S4 Ep50: She Was Built for This (with Dana Bash)
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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're assessing the first and possibly only debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. And boy, what a difference two months has made since the June debate between Trump and Biden.

Here's what you're going to hear today. Harris eased the concerns of a lot of voters who didn't like Trump but weren't sure what to make of her. She reassured them that she's ready to be president, and Donald Trump looked every day of his 78 years of age.

My guest this week, oh, and I'm very excited about it, is Dana Bash, host of CNN's Inside Politics and State of the Union. And she was the co-moderator of one of the most consequential presidential debates in American history back on June 27th.

She's also the author of a new book, America's Deadliest Election, The Cautionary Tale of the Most Violent Election in American History. Dana, thanks so much for being here. Hi, Sarah. I'm so excited. You know, what's amazing about this is I was on your show the day of the debate.

The day of. Yeah, the morning of. And so you got to ask me about my predictions then or, you know, what I thought she should do. And now I'm going to get to ask you a bunch of questions about how you thought she did and the moderators did. But first, I do want to talk about your book because you wrote...

about the Reconstruction era, Louisiana gubernatorial election of 1872, where there was so much voter suppression and skullduggery that there wasn't a clear winner. And it took almost two years and a lot of violence before the election was resolved. So I do a lot of work like in the democracy space and political violence has just become such a major topic of concern, not just since January 6th, but even leading in. Now, I hear this in the groups a lot, like they feel like we're on the precipice of a civil war.

They feel like we're so mad at each other. And so, yeah, tell me why you decided to write this book. Yeah, I mean, listen, I think that the idea that political violence is kind of hovering over us feels different for our generation. But unfortunately, it is the through line of America. Yeah.

political violence. And this particular era, the Reconstruction era, and even more specifically in 1872, this election in Louisiana was after obviously the most violent time in American history, the Civil War. America was trying to heal, and the South was having a little bit of trouble reconciling the notion of their former slaves, now freed,

being able to go to the voting booth next to them and pick who was going to be their elected officials locally and nationally. And so what happened was this was kind of one of those, you know, sliding doors where you could go a completely different direction depending on what happens in that moment.

This country could have been so different had this election in 1872 not been allowed to go the way it went. And what I mean by that is the election beforehand in 1868, which was the first time in Louisiana in particular that freedmen could vote, Black men could vote. And they elected, like other Southern states, they elected Black representatives. The new voters elected people who would represent them and their interests.

Well, by 1872, the Southern Democrats, because it was the solid South, of course, then the Democrats were the majority in the South. And it was the Republicans who were the party of Lincoln. They wanted to, for the most part, give African-Americans rights and Democrats did not.

they realized the only way to stop that representation, that equality, was at the ballot box. And so there was enormous corruption, fraud, intimidation, disenfranchisement, and violence that nobody would concede the election. So two governors were sworn in, two legislatures were sworn in, and it was a mess for months and months and months. And then the people at the sort of top of the ticket—

were encouraging violence, openly encouraging violence. And their people listened. In a parish called Grant Parish, named for Ulysses S. Grant, who was the president at the time, there was a massacre called the Colfax Massacre. And about 150, probably more, Black men were murdered in cold blood. It was horrible.

And in order to try to find justice, it was decided that they would be tried in federal courts to test the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments that had just passed in attempt to give rights to black men. It went all the way up to the Supreme Court. And what the Supreme Court decided was that it's not a federal decision. It's not a federal role decision.

to determine people's civil rights, it's a state role. And so Louisiana said, and other Southern states said, "Great, we agree." And they enacted Jim Crow laws that stayed in effect for a hundred years. And if you fast forward four years, the corruption and fraud and violence that I described, totally racial,

wasn't just in Louisiana, it was in other states. And it was such a mess that multiple slates of electors were sent to Congress in the presidential of 1876, so much that these electors were just thrown out. Why, Sarah? Because it was decided that the role of the vice president in counting the electoral college votes was ceremonial. And he couldn't decide. And

And so the whole election was decided by a commission because that's what they do here in Washington. Even back then, they come up with commissions. And one man, one single man in that commission ended up being the deciding vote for the president of the United States. But because nothing is for free, there was a backroom deal. And it was the Republican almost president was President Hayes.

And with a wink and a nod, he said, thank you for making me president. In exchange, I am going to pull all the federal troops from the South who are there protecting

the civil rights and the safety of Blacks. So in these two elections, you saw the civil rights get thrown out, and then you saw the protections, the physical protection for newly freed Black Americans get withdrawn. And that led to what we saw until the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s.

You know, I can't say that I was like a big history buff. That surprises me. You know, I'm a big political science nerd. And so to the extent that I like engage with history, it was often through the prism of political science. And so I read a lot of the Federalist Papers, think a lot about the founding. But as a grownup,

especially somebody now who is sort of riveted by the complexities of our moment and trying to understand them by listening to voters. I've become much more interested. And I think one of the things I'm constantly shocked by is both the contingencies of history, like how certain small things just create trajectories that linger and affect us today. Mm-hmm.

But also, I think there's something about being maybe a kid in the 80s and 90s where we just felt like we got it all solved. Like, things feel pretty good. And obviously, we've lived through some crazy things, you know, Rodney King and 9-11. And, like, you know, it's not like there was nothing. But—

I think we generally felt safe and the specter of political violence, I know this happened for me, that going into 2020, I was surrounded by people who were like, there could really be political violence. And I was like, nah, I don't think so. It's not really what we do here anymore. And then we did. But when I listen to you and when I read books like yours, I

I am reminded that we do have a brutal, violent history. Brutal. That is a through line. And it's both an attempt to keep people out of sort of the promise of the American experiment, right? It's about excluding people.

