Can Tim Walz Out-Debate JD Vance?

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New members only within 14 days. Welcome to Pod Save America.
I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett.

I'm Tommy Vitor.

On today's show, Trump says he'll end shoplifting in America with, quote,

one really violent day.

Tim Walz and J.D. Vance head into Tuesday night's VP debate with the race stuck in a dead heat.

And the raging Cajun himself, James Carville, stops by to talk about the state of the race and the new documentary about his career in Democratic politics.

But first, as you all know, the death toll from Hurricane Helene is now north of 100. There is unbelievable devastation across the southeastern states.
And as we're recording this, thousands of people in western North Carolina are still stranded without power, water or fuel. The normal response to a disaster like this from political leaders would be to pledge support, send relief, figure out how to immediately help people in need.
That's what

President Biden is doing. That's what Vice President Harris did when she spoke at FEMA

headquarters in DC on Monday. Here's a clip.
To everyone who has been impacted by this storm,

and to all of those of you who are rightly feeling overwhelmed by the destruction and the loss,

Our next question is, has been impacted by this storm and to all of those of you who are rightly feeling overwhelmed by the destruction and the loss. Our nation is with you.
And President Biden and I and all of the folks behind me are with you. We will continue to do everything we can to help you recover and to help you rebuild, no matter how long it takes.
Over the past 24 hours, I have spoken with Governor Kemp of Georgia, Governor Cooper of North Carolina, and many local officials. I have shared with them that we will do everything in our power to help communities respond and recover.
And I've shared with them that I plan to be on the ground as soon as possible, but as soon as possible without disrupting any emergency response operations, because that must be the highest priority in the first order of business. So the Republican nominee for president taking a slightly different path, even though local officials, as the VP just mentioned, have asked both campaigns to temporarily stay away from the affected areas so that resources aren't diverted from the emergency response.
Trump went to Georgia on Monday to, quote, deliver supplies after he falsely accused the Biden administration and Democratic Governor Roy Cooper of, quote, going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas. Trump also said that Georgia Governor Brian Kemp has, quote, been having a very hard time getting the president on the phone, which was a little weird when Governor Kemp then said, he just spoke to the president on Sunday.
How shocked were you guys that Trump decided to play politics here? And by play politics, I mean, tell the most easily refuted lies. I was not surprised at all.
It is like I was trying to like, you know, Trump like moves your baseline because he's so fucking crazy. And I was like trying to remember like, well, things have happened before.
And I remember when 2004, I was an intern for the Kerry campaign. There happened to have been four hurricanes that hit Florida in that cycle.
And I went back and looked at what happened after that. And there were headlines about how there would be politics, but both the Kerry campaign and the Bush campaign were very clear, like, we're not playing politics with this.
They both talked about how privately people were worried about what the implications would be. Bush got to go be, as the AP referred to him, comforter in chief.
John Kerry waited a few days because he was listening to local authorities. And then he went down there to talk to people and meet with people.
There was a Bill Nelson was a Democratic senator from Florida toward with him saying we wanted John Kerry to come because if he becomes president, we want to understand the damage here. Kerry went to great lengths to say this is a bipartisan moment.
And so what you have is two politicians trying to make the most of it politically, if we're being honest. right there let's okay to be cynical about like some aspect of this, but understanding what they were supposed to do to like at least model being somewhat apolitical.
And like Trump just obliterates that instantly, both by going, despite even the nonpartisan mayor of that town saying we would have liked for him to come on another fucking day, give us a few days to figure out what we can, what we have to do to dig out of this, but also then make up conspiracies, show up in a Make America Great Again, have a little wall of bricks built around him to make it, it's like a, you know, a disaster photo app and it's gross. Remember there also was an expectation back in the day that candidates would even pull down attack ads or political ads generally.
I mean, there used to be so much like care and thought put into these things. And now he just makes stuff up.
Trump also said that no one expected a hurricane like this because we're after hurricane seasons. Absolutely not.
We're dead square in the middle of hurricane season. Everyone expected this to happen.
It is only Trump, too. I mean, we remember is just in 2012, right, after Hurricane Sandy and Barack Obama goes and gives Chris Christie a big hug, which, you know, hurt Chris Christie's career in the Trump era.
But like- Worst hug he's ever gotten. Like Governor Kemp, Republican governor, Democratic Governor Roy Cooper, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, they're all working together.
They're all helping each other out. And then there's Donald Trump out there just trying, like just lying.
And here's the problem too, because the, you know, there is the hurricane has disrupted power and Wi-Fi service out in Western North Carolina. There's sort of like a lack of local news coverage.
There's garbage Twitter accounts on the right and even some on the far left that are just spreading absolute lies, craziness about, like, Biden not helping. Meanwhile, there's, like, hundreds and hundreds of FEMA responders there helping out.
The federal government's doing like, the federal government signed an emergency declaration that like before the hurricane even hit just so that resources would be freed up. I mean, it's just crazy.
There's some sequencing to this too. And that's why in these times of crisis, the governors and the president have to work together because the governor makes a request and then the White House has to grant it.
And that unlocks certain authorities. And in this case, I think Biden could have gotten either an emergency declaration request or a major disaster declaration request, which unlocks even more federal government resources.
And he did the major disaster declaration. So Biden literally is doing everything he can in real time yeah it's just it's completely made up it's not this even for trump these things used to be based on like a hint of oh did he was he a little slow on something did he something there was just nothing nothing absolutely nothing yeah and there is sort of like a bottom up top down thing because like the there's a conspiratorial mindset that has taken hold on the right that is spread on social media and i noticed it like as the storm was unfolding there were already people on social media saying where's the federal government they haven't responded they're abandoning this region and you realize like okay so that is the mindset that trump has sort of i think like part of what led him to be successful and also what he feeds and then he's just ready to come right on top and to like sort of feed that worst impulse.
What do you guys think of Harris's response so far and what she should do? Obviously, it happens a lot in these situations that the local officials tell politicians not to come right away, but then the politicians don't want to be accused of looking like they don't care. So they want to go.
Yeah. I mean, I think she's doing everything she should be doing.
She got briefed by the head of FEMA. She's talked to Roy Cooper.
She went to FEMA today. I think in terms of the visit, I would just be in constant contact with Roy Cooper's office in North Carolina and figure out the earliest possible time that doesn't impede relief operations.
And you don't have to go to downtown Asheville. You could go to a county over where FEMA is staging like relief operations and go there and talk to people, hear directly from folks affected.
But I think like showing up is really, really important. I think the more complicated political question is going to be, do you go with Joe Biden? Do you go separately? Navigating that is going to be, is going to be hard.
But I also think, you know, if I were the Harris campaign, I would consider finding a bunch of really good local relief organizations and then sending an email to my list fundraising for them. And then saying to my field staff in Western North Carolina, like, all right, for the next two weeks, we're not doing campaign stuff.
You're putting on a Harris Wall shirt and you're going doing whatever relief is happening. Sandbagging, cleaning up, helping people get food, like whatever it takes, just be in the community representing the Harris Walls campaign, but do what it takes to help those people.
I think that would be pretty impactful. Yeah.
I think you go. I thought about that too, Tommy.
I think she goes with Biden. Like, I think she should go with Biden.
It's like, he said he was going to go Thursday, Friday, their president, vice president. You want, I mean, like two visits if you don't go with him too.
Yeah, no, that's why. And like, you know, they, they're, she's not afraid of of being, like they've done events together since she's been the nominee.
And it's like, it's not a political rally. So I think she's like, well, you said your name is Joe? What was it? Right, yeah.
Who's this guy? It's Bidin. I've never heard it said.
I wonder if Trump keeps this up or even now that he's already attacked them for it. like, do you at some point take a shot at Trump for doing this? Not in a way that's like, now I'm going to go after you, but just sort of like, look, we're trying to work with Republicans, Democrats.
We're trying to focus on this. And, you know, a disaster just hit people in red areas and blue areas.
And we're trying to help everyone that we, that we can, and we don't need Donald Trump exploiting people suffering and trying to divide us so he can pick up a few votes. Like people are tired of this shit kind of thing.
And I don't know if maybe Walls does that tomorrow night in the debate. I don't know if Harris does it like next week sometime.
I mean, you don't want to do it right now, but like, I kind of think you've got to call out his game at some point if you want it to get traction and to like really stop it from happening or at least stop it from affecting. Yeah, I think that's right.
I think that like sort of stepping back, like just she should just be modeling responsibility. Yeah.
I don't know. You're not saying otherwise, but like she should be modeling responsibility.
And what that looks like is not like Trump is wants to seem responsible and look responsible. So he's being irresponsible.
He cares what it looks like, not what it is. And she should just do the opposite.
And I think if she's asked a question about why she waited or something like that, I think it's like, I don't know if you like go out of your way to do it, but you respond and say, there are people that want to use this to exploit a tragedy for political gain. There are people that are thinking only about how it affects themselves.
I'm not going to do that. We're here.
We're all Democrats, Republicans. We're all here together trying to rebuild.
And like, I think she can take a shot at him that way. I think great.
Just as you know, just telling the truth. Yeah.
It's an, it gets annoying for, and I'm sure for president Biden and people in the government too, because it's like you model responsibility and then because no one ever pays attention to anything who's not affected by something, that like your model of responsibility just like doesn't, just goes unnoticed. Well, this is why I think sometimes too, it's like, you know, it's about to be October.
We're in the final sprint for this election. So it's not the time to step back and wonder, how did we get here? But like, you know, we lay at the feet of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, of any responsible elected figure, all the sins of the media environment and the crassness of our opponents.
And it's like, no, like, yeah, sometimes now, because of how social media works, a politician doing everything, like Joe Biden responding exactly the way he should still doesn't stop a Republican leader from North Carolina or from one of these states saying, where's Joe Biden? He didn't issue the response when he did exactly as he should have done in response to a request from the government. Or do you hear that reporter? He got a shouted question at the White House after he talked about everything the federal government was doing.
The reporter's like, why weren't you here commanding the response over the weekend? Biden was like, I was on the phone for two hours yesterday,

