Overtime – Episode #407 (Originally aired 10/14/16)

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night Series, Real Time with Bill Mark.

Bob Kerry, do you think either candidate has a good enough policy on trade?

You know,

that is one of the naughtiest ones.

Trying to get into the TPP weeds.

Where's your?

Well, I think Hillary Clinton's got a much better idea what we need to do to make it.

She was for it before she was against it.

Well, but Donald Trump didn't care about trade five years ago.

He's pro-choice five years ago, pro-choice.

So who knows what he's for?

But he doesn't understand.

TPP, for it against it?

Actually, I think I would vote for it.

You would?

Yeah, I think it's less than TPP to me is more about bringing nations into a set of rules than it is about trade.

It is one of those issues where I'll read one article and go, I'm for it, and then I'll read another one and go, I'm against it.

No matter what you do with trade, the problem is we do not have a good safety net that works for working people.

Their pensions are going down.

They have a declining number of people that have health insurance, a number of people that have high deductible health care plans.

And so they do look at trade and they say,

it's going to lower my wages.

They look at immigration.

They say the same thing.

They say the same thing about technology.

And they're not wrong, right?

Well, I don't think they are wrong.

But

I don't think if you set price controls and do all the things that you think you need to do in reaction, all you're going to do is drive down quality and drive up prices.

I think you need a different ⁇ we needed a safety net that took care of 65-year-olds

in 1965.

We need something different today.

We need for younger workers who are basically getting screwed.

Okay.

Should we have confidence in the ability of polls to predict the outcome of this election?

Yes.

I'm still nervous and I will be.

No, we should have no confidence in the war.

Brexit didn't win.

Brexit did not win.

All the polling mechanisms are changing.

People decline to answer polls.

There's over-polling.

People are sick of being asked.

Also, you're talking about a shifting electorate,

an electorate that is shifting so swiftly.

There's massive voter registration drives, people dropping in and out of

interest and participation and engagement with the election.

I don't think we should trust polls.

I mean, it could be a landslide for Hillary.

There could be a lot of people out there who just are not letting their voice be known.

We've never had round up all those people and take them out of the country on the ballot before.

And

people like that.

Yes.

We've also never had a woman on the ballot before.

Ever.

And we don't know.

We just don't know.

We don't know.

Here in Los Angeles, we talk about the Tom Bradley election.

Tom Bradley.

You know, people don't know.

A lot of people told the pollsters, oh, yes, I want to vote for a black mayor.

This is the early 90s.

And then when they got in the booth, they decided they didn't.

Right.

And you worry about that.

I mean, the polls look good for Hillary, but Jesus Christ.

She's also, I mean, a terrible candidate.

She's got to stop saying it, the debates, go to hillaryclinton.com.

Don't say that.

Say it to his face.

He's right there.

Say you're full of shit, you asshole.

Don't say go to HillaryClinton.com.

I have to stress, I agree with you.

Please stop saying HillaryClinton.com.

However,

the peril.

of Hillary Clinton turning to Donald Trump and saying, eat shit asshole, is so high.

The amount of pressure, women don't get to express their anger that way and still be like, I was just like her.

Okay.

Not literally.

Okay, but even split the difference.

Did you see how controlled she was in that debate?

It was heartbreaking.

And you know what?

One of the ways, Andrew said earlier, we've had a hard time remembering that she's a woman because she's so firmly, you know, identified as part of the establishment.

We forget that she's this outsider.

One of the impact, one of the effects of the past week has been watching this woman, this, whatever you think of her, overqualified, overachiever woman, in contention for a job against this know-nothing, sexually predatory lout,

and watching that woman have to compete with him as if this is a normal situation in which he is, he's intimidating.

And she can't just kick him in the bus.

And what was more frightening, right after the debate to hear the media people go, I think Donald Trump did himself a lot of good tonight.

Right.

The rapist racist did himself a lot of good.

Look, she lost.

Rebecca, she lost on all the issues.

She doesn't have a good answer on these issues.

She's incapable of really.

She can give you a laundry list.

She can give you a laundry list, but can she communicate it to people?

Can she tell us what she wants to do as president?

No, she can't.

Well, she does, Andrew.

Of course she does.

She spends too much time.

Not effectively.

Not effectively.

Right, because she's too deep in the weeds.

She knows too much about the policy.

Do you know how

this is what I was saying about women suddenly being

identifying her as a woman?

She's going to be good at the job.

She's not good at running.

That's what it is.

I completely agree with you.

I don't see why she's going to be able to do it.

By the way, to your question,

I answer absolutely.

Not all polls you can count on.

But right now, Hillary Clinton's got a lead.

She's got a lead as a consequence of this tape, as a consequence of people discovering who Donald Trump is.

They don't like who he is.

She's got a 19-point margin right now with 51% of the population who were going to vote who are women.

And it's not Brexit.

We're identifying our voters.

We're going after our voters.

We're not doing a very good job.

in Iowa, by the way, on that score.

Really, we're not doing a very good job in Iowa, but we're doing a very good job in Ohio, a very good job in Florida.

