Beating Donald Trump, with David Plouffe

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Speaker 2 This is the ticket. I'm Isaac Dover.

Speaker 2 Well, since the last time I recorded a podcast, I have been in six different states covering this election. Five candidates have dropped out.

Speaker 2 It is now a new race, a two-person race, and a race that looks very different than it did only a week ago.

Speaker 2 Rather than the chaos of a half dozen candidates, you have a battle between two standard bearers for two very different visions for the Democratic Party. There's Bernie Sanders and there's Joe Biden.

Speaker 2 So since we're now in a more straightforward race, it seemed like a good time to talk with someone who's run these campaigns in the past. David Plough was the man behind Barack Obama's 2008 campaign.

Speaker 2 That historic victory gave him a reputation as one of the smartest minds in politics, a reputation he kept up with a great track record of winning races and predicting others. That is, until 2016.

Speaker 2 He was one of the most confident voices saying Donald Trump couldn't win. So he was obviously quite shaken when he found out how wrong he'd been.

Speaker 2 He's since thought deeply about what happened four years ago, and he's now come out with a new book, A Citizen's Guide to Beating Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 I'm back in Washington, at least for a bit, and that's where we sat down on Friday morning.

Speaker 2 I asked him about his process of reflection and to offer his take on what he thinks the Sanders and Biden campaign should do now, why other other candidates' campaigns didn't work, and what it means for him that this is the most important election of our lifetime.

Speaker 2 He thinks there is a very, very good chance President Trump gets re-elected. Pluff was in the White House the last time a president ran for re-election, so he knows what an advantage that can be.

Speaker 2 Especially for a president who's shown he's ready to use the tools of the office to help get himself re-elected.

Speaker 2 Take a listen.

Speaker 2 David Plough, thanks for being here on the ticket.

Speaker 3 Thanks for having me, Isaac.

Speaker 2 So your book starts with you reflecting on that night that Donald Trump won

Speaker 2 and re-watching the footage of it.

Speaker 2 Was it just to torture yourself?

Speaker 3 Yes, basically, I did. Because it was happening so fast.
I wanted to go back. And for me, it's also motivation.
Like,

Speaker 3 as bad as that night was for those that are panicked at the thought of Donald Trump having a second term, think about how bad it's going to be when he strides out to the ballroom at Mar-a-Laga with Ivanka and Jared and Sean Hannity and says, thank you, America, for re-electing me to a second term.

Speaker 3 It'll feel 10 times worse than 2016 did. And

Speaker 3 for me, that's what we have to keep in mind, which is, yes, we want to think about our nominee giving the victory speech, but you need to be motivated by what it's going to feel like if Trump is ratified.

Speaker 3 And if he's ratified, there'll probably be at least a generation of male politicians here in America and around the world, quite frankly, who think this is the way to succeed.

Speaker 3 And we will pay a price for that in ways I don't think we quite understand. Aaron Trevor Brandon,

Speaker 2 you were very famously very wrong about 2016. You had said the worst case scenario was 324 electoral votes for Hillary Clinton.
She got 232.

Speaker 2 Obviously, she did not win.

Speaker 2 What is that like? You are regarded in Democratic circles as the great genius of electoral politics, the strategist who made Obama happen.

Speaker 2 And you had a pretty good record of being right. And you were very, very wrong.
Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Right.

Speaker 3 And I can't take too much solace in the fact that everybody was wrong because I should know better. And, you know, I've been right about this primary for the most part.

Speaker 3 Like, I understand politics, presidential politics. And so I think that the lesson is if you're not involved in something deeply, you shouldn't offer much insight on it.
Be careful about predictions.

Speaker 3 And I think understanding that politics changes much more rapidly these days than even I imagined.

Speaker 3 So, you know, part of the confidence came from, of of course, you know, listen, don't forget the Trump campaign briefed the reporters covering the race on election about why they lost.

Speaker 2 So like everybody and the Clinton campaign was pretty confident.

