The Biden-Trump Rematch Begins

Transcript

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Speaker 1 Ingrezza.

Speaker 5 What's poppin' listeners?

Speaker 6 I'm Lacey Mosley, host of the podcast Scam Goddess, the show that's an ode to fraud and all those who practice it. Each week, I talk with very special guests about the scammiest scammers of all time.

Speaker 9 Want to know about the fake heirs?

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Speaker 15 I'm joined by guests like like Nicole Beyer, Ira Madison III, Conan O'Brien, and more.

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Speaker 1 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Fabrick.

Speaker 4 I'm John Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor.

Speaker 1 I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Gang's all here.
Here we are. Well, Dan's on Zoom.
Sort of, sort of. Tough, tough, Dan.
On today's show, Nikki Haley concedes to Trump but doesn't endorse.

Speaker 1 Dean Phillips concedes to Joe Biden and does endorse. Adam Schiff is headed to the Senate.
North Carolina Republicans nominate a Holocaust denier for governor.

Speaker 1 And Joe Biden prepares for his biggest speech of the year. But first...

Speaker 1 Super Tuesday told us what's been obvious for a very long time. President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are headed for a a November rematch that no one asked for.

Speaker 1 It's happening, guys. It's happening.
It's happening. It's at gird your loins.
We started a podcast eight years ago talking about Donald Trump. Eight years later, here we are.

Speaker 1 You know, still running for president. I think we've slowed him down.
I think we've slowed him down, though.

Speaker 1 I think there's nothing there in those tires. All right.
So on Super Tuesday, Biden won every contest but the caucuses and American Samoa. Talk about that soon.

Speaker 1 And has won every state and every delegate but 10. He's now just a few hundred delegates away from officially clinching the nomination.

Speaker 1 Trump won every Super Tuesday contest but Vermont and is also just a few hundred delegates away from clinching, which he will because he's now the only Republican candidate left in the race.

Speaker 1 Nikki Haley suspended her campaign this morning, but declined to endorse Trump in her concession speech. Let's listen.

Speaker 19 I am filled with the gratitude for the outpouring of support we've received from all across our great country. But the time has now come to suspend my campaign.

Speaker 19 I said I wanted Americans to have their voices heard. I have done that.
I have no regrets. In all likelihood, Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee when our party convention meets in July.

Speaker 19 I congratulate him and wish him well. I wish anyone well who would be America's president.
I have always been a conservative Republican and always supported the Republican nominee.

Speaker 19 But on this question, as she did on so many others, Margaret Thatcher provided some good advice when she said, quote, never just follow the crowd. Always make up your own mind.

Speaker 19 It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him. And I hope he does that.
This is now his time for choosing.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 do we consider the votes burned? Is that the non-endorsement we were hoping for? What do we think? Love it?

Speaker 1 If you're saying, I hope Donald Trump earns everyone's vote,

Speaker 1 what exactly is she hoping for? Because it sounds like she's hoping that he wins the presidency. Hoping that I guess he has a personality transplant to them.
Yeah, he suddenly changes his ways.

Speaker 4 He's going to build that big tent with the business.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's finally going to change. Yeah.
70 years. He's 77 years old.
She hopes. Yeah, turns over a new leaf.

Speaker 1 I feel like just, I've seen a bunch of people talking about this speech and, you know, has she burned the ships or not? Will she endorse it? Will she won't?

Speaker 1 It is truly amazing that she has been running against Donald Trump for a year,

Speaker 1 running hard for three months. We have absolutely no idea what she thinks.

Speaker 1 We don't know what she thinks. We don't know what she actually thinks.
It's sort of been the case for her entire political career. Dan,

Speaker 20 I'm not going to make a prediction whether she's going to endorse or not endorse but she coward oh on the eight-year anniversary we're going to bring predictions back into the podcast yes exactly

Speaker 20 nobody's going to win she's continuing she's leaving herself the option to do it but he's obviously not going to earn the votes of anyone i think in his statement his truth about this he called her bird brain and said she did really poorly and then asked her supporters to vote for him so i'm not sure it's a low bar she's setting

Speaker 1 Yeah, like, I thought it was better than an endorsement, sure, but not as good as a non-endorsement where she took a few more shots at Trump. That's what I would say.
Tommy, what did you think?

Speaker 4 Yeah, listen, first of all, Maggie Thatcher, shout out.

Speaker 1 Radio, good for her. You know, look, to me, she's a worldo through and through.
That's at her core.

Speaker 4 She knows really how to appeal to the court.

Speaker 1 She knows the Republican Party.

Speaker 4 It sounded to me like she was setting up a process for her to come back to the fold and endorse.

Speaker 4 She wants to make it bigger and about her supporters and not herself because she, of course, it's not about her. It's about the country, John.

Speaker 4 So I think she'll probably at some point pretend that Trump has changed or improved.

Speaker 4 Joe Biden will do something that a bunch of establishment Republicans will arbitrarily decide is unforgivable and they'll all give more people health care or something.

Speaker 1 Yeah, almost certainly

Speaker 20 calling for a ceasefire in Gaza will be the thing that says a run to Trump's camp.

Speaker 1 It's also, I think, telling that as she was saying, like, I hope Donald Trump does whatever he can to earn the votes of my supporters.

Speaker 1 He was putting out the statement he wanted to put out dinging her that he wrote before she spoke, but didn't get it out in time so that he could get a statement out saying, I hope she never fucking quits.

Speaker 1 I hate this woman.

Speaker 1 And then the campaign puts it out and just puts a little note that says, just so you guys know, it was from before she started speaking.

Speaker 1 That's when he wrote it, but we didn't get it out in time, but we wanted to put it out anyway. I'm looking forward to the Unity event in Unity New Hampshire.
Yeah, her convention speech.

Speaker 1 Or maybe she'll do the Ted Cruz vote your conscience at the convention and then. go ahead and vote for him.
Who knows?

Speaker 1 Dan, can you talk about your message box takeaway from last night that Haley's candidacy helps Biden in the general?

Speaker 20 Yeah, I think when you look back on this, Nikki Haley never had a shot to beat Donald Trump.

Speaker 20 But what happened is the Koch brothers spent almost $100 million to fund a sophisticated, persuadable voter ID program for Joe Biden, right?

Speaker 1 All across Koch brothers.

Speaker 1 That's only one level of

Speaker 1 them.

Speaker 1 We always say here.

Speaker 1 There's only one left. There's one that's the Koch brother and the Koch brother.
The Koch organization. Yeah, the Koch organization.
Thanks, Koch's. Although, I do think the dead one is happy.

Speaker 1 I didn't know we're done. He was happy to be part of it.
I mean, yeah, I can thank him. It's still his money.

Speaker 4 Is that the one who bought all the fake wine? It was a great documentary. Anyway, continued on.

Speaker 1 Sorry. So,

Speaker 20 I mean, basically, when you look at this, there's been this little pushback over the last few days or so about this idea that Haley voters are potential or are demonstrating a weakness for Trump because in the New York Times Sienna poll, a near majority of her supporters voted for Biden in 2020.

Speaker 20 And so it's like, so people are like, so see, Trump is never going to get those voters anyway.

