Speaker 1: I'm not going to answer the question because because the question,
Speaker 1: the question is rational. Left.
Speaker 2: Who is on your list?
Speaker 3: Joe?
Speaker 2: Who is on your right?
Speaker 1: Gentlemen, I think this We're not going to We have
Speaker 1: ended this segment. We're going to move on to the
Speaker 1: second segment. That was really a productive segment, wasn't it.
Speaker 1: Keep yapping, man. The people understand, Joe, forty seven years,
Speaker 1: you've done nothing.
Speaker 4: They understand. All right, Remember this final debate of the
Speaker 4: twenty twenty presidential campaign, and remember all the barbs both
Speaker 4: Trump and Biden tossed during that campaign. Well, sparks may
Speaker 4: fly again between these same two candidates if the polls
Speaker 4: are right and they do indeed become the respective nominees
Speaker 4: for their parties. Several third party candidates may jump into
Speaker 4: the race, which would mix it up, But voters don't
Speaker 4: seem excited about any of the current options. How did
Speaker 4: we wind up in this groundhog day election cycle?
Speaker 5: Like a lot of people still don't believe that Trump
Speaker 5: and Biden are going to be the nominee despite all
Speaker 5: the evidence we have that they probably are going to be.
Speaker 4: That's my colleague Josh Green. He and I wrote about
Speaker 4: how voters and donors are feeling about another Trump Biden matchup.
Speaker 4: It's a big take from Bloomberg News and iHeartRadio. I'm
Speaker 4: Nancy Cook today. Who's ready for the Biden Trump rematch? Anyone? Hey, Josh,
Speaker 4: thanks for coming on the podcast.
Speaker 2: Always a pleasure to be here with you.
Speaker 4: You and I just wrote this piece called the Election
Speaker 4: No One Wants.
Speaker 5: That's right, because it's shapen up to be two of
Speaker 5: the most unpopular presidential nominees in probably American history, if
Speaker 5: the polls are to believed, which show Trump and Biden
Speaker 5: both winning handily, and yet Americans young and old are
Speaker 5: tired of them, don't like them, want somebody younger, want
Speaker 5: somebody different, And as we concluded from our reporting, they're
Speaker 5: probably not.
Speaker 2: Going to get it.
Speaker 4: So what does the polling show us, Josh, tell me
Speaker 4: a little bit about you know what you found when
Speaker 4: we were reporting out the piece.
Speaker 5: The polling showed that Biden and Trump are both very
Speaker 5: unpopular with the opposite party and also pretty unpopular with
Speaker 5: independent people too. Republicans are still basically okay with Donald Trump.
Speaker 5: Self identified Democrats are still basically okay with Joe Biden,
Speaker 5: at least in terms of saying we'll support him in
Speaker 5: the twenty twenty four election. But if you probe a
Speaker 5: little deeper, even Democrats say, would you prefer a different nominee?
Speaker 5: Would you prefer somebody younger? A majority of those Democratic
Speaker 5: voters say yes, we would. And I think that gets
Speaker 5: to the lack of enthusiasm among all American voters. That's
Speaker 5: kind of the beating heart of our piece, this overwhelming
Speaker 5: desire for different choices that they're not going to get.
Speaker 4: And so what happened to these other choices? I mean,
Speaker 4: I know on the Democratic side, you know there's Representative
Speaker 4: Jean Phillips from Minnesota. We have the activist professor of
Speaker 4: Cornell West who's running as an independent. We have Robert
Speaker 4: Kennedy Junior, who's a former environmental lawyer turned major anti vaxer.
Speaker 4: On the Republican side, there's Nicki Haley, Ron de Santis,
Speaker 4: vivk Ramaswami, Chris Christy. What happened to all these different people?
