Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Focus Group Podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark. And today we're going to do something a little different.
We're not going to do the clips of the focus group. So if you literally are only here because you like listening to the real people, then this might not be for you. But if you like the analysis, that's what we're going to do today because we are almost entirely through the primary cycle. Early September, there's going to be a few more. We've got New Hampshire in there, Delaware, Massachusetts. But for the most part, the big states, the competitive states are
are locked up. I think New Hampshire is probably the only one we're really looking forward to. So I wanted to bring in my favorite friend, political analyst, whose name is not Amy Walter, because Amy Walter is actually my favorite. But my next favorite is my old friend and bestselling New York Times author, Tim Miller. Hey, Tim.
Hey, Sarah, I feel like you should have said that I was on first before you told people to sign off if they only are here for the focus group voices, because maybe there are people that only like the focus group voices, but also like me. That could be true. I can recut it. But it's funny. I have a couple of people who like to tell me that the only reason they listen is to hear the real people. And it's annoying when it's... I'm basically one of those people. Not annoying. I wouldn't say annoying. I think that it differs from week to week.
I thought Mark Caputo, who's an old nemesis of mine, really, was very harsh on my candidates, I guess, in retrospect, maybe for good reason. I thought he was fantastic last week. I think you've had some other really good guests, Amy, obviously. But every once in a while, I'm like, give me some more people. You know, I want more real people right into my veins. Every once in a while. Well, I'll tell you, next week...
I'm going to give people like a full focus group where it's just like start to finish. You can just listen to the whole thing. Okay. Now that might be too much on the real people. All right. Let's keep the porridge just right. All right. Well, the reason I wanted to have you on today, Tim, and to do one without the groups is I want to talk about something more macro and not as micro because we are about to turn the hinge of Labor Day.
And once we're past Labor Day and we get a couple more of these primaries out of the way, we are full on in...
in the general election season. And at that point, we're going to start doing lots of focus groups on each of the big competitive states. We're going to spend a lot of time in Arizona, a lot of time in Pennsylvania, a lot of time in Michigan, doing a lot of swing voter groups, figuring out where we think things are going to go. But before that happens, I want to kind of do an overview, a look back of where we've been and talk about something that I think is happening at the macro level, which is the vibe shift.
My pal Amy Walter has a really good piece in the Cook Political Report, it was like last week, where she talks about the vibe shift. And that's something that I think we're all starting to notice here. It's coming through in these elections, like Tuesday's election in NY19, special election, where the Democrats sort of pulled it out in a right-leaning seat and
There's a lot of suddenly like, oh, my gosh, maybe Democrats will hang on to the House. And obviously with the Dobbs decision, I think that there seems to be an enthusiasm shift. And so I want to talk about vibes with you. That's why I want to have you on because I know you like to talk about vibes. I love vibes. Yeah. And I got to tell you, I do think more and more of our politics shift.
It's starting to be about vibes. And so I want to dig in on this. So why don't you just tell me from your perspective, and let's maybe start with Tuesday's election in New York, like, where would you say we are right now?
I think obviously the Democrats feel like they have their wind at the back a little bit. And I think that just the frustrations and annoyances that are happening, economy writ large, are starting to taper off a bit. And I think that is having a big impact on Vimes. Vimes is also a lot about expectations, right? Like when you're told that the Joe Biden return was going to be normal and that COVID was going to be over, and then all of a sudden we have these lingering annoyances that last for months on end and costs are rising.
That is an expectations fail. And that contributes to people having bad vibes.
Then after a while, you kind of realize that we're adjusting this new normal. All of a sudden, there's a tapering of inflation. The Biden administration seems like they have their act together a little bit more than maybe they did towards the end of last year. Some of the just day-to-day first world problem annoyances that happened from the kind of post-COVID rebound, like you'd want to order a bed, but like one of the parts you couldn't get for seven months or whatever.
You know, you go to your local coffee shop and there'd only be one barista there instead of three and it would take 35 minutes to get a coffee, right? All these things are
First world problems, of course, but they contributed to this, right? When you're like, man, my paycheck isn't going as far as I thought it did. I also have to deal with all these annoyances. The vibes were bad. I think that stuff is still there, but at a much lower level. People are getting a little used to it. Things are getting better. And I think that is contributing to the kind of mood about the Democrats in the midterm. And then, obviously, I think we can have a separate conversation about Roe, which as
has had a different type of impact than maybe I expected right when it happened. So actually, well, let's just talk about Roe. Because I think, you know, after the special election in New York in particular, did you have any reactions? Yeah. And by the way, Pat Ryan is the name of the winner of the New York special election we've been talking about, New York 19. I mean, it's not nothing. I think that if you go back to the big wave years that I have been either part of, either working politics or kind of on the sidelines in 10, 14, 18,
There was always some signs early that the wave was coming in these special elections, right? You can't overread them too much, but, you know, weird things would happen, right? You know, Scott Brown winning in Massachusetts was obviously the prime one from 09. This happened in 14 and 18, where in districts where you wouldn't expect, you know, there'd be a special election and either be really close or a party that hadn't won there in a long time was going to win. We've now seen in a series of special elections, in addition to the Kansas ballot initiative,
races where Democrats do a little better than expected. And so in Tuesday's special election in New York, I think Biden won this district by one or two points. Pat Ryan ends up winning the special election, looks like a little bit more than Biden won by. Okay. Again, it's a special election, so it's not necessarily the same kind of electorate that'll turn out in November, but that's not nothing. If it was a wave year, you would expect all the Biden plus one seats to be going to Republicans.
