Dark Brandon: The Sequel

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Speaker 15 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favreau.

Speaker 16 I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

Speaker 15 On today's show, Joe Biden makes it official. House Republicans pass a debt ceiling bill that eliminates health care for millions.
Disney sues Ron DeSantis.

Speaker 15 And Democratic pollster Celinda Lake stops by to talk about the president's road to 270 electoral votes.

Speaker 15 Then, Dan and I sort through the many wild rumors and theories about why Fox News fired Tucker Carlson. Fun stuff.
But first, Crooked's newest pod, Pod Save the UK, is launching May 4th.

Speaker 15 And if you like to laugh and cry about politics, you're going to love this show. Love it.
Tommy and I sat down with the hosts, Nish Kumar and Coco Khan, for a special bonus crossover episode.

Speaker 15 We tackled some really important issues like what the USA and the UK really think about each other's politics, how to turn political outrage into action, and of course, what really happened to the Queen's Corgi when she died.

Speaker 15 Which you can imagine Lovett brought up.

Speaker 15 Here is a sneak peek.

Speaker 18 It's a very historic phrase that we use here in Britain, and it is: chat shit, get banged.

Speaker 16 I love that. That's the phrase.

Speaker 18 It's true. And what

Speaker 18 I promise I mean this genuinely. There is a lot of chatting shit in politics, a lot of flagrant lying and not enough getting banged.

Speaker 18 And I think really the general public, and I'm serious, I feel like people need to see some consequences to the constant lies.

Speaker 15 I just want you to know, Dan, that we got a note about the episode from the producers afterwards saying that it was great, but that, quote, they did have to cut all the bestiality stuff.

Speaker 16 Oh, okay.

Speaker 16 Will that be available maybe down the line for other people?

Speaker 15 That's for subscribers.

Speaker 16 Yeah.

Speaker 16 You want the good shit.

Speaker 15 It was an unhinged episode in a very fun way. For more of this crossover episode, watch now on the Pod Save the World YouTube or listen and subscribe to Pod Save the UK wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 15 All right, let's get to the news. President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.

Speaker 15 has officially launched his re-election bid with a three-minute announcement video that was followed by an ad blitz from the campaign and allied super PACs.

Speaker 15 Let's listen to some of the announcement video.

Speaker 19 But you know, around the country, MAGA extremists are lining up to take on those bedrock freedoms, cutting Social Security that you've paid for your entire life while cutting taxes for the very wealthy, dictating what health care decisions women can make, banning books, and telling people who they can love, all while making it more difficult for you to be able to vote.

Speaker 19 Every generation of Americans have faced a moment when they have to defend democracy, stand up for our personal freedom, stand up for the right to vote and our civil rights. And this is our moment.

Speaker 19 Let's finish this job. I know we can.
Because this is the United States of America. There's nothing, simply nothing we cannot do if we do it together.

Speaker 15 I just want you to know that I had that song stuck in my head last night. I think it's catchy.

Speaker 15 I like the music. Two questions, Dan.
What did you think of the video? And

Speaker 15 why aren't you wearing the Dark Brandon t-shirt that the campaign is currently selling on its website?

Speaker 16 To answer your second question first, it's because the mail has not arrived today.

Speaker 15 Okay, that's fair. That's fair.

Speaker 15 Next Thursday, I want to see those two glowing red eyes on your shirt while we record this.

Speaker 16 Yes. I thought the video was very good.
It was upbeat, optimistic. As you mentioned, it had very catchy music.
It framed the race on very favorable terms to Democrats.

Speaker 16 It tried to remind people of why they felt so good about Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, both in 2020 and then at various points over the course of the first few years of the presidency.

Speaker 16 And I think it didn't seem like a typical political ad. So I thought the audience for these things is not the persuadable voter who's not going to tune in for a year and a half now.

Speaker 16 It's for people who are already engaged in politics. And if it wants to get people to, what you want in your announcement video is people to give money and sign up to volunteer.

Speaker 16 And I think it thought hit all the right notes to achieve that goal.

Speaker 15 Yeah, I sort of dissect these videos like frame by frame because when I was a speechwriter, you could write a five, six, seven page speech and just put in everything you wanted.

Speaker 15 And then a couple of times Axelrod asked me to help with like an ad or two.

Speaker 15 Man, that's hard because you have, you have, and this is three minutes, but usually you have like 30 or 60 seconds and you try to write a script and the script is obviously way too long.

Speaker 15 You really have to choose carefully what you want to include in the video. So I was interested in what they decided to include.

Speaker 15 Like they opened with January 6th and Dobbs, images of both and the Supreme Court.

Speaker 15 They talked about freedom a lot, also democracy, wanted everyone treated equally, protect everyone's rights, give everyone a fair shot.

Speaker 15 And then when he hit MAGA Republicans and talked about that movement and talked about them taking away freedom, he picked cutting Social Security, dictating health care decisions for women, banning books, telling people who you can love, and making it more difficult to vote.

Speaker 15 I thought it was an interesting choice that the, you know, in the lead up to 2022, the message from Biden was mostly about the,

Speaker 15 about abortion and about democracy. I think that their paid ads were much more economy.
But it was interesting.

Speaker 15 What did you think about the fact that this was heavy on democracy and freedom and lighter on economic messaging?

Speaker 16 I was surprised by that. And I think somewhat pleasantly surprised because

Speaker 16 there had been Ron Brownstein, who writes for The Atlantic and CNN, wrote a story or a column a couple months ago about how Biden would handle these culture war, quote unquote, culture war issues, which is a term I hate to use, but I can't think of a better one right now.

Speaker 16 And in that story, he quoted some people in the Biden operation saying that they were going to avoid taking the bait on these things. Their primary and main focus is going to be on the economy.

Speaker 16 And that they were going to, that that was just sort of noise on the outside. And so to see them lean in here, I think, I thought that was not a viable strategy in this political environment.

Speaker 16 And so I was, I was very glad to see that. And I thought reclaiming the word freedom, I think is very important.
It's something you and I have talked about a lot. I have argued for in the past.

Speaker 16 I think this is the right way to do it, which is to take all of the Republican extremist agenda and frame it under one word to make them not just be extreme, but sort of these meddling, privacy invading weirdos who are trying to get involved in all your personal shit.

Speaker 16 I think that's a very good way to set the race. create the choice and help with some of the voters we know Biden's going to need, like young voters who feel the most strongly on these issues.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 15 And like you said about intended audience, I think videos like this are probably for an audience of people who have probably been quite politically engaged since 2016, who've probably not only voted in all these elections, but maybe volunteered, who pay close attention to politics, and I think who care about these issues quite a bit.

Speaker 15 And I think that as you try to message to sort of

Speaker 15 a lot of more working class voters, there'll probably be more economy. Though it's interesting, you know, I talked to Celinda Lake, we'll hear that interview soon.

Speaker 15 She was talking about how this freedom message landed with a pretty wide swath of voters from different backgrounds, different education levels, et cetera.

Speaker 15 And so I do think that, you know, it gets to something.

Speaker 15 We always talk about how like, you know, Democrats talk about issues too much and Republicans talk about make it bigger and make it about values.

Speaker 15 He really, this was an announcement video that was all about values and the value of freedom.

Speaker 15 And I think it's so ingrained in the American experience that it will resonate with people who also don't pay close attention to politics.

Speaker 16 When I was listening to this video and the ad that we're going to talk about in a second,

Speaker 16 I hearken back to the interview you did on offline with Lynn Veverick,

Speaker 16 who has written the analysis of all the elections and talks about the era of calcification of politics.

Speaker 16 But one thing that I think embedded in that interview that is really worth paying attention to is the idea that in the 2020 election, even though a lot of Trump voters agreed with Democrats on a lot of policy issues, those issues were secondary to issues related to identity, to on sort of the freedom agenda you're talking about here, right?

Speaker 16 Abortion,

Speaker 16 marriage equality, the LGBTQ plus rights, and on both sides.

Speaker 16 For people who agreed with it, it was more important, even though they disagree with Democrats on the economy, they would side with Democrats there. And then the reverse is true.

Speaker 16 And so that, I think that dynamic is playing a role here. This does not mean the economy is not going to be a huge part of this election.