And also about people fighting to be included, right? Fighting for the right to vote. I think a lot now about the right to vote and where it came from and how many people, I mean, it's a cliche, right? People bled and died for it, but of course they did. Honestly, I knew nothing about this era. And I feel really bad about it and I was embarrassed about it. But-

But it says a lot about our education system as I'm older than you, you know, going to elementary school in the late 70s, early 80s.

high school in the late 80s. I went to a great public school in New Jersey, but like, we didn't learn this stuff. Yeah. Let me just say that I appreciate that you were like, I don't know anything about this, so I'm going to write a book about that. That's a very specific kind of thing. Well, I want to be totally transparent in that David Fisher, who's my co-author, he came to me with this idea. Okay. And he was like, this is an incredible book.

moment in time. It's not well known and we should write about it. And because I obviously cover politics for a living and elections and covered 2020, you should do it with me. And I said, okay. Great. There is something comforting. I don't know if comforting is the right word because it's kind of a nice word, but I guess comforting

The fact that this is not a unique, like it's unique to us, but it's not. Like we've survived it before. We've survived it. That's right. We've come back from this. Is there something about giving it a longer lens that makes you feel better? Like it's been a whole lot worse than it is now. It could be worse. And it was worse.

Yes, I definitely feel that way. But I also feel like we have to keep these moments in time alive because, yes, we survived. But at what cost? You know, the leaders back then,

engaged in these compromises in order to just not have another civil war and to unite the country. But the unity on top was like literally a band-aid, and underneath it, the wound was still very much festering. And so I think that's another really...

important lesson, never mind just the lesson, like you were saying, of making sure people vote, making sure that their votes are properly counted. And I mean, another deeper part of this book is who is in control of the voting booths, of the certification of votes. In Louisiana, it was called the returning board. In other states, it's called the canvassing board. They're different

names for them in different states. But at the end, it is about who is in charge of deciding who wins the state and whether or not the people in that state accept it, whether that decision is legitimate

And then on the presidential level, whether it can be approved. That is all very real and sort of scary stuff that we need to be thinking about now, looking at these states, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan. I mean, this stuff matters so much. And it reminds you that this stuff isn't all worked out, right? Not at all. When you get a system...

that is not built for a character like Donald Trump and a movement that is willing to blow through the Constitution and a lot of the constraints that have been put in. You know, I'll tell you, this was a real shock to me sort of as I went through 2017 and 2018 is, you know, how many things were just norms, right? They weren't laws. It was like, we aren't supposed to do this, but there's not really a rule saying you can't. Like, okay, if you want your

You know, son-in-law, or you want to install your whole family in the White House, there's no rule saying you can't. So this is the next book that I want to write. Maybe you can write it with me because I'm trying to figure out the best way to—I'm still noodling it in my head, which is The End of Shame. The norms were in place without actual laws and rules—

Because people didn't do it because they didn't want to feel ashamed. Right. A lot of people don't care anymore. Shame is normalized. This is one of the things that Donald Trump taught a lot of people. It's sort of how he handled the grab them by the whatever moment. The Access Hollywood moment. Access Hollywood. Thank you. Is...

He understood sort of like domination politics that I think a lot of us didn't, right? Like I did expect because I grew up as a conservative where people talked about character counting as a central thing.

thesis for what it meant to be a conservative that the American people wouldn't tolerate things like this. But Donald Trump understood in that like lizard brain of his that if he just plowed through, gave them a plausible reason, locker room talk, that people would like get over it. I remember when he said, you know, we're going to shut down Muslims coming into the country. We're like, we can't do that. You can't say that. His poll numbers went up.

And so even now watching, and this is going to turn us actually to the debate, watching them, the Trump folks, Hugh Hewitt comes to mind as an actor on this, coming out and saying, no, he won. He won. The refs have looked and actually in retrospect, Trump totally won this. And Donald Trump's claiming that he won. There's this way in which, and it's a line from 1984, right? Like they demanded that you ignore your eyes and your ears. Yep.

There's a lot going on there. It's some of it's shame, some of it's propaganda, some of it's the way tribalism is working on us. But there's a lot to mine there. And it is why I do the focus groups. I'm trying to understand what it is about people. And I'll say, I do not compare this time to 1932. I don't think that's what we should be doing. But I will say, I remember being as a young person, always wondering when I learned about the Holocaust, I thought, I don't understand how that could happen. I don't understand. It boggled my mind.

I much more now see how it can happen. I can see how these things work on people and how people get into mindsets of enmity, hating one another, dehumanizing one another, how leaders who put forward propaganda, who dehumanize other people, how that works. Like I'm just watching right now, we've decided Haitians are stealing and eating pets in

You know, it's like this is like longstanding human stuff that humans can go for. Yeah. No, it's very true. All right. Let's talk about the debate because I want to get to it. Let's do it. Because I know that our listeners are like, Longwell, give us the focus groups. We got to know how do the people how they feel about that debate. And.

Generally, it tracked with what we're hearing sort of broadly from the public, which is that Harris won the debate and Donald Trump definitely lost. So let's start by listening to how a group of Trump to Biden, so our flippers that we talk about on the show a lot, these are kind of your swing voters, how they talked about the debate the morning after. It felt like a lot of the things that Trump was saying

you know, criticizing and exploiting Joe Biden for now he's the old man that can't keep up, you know, and that was kind of a fun dynamic. I had not heard a single thing about people eating pets, people eating cats and dogs. But that kind of leads to the fact that what I like most about the debate was the fact that they did fact check.

