Iowa Caucus Countdown with Steve Kornacki

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Welcome to Pod Safe America.

I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

I'm Tommy Vitor.

John is out for the next couple of weeks because on December 22nd, Teddy Favreau was born.

Everyone is happy and healthy and was home for for Christmas.

By all reports, Charlie is enthusiastically embracing his role as a big brother, and Leo is adjusting to yet another child invading his house.

That is true.

I can confirm that.

A lot happened while we were off for a couple of weeks.

Believe it or not, the 2024 election is here.

The Biden campaign is ramping up their attacks on Trump.

Trump is desperately trying to stay on the ballot in two key states.

And later on, NBC News election analyst Steve Kornacki will join me to break down the Iowa caucus in the upcoming primaries.

Tommy, you're actually on the ground in Iowa right now doing some reporting for a special mini-series that is going to air on this feed next week.

Tell us what it's been like in Iowa and what you're working on.

Yeah, well, so been here for a couple of days.

Some folks might remember that back in 2020, I did a limited series on the Iowa caucuses on the Democratic side, spent some time with some organizers, went to a bunch of events, got to talk to a bunch of candidates, explained how the caucus process worked, and it was very fun.

We're doing a smaller version of that this year where we're digging into the Republican caucuses.

We're talking about, frankly, like, what are we all doing here?

It's kind of the question.

Is there really a race?

Does Iowa really matter this year?

Is Trump running away with it?

So we went to a bunch of events yesterday.

We saw Vivek, we saw DeSantis.

We're going to try to see Trump.

And those episodes will start to appear in the Pod Save America feed on January 10th.

So check them out.

But first.

Every four years, the political media circus turns its eyes to one particular state.

So now the Iowa caucuses come on fast, right around the corner.

We are entering that final stretch.

The Republican candidates will be flooding this state, making their final pitch to voters, and that includes the frontrunner in this race.

Donald Trump dominating the polls, good 30 points ahead of his nearest rivals.

Reminder that, of course, Donald Trump lost Iowa to Ted Cruz back in 2016.

One of the rest of the field still hoping for a breakthrough.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has bet big on Iowa.

He's visited all 99 counties in this state, even holding a New Year's Eve rally.

But he's been losing ground to former U.N.

Ambassador Nikki Haley.

That's right.

The Iowa caucuses are less than two weeks away.

According to the 538 average of Iowa polls, Trump is above 50% and leading his rivals by more than 30 points.

Tommy, you are our man on the ground in Iowa.

You are in Des Moines right now.

Sure am.

Tell me what you've been doing back in Iowa, the place where your political career really took off.

Where my political personality was born.

So we got in on Tuesday.

We went to a bunch of events yesterday.

We saw Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy twice, and Dan, Asa Hutchinson.

We went to one of his events.

This man has been shot out of a cannon.

So I'd love to tell you about everything we've been doing here.

I'm so glad you got to go to an Asa Hutchinson event.

I feel like that opportunity is going to go away pretty quickly.

And it's also, I think, breaking news for people on this pod, listening to this podcast that Asa Hutchinson still running for president.

That was the primary reaction to the photo I tweeted of his event.

It's like, look,

he seems very nice.

His staff seem very nice.

The event was so small that it was like hard to be mean about it, but I think there were 20 people there and 15 of them were students from California on a class trip.

So, you know, I don't think he's going to have a surprise upset, but we can get into more of that later.

Yeah, are you

based on what you've seen at these events, is there anything stick out to you?

Do you see any signs of momentum for anyone?

You know, what are you seeing?

So we'll sort of walk you through what we did.

So we went to see Ron DeSantis Wednesday morning in Dallas County, which is, you know, a western suburb.

It's a county a little bit west of the Des Moines area.

It was a typical town hall meeting with Ron DeSantis.

I think there were probably like 60 people there, which, you know, 10 a.m.

on a Wednesday isn't bad, but it's also not great.

The most interesting moment was this voter who pressed Ron DeSantis on why he wasn't going after Trump hard enough.

I think we actually have a clip of that that we could play for you guys.

And I have a couple questions.

For one,

why haven't you gone directly after?

Holes are down.

He's up really high.

What do you mean by going directly after?

I mean, you're

in my viewpoint,

you're going pretty soft, Doc.

But what do you think?

I've articulated all the differences time and time again on the campaign show.

I know.

I think that there's just a narrative that I think the narrative is this.

I think what the media wants is they want republican candidates to just kind of like smear him personally and kind of do that that's just not how i roll i'm not going that way okay good

so so that was the first 45 seconds of what turned into like a quite long exchange again dan this is a man named chris garcia older guy uh was you know moving around with a walker who supports ron de santis he like he he likes ron de santis he wants to caucus for him he intends to caucus for him he wants to vote for him in the general election because he doesn't think trump can win but as you heard there desantis's response to like i think a pretty fair observation or question was to get mad about it like it didn't seem didn't go very well yeah it was very i was struck by just how defensive he was this clearly this is a question he gets from donors and others all the time like he was like brimming over with frustration about it it just on top of his general awkward seemingly odious personality uh it really it isn't exactly how what the sort of message you would want to be closing with at the caucuses, right?

Yeah, attacking your own voters.

I mean, my takeaway from going to a DeSantis event was that the guy you see on TV is the guy you see in person.

He is bad at interacting with human beings.

You know, some woman asked him a question.

He said, What's your name?

She said, I'm Gloria.

I'm the one who prays for you.

And his reaction was like, well, good.

And then he just like plowed forward with whatever talking point he wanted to say.

He seems to step on his own applause lines all the time.

Like he'll say some shitty thing about, you know, protecting women's sports or whatever.

And the audience, unfortunately, gets into it and he just steps on them.

The one sort of surprising hit was DeSantis criticized Trump for coming out in support of a new FBI building in Washington, D.C., which

people were surprisingly exercised about.

But nothing at that event made me think that there was some growing sense of momentum for Ron DeSantis.

Why were people exercised about the FBI building?

I don't know.

I think they've been conditioned to hate the FBI.

And it is just sort of weird that like Trump waited on this parochial matter about where this building should be, whether it's D.C., Virginia, or Maryland.

I mean, I guess the context here is that a Washington Post poll out this morning shows that 25% of Republicans think the FBI was involved in making January 6th happen.

So maybe that's why they're upset about it.

Yeah, yeah, no, I think that's right.

I think they're hearing from all of these candidates that the FBI is, you know, entrapping Trump or entrapping January 6th protesters.

So there's a lot of skepticism of government.

Now, you also, if I understand your Instagram stories correctly, you got on Vivek's campaign bus and spoke to him?

I did.

I did.

How does that happen?

Well, listen, first of all, shout out to Vivek's press team or campaign team.

Okay, just clip that social team.

You know what it is?

Like, they're just super nice and helpful and responsive.

And frankly, that's a huge contrast to the other campaigns.

Like, DeSantis' folks won't write us back.

Haley's folks won't write us back.

Asa Hutchinson's folks are great, surprisingly, no surprise.

But Trump won't credential us for events or let us into anything.

Trump's people won't let us into a coffee with Eric Trump at some point.

Do you think part of the challenge could be that you work for a company called Crooked Media?

Yeah.

Yeah.

In hindsight.

In hindsight, that wasn't good.

If we were working on the Obama campaign and someone applied for credentials with a right-wing propaganda machine,

would we allow them in?

And that's sort of my point.

2007, me would have said, get out of here.

Like, go fuck yourself, crooked media.

But so, here, my takeaway from Vivek.

We went to two of his events.

We saw him in Des Moines, and then we saw him in Newton, Iowa, which, Dan, you remember, Newton, Iowa was the place where there was a Maytag plant that got shut down.

Oh, yeah.

And it became kind of the poster child for talking about trade policy and NAFTA and everything.