Speaker 16 I don't know if Celinda Lake made this point to you in this interview, but she made it when I talked to her a few months ago.

Speaker 16 No person has ever won the presidency in the modern era while losing it on the economy. And Biden has a lot of work to do there.

Speaker 16 And they clearly are going to spend a lot of time trying to rebuild his numbers on the economy heading into the election. Just can't do that right this second.

Speaker 16 So, this is for where they put the focus.

Speaker 15 You mentioned the ad to Biden campaign and DNC released their first one, a 90-second spot called Flag. Relatively small, ad-buy, seven figures.

Speaker 15 It will run nationally on MSNBC and locally on TV in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Here's a clip.

Speaker 20 As the sun rises, we raise the flag, a symbol of all that we hold most dear as Americans. Courage, opportunity, democracy, freedom.

Speaker 20 They're the values and beliefs that built this country and still beat in our hearts.

Speaker 20 But they're under attack by an extreme movement that seeks to overturn elections, ban books, and eliminate a woman's right to choose.

Speaker 20 Joe Biden has made defending our basic freedoms the cause of his presidency.

Speaker 15 Since you host a hit show on our YouTube channel about ads called Political Experts React, why don't you go ahead and react?

Speaker 16 As a faux political expert, I shall react. So

Speaker 16 it's interesting to sort of think of all the various pieces of Biden content as as sort of like these nesting dolls. So you had the State of the Union, which had everything.

Speaker 16 And then you have a three-minute video. And now we're down to a 90-second video.
And in each stage, as you get smaller, more stuff drops out. And it is very notable.

Speaker 16 What stayed in this 90-second version is the huge focus on a Republican extremist attack on freedom. And I thought it was a good ad.
Now, like,

Speaker 15 why do you think 90 and not 60 or 30? 90 felt long to me.

Speaker 16 That's because

Speaker 16 you've spent too much time on Twitter like myself. And so 90 seems like an impossible amount of time.
You're like, that's like 19 TikToks. Like, I can't do it.

Speaker 15 I know, but I don't think we're alone.

Speaker 16 No, I think the way to think about this ad is, once again, this is not, they are not trying to persuade the up for grabs voters who are going to decide the election.

Speaker 16 Those people are not watching politics. They're not engaged with politics or not.
Most of them probably have no idea that Joe Biden just announced a re-election.

Speaker 16 They may not know he's planning for re-election. Even if they did, historically, they are not going to decide until weeks before the election.
We are 18 months out from the election.

Speaker 16 So what this ad is doing, I think it's a very smart way to think about modern communications is it is spending some money to improve the information environment in which your announcement is happening.

Speaker 16 Because Biden knows his video is going to go out there. That'll get some circulation.
There will be a lot of right-wing media reaction to it, which is dominant.

Speaker 16 And then you're going to have mainstream media reaction, which is going to be infected with. But Joe Biden announces despite low polls or concerns about age.

Speaker 16 So you put out a piece of content on your terms that's seen by your people, which is why it's on MSNBC and why it's happening in the Battleground States.

Speaker 16 And for that environment, 90 seconds is a totally, I think, useful

Speaker 16 length. If we were trying to, you know, 15 seconds is better than 30 seconds if you're trying to get the less engaged swing voters at the end of an election.

Speaker 16 Yeah.

Speaker 15 I love that he's taking back the flag and patriotism. I thought that was great.
Yeah. The democracy and freedom message worked here.
It's interesting. Like,

Speaker 15 I also like that he is framing it as an extreme movement. Like he did two things.
First, he said democracy should not be a partisan issue, which is the clip from the State of the Union.

Speaker 15 And he also said there's an extreme movement that's trying to overturn elections, ban books, and eliminate a woman's right to choose.

Speaker 15 And I do think that he's trying to square the circle here on these two things, but like I do think it's important to give people the permission structure to say, you know, this isn't the Republican Party I remember.

Speaker 15 This is an extreme movement. And it's not about, it's not for partisan reasons that I want to vote against them, but it's because they are attacking democracy itself.

Speaker 15 I think that's like an important thing. He's been doing that in the midterms, and I think he did that again here.

Speaker 15 I also, you know, when the video came out, when the ads came out, I like watched them quickly, didn't really think about it.

Speaker 15 As I was watching them again closely last night, the other thing that struck me is it really makes the campaign a cause for Joe Biden. And, you know, everyone's like, this guy's running.
He's

Speaker 15 80s years old. Why is he doing this again? And it's like, you can tell from what he says in these videos and the thematics here, like the guy is genuinely worried about democracy.

Speaker 15 He genuinely thinks he can beat Donald Trump, maybe the only one who can beat Donald Trump. And he might be wrong.
But at the very least, like, you can tell he genuinely believes that.

Speaker 15 Like, this is a real cause for him. And I do think that's important to start out a campaign like that.

Speaker 16 Is it particularly important for Joe Biden, given what the polls show about the number of Americans and Democrats who think he should run again? Because there is this like common sense question.

Speaker 16 We all have parents or grandparents who are Biden's age and they're like, do you want your dad to be president of the United States? Absolutely not. Right.
Or, and so it's like, why is he doing it?

Speaker 16 This is why he's doing it. Every campaign needs a rationale for why, you, and why now.

Speaker 16 And these ads begin to make that case, I think, in a pretty compelling way that is authentic to Biden and his original decision to run for president in the first place, which people asked even then, given everything that had happened with Bo and his family and his age, everything had accomplished.

Speaker 16 Like, why are you doing this? This is why.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 15 Moments after Biden's launch, the Republican National Committee responded with a video that they openly bragged contains 100% artificial intelligence generated images. Let's listen.

Speaker 21 This just in. We can now call the 2024 presidential race for Joe Biden.

Speaker 20 Taiwan.

Speaker 22 Financial markets are in free fall as 500 regional banks have shuttered their doors.

Speaker 15 Border agents were overrun by a surge of 80,000 illegals yesterday evening.

Speaker 15 Okay, first question. What's with the AI angle?

Speaker 15 Like, has the Republican Party not had enough problems with reality? Was this, was this just a...

Speaker 15 Reminding people that?

Speaker 16 was this just like a stunt to get attention yes it was a stunt to get attention that absolutely was and guess what it worked so i'd say a couple we're talking about it we're talking about it i think there are a few things about the ai angle of this one

Speaker 16 it is a piece of shit add so i think humans should feel pretty good about our coming battle with the robots for our jobs like it's not there yet

Speaker 16 second

Speaker 16 the fact that ai is used here is irrelevant totally they could have used stock images for all that yes this is a simply faster, but probably less effective thing than what you would normally do, which is you would use stock images, b-roll, you'd use Photoshop.

Speaker 16 It's not that hard. And so the AI, I think, is so effective.
There are

Speaker 15 very

Speaker 16 real implications for how AI could change politics in really dangerous ways with deep fakes, in really interesting ways in terms of how it could affect how we make content, how we analyze the effectiveness of content, all of that.

Speaker 16 And there are concerns, we're going to eat guardrails and there are concerns. None of that is pleasant.
These people who are like freaking out about the fact this is AI generated,

Speaker 16 it doesn't matter. They could have done the exact same thing from stock photos and Photoshop.
The AI part is just a trick. It worked.

Speaker 15 Also, yeah, I was going to say that was, I didn't see anyone freaking out, but my first thought was like, this is designed to trigger liberals into screaming about the dangers of AI and disinformation.

Speaker 15 Even though, like you said, it's not like they used AI in this scenario to spread any disinformation other than the disinformation they would have spread had they not used AI.

Speaker 16 Well, it's like they created the way people in the movie describe this is they used used AI to create an entirely fake future.

Speaker 16 It's like, to be completely honest, Barack Obama ran this exact same ad at the end of the 2012 campaign that was, what if Rodney won? Right? It's a, it's a newscast.

Speaker 16 We just use actors instead of fake images, right?

Speaker 16 It's not, that part is not that big a deal.

Speaker 15 Well, the reason we're talking about it is not necessarily the AI, but it's, it's the first sort of salvo from the Republican Party on how they're going to attack Joe Biden in this campaign.

Speaker 15 So what did you think about the ad's message? Was it effective? Do you think it's indicative of how they're going to run against Biden?

Speaker 16 I think it's indicative of the fact that they don't really know how to run against Biden yet.

