Harris Denounces Trump's Pet-Eating Conspiracy

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Speaker 3 Welcome to Pot Save America.

Speaker 4 I'm Dan Pfeiffer. And I'm Adisu D'Amissi.

Speaker 3 We are here for a rare all-bay area show. We are in person in Oakland.
Yeah. And we are getting Bay Area weather today.
I have a sweatshirt on for the first time in months.

Speaker 4 60 degrees and rainy for the first time. It is.
Fall has come to the Bay Area.

Speaker 3 It is. It feels like election time.

Speaker 4 Hey, it's fall.

Speaker 3 Actually, is today's what?

Speaker 4 I think. I think it's one day left, technically of summer.
Last day of summer with everybody here.

Speaker 3 Okay, Adee, so it's always great to have you on the show, but this is an especially good time to do so because we are less than 50 days to go.

Speaker 3 And it seems like the right moment we can get together and talk about where the race stands, how things are going, what the polls say, and what the electoral map looks like.

Speaker 3 But let's start with the news.

Speaker 3 Now that the debate has come and gone, and it doesn't feel like there's going to be another one, the Harris campaign is trying its next best option to catch voters' attention and drive contrast.

Speaker 3 As the New York Times noted on Tuesday, that doesn't necessarily mean a bunch of interviews with networks, or at least as many interviews as the news networks would like.

Speaker 3 The campaign's focus is going to be more on local media and other outlets that reach key target demographics, like Harris's interview on Tuesday with reporters from the National Association of Black Journalists in Philadelphia.

Speaker 3 Let's take a listen to see how it went.

Speaker 5 We had then a lot of work to do to clean up a mess.

Speaker 5 As of today, we have created over 16 million new jobs, over 800,000 new manufacturing jobs. We have the lowest black unemployment rate in generations.
Is the price of grocery still too high? Yes.

Speaker 5 Do we have more work to do? Yes. So I don't know if anyone here has heard most recently recently the stories out of Georgia.

Speaker 5 Tragic story

Speaker 5 about a young woman who died

Speaker 5 because it appears the people who should have given her health care were afraid they'd be criminalized after the Dobbs decision came down.

Speaker 5 I'm working to earn the vote, not assuming I'm going to have it because I am black, but because the policies and the perspectives I have.

Speaker 7 Why Why is joy important to you to insert into this election? And what do you make of

Speaker 7 Republicans using that as a way to suggest that you're not a serious candidate?

Speaker 5 Well, sometimes I think, and I'll say to whoever the young people are who are watching this, there are some times when your adversaries will try and turn your strength into a weakness.

Speaker 8 Don't you let them.

Speaker 5 Don't you let them.

Speaker 3 How do you think she did?

Speaker 4 I think it was phenomenally good on both substance and politics. You know,

Speaker 4 the contrast with Trump from two months ago was pretty clear to anybody who

Speaker 3 has eyes and has ears.

Speaker 4 But she also answered

Speaker 4 the questions, I think, directly and even made a little news.

Speaker 4 I don't think we played the clip about the 7% childcare cap that she proposed, but that was news, at least to me. But I think what's most important is what she said there at the end.

Speaker 4 She realizes she has to earn everybody's vote.

Speaker 4 Even though she's black, she has to earn black people's vote. Even though she's a woman, she has to earn women's votes.
And kudos to her for saying it out loud,

Speaker 4 naming the issue directly and acknowledging that she's got work to do because

Speaker 4 the case that she made yesterday economically, I think, was as forceful as I've seen her do it since that North Carolina speech right before the convention.

Speaker 4 And to the extent there's work to do with black voters, and I think all voters, it largely has to do with persuading people that she's going to fight for them and their pocketbook.

Speaker 4 And so I think it was pretty much a home run. And she's

Speaker 4 continues to walk that tightrope and hit home runs every time she's out there. 47 more days.
Let's see how she's going to be doing it.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I thought she did really well. It's a really hard format.
These are three very good journalists.

Speaker 3 You're just in a room.

Speaker 3 If you watch the video, a lot of reaction. Not a lot of reaction.
There's not really, there's not an audience cheering. There's one on three is a tough dynamic.

Speaker 3 The room itself looked like a local cable access access show from

Speaker 3 like the 1980s. And she, and they were all tough questions and they, and people had follow-ups.
And so she handled that very well. I agree.
The economic answer was very good.

Speaker 3 She, it was, I think, very important, as you pointed out, that she very directly talked about the need to win.

Speaker 3 And she's specifically talking about young black men's votes in there and talking about that and hit all the marks there.

Speaker 3 I think for the campaign, an important thing going forward, we're going to talk a little bit more about their media strategy, is to view these interviews not just as something to endure, a test to pass, but as an opportunity to communicate with voters and deliver a message.

Speaker 3 Because she's very good. She is very good when she is out there.
All the research I've seen shows that the more people see her, the more they like her.

Speaker 3 And so she's got to be out there a lot.

Speaker 3 And she did an interview last week with the local Philly ABC affiliate, biggest TV station in the most, probably the most important market in the entire election.

Speaker 3 And she did totally fine there too, did good. But there's going going to be more and more of that going forward.
And so I think, I think that is, that is good.

Speaker 3 And so, and I think there's, you know, the reason why she wants a second debate is because she wants that split screen.

Speaker 3 And if you can't get the second debate, the best split screen you can get is to go to the same place where Donald Trump melted down in the most embarrassing fashion a few weeks ago, for people who don't remember.

Speaker 3 That's the event in Chicago, I believe it was, where Trump had his campaign had to end the interview early because he was doing so terrible. It's where he questioned Harris's racial identity.

Speaker 3 He acted like a complete lunatic. And so to the extent this is going to get coverage outside of that Philadelphia market and outside of Black Press, it's going to be

Speaker 4 the contrast.

Speaker 3 And that's very much to her advantage.

Speaker 4 Yeah. And I think these interviews in general, I mean, I know we're going to talk a little bit more about this, but.

Speaker 4 She now has some batting practice, you know,

Speaker 4 with the CNN Dana Bash interview, with the debate, obviously, and the debate prep she went through. And so, and also six weeks or whatever it's been now, eight weeks of her being the nominee.

Speaker 4 It's a lot safer ground.

Speaker 4 I mean, it still has its pitfalls, don't get me wrong, but it made a lot of sense to let her get her feet under her and get some practice at being the Democratic nominee, speaking as the Democratic nominee and not as Joe Biden's number two for a few weeks before you start putting her in these kinds of situations.

Speaker 3 It's just also pure logistics.

Speaker 3 It's not that she was running from the press. She was not doing that.

Speaker 3 It's that she, we've said this several times, that she woke up on Sunday as the vice president, she had breakfast, and by the time breakfast was over, she was the Democratic nominee.

Speaker 3 And then she had to pick a vice president in, I think it was about 10 days to meet the virtual roll call to avoid any ballot access issues.

Speaker 3 Then she had a convention two weeks after that and then a debate 10 days after that. And here we are.
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 And in the middle of that, she had to hire a staff, work on a policy platform, reorganize the campaign to fit her. I mean, just

Speaker 4 it's so much they've had to do in two months. And it feels like two years to a lot of us, but I couldn't agree more.
It is, it is logistically difficult. It is substantively difficult.

Speaker 4 It is probably psychologically difficult for the candidate and for everybody around her. So we're in a different phase now.
We understand that. She understands that.
She's doing things like this.

Speaker 4 And I think, like I said, she seems to be hitting every checkpoint on the way towards November 5th.

