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Hi, I'm Tara Palmieri. I'm Puck's senior political correspondent, and this is Somebody's Gotta Win. A few things happened over the weekend in terms of the 2024 presidential election since I recorded this episode about how the Biden campaign is strangely embracing the age issue.
These weren't like tidal waves type events that happened over the weekend, but they're kind of like, you know, stones dropping in the pond that perhaps give us some context of the larger 2024 landscape.
First of all, Mike Pence dropped out of the race. Well, in his words, he suspended his campaign after much prayer and deliberation. You know that phrase that all Republican politicians use when they either decide to run, decide not to run, or when they drop out. But the truth is, it wasn't really the almighty, I'm sure, that told Pence it was time to drop out.
He was running up a ton of debt, $620,000, according to his last campaign filing. He was running on fumes and like we've talked about, that is generally what determines whether you continue campaigning or not.
It was also unclear if he was going to make it to the GOP debate on Wednesday. And I think if you don't make it to the GOP debate, it's hard to argue to the grassroots and donors and really anyone that you should be on any stage at that point. From the beginning, I've always thought this campaign was going nowhere fast. It was this like legacy makeover tour after serving in the Trump administration. They made such a hard pitch to the media at first. And then once they got on the road, I think they found that
voters weren't really buying it. Either they were hardcore Trumpers who were sadly still shouting, hang Mike Pence wherever he went or protesting or rioting, or they were anti-Trump Republicans who just still saw him as a supplicant for Trump. So he didn't really, he wasn't really able to tap into any sort of base.
I wonder if his extreme views on abortion had anything to do with this as well. Definitely doesn't play well in New Hampshire, maybe okay in Iowa, but he's one of the few candidates that's calling for an all-out ban on abortion. So we'll see what this new dynamic on the stage is like with just four perhaps presidential candidates qualifying. So far, it's been Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Chris Christie.
Tim Scott claims that he's made the debate stage. His people tell me that he has, but I don't know. The New York Times has not updated their website to say that he has. He's got an issue with polling, not so much money.
If he doesn't make the debate stage, I don't know how much longer he's going to last, but we'll have to check in on that. Now, on the Democratic side, there is a new challenger to Joe Biden. It's a 51-year-old congressman from Minnesota, Dean Phillips, another guy I'm sure you never heard about before. Um,
he's decided that he is going to take on the Democratic National Committee, the machine, and challenge Joe Biden. And he decided to do it in New Hampshire last week, the state that's pissed off. The DNC changed the primary calendar and no longer made them the first in the nation. And now the reason that they did that, we'll never admit it, but Biden didn't do well in New Hampshire.
He didn't do well in Iowa. He did well in South Carolina. And to avoid this situation in which a challenger would come in and take Biden out where he's weak, the party decided, with Joe Biden's urging, to start the primary process in South Carolina. African-American voters really helped him get over the line. They're more moderate, pragmatic, etc.
But there's still a bunch of pissed off New Hampshire voters who are saying like, hey, we loved having influence over this process. And they are not really having it. That's a vacuum that Dean Phillips saw and others have seen as well. And so he headed out to New Hampshire, not without the kind of money in the bank like Biden. I mean, he's a distillery and gelato heir. He's a multimillionaire. But he doesn't have $91 million in cash in his campaign like Joe Biden. And another thing about him is that his platform
platform isn't really that much different than Joe Biden's. I mean, you could argue that it's a little bit further to the right in the sense that he wants to tackle migration, crime, inflation, kitchen table issues. I mean, Joe Biden is basically saying the same thing. Maybe not as hard on inflation and crime, but he's really just playing into the fact that he's younger. That's about it. And a sign that the party was not willing to go anywhere near him
He hired a former GOP strategist, Stuart Schmidt, a guy who ran John McCain's campaign to run his campaign. So to me, that means that no Democratic consultant was willing to work with him. Oh, and another thing.
I actually have been reporting on this for a while in my newsletter, The Best and the Brightest, which you should sign up for at puck.news.com. And I said, you missed getting on the ballot in Nevada. I asked him that once the date had passed, I believe it was October 15th. It's the second presidential nominating state. That means you lose delegates and ballot access. And...
