, Like the polls showed
Speaker 1: that she was losing by fifty points and she lost
Speaker 1: by whatever.
Speaker 3: Such an important point that the polls got that wrong.
Speaker 3: They're getting it wrong on Trump's strength.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and again this is another important point though, I
Speaker 1: did think about last night, which was you had a
Speaker 1: lot of independence and some Democrats switch parties and switch back, right,
Speaker 1: you can switch parties. Their a lot of unaffiliated voters
Speaker 1: in New Hampshire, and a lot of them really came
Speaker 1: in to stop Trump and that was their goal. And
Speaker 1: there was voters switch in. Then Nikki Haley was you
Speaker 1: came after them, which I thought was an odd move.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And there's something else about the independent vote that
Speaker 3: I think is really important to underscore, which is that
Speaker 3: the exit polls in New Hampshire showed that nearly half
Speaker 3: of voters in the GOP primary. Now this is loaded
Speaker 3: up with independence and maybe even others, but that's important, right,
Speaker 3: because nearly half of the voters on the GOP primary
Speaker 3: said that if Trump is convicted of a crime, he'll
Speaker 3: be unfit to serve nearly half. And there's a number
Speaker 3: that I still think of as extremely important. From the
Speaker 3: recent Washington Post poll.
Speaker 1: These are from the exit polls. I want to add
Speaker 1: that exit polling tends to be a little more accurate
Speaker 1: than calling people on the phone.
Speaker 3: Right, It's really important that nearly half of GOP primary
Speaker 3: voters said that they'd see Trump as unfit if he's convicted.
Speaker 3: And by the way, what I was going to say
Speaker 3: is the Washington Post pole, the most recent one had
Speaker 3: fifty seven percent of independent nationally saying that they believe
Speaker 3: the prosecutions are Trump of Trump are lawful as opposed
Speaker 3: to political, and fifty eight percent of independence nationally said
Speaker 3: that they believe Trump probably are definitely committed crimes related
Speaker 3: to January sixth. Now, this dynamics going to get worse.
Speaker 3: We could have the January sixth trial jury just found
Speaker 3: that he had sexually abused E Gene Carroll. These things
Speaker 3: are going to deepen his problems for him, and I
Speaker 3: really am glad to see that the press is finally
Speaker 3: starting to pick this up.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I think is an interesting
Speaker 1: dynamic here too, is that Trump the candidate, actually I
Speaker 1: think is going to get very soon into conflict with
Speaker 1: Trump the defendant. Yes, he wants to go into all
Speaker 1: these court cases and argue politically because he thinks it
Speaker 1: will help him, which is certainly possible, but it really
Speaker 1: will hurt him with voters. I mean, that's what these
Speaker 1: polls are saying.
Speaker 3: That's absolutely right, and it's true as you say that
Speaker 3: it can help him in a narrow sense. It's clear
Speaker 3: that the indictments helped them in the primaries, right, They
Speaker 3: helped them out Planetic Dissenttus because Dessantus wasn't perceived as
Speaker 3: I don't know, a victim of the deep state, a
Speaker 3: sufficiently victimized figure for the Republican base to support them.
Speaker 3: But look, I mean when a last Deefenek recently described
Speaker 3: the January sixth prisoners as quote unquote hostages, a number
Speaker 3: of vulnerable House Republicans actually ran away from that comment
Speaker 3: and they went out there and they forcefully stressed that
Speaker 3: these are not hostages, they are criminal dependents. But what
Speaker 3: I take from that is that in tough districts across
Speaker 3: the country, it's toxic for a Republican to be aligned
Speaker 3: with the MAGA position that the prosecution of January sixth
Speaker 3: attackers is illegitimate.
Speaker 1: And this gets back to this idea that I feel
Speaker 1: like we should all as pundits get tattooed onto our foreheads,
Speaker 1: which is this idea that, as we have seen again
Speaker 1: and again and again, trump Ism wins a primary and
Speaker 1: loses a general. And we saw that with Carrie Lake.
Speaker 1: We saw that in Pennsylvania. You know, yes, in states,
Speaker 1: in ruby red states, but even in Ohio, jd Vance
Speaker 1: ran about ten points behind what he should have.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's one hundred percent, right. I mean,
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty two, the big story of that election
Speaker 3: was that the mega candidates lost a lot of winnable races.