Speaker 3 One section that got a lot of attention was the question and answer about Vance and Trump and the entire

Speaker 3 racist, made-up lies about Haitian migrants eating pets in Ohio, a sentence that I can't believe I have to say, but maybe I should believe it because I've been doing podcasts about Donald Trump

Speaker 3 for a long time now.

Speaker 3 Let's take a listen to her answer.

Speaker 5 I know that regardless of someone's background, their race, their gender, their geographic location, I know that people are deeply troubled by what is happening to that community in Springfield.

Speaker 5 And we've got to say that you cannot be entrusted with standing behind the seal of the President of the United States of America, engaging in that hateful rhetoric that, as usual,

Speaker 5 is designed to divide us as a country. And I think most people in our country, regardless of their race, are starting to see through this nonsense

Speaker 5 and to say, you know what, let's turn the page on this. This is exhausting and it's harmful.

Speaker 3 What'd you think of her answer? I mean,

Speaker 4 I think this was her letting her hair down a little bit.

Speaker 4 This felt like of all the answers, and I only watched, I'm gonna be honest, I watched clips and probably three quarters of you never have to admit that.

Speaker 4 I just saying honestly, like I didn't see every answer that she gave to every question, but you could almost see when she was answering this question, she was like, how am I going to do this?

Speaker 4 Am I going to try to do what I did in the CNN interview, which is bat it away and say nothing? Or am I going to lean in and try to hit a homer?

Speaker 4 And this was as unscripted and sort of un talking point of Akamala Hairs as we saw.

Speaker 3 And it turns out she's really, really, really, really good at that.

Speaker 4 And I think she was really smart in leaning into the divisiveness of what he did and sort of the political strategy behind it, as opposed to making it simply about the racism and the,

Speaker 4 you know, disgustingness of it. We have learned, I think, over the course of the last nine years that Trump throws bait into the water, asking us to get into a fight about something that

Speaker 4 we feel passionately about and should feel passionately about, but may not help us politically.

Speaker 4 And she figured out a way to talk about this in a way that spoke not just to the black folks in the room or the black journalists she was talking to, but to all Americans.

Speaker 4 She even said it explicitly in the in the answer. So it was, I was truly impressed.

Speaker 4 And I think the more that she, you know, this was also a safe space for her, I think in a way it was, it, it's easier for black folks to have, to feel safe in this, in this place.

Speaker 4 But she didn't, she gave exactly the right answer that appealed to the swing voter and the base voter alike.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I was fascinated by this because I could, having been down this road with Brock working for Barack Obama for all these years, is I can imagine the prep meeting before this where a bunch of her advisors probably told her to do exactly what she did in the debate or what she did after former President Trump questioned her racial identity and just brush it off.

Speaker 4 Cause that's been been the thing that could have been a, it could have been a five-second answer.

Speaker 3 And I can imagine her looking at her, her advisors and saying, I'm not doing that at the National Association of Black Journalists when this is a vile racist lie that has endangered lives in Ohio.

Speaker 3 And so we're going to do it this way. What I thought, so I thought it was interesting that she took the pass and it felt very authentic to me.
And I think it's good to have moments like that.

Speaker 3 But she also, I do think, walked the tightrope of answering it in a way that felt authentic and real and measured up to the gravity of what Trump and Vance are doing here and the danger of it without

Speaker 3 putting too much spin on the ball that it became a thing. Like this is the most newsworthy thing, but it did not spark an outrage cycle.

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 3 And that, that, that takes skill. And so I think that was, that was impressive.
And I'm sure her campaign was very kind of like

Speaker 4 holding their breath, Darian, I'm sure.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And end up feeling very good about it.
And just on top of that,

Speaker 3 being able to walk that type rope, I think is very important. And being able to give the answer that way says a lot about, I think, how she's doing in this race.

Speaker 4 I'm not sure she could have done it two months ago. And I don't mean that as a dig on her.

Speaker 4 It's just that's what the batting practice and the feeling comfortable in your own skin as the principal as opposed to as the deputy does for you.

Speaker 4 And that, you know,

Speaker 4 she could have given that answer eight years ago or six years ago or two months ago, but she was able to sort of in the moment, I think, you can almost, like I said, you can almost see the switch go off in her head.

Speaker 4 She's like, I'm doing this and I know I can do this and land the plane. And then she did it.

Speaker 3 I think running against Trump takes a little bit of practice to figure out how to modulate your responses to be able to get your message out. And

Speaker 3 really, I think, live up to what she said in the convention speech, which is he is an unserious person whose actions have serious consequences. And this is one of those.

Speaker 3 And how do you do, how do you address the seriousness of his consequences without giving him the attention he wants or elevating him to be some sort of strongman figure, which he also wants.

Speaker 4 Or elevating the issue to a point where you outrage cycle is a great way to put it. And she managed to do all of those things.

Speaker 4 And I think that is something learned by not just by her, but by us as Democrats over the course of the last nine years.

Speaker 4 We did not do a good job of this in 2016 with Hillary Clinton because I think partially because Trump was so new, partially because we thought and believed

Speaker 4 nobody could possibly be willing to vote for this kind of vileness. But it turns out that is not the case.

Speaker 3 Yes, there's 47% of the American people and more of them in Battleground States than the nation is all. Exactly.

Speaker 4 And we need to take a different strategy.

Speaker 3 We talked about this a little bit on the Tuesday pod, but Republicans in the Trump campaign in particular keep telling reporters that they're happy to keep this Springfield story alive.

Speaker 3 What is that about? Because it keeps the conversation focused on immigration, and they think that's a winner for them, even if people don't believe the specifics of the story.

Speaker 3 How do you think Democrats should handle it? Do you have any fears about this?

Speaker 4 I mean, I do.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 4 I don't want to give Jason Miller any credit here.

Speaker 4 I do have fears about it. I do think that...
The more that we are talking about the economy and abortion rights, the better. The more we are talking about immigration, generally speaking, the worse.

Speaker 4 Not because it's not an important issue for us to talk about, but because it's safer ground, honestly, and more, I'm talking purely politically here.

Speaker 4 Once we get to January 20th, it might be a totally different story about what we need to do as an administration or what she might need to do as that. But

Speaker 4 this Pets and Springfield thing has turned into more than immigration. It's about Donald Trump's lunacy.
It's about divisiveness, as the vice president talked about at NABJ.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 I think it is driving

Speaker 4 a,

Speaker 4 to the extent it's driving any message, at this point, it's driving a message that Donald Trump has a screw loose and Kamala Harris is a sane, competent, unifying leader. And so

Speaker 4 I do still think we can't talk about this and only this for 46, 47 more days because ultimately we still have to make a case on the economy. We still have to make a case on abortion rights.

Speaker 4 We still have to remind people that what a Donald Trump second term would look like. But the only way this is hurting us in any way is opportunity costs to not be talking about something else.

Speaker 4 It's not, it certainly isn't helping Donald Trump or his campaign, in my opinion.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think that's exactly right.

Speaker 3 it is true that if we're talking about immigration, that is good for Trump, right? It's in the Monmouth poll. Trump has a 12-point advantage over Kamala Harris on immigration.

Speaker 3 It's larger in other polls where the question is phrased more on border security, but this is their issue. It's their chosen issue.

Speaker 3 It's why, in addition to being a man with a pickled brain, Donald Trump answered the first question in the debate that was on the economy about immigration.

Speaker 3 It's like it is what they want to talk about. Exactly.

Speaker 3 Talking about immigration and border security is not the same thing about screaming at the moon like a nut about mythical pet eating and abducted geese. Like that's not the same thing.

Speaker 3 And the polling actually shows the same thing, right? There's a YouGov poll that shows that a majority of Trump supporters believe these lies.

