Kamala Harris: Still the Underdog

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and don't forget to check meanwhile the two candidates give dueling economic speeches on the issue voters say they care about most, the economy. Then Liz Cheney says she's voting for Kamala Harris while a bunch of other Republican politicians reportedly want Harris to win, but are still too afraid to say that publicly after nine years, multiple defeats, an insurrection, and a felony conviction.
Same as it ever was. But first, because we had the great fortune to have Doug Emhoff in studio on Wednesday, this is our first regular pod since Labor Day, Dan.
Feels like it's been 100 years. It does.
It does. So let me say welcome back from summer.
The final campaign sprint has begun, and it's time to spend every moment between now and November in a perpetual state of crippling anxiety. Who's with me?

What a compelling pitch you make. Get involved with politics.
Have your stomach hurt for 50-some days.

Yeah, you know what, though? It's fulfilling, and it will lead to a good outcome for all of us hopefully the harder we work and the more our stomach is in knots okay we are 60 days from election day which is both an eternity and no time at all uh for context 60 days ago we were talking about joe biden's interview with george stephanopoulos where he said he would only step down if the Lord Almighty came down and told him to. So score one for the Lord Almighty.
We don't know. We don't know what he said to him.
We don't know what happened. We don't know what happened.
He was giving him different polling than Donnellan. Anyway, so lots can happen.
The race is basically a toss-up. Polling averages give Kamala around a three-point lead nationally, but the swing state margins are terrifyingly close to the final results in 2020, with Pennsylvania essentially being tied.
A big reason Nate Silver's model now shows Trump with a better chance of winning. Harris campaign manager Jen O'Malley Dillon also put out a memo on Sunday calling Harris and Walls clear underdogs.
So before we dive into the news of the day, what are your thoughts on the state of the race right now? How are you feeling? A couple of weeks ago, sort of at the height of Kamala enthusiasm, you went through all the positive polling. You asked me if I was going to rain on everyone's parade.
And at the time, I declined. I'm also not going to do it.
Uh-oh, it's getting cloudy. No, no, no.
Okay, good. But I wanted to say a couple things.
One, sitting here where we are today, I would much rather be us than them. Kamala Harris is a better candidate.
She has much more upside, much more of a capacity to grow her vote than Trump does. She's much less likely to light herself on fire every time she appears in public.
And so she has energy, she has momentum, she has resources, she has enthusiasm, she has what you want. Having said that, this race could not be closer.
In every single one of the, as you pointed out, in every single one of the swing state polling averages are within one to two points. And then when you look at the map and you start charting out a path to 270, you basically have to win Pennsylvania.
And if you don't, you have to win Georgia and North Carolina plus one other. And that is doable.
Or, well, you could do, if you could win, oh, did you say Georgia or North Carolina?

Georgia or North Carolina and one other, right?

You can win Georgia and North Carolina.

You can win Georgia, North Carolina

or Nevada or Arizona.

But you have to win Pennsylvania

or two other states

and one of those states

has to be Georgia or North Carolina.

So that is hard, right?

It's Georgia's a state.

We've won one since 96.

North Carolina is a state that

at the presidential level,

we have not won since 2008.

And so challenging- In Pennsylvania, we lost in 2016, and Biden won by one and a half percent, I think, in 2020. Well, one and a half percent.
Yeah. Just to remind people how close things were, he won Wisconsin by 0.6 percent, Michigan by like 2.8 percent, and Pennsylvania by like 1.6, I think, or about a point and a half.
Yeah. And he won Nevada and Georgia by 11,000 votes, I think.
So it's like, these could not be closer. And that is where this race is.
It's incredibly, incredibly close. And I was on John Heilman's podcast last week or this week, I guess.
I saw that this morning. And he asked me what number would, he was going through the polling averages and where Harris is and up by three and a half points and the 538 average.
He's like, what number would she need to be at for you to sleep well night before the election? There is no number. There's no number.
You know how we know that? Because Biden was at that number in 2020. There's no number.
Well, I was going to say, what if the polling was correct? Well, yeah. How are we going to know that? Right.
But what if it was, what if there's not a poll? What if there is not a huge polling error like there was in 20 and to a lesser extent, 16? Like what's the, what's that actual, not the margin, but what's her number that makes you feel good that she will overcome the electoral college advantage that Trump has? I mean, there is not a number where I would sleep well. I mean, honestly, I haven't slept well in a decade.
So I don't think I was going to say. What is the sleeping well you speak of? What is a world in which you're not texting swing state polls at 445 in the morning? Like, what world is that? I just this is going to 52 maybe no absolutely not higher than that 50 54 i mean 54 i'm sleeping pretty well i'm there's no i'm sleeping pretty well at 53 i mean in a world where the lord almighty who has recently left joe biden's residence and come to us to tell us the polling is correct, maybe I would feel okay at that.
But in general, I will not feel okay, no matter what her number is. And I should say, you know, I had Lynn Vavrik, who's a great political scientist from UCLA.
She's been on Offline. She's been on The Wilderness.
We've talked to her a bunch of times. She talks about how the electorate in the Trump era is calcified, which is like polarization plus.
It's polarized. It's evenly divided between partisans with the truly undecided.
And every time we say undecided, everyone should know it's undecided about who you're going to vote for or whether you're going to vote. But that group of voters makes up a small but decisive group.
And that's where we are. i think part of it is donald trump uh he's been on the ballot uh since 2016 um part of it is just a lot of the issues that are uh elections are decided on now are identity inflected issues um where there's not a lot of room for compromise and the the parties there's just not a lot of overlap with the parties.
Now, they are very well sorted between liberal, liberal leaning,

moderate to liberal voters in the Democratic Party and the rest in the Republican Party.

It didn't used to be like that throughout history, but it is now and it is why all of

these elections are incredibly close. Honestly, the outlier was Joe Biden post the first debate, right? Like that was the, that was sort of like the biggest gap that we've seen in many years in the election.
But now with a good, strong candidate like Kamala Harris, we are back to where Joe Biden was in 2020 and where elections have been generally in competitive swing states in the Trump years. But even in Biden post-debate, yes, Trump picked up a point or two in his top line number, but the delta between Biden and Trump went up, not because Trump went up, but because Biden went down.
And so, and that just as an example of how, quote unquote, calcified things are, Trump was nearly assassinated. He was shot in the ear on near national television and then had a viral photo that everyone loved that was shared gazillion times on social media.
And his top line number did not move. Nor did it move when he was convicted of a felony.
Yeah. These major things are moving the polls one to two points, which is as likely to be statistical noise as it is to be actual movement.
But I think one thing you said is important for everyone to keep in mind, which is that she has more room to grow than Trump does. Of course, that means she also probably has more room to fall.
But people have mostly made up their minds about Trump. They don't like him.
But the ones who are still considering him think maybe he's better on the economy, to a lesser extent immigration, just because they care about that a little less than the economy. Those same people do not know enough about Kamala Harris to make a choice.
And so they want more information about who she is, what she values, what she'd do, how she'd be different than him going forward over the next four years.

And, you know, she has the money to tell that story.

She has the organization to tell that story.

But she may not get a bigger megaphone.

She won't get a bigger megaphone or more attention than this debate on Tuesday.

You know, they could have a second one and maybe that gets the same ratings.

