Ron Brownstein: Don't Take the Bait

Hey guys, a couple programming notes. Number one, my colleague, the great Mona Charan, she has a new pod out or a reform pod, I guess we've begged to differ.
We have retired at the end of the Biden years. And Mona is instead launching a new pod, the Mona Charan show, which is going to focus on long form conversations, you know, about big picture issues off of the news.
She's got Richard Reeves talking about, you know, the threats to men and this whole conversation around that on the pod on Monday, which might be a distraction from whatever else is happening in the news that day. She's excited about it.
We're excited about it. So I'll put a link in the show notes here.
Make sure you can go and subscribe to the feed to get it in your Apple podcast or Spotify podcasts. And, you know, we'll be doing crossovers and have a moment on here to talk about it again soon.
A couple of the things I'm popping on to YouTube, either if there's breaking stuff in the afternoon after I've already taped the pod, or if they're kind of niche topics, you know, where I'm doing interviews with people that I want to grab that we just kind of can't fit into the pod schedule. So for an example on that, I talked to Jim Himes, Congressman from Connecticut yesterday about this fight over the Intel Committee chairmanship.
Super interesting and I think important fight in the Republican coalition. If you're interested in that, you can go find it on YouTube.
Same thing today. I haven't taped it yet, but I'm about to tape with one of my favorite tax reporters.
We're going to get nerdy on the Treasury Secretary hearing with Scotty Bessent,

which happened yesterday.

There's some pretty interesting testimony on that yesterday that I think Democrats,

Democratic political consultants in particular, are going to have a close ear too

when it comes to their interest in extending tax cuts for billionaires, etc.

So we'll be doing that this afternoon as well.

And we're back normal schedule next week.

We will be taping Monday morning with Bill talking a lot about the coming. I'm not going to say it, but also Trump's rally on Sunday and then a full schedule next week.
So stick with us. I get it.
If you don't want to turn on the tube next week, I get it. But you can still hear my dulcet voice.
And, you know, I'll give you a trigger warning before I play any voices that you don't want to hear up next ron brownstein this guy understands data and and what is happening with the electorate better than anybody i love having him on the pod we're going to do a little bit of look back to the 2024 election but also look forward on kind of this demographic the coalitions and and how things are shifting as well as uh he comes from he's uh coming from california so we'll talk a little bit more about the politics of the fires and everything happening out there and how climate change is going to be affecting all of us. So it's a good convo.
Hope you guys enjoy it. Up next, Ron Brownstein.
Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
It is Friday. I've got with me friend of the pod, Ron Brownstein, senior editor at The Atlantic, senior political analyst for CNN.
His most recent book is Rock Me on the Water, 1974, the year Los Angeles transformed music, movies, television, and politics. I wish we could just talk about that, but I will talk about LA and the fires and you're coming at us from Venice.
We'll get to all that at the end. But first, how are you doing? How are things? We're okay.
I mean, we were packed and ready to go, but the evacuations never got down as far south as us. They really kind of stopped in Santa Monica.
But, you know, Tim, I mean, like everybody else, we know people who have just been utterly devastated about this. I mean, when you think about it, there were the two largest fires.
One was on the heart of the west side, and one was on the heart

of the east side. So it feels like everybody in LA knows people who have been displaced or

faced these unimaginable losses. And it's going to be a long road back for not only the city as a

whole, but for so many individuals. It's just a tough time.
Yeah, it's a nightmare. I keep hearing

Thank you. It's going to be a long road back for not only the city as a whole, but for so many individuals.
It's just a tough time. Yeah, it's a nightmare.
I keep hearing from friends and people out there who go back to the neighborhoods to check on what's happening in the Palisades. Everybody's like, it's worse than you even think.
Just total devastation. I want to do the politics of that towards the end.
But speaking of total devastation i want to get your i haven't had you on since the election so i wanted to get your biggest picture view on kind of what we know now there's you know some more data has come out there's all these snap vibes and narratives that get out there and and at the time you interviewed the harris advisors about a month ago we'll put that link in the show notes people want to read that, but I want to cut through at the time, you interviewed the Harris advisors about a month ago. We'll put that link in the show notes.
People don't want to read that. But I want to cut through, like, at the most top level, there's a fundamental question that is emerging on the Democratic side.
Was this about depressed Democratic turnout or was it about a shift towards Trump? And obviously, it's always a little bit of both. But I'm wondering how you would adjudicate that conversation.
I think that there was both because they were both a dependent variable of the larger dynamic. And the larger dynamic was that a considerable majority of the country was dissatisfied with the results they got from the Biden presidency.
And in the normal hydraulics of American politics voted for the party that was not in the White House. I have said, and I believe the most shocking thing about this election was how normal it was.
I mean, you go through, given that Donald Trump is anything but a normal candidate, and yet voters more or less treated him as one in that through American history, as I said, when people are unhappy with the way things are going, they vote for the other party. And, you know, we saw in both the exit polls and the AP vote cast, which are our two main sources so far, we'll get more later on what voters did and why.
And they used to be

