S4 Ep48: DNC Part 2: The Dems' Defibrillator (with John Anzalone)
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Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Focus Group podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark. And this week, we are assessing the aftermath from the Democratic National Convention. And that aftermath is mostly good. As you heard last week on my show with Joe Perticone, the first night of the convention was a bit of a snoozer with voters in our focus groups. But the rest of the convention was pretty good.

While it was clear that voters weren't hanging on every word from Chicago, voters did like the positivity they saw from Democrats. And now, this is Labor Day weekend, and it is the traditional start of the fall campaign.

So to evaluate the post-DNC polls and to compare this Democratic National Convention to previous cycles, my guest today is John Anzalone, partner at Impact Research, former pollster for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden. John, thanks for being here. Hey, thanks for having me, Sarah.

So you're a pollster, but how many focus groups do you do? Do you just do focus groups all the time too? You know, I'm over the 1,000 mark in my career because I've been doing this for 40 years, right? And, you know, in the last five years, not so much. You know, we've got a whole kind of team of people who do these now. But they were, without a doubt, I think my most favorite part of research, as you know, because you do them.

to kind of get a granular view of what people are thinking in their own words is...

really, really important for campaigns and for staff and candidates to see, without a doubt. Yeah, or just to satisfy my desperate curiosity and convey them in a podcast, which is what I do. So you and I, we were together at the convention. We were doing a little thing with Cook Political Report and the Institute of Politics at University of Chicago with David Axelrod. So we were doing a little panel

My last convention was, I was in Tampa for Mitt Romney back in 2012, but I'd never been to a Democratic National Convention. So like, how does it normally work with the polling bumps? Everybody's like, oh, post-convention, you get a bump. Does that normally happen? Yeah, I think it's overstated, right? And I think that, you know, you can't have a normal measure or expectation this time like you can in previous times because, you

The month leading up to it was kind of like the convention bump, right? I mean, she was riding a tsunami and she did it so well. And during that time, you know, Democrats were just so happy, you know, to have her as the nominee and to be back in this race that her consolidation, if you will, including beyond Democrats, some independents and women, I think really acted like what was traditionally the post-

convention bounce. And so I never had anticipated that you would see additional bounce. And I think that, you know, what will play out post-convention, post-Labor Day, when the bell rings, will be like we always see it, which is what I call step two, right? Step one is consolidation of your base, whether you're a Democrat or Republican. Step two is, oh, we each get to spend a billion dollars chasing down a really slim universe of independence that

is hard to do. It's hard to do for the Democrat. It's hard to do for the Republican. And we've had two back-to-back races decided by 75,000 votes and 45,000 votes in three states. And you have to anticipate we're going to be in that same scenario again.

You know, since we're talking about it, I have strong views on this, but who do you think that billion dollars, like who are they aimed at? Who is that late breaking group? So I think there's two ways to think about this. And the first one is traditional, right? Like, okay, there is a persuasion universe. Like we know that there's a universe of people who break late. That never hit me harder than

Then in 2016, I mean, there was a universe that broke late and it broke against Hillary Clinton. I would say it's because on October 28th, Comey came and opened up another FBI investigation and made her just as big a risk as Trump. And therefore they went with the new guy.

But there's that universe of persuadable voters. And, you know, you look at them in public polls and they kind of look not dissimilar from past. They're under 50. They're really independent, meaning party identification. They're non-college educated voters, mostly white, but not all. And they're disproportionately women.

And some of that you can say, hey, they're also low information voters. All of those scream low information. Under 50, right? Non-college educated working women, white, who, again, don't have a hell of a lot of time to go and look for information. They're raising kids, they're going to work, they're dealing with the sandwich generation in health care, etc., etc.,

So they're low information and they're hard to get. So that's my first bucket, right? Without a doubt. The second bucket is a little different because it's the really hard to get for each side. For us, it's important to just narrow the margins, for example, in rural and small town America. If you can just do it like by three points, like, you know, don't get your ass kicked.

75, 25, get your ass kicked 70, 30. That makes a difference when you're winning a state like Wisconsin by 10,000 votes, right? American Bridge, the big independent expenditure run by Bradley Baychock in 2020 did that brilliantly. They pegged 70 counties in Wisconsin, Michigan,

in Pennsylvania that were Obama-Biden counties, mostly rural, and they went in there and they communicated and they filled a void that we never actually ever get to. And they moved those county votes by three to five percent. And it really made a difference. And so I would look at all of the demographics there. Right. I mean, who does Democrats have trouble with and go in there and try to just narrow the margin a little bit? And you can think of a

of a third lane, really. I'm adding the third lane, Sarah. Give me your lanes, man. Where do you go expand, right? We only think about persuasion. We never think about expansion. And I think there's real opportunities for Democrats, for example, with 65 and overs, who Biden never dropped with. It was really one of his strongest groups.