Speaker 20 If they're telling exit pollsters they're not going to vote for Trump because they never were, that's because a bunch of democrats came into the primary i think that's idiocy for two reasons one it's only half of her voters but also

Speaker 20 the people that biden needs are the people who voted for trump in 2016 biden in 2020 and now don't know what they're going to do these are the exact kind of republican leading independents who vote in republican primaries it's just a pure numbers game right take michigan right there were 300 000 almost 300 000 people who voted for nikki haley in that primary and um so let's say just let's just pretend that half of them were always going to to vote for Biden.

Speaker 20 They were just, they just wanted to play in an open primary because they wanted to just pull one over on Trump. But then you still have 150,000 voters, some portion of whom are open to Biden.

Speaker 20 And in the exit polling, we've seen upwards of 60% to three quarters of Nikki Haley voters who say they will not commit to voting for the nominee.

Speaker 20 So that is 150,000 voters in Michigan that Joe Biden can target. And you know what Joe Biden won Michigan by in 2020? 150,000 votes.

Speaker 20 So it's just, these are voters that the the Biden folks can go get in his camp. They can track them down.
And they now have eight months to persuade them.

Speaker 20 And Donald Trump is helping them by saying things like, non-MAGA people are not welcome in this party.

Speaker 20 So I just think this is, she has given a little bit of a roadmap and I did a whole bunch of voters that the Biden votes can go get.

Speaker 20 And I think that's been very helpful to him, even though I'm sure that was not her intent.

Speaker 1 Dan, can I do a question about this? Because I was thinking about this when I was reading your message box, as I do every morning as like almost like a prayer ritual.

Speaker 1 So you see, like in the exit polls, you see this sort of weakness that that there are a ton of Haley voters, including Republican Haley voters, that just say they won't vote for Trump or they're open to Biden.

Speaker 1 It just shows like a real weakness that Donald Trump has. And then you look at like the polls that just came in.
And

Speaker 1 if you were wondering who has done a better job of consolidating their own party, it's actually Trump, right? Like Biden's in the 80s and Trump has in the 90s among Republicans.

Speaker 1 Is that just... the difference between these two electorates? Is that the difference between people that

Speaker 1 like, how do you explain that difference? Yeah, how do you, how do you square in the New York Times poll, like 48%

Speaker 1 of Haley voters saying they were Biden 2020 voters, but then Trump winning 96% of his 2020 votes, which is the high one, right? It's like 90 to 90, 94 or 96.

Speaker 1 I think I'm talking about the New York Times. Yeah.

Speaker 20 So of, so it's 48% of Haley supporters who say they voted for Biden, 31% who say they voted for Trump, and the rest are people who either declined to answer or most likely did not vote in 2020.

Speaker 20 So when you're dealing with a margin of error, that math actually works works out okay, that you have a couple of percent of Trump's voters who have voted for Haley in the primary, who may be unwilling to vote for him in the general.

Speaker 20 And so those are the people you'll get. We're talking, everything's happening on the margins here, right? Trump has obviously done a better job of consolidating his

Speaker 20 overall base. Biden has done a better job of consolidating primary voters.
than Trump has.

Speaker 20 And you see that in the poll where they asked people if you voted in a primary, in the New York Times poll, if you voted in a primary and a midterm, then Biden actually was up by one point among that group of people.

Speaker 20 It's when you, the further you get out among Trump voters, the better he does. But the hardest core people are some or most, the most regular Republicans are ones he's struggling with.

Speaker 20 And those people that Joe Biden can go get. Look, in an election like this, you're trying to go get.

Speaker 20 If you could find 15,000 votes in Michigan of people who voted for Haley, who either didn't vote in 2020 or voted for Trump in 2020, that could be enough to win this race, right?

Speaker 20 Like, so that's why I think it helps.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think

Speaker 1 we don't know how many Haley voters supported Biden in 2020. We just know polling.

Speaker 1 But one thing that keeps coming up and that has for like a year, a couple of years now, is there is about 30% of Republicans who say they don't like Donald Trump, believe that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, tell pollsters that he shouldn't be president if he's convicted.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 there's like 30% of Republicans out there who are at least potentially persuadable.

Speaker 1 I think that's what we've learned from both Haley's candidacy and everything that that people have told pollsters for the last several years now. Right.

Speaker 1 And right now, if you look at the other polls about the general, two-thirds of those voters are saying they're coming home, but a big chunk of those people are gettable.

Speaker 4 One thing before we move on from Haley, I just, I have to point out that in that fun little period between results coming in and her dropping out where there was a bunch of reporting,

Speaker 4 her spokeswoman sent a statement to Politico saying that Haley was watching the results with staff and, quote, the mood is jubilant.

Speaker 4 And I just love that because rarely do you see see bullshit printed quite that directly because, you know, clearly it was not jubilant when you're only winning Vermont.

Speaker 1 Tommy, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Maybe they had a good time.
They could have been jubilant that the campaign's over and they don't have to work hard anymore.

Speaker 1 That's a very good question. Awesome.

Speaker 20 I take it back. They were expecting to win zero contests and they won one.

Speaker 1 So I'm sure they're extremely excited. We gave a little short shrift to Vermont.
Vermont. A big Vermont victory.
Shout out to Vermont.

Speaker 1 All right. So the overwhelming majority of Republican voters got their preferred candidate for president, a criminal defendant facing 91 felony charges that include trying to overturn an election.

Speaker 1 He lost. In last night's victory speech, Trump dispensed his trademark optimism from the scene of one of his crimes at Mar-a-Lago.

Speaker 21 We're going to stop them. We're going to close our borders.
We're going to have to deport a lot of people, a lot of bad people, because our countries can't live like this. Our cities...

Speaker 21 Our cities are choking to death. Our states are dying.
And frankly, our country is dying. And we're going to make America great again, greater than ever before.

Speaker 21 Thank you very much. Been a big night.
Thank you very much. Thank you.

Speaker 1 How's that for a general election message? Our country is dying. Low energy.
And I'd say I just found it so distasteful that CNN took the whole speech. Just kidding.

Speaker 4 Yeah, he's back to like the American carnage message. It's very dark.

Speaker 1 Very dark. Very dark.
And the low energy plus

Speaker 1 the dark is the darkness of the message was interesting to me.

Speaker 1 At his rallies, he's like having a good time. He's a comedian.
He's saying crazy shit.

Speaker 1 He was very subdued last night. Yeah.

Speaker 1 not the Iowa guy. Well, I'm sure it was like, hey, Iowa, you were gracious.
New Hampshire, you were an asshole. Just try to be on message here.

Speaker 1 So he tried to be on message, which he's always looking bored when he's on message. Yeah.
That's true.

Speaker 1 Did the primary results and exit polls from last night tell you guys anything else about Trump's strengths or weaknesses heading into the general? Dan, you had anything?

Speaker 20 Yeah, I think it's this, there's been a consistent story from. Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Michigan, which is there's a group of voters.

Speaker 20 Most of the men have voted for Haley that he struggles with. It's college-educated Republicans.
It's people in the suburbs.

Speaker 20 It's people who don't believe in the big lie, which is a problem for Trump nationally because the majority of voters don't believe the big lie. He's losing those voters by 60 points in some cases.

