"A Bucket of Warm Spit"
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Welcome back to The Horse Race. This week, I'll talk about the return of yellow journalism with the Federalists' Molly Hemingway, chat about Kamala Harris' selection and the state of play in the presidential and Senate races with MSNBC's Steve Kornacki, and examine the next three weeks of primary voting in a special edition of Primary Night in America. The horses are at the starting gate. They're off.

This week on The Horse Race, I have the pleasure of being joined by Molly Hemingway, Senior Editor at The Federalist and Senior Journalism Fellow at Hillsdale College. She is one of the most interesting journalists in America today, as she is not infected by groupthink, not the least, as anyone who is familiar with her new book, Justice on Trial, The Kavanaugh Hearings, and the Future of the Supreme Court would immediately recognize. Molly, welcome to The Horse Race. Thank you.

Thank you. It's great to be here with you. Well, let's start with your book. Obviously, anyone who was alive during that period knows what the main media narrative was and what it continues to be after the confirmation of now Justice Kavanaugh. What does your book say that the media got wrong, willfully or otherwise?

Yeah, I wrote Justice on Trial with Kerry Severino, who's at the Judicial Crisis Network. And we really just wanted to get the story down of how those confirmation hearings went and what their significance was and how it relates to previous Supreme Court confirmation battles. And so we interviewed more than 100 people who were key players, people at the White House, up to and including President Trump. Ever

in the Senate who played a major role. We interviewed several Supreme Court justices, and we just told the story of what this one nomination was like. But it was an interesting story because it dealt with how the Republican Party has handled judicial nominations and how it has changed its approach, as it has, frankly, had quite a few failures with how it's handled judicial nominations, particularly at the Supreme Court level, and looking at how esoteric

as the court plays a bigger role in our lives and as they become more like a legislature as opposed to a court, how those confirmation hearings get more and more political and contentious. And

And so it was a really fun story to report. And part of it was, as you know, about how the media messed up that story or how they took an activist role, particularly at the later stage when unsubstantiated allegations of violence

like crazy sexual assault came out against Brett Kavanaugh and how we do get into how they handled that. And it's not a particularly favorable look at journalistic standards or how they handled that part of the process. Well, as an aside, before I ask you more about that, did you interview Senator Harris as one of the hundred people who played a role? She was on the committee.

So we don't, we interviewed many people, but we don't usually talk about who we interviewed or who we didn't. But we definitely had, you know, Harris played a big part in the story. She was one of the people, a lot of the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee played a prominent role early, you know, almost immediately when President Trump nominated a

Brett Kavanaugh. They came out against him. She was one of the people who came out against him right away, went to the Supreme Court the next day. And she really made a name for herself in the first round of hearings. She had a good interview with Justice Kavanaugh. I think they both found it to be a favorable interview when you go and meet with the senators who are on the committee. But right away in that first round of hearings, seven seconds in, Chairman Grassley was interrupted by Kamala Harris, who

who tried to get the hearings to be stopped on procedural grounds. She felt that the hundreds of thousands of documents that they'd had from Brett Kavanaugh's time in the government weren't sufficient and she wanted to delay it so she could get more. And she was one of the senators who provided seats to some of the activists who got elected

arrested in the first round of hearings. People know that by the time Christine Blasey Ford came on the scene, things had gotten crazy, but they actually were crazy long before that in the first round of hearings with hundreds of people arrested and whatnot. And she also...

was noteworthy for trying to lay a perjury trap for Brett Kavanaugh. And the media really thought this was a good... I think it's an interesting vignette about who she is and what type of candidate she will be. She did this really dramatic line of questioning suggesting that Brett Kavanaugh had done something very wrong. She was asking him if he'd ever talked about the molar probe with anyone at this particular law firm. It's the kind of thing where you think

She must have the goods on something and she must be trying to get him in trouble. And he answered in very lawyerly fashion that, you know, he would need to know who she was talking about or, you know, that hundreds of people work at this firm. And, you know, he answered that way. And the media really thought she had him on the ropes. And it turned out that she had nothing at all. She just knew that he had worked with someone at this one law firm.

that was somehow tied to the molar probe. And she was trying to get him to commit perjury somehow. But he was aware of it because Ted Cruz had warned him that something like this would happen. But I think it's an interesting vignette because it came off so good at first. She really seemed charismatic and very prosecutorial. She really knew what she was doing. And it turned out in the end, she had literally nothing and it was all a big

And I think it's just something I kind of think about as she's now on a much more prominent stage and how she didn't do so well with her presidential run, but now has another chance as VP nominee, you know, whether we'll see more of that type of Kamala Harris.

Well, what do you think the big media flubs were in the Kavanaugh hearing? And perhaps more importantly, are they unique to the Kavanaugh hearing? Or do you see similar types of flubs throughout the mainstream media's treatment of Trump and Republicans more generally? I think we've just all grown accustomed to the hostile posture that the media have toward Trump.

Right.

And you saw some of that right away when the Washington Post was trying to make scandals out of things that didn't seem so scandalous. Like Brett Kavanaugh had put group season tickets for the Nationals on his credit card. And then before they all got paid off by his buddies.