Speaker 3: I mean, everything about the fundamentals tilted towards a Republican victory.
Speaker 3: And again, as you say, the punditry was in denial
Speaker 3: about this. Remember, and I actually committed a mistake on
Speaker 3: this too. I think I actually didn't expect democracy to
Speaker 3: matter quite as much as it did to voters and
Speaker 3: in a very pleasant surprise. And I think the January
Speaker 3: sixth hearings, by the way, played a major role in this,
Speaker 3: and Liz Cheney played a major role in it too,
Speaker 3: especially with independent voters. Right. Yes, it turned out that
Speaker 3: the one to two punch of Dobbs and January sixth
Speaker 3: really resulted in kind of a toxic combo for the
Speaker 3: more MAGA oriented candidates in one statewide race after another
Speaker 3: they lost. Oh yeah, And it's just amazing to me
Speaker 3: that this isn't more part of the dialogue. I have
Speaker 3: this term twenty sixteen brain, and I think it's really
Speaker 3: like a syndrome that a lot of people are suffering from.
Speaker 3: As if the only national election in the last seven
Speaker 3: years or so, it's eight years that mattered is the
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen election. We had three national elections since then,
Speaker 3: and Republicans, especially mega candidates, and Trump lost them all
Speaker 3: or dramatically underperformed in them, as in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 3: which is a bit of a mixed verdict but basically
Speaker 3: a democratic win. Right, It's not part of the discussion.
Speaker 3: It's so bizarre.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's really a good point. The problem
Speaker 1: for a lot of us in pendent world, but also
Speaker 1: like just in the world itself, is that twenty sixteen
Speaker 1: came so out of left field. And as I was
Speaker 1: talking to Brian Klass about this, is that twenty sixteen
Speaker 1: was a shifting electorate that shifted right for Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: and now we are in a you know, we haven't
Speaker 1: really come back again. We don't know, right, we don't
Speaker 1: know what the shifting electorate will shift for this time.
Speaker 1: But if you look at Iowa had this very low turnout,
Speaker 1: New Hampshire had much higher turnout, But you have to
Speaker 1: wonder how much of that was much higher turnout, much
Speaker 1: closer margins. Again, so you clearly see that in New
Speaker 1: Hampshire they were certainly polling with a twenty sixteen electorate
Speaker 1: in mind. Right, Yeah, so I think that's interesting, oh
Speaker 1: for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, and it's true as you say that
Speaker 3: there was a legitimate reasoning to be shocked and disoriented
Speaker 3: by twenty sixteen, right, yeah, And look, of course Trump
Speaker 3: can win this time. Right. There are a lot lot
Speaker 3: of scenarios you can imagine in which Trump pulls out
Speaker 3: a victory in the end here, but one can acknowledge
Speaker 3: that without sort of erasing the last three national elections
Speaker 3: from the discussion. Right. The bottom line is that there's
Speaker 3: is an anti Magam majority out there that just keeps
Speaker 3: showing up. And the special elections. I think we've all
Speaker 3: heard the reasons why the special elections aren't all that predictive,
Speaker 3: but boy, there's a lot of special election wins for
Speaker 3: Democrats piling up right now, and that is pretty consistent
Speaker 3: with the idea that that anti MAGA majority is.
Speaker 1: Durable, right, And I think that's a really, really, really
Speaker 1: good point. Again, this is this idea that some of
Speaker 1: the pre existing mechanisms for covering political races really don't
Speaker 1: serve democracy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the conventions of political reporting still haven't caught up
Speaker 3: with the problem. I guess is one put it.
Speaker 1: You've written it, yeah, and you've written about it too.