He was doing really well with them. Democrats have a lot to talk to them about, right? $35 insulin, $2,000 yearly prescription drug caps, negotiation with Medicare, protecting Social Security and Medicare, et cetera. And so I think that there's expansion universes, suburban women potentially, et cetera. So that's kind of how I would think about those. What about white working class women? So

I'm going to have a problem with you on this podcast, which is that I'm just going to want to nerd out on stuff and we're going to have to get to some of the sound. But like, I feel like Kamala, part of what she's doing, absolutely right, putting her base back together. But it does seem like whether it is abortion or some other things in the water, she's doing slightly better with white working class women. It seems like there's room to grow there. Do you think she can? Yeah, I do. And I think that they are taking a look at her. Like, right. I mean, I think that in a lot of ways, like,

If you watch Kamala Harris's speech or Tim Walz's speech and many other people's speeches, they were in a lot of ways speaking to it.

I think Kamala Harris has done something really important that we kind of wanted to happen, which is she is acknowledging people's pain with cost of living. Regardless of whether the inflation rate is evened out, she's acknowledging the pain. Like she put out a housing ad, which I think was fantastic, you know, talking about how she was in rental housing, her mom saved for a decade to buy a house, now it's impossible to buy a house, and what she's going to do to help people get back to where they can buy a house. She has that story.

If you listen to her economic speech in Raleigh, I guess a couple of Fridays ago, same thing. She's acknowledging the pain. It's sounding very Bill Clinton-ish, right? She's not like rah-rah-ing unemployment numbers, GDP numbers, the stock market.

which people don't care about. You and I know that people look at the economy through the prism of cost of living. And she's taking that head on and she's going to continue doing that. This loops back to your curiosity about whether we can expand with working class women. And the answer is yes, that's how you do it.

I also think that there is a lesson to be learned in the 2022 Gretchen Whitmer election, right? I did her polling. Again, she connected very well with working women who didn't have a college degree. But we also saw with the abortion referendum on the ballot and when we were doing focus groups,

The non-college educated women had much more of an interest in what this all meant for them. And they actually acknowledged that rich suburban women, you know, they can take care of it because they'll get it figured out. And they were really worried about them and their daughters and nieces and friends, whatever, about whether they were going to be trapped.

Right. Whether they had any solutions of reproductive rights if everything got shut down because of money, because of travel, because of access, et cetera. And so I think that there is a real acknowledgement among that group of women which will keep them really interested in the reproductive rights debate. Yeah.

I agree with that. Okay, I want to get into the public reaction to the convention. We convened two groups the day after it ended. One of them was the Trump to Biden voters that we talked to a lot, our flippers. And then we talked to 2020 Trump voters first.

who were down on Trump. And so many of them had voted for Trump twice. This is a group I like talking to where we kind of screen for people who voted for Trump, especially in 2020. So not all of these were two-time Trump voters, but a lot of them were. They definitely voted for him in 2020, but they rate him as doing a very bad job or say that they are very unlikely to vote for him again. So these are also people in our persuadable universe that I like to talk to. So let's listen first to

The first group of sound is going to be from the Trump 16, Biden 20, 20 voters. Let's listen. So I watched the DNC one more than I did the RNC. But DNC, I think, yes, it was full of hope, which is a refreshing change. And if you watch the RNC, it was doom and gloom. Oh, you're about to die right now if you don't vote for him. That's that is just a lot of BS and fear.

drives a lot and that's what they are trying to do over there is just scare you into going back to trump but for what the guy is a felon for god's sake but yes the bnc was fluff but at least it was hope and hopeful it was not doom and gloom so it's not going to change my mind i think i'm still going to vote the way i'm going to vote but it was please good to see hope

I was impressed at the DNC that you had former presidents on, you had members of the party on, and it was refreshing and upbeat.

The GOP, I will have to admit, I started laughing when they had Hulk Hogan rip off his shirt. I mean, it's like, please, you know, and I noticed none of Trump's former cabinet, no former Republican president has come out and endorsed him.

And to me, you know, that kind of says something, you know, if the members of the particular party are not even going to stand up for their candidate. And when you have members of the Republican Party standing up and endorsing a Democratic candidate,

To me, that also sends a message. And the Republicans that were up there were, you know, those Republicans that fall into the category of being conservatives. They were what I grew up as knowing what a Republican is. Well, I was only able to watch one night this morning. I had to get up at 2 a.m., so I couldn't stay up and watch it last night. But I feel like there is a lot of hope.