Speaker 20 And so there is this group of people. It's a 30% you identified that, and that has persisted through this.

Speaker 20 And even there are some who were voting from the primary here indicating some reservations about it, particularly who's convicted for a crime.

Speaker 20 So it's just, it is a story of a dominant performance among the MAGA base and some real weakness against non-MAGA voters. And we're not a MAGA majority country, so that's not great for him.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we also just saw that there's a super PAC that was a pro-Haley super PAC that has rebranded as Haley voters for Biden. So hopefully they spend some money.

Speaker 1 Sort of seems like also making Trump's point.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 give him one point there.

Speaker 1 I do think one couple of strengths that Donald Trump has going into the general, the entire Republican establishment is behind him, including we just found out this morning that Mitch McConnell has

Speaker 1 Has just decided to back him.

Speaker 1 Donald Trump is a challenger in an environment where last time an incumbent president won re-election was 12 years ago because the country has been, you know, voters have been pretty upset.

Speaker 1 And so that's what Joe Biden's dealing with. But again, weaknesses, suburbs, moderates, Haley voters.
And I think it's good to, you know, Donald Trump starts 40,000 voters in the hole.

Speaker 1 That's what he lost by.

Speaker 1 in 2020. So he can't afford to lose a bunch of voters, even a couple Republican voters here and there.

Speaker 4 Yeah, Yeah, I mean, but to your point about the sort of anti-incumbent sentiment, I did notice that 55% of California primary voters rated the economy negatively, including 66% of independents.

Speaker 4 So that's a big headwind for Joe Biden.

Speaker 4 There are, you know, 66% of California independents disapprove of Biden's handling of the job. Trump is beating Biden by eight points when it comes to job approval with California independents.

Speaker 4 So again, that's just like one snapshot based off the California exit polls, but it shows the challenges of being an incumbent right now.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And other weaknesses for Trump. I think all the felony charges should be weaknesses.

Speaker 1 He's just, he is unpopular still. He's very much.

Speaker 1 He's a little more popular than he has been, but he's still a pretty unpopular guy.

Speaker 1 And of course, his lack of discipline and penchant for saying crazy shit. I think that's a weakness as well.

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Speaker 1 So before we get to Biden and the general election strategy, let's run through some of the other notable results from Tuesday night. Adam Schiff is most likely headed to the U.S.
Senate.

Speaker 1 He finished first in California's top two primary and will face Republican Steve Garvey in November, though it shouldn't be much of a race because of California's voter registration.

Speaker 1 Katie Porter and Barbara Lee came in third and fourth with much less of the vote than the polls had suggested. Any thoughts on how Schiff was able to dominate this primary?

Speaker 20 Money.

Speaker 4 He had like $40 million in a state that's just absurdly expensive to run in to begin with.

Speaker 4 And they had so much money, the Schiff team, that they could spend like between $11 and $15 million boosting Steve Garvey, the Republican, who he will now run against, including running ads on Fox News.

Speaker 4 But then he also could run pro-Schiff ads. He could run anti-Katy Porter ads.
And Schiff ended up doing more campaigning for Garvey than Garvey did for himself. I think he spent like $1.5 million.

Speaker 4 He barely did events. Schiff also had a bunch of institutional support.
Like Pelosi loves Adam Schiff. She helped him raise money.
She elevated his profile in the House.

Speaker 4 Republicans gave Schiff an in-kind contribution when they censored him,

Speaker 4 which made him, you know, a star

Speaker 4 on MSNBC. And, you know, I think Porter and Barbara Lee split the progressive vote.

Speaker 4 But as you said, even combining their vote totals would not have gotten them where they needed to be to make the runoff.

Speaker 1 So yeah, I do think also like being a chief Trump antagonist in a state as big as California, where it takes millions and millions and millions of dollars just to get people to know who you are was a

Speaker 1 pretty tough uphill climb for anyone who wasn't chiff. And a chief Trump antagonist in a time where the most powerful motivating force for Democrats has been Donald Trump, right?

Speaker 1 That is what has gotten Democrats to the polls from 18 on, every single election.

Speaker 1 And when you are the guy that just takes it to Trump all the time and is seen as taking it to Trump, then that's going to benefit you. In other down ballot news, the Senate map is just about set.

Speaker 1 Colin Allred will face Ted Cruz in Texas, and it'll be Ruben Gallego versus Carrie Lake in Arizona because Kirsten Sinema has announced her retirement.

Speaker 1 We'll get there. We'll get there.

Speaker 1 In the North Carolina governor's race, Democrat Josh Stein will face Republican Mark Robinson. If you haven't heard of him before,

Speaker 1 he's the lieutenant governor right now.

Speaker 1 He's a Hitler-quoting Holocaust denier who has called being gay a filthy abomination that marks the end of civilization and said that school shootings are karma for abortion.

Speaker 1 Trump has called Robinson Martin Luther King Jr. on steroids.

Speaker 1 Sounds like a nice guy.

Speaker 4 Well, should we do a little greatest hits of Mark Robinson op-a? We've got some others.

Speaker 1 Yeah, let's keep going.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 4 I want to flag that first one, the Martin Luther King comparison, because Robinson likes to attack Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement.
So he's actually criticizing him there, Trump.

Speaker 4 Robinson voiced support for passing, quote, a bill saying you can't have an abortion in North Carolina for any reason. He called abortion murder and genocide.
He refused to commit to protecting IVF.

Speaker 1 He called public school teachers, quote, wicked people.

Speaker 4 You mentioned the Holocaust, calling it hogwash. He got really mad on Facebook about the movie Black Panther.
Yeah. I was very upset about Black Panther.

Speaker 4 And said the character was, quote, created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic Marxists and only created to pull the shekels out of your schwartz pockets.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Did I do that right? Yeah, that's a well, it's an epithet for black people.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, it's,

Speaker 1 you know, Black Panther was a conspiracy by Jews to trick black people into, I guess, having a good time.

Speaker 1 The hogwash quote, the first part of that, because I saw the whole Facebook post, it's from March of 2018.

Speaker 4 Man, spent a lot of time on Facebook in 2018.

Speaker 1 A lot of time. Wow.
It's quote, this foolishness about Hitler disarming millions of Jews and then marching them off to concentration camps is a bunch of hogwash.

Speaker 1 He also refers to

Speaker 1 the post, just in case you think libs are just exaggerating.

Speaker 4 Yeah, no, in context, these are all worse.

Speaker 1 He also referred to the students at Marjorie Stone Douglas as spoiled, angry, know-it-all children, silly, little, immature media prostitutes. That's a child prostitute.

Speaker 1 And this one, it's listen, it's been a very serious and terrible situation, but after the Boko Haram kidnappings in 2014, he posted on Facebook. It's not funny.
George Soros stole them girls. I can't.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry. God.

Speaker 1 Jesus Christ.

Speaker 4 The folks at the DGA wanted us to remind you to text NC to 30201 to help Democratic governors win North Carolina.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's important. That's important because here's where we stop laughing.
Race is tied. I'm tied.
Josh Stein. It's real bad.
Josh Stein is the Democratic Attorney General in North Carolina.