Coke and Pepsi, like kind of this rivalry, but they ended up being very, very similar in this election in terms of what they came back with and what they found, almost identical. And they both found that roughly 60% of Americans disapproved of Joe Biden's job performance and 80% plus of those disapprovers voted for Trump.
They found that 70% of Americans described the economy as negative in negative terms, and 70% of those people voted for Trump. That was essentially what we have seen through American history.
And you know, one, you know, you may have seen like the one data point that really underscored

this to me was in 2008, when Barack Obama won to succeed the unpopular outgoing president of the

other party, right? 62% of voters who said the country was on the wrong track voted for him.

Okay. In 2024, when Donald Trump won to succeed the unpopular outgoing president of the other

I'll talk to you later. was on the wrong track voted for him.
Okay. In 2024, when Donald Trump won to succeed the unpopular outgoing president of the other party, wait for it, 62% of voters who said the country was on the wrong track voted for him.
For all the things that make Donald Trump a distinctive candidate, like, you know, I mean, all of the personal baggage, all of the remarks that could alienate various groups, all of the extreme policy proposals, you know, enough of the electorate treated him as if he was, you know, Dwight Eisenhower after Harry Truman, or, you know, or Warren Harding after Woodrow Wilson. I mean, maybe that's a better analogy than Dwight.
Grover Cleveland after Benjamin Harrison. Yes, exactly.
Exactly. You know, so or Grover Cleveland again after Benjamin Harrison, you know, McKinley after Cleveland, like, basically, you know, there were other things going on.
I mean, clearly, the long term shift among non college non white men is something that Democrats have to worry about. But if you ask me what was the biggest thing that decided this election, it was that a distinct, a considerable, a comfortable majority of Americans were dissatisfied with the Biden presidency and voted for the other party in a reflection of the historic hydraulics of American politics.
And one last point that I think really underscores that, which is, you know, as I have written, Trump won a substantial number of votes from people who still expressed significant doubts about him and his agenda, right? I mean, I had to go back to my stories. Look, but basically somewhere between one sixth and one fifth of his voters would agree with sentiments like he was too extreme, or he would steer the country in an authoritarian

direction, or he lacks the character to be president.

You know, he won a higher share of women who identified as pro-choice in 2024 after Dobbs than he did in 2020 before Dobbs. Okay.
More than a quarter, just let that sink in for a minute. That's enough to just make me want to hang up the podcast mic, to be honest.
A quarter of Latinos, more than a quarter of Latinos who said they opposed mass deportation voted for him. And, you know, what all of these different data points tell me is that the dissatisfaction, primarily over inflation, to some extent on the border, just simply outweighed at this moment voters' hesitations and concerns about Trump.
I've been thinking about this, like when you go through all of the results, the county results, the state results, all of these exit poll and vote cast results, it's almost like you're sitting in an archaeological dig. And you are picking up little pieces of broken pottery, and you're dusting them off, and trying to see how they fit together, you know, and that's what it feels like to me after elections.
And this is my 11th presidential

election. But to me, there was one data point that was like the master shard.
It was like the Rosetta Stone. And I'll tell you what it was.
I got the exit poll people to run this for me. 36% of all voters, so we're talking about a lot of people, a big chunk of voters, 36% of all voters said they were pro-choice, but viewed the economy as only fair or poor.
Okay. So like, to me, that was kind of the battle of the bulge.
I mean, that was Harris's best argument. Trump is a threat to your rights, particularly on reproductive rights and Trump's best argument, which is that the Biden administration has mismanaged the economy.
And in that collision of strength against Trump, Trump basically broke even. In the exit poll, he won 50% among voters who are both pro-choice and negative on the economy.
In the exit poll, he beat Harris by three. In the AP VoteCast, she beat him by two.
But either way, It meant that vastly more voters who are pro-choice voted for him than voted for Republican candidates in 2022, because they prioritized the economy more. And that just could not be overcome, particularly in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin.
Last, I'm sorry, I'm filibustering you here. But really, this kind of really underscores it.
Among white women without a college degree, right? They are just crucial to how those states turn out, right? Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, they're always crucial to how those states turn out. Among white women without a college degree who supported legal abortion, but described the economy in negative terms, you know how they broke? Two to one for Trump.
And that basically tipped those states, even though Democrats had $120 million program. Wait, hold on.
I just want to put a final point on that. So was that non-college white women or all white women? No, non-college white women.
Non-college. Non-college white women who supported legal abortion, but were negative on the economy.
They voted two to one for Trump. Even the college white women who supported legal abortion and were negative on the economy only narrowly voted for Harris.
And all of this explains what I kind of view as a critical variable, which is that if you look at 2022 and you look at candidates like Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro, Tony Evers, Raphael Warnock, Katie Hobbs, Mark Kelly, they all won a significantly higher share of voters who were pro-choice in their state than Harris did two years later. I mean, Harris just, the abortion issue did not move as many people as it did two years earlier because too many of them were were unhappy with the economy and were not willing to look past it in the presidential race in the way they were in a governor or Senate race.
And to me, you know, we can talk about the structural change, and you can't deny there's some of that happening with non-white men in particular. But the core thing that happened was that economic discontent overwhelmed both the Democrats' best issues and overwhelmed the doubts about Trump, which are still there.
So it was not Rovember, is what you're telling me. It turned out not to be Rovember.
You know, it turned out that, I don't know, what was the period of the highest inflation? The summer of 21 till the fall of 22? like it turned out that was the decisive period of this election and that 2022 as i wrote kind

