Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. This is Bloomberg Business
Speaker 1: Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebeck on Bloomberg Radio Well.
Speaker 1: Earlier today, President Joe Biden expressed hope that Americans can
Speaker 1: quote lower the temperature and reaffirm their faith in the
Speaker 1: election system after a contentious campaign that saw Republican President
Speaker 1: elect Donald Trump secure a sweeping victory. The former president
Speaker 1: did say that campaigns are a contest of competing visions
Speaker 1: or the current president I should say, a country chooses
Speaker 1: one or the other. He said, we accept the choice
Speaker 1: the country made. And he said many times, as he
Speaker 1: said many times, you can't love your country only when
Speaker 1: you win. Well, it will take some time for the
Speaker 1: history books to write the story of this presidential election,
Speaker 1: but Bloomberg BusinessWeek editor Bradstone offers an assessment today of
Speaker 1: what propelled Donald Trump to a decisive victory. Brad is
Speaker 1: a Bloomberg BusinessWeek editor. He's also the author of four books,
Speaker 1: including New York Times bestseller Amazon un Bound, Jeff Based
Speaker 1: and the Invention of a Global Empire. He joins us
Speaker 1: from our San Francisco bureau. Brad, you write that Trump's
Speaker 1: decisive twenty twenty four win against Kamala Harris looks less
Speaker 1: like the polished narrative Gemstone it will inevitably become and
Speaker 1: more like an unwieldy clump of muddy economic explanations and
Speaker 1: gross political blind spots. What are the muddy economic explanations?
Speaker 1: I want to start there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks Tim Oh And first of all, great interview
Speaker 2: with Kathy Wood. I think you very interesting stuff. Well, look,
Speaker 2: you know, we always look back on our elections and
Speaker 2: sort of contemplate a pithy summation of what happened. So
Speaker 2: Trump in twenty sixteen kind of bringing Americans to reject
Speaker 2: Obama's globalist optimism. You know, you can go back Obama
Speaker 2: his message of hope after the Great Recession, and so
Speaker 2: I was really kind of thinking about, well, what are
Speaker 2: we going to take from this, And the most obvious explanation,
Speaker 2: the big one that stands out, is that people were
Speaker 2: just just dissatisfied with the current state of things economically.
Speaker 2: I mean, you had a president deep underwater and Biden
Speaker 2: his popularity is approval rating at forty one percent. Twenty
Speaker 2: six percent of Americans dissatisfied with the direction of the company.
Speaker 2: That's the easiest and most obvious explanation. But when I
Speaker 2: talk about the kind of muddy factors, I mean, there's
Speaker 2: just so much we don't know the fact that Vice
Speaker 2: President Harris lost ground with Latino voters, non college educated,
Speaker 2: female voters, young voters. I mean, there's clearly something else
Speaker 2: going on here, and I think it will take a
Speaker 2: while for us to really look at the data and
Speaker 2: understand what went on.
Speaker 1: One thing that's really striking to me again, the data
Speaker 1: is still continuing to sort of come out here, Brad,
Speaker 1: and there's been a lot of hand ringing by a
Speaker 1: lot of different groups here at this point. But turnout
Speaker 1: just wasn't there, even on the Republican side in terms
Speaker 1: of gross numbers compared to twenty twenty. Do you have
Speaker 1: any idea what happened there?
Speaker 2: I mean, it's yeah, it's I mean, maybe there's a
Speaker 2: little bit of political exhaustion. I mean the Vice president,
Speaker 2: you know, talked a little bit about that on the
Speaker 2: campaign trail. You know, in twenty twenty, the election we're
Speaker 2: comparing it to we were in the very midst of
Speaker 2: the pandemic. You know, maybe there weren't all that many
Speaker 2: alternatives at the time to getting engaged in the electoral
Speaker 2: process and voting. You know, there might have just been
Speaker 2: something about the options and the candidates that voters had
Speaker 2: to turn them off. So no, I think, you know,
Speaker 2: when when you look, particularly on the Democratic side, the
Speaker 2: depressed voter turnout was a major factor behind the across
Speaker 2: the board defeats Brad.
Speaker 1: You know what's really striking to me, And we actually
Speaker 1: heard this from Jay Powell over and over again this afternoon.