like commanding the response.

Right, so you want something to look like,

you want the wall of bricks assembled by an advanced snapper. That's right.

You want the throwing of the chicken nuggets.

Like you want that.

That's what you think.

You want something that looks like that.

You want better TV.

You want the performance of empathy.

Are we going to bomb the hurricane?

What are we talking about?

You pre-position a bunch of assets and you make sure FEMA's on top of it. You need a competent team.
That's what Joe Biden has put in place. People also make the comparison to Bush and Hurricane Katrina and the Air Force One photo op over New Orleans, which was obviously very bad, but also came on the heels of a 29-day vacation in Crawford, Texas.
That's part of why it was so bad. And then on top of that, like the FEMA administrator was a clown who had run the Arabian Horse Federation.
Remember Brownie and the state local response was terrible. And so he was blamed for like the most important thing that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris can do is make sure that people get the help they need.
Yes, and that is also the most important political move too. Yes.
Like it's the right thing to do. That's right,'s what I'm saying.
Yeah, of course. But it's also the right politics.
We should note that if Trump had his way, the federal government would be shut down right now. Very good point.
He did not succeed in his attempt to get Republicans to shut down the government. Biden signed the continuing resolution, so it'll be funded through the election.
And as a lot of Democrats have been pointing out, Project 2025 calls for breaking up and privatizing big parts of the National Weather Service, eliminating small business disaster loans, and raising the threshold for disaster declarations. Is there a policy case for Harris to make here or is that too much? I don't think you do it right now, but I do think as we talk about this in the next couple of weeks, I think referring to all of that, but also stepping back and saying, you know, local officials are saying they're not only just going to have to rebuild, they're going to have to rebuild with an eye towards being ready for future storms that are even more severe because climate change is having such an obvious impact and reminding people of the stakes around climate.
and the fact that like the investments that like the money to rebuild, the money to invest in infrastructure, like Donald Trump promised he would do it. It was Joe Biden that delivered on these things, whether it's through the infrastructure bill or through the Inflation Reduction Act.
I feel like those are all points to make. Yeah, I mean, I think there's two points I'd make.
One is that like events like this are why you need a federal government. It's the only entity in the world that has enough resources to surge assets to a place like Asheville in the near term and then rebuild in the long term.
And then I also think it's appropriate to talk about how Project 2025 wants to take the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, and the National Weather Service and fundamentally change them. They want to privatize the weather service and commercialize it.
And really like the goal here is you have a bunch of anti climate change ideologues who don't want any government data going towards making the case that climate change is real and manmade and they want to distort it. So you're going to end up with some natural gas lobbyists in charge of like the national weather service or something i think selling people telling people that is probably worthwhile they don't like our satellites pointed down they're like oh it's mission creep pointed up miami's underwater today everyone but uh wow it just must have been a freak storm and great day for kayak rentals the uh yeah yeah also so it's funny because have Project 2025, which is like the brainchild of these like extreme right wing activists who just don't want government at all.
Right. Like they don't think the federal government has a role.
Then you have Donald Trump and his view on these things is you use the federal government to help the people that you like and who like you. The Republicans.
And you screw over the people who don't support you so everything is politicized the government is politicized government power is politicized right and so sure enough like trump who's like yelling right now about how you know joe biden and is calling governor kemp whatever after hurricane matthew in 2017 hit north carolina the Trump administration denied 99 of the aid requested by democratic governor roy cooper for north carolina one of the last times north carolina had a big big disaster hit trump said no thanks all set but we all like and have amnesia but like there was this sort of like sickening reality after the after the the pandemic began where gavin newsom and and and Andrew Cuomo had to like praise the dear leader because they wanted to make sure they were getting the resources they needed in the middle of an emergency. And they knew that the actual stakes, actual empathy for what people were going through was immaterial.
Yeah. That is something, that's something to look forward to, uh, with the second Trump term disaster hits.
And you better hope that you're, uh, you live in a red, red state. Yeah.
What's, uh, no atheists in a foxhole, no libertarians in a, uh, disaster relief zone. That's there you go.
No heritage foundation staffers. We'll keep going.
Yeah, you got it. You got it.
Before we move on to other subjects, uh, we wanted to let you know that if you want to help folks affected by the storm and the flooding, uh, you can go to votesaveamerica.com slash Helene. Uh, your donation will go to some organizations that are helping on the ground right now.