of gave democrats a misleading signal because, you know, as you wrote, I wrote, everybody wrote, it was Democrats in 22 won an unprecedentedly high share of voters who were discontented with Biden and discontented with the economy. The double haters.
We talked about this all the time. It was like they cheated.
The Dems did great with the double haters. Yeah, not this time.
Yeah, you wrote about that. If people want to read more about this all the time she did that he the the dems did great with

the double haters yeah not this time yeah you wrote you wrote about that if people want to read more about this it's called democrats error message looking at like kind of what was missed from 2022 i want to dig into that a little deeper because i think there's possibly a different interpretation i okay i hear what you're saying about how the economy overwhelmed concerns about Trump in a row. But is that true true it doesn't seem like the same voters in 2022 tacked back right it was a different electorate right yeah and maybe is the question is the types of people that are showing up in a presidential election is a group that's meaningfully different in the types of information they have about uh candidates.
They have less information. Are they more inclined to be moved by cultural kind of issues and cultural mores and worries that the Democrats moved to the left on cultural issues? Right? I mean, because to your point, like the economy got better between 22 and 24, not worse, right? And so maybe it's more about the makeup of the electorate.
I don't know, but you kind of analyze this more. What would you think about that? That's definitely part of the story.
I mean, I think one big part of the story is that voters view the president as the repository of economic policy, and we're not as willing to look past their economic discontent in picking a president as they were a governor or senator. So I think that's part of it.
But I agree. That's moronic, but yeah, that's true.
That's a good, that's probably right. That's right.
Correct is an analysis of what voters think. But FYI, if you have that voter in your life, the governor actually is a pretty, is pretty important to your, to your economic well-being.
And your day-to-day life. You know, look, I mean, before we get to your second point, maybe this does get to your second point.
I mean, all year, right, Democratic pollsters and people working in kind of progressive groups would say that every time they did a focus group with Black, Latino, or even in some cases, Asian-American men, they would say you could not get through an hour and a half without hearing what one described to me as the nightmare phrase. And the nightmare phrase in this focus group was, yeah, he's a pig.
He's a racist. He's a misogynist.
He says and does things that I don't respect. But if I'm being honest, I have more money in my pocket at the end of the week when he was president, right? So that is the universe of voters who, as you say, were more likely to participate in many ways, white ones and non-white ones, in the midterm, in the presidential election than in the midterm.
And there is definitely a problem Democrats face in that many of these surge voters are now, as you point out, not listening to us today, you know, not tuning in even to Fox or Newsmax. I mean, they're people who are largely avoiding political content and political news.
But, you know, as I say, they are expert in their own lives. And to say that, like, these were voters who drifted toward Trump because they didn't know all the wonderful, wonderful things Biden has done, which I think I've heard at times, not from you, but from, you know, some some Democrats.
That's not right. I think what was clear, not only for these surge voters, but for a lot of traditional voters, more regular voters, is that Biden's failures eclipsed his successes for them.
And the way they interpreted the Biden economy

was inflation. Biden said this last night with Lawrence O'Donnell.
Biden was like, well, not exactly, but he was like, maybe I should have put my name on the stimulus checks and the people should have learned more about the infrastructure. And it's kind of like, no, I don't, that's not it.
It wasn't. It's not.
Biden had real successes economically that were precisely targeted toward the groups that really delivered the election to Trump.