Speaker 1 Dan, what do you think about this race? I fucking hope Josh Stein can win because if not, we're in real trouble.

Speaker 4 Quite a setup for that.

Speaker 1 What do you think is

Speaker 1 going to those shekels? I mean, it is, oh my God.

Speaker 1 It is a

Speaker 1 situation in North Carolina where Mark Robinson does have, even though he's a fucking loony kook, he has a lot of name ID because he is the lieutenant governor.

Speaker 1 Yeah, this guy's already the lieutenant governor of North Carolina. He's not just walking in off of Facebook.

Speaker 1 Now, Josh Stein has run statewide also, so he is, you know, he's a statewide figure as well as Attorney General. But

Speaker 4 isn't it cool to be a kook in North Carolina? Wasn't that Outer Banks?

Speaker 1 The kooks in the

Speaker 20 TV show. The TV show, The Outer Banks, the Pogues were cool.

Speaker 1 The Pogues, yeah. Oh, my God.
I watch TV. Someone get a compilation of Tommy's dad jokes for

Speaker 1 New Year's

Speaker 1 New Year's. Topical, it's timely.
I didn't think it was bad. It was a pandemic era.

Speaker 1 It's timely. It's very timely.

Speaker 1 I always love GoForth. Anyway, anyway, got to help Josh Stein, everyone.
Yes. Come on.
This is

Speaker 1 bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. Everyone, thoughts on all red versus cruise?

Speaker 1 I think it's tough for Allred in a presidential electorate environment, but, you know, polls so far, limited polling, but polls so far show him somewhat close to Cruz.

Speaker 4 Yeah, look, Ted Cruz absolutely sucks. People hate his guts.
He motivates Democrats in a way that very few other down ballot races will. Colin Allred is a really good guy.

Speaker 4 He's a super interesting bio. Played in the NFL.
He's from Texas, played college football there, too.

Speaker 4 He's really smart and thoughtful and a compelling speaker and was great on this show in particular. So I don't know.
He's someone we'd love to have in the Senate.

Speaker 1 I'm excited about it. At some point, and if you're great on this show, that's all.
The sky's the limit for you.

Speaker 1 You can't get to the Senate or the White House, but

Speaker 1 there's a lot of other cool places you can get to.

Speaker 1 Like the show. Like the show.
Yeah, I don't know. You know, look,

Speaker 1 Texas has been like Lucy with the football. I know.
But you know what?

Speaker 1 This is America. This is our year.
And this is America. And it's a new day.
It's a new mate. And I look, Betto couldn't do it.
Where Betto walked, Colin can run. Dan, do you have some insight?

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 I don't know if it's insight.

Speaker 20 I think Colin All Red is basically a perfect candidate for Texas. He is a black, moderate football player.

Speaker 20 He has a great demeanor.

Speaker 20 He is someone who reaches out to people across the ideological spectrum. He can sort of alive some of the typical caricatures of Democrats.
Is it a very hard race in Texas generally? Yes.

Speaker 20 Is it even harder in a presidential year with Donald Trump on the ballot? Absolutely.

Speaker 20 Does he have a shot? Sure.

Speaker 20 It's a long shot, but he has a shot, but there's also real value in supporting and funding his candidacy because we need the map is shifting in ways that are not great for Democrats.

Speaker 20 Texas is something we need to get into our column before long.

Speaker 20 And every time we run a competitive, well-funded, well-organized race, we get ourselves a little bit closer to Charlie actually kicking that football.

Speaker 20 And so I think people, if people have money and they're looking for Senate candidate support, it is not the race that will likely deliver us the Senate, but in the long, building long-term, sustainable, progressive power, investing in Colin Albert's probably a good idea.

Speaker 4 Hey, who better to kick that football than a 6'1, 237-pound outside linebacker who ran a 4'7, 540?

Speaker 1 Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 4 And has played a Baylor.

Speaker 20 Do you have his combine stats in front of you?

Speaker 4 I Googled his.

Speaker 1 I do. I did.

Speaker 1 He's had it saved on his desktop.

Speaker 4 I haven't tattooed a man.

Speaker 1 All right, another state that's been shifting to Democrats, Arizona. Kirsten Cinema is out.
Don't let the door hit you where the good Lord split you.

Speaker 1 She's not a dad joke. That's just a great old saying.

Speaker 1 That is a dad joke. That is a dad joke.
So she's out. She hadn't been raising a lot of money, so people kind of suspected she was out.
Seems like she's retiring for good.

Speaker 1 Doesn't quite seem like she's ready to jump on the no labels ticket.

Speaker 4 I haven't heard that. I'll spend more time with her headphones, I think.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think she's going to go do her marathons. She likes her marathons.
Yeah, learn more about wine. Learn more about wine.

Speaker 1 So last two head-to-head polls in Arizona have Gallego up seven and and ten on Cary Lake. Only two polls, you know, not super high quality polls, but not bad.
Not bad. What do you guys think?

Speaker 4 He's another really good candidate, I think. I mean, he's a former Marine.
He talks like a normal human being. He's super thoughtful.
He can connect with like your average voter.

Speaker 4 He's a combat veteran. I mean, I think the fact that this is now a one-on-one race is really important.
I think what he needs is money because

Speaker 4 Kirsten Cinema has been kind of like parked in this will-she-won't she region, the DSCC and all the other party organizations haven't been able to go all in on Arizona.

Speaker 4 So they've been having to cobble together their own grassroots donor base. So they're a little behind just on raising, but at least they, they have this fundraising base of their own.

Speaker 4 And now they need the DSCC to come in and help them out.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, look,

Speaker 1 Arizona has, you know, these, this is a closely divided state, but it's also a state that has rejected these fucking kooks. And Carrie Lake, if they ran a she's the queen of the kooks.

Speaker 1 She's the queen of the kooks. And if they had run a more normal old school type of Republican who didn't believe in the election lie and wasn't just

Speaker 1 harassing Ruben Gallego at the airport,

Speaker 1 maybe they'd have, maybe this would be, maybe they'd have a better shot. Yeah, and much like Trump, she was telling McCain voters to fuck off.

Speaker 1 So I suspect you'll see Gallego try to

Speaker 1 reach out to a lot of those moderate and independent voters who make up a big portion of the electorate in Arizona.

Speaker 1 I noticed that he's

Speaker 1 he's you can you could sort of tell that he's been moderating a little bit over in the in the last several months.

Speaker 1 But look, replacing cinema with Gallego and keeping the Senate means that we would have the votes to get rid of the filibuster, at least for reinstating Roe v. Wade and passing the Voting Rights Act.

Speaker 1 It is huge if we hold the House in the presidency, too. But like we've...
We talk a lot about all the bad things that we could prevent from happening if

Speaker 1 Joe Biden wins again and Donald Trump doesn't. But this is a good thing, a really good thing, Voting Rights Act and abortion rights nationwide.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think it's worth like taking just a second on just the kind of like

Speaker 1 cynical,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 no labels-esque bipartisanship of Kirsten Sinema and the things she decided she was going to draw a line on. Because, you know,

Speaker 1 in her

Speaker 1 announcement video, she talks about the bipartisan legislation that would have passed if she didn't exist.