You know, he had like a month of credit card debt or something like that. You know, it was very, very silly as far as scandals go and very typical of someone like Brett Kavanaugh, who's, you know, almost frankly kind of boring in terms of how he had led his life in such a straight and narrow kind of way.

But I think when people look at what they don't like about the media coverage, they really are focused on the handling of the unsubstantiated allegations against him and realizing that the media could play such a vicious role in trying to destroy the life and reputation of someone when they didn't have the substance to go with that. I mean, the Washington Post very carefully rolled out their initial story against him, making the accusation sound credible when there was really no evidence that

There was no evidence at all in support of it other than the claim of this woman, Christine Blasey Ford. There was no evidence that the two had ever even met. And so you might look back at how Clarence Thomas was, how that situation was handled by the media. But at least in that case, Anita Hill had met Clarence Thomas and there was evidence that the two knew each other. But the media decided to just pretty much ignore

make it out like this man was a rapist, even though there was no substantiation for it. And it got increasingly ridiculous. I mean, the Christine Blasey Ford story had no evidence in support of it, but at least it was within the realm of like, it conceivably could have happened. By the end, you were getting stories treated credulously by the media, even though they were about like,

you know, Brett Kavanaugh is the leader of a serial gang rape cartel that's roaming the streets of suburban Maryland. You don't need to be that good of a journalist to be skeptical of stories like that. And yet the way that they were rolled out by the media as like the latest credible allegation, uh,

And the New Yorker with Jane Mayer and Ronan Farrow wrote a story that even the New York Times said they called 70 people to try to corroborate and they were unable to. But they gave it real favorable coverage, again, even though there was no substantiation for it. So it was not a good moment for the media. Yeah.

You know, it increasingly looks like what we have is a return to pre-World War II journalism, where journalistic standards were the standards of the publisher.

And or the owner and that one had was agenda driven journalism now called the pejorative of yellow journalism. But there was a competition in those days because it was mainly through the newspapers and you could afford to have multiple newspapers with different agendas competing for the same agenda.

Audience, do you see a return to would you agree with me or disagree, whatever you think, that we are seeing a return to partisan slash yellow journalism, but that now we do so in an age when with the absence of what goes on on the Internet, there is very little economic opportunity to break through the a monopoly with the exception of deep pocketed people like Rupert Murdoch and Fox.

Yeah, I'm glad that you noticed that because I think a lot of people think that objective journalism or the aim of objectivity is something that has always been part of our media when, in fact, that was a very brief period of the previous century where we had an attempt by people to set aside their biases and try to just tell a story and get all sides on there. That has clearly, clearly died.

that has gone away. I don't think there are hardly any media outlets actually continuing to try to do that. And so it is a return, and yet it is different in that, as you note, the corporatism backing these major media outlets is seriously impressive. I mean, some of these media outlets that have returned recently

to yellow journalism, even if they're denying it, are very large corporations and they have a lot of power and they still have a lot of power to influence journalism

discussion and debate. And I'm very thankful for how the internet has created opportunities for other journalists to break through. And that's been a story that I've benefited from quite a bit, but it's still nothing compared to the power that the New York Times or other major media have. And you saw the damage that can be caused by this with how they were basically co-conspirators in a dramatic hoax case.

Russia collusion hoax to claim that the president of the United States was a traitor who had colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election. And as absurd as that is, and as absurd as it sounds, it's

Our major media actually pushed that theory for years, and then they gave themselves awards for how well they pushed this absolutely ludicrous idea. And it really caused a lot of damage to the country in terms of foreign policy and domestic peace and whatnot. So it's a very unaccountable group right now, and hopefully that can change. So what does it mean going forward that you are –

one of the few journalists who stand on the other side of the partisan equation. And you do have your outlets and things like the Internet increasingly give people the opportunity to create zones of influence that the gatekeepers who own these major outlets

broadcasting and publishing platforms can't control. Do you think that the partisan media will be moving in a Biden administration to try and stamp out or regulate the competitors for eyes, ears and influence?

So mostly what I'm worried about for the future is not the power of these media companies alone, but how they work with large technology companies to silence their competitors or people who highlight the problems with their media reporting. And we have seen that already. And The Federalist, my publication, has already been targeted through a false report from NBC News where they colluded with Google to try and shut us down in some way. It didn't work, but it was definitely effective.

scary to go through. And so when you imagine a Biden-Harris administration, you know, Harris is someone who has used her power to go after journalists in California. She quite famously started the persecution of David Daleiden, who was a journalist, who is a journalist, who has exposed some stuff going on at Planned Parenthood clinics. And she was the woman who, you know, raided his home. And people claim to care about

assaults on the First Amendment and journalists, and they get very upset if President Trump says that they are producing fake news or if they are harming the country. But when it comes to actual action against journalists, Kamala Harris has done more than most authoritarian leaders could even dream of. And so having her in a position of higher power, I think, is a threat to people who don't share her political views.