Those would be prime Republican pickups. So for a Democrat to hold that, and he ran basically a nationalized race. This is not a local thing. He ran on Roe and nationalized issues. Weigel, who's been another great guest of this podcast, has been on this, I think, since back in July. And you notice in some of these races, it's kind of the opposite of the old Tip O'Neill. All politics are local. All these Democrats are trying to nationalize this about January 6th, about abortion, about the Republican crazy. That's what this candidate did. He wins. He does better than Biden.
is,
Is that a sign that Democrats are going to win all the Biden plus one districts in November? No, but it sure is a good sign that the wave, you know, might not be materializing. It may yet materialize late, but it sure doesn't feel like it is right now. Yeah. So let me throw my theory at you on this, which is, you know, we do at least a focus group a week and have been now for the last couple of years. And prior to that, we were still doing lots and lots of focus groups. But like now we do them every week, voters across the political spectrum. Yeah.
If we'd been talking sort of last fall and I was talking to lots of reporters and they were asking about focus groups, the thing I was talking about a lot was the enthusiasm gap. You don't have to go back and listen to all the old episodes. I'll remember. I've heard all of them. Well, Carvel, right? So Carvel and I did right before the Virginia, the Yunkin election. Yeah.
We did an episode and it was very clear. Youngkin had a super good shot to win. I mean, the thing I was talking about in that podcast was listen to how meh these Democrats are. Like the Republicans are fired up. They want to vote for any living, breathing Republican. I was seeing that all over the focus groups where the Republicans just could not wait to get to go vote for a Republican somewhere because they were so mad about the 2020 election. And the Democrats felt like
like just demoralized. Some of them were upset about Afghanistan. Some of them thought Biden was being too progressive. Some of them thought he wasn't doing enough. There was like the Democrats in disarray around the big infrastructure package that was not the bipartisan one, big BBB. And so like the Dems, I just said, look, there's this massive enthusiasm gap. Dems are super meh. Republicans are fired up to vote. And
And when people started talking about what impact Roe would have, like would Roe be a game changer on the fundamentals? I was sort of skeptical, but open to it. And my main take was from talking to a lot of these women was like, well, the economy is still the number one thing that they care about. People would say economy, inflation, healthcare. But then if you ask about Roe, there's just like, oh,
oh, yes, no, I'm voting on that. And it also started to come up a lot more organically since the actual overturning. Like now it is like always for some people in the groups, it is a much more dominant issue. But I guess I was sort of skeptical that the forces of overturning Roe would overwhelm the feeling that I was seeing from people's dissatisfaction with the economy. But I also said that it was possible that if Democrats could really prosecute a case on abortion,
that it could be a game changer in certain places because of the animation that I would see when it was talked about directly. And I think that part of what has happened is not just Roe being overturned, but the Democrats have actually done a good job of like making it central to their case. Like the thing that I sort of didn't count on as much, I think I said this on the podcast with Bill, was
was that like how much Republicans would make themselves look like the extremists on this almost immediately, like talking about a federal abortion ban. And I think in the special election, he was running on the idea that the Republicans wanted a national abortion ban. And I think that it has closed the enthusiasm gap. And then it has also then contributed to, I think, an overall picture of extremism on the right. And then I think you add on top of that
a very key thing that we can get into later, which is how terrible the individual candidates are in a lot of these swing states that Trump endorsed. And there you get this picture of just
Republicans being corrupt and extreme and out of touch. And it's gone from a referendum, like we're going to do a referendum on Joe Biden to a choice election. I mean, the double entendre where it is now about Roe and choice. And it is about a choice between do you want these Republicans or like, can you live with these Democrats?
Since he was ahead of us on knowing that nationalizing abortion was going to work, props, Pat Ryan. I basically agree with everything that you said. I just want to add a couple of specific points on it that I think sort of add to the trajectory that we've been on. Firstly, at the beginning, when all this happened, there was reason to be skeptical that abortion was going to be motivating, not just because of what you said in the focus groups, but also because we had this real life example of Texas, right?