Yes. Finally, for once, somebody went, no, you're wrong. They don't kill babies after they're born. That never happened. I like the fact that they they were even about it. They fact check both her and him. So it wasn't like they were all ganging up on him. But that was something I didn't see coming. I literally did a spit take. Joe Biden was kind of moving at half speed and it was just easy to hit him.

below the belt easier, whereas Kamala is sharper, more intelligent, articulate. She was pretty much built for this, I feel like, to put him in his place, but in a way that's informative and comforting almost, whereas Joe Biden left a lot of people feeling unconfident. And it makes sense. It's like someone bullying someone in a memory care unit. That's just not nice.

Harris being more presidential, that's obvious. We know Donald Trump is just going to run people through the mud. And I was actually pleasantly surprised at Harris because like many of us, we haven't heard much from her. You know, she addressed most of the issues pretty well.

well. And she gave Donald Trump like what maybe other candidates couldn't, you know, she was a little bit sarcastic or talking back with him, which I appreciated. But as much as it is entertaining, I don't know that that's what we need in a presidential debate for 2024. But it's just where we're at right now. I don't think that we can group her with

With Biden, I mean, that's just so typical of Trump. He's just bullying. It is that Trump wants to do the same old things where Kamala wants to kind of try something new. I think in Harris's remarks last night about her not being Joe Biden, she said, clearly, I'm not Joe Biden. I'm not Donald Trump. She was channeling her Obama there. And I think it came across really well. She also spoke about the future many, many times, whereas Trump has the concepts of a plan.

I got so tired of hearing Trump rail on how many millions of criminals are being led into the country and people's crime rates are dropping, but ours are going up. I'd like to know where he got those stats.

After the second or third time hearing it, every time they started talking about immigration, I kind of just tuned out for a little bit. Well, I think that Kamala handled that very well, actually, and pointed out that Trump influenced a lot of people to shoot down that multibillion dollar border bill. And Kamala's words really resonated with me. She goes, yeah.

He's campaigning on a problem. He stalled a solution so that he could use this against me. He was picking at Kamala like, well, you didn't do anything the last three and a half years. But the same can be said about him because he's been a president for four years. And like we were talking about the Obamacare, you know, he wants that change, but he did nothing. So, you know, he's picking at her for something. And I kind of feel like, you know, he had his chance and he was he was the man. And he I felt like he didn't do anything.

Trump was so negative and divisive and there's no hope, but he's going to fix it.

At least there was optimism coming from the Harris side of the thing. And it was breath of fresh air, which is what we need in this country. I really did want to see how Harris could hold her own on a stage like that with such a daunting established opponent. And I felt like she gave more specifics. I felt like in the end, the fact checking favored her over him. And I was very impressed by

She did seem very presidential. And I participated in the same group after the first debate. And I said there needs to be real time fact checking. That would be a great improvement. So I was really happy to see that.

Okay, so as that guy said, we had a bunch of people in this group that we had in our groups immediately after the June debate, which you moderated. This group panned Biden's performance. So we talked a bit about how they viewed this debate relative to the Biden-Trump debate, which is why you're hearing some of that talk.

I want to talk about your own debate experience. And so back when you were moderating the June debate, what went through your head as you were watching sort of this performance unfold? And I will take anything you want to tell me about, like what the pressure's like, because I, as somebody who does have to perform in public sometimes, I am just so acutely aware of both for everybody who's there, Trump, Kamala, the moderators. It is a like big pressure moment. And then I'm dying to hear your thoughts on the fact checking.

Yeah. Okay. Well, first of all, on the pressure. Yeah. So much, so much pressure. I had done many primary debates, but to say this is next level is an understatement. I'd never done a general election debate, nor had Jake. So we were extremely aware of the stakes. But for me, just in my own head and emotionally and mentally, it's,

What I tried to do was, as much as I could, just put blinders on and just be in the moment, be in the room. It's just me. It's just Jake. It's just Trump. It's just Biden. And we're just doing this. And when you're performing on TV, especially, you obviously have to think about that aspect of it. But in this case, I just tried to stay in.

in the zone as much as I could. Because if I started to think about 50 million people, then I would have probably crumbled and fallen on the floor. So I just, as a human being, I just couldn't do that. And it did help to have Jake there. And it mostly helped. I mean, I think he would say the same about me, but what really helped was our prep.

And the team that we have, Sarah, and you know some of our team members here because you've done a lot of CNN and we're grateful for that. But there is this remarkable group of people, and I kind of joke that it's like Avengers assemble, that when we have this big event...

We have all of these superheroes who have different superpowers, and they all come together in one room, and we figure out how to rule the universe and fix the universe. And that is what happens in these big moments, and this is what we did. I mean, we spent hours and hours and hours working.

with questions, with topics, trying to figure out the order. We, of course, do mock debates where somebody plays Trump, somebody plays Biden, and we go through. And once we do that, you get a feel for what works, what doesn't work, what lands, what doesn't land. And we did it over and over until the morning of the debate.

Because it's that, but it's also like, you know, things happen in the world and in the news. And so the prep is key, is absolutely key. And knowing that we have a net, like we have these tremendous people that I told you about, not only prepping us beforehand, but in the control room. So we approached the debate in a traditional way, which is since 1960, since Kennedy-Nixon era,

The debate moderators have been facilitators when it comes to the content of what they're saying, except for when they don't answer your question. I have, in primary debates and in the general election debate, followed up. My question was, President Trump, will you accept the results of 2024? Second time, third time. Okay. And the feeling was that once you participate with moderators,

more than that, you're putting your thumb on the scale. And when I'm doing an interview, I'm definitely responsible for fact-checking, real-time fact-checking, which is not easy. I'm absolutely responsible because it's just me and the person I'm interviewing. Same goes for a town hall. CNN often does these town halls where it's me or one of my colleagues and the elected official, presidential wannabe, and a room full of people asking questions. Fact-check is key.