Speaker 1 But then you look at like the places where she said, I'm going to use my power to kind of demonstrate what it means to me to be bipartisan. That was where she decided to save the filibuster.

Speaker 1 That is where she decided to stop the Biden administration from negotiating for prescription drugs. That is where she decided to protect things like the carried interest loophole.

Speaker 1 And I think it is a very good thing that she discovered that there was no constituency for defining bipartisan as just stopping a few progressive, but also extremely popular bipartisan policies.

Speaker 4 One quick thing on Carrie Lake is she's been trying to smooth over her

Speaker 4 her MAGA craziness. And, you know, she was like all in with Trump on attacking the rhinos, attacking the McCain family, right? Like, it's MAGA only for her.
She's been trying to walk that back.

Speaker 4 Megan McCain tweeted the other day about Carrie Lake trying to walk back these attacks on her dad. And her tweet ended, No peace, bitch.
We see you for who you are and are repulsed by it.

Speaker 4 And Carrie Lake wrote back this novel and response. It was like, I'd love nothing more than to buy you a beer, a coffee, or a lunch and pick your brain about how we can work together.

Speaker 4 So she is full on groveling and trying to, you know, clean up her past. We'll see if it works, but I hope not.

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Speaker 1 All right, let's talk about Joe Biden, who won every Super Tuesday primary, but American Samoa, which he lost to 52-year-old Jason Palmer. by 51 to 40, not percentages, votes.

Speaker 1 All right, raise your hand here.

Speaker 1 Who knew the name Jason Palmer? Who had heard the name Jason Palmer before last night? Any of you?

Speaker 1 I think he texted me for donations, but I can't tell because everybody's texting me.

Speaker 1 Dan, Dan, what about you? Did you ever hear of Jason Palmer?

Speaker 20 You learn something new every day.

Speaker 4 Can I tell you my funny Jason Palmer thing from this morning? So I, like you, I Googled him.

Speaker 1 I was like, who is this dude?

Speaker 4 Politico had done a sort of a profile video of him about a month ago. His entire case is like, I'm 52, I'm young.
Joe Biden is old.

Speaker 4 The Politico video included a counterpoint from a spokesperson to say it's okay to be old from Diane Feinstein's former press guy who's like, actually, no, aid doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 Hey, I get some backup here.

Speaker 4 Which I just thought was pretty amazing. Continue, though.

Speaker 1 You mentioned that his whole thing was just campaigning as a younger Joe Biden, but the same thing. Also, Dean Phillips's whole thing.

Speaker 1 And Jason Palmer will end up with more delegates than Dean Phillips, who did suspend his campaign today.

Speaker 1 Phillips did it in a pretty classy way. Says he's going to, he endorsed Joe Biden, said he's going to campaign for him, said he's a good and decent man.

Speaker 1 Dean Phillips also had quite a funny tweet last night.

Speaker 1 He said, congratulations to Joe Biden, uncommitted, Marion Williamson, and Nikki Haley for demonstrating more appeal to Democratic Party loyalists than me.

Speaker 1 And then after Jason Palmer won, he replied to that tweet and said, oh, and Jason Palmer.

Speaker 1 That's good. Good for Dean Phillips.
Good for Dean Phillips. Good for Dean Phillips.
All's well that ends well there. Okay.

Speaker 1 The only nominal opposition to Biden materialized last night in the uncommitted vote, again, which received 19% in Minnesota, 13% in North Carolina, and 8% in Colorado.

Speaker 1 Biden campaign is not concerned.

Speaker 1 They released a memo this morning saying they are well prepared and well-positioned to beat Trump, who they called, quote, cash-strapped and beleaguered by an extreme agenda that makes him unpopular with the voters he needs to win.

Speaker 1 The pro-Biden groups and super PACs alone have promised to spend $700 million to defeat Trump with an ad campaign that will start immediately, just as President Biden prepares to deliver the State of the Union address tomorrow night.

Speaker 1 what do you guys make of the uncommitted vote?

Speaker 4 I mean, look, I'm biased here because I care a lot about Gaza, but I'm concerned. I don't think Biden is going to lose Minnesota.
That's not my fear. But more, I think there's a warning sign here.

Speaker 4 I think we saw it in Michigan, we saw it in Minnesota.

Speaker 4 Those states have large Arab American and Muslim-American populations, but I think it's wrong to think that this is just an issue with that cohort of voters.

Speaker 4 I think young voters are extremely frustrated about the administration's Gaza policies. The uncommitted vote was highest in areas with the most young voters.

Speaker 4 You're seeing protesters at like every single Biden campaign event.

Speaker 4 You're seeing Wall Street Journal polls that shows concern about Gaza policy is growing.

Speaker 4 And so I just think like the death toll is already staggering, but listeners should know that this will be nothing if there is a Gaza-wide famine, if there's a massive cholera outbreak or some other disease, if there's a major ground invasion into Rafah where 1.4 million people are now living, mostly in tents and shelters.

Speaker 4 So I know the Biden team is pushing hard for a six-week ceasefire, but they need to dial up the public pressure, I think, state more clearly where they stand, because you saw Kamala Harris talk about the administration's policy that they've been talking about in other places and get cheered because she forcefully called for a ceasefire, whereas other Biden officials have been booed for kind of talking about the same thing, but in a less, you know, declaratory way and sounding like they're observing the events versus trying to shape them.

Speaker 1 I will say, too, that if you read some of the interviews with people who voted uncommitted, it's not just that they're Arab American or Muslim or young progressives.

Speaker 1 One person was quoted saying, like, I'm really upset about Gaza. I'm also mad about inflation and the border being out of control and too many migrants coming in.

Speaker 1 So it's like a, it's just, it's become a vehicle for a protest about Gaza, but also a host of other issues that people are. I got 11 delegates.

Speaker 1 And I look, and I agree with everything that Tommy is saying.

Speaker 1 But I do think it's even, it is deeper than that, which is if you ask people how they feel about a Biden-Trump rematch, 48% say they're they're negative about it, 42 are depressed about it.

Speaker 1 And that is more true of Democrats than it is Republicans. And you can slice the numbers any way you want.
You can point to the ways in which you have strength. That is a huge problem.

Speaker 1 It is a huge problem that Democrats, on the whole,

Speaker 1 find the prospect of this rematch depressing. Yeah, I will say,

Speaker 1 on the whole, when you look at the uncommitted vote and you compare it to the uncommitted vote against Barack Obama in 2012 through a host of states, it is not,

Speaker 1 it looks favorable compared to that. They're similar, the margins and that.

Speaker 1 Cause it's not going away. But also, we're rerunning an election where last time Joe Biden only won by 40,000 votes.
Dan, what did you think?

Speaker 20 Look, I agree with what you said. You got to put these things in context.

Speaker 20 And historically, it may not look as bad, but the primary results to date, I think, have told an overly optimistic story about Joe Biden's coalition.

Speaker 20 We see this in the polls. He is struggling much more than Donald Trump to

Speaker 20 rebuild his 2020 coalition.

Speaker 20 And the way the Michigan results were spun because expectations were so high, where I think you and Mehdi talked about it last week, but 100,000 votes, maybe it's not the percent number that people thought, but 100,000 votes is a lot of votes in Michigan.