And it's positive. It's not all tearing the other people down. And that's all that Trump seems to do is tear people down and criticize. You know, he's like a sixth grade bully. But, you know, Kamala, she's got a lot of positive things to say. I thought it was very upbeat, a lot of good. I mean, you got to understand, she's only had a month that she's known that she's running for president. So I thought it was really good what I was able to see.

I got to see a bit of Michelle Obama. Very, very positive. And I'm trying to think of who else talked. You know, there were some, like you said, former Republicans that served with Trump. And I can't think of her name, the one girl that came on and spoke. Just the fact that she's even there speaks volumes. Stephanie Grisham spoke. Yes, yes. Yeah. So that to me speaks a lot.

I felt that Kamala's speech was rehearsed. She stayed on her speech most of the time. She didn't meander. I felt that I was disappointed because I wanted to see Beyonce and Taylor Swift, and they never showed up. It was reported that they were going to show up. So another broken promise. And I just felt that it was more of the same.

So I'm trying very much to not get sprinkled with the fairy dust. I'm trying to keep my eyes open. Like I feel like most of my family is like, it just feels so good. I sometimes feel like Democrats can be emotional voters. I'm trying to make a very rational decision when placing or casting the votes. So, you know, mostly good reviews here. You know, a couple of people still trying to be hardheaded about it, but people are getting swept up in the vibes. What struck me about this as a swing voter group

sort of two things. One is how much the convention was for a lot of these swing voters. You know, having the former Republicans, having Kinzinger, having Trump's former staff members, you know, the mayor of Mesa, Arizona, like a lot of Republicans up on stage making the case against Trump and to a lesser degree, but still for Kamala Harris, felt like that landed with a lot of these voters. But the thing that really stood out to me was how much people were like,

Yeah, man, it feels good. It feels like they're being positive. Do you feel like there is something about this moment? Like you've seen a lot of elections. You've picked up on a lot of vibes. Are people ready for the positivity? Like are people done with the doom and gloom? Yeah. So I would say a couple of things. One is that this convention felt like a celebration.

And it felt very much like 2008 Denver with Barack Obama being the nominee and Joe Biden being the VP candidate. I mean, I've been to seven conventions, started in 1988 in Atlanta.

And even 92, which was a surprise, you got to remember, Clinton was kind of a surprise nominee in a lot of ways. He was in third place at one point. But even 92 was not as exciting as this. And so the vibe felt like a celebration where, you know, a month or so ago, everyone didn't think that it was going to be very much of a convention that had hope or that was going to be fun.

So I think that there's no doubt that this is a party that, again, I've said many times, it's like a defibrillator has hit it, right? It's like we've had a defibrillator in two stints and we're back out playing tennis, you know? And-

That's not where we thought we were going to be. Like, you know, there's a certain amount of being grateful that like we're back in it, baby. Right. And that becomes really important. And again, I don't think that anyone's taking anything for granted. But the first guy, he said hope and change and was very, very 2008 versus doom and gloom. You know, I sat and watched the Republican convention a little bit and they were all in for their candidate. Right.

And you kind of felt like they felt like they were going to win. And then boom, this is all changed. And, you know, if you were in Chicago, you felt like we had a really good chance of winning. And one of the things that we learned in 2020, which I think is really important,

is that voters wanted to hear what Joe Biden had to say about what he wanted to do as president, what his agenda was. They didn't want to hear about Trump. And anytime there was Trump in a frame or Trump in an ad, they turned it off. And I think that we're going to see a lot of that is that people are still really getting to know Kamala Harris. They like what they see.

They have made up their mind about Trump, meaning they know everything that they need to know. And he gets in the way, quite frankly, sometimes of her message. And I think you heard that in the focus group is that people want to know what she's about. Is she going to be on their side? What is she going to do as president? And I actually think that for most of the convention, that was what she was trying to do.

Yeah. When we hit that point where it looked like Biden might step aside or like we were talking about whether or not it would happen and we were trying to evaluate, okay, what would an alternative look like? And I was listening to voters and I was nervous about Kamala because I'd been listening for years to voters talk about the negative impression they had of her. But what was interesting is it was...

It was an impression. So I started to think about it more. I started to be like, you know, I think there is upside there because voters would be like, I don't know her. I don't see her. I don't know what she's about. And that gave them a negative impression of her because they didn't feel like they saw her. But it also meant

They didn't see her. They didn't know. They didn't know what she was about. She could reintroduce herself to people. And it felt like that's what the convention was. It was like, I'm going to introduce myself to these people. And it sounds like that was effective. People are coming away feeling good and positive now about it. Yeah, a couple of things. One is by the time she got to the convention, her favorables had already increased by 14 points. Yeah. Right? And so she did get that.