I mean, as I've written going all the way back to 2021, he had a very different theory of the case than Obama or Clinton. Obama or Clinton, both were more in the camp of what you earn depends on what you learn and figuring out how to get more people, you know, advanced education that would theoretically equip them for better paying jobs that would open up as we expand trade and lower barriers around the world, even if that costs some, as it turned out, many blue collar jobs in the US.
Biden was very different from day one, in that he basically emphasized from the beginning that he wanted to create work that could support a middle class life for people without a college degree. Tim, every time he went to one of those plant openings, the Intel plant in Ohio, or the other semiconductor plant in Arizona, or one of the EV plants, he talked about how many blue collar jobs he was creating.
And in fact, according to the White House, they created 1.6 million jobs in manufacturing and construction. I mean, that is a serious record over a trillion dollars in private investment linked to his big economic bills.
And yet, 1.6 million jobs. Okay, how many non-college workers and voters were there? Maybe 90 million, right? So for the vast majority of them, what was their experience of the economy? It wasn't the stock market going up because most of them don't have stock.
They were probably employed when Biden got into office. They may have benefited from bidding on blue collar, you know know labor that bid up their wages but what was their main experience it was a gas and groceries cost too much so like focusing on the idea that these were low information voters definitely true but to me kind of obscures the larger point as i say they are expert in their own lives and they were not feeling that they got what they expected or desired out of the Biden presidency.
They had this point of reference, this idea that it was easier under Trump. They had more money in their pocket under Trump.
And even though his agenda, by most serious analysis, had more inflationary risk than Harris, it's kind of hard to convince people that it's going to be worse under the guy that they remember it being better under. I think that you're absolutely right.
And I don't want this follow-up question to make it seem like I'm minimizing the fact that people, particularly working class folks, were voting in part on the fact that they're experiencing pain from inflation and that their wages weren't meeting it. That said, it's important to kind of hash out, right right like how much of this is economy and how much of this is cultural right because it matters to what the democrats do going forward yeah and and i just i just want to use one example because it was such a hot spot in the election i pulled this up for you on looked at clark county ohio uh which is where springfield is right so the whole the whole controversy about the haitians was premised on the fact that there were more jobs coming into Clark County into Springfield and that they couldn't fill them right so they had to bring in Haitians so like there was and that Springfield was on a comeback so there's economic growth happening in Springfield if you ask Mike DeWine or the new senator he just appointed John Husted they would talk about the growth economic growth in Clark County that happened.
In 16, Trump 57, Clinton 38. In 24, Trump

64. to john housted they would talk about the growth economic growth in clark county that happened in 16 trump 57 clinton 38 in 24 trump 64 harris 34 so i he gained a net 11 points in a county that was having economic growth over that period on the back of biden policies and yet still people are like nope eff it and so to me that says that it's it's obviously

all these things are a mix but there's a big part of this that is some just cultural disconnect you know totally i mean look i mean the core of the trump coalition the core of the trump coalition are voters who are hostile to the way america is changing on every front culturally demographically and economically. If you go back to 2016, the very clear research of the CES, the Cooperative

Service, America is changing on every front, culturally, demographically, and economically. If you go back to 2016, the very clear research off the CES, the cooperative survey, was that the best predictor of support for Trump was not economic distress.
It was the belief that whites face more discrimination at this point than non-whites and that women are really seeking special favors when they ask for equal treatment. And that cultural resentment is at the heart of the Trump coalition.
I mean, without that, and still is. The last piece that I would say, the last piece that gets him over the top is in this election were voters who may actually be even inclined toward those positions or not,

