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Speaker 1: Welcome to this whistlestop edition of voter Nomics, where markets
Speaker 1: and politics collide, and we're talking about the first debate
Speaker 1: between the former president Donald Trump and the Vice president
Speaker 1: and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. It was hosted last night
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia by ABC News. I'm Stephanie Flanders, head of
Speaker 1: Economics and Government at Bloomberg.
Speaker 4: I'm alecro Stratton, and I'm Adrian Wooldridge.
Speaker 1: And Tim O'Brien is here, head of opinion for Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: I mean, Tim, this was President Trump's sixth debate, but
Speaker 1: I think it was probably I think it's fair to
Speaker 1: say it was the first in which he's been so
Speaker 1: often on the defensive. I mean, Kamala Harris came with
Speaker 1: a plan to bait him clearly and let voters see
Speaker 1: the Donald Trump that is least popular with those crucial,
Speaker 1: kind of middle of the road undecided voters. But I mean,
Speaker 1: I suspect everyone else who's debated Trump has also had
Speaker 1: a plan. Hillary Clinton surely did. But the difference seemed
Speaker 1: to me staying up in the early hours, was this
Speaker 1: time it worked. I mean, I think a lot and
Speaker 1: a lot of that came from Kamala Harris just having
Speaker 1: the confidence to pick a fight with him. I mean,
Speaker 1: she wasn't brilliant, but she was kind of the alpha female,
Speaker 1: and I don't get the impression Donald was really ready
Speaker 1: for that at all.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 5: Also, you know, time has gone on. In twenty sixteen,
Speaker 5: he was less of a known quantity. I don't think
Speaker 5: his weak points were less known to his appointments. If
Speaker 5: you ran tape of Harris last night against Hillary Clinton
Speaker 5: in twenty sixteen. He was also younger then, and he
Speaker 5: he's noticeably degraded just physically since twenty sixteen. He's hard
Speaker 5: of hearing, he's more mush mouthed, he's hunched over. He's
Speaker 5: not as acute as he once was. You know, one
Speaker 5: of his primary skills is performance art, not policy, And
Speaker 5: as a performance artist, he's clearly degraded. So there was
Speaker 5: that set of factors at work. And then secondarily, and
Speaker 5: I think probably most importantly, is she did her homework
Speaker 5: and she came into it knowing that how you get
Speaker 5: Donald Trump off balance in any forum is it's not
Speaker 5: about policy, it's about going after his sense of himself,
Speaker 5: because he's narcissistic and insecure. And to me, the kind
Speaker 5: of pivot point in the whole debate was when she
Speaker 5: mentioned that people were getting bored at as rallies and
Speaker 5: leaving early. And I looked at his face at that
Speaker 5: moment you could sort of like, you know, he sort
Speaker 5: of froze, and it led him then to give also
Speaker 5: one of the most bonkers answers of the night.
Speaker 3: And what you will also notice is that people start
Speaker 3: leaving his rallies early out of exhaust, question and boredom.
Speaker 2: What they have done to our country by allowing these
Speaker 2: millions and millions of people to come into our country.
Speaker 2: And look at what's happening to the towns all over
Speaker 2: the United States. And a lot of towns don't want
Speaker 2: to talk. Not going to be Aurora or Springfield, a
Speaker 2: lot of towns don't want to talk about it because
Speaker 2: they're so embarrassed by it. In Springfield, they're eating the
Speaker 2: dogs the people that came in, they're eating the cats,
Speaker 2: they're eating they're eating the pets of the people that
Speaker 2: live there. And this is what's happening in our country.
Speaker 5: And I don't know if you meant that as a
Speaker 5: commentary on inflation and grocery prices, which had been one
Speaker 5: of his bugaboos, or it's just one of his inflammatory
Speaker 5: things about immigrants. I think probably definitely the latter. And
Speaker 5: then he came back to say, but my rallies are
Speaker 5: really popular, the most popular in history. You know. She
Speaker 5: was a little unsettled at the beginning of the debate,
Speaker 5: I think once they got into abortion, and then she
Speaker 5: teed him up with that statement. It was her debate
Speaker 5: from there on in, and he just got more and
Speaker 5: more like Jack Nicholson and a few good men. You know.
Speaker 5: He was raging against the universe, probably more like King
Speaker 5: Lear than anything else.