So, my takeaway was: Vivek is far less obnoxious in the room with voters than he is on television or at debates.

You know, he is energetic, but he's not combative.

He is doing an unbelievable number of events.

So people always talk about doing the full Grassley.

You remember this, Dan?

The full Grassley?

The full Grassley.

You go into all 99 counties.

This is the full Grassley.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I thought I was thinking full Ginsburg in my head when the Sunday shows under one day.

Yeah, we're just sort of regurgitating terrible DC terms of art.

But so Vivek has done the full Grassley twice, which means he's gone to all 99 counties twice.

His staff told me that he will do, or Vaik actually said this, he'll do something like 330 events by the time the caucuses are over, which is just like, I think more than all of his opponents combined.

He's traveling around with his wife and kids, which, you know, would humanize anyone.

I think he is much better at interacting with voters than Ron DeSantis.

Like he smiles like a normal person.

He says thank you when people compliment him.

He's really nice to their kids.

Like, I know all of that sounds very basic, but when you go from a Ron DeSantis event to a Vivek Ronaswamy event, you notice the contrast.

You really do.

And so the Des Moines event was like 100 people in the middle of the day.

It was sort of, you know, not that interesting.

But yeah, they let us jump on his tour bus from Des Moines to Newton, Iowa and spend some time interviewing him.

Were you worried you were being kidnapped?

I was worried that there was a chance I might get let out onto the side of the highway at some point halfway there.

And I mean,

I don't know how much time our listeners still spend on Twitter.

You spend less time, but I would say of the time you spend, much of it is just attacking Vivek.

I actually think we have a brief clip of my conversation with Vivek where I was trying to press him on his comment that January 6th was an inside job.

I think you're right to question, like to talk about Watergate or the Iraq War, Times Death.

Of course, because that's Nixon and Bush.

But I will, and I do talk about those things.

I mean, the Iraq plan was based on lies.

But that still doesn't doesn't mean that thousands of people trap through the Capitol because the FBI led them in there.

No, but

I didn't say the FBI led them in there.

That's not.

So, you know, that was how a lot of people were talking about.

Great job, Tommy.

Great job.

Listen, I like the conversation built.

We started with some Iowa stuff.

We got into some foreign policy stuff where, frankly, he's a lot more interesting to talk to.

And then we got into some of the kind of conspiratorial sounding things he's been tweeting.

And so, look, the vibe in the interview was different.

He is like on edge.

He's very intense.

I could tell he seemed annoyed maybe that his staff had booked this because he said something like,

yes,

he said something like, I'm sure your podcast is listened to by lots of Iowa caucus goers.

I was like, uh-huh, yeah, totally.

And actually, he, he

name-checked me and the show at his Newton event.

And he was like, in front of the crowd, and he's like, what's your, what's your show called again?

I was like, Pod Save America.

You guys should subscribe.

You had to speak.

in the show?

Yeah, I was like, you had to speak at the event?

Yeah, I was like, subscribe to Pod Save America.

You guys will hate it.

But like, look, he's not he was prepared to go to war with me right i think he probably wanted a screaming batch or at least expected that that was not my goal i wanted to like understand the guy it's hard to like shout at someone on their on their campaign bus with their kids there my takeaway um from the conversation and from watching him is that the vagues team they obviously want to get votes from traditional caucus goers but they're also going after this demographic of people that just seem to distrust government that are more in the like RFK Jr.,

Joe Rogan, InfoWars worlds.

And that's interesting strategically because maybe those people aren't showing up in polls, but I don't know that that's going to, you know, get you to 50% of the vote.

The thing I was pressing him on there was he keeps saying that January 6th was an inside job.

He keeps saying they,

in kind of scare quotes, aren't going to let Trump or Biden get to the finish line.

He's tweeting about Jeffrey Epstein.

So I was just trying to get him to help me understand his worldview because all his events have backdrops that say the word truth on them.

And

truth is different than anti-censorship, right?

Like

if you want to have Alex Jones on your show, he had Alex Jones on his podcast, but Vake did.

If you want to have that conversation to make a point about not censoring anyone in freedom of speech, sure, that's fine.

But Alex Jones is not someone who's known for speaking the truth.

So I was trying to suss that out with him, but basically he just talked over me whenever I pushed back.

That's that seems about right.

Let's take a step back a little bit and look, think about what's going to happen on

January 15th on caucus night.

I mean, it's worth noting that Iowa awards only 40 of the 1,200 or so delegates you need to become the Republican nominee.

And therefore, winning and getting all those delegates is often less important than simply just beating expectations.

What do you think Haley, DeSantis, or Ravaik need to do to build some momentum or have something that they can attribute as success?

Well, it's funny.

It's like there's what they think they need to do and what they probably need to do.

And those are different things, right?

I mean, they all think they need to exceed expectations, which is a nebulous way that all of us who have ever worked on a campaign, especially in Iowa, define success.

So for Vivek, the last Des Moines register poll had him at about 5%.

That was a month ago.

If he can bring in some of those sort of off-the-radar screen folks and turn them out and double that number and get 10%, that could surprise people.

That could give them a little bounce, right?

The same is true for DeSantis.

I think he had 19% in the register poll.

Trump had 51% in that poll, by the way.

If he can cut that margin to like 50, 30, maybe that helps.

I mean, DeSantis is going hard in Iowa, too.

He's gone to all 99 counties.

Tell me what you think, Dan.

I mean, I think Haley seems to be more focused on New Hampshire.

She's coming back to Iowa for a couple of events, and this Americans for Prosperity pack says that they're now going to rev up some ground ground game field operation for her for the last three weeks.

But I'm very skeptical that that will be effective.

Yeah, she seems Haley.

I talked about this a little bit in my conversation with Steve Kornecki, which you will hear after this, but Haley seems a little betwixt and between strategy-wise.

And on one hand, there's an argument, and part of the problem is that most of her money is coming through a super PAC by which she has only limited influence over

and actually multiple super PACs.

there's an argument for trying to take out DeSantis in Iowa.

So she could beat somehow beat DeSantis in Iowa.

They're basically tied in the average, uh, the 538 average right now.

And to come in second to Trump, that would be the expectations, give her some additional momentum going into

New Hampshire.

DeSantis, I don't really know what happens unless he somehow

in the polls are all wrong or they have shifted dramatically since the Des Moines Register poll right before the holidays.

And he is somehow north of 30.

Trump is bled.

And when DeSantis gains a voter, he's usually gaining it from Trump, not someone else, because he's the second choice of most Trump voters.

So if somehow he gets it really close and just shocks the world by losing by 15 as opposed to 30, maybe that gives him something.

He's just, he is a lot like,

to use

an analogy that is a little unfortunately close to your heart, which is he's a little like John Edwards in 2004, which is even if he does well in Iowa, he doesn't have a next, he does not have a, he's not a strong, he's not strong in New Hampshire.

So it's hard to get momentum out of Iowa, go to a state where you're pretty weak, and then maintain that momentum heading to the next state after that, because you have a week between Iowa, New Hampshire, then you have a month between New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Right.

Right.

And that is, so if you do not have a, if you cannot get a second bounce out of New Hampshire, you can't really very, no candidates ever really made it to South Carolina that way, right?

Where you, you fail in South Carolina other than Joe Biden is the exception to that rule, who got no bounce out of Iowa, no bounce out of New Hampshire,

maybe a little bounce out of the Nevada caucus.

And then obviously won South Carolina and was the nominee like 16 seconds later.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

Yeah, I mean, Trump's coming back to Iowa.

He's doing a bunch of big events over the next few days, including a couple of fun ones on January 6th.

Who isn't excited for that anniversary celebration?

I mean,

I've been on the ground for a couple of days.

All this is like anecdotal information, but did we see some groundswall of support for DeSantis or Vivek?

Absolutely not.