Speaker 3 It's not as many Trump supporters as you would think, but it is a majority.

Speaker 3 A majority of independents, which I think is the best proxy for quote-unquote persuadable voters that you can get from a poll like this, do not believe the lies.

Speaker 3 Five times as many of these independents believe the allegations are definitely not true than believe they are definitely true.

Speaker 3 And so I don't see how this is necessarily helping him in any real way, except for the fact what he, we can't control what he says. If he wants to rant and rave about it, that is his business.

Speaker 3 We have proven over the years that we're not going to stop him from saying crazy things. I do believe that, as you said, there's an opportunity cost here.

Speaker 3 And this is not really, and the Harris campaign has really,

Speaker 3 they've done a little messaging on this. They circulated a very useful story this morning from the Wall Street Journal, which showed that J.D.

Speaker 3 Vance's office actually fact-checked the story before they went out. We're told it wasn't true and went out with it anyway.

Speaker 3 Which is to tell you something about JD Vance. But it's not, this is not in ads.
This has not been a big part of the stump in any way, shape, or form in the post-debate world.

Speaker 3 But for all everyone else who's having conversations with voters or

Speaker 3 people who are posting on TikTok or Instagram or Twitter about the election, there's not a lot of evidence that the cat memes, the cat-eating memes, are helping us.

Speaker 4 Yeah,

Speaker 4 they're not going to persuade persuadable voters at this point, but they're not going to help Donald Trump.

Speaker 3 Yeah, they don't.

Speaker 3 This is a situation where there is talking about it does not seem in the evidence that we've seen have backlash but it's not moving the ball forward and still and this is the thing we always have to remind ourselves because it is a complete change from our mentality in 16 and 20 is that the path to victory is in building kamala harris up more than it is tearing donald trump down amen of course this nabj interview is the same event as we mentioned that caused donald trump to melt down in chicago trump advisor Jason Miller apparently was watching because he tweeted, I can't quite put my finger on it, but the tone of this NABJ interview with Kamala Harris seems to be a little bit different than the tone of the interview with President Trump.

Speaker 3 What changed? What do you think Jason Miller is missing here?

Speaker 4 I mean, he's missing that his candidate is a lunatic.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 I think, I mean, my reporter friends are probably going to hate this answer. That's fine.
But, you know, we're kind of, here we are.

Speaker 4 But I think it's wishful thinking to think that interviews with political reporters are going to be what.

Speaker 4 win the election or lose the election for Kamala Harris.

Speaker 4 And I think maybe more importantly, what voters actually want to see see at this point, because

Speaker 4 the debate, the CNN interview, this NABJ interview, I think are checking those boxes for people to the extent people care. But

Speaker 3 they're risky.

Speaker 4 They are risky.

Speaker 4 And the voters who are still undecided or at least waffling between Trump and Harris or Harris and the couch, I think they want to see her in sort of unscripted situations, but not necessarily get grilled by, you know, Tim Russert

Speaker 4 right now. They want to see, can she handle herself on her feet?

Speaker 4 And I think the debate kind of started to prove that to folks, but it doesn't have to be interviews with, you know, with the New York Times or with Politico or with Axios.

Speaker 4 It needs to be maybe NABJ friendlier places to be. I think that is a totally fine thing to do.

Speaker 4 I think these adversarial interviews in general are

Speaker 4 overrated

Speaker 4 as, you know, when she's president, it may be a different story. But right now, as a pure point of campaign strategy, that is not what we need to do to win the election.

Speaker 4 We need to expose her to more people in the ways that those people, the persuadable voters,

Speaker 4 want to hear from her.

Speaker 3 Couple of points here. First, Jason Miller is a ridiculous buffoon.
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 Sorry, I should have started there.

Speaker 4 Yeah, right.

Speaker 3 Point number, I wasn't suggesting you did not agree with that. Point number two is, yes, the tone was different, but the questions were very these were hard questions.

Speaker 3 These were not softball questions for comments. There were follow-ups.
She was pushed on several things. The questions were different in Donald Trump's interview because he was different.

Speaker 3 He was adversarial when he was in the room, but let's not forget that for his entire life and for all of this, much of this campaign and for all of his presidency, he was constantly saying and doing racist things.

Speaker 3 And to expect to not be called on that when you go to the National Association of Black Journalists is the epitome of naivete. It's like they were shocked that got asked.

Speaker 3 Of course it was going to get asked. You can't do those things and not get asked.

Speaker 3 I mean, it just like, and we know that this is the classic tactic of Trump rule, which is when an interview doesn't go well. Or a debate never.

Speaker 3 It's never Trump's fault, right? It is obviously the fault of the press.

Speaker 4 Yeah. And I think, you know, the three reporters who questioned her for that 45 minutes or whatever it was deserve a lot of credit.
They did not take it easy on her. No.
Whatever Jason Miller says.

Speaker 4 They also... had less fodder to go after her because she hasn't done things.

Speaker 3 She's all white supremacists, very fine people.

Speaker 4 So, you know, it can't necessarily necessarily be equal when the substance is a little different.

Speaker 3 Right. If you call several countries in Africa shithole countries, you might get asked about it one day later in life, and this happened.
So tough luck. Tough luck, buddy.

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Speaker 3 Just in general, as you think about our communication strategy going forward, you hit on this a a little bit, but let's talk a little bit more about it.

Speaker 3 You spent a lot of time studying persuadable voters, the folks we actually need to reach. What's the best way to reach them?

Speaker 4 Yeah, maybe too much.

Speaker 4 If there's one thing that listeners should just remember and internalize is that there are still persuadable voters out there, people who in swing states in significant numbers who are deciding how to vote still.

Speaker 4 It is hard to believe.

Speaker 4 Every morning I wake up and I'm like, really? People still are looking after the debate, after the last nine years and potentially considering Trump. But the answer is they are.

Speaker 4 And I'll talk a little bit more about why in a second.

Speaker 4 But ultimately, I think what people need to understand about those voters in this cycle, at least, is every piece of data I've seen suggests these folks are the least interested in politics, the least connected to politics, the least engaged in politics, and honestly, in many ways, rebel against the idea of politics as important in their lives.

Speaker 4 And so they are not consuming the New York Times or Politico. In fact, it's not like a hating the media thing.

Speaker 4 It's just a hating politics thing, or at least a feeling like politics isn't important to their lives.

Speaker 4 And so to answer your question, I think it's really, really important to engage those people where they are and kind of force the issue.

Speaker 4 That's local press, like the campaign has been talking about doing. That's social media and influencers.
That's paid media.

Speaker 4 It really is important to just like force impressions on people so they see Kabla Harris at her best. It's field.

Speaker 4 It's really important to go, you know, engage them in person where you can't avoid it at some level, or at least it's put right in front of you.

Speaker 4 But these persuadable voters who are left who are going to decide the election in seven or eight states are not voluntarily engaging in politics.

Speaker 4 Jim Messina used to say, I remember in 2012, the normal person engages in politics for what, four minutes a week. And so you got to get them for those four minutes where they are.

Speaker 4 That is not in the places where people like me, people like you, and probably a lot of people listening to this podcast get their news.

Speaker 3 It, I mean, it is the hardest thing for people who listen to this podcast to understand is

Speaker 3 how

Speaker 3 different we are. That we're actually more like the people who listen to Ben Shapiro's podcast in some ways than everyone else.
Yeah. Because

Speaker 3 the biggest divide in politics is between people who engage in politics and people who don't. And we're the minority.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 And we're the weird ones. Somebody said to me recently, and that's true.
And I don't mean that ideologically or otherwise. It's the way we engage with politics is the minority.