Can you tell my listeners a little bit more about this particular instance? Well, David Daleiden is a journalist in California who...

did these undercover videos where he showed people affiliated with the abortion industry talking about things that are illegal, including the sale of body parts from the unborn children that are, you know, the products of abortion. And it was, this happened, I think,

maybe like four or five years ago that this came out. And it actually was a follow-up to a major media expose from decades prior. I think it was like 60 Minutes or something like that, did something very similar where, you know, legally speaking, you're not supposed to sell body parts or full bodies from aborted babies, but it does happen. And so he was just kind of doing a follow-up to see whether it was still happening despite efforts to

to make this illegal and keep it illegal. And it was, I mean, they had people dead to rights in terms of just openly talking about how they procure these parts, how they hide it, how they, how they, you know,

to avoid getting in trouble for it. There were later congressional investigations showing that there is such a market for these things. You can actually have like a drop-down menu on some sites where you can like order body parts by gestation and sex of the child that has been aborted. And so it was a really important journalistic thing that he did. And Kamala Harris, as AG in California, said,

the prosecution of him on the grounds that recording people surreptitiously was a violation of the law. And so normally, normally this is something where you'd see a lot of journalists rushing to defend an undercover journalist's work. You know, there are times when undercover journalism is definitely justified because of the inability to get the story through other means. And it's something that generally the media love, but because so many people in the media are themselves so radically in support of abortion rights.

They were unable to defend him or unwilling to defend him as he started facing his persecution from his state government. He had his home raided. He's had unbelievable legal expenses associated with this, even as the courts have shown that what he recorded was true. You have people under oath in these court hearings saying that, yes, what

What his journalism was, was accurate and whatnot. So just a very interesting story and one that if it were on a different topic, I think the media would be rushing to his defense. So where do you see the future of journalism going? And more broadly than that, where do you see the future of journalism covering the presidency going?

I it's a really good and important question, and I'm not entirely sure what the answer is. The thing I am most interested in relates to what you said earlier about the return to yellow journalism. What I think what is really key is how people respond to journalism. So right now you have a situation where there is pretty much still a lot of support for journalism on the left, right?

and none on the right. I mean, just like you look at these polling numbers about what people think of journalists. And if you identify as a Republican or a conservative, you are done with the media, just done with them. On the left, there's still some reservoir of support or thinking that they do important work. And it's understandable why you see these differences because the journalists are so far on the left, they're going to have more support on the left than on the right.

It's when that trust erodes in an institution that things get fraught. And we're seeing that

nationally with all of our other institutions. But when it comes to journalism, I think it might be a good thing for people to lose trust in an institution that has done such a bad job of conveying big issues, whether it's like about immigration or interventionist wars or crony capitalism or, you know, all these big issues where the media have kind of like dropped the ball and messed up the story.

It's probably healthy for people to lose trust in an institution like that. But what arises after that is the big challenge. And I hope that we do have like some means by which people can have shared facts from which to debate policies and a shared understanding of values of some kind, just because that's important to keep the country and the republic healthy and together. Yeah.

What do you see as the role of conservative outlets like Fox or The Federalist in this coming evolution? Well, for The Federalist, it's just very important for us to try to hold –

the media accountable. I mean, that's one of the big things that we do. We do fresh reporting ourselves, you know, whether it's on border issues or elections or, you know, what's happening in education. We do that fresh reporting ourselves. We do a lot of analysis and media analysis in particular is important because again, of that unaccountable power they have. I don't

think Fox does that so much. But I don't actually, despite working in cable news, I don't quite understand cable news as well. I understand that many more people watch it than read newspapers or websites, but I still think that written word is really important for shaping what we hear on cable news and how people respond to it. Yeah.

One thing that makes me sad about cable news and TV news in general is that

the almost everybody has gone into this like open advocacy on the left. And people say that Fox is, is like the equivalent on the right, but it's not really because it actually still has these debates between people on the left and people on the right. It has a division between news and opinion. You know, there's a difference between Brett Baer and Tucker Carlson, and it's very clear and obvious. And I don't think that they're even like,

claiming those divisions over at CNN or MSNBC anymore. It's just kind of like everybody's generally an opinion person. I could be wrong on that. They might be claiming that some of their people are straight news, but it's just getting harder and harder to see that division. Whereas

So I guess it would be also kind of interesting to see if that creates an opening for someone to do a conservative equivalent of MSNBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS. Because right now, the idea that Fox is that equivalent is not actually – that's not actually how it works. They still have those debates between left and right. So they're kind of what the news media used to be a few decades ago.

Where they might have a slight, you know, edge to it, but they're still hosting debates. But you're not seeing any conservative equivalent really to those left-wing outlets like MSNBC and CNN. Could Newsmax or OANN be that sort of entity? I think so. But I mean, are they – I'm so sorry that I –

I love TV. I'm not like one of these people who doesn't like TV, but I usually get my news through reading as opposed to watching. So I, yes, I think they could be, but I don't even know if they're like generally available or accessible to most people right now. Yeah. I ask because I'm like you, I don't watch television news of any variety. I do like you appear on television news from time to time. My anecdote about MSNBC is that as a opinion journalist,

columnist for the Washington Post, I get broad brushed emails from people trying to influence me. And a couple of months ago, I got put on some distribution list for MSNBC. And literally in the multi-month period, I've received multiple quotes from interviews. One person was a Republican. Everyone else is a Democrat.