But this is I think this is a big, big, big deal. Oh, you think the debate's a big deal? As big a deal as it could be.
As big a deal as it could be. More so, well, more so than a typical presidential debate, I think.
Yes, I think when you have only one, in a changed media environment where it's very hard for the candidates to communicate with persuadable voters through the normal course of the campaign. Big, huge, monumental moments where people actually tuned in are of outsized importance than they have been in previous elections.
And I do think, this is my own guess, but like if she does really well in the debate, I would not be surprised if she opens up a little bit of a lead, which in this environment seems like a big lead. Like she's at three points nationally.
You could see her going to four, four and a half after a pretty good debate. I just think that there's a group of voters who like they've, they've pretty much made up their mind about Trump, but they're just not sold on her yet.
And if they see her on stage next to him, they can compare the two candidates. She has a strong performance, tells people who she is, what she values, what she wants to do.
And Trump is Trump. You know, that could be, that could be good.
Otherwise, I just think it's going to be a dogfight in close like this right up until November, which it probably will be. But even a four and a half point lead nationally is a one point increase in where we are today, where we're already very nervous about the battleground state polls.
Which is big. I mean, one point is big.
We went through how close all of these races were and Biden won the popular vote by four last time. I know.
I know. So you know what everyone should do? If you're a little nervous about this, you go to votesaveamerica.com slash 2024 and you sign up to volunteer to help Democrats in races all across the country, not just in the presidential level.

Ben Wickler, chair of Wisconsin Democratic Party,

best Democratic chair in the country,

he always says the race is within the margin of effort.

Not the margin of effort, the margin of effort,

which means that in a very, very close race

where it could be decided by a few thousand votes,

basically a few votes per precinct, every single volunteer matters. Everything you do matters.
Every donation matters. Every doorknock, text, all of it matters.
So if you haven't signed up yet, go sign up. Let me just make one point on this, which is as dark and dreary as all of that calcification and polarization and scary poll numbers sounds, there is one important thing to remember is that there is an anti-MAGA majority in this country, and there's an anti-MAGA majority in all of the battleground states.
We know because we've seen those voters turn out to defeat Donald Trump and to defeat MAGA candidates in 2022. Even North Carolina, the state Democrats have not won in a long time, that majority turned out for Roy Cooper twice in 2016 and 2020 when Trump was on the ballot.
And so it is right there for our taking. If we turn out the voters who we know will support us and we persuade them to choose Kamala Harris and Tim Walls and to choose Kamala Harris and Tim Walls over the couch, we will win this election.
Like it is that simple. And that's why the margin of effort stuff, I suppose, America matters so much because we control what happens here ultimately.
Yes. Yes, we do.
All right. So for most people who are still undecided about who they're voting for, whether they're voting at all, the number one issue remains the economy and cost of living.
Both candidates delivered speeches on the topic this week where they laid out new economic plans. Kamala Harris went to Northampton, New Hampshire on Wednesday to make an announcement about drastically increasing the tax deduction for small business and startups from $5,000 to $50,000.
Let's listen. I believe America's small businesses are an essential foundation to our entire economy.
And I've met so many entrepreneurs across the country who take the incredible leap of faith that is required to start a small business. Folks who put their life savings on the line and work through the weekends and holidays because they aren't just building a business.
They're pursuing a dream. And by extension, they're building a stronger middle class and a stronger America for us all.
Harris also said this week that she'll seek a smaller increase in the capital gains tax than Joe Biden wants. She'd go up to 28 percent, not as far as the nearly 44 percent maximum that the White House put in their budget proposal.
On Thursday, Trump spoke at the Economic Club of New York, where he promised to increase oil and gas production, which is already at record levels, hand out about $10 trillion in tax cuts, mostly to the rich, do more to support crypto, slap some tariffs on everything that's imported, which is really fun. It's a couple of thousand extra dollars per family.
And he wants to take a suggestion from his favorite red-pilled billionaire.

Let's listen. At the suggestion of Elon Musk, I will create a government efficiency commission task with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government and making recommendations for drastic reforms.
We need to do it. And Elon, because he's not very busy, has agreed to head that task force.
I took care of our economy like I would take care of my own company. My plan is to make the Trump tax cuts permanent.
They are massive tax cuts, biggest ever permanent.

And to cut taxes even more, you can be the head of the biggest bank in the world and a couple of nukes and your bank doesn't mean a thing. It's nice to hear them both side by side like that.
I do enjoy that we're putting Elon Musk in charge of the federal government audit because he has done such a great job with his takeover of Twitter, which cost investors $24 billion and counting, forced advertisers to flee, and cost a few thousand people their jobs. But the product, the product is just- Not just the product.
The experience.

The experience of being on that platform.

Pure joy.

Top notch.

Top notch.

Can't put a price on that.

All right, we'll go back to Trump.

Let's start with Kamala.

What do you make of the political strategy behind her economic proposals?

Do you sense a theme or a story they're trying to tell?

Yeah, I think this story is very clear.

They want to make her someone who fights

for the middle class and small businesses, and Donald Trump is someone who fights for the rich and large corporations. And that's the exact contrast they want.
That is why she has this slew of small business tax credits. And Trump obviously helps with that by going out and touting his massive permanent tax cut for corporations.
Most of that money did not get put back in the American economy. It was given as bonuses to executives and dividends to shareholders and stock buybacks.
And so, yeah, that's a very clear contrast. It's consistent with what she's doing in her ads.
It's all about fighting for people like you. The measure that we've talked about before is the most important measure, probably in any campaign, on who's going to win or lose is who's winning that contest.
Yeah, it's a little bit more, you know, fighting for the middle class than it is like populist warrior. Yeah.
You know, I just noticed the emphasis on especially with the speech this week, emphasis on small business owners, on founders, and then her first real policy break from Biden going with a lower capital gains tax increase. What did you make of that? I've struggled to try to figure that out.
And I'm because there's not a lot of political logic to it. It's not I mean, one capital gains tax rates is not something that's mattering to every single voter is not like a top of mind voting issue for people.
And having a lower rate, but generally you would assume to be less good politics broadly. So I'm going to go out on a complete limb and suggest that it is very possible and maybe even likely that she simply disagreed with this policy proposal of the Biden administrations.
Just possible. And there is a true debate among the econ nerd community, many of whom are our friends, about this proposal, right? There is a sense, And I don't feel qualified to weigh in one way or the other.
But an argument put forward by some of our former colleagues in the Obama administration, some of whom are on both sides of this, is that this is an ineffective tax. Because when you put the tax rate that high, people just sit on the capital.
They sit on their investments as opposed to selling them, putting that, then reinvesting that money. and it sort of locks up capital.
And that's why it doesn't make sense. So it neither raises revenue nor helps the economy.
And so you should do something else. The people who have been pushing for this are Silicon Valley types, which sometimes can be a black mark at times.
But it is like, I think what you hit on something that I think is tangentially related to this specific question. I just don't think they went out there like, you know, we're going to distance ourselves from Biden on a capital on a 14 point capital gains increase.
It just doesn't seem I mean, that you bring up a good point, which is like, you should know this about campaigns, which is when you're dealing with a lot of the policy people, especially the economic policy people, oftentimes they're not thinking about politics at all. They're literally just like, when I crunch my numbers, this would be better for the economy.
You know, and some people, you mentioned the San Francisco angle here, say, oh, you know, too many donors talk to her or whatever. This is not something that you do for donors.
She has more money than fucking any candidate at this point. And a lot of it wasn't even raised by her doing fundraisers.
None of it. She hasn't done any yet.
And the other thing is, if you look at her tax proposals and what she supports still from the Biden administration's tax proposals, like she's hitting the super rich with a lot of tax increases still, especially still with the billionaire tax that that Biden had proposed, a lot of the income taxes, a lot of the corporate taxes. So like that's all there, which leads you to believe that, yeah, maybe it's just an actual economic policy that if she wants to focus on small businesses and startups, you would want more investment in the economy.
I think the question of where does she distance herself from Biden's economic policies is kind of the wrong one. Because Biden's economic policies are actually quite popular.
The bills themselves are popular and the components of those bills are quite popular. What people are upset about are the results, right? Rightly or wrongly, they are dissatisfied with the state

of the economy, either for themselves and their personal lives because of the high prices,

or some sort of sense of where the national economy is going. And so it's not like Biden

did something specific that made people unhappy. He didn't pass an unpopular bill.