Speaker 6: So did his team have a strategy and he didn't
Speaker 6: execute it or did they just not have a strategy?
Speaker 5: Yes, there's always which you can never have strategy in
Speaker 5: Donald Trump in the same sentence, because he doesn't he
Speaker 5: doesn't listen to other people. He believes he's a force
Speaker 5: un to himself, and he never he never he thinks emotionally.
Speaker 5: And I know for a fact that the guidance he
Speaker 5: was getting from his team was to be a kind,
Speaker 5: nice Donald. But that's not who he is. You know,
Speaker 5: he's he's a juvenile, nasty man at his core, and
Speaker 5: that's the person who showed up.
Speaker 1: Even if you're going to be the nasty Trump, you
Speaker 1: could be the nasty but reasonably disciplined Trump. And what
Speaker 1: she was very successful. He was quite disciplined at the start.
Speaker 1: And I think we could we could talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about the economy section because it was probably his
Speaker 1: best section, and talked about tariffs and some other things
Speaker 1: he's stuck to some of the topics that you know,
Speaker 1: his advice is have been telling him to, but he
Speaker 1: couldn't help himself once she was sort of needling him
Speaker 1: going into his sort of rally mode.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, I think one of the virtues of
Speaker 4: Donald Trump in the past is that he's had a
Speaker 4: very good sense of humor. I mean cruel and unpleasant
Speaker 4: sense of humor, but he was able to tell a
Speaker 4: joke and amuse people and feel people made people feel
Speaker 4: a bit good about their resentments. That was completely absent.
Speaker 4: I mean, he seems like a bad tempered, grouchy old man,
Speaker 4: the sort of people that all too many people will
Speaker 4: know from their home sitting in front of Fox News,
Speaker 4: agreeing with it and talking to agree, you know, agreeing
Speaker 4: with everysentiment on Fox News. He seems a bit past.
Speaker 1: She also remember when Tim Watz was first nominated, and
Speaker 1: one of the things that people said was one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why he'd sort of caught fire when people
Speaker 1: were campaigning kind of informally to be her running mate,
Speaker 1: was that he'd sort of had this line about, you know,
Speaker 1: they were weird. You know that there was that weird
Speaker 1: stuff that that Trump and Mats were talking about in fact,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to sit round a Thanksgiving table and
Speaker 1: not have a weird argument with his aunt or his
Speaker 1: uncle about something strange. And she was really channeling that
Speaker 1: at various times. She was sort of he was there.
Speaker 1: He had a very kind of he had his kind
Speaker 1: of mugshot pose for most of it in the in
Speaker 1: the two shot when you could see one next to
Speaker 1: the other, and she was sort of she was very
Speaker 1: effective at saying, this is a man who just wants
Speaker 1: us to be shouting at each other all the time
Speaker 1: and divisive, and we don't want to go back to that.
Speaker 1: I thought she delivered that was obviously prepared, but she
Speaker 1: delivered it very well.
Speaker 5: Think about the fact that he wasn't aware of how
Speaker 5: to handle the split screen, because it so did Biden
Speaker 5: in in their June debate, and Biden didn't know how
Speaker 5: to handle it, and maybe couldn't because he looked catatonic
Speaker 5: when you know, when Trump was speaking, Biden was sort
Speaker 5: of looking out into space and slack joed and it
Speaker 5: was like, you know, is he actually breathing? And and
Speaker 5: you would think anyone watching that debate, and especially Trump,
Speaker 5: he's a former reality TV star. He understands the power
Speaker 5: of celebrity and the visual mediums that he would have
Speaker 5: had in his mind, don't stand there repeating the look
Speaker 5: of your mugshot in Georgia.
Speaker 1: Well, except for it worked so well for him, right,
Speaker 1: so he thought this is a shot that people like.