And I suspect that even Tucker Carlson has more Democrats during the same time period on his show, much less the entire network than what MSNBC is sending out to me. Let me ask a final question then for you, which is.

Somewhere in my listener audience, I'm sure there is a young person who identifies as a conservative or libertarian or somewhere on the broad constellation of people on the political right who would like to get into something that they think of as journalism. What would you say to such a person? Would you standing in front of them and they asked you, what do I do?

Well, first off, I hope there are a lot of people like that because I think it's a wonderful line of work to get into and good people need to...

get into it. And my own background, you know, as these institutions kind of crumble, I don't know what the proper path is. For me, when I began in journalism, I just did straight news reporting for so long. And I'm really thankful for that. So that by the time I did have something to say, I had established myself as a writer who knew how to just do basic reporting. Now I do opinion stuff, and I love doing it, but I just wouldn't trade that

history of writing story after story after story where my opinion had nothing to do with anything and just learning how to ask people questions on the phone or get them to get them to explain things in a way that would make for a good quote, you know, and all that kind of stuff. Just really good skills. So if you can do that, I think that's still really important to do. And even if you are at a ideological outlet, those are still important skills to learn. But understanding that your job as a journalist, like kind of

Not making yourself the most important part of it, but understanding that you're serving your readers by telling them things that they don't have immediate access to or sharing with them, you know, what happened at this event or what the nature of the debate is. It, you know, less about you and more about just helping other people understand a situation I think can be very helpful. Yeah.

But there are more opportunities now to write and influence discussions than there have been in a really long time. So it is an exciting, it's an exciting period of time for people who do want to get into it. And I highly encourage it. It's been a really fun career to have. And you get to, you know, get very interested in one topic and then move on to another. You know, you don't have to stay in one thing your whole life. And that's been very enjoyable for me.

Well, Molly, thank you very much for the insight and thank you for coming on the horse race.

It's my pleasure this week to welcome back to The Horse Race, Steve Kornacki. Steve is one of the most knowledgeable political analysts and correspondents we have and is somebody who you can see regularly on MSNBC with his magic board. He makes numbers comprehensible to the numerically impaired, as well as being an excellent analyst of things non-numerical. Steve?

the national course political correspondence for NBC News and MSNBC. Got to get that in there for the corporate plaques. Welcome back to the horse race. Thanks, Henry. Appreciate you having me. Well, we now know after weeks, months of speculation who Joe Biden has picked as his prospective running mate. And it's to nobody's surprise, Senator Kamala Harris of California. What do you make of the pick?

Yeah, like you say, to nobody's surprise. It reminds me, I think the last time there was a process for the vice presidential selection where there was a clear favorite from the beginning and the pick was that favorite. I'm thinking of John Edwards back in 2004 for John Kerry. It was a bit similar. You know, Edwards had run in the primaries against Kerry and there were a bunch of folks, I think, at the party for various reasons who just thought, you know, Edwards was the most logical pick.

I think there was a lot of that sentiment around Kamala Harris, too. So, yeah, you know, there wasn't a lot of suspense on this one. The impact, you know, my sense is minimal, you know, maybe zero impact, which is, I think, par for the course for these vice presidential picks. Although I do think.

huge impact in the future of the Democratic Party category because we all know Biden's age. We all know the distinct possibility that if he is elected, it's a one-term presidency. Somebody who becomes the vice presidential pick gets a bit of a leg up going forward. Somebody who actually becomes the vice president, a significant leg up. And if the president turns out to be a one-term president by choice, that could be quite a leg up.

So what does that mean for the future of the Democratic Party? You know, people on the Republican side say, oh, my gosh, look at that crazed leftist. The crazed leftists I know are actually kind of shrugging their shoulders generally like, gee, we wish we had had somebody better. Where's the truth in all of this? What does this mean?

Yeah, it's it's look, she's a from a from a deeply blue state of, you know, population rich state. I think, you know, my read on Harris as a politician is I think she she has an instinct that's similar to Biden, where she tries to find where the center of the Democratic Party is at any given moment. And I think, you know, the Democratic Party as a whole has moved to the left here in the last few years. And I think you saw in the primaries and I think Harris more than Biden is.