Speaker 20 I really hope we're not talking about Minnesota as the battleground state in a few months, because if we are, we got problems.

Speaker 20 If Minnesota's in trouble, we are in real trouble in Wisconsin, right?

Speaker 20 But it's just, I think it, I think it, I think a lot of people who have taken solace in some of the primary results in giving them a permission to dismiss the polls.

Speaker 20 And And I think what I think is the political reality of the work Joe Biden has to do and can do, hopefully this is a reminder that that work exists and has to be done. It's not just Gaza.

Speaker 20 It's over a whole bunch of things, but Gaza is a very particular, specific challenge that has to be addressed.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I heard on MSNBC last night someone say, the polls are all wrong.

Speaker 1 And the proof of that is these exit polls, saying that people, people saying, telling the exit pollsters that they wouldn't vote for Donald Trump in the general. And I was like,

Speaker 1 that is actually not proof that the polls are wrong because also exit polls are also polls. And we just went through exactly what's going on with the Haley voters.
We don't know.

Speaker 1 There's some portion of them that are gettable for Biden, but we don't know beyond that. Dan, what's your take on the

Speaker 1 memo that the Biden campaign put out this morning and sort of the ad campaign starting now?

Speaker 20 I think the memo is the best, most realistic case they have put out for why they have optimism. for this election that does not show up in the polls, right? That Biden has some structural advantages.

Speaker 20 Donald Donald Trump has some weaknesses. We talked about them here.
And I think it's, this is the, it's the case that I think that has to be made to activists and donors about why Biden can win.

Speaker 20 There's a lot of like, Trump can't win. People care about democracy.
They'd never elect this guy. That's all just like voodoo wishful thinking.

Speaker 20 And this is like the real, this is, I mean, this is what, how a campaign who is serious and has a plan to go win, this is how they lay out that plan. And it's a very credible case, right?

Speaker 20 It is why this election will undoubtedly be closer than what the margins we see like in this New York Times fall, right? It's that Biden has these financial advantages, structural advantages.

Speaker 20 Donald Trump has weaknesses that can be exploited that just haven't been exploited yet.

Speaker 1 What do you guys think?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I agree with that. What I thought when reading it is like,

Speaker 1 you know, we are

Speaker 1 that theory totally makes sense to me.

Speaker 1 I hope and believe it will be true. The polls do not reflect it yet.
And what I think when I see this is just, okay, you have this huge financial financial advantage.

Speaker 1 The Republican Party is just not as well organized. Okay, when do we start seeing the results of an ad campaign like in the polls?

Speaker 1 When can we start to say, okay, the Biden campaign's theory and their confidence or their performance of confidence, which is what they should be doing, is now bearing out and showing that their theory of the case now towards naysayers who, by the way, were wrong about Biden a bunch of times in the past are wrong about Biden again.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, they said they pointed out that 10% of the electorate is undecided, that those supporters supporters like Biden's policies and accomplishments, they just don't necessarily know about them.

Speaker 4 Going to Super Tuesday, 31% of the electorate wasn't sure if Trump would be the nominee. So people are probably thinking about the race differently now, or at least they will be soon.

Speaker 4 So yeah, look, there's time here. I do think

Speaker 4 the State of the Union will be a big moment.

Speaker 1 Yeah. To your point, Lovett, about the ad campaign, I think it is really good that they are starting early.
There were some comparisons made to Obama in 2012 starting

Speaker 1 in May of 2012, I believe, unleashing an ad campaign to define Mitt Romney, which was quite successful. And so that's great that it's even earlier than that.

Speaker 1 I think the only difference that's a challenge for the Biden folks is, you know, our goal was to define Romney for people who either didn't know him or remembered him as a moderate governor of Massachusetts.

Speaker 1 Their goal is going to be much tougher because Donald Trump is well defined in the minds of voters. And so I think that it's not just negative ads that I bet they'll run, but contrast ads, right?

Speaker 1 And so it's what Trump means for you, what Biden means for you, what the difference is. I think that's going to be more important than just remember this crazy thing that Donald Trump said.

Speaker 1 I do think that's like, yes, I think it's voters have a, obviously know who Donald Trump is, but if you look at these polls, their memories are fuzzy.

Speaker 1 And it is about what parts of Donald Trump are salient to people.

Speaker 1 And as they point out in the memo, third of people going into Super Tuesday still didn't believe that Donald Trump was going to be the nominee.

Speaker 1 And what, what is not prospective, imaginary, past, gauzy Trump going to be like in people's minds, but the real actual menace and threat of Trump as they define him.

Speaker 20 It's not just that we had it much easier in 2012 because Romney was largely undefined. Also, people watch TV in 2012, right?

Speaker 20 It's just like a lot of that ad campaign that started in May of 2012 was a very specific cable television buy on programming targeting women,

Speaker 20 informing them that Mitt Romney, who many of them thought was moderate, if they knew anything at all, wanted to defund Planned Parenthood, right?

Speaker 20 So you could reach a shitload of people in a very targeted way in 2012. That is much, much more challenging now.

Speaker 20 And it's much, it's virtually impossible other than it's during sporting events to reach people under the age of 45 on linear television, right? Which is where a lot of that money will be spent.

Speaker 20 So there is a big challenge there, but that's the advantage of having all of this money. And while there's a lot of stuff that's happening on

Speaker 20 for political advertising on connected TVs, a lot of places you can't buy ads. Like you cannot buy political ads on Netflix for people who have the ad tier on Netflix.

Speaker 20 And so it is going to be, it won't just be ads, but ads will at least provide some background noise for this.

Speaker 1 And coincidentally, the Biden campaign is struggling with voters under 45. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Well, also, interestingly, like they're probably going to have to run ads with the same exact message because a lot of voters, I know this will be shocking to listeners of the show, don't understand

Speaker 4 the depth of Trump's opposition to abortion access and what he did to lead to Dobbs being overturned. Yeah, that'll be a huge lead to the Dobbs ruling.
That is.

Speaker 1 Axios reports that the campaign's new strategy is to, quote, go for Trump's jugular.

Speaker 1 They said, quote, Biden has told friends he thinks Trump is wobbly, both intellectually and emotionally, and will go haywire in public if Biden keeps hitting him.

Speaker 1 What do you guys think of that strategy? I like it. I like triggering him on issues and contrasts, but I hope you pick issues and contrasts that like work to Biden's benefit.

Speaker 1 Yeah, look, I think it's already working. Like it's already happening.
Like the fact that Trump is going on things like, actually, I confused Nikki Haley

Speaker 1 and Nancy Pelosi on purpose. I was doing it on purpose.
It is already getting to him. So I like that.

Speaker 4 There's value in it. It is basically like the Lincoln Project theory of the case from the last cycle, right? Remember they would run ads like just in the Palm Beach area.

Speaker 4 I'd be like, Donald, they're talking about you. And it's like him tweeting on the toilet as the image, you know, right?

Speaker 4 So this is a strategy that I support and I'd like to see implemented, but is not novel per se.

Speaker 1 Dan?

Speaker 20 Yeah, I think if there's opportunities to do that, they should do it.

Speaker 20 Biden and his team like to call Trump a loser. They've been doing that.
Biden did it in his democracy speech on multiple occasions.