And I'm with you.

I mean, I think if DeSantis gets third or even fourth in Iowa, like everyone on his staff is going to tell him, you need to drop out.

You need to endorse Trump.

You need to preserve your political future, such as it is.

I do think you're right that Haley has a path,

a limited, not a likely one, but it's a path both to do well in New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Vivek said something to me like, you know, I'm sticking in this for the long haul.

I mean, I do think it's a question of sort of what his goal is here.

The taking him literally version of it is he thinks that there's some chance that Trump gets arrested, indicted, taken off the ballot.

You know, he's literally saying these things, and maybe then he emerges.

The more cynical view of, you know, his future is he has used this entire campaign as a way to build name ID and a base of support in these conservative circles, which could then vault him to some future job, whether it's in the administration or being, you know, the next sort of conservative media darling, Ben Shapiro type, who knows?

But, you know, all of them are saying we need to just exceed expectations and then we'll take on Trump.

But if Trump wins Iowa, he will have beat his performance in 2016 when he lost to Ted Cruz.

And then he's got eight days to New Hampshire.

So I'm as skeptical as you are that there's really time to catch up to him, especially when you consider that a lot of the Super Tuesday states have been tweaked so that if someone gets, 50% or more of the vote, it's basically winner-take-all.

And Trump can just lock this thing up super fast.

So while Iowa may be looking good for Trump, he's got some other problems, specifically Maine and Colorado, where the state officials are attempting to remove him from the presidential ballot, citing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which is also known as the Insurrection Clause.

Trump has appealed both those decisions, which will almost certainly be in front of the Supreme Court before long.

Tommy, neither of us are qualified to weigh on the constitutional merits of that question, although you should feel free to do so if you would like.

But what do you think of the politics?

Does this help or hurt Trump?

What do you make of the whole idea of kicking Trump off the ballot?

I mean, I think in the primary, it almost certainly helps him that we're having this conversation because it's just like another part of his case that the system is rigged and everyone's trying to go after him.

And it means that everyone competing against him gets asked this question and that becomes their headline of the day.

And you've got Vivek out there leading the charge saying that he, Vivek, will pull himself off the Colorado ballot if Trump is pulled off, right?

So that's kind of a funny way to compete with someone.

I also saw in the Times this morning, there's now formal challenges to Trump's candidacy in at least 33 states.

You know, my fear is that we see some red states try to do the same thing to Biden, get him thrown off the ballot for some trumped-up reason.

So, you know, look, look, a year ago, Dan, I probably would have thought that the indictments, an issue like this, would be good fodder for all of these Republican opponents to Trump to make an electability argument against him.

But so far, the opposite has been the case.

So we'll see what the Supreme Court does.

Yeah, I don't know that the politics matter that much beyond the primary.

You are absolutely correct, that the dynamic that has existed throughout this primary repeated itself here, which is something,

someone does something to Trump, some quote-unquote unfriendly anti-MAGA entity, a district attorney, the Department of Justice, a Democratic Secretary of State, a liberal court does something to Trump.

The MAGA media machine rallies to his defense.

Every candidate, all of his opponents are asked, what do you think about this?

Then they defend Trump.

And so it's,

you end up in all kinds of situations where his opponents are amplifying his message.

It's an opportunity cost for his opponents because they're not talking about it.

Now, none of them are deft enough to actually use this to their advantage by saying, using this as an example of the chaos that surrounds Trump, that's an argument for maybe why he's not our best bet to actually beat Biden because they're just one-dimensional checkers players.

But once again, it's helping there.

In the long run,

we're talking about two states.

The Supreme Court's going to weigh in here.

Other states may do it,

but this isn't how, and I don't think anyone is making this argument, but this is not how we're going to beat Trump, right?

It's not going to, even, even if it,

on, on it's like, I can't speak to the constitutionality of it, but if the simple question is, people who engage in insurrection cannot run for president, well, guess what Donald Trump did?

And guess what he's trying to do?

You know, under that view of it, yeah, he probably should not be on the ballot anywhere.

And there are multiple ways in which he could have been stopped from being on the ballot, dating back to

the Republicans refusing to convict him at his second impeachment for engineering an insurrection.

But this, in terms of the general election, he's going to be, maybe he ends up not on the Colorado ballot, maybe not on the main ballot, maybe another place.

And that will probably have some consequences for the, for down ballot Republicans there if Trump is not pulling voters out.

Like if I was

like Lauren Boebert or some other Republican in Colorado, I'd be pretty nervous about my turnout without Trump on the ballot.

But it's all sort of, I think, small potatoes related, politically small potatoes related to the larger forces that are going to decide this election.

Yeah, I mean, to the extent that any of these candidates are making a contrast with Trump, like you're seeing some specifics.

I think Haley is out with an ad today about a gas tax critique of Trump or something like that.

But most.

It's a Trump attack on Haley for the gas tax.

Oh, I'm sorry.

So

Haley attacks him about like.

the national debt, right?

They'll all be like, they'll all point out that the wall didn't get finished and that Mexico didn't pay for it.

But they don't really make an argument besides sort of alluding to the fact that maybe you want someone younger, maybe you want someone without the baggage.

And even Ron DeSantis, when he has a voter begging him to make that case, because that's what that voter believes, kind of whiffs on the opportunity.

So, yeah, I mean, I imagine this will just help him.

One more thing on Trump.

He told Mackie Habern in the New York Times he's going to spend a lot of time in the coming weeks at his various trials and even plans to testify in the Gene Carroll defamation case.

Now, let's presume he's not actually going to testify.

He said he's going to testify in every trial.

He never does.

But what do you think about Trump taking the time during this critical period in the primary and sitting in a courtroom again, all across the country?

I mean, I sort of feel like the strategy is, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I mean, he's like, well, my numbers are only going up.

His political ethos seems to be no matter what, be the center of attention, be the story.

And there's reports, I think it was in Maggie's story in the Times, that Trump and his aides loved the O.J.

Chase style attention that his drive to the courtroom got.

And they know that Republican primary voters have rallied around him when he was prosecuted, and that his opponents have tied themselves up in knots and refused to exploit what seemed like a very easy advantage for them.

You've not like Ron DeSantis, I think, over the Christmas break was whining that he wished Trump never got indicted, which is just an incredible thing to say about your political opponent.

Yes.

I mean, that is sort of the metaphor of Republican politics in this current era right there.

Yeah, like what a thing to whine about.

You know, we also have Trump trying to argue that, you know, because the Senate didn't convict him in his impeachment case, he is now immune to all prosecution, which is an interesting and rather novel legal argument.

So I think like long term, the Trump folks know that a conviction would be a real problem for him in the general election.

They've seen the same numbers we have.

They'll try to prevent that from happening in any way they can.

But I think until then, they're just going to message this and try to win these sort of like day-to-day PR fights in any way possible.

And if the easiest way to do that is from a courtroom, I guess so be it.

I'm considering as skeptical as you are, though, Dan, that he will ever testify.

Yeah, I mean, it would be a truly insane choice, given just how he speaks generally.

I mean,

I was just like, as a general rule as a lawyer, do not let him be under oath at any point.

I have a sort of a,

I agree that on the margins, this is probably helpful in the primary.

It will suck up attention.

It'll do, have that dynamic we just talked about about his forcing discussion of these forces, you know, these elite liberal forces trying to take down Trump because he's a threat to the system, which is good for him in Republican politics and maybe good for him with even a larger swath of voters than we really would like to be, we would be comfortable with.

But they're his

like my take on Donald Trump's rise in the polls is that he is rising in 2024 for the exact opposite reasons he rose in 2016.

He rose in 2016 by dominating attention.

Everything was about Trump.

He became our national monoculture.

You couldn't, he was on TV all the time.

He was the topic of every conversation.

It was, it was a pop culture conversation.