I think Harris was struggling a bit during the primaries to find the middle. And you saw a number of cases there where I think she would she would make a statement or make a pronouncement on the campaign trail where it seemed her instinct was telling her this is this is where the party is. This is where I need to be. And there'd be follow up and there'd be fine print and there'd be.

sort of a modification. And as I saw that with her a few times during the primary campaign, that's what I, I believed I was, I was seeing happen. But I think she is somebody who in that sense, there's, there's a pragmatism about her. I think in terms of just trying to read and sort of hue to the politics of the democratic party at any given moment. And, and yeah, you just look at the track record here. If Biden wins, obviously, I think there's a lot of this is moot if Biden loses this fall, but if Biden does win,

I mean, the vice presidents who have wanted to make a go of it, you know, on their own modern times, there's a pretty good track record there of at least getting the nomination. You know, the presidency itself can be a little more dicey, but to at least get the nomination, you know, Cheney didn't try. Biden had to sit out 2016. He gets it in 2020. You know, otherwise, you know, Al Gore got the nomination, George H.W. Bush, Walter Mondale is pretty, pretty, you know, Richard Nixon. You know, there's quite a few who've been able to do that.

Yeah. Hubert Humphrey going back that far. Yeah. I'm really glad you mentioned that about Harris, because the more I thought about it over the last few days, the more I thought, gee, you know, she is very much like Biden in that sense.

trying to find the center of the Democratic Party. And that part, I thought, gee, part of her stumbles early on in her own presidential race might very well have come from the center of the Democratic Party in her home state of California is to the left of the nation. So her initial instinct was, yeah, I know where the center is. Boom. Abolish private health insurance. And that may have flown in California, but not in the nation as a whole. So

That suggests to me that maybe you would see a Kamala Harris, besides doing what vice presidents always do, which is pledge fealty to everything that the president says and does, even if they disagreed when they were running against them, suggests that a Harris presidency may be less progressive than even her public record has suggested. What do you make of that possibility?

Yeah, no, I mean, I think there's when I say pragmatic, I think that's what I mean. And I think this was when I say she had the issue in the Democratic primaries, she was far from alone. You mentioned, you know, when she had called for abolishing private health insurance at one point is a great example of this. But we saw that.

Many candidates running in the Democratic field last year, this year, two dozen of them, I think, set out to run. I think they confused the Democratic Party of how do you say it? Twitter, social media, often cable news that that kind of sphere. They confuse that Democratic Party with the much broader sort of electorate of the Democratic Party that's going to go out there and vote in primaries.

Um, and I think it's because that's where the noise comes from in our politics. That's where, you know, that's where you're going to get all your feedback from. Uh, and I think you can very easily mistake that for sort of mass opinion. And I think you saw a number of candidates. I mean, I could, Elizabeth Warren, I think did that. Kamala Harris did that. Julian Castro did that on and on and on. Interestingly, the one candidate who didn't do that, you know, really it was Joe Biden. Joe Biden, of course, obviously I think had, had, um,

was tapping into something there very clearly. My question with Harris, and I think my sense with Harris is, given the failure of her own presidential campaign, the success of Biden's, I think she may learn something from that. She strikes me as the kind of politician who will, and maybe will measure these sorts of things more in the future. I think she showed herself certainly capable in 2019 and 2020 of kind of going, I think she got

Too far to the left there, I would say, just in terms of where mass opinion in the Democratic Party was. I suspect she'll learn from that, but it's going to be interesting to watch. I'm not sure of that.

The same thing is true in the Republican Party, is that one can argue that one of the reasons why Trump was able to pull off his upset in 2016 was there were 16 candidates running against him, all of which mistook Tea Party rallies and donor caucuses as where the Republican voter base was. And one person who had never been a Republican seriously in his life, who wasn't encumbered by false knowledge and drove right through voter sentiment to the nomination.

And that was, yeah. And look at, well, look at the Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, look at their famous interaction on the debate stage last summer, right? I mean, it was, it was Biden's old Senate record that was going to kill him. There was a lot of energy in sort of the social media side of the Democratic aisle behind sort of,

uh you know trying to sort of uh what would you say trying to correct the the past wrongs and and uh and harris decided to make her stand on that on busing on joe biden busing 1970s and it was a dramatic moment um but you did not see uh you saw a brief blip in terms of support for her but then it was a sort of slow steady fade out from there and you didn't see joe biden sort of uh um

You didn't see him fade out very quickly. So I just think it was it was that was one of those moments I think was very revealing where she took that bait and didn't get anywhere with it. So we're going to go into a convention or a virtual convention or whatever they're going to call this thing that will nominally take place in Milwaukee, but won't actually take place in Milwaukee.

And Biden has a lead that's pretty substantial. Historically, you take a look and say presidents who run this far behind this late in the game don't win. So what's your take? You look at the numbers more closely than just about anybody that I know. Walk us through what the polls say and probably as importantly, what they don't say, but that maybe some of your competitors

competitors who are less numerically and analytically focused are telling us, they say. Yeah, I mean... Without naming names, of course. Never, never, of course. I think part of this is there's sort of a psychology to this, right? Where...

In some way, we are all haunted a bit. I don't say that in a partisan sense, just in terms of what the expectations were in the fall of 2016 versus what the reality was on election night. And I think there's a bit of a memory of that that certainly has me looking for, is there something more to this that I'm missing? Is there sort of a consensus, a conventional wisdom that's forming here that's sort of willfully blind to a few things? I'm trying to be mindful of that. I'm trying to look for that. The way I say it right now is,

I'm not seeing right now when I look at these polls, I am not seeing that. OK, there's the thing we're all looking away from. There's the thing we're all missing. I'm seeing a pretty sizable and a pretty steady Joe Biden lead at the national level. And I'm seeing the same thing at the state level when you start looking at the Electoral College.