Speaker 3 You know, so but I think the lesson is things can change more quickly over a four-year cycle than they did. So for me,

Speaker 3 you know, you look at Trump who showed no, you know, I actually said very early, I think Trump's going to be the Republican nominee. I think he'd be a very strong general election candidate.

Speaker 3 Then he doesn't moderate at all, keeps up the Clown Act, has three different campaign managers. They access Hollywood stuff, and you're just like, this guy's not going to win, right?

Speaker 3 And, you know, Clinton did outperform us in many suburban areas. So that thing

Speaker 3 we assumed happened would, but then numerically, I think what everybody missed is the margin shifts in some of these exurban blue-collar and rural areas.

Speaker 3 You know, we knew she was going to underperform Obama, but not by 20 and 30 points. And it isn't just rural areas.
I mean, you know, he wins Erie County.

Speaker 3 Some of the really important swing counties in eastern Pennsylvania, you know, north of Philadelphia, he won comfortably.

Speaker 3 And so that's where you're like, okay, he's going to do better there than Romney or McCain did. But he's not going to do 20 points better.

Speaker 3 So that's where the math, and so it's always interesting in politics, you're always surprised. It's like, I certainly didn't think those swings were possible of that magnitude, and they were.

Speaker 3 And so that's a good lesson, which is don't get too out over your skis.

Speaker 3 And, you know, I'm not overcompensating because of this. I have studied every incumbent presidential reelection carefully, was part of one.
Incumbent presidents have amazing advantages in weaponry.

Speaker 3 And this guy's obsessed with reading re-elected. It's all he cares about.
And

Speaker 3 people say, well, Obama was obsessed or Bush was obsessed. I was there, man.
The campaign was almost like, yeah, I want to win, but I got other stuff to do. And so it scares me.

Speaker 3 And he understands how to transact politics and communication in this modern day world. He just gets it.
He thinks images and gifs and memes and strong languages.

Speaker 3 It's just intuitive to him, and therefore it's intuitive to his campaign. So, you know, we need to be ready for that.
So

Speaker 3 I learned a lot from that. And, you know, the truth is, I'd had a nice run of success in life.

Speaker 3 And even though I wasn't part of the Clinton campaign, there's something healthy about being knocked back a little bit.

Speaker 2 But you feel like you were not surprised by the twists and turns of the Democratic primary, how it ended. A week ago, we were

Speaker 2 the field was much bigger. The panic in the Democratic Party was enormous about how is this going to be resolved, what's going to happen.

Speaker 2 The people who don't want Bernie Sanders to be the nominee thought the Democrats who

Speaker 2 are blowing it by not stopping him. Obviously, there are a lot of people who do want Sanders to be the nominee, are very happy about what happened.

Speaker 2 I think it's pretty clear from what we have seen of Sanders and the Sanders campaign and what we've seen of Biden and the Biden campaign that on Tuesday morning, Bernie Sanders woke up thinking that he was going to have a very good night, and Joe Biden woke up thinking he was going to maybe have an okay night.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 that is not the way that things went.

Speaker 3 Right. So the magnitude of the wins, I think, were, you know, he got the upper range of what was possible for him.
But the contours of this has been clear.

Speaker 3 You know, I've spoken a lot of this publicly, which is if this remains a four or five person field, Bernie Sanders was going to be the nominee unless somebody emerged as someone getting into the mid-30s or 40s.

Speaker 3 Like he's the guy sitting there 28, 30. And in our proportional system, if everyone else is in the teens or low 20s, you're going to benefit from that.
And what happened here was somebody emerged.

Speaker 3 And Biden, you got to remember, if you look back at 2019, you know, his national poll rating, 35, 38, you know, he basically got back the vote he had lost, which is always easier in politics.

Speaker 3 I saw this in the New Hampshire primary. You know, when we got beat by Hillary and got surprised, she had led us by big margins.
She had big favorable ratings. People left her for a while.