Speaker 3 We are.

Speaker 3 The folks at Blueprint did polling where they looked at swing state voters and their media consumption habits and they asked them how many people have heard or watched big events, right?

Speaker 3 The debate. The debate.
This was done pre-debate, but the convention speeches, et cetera. And so Kamala Harris's convention speech, let's take that.

Speaker 3 34% of swing state voters had neither watched nor heard of her convention speech. 34% said that for Donald Trump's convention speech.
We see this for every single thing that dominates politics.

Speaker 3 A third of voters in swing states, right? These are people who have indicated a chance they will vote in this election, have heard nothing about it.

Speaker 4 I'll give you a story. I was in, when I was in Chicago for the convention,

Speaker 4 the day that the vice president gave her speech, a Thursday, took a Lyft or whatever to

Speaker 4 the United Center, and

Speaker 3 our Lyft driver.

Speaker 4 was like, where are you going? You know, a woman, I think a woman of color, she was very excited about Kamala.

Speaker 4 Didn't even know that the vice president was there, didn't know the speech was that night,

Speaker 4 but was very engaged in politics once we started having the conversation. But it just was a reminder to me that this is somebody who is, obviously it's Illinois, not

Speaker 4 Ohio or North Carolina or Georgia or whatever. But

Speaker 4 just a reminder that like people have lives and the swingiest of voters out there are really, this is tangential to their life.

Speaker 4 And honestly, even in mid-September, are just beginning to pay attention to what's going on in this race.

Speaker 4 And, you know, we're going to have this thing probably decided in these last, certainly in these last seven weeks and probably in in the last two.

Speaker 3 I mean, these voters are just not consuming news in the way in which we think of political news. They're not watching CNN.
They're watching the New York Times. They're not watching local TV.

Speaker 3 And one of the things that's made life harder to reach these voters organically is that Facebook in particular was the delivery mechanism for a lot of news to people organically.

Speaker 3 Like you would just be scrolling through Facebook looking at.

Speaker 3 your friend's kids or whatever weird memes your MAGA uncle posted and you would and Facebook algorithm would serve you some form of political news right something from a candidate, maybe something from a news outlet.

Speaker 3 Facebook does not promote politics anymore. So you're never organically bumping into the news anymore.

Speaker 3 And it just is become in, you know, this is, this is your life.

Speaker 3 But reaching these people even in a paid way is incredibly challenging because if you don't have linear TV, you're almost impossible to reach.

Speaker 3 Because a lot of, you know, I always think about the person who streams Netflix and TikTok is their social platform of choice. There is no way to spend money to reach those people, right? It's just

Speaker 3 they live in a bubble. And that's why when we get to her, you know, as she thinks about this interview strategy going forward, a lot of it is influencers.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 That's the media for low information, low-engaged people is, you know, your cooking influencer on TikTok is actually...

Speaker 4 to the extent they're getting information of any kind, that's their primary source. And that's not a knock on the news and it's not a knock on them.

Speaker 4 It's just the way that people consume media nowadays. And particularly those low engagement voters who happen to be in this election, the most persuadable ones.

Speaker 3 And when the press screams and yells about Kamal Harris not doing more, the traditional press screams and yells about Kamal Harris not doing more interviews with them, they do have to understand that, like, yes, I think it is good for democracy for candidates to take tough questions.

Speaker 3 I think taking tough questions makes you a better candidate. So when you're talking to voters on the stump or at a town hall or whatever else, you are better.

Speaker 3 But for a long time, there was huge benefit in doing them because the media could get your message in front of those you need. That relationship does not exist anymore.

Speaker 3 Most like that CNN interview, which was, I think, very well done by

Speaker 3 Danabash and the candidates, 6.6 million people, it's hard to imagine how many persuadable voters even knew that ever happened or bumped into it.

Speaker 4 And it was checking a box for the influencer class, which then

Speaker 4 has a second order

Speaker 4 effect on the voters, but it's not a direct voter contact.

Speaker 4 You have to do that through paid media, through field, and through these outlets that might be non-traditional, but that is where people are living their media lives nowadays.

Speaker 3 Switching to gears to the Republicans now. Tonight, Donald Trump is headed for a big rally in the key battleground area of Long Island, New York.

Speaker 3 On Tuesday, he held a town hall in Flint, Michigan, moderated by his former press secretary and current governor of Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Speaker 3 This was his first big event since his second assassination attempt. Another sentence, I can't believe I'm saying.
Seriously.

Speaker 3 Typically, when Trump does an event like this, our producers get together and they cut a very funny, interesting, outrageous clip of all the crazy things Donald Trump said.

Speaker 3 But last night's town hall, which I watched all of, was so boring and so repetitive that there was really nothing worth cutting. Which is, we don't say that often for Trump.

Speaker 3 Not because he was more normal than usual. He just sort of low, he was less interesting, low energy, and just said the same things we've now heard from a thousand times in a row.

Speaker 3 I bring all this up because this is Trump's second town hall in recent weeks. He had one moderated by Chulsi Gabbard recently.
Another sentence, I can't believe I'm saying.

Speaker 3 And it seems to be the campaign as a new strategy of periodically doing these town halls as opposed to the more the rallies that Trump has sort of lived by. Is there anything to this strategy?

Speaker 3 Are they trying to sand down the edges of his lunacy?

Speaker 4 I mean, good luck with that. Like, I don't think that is possible.
I think I saw Governor Newsom talking about this at the debate.

Speaker 4 He's just a little old, a little tired, and just not, he's like lost a step, I think.

Speaker 4 And so so I think on any given day, he might just be in a bad mood. I'm psychoanalyzing a lunatic now, but he might just not be up to the challenge, as it were, of being his normal bombastic self.

Speaker 4 I think it could be the next day and he could be back on his, back on his bullshit, as it were.

Speaker 4 But if they're trying to make him boring, I think that's a strategic mistake because I think his appeal, to the extent he still has it, is that

Speaker 4 he is interesting and entertaining. And he is

Speaker 4 like, I don't know if we, if the election were today, we would win or lose, but he is losing in the sense of the trajectory of the race.

Speaker 4 And so he needs to change something for the trajectory to change. So if they're playing prevent defense, it's a huge mistake in my mind.
Problem is they have a candidate who can't drive a message.

Speaker 4 So they're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think these town hall formats are a little bit more.

Speaker 3 They sort of hem him in some because not that he necessarily answers the question, but at least the campaign is dictating the topics he hits. I mean, he took some of these.

Speaker 4 He did not get somewhere linearly.

Speaker 3 We saw that this is sort of like all the stories we saw before the debate where they were like, policy Trump, who's not going to take the bait. Like that was their strategy.

Speaker 3 And in your head, you can kind of see some Republican political consultants like Chris La Savita or Susie Weil sitting around being like, you know what would make sense when it's seen presidential?

Speaker 3 A town hall raised on stage interviewed by a woman in this election with a historic gender gap.

Speaker 4 The Long Island, but that's what I think.

Speaker 3 Well, the Long Island thing is going to be a rally because I think there's a real like one for them, one for us thing with Trump. Like, I'll do this, but I'm going to

Speaker 3 threaten to arrest the entire country on Truth Social later that day. Fair.

Speaker 3 So, I think they were like, Yes, if you do this, they're going to let Trump be a lunatic on Long Island, and they're going to do the town hall in Michigan. Yeah, but it doesn't.

Speaker 3 It's, it's like, sometimes I feel like the campaign hasn't met Trump before, and they just, they just, it's a really good point.

Speaker 4 I mean, he is a fun, you know, he is his own worst enemy. Uh, this was true in 2020.
This is true, it was true in 2016, even when we lost.