Texas had passed this bounty bill, a five-week bill. And, you know, this was amidst all of the really acute parts of inflation happening and, you know, the fallout of Afghanistan, et cetera. Democrats' numbers, it wasn't helping them at all in Texas. You know, you'd see these polls where, you know, Beto is getting crushed, right? And so, you know, I think there was reason to look at the data and be skeptical and say, man, we just had this trial run where they passed this really extreme bill.
And we're not seeing a lot of evidence on the ground. Now, it was earlier in the cycle. So I think that was one contributing factor. Since then, that has changed. And I think really there are two points. One of them you really hit on that I want to expand on. One is the enthusiasm gap is being closed. Saw that in Kansas. The types of people that registered, the types of people that showed up were different. The second thing is...
I was maybe wrongly, in retrospect, concerned that what we would see is just, you know, after the overturn of Roe is like both sides going to the far extremes. Right. And it's kind of coming out in a wash where Democrats maybe get a little bit of an enthusiasm boost. But with your median voter, turns out to be a little bit of a wash. That is not what has happened.
to your point, as the Republicans being the one that are described as extreme. I think if you're an average voter and you look at the abortion situation right now, what you see is the Democrats basically running on status quo, right? Like keeping the current abortion regime intact. I think that's your perception of the Democrats. Perception of the Republicans is that they're trying to ban abortion in one week and with no exceptions. You know, you hear these horror stories
I recently heard this from a legislator in South Carolina. It was a Republican legislator talking about how the law they passed, the heartbeat bill in South Carolina, was preventing a woman from getting a procedure for a fetus that was dead, right, but still had a heartbeat that was not viable. That created a lot of ancillary health risks for this young woman, which is 19. This is a Republican South Carolina state legislature talking about how they have to fix this. So people don't like radical change and stuff. A lot of times this hurts the Democrats on various issues.
People are generally comfortable. Right. And so if they look at this and say, man, the Republicans are going to try to put in this regime that might have a very meaningful impact on me or one of my loved ones, a woman in my life, a young girl, that is scary. And the Democrats position doesn't feel as scary because they're basically saying, no, we just want to kind of want to keep the rules as they were.
You know, we've talked a lot about on these podcasts, there's this broad middle on abortion that never gets talked about on cable television of people who like, you know, think it should be legal in some cases and there should be reasonable limits. If you hold that position, some of those people might probably consider themselves pro-life.
They look at the debate right now and think, man, it's the Republicans that are really radical. And I think that has helped the Democrats, you know, because now they have this two-pronged little boost that's happening as a result of Roe. One is the engagement and excitement. And then the other is from this marginal swing voter who might have voted for Glenn Youngkin, who's now looking at this and thinking, man, inflation's coming back down. I'm feeling a little bit more stable economically. I'm really concerned that these freaks are going to put in
And that brings me to my, what I think is the second piece of this major vibe shift, which is that Trump, now he's inflated his numbers somewhat by coming in and endorsing people once they were definitely going to win. I think this is something that really gets overlooked when people do like this dumb tally of his wins, because I don't think the important part is like the
the win-loss record for Trump so much as it is what we're all looking at now in terms of nominees. And there's an intersection between the people who Trump endorsed and who won their Republican primaries and the fact that many of them are anti-abortion extremists. So in these governor's races, like I was looking at the governor's races, they were always extremely important to me because those are the people who are going to certify elections. They're going to work with their secretaries of state. Like that's going to matter a ton.
for the big democracy picture. But like now, these are also the people who are going to decide the state's abortion fate. So you've got people like Doug Mastriano, Tim Michaels, Tudor Dixon, like Carrie Lake. These governors, folks, they are all
like no exceptions for rape, incest, life of the mother. Like the Michaels one in Wisconsin, he supports Wisconsin's 1849 law, which has no exceptions. And, you know,
You know, he said when he was running for Senate in 2004 that it would be not unreasonable to force a rape victim to deliver a baby. So these are all your Republican governors candidates. Any law signed 12 years before the Civil War started, you got to feel pretty good about the fact that, you know, it's really ready to just plug and play that right in here in 2022. That's right. That to me, the candidate quality now has sort of like intersected exactly at the wrong time.
With Roe for Republicans, where they do have the anti-abortion extremists at the top of the ticket to lead the state. And I think that that's a big part of the dynamic shift. What do you think about that theory? Absolutely. Absolutely. And this is another the contrast between Youngkin and now the vibe shift. Right.
This wasn't hanging over the row issue wasn't hanging over a young kid and how he would have done in Fairfax County, I think, you know, is really an open question. And so this big conversation we were having, I think probably the last time I was on the focus group about how the Democrats are struggling a little bit in this acute crisis.
inflationary period to get people to care about a more esoteric thing about our democracy. You see in the numbers, that's changing now. Part of that's because the economy is getting better. Part of that is because they have other concerns that are coming up. Part of that is because of the January 6th committee. And so now I think if you look at a candidate like Michaels, right, Wisconsin, this is your median state in the 2020 elections.