Speaker 5: The thing we kind of concluded that really jumped out
Speaker 5: to me in the reporting that I hadn't appreciated going
Speaker 5: in was that the story in each party is kind
Speaker 5: of different. On the Republican side, what prevented a challenger
Speaker 5: to Trump. It was really this kind of bottom up
Speaker 5: energy that rank and file, grassroots voters who are Republicans
Speaker 5: still like Trump and they don't really like anybody else
Speaker 5: you can add up and we did all the supporters
Speaker 5: for Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswami, and it still
Speaker 5: doesn't constitute a majority.
Speaker 2: And as much as.
Speaker 5: Republican donors Wall Street people want somebody other than Trump,
Speaker 5: they just haven't been able to overcome his popularity with
Speaker 5: a base. No matter how much money they stuff into
Speaker 5: super packs for challengers like Haley in DeSantis, nothing is
Speaker 5: over until we run through the primary season. At least
Speaker 5: at this point, it doesn't look like Trump is going
Speaker 5: to have a real serious challenger.
Speaker 4: So that's the story with Trump. You know, Republicans just
Speaker 4: haven't been able to quit him. What did we learn
Speaker 4: about Biden?
Speaker 5: Well, the interesting thing with Democrats is that they've essentially
Speaker 5: had kind of the opposite dynamic. From the moment Biden
Speaker 5: got into office, the people at the top of the
Speaker 5: Democratic establishment, the leaders in the party, basically decided that
Speaker 5: he is their best shot to win again in twenty
Speaker 5: twenty four, and they kind of rallied around him. You
Speaker 5: didn't have any real blue chip challengers that decided to
Speaker 5: run in the Democratic primaries, and so you're left with
Speaker 5: these kind of gadfly candidates like Dean Phillips of Minnesota,
Speaker 5: who you mentioned, who were you going to run in
Speaker 5: one or two primaries, but don't constitute a serious challenge
Speaker 5: to Biden, despite the fact that so many rank and
Speaker 5: file Democratic voters are unhappy with him, They're unhappy with
Speaker 5: the economy, they're unhappy with his age, they like different
Speaker 5: and better choices. Doesn't look like they're going to get it,
Speaker 5: and that could be a potential big problem for Democrats.
Speaker 4: And I think so much in the reporting that we
Speaker 4: learned was that really Democrats are sold on this idea
Speaker 4: that Biden is the only one who has beat Trump
Speaker 4: and therefore they have to stick with him despite the
Speaker 4: concerns about his age and the economy. I was so
Speaker 4: struck by that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was too.
Speaker 5: And you know, when you hear the White House lay
Speaker 5: it out, or hear kind of pro Biden polsters and
Speaker 5: strategises lay it out, it isn't crazy if the opponent
Speaker 5: is Donald Trump. Because Trump, despite the fact that he's
Speaker 5: sort of subsided a little bit. I think from the
Speaker 5: news cycle in a way that's made people focus on Biden.
Speaker 5: Once he comes roaring back, I do think that his
Speaker 5: negatives are going to rise and people instead of focusing
Speaker 5: on I don't like Biden, I don't like the economy.
Speaker 5: It's going to become more of a choice than a referendum.
Speaker 5: That's certainly the hope for Democrats.
Speaker 4: One of the most interesting phrases in the reporting I
Speaker 4: found was this idea of double haters. It's voters who
Speaker 4: actually hate both of them.
Speaker 2: Tell me about that, Josh, Yeah, so that was funny.
Speaker 5: That was a term I first heard in the twenty
Speaker 5: sixteen cycle when I was hanging out with the Trump
Speaker 5: data team Polsters, Me and another BusinessWeek reporter got invited
Speaker 5: down to their Trump Data headquarters in San Antonio.
Speaker 2: They had this sort of category of.
Speaker 5: Voters, like ten or fifteen percent of the voters who
Speaker 5: told Polsters they did not like Donald Trump, but they
Speaker 5: also did not like Hillary Clinton. And yet if you
Speaker 5: look at their voting records, like these people are going
Speaker 5: to vote for one or the other, and so the
Speaker 5: campaign dubbed them double haters. In the end, the very
Speaker 5: kind of last week or so, James Comey came out
Speaker 5: with all the Clinton email stuff, and the double haters
Speaker 5: moved in mass.