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Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Kamala was born that way.
She was born that way. You got to do what you got to do.
You got to get these people back where they came from. You have no choice.
You're going to lose your culture. You're going to lose your country.
We win and when we win, we're going to prosecute people that cheat on this election. And if we can, we'll go back to the last one, too.
Oh, there's a fly. Oh, I wonder where the fly came from.
See, two years ago, I wouldn't have had a fly up here. shelves they literally the people walk in they just take everything they want they walk out of the store what the hell is going on they have to be taught now if you had one really violent day like one rough hour and i mean real rough the word will get out and it will end immediately.
End immediately. So, Lovett, you said that you know what he was suggesting with the one violent day thing.
Did he think The Purge was a documentary? So here's what I thought, what he was in his adult brain. He's pulling back old things he used to say, but not as clearly as he was able to say before.
And what I think he's talking about is something that you would hear like from a New Yorker like this would be something like, you know why there's no homeless people in front of Tiffany's? Or you know what restaurants used to do back in the day if somebody tried to steal from them? They would have somebody go out and beat the ever-loving shit out of them. And then that person would tell all their friends he didn't have to worry about it anymore.
That's why there's no homeless people over here. That's what you used to have the mob.
You used to have dirty, whatever it is. And you would dispatch these people and they would rough somebody up and they would get the word out.
That's that's that is what he's talking about there. That's sort of in his mind.
He's referencing that kind of way people would talk about crime that like you could fix this by beating somebody up and then they'll tell all their friends. You know, the Times wrote this up and just sort of stunning to read it in a straight news story, but it said, Trump has in the past urged law enforcement to be rougher when making arrests and called for the summary execution of shoplifters.
Yeah. Like, yeah, that is true.
That is what he has said before. And then the roughing up suspects thing was in a speech to police in 2017.
He also wants universal stop and frisk. He wants to deny funding for local police departments that do not implement universal stop and frisk.
I think he genuinely believes that extreme government violence is a way to prevent crime. Because he also on the international stage, he talks about Rodrigo Duterte all the time, the former president of the Philippines, whose quote-unquote war on drugs was basically just massacring people, innocent, guilty, didn't matter, thousands of them.
And he would praise him all the time, publicly, privately, in phone calls. And this is just what he thinks is what you should do.
He has proposed the death penalty for drug dealers. Like, just he wants to execute drug dealers, which is what Duterte did.
Now, do you think of any of what we just heard from Trump in that clip is moving any voters? Should Harris respond to any of it? What do you guys think? I don't think so. I mean, the most egregious thing in there was Trump referring to Kamala Harris as mentally disabled, which is, like, disgusting and offensive, but I don't think you want to make it about you.
So I don't know. I didn't hear anything there that I would jump on.
Yeah. I just like, I think you got to just put it in the bucket of like, Trump's out here spewing all this nonsense and all this craziness and all this division and all this meanness and all this cruelty.
Remember why he's doing all this. He's doing this because he's distracting from the fact that he has an incredibly unpopular agenda.
He wants to cut taxes for corporations. He wants to do a mass deportation that would disrupt our economy and cause a second Great Depression.
He wants to overturn abortion rights, even in blue states. This is what Donald Trump is promising.
So don't let the noise and don't let the bullshit and don't let the crazy ramblings fool you. He's very dangerous.
And these are the things he's going to do. I would like to watch a group of undecided voters or persuadable voters who aren't sure watching Trump talk about the one violent day, the one rough hour, the shooting shoplifters, executing.
I get that Republicans and Trump have an advantage on crime and we don't want to play on their territory. I just think that that kind of stuff is so extreme and has to do with what Trump wants to do in a second term.
And not, like you said, Tommy, like the names he's calling Kamala Harris, I wouldn't talk about that or anything like that. But I don't know.
I think this is, I think if you were convincing someone who was going into the voting booth that day, that was like a friend of yours who was wavering, you'd be like, hey, this guy's talking about fucking executing people who were arrested for dealing drugs or people who are suspected of shoplifting. He wants them to shoot.
Like, I think that's a fair data point. I think most people would watch that and think he doesn't really mean that.
He's just kidding around. He's talking.
I think, unfortunately, even if you did it with the clips of shoot the shoplifters, execute the drug dealers, all that kind of stuff. I mean, I think shoot the shoplifters and execute the drug dealers are just different categories.
I think some people might be like, yeah, maybe you think about death penalty for some drug dealers. I don't think, I think they would think he was not serious about shooting shoplifters.
And I think broadly,

people have way more

harsh views on crime

than I'm probably personally,

that we're personally

comfortable with.

And I don't know.

I just don't know

that I'd highlight it.

Yeah, I honestly,

I just don't even,

I like,

I feel so like unmoored

at this point.

Like we're at,

we're saying shit like this.