He didn't pass a bill that didn't work. People did not get hit with some sort of tax increase.

It's largely environmental factors, largely outside of its control around inflation and prices. So what she has to have, and I think is what she has done, is a different approach.
To the extent that Biden had a challenge in the economy that was of his own making, it's that his economic message was backward looking. And hers has been fully forward looking.
You have not heard her defend the Chips Act like one time in this campaign. Like she's proud of those things and she will talk about them.
But what she's doing, she's articulating a vision for the future, which is sort of what people want. And that's the difference.
And that's why in the numbers, like you look at that Wall Street Journal poll, she is losing to Trump by eight points on the economy and five points by on inflation. In December of last year, Biden was losing to Trump by 20 on both those measures.
And so just the fact that she is not Biden, because Biden's age also affected these things. I was going to say, the biggest distance between her and Biden is the distance between her age.
That's it. That's the real distance.
That affected everything. Because if you do not, there are a significant number of people who did not believe that Joe Biden should run for president again.

And if you don't believe he should run for president again, you're not going to suggest that you trust him on the economy, your most important issue. Change the equation there, you're going to have better number.
There's more work to do, but it's not a question. It doesn't have to go find some Biden policy and shoot it like Joe Manchin did the Obama Climate Act, right? It's not like that.
Well, and also Biden's approval ratings have gone up quite a bit since he decided not to run, which tells you that people's problem with Joe Biden was not necessarily his policies or his presidency, but the fact that he wanted to run for president again. The last thing you want to hear when you need your auto insurance most is a robot with countless irrelevant menu options, which is why with USAA Auto Insurance, you'll get great service that is easy and reliable all at the touch of a button.
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We'll supplement your daily news diet with a dose of necessary legal analysis and a healthy serving of our Real Housewives takes, some pop music, and 90s throwbacks, because we believe there's no better way to unwind after an oral argument than by watching a stupid reality TV argument. Subscribe to Strict Scrutiny wherever you get your podcasts, and don't forget to check out full episodes on YouTube.
So, what the hell was Donald Trump trying to do in his economic speech uh and how are you feeling overall about the contrast between the two candidates on this issue because obviously he leads i think what he was trying and largely failing to do was seem serious and normal at this speech that's why you go to the new york economic club're there. It's this August setting.
You don't think the nuclear weapon comment, if you're a banker, what is the, you got a nuke, what does it matter? I mean, he's not wrong. No, it's, yeah, it's a.
There's no set of FDIC rules. You're not going to get Daniel Dale'd on that one.
That's right. Who knows? That's possible.
Anything's possible. Daniel Dale.
Daniel Dale is a great verb. Honestly, I think it was basically seeing serious and normal and to make the economy more of an issue in this campaign.
I don't know that he accomplished any of those goals. It wasn't as bad as his normal set of remarks that like maybe it's a redo for that North Carolina speech from a couple weeks ago when he made fun of the idea he was supposed to be talking about the economy and end up talking about the election and Joe Biden and much of other stuff.
But he didn't drive a consistent message. He didn't have anything really interesting to say.
It was not in the clip we played, but in talking about the commission, Trump said it would save us trillions of dollars. A commission that is going to save trillions of dollars is a commission that by definition has to slash Social Security and Medicare.

Yeah, because the government spent six trillion dollars overall last year. That's the whole thing.
So if you're going to save trillions off of that, that's not just cutting a few regulations and programs here and there. And so in that sense, I think he gave the Harris campaign a bit of an opportunity to hit him on that.
his problem is the opposite of Biden's, which is people have good feelings

about the outcome of whatever he did

on the economy when he was president,

but his individual policies are very unpopular.

The tax cut, very unpopular.

The tariffs, to the extent people know

what tariffs are when they learn about them,

unpopular.

Even his like, you know,

people do want

to cut government waste they do want to take care of the deficit they those pop in every poll donald trump has nothing good to say about that because he added a ton to the deficit when he was president and is now proposing 10 trillion dollars of tax cuts um which are not paid for uh by whatever cuts, right?

And so, like, the more

he gets into a debate with her

about... which are not paid for by whatever cuts, right? And so, like, the more he gets into a debate with her about actual economic policy, I think the worse it is for him.
Yeah, I mean, theoretically, yes. Yeah, I think that's right.
If he stays in, like, you know, the gauzy, you know, I did, I managed the economy well and everything was

great. Now everyone, everything's expensive.
It doesn't go beyond that. Like that's his strongest

argument. I think that's right.
If he has to go, if he has to dig into that anymore and talk policy

and talk about what he's going to do for the next four years, it's, it's not as helpful.

Well, that's true on every issue for him. Like once you, once you get beyond that top gauzy

level, you have to actually say, I think that for two reasons, one, his actual specific policies

are quite unpopular. And two, he has no capacity to understand or speak about them coherently i mean when he got asked a question about child care in there his answer was oh my god bananas i know we didn't we didn't play that clip just because it was so rambling it was almost impossible to understand but he was basically there was a q a afterwards and someone asked him about child care and he just rambled on and on about how like the tariffs are going to pay for the child care and he's going to keep the child care and child care is actually not that expensive and meanwhile jd vance is like you know talking about why child care is you know uh universal child care is like uh um i think it's like it's class war against normal people yeah and you should just have your uncle and your parents watch your kids for you as if they don't also have jobs in America.
Just crazy. All right, so Harris did get a notable endorsement on Wednesday from friend of the pod, Liz Cheney.
I mean, I know that is technically true because she has been on this podcast and you conducted a great interview with her, but that is just like a hard sentence to hear sometimes. That's why I said it.
That's why I said it. During an event at Duke, she was at, also Duke, she was asked about it.
What, I mean, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not like a Duke guy, but just what a random shot at just a school in one of our seven swing states. During an event at Duke, she was asked by a student what she planned to do in November.
The audio is bad quality or we play it for you, but here's the key quote. I don't believe we have the luxury of writing in candidates names, particularly in swing states.
And as a conservative, as someone who believes in and cares about the Constitution, I have thought deeply about this. And because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump, but I will be voting for Kamala Harris.
So that was Liz Cheney. On the other hand, Jonathan Martin had a column in Politico this week saying that there are establishment Republicans out there who want Trump to lose and lose definitively, not just because they think he's dangerous, because they want the party to realize that it has to move past Trumpism.
Of course, unlike your Liz Cheney's or your Adam Kinzinger's, these Republicans are just too afraid to say it all publicly. They just got to tell J-Mart quietly on background or off the record.
And that's all they're going to do. Sorry, nothing else they can do.
Unfortunately, they're hoping that he loses, but they're just spectators. What do you what do you want them to do? Speak, say something, campaign, vote.
So what do you make of the Cheney endorsement and also like how she did it? Well, as a communications professional, I would not recommend rolling out your endorsement on a random weeknight at a random college event with no cameras where we only know about it because someone in this audience recorded it on a cell phone, as far as I can tell. Yeah, I'm very confused by that.
And like I get, I mean, you know, like you said, swing state, North Carolina. So that's nice.
But just sort of, I don't know, did she just get the question and decide I'm just going to do it now? Yeah, it sort of seems that way. I think she was specifically motivated by Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey saying, I think this past week, that he was not going to vote for Trump, but he could not vote for Harris or he's going to write someone else in the Pennsylvania ballot.
And that has been, that is a burr in the saddle of a lot of people in the Never Trump movement. We hear our friends at the Bulwark talk about this all the time, the sort of the cowardice of this, where you think Trump is totally unfit, should not be president, but then I'm going to do nothing to actually help that person.
And the cowardice of that moment is truly magnified if you're in a swing state. If you're in California, and you're just like, can't bring myself to vote for Kamala Harris and I'm going to write in, I don't know, Jeff Flake or the ghost of Ronald Reagan, whatever.
I mean, that is lame. That is very lame.
It's a bad example, but it's not as consequential. But if you're a voter in Pennsylvania, like Pat Toomey is, that is embarrassing.
I think she was implicitly calling that out. Yeah, that makes sense.
Do you think it would be useful? it'd be useful if you're on the Harris campaign? Do you want Liz Cheney to do events? Do you want her to ever appear with Kamala Harris? Do you ever want to put her in an ad? Maybe I mean, you could imagine targeting voters in, you know, sort of center right leaning independence in some suburbs and, you know, around Atlanta and North Carolina and targeting ads to them that have Liz Cheney in it. But I don't know.
What do you think? Yeah, I think so. Absolutely.
They were reportedly courting her endorsement for a while now and trying to get her to come out and do this. So they clearly want it.
How you use it, like Liz Cheney is someone in the world of politics. Like the last name is very familiar to people.
World of political junkies, that means a lot. We all know the story of what happened.
We know the courageous role she played on January 6th. We understand how conservative she is on so many issues, yet still opposes Trump.
the average voter, particularly the ones we target, not so much. But there are a group of people, like some of these Biden-Trump voters who have been straying from our coalition.
This is that,