but are not really moved by them. I think they are voters who are moved more by performance, by Biden's performance, and believing that Trump gave them a better chance to kind of get what they wanted out of their own lives.
I agree with you that I think it is inevitable that the next Democratic nominee, a la Clinton after Dukakis in 92, a transition that I covered really intensively, is going to be more centrist on all of these cultural hot point issues. There's no, I think there is- You do? I do, yes.
It's inevitable, you think? I think it is highly likely. I have a hard time after this result seeing the Democrats just kind of ignoring any of the signals they were getting on crime or immigration.
But you know, there's a way- I'm worried that it is the Luigi Mangione pivot and that the Democrats say, what we really need to do is be meaner towards CEOs and we can still not change anything culturally. I don't think that's a totally irrational thing for them to think.
I think it's wrong, but I think that that might happen. The problem with that line of argument, even in the Democratic Party, is that even if you believe that voters were not making decisions based on these cultural issues, the cultural issues still had an economic impact because at the least, at the least, it is, I think, indisputable.
And I think widely accepted across the Democratic Party, that the way Trump used cultural issues sent the message to just kind of a wide swath of voters living paycheck to paycheck, that Harris and Democrats care more about various, you know, kind of small groups with specific problems than they do about you. You know, she's for they, them, right? So like, whether or not you think, I think I have this right, in the vote cast, most voters opposed banning gender affirming care for minors.
Okay, most of them opposed it. But a lot of them who Yes yes.
AP vote, yes. Yes.
And, but a lot of them who opposed the ban voted for Trump anyway, in the same pattern that I'm talking about. And where this hurt Harris, I think unquestionably, like where there's no doubt this hurt Harris is the sense that her priorities were askew, that Democrats were not really worried.
They were more worried about undocumented immigrants in New York and, you know, criminals rights and, you know, transgender teens than they were about me putting food on the table. And I suppose there will be a fight about this, but I suspect the nominee in 28, you know, the governors will have a leg up.
And I think any governor who might be nominated will pursue a more centrist overall cultural message. And I do think that, you know, look, the kind of consulting class doesn't always get its way, you know, and they shouldn't.
But if the consultant class did get its way, there is as close to 100% unanimity as I think you can find that Democrats have to avoid taking the bait on all of the cultural fights Trump provokes and really try to center their messaging over the next two years on the core argument that he promised to solve your problems, but all he's really doing is enriching further his rich buddies. Like that's what they want the next two years to be about.
Trump will certainly give them a lot of ammunition to make that argument. But, you know, again, not getting drawn into these culture battles.
And look, some of them may be unavoidable. I mean, if he takes mass deportation to the level that he's talking about, it's kind of unavoidable to display some resistance to that.
But I do think coming out of this election, even amid disagreement about how much the cultural issues, how much voters voted on those issues, I think there is a basically party-wide consensus that it projected the message that we're more worried about these somewhat fringe or esoteric concerns than we are about the broad mass of people. I love to zag from the consultant class.
It makes me feel good because I think that that is correct. I agree that that frame is correct as the big frame, but I think they have to.
They have to pick strategic battles to fight them on the culture front, I think is one where, and probably where I really disagree is that the battles they would pick would be the wrong ones. So maybe it's better.
So maybe it's better that they don't do any at all. But anyway, for another day, before we get to Biden and the fires, I want to drill down one more time on the original question, right? Because there are a couple of stats that I have seen over the last week.
One of them came from you that I want to talk about, which was one was about this question of turnout versus people shifting. One of them was about 90 of the counties in the country moved towards trump right yeah which is unbelievable which to me again shows that this is movement towards trump then if you drill down on particularly these counties and precincts where you have high degrees of non-white working class voters the numbers are unbelievable like particularly outside of the swing states but states, but even in the swing states, like the Bronx, et cetera.
The other side of the argument, though, the turnout side of the argument, this one really got my goat. Your fellow Venice resident, Peter Hamby shared this one yesterday.
The young people least likely to vote in 2024 because they didn't like either of the candidates were collegeated Zoomers. So there certainly was a drop among young voters who didn't feel motivated by Biden.
So anyway, how do you adjudicate all that? So, you know, I'm trying to remember whether it was the exit poll or the vote cast, but I think it was both. Among people who voted in 2020, it was basically even, Trump and Biden.
The returning voters from 2020 split evenly between Biden and Trump in 2020, which means that there were a lot of, by definition, there were a lot of Biden voters who didn't show up, right? Because Biden won by, you know, 7 million votes. So the fact that the returning electorate was, you know, basically 50-50.
Well, not necessarily. I guess some of those, maybe my math is bad here couldn't sound couldn't sound that be based on people just switching Biden people switching to Trump or the actual turnout number was less.
No there's this is I'm trying to remember it was the exit or the vote cast or maybe both of them you you ask people whether they voted in 2020 and who they voted for in 2020. Yeah.
Okay so this is these are actual 2020 voters. Oh god god god I understand.
Yeah so so there should be like a you know four point Biden advantage and there wasn't. Okay.
So these are actual 2020 voters. Oh, got it.
I understand. So there should be like a four-point Biden advantage and there wasn't.
Okay. So that pretty clearly, I think, will say, when we get to catalyst, we'll be the best, the catalyst analysis will be the best analysis of the drop-off.
And I think that's real. But Trump won new voters, people who had not voted in 2020.
And so you can't ignore that. I mean, that's real, too.
I mean, I don't think Trump vastly expanded his support. I mean, you know, he got he did get more votes than he did.
He certainly did in blue states. He certainly expanded his support in New York, New Jersey.
Well, I, you know, his overall national total vote was what, like about what was 79 million versus like, you know, he got 78 million. He got more votes than he did last time.
But there was also a significant element of Biden voters who didn't come back. And I guess I have not gotten this engaged in this debate, because I feel like that both things are like two sides of the same coin.
It's like the people who were disappointed in the outcomes of the Biden administration, some of them were people who voted for him in 2020 and didn't come back. And some of them were new people who came out and voted for Trump.
But it's still like either side of the ledger is still being driven. It's not like they're still being driven by largely the same force, which is, you know, people didn't like what they got out of the last four years.
And they thought Trump would do better on the things they cared most about, which overshadowed the continuing hesitations many of them still had about him. I mean, just kind of let it sink in that Trump won a higher share of women who identified as pro-choice in 24 than he did in 2020.
Okay. It wasn't like abortion was less relevant in 24 than it was in 20.
I mean, it was- You also can't blame that on the campaign strategy, right? It's not like Kamala Harris didn't, you know, didn't ensure that was a high salience issue for voters. Like people knew.
People knew, exactly. And it was just that there, for enough voters, their just you know was more important American Bridge spent I think it was 150 million dollars on a program aimed solely at non-college white women in Michigan Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and Harris did no better than Biden maybe a little worse among them them, you know, after all of that effort, because like, no matter what messages you were driving, these were people who felt that their life just didn't work at the moment.
like i'm not minimizing that cultural issues were a problem on on some fronts for democrats although i am in the camp to think the problem was more one of voters making judgments about your priorities rather than making decisions on those issues themselves. But either way, it has created a consensus, I think, among people who do politics for a living for Democrats, that Democrats have to figure out a way to focus on the economic struggles of middle class and working class families, avoid the bait of getting drawn into endless culture wars with Trump, and hammer away the message that he's really about enriching his rich buddies, not helping you.
Don't forget, in terms of thinking about how that may play out, Trump's lowest approval rating in his first term, besides January 6th, was very clearly around the effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act. That was his lowest point as president.