Speaker 4 And I think it's true now is that he is incapable of not being a narcissistic asshole.

Speaker 4 And if they were driving a consistent message from the candidate's mouth, it would have an effect, whether that's, you know, downwind second order, like I was just talking about, or directly with the voters, it would have an effect.

Speaker 4 And there are things he certainly could talk about, but he can't do it. And maybe the town hall is an attempt to, like, to your point, put some guardrails around him.
But it doesn't matter.

Speaker 4 You could, you know, lipstick on a pig, like good luck. It's not going to work.

Speaker 4 They're going to do it in paid media i think a lot and i think you know this is where a second debate to me is a risky proposition because the bar is pretty low from you know high for kamala and low for trump uh in terms of what people will expect out of a second debate so if he were able to like turn on a switch for 90 minutes the next time that could have that could be dangerous but i don't know i don't trust it you know he can't even do it for one answer let alone 90 minutes debate this is not this is not in our outline but so we're gonna we're just gonna live freely here but if someone were to ask you should you come here to do a second debate or not?

Speaker 3 Not on NBC, right? It's not on Fox. What would you, would you say yes or no?

Speaker 4 I mean, I'd probably say no. I think

Speaker 4 it's just risk. I'm also just maybe risk averse.
I think, right? You won one. The trajectory is good.
There are other ways, like we've talked about before, to get your message out there.

Speaker 4 The contrast really helps, but you are counting on a good performance by your candidate. a bad performance by your opponent and moderators that don't screw you.
And like, like,

Speaker 4 we got that once, but do you really want to go back to the well and get that again? Or are you, can you be sure you're going to get that again? I don't know.

Speaker 4 So the odds are probably in our favor if one happens. Don't get me wrong.
Like there's an 80% chance it's the exact same thing as what happened a week ago.

Speaker 4 And we are even happier that time in October than we were in September. But like that 20% chance scares the shit out of me.

Speaker 3 I am a strong advocate for doing a second debate. If I was on the campaign, I would encourage them to seek it out.
I certainly publicly advocate for it and be the one who wants the debate.

Speaker 3 But even if the opportunity came to do it, I would do it. I'd want to do it pretty late.

Speaker 3 Because my general take on the race is he has a lot of advantages.

Speaker 3 We can talk about, we're going to get in a little bit about where the race is.

Speaker 3 But he is a former president of the United States who has run for president three times.

Speaker 4 It gives her the big stage.

Speaker 3 It gives her a big stage. People know everything they know about him.
He is in a, he still shows up as the safer choice in a lot of the polling.

Speaker 3 Like in that New York Times CNN polling, Kamala Harris is the riskier choice because she is unknown to so many voters or not known deeply to so many voters.

Speaker 3 And so if you have a chance to be on that giant stage and do it, like it is terribly risky.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it's really more of a...

Speaker 3 It really, I guess it's your assessment of where you think the race is. If you think

Speaker 3 I am a more glass half-empty person and feel like, like, I think she's doing very well right now.

Speaker 3 But this thing always reverts back to where it's been. It always reverts to the mean.
And the mean is that Trump is right there on the cusp. And so.
It's a fair point.

Speaker 4 like just because we are on that trajectory on september 18th doesn't mean we're going to be on that trajectory on october 18th and we've seen i mean 2016 i just have such flashbacks to comi letters and and and debates and uh assex hollywood like

Speaker 4 seven weeks is still a long time so we could be in a very different place a month from now where the trajectory changes and we actually need something to shake up the race but it is not a easy no no no no no no it is like it is very easy for me to say it as someone who doesn't have to doesn't have to prepare for it Yeah, me too.

Speaker 4 And that's the other thing, right?

Speaker 4 To your, to our earlier conversation about opportunity costs, like the opportunity cost for prepping her for a late October debate or a mid-October debate, that's taking her off the trail for a week because that's like, you gotta, yeah, you gotta be sure you are, you are nailing it.

Speaker 4 So there's, there's the unseen downside cost of, of taking her away.

Speaker 4 But yeah, I don't envy Jen and those folks trying to figure this out because it is not, Brian, it is not an easy, uh, it's not an easy call. And it's a high-risk situation if you do it.

Speaker 4 So if we do get it, good luck, guys.

Speaker 3 I mean, it's probably a theoretical question because Donald Trump doesn't seem like someone who would risk getting his ass kicked like that again. So

Speaker 4 somebody made the point to me, sorry to take us too far down this,

Speaker 4 that there may be

Speaker 4 the outcome of the vice presidential debate might actually change his mind. Oh, interesting.
Which I think is which is coming up in on October 1st.

Speaker 4 Like there's a world in which Vance totally bombs or Vance does really well, which I don't think is likely. And like Trump can't allow either of those things to stand as the last word.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think we'll have a lot of conversation about the VP debate going forward, but Vance has a real expectations advantage here, which is if he,

Speaker 3 as Mike Pence did against Kamala Harris, she obviously won that debate, but people thought that he would be absolutely miserable.

Speaker 3 And he was only kind of miserable, and that was seen as fine. Vance is a similar situation.
The guy can't even order fucking donuts on camera.

Speaker 3 And so if he stands up there, and he's a smart guy, so you can see him doing fine. Either way, we're down a rabbit hole here.

Speaker 3 On Wednesday, more than 100 GOP officials, former members of Congress, and appointees for Republican presidents, including Trump, signed a letter endorsing Kamal Harris.

Speaker 3 This comes on top of the recent endorsements of resistance heroes, Dick and Liz Cheney.

Speaker 3 Do these endorsements from Republicans matter, or are they just sort of fodder for a press that yearns for a bygone era of bipartisanship?

Speaker 4 When my text chains blow up about Dick Cheney endorsements, like

Speaker 4 23-year-old me just absolutely loses my mind. But hey, I think the answer is they don't really matter.
Honestly.

Speaker 4 I think they matter insofar as it continues to be a signal to particularly donors and high information voters that like there's a Trump

Speaker 4 There's an anti-Trump wing of the Republican Party that is not totally dead yet and obviously voters that come from them but Sarah Longwell and her work I think has made pretty clear that it's not the politicians that matter it's the people and I would rather have an endorsement from Joe Schmo, white guy from

Speaker 4 rural Michigan who's willing to go direct a camera and say he voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 and is not doing it now than I would any politician at this point.

Speaker 4 And that's probably true on the Democratic side, too. Like it is going back to who these voters are, these are people who don't trust politicians.

Speaker 4 Like they don't believe politics works for them, Democrat or Republican. It's not part of their identity.

Speaker 4 And so any politician, whether they be Republican or Democrat, giving their imperimeter to a candidate, I don't think has the value that it did once before.

Speaker 4 It certainly matters, but it's not going to swing the swings.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think it's greatly overstated. Dick Cheney is not a popular person among Republicans or Democrats.
I don't think a lot of people were just waiting to see what Dick Cheney was doing.

Speaker 3 Where I think it is mildly helpful is there is a smaller subgroup. This is like Sarah Longwell's group, right?

Speaker 3 These are people engaged in politics. They are not, they, they watch the news, they pay attention.

Speaker 3 They are people who voted for Trump in 2016, Biden in 2020, and soured on Biden and have been Trump curious going forward.

Speaker 3 And so you do want to create what it's it's not the individual Republicans, but just the general idea.

Speaker 3 There are a bunch of Republicans who are going to vote for Kamala Harris. And it makes you feel a little bit safer

Speaker 3 in doing that.

Speaker 4 I guess I was talking specifically about Cheney or either Cheney or even Adam Kinzinger to some extent.