But when it's one candidate and another candidate and they're going back and forth, our approach to it, again, just going back to how I started this, was more traditional. It's up to Joe Biden to fact check. And ABC took a different approach. That's just a different philosophy. There's lots of debate about this approach. I will say one of the voters said he was happy about the fact checking, which is interesting, also said that it was balanced, balanced.

It wasn't. And I'm not saying anything negative about my friends at ABC. I think they did a terrific job. But there were, I believe, four times where they fact-checked Trump. And look, there's not necessarily an equal playing field here. If you make a decision to fact-check and one person is lying up the wazoo and the other person is shading the truth or being more of a typical politician rather than flatly lying—

I don't think you have to be equitable. However, there were times when Kamala Harris, again, in a typical politician way, I'm not saying she did anything different than anybody else when you ask a question who's running for office, didn't answer the question. There wasn't follow-up. Like, well, my question was. So I guess my point is, is that

To me, it looked like there was a very deliberate plan to fact check Donald Trump because of the fact that he lies and just lies. It's not even shading the truth. He lies more than any politician in our lifetime that we have seen in the public sphere. And they were prepared for it. And that was their approach. And there's a big debate about that.

There are people who say our approach was right. There are people who say their approach was right. And the way that media organizations approach debates, I think from now on, is going to be more of a jump ball. I mean, what do you think? I'm curious about your perspective. You know, the night of, as I was watching it,

When they did the first fact check, I was like, oh my gosh, do my ears deceive me? Are we going to get a fact check of Donald Trump? And I think there's a little bit of having listened to this guy—

In many ways, because he does so much friendly media, he goes so unchecked so often. Just letting these lies persist, something about me cries out for, can somebody just tell him in front of people that they're not murder

babies after they're born. Like, this is an absurd thing to say. But, and now, let me ask you a question in a debate. Why isn't that Kamala Harris's role? So I was saying, in the moment, I really was like, thank God, you know, somebody's saying it. And the reason, I'll tell you, the difference between the moderators doing it and Kamala Harris doing it is...

It is Kamala Harris's job, but she's also not a neutral arbiter of the facts, right? She's an adversary in that space. They're the ones who are supposed to be neutral. And so it seems like a natural role for them to be in some ways arbiters of the

major truths. That being said, first of all, I think that the right wing, where you guys are getting major kudos, you and Jake are being very celebrated for your performance among folks on the right because they did feel like it was even-handed and nobody was putting their thumb on the scale. I would say in retrospect, having thought about it a little bit more,

I don't think it was terrible for them to do it once or twice. And I think if they were going to do it, they needed to find a way to do it to her too. Right. You're saying it in a much more articulate way because I'm being cautious about it because I don't want to...

Yeah, this is your... Kiss everybody off. Yeah. Everybody can be mad at me all the time. Because it really did give the right. Now, I think that they're playing the refs because their guy got smoked. Definitely. And let's be clear. Yeah. They played the refs with us beforehand. Yeah. I tried to tune it all out. I took Twitter off my phone and everything before the debate. But playing the refs is like, that's what they do on both sides. Yeah.

So I do think there is a lot of peril in getting involved. And I think Candy Crowley, part of the reason that I think people are like, let's not do this is because that happened one time and it was a big disaster. Right. And so you do want to be very careful. It's a tough call. I think the media trying to figure out how to handle Donald Trump, I get frustrated myself sometimes, but I also just think it's a really hard thing to do.

It is hard. It is hard. And again, ABC made the decision that Donald Trump is a unique character who should have a unique set of rules applied to him. And just on the other thing, on the candy thing, who I will say that I love and has been a mentor and a wonderful person.

Part of the lore about the danger of fact-checking is that if you're going to fact-check real time, you better be right. There was one moment when it was about crime stats. Crime's been going down. You're wrong. If you look at the FBI stats, crime has been going down. FBI stats do say that. But Trump was also right that the FBI did not have the crime stats in major cities because the major cities have not reported those stats to the FBI. Right.

So this is like, you're going to go down a rabbit hole of nuance where everybody has a point. And like that last part, Trump said, but I don't know if people believe him. And I don't know that he has behaved in such a way that he deserves the benefit of the doubt. Yeah. Yeah. Look, I think there's a lot of fairness in this. I think the first thing that they checked was,

on. I can't remember if it was the murdering babies, but I thought that the fact check on Springfield and that they're eating dogs and cats, I thought that was super fair because it's a news story. And it's one that like, there's a lot of like, wait, is this happening? What is going on here? And as news people, they had the opportunity to like call them and say, okay, this isn't happening. I felt like that one was really fair. And then

Even like Donald Trump is lying that you can just like murder babies after they're born. But there are states that have laws that are extraordinarily liberal around the ways in which you can have an abortion, even of a healthy baby up until nine months without a penalty. Now, typically that is not what happens. It is usually a devastating case. It's so rare. But it is a complicated thing to fact check absolutes in that space.

Now, let me just tell you one, I'll give you one little piece of intel, which is had Donald Trump in our debate said the election was stolen, he would have heard from us. Okay. So unlike a fundamental of democracy that is so dangerous—

And we saw what it did in 2020. He didn't say it. He didn't say that, which was noteworthy. That is true. Although you did ask about January 6th, right? I'm pretty sure you did. Yes. I did feel like it played a slightly bigger role in this debate than it did. No, no, it did. It did. Our focus was more looking ahead. Yeah. Like my question was about 2024 and the election results.