you can see a video, it's probably a higher quality one than the one we have of this event, that maybe it never should, it could be a targeted digital ad, or it could be a video that people could share with the Biden Trump voters in their lives, right? Just as a piece of video you're texting or putting in your group chain of just her to camera. You know, a lot like the voters that Sarah Longwell's group does, which is sort of these

raw cell phone videos of people talking.

You could see that with her, like a less likely produced version of her just kind of saying

who she is and why she's going to cross the Rubicon to vote for Kamala Harris.

You know, because some of these voters, you know, they are leaving Trump.

So he's losing a point.

But for us to win, we need them to come over here and come to Kamala Harris so that we

are netting two points out of this. And I think she could be helpful with some number of voters that way.
Yeah. I'm thinking Georgia.
I'm thinking Arizona, where John McCain's son came out this week. Yeah, that was cool, too.
Yeah, that he's been drifting away from the Republican Party, and now he's going to be voting for Kamala Harris. So that's probably you know, probably big in Arizona.
J Mart's column, two questions. What do you think of all these Republicans who were secretly hoping that Trump will lose? Do you buy that? And then do you buy that if he does lose decisively, the party will be able to move on from Trumpism? Like Jonathan Martin is a excellent reporter, as we know from his writing over many years, but also the book he wrote a couple of years ago.
He has a great ability to get Republicans to say things to him that they would not say to others. So I believe they have said this to him.
Yeah. And I don't think he would write it unless he had sufficient numbers of sufficient stature to say it.
Now, imagine being one of these people who you want something to happen. You believe it's for the good, not just of the country, but of the party and for your career.
And then waking up every single day and doing the opposite of that. Because it's not just that they are being silent.
It's not just that they are writing in someone else. They're actively campaigning and endorsing Trump.
Yeah. They are appearing with him when he comes to their states.

They are going to events with their constituents

and telling them to vote for Trump.

Like Brian Kemp, right?

Republican governor of Georgia,

who Trump's like, you know, attacking him,

attacking his wife, blah, blah, blah.

He's just like, hey, let's focus on beating Kamala Harris.

Don't be attacking my wife.

What the Brian Kemp thing and Jonathan's column says- Sununu. Sun and Jonathan's column says is that every Republican is Ted Cruz.
We all thought he was some special example of shameless obsequiousness. But no, they're all like that.
He's just a more embarrassing version of that. But that is how they all are.
And again, if you're a Republican who's just publicly like, no, I want him to win because I have my reservations about his personality and tendency to try to overturn elections and start insurrections, but I really like the policy. And that's what's important to me.
Like, fine, right? But these people are like, he's got to lose. I want him to lose.
I want him to lose, but shh, can't afraid of they're afraid of like the right wing media and and and what and Trump and what they can do to like whip up voters. And some of these people face threat.
I mean, who knows? But I think it is legitimately scary to if you want to keep your job, you will lose your job as our elected member. Congress.
Liz Cheney, who we just mentioned, the daughter of Dick Cheney, true Republican royalty

from Wyoming, gets hammered in a primary because she came out against Trump. to member Congress, Liz Cheney, who we just mentioned, the daughter of Dick Cheney, true

Republican royalty from Wyoming, gets hammered in a primary because she came out against Trump. You know, we go, Jeff Flake, we can go Mitt Romney, Republican.
Like he did not, he was run out of the party essentially. And it's not just that these people are run out of the party and don't have jobs again, but I'm sure, you talk to Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, whoever, like they've had actual threats.
Yeah, the vitriol violence. Security, right? Just as Democrats have too, who've been targets of Trump.
Like it can get pretty scary. Now to the question of whether this Trump losing would rid the party of Trumpism, that is one of the most naive, dumbest things I've ever heard.
It a big no you know i wrote today in message box um about how gen z men are becoming much more pro-trump that this is a group obama won men under 30 by 30 points uh almost 30 points in 2008 uh trump in swing states growing new york times polling is winning them by double digits and by double digits. And these are not just like small government, lower taxes, Jack Kemp, Mitch McConnell Republicans.
These are MAGA Republicans. And this is the largest generation in American history.
And if they are like, MAGA-ism will exist beyond Trump. I thought, look, defeating Trump will go a long way to taking one of the most dangerous people in American political history off the board.
Absolutely, if we defeat him this election. But there is a long work to do here to beat the dangerous strains of the Republican Party.
And it's because the exact Republicans that Jonathan Martin talked to have been fostering this and enabling this strain of politics with their silence over the last 10 years. Yeah.
And their problem is their voters. It's more their voters than it is Donald Trump, because this is what they want.
This is the kind of politics they want. The problem for them is going to be that the candidates that they have nominated who aren't Trump, but who are still Trumpy, have tended to do pretty poorly in statewide races.
The Senate candidates, the gubernatorial candidates, there's exceptions here and there, but most of them who've tried to be Trumpy have lost by quite a bit. It presents a short-term electoral problem if you have either super kooky candidates who are truly MAGA or like Herschel Walker, for instance, or Blake Masters or Carrie Lake, or you have more traditional Republicans doing MAGA karaoke like Ron DeSantis, those candidates tend not to do well.
But you're still going to end up, because of gerrymandering, you end up with a Congress full of MAGA candidates, which means that every government funding deadline, if they have control of, you know, we don't even want to talk about what the Senate map looks like of the next coming cycles. If they have power, dangerous things can happen.
Yep, yep. All right, after the break, I'll talk with CNN's Dana Bash about landing the big interview with Harris and Tim Walls and get an experienced moderator's view of what's at stake for Harris and Trump on Tuesday in Philly.
But before we do that, two election related asks for you. One, please share this podcast with people in your life who are looking for a little more information about politics in the 2024 election.
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When we come back, Dana Bash. my name is

Nicholas When we come back, Dana Bash. My name is Niccolo Mainoni, and for years I have been obsessed with one of Europe's greatest mysteries.
Who killed God's banker? The wire said, Calvi found dead. Suicide? Question mark.
What truly happened to the banker

who had the Vatican, the mafia,

and a secret far-right branch of the Freemasons

all pounding on his door?