Speaker 1: But I mean, to your pot adrin about you know,
Speaker 1: having been funny. It is true that people have sort
Speaker 1: of found him amusing, but it is interesting given his
Speaker 1: the one thing that she wasn't. She didn't get him
Speaker 1: on was talking about her laugh although she did laugh
Speaker 1: several times at him, and I wondered whether he was
Speaker 1: going to go there. But he's talked about a lot
Speaker 1: about her love. But you know, as people have commented,
Speaker 1: it's very hard to find him laughing. He doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to ever laugh. So I think even that played against
Speaker 1: he seemed just very negative, very dow And I have
Speaker 1: to say a leg I mean just being a woman
Speaker 1: for a moment. You know, one has always thought, gosh,
Speaker 1: the prospect of debating Donald Trump as a woman even
Speaker 1: more challenging in some ways, and certainly the risk is
Speaker 1: you will come across, as Hillary Clinton did, as someone
Speaker 1: who was terribly well prepared and really was just felt
Speaker 1: she just deserved to be listened to. Why would you
Speaker 1: listen to this awful man? Yes, a swat exactly, so
Speaker 1: you don't say swat in America, but yeah, absolutely. But
Speaker 1: I thought what was really interesting about the way she
Speaker 1: did it was it was like that second step. I
Speaker 1: remember having a professor who would say, you know, there's
Speaker 1: learning a difficult text, and then there's learning to be
Speaker 1: knowing it so well you can just walk around in it.
Speaker 1: She didn't just know her debate prep. She was then
Speaker 1: able to walk around in it. And when he mentioned something,
Speaker 1: you know, when he said you're Biden, she was like, oh, great,
Speaker 1: I can do the line that I'm not Biden. And
Speaker 1: by the way, I'm a different generation from Biden and
Speaker 1: you Donald Trump, I thought, as it sort of showed
Speaker 1: that there's if you were brave enough, it's actually easier
Speaker 1: to debate him as a woman, do you think yeah.
Speaker 6: And gender is also playing a different role from the
Speaker 6: one it played before with with Hillary Clinton, because abortion
Speaker 6: has so been electrified as a political issue that she
Speaker 6: is now the standard bearer for defending abortion right. So
Speaker 6: whereas before with with Hillary Clinton, it hadn't been weaponized
Speaker 6: in that way, it is now a political battering ram
Speaker 6: for her to make all, you know, women across America
Speaker 6: very anxious about this guy. So and I don't think
Speaker 6: that was a thing back then. Trump also tried to
Speaker 6: kind of do a little bit back at her, where
Speaker 6: he's like, I'm talking now, what a.
Speaker 2: Minute, I'm talking now, if you don't mind, please does
Speaker 2: that sound familiar?
Speaker 6: Subverting the kind of previous charge of you know, let
Speaker 6: me finish. She is a prosecutor, she is a parent
Speaker 6: in the land. She is superb. The worry had been
Speaker 6: that previously during the Democratic primaries back in the day,
Speaker 6: she was wooden. I don't know why she was so
Speaker 6: off her pace back in twenty nineteen and twenty twenty,
Speaker 6: but she's now with this nomination, got a new confidence.
Speaker 6: I don't think people saw even as vice president.
Speaker 1: We didn't see it. Frankly in the CNN interview.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, I think that's absolutely right. I think it's not
Speaker 4: just that Trump had a really bad evening, but she
Speaker 4: had really good evening in the sense, well she was
Speaker 4: slow to start, but she got off some really well.
Speaker 4: The stakes were so high. She came across as likable,
Speaker 4: charismatic and actually quite articulate. It wasn't expected because she's been.
Speaker 6: She has had some shockers. But my queasiness, and I
Speaker 6: really want you to kind of kind of give us
Speaker 6: a kind of gauge on this, tim My queasiness is
Speaker 6: sometimes with Donald Trump, the sort of rambling shambalism works
Speaker 6: for a bunch of people at home, they kind of
Speaker 6: we look at it and think how in articular incoherent
Speaker 6: and and rambling, and and then you know, he gets
Speaker 6: a bite spike in the polls or or people go, yeah,
Speaker 6: it's kind of reassuring because he's not super clever, and
Speaker 6: he's not super shiny, and he's not really he's not.
Speaker 6: He doesn't make me feel stupid or you know, because
Speaker 6: Kamela is she's she is, she is so so polished
Speaker 6: and so assured.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 6: I think what we are learning about about voters is
Speaker 6: some people that makes them feel, you know, you know,
Speaker 6: lower in the self esteem. So I'm just wondering, is
Speaker 6: it this time does that work for Donald Trump? Or actually,
Speaker 6: this time is it just too to Stephanie's point, were
Speaker 6: and incoherent, it's just too much.