He didn't seem to be worried about that. And even this unsanctioned primary that he's running in in New Hampshire, it's unclear if it will yield any delegates. So I don't know. It's a bit strange. Right now, we know that Joe Biden is not going to be on the ballot in this unsanctioned primary in New Hampshire. And some people are scrambling to make sure that there's a right in campaign in which Biden wins because it would look really bad if Biden lost in New Hampshire to Dean Phillips.
So it's a bit of a weird situation going on. The White House is just like swatting him away like he's a fly. The campaign barely addressing him. I think everyone's sort of intrigued by him. He's obviously going for broke, could destroy his career, make him a star, or could really help Trump. And that's what a lot of people are worried about. Okay, now that you've gotten your update, your primary on the 2024 primary, you know, now...
The Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, the guy whose name you'll never remember, he's starting his first day at work. It's happening on the Hill. And of course, he's actually fighting with minority leader Mitch McConnell to separate Ukraine aid from Israel aid. He doesn't want to send that as a package. And that's how Mitch McConnell wants to send it. And the Democrats in the Senate want to send it. And frankly, it's the most bipartisan way to send money. They want to attach the aid, Ukraine aid and Israel aid separately.
the hardcore MAGA right, they don't want to send any more money to Ukraine. And Mike Johnson is fighting that. And it is fighting against Mitch McConnell, a leader in his own party about that. We'll see who wins, MAGA Mike or the hammer Mitch. I mean, Mitch has been around for a long time, but
Who knows if he's still got it, but it'll be interesting to see who wins in the end. This is Mike Johnson's first real test. All right, now let's get into an even wackier story about how the Biden campaign thinks it's a good idea to inject the age albatross into the campaign. I've got some of Ford's Shelby Talcott with me to talk about her latest report about how the Biden campaign is pointing out how much Trump himself is aging.
And it's interesting because a few days later, the New York Times had a similar report just about how much Trump is slipping up, you know, calling Sioux City Sioux Falls or claiming that he was running against Obama rather than Hillary Clinton or just like calling Hamas hummus. It's just a bunch of weird ways. I mean, Trump has always been slipping up.
But it seems much more than usual. And these verbal slip ups and the thinking is that these verbal slip ups could be used against him. Finally, like he's not Teflon Don. I don't know. I'm a little skeptical. And maybe it could help Biden, who is just three years older than him, to show that Trump is old, too, and perhaps not all there.
or at least it could neutralize Trump's attacks against Biden because Trump has like a routine that he does about Biden, how old he is. I know it's crazy between the two of them, but yeah, we're going to dig into this one. So Shelby, the thing that really kind of blows my mind with this whole concept is that the Biden campaign thinks it's a good idea to elevate the age issue, to talk about it, where I would think that they would want to ignore it
duck for cover, which is what they've been doing for a while. Although I have heard like certain Biden aides like Michael LaRosa say, you know, Reagan would use his age to remark on his opponent's inexperience, right? He would say like, you know, wisdom with age. But it just seems strange that the campaign would be sort of elevating this, especially when the two men are just a few years apart in age. What is the strategy and the tactics behind this? I think it's
it's largely based on the Biden campaign being really frustrated with how much media coverage Biden's age and questions about his health is getting. And so it inherently, from my understanding, comes from a place of, well, if the media refuses to cover Trump's gas and Trump's missteps, we're now going to elevate it to sort of point out that
the two are not that far apart. So it's less, it's really interesting because it's less of a situation where they're thinking they're going to flip the script.
And more of a situation where they're trying to almost level the playing field. Right. So are they creating memes that they're putting out on Truth Social? Are they sending out blasts like press releases? Are they pitching reporters on times where they thought that Trump seemed a little bit off or kind of slipped or fell? Is that what's going on? Are they trying to get it in the hands of
like MSNBC hosts who might like Hannity. I feel like every time I turn on my Instagram, Hannity is highlighting a time when Joe Biden seemed like flustered or kind of, you know, spacey. Are they trying to do the same thing? Are they trying to find allies who will
just put clips together of Trump looking like he's out of it? Yeah, so I think it all sort of started on social media and online. So what they've been doing a lot of is clipping basically any time Trump has a misstep or misspeaks or mixes the name up of who is in office right now or stumbles over his words or just generally has a sentence where he doesn't make sense.
But when I reached out after noticing that they had sort of ramped up that online, Biden campaign officials were more than happy to talk about it and said, you know, yeah, I have a lot to say about this. And so I do think that this is sort of the start.