We're stuck at 48, 48 of this tiny group of people. Is this the thing that finally gets them to understand why trump is so dangerous i i really don't feel like i i know anymore like are there a group of people that are leaning towards trump that can be pulled toward kamala not because of something that kamala does but because of something at long last that trump says maybe you're right't know.
Yeah. I was talking to some of our pollsters at Focus Group folks we know, and they said, especially young people and young black and brown men, like hearing about universal stop and frisk, it's like incredibly unpopular.
And that's just police. That's a terrible policy.
That's literally just police stopping and frisking you. That's not shooting suspected shoplifters.
So I actually, I totally agree that in general, probably the views of crime at this table versus like the public's views of crimes are quite different. But I think that this is so extreme that it would be, I don't know if it moves people, but it's very unpopular.
I think if you're talking about pulling out certain parts of this, that would be like, like in the, would appeal to like a certain segment of young people that seem open to Trump. Like, sure.
Like that makes a lot of sense to me. But on the whole, on the main, like I feel like we are back into a couple of cycles of Trump's crazy in a thousand different fucking directions.
And I like worry about the 2016 effect of like, he's saying, oh, he's saying we didn't use to have flies as if immigrants brought all the flies. He's saying crazy shit about crime again.
Wait, he's making his drug dealer point again. And like, what was that? He called her mentally disabled.
And then like, I feel like I'm in a bit of a time warp. Yeah.
No, I mean, I think like, I think that, uh, you want to be on the economy. You want to be on abortion.
The only other category of Trump stuff that I sometimes think we should push a little harder on is the using government for violence. And, uh, whether it's the mass deportations, whether it's the, the shooting, the the shoplifters like this stuff is just in a category of like even like libertarian leaning republicans like you're gonna use the federal government to like like when the looting starts the shooting starts right yeah no i i was trying to take it just a second ago and i don't feel like i was i'm like struggling to do it but like i i do think that's a way to kind of, I think we like have to get, I think that that kind of gets sorted into like the Trump chaos extremism bucket.
And then there's like the Trump economy bucket. And I do think there's like a way to put them together and that we're not being clear enough with people about, like talked about this with Tim actually, cause we were talking about Trump's economic speech, which was kind of glossed over because of all the crazy shit he said, but inside of it was an actual economic speech.
And you look at what he's promising and like, it could cause a depression. It could cause a massive, massive, massive recession.
And like, we should like, that's in the reverse. That's what Donald Trump would be saying.
Why aren't we saying that? Like Donald Trump's chaos, Donald Trump is going to, when he left office, he left the country with a recession. He is promising through tariffs and mass deportations, not only tariff for millions of people, but an economic calamity.
If you want to prevent a massive economic crash caused by Donald Trump's chaos, mismanagement and extremism, like to protect the economy, you have to vote for Kamala Harris. And there's some way to kind of put those things together.
Yeah,iff thing is to i've been an advocate for going hard at the tariff for a while now it is hard for people who like lived through a first trump term i think to imagine like well why didn't he do this crazy tariff thing in the first term and what what's his motivation for doing in the second term you're going to be like i don't know he's kind of fucking crazy yeah that's like the only explanation as well and he also totally misrepresents what a tariff is. Although there's some recent Pew polling on immigration that found 56 percent of registered voters support mass deportations, including 27 percent of Harris supporters.
So it just shows you how far people have moved on immigration and why, like, Trump is only talking about it. The other thing that's interesting from Pew on crime is they they test people's feelings on crime and whether crime rates are going up or down.
And in 23 of the last 27 polls, I think that's right, people thought that crime was going up even when it was going down. So there's clearly just like so much fear of crime, mostly from the media, that it distorts views.
And I'm just not sure how it kind of cuts. Well, I definitely think you can't try to tell people, much like the economy, you can't tell people that crime is going down if they don't feel that crime is going down.
I think that's a mistake. So it seems like some of this crap from Trump was a reaction to Harris going to the border on Friday, which Dan and I previewed a bit on Friday's show.
How do you guys think she did that event? The coverage looked good. I mean, I'd like any opportunity to drive the message that there was this border security bill, a bipartisan group of lawmakers wanted to pass it and Trump tanked it because he wanted to run the issue.
I think that's just like a great message. I also thought it let her highlight her work in California going after drug cartels and drug traffickers, which I bet you zero percent of voters know about if you were just to sort of ask them in sort of an open setting.
She has gained back some ground on immigration as compared to where Biden was, but she's still losing pretty badly on the issue. And that similar, that same pupil last month found that 56% of registered voters are extremely or very concerned about the number of immigrants entering the country illegally, including 27% of her supporters.
So the same numbers as mass deportation. And so, you know, I think what I take from all of this is that her campaign has decided that she needs to look like she thinks the border is a crisis and the immediate priority.
And we're going to solve that first. And then you move to like a broader more holistic conversation about immigration policy uh and this visit was a piece of it i think the one criticism you can make is like maybe do this six months ago a year ago you do it a couple times so it doesn't get called uh just a stunt as the chyron on fox news said as we were walking in but it's worth doing i just remembered i can't remember if it was a sarah longwell focus group or one of those cable focus groups after the debate or something but there was an undecided voter or some swing voter who was like and you know i heard that she uh when she was in california she prosecuted some of these gangs these and i was like someone knows thank god get that woman on tv like that is great that's a mission accomplished there that's one Yeah, I watched, I went just, I was like, what knows about this? Thank God.
Get that woman on TV. Like, that is great.
That's a mission accomplished there. That's one.
Yeah, I watched, I went just, I was like, what does this look like if you're in Phoenix? And like, what does the border coverage look like? And the images are great. It's her walking with like police in front of the wall.
It's very kind of like law enforcement, kind of border security. I think the remarks were great.
All that was great. But you just sort of see the challenge of trying to make a dent.
We'll get to the polling, which is how challenging this media environment is. Because if you watch a local affiliate, it's images of her at the border.
Then they go to a Trump surrogate, who's basically saying she was the border czar who failed. She hasn't been here since she was elected, which is false.
And then they say, all right, well, let's cut to Kamala Harris's remarks on the border. It happened to be the part of the speech where she was doing acknowledgments.
So they cut from a Trump aide going like she's never done a thing for the border. And then it's her just applauding and like pointing at people.
And you're just like, man, it just got to Tommy's point about like doing this. It's like you just it's reps.
It's going again. It's like doing then going and doing interviews with these affiliates to talk about it more.
It's just you have to hit it over and over and over again.

Also, if you are making a speech about a policy that your supporters and your voters are excited about, they're going to spread the message and they're going to help you spread that message, which is tough to do in this media environment.

If you are going to play defense on border security, which is what she's doing.

And look, there's a lot of undecided swing voters are saying, like, I'm not sure about her on the border.

Right.

I'm not sure about her on immigration.

and then the next one. to play defense on border security, which is what she's doing.
And look, there's a lot of undecided swing voters are saying like, I'm not sure about her on the border, right? I'm not sure about her on immigration. And it's along with the economy.
Those are the two things holding a lot of these voters back. But it's just like, you're not going to get a bunch of your supporters to go and be like, look at her on the border.
It was so exciting. She was really tough on border security.
Like, it's just a hard thing to get out there. Right.
It's like you're trying to like you're trying to beat him on temperament and extremism. You're trying to beat him on abortion and try to fight to a draw on the economy.
And you're trying to like mitigate your losses on immigration. Like to Tommy's point about why mass deportation polls so well, there's no conversation about whether or not there should be a mass deportation.
It's people saying, well, yeah, I do agree that there's a huge problem at the border. Or the impact of it.
Or the impact about it. And so- Yeah, you show people videos of federal agents raiding offices and homes.
I think they're not as excited about it. But then what happens is Donald Trump's out there saying, this is what we need.
This is how we'll solve the problem. Correctly, the Harris campaign is saying, let's talk about border security.
Let's talk about Trump killing the bill. Let's talk about a better immigration system.
And then there's no actual debate about this heinous and terrible policy. As you said, Lovett, we keep getting more polls.
They keep showing that the race is more tied than the last polls. That's possible.
New York Times-Siena, once again, Saturday morning, we all get up and more New York Times Siena polls. Harris leads 49-47 in Wisconsin, 48-47 in Michigan.
There was a Fox News poll out on Friday that had Harris up two in Pennsylvania, but tied among likely voters. Blah, blah, blah.
It's all the same. Are we just stuck here until Election Day? Is this what's going to happen? Yeah.
Feels like it. In my dark moments, I wonder if we spend years of our lives and billions of dollars on campaigns and in the end what really matters is like the meta media narrative at the last week or last week yeah you know uh it's like the late deciders and where they break it's made me worry tommy to that point that like the trump people know this because that's how they won in 16 and they're just like waiting to just throw some kind of shit at the wall in the last two weeks come on jim comey yeah what are you up to they'll make what they don't have to they don't have to he doesn't have to have a kernel of truth they're just gonna like throw shit yeah i will say like even if what you're saying is true let's that the campaigns create the space for that that like final two weeks to unfold i also like i just i think we don't know Like, I think it's very possible that the race is frozen and like the very, like no campaign is perfect, but like Kamala Harris is like doing what she is supposed to do.
What like her, like she has very smart people around her. They are running an enthusiastic campaign.
They're doing everything they're supposed to do. Trump is selling fucking watches and careening through disaster sites.
And yet they're tied. Launching and they're tied a genuine like i think there's the the race could be genuinely tied and this politics is all going through like the information mandolin and like ending up as shredded on the bottom that's possible it's also possible that these polls are accurate but it's just very hard to measure the like shifts between leaners shifts in enthusiasm tiny shifts amongst undecided voters that even if the polls are creating an accurate picture of what's happening, they're not able to measure these subtle and qualitative differences, which you do see in focus groups.
Right. There is a difference in the focus groups between how they talked about Biden versus Trump versus how they talk about Harris versus Trump.