And again, I'll go back to 2019 when we were doing focus groups for Biden. This is a guy who had been vice president for eight years, been a senator for 30 something years, and people knew nothing about him.

Like it was crazy. Right. And again, if you, you know, kind of watch our first commercials, people didn't know about the tragedy of him and his wife and baby girl and all, you know, just simple things that he was a stutter or whatever, that he had done the Brady bill and all these types of really good things on gun control, et cetera, et cetera. And so I think she was in that position. And it was interesting because when this all happened, it's like, I had an impression of her. I don't, you know, didn't know her well. And, and,

Things just ignited. And I just had to go see it. I had to like see if this was real. And I flew to Atlanta and went to the event in Georgia State University. And there's 12,000 people. And I didn't know what to expect. I've been going to events for 40 years.

It was nuts. It was electric. And I was sitting next to the young African-American mayor of Montgomery, Alabama, Stephen Reed. And he looked at me and I looked at him and he was thinking the exact same thing that I was thinking as an African-American man, which was this crowd is really diverse. Like the middle age white women convention was there. Right. And so something was happening. But it was something was happening with Kamala Harris, too.

She was no longer the VP. She was a Democratic nominee. She was speaking like that. She was untethered. She was comfortable. She was funny. She was confident. She was focused. I mean, like she had the economic message down. She had the contrasting message down. And she just felt like herself, like she had found who she was and herself.

She's met this moment. And I think that it's very fair what you said, which was you didn't really know what to expect or how to feel about her. And now you feel about her, what she has done to rise to the occasion. And you have to applaud that.

You do. Because guess what? Not everyone does, you know? No, man. Meeting the moment is hard. Yeah. J.D. Vance, and I'm not here to shit on J.D. Vance. He hasn't met the moment, right? Yeah, you're welcome to do that. But Tim Walz has. This has happened throughout. I mean, you know, we've had, like, Michael Dukakis didn't excite anyone. He became our nominee. Yeah. The most exciting thing about the 1988 convention, and I was on the floor with this, was Jesse Jackson's speech. It wasn't Michael Dukakis' speech.

Yeah. All right. Well, let's keep the vibes going because we did a group of Trump voters. And now, granted, we screened them for being kind of down on Trump. But I want to listen to how striking the responses were from this group.

I was kind of impressed with the positivity. I mean, after watching more of the RNC for three or four nights before it was on, I mean, I wanted to jump off a bridge. I mean, the bridge down by the border, because it's like, God, we must live in a horrible place and everybody's horrible. So I respond to kind of a positive message. But I heard more of like the can-do part of this, that it seemed to come out through Walt and even like Harris, just her background, where she's been on trajectory of doing things and actually responding

I don't know if it's right or wrong. I don't know, but it seems like she's done stuff. I caught part of it last night in the part where Ruben Gallego from Arizona said,

And it was really talking about veterans, military service. And I mean, that's important to me. I have a lot of veterans that work for me. And we've kind of left them dry out there. I mean, we talk shit about their service and stuff like that. That makes me ill about Trump. It was kind of like a juxtaposition to hear the Democrats come across as like, we're pro-America, we're pro-strength, and we're damn sure like pro-service and veterans. I was like, yeah.

Yeah, I like that. Again, there's a lot more I need to learn. And we have 78 days or something to do that. But down where it really like came to like a crystal clear for me was during the Republican National Convention. And just the speakers that they had was like, you know, Don Jr. And then like Hulk Hogan. And then Donald Trump came on, right? Not one after another. But it all sounded the same to me. And it sounded like I was watching a

wrestling on Saturday night, you know, where like they have the managers that scream loud and stuff before they come in and say the craziest shit they can think of just to stay on TV, just to get the ratings. And, you know, they bitch about the border and stuff like that. The border is important to me that it works right. Not crime is very low coming through the border. It's just the chaos that affects those communities. And they haven't done a damn thing about it. So I just think he's trying to stay out of jail, to be honest with you.

So I think Kamala's message was kind of unexpected. Like her backgrounds, I wasn't very familiar with her like fully. So I kind of like to learn that she comes from like a humble beginning, sort of saying. And there's like a lot of things that are relatable for people that are in the lower income or middle class even. It kind of just reiterated where they stand politically, right?

Some of it I do not agree with, but I do think that the way they are approaching it is just like more healthier and like that it is more positive. I think that the way that

the speaker's sort of message things was a lot more down to earth and a lot more relatable for a lot of Americans. I listened to Tim Waltz and I thought he really came across as like a relatable guy that I think a lot of people can empathize with. So that was my biggest takeaway because I had never heard of him before until he got the vice presidential nomination. So it was interesting to learn more about him.

Okay, so here's the thing. These are all Trump voters. And I want to go back to a point that you made earlier, and I want to stomp on it and explore it, which is about low information voters.