Speaker 16 If you just look at polls and you're like, what is

Speaker 16 the most obvious attack on Biden? It's that he's too old for the job. But they can't say that because the frontrunner for the Republican nomination is basically Biden's age.

Speaker 16 And then the second problem with the, and they try to use weak weak as a proxy for it, but it's not the same thing.

Speaker 15 I don't, it worries me. The weak thing worries me because I think that, and I don't, I don't, I don't think Biden's weak, but I do think that like there's a lot of focus on the age.

Speaker 15 And then a lot of Democrats say, oh, well, Trump is 76. He's old too.
So the age thing is whatever.

Speaker 15 But what they're, in this ad, it's very clear they're trying to do the like, the world is out of control. The country's out of control.
You feel like things are bad.

Speaker 15 And this guy is too old and weak to really handle it. You know, Trump's an asshole.
We all know that, but like Trump doesn't seem weak. Trump seems strong, right?

Speaker 15 Now, like, again, I'm not like too terrified of that, but it does seem like a coherent message.

Speaker 16 It can be a coherent message. There is old plus weak and there's weak.

Speaker 16 And if Ron DeSantis or someone else who is not in their late 70s is the Republican nominee, you can do both. And that is probably a stronger message on that dimension.

Speaker 16 As we said before, Joe Biden is going to determine how much voters care about age, depending on how he performs in the White House and on the trail.

Speaker 16 And if he's performed like he has for the last few years, I think that that issue can be taken off the table.

Speaker 16 The problem with the way they are articulating that message is they are trying to create a reality that does not

Speaker 16 compute for the vast majority of Americans who do not live in the Fox News bubble.

Speaker 15 The idea is that are you saying that San Francisco isn't about to be closed down?

Speaker 16 Well, I got a flight out of there in an hour, so I better hurry.

Speaker 16 It's like, you know, San Francisco just going to be closed down. It literally says the border is gone.

Speaker 16 Right. Like that.

Speaker 16 This is one of the things I saw all through 2020 and through 2022. It's one of the problems for Republicans is the people who make their ads have had their brains pickled by the right-wing media.

Speaker 16 And so they constantly make ads that are relevant to a world created by the right-wing media and not the world experienced by the voters they need. This video, like the original.

Speaker 16 Biden video is for a certain audience. It's for RNC donors.
I'll be interested to see if they, if that, this problem will continue, but it continued all through the ads in 2022.

Speaker 15 Yeah, I guess I have a little PTSD from 2016 when I felt like the whole election, I was saying, like, you know, these wrong track numbers, they don't really capture how people are going to vote.

Speaker 15 And people tend to be grumpy. And the Republicans talking about, and Trump talking about how dark everything is and how awful everything is and how the country's falling apart.

Speaker 15 Like, that's not really going to work. That's not optimistic.
And then

Speaker 15 we know what happened. So I guess, yeah,

Speaker 15 it's clear that it's an ad that tries to, like you do if you're running against an incumbent, try to make the election a referendum, right? Like things are shitty. Joe Biden's the president.

Speaker 15 Give us a chance. And I imagine that's going to be harder to do when Donald Trump is your nominee, if Donald Trump is your nominee.

Speaker 16 Right.

Speaker 15 Let's talk about Biden's path to 270.

Speaker 15 Nate Cohn has a pretty good piece in the New York Times about the president's re-election prospects at this point, a year and a half before election day, though I might quibble with the lead, which says, quote, some might feel that President Biden's reelection is all but a done deal.

Speaker 15 If those people are out there, I would love to get my hands on whatever drugs they're taking.

Speaker 16 You know, Democrats, famously confident and cocky about elections.

Speaker 16 It's like,

Speaker 15 Elijah, thankfully, I put that in Slack and was freaking out about it. And I was like, yeah, that's pretty bad.
That's pretty bad. Nate Nate goes on to write, on average, Mr.
Biden leads Mr.

Speaker 15 Trump by 1.4%

Speaker 15 so far this year. Mr.
DeSantis even leads Mr. Biden by less than a point.

Speaker 15 Let the freak out begin. Why is this race, and especially if it's a Biden-Trump rematch, so close?

Speaker 16 Because the last Biden-Trump rematch was decided by like 40,000 voters.

Speaker 16 This is the nature of American politics. It is happening on the margins in a small handful of states.
The last, I said this last week, I'll say it again.

Speaker 16 We have to remember the last two presidential elections were decided by a total number of voters that was about the size of the number of people who sit in a college football stadium on a Saturday.

Speaker 16 It is like 120,000 voters. That's what we were talking about here.
It is, it is going to be close. We should assume it's close.
We should act like it's close.

Speaker 16 That is the reality of politics. Now, if we had a popular vote election, it would not be close.
The margins have been getting larger for Democrats over the years.

Speaker 16 But within the context of Electoral College, which trends Republican, we should expect the very closer.

Speaker 15 Yeah, and that's, you know, regardless of which candidates are running,

Speaker 15 what we've learned over the last several years, regardless of there's a pandemic, a recession,

Speaker 15 indictments, an insurrection, like, you know.

Speaker 15 Very few things are shifting in a significant way where the electorate is, at least in the Trump era. That doesn't mean that can't change, right?

Speaker 15 Like we thought things were going one way, and then 2016 sort of upended everything, partly because of Trump. But as for now, 18, 20, 22 have all been pretty much, you know,

Speaker 15 the electorate has been

Speaker 15 pretty much the same. We talked a little bit about Biden's low 40s approval rating on Tuesday, but I know you wrote a message box about it this week.
What's going on there?

Speaker 15 Can he win with those numbers? Can he improve them?

Speaker 16 Biden absolutely can can win with a number in the low 40s.

Speaker 16 He should try to get his number up. He's going to try to get his number up.
But good advice.

Speaker 15 Good advice.

Speaker 16 When Barack Obama won re-election in 2012, the last president win re-election, he did so with an approval rating at about 50%.

Speaker 16 There is almost no universe where Joe Biden's approval rating is going to be 50%.

Speaker 16 Because America's become more polarized, we have fewer members of the other party who are willing to approve. of the president.
That lowers your ceiling pretty dramatically.

Speaker 16 But we live in a world of negative partisanship where most people vote not for their party, but against the other party, which is why Biden was able to have a historic performance in the 2022 midterms, despite having a low approval rating.

Speaker 16 We cannot analyze presidential approval ratings in a vacuum. Running for president is a lot like avoiding getting eaten by a bear.
You don't have to be faster than the bear.

Speaker 16 You have to be faster than the other guy. Joe Biden doesn't have to be popular.
He has to be more popular than Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis. And that seems very doable.

Speaker 16 That doesn't mean he doesn't have work to do. He needs to improve his leadership quality, how how the public sees his leadership qualities and numbers on the economy.

Speaker 16 He's got real work to do with young voters. But we should not look at his approval rating and compare it to previous presidents and how they did because the world has changed a lot.

Speaker 15 Yeah, I even saw,

Speaker 15 I think in the NBC Wall Street Journal poll, they did, they tested Joe Biden versus generic Republican nominee. And it was like Joe Biden got 41%, the generic Republican got 47%.

Speaker 15 I'm like, that is the most useless question to ask because there will not be a generic Republican nominee. There will be either Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis.
And

Speaker 15 so

Speaker 15 when that's what you get, you've got to measure it against the actual person you're running against.

Speaker 15 If you did Donald Trump versus a generic Democratic nominee, I bet you'd get the same numbers or a bigger margin for the Democrat. Can you talk about how you see the map at this point?

Speaker 15 I was listening to the daily the other day, and Jonathan Weissman said it will come down to Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin, which seemed a bit narrow to me.

Speaker 16 What's the daily? Where do you find that?

Speaker 16 Is that like a newspaper? The daily newspaper. Oh, is that someone who copies one a day? Is that always like a what a day?

Speaker 16 Exactly. The last election came down to six states.
Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan. My expectation is it'll come down to those states again.

Speaker 16 The only question on that list, in my mind, is how competitive Michigan will be. It was the least competitive of those six.
Democrats had a tremendous performance in 2022 there.

Speaker 16 But when I say how competitive it is, I'm saying, is it Biden going to win it by two points instead of one point? Like that, I mean, that's how narrow these states are.