Speaker 4 But like the idea that there are hundreds of Republicans out there makes you, it's why Kinzinger spoke at the convention, right?

Speaker 4 It's because it gives a permission structure to another specific, I think, high-information Republican to come. But that's

Speaker 4 everything matters what that thing's going to be. Everything matters.
Even the weather is going to be a lot of fun.

Speaker 3 The weather in Maricopa County is going to possibly decide who the president of the United States is.

Speaker 3 Over an eight-hour period on one of 365 days of the year, that weather could decide who the president is.

Speaker 4 It's the most, it is both. I think I said this last time I was on the pod too.
It's like

Speaker 4 after the election, win or lose, this thing is going to be close.

Speaker 4 Everybody is going to be able to say their thing was the thing that changed the election because it's going to come down to a few votes in a few states and they're going to be right.

Speaker 4 So anything that marginally helps us helps us.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's exactly right.

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Speaker 3 Tuesday was one of those days that makes it easy to get your fantasies for an easier election night up because we had a bunch of post-debate polls that came out, which were almost all good news for Kamala Harris.

Speaker 3 We are still waiting for the granddaddy of them all, the New York Times Sienna poll, which will,

Speaker 3 they have a post-debate poll we assume coming any day now that

Speaker 3 it may or may not be more accurate than the other ones, but it is the one that most affects the

Speaker 3 media narrative.

Speaker 3 But the New York Times average has Kamala Harris up four points as of Tuesday.

Speaker 3 And then this morning we got Quintipiak polls that showed Harris up with a decent lead in Michigan and Pennsylvania and a narrow lead in Wisconsin.

Speaker 3 And frankly, I'll be honest, the vibes feel even better than that right now.

Speaker 3 When you hear numbers like that, do we have this thing in the back?

Speaker 4 Oh, the vibes. Don't I love the vibes?

Speaker 4 I joke with my friends that I worked on the Clinton campaign in 2016, and I am unable to feel political joy until Donald Trump is gone, dead and gone, not literally, but politically, figuratively.

Speaker 4 We do not have this thing in the bag.

Speaker 4 You know, even a four-point lead nationally does not translate to that. There's like a discount in the Battleground State.

Speaker 3 Well, that's what Biden won the popular vote by in 2020. He won by 40,000 votes across several states.

Speaker 4 So we have to win by four points, three, certainly, probably four points nationally to even have a chance in the Electoral College.

Speaker 4 I alluded to this before. The trajectory is good.

Speaker 4 We are improving.

Speaker 4 We started behind, even when, certainly when Biden was the nominee and even for the first weeks of

Speaker 4 when Kamala was the nominee. But things have basically been on a one-way ratchet since then.
Right. And so.
If this keeps up for the next seven weeks, we are going to win the election. But A,

Speaker 4 nobody should assume that's going to happen. And B, I am not sure.

Speaker 4 It's not that I don't trust public polling, but I do think there is an effect, I forget what it's called, but that I've talked to some pollsters and researchers about of like Democrats being sort of more willing right now to

Speaker 4 answer polls. And how can you actually control for that in these surveys? I don't know if these surveys are necessarily doing it.
Certainly not across the board.

Speaker 4 I would guess that the better ones, the more expensive ones, you're able to do that.

Speaker 4 But a lot of these surveys are, you know, they're horse race polls that are sort of inexpensively done to drive news and to get a set, you know, put your toe in the water. But if we're basing our

Speaker 4 vibes off the polar coaster, we are making a huge mistake because A, they might not be accurate. We literally that happened in 2016 and 2020.
So why shouldn't that be different in 2024?

Speaker 4 And B, the polar coaster can go up and down. So like when it comes down in early October, don't feel any better than how good you feel now as they're going up.

Speaker 3 And if you want to hear more about all the post-debate polling, check out the latest episode of Polar Coaster, my my subscriber-only show. Our new episode will be out on Thursday.

Speaker 3 Now, I don't want to make anyone feel not good now. Like we, like, Kyle Harris wants us to feel joy.
We should feel joy. Oh, yeah.
And joy helps.

Speaker 3 And we're thinking that you're definitely going to lose is not somehow or likely to lose is not like some strategically smarter than thinking you're, you might win or probably could win because you're going to do the same things anyway.

Speaker 3 I don't think we're in any danger of complacency in the way these elections have gone, particularly with the last couple.

Speaker 3 Like there was in 2016 where people are like, well, my vote's not not going to matter. So I can throw it away.

Speaker 4 Maybe that's where my fear comes from.

Speaker 4 Yeah, well, that's we definitely had it in 16, but not 20 and not 22 and not 18 and certainly not yet. Yeah,

Speaker 3 I was doing, we talked, John and I talked about this a couple weeks ago, but I was doing a podcast with John Heilman from Puck, and he was like, what would the polls have to say for you to be able to sleep the night before an election?

Speaker 3 I was like, there is no number.

Speaker 3 Like I would, it's just, that's, I'll never sleep the night before an election again after 2016. Like, that's not even a possibility.
Nope.

Speaker 4 Biden was up.

Speaker 4 I looked back at this sometime in August, maybe July. I should have looked at this before this.
There was Wisconsin polls that had him up 10 in 2020 in like the summer.

Speaker 3 And there were some

Speaker 4 by point something percent

Speaker 4 in that state. So like it is 2020 isn't 2024, different candidate, et cetera.
But like, you're right. There's no number that's going to make me feel.

Speaker 3 I mean, he was up. Biden was up eight in a high quality public Wisconsin poll in late October.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 And he won by less than 1%.

Speaker 3 And I mean, that's everyone's operating assumption should be that American politics is such that the six battleground states are unlikely to be decided by more than two points.

Speaker 4 I think that is, I would put my house on it.

Speaker 4 And, you know, something could change.

Speaker 4 It would require a campaign-changing event at the scale of the Lehman Brothers crash of 2008 for that. That's what I think ultimately led Obama to win by, what did he win, by seven points over McCain?

Speaker 4 It was something of a catastrophic, large national nature to actually move move people

Speaker 4 in large mass

Speaker 4 towards us in 2008, and obviously a good campaign that we all ran. But

Speaker 4 without that, if things sort of remained fundamentally as they are right now,

Speaker 4 it's five states within two points, and we could win by two. We could lose by two.

Speaker 3 More likely with a winner-lose by 0.5.

Speaker 3 Exactly right. I mean, Trump got shot in the ear, and the polls moved two points.

Speaker 4 Kind of, yeah.

Speaker 3 That debate has moved the polls to two points. The New York Times average the day before that poll was two points.
It is four points today.

Speaker 4 That is, that can, you know, I was speaking to somebody the other day about this. A one-point move in this race is massive.

Speaker 4 We spent when Joe Biden was the nominee, we spent a year and a half with basically the same race. He was down two or three points, maybe four.
Obviously, July was its own animal.

Speaker 4 It was very stable. And now we've kind of reached a new stability, which feels like tide.

Speaker 3 It feels like what 2020 was. Not what the poll, public poll said, but what 2020 actually was.

Speaker 3 What 2016 actually was, but we didn't know at the time. We didn't know is that we are in, it is coming down to these small groups of voters.
I mean, this is not unusual in history.

Speaker 3 I mean, Al Gore did not become president because someone printed the wrong ballot in Palm Beach County, Florida. Yep.

Speaker 4 And Joe Biden became president because a few people in Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia.

Speaker 4 you know, voted for him.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 we're headed towards something similar here. Which states, I'm sure, I mean, mean, I'm curious what you think.

Speaker 3 Like,

Speaker 4 do you think the blue wall is still the path to 270? Do you think, you know, where do you see this?