And the next steps are going to be sort of pushing the media more so to cover Trump's age issues and what they see as his missteps and his gaffes. Where are they posting this? Like, where did you see it? Was it on Twitter or did you see it on Truth? Is that where you were seeing it?
I saw it on Twitter. And then also the Biden campaign has really made an effort to post ads nationally that sort of the underlying message of these ads are, well, Biden actually does have the stamina. Look at him. He's going overseas. He's gone to Ukraine. He's gone to Israel. Are they using the word stamina? Is that what they're saying? No.
that's the underlying message is, and they'll say that privately is, is it shows that he has the kind of mental and physical stamina to do these long trips. And they've, they've said that for months now. And that's been one of their kind of main arguments behind the scenes to try to combat this messaging that doesn't just come from the media, by the way, it's, you know, the, the public, if you look at the polls, the majority of Americans are, you know, have concerns about his age and,
mental fitness. So it's not just that. So it's kind of this broad effort to combat that messaging before it becomes a problem. Yeah, I get that. I've seen those ads and it does always feel like Biden has like a hop in his step or he's wearing his cool aviators or he's got his Corvette.
or he's just like doing something a young person would do. He's got his sneakers on. And God, I think sneakers are now fine in Washington just because of Biden. Yeah. I've seen them at every party. People are just wearing sneakers with their suits. But I see that. It's subliminal messaging about Biden's youth. I wonder, are they going to have like a hashtag for Trump, like Trump's old two or like Trump's gaffes? Because I feel like
There's a total campaign by the right to highlight Biden's gaffes. There's no question about it. I don't think that the Trump gaffe campaign has really caught on, but there's just so many other things to peg Trump on. I mean, his legal issues alone, indictments, his own tweets. I mean, the crazy shit that comes out of his mouth. And then...
you know, when you've got such a diluge of information coming out about Trump, how are you also supposed to think, oh yeah, and he's old too, because he goes up there and he seems very animated on stage. Like that's one thing I'll say about him. Like when he is doing his rallies or his speaking engagements or anything, like he just seems animated. He has energy and he has more energy than Joe Biden on stage.
But actually, some people just have more energy, like human beings. You could be 30 years old and be up against another 30-year-old, and one of them just has more energy, even if it's frenetic, anxious, crazy. That's why when I compare the two, I'm like,
Joe Biden feels like a softer, docile grandfather type. And Trump is like your crazy old uncle, right? Your uncle is maybe the same age as your grandpa. He's like maybe your great uncle, but he's got more energy. He maybe has had a drink. Trump is a teetotaler, so is Biden. But like, it's a different vibe. Can a person really...
change their energy after, you know, 50 years being in the public eye? No, I think you raise a really good point. And I don't think it's a one-to-one comparison as they're sort of trying to make it. Trump has always, in my eyes, been the kind of person who consistently goes off script, right? He will go on these tangents for 20 minutes, 30 minutes during his speeches. And
he's always historically said things that like, don't always make full sense. He's always had, you know, typos. Remember what was the most famous one was the covfefe. Covfefe, when he made coffee. Yeah. So it's like, it's a little bit different, I think. And it's, it's really interesting that the Biden team is so,
so frustrated with the coverage they're getting about Biden's age that they're going to now try to do this one-on-one comparison. And I don't know if it'll be effective. I'm not convinced that it's going to move the needle at all because the voters see those kinds of differences. And I think from talking to voters, both Democrats and Republicans, they view Biden's age and Trump's age and Biden's mental health
versus Trump's mental stamina as different based on what they see. So it's, you know, not just based on what the media is reporting on. It's no news to anyone that Trump has horrible grammar, embraces
you know, typos. He actually like embraces them, but I think they see that as a way to relate to everyday people. Cause that's his whole thing is like, I'm like you, I stand for you. I do think that it's hard to catch Trump on not being polished because he never really was. That's exactly right. Of course, according to their doctors and what has come out publicly, they have a good bill of health, right? They have no cognitive issues according to their doctors. Um,
or mental acuity issues. But in a new CBS News poll, it's interesting to hear that 34% of respondents thought Biden would complete a second term and 55% thought Trump would. So clearly people think that Trump is younger, would have more time in office. The difference in age is just three years.