Speaker 1: He talked about how good of an economy it is
Speaker 1: right now, spot firing on all cylinders, inflations coming back
Speaker 1: to two percent, the unemployment rate is pretty in balance
Speaker 1: with where he wants it to be. That's not the
Speaker 1: that I got in terms of this election. That's not
Speaker 1: the message that voters sent, especially in those swing states.
Speaker 1: What's the misery index? And explain how you looked at that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Bloomberg had I thought a very prescient article about
Speaker 2: a week ago that talked about how uneven that economic
Speaker 2: recovery was and that despite the overall positive kind of
Speaker 2: macro numbers on jobs, on inflation, on gas prices, that
Speaker 2: you know, there are pockets of unhappiness. And we looked
Speaker 2: at the swing states where you know, states like Wisconsin
Speaker 2: or Michigan, Ohio, states that did vote for President Trump,
Speaker 2: where the misery index, as you say to him, that
Speaker 2: combination of inflation data unemployment data is still very high.
Speaker 2: And so there are things like population declines in some counties,
Speaker 2: still a stumbling recovery, high unemployment numbers that were clearly
Speaker 2: fueling the dissatisfaction that may have turned the election.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting because it seems like the chattering class
Speaker 1: kind of thought that presidential candidate, who has been accused
Speaker 1: of so many different things, who has been determined by
Speaker 1: a court to actually be a fellon thirty four different counts,
Speaker 1: and has had so many struggles at least with the
Speaker 1: law over the last few years, oversaw not really what
Speaker 1: he would say, but no question that he was there
Speaker 1: on January sixth, and all the comments that he's made
Speaker 1: about that have been well documented. But that just didn't
Speaker 1: matter at all in the end to voters.
Speaker 2: Well, certainly not to a majority of the voters that
Speaker 2: turned out in the selection. You know, maybe it did
Speaker 2: propel some to stay home.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It may also be that people have short term memories.
Speaker 2: I mean, my colleague Mark Million writes today in the
Speaker 2: BusinessWeek newsletter about nostalgia. Nostalgia can be a powerful political force,
Speaker 2: you know, make America great again. Reagan's shining City on
Speaker 2: a hill, evoking these memories. So, you know, nostalgia as
Speaker 2: a political force. I kind of like the idea, but
Speaker 2: it also maybe suggests that specific memories aren't as powerful
Speaker 2: as these vague memories of a greater time, and that
Speaker 2: in talking about making America great again and all the
Speaker 2: implicit things in that statement, you know, that Trump is
Speaker 2: distracting people from the specifics of maybe how they felt
Speaker 2: about his leadership during the pandemic, how they felt about
Speaker 2: some of his you know, crimes alleged and otherwise, and
Speaker 2: brought their attention more on, you know, restoring this sense,
Speaker 2: maybe illusory, that he can help, you know, bring America
Speaker 2: back to some previous greatness.
Speaker 1: So so, you know, I'm wondering about sort of the lesson,
Speaker 1: and it's not our job to sort of give a
Speaker 1: lesson to democrats here. But as I mentioned, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of hand ringing going on, and we've written about that.
Speaker 1: It's it's been well documented. But the day morning or
Speaker 1: the Wednesday morning quarterbacking there should have, would have could
Speaker 1: have it sort of seems like, in hindsight, some of
Speaker 1: it actually went back to the current president's decision to
Speaker 1: continue running until that became untenable.
Speaker 2: Well, look, I mean, Tim, I'm not a political analyst
Speaker 2: by any means, but you know I would say this.
Speaker 2: I mean, first of all, the margin of the victory,
Speaker 2: you know, for Trump was so big that you know,
Speaker 2: perhaps any one factor might not have even had made
Speaker 2: a difference. And too, you know, the Democratic Party, you
Speaker 2: know the fact that there is no longer a chance
Speaker 2: or a hope of changing minds in Ohio, you know,
Speaker 2: my home state, or Florida used to be a swing state.
Speaker 2: The fact that the Democratic Party doesn't speak to you know,
Speaker 2: middle class or lower class voters in states like Arkansas
Speaker 2: or Oklahoma, you know where you know, arguably voters there
Speaker 2: might appreciate some factors of the Democratic agenda, raising the
Speaker 2: you know, the minimum wage, restoring protection for healthcare and insurance.