Speaker 2: To Donald Trump.
Speaker 5: The interesting thing this time arounds you talk to polsters,
Speaker 5: there's about four times as many double haters who disliked
Speaker 5: both Trump and Biden then there were back in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 5: So to me, that was just a wonderful measure of
Speaker 5: the kind of boiling dissatisfaction that so many people in
Speaker 5: the American electorate have for the choice of candidates that
Speaker 5: they're probably going.
Speaker 2: To get next fall.
Speaker 4: There have been several billionaires and Wall Street types of
Speaker 4: way in the election in the last few weeks. Josh,
Speaker 4: what have they been talking about?
Speaker 2: This is really interesting.
Speaker 5: Bloomberg had a great story on all the kind of
Speaker 5: Wall Street heavyweights who suddenly have begun to panic and
Speaker 5: express their own let's call it double hatred toward the
Speaker 5: two candidates. You have them out publicly casting about for
Speaker 5: an alternative, despite the fact that we're like a month
Speaker 5: and a half away from primaries beginning, and that's not
Speaker 5: remotely realistic. So you have Jamie Diamond, the CEO of
Speaker 5: JP Morgan Chase, come out very publicly in support of
Speaker 5: Nikki Haley and sort of encourage everybody, including liberal Democrats,
Speaker 5: to get behind her. The other Wall Street big wig
Speaker 5: was Mike Novograts, the CEO of the crypto firm Galaxy
Speaker 5: Digital Holdings, who actually told Bloomberg Television that he'd met
Speaker 5: with Haley that you also met with Dean Phillips was
Speaker 5: really excited about Phillips, found him to be amazingly rational,
Speaker 5: and yet Novograts called him Neil instead of Dean in
Speaker 5: the Bloomberg interview. So clearly these guys are kind of
Speaker 5: grasping for anybody who could possibly be an alternative to
Speaker 5: Donald Trump or Joe Biden. To me, it's just another
Speaker 5: striking example of the kind of cycle of denial that
Speaker 5: I've experienced as a reporter talking to people about how
Speaker 5: do you think the election shaping up? Who do you
Speaker 5: think you're going to vote for? Like a lot of
Speaker 5: people still don't believe that Trump and Biden are going
Speaker 5: to be the nominee, despite all the evidence we have
Speaker 5: that they probably are going to be.
Speaker 4: And what's so interesting to me is we're basically weeks
Speaker 4: away from the Iowa caucuses in January, and then the
Speaker 4: New Hampshire primary comes shortly after that, and Trump is
Speaker 4: so far ahead of his rivals in pull after poll.
Speaker 4: He is pulling above fifty percent, close to sixty percent nationally,
Speaker 4: And it's like, even though you know, Ron de Santas
Speaker 4: and Nikki Hilly are kind of duking it out for
Speaker 4: second place, they're still I need a thirty percentage points
Speaker 4: behind Trump in the polls, and so it's almost like,
Speaker 4: you know, who cares if they're duking it out. You know,
Speaker 4: unless there's some catastrophe or healthcare on the part of Trump,
Speaker 4: it seems likely that he will be the nominee.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And what's happened over the last year or so is,
Speaker 5: you know, if you go back to January, she had
Speaker 5: a big cover story on Ron DeSantis, who had just
Speaker 5: gotten reelected and was super popular and was kind of
Speaker 5: pulling neck and neck with Trump, and it looked like
Speaker 5: he might be the guy to kind of knock off
Speaker 5: Trump and become the nominique.
Speaker 2: But what's happened over.
Speaker 5: The last year is that his support is diminished in
Speaker 5: all the non Trump candidates, Desantus, Haley, Chris Christy, you
Speaker 5: name it, have cannibalized each other's support. So you'll have
Speaker 5: somebody like DeSantis, who for a while was the clear
Speaker 5: cut number two, has now fallen in the polls and
Speaker 5: been replaced by Nikki Haley. You know, but she's, as
Speaker 5: you say, she's no closer to knocking off Trump than
Speaker 5: DeSantis was six or eight months ago.