And that would just be hard to measure. The other is that like all of this polling, like we may we may discover after this election that the ways in which they were trying to correct for errors after 2016 and 2020 created totally weird results because those were weird elections between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, between Joe Biden and Donald Trump during a pandemic.

And now this election where we finally have a candidate, a lot of people are enthusiastic about.

Finally, a normal election.

Well, it's like so between between a vice president. president the answer is who knows the answer is who knows but that but we just won't know till after i know i'm saying and that was a joke in my dark moments i think that i i obviously registering voters matters gotv matters but ultimately like we're talking about 10 of the population it's undecided and trying to convince them and it's just it sucks and again i like i, I think people, you hear undecided and you think that those people are all torn between the two candidates and they're just checked out.
A lot of them are checked out. And, you know, I just, Alex Wagner did a focus group of Michigan voters, uh, last week and just hearing some of them, you could, it's so funny because you can tell the difference between the voters who've been paying attention to this race and they talk about the convention speech or trump did this and then the other ones are just like i haven't looked enough about kamala harris i know she's a new candidate i got to check it out i do remember i had more money in my pocket when trump was president but i don't know he seems kind of crazy i mean you just hear the same shit and they're gonna they are gonna tune in those last couple weeks yeah michigan numbers or people are't like this Michigan numbers.
Or people are going to, you know, knock on their doors and or the campaign's going to be on the ground. You're going to have an organizer.
They're going to hear from a volunteer. And again, one conversation is not going to do it, but if they're going to start thinking, okay, I got some new information from that person.
That's interesting. I do think that because the race has been so static and because it's so close, like it's hard to know the difference between are there just a group of people that are very hard to persuade or are they being persuaded and it's just not showing up in the numbers? And we just don't know.
It's very hard to measure. Let's give them a little hot war in Lebanon.
Close this thing out. Close strong.
Some more chaos and death and destruction overseas. Maybe shovel some cash over there.
Can't you fix that? That's supposed to be your other podcast. Rhodes is working on it.
Rhodes is working on it. He's doing his thing.
God, I'm not doing my joke. I know the joke and I was going to do it too.
We didn't. Nope.
There is one more quote unquote big moment left on the calendar. Tuesday night's VP debate, J.D.
Vance and Tim Walls will meet on stage at CBS's studios in New York at 9pm Eastern. Like the Harris-Trump debate, it'll be 90 minutes with no audience.
Unlike the Harris-Trump debate, both candidates' mics will be on the entire time. The moderators are Nora O'Donnell and Margaret Brennan.
We know that Pete Buttigieg has been playing Vance in Walls' debate prep sessions, and that Minnesota Congressman Tom Emmer has been playing Walls in Vance's sessions. The Walls team has been trying to set expectations with leaks about Walls being nervous and not a great debater.
The RNC did a preview call about the debate and teased that Vance will call Walls Traitor Tim for allegedly abandoning his National Guard unit when they went to Iraq. So is it going to be Traitor Tampon Tim or Tampon Traitor Tim? Or are they going to just drop tampon? Oh, good question.
It's tough. Yeah.
Traitor. So great.
Actually, great. That's good.
They should do that. What a prick.
How are you guys feeling about the expectation setting? Do you buy the expectation setting? Do you not? What do you think? I'm a little nervous. I watched some of Tim Walz's Minnesota public radio debate from last year against Scott Jensen.
Barnburner? You heard of Scott Jensen. It wasn't great.
He seemed pretty nervous. He was a little gruff.
Got a little defensive. The answers weren't always totally smooth or coherent.
And so, you know, he's probably doing exponentially more prep this time than last time. But, you know, the stakes are a lot higher.
And Tim Walls hasn't been doing any interviews. Like, the lack of reps could make him rusty.
He's now defending Kamala Harris's record, something he learned about for the first time two months ago like think about how complicated that is you're not you're not like defending your own legislative record or time as governor which you know inside and out you're talking about this person you you barely knew three months ago as opposed to jd vance who's been doing fucking mop-up duty for donald trump for four years publicly while attacking him privately and so i like like JD, again, he's been out there, he's doing press conferences, he's doing hostile interviews. They're not always good.
He's not always helping the cause, but he's got a lot of reps and he's an obnoxious, like slippery little shit who is kind of good at this stuff. Yeah.
I think a Socratic, a Socratic forum is a good forum for JD Vance. JD Vance is better in one-on-one interviews that are interviews that are contentious with a national news reporter than he is on the stump or talking to someone trying to sell him a donut.
He's better in the green room. He's better in well-lit environments.
He's a green room creature, and I do worry about that. What I was thinking about this debate was actually the John Edwards, I don't know why it's 2004 for me right now i don't know what came out of the time capsule do you support the surge yeah so the reason i was thinking like let me tell you about the last time i remember a disaster relief situation in politics 2004.
i do well so this is a coincidence but the reason i was thinking about 2004 is because um you know dick cheney had become like kind of like was had this reputation of political a political hero. Yeah, sure.
Became this sort of like, you know, this political Darth Vader and John Edwards was this charming lawyer. And then they had this debate where they kind of folks eat it up and had a really kind of mild mannered good time.
And I think it redounded to Dick Cheney's benefit because John Edwards made Dick Cheney seem like a normal person in that debate. Yeah.
And the only thing I remember from it is him kind of really awkwardly being like, your daughter, who is a lesbian. Yeah, that was a weird moment.
What are you doing, John? But Dick Cheney came out well out of that debate. And I was a little worried about that.
Tim Waltz is going to kind of end up in this sort of folksy conversation with J.D. Vance.
And J.D. Vance comes away looking vaguely normal because he's in conversation with a normal guy.
That was my concern. But the fact that they're previewing this traitor thing, I think that's fucking great.
like the more J.D. Vance and J.D.
Vance comes away looking vaguely normal because he's in conversation with a normal guy. That was my concern.

But the fact that they're previewing this traitor thing, I think that's fucking great. Like the more J.D.
Vance is coming after Tim Walls and Tim Walls can just be like, I'm proud of my service to my country. Let's talk about Donald Trump.
Let's talk about Kamala Harris. I think the better.
And I think that would be a pretty stupid strategy. Real waste of time.
J.D. Vance, which makes me think it's a head fake, but who knows? Who knows? I do.
I buy the spin from the Walls camp. Someone in the CNN piece about this recalls Walls saying,

I think at a fundraiser,

as teachers, we're trained to answer the question

and we train our students to answer the questions.

That's not how this goes.

Barack Obama, also a teacher, felt the same way.

He was not always great at debates.

Kamala Harris was a prosecutor.