So I think that's where Jeffries wants to go.

I think that's where Schumer wants to go.

But as you say, the discipline to avoid having the next two years defined by a series of

culture war battles would be something of a break in behavior for Democrats.

Yeah, for everybody.

Just to close a loop, it was Trump got 74.2 million votes in 2020, 77.3 in 2024. So 3 million more, second most of all time.
So, you know, there's something to think about that. After January 6th, second most presidential votes, raw votes of all time.
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Join them at wearethere.us. wearethere there dot us that website again is we are there dot us okay i want to talk about the biden farewell just uh while we're here we have some uh a little breaking news due to the dangerously cold temperatures expected monday trump's inauguration is moving indoors that's going to vibe.
Hey, you know what? I was in the pool for Reagan's inauguration in 1985 that had to be moved indoors. Really? Tell us about that.
Yeah, it was like, you know, super, super cold. I was working then at National Journal.
And somehow, you know, it was our turn in the White House pool. And being very junior, I think I was the only person in the office and like the phone rings and it's the White House.
And it's like, you guys are the pool. We're moving the inaugural inside.
You want to go? Yeah, I'll go to the inaugural. And it was so cramped that I was sitting on the, you know, how you sit on the edge.
Where was it? Inside where? Where did they move it to? It was inside the Capitol. I think it was in the rotunda, you know, and there was a press riser with like, you know, all these cameras packed in, which would normally be spread out on the mall.
And I was sitting next to a senator, like because we were all there was no place for anybody, you know. So there you go.
Trump, you know, will not be the biggest crowd ever, I guess. Sean Spicer off the hook this time.
Yeah. All right.
Just really quick, I can only take so much Biden legacy stuff these days, but you do have an article in The Atlantic on why late regime presidencies fail. I'd love for you just to give us the thumbnail of it, and then people can go read the rest if they're intrigued.
So there's a great political scientist at Yale named Stephen Skowronik, who wrote a book in 1993, he's updated a few times, that argues that presidents fail or succeed based not only on their innate talents, but where they fall in the cycle of competition between the parties. Okay, there's kind of a waxing and waning of the strength of the parties through American history, great realigning elections of 1828, 1860, 1896, 1932, arguably 1968, to some extent 1992, where the balance of power in the electorate shifts toward one side.
And Skowronik basically argues that the presidents that we consider the weakest through American history are those who come in at the tail end, kind of the ass end of one of these coalitions, a coalition that has seen better days, but is able to squeeze out one more victory. So that would be John Adams in 1800, John Quincy Adams, his son in 1824, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan for the Democrats in the 1850s, Hoover in 1928, Carter in 1976.
Arguably, I think, as Scalronik does as well, Biden bears a lot of similarity to this. Biden was elected after a string where Democrats had won- But HW, 92? Wouldn't HW 92 count or no? Yeah, HW would kind of count too.
Yeah, I mean, HW would kind of count too. There was a shift in the electorate in 92.
Democrats won the White House in four of the next six elections, won the popular vote in five of those next six elections. Trump wins in 2016, showing clear evidence of kind of, you know, fracturing the Democratic coalition.
And then Biden comes in in 2020 and looks like he's put all the pieces back together.

Right.

And you have that kind of Clinton era coalition of strong support among minorities, growing support among college educated whites, and just enough support among non-college whites, particularly in the Rust Belt. And in many ways, this is reminiscent of Carter, right? Because you have Nixon's victories in 68 and 72 show real fissures in the Democratic coalition that had dominated the previous decades.
And Carter seems to pull it all back together, you know, with just enough support among working class whites in the North and especially white evangelicals in the South. But in office, Carter and then Biden can't hold this coalition together, either legislatively or in popular support.
And after their four years, they get routed. So the scowronic argument is that the presidents we consider the most successful and consequential in American history are what he calls repudiating presidents who come in immediately at this hinge point after the last president of the previous cycle failed.
Oh, no. This article is getting darker by the minute.
Yes, right. So they come in at the moment when the previous regime has been the most discredited, so they have the most leeway to change direction.
So he cites Thomas Jefferson in 1800 after Adams, Andrew Jackson in 1828 after Adams Jr., Lincoln in 1860 after Buchanan, Roosevelt in 32 after Hoover, Reagan after Carter. Well, maybe the stupidest president in history will break the trend there, be unable to capitalize on the trend.
So that's what, I mean, by the way, that's what's scowronic. I mean, I think there's a lot of reason to view Biden's experience as analogous to Carter's.
However, there's a lot of reason to question whether Trump can seize the advantage