Speaker 16 Most of them are happening within less than one half of 1%.

Speaker 16 And so we should expect those to be where the race is contested again.

Speaker 15 Yeah. No,

Speaker 15 I agree. I was like, I'm definitely more bullish on Michigan than I was at the beginning of 2020 and probably Pennsylvania too, but I still think they are going to be fiercely contested.

Speaker 16 Donald Trump running in Pennsylvania is very different than Dr. Oz running in Pennsylvania.

Speaker 15 Yes, yes, right. All right, let's talk about the big news this week on the debt ceiling drama.
Kevin McCarthy finally got a bill passed through the House with no votes to spare.

Speaker 15 It was 217 to 215 with four Republicans voting no.

Speaker 15 In order to win over the most hardcore MAGA extremists, McCarthy changed the bill in the middle of the night so that it would take away health care and food from even more seniors, veterans, and low-income families.

Speaker 15 Dan, are you ready to say that you were wrong about Kevin McCarthy and admit that he is, in fact, a shrewd political tactician?

Speaker 16 Congratulations on barely achieving the most basic task assigned to you. Like we are in participation trophy culture for Kevin McCarthy.
That is for sure.

Speaker 15 Most of the playbook this morning was just like a lot of people. showering Kevin McCarthy with compliments.
Oh, we had it all wrong. He really, he really figured this out.
I was like, okay.

Speaker 16 He passed a bill

Speaker 16 with all people who voted for him as speaker. Congratulations for not falling on your face while walking seven feet consecutively.

Speaker 15 Yeah, I also think that he has a bit of an easier job in the sense that, like, you know, the Freedom Caucus basically made a bunch of demands. He gave in.

Speaker 15 He doesn't really have to worry about moderates getting pissed off because all the moderates are gone.

Speaker 15 And the people who are now the most moderate in there are, they never really had a lot of juice anyway. Their numbers are small and they all folded.

Speaker 15 Like Nancy Mace was like, oh, no, I won't, I won't vote for a bill that has stricter work requirements on Medicaid. That's bad.
I don't want that. And then she voted for it in the end.

Speaker 16 And what is she going to do? Not vote against it, cause Kevin McCarthy to lose his speakership and end up with Marjorie Taylor Greene as her boss?

Speaker 16 Like, I mean, this is, this was always going to happen. And it's Kevin McCarthy's advantage in life is he has no principles.

Speaker 16 And so there's nothing he won't do to achieve a short-term, even if it has long-term or even medium-term consequences for his party and certainly for the country.

Speaker 15 I think that's an important point, too, is that he's like, it's, it's very Trumpian and that like, you just get through the news cycle, right? You just get, you get to the next day.

Speaker 15 And there's a bunch of Freedom Caucus people who are like, oh, well, we told him we'll vote for this.

Speaker 15 But if you don't include everything that was in this bill in the, in the final debt ceiling bill, we're not, we're not voting yes. It's like, well, guess what?

Speaker 16 It's.

Speaker 15 You're not going to get everything that was in this bill in the final bill, even if you were just negotiating with Senate Republicans, let alone Democrats.

Speaker 16 That is a really important point.

Speaker 16 The fact that he told all these members that this was a floor, not a ceiling, means he already knows how this is going to end, which is some bill passing with a majority of Democrats plus a small handful of Republicans to lift the debt ceiling.

Speaker 16 Whether that happens before or after the economy crashes, that's the real question, but that's where it's going. And Kenny knows it.

Speaker 15 Stay tuned. All right, here's McCarthy's post-vote statement to President Biden.
The Republicans have raised the debt limit. You have not.
Neither has Schumer.

Speaker 15 So this was all reportedly a play to get Biden and the Democrats to the negotiating table. Should they bite? Do they have to? Are they coming to the negotiating table now?

Speaker 16 They do not have to bite.

Speaker 16 I don't think they're going to bite because Joe Biden can't enter a negotiation with Kevin McCarthy where Joe Biden's starting point is keeping the economy from blowing up and Kevin McCarthy's is stopping the economy from blowing up and cutting every federal program by 22% and doing a whole bunch of other bad shit.

Speaker 16 Like that's not a good faith negotiation. It cannot happen.
It will not happen.

Speaker 16 If this is going to get resolved, I don't think it's going to happen with Kevin McCarthy and Joe Biden in a room together.

Speaker 15 So what happens next time?

Speaker 16 That's a great fucking question, John.

Speaker 15 We're barreling towards the deadline. Although, I think that Treasury got some more money in more than they were expecting.
And now they think it's late July, mid to late July is the drop dead date.

Speaker 16 I think Treasury is still claiming, still says they were planning for June. Goldman Sachs, which last week said it was June, now says it's July.

Speaker 16 And the CBO says, I think sometime sometime between July and September, which is a really precise measurement for something that of these stakes. So we don't really know.
There's some time.

Speaker 16 It's not going to happen next week or even next month. But at some point this summer, this is all going to come to a head.

Speaker 15 I just wonder, like, I feel like the ball's in Biden's court now, at least in the minds of the media. And the Republicans will certainly help deliver that message as well.

Speaker 15 And so let's say the White House says no, no negotiations. And then what happens? I mean,

Speaker 15 I guess you could say that the Senate then, maybe Schumer takes something up and says that they'll start working on something in the Senate.

Speaker 15 Because I guess McCarthy did also say that like, hey, well, you know, I want to negotiate with Biden, but if the Senate passes something, then we can get in the room together and negotiate a compromise with the Senate.

Speaker 16 I think what would come next, and this is not easy, in a normal world with a normal Democratic majority that not include Kirsten Sinema and Joe Manchin.

Speaker 16 And had Diane Feinstein present, what you would do is Schumer would bring up a clean debt limit bill,

Speaker 16 get 50 Democrats for it, force the Republicans to filibuster it, and claim Republicans are blocking avoiding default.

Speaker 16 But I'm not sure you're going to get 50 votes for that because of a Democratic absence and two troublemakers in our party. But that would be the next step in the old way of doing business.

Speaker 15 So Biden did come out swinging against this bill. Let's listen to a clip.

Speaker 23 They haven't figured out the debt limit yet.

Speaker 17 Will you meet with McCarthy?

Speaker 23 When can Americans meet with McCarthy, but not not on whether or not the debt limit gets extended.

Speaker 23 That's not negotiable. I noticed they quote Reagan and

Speaker 23 they quote Reagan all the time and they quote Trump, both of which said, it's just, I'm paraphrasing, it would be an absolute crime to not extend the debt limit.

Speaker 15 So that was from Biden. The White House has also been

Speaker 15 tweeting about how this bill would cut veterans' health care, meals on wheels for seniors, health care coverage for millions, would send clean energy manufacturing jobs overseas.

Speaker 15 What do you think of all this messaging from the White House? And are there any other arguments you'd make about this bill?

Speaker 16 The White House has been making this argument. Other Democrats have been making it.

Speaker 16 The most effective argument, according to a poll out this morning from Navigator Research, is by pointing out that the Republican House bill would cut programs like Veterans Affairs, Cancel Research, Childcare by 22%.

Speaker 16 When you put that 22% number in and you list some of the programs that would be cut, it takes the bill bill from 3% support to opposition by 22 points. It swings it 25 points.

Speaker 16 And that swing is most

Speaker 16 manifest with independence. And so focusing on the specifics of the cuts is how they should do this.
The White House has been doing that. They've been setting the stage for it.

Speaker 16 I think all you need to know about the politics of this bill is that Donald Trump has not been willing to touch it with a 10-foot pole.

Speaker 15 Yeah. Haven't heard him talk about it much.
Yeah. You mentioned the troublemakers.
One of them is Joe Manchin. Obviously, Democrats need to be united to win this fight.

Speaker 15 I thought we were, personally, I thought we were done talking about Joe Manchin, but he's out there threatening to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, which basically he wrote, for reasons

Speaker 15 I can't begin to comprehend. I mean, I do.
think he's clearly trying to improve his very bad poll numbers in West Virginia.

Speaker 15 They are bad because he did vote for the Inflation Reduction Act, and people in West Virginia are quite conservative and probably didn't like him doing that.