Speaker 1: So much of the framing here is about comparison, and
Speaker 1: by comparing these two candidates, you're actually normalizing autocracy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think there's also a built in bias
Speaker 3: on It's funny, it's kind of ironic that it results
Speaker 3: in a media bias. And this goes back to what
Speaker 3: you were saying about sort of the twenty sixteen shock, right,
Speaker 3: post twenty sixteen dramatic stress disorder or something maybe that yes, right,
Speaker 3: that people are still suffering from. I mean, if you
Speaker 3: think about it, right, a lot of reporters and commentators
Speaker 3: say to themselves the one thing they dread most is
Speaker 3: to miss a big story, right, And so the feeling was,
Speaker 3: oh my god, we missed this ground swell of right
Speaker 3: wing populist support, and now there's like a bias in
Speaker 3: the other direction, this constant hunt for signs that that
Speaker 3: kind of right wing populist swell that upsert is a
Speaker 3: real and formidable force, or maybe is more formidable than
Speaker 3: it really is. And so again what gets erased are
Speaker 3: the examples of all those can that it's losing.
Speaker 1: Exactly, Greg Sergeant, please come.
Speaker 3: Back, Hey, you have to come on our pod.
Speaker 1: Dave Wigel is a reporter at Semaphore. Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy to have you. Dave.
Speaker 3: Hello, it's good to be here.
Speaker 1: Where are you.
Speaker 4: I am in Washington, d C. Getting ready for the
Speaker 4: June primary. Now I'm just I always expected to come
Speaker 4: back here after New Hampshire had voted. This was the
Speaker 4: earliest call I can recall.
Speaker 2: In New Hampshire.
Speaker 4: That's good writing in Bicky Haley's victory of party. And
Speaker 4: she walked out in eight nineteen and the Pols have
Speaker 4: closed nineteen minutes earlier to give her. I guess you'd
Speaker 4: have to call a concession speech factually, but it wasn't
Speaker 4: really net So I got back here right away.
Speaker 1: So I think of you, Dave as the guy who
Speaker 1: is everywhere, like when something happens, I think of you
Speaker 1: as someone who goes everywhere, and that is a high
Speaker 1: compliment from someone like me who has my own weird
Speaker 1: phobia is about going anywhere. So you were in New
Speaker 1: Hampshire on the ground. So what I'm hoping you can
Speaker 1: tell us is there was a huge turnout in New Hampshire.
Speaker 1: Numbers much bigger than in Iowa, where there was about
Speaker 1: a seventy thousand people less turnout besides the weather. Why
Speaker 1: was there that big difference and can you extrapolate anything
Speaker 1: from it?
Speaker 4: I was surprised that turnout was that high, and I
Speaker 4: shouldn't have been. The Secretary of State is his first cycle,
Speaker 4: but he's worth been working in the office for a while.
Speaker 4: He predicted record high turnout for Republican primary. He predicted
Speaker 4: low turnout actually under sold what turnout would look like
Speaker 4: for Democrats. It's about twenty thousand more people showed up
Speaker 4: in that primary than he thought. I was only surprised
Speaker 4: because on the ground there was not the sort of
Speaker 4: surging enthusiasm that you've seen before competitive New Hampshire primaries
Speaker 4: and polling, especially the one track and pull from Suffolk
Speaker 4: in the Boston Globe was showing Trump blowout, which which
Speaker 4: it kind of was. I mean, there are not many
Speaker 4: fifteen point or I think in the net it's gonna
Speaker 4: be about twelve point results that you don't think are
Speaker 4: a blowout, they're probably showing twenty points. I think two
Speaker 4: things happened. One, the weather was pretty good, literally sixty
Speaker 4: degrees warmer than I want in New Hampshire on latch
Speaker 4: day it started as snow, but only after voting was done,
Speaker 4: not that that's an impediment to people in New Hitsher, So
Speaker 4: that helped. I think some unlikely voters turned out. And
Speaker 4: there were a lot of people who did not show
Speaker 4: up to political events, were never going to show up
Speaker 4: to Nikki Hailey rally in person, but who voted for
Speaker 4: her just because they wanted to slow Trump down. So
Speaker 4: a combination of Trump having a very good turnout machine,
Speaker 4: Hailey having a decent, very decent turnout machine between her
Speaker 4: and America's prosperity, and just these unlikely voters who said,
Speaker 4: screw it, I'm going to drive five minutes to the school,
Speaker 4: walking to the polls, take thirty seconds and vote against
Speaker 4: Trump by hooting for her.
Speaker 1: So that's what I actually wanted to ask you, because
Speaker 1: I had dinner on Sunday night with a political scientist
Speaker 1: basic the UK and we were talking about the shifting electorate.