Speaker 5: It will continue to work for him with about thirty
Speaker 5: percent of American voters, and it will always work for
Speaker 5: him with those voters. And there are long routes to that,
Speaker 5: the most recent which is the two thousand and eight
Speaker 5: financial crisis, in the wake of which neither political party
Speaker 5: in the United States addressed the needs of middle class
Speaker 5: Americans who saw their mortgages, pensions, and hope evaporate standards,
Speaker 5: and Trump filled that vacuum when he campaigned in twenty
Speaker 5: fifteen and twenty sixteen and He basically said, I'm on
Speaker 5: your side. The oppressive federal bureaucracy and all these people
Speaker 5: of color sneaking across the borders are the ones doing
Speaker 5: you in, and I will go after them on your behalf.
Speaker 5: And he'll have the imagine hearts and minds of those
Speaker 5: voters probably forever. But moderate and independent voters are not there.
Speaker 4: But if you look at the reaction to this debate,
Speaker 4: it's quite interesting that the magaworld reaction has not been
Speaker 4: He's on our side. He said some really good things.
Speaker 4: They've been really quite shocked by how bad his performances.
Speaker 4: I think he's becoming so that Elon Musk says, well,
Speaker 4: he's obviously had a bad night. It's very hard, but
Speaker 4: I still think they'll vote for him.
Speaker 5: The electoral impact of it, I don't think is abandon
Speaker 5: it's embarrassment.
Speaker 4: But is the memes that have taken off on on on,
Speaker 4: on Twitter and everywhere else. They're all very bad for him,
Speaker 4: particularly on the issue of roasting pets or full of
Speaker 4: people putting pets in in the oven and barbecuing them.
Speaker 4: We go, that's not good for him.
Speaker 1: With sort of segueing into the sort of reality check zone,
Speaker 1: and I'm interested, Tim, I mean when you look at
Speaker 1: the polls afterwards, about which we know in the end
Speaker 1: don't make much difference. You've often had poles that he
Speaker 1: was perceived to have lost and it didn't make a difference.
Speaker 1: He was perceived to have lost in the debates, at
Speaker 1: least on points and debates against Hillary, and you had
Speaker 1: I think most of them have shown thirty eight forty five,
Speaker 1: depending on which one you lookt still thinking that Donald
Speaker 1: Trump won the debate. You know, obviously a majority thinking
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris one. And I just wonder, you know, for
Speaker 1: the first fifty minutes was about the economy, he was
Speaker 1: more or less on message. She was fine, but definitely
Speaker 1: not great. A lot of people would have just turned
Speaker 1: off after that. Do you think there's I mean, it
Speaker 1: certainly is possible that this does not move the needle
Speaker 1: at all. We saw that even after the most catastrophic debate.
Speaker 1: The first debate had a huge impact on the race
Speaker 1: because it changed the candidate. The polls themselves barely moved
Speaker 1: after that first debate. We saw a few points, but
Speaker 1: that was probably the most catastrophic debate that any candidate
Speaker 1: has ever had. So are we are we inevitably going
Speaker 1: to be surprised by how little this affects anything.
Speaker 5: I don't know the answer to that. I think that
Speaker 5: you know, debates have a mixed record in terms of
Speaker 5: whether they're predictive or they have an influence. The thing
Speaker 5: to remember about what's transpired between late Tune and now
Speaker 5: is that Trump was ahead by three to six points
Speaker 5: in various swing states. That gap has completely closed, and
Speaker 5: in some cases Harris is ahead of Trump, and in
Speaker 5: Florida it's only two points. That has to terrify the Republicans.
Speaker 5: If Florida flips, Trump loses, and it's a generational change
Speaker 5: for the GOP. I think that you know a couple
Speaker 5: things to remember or focus on, and I was thinking
Speaker 5: about it when you asked alegra The quick question about
Speaker 5: women and gender is that when Hillary Clinton campaigned in
Speaker 5: twenty sixteen, one of the campaign models was I'm with her,
Speaker 5: And what Harris is saying is I'm with you. She's
Speaker 5: not denying that she's a candidate of color or obviously
Speaker 5: that she's a woman, and she strategically embraces that when
Speaker 5: it's useful. But she has I think the strength of
Speaker 5: character to say I'm not doing identity politics here. I'm
Speaker 5: trying to deliver solutions to voters and that's a really
Speaker 5: powerful place to be. And I think the Kamala Harris
Speaker 5: who has emerged on this international stage since being anointed
Speaker 5: as Biden's successor is not Kamala Harris any of us
Speaker 5: saw before. And I think I think it's a lesson
Speaker 5: in people who were on the ground with one another
Speaker 5: in any organization, whether it's politics or companies or families.