That's like, debates are more her style,

like the way that you prepare for trial, you know? So I do, I worry a little bit, you know, about, about walls, but I don't know, maybe he's practiced a bunch and maybe Pete really gave it to him good. And now he's, he's all ready.
And then had the debate prep. Okay.
Jesus. Tom thought it.
I don't know if Tommy thought it. I can see what Tommy thought it I don't have the permission structure to say anything I also was texting with some people on the Walls team like are you ready to dominate and they're like you know not quite how we're feeling but we're making progress so they're playing things down publicly and practically and then there's a piece do you guys read the piece in the New York Times about J.D.
Vance and his past debates that like an expectations uh razor that was yeah it's like the walls campaign placed it but it was like basically all about how great how jd vance was like made for debates just like what you said you know and apparently in hillbilly elegy he talked about how he uh in the marines he did media relations for the marines yeah he's a combat correspondent the experience taught me a valuable lesson that i could do I could work 20 hour days when I had to, I could speak clearly and confidently with TV cameras shoved in my face. So this is a guy who's been like practicing doing this for a long time.
And you're right. Like I think interacting with humans sort of tough, but like a debate stage, white nationalist podcasts and great preparation for a debate.
And I think the smarter strategy for JD VD. Vance than the traitor Tim stuff would be to run the play that Donald Trump was supposed to run at the Harris-Trump debate and forget about Tim Walls and make Tim Walls answer for like Kamala Harris and all of the unpopular parts of the Biden-Harris record and her stuff.
Like that's what I bet he'll do. Yeah, what's confusing, though, about J.D.
V jd vance is like he seems smart enough to know that and then he goes on social media and like starts bickering with reporters all day so yeah there's an angel and devil on his shoulder well and they're both assholes talking worst angel you'd ever fucking meet he's such a weirdo you know you could see him getting triggered by um nora and margaret too because he's like these these they're just like shouting questions at him and he just he already has an antagonistic relationship with every reporter and so i could see him yeah i got real mad at dana bash yep i could see that too if you were walls would you go after him for uh the shitty things he said or would you keep it all about trump i was thinking about this over the weekend. And I think the one place I would kind of go after JD Vance repeatedly is be like, JD, I was a teacher for many years.
I had a lot of students like you, like kids who were in a hurry to make a name for themselves and be someone. And they were willing to say and do anything to get there.
Like, that's how you end up being the attack dog for a guy who doesn't care about working people who in 2020, you said had failed to deliver as president in a DM. And now you're running around the country, you know, telling lies and trying to divide the country.
And then you try to like create this narrative around JD that becomes a motive for everything he says and kind of undercuts him and sort of gets at his lack of qualifications for the jobs. Maybe you slip in a couple of lines about how old Trump is, but yeah, no, I don't think you're going after the greatest oppo hits.
Like maybe you're mentioning some of the top ones, like childless cat ladies or lying about migrants in Ohio. But yeah, I mean, most of this is going to be just the Trump show and making him defend Trump.
Couldn't agree more though. That is a great, that's a great strategy to have like one motivation for J.D.
Vance and his career and to just like keep coming back to that, right? Which is just trying to do anything to get more power. Yeah, I do think using the new stuff about the 2020, like even after Donald Trump's presidency, you were saying these things, which is new and he'll feel obligated to respond.
And his response is pretty bad. I don't, I don't know if we've, do we cover this on this show? I think just so everyone knows what we're talking about.
There was a Washington Post story about this, that JD Vance was a direct messaging on Twitter with someone where he said, uh, in 2020 that Trump quote, thoroughly failed to deliver on, uh, economic populism. Yep.
And, uh, so I pretty damning, one of the more damning, uhD. Vance quotes.
Even more damning. That line was followed by parenthetical accepting a disjointed China policy.
Who says accepting? J.D. Vance.
J.D. Vance.
Go back to Yale. Yeah.
I do think that's like pretty damning. And his defense is like I was saying how establishment Republicans let him down which is sort of embarrassing.
Okay, buddy. But he'll feel obligated because he'll know trump is watching oh god yeah and so i have to respond so have to respond the only if i was walls i would look for i mean that's one opportunity but other opportunities to drive a wedge between trump and vance um with either different positions they've had or remember when vance fucked up by saying uh that donald trump would veto a national abortion ban and trump said i never told him that right like i would i would look for hammer him on that that's for sure and know that trump's watching and try to get make him be a supplicant for trump and just embarrass himself like i think that's yeah this is a real audience of one situation for uh for jd uh what's a win for walls look like it's like a relentless message about trump being in this for himself and not working people and then just getting jd on defense yeah i think i think a draw is a win do no harm and yeah and just saying how great kamala is and her record and her you know her plans and everything like that i mean because again she i would say the only missed opportunity not really missed because she didn't have the time, but in the last debate, she didn't get to talk as much about her plans, her policies, her values, stuff like that.
She did, but I think that Walls could probably do that for her even better because he's essentially a surrogate for her and not just her bragging. Yeah, she went back to like aspirations and ambitions, but she didn't go back to the details that much.
Yeah, I think a win will be a debate in which it felt like Tim Waltz was kind of putting J.D. It's very similar.
It's sort of a mirror image of Trump. J.D.
Vance is going to be a smarter, more sophisticated kind of bulldozer coming at him. But like kind of being able to put that aside and letting him get himself riled up while talking to the camera and like kind of he comes away kind of seeming kind of nonplussed.
Is that the right way of using nonplussed? Yeah, sure. And Vance seems rattled, seems angry.
How much is this going to matter? You think the whole race is going to be upended if Wallace does bad or does well? I wonder, what's the worst VP debate performance? It's a good question. I mean, Sarah Palin even did fine, right? Yeah.
They're usually non-events. No one cares.
It is weird that it could be the last big event before voting, but no one will remember it by the time they're actually on election day. You know, it could cost a few news cycles to one side or the other, but maybe a, I don't even know.
If the debate between Harris and Trump didn't seem to move anything I know I know right like I don't know yeah this is gonna be the thing this will be the yeah no I don't know when we come back from the break you're gonna hear my conversation with the one and only James Carville two quick things before we do that for tonight's VP debate we're gonna be hosting a subscriber live chat starting at 9pm Eastern 6pm Pacific on our Discord.m. Pacific on our Discord server.
You'll be able to watch the debate live, chat with fellow Crooked listeners, and vent about J.D. Vance's awfulness in real time.
Not a friend of the pod yet? Sign up now at crooked.com slash friends. We'll be doing our own recap show after the debate ends, but also make sure you're subscribed to our daily news pod, What a Day.
You'll wake up with a 20-minute overview of the highs and lows of the the walls vance showdown best of all tommy's going to be joining jane coastin for the episode oh yeah i can't wait nice it's very fun it's a tradition like any other me going on wad after debates there you go when we come back james carville If you love a Carl's Jr. Western Bacon Cheeseburger,

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Joining us in studio today. He's the subject of a new CNN documentary coming out this weekend called Carville, Winning is Everything Stupid.
The legendary Democratic strategist who inspired a generation of hacks like me to get into politics. James Carville.
James, welcome to the pod. Well, thank you.
I'm excited to be here. It's always good to have a conversation with another hack.
That's right. That's right.
So since Kamala Harris became the nominee,

we've had a convention, a debate,

millions in ads, saturated media coverage,

and basically nonstop polling that shows a race

that is essentially tied with five weeks to go.

I know the last few elections have been pretty close,

so this isn't unusual.

I can't remember a race where the polling has been

this tight for this long. What do you think is going on? Well, first of all, in this century, the only candidate that woke up election morning knowing they were going to win was Obama 2008.
We were still a little nervous, but it was you kind of knew. It was a good lead, yeah.