Speaker 15 But I don't know that going to voters in your state and saying, hey, remember that bill that I wrote? Well, I wrote it one way and it passed, but Joe Biden didn't implement it right.

Speaker 15 So now I'm threatening to repeal it. I don't know that that works.
But maybe, maybe I'm wrong.

Speaker 16 John, you have a toddler that lives in your house, correct?

Speaker 23 I do.

Speaker 16 How does your toddler react if he feels like you are not giving him sufficient attention in any one moment?

Speaker 15 Yes, yes.

Speaker 16 That's what's happening here.

Speaker 15 He now says, excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, because we told him that

Speaker 15 you need to say excuse me and not just yell. And so now he yells, excuse me.

Speaker 16 Yes.

Speaker 16 So, you know what that is? That's a smart kid right there.

Speaker 16 Joe Manchin needs attention at all times. This is it.
He, I think he may misunderstand some of his own political successes.

Speaker 16 If you remember, when he was running for election in 2010, he had a campaign ad where he shot the cap and trade bill that was supported by President Obama and passed by the House Democrats.

Speaker 16 But shooting your, shooting someone else's bill and shooting your own bill is a bit different.

Speaker 15 He's shooting his own bill. I am a little like, I'm like, what's he up to? Governor Jim Justice of West Virginia is entering the race against Joe Manchin.

Speaker 15 Jim Justice is like former Democrat, turned Republican, very popular governor of West Virginia. Seems very like the toughest possible opponent for Joe Manchin if he makes it through the primary,

Speaker 15 if Justice makes it through the primary. Manchin released a statement saying, I'm not going to, he keeps saying I'm not going to make any decisions until December about my future.

Speaker 15 But then he also said, I will win any race I enter. He keeps leaving open the possibility that there may be other races that he's going to run in.
He's already ruled out governor, though.

Speaker 15 So, like, are we going to get a fucking Joe Manchin no labels ticket? Is that what we're dealing with?

Speaker 15 And we haven't talked about no labels much here, but like, they are going around getting no labels, no labels spot on ballots in key swing states. I think they've already got one in Arizona.

Speaker 16 Yeah, and Oregon as well, I believe.

Speaker 16 I

Speaker 16 do not believe that Joe Manchin can beat Jim Justice in a Senate race in West Virginia in a presidential year.

Speaker 16 Joe Manchin barely won in 2018 against a massively flawed opponent. He was running against a...

Speaker 16 unpopular attorney general who was all mobbed up with the opioid industry in West Virginia.

Speaker 16 That is not a good candidate. Yeah.
And so if he's running against Jim Justice, who's going to get Trump's endorsement, he is a former Democrat with Trump credentials. He's not going to win that race.

Speaker 16 And so there's a very real possibility.

Speaker 16 We, you know, as we say, we worry about everything, panic about nothing, but we should be worried about Joe Manchin running for president on some independent ticket.

Speaker 16 And when we talked all about, you know, your fears about 2016, the reason 2016 happened one way and 2020 happened to happen a different way is that in 2016, Donald Trump only needed 47% of the vote to win.

Speaker 16 in 2020 he needed 50 so he lost if we get to a point where there's a third-party candidate who can take a significant chunk of votes and by significant i mean three points in a battleground state yeah donald trump can easily win any of these states he's got 47 on lock in these states less than three percent yeah

Speaker 15 right i mean it's like and also it doesn't have to be in every state right like say it was just arizona it could come down to arizona and joe manchin could pull one percent in arizona and still fuck us just remember jill stein received more votes in several of the states that decided the election in 2016 than the margin of difference between Trump and Clinton.

Speaker 15 All right.

Speaker 16 There's the thing.

Speaker 16 Let's end on a high note.

Speaker 15 All right. One last piece of fun news before Celinda joins.
Disney is suing Ron DeSantis for what they're alleging is a, quote, targeted campaign of government retaliation.

Speaker 15 The lawsuit came just minutes after DeSantis' goons voted to nullify two agreements that gave Disney control over their resort complex from the Disney statement.

Speaker 15 Quote, Disney finds finds itself in this regrettable position because it expressed a viewpoint the governor and his allies did not like.

Speaker 15 In America, the government cannot punish you for speaking your mind. NBC has also reported that Tiny D is planning to launch his exploratory committee for president in mid-May.

Speaker 15 You think being hit with a lawsuit from the most beloved company in America is a win for little Ronnie Puddingfingers?

Speaker 16 Kind of. I kind of do.

Speaker 15 Go ahead. Go ahead.
Tell me why you think that is.

Speaker 16 I think it is a... He's probably going to lose this suit, and that will be bad for him.
And it's the reason Disney's doing this, and based on a lot of what I've read, is it's not just DeSantis.

Speaker 16 Obviously, they have some real stakes here, but you can see every Republican governor doing this.

Speaker 16 And so, any place where they have business interests, they need to win a case here to that sets a standard that protects companies from, I don't know, just expressing their opinion publicly without facing repercussions, something that might be included in the Constitution.

Speaker 16 But

Speaker 16 Republican politics, you're defined by your enemies, and corporations, whether they're Disney or even Fox, are incredibly unpopular among the Republican base.

Speaker 16 You know, we, you talked to Celinda today when she did that project on factory towns.

Speaker 16 The most interesting, to me, part of that project was if you call Fox News corporate news, Republicans run away from it. It's the best way to combat Fox News disinformation.

Speaker 16 And so a corporation suing Ron DeSantis can be a win for him, whether he's got the dexterity to make it at least a short-term win for him, to be as a proof of his conservative bona fides, that he's such a fighter against wokeism or whatever fucking word he wants to use.

Speaker 16 Like it has something to do. I don't think it's bad for him right now.

Speaker 15 I think in a vacuum where there is no Donald Trump and

Speaker 15 everyone is like, oh, Ron DeSantis, he's, you know, he's the frontrunner in the Republican primary. I think that everything you said would be correct.

Speaker 15 I think the existence of Donald Trump now shitting on every single thing that Ron DeSantis does

Speaker 15 makes this much trickier for him because now it fits in a bucket of, oh, look at this guy. He's flailing.
He's sort of,

Speaker 15 he doesn't know what he's doing. He, you know, Trump already hit him once for the Disney thing.

Speaker 15 And I don't know that it's as clean as it would have been had there been no Donald Trump because now Trump will message to voters, this isn't DeSantis taking on a big woke corporation.

Speaker 15 This is DeSantis doing some kind of stunt and he fucked it up and he couldn't do it right. And now Disney's going to get him.

Speaker 16 I think that is, that is definitely true.

Speaker 16 That if it was, if DeSantis was in this race alone or he was just running against Nikki Haley or whoever else, it would be a much cleaner, bigger deal for him.

Speaker 16 Everything is more challenging for DeSantis because Trump is in the race shooting on him. Eating breakfast is a pain in his ass, right?

Speaker 16 Like everything is hard, but this is at least a chance for DeSantis to have a news cycle that is about him and him alone.

Speaker 16 Now, the one thing we should remember, though, is that we have seen no evidence in any of the polling that any of these voters are hearing Trump's attacks on DeSantis.

Speaker 15 Because they're just, they're just truth doubt and truth stories.

Speaker 16 Like, you and I are missing like 80% of Trump truths because they're not, they don't break through anywhere.

Speaker 15 Well, apparently there's this, he had this great statement about...

Speaker 15 DeSantis's trip to Japan, which also I didn't really, I would have never known DeSantis went to Japan, except that he gave that press conference where he fucking sounded like a bobblehead doll and then Tommy Brought it to our attention because I guess he read it on pod save the world and it's like Trump saying that DeSantis is flying home from Japan and he's like why did I do this why why why am I running for president it was very funny it's it's great

Speaker 16 his statement on the Disney thing today is actually pretty smart for general election about how this is going to cost Florida all these jobs but was that what Trump did I was waiting for I couldn't find like I said they're fine no one hears them you and I don't hear them, right?

Speaker 16 I had to go to the exact URL of the Trump truths to find it this morning in preparation for this spot.

Speaker 15 As it should be. Okay, when we come back, I will talk to Democratic pollster Celinda Lake.

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Speaker 15 Joining us now to talk about Joe Biden's path to re-election, one of his top pollsters, veteran Democratic strategist, Celinda Lake. Celinda, welcome back.