And when you start to break down that map in 2016 that got Trump elected, I mean, we all know this, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, it was about 77,000 votes across those three states. If Democrats can just erase that.

and nothing else changes on the electoral map, that alone gets Joe Biden past 270. So you take those three, and then you can add in Arizona, Florida. Florida's looked very rough for Donald Trump. A bunch of other states, there's just all sorts of options that are presenting themselves right now for Democrats and for Joe Biden on the electoral map. So that's what I'm seeing right now. The cautionary note, though, that is on my mind is,

If you think back to where Trump where Trump stood right before covid and really even in the first, I would say about six weeks of the pandemic, he had an approval rating of.

In the mid forties, well into the mid forties, you know, 45, 46%, that range was about as good as it had been for him, his entire presidency. He was competitive, certainly with Biden in the national polling, I would say down by three or four points. And again, with Trump, you know, he doesn't need to win the popular vote. As we know, he can, he can lose by two or three even potentially and, and still find a way on the electoral map. So I, I feel like he is clearly Trump is clearly behind right now. I,

I don't think we are missing anything in our analysis of what the playing field looks like right now. I am aware of where Trump is right now and where he needs to be to have a chance on election day to pull off something like he did in 2016 with the Electoral College. I don't think there's a huge gap between those two places. You know, and I do wonder if

Again, no scientific epidemiological knowledge here, but if the coronavirus, for whatever reason, the epidemic were to calm down a little bit in the next month and people were just sort of the psychology of the nation around that were to change a little bit.

I wonder, you know, could he get his approval rating back up to 45%? Could he get it to 46%? And I think if he's somewhere there, if he's within about five points in the polling, national horse race polling, I think at that point you have to start saying,

So there's a possibility he can he can stitch it together like he did in 2016. So I'm just looking for, you know, if he's down about, you know, eight, nine points nationally right now. I think it was I think it was seven and a half in the real clear politics today. If that gets under five, if that gets down to about four, that's when I start to get curious. Do you think that there is if you're on the right, you know, whenever I publish my pieces in The Washington Post, right?

I try and follow the numbers and I say, hey, Republicans, it looks really bad. And I always get people usually with some form of MAGA in their Twitter handle who tell me that I'm an idiot, that there's a secret majority, the polls are wrong, blah, blah, blah.

And I discount that like you do. But is there the possibility that there is a slight polling underestimation on a national or a regional basis of Republicans that could mean that a minus five nationally is really a minus three and a half once you factor that in? Or is that kind of just a lesser myth that is the illegitimate spawn of the silent majority? Yeah.

No, I mean, that's why I say if it gets to within about five points, certainly four points, I'd be I'd perk up. It's for that reason. I think I think the final polling and certainly our final poll here, our NBC Wall Street Journal poll right before Election Day had it at four.

You know, and it came in at about two, you know, Clinton's margin in the popular vote. So, and I do think there were some, you've talked about this, I know there were some clear misses, obviously in 2016 and in 2018, there continue to be in some of those Midwest states, you

I think the possibility of these polls are missing a little bit. So, yeah, I feel like if it's I say five, five could be three, you know, four and a half, two and a half and three or two and a half. A popular vote margin like that for Biden, to me, is certainly within the realm of possibility that Trump gets 270 in the Electoral College.

Yeah, I mean, one thing I've found over the last few years is when you see a gross polling error at the state level, it's often in a place with a lot of white, blue collar voters. Kansas in 2014, Kentucky with McConnell in the same year. And in 2018, you saw polls that said that the Republicans would lose the governorships of Iowa and Ohio, and they ended up winning. And it wasn't.

I mean, it was close, but it was not a nail biter in either case. It was a significant outside of the margin polling error. Is that an issue that has been largely corrected because most reputable pollsters now wait by education? Or are you still suspecting that there might be some sort of residual problem because some people in that group that gets weighted up

are not responding. So the group that gets weighted up is disproportionately Democrat as opposed to who will really vote.

Well, here's where I have to stick up for NBC's state pollster Marist and earn the wrath of a lot of the prominent polling folks on Twitter. But I'm not doing this just out of contractual obligation. I'm going to make a case here that I think our pollster Marist is doing something very interesting on the front in terms of what you're describing here. Marist conducts state polls for NBC. We had one out of Arizona a couple weeks ago. There'll be more to come. What Marist, what our folks at Marist say, they

They have seen is that obviously there is now this massive gap between white voters, white college, white non-college. We all talk about this. We know this. It's exploded in the Trump era. But they say within those groups, especially within the white non-college group, there's a huge difference based on geography.