It was a, the dominant story.

2024, he's actually risen in my view because he's not the center of attention.

He's not on Twitter.

He's not really on TV that much.

There's a lot of TV coverage of Trump.

Fewer people are paying attention to news.

And they're not, most people,

people always think this is crazy when we say this, but most people have no idea that Donald Trump is about a month from being the Republican nominee.

Like that is going to blow away a large swath of Americans.

And so he is deciding to

highlight his greatest vulnerabilities.

Not the Eugene Carroll trial is an example of just what a disgusting human being he is.

But, you know, talking about the January 6th case and all of those things, he's shining a light on his greatest general election vulnerability at the exact moment when voters are beginning to pay attention.

And that could be a mistake in the long run, right?

I don't think Trump's not known as a long-term thinker, but I do think he is,

there is real risk in what he's doing.

And for only what are likely to be marginal gains in a primary that he is winning by 35 points, right?

Yeah.

No, I think that's right.

I mean, I think it's the argument that probably works very well for them is, hey, remember when Trump was in office, the tweets were annoying, but gas prices were low?

I mean, I think that's kind of like simple but effective.

But if you're making people relive every moment of impeachment or January 6th or all these sort of really dark events that were part of the Trump first term, I don't, I'm with you.

That I don't think that helps you in a general election.

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Speaking of 2024, President Biden is kicking off the new year by ramping up his campaign with a focus on the threat Trump poses to democracy.

On Friday, he's giving a speech in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania to mark the third anniversary of the January 6th insurrection.

And on Monday, Biden heads to Charleston to speak at the historically black church where nine parishioners were killed by a white supremacist in 2015.

They also launched this ad.

I've made the preservation of American democracy the central issue of my presidency.

I believe in free and fair elections and the right to vote fairly and have your vote counted.

There's something dangerous happening in America.

There's an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs in our democracy.

All of us are being asked right now, what will we do to maintain our democracy?

History's watching.

The world is watching.

Most important, our children and grandchildren will hold us responsible.

What do you think of the Biden campaign strategy of focusing so much attention on January 6th and the threat to democracy as opposed to issues like inflation, the economy, the border, that sort of stuff?

Yeah.

I mean, my gut on this is, you know, as we learned at the White House, Dan, like choosing your message of the day is the easy part.

Getting it covered is the really hard part.

So the White House is smart.

They know that everyone is going to be focused on the January 6th anniversary.

They know that the Washington Post just had a poll out that found 55% of Americans believe that storming the Capitol was, quote, an attack on democracy that should not be forgotten.

And that includes a majority of independents who feel that way.

So I do think it's smart to give a big speech that day.

It's smart to fold it into a broader narrative about democracy.

I'm sure they anticipate that Trump will do or say something stupid or crazy at one of his events that will help, you know, sort of add some fuel to their fire.

And I like, I don't know if they announced.

how much or if any money is behind that ad, but, you know, you put out an ad as a press release half the time.

So it could just be that.

But I think it's smart to package this all up.

Yeah, I think that's right.

It would be, I think, somewhat somewhat naive to think that this is the full, here we are here on January 4th, getting the full view of how Joe Biden's going to run against Donald Trump, who's not yet the nominee.

And will democracy and freedom be part of the campaign?

Absolutely.

Is January, the anniversary of January 6th the exact right time to highlight that message?

Because you might get it covered?

Absolutely.

And to your point on the ad, where it'll run, where it'll run, I don't, if they put that out, that information, I don't know, but they gave it exclusively to Morning Joe this morning.

So at least it was a, it'll, I'm sure it'll play on on the cable channel all day.

And probably part of the audience of that is just Biden supporters, just to show that he's out there fighting.

And I think that is probably even more important than what he says

and does on January 6th.

And I should note, actually, the...

The speech was supposed to be on Saturday, which is the anniversary of January 6th, but there is apparently a blizzard coming to the East Coast.

And so they moved it up a day so they could make sure they actually got to give the speech,

which is another example of just how hard it is to get your message covered in the White House.

Sometimes even weather gets in the way yeah too bad there wasn't um the blizzard a couple years ago could have saved us a lot of trouble

yes that's

that that is you think those people were going to stop because of snow yeah i don't know maybe their flights wouldn't have landed they're all their private jets that they flew in on these uh economically anxious people That's right.

I just think Joe Biden fighting is good.

Just the image of him.

He gave a very good speech on the one-year anniversary of January 6th that was very powerful.

He did from the Capitol.

Something like that that just shows energy and vigor and a, you know, that he's taking on this very real threat

is good politics for him.

So I think this is the, this is the right thing to do.

It doesn't mean he's not going to talk about inflation and that his accomplishments and all the other things are going to be part of this.

But I guess the question is, what else do you think Biden needs to be doing on top of this?

CNN reports, you're going to be shocked by this, that congressional Democrats want him to spend more time laying out a second-term agenda.

What do you think the right balance is here?

One top House aide told CNN, what's our bumper sticker?

What's our making America great again?

Now, I mean,

like, of course, Joe Biden needs to lay out a vision for his re-elect.

I don't know that that has to happen urgently.

Like, you're not going to send out a PDF and be like, here it is on, you know, January 8th.

Here's our re-elect message.

I mean, Dan, you would have a much better sense of this and memory of it than I would for the re-elect because you were working on that.

And I was a full-time NSC nerd at that point, just like not solving the whole Benghazi problem.

But

I suspect that Biden will kickstart this process during the State of the Union.

And over the coming months, you'll do a series of policy speeches and events to highlight kind of pieces of the platform, things you're fighting for, what you want to do with a second term, what you would do with a Democratic Congress.

And then I suspect you'd want that.

platform and the narrative to be fully baked by his convention speech.

And then you're just kind of hammering away from there.

But, you know, that vision has to include a contrast with your opponent, which he doesn't have yet.

And if you're talking about all these things too early, you won't get it covered.

You won't get the attention.

And it will just be a waste of time.

So I suspect, sort of in the more immediate term, they're thinking about getting back the Democratic voters that they lost, making sure the party is unified.

That could come from a second-term agenda.

That could come from highlighting the threat from Trump.

It could come from course correcting on current policy like the handling of Gaza.

I imagine it will require a mix of all of it.

But yeah, I mean, those congressional leaders are not wrong, but it may be just a little premature.

Yeah, I mean,

yes, of course you need to say something about what you're going to do if you're re-elected.

I mean,

that's table stakes.

The state of the union will be for Biden, as it was for Obama, the first place to begin to lay that out.

And

there will be specific policies involved.

And there's even in some of these stories, there are some ideas previewed around taxes on stock buybacks, additional efforts to protect the Affordable Care Act, which are obviously specific contrasts against Republican economics, against Trump's pledge to take to repeal the ECA.

That will sort of ladder up to the convention speech, which will be the next biggest audience the president will have, or hopefully that will be the biggest audience the president has, but even bigger than State of the Union.

to let to lay out his vision.

The vision is more important than the details of the vision, and the details need to be essentially proof points for the kind of president Biden will be in a second term.

What's the details of the white paper is not really going to matter.

And it's going to matter, I think, even less than before because people are just so as cynical as people were when we were trying to get Barack Obama re-elected, they're even way more cynical now.

So if Joe Biden stands up and says, I'm going to do this big, huge thing for the voters that he most needs to win over, they're going to be pretty skeptical that he can get that done.

That's not even really about Joe Biden.

It's just about a broken political system.

And so you,

along with that, he'll need a theory of change.

Like, what can he do that

what can he get done?

Is he going to get a trifecta without a

with enough senators to not be bedeviled by the filibuster?

It's going to be hard to sell that to the press given the senate map.

So, but yes, you're going to need some things to say.

You're going to want, because people have to have to answer.

He's going to have to answer questions and campusers are going to have to answer questions at the door.