Making the case that they're an extremist on election fraud, okay, that's going to engage some people, right? There's going to be a certain class of people that are like, yeah, I don't want an insurrectionist determining where electoral votes go in 2024. That's going to motivate some people. But the abortion thing...
There's a much wider audience of folks that can be engaged on this. And it's much more tangible, right? It's not esoteric at all, like a democracy issue, right? It's this question of, okay, if Tony Evers remains our governor in Wisconsin, we're going to have the status quo abortion law. He's not going to put in place some, you know, extreme post birth, whatever, you know, kind of fear mongering law, like it's a Republican legislature. We'll have status quo if Evers wins. If Michaels wins, then,
We might have a literal heartbeat bill, a one week ban, you know, where a teenage girl who gets raped by her uncle can't get an abortion and has to travel to Illinois. That is a drastic difference that is going to have an impact across the ballot, but particularly in these states.
Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona. Because in all those states, you're in this situation where it's a purple state, a very extreme anti-abortion candidate for governor, and a Republican legislature that could conceivably put in the extreme laws. So this is a real choice on that ballot. Some of those states overlap with Senate candidates, which I think will make a difference, Pennsylvania and Arizona, and Wisconsin, so three of them. And so yeah, absolutely, I think it has really changed the kind of dynamic quite a bit.
And I just want to talk about the Michigan dynamic specifically for one second, because, you know, I've done a fair number of Michigan focus groups. And one of the things with swing voters, you know, I had really thought that Gretchen Whitmer was in quite a bit of trouble. And because people are really mad about COVID, like still, I mean, it still comes up in the focus groups where the state was on lockdown or husband, I don't know what he did. He went fishing or something. Right.
I forget the scandal, but it looms large there. You know, this the same reason Newsom for shutting the state down for covid while he goes to the French laundry like that stuff was sitting really, really poorly with voters. But now now you've got Gretchen Whitmer with covid very much having receded as an issue for most voters and abortion being very much top of mind.
And Tudor Dixon getting more and more famous all the time for her comments around saying that a 10 or 12 year old who's raped should have to carry the child to term. I've been kind of notionally thinking that if Whitmer comes out of the Michigan race strong, like she wins by four or five points, she's a potential presidential contender going forward. But like, what do you think on Michigan?
I do agree with that about Whitmer and potentially some other candidates, you know, to see how they would perform. But, you know, I think Fetterman and Warnock and Kelly and all of them have issues. But conceivably, if they win tough races this time, there'll be a little chatter about them. And I think that she was in real trouble with the COVID stuff.
I think that, you know, there was a lot of, you know, the type of Trump, you know, swing voter, the Macomb County, Michigan voter, just on balance, didn't love the COVID policy, some of the hypocrisy there. So I agreed with you. I did not think that she was in a slam dunk. Dixon, though, feels like she's in the sour spot on these endorsements. This is a problem that Republicans have right now is she's not like a Dave McCormick. She's like a Cruz. You know, Trump sort of changed the mix in the party in a way that did help Republicans
You know, the types of voters that were attracted to the party. It used to be this kind of coalition between social conservatives and your suburban Chamber of Commerce voter, right? Well, a lot of the Chamber of Commerce voters are gone, as we've discussed at Nauseam. But, you know, he brings in these more secular working class voters.
That is a much more tenuous coalition, right? Like a lot of those voters went for Trump and hated Cruz. They were like, Cruz is weird, this sort of Christian, teetotaler kind of finger wagging stuff I don't like. They're pro-choice, a lot of them. And so going back to somebody that is just a purist,
pure Christian right nominee in a state like Michigan. It's a weird fit. So I don't know that she has no chance to win. Of course, it's certainly a winnable race potentially for Dixon, but I don't know that she's a great fit kind of for a different reason than some of these like, you know, the Carrie Lake ultra magas are a bad fit. They both kind of have different types of deficiencies.
Yeah, I totally agree with that. But one of the things I want to make clear is that I think Whitmer's in a better position, the same way that I think Katie Hobbs is in a better position. But like, those are going to be close, really close races, and they could definitely lose. And especially in the case of Carrie Lake, I think it's extremely dangerous and that nobody should take it for granted that just because these are slightly weaker candidates, they still can't win. But I literally had written down
talk to Tim about his weirdo theory of politics, because this is my favorite piece of analysis that I ever heard from you that totally changed one of the ways that I thought about Trump voters, that when I see it in the focus groups, like you said it to me a long time ago. And then when I was doing the focus groups, it's so, so clear because people have started describing Trump as far right. And because evangelicals love him,
There is this sense that people who are really conservative like Trump, but that actually people perceived Trump to be the moderate. They think that Mike Pence is a weirdo or that Ted Cruz is a weirdo with their super social. Nixon is Pence. Pence is probably better than Trump. That's right. This is why Kerry Lake, I think, has a better chance than even like a Tudor Dixon because Kerry Lake has the like.