Speaker 3 They came back. And so I think that

Speaker 3 in a two-person race, what Sanders has not been able to do is grow into the African-American community, grow into suburban college-educated voters in a way that would allow him to survive a two-person race.

Speaker 3 And so, and again, the other candidates had an opportunity to become either the alternative to Bernie or Bernie to strengthen his hand.

Speaker 3 So Biden was also, you know, was given a gift because when he was struggling, nobody seized it.

Speaker 3 And so when he then stabilized, if we can call it stabilized, you know, he was the natural place for that vote to go.

Speaker 3 So, and again, it's just a reminder that in our proportional delegate system, it's incredibly hard to get a delegate lead,

Speaker 3 but it's even harder to lose it, particularly when you get down to a two-person race, when the demographic realities of each candidate support, you know, you can fairly easily model what that means.

Speaker 3 And so the only, you know, Bernie Sanders may win a landslide in North Dakota next Tuesday, and he'll probably do pretty well in Idaho.

Speaker 3 But Biden's the one that's got states where he's going to win by 20, 25, 30, even 40 points. And so he enters next Tuesday with a delegate lead.

Speaker 3 And then March 17th, I think, is going to be an absolutely devastating,

Speaker 3 great night for Biden because he's going to walk out of Florida with, I think, worst case scenario, 150, 170 net delegates. So that's just where this race is heading.

Speaker 2 If you're the campaign manager for Bernie Sanders right now, what do you do?

Speaker 3 Well, listen, you try and do as well as you can next Tuesday. You put a lot of...

Speaker 2 You left off Michigan from your list where Sanders is hoping to do well.

Speaker 3 Right. But but here's my point about Michigan.
Mississippi is far more important to the delegate story next week than Michigan because Biden's going to walk out of there with maybe 30 delegates.

Speaker 3 Michigan,

Speaker 3 so let's say Joe Biden wins at 51.49. You know,

Speaker 3 I know there'll be a reaction and say, Bernie won it last time. He lost.
It's like the delegates are basically the same. I know that's boring to people.
It's what this is about.

Speaker 2 But so if you're the Sanders campaign manager, what do you do?

Speaker 2 What do you do with this situation where you're looking at all the things that you've just laid out and the reality of the next couple months of this, is there a way that you could say to them, this is what you do that makes it possible to win the nomination?

Speaker 3 All you can do is try and perform as well as you can the next two Tuesdays. That requires getting higher percentage of African American support.
It requires actually getting larger youth turnout.

Speaker 3 He's blowing out the vote share, but not the turnout. And it requires eating into Biden's suburban vote.
His problem between now and Tuesday is there's no big event.

Speaker 3 And then, even on the 15th, a debate. So, they are going to spend a lot of time saying, Can we change the contours of this race in the debate?

Speaker 3 Their trouble is, Biden paid a price for early voting in a lot of the Super Tuesday states. He would have done better without that.
Florida, Arizona, Illinois, Ohio, people are voting early.

Speaker 3 A lot of votes are going to be in by the time the debate happens.

Speaker 3 So, what they have to say is we have to have such a great debate performance against Biden that people vote on Election Day on March 17th, you know, overwhelmingly vote for us.

Speaker 3 That's kind of what this is down to. I think the realities of this race, though, if that doesn't happen,

Speaker 3 you know, come the morning of March 18th, Biden should have, if he executes well, and there's an if there, such a significant delegate lead that I think it will be implausible to suggest Bernie Sanders will erase it.

Speaker 3 So then I think that's a tough position for the party, because if I'm running the Biden campaign, Trump's probably starting to spend real money against me. So

Speaker 3 you want to execute the primary, but you've also got this other, the big, you know, event. And, you know, they need to be responsible about that.
And so that's hard.

Speaker 3 You've got to plan for winding down the primary, but you're in a general election.

Speaker 3 And, you know, Bernie Sanders has said, to his credit, and, you know, I've spoken about this publicly, I agree with his position, the plurality delegate leader, if we don't have a majority, should be the nominee.

Speaker 3 And he has said that. And if you're in a situation where it's likely that both of them.