We say low information, and my first response is always to defend. I don't like the term low information because I don't know what an alternative is. It's because what I want to be is like- I like it. I like busy voters. I'm like- They're not- They're busy. These are not stupid people. They are just people who have lives. They're busy, man. They have other priorities. Frankly, we are the sick ones, John. Look at the problem. It's me. We're being too invested in this stuff. And-

I interrupted you. I'm sorry, but I really put these in several buckets. Like I have a 31, 29, 22 and 20 year old. OK, I constantly pepper them with where they get their information. And it's just so diffused. And I still don't understand it.

Like, how are they getting information from Snapchat and Instagram? I just see pictures. Right. So that confuses me. Right. And so I don't think that they're busy. I think that they're either, you know, I don't want to say lazy because I'll get beat up, but or they're not interested or whatever. They get information when they want to get it. So that's a bucket. Young people are super hard to get a hold of. And we spend a lot of money doing it. Most of it gets pissed away.

And then we have people, you know, my mother's past, but it was like her. She was raising kids. She was dealing with a disabled husband. She had a job. She was like dealing with rummage sales, you know, really working women like do everything. And so they're not lazy. They're just frigging busy. Yeah. And so there's just different bucket of low information. Yeah. We're using that term as practitioners, not as a judgment. Yeah. And to say, okay,

They come to this during an election every year. And so sometimes people are like, how could somebody vote for Trump twice and then just like turn around and like Kamala Harris? And I'll say that for a lot of these voters, and I guess I'm interested in your opinion on this, they're coming up for air. They know there's an election. They're going to vote in it. And they're like, all right, which one of these people are going to do something for me?

And for them, Donald Trump was like making a lot of crazy promises and he talked in a way that was accessible to them and he seemed different. A lot of people gave him a shot. And I think there's a fair number of those voters who could look at Kamala Harris and Tim Walz and say what these voters are saying, which is like they seem like they're positive. They seem like they're for the people. I've heard a number of people say like for the people or regular voters.

There's a lot of people talking about Wallace in a way like he's like an ordinary guy. He's a regular guy in the focus groups. And I wonder if you think that there is a world in which low info voters, which Donald Trump has done very well with because he's a celebrity, because he's in pop culture, that Kamala Harris could kind of beat him there, could also do really well with these low information folks who look at the race sort of for the first time and be like, I don't know, she seems good.

So I want to step back. Okay. I think part of this is default, meaning pre-debate. Almost 70% of America did not want this choice. Yeah. Right? They just didn't want this choice. It wasn't just a Biden thing. It wasn't just a Trump thing. It was like, I don't want this choice. I don't want these two to be my choice. And you took one of those people away and the other guy was still there.

with over 50% unfavorable. And so I think she filled a vacuum. Now you have to meet a bar. And again, we talked about how she met the moment and I think she's met that bar. I think that what one of the focus group respondents said about walls being relatable is true and he has hit a chord himself. And so I think people have been surprised at how much they like her and how relatable she has become. But guess what?

They were not part of the 70% combination of what people didn't want.

And you take one of those away and all of a sudden, I think the warts of Trump on top of the warts that were already there become magnified. So you meet the moment with someone who is palatable, right, acceptable and now relatable. And I think it explains a lot about why they're doing so well.

Hey, what do you make of the fact that she seems to have sidestepped? Like she's doing this happy warrior thing. She's talking about building out the middle class. It's possible voters will still hold her accountable for what they perceive to be a negative economy. But she seems to be getting her own look on this. I think people truly –

believe that the vice president is, again, a happy warrior, right? Is someone there to support the president and not necessarily driving policy, et cetera, et cetera. It doesn't mean that you can't take advantage of accomplishments. I don't think they are making her responsible for what they may have problems with vis-a-vis Joe Biden, whether it's fair or not, right? The economy, the border, whatever, whatever.

I think she's getting a pretty decent pass. And I think that that is more about how Americans view the vice president, you know, whether you're a Democrat or whether you're a Republican, quite frankly. Yeah.

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All right. I want to talk about Harris a little bit more because I cannot underscore enough how sudden and dramatic the turnaround she's had in her favorability ratings, including how people talk about her in the groups. We've been like focus grouping like crazy trying to get as much information as we can. And so on the day Biden dropped out, her favorability rating, you kind of hit this before, was 15 points underwater in the 538 average. And then today, the day we're recording, they're only two points underwater. So

And look, other averages will give you a slightly different result, but I think that the direction is clear. I mean, just a huge rebound.