Speaker 27 Thank you. Great to be here.

Speaker 15 Big week for the president.

Speaker 15 What was the thinking behind the messages in the announcement video in the first ad, which were heavy on freedom, democracy, protecting rights, a little lighter on the economy?

Speaker 27 Right. So I'm not speaking on behalf of the campaign here.
I'm just speaking as a Democratic bolster. Sure.
But

Speaker 27 one of the things that we've been finding in all of the work that we've been doing is the power of the freedom narrative. It's huge out there.
And the central narrative of taking away our freedoms.

Speaker 27 And it's something.

Speaker 27 that was also, you know, is a real through thread for the president. He started with Charlottesville and the soul of the nation.

Speaker 27 And the soul of the nation is as much in jeopardy today or more so because it's been revealed how far the other side will go. So it's a very, very heartfelt thematic.
It's test unbelievably strongly.

Speaker 27 It's a value. Freedom is interesting because it's the number one value out there and it's the number one word that the right uses more than the left, which is quite ironic right now.

Speaker 27 So we are taking it back. And I think the president's speech was a strong part of that.

Speaker 27 The president, I think there are two pillars to the campaign, the record on the economy and taking away our freedoms and fighting for our freedoms, whether it's voting, whether it's abortion,

Speaker 27 whether it's LGBTQ rights. But the other pillar is the economy.

Speaker 27 Simultaneously to the announcement, of course, the president and the whole cabinet is engaged in a 31-city tour on the economy and on investments from the IRAs. So it's not like it was ignored.

Speaker 27 It was like these are the two pillars and they are being spoken to simultaneously, in my opinion.

Speaker 15 Can you take us behind the scenes in the world of Democratic pollsters and strategists on how the freedom narrative sort of came to be? Because I remember like democracy and abortion rights.

Speaker 15 The president talked a lot about both of those in the lead up to the midterm. So did other Democrats.

Speaker 15 And there was some, you heard some candidates talk about freedom in the lead up to the midterms, but I feel like it really took hold maybe in the last year or so

Speaker 15 since the election.

Speaker 27 I think it actually really took hold after January 6th. And there had been some freedom messaging around abortion before that.

Speaker 27 And Anat Shankar Asario, who I know you know well and adore as much as I do, was really one of the people who developed freedom as such a strong, broad thematic.

Speaker 27 And freedom relates to the economy, too. The freedom to thrive in the economy was a point that she made and has been making for some time.

Speaker 27 Then, of course, with January 6th, with the voting rights restrictions, with the abortion restrictions, the Dobbs decision, medication, abortion, taking away our freedoms became a very, very prominent theme.

Speaker 27 The freedom to be represented by who we want to be represented by and not have them silenced on the floor of the House.

Speaker 27 There are just so many things happening that people thought were completely unlikely to happen. And many of them people think, is this even legal? Like, don't I get to vote for who I want?

Speaker 27 And you can't tell them they can't speak on the floor.

Speaker 27 So that has been the push in this last year. There were quite a few candidates who actually ran on freedom in 2022.

Speaker 27 And it's been a very strong thematic since then because the Republicans keep making it stronger and stronger for us.

Speaker 15 You were one of the president's top pollsters in 2020. You've known him for years.
In your view, what do his current low 40s approval ratings and

Speaker 15 lack of enthusiasm among some Democratic voters not capture about his strength as a candidate in this race.

Speaker 27 I think there are three things. I love your question.
Thank you. I was expecting another one, but thank you.

Speaker 27 I think number one, that we beat Trump already. 7 million more votes.
I mean, this wasn't a

Speaker 27 100-vote margin, 7 million more votes. And that was before January 6th.
That was before Dobbs. It was before Trump was indicted for everything under the sun.

Speaker 27 So, and has completely completely alienated women. And actually, of all the indictments in our research, we're finding that the rape trial is the most salient to women.

Speaker 27 It's not even the papers or the finances. It's the rape trial, which is very, very vivid to them.

Speaker 15 Has that broken through to folks?

Speaker 16 Totally.

Speaker 27 Interesting. Particularly college-educated women, suburban women, attentive women, independent women, Democratic women? Yes, it's volunteered much more than I would have thought.

Speaker 27 Secondly, the fact that he has such an amazing record. Honestly, it would have been easier for him if he had gotten a lot less done because then you would know exactly what to talk about.

Speaker 27 We got to talk about these four things because they're the only things we got done rather than these 40 things.

Speaker 27 And then I think people are underestimating what a sharp contrast. was laid out.

Speaker 27 And it was laid out by the president's announcement veto and the RNC's response video this is a very stark contrast in the future of america what is the soul of the nation is it an optimistic vision or a pessimistic vision and he is a resilient person he is optimistic he is energetic and that's all being underestimated i think

Speaker 15 How much do you think the president and the White House and the campaign can really do to get his accomplishments to actually break through to voters?

Speaker 15 And I'm sure the voters we're talking about are not the super engaged people who consume a lot of news like us, but a lot of folks, working class, middle class, don't pay close attention to politics, they don't really hear about the accomplishments because the media doesn't really cover them.

Speaker 15 Like how

Speaker 15 useful are campaign ads, president speeches, in really making that stick with voters in your experience?

Speaker 27 Well, first of all, I would say to the ever-loving frustration of all of us, it is just amazing how difficult it is to penetrate right now.

Speaker 27 I would have thought this stuff would have penetrated a lot more. It did in 2008.
And I think this administration has tried every kind of communication vehicle known to womankind and mankind.

Speaker 27 But I think the more of this that shows up at people's kitchen tables, the more that it shows up in people's neighborhoods, the more that it shows up in the friends and family networks of people, that grandma says, thank God the insulin is only priced at this.

Speaker 27 That your latino neighbor says i have a job on that construction crew for that bridge that the small business owner is reminds them you know ppp loan actually kept me afloat during covid we came out of covet we're still here because of those loans and those help that help the more that those networks express what is actually showing up

Speaker 27 And then I think there are two things that are blocking the communication. One is for a while, I think Democrats didn't seem in touch.

Speaker 27 We were taking victory tours and we were saying everything was good. And it's like, what planet are you on? And we had people in focus groups asking, what neighborhoods do economists live in?

Speaker 27 Because they sure don't live in my neighborhood.

Speaker 27 So I think now that there's a much greater understanding, which Bill Clinton had in his administration, that we've made this progress, but it's not good enough.

Speaker 27 It's not good enough to hear, here, and here.

Speaker 27 And then the cynicism that voters have for every institution right now is at record high. I mean, people say the president's president's numbers are bad.
Okay, well, the president's numbers are weak.

Speaker 27 Want to be the Supreme Court right now? Want to be Congress right now? Want to be Donald Trump right now? I mean, his numbers are better than all of them.

Speaker 27 So it's just, we're just in an era of great dissatisfaction, instability. And I think we have to factor that in.

Speaker 15 Yeah. How big of a factor is the president's age in the focus groups and polling you've done?

Speaker 27 People mention it a lot.

Speaker 27 I think sometimes people mention it protectively.

Speaker 27 Some seniors will say, well, I can't handle it. I'm not sure if he can.

Speaker 27 But on the other hand, if age is the worst thing they can say about him, oh my gosh, are we in great shape? No scandal, no corruption, no failed programs. Keep on it.

Speaker 27 The second thing I think is the best anecdote to age is just for him to be out there showing his energy, showing what he can do. And that will come across, I think, as he's out in the hinterlands.

Speaker 27 And I think we're finally resigned and you mentioned it, John. We can't get any national press on the accomplishments.
So they're going market by market.

Speaker 27 It's a slow grind, local news by local news, but people are also relying on local news and podcasts than they were in the past.

Speaker 15 Yeah, I noticed in the announcement video that he narrated the whole thing.

Speaker 15 And I wondered if that was partly to show people, like, here he is. He's got energy.
He's talking. He's out there.
Like, does the, do you think the campaign will be

Speaker 15 trying to put him in situations where he can show energy, that he's interacting with people, all that kind of stuff?

Speaker 27 I think so. I mean, I'm not privy to those plans, but I think it's obvious.

Speaker 27 And I think the great thing was people know Joe Biden and they know that he's, he's not Barack Obama in terms of being an orator, but, you know, he laid out a clear vision.