Speaker 2 He said it thinking that the world was going to look pretty different.

Speaker 3 Well, sure. Yeah.

Speaker 3 But, you know, it's, I think, so, but I listen, there's a chance that Joe Biden could actually get the majority of delegates. He'll have to perform well.
So that's all Sanders can do.

Speaker 3 And you know, this is the lesson of this process. It moves so quickly.
The first part of it, really the first year. Quiet, state to state.

Speaker 3 And then it accelerates with a speed if you haven't been in it, you cannot prepare for it.

Speaker 2 He's not kidding. The last six months of my life have felt like about six years.
So we're going to take a short break.

Speaker 2 When we come back, I asked David Pluff about Joe Biden, a candidate who doesn't have a big enthusiastic base, but has now become the frontrunner.

Speaker 2 Does Biden have what it takes to win the nomination and beat Donald Trump?

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Speaker 2 Joe Biden has,

Speaker 2 for a long time, on the campaign trail, and it's changed in the last couple of days, had an enthusiasm problem.

Speaker 2 Not as many people show up to the events to begin with. They generally are not as jazzed when they're there.
Biden is not the kind of speaker speaker that tends to whip up the crowd.

Speaker 2 Again, in the last few days, even in the days before he won South Carolina, you could see it happening. I saw it happening myself in South Carolina, and it has grown since then.

Speaker 2 But they're still not of the level of events that Donald Trump has, or that Bernie Sanders has, or that even some of the other candidates have. Buddha Judge was getting a lot of enthusiasm.

Speaker 2 Warren would, too.

Speaker 2 Is that an issue?

Speaker 3 Well, you like to see bigger crowds, more enthusiasm. Candidates have to be who they are.

Speaker 3 I mean, I worked for Duval Patrick in his governor's races, and Duval was one of the most compelling political performers I've ever had the privilege to work for, but it was largely because he would quiet a room.

Speaker 3 But passion came from that. So

Speaker 3 I think you can't equate crowd size with electoral results.

Speaker 3 You remember in 2012, Romney started getting big crowds and people writing columns saying something's stirring out there and Romney's going to win.

Speaker 3 You know, somebody who votes quietly, who doesn't even vote enthusiastically, counts the same in the tally as someone who's got a bumper sticker on their truck. So we should be careful about that.

Speaker 3 But Biden generally needs to strengthen his performance in all arenas, speeches, debates, interviews, social media content. And so we need to see more of that.

Speaker 3 But we also have to understand who these candidates are. And Biden's probably not going to be someone that gets 80,000 people at an event.
You know,

Speaker 2 You were part of the decision to put him on the ticket with Obama. You had seen him on the campaign trail in 2007 in the debates.
He was a good debater.

Speaker 2 He was not generating a lot of interest in his campaign then. Obviously, it didn't go very well.

Speaker 2 And then you thought this is the right person for being on the ticket. And then you were in the White House seeing that for the first

Speaker 2 couple of years of it, right?

Speaker 2 How does he compare now to the Joe Biden that you saw at the beginning of the Obama days?

Speaker 3 Well, he's the same person in terms of, you know, Washington really didn't change him. High character.
I mean, listen, I'll give you a story about Joe Biden. You know, everyone seems to have one.

Speaker 3 You know, in 2012, my father passed away. And,

Speaker 3 you know, I was talking to my mother every day, but like a week after the funeral, I was talking to her and she said, oh, I talked to Joe Biden again today.

Speaker 3 I'm like, what do you mean you talked to Joe Biden again? He had called her twice, didn't tell me about it.

Speaker 2 It's even the craziest.

Speaker 3 Yeah, spent a half hour on the phone with her each time. And, you know, he's just, he's a lovely human being.
That hasn't changed.

Speaker 3 And I think if you look at his interviews, even like his town hall performances, you know, roughly the same. The mystery is the debates.

Speaker 3 Because you point out in 07, when not much else in the campaign was going well, he was a strikingly good debater in a big field. He does well against Palin, does well against Ryan.