We're winning Pennsylvania.

The polls are accurate in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

I mean, yes, you've got to go out and vote.

Maybe your vote doesn't matter in California and mine doesn't matter in New York, but people sitting out this election are making a big mistake.

But right now, for all the right reasons, she's got a big lead.

And I also want to say that

the inverse of the Bradley effect, which is Republican women telling pollsters that they're going to vote for Donald Trump or telling husbands or friends that they're going to vote for Donald Trump and then going into a voting booth and maybe voting for Billy Trump is another possibility.

At some level, this is.

People are pissed off.

This is a change election.

She represents the antithesis of change.

So

she is incredibly weak on the core fundamentals of the change.

What would you like her to change that she's not changing?

She is just simply, I'm talking about, I'm being analytic here.

I'm just saying, for most people, she represents, rightly or wrongly, the established powers.

She's already been in the the White House.

Let me take that.

Public life for third man.

First of all, poverty rates are going down.

Unemployment's going down after the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

What do you want to change?

Other than trying to do something about income inequality.

I mean, there are things that we need to do.

But I think the case, Andrew, this was my point at the end of the show last week, our editor we did, was saying the whole election for Donald Trump hangs on this idea that America is, the wolves are at the door.

If you listen to Donald Trump, it's all gone to shit.

But if you you look at the statistics, actually things are pretty good.

Violent crime is down.

Unemployment is at what they consider full employment.

The stock market is as high as it's ever been.

This idea that America is hanging by a thread is ridiculous.

What the Democrats should do is

counter punch on that.

And when he says America is going to shit, say it is not.

That's all in your head, you fucking pant shitters.

So

I don't know why we need a change agent.

We need someone to keep going in the direction we're going.

Let's talk about that.

You can't do the t-shirts, the slogans, the bumper stickers.

None of that you get to do.

And look at that, look at the platform that Bernie Sanders held up.

You can say, oh, there's no change here, except that that platform includes mandated paid family leave.

It includes subsidized child care.

It includes a raise of the minimum wage, it includes immigration reform, it includes things that have not been, it includes the wanting to abolish the Hyde and Helms amendment, includes, it includes progressive possibilities that have not,

that were like third rail five minutes ago.

Yeah, but

right now she's saying go to HillaryKelton.com, it's all in there.

No, I agree with that.

She's not going to do that.

I agree that.

But it's not, she's not proposing change.

Progress in politics is not usually sexy.

It's not.

It's

the harder the possibility.

I'm saying simply that people are looking forward, not past.

For reasons we talked about tonight, they're very insecure and scared about the way the global economy is affecting them, the way the culture is shifting, and

they want to find somebody who can commit.

She's the one who went to West Virginia and, of course, it got all taken out of context and said, basically, look, coal is not the thing of the future, as it shouldn't be.

We found something better

than digging up a toxic black rock and burning it.

Deal with it.

I'm

so sick of people bleeding about their fucking stupid jobs.

Get a different job than the worst job in the world.

And who would help you find a different job?

Hillary Clinton is the one with the detailed, nerdy plan to take you from the stupid job, retrain you to go into the new economy.

But do they care about that?

No.

They want you to preserve the job that'll give me black lung disease when I'm 40.

They're not getting black lung disease any longer.

You're not going to retrain somebody.

If you're in a mine, you don't get black lung disease?

No, not any longer.

If you want to.

What happened down in the mine?

If you want to retrain somebody's...

No,

if I have been...

Of course you do.

No,

if I've got a mining job, my father's had a mining job,

and you come and say to me, I'm going to retrain you, and you're going to do what?

Make $12 an hour working in some service economy?

No, you're...

No, no, retrain you maybe for working with solar panels.

Unlikely.

Unlikely?

No, somebody else is.

Look, I'm for retraining people.

I'm for trying to go to the new.

I'm just saying, why do miners get upset?

Because they're going to get left behind.

You know what?

They're not going to be able to do that.

Hillary's husband sold that idea great.

I mean, he's a much better salesman.

But when he was running, that's what he ran on, and he did it great.

She's just not a good salesperson.

Well, I'm trying to answer the central.

I'm trying to say, Bill, I'm trying to simply say,

this question was about why do we think it might be closer?

And one of those is she's incapable of connecting with most people.

Horrible.

And that is 80% of the job of President of the United States.

I hate to tell you that.

I agree.

There's a lot of it.

I agree.

And she doesn't have that connection.

No.

He has a real connection with his supporters.

I don't feel massive enthusiasm for her because she hasn't mobilized people.

It's party.

And that's what's very worrisome.

Yeah.

Is because a lot of people don't feel the, you know, well, I'll sleep in.

The election's in the bag.

Trump's a clown.

He could never win.

I hear this all the time in Liberal California, in there, in our bubble.

Trump could never win.

It could never happen.

I don't believe it.

It could never happen in your town.

You don't live in America.

I go to America almost every weekend.

They're not the flyover states to me.

I land in them.

I go to Nebraska.

I talk to people.

I'm telling you, Trump could still win.

Don't ever forget that.

Thank you, everybody.

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