From Crooked Media and Campside Media,

this is Shadow Kingdom, season one, God's Banker.

Find it wherever you get your podcasts

or get early access to the full season

by joining Crooked's Friends of the Pod

at crooked.com slash friends. Joining us now, she's CNN's chief political correspondent and the anchor who co-moderated the first presidential debate back in June and landed Kamala Harris's first interview as the Democratic nominee.
She's now the author, along with David Fisher, of America's Deadliest Election, the Cautionary Tale of the Most Violent Election in American History. Dana Bash, welcome to the pod.
Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. It's good to have you.
Long time listener, first time caller. So before we get to your book, I want to start by talking about your incredibly busy summer, which began with you and Jake Tapper moderating what might have been the most consequential presidential debate of our lifetime, maybe ever.
Can you talk a little bit about the process for preparing for that debate? How do you think about the questions? How do you think about when to jump in during an exchange? Well, the jumping in, first of all, thank you so much for being here. It's awesome to see you.
The jumping in was limited by the rules. The rules were very strict.
And we're now seeing with the ABC rules coming out that they, you know, everybody has their own set of rules. Those are similar to ours, but it looks like they have like an additional minute or so.
So that's the answer to that. There was a lot of structure, let's put it that way.
But in terms of the prep, the way I kind of describe the team here, it's like Avengers Assemble, because we have so many superheroes that do different things that have different superpowers. And when it's time to do a big event, and it didn't get much bigger than this, everybody comes together.
And we prepare for a very long time. I mean, I guess maybe by these standards, we didn't have that long, by debate standards.
But we had three weeks, four weeks. And so it's the churning.
Maybe it's not that different from the process of writing a speech where you have an idea, you have a set of principles, you have a loose, and then you put it together. But you have to make edits and make changes because it feels wrong here or it doesn't feel exactly on mark there.
And we do that with a fantastic, as I said, group of superheroes who have been doing this for a long time at CNN, both from the production team to the researchers and on and on. And then we just, we go through it over and over.
And the news cycle changes, things in the world change. They say things on the stump that make us amend the approach that we're taking to a certain issue.
And then we just play it out. We do mock- Do you do mock debates? I was going to say, do you have people play the candidates?

Oh, yeah.

That's cool.

Yeah. We have people play the candidates.
And it's, I mean, I can't imagine doing a debate

without that process because it really does help inform how something is coming across

and maybe not coming across as we intended. And I will say for these mock debates, I'll let you in on a little secret.
We did not mock for the actual debate that we had. Oh, wow.
Just because there wasn't enough time? No, we's just we didn't expect that to be the way the debate went.

Oh, oh, oh. Well, I was going to ask.

Well, I was going to get to that.

I imagine like, do you do you guys talk about how to handle Trump, who is unusual and that he enjoys yelling not only at his opponents and interrupting men, but like yelling at the moderators and interrupting moderators in debates? We practice for everything. Got it.
That's what I think. Yeah.
Knowing the nature of the candidates and how they tend to act and react in debates and interviews and other scenarios. Absolutely.
The thing about this debate, which ABC is going to deal with as well, is that he could have yelled at me or yelled at jake anytime he was free to use his time however he wanted but he couldn't do it when his mic was off and so these rules and this is obviously you know far better than i why the harris team wanted to change that and not have muted mics because we all realized real time, especially the Biden team who wanted to impose that rule, that it was actually a built in set of guardrails for Donald Trump, which his campaign was thrilled about. But you didn't really see the kind of Trump who we saw in several of the debates in 2020.
Yeah, I'm wondering how much you think the muted mics debate matters. Like, did you guys, could you guys hear Trump when he, when his mic was muted? So could, like, I don't know how that worked.
We were in a relatively small studio and I'm guessing ABC will have a similar situation because they don't have an audience like we did. So, yes, you can hear.
The challenge is how much the audience can hear because the mic is muted. And they're close, so you could potentially pick it up on another mic.
So we did a lot of practicing for that. But what happened in reality

is that knowing that the mic was off, Trump really didn't say much when his mic was off and when Biden was speaking. It happened a couple of times.
So it kind of prevented him from acting out. So it was, forgive me, moot.
that's interesting that's interesting what was your reaction in the moment to biden's performance like what do you remember thinking when it was five minutes in ten minutes okay well let me ask you this well i actually think i've already asked you this on the air but i'll'll ask you this on your podcast. What were you thinking from the first minute?

I mean, I thought before the debate that it could go fine or it could go really badly.

Even in my wildest imagination of how badly it could go, I did not go to that level.

Like I thought, and I thought, you know, after the first five minutes, I'm like, uh, slow start. This is really bad.
He's got to pick this up at some point. Unfortunately, people always remember the first five, 10 minutes of a debate, not the end.
So even if he's stronger at the end, it's going to be tough. But then by the time he got to, you know, we beat Medicare and we killed Medicare, yeah.
Yeah, and then pivoting from like an abortion answer, which should have been strong, to like the killing of Americans by undocumented immigrants. I was just like, what is, this is bad.
This is really bad. Yeah.
So that's, we felt it. We felt it.
And I do think that it's possible that people at home had an even stronger reaction to it because we were seeing sort of the whole scene in front of our actual eyes.

And at home, you obviously saw, for the most part, the split screen.

So you saw the close-up shot.

So I think it was even more stark for viewers at home but yeah it was a holy shit moment there was some uh there was some criticism before and after the debate about cnn's decision not to do live fact checking how did you guys think about that leading into the debate wait there was criticism of our debate can Can you tell me more? I'm just, first I'm here a bit. Wild.
Wild. Of anything that we do in this debate? No.
And you know what? Fair game. That's being in the arena.
I'm glad you asked that because we looked at the history of presidential debates since, you know, Kennedy, Nixon, modern presidential debates.

debates. And we felt pretty much all of us, our bosses, the execs, the production team, Jake and me, that the way that it is done best is for the moderators to facilitate,