Speaker 3 And that was a high-pressure debate, the one against Ryan. We had flopped against Romney.
I mean, I was part of helping him prepare for those debates. He was very good.
So that'll be the question.

Speaker 3 And honestly, Biden probably enters March 15th with most people assuming absent some shock he's going to be

Speaker 3 the debate. Absent some shock, he's going to be our nominee.
So on the one hand, if you're the Biden people, you may say, I can't believe I have to do this one-on-one debate.

Speaker 3 But Bernie, he needs to do it because Trump's looming. So that'll be the test.
I mean, they know they've got a lot riding on it.

Speaker 3 I think the Biden people believe he'll be stronger in a one-on-one debate than a multi-candidate field.

Speaker 3 you know, I've seen him deliver. You know, he's not like Lincoln, but he's actually been a pretty good debater.

Speaker 3 The other thing about Joe Biden, I think, is he will feel the weight of responsibility that so many voters and so many party elected officials are putting their faith in him.

Speaker 3 And he's going to want to perform well. So again, I think where you've seen

Speaker 3 a delta between prior performance and

Speaker 3 the big place it's been in the debates. And again, I think in the political decathlon, that was always an event that he had some strength in.

Speaker 2 Why didn't Elizabeth Warren's campaign work, do you think?

Speaker 3 I don't know. I mean, it requires an enormous amount of study by people smarter than I am, academics, political science professors, because it is.

Speaker 2 But it's a pretty experienced political professional.

Speaker 3 Well, I mean, the best I can see is because you look at like amazing personal story, energy.

Speaker 3 You know, didn't raise Sanders money, but had enough money to win the nomination, I think. Performed well in debates, interviews, diagnosed the problem, had good solutions.

Speaker 3 So you put all that together, particularly as the field winnowed and she was the only credible woman candidate left standing, she still couldn't get out of the mid-teens.

Speaker 3 So I'd say two things about it. One is clearly gender played a role.
Exactly how and to what extent, I don't know.

Speaker 3 My view is there were far too many people who just said, well, Hillary lost, so I'm not sure we can elect a woman. I think that kept a pretty low ceiling on her support, unfortunately.

Speaker 3 The other thing I'd say, which may be less interesting, but it's just math. Biden and Sanders entered this race with a lot of support.

Speaker 3 And there were various times when it looked like they may lose it. But as it turned out, there were less openings here for any other candidate.

Speaker 2 That's what she said when she announced that she was dropping out, that she was told that it would be hard to break through with Biden and Sanders in the race, and that she thought that they were wrong, the people telling her that, and she was wrong, is what she said.

Speaker 3 I didn't see her say that, but she's right. So it's so interesting.
If you look at where we are today, it's kind of where we were 14, 16 months ago.

Speaker 3 It's really remarkable. That's great for a reporter who's been out there on the trail like every day doing it.

Speaker 2 I wonder, is the Biden surge,

Speaker 2 is it because

Speaker 2 people were worried about beating Trump? Is it because Democrats were worried about beating Bernie Sanders and he was just an acceptable vessel for both those things?

Speaker 2 Or was it that you saw something happen really in the last couple of weeks that changed this?

Speaker 3 Well, again, going back to Biden started this campaign and held all through 19,

Speaker 3 he was the leader. He was the frontrunner.
So let's not forget that.

Speaker 3 People were comfortable with him as our nominee, enough people to win the nomination.

Speaker 3 He then, you know, risked losing all that. So that's the important thing to remember here.
He's not somebody where it's like Bernie Sanders does well. People are concerned about Bernie Sanders.

Speaker 3 We're going to throw all our hope in somebody who was only getting 5% or 10% and now becomes the frontrunner. Like he was the national frontrunner.
Lost it for a few weeks, got it back. So important.

Speaker 3 And I think it was fueled by when it was clear, you know, and I said this Saturday night, this is a two-person race. There's no question about this.
So now it focuses the decision.