Speaker 5: You know people better when you're with them every day.
Speaker 5: And clearly the sharpest democratic operatives in the land, from
Speaker 5: Nancy Pelosi on down, knew that she had evolved. And
Speaker 5: there will be a very interesting TikTok written someday of
Speaker 5: what happened when Biden got nudged down to that stage,
Speaker 5: self emolated, and then with like clockwork.
Speaker 1: The party.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, because I think I think there were probably
Speaker 5: some people in the White House who knew he would
Speaker 5: embarrass himself and the only way to get him out
Speaker 5: of the race was humiliate and public Well, I just
Speaker 5: think it's practical politics. You know, politicians are egotists, and
Speaker 5: they don't move easily. And then the speed and the
Speaker 5: alacrity with which she was put in place, and how
Speaker 5: she's risen to the occasion people knew she could do it.
Speaker 6: But quick question on that, I mean that Kamala Harris
Speaker 6: doesn't go away and that she's this still is that wreck?
Speaker 6: I mean, how many staffers has she kept with her
Speaker 6: through from the beginning of being vice president to to
Speaker 6: now or to shortly before becoming the nominee for president?
Speaker 6: Like not many. So there's a kind of.
Speaker 5: Virtue when a man moves through an incompetent staff, and
Speaker 5: when a woman does it, it's.
Speaker 6: People do think it's about someone who's works in politics.
Speaker 6: I don't think it is a virtue when people turn
Speaker 6: through people very quickly. You need who are you? Who
Speaker 6: are your kind of long term confidence. I'm not saying
Speaker 6: I think it disqualifies her or that she's going to
Speaker 6: be a bad president because of it. I'm just saying
Speaker 6: that that that's slightly poor performing Kamala Harris. How much
Speaker 6: of that is going to come back to the fore
Speaker 6: at some point in terms of advisers she's had. I mean,
Speaker 6: you're right that she's gone through that there is a
Speaker 6: double standard because clearly, clearly, as Adrian says, Donald Trump's
Speaker 6: not the one to talk about having gone through.
Speaker 1: Lots of people. I thought, if we just talked briefly
Speaker 1: about I mean, there were quite a lot of areas
Speaker 1: where she could have. You know, one of the failures
Speaker 1: that Donald Trump had is he didn't get enough onto
Speaker 1: Whenever the discussion had moved to her flops and her
Speaker 1: weak areas like immigration, she would just sort of, rather
Speaker 1: very obviously and transparently pivot back to something that would
Speaker 1: bait him and distract him. But it did mean that
Speaker 1: she got away with some of that. I thought, though.
Speaker 1: There was a bit more substance on foreign policy, or
Speaker 1: at least more discussion on foreign policy than I had
Speaker 1: anticipated to talk about. Gaza talked about Ukraine, where he
Speaker 1: was unwilling to say that he wanted Ukraine to win.
Speaker 1: Even in that earlier section, she was quite She took
Speaker 1: the offensive on China in an interesting way. How did
Speaker 1: you think she was tim on foreign policy?
Speaker 5: My own bias is that I think the United States
Speaker 5: has to be a citizen of the world, and that
Speaker 5: we play an indispensable role in global security and our
Speaker 5: partnership with our allies in Western Europe and further abroad.
Speaker 5: And I thought her most effective statement of the night
Speaker 5: was how she described America's leadership role in the world,
Speaker 5: her commitment to national security. I thought she was excellent
Speaker 5: on Ukraine. She was excellent on Gaza, she was excellent
Speaker 5: on China. All three of those theaters are are perilous
Speaker 5: right now. China could invade Taiwan Gas as a potential
Speaker 5: tinderbox for the rest of them Middle East. And if
Speaker 5: we don't stand up to Vladimir Putin and Ukraine, he
Speaker 5: becomes an even more predatory presence throughout the rest of Europe.
Speaker 5: And I think the essential player in every one of
Speaker 5: those theaters is the United States, for better or for worse.
Speaker 5: And she made a statement of purpose around that I
Speaker 5: thought was spectacular.