And through several weeks of groups, we've generally seen that the more people see of Harris, the more they like her, which is actually the inverse of Donald Trump. The more people see Donald Trump, the less they like him. So this is about to be a long clip, but I want to stress that these folks that we're about to hear from all voted for Trump in 2020, and many of them voted for him twice. So let's listen to what they said specifically about Harris. As far as Kamala Harris goes, I mean,

I haven't really seen a lot of her past doings. Now, I know she was, I know she is an attorney, and that she was a prosecutor. So, I mean, in that respect, she's going to have a little bit more idea of what's right and wrong, I think, as compared to somebody else. Something else that comes to my mind just now, and I'm sorry if this offends anybody, the fact that she is a woman of color and she is married to a man that is white,

I think that's going to say a lot to the American people about, you know, the non-racial crap that's going on, you know. She's obviously not racist, and that's going to be a good thing. I mean, I watched a little piece of it last, or not before last, rather. I don't know. I'm just going to let you go back about your business there. But I like her. I'm not a Democrat. I don't care about the Democrats that much. But her, I would vote for simply because of the foundation she's got under her.

It's like if you're going to build a house, don't build it on sand. The fact that she's a female and she might be elected president is fantastic. It's women's rights, you know. Also, she doesn't have any scandals. So, you know, you don't hear of any dirt in her background, which is nice, you know. And she she's a child of immigrants. So I think that's going to help her understand both sides of the border issue.

And I think that she's going to be very good for that. And the fact that she's a lawyer and she reminds me a lot of Obama, just the way she carries herself, the way she speaks. And I didn't really like Obama when he was president because I was a Republican. But since he's not a president anymore and I've seen some interviews with him, I'm like, wow, he's such a nice guy. I was like, I should have given him more of a chance.

She does come off like more positive, more professional, educated versus what we already had. Initially, my like sentiment towards her was a little bit more negative just because when she was vice president, I often heard that she was aggressive.

not very proactive with dealing with the border. And that was her main role. And additionally, like there was a huge traffic of immigrants coming in and that just showcased like her ability. So prior to this, like learning more about her, I had like a negative perception towards her. Like when she was a prosecutor,

She prosecuted a couple of people like a little too harshly. So although, you know, they did commit a crime and they should, you know, pay, obviously, it was just like so aggressive. But honestly, even though I may not agree with her, I still see her as the stronger candidate.

I hadn't really had a lot of exposure to her in the past three years, just with the vice presidential role, as we've kind of touched on. But I will say so far, like just hearing her speak, like she seems to be very professional. I think that DNC also kind of highlighted that she came from like pretty humble beginnings. And I think that work ethic and that drive is something that I really respect. I think she's a bit too progressive for me.

She hasn't revealed too many policies. Even though she just entered the race, you would think that she would have been working off of Biden's. So that to me is a little concerning. Also, the fact that she hasn't really sat for an interview yet or even at a press conference. And I know Biden also wasn't big on that either. And at least Trump does answer questions when reporters shout them at him. So that to me is a little concerning. I think also,

The way everything turned out, she hasn't been elected. Everything that I have seen would help the racial issue that we are having here today.

in the U.S., I think that that would help a lot, her background. And I do like the fact that she is a lawyer, her background being the main thing who she's all entangled with. Again, I'll have to educate more throughout the next days, but I haven't seen negative things from her. So I'm moving with that. Yeah.

As far as a vice president, you're not supposed to think about the vice president that much. I mean, they're just like ceremonial, do a service or do hard jobs. The only time I really heard of her as a vice president is when President Biden sent her to Guatemala and it was about the border. So she had to go to Guatemala to fix the border. That's like...

it doesn't do anything. So, I mean, she kind of got a raw deal there. I don't know what that's going to do. And then I thought of her in the past, like, probably year, she took more of a forward stance on Roe versus Wade and abortion. And I just have a personal feeling that

I don't think like in Texas, Ken Paxton and Greg Abbott, our governor, should be able to tell women and families how the hell to run their lives. I don't think it's their business. What literally I know about her in the past month, and I think everybody's just kind of like learning a little bit more. I like that she came from a humble background. Nobody gave her anything. I like that she's from a prosecutor. And the one thing I keyed on, because she's from California and I live in Texas now, is

she's dealt with issues around the border right now, and she's actually prosecuted cartel crimes. And that's a big root of the problem. Okay. So here's why I made everybody listen to all that, because we are in the moments of defining Kamala Harris. And so I think it is intensely interesting to find out, like, what do people know about her? What's jumping out? And a couple of things to me that are wild.

is that, A, she's getting incredibly positive marks from basically everybody. The stuff about the prosecutors breaking through, the humble beginnings. You've heard that from lots of people through that she's from middle class. You know, they like that. That came up a bunch. The one thing negative that seemed to be sticking is this idea that Republicans are really trying to push, which is the idea that it was unfair how she got chosen, right? That was the only thing that somebody raised. Somebody said she's scandal-free, which is sort of actually not true. But are you surprised

that Republicans haven't been able to define her more, even to people who voted for Trump last time? Yeah, there's a couple things here. One, it's pretty stunning. Like, listening to it is stunning. I hope you do more of these Trump voters.