Speaker 3 And a lot of the people who chose Biden, that was their inclination anyway. He was testing it with his performance, but that was their inclination.

Speaker 3 And then for people who undecided, they were like, who do I throw with? And I think more people than not believe.

Speaker 3 You know, Faz Shakiri, who's run a great race, you know, has given some interviews this week.

Speaker 2 Bernie Sanders campaign.

Speaker 3 Campaign manager, where he says, listen,

Speaker 3 you know, if voters only want to defeat Trump,

Speaker 3 we may not be their choice. If they want to defeat Trump and basically bring a revolution, we are.

Speaker 3 And I think more voters than not in the Democratic Party, you can argue historically whether they're going to be right or wrong, are choosing, we want to beat Trump, and they've decided someone like Biden is a safer route there.

Speaker 3 We will find out in the campaign if they're right, but I think that is that's where he's getting vote on top of folks who were with him through 19 is, and again, a two-person race helps clarify that.

Speaker 3 So I think you're at a point now where 55 to 60 percent of Democratic prime voters are saying that's the route I want to take with our nominee.

Speaker 2 How worried are you about Donald Trump being re-elected? It seems like pretty worried. I was walking around with your book this morning and someone looked at it and said, so

Speaker 2 does that have the solutions in it? And I said, well, I'm just a reporter trying to read it for interest, not for advice. But you seem seem pretty concerned.

Speaker 3 I am. And, you know, the book doesn't have a solution.
It's got a lot of different ideas for what people can do and why it's important.

Speaker 3 So on the one hand, low approval ratings, including Battleground States, Donald Trump.

Speaker 3 There is definitely a fatigue factor where people are like, do I really want to live through eight years of this?

Speaker 3 And I think you are going to be able to make a compelling argument economically. If we don't, we're going to lose, that basically everything he's done is to take care of the wealthy.

Speaker 3 And even though the unemployment rate's low, as you know, a lot of people aren't satisfied with their wages.

Speaker 3 So the sign of whose side are you on debate, which I think actually either Burt Biden or Sanders should be well positioned to execute.

Speaker 3 But what worries me is his ability to register and turn out folks on top of his current base, which means let's say in Wisconsin he ends up getting 200,000 more votes than he did last time.

Speaker 3 That's a steep hill. Yeah.
Number one.

Speaker 3 So that concerns me.

Speaker 3 An incumbent has enormous advantages because he is ready for this race. And

Speaker 3 he understands how to communicate and how to position and how to dominate the news cycle every hour. And that's something I don't think we've quite picked a lock on.

Speaker 2 Would 2008 or 2012 David Plough know what to do with Donald Trump in 2020?

Speaker 3 Well, here's what I would know, too. I would know how to construct a campaign in each battleground state to get the win number you think you need, and I wouldn't underestimate Trump's vote.

Speaker 3 I would make good decisions about then all that flows from that in terms of resources and decisions. How to handle the campaign with him day to day, I'm not sure any of us know.

Speaker 3 The debates, your convention, that stuff's easy in a way, compared to just like, how are you driving a message every day? How do you deal with his distraction and attacks?

Speaker 3 And how do you communicate?

Speaker 3 You know, so here's the thing: like, you know, whoever our nominee is, yeah, they got to have a great Instagram game and Facebook game, but they got to have a great Snapchat game and TikTok and YouTube.

Speaker 3 And so, in many respects, I'm a dinosaur because it's been eight years since I, you know, kind of led a campaign. So, that to me is a challenge.

Speaker 3 But I think that it all starts with whoever is our nominee has to be themselves. People say, well, should they be like Trump? Should they not? They should be themselves.

Speaker 3 And that's the race they should run. I do think the debates, and I assume Trump's going to do them because how can he not be part of that circus and spotlight? But

Speaker 3 they're going to just be geriatric cage matches. I mean, it is going to be something for the history books.

Speaker 3 So, yeah, so I think that, and I would rather be the Democrats than the Republicans because we have enough people, particularly if we do some smart registration work in each battleground state, to get to a win number.