but not be the story and not participate any more than we have to because we're obviously asking the questions. And it's a debate.
It's between two individuals who want to be the leader of the free world. and I recognize that in today's times, it is not the same as it was prior to eight years ago, never mind, you know, other times in our history.
But it was, we decided to use that traditional model, that if and when Donald Trump said something that wasn't true, which we did fact checking after the case, after the fact, which we telegraphed to everybody that we were going to do through our great Daniel Dale 30 times, he did not tell the truth, he Donald Trump. If we were to jump in, we would be active participants as if I was doing an interview or we would do in a town hall that we moderate when there's not a political opponent there, but that it was up to Joe Biden to do the wait a minute and vice versa.
Joe Biden said a couple of things that were at least a couple of things that were just not accurate. He suggested that no military service men had died on his watch.
And we know that's true because that's not true because people, unfortunately, were killed in the chaotic extraction from Afghanistan. I'm not to say that I'm equating them because it was not the same amount when you look at the numbers when it was all said and done.
So that's what we decided to do. The rules, as I mentioned, were such that they were very, very structured.
And that was part of a negotiation that Jake and I had nothing to do with. And it really came primarily at the beginning from Team Biden, who said that they wanted to do this early debate.
and and there's also the question of the real-time fact-checking and the pitfalls of it. We know the facts.
We generally have a sense of what each candidate, particularly Donald Trump, is going to say that's like, what, and not true, because we do it in interviews. We haven't interviewed him lately but in his or his surrogates and others but there's still like a if we're gonna do it we gotta we gotta have it right and there yeah and there is um it's been done and it's and it's not worked out that well and it's dangerous yeah i mean look i my experience with this was in, which I'm sure you know well, in 2012 when Candy Crowley fact-checked Mitt Romney during the debate with Barack Obama.
And obviously we were thrilled at the time that she did and also a little surprised that we got the fact-check. Is that right? I think it was part – Yeah, because I didn't know that she would actually do that.
Right. I think it was partly because both Romney and Obama were sort of staring at her and being like, see, what do you think? What do you like? You know, Obama just kept saying, look at the tape.
Look at the tape. Look at the transcript.
Look at the transcript. And then Romney's kind of looking at Candy.
And yeah, it was a tough position. I'm a humongous Candy Crowley fan.
She's one of my heroes and mentors from when I first started here. And I'm glad that you gave that proper context.
Because I remember they were looking at her like, do something, lady. And we had prepped for that exact moment.
Really? Yes yes and so we've told this story before but ben rhodes ben rhodes especially when obama was giving a practice answer about benghazi and about when whether he called it terrorism or not said something like i i said terrorism in the in the in the rose garden speech and then ben said i know you got to say act of terror because that was exactly what was in the transcript. And Obama's like, it's the same thing, right? And Ben's like, it's not the same thing and you've got to be precise.
And sure enough, Obama was precise in the debate. That's exactly what Romney called him out on.
So we had prepped for that moment. Did you also prep for when Romney calls him out and disputes it for looking at Candy to say, fix this? That, I think, was Obama's instinct to just give him enough rope.
Because I think he knew he got him in that moment. I do not know that he expected Candy to jump in.
But interesting. It's very interesting.
This debate coming up Tuesday, what are you expecting and what are you going to be paying particular attention to? Well, based on our experience, I am expecting literally anything. I'm expecting two individuals named Donald Trump and Kamala Harris to be on a debate stage.
And that's the end of my expectation. Yeah.
It seems like they've agreed on, even though they're going to have muted mics, they've agreed on letting the moderators step in when candidates interrupt and communicate to the audience when someone says something on a muted mic, which sounds interesting. Well, it's funny because that's one of the challenges of having the muted mic because if you're Kamala Harris and Donald Trump doesn't stay in his guardrails and he talks while she's talking and she can hear it, but you, the viewer, can't hear it, it could get a little bit confusing.
So that makes sense that the moderator will communicate to the audience like, here's what's happening right now that you might not fully absorb. And they're going to have the both mics open during intense exchanges.
I can't remember. Did you guys have that? There weren't a lot of intense exchanges.
No, we didn't. Okay.
Trump took his foot off the gas when he saw what was happening, I thought.

Yes.

Which was...

So you also landed the first big... We didn't.
Okay. Trump took his foot off the gas when he saw what was happening, I thought.

Yes.

So you also landed the first big sit-down interview with Kamala Harris and Tim Walls.

And I'm so curious about how you prepare for something like that and approach the interview itself.

I mean, especially you going into this interview, there were entire pieces written about what questions should be asked.

There was a lot of pressure on the candidates and you since it was their first interview. You only had like 20 minutes.
How did you think about what you wanted to get out of that interview? That's such a good question because there were so many ways to go because it was the first. And what I decided along with the Avengers that I described, which we had to assemble very quickly because I got the call Monday night and I had to be on the plane with her.
I was at the beach, somewhere in the vicinity of where you grew up, but I'll leave that alone. And then- It's where I was after the debate.
so okay so i um so i quickly you know got back to washington and i was able to fly with her day of force too and meanwhile we were doing a lot of this obviously quickly and remotely and from far-flung places but but what we decided was that this needed to be like foundational um because of the nature of her candidacy. She was shot out of a cannon.
She was still full. I mean, she was I think at that point she had just done like one little piece of her economic plan.
and for the most part it was her agenda was joe biden's agenda which still is largely but she's

starting to since then um separate herself a little bit and be her own person. But that was the foundational part of the interview that I thought was so important, which is you have basically been the understudy for almost four years.
How much are you going to do the role like the lead and how much are you going to make it your own? And so those were some of the, that was the thought process behind some of the key questions, including, you know, pun intended, drilling down on issues like fracking, which is like table stakes in a place like Pennsylvania, which she has to win. And I thought it was interesting that she was obviously prepared for that.
And she wanted to make it extraordinarily clear that she is not going to ban fracking. Like she wanted to get that out there right away to which, you know, I can't, there was, there were a lot of, um, there was a lot of commentary on the, the kinds of questions and whether or not that was, you know, oh, that was written by MAGA or whatever.
But you'll appreciate this as a democratic strategist that my impression, and nobody ever said this to me, but my impression is her campaign wanted her to say that because if you're an undecided voter in Pennsylvania, and you think that this is like a big issue for you, you want to hear it.

If you're already voting for Kamala Harris, who cares?

Like they got them in the bag.

And if you're already going to vote for Donald Trump and you're not persuadable, who cares?

It's going to be such a campaign, we believe, on the margins that that kind of stuff really matters.

So she was eager to be asked questions like that to try to explain.

And more broadly, like her thought process.

Thank you. on the margins that that kind of stuff really matters.
So she was eager to ask, to be asked questions like that to try to explain and more broadly, like her thought process. She was a candidate for a brief time in the 2020 cycle.
She left in 2019 and she had a very different sensibility in that time, not very different, somewhat different in that time than she does now, which in many ways is understandable because she's the understudy. So how much have you changed because you learned on the job or how much have you changed for other reasons? Yeah, I didn't catch too much of criticism from the left, but when I did, I thought it was sort of insane.
It was like a very fair interview of questions that like I'm a Democratic. I'm a former Democratic operative who still considers myself an activist.
And like I would have asked those questions. Can I take this quote and like put it on a pillow and then take a picture of it and pin it to my social media feeds? I mean, like I remember I interviewed her when she was running in 2019 in the primary.
And that was in that case, it was she had this record as a prosecutor and as attorney general, which sometimes was like a little more moderate than the position she had taken in 2020 in the primary. And I just like dug into those.
And she wasn't mad. No one else.
You know, like she you expect that if you're a candidate, that's the whole, that's what you get prepared for. Absolutely.
And, and it's in, in normal times, she would have been going through that with, uh, with other candidates against her in a democratic primary process and with voters pressing her on those issues. But that's not where we are.
Well, I think you did a great job. Thank you.
So, okay, your book. Some people may not know much about the 1872 Louisiana gubernatorial election and its repercussions.
Prior to preparing for this interview, I was one of those people. Why did you decide to write a book about that election? You know, I'm so glad when smart people like you say, I didn't know anything about it, it makes me feel so much better.
No idea. I didn't know anything about it it makes me feel so much better no idea I didn't know anything about it um I mean I knew some like I heard Colfax massacre particularly after the 2021 debacle because it was kind of in the conversation about the ramifications for that which I'll get to in a second, of that in 1872 and then the 1876 election, which was an election where the Electoral College was a mess and Congress had to deal with the mess that they got because four states gave them multiple slates of electors because they couldn't figure out who actually won in their states.
Back then, it was because there was actual corruption. There was actual fraud.
And there was disenfranchisement of Black voters, new Black voters, because it was during Reconstruction. And so it was genuine, unlike what we saw in 2020, which was allegations of fraud and corruption, which there was no evidence of, at least presented in any court of law.
So that's a really big difference. But going back to 1872 and Louisiana, my co-author, David Fisher, approached me with this.
Dan Abrams, actually, who wrote a few books with David Fisher,

somebody came to him with the idea or he had the idea or something. But anyway, he put us together.
And I sort of said the same thing, like, how do I not know about this? Because the South was still licking its wounds in a big way. The Civil War had just ended.
and segregationists, racists in the South,