Speaker 27 He emotionally spoke to what was in his heart. Um, and people really and he laid out the contrast.
Frankly, he did that in 2022 very effectively in a series of speeches.

Speaker 27 So, I think showing him out there energetically locally delivered for markets in paid ads and in speeches is a formula that worked in 2020. It's a formula that will work in 2022.

Speaker 27 And it contrasts vividly with the erraticism and chaos of the Trump team.

Speaker 15 How are you expecting the 24 electorate to be different than the 2020 electorate?

Speaker 15 You know, we were just, you just mentioned that he won by 7 million votes. Obviously, in the swing states, it was like 40,000 votes, right?

Speaker 15 If they'd gone the other way, Trump would have won because of the Electoral College.

Speaker 15 Like, you know, a lot has happened in four years, but also since Trump won in 2016, the electorate hasn't changed that much, I would say.

Speaker 15 And there's just been sort of swings and differential turnout here and there um what do you expect it what are you seeing as we head into 24

Speaker 27 i think a lot of the the more they change the more they stay the same but there is going to be a younger electorate particularly if they turn out to vote and for the first time we're going to have younger voters outnumber potentially baby boomers that's good for democrats yeah what uh what does the map look like narrower larger Same swing states?

Speaker 27 Pretty similar, I think. The battleground states are still battlegrounds.

Speaker 27 florida was already tough if desanches is the nominee it'll be even tougher michigan's a little better for us but it's the same playground i think which groups of voters worry you the most keep you up at night the most if you look at uh biden's 2020 coalition blue collar the same people that worried us in 2020 blue collar women and blue collar men

Speaker 27 particularly blue collar women because they're pretty upset at instability. They are the most cynical about accomplishments, and they are being pressured by their husbands to vote for Donald Trump.

Speaker 27 Yeah. So we got to make sure that a lot of women vote differently than their husbands, particularly blue-collar women.

Speaker 15 What about

Speaker 15 working class voters who are Latino, even some black men? We've seen some attrition there in the last couple of elections.

Speaker 16 What do you think about that?

Speaker 27 I think that's a problem, and I think it's a problem that derives from the central problem for all Democrats, which is we have to more firmly establish an economic message.

Speaker 27 We have to lay out an economic contrast. And the Biden team is well aware of it.

Speaker 27 As we've talked about before, John, Hillary Clinton, and I love Hillary Clinton, ran one ad totally devoted to the economy.

Speaker 27 60% of the Biden media was devoted totally to the economy. We have to establish an economic plan.
We have to give an economic vision. We have to get the economy in better shape.

Speaker 27 And the administration is working 24-7 to do that.

Speaker 15 Aaron Powell, Jr.: The RNC's response to Biden's announcement video was basically, you know, country's out of control. This guy is too old and weak, you know, to fix it.
Wheels are coming off the bus.

Speaker 15 He's over his head. Does that message worry you?

Speaker 16 Does it land with voters?

Speaker 15 And how does that message seem if

Speaker 15 the GDP numbers came out today? I think growth slowed a bit.

Speaker 15 Like if we tip into even a mild recession, I mean, obviously Biden can't do much to control that, but does the messaging become sharper on the economic contrast?

Speaker 15 Or how do voters deal with that, do you think?

Speaker 27 I think that

Speaker 27 one of the things that we have to worry about as Democrats is that

Speaker 27 Republicans are still slightly ahead on the economy. And that's generic Republicans.
And Trump economics is still perceived to be better than Obama economics or Biden economics.

Speaker 27 So that's why we've got to stay on this message. And, you know, it's back to the future.
As James Carbell said, it's the economy, stupid. We got to stay on that message.

Speaker 27 We got to establish how this economy is delivering for everyone, not just people on the coast, not just people with a college education.

Speaker 27 And that includes young black men, and that includes Latinos, particularly Latino men, who are very economically focused. Now,

Speaker 27 case in point, Latino men love the infrastructure bill because they firmly believe we will be the ones who build those roads and bridges.

Speaker 27 So we've got to stay on that and really make sure that we communicate to all of those channels.

Speaker 15 You made a bold, very early prediction on this show that Democrats would keep the Senate in 2022. Before it was ever cool to think that.
Care to do the same with 2024?

Speaker 27 Yeah. I think we're guaranteed to take back the House that we're going to have to work work hard for it.

Speaker 27 Our margin is very narrow, and we got 17 seats that were won by Biden. And I think the choice issue is going to matter a lot in the House seats.
And then I think we're going to hold the Senate.

Speaker 27 We've got really good candidates running.

Speaker 27 They're still having candidate problems. And I think these are tough, tough races.

Speaker 27 But the John Testers, Sherrod Browns, Ruben Gallegos of the world are the kinds of seasoned candidates we need to win these seats.

Speaker 15 And a Biden win on the presidential level?

Speaker 27 Biden win on the presidential level for sure.

Speaker 15 Okay. Well, now

Speaker 15 we're out of the prediction business here, but it's always good to have you on.

Speaker 15 You have actual data to back it up and talk to voters. So we love that.

Speaker 15 So Linda, thank you so much for joining Poly Dave America and come back soon. We'll keep in touch during the course of this campaign.

Speaker 27 Thank you for having me so much. And thanks for your good analysis.

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Speaker 15 All right, before we go, Dan, we got to talk about Tucker. You haven't really had a chance to talk about Tucker yet.

Speaker 15 In the days since Rupert Murdoch knifed his golden child, there's been a flurry of theories explaining why.

Speaker 15 So I'm going to do, I thought we'd go through each of these theories one by one, and you're going to tell me if each theory is either possibly true or resistance fanfic.

Speaker 16 Okay. Because that's it.
All right. I like that.
Okay.

Speaker 15 All right. Theory number one.

Speaker 15 He violated too many HR policies. So the Dominion law, and that's to

Speaker 15 that's an understatement. The Dominion lawsuit exposed Tucker's text messages where he disparaged Fox executives, calling one senior executive the C-word.

Speaker 15 We knew that he called Sidney Powell the C-word, but it's also apparently a Fox News executive.

Speaker 15 Fox was also worried about a lawsuit filed by a former producer, which apparently details a highly sexist, misogynistic workplace

Speaker 15 in the Tucker show. Again, shocker, shocker.
That would be misogynistic workplace.

Speaker 15 It's always the ones you least expect.

Speaker 15 All right. So what do you think about that theory?

Speaker 16 That sounds possibly true. And there is even in one of the many stories about this, there is a details of a meeting with the Fox attorneys in Tucker where they came to him and said, good news,

Speaker 16 we were able to get redactions of a bunch of your messages. So the public won't see all the things you said, including calling the Fox News executive the C-word.
And he was not happy.

Speaker 16 He wanted his views out there. That doesn't seem like the sort of team player

Speaker 16 you want to go to war with.

Speaker 15 And, you know, a lot of people are, you know, understandably saying, like, well, what about the timing? He's been doing this shit forever.

Speaker 15 And the New York Times last night, Wednesday night, broke a story,

Speaker 15 and they had some new reporting in this, which is there was basically the night before they were supposed to go to trial, even though the Fox lawyers had all the unredacted text messages from Tucker, the board and senior executives hadn't seen all of them.

Speaker 15 And so they saw all of those messages the night before.

Speaker 15 And Dominion basically said, yeah, we're going to call Tucker to the stand, and we're going to try to make sure he has to answer for all of the text messages, even the redacted ones.

Speaker 15 And that finally was apparently the straw that broke the camel's back and why they all flipped out. Which seems, again, I would agree,

Speaker 15 possibly true.

Speaker 15 Theory two.

Speaker 15 He dazzled Rupert's girlfriend with Bible talk. Rupert Murdoch did not like that Tucker laced religion into his show.

Speaker 15 Then in March, Murdoch invited Tucker over for dinner, and Tucker bonded with Rupert's then-fiancé and Leslie Smith over the Bible. Rupert has since broken up with that fiancée over email.

Speaker 15 It's just

Speaker 15 very Logan Roy. She later told Murdoch that Tucker was a messenger from God, to which Rupert reportedly responded, nope.

Speaker 15 Which, honestly, best response.

Speaker 15 And of course, they broke off their engagement shortly after that.