Like, what does it mean for me?

Yeah.

And what does it mean?

Can me can be protecting the progress we've made.

It could mean ensuring the ACA is not repealed.

It could mean

he will be the bulwark against the federal abortion ban that a Republican Congress wants to pass.

You know, all of those things like that.

But this is usually this congressional Democrats always want this and it matters, but it is not decisive, in my opinion.

Yeah.

And look, I mean, part of it is they're probably feeling like they're going on TV and they're constantly on their back foot and they're getting asked about his age and they're getting asked about his polling and they want to talk about what he would do and bring it back to substance and go on offense again, which I appreciate and respect, but I just think it's something you can do with broader sets of contrasts and ideas and values and vision versus, you know, laying out a full second-term agenda.

The Biden campaign has been getting much more aggressive with Trump in recent weeks.

In a CNN report, it said that the Biden campaign jokes about going, quote, full Hitler for the moments in which they feel they can compare Trump to the Nazi leader.

Are you surprised we've gotten to the Hitler comparisons by January of 2024?

What is the old saying?

The first rule of comparing someone to Hitler is don't, I think.

I think that rule has apparently changed because they've been doing it for months and seems fine.

I mean, well, just to be a little more nuanced, I do think it's important to talk about the dangers of incitement and political rhetoric.

I mean, we know that the great replacement theory, for example, has inspired white nationalists and mass shooters in the U.S.

and New Zealand, all over the place.

We know that

language like, you know, talking about immigrants having tainted blood or dehumanizing language, like calling people rodents or vermin, can be precursors to real violence.

But I think you have to make sure you make those arguments in a way where you don't sound hyperbolic because I just think you're less convincing.

So you can say, you know, that's the kind of language that was used by the Nazis and explain the context.

But if you say this person is like Hitler, I think a lot of folks kind of tune you out.

Yeah, that is the hard part with all of these comparisons of Trump to authoritarians and dictators and white supremacists is they are substantively correct or in spiritually correct in what he is pushing for.

But it may, but it's the challenge is Donald Trump was just president three years ago.

And so when you say Donald Trump's going to be a dictator, people didn't see the, right or wrong, people did not see the original Trump presidency as a dictatorship.

They may have found a lot of things problematic about it, it being overly chaotic, it being overly corporatist, it being ineffective in a lot of ways, but they didn't think it was a dictatorship.

And so you just, you're going to have to make the case in a pretty relentless and specific and easily understood way if you want to do that.

That does not mean that the Biden folks can't,

you know, post some threads with pictures of Trump and Hitler to make a point.

you know, like, that's fine.

That's not really, that's just sort of inside baseball.

But on the larger argument about Trump is an authoritarian, Trump is a Nazi, Trump is a dictator, it's a, I think it is a more challenging case to make than a lot of us would like it to be.

Yeah, I mean, right, I think you just have to be specific.

You know, and I think part of this, this always gets broken down into a debate about, are we talking about culture war?

Are we talking about values?

Or are we talking about kitchen table issues?

And the much more boring reality is you have to do both.

And I do think he'll talk about all the things that, you know, show up most in polls, inflation health care etc but i do think he has to make a case about donald trump his character and reminding people about all the bad parts of his four years in charge that they didn't like that you know didn't include um

being a full-on fascist but included being a pretty god-awful human being who was a terrible leader yeah he was uh fascist adjacent would be the way to put it i guess there you go Before the break, two big positive America schedule updates.

First, starting January 16th, we have a new three-day-a-week schedule with episodes dropping Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

Because let's face it, there's too much going on to cover in just two episodes each week.

The takes overfloweth, as they say.

Second, tune into the two-episode special of On the Ground in Iowa for Tommy's on-site analysis of the GOP caucus and what it means for the pivotal election year ahead.

Listen to it on the Pod Save America feed starting January 10th.

When we come back, Steve Kornacki.

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Joining us now is someone who needs no introduction to political junkies, the man behind the magic wall, NBC National Political Correspondent Steve Kornacki.

Steve, welcome to the pod.

Thanks for having me on, Dan.

Good to be here.

All right, we are two weeks away from Iowa.

We are about to head onto a quick succession of New Hampshire, South Carolina, Super Tuesday, and then basically every Tuesday for a while is going to be an election night.

How are you preparing?

Have you been doing cardio?

Are you standing in front of a board to train for a long period of time?

What are you doing to get ready?

Yeah, I mean, the focus, you know, right now is Iowa, obviously.

And just, you know, if you ever looked at a map of Iowa, you got 99 counties.

A lot of them look geographically, just they're squares.

They look very similar.

So trying to make sure I kind of know where they all are and especially where the biggies are.

I think the most important thing for our coverage right now is just

the point of comparison that we're going to stress, obviously,

for all these Republican primaries, as long as they go, is just 2016, the last open Republican primary, Trump's first time running.

How was he doing with certain groups then?

How is he doing now?

Where has there been growth?

Has there been any slippage?

And

obviously the question everybody's looking for still is, is there any room?

Is there any scenario where a DeSantis or a Haley still could make this a game with him?

I know you've been digging into the data in Iowa.

What's your sense of where the race stands in the Hawkeye State?

Yeah, well, I'll give a good plug here to

the polling partnership that we started this year.

And I love we have a partnership with the Des Moines Register and Selzer, who is the, you know, kind of acknowledged as the

it's great to have this partnership because I know this is the one everybody waits for and sort of on caucus eve she'll release her final numbers so we'll have that you know right before the caucuses so that'll give us the best sense of it but we've been in a bit of a a lull here in terms of

polling out of Iowa and New Hampshire for that matter.

But our most recent one,

now

a couple weeks old, but our most recent one had Trump over 50%.

We had him growing his support from September to December.

We had him at 51%, DeSantis, 19%,

Haley, 16% in Iowa.

And

that's the last time you had a Republican with a lead that big, this close to the caucuses.

You got to go back to George W.

Bush in the 2000 cycle.

Bush won Iowa fairly comfortably in 2000.

He did get a scare by losing New Hampshire to John McCain, but was, you know,

basically able to win South Carolina and put that one to bed.

So that's the kind of historical comparison I got in my mind.

And

yeah, I think, look, Trump is obviously favored to win Iowa.

The question is, does he actually win it?

How big does he win it?

And does somebody get a second place showing that allows them to claim a moral victory and some momentum?

I think that that's a very important point because, and maybe you could help explain this to our listeners, because who many of whom may have tuned in, started paying close attention to politics, listening to Potsdam America, watching election nights with Steve Karnaki after 2016, after Trump won.

The Iowa caucus has not picked the Republican nominee for nearly a quarter century now.

So why should people care about what's happening on the 15th?

Yeah, and it was.

It was George W.

Bush in 2000 was the last time he had the Iowa winner go on to win the nomination.

I think the key is what's happened in the primaries or caucuses since 2000 is that a candidate squarely of the Christian right has won.

So in 2008, that was Mike Huckabee.

He won Iowa, powered by Christian conservatives.

In 2012, it was Rick Santorum in a squeaker over Mitt Romney, but powered by evangelical Christians.

And in 2016, Ted Cruz beat Donald Trump, powered by evangelical Christians.

They make up, you know, almost in 2016, two-thirds of the caucus electorate.

I think you're looking at about 60%, 65% of the caucus electorate roughly is going to identify as a born-again or evangelical Christian.

And so obviously that group holds tremendous sway.

And you've seen the last candidate who was able to get a win among evangelical Christians in Iowa, but also have broad support among non-evangelical Christians in later states, was George W.

Bush in 2000.

And at least in the polling right now, we're seeing Donald Trump fits that basic pattern that we saw with Bush in 2000, which is to say,

he leads right now.

He finished a very distant second Trump did among evangelicals in Iowa in 2016.