Speaker 3 But, you know, the degree of difficulty to execute on the persuasion, turnout, and registration you need to do, and I talk about this in the book because people have a role to play here.

Speaker 3 This whole election could be decided by what is Trump's win number, meaning if third parties in Wisconsin and Michigan and Arizona get 4% or 5%,

Speaker 3 and he can win this election again at 47.5% or 48, we're going to lose the election.

Speaker 3 We have to keep people off third parties.

Speaker 2 Aaron Powell, Jr.: We talk a lot about Obama-Trump voters, but I was thinking the last couple of days that actually those are people who also voted for Joe Biden because it was Obama's running mate, right?

Speaker 2 So if Biden does become the nominee here, there are Obama-Trump, at least sort of Biden voters.

Speaker 2 Are those people up for grabs?

Speaker 3 Sure. By the way, Bernie would have a compelling economic.
I've seen research with swing voters who are like, I like what he says. They were Obama-Trump.
So, yeah, so who are the true swing voters?

Speaker 3 You know, there are people who are the Obama Trump voters. Those tend to be men, but not exclusively, and they tend to be non-college.
And they're not just exurbant and rural, a lot of blue-collar.

Speaker 3 There are suburban voters who actually voted against Trump who Trump may be able to get because they're happy with the economy

Speaker 3 and they're not sure about the Democratic alternative. And then we better treat people who are at risk voting third-party as swing voters, too.

Speaker 3 We better treat them as seriously as we do the Obama-Trump voters.

Speaker 3 Now, there's a whole other set of voters, obviously, we have to worry about in terms of registration and turnout. But persuasion, yes.
And I think it's so dangerous.

Speaker 3 I mean, there are some in the political science community now who say this. There's some in our party who say it, which is this is all about base turnout.

Speaker 3 It's just simple second-grade math, particularly if Trump really raises the ceiling on his vote total. We can't get to a presidential win on turnout alone.
It's incredibly important.

Speaker 3 We have to win the persuasion. Listen, in battleground states, there are more conservative voters than liberal voters.
We have to win the middle too. To win the presidency, you have to win the middle.

Speaker 3 And then you got to maximize your turnout. You have to do both.
I will say this, neither Bernie or Biden, it seems like they're five tool players. They have it all.

Speaker 3 And that's kind of part of my message in the book is we're the cavalry. Like, this is not the second coming of Kennedy or Reagan or even Obama.

Speaker 3 Like, you know, they're good candidates, but we're going to have to work really stinking hard.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it seems like

Speaker 2 politics is not that complicated a lot of the time.

Speaker 2 And given that we see a Democratic primary race that went through all this and then ended up with Biden and Sanders, it seems like maybe that is one of the lessons that everybody should take away from this.

Speaker 2 But there are these very drilled down micro things that need to be done in order to win a race, or at least to have the comfort of winning the race and not having it just be chance that you win.

Speaker 3 Well, campaigns, it's the marginal stuff. If a campaign ends up being not closed, you know, all you did was add to your margin.
It wasn't dispositive, actually. It's really only important

Speaker 3 if you come down to 10 or 15,000 votes in a Battleground State. Then the stuff you did in the campaign and that an average citizen did does matter.

Speaker 2 Aaron Trevor Brandon,

Speaker 2 a week ago, there was a lot of talk about a contested convention.

Speaker 2 There were seven candidates in the race. Now there are two plus Tulsi Gabbard.

Speaker 2 I wrote a contested convention article myself on the morning of the Iowa caucuses because it looked like that's where we were heading. Is that done?

Speaker 2 Is that now part of the history of this race race that there was a period where we were worried about things getting that crazy and now not?

Speaker 2 Is the Democratic Party in better shape than it looked like it was a week or two ago?

Speaker 3 Well, I think so. But, you know, my view is the contested convention thing was always nonsense and a fantasy.
I really believe that.

Speaker 2 Thanks, David. I mean,

Speaker 2 I wrote a whole article.