Because it's not what you would expect. And it does show that she has penetrated. And again, I think that if we step back and we look at the dynamics of how she became the nominee, the fact that it was so dramatic is sitting president, stepping down, passing the torch. Therefore, the intensity.

of the media attraction in a month time and what she created in the campaign created, all of a sudden eyeballs are on her. That is so different and so much more intense than a normal nominee in August. Right. And I think that this is kind of why people know so much is that this was historic. It was dramatic. It was intense.

And then she met the moment. But for 30 days, she's been leading the news and people are actually getting real things about her, her humble beginnings. I mean, you know, this is a huge contrast with Trump that she was a prosecutor and put all these type of people away that if you've seen her talk, she knows Donald Trump. Huge contrast with him. So, you know, they're picking things up at a much deeper level.

and kind of organic level than we normally see because of how this all happened in a made-for-TV movie type of August.

That's a great point. It's not like they're getting it from ads or watching the DNC convention. Like they're getting a lot of this messaging because they're like, Oh, someone's new. I'm going to go take a look. Right. I mean, this is like, you know, the athletic team who are, you know, someone gets the major guy gets injured and they're like the, the new guy comes in or a woman comes in and, you know, becomes a star. No one knew him yesterday. And then 30 days later, everyone knows about them. This is kind of how it feels. Right. Yeah.

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So public opinion, it's like cement, right? It's soft at first. You only got a little time. Then at some point it hardens and you can't change it. And so as Trump prepares, I just saw today, you know, he is getting ready to dump, I don't know, 60 million. Like they're about to start doing their post-Labor Day. We're getting into the home stretch. We're going to, we're going to drop. He's going to spend a billion dollars. That's right. So much money. Is it too late to define her? Or do you think people like took a look and were like, I like her. That's pretty good. Or.

Or do you think that you can take it away still? I go back to the 70% who didn't want this choice between Biden and Trump, and only one of those choices is left is him.

Listen, this is going to be a close election. Right. You know, we don't know who's going to turn out. And we know that the persuasion universe is small and probably favors Republican if they do the right job, which he may not do. Right. But again, if you believe that presidential elections are about the future.

which they usually are, and about who's going to do a better job for you. She just seemed to be connecting on all of those. And there's one other thing about your question. You know, is there time? Yeah, sure. I think that if we're being realistic, there's time. Don't get too overconfident. But there's also this sense right now that voters are going to call bullshit on the attacks on her.

You know, I at first I was going to worry because like African-American woman, the bar is probably high on everything. Right. And when she makes a mistake, the bar will be higher when she's trying to get her message out. The bar will be higher. But now I kind of feel like because Trump is who he is, he's not a great messengers for negative.

that there's also going to be a lot of bullshit called on the hits that they take on her by the American people based on what we're hearing here, right? And what they know about her. And going back to your cement, or cement, as we say in the South, that is settled a lot more than you would expect. Okay, so speaking of this, I actually want to play you what was, to me, the wildest and funniest thing from the focus group that we did with the Trump voters. And I'll tell you this.

because everybody who listens to this podcast to an annoying degree knows that I thought it should be Josh Shapiro. And so, you know, I went to the convention, I got a little waltz pill, but like,

When I found out it was walls and I started looking like I was like, all right, how are they going to come at this guy? My very first thing that I saw was this thing about how he put tampons in boys bathrooms. Right. Like this is what the right went to immediately. And I was like, oh, no, this whole thing is going to become about tampons and girls bathrooms. And that is going to be so bad for Democrats because it's exactly the kind of stuff that swing voters hate because they think it's woke. They think it's weird.

It came up in this focus group. And let's listen to how these Trump voters talked about the tampons and boys' bathroom and walls in general. One of his policies was that he did breakfast and lunch for schoolchildren. And a lot of people said that that was too socialist and things like that. But, I mean, I am more than content with money that I pay the state of Alabama going to feed children. I'm more than okay with that. Another thing specifically my father-in-law had a problem with was...

I'm just going to be honest. I may not report all the information correct on this. This is just what little research I've done. He had a policy where he was wanting to supply tampons for women's bathroom. And then he was also putting them in a men's bathroom. Someone for me, I don't have a problem with that because that's not necessarily trying to promote any form of gender norms or anything like that. It's, Hey,

You know, I have a little sister. Hey, I know we're out at home. Let me grab some, you know what I mean? Or, or my girlfriend at the time, if she, you know, needed some and their bathroom was out, you know what I mean? Stuff like that. That doesn't bug me anything like that. It's just like wrestling talking points. Somebody gets worked up online about transgender stuff. So they just repeat whatever they're hearing.