He now leads by an R poll almost 30 points among evangelicals in Iowa.

But then you test him in New Hampshire.

And again, it's been a while since we've had a really good poll come out of there, but it's, you know, he's got, it's not as dominant, but he's got a lead there.

And he's got a lead in every other state poll that we've seen, including South Carolina, Nikki Haley's home state.

So there's a breadth of support across the sort of Republican spectrum that you never had with Huckabee, you never had with Santorum, and you never had with Cruz that right now, at least in the polling, Trump has.

I mean, it is.

wild, you know, if you were someone sitting back in 2016 to hear that you would be able to likely pick the states where Trump would do best in the primary based on the higher percentage of the voters are evangelical Christians for the thrice divorced Donald Trump.

It's a truly, truly stunning shift, I think, in politics because the ones you mentioned before, Santorum and Huckabee, were true

soldiers in the Christian right movement for years beforehand.

And now they're picking someone who really has been unable to quote a Bible verse for, you know, his entire time in public life.

No, it really is.

I mean, the numbers are just so stark on it.

Like I said, he was at 21%,

22%, I should say, in 2016, Trump was among evangelicals in Iowa.

22% is what he got in the caucuses.

And in our polling now, he's at 47%.

I thought one thing, before Mike Pence dropped out of the race, it was really striking to me.

Evangelicals were going to be Pence's bedrock.

That was the theory of his candidacy.

He fits, when you talk about like a Huckabee, Santorum, he absolutely fit that profile.

He was, you know, he was going to make a stand in Iowa.

And the final poll that was taken that we took literally as Pence was dropping out of the race had Trump in the high 40s and had Pence at 1% in Iowa among evangelicals.

So I think that's a huge story in Iowa and it's a huge story nationally that since the beginning of that 2016 campaign, when there was a lot of skepticism and some plenty of resistance among evangelicals to Donald Trump, it's gone completely in the opposite direction now, where not only are they supportive of him, but they're one of his core constituencies now.

It seems like, based on the ad traffic and what people are saying on the stump, that

DeSantis and Haley are basically competing against each other for second.

And the goal for either one of them is to leave there with some measure, something they can hang on to that says, I have momentum heading into what comes next.

What do you think success looks for either one of them coming out of Iowa?

Yeah, my sense is the pressure is more on DeSantis because he has simply put more into making a stand in Iowa.

He's locked up the endorsement of the governor, Kim Reynolds, who's very popular, although that has not shown any evidence of rubbing off on him.

Bob Vanderplatz, who is sort of acknowledged as one of the key leaders of the evangelical movement in Iowa.

Again, he got that endorsement.

No evidence yet that it's really redounded to his benefit.

But yeah, I think, look, just the profile of the electorate in Iowa,

what DeSantis has been aiming for in terms of the groups he would like to build a coalition around.

Iowa is a state that he should be doing well in

if he's going to be competitive for the nomination.

And he's spent a lot more time in Iowa than Nikki Haley has.

So

I think there's more pressure on him to get second.

But even if he gets second,

if it's a second like we're seeing in our poll right now where he's more than 30 points behind Trump, I'm not sure

what that gets him.

My sense is it would really have to be a second, a surprisingly strong second.

And I don't know quite where you'll have to see the final numbers to see where

you kind of set the bar.

It can be funny in Iowa.

I mean, the famous story back in 1984, we're going way back in time here.

Gary Hart lost Iowa by 34 points to Walter Mondale, but Gary Hart basically won Iowa because somehow he got momentum and he won New Hampshire and it became this political phenomenon.

So these weird benchmarks can kind of emerge, but I think DeSantis, you know, it's got to do something,

not just second, but a kind of a significant second.

Haley is a little different.

I think if she gets second for her campaign, it's a big boost

because she is much better positioned in New Hampshire than Ron DeSantis is.

Haley has some real strengths in New Hampshire.

She's running, you know, depending on the poll, she's running fairly competitively with Trump there right now.

The big difference is, the two big differences between Iowa and New Hampshire are, we're talking about evangelical Christians, about two-thirds, as I said, of the electorate in Iowa, maybe a quarter in New Hampshire, 20 to 25%.

So it's one of the most secular Republican electorates you're going to get.

And also, the participation of independent voters in the New Hampshire primary,

it's basically as high as you're going to find anywhere.

In 2012, when Obama was running for re-election and there was really no Democratic primary in New Hampshire, which is similar to what we're going to have this year, 45% of the New Hampshire Republican primary electorate said they were independents who were choosing to participate in the Republican primary that day.

And independents is the group that Haley is doing the best among right now.

So if she can come out of Iowa with anything that looks like momentum, I do see a potential for her to roll that into New Hampshire and potentially make it interesting there.

You drew the parallel between

this race in 2000.

And in that parallel, Trump is George W.

Bush, something he would probably not take very kindly to, or maybe George W.

Bush probably wouldn't either.

Probably Haley is.

Yeah, that's right.

And Haley is McCain.

Given that, and given Haley's strength in New Hampshire, are you surprised that Haley's even competing in Iowa?

Because Trump, because McCain famously did not compete in Iowa, did not compete again in Iowa in 2008 and put all of his chips in New Hampshire.

It helped him at least stay alive in 2000 and it helped him become the nominee in 2008.

Have you been surprised by a strategic decision from the Haley folks?

Yeah, a little bit.

Honestly, when I was looking at some of those New Hampshire numbers, I thought she might might just kind of just toss Iowa aside.

But I think they see an opportunity to beat DeSantis to get second.

And whether that would drive DeSantis out of the race on the spot or it would effectively end his candidacy if they were able to pull that off, I think they see that opportunity and

potentially to get closer to a one-on-one race with Trump, which is what everybody's goal is.

And I think there has to be some recognition in the Haley campaign that if you're relying,

if your campaign is disproportionately driven by the support of basically non-Republicans, whether that's independents, whether that's the small number of Democrats who can participate in some of these states, or Republicans who don't like Donald Trump, they're a distinct minority of the Republican electorate, but those who don't like Donald Trump disproportionately like Haley.

That is what's driving her support in a lot of ways.

And that's not, I think they know that's not enough to win the Republican nomination.

They've got to expand on that.

So I think from that standpoint, there's some importance in Iowa in showing that they can win over some of those, some voters who don't fit the profile I was just talking about.

The challenge, I think, for Haley in that scenario is that in most of the polling that I've seen to date, the second choice of DeSantis voters is not Nikki Haley.

Right.

It's Donald Trump.

And in some senses, if I was sitting in the Haley campaign, what I want is DeSantis to grow stronger

because the second choice of Trump voters is not Nikki Haley, it's Ron DeSantis.

And so I guess ultimately you're going to get to the one-on-one point at some point.

And therefore, you're going to need a bigger available universe than she currently has.

But you talk a little bit about the role that second choice plays and sort of how people game out these strategies.

Yeah, no, just in terms of second place in Iowa.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, right.

Like, look,

the problem,

Haley, I think, sees the potential of momentum.

Second place being momentum, rolling that into New Hampshire.

I think they're, you know, Sununu is talking about her, the governor of New Hampshire, Chris Sununu, who endorsed Haley, is talking about winning New Hampshire.

But I think they're, you know, they're, they're trying to keep the expectations a bit under wraps.

But I think that her campaign would, you know, very much has it on their minds to win New Hampshire.

And what that would then set up is you do have Nevada in between New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Nevada, it's a very weird situation this year.

There's going to be a primary.

No delegates are at stake.

Haley will be on the primary ballot.

There's going to be a caucus two days later.

Haley will not be part of that.

The delegates will be awarded there.

So we're not, Nevada is a very weird one.

I don't know that it's going to carry much weight this time around.