Speaker 4: It's not just that she did very well on that,
Speaker 4: It's just that it's also that Trump did very badly
Speaker 4: on that, in the sense that he has dealt with
Speaker 4: a great many people. He's been president for four years,
Speaker 4: and he didn't make any real use of that depth
Speaker 4: of experience or knowledge or comforting the world by saying
Speaker 4: that I know these people, I can deal with them.
Speaker 4: I'm a man who makes deals. He made nothing of.
Speaker 5: The fact the Barker's statement of Victor.
Speaker 1: He was citing.
Speaker 4: So nothing, you know, no Nixonian depth of experience. And
Speaker 4: the other thing was immigration again, which is one of
Speaker 4: his things, is one of the things that he just
Speaker 4: had on the book. In the polls, people are worried
Speaker 4: about it, and he fluffed it completely. He didn't talk
Speaker 4: about people's real fears about immigration in fact, and Gren
Speaker 4: sorry to mention this line, but he made it all
Speaker 4: about cats and dogs, which was you know that that.
Speaker 5: Had been a debunked meme. And the issue that where
Speaker 5: average Americans fear immigration is that their jobs are going
Speaker 5: to take not that they're going to be that someone
Speaker 5: down the block is reading, you know, the kitchen and
Speaker 5: making dinner, eating fluffy.
Speaker 1: I mean, I suspect I toightly disagree with you, Tim,
Speaker 1: in the sense of I suspect probably the bit her
Speaker 1: advisors will have been least happy with, or at least
Speaker 1: will not will not be so excited about is her
Speaker 1: fulsome defense of the role of America in the world.
Speaker 1: Which is not to say she shouldn't say it, but
Speaker 1: I think what is the only bit of the foreign
Speaker 1: policy that she spoke to that is very popular is
Speaker 1: being tough on China, which Is, which was again sort
Speaker 1: of taking the game to Trump, and I thought it
Speaker 1: was very interesting that she went on China first and
Speaker 1: even managed to insert the sort of reference about the
Speaker 1: origins COVID and accuse him of being too close to
Speaker 1: she and talking about girls. His response was, she hates
Speaker 1: Israelis and Arabs, which I thought was a fantastic statement.
Speaker 2: She hates Israel if she's president, I believe that Israel
Speaker 2: will not exist within two years from now, and I've
Speaker 2: been pretty good at predictions, and I hope we're wrong
Speaker 2: about that one. She hates Israel at the same time,
Speaker 2: in her own way, she hates the Arab population because
Speaker 2: the whole place is going to get blown up.
Speaker 1: You really can't have it both ways.
Speaker 5: I don't think foreign policy has ever turned a US election.
Speaker 5: Most US voters don't care about it. And I do
Speaker 5: think that leadership means you articulate and get out in
Speaker 5: front on issues that voters aren't either in touch with
Speaker 5: or in agreement with. But because it's the right thing
Speaker 5: to do, and we're in a perilous place right now globally,
Speaker 5: and if the US doesn't assert itself and have someone
Speaker 5: as with the clarity and commitment that she articulated last
Speaker 5: night in spades. Even Joe Biden, who is credited as
Speaker 5: being the savant on foreign policy, he never articulated as
Speaker 5: well as she did last night. And I think that
Speaker 5: that stands in her favor.
Speaker 1: So next steps, do we actually think this is going
Speaker 1: to change the race?
Speaker 5: Sixty percent of Independence in the wake of the poll
Speaker 5: said she won. And I'll sound like a dead horse
Speaker 5: because all three of us have talked about this multiple
Speaker 5: times together, I think by this point, but it's going
Speaker 5: to be seven swing states in November, and the pivotal
Speaker 5: votes in those swing states will come from moderate and
Speaker 5: independent voters. And I think they're not only moving to
Speaker 5: her noticeably. I think they will move to her on
Speaker 5: Moss and I think that momentum the clips they'll be
Speaker 5: able to. Now you know, the Democrats have a lot
Speaker 5: of money. Airwaves are going to get flooded in Nevada
Speaker 5: and Arizona. Of Donald Trump saying your neighbors want to
Speaker 5: eat your cats.
Speaker 1: And saying that he has a concept of a concept
Speaker 1: of an idea, concept of an idea on health.