Speaker 1: Why some of the reason that polling has become so hard,
Speaker 1: besides the fact that nobody has phones, is because Trump
Speaker 1: won on this electorate that did not exist before Trump
Speaker 1: and has not really existed after Trump except in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty sort of. And so I'm wondering if what we
Speaker 1: can get about that shifting electorate when we look at
Speaker 1: because Iowa is white and tends to be more religious.
Speaker 1: And notice how I didn't say evangelical, because I feel
Speaker 1: like it's used in a sort of pejorative there, though
Speaker 1: evangelicals tend to support Trump, So do with that what
Speaker 1: you will. In New Hampshire, it's more of a mix.
Speaker 1: So that sort of Trump voter, that low frequency voter,
Speaker 1: probably would short up more in Iowa than in New Hampshire.
Speaker 4: Yeah, actually one side note not sure how it fits
Speaker 4: completely in, but there is a special election to replace
Speaker 4: a Democrat and a Democratic seat in New Hampshire and
Speaker 4: republic has won it because the high turnout, And I
Speaker 4: guess I bring that up because the atypical voter attorney
Speaker 4: off for avery special election has been a college educated
Speaker 4: moderate who doesn't like Trump and Mega and so Trump
Speaker 4: changed the electorate in two ways. Most importantly, he converted
Speaker 4: a lot of white voters without college degrees, which there
Speaker 4: are a fewer NAMESAVM Aaron Iowa, but a lot converted
Speaker 4: them to MAGA voters. And he alienated college educated white
Speaker 4: voters who were voting for Romney a few years ago
Speaker 4: and have turned around. Don't like this version of the
Speaker 4: problem the party. They're going to vote for christ and
Speaker 4: Hudu not anymore because he's retiring. They don't like probably
Speaker 4: and they turn on everything. The reason Democrats have been
Speaker 4: doing so well and special elections they actually flipped to
Speaker 4: Seed in Florida, R De Santas dropped out is those
Speaker 4: voters they are aware of when elections are They don't
Speaker 4: need a lot of cajoling to turn out. They want
Speaker 4: to vote against MAGA for many reasons, from Trump personally
Speaker 4: to abortion.
Speaker 3: Rights to the uncoastless.
Speaker 4: They see. These are people who drive past a neighbor
Speaker 4: who has a Trump flag with the F word on
Speaker 4: it and say, all right, that's not me. I'm going
Speaker 4: to vote for whoever the ELF is running against ten.
Speaker 4: And that's how we changed things. And you saw this
Speaker 4: in Hailey did best in both Iowa and in New
Speaker 4: Hampshire in places with lots of those voters. She did
Speaker 4: better in New Hampshire. It has more than turned out.
Speaker 4: It's a little bit easier to turn out. Remember to
Speaker 4: vote in Iowa. In Iowa, you need to show up
Speaker 4: at the Republican caucuses at six point thirty and change
Speaker 4: your illustration to Republican. In New Hampshire, if you're an
Speaker 4: undeclared voter, which there are about three hundred and two thousand,
Speaker 4: you're already registered to vote, you to show up and
Speaker 4: say I'm pulling a Republican ballot and then you lease.
Speaker 4: And so it was easier to do that. A lot
Speaker 4: of those voters turned out. You can see that in
Speaker 4: places like Hanover where Dartmouth is, and places like Durham
Speaker 4: where the University New Hampshire conquered, places where there are
Speaker 4: concentrations of college educated voters who do not like Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: She did very well and also very high Democratic turnout.
Speaker 4: There were lots of Democrats showing up to write in
Speaker 4: Joe Biden. Those are voters who might have skipped in
Speaker 4: the past, but Trump activates them and you were saved
Speaker 4: if you're watching TV which from it. My favorite polling
Speaker 4: was by CNN in University of New Hampshire, which said
Speaker 4: where people media sources were from. If you watched local
Speaker 4: news or listened to New Hampshire Public Radio or CNN,
Speaker 4: you were voting for Dickie Haley. If you watch conservative media,
Speaker 4: you're vote to somebody else. But all those New Hampshire
Speaker 4: Public radio folks, they were veryware in the primary, and
Speaker 4: they were hearing about Trump all the time, and they said, Nope,
Speaker 4: not that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so interesting. And then there was write in,
Speaker 1: now let me ask you a question here. We tried
Speaker 1: really hard not to talk about international stuff here, but
Speaker 1: some people did write and ceasefire.