But everything else, you might have thought you were in a little better shape, but you

didn't know.

Right.

You certainly didn't know in 2005.

I mean, Romney was actually shocked that he lost.

I mean, it was like he went there thinking he was going to win.

Yeah.

So it's not unusual.

And what I will say, they're usually breaking in.

So if there's seven swing states, the most unlikely result is they break four or three. They're going to break.
Altogether. More likely than not.
My instinct, but it's nothing but instinct, it's Kentucky windage, that it'll break Harris's way. But that's only instinct.
There's no evidence to support that. Were you surprised at how fast the party came together around her candidacy and how fast her favorability ratings went up? No.
I think it was clear that people just wanted something different. It was like, well, 72% wanted something different.
60% of the Democrats did. And you know what I would, the analogy I would use is that if you have an infected wisdom tooth and they pull it, you feel great.
you don't feel any better than you'd have felt if you didn't have the wisdom tooth. The fact that the wisdom tooth is gone, you're like, gee, I'm on top of the world now.

And... You feel great.
You don't feel any better than you'd have felt if you didn't have the wisdom tooth. The fact that the wisdom tooth is gone, you're like, gee, I'm on top of the world now.
And I think you had some of that effect. Like in the way that it was 1245 central time, almost a minute when I got the first text.
And by I was listening to, you know, political radio. I forgot what it was.
In our, at 1.45 Central, you knew that they'd already called us, that there was no appetite for anything else. Yeah.
Were you worried at all that, because I know you were initially concerned that it would appear either she was anointed by the party or even another Democratic nominee.

And look, she did earn the nomination, but there was no other challengers, about 24 hours. Yeah, you know, Simon, if President Biden would have dropped out June the 15th, there might have been a lot of – One of the things that I do believe, that the level of talent in the current Democratic Party is the highest level of talent I've seen in a political party in my lifetime.
I mean, if you look at the potential presidential candidates we had, they're all really world-class talent. And Harris has kind of proved herself to be a lot better than people thought.

The other thing that I would have people tell me that, you know, she's gotten a lot better.

I'd like people working at the White House.

She's become more confident.

She has better staff work.

I think they brought Lorraine in.

So I'm gratified.

I didn't, you know, if I saw her 2000 presidential campaign, ooh, man, I think stunk. But she's grown.
She has. She really has.
It feels like Trump and Kamala are in a battle for voters' attention, which is increasingly harder to come by these days, the state of the media. I think it's one big reason that the Harris folks really want a second debate.
So far, Trump's not giving it to them. What do you think her campaign can do to break through in these last few weeks? Any creative ideas to grab people's attention? The answer is yes.
Okay. First of all, what they do is they do big events very well.
The vice president will roll out. You could say maybe it should have picked Shapiro.
picture bureau i don't know but it was very well done the convention you couldn't walk away from there and not say it's one of the better conventions you ever had you certainly couldn't walk away from the debate and not say that they did did a real good job in preparing her i kind of i knew some of the people that were in prep but i and I was really very confident she was going to do well. What is less certain is how aggressive they are day to day and how they don't take a story and kick it.
So Trump says, I don't like to pay people a minimum wage. I just don't pay them.
I mean, overtime. Overtime.
And Project 2025 has this overtime provision. I wish they would be kicking the crap out of this all day.
I wish they were, like, flooding TV. Like, come on, people work overtime.
They want to get paid. You know, hourly workers, overtime is everything to them.
So I thought that they could kick that a lot harder. And what I hope that they do coming down the stretch is push a story every day.
And a lot of it is just the stuff they're proposing on taxes, people don't like. The other one they should be just kicking the crap out of is the tariff stuff.
You see we're down four in Iowa. That's understandable.
Agrarian people can't stand tariffs. They have a terrible – industrial people, some are naive enough to think they're going to do some good.
I think they should be pushing the Peterson Institute, which, okay, nobody knows what it is, we know, but it's all credible people say this is going to be a $2,500, $3,000 on every family. I wish they would push that harder.
Yeah. It seems like, I mean, this has been a problem for years now, but Trump gives you so many different targets every day because he says a bunch of crazy shit all the time.
She has the added challenge of voters saying, well, I want to know more about her. I want to know what she's going to do as president.
But then you've got Trump up there saying he's talking about the tariffs, he's talking about mass deportations, political prosecutions. He just talked about going after shoplifting by letting police do whatever they want for one rough hour.
How do you think she should balance talking about herself and talking about him? How do you handle that? So I think that if she ran hard, if they pushed the tariff stuff, people would find out something about her. I think if they pushed the overtime stuff, if they pushed something simple that everybody is for, but they just don't do, the minimum wage.
It's time to give America a raise. Everybody else in the world has gotten a raise, but America's not got a raise.
And I read a New York Times story. It's so predictable.
She did the interview with, I guess, Stephanie Ruhle. And of course, it's that same pissy thing.
Well, she really didn't say anything. There was a lack of specificity.
Hidden in the story was the fact that she'd put out an 81-page economic plan. Yeah.
Like, why didn't – so we had – in 92, we had an 85-page economic plan. No one ever read a word of it, including me.
But there is actually, well, she lacks specifics. She's not talking about the issues in any depth.
It's just this bromides. Well, actually, she does have an 81-page economic plan.
There's no danger that I'm going to read it. But I think if people knew that, you have to say, check out the 81-page economic plan.
On page 32, she says, we need to increase the minimum wage to $12.85 an hour. Pretty good.
Or we need to raise taxes on people who make over $400,000 and put it in a first-time home buyer mortgage relief fund to help young people buy houses. Anything like that you know is going to be massively popular.
It pointed out, but The New York Times is never going to say that she has economic specificity. Right.
Because you always say that no matter what. Yeah, and when she does interviews too, she can answer questions by saying, oh, want to know more i have this whole i have this whole book out there and by the way here's what trump wants to do right yeah yeah so they there are i i do i do think they can be more aggressive i think they can fight for the news cycle uh and i think that is you know you don't get the back where one day you get a bunch of good stories and you poll that night and you say well shit we didn't move you got to keep building stuff up so polling shows a big gender gap uh including and especially between young women and young men white men hispanic men even black men um It's been like the big demographic debate of 2024.
Do you think this is a dynamic that is specific to Trump and the current version of the Democratic Party? Or is it bigger than that? How do you think about it? Well, I've been pretty outspoken. We don't do as well, near as well with males as I think you can do.
And John, you know that every election brings about a fashionable demographic. Nice-core dads, soccer moms, women of color.
I think that the demographic in this cycle with the most elasticity is in, that'll get in trouble saying this in some quarters, but are college-educated white males. I think we have a lot of, why do I say that? First of all, they tend to be more pro-choice than non-college white males.
You know, I'm sorry, but we have mothers, wives, children, friends. But so much of this has become that abortion is a women's issue.
It's actually somewhat of a male issue too. And the other reason I think that there's upside is, you know, because of obvious reasons, they're more invested in the stock market.
They have more to lose. So I do think we have some, we can't do any better than we're doing in post bachelor white women.
But we certainly can do better with younger black males. That's a problem that I think to large, you said our cultures help create that.
But I think the trendy demographic are college white males. And what do you think is the best way to lock down college white males? Keep talking about abortion.
Keep talking about freedom. And say that Trump says, the argument is, is it a good economy or bad economy? And it's very hard to talk people into something that they don't believe.
But Trump gave us a tremendous opening. He says, you have nothing to lose.
We're going to try everything because it's all in a toilet. I don't think people look at it that way.
I think people say, well, yeah, I got a job. I think most people, if you say, yeah, I feel pretty good about the next year, a year and a half.
You know, some people may have a savings account. You know, maybe they're doing a little better.
So if the question is, is it good or bad, that's not the question we should be asking. Do you have something to lose in this? Can you do better? Yes.
But if we do things like start slapping tariffs on everything, we're not going to do very well. You have something to lose and he keeps running these ads, what the hell you got to lose?