But maybe there is a really big difference between 77 and 80 in a person's life. Like maybe it's the difference between when you take the car keys away or you talk about putting the person in a home. It's hard to say. I mean, all these actuaries say both of these men have parents that have lived for a long time. Joe Biden's mother lived till 92 and Trump's father died.
died at 93. They are also wealthy men that don't drink or smoke. Trump is heavier than Biden, which some say cancels out his younger age. And people are living longer lives. Also, I mean, it's kind of an issue on both sides of the aisle. You've got Mitch McConnell on the Senate, who's 81. Nancy Pelosi just gave up the speakership at 83. Dianne Feinstein stayed in her role until 90 when she died. So maybe it's not as big of an issue.
But it certainly seems to be everywhere I go, people talk about Biden's age. And I'm sure you hear the same thing on the road, right? Yeah. And I think it's interesting because age and health obviously are connected, especially as you get older. But I also think with Biden, the concern goes beyond the age. And it is more so about the health. It is more so about his stumbles and his misspeaks. And when he...
trips down the stairs or trips walking up the stairs, people then have questions not just about his age, but about how healthy he is. And what's also interesting is even though both teams are really pushing this age health thing,
The candidates themselves are not because I'm pretty sure this would be my guess is they understand that if they were to directly go after somebody's age or health, given their own questions over age and health, it's just going to get turned around. Yeah. You don't throw stones when you live in a glass house. That's sort of why I'm just confused as to why the campaign would be bringing this issue to the forefront. But I don't know. Maybe it... Do you think it works with swing voters? Because...
To me, I don't think Trump's age matters to the people who the base, the people who really follow him, the people who will vote for him if he's imprisoned. Do you think Trump's age even matters to Republican base? I mean, they're going to have to get over voting for a person who could be possibly convicted before Election Day. Yeah, no, I think age for Trump voters and the Republican base in general matters.
for a Republican president like Trump is so far down on their list. And you've seen even Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley sort of make these indirect jabs at Trump's age and kind of argue that it's time for a new era of leadership. And that clearly has not worked right there in a so far away second place, but that's not something that has translated into votes for them. And so I think,
I don't think Trump's base or the Republican party cares that much about Trump's age because they see Trump's age and health so differently than they do Joe Biden's. But,
How? Why do they see it so differently? Well, that's the ultimate question, right? If you talk to Joe Biden's team, he's a cult leader. It's because of the media and because the media is only focused on Joe Biden stumbles. But if you talk to Republicans, they'll say, well, it's because you just have to look at Joe Biden and just have to look at the missteps and the kind of awkward moments he's had and and all of these things that combined race, race,
serious questions about how healthy he is. And so that's kind of the ultimate question that I think Democrats are trying to answer. And they're trying this new thing out where they think that, okay, if, if this is going to continue to be a focus and continue to be an attack, we're at least going to try to level the playing field. And we're at least going to argue that, you know,
OK, these two these two candidates actually aren't that far apart in age. They would have gone to the same school together, right? Three, four years apart. There is no significant difference between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Whether that ends up being effective again, I'm not convinced. I mean, it's hard to say, too, because like Biden would be closer to 90 at the end of his term. He'd be like 86, right? Yeah. Yeah.
Trump would be at the early part of his 80s. But see, this is the other thing, like to the Democratic base, they don't care how old Joe Biden is, right? Well, I think some of them do actually, right? Dean Phillips just launched his presidential bid in part because of Biden's age. So I think there's like...
Like, I think that's also the difference is there really isn't even underlying whispers generally from the Republican Party that Trump is too old besides from his opponents, which, again, clearly that hasn't been effective. I think on Biden's side and on the Democratic Party side, there have been whispers of is Biden too old?