we're still trying to cling to the notion that they didn't have free labor anymore with slaves, but they were still trying to cling to the notion that the white race is the supreme race and black people should not have the same rights that they have. And after during Reconstruction, a lot of black elected officials were sent into not a lot, but comparatively black officials were sent for the first time into Congress and into elected offices all over the South because they were representing the people who were voting for them.
The Democrats then, because of course everything was in reverse, the Democratic solid South, the segregationists said, well, we have to stop this. And they realized that the way to do that was at the ballot box.
And the things that we hear today and we see today, even though a hundred years after that, John Lewis and Martin Luther King and all of the amazing civil rights leaders tried to right the wrongs from back then, it was born out of this time period. And let me just give you one fact that I did not know, one of many I didn't know before working on this book.
so this election in 1872 because it was so so corrupt, nobody would concede for the governor's race, for the legislature, it even impacted judges. So two governors were inaugurated by their own people.
Two legislatures were sworn in by their own supporters and so forth. So this went on for months.
And the people who were trying to win out to actually be the real governor, they had no problem with inciting violence, particularly those who were aligned with the Democrats. And that happened in a stunning way.
There was blood on the streets of New Orleans. There were pitch battles.
There were

insurrections. There were coup attempts.
There was all kinds of chicanery beyond. We think that there's stuff that happens now.
I mean, it's nothing compared to then. There was a massacre, which I mentioned, the Colfax Massacre, which happened in Grant Parish, named for Ulysses S.
Grant, the president at the time, of course, the general before that, where 150 black men were slaughtered in cold blood. And it was horrible.
They were just trying to make the point that their vote should count and they should have had the right to vote. And this is after the election.
In order to prosecute this case and to try to find justice, the federal government said, we're going to do this through the federal court system because there were new constitutional amendments in place post-civil war that gave some protections. So instead of just trying them for murder in the South, which they thought,

these are white guys in the South killing black men. There's not going to be a fair trial here.
We'll do it through the civil rights laws. Went all the way up to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court decided the federal government doesn't have a role here in civil rights.
It should be up to the states.

They're going to determine how people should live. And the South said, fantastic.
And let us present to you the Jim Crow laws. And that's how Jim Crow happened and lasted, of course, for a century.
So it was that election and all the ramifications from that, that really laid the groundwork for the horrific way that black citizens, after they were already slaves, were treated for so long in this country. I mean, reading about it, you know, made me feel better about our current political climate, just because you look to history and realize how much more violent and

horrific it was back then. But are there parallels that you learned about while writing the book

that make you think, well, you know, this kind of thing can happen, right? And what we have is very fragile. Yes.
Going back to four years after what I was just talking about, 1876, and the problems that I just described in Louisiana happened in other states. and it was so fraught and so corrupt.
And nobody in the state could make a decision, okay, like the canvassing board in Louisiana, it was the returning board. This is our slate of electors, Congress, please certify them.
They sent multiple slates to Congress. And one of the debates was whether or not the vice president on the day that they certified the electoral results had the ability to choose which slate of electors or whether it was just a ceremonial role.
And they decided that it was a ceremonial role, just like Mike Pence decided 150 years later. I wonder if they looked at, they must have, I wonder if Pence and his folks looked at this case.
I think they did. It's funny because I've been meaning to call his people to ask, I mean, how could they not have? Right.
It was pretty much the only precedent. But then what happened was they threw out, they just said, we can't count these four states.
They don't count. So then there was a tie, an electoral tie.
And then they had to figure out, well, now what do we do? And so they came up with a commission because that's what we do in Washington. Even then.
Even then. And it was supposedly bipartisan and then nonpartisan.
But of course, at the end, it was one Republican who decided who was going to be the president, one man. And they decided it would be the Republican Rutherford B.
Hayes. And he became the president, but not for free.
the trade-off which was never obviously made official it was the quintessential backroom deal

was And the trade-off, which was never obviously made official, it was the quintessential backroom deal, was that the federal government would pull federal troops out of the South. So not only at that point had the Supreme Court said, it's up to you to set the laws, the federal troops had been there on and off for years to try to preserve the peace.
They had to come out. Yeah, no, I mean, and of course, when they pulled the troops out, that's when the reign of terror in the South began.
And it was Jim Crow laws, but it was also a lot of violence. So it's interesting, the alternate slates of electors, when you think about the potential issues with 24, you know, they passed reform in Congress and obviously Trump's not president this time.
So, you know, there's a lot of things he can't do, but you do wonder about a lot of these states, especially with Republican legislatures and very Trumpy legislatures sending in their own slates of electors. And then in a lot of the states, there's Democratic governors.
And so you could see the dual slates getting sent in. And yeah.
He's not president, but they changed the laws in a lot of these key states. Yeah.
Like Georgia. And they're not the same as they were.
Yeah. No, I know.
That's the, oh boy. Well, you know know, we've had a pretty busy summer, so maybe the fall will be quiet.
Maybe all will just be normal again, right?

I'm just in showroom. I won't be.

Dana Bash, thank you so much for coming on Pod Save America.

The book is America's Deadliest Election,

the cautionary tale of the most violent election in American history.

It is on sale now.

Go check it out.

Fascinating history. And thanks again for coming on.
Thank you for having me. Sorry, my voice just crapped out.
It's done. You know what? You've been talking too much.
We all have. Bye, Jenna.
Take care. You too.
That's our show for today. We'll be back in your feed on Sunday morning with Pod Save America live in Phoenix.
Our guest host is Jane Koston. We also got Ruben Gallego, who's running for Senate.
But we have some extra content for you right now. Tommy and Lovett sat down with one of our producers, Caroline Reston, to talk about some untold campaign stories on the newest episode of our subscription show Inside 2024.
Here's a 10-minute preview of their conversation to hear the full episode, plus Polar Coaster, Terminally Online, and all of our other subscription content. Subscribe at crooket.com slash friends or on Apple Podcasts.
Here's Tommy, Lovett, and Caroline. Welcome back to Inside 2024.
I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm John Lovett.
Who are you? Oh, I'm Caroline Reston. Do we not do that here? No, we don't do that on this show.
But thank you for thinking of me as an equal for a hot second. You are, of course.
In today's episode, we're going to take a little trip down memory lane and answer listener questions about our days on the campaign trail. Okay.
This is a great question from the Discord. If the campaign is in a small town with no hotels rated two stars and above, where does the candidate stay? Do they fly out on their private plane and go home? What kind of lodging arrangements are available to the entire entourage? Good question.
Yeah. I mean, candidates do stay in dumps.
Total dumps. Was Obama staying in dumps? I mean, our like go-to was a shitty hotel by the airport where he could rip cigs in an adjacent room.
So yeah, there was a period of time when it was a normal thing for candidates to stay with supporters. Like you'd go to some random little town and John Edwards would just like shack up with somebody in their – Well, not shack up.
You know, well, maybe. Poor word choice.
We'll never know. Some empty nester, like just crashing their kids' former room.
Like Jerry Brown, who is the governor of California, is old school, and he would stay in like supporter housing when he traveled just to save money. It's really, really, one thing that has changed like just in the last, like we're so old.
Like it used to be that like hotels were more, like there was more varying quality, but now there's just these chains that have like made the same experience at virtually every city. Yeah, they have a baseline.
Yeah. So it's like never too horrendous anymore.
It's like you're in a Kempton and you know what it's going to be. Yeah, or Hampton Inn.
Hampton Inn. Best Western.
I think we did Hampton Inn a lot. Obama did Hampton Inns.
Hampton Inn, great value. I believe in the Hampton Inn model.
Are you being sponsored by them? No, but they could sponsor me. I think it's a great price point.
It's not luxury, but that's okay. When's the last time you stayed at a Hampton Inn? When we were in Boston for a tour show, I believe.
Wow, you stayed at the Hampton Inn? I was on Survivor. Like, I'm okay with some roughing in.
Were they filming in the Hampton Inn? Were there cameras there? I don't. I enjoy luxury, but I can sleep anywhere.
But to answer this person's question, I mean, odds are you just drive to like the kind of larger city nearby. Okay.
I mean, I guess that's a pretty good work on. Does knocking on doors and phone banking still work? Is there data showing that it's the best use of volunteer time versus user generated content for social media, for example? There is a lot of data that shows that it works.
It is effective. I would

argue it's getting more effective because as it gets harder to reach the most important and needed voters, lower engagement, less likely to vote, undecided voters. These are people that are less likely to be consuming news, less likely to be consuming television, less likely to see ads.
knocking on doors and phone banking become more important.