When you go into it, is it that you're thinking, OK, I have things I want to learn about this or I believe that this is what voters want to learn about this? No, both. I mean, honestly, this sounds so self-serving, but truly the way that we go into it is what matters most to the voters, particularly the voters who matter the most. Yeah. The people who haven't yet made up their minds.

The people you talk to every single day. Who are real, by the way. Yeah. And look, there is an element of, and we are going to get into this, but like there's an element of people wanting to be courted or wanting to, you know, they're holding out. There's a certain type of voter that's just like, I don't know. I'm still thinking about it. But it's also a real thing that people want, especially with Kamala right now. They know why they don't like Trump, but they're like, I don't know. I'd like to affirmatively like her. And, you know, I have concerns about the economy, which they do.

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Can I also ask you about this? I'm sorry to turn the tables on you. You can't stop being the interviewer. No, no, no, because I think about this a lot and I'm curious because you have an informed opinion on this since you talk to people who are undecided all the time. So in 2016...

Brad Parscale, who was the digital director for Trump, who did all the ads. And then, of course, he became briefly the campaign director in 2020. He'd never done politics before. And he told me that his sort of North Star, the way that he framed all of the ads, all of the messaging for Donald Trump was that iPod commercial with the guy in like in shadow dancing around with the earbuds.

It wasn't about like, here's how an iPod works. And let me tell you the mechanics of it and the technology. It was like, this is how it makes you feel. And nobody wanted to know the backstory of the iPod. They just wanted to know how it made you feel. And that's how he focused on Donald Trump. Meanwhile, you had Hillary Clinton with like 17 point plans of her 17 point plans and like nobody cared. So that's how I've been thinking about politics with Donald Trump on the ticket. But now, Sarah...

When you hear, I'm not sure yet, so many people want to know, well, I want to know more about what she's going to do on the economy. Not to say that's not a completely legitimate question, but why don't you want to know more of what he's going to do? Why is she being held to that standard in a way that I don't think he is? What does that mean? What is that about? So I'm going to take a shot at answering this. I think a lot in the groups about what they're saying is,

their preferences are and what their revealed preferences are as they talk. And so I listen to a lot of voters right now being like, well, I want to know more about policy. Now, I think that there are a lot of voters who feel like that's the thing that they should say. That's sort of the smart way to express why they haven't arrived at a firm conclusion. But I would say the revealed preference tends to be much more like

does she clear some internal bar I have over what it means to be presidential? Interesting. And I think there's a lot of funny things in the mix there that are like, some of them, I'm going to use the word like preternatural.

When people are talking and they talk a lot in frames of strength and weakness, a lot of times what they mean is like Trump's a big guy who like I wouldn't want to punch me or insult me or he scares me a little bit. And so maybe he'll scare world leaders or he'll stand up to people or he'll make the side that I don't like.

feel afraid because the most annoying person in my office is the person who is demanding that I use pronouns in my email. You know, it's just, there's so much going on. And also for Kamala in particular, she is contending with a few different things. Some of it's racial, some of it's gender, but mostly it is San Francisco progressive. Because for these swing voters, and this is where

as I try to remind people all the time, the swing voters are center-right. They are right-leaning independents, soft GOP voters. They are not...

like, committed Democrats most of the time, unless they've moved hard since 2016. And that happens to people. But for a lot of them, they're like, I really hate Donald Trump, but I also hate, like, a San Francisco progressive. That is not my jam. I do not like it. And I know what that means, and I don't, I'm not into it. And so what they mean is, like,

Has she sufficiently disabused me of the notion that she is going to behave like a San Francisco progressive when she gets into office? And that comes out of their mouths as, I want more policy. Yeah. And also, like, I want to see more of her. I want to know more about her. I want to feel comfortable with her, which is why, look, the debate—

And I've got to play more sound from this. Actually, literally, it's my next setup. You've like led into it. OK, so while they were sure that she won the debate, the thing that the guy said in the last clip was about this. It was about specifics. Right. So the biggest complaints that we hear about Harris is that voters don't see her enough. They don't know what she wants for the country. This is what they want. So here's how these Trump to Biden voters felt about the specifics that they got from Harris during the debate.

Sure.

She gave specifics. He gave generalities on every single topic. What are you going to do? Well, she said, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to talk to this guy. I think they need to do this. I'm just going to fix it. How? I'm going to be so awesome. You just can't believe it. Well, how? And he never did the how other than by the sheer force of his personality and will, he's going to make it better.

I feel like a lot of the rhetoric in the debate space in general is really emotionally geared and it's like lacking a lot of information. So, I mean, I went into it kind of expecting that, taking it with a grain of salt and I'm trying to be entertained by it more than I'm trying to like base my opinions around whether I'm voting for each candidate. I think it's just more important to take the time to look at the hard facts on your own, not just base it on a debate.

Because they're just insulting each other, saying ridiculous things. And, you know, a lot of that information that you're hoping for is just lost in the ethos. I wanted some answers, which in the beginning Kamala didn't seem like she was going to give, but she got there. She was definitely very presidential. I live in Georgia. We just had a school shooting here, as I'm sure most of you guys know. I am...

a gun owner. I own plenty of guns, so I wanted answers on guns, abortion, Gaza, Israel, stuff like that. I feel like I got all the answers from Kamala, but Trump just sat there taking her bait and not answering questions, I feel. I don't really expect to get answers in a debate. I would like that, but past experience, I think, has shown me that it's rare that those lingering questions that I have get addressed. Last night stayed with that

I thought Trump started off decently. Like I remember like being like just sort of surprised at him at the beginning of the debate. And then I felt like about halfway through, maybe a little less than halfway through that he just shot himself in the foot. I think she was the clear winner. She was more presidential and he did a poor job of taking her bait and allowing himself to get upset and caught up in different issues that we didn't need to spend a lot of time on, in my opinion.