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According to some polling, two-thirds of Democrats said that Biden is too old to run for re-election. So clearly, it's an issue with the party, but also the Democratic Party has always been more aligned with the youth progressive movement. It's kind of weird when that's such a big part of their coalition and their voting bloc to have an older candidate who doesn't really represent the party. The GOP is the grand old party in a way, and
The Democrats are supposed to be the younger lightning rods, and yet they have...
an older candidate. So perhaps that's part of it as well. He does represent like an older style of legislating too, like his old pals in the Senate. And he just comes off older. I don't know. And that's not what the party really wants, or at least the base of the party. But there's not going to be a primary because the Democratic National Committee moved the primary dates to South Carolina. So the only place where he would have really been challenged would have been New Hampshire, maybe Iowa, which he didn't do well in the last election. But
He's they're starting in South Carolina where he has a lot of support. And so we won't really have a challenger. Yeah. And the Democratic establishment is publicly fully behind Joe Biden. And when I talk to Democrats, the reason is pretty simple. And it's because they've done all these polls with all of these other prospective potential candidates. And Joe Biden has consistently been the person that
It doesn't matter that he's older. It doesn't matter that all these people have questions about his age and his health. It doesn't matter whether or not you think he did a good job his first four years in office. Like he is the best person we have to beat Trump. And so we're getting behind. I don't know that I would necessarily trust that polling, though, because until you run for president, your name ID is low. Yeah.
Yeah. Right. Totally. It's a lot different. Yeah. Well, Dean's a member of Congress, but if you had a really popular governor from like Michigan, like Gretchen Whitmer, and she started to pop up on the national stage, like even Gavin Newsom, who's doing his like tour de force, even going to China, like if he was actually running for governor, yeah, he's got a lot of problems in Cal, I'm sorry. If he was actually running for president. Yeah. He's got a lot of problems in California, but like the second you announced that you are running for president of the United States, it's,
and you're not Dean Phillips or Marianne Williamson, you get a name ID that could propel you to a place that could beat Trump. I mean, perhaps it would be on age alone. People would look at Trump and be like, this guy's an old, erratic, drunk uncle, even though he's sober. And here's a younger, fresher face that we trust. And they don't have to be young, like 20s, 30s. Well, you can't run until you're 35. But we're not talking about very young. But
someone who has real experience and like Americans love electing governors, you know, so there's definitely some options out there in the democratic party. It's hard to say. I mean that, do you agree with me on the polling? Like how do you really pull someone who's never run for president to see how they would do against Trump? I,
I completely agree. I think it just comes down to, do you want to take that chance? Right. Or should we kind of put all of our eggs in a basket where we already know he was successful last time around? And so I think they're taking kind of the safer route, which is, okay, he's done it once before.
Let's stick with him. Right. But the problem is that he's running again for a second term. He's lost that shine that he had. Obviously, the Bidenomics is hard to sell. There's issues with inflation. We've got, you know, various world wars going on. His favorability ratings are low and Trump is beating him in certain swing states that Biden needs to win reelection.
And so there are a lot of concerns and national polls Trump's beating him, which some say don't really matter. But then when you see the polling in swing states like this recent Bloomberg poll that shows Trump beating him in Arizona, I mean, that's concerning. Because in 2019, right before the 2020 election, Biden was killing Trump in the polls. And even before the election, Trump people were packing up their offices. They were fully ready to
to be vacated, even if he didn't want to accept it. So I think there's real reason for concern right now. There is. I just saw a Gallup poll that recently came out that showed that his job approval rating among Democrats is down 11 percentage points in the past month to 75%, which is still high, but it's the lowest of his presidency.
And then he also has his approval rating down to 37%, which is matched with his personal low. And so there are serious concerns, which is also why I think maybe team Biden is sort of trying to think outside of the box and say, okay, it doesn't matter how relevant or irrelevant or how effective these attacks about age and health are like, we're just going to
try to address everything at this point, because you never know when things are this tight. And when Joe Biden has so many problems, as you just named several of them, what's going to stick and what's going to end up potentially pushing Trump over.
But is it effective? I don't think it's going to be effective. I guess we'll see. I'm not convinced just for the many reasons we just talked about. Right. There is inherently a difference in public perception about Joe Biden's age and health versus Donald Trump's age and health. And there's no public relations campaign that can change that. I don't think social media posts or ads will change that perspective.
enough to make any sort of difference. All right, Shelby, thanks for breaking it down for us. We'd love to have you on again. It was an interesting article, sobering to say the least.
Thanks again for listening to another episode of Somebody's Gotta Win. I'm Tara Palmieri. I want to thank my producers, Christopher Sutton and Devin Manzi. If you like this show, please subscribe, rate it, share it with your friends. If you like my reporting, please sign up for my newsletter, The Best and the Brightest. It's at puck.news slash Tara Palmieri. And you can use my discount code Tara20 for 20% off. Thanks for listening. And I'll be back on Thursday.