Actually, a fair amount. Yeah.
And it's not just people like you and I that have something to lose. A pipe fitter has something to lose.
Yeah. I mean, that guy, Joshi, is going down to the union hall and you got work every day.
Yeah. I know you've taken your share of shit for warning Democrats about identity politics and woke language and all that.
I've always wondered about this from the perspective of Democratic politicians, like 99% of whom don't actually talk like that. They get tagged as, you know, woke party because of activists and people on social media that they have very little control over.
If you're a democratic politician or working for one, what do you do about this issue? Well, first of all, no one uses that language. I mean, they just don't.
And it started and it was like an idea that never caught on. So there's no chance that, you know, I tell people, and this is true, I, you saw the film, I probably had more encounters with black people than any Democratic consultant, just where I grew up and where I live.
And if I saw, like, which I see all the time, it's just to say there's three black guys shooting the bull out in front of the supermarket. If I walked up and I said, good morning, fellas.
How are things in the community of color today? I said, what's this giant ass motherfucker talking about? Okay. You wouldn't know what I was saying.
And I think it was well-intentioned people that just made a giant mistake. And they tried to lead and no one followed them.
And the best thing we can do is just move on. And we don't need to go remind NPR that no one talks like that.
Everybody knows no one talks like that anymore. there's no danger that Adam Schiff is going to be running for Senate in California and start talking about Latinx or something.
It's just not going to happen. There's no value in that.
I love the documentary focuses on your life your career your marriage a good chunk of it is also about your your very vocal push to get Biden to step aside which was a bit of a lonely crusade

before the debate I know that you probably weren't too concerned with the criticism you received during that period. There is a moment in the doc where you worry aloud about becoming one of those people you used to hate, the goddamn carping Democratic pundits who were never satisfied.
But how do you think about giving advice that's still pertinent and persuasive, even though you're not working inside these campaigns like you used to? So you and I work in campaigns, and you would see people on television. Son of a bitch has no idea what he's talking about.
We're sitting there 16 hours a day trying to crank out a schedule, trying to get spots written and talking points pushed and doing local TV hits. And this asshole's popping off.
And I always—so here he says, well, yeah, that guy is sitting there and knocking down $35,000 of speech and sitting on TV.

And I've always hated that kind of person.

Yeah.

And that's so true that I had become that which I had always detested.

But I just didn't, because I was old.

If you see the documentary, it's pretty clear that I'm in the midst of the aging process. I had, like you, I had maybe a better view, but we have an idea of what the job entails.
It's not easy. And I had a platform.
I kept, and I thought it. I'd talked to a lot of people about it.
I thought about it myself. I just didn't think I had any other choice.
Just given the unique circumstances, maybe if somebody got really vocal, they would cut guests off from you. Or if you were lobbying, or you've had other campaigns you were working on.
Or even if you were working on foreign campaigns, they'd call the government of Nigeria and say, you know, if you don't get rid of this son of a bitch, you're not getting something. I mean, but there was no pressure point that could be applied to me.
And I just thought I was in a unique situation. I don't blame other people.
And I would have people would say, God, I wish I could say that, but I can't. I said, I understand.
It's not. Yeah.
I couldn't have said this 15 years ago. Right.
All right. But you can do it now.
But I can do it now. I'm sure you get asked a lot by young people for advice, especially people who are interested in pursuing a career in politics.
I know one of the reasons you really wanted to do this doc or what you hoped from this doc was to get young people involved in politics again. What do you say to people who ask? Well, the origins of the doc was Susan McHugh, who was kind of a friend.
We hadn't done it. I think it was post-pandemic.
And she said, you know, I was a student at Rutgers and I saw the water. I mean, she became Harry Reid's Chief of Staff at 30 years old.
And Susan's just one of these like uber-connected people. And she said, I want to make another documentary because I want to.
And that was really the kind of origin of what started it. And, you know, whatever you call this, the profession, the business, the industry, it's taken a lot of hits.
So a young person says, everybody says it's dirty, it's all negative, it's all polarized, everybody's in it for themselves. And guess what? That message actually broke through.
They were actually successful in convincing people that this was a shitty business that shitty people were in. And that's just not people like you and I that work in campaigns.
It's people who every election, Ms. Mabel, who sits there at the card table and checks off the list, that's the person that walks the precinct, that goes that goes into the projects to flush it and goes to get the votes out.
It's also the local newscaster that covers politics. It's the people that write about politics in the entire business.
And to the extent that this movie lives beyond the cycle, which I hope it does, I hope it gives people like, you know what? Those people look like they were having a pretty good time. It didn't look like they went to work with a half shirt on.
They were particularly embarrassed by the way they earned a living. And I think, Matt, the advantage we had was our director actually like worked, was a gopher in the Mondale campaign, was Susan Estrich's kind of assistant in the 88 Dukakis campaign, and covered politics at Manitifair.
So he actually had some idea because most people think, what kind of carnival barkers, itinerant people, vagabonds, they move from one place to another. And I hope some young John Favreau says, you know, nothing to do.
Or some young Susan McHugh says, well, shit, maybe I want to be chief of staff to when I'm 30 years old and be some Irish woman from what the Rutgers.

That's fine.

I mean, I was a kid when I first saw the War Room.

And to this day, I can still remember your line that at the end, outside of a person's love, the most sacred thing they can give is their labor. And anytime you can combine labor and love, you've made a merger.
Because that was the moment. That was the first moment I thought about getting into politics.
So thank you for that. Well, thank you for that.
Actually, you know, that's what I hope we're able to do with this movie. I mean, that's my hope is that, you know, 30 years from now, somebody says, you know, I got out of UCLA and I got an offer, but I thought I'd maybe run for the Sewage and Water Commission.
Who would have ever thought that one day I would be the governor of California? There you go. I don't know, yeah.
The doc is fantastic.

It's called Carville, Winning is Everything Stupid.

Directed by Matt Turnhour, premieres on CNN on Saturday, October 5th,

and in theaters in New York, L.A., and other spots across the country.

James Carville, thanks for coming on Pod Save America.

Thank you, and thank you for your current words about the war room inspiring you.

And I hope this will inspire somebody else.

Thank you so much. Me war room inspiring you.
And I hope this, I hope this will inspire somebody else. Thank you so much.
Thank you. That's our show for today.
Thanks again to James Carville for coming by. We'll have our VP debate reaction show in your feed tomorrow morning.
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