Speaker 20 He did it in that South Carolina political speech he did right before the primary. So we should do that.
But I actually think that's not what their strategy is going to be.

Speaker 20 I think that's something you tell Axios. Like in the statement,

Speaker 20 we did that. We did that all the time because people are like, Biden's got to fight back.
He's got to be punched.

Speaker 20 You know, it's something is a, if you give a leak to Axios about your political strategy, you are saying, I really want to tell my donors.

Speaker 20 uh what i'm going to do so they'll write me checks and i think they will do some of that i think there's that new york times story where it talks about biden really wants to do those tick tock videos where he is re he is holding an ipad and responding to crazy things trump says

Speaker 1 yes Yes, he wants to do the dances. Biden's out there being a damn thing.

Speaker 1 Bring me the TikTok. He has several cockpits he wants to do.
Go to Ukraine again.

Speaker 20 But in the statement they put out last night, which I think is the,

Speaker 20 in my opinion, at least the best distillation of a message for this race, here's what Biden said. Tonight's results leave the American people with a clear choice.

Speaker 20 Are we going to keep moving forward or will we allow Donald Trump to drag us backwards into the chaos, division, and darkness that defined his time in office? Right.

Speaker 20 Like that is ultimately, and I think you get to that message by without having to make Donald Trump glitch on television every other day.

Speaker 1 But he'll probably do that on his own. Yeah, that's right.
He's the chaos. The glitching is good.
The glitching. Right.
The glitching is the chaos. I have like a good glitch, yeah.

Speaker 1 I just want them to, and I think loser does this. But if you're going to trigger him, you got to trigger him on issues that work for you.

Speaker 1 Because if we have like a news cycle of fights about some crazy thing Donald Trump said that we know doesn't matter to voters as much, we're just sort of wasting time.

Speaker 1 So I think like on election denialism, on abortion, like there are these issues that we know are weaknesses for Donald Trump that I imagine that if they're going to trigger him, they would do it on that.

Speaker 1 I agree with that too.

Speaker 1 But if you look at the, if you look at the polls, the polls show that like if you ask people like, do you think Joe Biden is mentally fit or Trump is mentally fit, physically fit, physically fit?

Speaker 1 There's a group that says Biden's fit. There's a group that says Trump is fit.
There's a group that says neither is fit.

Speaker 1 We may struggle to get the Biden number up, but we can get that both are unfit number up too. You know, I don't hate that.

Speaker 20 I think the pollster should ask the question, is Trump morally fit?

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. Well, he was Biden was doing better in the New York Times poll on who has the temperament and character to be president.

Speaker 1 He was winning on that one, which, and that's been the case in a couple polls now. What do you guys want to hear from Biden in the big state of the union tomorrow night?

Speaker 4 I got one for you. Okay.
From Kentucky to Kiev. Wow.
We're rebuilding bridges and our alliances.

Speaker 1 Well, why? You don't need to rebuild alliances in Kentucky.

Speaker 1 Kiev, motherfucker. What about his friend Mitch McConnell? Well, maybe they'll go do another bridge event together.
together.

Speaker 1 Oh, God, he's going to say something nice about Mitch McConnell and the State of the Union.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, people aren't going to like it.

Speaker 1 So, you know, John, you made the point about what's motivating Democrats. And there were two numbers.

Speaker 1 We talked about the polling last week, but there was two that jumped out at me about the State of the Union.

Speaker 1 You know, you had mentioned that

Speaker 1 more people think Trump has a vision for the country, but actually 50% of voters think Joe Biden has a vision for the country.

Speaker 1 But if you ask people who's fighting for people like you, Trump is beating Biden.

Speaker 1 trumps it's 48 to 52 for biden it's 42 to 58 and then if you ask people um uh what is a 2024 election about is it about hope for what might happen or is it about fear of what might happen for biden voters it's 65 35 percent fear right and i think that that is a legitimate place for our for democrats to be we are talking about the end of democracy we're talking about the end of basic human rights but i do think this is a speech to say hey we are going to do everything we can to protect basic rights.

Speaker 1 We're going to do everything we can to protect democracy. But here's what we can do with this democracy.
Here are the things that we can achieve if we are able to protect this democracy.

Speaker 1 Because I do think that's the third piece. You know, he's done this big abortion speech.
He did that great January 6th speech. And now it's okay.

Speaker 1 If we're protecting basic rights, that's stopping something bad. We're defending democracy.
That's stopping something bad. What are we going to do?

Speaker 1 Dan?

Speaker 20 First, I have a question for you guys. Do you think he should make an age joke?

Speaker 1 Look, I've said this quite a few times now. I think

Speaker 1 from the scene from Charlie in the Chocolate Factory where Gene Wilder, That's a big ass, John. He trips, it looks like he's going to trip and then does a somersault and on his feet.

Speaker 1 You didn't see the other takes. You didn't see the other takes.

Speaker 1 He didn't do that. Why? He's got one shot.
Let's just do it. Do you want to be president or no?

Speaker 4 I'd vote yes, Dan.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think so too.

Speaker 1 Love it's a good one.

Speaker 20 Other than that question, I have, I think, a different take than Lovett on this.

Speaker 20 What I kind of hope for Biden

Speaker 20 on Thursday night is that he

Speaker 20 talks about, he talks to the American people sort of where they are.

Speaker 20 I think one of the problems that we, this is less things that come out of Joe Biden's mouth, so maybe I shouldn't worry about it, but you heard a lot from other Democrats and members of Congress.

Speaker 20 It's like, Joe Biden has passed more legislation than any in three years, than any president's passed in 16 years. Greatest president since FDR.

Speaker 20 This is the greatest economy since the post-World War II boom. And those things may all be technically true in many ways.

Speaker 20 And Joe Biden has been a great president, but this is not something you can sell to voters in this political environment, right? They don't know any of the things you did. They don't know,

Speaker 20 they're not happy with the way things are. They don't feel good about the economy.
And so we think there is just a lowering of the rhetoric.

Speaker 20 And I took this from the statement they put out last night, which is Joe Biden inherited an absolute shit show that Donald Trump helped create.

Speaker 20 You can't, people will not believe that Donald Trump is fully responsible for COVID, but he did put us in a worse position than we should be in.

Speaker 20 Worked hard, worked in a bipartisan way to make real progress. Here's where we are today.

Speaker 20 Here is what I want to do, but more importantly, here's what the Republicans will, and Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans will take away from you.

Speaker 20 Because I think people are so cynical right now, it's very hard to convince them that we're going to pass a bunch of really big things. Those things will be in the speech, of course.

Speaker 20 But I think more emphasis on the things Republicans will take away, your rights, your freedoms, birth control, IVF, your health care. Right.

Speaker 20 And just like loss aversion, I think is going to be a very powerful message here. And I think just there's just a lowering of the rhetoric to sort of be right where people are.

Speaker 20 And the democracy stuff is very true. It's very important.

Speaker 20 But, you know, Axe, our friend David Oxford said something on CNN last night that I thought was very, very apt for this for Biden's speech, which is.

Speaker 20 If there's a family sitting on the dinner table talking about the future of democracy, they probably weren't worried about how much their dinner cost.