Through some of those discussions, like with Russia and Ukraine and the Middle East, I was just coming back to the fact that

like the two of them standing on the world stage, her just having just a better ability to present presidentially, to present like she's a leader. And I have conflict with that because that's not totally what it's about. Like the substance is really important, but I did find myself just keep coming back to that. It would just be nice to go back to a place where we have a president that can just stand on their own on the world stage and not be a joke.

Yeah, so like I shouldn't even have answered your question. I should have just let them answer because I think they do it, right? And look, my big takeaway from the groups that we did right after was the fact that people were organically saying she seemed presidential. And to me, that was just— Which is not a small thing for a woman. No, that's the big hurdle. The hurdle is like can you be seen as somebody that they're like, no, I think she can stand up to world leaders. I think she can be the one who pushes back against big bullies in the world. Yeah.

And Donald Trump was, I said this on your show, and I stole it from a guy who said it in the focus groups, that people want to see how she handled Donald Trump because they see it as a stand-in for how she'll handle other autocrats across the world. Sarah, I was thinking about you telling me that the entire time I was watching that debate because I thought that was so wise. And she did it. She clearly did it.

Yeah, she clearly did it. Credit to the great American voter who said that, and I stole it from. I'll actually just note there was one guy who felt like he didn't get enough answers. He was like the most down on her in the whole group. But even he said Harris gave them more specifics and Trump's ramblings about immigrants and eating cats

and saying that he had the concepts of a plan really turned him off. And ultimately, it was a clean sweep with these voters. Which actually, I'll just throw out, was very notable because we had a lot of repeats in this group. Like I said, a lot of people who'd been there from the debate in June, and so we wanted to compare them. Three of them had really been leaning RFK over...

in this group, and we knew that from the screens and from the conversations we were having with them. So it was interesting to hear that one of the things she did was move them from, yeah, I think I'm going to ditch out to third party. Now, RFK is gone. But he's endorsed Trump. But he's endorsed Trump, and so she brought them back. When you sign up at WorkMoney, you could win $50,000. With the average renter paying around $2,100 per month, that means you can have rent covered for a whole year and more. So you can be more...

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Okay. You and I are just talking so much that now I can't keep you here forever. So I've got to keep rolling the sound. I'm going to keep rolling the sound. Okay. So this guy who was the biggest skeptic in the Trump to Biden group was a former California resident. And he said one of the things that was really holding him back was her record as attorney general there in California. So I want to listen to what he said about that and then what the reservations the rest of the groups were still voiced about Kamala Harris.

So when she was attorney general, her department harassed the Backpage founder until he committed suicide. Her department argued against letting people out because otherwise they couldn't find cheap labor. She put people in jail for drug offenses and then admitted that she did it herself. She withheld evidence until she was forced by a court to do it, to get a guy off death row. She's a bully in a completely different way than Trump. But, you know,

Yes, it may have been her department, but she still was over it. So she's done a lot of really horrible things that nobody's asked her about yet. And I was in California. I lived there when she was the attorney general. It's not like this is secondhand. This is in the papers. That's the kind of thing that I need answers. Like, how do you really feel now? Why did you mess up? You know, do you feel bad that, you know, this guy committed suicide?

And nobody's asked her about that in the way that Trump has been asked about his stuff. That's like the one thing that I need answered is explain yourself on this. Pretty much after the debate last night, I kind of decided that it was going to be a Harris vote. And it actually just brought me back a little bit. I'm going to have to do some research now. I feel like you should be hesitant toward any politician. They're all doing something. I mean...

I would argue that Joe Biden was not always great in the past too. And I'm not even that educated on it, but yeah.

They're all kind of bad. So when it was announced that she was going to be assuming this role, I was disappointed again and wasn't sure, which is why it was very important to learn more about her and what she was going to stand for. And hearing some of the things she said about her, I'd heard some things, but there's a lot that every politician has in their closet that we're not always familiar with. So

knowing I do not want Trump back in office. And I have two choices right now that are really in the forefront. I have to at least be educated enough and I do have to fact check some stuff, but I still lean towards Harris. I never really kind of heard what she was really doing. So I have to admit, I never thought about her being president. If you would have asked me a couple months ago that, well, Biden drops out and they do Harris, how would you feel? I would have said negative because I

That was my viewpoint of her the whole time. If someone else was in the picture against her, I might feel differently. But I can't see myself ever voting for Trump. So I guess I'm trying to push myself to her. Is she perfect? I would have to say probably not. I didn't know a lot of these things that was saying. I'm not educated on that, really, to be honest with you. So I have to say my view has been a little more positive than it was a couple months ago, but probably not, you know, not 100%.

So this is where new information can matter to voters, right? This one guy, he was not happy she was the candidate. But even he, like I said, when we did vote choice, he was going to vote for her and so was everybody else in the group. And I think that this is where I guess I want to make one observation about these undecideds and kind of how it works here.

An election is often decided by which way kind of the late independents and undecideds break at the end. And it is interesting to me to hear from people because I remember in 2020, people are always like, how do you know? Because obviously I do the Republican voters against Trump stuff. And they're like, well, how do you know that Republicans were moved on this? And I was like, well, because down ballot in these swing states, Republicans overperformed Donald Trump.