the star quality, the charisma, the storytelling. And like, she is a kook and a conspiracy theorist, but she doesn't come off like an evangelical, like a, maybe you can say this better since this is your theory, but it's like, it's like they have a pop culture sense of religion, but not like they're not actually religious. And so for secular voters, like this secular working class voter, uh,
is a huge piece of this story that I think sometimes people don't realize. And I keep trying to explain this to people because, I mean, Pence is trying so hard to make Pence happen. And so he's going around to all the reporters and they always call up and they're like, well, what do you hear in the focus groups about Pence? And I'm like, they hate him. You just talk about the sour spot. Like he's in the sour spot with these voters where the Trump skeptical ones think he was just like a bobblehead to Trump, always just like nodding along, never doing anything. And the hardcore magas think he's a traitor. But like,
And generally, like, they're not interested in his brand of social conservatism. Him, like, not being alone with a woman who's not his wife. Like, people think that's weird stuff. And I think that that's part of what's interesting about some of these. Like, Doug Mastriano is a weirdo. Yeah. I know they're not up against each other exactly. But, like, I think there's more Trump voters who would vote for Fetterman on Vibes.
And I think these more college educated, more like secular kind of normie Republican voters might reject Mastriano because he's a weirdo.
Yeah. There's this talking point going around right now, which is like the Republicans want to become a white Christian nationalist party. I understand what they're trying to say. And I was like, there's, cause there is an element of that, you know, and there are plenty of people who have documented that there are some people that want that, that it's, I don't even think it's a majority of the coalition. It's like maybe a strong plurality. It's maybe a third, maybe 40% at the most. The rest of these people, they're not Christian nationalists. They see the culture war in a different way, right?
Maybe the best way to describe this, imagine a voter that is a dude, working class guy, maybe goes to church, maybe doesn't, maybe goes to church on Easter, has had plenty of sex out of wedlock, is interested in abortions if necessary, but culturally is more, we're stereotyping here, but culturally is anti-woke,
Didn't like being told that they had to wear a mask. Doesn't like the whole, oh, can a trans person compete with girls? Right. And so their culture war is different. Like the person that has those views doesn't necessarily care about gay marriage bans or certainly doesn't want a one week abortion ban or something.
Certainly doesn't, you know, want a churchy president like talking to them about churchy stuff. Right. Like that is just not a good fit for this person.
And that's about half the party. That's another sizable chunk. That's another 40% of the party. There is as important as the people that are the, as the evangelical crowd. So you look at someone like Lake, can Lake merge both? I think maybe. Now the problem with Lake is that she's gone so far all in and trying to appeal to that. He's talking about taking ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine and the Biden regime and like,
It's a little much. And Trump lost Arizona, right? Not by a lot, but yes. Not by a lot, but yeah. So Kerry might do the best Trump imitation, better than Mastriano.
Or Tudor, of course, can. And, you know, maybe they run two points behind Trump and she runs one. But, you know, you can run one point behind Trump in Arizona and that's still an L. Right. So I think that she's still got some challenges about how she can add to the Trump coalition. I don't know how she does that. But I do agree that she's a much better fit for the type of person that Trump brought into the coalition, which is now a very significant part of the Republican coalition.
Yeah, I'm really glad you made that point about the white Christian nationalists. I do think that people continue to misunderstand. It's why I keep doing these episodes where we talk about the not Trump voters who then voted for Trump. Right. And some of them were Hillary Clinton voters, but a lot of them were just people who came in off the sidelines over the culture war. Also because like it made politics more fun to them. Like Trump was more accessible to them as a politician. And so there, of course, is a very dark relationship.
running through what's happening right now. But like actually a lot of it is that people are having more fun this way. They get to own the libs. You know, I have my libs tears mug and I have my Trump flag and I say, let's go Brandon. And sometimes I catch a rally and like, I feel like I have a community. I feel like it's fun. I mean, I got to tell you the focus groups are,
when you tell them all they're all Trump voters, they love chatting with each other. Like they just, you know, the Democrats, they're just much less unified. Whereas like the Trump voters, they immediately develop this camaraderie and they just all say the same things. But so much of the time they laugh when they say it. They carry Trump so lightly. It's one of the things that I always think is like,
such an interesting difference between the Democrats and the Republicans because the Democrats take the threat of Trump, much like we do, seriously as, like, a very bad outcome. And our somber tone, like, our fear, our discussions of democracy, like, that is just, like, fodder for their ridicule, mocking, and, like, they think it's hilarious. They think it's funny. And they're owning us by, like...
You know, making us say, oh, it's also dangerous. Please get over it. You know, deep state is like a fun thing to talk about. So can I add a separate point on this? It's kind of it's another thing I've been monitoring. I want to talk about on this recap of the primaries is.
This coalition change, which we've discussed ad nauseum, is good for Republicans because the imbalance of the Senate and the way the Electoral College works and these sort of more rural voters and working class whites have outsized sway in the way our system is. I am wondering, though, now, as we look ahead to the midterms, if...