Speaker 4: Not that many. So there was a campaign that formulated
Speaker 4: you're right, and I wrote about it. So I'm saying I.
Speaker 1: Didn't know the numbers on it, so I'm curious.
Speaker 4: It is still being tabulated, probably going to be less
Speaker 4: than two thousand people who did that. There was a
Speaker 4: campaign formed in really the final week of the election,
Speaker 4: which is when most people are turning. In some New
Speaker 4: Hampshire progresses hout a press conference saying we're going to
Speaker 4: encourage you able to write in this term. There was
Speaker 4: actually pushback from Democratic Majority for Israel, which is spending
Speaker 4: a lot of money on pro Israel candidates trying to
Speaker 4: defeat Israel critic usually in Devorkcratic primaries, protesting that putting
Speaker 4: a letter and saying you shouldn't do this. That got
Speaker 4: a little bit of atension. But when I talked to
Speaker 4: Mary and Williams, Cintin Phillips, they're saying, look, if you
Speaker 4: you do want to change the Biden approach here, you
Speaker 4: should vote for a candidate who's not Joe Biden. Lower
Speaker 4: his vote total, increase the denominator and make it look
Speaker 4: like he's want fewer votes. Biden ends up with around
Speaker 4: sixty five percent of the vote as a writing candidate,
Speaker 4: Ceasefire ends up probably around two percent at peak, and
Speaker 4: Biden alternatives get the rest. So there is a a
Speaker 4: anti Biden vote here, but not explicitly vote for Ceespire vote.
Speaker 4: There's not Williams said, is a pro Ceasefire candidate. You
Speaker 4: have them together. That is a about six percent of
Speaker 4: the New Hampshire primary electorate. The obvious example here is
Speaker 4: let's make it like nineteen sixty eight, where nobody can
Speaker 4: ignore the opposition to LDJ in the Vietnam War. That's
Speaker 4: not what happened this time. And I think there are
Speaker 4: lots of reasons for that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a totally different I mean, American soldiers are
Speaker 1: not there, right.
Speaker 4: That's the reason you got it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But I do think what's really interesting when we
Speaker 1: talk about this is like this does in some way.
Speaker 1: I mean, New Hampshire really does make a case for
Speaker 1: the strength of Biden. Right, he's not on the ballot.
Speaker 1: You could argue that Biden got support. There was about
Speaker 1: seventy thousand dollars spent in this state. Unless it's more.
Speaker 1: You might know better than I do, Dave. What I
Speaker 1: read was about seventy thousand to get people going to
Speaker 1: know that there was a write in campaign. I still
Speaker 1: think that's pretty amazing, considering that he had snubbed the state, right,
Speaker 1: he changed the like I thought New Hampshire would be
Speaker 1: matter at him because he has robbed them of their
Speaker 1: status as going first.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was a surprise. I remember I was quoting
Speaker 4: the Secretary of States projection. It was that maybe eighty
Speaker 4: eight thousand people would bother showing up for the primary period,
Speaker 4: and there was a lot of wardbreed I'd say three
Speaker 4: months ago that Biden was going to do this. One
Speaker 4: thing that Governor Sanuna would point out a lot is
Speaker 4: that Democrats didn't have their meeting on their primary schedule
Speaker 4: until after twenty twenty two's midterms. He thought that would
Speaker 4: be issue that would help Republicans, and they pushed it back,
Speaker 4: so they didn't get they didn't get the bounce from that.
Speaker 4: But while this primary was happening, some posters were asking, Okay,
Speaker 4: when this is over, you voting for Joe Biden or
Speaker 4: Don Trump or je vote for Haley or Joe Biden.
Speaker 4: And Haley was in a close race with Biden up
Speaker 4: a little. Biden was beating Donald Trump because these voters
Speaker 4: were less offended they are Also was an impression, i
Speaker 4: think enhanced by this right in campaign that look, we're
Speaker 4: going to we're going to get the primary back. At
Speaker 4: some point, there's going to be a twenty twenty eighth primary.