Speaker 4: And I also think two things happened for Trump and
Speaker 4: Biden this year that really led to them being most
Speaker 4: likely than nominees. With Trump, it was the legal challenges.
Speaker 4: That first indictment out of New York for him really
Speaker 4: energized the base. It had like the opposite effect that
Speaker 4: I think people thought it would. People thought, oh, wow,
Speaker 4: he's going to be so mired in legal troubles and
Speaker 4: he won't be able to run. But actually it mobilized voters, Republicans,
Speaker 4: primary voters. They coalesced around him and it really gave
Speaker 4: him this huge boost. And then for Biden, I think
Speaker 4: a lot of people thought maybe he wasn't a great president,
Speaker 4: but Democrats had a good showing in the twenty two midterms.
Speaker 4: Messages about democracy and Republicans trying to restrict abortion rights
Speaker 4: really resonated with women voters and Democrats and they came
Speaker 4: to the polls. And I think both of those two
Speaker 4: events really helped both of these men.
Speaker 2: That's a great point.
Speaker 5: I mean, they were both the beneficiaries of an odd
Speaker 5: and unexpected good fortune. Were you surprised as I was,
Speaker 5: that when Trump was indicted and then reindicted and then reindicted,
Speaker 5: that it didn't hurt his support more because I've seen
Speaker 5: Poland going back years talking to Trump's and asking them like, hey,
Speaker 5: do you support Trump? Like what could cause your support
Speaker 5: to waiver? And a lot of those poll questions, like
Speaker 5: a decent chunk of supporter to say, well, you know,
Speaker 5: if it turns out he's convicted or and died or something,
Speaker 5: you know, and then I may rethink my support. I
Speaker 5: was kind of expecting a drop in support, and yet
Speaker 5: I feel like kind of a chump for having believed that.
Speaker 4: Yes, I was surprised. But I do remember talking with
Speaker 4: a Republican source the day of that first indictment, and
Speaker 4: this was someone who was really excited about Ron DeSantis
Speaker 4: at the time, and the person said, you know, this
Speaker 4: has just supercharged Trump's candidacy because so many Republicans viewed
Speaker 4: those charges out of New York as you know, sham
Speaker 4: or overblown. And Trump also really turned all of the indictments,
Speaker 4: all of his legal troubles into one big thing where
Speaker 4: he is fighting on behalf of people. He is a victim,
Speaker 4: he is fighting for you. He's taking the legal challenges,
Speaker 4: so you don't you know, he's been sort of masterful
Speaker 4: at turning that on a head. I've seen him do
Speaker 4: it in rallies and events and it really rallies people.
Speaker 4: And I think that that has really supercharged his candidacy.
Speaker 4: When we come back with Trump's surprising dominance in the polls,
Speaker 4: should Democrats look for an alternative candidate?
Speaker 3: The twenty twenty four presidential campaign has seen some comings
Speaker 3: and goings in recent days. While Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips
Speaker 3: has jumped into the Democratic primary, Phillips is officially challenging
Speaker 3: President Biden for the party's nomination, and he ended the
Speaker 3: race because he's concerned about polling numbers and a potential
Speaker 3: second Trump presidency.
Speaker 4: So, Josh, has this ever happened before in US history
Speaker 4: where basically somebody lost an election, a president lost an
Speaker 4: election and then came back and ran again.
Speaker 5: It's happened once that we're aware of, or an incumbent
Speaker 5: president lost ran against the same opponent four years later
Speaker 5: in return to the White House. And of course we
Speaker 5: all remember that was when Grover Cleveland faced off against
Speaker 5: Benjamin Harrison.
Speaker 2: It's happened before that was and.
Speaker 4: That was late late eighteen hundreds, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that was in eighteen ninety two, so long before
Speaker 5: the advent of public polling. Who knows if they were
Speaker 5: double hated. The bigger point is this is this is
Speaker 5: just extremely unusual. Hasn't happened in America in the last
Speaker 5: one hundred and thirty years, And so yeah, it's a
Speaker 5: weird election and a weird election cycle for everybody. I
Speaker 5: think that's part of the dissatisfaction.