Speaker 3 Yeah, that was my next question for you is whether the blue wall.

Speaker 3 So I think if you're just doing probabilities, the most likely path for Kamala Harris to become president and, frankly, Donald Trump to become president is winning Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin.

Speaker 3 And it all really comes down to Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is the keystone because of its 19 electoral votes.
It's very hard to replace.

Speaker 3 You need need to win two of the other states to replace it. And now, yes, Donald Trump won those three states in 2016.
Democrats have won them almost every other time going back to the 80s. And

Speaker 3 we did very well there in 2022.

Speaker 3 So that seems like, if you were to say, what is more likely that Kamala Harris wins Pennsylvania or she wins Georgia and Arizona or Georgia and Nevada or North Carolina in one of those other three, winning Pennsylvania seems like the more likely one, but it's, I mean, it's hard.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it's you're talking about these two-point states. Like I would put everything on the on the idea that Pennsylvania is going to be within two points and probably within one.

Speaker 4 But I completely agree. I think the 19 electoral votes is the key.
I think the most likely outcome of the race, sorry, listeners, is 270 to 268 for Kamala Harris today.

Speaker 4 But that's today and not seven weeks from now.

Speaker 4 And that means winning Nebraska too and the and the Blue Wall. And

Speaker 4 but she has opened up other paths to victory, which is really what the, I think the lasting effect of her as the nominee instead of Joe Biden is it used to be basically 270 or bust in the path I just said.

Speaker 4 And now there is a world in which we lose Pennsylvania and win Georgia and Nevada.

Speaker 4 It is a plausible world that we live in that we win.

Speaker 4 North Carolina and Georgia and lose Pennsylvania and Michigan. Like unlikely, I think very unlikely even, but not with Biden at the top of the ticket, it was it was zero.
And now it is not zero.

Speaker 3 What is interesting is it used to be this view that like demographically alike states were correlated, right? Where if you were winning Michigan, you were probably winning Pennsylvania.

Speaker 3 And if you were winning North Carolina, you were probably winning Georgia, too. Because they're similar.

Speaker 3 But now the margins are so close that, yes, they're correlated in the sense that they're all really close.

Speaker 3 But just because you win one doesn't win you're meeting the other because of one small blip here or there.

Speaker 4 So your point, whether you know things, things that you have no control over and some that you do.

Speaker 3 Like delayed mail ballots in North Carolina or the number of drop accesses in

Speaker 3 Fulton County, Georgia, or how long the lines are, whether people stay in line or not could literally be the difference. I mean, wasn't it 11,000 votes in both Arizona and Nevada?

Speaker 4 Yeah, and Georgia. Georgia was, yeah, both of them, and Wisconsin was not much more.
I think it was 40,000 across those three states, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia.

Speaker 4 And if all three of those had flipped the other way, I believe Trump would be president right now. So it is,

Speaker 4 we are, I don't know what states it's going to be. It's going to be one of those seven plus Nebraska two, in my opinion.
The good news is we have more places to compete in.

Speaker 4 The bad news is that costs more money, more time, more energy, more everything.

Speaker 4 And it requires people listening to this podcast and others to open up their wallets and give their time for the next seven weeks.

Speaker 3 It's that, you know, we can win all of them.

Speaker 4 That's the other thing, right? And like finally drive a stake

Speaker 4 in this guy, I think, going forward. And I hope and pray that that's possible.

Speaker 3 But we forget this, but Biden won all of them last time.

Speaker 4 Exactly. Well, not North Carolina, but all the other ones, right? So,

Speaker 4 you know, that would be, if I can do the math, like 318-ish electoral votes. And that feels like a landslide.

Speaker 4 So we'll see. I mean, it's not, it's none of that is, to answer your original question, none of it's in the bag.

Speaker 3 All seven of them are not in the bag. What do you think is going on with North Carolina? Because that one is actually showing up in the public poll and doing a little bit better in Georgia.

Speaker 3 And that doesn't make a ton of sense given partisanship and

Speaker 3 the demographic makeup of the state. Like, obviously, there's room for Democratic victories there.
Obama won there.

Speaker 3 Roy Cooper's won there twice, but Georgia seems more friendly on paper, but North Carolina seems doing a little, he's punching above its waist, if you will.

Speaker 4 I think it has everything to do, it's two things. One is, it's really one thing, black folks who have come home to Kamala Harris more than other.

Speaker 4 minority groups, people of color groups,

Speaker 4 and are sort of more solidly with her than certainly than they were with Biden.

Speaker 4 The other is that the white people in North Carolina are more college educated and generally more friendly to colors, candidates of color than Georgia white folks.

Speaker 4 I mean, we win, I don't remember what Stacey Abrams got in 22,

Speaker 4 but we win 25, 30% of the white vote in Georgia. It's just like a, and they're obviously a majority of the electorate.
So, whereas it's more like 40 in North Carolina.

Speaker 4 And so there's just like a fundamental difference amongst the white electorate in North Carolina that's friendlier to Democrats, probably because a lot of people from the North North have moved to the triangle and Charlotte and other places like that.

Speaker 4 That doesn't exist. In Georgia, we have to like

Speaker 4 hang on with white folks basically in Atlanta and some other places, lower the margins in the out places as much as you can, and then max out black turnout.

Speaker 4 And that's really the only path to victory there. Whereas in North Carolina, you can kind of turn the dials differently.

Speaker 3 And it doesn't hurt Republicans are running a complete lunatic like Mark Robertson at the top of the ticket.

Speaker 4 It certainly doesn't.

Speaker 3 He is the embodiment of the dangers of the MAGA movement. And I think that probably helps on the market.
Like everything, it helps on the margins.

Speaker 3 And if you can squeeze another 2% out of the white vote or 1% of the white vote, that is a different statement.

Speaker 4 That's the difference. I mean, that is true.
You truly have to in those kind of states because our ceiling in Pennsylvania, I mean, we saw Josh Apiro got 56, 57%.

Speaker 4 I don't know what Roy Cooper got, but I'm guessing it was. No, it was not 57%.

Speaker 4 And even if it was, he was a two-term attorney general, one-term governor, something that had all these advantages that Kamala Harris doesn't have.

Speaker 4 So our ceiling in North Carolina is probably 50.5, you know, or 51. And so we got to have everything go right there in Georgia, both.

Speaker 3 Our friend Peter Hanby of Puck had a particularly smart piece recently called the Swift Rogan Election. It was largely about Gen Z men moving to Trump as one of the definitive trends in this election.

Speaker 3 There's been some online quibbling about how much that's really happening.

Speaker 3 The New York Times swing state polls recently have actually had Trump winning Gen Z men, including by double digits in some cases. Other polls have shown a more narrow thing.

Speaker 3 What do you see happening here? Is this a real problem?

Speaker 4 I definitely think it's a real problem. I think Peter's kind of nailing it this cycle with his reporting.

Speaker 4 He is a very smart observer of this, but I do think that there's a particular, I don't want to say radicalization because that's a little too far, but sort of right movement of young men.

Speaker 4 I don't think it's just Gen Z.

Speaker 4 I think it's millennial men too, mostly based on cultural issues, but I actually think there's an economic element to it too, which is if you are or perceive yourself as the provider for a family, if you're 35 years old and a person of color or white person alike, and you have a young family and you have child care costs and prices have gone up and things like that, you are more susceptible to both Trump's negative arguments about the Biden-Harris administration and sort of this anti-wokeism that is

Speaker 4 permeating, I think, social media and other places targeted at men. So I 100% think it's a real thing.