Speaker 4: Democrats all realize they shouldn't have done this. They're going
Speaker 4: to come back to it. So that was explicitly an
Speaker 4: argument made by the right end effort. It was in grassroots.
Speaker 4: If you can call Democratic lobbyists grassroots, they are.
Speaker 3: And they were doing this.
Speaker 4: About the without money from the campaign as Jim Damers
Speaker 4: and Kathie Sulivan. That's what they were telling me and
Speaker 4: other people. Yes, if we have a great showing for Biden,
Speaker 4: the parties had to come back to us. Actually, I
Speaker 4: just I just was double checking. It's going to be
Speaker 4: closer to one hundred and twenty five thousand New Hampshire
Speaker 4: voters turned out. That is fifty percent more than a
Speaker 4: state projective. Biden's going to end up. A stat that
Speaker 4: you're going to see thrown around is Biden got more
Speaker 4: votes as a writing candidate as than Bertie got when
Speaker 4: he won the twenty twenty primary.
Speaker 1: Or then Obama got right.
Speaker 4: More than Obama got in twenty twelve when there was
Speaker 4: no opposition, and when Democrats were just going to go
Speaker 4: back and redominate him. They wanted to prove that. They said, Okay,
Speaker 4: we know you're unhappy, but I should put it this way.
Speaker 4: The message was, we're not Iowa. We're not the state
Speaker 4: that screws up the primary, that makes you stick around
Speaker 4: waiting for results. We're not the one that can't count.
Speaker 4: We are the one where people are engaged and they
Speaker 4: will show up. You should really reconsider your purge of us,
Speaker 4: not purge, but you know, your slight emotion of us.
Speaker 4: In twenty twenty eight, I feel like they succeeded based
Speaker 4: on the chatter right here from Democrats. Oh interesting, they're
Speaker 4: probably going to be revisiting this in three years and
Speaker 4: if Biden's president and there's a new nomination, they fere confident,
Speaker 4: they'll say they'll be able to come back and say
Speaker 4: we took her a lump, come back and then do
Speaker 4: the best primary, the one everyone loves. So come back
Speaker 4: and hang out with Verban Supreme.
Speaker 1: I know you've seen this, know you've seen this the
Speaker 1: CNN interview where they where they thought they were interviewing
Speaker 1: a normal New Hampshire voter.
Speaker 4: Yes, because Kathy Sullivan, that's one of the she was
Speaker 4: leading the super pack in favor of writing and bibe.
Speaker 1: Yes, can you talk? That was one of the great
Speaker 1: moments ever. So they clearly think they have like a
Speaker 1: little old lady here and she is explained to us
Speaker 1: who she is again, because I thought that was great.
Speaker 4: Kaffy Sullivan is a former New Hampshire Democratic Party chair.
Speaker 4: She was there when Barack Obama won, so she was
Speaker 4: there for New Hampshire Democrats becoming not the dominant political party,
Speaker 4: but the party that wins most of the federal races.
Speaker 4: Chris and Nunu has been able to break that. They're
Speaker 4: trying to keep that record this year. But they've won
Speaker 4: governor's races, but they struggled and Senate and House races
Speaker 4: since the party ship, since more college educated white voters
Speaker 4: became Democrat. And yeah, she ran the super pac that
Speaker 4: was paying for signs and mail, not cdeds. You never
Speaker 4: saw cded and said, right and Biden, but you saw
Speaker 4: a lot of road signs that were explaining how to
Speaker 4: write it in. He paid for it. Yeah, And she
Speaker 4: said that what Dean Phillips is doing with obnoxious, I did.
Speaker 1: Think that was sort of amazing. But Dean Phillips, he
Speaker 1: made sort of a similar case. I mean, I actually
Speaker 1: read a really smart essay yesterday about how both Dean
Speaker 1: Phillips and it was just something I hadn't thought about.