And so at the top of the ticket, people who voted Republican down ballot either voted for Joe Biden or they left it blank. And so what she's doing is she's chipping away with these voters. They know they don't like Trump. They already voted for Joe Biden despite not being Democrats in 2020 because they hated him so much. But there's been a lot of backsliding in these groups. I've watched it, you know, for a long time where people are mad about the economy. They're frustrated about just a whole bunch of things with Joe Biden, thought he was too old.

And so she is trying to chip away at these people to get them to believe they can affirmatively vote for her. And I do think that what you're hearing from them is when push comes to shove and they've got to vote, they'll break her way. And affirmatively so, not just leave it blank, which to me is –

is her doing the job. So fascinating. Can I ask you, though, so I'm always interested in the post-debate narrative and everything. What does journalists roll after a debate and how they think about shaping the narrative? Such a good question because it matters. Yeah. It matters because people have just had like 90 minutes of stuff thrown at them. And to distill it, you know, it helps to hear from people who cover this, like me and my colleagues.

It's something I think about. I take it really seriously. I approach it as a reporter and not a, you know, an analyst. But also I don't go, she won, she crushed him. None of that. That's not in my lexicon. It's not my job. So I try to do it like just an informed observation. For example, I think the thing that I said right out of the gate was that I

The statement that she made, I am not Donald Trump and I am not Joe Biden, to me was just kind of summed up her whole approach. I called it kind of modern triangulation, but it's also her trying to really differentiate herself from everybody. And then I kind of took it from there. So I think it matters a lot. I really do.

Yeah, I mean, look, like the debate, it does come at you so fast, like that 90 minutes. And Donald Trump is also like indecipherable sometimes. So I was like, what? Oh, he did say that. Or I didn't catch that the first time. And I think that for journalists...

what they choose to highlight from those things because it gets reduced to sound bites. And I actually, the one versus loss, like I was in the moment being like, she is dominating him. But I will say, I also view my job as to be honest with people as somebody who is doing analysis. And so after the Joe Biden debate,

I watched your debate at the Aspen Ideas Festival in front of a live audience. And so Jonathan Capehart was moderating the panel. So we did 30 minutes up front of like, what does Joe Biden need to do in this debate? And then we watched the debate and then we had to get back up on stage. And I was on with some damn kind of operative types who were like,

don't matter. This is, this is fine. And I was like, I was like, guys, this is a nightmare. Like this is, what are you talking about? That's campaign ending. And then I did spend the next much to many people's annoyance being like, Joe Biden cannot continue this campaign. And part of it was because I was listening to voters incessantly say, I don't think he'll live through his next term. And I don't feel like it's responsible for

These were like soft Dems saying, I don't think I can vote for him. And then he'd listen to like hard Dems be like, well, I'd vote for his brain in a jar. And you're like, all right, well, be better if you didn't have to do that. I think we could all just admit that up front. And so I think just from listening to voters so often, I can see them being

warming up to her with this. And I think that the, I want to hear more about the policies as like just part of the warming process. And one thing I also know is that the more voters see of Donald Trump, the less they like him. That has always been true, the more he's in their faces. And the amnesia that Democrats have been beating their heads against the wall about with him, what it was really like when he was president. Yeah. And just kind of the

Yes, maybe you had more money in your pocket because the economy is cyclical, which nobody will say. And there were reasons for that pre-pandemic, obviously. But what about all the rest? I feel like that fog is lifting a little bit.

Yeah, I think that's right. All right. I want to turn to how a group of 2020 Trump voters who are down on Trump – so we screen for this type of group a lot – people who voted for Trump, but they're like, ugh, I really don't want to vote for this guy again, partly because we view them as in our persuadable universe of people we're trying to target –

Now, this group isn't going to be as much fun for people who are hopeful of persuading these people to vote for Kamala Harris as the swing voters were. But it is clear that this debate did nothing to make them less down on Trump from their assessment of his performance. Let's listen.

I voted for him in the last election and the junk that happened at the insurrection and, you know, him trying to get through to Mike Pence. I just sat there and I was like, just accept it with grace. They were asking him direct questions. And I'm just sitting there and I'm just saying, just answer the damn question.

The debate last night was like a tough watch. You know, he kind of berated Kamala for like, well, you only have four sentences in your plan. It's like, okay, that's yours. Do you have a single sentence? He said he has a concept of a plan. That's just like not good enough for me. It's

said with the abortion laws are you going to veto that because i went out and voted so that my state would have that because that directly affects my young adult woman life like that's terrifying you know that you could just come in and say nope actually i know you voted on that but we're gonna change it where harris was like these are my plans this is what i want to do i felt like all he did during closing remarks was like name call and be neither it was like is this really like

Oh, you think you're going to like sway me? Yes, I was on board with Trump 2016 and 2020. I really like the slogan, Make America Great Again. And especially like the stimulus checks that came about because during COVID part of the time I was unemployed. So that helped out quite a bit. But now really worried about the comments last night about

food, goods and services, you know, the prices going sky high through the roof and about the tariffs being imposed, the price hike occurring as a result of that. And also I was thrown because he never did answer the damn question on if he would support Ukraine to win the war against Russia. So basically I'm appalled by both candidates.

And I'm very disappointed in Trump because I thought initially that he was going to bring a breath of fresh air to Washington and he was going to be able to come up with a better program than the non-program that his predecessor had. And

What's tragic, actually, is that he's not matured or changed at all as a result of having been president for four years. He's not more flexible or open-minded or courteous or in any way a better human being. And again, I'm appalled by the lack of equality of both major party candidates. But Trump is perfect.

is a tragic figure because he's incapable of coming up with any kind of meaningful program.

a big issue about health care, which is so horribly expensive in this country. You know, he has no plan. He says, well, I'll have a great plan and come up with it. What's your great plan? At least give us some idea of what the great plan is. And another disturbing remark in regards to Trump is that immigrants are now eating your pets. OK, even if that's true, I don't want to know about it. Thank you. You know, that was the weirdest remark of the whole debate.