Speaker 4 I think we're probably going to see a gender gap in this election unlike we've we've ever seen before because it's not just white folks, it's people of color too who are

Speaker 4 starting to diverge, men and women. But the flip side of this is that women, because of Dobbs, because of other issues as well, I think are kind of counteract moving more our way as well.

Speaker 4 And you might see, you know, 55% of women or something vote for Democrats and 42% vote of men or something along those lines, which is kind of crazy.

Speaker 4 But it's something we have to deal with as a party. I think in the long term, in the short term, it's a bit of a triage

Speaker 4 to win the election and make sure that men get the message that they need to get in the places that they need to get it to feel comfortable with Kamala Harris as the president.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I, I sort of, this is one of the things I've come to really,

Speaker 3 really sort of annoyed me all election cycles. Whenever there's been an identified challenge within the Democratic coalition, we get, we like quibble over

Speaker 3 the severity of the challenge and that becomes a thing like, are we losing Gen Z men or are we as the NBC survey monkey Gen Z poll shows only winning them by four? Yeah. The problem is

Speaker 3 our coalition depends on doing better with young voters than we are. And if we need to do that, we have to win some of these voters.

Speaker 3 Back we saw the same thing back when Biden was nominee with black and Latino voters.

Speaker 3 And we're still having some of that conversation around Latino voters is, are we in the middle of a historic racial realignment?

Speaker 3 Who knows? Probably not. It doesn't seem that way.
But are we, is even Kamala Harris still a little bit behind where

Speaker 3 Joe Biden was and certainly far behind where Barack Obama was? Yeah. Did we have to make up some of that ground? Yeah.
And I think that's particularly true with Gen Z Men.

Speaker 3 And it is like we can win this election because of the gender gap this time.

Speaker 3 In the future, if the way this is going is that, you know, 46% of men under the age of 30 are MAGA Republicans. That's bad for the Democratic Party and that's bad for democracy.

Speaker 3 And it's in large part because we don't have a very good way, and Peter points this out in his article, very good messengers to reach them.

Speaker 3 Obama was very good at talking to young people and talking to young men in particular. He had ways to

Speaker 3 meet them where they were.

Speaker 3 That's not something that we have done over the over the year, the Trump years. And the information space, Obama could reach these people by going on ESPN.
It doesn't work that way anymore.

Speaker 3 You have to do, we talked about this recently, but you have to go on some of these podcasts, right? And you have to talk to them.

Speaker 3 And they are in this algorithmically driven information bubble bubble where there's no countervailing information about the Democratic Party.

Speaker 3 Someone has to be able to go in there and make that case for why Democrats are the ones who will fight for you.

Speaker 3 And people have legitimate grievances about the economy, about politics not working for them. And we have to address them.
And if we don't, we're not going to get these voters.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I like the way you framed it too. It's not that we necessarily are losing.
It's that we're not winning by as many as we, as much as we need to. And yeah,

Speaker 4 it's not a failure per se of messaging or strategy or policy or whatever.

Speaker 4 I think at some level, it's we haven't focused on it because we haven't sort of been able and been willing to name the problem, but it is a problem and it's going to be worse for us.

Speaker 4 I hope we can solve it at least enough to win on November 5th, but I do think as a party, we need to have a strategy around this very specifically.

Speaker 4 And to your point, very important messengers, people like Tim Walls, people like, I mean, there are others that are out there that their job in some ways is to go try to pierce these bubbles because culturally and otherwise, they can relate to those folks in ways that maybe other people can't.

Speaker 4 That's not a knock on Kamala Harris or anybody else.

Speaker 4 It's just like, that's how you do politics is you put people who feel like they can talk to a certain audience in front of that audience to persuade them.

Speaker 3 The, you know, Peter used Joe Rogan as his example of the avatar for these young men. We're a lot of them get information.
He is the biggest podcaster in the world.

Speaker 3 I do think we need to share with our listeners.

Speaker 3 Joe Rogan recently praised Kamala Harris for her debate performance and made fun of Trump on a recent episode. Let's take a listen.

Speaker 14 Before I say anything, I just want to say, whoever's helping her, whoever's coaching her, whoever's the puppet master running the strings,

Speaker 14 you did a fucking amazing job.

Speaker 14 They did an amazing job from the moment Biden drops out, forcing Biden to drop out.

Speaker 14 Whatever they're doing, whoever's writing those speeches, getting her to deliver them, coaching her, she's nailing it. She nailed that one speech.

Speaker 13 She's like, say it to my family.

Speaker 6 Yeah, she nailed it, dude.

Speaker 14 And then last night, to me, when I was like, oh my God, this is jiu-jitsu, where she was like, if you go to his rallies, his crowds are boring.

Speaker 3 They're tired.

Speaker 8 They all leave.

Speaker 14 My crowds are the best crowds.

Speaker 8 I have the number one crowd. He couldn't help himself.

Speaker 6 And she got him.

Speaker 8 She baited him on that. She walked him right away.

Speaker 6 100%.

Speaker 14 100%.

Speaker 4 Really interesting. Two things.
One is he didn't give her credit. He was like the puppet masters,

Speaker 4 which is like, you know, okay, got to call that out, but God bless. But the other thing is the stuff that appealed to him was kind of traditionally masculine stuff, right?

Speaker 4 The like baiting of him and the say it to my face stuff, et cetera. And again, like whatever our listeners or ourselves feel about that brand of masculinity and

Speaker 4 politics, like. Clearly it has an effect on somebody who is probably, Peter is right, the most influential podcaster in America.
No offense to present company or present company not here.

Speaker 3 The most influential podcaster right now. Right now.

Speaker 4 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 4 You guys have time. But also somebody who I think is a little bit of an avatar for that, you know, contrarian way of thinking.
Who's, I don't think he is, Atlantic had a really good profile on him.

Speaker 4 He's not a right-winger per se. He's one of those.
I'm just asking questions, guys. But those people might be more attainable for us in the long run than the, you know, the true mega, mega Reddies.

Speaker 3 I mean, there are people who listen to Joe Rogan whose votes we need. Yeah.
Amen.

Speaker 3 And And so someone, you know, who can go,

Speaker 3 there's always a debate about should you go on Rogan? Should you platform?

Speaker 3 Point being is you got to reach some people who listen to him. You got to reach some people who listen to Theo Vaughan and some of these other folks.
And

Speaker 3 we saw this during the convention, but Tim Walls and Doug Emhoff in particular have a different, more progressive, more compassionate version of masculinity.

Speaker 3 They could be very appealing if offered to do that.

Speaker 3 And so

Speaker 3 this is one of those clips that I think will be, yet she does not give Kamala Harris. He does not give Kamala Harris the the credit she deserves.

Speaker 3 By far, it's quite sexist and demeaning, but him making fun of Trump has value. And so there are all those people out there who are sharing your clips on TikTok.

Speaker 3 Like this is a good one to share because the Rogan stuff goes viral.

Speaker 3 TikTok loves for very good reason to show people Joe Rogan clips. They are hammering me with Joe Rogan clips all the time.

Speaker 3 And so a Joe Rogan clip that is anti-Trump that makes fun of Trump, that is a useful thing. So that's my final piece of advice I would give people.

Speaker 4 I think it is very good advice. You're good at this.

Speaker 3 Do it for a living.

Speaker 3 Put podcasting, unfortunately, I do. Okay, that's our show today.
Thank you so much, Adecia, for joining us. John and I will be back in your feed with a new episode on Friday morning.

Speaker 3 Talk to you then. Bye, everyone.
Take care.

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Speaker 16 I'm Alex Wagner, and on my new crooked media podcast, Runaway Country, I'm talking to people across the nation to uncover how political chaos is shaping their everyday realities.

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