Speaker 2: You know that they that the Democrats rely on, you know,
Speaker 2: three Midwestern swing states, the so called blue Wall, or
Speaker 2: hope to turn Arizona or Nevada or North Carolina. It
Speaker 2: just feels like there needs to be an overhaul, you know,
Speaker 2: a rebalancing of expectations in the Democratic Party if they
Speaker 2: really hope to compete going forward.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it's funny you mentioned blue Wall, but
Speaker 1: I've heard people say they might need to rechange or
Speaker 1: change the name of that given what's happened in the
Speaker 1: last three elections, whereas Democrats only won the Blue Wall
Speaker 1: states in one of those last three, and that was
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty. Hey, I wanted to talk about with
Speaker 1: you some of the other stories that you and the
Speaker 1: team over at Bloomberg BusinessWeek have been highlighting in recent days.
Speaker 1: There's been a lot of handwringing about polling and the
Speaker 1: idea that every poll that we got, save for a
Speaker 1: couple polls that people thought were outliers at the time,
Speaker 1: really showed this race neck and neck a coin flip.
Speaker 1: It's pretty remarkable to see. You're the team Chadwick Matlin
Speaker 1: and Alex Tanzy argue that even though there was a
Speaker 1: red wave, we shouldn't be blaming the polls. What's going
Speaker 1: on here.
Speaker 2: I may not be so charitable as Alex and Chad
Speaker 2: on this one. You know, there is an argument and
Speaker 2: polsters make it that, Hey, the results were within the
Speaker 2: margin of error. So they weren't technically wrong. And Chad
Speaker 2: and Alex right that polsters are often more accurate than
Speaker 2: they are precise, which to me feels a little bit
Speaker 2: like you know, when your football team loses and they
Speaker 2: still say they played a great game. You know, It's
Speaker 2: like all these states, all the swing states. Sure they
Speaker 2: might have been within the margin of error, they're still
Speaker 2: very close, but they all underestimated Trump support. They were
Speaker 2: all sort of directionally wrong in the same way. And
Speaker 2: then you look at states like Florida or Texas, and
Speaker 2: they really extremely underestimated Trump's support, well outside the margin
Speaker 2: of error. And I think that, you know, polsters still
Speaker 2: haven't quite figured out Donald Trump's support this time around.
Speaker 2: They waited their results, they tried to account for communities,
Speaker 2: like is the respondent in a rural area, or how
Speaker 2: did they vote previously? And I just don't think they
Speaker 2: have quite figured it out or gotten it right. And
Speaker 2: I think you know, if you were, if you made
Speaker 2: the mistake once again of putting your faith in the polls,
Speaker 2: you were probably very disappointed last Tuesday night.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point. In the outlier polls that
Speaker 1: I was talking about, I mean, there have been these
Speaker 1: you know, sort of opium polls for Democrats out there,
Speaker 1: like the one we got Saturday night from Anne Seltzer
Speaker 1: that showed that Vice President Harris is actually leading in
Speaker 1: Iowa by a margin.
Speaker 2: Of four whatch is fourteen points.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was wasn't even close. So it's pretty remarkable
Speaker 1: to see that. Do you think, Brad, that we have
Speaker 1: to as Americans have to adjust the way that we
Speaker 1: view polling or do we have to figure out a
Speaker 1: better way to poll because it just seems like and
Speaker 1: Billy hous was talking about this earlier on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: You know, he would speak to people wearing Trump gear
Speaker 1: in some states and they wouldn't tell him who they
Speaker 1: were voting for. They were even skeptical of someone like him,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that they were signaling it to the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, my opinion is it's a it's a
Speaker 2: broken science. You know, it relies on a voluntary response
Speaker 2: from people that are now connected in all sorts of
Speaker 2: different ways. We're all besieged by text messages and spam
Speaker 2: and other kinds of unsolicited email, and so most people's
Speaker 2: instinct is to kind of reject an unsolicited query, and
Speaker 2: you know, and then you layer on top of that
Speaker 2: that we live in such a polarized environment that some
Speaker 2: people don't want to express their opinion because they might
Speaker 2: be you know, they might they might feel judged by
Speaker 2: their community. And so I think, you know, the polling
Speaker 2: community needs to kind of come together and figure out
Speaker 2: if there is a path forward. And then yet, as
Speaker 2: voters is in the in the media, as the electorate,
Speaker 2: I think that relying on polling right now is very dangerous.