created by that to the extent Reagan did. I mean, there's just no evidence in Trump's history, and certainly even in this transition, that he is capable of speaking to a broad enough audience or has the instincts to do that, to take advantage of the opening that Biden has left him.
But I would say, Tim, that I am sympathetic to the point of view that the opening that is there is similar to what was there after Carter. Me too.
I see it too. Yeah.
I mean, Scalronic says, you know, the repudiating presidents get so much power because they basically are able to point to their predecessor as the embodiment of a failed regime. And, and this, he wrote this in 1993, they hearken back to the past, often a mythic past, to say that America has to recapture those values in order to get itself going again.
And the Trump Biden kind of sequence has a lot of similarity. Now, of course, the big difference is that objectively, the country is not nearly in as bad shape now as it was when Carter left office.
So for Trump to argue that Biden has left him this big steaming pile of crap is a lot less credible than it was for Reagan. But when you're talking about a guy in Biden, who's approved already fell under 50% in, you know in summer 2021, never got back over 50%, is leaving with his lowest ratings ever.
See how we're transitioning into your... Leaving with his lowest ratings ever.
You've got to say, I think in scowronic-ish terms, and it's a great book. People should read it.
It's called The Politics Presidents Make, that Biden has left Trump a lot of room to consolidate a bigger coalition than he's ever had. The difference is I don't think Trump's political instincts and his agenda are as congenial to doing that as Reagan's was.
You make good pot. You know how to transition for me.
Now, I think that if they were able to kind of take the good traits of Trump and J.D. Vance and mesh them together into a single president, the opportunity would be there.

Like Trump's ability to appeal to kind of the less engaged voter, particularly these younger kind of men of color, you know, that I think like him for various cultural affect reasons as much as anything. if you're able to have that but not have

all the chaos and the nonsense

and the moronic instincts

that Trump has at times

maybe you'd be in a better position to take advantage of it. We'll see, as Trump likes to say.
We'll see what happens. I want to do fires really quick.
My buddy, Brian Tyler Cohen, interviewed your governor, Gavin Newsom, and they talked about the threat to withhold funding, emergency funding from California, which I think is a real threat. Kristi Noem's testifying in front of Congress for a confirmation hearing right now, and she would not guarantee that they would give emergency funding.
So I think it's a real threat. Here's what Gavin had to say about it.
Never in California questioned whether or not we as taxpayers in the largest state in the union should support the people of Louisiana at a time of emergency and need. We never conditioned it.
We never talked about putting the full fate in credit of the United States of America with the debt ceiling bill so we can get tax cuts for billionaires and corporations that don't need it and then put at risk the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans that happen to live in California. A state with millions and millions of Trump supporters, Speaker Johnson.
And Mr. President-elect, millions of your supporters are out here.
They need your help. They need your empathy.
They need your care. Empathy.
Mike Johnson replied, Speaker Johnson, instead of making highly produced clapback videos with social media influencers, ouch, Brian, you should get to working helping Californians. What do you think about the politics of this for Gavin? It's obviously it's cut in both ways.
Yeah. I mean, I think the politics for Bass, the mayor, is pretty unequivocally bad.
I think Newsom has looked better and has been more dynamic in responding to this. One of the things I said about Trump won, I said repeatedly, was that Trump governed as a wartime president with blue America rather than any foreign nation as the adversary.
And we were just talking about whether Trump has the vision and the emotional bandwidth to take advantage of the opportunity that Biden has left him, where you have voters way outside the traditional Democratic coalition who feel that, you know, Democratic governance did not give them what they want. Way outside the traditional Republican coalition.
Right, way outside the traditional Republican coalition, sorry. But what do you see from his instincts? I mean, you know, the water argument that, you know, somehow the North-South issues.
Yeah, the smelt. I mean, you know, that is not a serious argument.
I mean, there's no urban water system in the country or fire department in the country that has a record of success trying to fight a fire of this magnitude. And as I've read, you probably interviewed people.
I mean, you know, basically every time we've had a fire of this magnitude in an urban setting, the water has, you know, largely run out. You know, the question of forest management, you know, Trump kind of had a point.
He did have a point. The state is investing a lot.
The Biden administration and the infrastructure bill invested a lot, but he and Johnson and Republicans, A, really want to talk about anything but climate change, given that, you know, where we're headed on that. Doug Burgum's confirmation hearings this week, where he said any attempt to reduce reliance on fossil fuels is misguided because it just means people are going to be buying it from Russia or Venezuela.
I mean, like LA is burning, dude. I mean, like, you know, you're just ignoring what, you know, what is happening, you know, and, and Asheville did get flooded.
Okay. Like these things did happen much as they are inconvenient for you.
But I think, you know, withholding aid from blue states, as he was, you know, threatening to do during COVID, is a limiting, I think, for his voters, it's fine. I mean, they want him to be at war against blue America, because as we said, the core of his coalition is alienated from all the ways America is changing, and that is embodied in the blue states.