And this might be hard to tell from a focus group, but I'm interested in your take because the types of people that do focus groups might be a little bit self-selecting. But if the Democrats are actually being helped a little bit by this trade as far as the turnout and engagement is concerned. Yes. Right? Because the Democrats now got a bunch more people who are serious and maybe scolds and maybe we're being owned. Maybe we care a little too much. But we care. Right? And so they're really engaged. They're following this.
You know, I always look back at the 2020 primary and I thought it was interesting in the Democratic primary that there's there was a very significant, like maybe 15, 20 percent of the Democrat electorate that they were hopping. You could tell these people like watching MSNBC and reading Politico and on social media, like they were hopping from hot candidate to hot candidate. Right.
Right. Like they were very engaged in wanting to beat Trump and win. And, you know, there's people that want Pete and they're even with Liz for a while and then Amy and then, you know, Biden at the end because we need to rally behind Biden. And part of the reason it was so efficient in how people move to Biden, I think, is because of this. The newer Democrats are so highly engaged about this. Some of these Trump voters are not.
Right. And if they're taking this all as a big troll, this isn't to criticize people for being less educated, but just if you don't have a college education, you historically aren't as engaged in politics, you know, that profile is the profile of the type of voter who doesn't vote in midterms as often.
And I do wonder with Trump on the ballot, if some of the Republican wave is being crested a little bit by like the fact that this new coalition is a little harder to turn out. And the Democrats used to always feel like, oh, man, it's so hard to turn out these lower income voters that were a key part of their coalition. There's now some of the coalition, but a lesser part. And now it's like much easier for Democrats to turn out, you know, some of the newer parts of the coalition. I don't know. What's your take about that?
Well, this is something I'm just totally keeping an eye on because I do think, right, when you talk about like what is the Democratic base, I think people oftentimes think it's like progressive activists and like black and brown voters. And I actually think it's black and brown voters and like college educated suburban voters because that progressive like city base of kids, like they're your unreliable people. Right. Like this is why Joe Biden thinks he's got to give everybody 10 grand vote.
And debt loan forgiveness is to get those people up off their butts. But those college educated suburban voters are extremely reliable primary voters. And they've been voting in Republican primaries for a long time for moderate candidates. And now they are voting for Democrats in these in these elections. It's definitely worth keeping an eye on. But there's something you said that I want to dig into, because for a long time, another formulation I had was that Trump was going to be on the ballot for the people that he was attracting.
but he wasn't going to be on the ballot for the people he repelled. And so he was on the ballot for the people that he attracts by being like, well, we got a revenge store. You know, we've got to, we've got to avenge the election being stolen. Um,
But for people who turned out specifically because they wanted to defeat Donald Trump, right, he's not going to be on the ballot for a lot of those people. But I think that one of the big missteps besides the candidates that Trump endorsed, as well as the good candidates he chased off in Sununu and Hogan and Ducey, for example, I think one of the things that he's done is he has put himself back on the ballot.
Because there's all these election deniers. And I think the further we've gotten away from the 2020 election, the more bored people are getting with the election denialism as like an animating issue. I think a year ago it was much more animating. And now people are kind of like, I want to talk about like why Biden like is brain dead.
And I want to, you know, talk about inflation. And Republicans aren't talking about those. They have these issues that are top of mind and like they haven't been able to coalesce around a really strong message on inflation, the economy and crime and the stuff that they thought was going to like fuse this coalition back together. They're sort of suburban coalition with their base voters.
because it's all about Trump and it's all about the 2020 election being stolen. That's literally the platform of Michaels and Lake. It's what you had to do to get his endorsement. And so I think that the enthusiasm, the people, when I was saying Trump is on the ballot for the people he attracts, I think that that enthusiasm has been going down while Trump putting himself on the ballot through these surrogate candidates and making...
maybe some of the Mar-a-Lago stuff, he's looming larger saying he's going to run again for president. I think he is putting himself on the ballot for the people that he repels. And I would say that is also part of this vibe shift. And I would just like to give credit for part of that to the January 6th committee. Everybody, this is like just like a place where everybody was, was pretty wrong early on when people are asking me like, well, was it going to make a difference? You know, I was like, sort of depends on what they have, but I've still been surprised by how much I think it has changed.
caused people not to abandon Trump because that's not what's happening, but to kind of start looking around for alternatives and to feel like the baggage she's carrying makes him not as electable. I mean, I've talked about this a lot on this podcast that like we just saw a major shift after the January 6th committee. And I think it's a combination of people being interested in other candidates like DeSantis, but also feeling like Trump has too much baggage and can't win. And
And so I feel like there's been like a little bit of drift from him. And again, the people who hate him are being reanimated by him and the crazy people he's put on the ballot. Yeah. And and just briefly, the thing that I would add to that is that, again, I keep going back to Youngkin, but I think it's just important for like a baseline. Right. Because this was.