Speaker 4: And on the Democratic side, why do you think that
Speaker 4: Democrats settled on Biden as the nominee despite what we've
Speaker 4: talked about already. He has a low approval rating. You know,
Speaker 4: voters have very persistent questions about his age.
Speaker 5: In talking to Democrats, both around Biden and just sort
Speaker 5: of Democrats generally, I think there are two things that happened. One,
Speaker 5: a good number of Americans really did expect Biden once
Speaker 5: he was elected to only serve one term and to
Speaker 5: kind of voluntarily leave at the end of his first term.
Speaker 5: He had said During the campaign, there was a rally
Speaker 5: he had where he described himself as a quote transition figure,
Speaker 5: and a lot of Democrats took that to me, you know,
Speaker 5: I'm a transition between Trump and the next generation of
Speaker 5: Democratic politicians, and they thought that he would sort of
Speaker 5: pass the baton in twenty twenty four. Well he didn't,
Speaker 5: and that creates the second problem, And the other reason
Speaker 5: that Biden is here is that if he were to
Speaker 5: step down, there would be a very messy Democratic primary.
Speaker 5: Kamala Harris, a black woman, is the vice president. You
Speaker 5: would expect her to be deferred to. A lot of
Speaker 5: people would, but she isn't a very popular politician. She's
Speaker 5: less popular than Joe Biden. And there are a lot
Speaker 5: of other ambitious rising Democrats who would run for that role,
Speaker 5: whether it's you know, Pete Buda Judge or Gavin Newsom
Speaker 5: in California, Wes Moore and Maryland Roy Cooper in North Carolina.
Speaker 2: There would be a big scrum and a big fight.
Speaker 5: And I think that a lot of folks worry that
Speaker 5: having that kind of intra party family feud would weaken
Speaker 5: Democrats ahead of what is going to be a very
Speaker 5: important election in twenty twenty four, where Donald Trump could
Speaker 5: conceivably come back and win re election. A lot of
Speaker 5: Democrats don't want to have that fight, and so they
Speaker 5: kind of bite their tongue and cautiously get behind Joe Biden.
Speaker 4: Well, that's sort of what happened in the last election
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty there was such a crowded Democratic primary.
Speaker 4: I don't think anyone thought that he would end up
Speaker 4: as the front runner. Of course, like COVID I think
Speaker 4: really changed it, and there was some internal party calculus
Speaker 4: of like wanting to more moderate rather than a very
Speaker 4: liberal candidate. But they sort of already went through that
Speaker 4: the last cycle.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 5: But there were also, if you're huge, fights over race, gender,
Speaker 5: the size of government, whether we should triple the federal
Speaker 5: budget for Medicare for all. All of this stuff played
Speaker 5: out during the Democratic primaries in a way that I
Speaker 5: think made a lot of people nervous about rerunning that
Speaker 5: kind of a race in twenty twenty three twenty twenty
Speaker 5: four primaries. Democrats are kind of clinging to power, and
Speaker 5: do think a lot of them. I think that Joe
Speaker 5: Biden is still ill the guy best able to unify
Speaker 5: the Democratic coalition against Donald Trump. It's getting kind of
Speaker 5: harder to believe that if you look at the polls
Speaker 5: and you see his declining support on issues like the
Speaker 5: economy and his age, a portion of black and Latino
Speaker 5: voters moving over to support Republicans. One of the reasons
Speaker 5: that he's likely overwhelmingly likely to be a Democratic nominee
Speaker 5: is that in the end, you know, people just deferred
Speaker 5: to the idea that we really can't figure out a
Speaker 5: way to ast him. He hasn't left voluntarily, and so
Speaker 5: we're just going to have to go with him one
Speaker 5: more cycle.
Speaker 4: And what I think is also so interesting is that,
Speaker 4: you know, although he suggested he would be a transitional
Speaker 4: figure in the twenty twenty election, the thing is is
Speaker 4: that Joe Biden has wanted to be president for years.