I wanted to hear about this Project 2025 thing that I kept on hearing about. That's scary to me. I support Christians. My son is in a...

in a Christian private school, but I don't like this radical outlook of what they got going on in that plan. So I wanted to hear more about Trump. Thankfully, he did mention that, you know, he's not going to look at it, but that's right now. I do have some concerns with that because I feel like with the right money, because money talks and, you know, maybe a middleman for that establishment coming to him, will he look at it eventually during his presidency term?

So now let's listen to what the disaffected Trump voters had to say, though, about Harris. I was hoping for some clarification on what their plans are. And Trump was like, oh, we've got really great people. We've got a really great team. We have really great people. But didn't voice what those plans are. And that was the most frustrating thing of the whole thing. You know, and Harris just wants to throw money at anybody.

I know that, you know, talking about the $50,000 for small business owners, is that only for citizens? Is it for anybody who immigrated illegally? Or is it for people who are in a certain demographic as far as their income? Where's that money coming from? We're going to get further and further in depth. Did Harris win last night? No.

And the reason why is because she needed to show that she had some programs or what defined herself. And she didn't do that because she didn't answer any of the questions. And I was disappointed about that. Honestly, I'm not voting for Harris. I'm not voting for Trump.

But she did not do her job last night and define her positions. All I heard was I'm going to give these people money. I'm going to give these people money. I'm going to give these people money. Hey, don't give small businesses $50,000 or whatever you're going to give them. Go back and collect the billions from COVID that nobody administered properly.

I don't want to rant and rave, but I'm very disturbed with Trump. But boy, if you think Harris is the savior, we're in some deep trouble here.

I just wanted to see now that Harris is part of the campaign and she has the Democratic nomination that what would happen now with the new debate? And my key thing was that I was looking more so about how you're going to help better this economy instead of insults and dodging questions and the whole night.

I saw that certain questions that were asked by the moderators, they were more so on Harris' side than Trump's side anyway. So Trump was getting the fair end anyway. And I think the best point for Trump was at the very end when he got to do his closing statement.

And he spoke more about the three and a half years that Harris has been vice president. What has she done for immigration? What has she done to help with the economy? He said, you haven't done nothing. So I was really hoping to have like a clear winner of like, wow, that was amazing. Like you really touched on all the things I'm worried about. Oh, I feel so much better. Like here's my plan and here's how I'm going to make it happen. Not, well, here's my plan. And, you know, well, where does that money come from?

am i going to be paying for your 50 000 small business startup money like i can't have my taxes raised any higher and it's also really scary to hear that people who are going to move their airbnb houses into you know residential homes is just going to jack up the price because they know hey you're going to get that six grand

Harris, she sidestepped totally the question about immigration. And, you know, she just really didn't say anything about that and everything else. And of course, Trump, when they asked him about the January 6th insurrection, he said, well, what about all the prosecuting of all the people that burned down Minnesota? And, you know, he sidestepped that too. So these are former Trump voters, but they...

But they are now the double haters in a way that I think the swing voters, sort of the Trump to Biden voters, that coalition that Kamala Harris needs to keep together, it feels like she's moving them back to a place where they're getting comfortable with her. But these Trump voters who are like sick of Trump,

they're still kind of a pox on both their houses. And ultimately, there was one person in the group who was going to vote for Harris. There was one who was going to go back to Trump. But the rest were going to sit it out or go third party. A lot of them had actually been kind of interested in RFK. But as I always say, the most important thing is to build the biggest, broadest anti-Trump coalition. So I'm not going to be complaining that hard about Trump voters moving off of Trump. So, Dan, I'm going to close with this. There's like a little bit

bit of conventional wisdom here in a lot of this. Actually, back in Aspen, after Biden kind of cratered, you know, like I said, the Democrats on the panel were like, debates don't matter. And now I'm watching today Republicans and people like, you know, Ben Shapiro and others be like, debates don't matter. What do you think? Do you think debates matter? Of course. I definitely think debates, I mean, well...

Aside from the one that was outsized in its importance, the one that Jake and I moderated because it ended the candidacy of Joe Biden. Yeah, absolutely. They matter because especially in today's day and age, when people are just getting the bits and bytes on their phones and that's how they consume information to have a more fulsome live event where they can see them in real life is

It almost matters even more in some ways because they're not just memes and TikTok videos. They're like actual people, don't you think? I totally agree. I think that saying right now that debates don't matter after one of the debates just literally took out

both the sitting president and nominee for the Democratic Party. Like, that's a nuclear hot take because, I mean, clearly they matter and they make a big difference. But your point about this is it's one of the only times you get to see them face off against each other. They have to answer questions from, I think, moderators who are working to be stand-ins for the voters. And they're deeply important.

Yeah. And I want to congratulate you and everybody else who does the moderation because I think it's a really hard thing to do. And I think it offers a lot to the voters. They want to see whether or not they want every specific on policy like they say they do. They certainly want to see how these guys comport themselves. And drawing that out is an extremely important job. So,

Dana Bash, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. Oh my gosh, this is like just my happy place talking about politics with Sarah Longwell. Same, this is the best. And thanks to all of you for listening to another episode of the Focus Group Podcast. Remember to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, subscribe to The Bulwark on YouTube, and become a Bulwark Plus member at thebulwark.com. We will see you next week.

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