Speaker 3 I understand why you did.

Speaker 3 Well, because the other candidates were saying that's our strategy.

Speaker 3 But I just believe the person who got the most delegates, even if they didn't get a majority, unless there was such clear and convincing rationale.

Speaker 3 So in that scenario, people are like, well, what if Bernie is the person with the most delegates?

Speaker 3 Well, the only way he'd get denied the nomination at the convention is if it's clear, incontrovertible, he'd lose by 10 points and they'd all win by five. That wasn't going to be the case.

Speaker 3 What's the rationale? There was no rationale. And so I think we're either headed to a place where one of these folks, and it's probably Biden, gets a majority, or there's such a plurality.

Speaker 3 Like, I'm not even sure. We'll see, like, in a scenario, and this may not happen.
Like, if Bernie has an amazing debate on the 15th, this could get interesting again.

Speaker 3 But if Biden does what he needs to do to take advantage of the demographic advantages he has in the primary, you know, the Sanders campaign may ultimately say, look, we can't catch up.

Speaker 3 We've set its pledge delegates, and maybe this doesn't even go all the way through to New Jersey. We'll see.

Speaker 3 But I do not think we're going to have drama in Milwaukee.

Speaker 2 So is the Democratic Party overall in better shape than it looked like it was?

Speaker 3 Well, there really isn't a Democratic Party. What is the Democratic Party? You know, the Democratic Party is our elected officials, our voters.

Speaker 2 I think that there's not really a Democratic establishment. But are you going to stand by the old Will Rogers line that you're not a member of an organized party or a Democrat?

Speaker 3 Well, the Republican Party isn't either. I mean, you know, it's just a confederation of people, basically.

Speaker 3 Yeah, so here's what I'd say. The menace is looming, and he is ready for this battle.

Speaker 3 But there are more than enough voters to get rid of him. So that's a good place to be.

Speaker 3 But the execution to fully maximize, I think, our mathematical advantage in terms of the number of people to beat him is super hard.

Speaker 3 And, you you know, there's no question that, you know,

Speaker 3 if Biden's the nominee, they have a lot of work to do to strengthen this campaign, from digital sophistication to just great boots on the ground, making sure that the performance is there every day.

Speaker 3 I mean, okay, there's going to be a lot of pressure on Joe Biden's campaign if he's nominees. Likeway with Bernie, and they should have it.
If you don't win this election, it's shameful.

Speaker 3 You know, you are the person.

Speaker 3 Above all, we all have a role to play, but that nominee and their campaign leadership better win because the consequences for the planet and for this country are hard to put into words.

Speaker 3 And so it is the most serious thing in the world. So giving a bad interview, it happens, but it's really not acceptable.
Not fully maximizing your campaign, not acceptable.

Speaker 3 I mean, this has to be executed at a level we've never seen in American politics, in my view. And do I have some concerns about that? I do, but that's the standard.

Speaker 3 And that probably concerns me more than anything else is our nominee probably within 60 days is going to be in the full throes of a heated general election battle that probably has the biggest stakes the country's ever known.

Speaker 3 Maybe you could argue 1860, but other than that, and against somebody who's a terrible president, a terrible human being, who is going to be a super savvy, well-funded, savage opponent.

Speaker 3 That's what we're up against.

Speaker 2 All right. David Plough, thanks for being here on the ticket.
Thanks, Isaac.

Speaker 2 Well, so that's the way things look now after this crazy week. What they will look like a week from now, who knows.
But we'll pick it up next week here on the ticket, Politics from the Atlantic.

Speaker 2 Thanks to Kevin Townsend for producing and editing this episode, and to Catherine Wells, the executive producer for Atlantic Podcasts. Our theme music comes to us from Breakmaster Cylinder.

Speaker 2 If you like the show and want to support it, along with the rest of our work here at the Atlantic, the best way is with a subscription. Just go to theatlantic.com/slash radio subscribe.

Speaker 2 Thanks for listening. Catch you next week.

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