Speaker 4: He has run for president several times, and I think that,
Speaker 4: you know, inside the Biden White House, there is a
Speaker 4: feeling that he is a much better president than he
Speaker 4: gets credit for. I think he has a little bit
Speaker 4: of a chip on his shoulder about that and thinks
Speaker 4: he's doing a better job, and people thinking that's a
Speaker 4: great point.
Speaker 5: Look, you don't rise to the level of president of
Speaker 5: the United States without being a wildly ambitious and self
Speaker 5: confident human being, and especially somebody like Biden who's run
Speaker 5: and lost and run and lost and run and lost
Speaker 5: and become almost a punch line and then you ascend
Speaker 5: to the Oval Office. People like that just don't kind
Speaker 5: of willingly give up that kind of power. And yeah,
Speaker 5: I think the fact is Biden has passed a huge
Speaker 5: stimulust He passed, you know, the IRA, He's kind of
Speaker 5: led this. I think what the White House hopes will
Speaker 5: be this this renaissance in Middle America of reshoring, manufacturing
Speaker 5: and building out the chip industry, building up the green economy.
Speaker 5: He has a lot of tangible accomplishments that any president
Speaker 5: would love to have, you know. So, I think if
Speaker 5: you're Biden, the thought running through your head has to
Speaker 5: be why wouldn't.
Speaker 2: I run again?
Speaker 4: Just on the Republican side, I know we've talked, you know,
Speaker 4: a little bit about how Trump ended up being such
Speaker 4: a dominant figure again, but have you been surprised that Josh,
Speaker 4: given his legal challenges we haven't even talked about January sixth,
Speaker 4: He had a reputation of having a very chaotic leadership
Speaker 4: style in the White House, But yet he is still
Speaker 4: the dominant Republican dating back to twenty sixteen.
Speaker 5: Among other things, he completely broke the mold for how
Speaker 5: a one term president behaves, and as a result, he
Speaker 5: has a different profile than other one term presidents. You know, historically,
Speaker 5: if you run for president, win, serve a term, and
Speaker 5: are then defeated, you know, it's kind of a mark
Speaker 5: of shame. Trump, you know, by any historical standard, should
Speaker 5: have expected the same treatment, and yet literally refused to leave.
Speaker 2: The White House.
Speaker 5: You had him claiming falsely that he'd actually won the
Speaker 5: election and had him stolen from him. That it became
Speaker 5: a matter of faith among you a fairly sizable chunk
Speaker 5: of the Republican activist base, such that the party couldn't
Speaker 5: move beyond him, and no serious, ambitious presidential alternative really
Speaker 5: asserted themselves in a way that caused the party to
Speaker 5: kind of want to move on. And Trump, who's so
Speaker 5: good at getting attention and so good at putting himself
Speaker 5: in the limelight and making himself the center of everything,
Speaker 5: has just been able to do that NonStop, and as
Speaker 5: a result, nobody else has broken through. And it sure
Speaker 5: looks like Trump is going to be the nominee again
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 4: After the break, What can we expect to see in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty four? On the Biden and Trump campaign trail?
Speaker 3: Former President Donald Trump holding the first formal rally of
Speaker 3: his presidential campaign in Waco Tonight's both. President Biden held
Speaker 3: the first big rally of his reelection.
Speaker 2: Campaign today in Philadelphia.
Speaker 3: It was before a crowd of hundreds of enthusiastic Union
Speaker 3: members the table.
Speaker 4: So, Josh, if Trump and Biden do end up as
Speaker 4: the nominees for their party, as people think that they will,
Speaker 4: what do you expect the campaigns.
Speaker 2: To look like.