So I think what really, if Haley were to get a strong second or a meaningful second out of Iowa, if this is a huge if, but if she were able to win New Hampshire, you know, she would get obviously, there'd be a flood of attention in the media spotlight, you know, and there'd be, you know, could she actually knock off Donald Trump?

And I think the state then, this would be like that parallel to 2000 with Bush and McCain.

The Bush and McCain race went to South Carolina.

The Trump and Haley race would go to South Carolina.

South Carolina, in this case, her home state, too.

And so, you know, she would then need to win.

Obviously, she would need to win South Carolina, I think, to make a plausible claim.

And the problem she gets into, she's polling right now much better in New Hampshire than she is in her home state.

And South Carolina, again, we talk about New Hampshire being the most secular Republican electorate.

South Carolina, I think in 2016, was 72% evangelical, and it's Republican, you know, so even more than Iowa.

And Trump, of course, you know, swept it in 2016.

So, you know,

right away,

you know, if she gets the huge win out of New Hampshire, you know, she's going to a state that demographically is a huge challenge for her, given the nature of her support right now, but it's also her home state.

And so it'd be awfully tough if she didn't win South Carolina or come awfully close.

I think it'd be tough to make the case that she's got momentum to continue because there's a lot more states in the Republican primary mix that resemble Iowa and and South Carolina demographically than that resemble New Hampshire.

So from her standpoint,

it's get to South Carolina.

And

I don't think they would say this, but I think realistically she would then need to win South Carolina.

And I think for DeSantis,

it's to get

a strong second out of Iowa, show there's some life there.

And then I think he's not pulling that well in New Hampshire.

And I think he might run into some of those problems you talk about, like a Huckabee, a cruise, a Santorum having in new hampshire i think he might then look down south um look more to make a stand in south carolina in some of those super tuesday states um and and say hey look i'm a viable alternative and you know i don't know maybe maybe on some level they're hoping that you know this has been the hope of all of trump's opponents on the republican side for eight years something happens that kind of kind of you know marginalizes him or takes him out but nothing has yet

On caucus night, when those first results start to come in, are there specific counties or voter groups or turnout numbers you'll be looking for that could possibly suggest that something is upsetting the apple cart of what we all expect, a huge Trump win?

Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of places I would look.

And obviously, this just sometimes these counties don't report till the end of the night, so they end up, you only know it after the fact.

But

a big one I would look at is in Northwest Iowa, Sioux County.

Because Sioux County, Northwest Iowa is the most conservative and the most evangelical region in Iowa.

It was Trump's worst region in 2016.

It was Cruz's best.

And Sioux County of the 99 counties in Iowa, Sioux County was the worst one for Donald Trump in 2016.

He got 11% out of Sioux.

So, you know, an overwhelmingly conservative and evangelical county, pretty good size too.

You know, it's not where the big population center in Iowa is, but for that region, it's a good size.

So, you know,

is he winning there?

I mean, the polls right now suggest if he's getting 47% with evangelicals, he's winning in a place like Sue.

Is he?

Is he just rolling up massive margins?

If he is, if we were to get Sue early in the night and Trump were to be up, you know, you know, 20, 30 points, something like that, I think it'd be very hard to see how DeSantis is having a good night.

If you were to get Sue and DeSantis were, you know, within single digits, you might say, oh, this might be a little more interesting than we thought.

So on the one end, it's that.

On the other end, you know, you look at some of these suburban areas.

You could look at Polk County, where Des Moines is.

You could look right outside it, Dallas County, suburbs of Des Moines.

This is another place where Trump struggled in 2016.

It's not here the evangelical presence is a lot lower, but what you're going to get more are college educated, suburban.

These are the types of Republicans who traditionally vote more on pocketbook issues.

And they were very uncomfortable with Trump in Iowa and other states and have been since 2016, obviously.

This is an area where Haley and the polling, you know, we're seeing it suggest she do very well.

How well is she doing here?

How poorly is Trump doing in these suburban areas?

Because again, if Haley were suddenly rolling up huge numbers here, or if Trump were just lagging badly, maybe even DeSantis was running up huge numbers here.

Again, you could say, well,

this might be interesting here for the night.

But

if Trump's holding his own there and running up big numbers with evangelicals, then you're going to get a result that looks like the polls do do right now.

Aaron Ross Powell, are Haley and DeSantis competing for those college-educated Republican voters in Polk and Dallas County?

You know, it seems Haley

seems has much more appeal to them, at least just based on the polling right now.

The DeSantis strategy really from the beginning has been, it seems, to sort of sell Trumpism without Trump.

But it's complicated by the fact that he's very reluctant to make that explicit case of why you should want him and not want Trump.

And that's because of Trump's overwhelming, the thing that's complicated this for everybody is Trump is overwhelmingly popular with Republican voters.

So you look at our poll in Iowa and you just ask among Republicans, favorable, unfavorable, and you tick through the candidates.

We had Trump at 72% favorable in our last poll.

DeSantis, we had at 66% favorable.

And so I think that gets to the dilemma.

that he's faced and I don't think has found a way to resolve all year, which is that like he's, it's not that Republicans are looking at DeSantis and saying, oh, no,

I don't like this guy.

They like him.

They like him.

But I think a big reason they like him is that he has not gone head on against Trump because the people who have gone head on against Trump

just look in the poll.

Chris Christie, no one has been more aggressively out there against Trump

in this campaign than Christie.

Christie's number is like 15, 20% favorable among Republicans.

We're looking at 60, 65, 70% unfavorable for Christie.

That's what squarely aligning yourself against Trump will do to you.

And I think that DeSantis recognized that from early in the campaign.

And I think

his belief, his campaign's belief and assumption from the start of the campaign was that the 2022 midterms where Republicans underperformed and where the Trump-aligned candidates cost Republicans the Senate and cost them some key statewide races, that in the wake of that, there was a growing consensus among the Republican electorate that, hey, yeah, we like Trump, but it's time to move on.

And DeSantis would be there to fill that void.

And in fact, the early, early polling, I mean, I'm talking about like December 2022, January 2023, showed, seemed to show that.

DeSantis was very competitive in those polls.

If you did a line graph of

2023 and the polling, where the Trump and DeSantis lines diverge and Trump just takes off like a rocket and DeSantis begins this slow descent, it was early March 2023.

And that's when that first Trump indictment in Manhattan over the Stormy Daniels matter came out.

And it was almost like that was the rally around Trump moment.

And Republicans did that, and they have stayed behind him.

And in fact, in the polling, at least, even grown in their support for him since then.

It's interesting you raise how popular DeSantis is with Republicans, because I think people who are just not looking at the polling and just following the news coverage, we sort of shocked about that.

Trump has been relentless in his mocking and bullying, frankly, bullying of DeSantis.

There's been a bunch of negative ads about DeSantis.

He's sort of, he's been meme-fied on social media and

cable news for his awkwardness and his weird encounters with people.

And the narrative of the race is Trump is strong.

And if anyone is surging, it is Haley.

And I think it is true that Haley has, albeit a narrow one, a clearer path to possibly winning.

But DeSantis is 20 points more popular in a lot of these polls.

And one of the most interesting dynamics is that as Haley has, quote-unquote, surged mainly in New Hampshire, the number of Republicans in the polling who are open to voting for her has gone down nationally and her approval rating has gone down.

Can you talk a little bit about that dynamic?

Yeah, and that's that, I, I, you know, that's what did in, going back in time here, that's what did in John McCain against George W.

Bush, because the dynamic then was Bush, as we said, won Iowa.

McCain didn't really contest it.

McCain said, I'm all in on New Hampshire.

Remember the Straight Talk Express, the bus, the reporters, everything's on the record.

And he, you know, he was kind of, he was the, be honest, the candidate of the media in 2000.

And it was so, so attractive to independent voters who play such a huge role in New Hampshire.

And so he swamped Bush in New Hampshire.

It was a 20-point win.