Speaker 16 What do you think about this theory? I am first, most surprised that Rupert Murdoch uses email. That's a good point.
I didn't think about it.

Speaker 16 I mean, he was a man basically born in the Telegraph era, and he's just out here firing off emails to break up with women. I mean, I find that surprising.
This feels very fanficky to me.

Speaker 16 This discarded succession plot line, which is a joke a thousand people have made, but just seems hard to imagine this all came. Rupert Murdoch, who is a ruthless business person.

Speaker 16 got upset because Tucker bonded with his wife over religion or his fiancé over religion. Seems an unlikely reason to make a multi-million dollar decision for his company.

Speaker 15 Yeah, no, I agree. I can believe that Rupert got pretty tired of Tucker and maybe wanted to fire him for a while or was thinking about it.

Speaker 15 And this could be one of the reasons, one of the many. But like you said, you don't pull the trigger on that multi-million dollar decision just because of personal peak.

Speaker 16 Yeah, and Rupert Murdoch does not like Donald Trump.

Speaker 16 He has never liked Donald Trump, but he's certainly willing to help get him elected and help fuel the path to his insurrection because it's good for the business.

Speaker 15 Theory three.

Speaker 15 This is the succession theory. The Murdoch kids are thinking long-term.
Lachlan Murdoch is preparing to lead the company when Rupert passes.

Speaker 15 His siblings, James and Elizabeth, have been pressuring to do something about Tucker. Lachlan knows he'll need their support to run Fox because of how the family trust is structured.

Speaker 15 The Murdoch children and top execs at Fox feel that no one personality is bigger than the Fox News platform.

Speaker 16 Is there something between possibly true and resistance fanfic?

Speaker 16 uh this is you know what this is our show we can do whatever we want this feels like succession galaxy brain like we're just like we

Speaker 16 it's succession fanfic yeah we are overly complicating this and trying to fit it into how we all understand media now which is through an hbo drama

Speaker 16 I do think succession has probably done for the way we think about media, probably what West Wing did for politics, which is creating a very

Speaker 16 different version of how things actually work.

Speaker 16 Yeah.

Speaker 15 Theory four is internal warfare.

Speaker 15 Radio talk show host Michael Savage suggested on Newsmax that Sean Hannity stab Tucker in the back and convinced Fox to get rid of him because he's long held a grudge against Tucker, who displaced him as the most powerful Fox personality.

Speaker 15 He is a very jealous, talentless thug. He hated Tucker's wild success from the beginning.
Hannity may have had something to do with it. This isn't resistance fanfic.
This is MAGA fanfic.

Speaker 16 That's right. I mean, who wouldn't believe Michael Savage, who I'm sure has won multiple politics for all of his reporting? And also,

Speaker 16 is there anything about Sean Hannity that suggests he could concoct and execute some sort of complex plan?

Speaker 15 Very good point. Very good point.

Speaker 15 Theory five, ratings don't equal money. The Wall Street Journal reports that despite being the highest rated show on the network, Tucker's show didn't make big bucks.

Speaker 15 That's because Tucker's content was so unhinged that the big blue chip advertisers wouldn't buy ad time on his show. So Fox couldn't sell commercials at a premium rate.

Speaker 16 No, that's not fanfic. That is a misunderstanding of cable news economics.
Yes, his ads were not.

Speaker 15 How carriage fees work, right?

Speaker 16 Yes, yeah, right. The Fox News gets a lot of money, not by the ads they show, but just by being on everyone's cable box.
So all you people who have not yet cut the cord are still paying for Fox.

Speaker 16 And whether they run ads from Fortune 500 companies or weird virility supplements or gold buying or Trump commemorative coins

Speaker 16 is only sort of marginal to the bottom line.

Speaker 15 Yeah, there was also a report, too. I'll just throw another theory that like Rupert Murdoch was angry about Tucker's Ukraine war stance.

Speaker 16 Come on.

Speaker 15 Just like, you know, you know, Rupert's principled stance on the Ukrainian war, and he just, he can't, he can't stomach Tucker out there being so pro-Putin.

Speaker 16 Yeah, I mean, because, I mean, it's obviously an outlier on this network. They never are supportive of Putin or Russia.
Like, how could that possibly happen? The reality here here is very simple.

Speaker 16 Fox just lost three quarters of a fucking billion dollars in a lawsuit because a bunch of people on the shows, on the network, said dumb shit.

Speaker 16 And Tucker Carlson clearly is someone who does whatever he wants and can't be stopped, which is why he ran that insane false flag January 6th documentary, which everyone tried to stop.

Speaker 16 He said, do it anyway. And then got access to those tapes and then did more of that dangerous shit.

Speaker 16 And so they're staring, they made a, they were going to take a small-term hit now to avoid getting sued for a trillion dollars in 2024. It's that simple.

Speaker 15 Yeah, that seems right. Highly plausible, I would say.

Speaker 16 Great.

Speaker 15 How fun is this that Oliver Darcy reported that the ratings for Fox last night were like some of the lowest ratings in the post-9-11 period?

Speaker 15 And that not just low ratings for Fox because you could say, okay, well, they... Tucker was their highest rated host.

Speaker 15 They're now doing some sort of filling rotational, you know, rotation of hosts while they try to find a new one. So of course their ratings go down, but Newsmax's ratings have started going up.

Speaker 16 Think about that. We saw the same thing after January, after the Arizona call in 2020, and it reverted to the mean.

Speaker 16 It will likely revert to the mean. Now, the next person in that slot may not get Tucker's numbers, but it will probably continue to be the most watched cable news program.
at that time forever.

Speaker 16 We had the same thought you guys made this point on Tuesday. Everyone thought it was all going to fall apart when Glenn Beck left and then when Bill O'Reilly left and when Roger Ailes left.
And

Speaker 16 it always, it returns to where it was. And whether it's Jesse Waters or Greg Guttfeld or I don't know what other Yahoo they're going to put in there,

Speaker 16 they'll continue to do fine and continue to make a shitload of money dividing America on racial lines.

Speaker 15 One material effect of that on politics, I think, is in order to revert to the mean

Speaker 15 and not lose audience to Newsmax, I think all these stories about how like the Murdochs are done with Trump and they want DeSantis now and all this kind of stuff. I think that's all gone.

Speaker 15 I think they're going to go so

Speaker 15 everyone at the network all in for Trump because they don't want to lose. They just canned Tucker and they don't want to lose his audience to Newsmax.
So they're going to be right up Trump's ass now.

Speaker 16 Yeah, that's right. That's exactly right.
That's how that's what happened last time. Yeah.

Speaker 15 Thank you to Celinda Lake for joining us. And

Speaker 15 have a great weekend, everyone. We'll talk to you next week.

Speaker 16 Bye,

Speaker 15 Pod Save America is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez.
Our senior producer is Andy Gardner-Bernstein. Our producers are Haley Muse and Olivia Martinez.

Speaker 15 It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglund and Charlotte Landis sound engineered the show.

Speaker 15 Thanks to Hallie Kiefer, Ari Schwartz, Sandy Girard, Andy Taft, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montoud.

Speaker 15 Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com/slash podsaveamerica.

Speaker 3 The Kia Sportage Turbo Hybrid has a bold design, a spacious interior with 232 horsepower, and a 12.3-inch panoramic display to keep the adventure going and fit with the way you live.

Speaker 9 And with Sirius XM, every drive comes alive, bringing you closer to the music, sports, talk, and podcasts you love right in your vehicle or on the Sirius XM app.

Speaker 1 Every Sirius XM-equipped Kia Sportage Turbo Hybrid includes a three-month trial subscription to SiriusXM, so the experience begins the moment you drive.

Speaker 11 Learn more at Kia.com/slash Sportage-Hybrid, Kia, movement that inspires.

Speaker 28 This is a 30-second ad. In just 30 seconds, there are likely to be an average of over 30,000 cyber threats to all businesses.
Since I've been talking, more than 10,000 likely just happened.

Speaker 28 Hey, cyber threats don't wait, and neither should you. With advanced security solutions, Comcast Business can help keep your network and data secure secure and your business reliably up and running.

Speaker 28 Get threat ready with Comcast Business. Learn how at ComcastBusiness.com slash cybersecurity.