Where if you think of like Pennsylvania, for example, right, and you think of the suburban counties outside right outside Philadelphia that are filled with white college graduates. What they believe they are finding here is that non-college white voters who also live in those areas where they are surrounded by college educated white voters tend to vote.

a lot more like those white college educated voters, as opposed to if you went out to, I don't know, Aliquippa in Pennsylvania and found a non-college white voter there. There's a huge difference depending on where you're getting that non-college white voter from. That was their great insight into it. And so they have changed the way they poll, trying, the emphasis on their polling is to get

a more geographically representative sample of white non-college voters. It's to sample these areas, zip codes, whatever that are, that they believe they have missed, that other pollsters have missed, that are filled with these white non-college voters who are going to vote differently and probably just in terms of the

entire demographic sample in a more representative way of the demographic sample than you're going to get in these white suburban areas. They think the polls have gotten too many non-college white voters from suburban areas and not enough

You know, from areas like I'm describing. So they put that methodology and I say right now that it's very controversial what they're doing. There are a lot of folks who don't like it, but they put that to the test. We've had one poll, one NBC Marist poll that's come out since they put that into effect. It was in Arizona. So it's not the best state to be testing this in. But the Arizona poll came back at Biden plus five. This was about two weeks ago.

Yeah. And Arizona is a state where there's not as many white non-college voters as a share of the electorate, in part because of the larger Latino share and in part because the large college educated population that is flocking to areas around Phoenix. Now, my listeners may not believe this, but you and I did not discuss this beforehand about the polling methodology. And so I'll just say that I did a trip across.

a couple of years ago to Levittown, which is a blue collar, white suburban community in lower Bucks County outside of Philadelphia. And I have looked at largely white, blue collar communities in the Philadelphia metropolitan area in both Bucks and in Delaware County.

And they did show large swings from prior voting patterns towards President Trump. And they also showed higher degrees of Democratic loyalty than similar places in Luzerne County, Lackawanna County, Wayne County, places that are small town or rural areas. And so based on my small sample size and non-statistical analysis, your pollster might be on to something.

I appreciate that. And now I'm thinking I must have read you somewhere right about this to have that on my mind like that, to have Pennsylvania on my mind about the subject.

Yeah, I wrote a two part column about Levittown for a UK publication, unheard.com, U-N-H-E-R-D. Give it a little plug here that I was writing before before I joined the post and became contractually obligated to be a solely post outlet person. Let's turn a little bit from the presidential race for a minute. Well, let's stick with the presidential race just for a second. Yeah.

There is the perpetual rumor that Trump is going to have a sudden decision to dump Mike Pence and put a woman on the ticket. I've discounted that for most of the year, in part because he seems to reward loyalty and Pence has been nothing if not loyal. And also with the thought that

What sensible woman at this point would join a ticket that's nine points down and looks like it's going to lose when she'd be known as the Mrs. Macbeth of the Republican Party for backstabbing a sitting vice president? Do you give any credence to the chance of a convention eve shocker where the president does that in order to try and play a reverse gender card on Trump?

uh, the, uh, democratic ticket and try and show a new league. My read on it is similar to yours. I have not seen or heard or read anything about Pence doing or saying anything in the last four years. Um, that would upset Trump and that would, that would trigger. Cause it certainly, if he had, I could certainly see it. Um, so I don't expect it. Um,

But it is Trump and he does have a an instinct for, you know, sort of the surprise move. So I don't entirely rule it out. I do think if I feel that if he were to do it, it would be the most most direct confirmation we can get.

That he does think these polls look different than 2016 and that he does think he was down in 2016. He's down now. You know, he didn't change anything up in 2016 and he won. If he feels he has to make that kind of a change this late in the 2020 campaign, I think that certainly would confirm that he really that at some level this polling is getting to him.

Well, and based on that, I'm going to expect Trump Conway 2020 to be the ticket. OK, now this is a big irony. Since you can't hear my voice, this is irony alert. OK, let's shift from the presidential campaign to the Senate campaign that we are seeing a lot of talk about Democrats regaining the Senate and not necessarily close that you see the same sort of trends in Senate polls that you're seeing with presidential polls.

What do you think the likelihood is of the Democrats regaining the Senate? And is there a cusp point at the presidential popular vote margin where whether it's reflected in the polling at the Senate level or not, you begin to call that back that chair closer to, hey, the Republicans have a shot? Yeah, I mean, I look at it right now and I feel the Democrats are favored to get it back. Yeah.

Just the simple, I think everybody knows, you look at Alabama and you assume that's going to be a loss for Democrats, a pickup for Republicans. But then you look at Arizona and the polling there has been pretty bad for Republicans. I know there was one or two in the last week that didn't look as bad, but still I've seen Mark Kelly, the Democrat, ahead basically in every election.

poll I've seen there. You look at Colorado, Cory Gardner, Republican, trying to get reelected in a state that wasn't for Trump in the first place and certainly isn't expected to be for him in 2020. And then you've got Susan Collins in Maine, who I consider, obviously, I consider that sort of a wildcard race because she's

you know, for decades had such an independent reputation there and been able to, to win support from democratic voters. But again, I've seen some polling there in the last couple of weeks that suggests she's, she's competitive, but perhaps down a few points. And I mean, if you just, if those three go democratic, if Alabama goes Republican and Democrats need to find one more, um,

And at this point, there are several options on the table. A state like Montana, for instance, where they've got Bullock running. It's not too long ago Montana was sending a Democrat, Max Baucus, to the Senate. It's a state Trump's obviously likely to win by a solid margin, as he did in 2016. But the possibility of sort of split-ticket voting there that would send a Democrat to the Senate doesn't seem likely.