Speaker 1: Help us figure out the path forward a little bit
Speaker 1: the best you can, not asking you to make predictions,
Speaker 1: but you are one of the few people who has
Speaker 1: sat down with President elect Trump in recent months. You
Speaker 1: did that down at mar A Lago for a Bloomberg
Speaker 1: BusinessWeek cover story that really covered pretty much every gamut
Speaker 1: of the economic agenda of the president elect. Give us
Speaker 1: an idea of how you view, if any his agenda
Speaker 1: has shifted since then. It was before his assassination attempt,
Speaker 1: it was before the convention, it was before his selection
Speaker 1: of JD. Vance, and it was of course before he
Speaker 1: won the election. Versus what you've heard from him now
Speaker 1: and how he puts that into action in the coming
Speaker 1: months during the transition, and what that looks like January twentieth.
Speaker 2: I mean, Tim, I just have no idea. Look, he
Speaker 2: might have all the branches of government. He's feeling extraordinarily empowered.
Speaker 2: He's feeling totally vindicated. There will be no checks on
Speaker 2: the appointees to his cabinet, to judicial postings, you know.
Speaker 2: At the same time, like my impression of him when
Speaker 2: we did go down there in July and just watching
Speaker 2: him over these past ten years, is that, you know,
Speaker 2: he does see himself as a man of the people.
Speaker 2: He wants to be liked. It's extraordinarily important to him
Speaker 2: to be liked and respected and admired. And I don't
Speaker 2: think that impulse goes away now that arguably he's not
Speaker 2: going to ever face election again. So when it comes
Speaker 2: to some of the things that he's proposed, you know,
Speaker 2: mass deportations or tariffs that could you know, according to economists,
Speaker 2: raise the rate of inflation, you know, he's not going
Speaker 2: to have any practical moderating influences. But you know, he
Speaker 2: doesn't want to. I don't think it's in his nature
Speaker 2: to want to do broadly unpopular things. So I do
Speaker 2: wonder if that will end up being a check on
Speaker 2: some of his instincts, although you know, the one thing
Speaker 2: that we heard from him on Tuesday night was he said,
Speaker 2: you know, promise is offered, promises will be fulfilled. So
Speaker 2: I do expect him, you know, to come into office
Speaker 2: looking to immediately put points on the board and to
Speaker 2: fulfill some of the promises that he made on the
Speaker 2: campaign trail.
Speaker 1: Look, I'm not going to ask you to give up
Speaker 1: what you're talking to new reporters about in your editorial meetings,
Speaker 1: but you have a job that requires you to think
Speaker 1: pretty clearly about what things will look like in the
Speaker 1: next few months, because they're responsible for assigning stories and
Speaker 1: understanding what people are going to be talking about in
Speaker 1: the future. How are you thinking about covering the president elect.
Speaker 2: We're going to be looking very precisely at the challenges
Speaker 2: and battles ahead for the new administration, and we have
Speaker 2: reached out into the Bloomberg newsroom around the world to
Speaker 2: look at, you know, what is ahead in Europe and China,
Speaker 2: in immigration, cryptocurrencies, on wall streets, and in tech. You know,
Speaker 2: we were thinking of it in terms of the battles ahead,
Speaker 2: and it'll be interesting now because I'm not so sure
Speaker 2: there will be battles. You know, Trump isn't going to
Speaker 2: have a lot of political opposition if he does control
Speaker 2: all three branches of Congress. But you know, certainly we
Speaker 2: saw today Gavin Newsom calling a special legislative session in California,
Speaker 2: a lot of the states girding to try to put
Speaker 2: checks on what the administration will do, either legislatively or
Speaker 2: in the courts. And so that's our approach, you know,
Speaker 2: to cover it carefully and to try to look forward
Speaker 2: rather than back and look at you know, what the
Speaker 2: Trump agenda will look like and what it will mean
Speaker 2: for business.
Speaker 1: Well, we look forward to following the story closely and
Speaker 1: following it at Bloomberg Business Week. Brad really appreciate you
Speaker 1: taking the time to join us this afternoon. Bradstone is
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Business Week Editor. He's also the author of four books,
Speaker 1: including the New York Times bestseller Amazon Unbound, Jeff Bezos
Speaker 1: and The Invention of a Global Empire. If you do
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