Somebody said this. I don't know if there's a tampon in a boy's bathroom in Minnesota. And if his sister or his girlfriend needs one, great, give it to them. But the gender thing, like, I mean, I'm all for them. Like, I'm for everybody. I have transgender people working for me. That's 0.0001% of the population. So why don't we focus on the 99.999 problems that everybody has instead of picking the shit that people like to talk about on TV?

right-wing news.

I think the biggest reason they're putting them in there is because of the identity thing. You know, I identify as a 15-year-old girl, so I can go in the ladies' room. Or a girl might say, I identify as a 17-year-old boy, and now she's going into the boys' room. I mean, she's in there. If she needs it, grab it. That's the only reason they're putting it in there. Now, I'm from down in Texas originally, and when they passed that law in Houston about –

unisex bathrooms for everybody, man, there were people left and right going pissed off because I'm a father. And I guarantee you, if my daughter at that time would have gone into the bathroom and right behind her would have gone, man, I'd have killed that son of a gun. I mean, that's the way it is.

Okay. Here's the thing. Going left and right pissed off. That guy was awesome. Yeah. That guy was so funny. And what was crazy to me, I was watching this and it was just a bunch of Trump voters. I was like, ooh, the tampon thing came up. There it is. And it was a bunch of them.

of them sort of defending it. Even the guy who was like, a dude goes into a girl's bathroom, I'm going to kill that guy. But also, you say you put tampons in there big time. I don't know. That struck me both as sort of a funny moment, but also it was a little wild to watch Trump voters be pretty resistant to just the sort of general woke attacks. And do you think that's specific to Walls? Because Walls has a little bit of

not Teflon, but like armor for some of that stuff by being kind of a flannel wearing every man? Or do you think that people like have hit their limit on some of this stuff? That's where I was going. Like, right. Like the bell curve, like, you know, we kind of got to the top and it's now going down. Like all that stuff was, you know, and social media and reinforcement and Trump and da, da, da. And I think maybe that we're going back down to where like, okay, we went through that era and,

There's always going to be some of it, but now we're just, we're not going to buy into it, all of it. And then we're going to like think through issues. I had never even thought through what that would have been for in a boy's bathroom for a sister or a girlfriend. That was not where I thought they were going, man. Right. And so I just think that maybe we've hit a peak of that bullshit and then we're going down. That's kind of where I was going before you asked the question. Look, people can always be stirred up by some of these culture war things, but

Fear and anger are always going to be a motivator. But I do wonder, you know, there's a lot of talk at the convention about joy. I was cringing a little bit at some of the joy stuff. But at the same time, like, I think it's possible people might be in the mood to not be so mad. Like, they just might be in the mood. I don't know about joy, but like.

They'd like to not feel like America's a terrible place for a minute. They'd like to not be mad at their neighbors all the time. They'd like to not be outraged at every weird thing that happens. Look, I want to hesitate, as I always do, to extrapolate too much from any single group. But I will say...

I was very surprised by this group. And it's not totally isolated. We've done a number of these groups of down on Trump voters. And I will, as a closer, sort of say almost everyone in this group is going to vote for Harris. There's only one person and that person is going to go third party. You know, and I go back to the beginning of the podcast with some people were talking about our convention versus theirs. When I was watching their convention, that group was all riled up and excited and coordinating and whatever.

Because of the dooming blow, because of picking on people, because of being negative, because of shitting on America, which I think people are over, right? Yeah. And we were excited and joyful and electric because of positivity and of the future. And quite frankly, because we wanted to do things right. They always want to kill things. Yeah.

And so elections are about choices, and we couldn't have given two more stark choices in a one-month period. And I think that's real. I think your focus groups are showing that. I think the polling – I mean, listen.

Trump was plus four before Biden got out. The average right now nationally is Harris plus three. That's a seven point movement. That's real, right? That's kind of where you want to be three or four or five points ahead nationally.

But we're also seeing her very competitive in the battleground states. And we have the excitement to drive a infrastructure on the ground with field and get out the vote that he used to have organically. And maybe he has it now, maybe he doesn't. But guess what? We got it.

the enthusiasm and motivation level of Harris voters are at the same level or above Trump voters now. We didn't have that before. That's right. And you cannot dismiss that on election day.

John Anzalone, thank you so much for joining us. And thanks to all of you for listening to another episode of the Focus Group Podcast. We will be back next week. And in the meantime, be sure to subscribe to The Bulwark on YouTube and rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts. We will catch you next week.