Speaker 1: Both Dean Phillips and Nikki Haley both ran sort of
Speaker 1: on the idea that the other guy was too old,
Speaker 1: right that on this sort of agism platform, because Dean
Speaker 1: Phillips has almost ideologically he's almost identical to Biden. In fact,
Speaker 1: he's really for someone of his age. His beliefs are
Speaker 1: very center center for this Democratic Party. So I'm just
Speaker 1: I'm just wondering. Neither of them really did what they
Speaker 1: said they were going to do, or what they had
Speaker 1: hoped they were going to do, But both of them
Speaker 1: seem unfazed by their inability to deliver what they said
Speaker 1: they were I mean, will they both stay in? Do
Speaker 1: you think.
Speaker 4: Phillips is staying in? Williamson is staying in. Phillip's in
Speaker 4: public to me said he needs to get into the twenties,
Speaker 4: which he did. As the votes are finally being counted.
Speaker 4: He barely made it into the twenties. That is, it's
Speaker 4: going to round up to that. At least he underperformed
Speaker 4: what he wanted. More quietly, they said, we did the twenties.
Speaker 4: They really wanted some dramatic result closer to nineteen sixty
Speaker 4: eight when LBJ only gets forty nine percent of about
Speaker 4: Jim McCarthy gets forty one. They didn't get that half
Speaker 4: of Fiji. McCarthy is something you'll hear from Biden. Folks,
Speaker 4: he has a problem where he is not really relevant
Speaker 4: in South Carolina, where voting is happening next thanks to
Speaker 4: Democratic calendar. He is not on the ballot in Nevada
Speaker 4: because he've jett in the race too late to make
Speaker 4: the ballot, so he doesn't get another test of how
Speaker 4: popular he is or how popular. The idea of replacing
Speaker 4: Biden with a generic Democrat, and this is Joe gander
Speaker 4: Yang likes, is that if if he just can convinced
Speaker 4: to change his name to generic Democrat, I'll say, in
Speaker 4: the country the Trump. He didn't get her test of
Speaker 4: that until Michigan at the end of February, and then
Speaker 4: is not clear exactly where else he competeing. One story
Speaker 4: I've worked on by talking to Phillips is that he
Speaker 4: missed some other deadline. So Florida, which is mid March,
Speaker 4: has a primary that he's not going to be on
Speaker 4: the ballot. For North Carolina is a Super Tuesday state.
Speaker 4: He's not in the ballot for that. So he put
Speaker 4: five million dollars in his own money, which is considerable.
Speaker 4: He's a successful businessman before he became a member of Congress.
Speaker 4: He's put money in the race he has a super
Speaker 4: pac funding him that has not been that successful. It
Speaker 4: did a really one of the better sidebar stories about
Speaker 4: this race was the Dean Phillips super Pac creating an
Speaker 4: hay I version of Dean Phillips, I can answer your
Speaker 4: questions and then shutting it down. It's the super pac
Speaker 4: is funded in part by Bill Lackman. Sam Altman. He's
Speaker 4: a little bit embarrassed by what the superPAC is doing,
Speaker 4: but yeah, there's the money out there to keep funding him.
Speaker 1: Wait, Sam Altman, Yeah.
Speaker 3: The open the Eye guy is also a THILD supporter.
Speaker 1: Okay, wow, all right, good for that's great tech brows
Speaker 1: once again. So now we go to South Carolina. I mean,
Speaker 1: it just seems as if Donald Trump can't help himself
Speaker 1: when it comes to Nicky Haley. Do you think that's
Speaker 1: the dynamic? I mean, and ultimately probably doesn't do much
Speaker 1: for Nikki, but it might help Biden ultimately, right.
Speaker 3: It could.
Speaker 4: So. I am very skeptical of any Trump is finished
Speaker 4: because of the way he emotionally reacted to something.
Speaker 3: Theory.
Speaker 4: We have seen this not work too many times. Even
Speaker 4: Democrats I talked to, if they could program the media
Speaker 4: which believe it or out they don't they assistant usuams
Speaker 4: and telling what they're doing.
Speaker 3: They would love.
Speaker 4: More of a focus on what is he going to
Speaker 4: do about abortion access, abortion medication, What is he going
Speaker 4: to do about tax rates? What is he going to
Speaker 4: do about labor? Because he has conservative advisors who'd want
Speaker 4: to gut the EDLRB Elon tries to it at existence.