Speaker 5: Comes a concept of a plane. When he was asked
Speaker 5: for your economic plans, and he said, I have a
Speaker 5: concept of a plan, and what are your healthcare plans?
Speaker 5: I have a concept of a plan. He has no
Speaker 5: concept of anything.
Speaker 1: That was one thing, and I don't know me in
Speaker 1: a legra maybe from a messaging standpoint, I mean, the
Speaker 1: one thing that I thought was a bit confused in
Speaker 1: the sort of Carmela messaging was that you know, clearly
Speaker 1: project twenty twenty five has had a lot of resonance,
Speaker 1: and she mentioned it a couple of times because she
Speaker 1: knows that even when people don't know anything about it,
Speaker 1: they kind of know it's bad. And he distanced himself
Speaker 1: from it. But you can't say you've got no plan,
Speaker 1: which she did repeatedly. But then there is a plan
Speaker 1: and it's twenty twenty five. And I thought that was
Speaker 1: one area where I mean, which do we think is
Speaker 1: going to be strongest for her? That he had an
Speaker 1: evil plan or that you've got no plan? Should I
Speaker 1: recognize that from somewhere because it's not very original.
Speaker 6: And it is quite tedious, how so much of politics
Speaker 6: is not particularly clever or original, but it just connects
Speaker 6: and it just works and as simple as usually best.
Speaker 6: Because I think you're right, I'm not even sure I
Speaker 6: think you're being very flattering to sort of Middle America.
Speaker 6: I'm not sure most people in Middle America will be
Speaker 6: cognizant of it, so I would have thought you'd better
Speaker 6: off sticking to kind of there is the plan, this
Speaker 6: guy rambles and do we think they should do another
Speaker 6: d I mean that was the other thing that came straight,
Speaker 6: and she went straight after the debate had bad saying
Speaker 6: it wasn't cats they were eating, it was the city
Speaker 6: geese that I'm not sure it was a lot better.
Speaker 6: You had Donald Trump go into the spin room, which
Speaker 6: is very unusual, but you had the Kamala Harris team saying, yeah,
Speaker 6: bring it on, We'll do more debates.
Speaker 4: You know from Sadusca. She lost, but she wants another one.
Speaker 1: Do you I mean, Tim, do you think or Adrian
Speaker 1: do you think? Do you think there'll be another debate?
Speaker 1: Do you think she should do a debate on Fox?
Speaker 1: Because it seems pretty clear that if there was another one,
Speaker 1: it would have to be on Fox.
Speaker 5: Neither of them have anything to gain by doing another debate,
Speaker 5: but for very different reasons. She now has all of
Speaker 5: the firepower she needs from a debate, and his advisors
Speaker 5: must think, well, should we do another debate or should
Speaker 5: we just drive a car into a wall's as possible,
Speaker 5: because he won't change in the next debate. He can't
Speaker 5: rescue himself from himself. It was himself on the stage
Speaker 5: last night, you know, King Lear, howling against the moon,
Speaker 5: not listening to anyone else in this sort of pathetic,
Speaker 5: angry growl.
Speaker 1: Well we will in a week's time. We shall probably
Speaker 1: find that the debate itself has had very little impact
Speaker 1: on the race. And the most important thing that did
Speaker 1: happen last night, of course, was that Taylor Swift the
Speaker 1: most powerful childless cat lady in the world. And I
Speaker 1: can't help thinking that will have more impact than anything
Speaker 1: we've said or anything we had.
Speaker 5: And she had a link in her post to voter
Speaker 5: dot org, so it will produce fundraising and voter turn
Speaker 5: out just in very practical ways.
Speaker 1: And she encouraged justice everyone should people to actually make
Speaker 1: up their own mind, which I thought was pretty classy,
Speaker 1: sort of half an hour after the debate finished, Thank
Speaker 1: you very much, Adrian Allegra, tim a privilege you be here,
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this special episode of voter Nomics
Speaker 1: from Bloomberg. It was hosted by me Stephanie Flanders, with
Speaker 1: Allegra Stratton and Adrian will Dridge and Tim O'Brien. It
Speaker 1: was produced by Summer Sadin, Production support and sound design
Speaker 1: by Moses and am Brendan. Francis Newnham is our executive producer.
Speaker 1: Sage Bowman is Head of Podcasts. Please subscribe, rate, and
Speaker 1: review this podcast wherever you listen to it