It's very much worth doing. It's a game of inches and you can knock on a hundred doors and you'll talk to two or three or four people, two of whom don't want to talk to you, two of whom maybe do.
But in that 100, you'll get one and dozens of other volunteers are hitting blocks around you. And together, you're drawing out the people that will make the difference.
I will say, though, I have definitely noticed in the last couple of years, something after the pandemic versus before the pandemic, which this was when we were in North Carolina knocking on doors. You go knock on doors of like democratic precincts where you're really just trying to remind people to vote if they might not have put their ballot in yet, just to make sure you get every single vote.
That's different. But if you're in kind of a more moderate or like if you're knocking on like the independent doors or the doors where you don't know what you're going to get, I have noticed that the people are just a little bit more reluctant to answer the door, a little bit more suspicious of each other.
Since the pandemic, there is a little bit of a, I think, darkness that has come in. But even still, you have really good experiences knocking on doors.
Yeah. What he said.
I never open my door when someone knocks when I'm at home because I always just assume it's a Jehovah's Witness. Well, and you watch a lot of horror films.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. If they have a mask on, don't.
Oh, that's what I do open it. With like a hockey mask? Yeah.
And like a knife? I'm like, welcome in. I'm ready to be a star of a podcast.
It's a good follow-up. How do you get out of your head and just talk to voters? I feel like I'm afraid of saying something wrong or not knowing something, and then I get frozen.
There's no wrong answer. The way you get out of your head is you do it.
You do it and you do it. It's weird at first and then it's fine.
But like there's a very funny story from 2007 where I think it was Samantha Power, Austin Goolsby, and Cass Sunstein were canvassing together. So these are people who, one's a Pulitzer Prize winning scholar of genocide and foreign policy, one is an

economist, and one is like the smartest

legal mind

alive. And they're like, okay, we

are like the A team. We're going to canvas in every

question we could ever get on the doors, like we got

it covered. And they knock on the door and

the first question they get is, when

is the caucus? Or where is my caucus location?

And they didn't know and they failed on their first question.

So you will be fine. It's going to

go okay. Just do it.

Yeah, I think that's right.

I'll see you next time. the caucus or where is my caucus location and they didn't know and they failed on their first question.
So you will be fine. It's going to go okay.
Just do it.

Yeah, I think that's right. Also

you just don't have to pretend to know everything. You can say

I'm not sure about that but here's why I really like Kamala Harris

or here's why I really like Ruben Gallego

whoever it might be. Ask questions

listen to them get their data

just make sure you write down what these people care

about and get it to the campaign.

Okay, that's really good advice. What is the maddest you ever got at someone on a campaign over something dumb? I think it was in Lovett's sandwich got here in a couple minutes.
Yeah, I'm getting pretty mad now. Hey, you have 20 more minutes before it gets here.
Maddest on a campaign. I feel like you've yelled at reporters, right? I don't even remember some of them now because they were so stupid and small, in part because we were exhausted, frazzled, stressed out, mid-20s people.
Being on the Hillary campaign in 2008, slowly and exorably marching towards defeat, but never losing a primary so badly as to justify either getting out or winning so decisively as to justify describing the races having changed. It was a pretty grueling time.
It was quite a year. The upside of it is that that year was like a proving ground for a ton of campaign staffers, both in Obama world and in Hillary world that are still the people kind of you hear about doing these jobs.
Like it was these jobs. It was an amazing experience for everybody involved, myself included.
Yeah, I mean, my job was to fight with reporters. And so we were young, and there was a lot of bravado and bullshit, and we did it in ways that were probably counterproductive.
Ben LeBolt, who's now the White House communications director, used to have a fan set up blasting directly onto his body because he would sweat through his shirts. So he would have just a fan propped at himself.
But the time I really remember losing it was when Fox News first reported like the madrasa stuff that Obama attended a madrasa when he was younger. And I think like I felt my like – I disassociated as I screamed at this producer on the phone.
Does that work? That fixed everything. Oh, yeah.
Fox News came correct after that. And did they believe you that he hadn't gone to Madrasa? I'm sure they did.
No. Still don't.
When you're on a presidential campaign, what's your relationship like with the staffers of the opposing campaign? Is there a relationship? Is there any kind of like Kirsten Dunn's Gabrielle Union and bringlle union and bring it on like respect you but i hate you and i'm gonna be you um i mean the the primary campaign ones are the weird ones because those are your actual friends you know it's like your roommate got a job in one place and you did another so you know those people um i actually got to know the mccain people really well uh because i went to the rnC and we ended up going out to dinner. A couple of reporters

took a bunch of the Democratic flax and Republican

flax. We all went to dinner and we had a good time.
We became

friends and we actually stayed in touch.

But I do remember

one time when we

had a particularly kind of

strident Obama surrogate

on the air against a very strident

McCain surrogate.

And I got a call through the switchboard and this person was like, it's Tucker Bounds for Tommy Vitor. And I'm like, Tucker Bounds? He's the McCain national spokesman.
And he's like, Vitor, we'll promise never to put this person on air again if you promise to never put that person on air again. It was this very funny moment.
Like, detente. Did it work? No, we both were booking those people all day.
But it was hilarious. It was a call for us.
That's really funny. Like a moment of, like, fake truth between you two? Just us being, like, a moment of recognition that we both were sharing experience from completely different perspectives.
And in that moment, we both could see how awful the thing we were producing was. And we just wanted to acknowledge it.
That'd be a great buddy comedy movie. Sure.
Well, there was some movie about, I can't remember what it was called, is it Our Jobs are Crisis or something? Yes. Something like that.
I didn't know anybody from the Obama campaign, but then we first talked around Cutout Gate. Oh, Cutout Gate? That's not important.
And then that was the first time we really spoke. And then the speech writing job came up, I think, later.
Is it expected that the sappers of a losing primary campaign kind of try to get jobs on the winning primary campaign? And is it humiliating? Or is it normal?

I think it's normal.

I think sometimes it's harder for spokespeople

because spokespeople,

they're very public in drawing the contrast

between the two candidates.

And the best spokespeople are ferociously loyal.

And you can sell a salesperson anything, is an old saying. And when your job is selling the candidate, you're not just selling it to the world.
You sell yourself and you really believe it. And so I think that can sometimes be the hardest bridge to build.
And also they're on the record. It's hard to get a job working for Barack Obama if you're on the record for an entire month of March with your campaign's message of he's not from here and he can't be president.
It's particularly hard for spokespeople because Barack Obama picks up the paper and sees named official attacking him and you're like, we're going to hire that guy. No, you're not.
Absolutely not. But I mean, David Axelrod, I mean, people like, yeah, there's a lot of, sometimes you're also aware that some of the people working on the campaign you beat, they're actually smarter than the ones working on the current campaign.
So it's awkward. Thanks for listening to that preview.
To listen to the full episode and much more, subscribe to Friends of the Pod at cricket.com slash friends or on Apple Podcasts. Talk to you this weekend.
Bye, everyone. Bye, everyone.
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