Speaker 4: They'd love to talk about that because they think Trump
Speaker 4: being erratic is not really a problem for him. Haley
Speaker 4: did to give her credit get under his skin. Her
Speaker 4: basic strategy on election night was concede quickly, which she did,
Speaker 4: which is normal if you're not Trump usually conceived the
Speaker 4: election if you lose, and you do it before the
Speaker 4: victory speech, and you get to influence a victory speech.
Speaker 4: So she came out there with a speech where she
Speaker 4: laid out how she was going to keep running for
Speaker 4: two months. He never said she lost the race. She said,
Speaker 4: thank you God. She talked like somebody who had just
Speaker 4: won an election. And yes, that pissed off Trump, who
Speaker 4: is going to keep making fun of her. The advantage
Speaker 4: he has though, as opposed to twenty sixteen when he
Speaker 4: actually lost Iowa and then yelled about it, just said
Speaker 4: it was stolen. Is that he has a superstructure in
Speaker 4: the Republican Party agreeing that Donald Trump should be the
Speaker 4: nominae and she should.
Speaker 1: Back off, like Ronal McDaniel.
Speaker 4: Yes, like the sharers for the RNC, which I wrote yesterday,
Speaker 4: you're not supposed to do It's in that our laws
Speaker 4: of the by Laws of the Party rule eleven. You're
Speaker 4: not allowed to do that. The party is not allowed
Speaker 4: to give it in Times contribution before there's a nominee,
Speaker 4: and they did so He's already got the parties saying, yeah,
Speaker 4: we agree. Maybe we're going to express it differently than
Speaker 4: Donald Trump and use a primetime an election night to
Speaker 4: make fun of her. But he is, I think, channeling
Speaker 4: what his voters think. A lot of Republicans think. He
Speaker 4: said that, but also Ja d Vance said that the
Speaker 4: governor South Carolina is getting there. He is a Trump
Speaker 4: endorser who is campaigning for him. I don't think that
Speaker 4: is a harmful thing for Trump to look like he's
Speaker 4: annoyed at Dicky Haley. Are not conceding because so are
Speaker 4: many of the forces in east side the party.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and also, I think you had a really good point.
Speaker 1: Being insane is not necessarily hurt Trump. If anything, it's
Speaker 1: sort of baked in. This was so interesting. I so
Speaker 1: appreciate you coming on and just also I continue to
Speaker 1: be grateful for your dispatches from places that I desperately
Speaker 1: do not want to ever go. Thank you, Dave.
Speaker 4: It's great, no moment, perfectly.
Speaker 2: Jesse Cannon by junk Fast Trump.
Speaker 1: He's yuppin, He's in court.
Speaker 2: What's going on?
Speaker 1: You know, he's testifying right now as we are doing this.
Speaker 1: We have a Lena Habba. You may remember Alena Hobba
Speaker 1: as being completely unqualified for this, and she is sparring
Speaker 1: with Judge Caplan and also with ROBERTA. Caplan. Robbie Caplan,
Speaker 1: who is the lawyer for Egan Carroll and who have
Speaker 1: course full disclosure. I know him and friendly with all
Speaker 1: these people.
Speaker 2: I saw that in a truth social post today, in
Speaker 2: fact from mister Trump.
Speaker 1: Yes, I've been truthed, but I just want to say
Speaker 1: that Trump is gonna have a lot of trouble with
Speaker 1: this testimony. And already we see Trump saying she said
Speaker 1: something I considered a false accusation. ROBERTA. Caplan objection, Judge
Speaker 1: Caplan sustained, and miss Habba I have no further questions.
Speaker 1: Judge Caplan, cross examination. There was a trial here, correct, Trump, Yes,
Speaker 1: so this is going to be my moment of fuckery. Basically,
Speaker 1: they got two questions. Donald Trump was not allowed to
Speaker 1: do the kind of lying he gets to do everywhere else.
Speaker 1: And for that, that is my moment of fuckery. That's
Speaker 1: it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday,
Speaker 1: and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes
Speaker 1: sense of all this case. I ask if you enjoyed
Speaker 1: what you've heard, please send it to a friend and
Speaker 1: keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.