It was the magnitude nobody saw coming.

And it was like, holy cow, is this guy actually going to beat Bush?

And what the Bush campaign immediately turned around and did was it made the race, Bush versus McCain, a referendum on are you a real Republican or are you, you know,

are you, what was the word Bush used?

A mischievous Democrat, a mischievous independent who's taking their cues from the media and, you know, trying to cause trouble in the Republican primary.

It was like, if you're loyal to the party, you're voting Bush.

You know, a vote for McCain is a disloyal vote for a Republican.

That's what the Bush campaign message was post-New Hampshire.

And it worked.

And McCain did have some some success after New Hampshire, but it was all, it was directly related to like, could independents vote in the state?

How big was the presence of independence in the state?

You know, McCain won Michigan, you know,

it had enough, you know, of an independent and even Democratic presence there.

But, you know, a state like South Carolina, Bush was able to win easily.

And so that's the problem that Haley, I think, faces.

Again, to the extent that her success is seen as coming from either non-Republicans or from Trump hostile Republicans, I think it's going to, it risks, and we're seeing already, it engenders the same reaction from core Republican voters that McCain's strength among independents and Bush-skeptical Republicans did in 2000.

And that is like, nope,

this is the media's candidate.

This is the Democrats' candidate.

We're not doing this.

We want the real Republican.

And, you know, I think that's how Trump is viewed by a lot of these Republicans when it comes down to it.

And that's a very different Republican Party than the one we're talking about now.

And also notable is in that period between there's a, you know, Iowa and New Hampshire happened in quick succession, and then there's a gap between New Hampshire and South Carolina.

And that, how these candidates navigate that gap will determine their success.

McCain made some mistakes, but also the Bush folks launched a vicious assault against him.

Now, that seems, likely seems like beanbag compared to Republican politics in the Trump era, that some of the things they did, although there were some pretty nasty rumor campaigns and phone and mail campaigns about McCain that were pretty scurrilous.

But I mean, mean, that, you know, I think that that's the, I assume that's the period you'll be watching if Haley has any successes.

Can she survive that assault from Trump?

Yeah, because we haven't, we haven't seen Trump.

That's the, the wild card with her, too.

We haven't seen Trump really take after her.

Um, what happens if and when he does.

And again, like I said, it's, it's just the fact that it's her home state, too, just raises the stakes that much more.

If she's you were saying it's like seeing a path more for Haley than DeSantis.

I tend to agree in the sense that that I can see potentially a Haley win in New Hampshire from where we're standing right now.

It's hard to see a DeSantis win in Iowa or any of these early states from where we're standing right now.

This can change overnight in politics.

But yeah, if she gets that win in New Hampshire, it's also,

it's hard to see.

It's weird to say, it's hard to see her turning around and winning her home state, just given these dynamics, and then given that Trump will be coming after her with full force and fury, presumably.

But yeah, it's a month.

I mean, New Hampshire is going to vote January 23rd.

South Carolina is going to vote February 24th.

So you've got a month in between.

And

we'd be obviously looking closely at all those polls in between.

Is she showing growth?

Is she showing growth with Republicans, with evangelicals, with these groups that right now seem resistant to her?

If she were to start showing, if she were to come off in New Hampshire win and start showing that, then you'd be talking about a different race.

But she'd have to show that, which right now we haven't seen.

We haven't seen very much polling since Nikki Haley's comment on the Civil War that got so much attention.

But from folks you've talked to or some of the, maybe the NBC reports on the ground, have you heard anything about that stalling her momentum at all?

Well,

it would be interesting to look at the next round of polling because I think the type of voter that is most likely to be put off by that, first to have absorbed the coverage of it and to have a negative reaction to Haley based on it, probably is the type of voter she's doing best among right now, which is the Trump hostile slash Trump skeptical, independent,

more moderate,

suburbanite.

That's the type of voter who I think isn't going to look at a, necessarily going to look at

that incident and say, oh, this is just the media.

She's not appealing to that voter right now.

She's appealing to a voter.

As I said, she's appealing to a voter that I think is more likely to kind kind of see that, hear about that, and maybe

adjust their view of her because of it.

So I am looking like in the wake of that,

does she stall with independence?

Does she move backward with independence?

She's doing well with college-educated women.

Does that change at all?

You know, I think these are groups that you could see in polling might be more swayed by a story like that.

All right.

Steve, last question for you.

I'll let you get back to your data.

You know, we've talked a lot about the 2000 parallel for this Republican primary.

If this ends up being Biden-Trump, do you have a general election historical parallel you're looking at as a potential equivalent to

this general election?

Or is anything in the Trump era a black swan event?

Yeah,

the short answer is no.

I mean, it's just think of the dynamic.

It's a the sitting president running against a former president who the sitting president defeated

four years earlier.

I mean, this is, this is, it's rare for a former one-term president to run again.

It has not happened in the modern era at all.

The closest, you know, Gerald Ford looked at it in 1980 and almost ran.

That's the closest thing there is to a parallel, and that's not a parallel in any meaningful way.

So, no, we don't have a good parallel for it.

And, you know, I just, people ask me how I look at that race.

And from this vantage point, at least, I, you know, it's, it's striking that the polling, the Trump Biden polling right now

is quantitatively different than it was at any point in the 2019-2020 cycle.

Every

major national poll in 2019 and 2020 had Biden ahead.

The question was, by how much?

And I looked at our NBC polling 2019-2020.

Everyone had Biden up.

The smallest margin was six.

The biggest margin was 12.

And now we consistently have reputable national polls that show a tide race.

Biden by one, Trump by one, Trump Trump by two,

right in that range.

So

it's interesting to me that we're seeing polling that looks very different this time around than it did in 2020.

And it raises some questions, you know, that we'll have nine months potentially to hash out here.

But it just, it makes me look at it and say, you know, this is...

you know, it's a cop out to say, but it looks like a toss, from this vantage point, it looks like a toss-up race.

Yeah, absolutely.

And it's also different underneath the top line numbers, right?

There's been shifts in some of the groups that Biden was strong with.

Trump has lost some with some other voters, but just the coalitions are potentially shifting, presuming these numbers are giving us an accurate portrayal of what's happened.

And then it gets even more complicated when you add in potentially extremely well-funded, well-known third-party candidates like an RFK Jr.,

a

Joe Manchin or some other no labels candidate.

These folks on the ballot

lowers that number where someone could win a state with 37% of the vote as opposed to the 49 or 50 you would need to win like there was in 2020.

Yeah, and I tend to think right now that's something we're probably not, I mean, let's get through the primaries, but I don't think we're following that

as much as maybe we should because the numbers, I don't know what RFK is going to do in terms of actually making ballots.

I mean, that's a big question.

But like when you throw him in a poll right now, he's registering at levels that you haven't really seen a a third-party name in polling register at since Ross Perot 30 years ago, 32 years ago, 1992.

And like you said, there's the potential for others to get in as well.

There's the extremely high negatives that both Trump and Biden have.

And

yeah, I know in 2016, there was a lot of, I don't like Trump, I don't like Hillary, and the libertarians got 3%.

I mean, there was a little bit of that in 2016, but I...

I look at these polls, and I think there's potential for a lot more in 2024.

And that looms to me as a huge potential wildcard, at least.

Again, it's pending how serious RFK ends up being about putting an organization together, getting on ballots.

Does Mansion take the bait, go with no labels?

Do they get in all the ballot?

I mean, there's all those questions around it, but boy, if they did, yeah, I mean, it could be, we could be talking third-party impact.

1992 is the last time we saw the level of

no, Steve Cornaki, thank you so much.

Good luck as election season begins.

It was great to talk to you.

You too.

Thanks a lot.

Thank you, Tommy, for filling in for John.

Thank you to Steve Kernaki, and we'll talk to everyone next week.

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