Speaker 20 And so

Speaker 20 if you want to get to democracy stuff, you have to get to the economic stuff first. And so

Speaker 20 I hope we sort of see that tomorrow night.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Inflation is down, but the effects of inflation and the lingering memories of inflation and the high prices are still around.
And you've got to acknowledge that.

Speaker 1 And I think, like you said, I think, I think Biden has been better at that than some of the broader democratic universe of surrogates.

Speaker 1 But Dan, you sent around, you sent me this blueprint polling memo,

Speaker 1 which is great because they asked people's top concerns about a Trump second term and then top concerns about a Biden second term.

Speaker 1 Top Trump concerns, abuses of power, Trump would abuse the presidency to take revenge on his political rivals, breaking the law, ignoring military leaders and acting in dangerous ways that threaten national security, and then abortion, what do we do to abortion, and then policies that favor tax cheats and rich people.

Speaker 1 So you do get a little bit of, you get the economy stuff, but you, and

Speaker 1 we talk about democracy as if it's like all or nothing. I think it's the way it's framed.

Speaker 1 When you talk about democracy just as like, we must save democracy, it might sound a little hyperbolic to people who don't necessarily think that democracy is under attack.

Speaker 1 I know that's a lot of people, believe us.

Speaker 1 When you drill down on exactly what he's going to do, extremely unpopular for people.

Speaker 1 Now, you can't do that in the State of the Union because he's not going to talk about Trump abusing his power and say, well, but as the campaign goes forward, it's a good thing to keep in mind.

Speaker 20 Just to the point about how... A lot of Americans consume this, working class, in this blueprint poll, which is, I think, very, very useful.

Speaker 20 Working class voters, people who make under 60,000, here are the top three concerns about Trump. And this is a group that Trump is is winning by 3% in this poll.

Speaker 20 Number one, Trump will let rich tax cheats off the hook. Two, Trump will cut Social Security and Medicare.
Three, Trump will cut taxes for the rich, but not working and middle-class families.

Speaker 20 Those are the top three concerns for people whose economic and financial security is at the forefront of their life.

Speaker 20 And those are the people in that New York Times Sienna poll that Biden is struggling with the most, people

Speaker 1 who make less money. I have a feeling we will hear that contrast in full.
Yeah. I will also say last year's State of the Union, I thought was like a really great moment for Joe Biden.

Speaker 1 And I think it was a great moment because I think he had an economic message. It was a great moment because he was energetic, he was feisty, and he mixed it up.
Reparte.

Speaker 1 He mixed it up with the Republicans in the room.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 look,

Speaker 1 there's never been a moment in Joe Biden's life

Speaker 1 in which it was more important that he seem like vigorous and energetic and honest fucking shit. Maybe more important than that.
Do you think so? Don't you do you agree with him? Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I also, by the way, I don't like

Speaker 1 no, no, I do think.

Speaker 1 Oh, come on. But the uh, I will say, I think the age joke is going to be about it'll be about Mitch McConnell.
We've known each other for I've been working with Mitch McConnell for 200 years.

Speaker 1 My intern. That's my prediction.
That's a prediction. You send that in.

Speaker 20 There's still time.

Speaker 1 We got a day. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'm going to be like, yeah, I'll be like the movie Tomorrow Never Dies. I'm going to make the news.

Speaker 4 I'm Scranton, whose sister wrote, We're rebuilding the steel industry. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God. Iron Dome.
Iron Dome. Iron Dome.
We love the Iron Dome.

Speaker 1 Speaking of the State of the Union, we'll be streaming the speech and doing a group thread in two places on our Friends of the Pod Discord and on our YouTube page.

Speaker 1 The difference is that on the Discord, you'll be able to submit questions for us in the main chat.

Speaker 1 So if you haven't already, head to crooked.com slash friends to learn more and sign up before tomorrow. Also, it's the general election.
We got to do a Vote Save America plug. Go to Vote Save America.

Speaker 1 It's time to sign up. Go to VotesaveAmerica.com.
And here's our promise. We're not going to have you waste your money or waste your time.

Speaker 1 We're going to tell you like where you can get the most bang for your buck and where your volunteering is going to have have the most effect.

Speaker 1 And you know, to Dan's earlier point about how the media environment's broken and it's really, really hard to reach people these days. And the Biden campaign is going to be doing all it can.

Speaker 1 There's only so much that we can control about what the Biden campaign does or what Joe Biden does. But guess what? We all have agency here.
We're all messengers. We all know people.

Speaker 1 And, you know, part of our job in the next eight months is to help turn those poll numbers around.

Speaker 1 And every time we ask, like, oh, what's the Biden campaign going to do to turn the poll numbers around? Well, that question should be directed at all of us too, because

Speaker 1 this is all of our democracy. And if you're not enthusiastic about these two options in 2024, wait till 2028 where there's one option and a guy outside the voting booth with a rubber truncheon.

Speaker 20 What does he have a rubber what? Truncheon.

Speaker 4 Hidden you. Also, we promise not to text you photos of ourselves with alarmist copy at the end of every quarter.

Speaker 1 I mean, I'm not going to send that. Those promises to you.

Speaker 4 Friend.

Speaker 1 All right, everyone.

Speaker 4 Our fundraising is underwhelming.

Speaker 1 So tomorrow night, State of the Union, Dan and I, we're staying up late. We're going to do a post-So 2 record.
So, yeah.

Speaker 4 I'm jumping on with the Wattsquad.

Speaker 1 Please don't. Oh, look at that.
Subscribe to what a day. Okay.
And Lovett's going to be doing a show. I'll be doing mine.

Speaker 1 I'll be doing my show.

Speaker 1 And I hope they give Biden and me the same fucking drug right before we go out there. You know? Someone get us up.
Got to get up. Who's they here? Got to get up.
I don't know. They.

Speaker 1 The same people Mark Robbins. You know what I mean? You know.
Same people, Mark Robbins, same people that made Black Panther. All right, we're going to cut it here.
We're going to cut it here.

Speaker 1 Goodbye, everyone. Goodbye.
Bye.

Speaker 1 If you want to get ad-free episodes, exclusive content, and more, consider joining our Friends of the Pod subscription community at crooked.com/slash friends.

Speaker 1 And if you're already doom scrolling, don't forget to follow us at Pod Save America on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube for access to full episodes, bonus content, and more.

Speaker 1 Plus, if you're as opinionated as we are, consider dropping us a review. Pod Save America is a crooked media production.
Our show is produced by Olivia Martinez and David Toledo.

Speaker 1 Our associate producers are Saul Rubin and Farah Safari. Kira Joachim is our senior producer.
Reed Sherlin is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

Speaker 1 Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer, with audio support from Kyle Seglund and Charlotte Landis. Writing support by Hallie Kiefer.
Madeleine Herringer is our head of news and programming.

Speaker 1 Matt DeGroat is our head of production. Andy Taft is our executive assistant.
Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Mia Kelman, David Toles, Kirill Pelaviv, and Molly Lobel.

Speaker 6 I'm Lacey Mosley, host of the podcast Scam Goddess, the show that's an ode to fraud and all those who practice it. Each week I talk with very special guests about the scammiest scammers of all time.