Speaker 5: I can't think of any reason why it wouldn't look
Speaker 5: a lot like it did last time. That Trump saying
Speaker 5: like I'm going to come back. I'm going to make
Speaker 5: America great again. I'm going to avenge my loss, and
Speaker 5: Biden's saying, you know, I'm the guy who represents the
Speaker 5: soul of the country and is going to prevent the
Speaker 5: trumpy and chaos from overtaking us, and everybody who is
Speaker 5: good and decent must sort of stand behind me. And
Speaker 5: I think what you'll have on both sides is a
Speaker 5: lot of voters grudgingly holding their nose and voting for
Speaker 5: a candidate they don't really like. And I think the
Speaker 5: two questions are going to be does anything kind of
Speaker 5: health or age wise happen with either candidate? And number
Speaker 5: two would be what kind of an influence in the
Speaker 5: end are the independent candidates going to have? Because if
Speaker 5: one of them comes in and wins five to ten
Speaker 5: percent of the vote, that's a big factor in a
Speaker 5: state like Georgia, where Biden only won by a hair.
Speaker 4: The other thing that I'm watching for is what the
Speaker 4: campaigning actually looks like. You know, once we get through
Speaker 4: the Republican primaries, you know we have Iowa, New Hampshire,
Speaker 4: South Carolina, and Nevada Super Tuesday, will we see a
Speaker 4: lot of Trump? He hasn't been doing a ton of
Speaker 4: campaign events, and you know Biden last time during COVID
Speaker 4: also didn't do a ton of campaign events. They're both
Speaker 4: these older guys. Biden is in his eighties. Trump is
Speaker 4: in his late seventies. I don't think we're going to
Speaker 4: see them both out there every day in the spring
Speaker 4: and summer. So I also think it will be just
Speaker 4: a really interesting campaign because I just don't think it'll
Speaker 4: be as active as past cycles.
Speaker 5: Probably right, I mean, I wouldn't expect it to be
Speaker 5: with Biden. He'll certainly have to do more than he
Speaker 5: did last time around when there was a COVID lockdown
Speaker 5: and he could just kind of broadcast from his basement.
Speaker 5: I'm mostly interested in Trump because he's always been the
Speaker 5: guy who loves going out to these big rallies with
Speaker 5: all his supporters and playing his little campaign soundtrack, you know,
Speaker 5: Tiny Dancer by.
Speaker 2: Elton and John, all the kinds of things it's ymca.
Speaker 5: I think he wants to kind of be out there
Speaker 5: touring the country and doing things. But he too has
Speaker 5: shown signs of age, and so I'll be interested to
Speaker 5: see whether he has the energy and the enthusiasm them
Speaker 5: to kind of go out and do that this cycle
Speaker 5: the way you did last cycle. The other thing I
Speaker 5: think too that could be a big variable is whether
Speaker 5: or not these guys debate, you know, how often, and
Speaker 5: whether they do it at all.
Speaker 4: Everybody knows so much about Trump and Biden already, everybody
Speaker 4: has opinions for the most part, So who are the
Speaker 4: two of them going to try to actually persuade.
Speaker 5: I really do think the most interesting pool of voters
Speaker 5: will be the double haters, the people who don't like
Speaker 5: either Trump or Biden, and yet do have histories of
Speaker 5: voting and presidential elections, so we know they're probably going
Speaker 5: to pull the lever for one or the other. I
Speaker 5: think it's convincing those people not if you're Biden that hey,
Speaker 5: I'm a great president you should like me, not if
Speaker 5: you're Trump, that I'm a victim and the last election
Speaker 5: was stolen from me. I think what they'll be convincing
Speaker 5: those double haters of is my opponent is a worse
Speaker 5: guy than I am, and therefore you should hold your
Speaker 5: nose and vote for me.
Speaker 4: I also am really going to be looking to see
Speaker 4: how both parties try to go after Black voters and
Speaker 4: Hispanic voters. Black voters are so deeply wedded to the
Speaker 4: Democratic Party. Last cycle, Biden won like ninety two percent
Speaker 4: of the Black vote and Trump one eight percent. But
Speaker 4: I do know that the Trump campaign really sees an
Speaker 4: opportunity to pick off Hispanic voters and Black voters, and
Speaker 4: we've seen a softening of support with both groups with Biden.