And I think for a lot of his kind of casual voters, they're more focused on their own economic situation than what happens. But by and large, treating blue America as an adversarial force to be occupied is going to do more in the end to limit than expand his reach.
And I think, again, example a of why even even if Biden is creating the same opportunity for Trump that Carter created for Reagan, Trump is less likely to be able to seize it. I'm glad you mentioned the Bergam thing because you'd sent a tweet about this too, that Bergam is signaling that the administration is all in to stop or reverse the green energy transition.
That it's not just about investing and drilling, drill, baby, drill, but it's also about stopping the green transition, which should be an interesting piece of information to the college-educated youth that they couldn't decide between the two candidates in the selection. Look, 80% of the investment tied to the Inflation Reduction Act, tied to all the big three bills, Inflation Reduction Act, infrastructure bills, 80% of that total investment has gone into Republican-held congressional districts.
And they seem very determined to make it go away. I mean, there was no question this administration was going to try to do whatever it could to support fossil fuel industries.
The question was whether they're also going to try to kneecap the alternatives. And I think they will probably do both.
It's starting to look. Although, like I said, that 80% investment in Republican-held districts might be a circuit breaker on how far they can get with that.
As you mentioned at the top, we have a lot of friends that are suffering in LA, but you've also written a book about a year in LA. Do you want to leave us with an ode to Los Angeles? Any stories or anecdotes? Yeah.
So my book is about LA in the early 1970s and the great pop culture produced then. Movies like Chinatown, Godfather, Godfather 2, Shampoo, Nashville Carnal Knowledge, the

really, you know, path-breaking TV, All in the Family, Mary Tyler Moore, MASH, and then

the great music, The Eagles, Jackson Brown, Joni Mitchell.

And basically the story is about how the pop culture produced in LA in the early 70s took

I don't know. And then the great music, the Eagles, Jackson Brown, Joni Mitchell.
And basically the story is about how the pop culture produced in LA in the early 70s took the social critiques that emerged in the 60s, the critiques of American life, and mainstreamed them, brought them into the living room of the country, literally, in the case of All in the Family and Mary Teller Moore Mash. And I came away feeling, you know, writing that book, I've always felt LA is kind of the capital of the future in American life, for better or worse, that, you know, a lot of the things that the country will be dealing with, cultural changes, demographic changes, economic changes, happen here first.
And sadly, this is another example of that, you know, certainly coastal states that and southwest state coastal states in the southeast with hurricanes, southwest states with wildfires are most at risk. But man, Asheville was neither, you know, and it was flooded.
And, you know, the amount of damage from hail and severe thunderstorms and flooding. I mean, L.A LA is living through this horrific tragedy, but more places are going to unless we get control to any extent.
Control is even the wrong word, unless we mitigate or slow the deterioration of the climate. My heart goes out to so many people in LA.
I mean, one big fire on the west side, one really big fire on the east side. There's virtually no one in the city who doesn't know someone who has been affected like this.
And I hate to say this is coming to a neighborhood near you, but some version of this is intent. I mean, this is 2025.
What's 2035 going to look like if we allow the trajectory of, weather to go on uninterrupted in a Doug Burgum-like way that says anything we do just makes Russia stronger? Ron Brownstein, thank you for your wisdom. And for all that, we'll put the links to your work in the Atlantic and to the book in the show notes, and we'll be talking to you again soon.
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Everybody else will be back here Monday. What are we going to talk about? I don't know.
I think Tacitus or something. I'm going to quiz Bill Kristol on the Romans.
I'm not sure if there's anything else going on on Monday. We'll see you all back here then.
Peace. Coming in from London from over the pole, flying in a big Atlanta, Chicken plant everywhere around the plain

Could we ever feel much finer Coming into Los Angeles Bringing in a couple of keys Don't touch my bags if you please Mr. Customs Yeah, and here's a guy with a ticket from Mexico.
No, he couldn't look much stranger. Walking in a hall with his things and all.
Smiling said he was a long ranger. Coming into Los Angeles.
bringing in a couple of keys.

Don't touch my bags, if you please, Mr. Customs Man.
The Bulldog Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper

with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brough.