a big reason why people thought a red wave was coming. Virginia had been a big blue state and for Youngkin to win. And we gave a lot of reasons for Youngkin to win. And a lot of some of the resistance folks, some of our new friends were kind of dismissive of some of these things. Come on, you know, like, I don't know if that's really right. And, you know, it must be racism that people voted for or whatever. But there is a really meaningful change between them and now. And for those of us who follow this closely, like the distinction between Youngkin and
Tudor Dixon or whoever is for your average voter. You're looking at him and you're going, OK, this isn't an insurrectionist really. Right. He doesn't give off insurrectionist vibes to keep with our vibe check. And I am really pissed about gas prices, et cetera. That is not the case for Lake
Mastriano, you know, Oz, it's Michaels, etc. They do give off insurrection-y vibes, right? And so that does matter. And so along with the January 6th committee, along with Mar-a-Lago, does put Trump more on the ballot this fall than he was last fall. You know, add on Roe under that, add on economy getting a little better. All of those elements are contributing to why the environment looks a lot better now than it did then.
Okay, so we've established that there has been some vibe shift. We've talked about why we think it is. It's Roe. It's Trump on the ballot. It's the Democrats' enthusiasm jumping up. It's the terrible quality of the candidates, many of them weirdos and insurrectionists. Gas prices going back down a little bit. Gas prices going back down a little bit. Okay, so we've got all that stuff in play. So then here's my next question. So Democrats today are feeling great. They think that maybe the House, they can hold on to it.
And I just saw Cook just downgraded their estimate, which they'd already downgraded once. I think they had originally had 30 as their top, and then they dropped it down to 25, and they just dropped it down their high end to 20. Do you think with the vibe shift...
that the Democrats could potentially hold on to the House? Or are we just all seeing kind of like an August mirage that comes from the fact that Democrats have been kind of spending unopposed while Republicans have been slugging it out in a bunch of these primaries? And as soon as they start dumping money on the heads of these Democratic candidates, things are going to like really tighten up and actually the House is definitely gone. Like, where do you feel like things are right now?
Are you ready for this? Yeah. Great pundit answer. Maybe. Maybe. I'm going to be a broken record on Borg Podcast for the next two months over this, and I'm sorry, but it's just, this is what it really all comes down to, is that Joe Biden's numbers right now are still in the 30s. There is no precedent for a president having that low of approval numbers for their party having a good midterm. Okay. So now the question is, well, does
does that mean that we're going to revert to the mean come fall once, once the ads come up and, you know, the laws of political gravity are going to reassert themselves and Republicans will end up winning 35 seats and, you know, winning one or two Senate seats.
Maybe. I think that's possible that that will happen. Or is it possible that we're in unprecedented political times and that Biden's approval number is low, mainly from kind of some people on the left who are annoyed with him? And maybe the student loan thing will change that. Maybe it won't. TBD. Maybe his approval ratings, and I think there's some evidence of this in your focus groups, are
are low just about age, you know, and people say that they have an unfavorable opinion of him because they just don't think that he's up for the job given his age and that they're still Democrats, you know, or they still think Republicans are way worse. They're still going to vote for Democrats. And there's like a great parallel for that.
outlier situation happening with the numbers or maybe the other thing that's possible in the democrats favor i keep looking to france you know where macron's numbers were as low as biden's and he ends up going up against le pen so the election ends up becoming a choice not a referendum and he wins handily because the french are like well i might not love what's happened with macron and the economy but this like lunatic fascist is worse so you know there are three
potential outlier situations that make a, I think, legitimate argument that the Democrats would do better than historically you would expect. But it's hard for me to want to go out on a limb and say that something that has never happened is going to happen in November. You know, that thing being a president with such low approval ratings doing well in the midterm.
That's right. And also, I mean, I think looking back on 2020, I think it's fair to say that especially in the polling, we all thought Biden was going to win. We all thought he was going to win probably by a lot. What happened? Republicans did better than everybody expected. Down ticket. Trump lost narrowly. Luckily, he lost narrowly in a bunch of places, which made it harder for him to try to overturn things when they didn't go his way.
But yeah, I had to write a whole new book. I had a whole different book idea that was maybe not wouldn't have been a number two New York Times bestseller. Yeah, the original book idea. I had a proposal going and they wanted me to wait till after the election was based on a Joe Biden landslide win. And it was going to be, you know, something along the lines of Trump is forever. And I was going to sort of make the red dog, like the fact that just because Trump lost, like we still have this permanent.
shift in our politics and like that was going to be the case but given that it was so close or not that close but close enough for like Trump to create a cult that stormed the Capitol there was not a requirement for a book about
About how Trump was going to have a permanent impact on the Republican Party. That was kind of like a tweet, not a book. It was pretty evident on people's TV screens. So yeah, no, expectations were that Biden was going to do better. And there is, at this point, some pretty clear evidence, particularly in certain states, that there are Trump voters who aren't answering polls.