Speaker 4: It's not that anyone thinks like Trump is going to
Speaker 4: win the black vote, let's say, but if he can,
Speaker 4: you know, get a few more percentage points in some
Speaker 4: key swing states that could be helpful for him. If
Speaker 4: there's you know, seventy five thousand people in these key
Speaker 4: states that are going to decide the election.
Speaker 5: It definitely could be and it's hard to know how
Speaker 5: to measure that clearly. You know, we can see in
Speaker 5: election results in twenty twenty two that a certain segment
Speaker 5: of black Silatinas did shift over to support Republicans. So
Speaker 5: that's a real trend. But the question of will they
Speaker 5: for Trump, and will they and key swing states for
Speaker 5: Trump in a way that matters, I think this would
Speaker 5: be hard to note. I'm curious to see, you know,
Speaker 5: will Biden be able to maintain his grip on white
Speaker 5: working class voters. He improved over Hillary Clinton in twenty
Speaker 5: twenty six and that was probably decisive for him in
Speaker 5: states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania that decided the election.
Speaker 5: I'm curious to see will he still be able to
Speaker 5: hold on to enough of those voters to prevail in
Speaker 5: those states or have they become so disenchanted with inflation
Speaker 5: and the economy that they'll drift back into Trump's column?
Speaker 4: And so what do you think are going to be
Speaker 4: the key themes that the Biden campaign hits on and
Speaker 4: the Trump campaign hits on. What are both campaigns going
Speaker 4: to emphasize?
Speaker 2: You think?
Speaker 5: I think with Biden it's going to be that the
Speaker 5: economy is back, that inflation is diminished, that we're historically
Speaker 5: low levels of unemployment. I don't think he'll mention the
Speaker 5: bad parts of the economy like housing prices and mortgage rates,
Speaker 5: but more the idea that, look, we've gotten through the
Speaker 5: horrible COVID crisis in return to kind of normal Americans
Speaker 5: who want jobs have them, Everybody is working, let's kind
Speaker 5: of keep this train going. And for Trump, the argument
Speaker 5: is going to be the country is a hellscape, that
Speaker 5: inflation is through the roof, that if we could only
Speaker 5: get Trump back into the White House so we can
Speaker 5: go back into the booming economy of twenty eighteen and
Speaker 5: twenty nineteen. And that's a message that, you know, if
Speaker 5: you read the polls, certainly hasn't appeal to a lot
Speaker 5: of voters who are unhappy about the economy right now.
Speaker 4: Biden really talked a lot about threats to democracy, Republican extremism,
Speaker 4: and Republicans' efforts to restrict abortion rights. Yeah, and those
Speaker 4: were very salient messages in the twenty twenty two midterms,
Speaker 4: particularly since the Supreme Court had just thrown out Roe v.
Speaker 1: Wade.
Speaker 4: And so I'll be curious, you know, are those messages
Speaker 4: still as potent and are people still so angry about
Speaker 4: that that they're motivated, you know, not just to vote
Speaker 4: for Democrats, but really like turn out in mass like
Speaker 4: we saw on toy.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I think I think Roe is a big factor,
Speaker 5: a huge maybe the biggest factor that I neglected to mention.
Speaker 5: I mean, we can see that not only in the
Speaker 5: midterm elections, but in special elections since that Democrats, Independence
Speaker 5: and even some Republicans are very upset about this. You
Speaker 5: can see in state ballot referendums and off your elections.
Speaker 2: If that kind of energy carries through to No.
Speaker 5: Twenty twenty four, I think that would be a big
Speaker 5: help to Joe Biden. And it's certainly something that Biden
Speaker 5: and Democrats are going to try and litigate during the
Speaker 5: campaign because they know that attention on that issue helps them.
Speaker 4: Josh, it's fun writing stories with you, and it's fun
Speaker 4: talking on podcasts with you. Thanks for coming on the
Speaker 4: Big Take. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Always fun to be with you.
Speaker 4: Thank you, thanks for listening to us here at The
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