Oh, well, I can tell you we've been running polls. And the number of Trump voters that opt out when you're basically trying to do like message testing, like they just disconnect immediately. And so I worry very much about the polls. I worry about over-interpreting things like Kansas, where you had a standalone ballot measure as opposed to like a candidate that they don't like on abortion, but they do like on the economy, et cetera, et cetera. That makes it a tougher choice for them. And so I don't think that's all that clear. But the one thing that I think is
So I was putting this up, this idea of, hey, Republicans did better than everybody thought in 2020, and people just rejected Trump. But Republicans did fine, much better than expected. What's interesting to me about the change now, and it's going to be a question about just how much do candidates matter and how much do fundamentals matter, is that now there's like so many of these candidates are now on their own seeming like crazy people.
I just really do still think candidates matter a lot. I think fundamentals matter a lot, too. That's what I wonder. Yeah. I mean, look at the big ones that they won, like Susan Collins, Tom Tillis. I mean, like, say what you want about these people. And it's fine to hate these people if you're a Democratic listener. But there isn't really a comparison between them and like Dr. Oz and Herschel Walker. You know, even Perdue and Loeffler. Like, if it wasn't for the craziness where they end up running as pro-coup candidates. Right.
You know, it's different. It's a category difference. And in a casual voter's eye, in particular, I do think they're going to look at Oz, you know, at Mastriano and judge them more like they judge Trump. So, yeah, I think that there could be, you know, the sense that Republicans did better underneath Trump in 2020. That's true. Can they replicate that again? I think that might be the case, you know, in Florida, right? They're hopeful Democrats, let's say.
Marco and Ron DeSantis. We can beat them. I think most Republican voters are going to look at Marco and Ron DeSantis the way that Republicans in North Carolina looked at Tom Tillis, right, and stick with them and not look at them as crazy people, regardless of what everyone's personal views are of those two people. They're certainly not my favorite people.
But I think there's a category difference between Oz and Mastriano and Marco and DeSantis. And I think that it's going to be a meaningful difference. That's probably the tune of two to three points. It's so funny you brought up Florida because that was my last question was, is the vibe shift enough? Great minds. Is the vibe shift enough for Florida? Because this is what happens, right? When there's a vibe shift, everyone starts getting like, ooh, maybe we'll hold the house. Ooh, maybe we should be in Florida. Maybe you can beat Rubio. He's weak.
Val Demings is the best. And I think that might still be an overread. That's an overread of I don't think the vibes have shifted that much. And obviously, we had the Florida primary. Charlie Crist totally dominated Nikki Freed, which I think is a lot of Democrats going for electability over sort of true Democrat because Crist was a Republican back in the day.
even though he's the more maybe electable of the two, is there any chance of beating DeSantis? Even with people knowing, I mean, I think people are pretty clear. Like if DeSantis were to lose, uh,
That would severely hinder his ability to run for president. Like, is that enough to generate the kind of Democrat enthusiasm in Florida to take out DeSantis? What do you think? I don't think so. I think it's worth a try. You know, I wish that there is a Florida Democratic billionaire that would put in money to make it a competitive race. I think Val Demings would.
against Marco as a strong candidate in a different kind of situation. But it's hard to see, you know, how it happens. And, you know, it's kind of easy to think, okay, well, who is DeSantis attracting that Trump didn't attract, right? Like there are going to be some voters that just, as we said, in other states, we saw that they couldn't vote for Trump because he was too extreme. Even if that's only 1%, that's a 1% bump for him. You can imagine him starting to improve even more working class Latinos, right?
in the state because that's the trajectory they're on. Okay, so now where is Chris going to gain from Biden?
I don't know. I don't know. That's hard for me to imagine who that person is, right? Like who's the Trump-Christ voter, the person that didn't vote and then votes for Christ. So I just think the math is pretty tough. I do think it's worth a shot. You never know what happens. There's still time left, but it's a tough environment. I'm not of the view that Florida is totally off the map for Democrats. I just think that they got to start thinking about the state a little differently and the types of candidates they run. Totally agree. Tim Miller,
I love your vibes. Your vibes have always been good. My old, old friend. I don't know if people know this, that, you know, these other Bulwark people, they all came to us late in life, but we've known each other since like 2006 or something.
I was in the closet when I met you. That's how far back I was like just out. It's a different world. Totally different world. My man. I love you. Thank you for having me. It's a great podcast. I hope people if they just came because they love me so much, which I'm sure is a handful of people because you know, I have such great vibes. I hope you go back and listen to the focus group archives because the other episodes are even better. Thanks, bro. It's great to have you.
And thanks all of you for hanging with us for another episode of the focus group. Uh, we will be back next week. And like I said, uh, it's going to be all focus group participants all the time. Have a great weekend.