It doesn't seem out of the question. Which they did two years ago where the exit poll had Trump with 51% job approval and they sent John Tester to the Senate with over 50% of the vote. That's right. Listen to me, forgetting about John Tester. Yes. There's Baucus, there's Tester. It's a state. I mean, you don't have to go back to the 1990s. Bill Clinton was even able to win it once. So Montana is an example. You know, there are others. We could talk about the two seats in Georgia. There are a number of possibilities for Democrats, uh,

Um, and if they can get those first three and Biden's winning the presidential race, um, I think my, my gut tells me they're likely to find at least one more North Carolina. Um,

and get the Senate. But again, if this, um, if Trump is able to close the margin, we say within five points, if this were able to look something like 2016 in terms of the popular vote margin, then in a scenario like that, I think he's getting North Carolina back. North Carolina becomes very difficult, um, you know, for the Democrats to get the Senate race there. Um, maybe, you know, Arizona, a state Trump carried in 2016, that has not been looking that good for him. Um, you know, maybe he's able to bring that back, um, and, and

and win it. And maybe somehow that's able to, you know, to carry McSally. Uh, maybe it holds off, you know, a state like Montana from going, uh, holds off those races in Georgia. So, yeah, I just, I, I think if it's, if it's within about three points nationally, uh,

I think the Republicans at that point, first of all, Trump has a chance of winning the presidential race. And I think the Republicans at that point have a pretty good shot at hanging on to the Senate. I think it gets more to, you know, four or five, six points in the national popular vote. That's where I think it's going to go for the Democrats. So let me ask you a couple of semi off the wall questions. First semi off the wall question.

Is there a race that is either seriously downplayed in terms of the likelihood of one candidate or another winning that you are taking keeping an eye on as a signal for either a massive upset or a kind of canary in the coal mine as far as a very unusual, unexpected result on election night?

Yeah, I'll tell you, I don't know if we get the result on election night either. The Alaska Senate race, and for that matter, just the presidential margin, I think, in Alaska. This is a state where if you think all the way back to the last really solid Democratic victory in a presidential race, it was Barack Obama in 2008. And there was a point in that campaign, I'd say the early summer of 2008, where the

when he was pretty significantly ahead of John McCain, and he was – there was a poll that had him competitive in Alaska. Then Sarah Palin got picked for the ticket that did it for Alaska. I've always wondered if, you know, 08 was the year Democrats were able to get Indiana. They were able to get that congressional district in Omaha. It's as friendly as the map has been to them, and I always wonder what Alaska would have looked like if Palin had not been picked. Well, it's the year that Mark Begich beats Ted Stevens to win the Senate seat for Alaska.

And, you know, and Stevens had all that legal trouble right before the election. And maybe that, you know, bleeds over into the presidential race too. And I think 2020 might be, you know, our test of that. You know, I saw there was a, I don't put too much into this, but this is what sort of started getting me thinking about it. There were some folks on Twitter who pooled money to take a PPP poll of Alaska. They found it. Yeah, they found it. I think it was single digits. Yeah.

And it got me interested. And I just I'm remembering 2008. And it's one of the states that we just always forget about. And that with Biden enjoying the kind of lead he has right now, if he were able to maintain a solid, you know, high single digit lead, you know, if he were able to win the presidential race by a margin similar to what Obama did in 2008, I wonder what Alaska looks like.

So other slightly off the wall question, you and I do this for a living, but most of my listeners do not. What one or two things would you tell somebody who wants to take their political analysis or sophistication up to another level to start doing in order to do that? Interesting question. I think I'm biased towards this. I say, you know, learn the history, know the history.

Not just the names. I think if you're trying to do – if you're trying to analyze campaigns, I think it really helps whether you're talking about the congressional district, the state, presidential race, whatever it is, be able to go back in your mind –

fairly far distance, you know, and I think to learn the evolution, the political evolution of, you know, again, whether it's a state, a district, you know, that the entire country learn the political evolution, because I think you can, um, I think it does two things. I think number one, I think it opens you up to possibilities about, you know, shifts, um, in the electorate shifts in American politics. I think it helps if you know that, um,

Michael Dukakis carried West Virginia in 1988. You know, if you know that West Virginia was a swing state in 2000, and you don't just know it as a state that Trump won by 40 points, I think it's a swing state.

I think that's a valuable thing to know, to know that that was a very quick and very dramatic evolution of other states where that's happened. And then to start asking yourself, you know, where else could it happen? You know, if you if you living through in my own experience, you know, Virginia going from a solid Republican state to a swing state for like two elections, you know, to a solid Democratic state watching, you know, an evolution in a state that big play out that quickly. I just think being able to have a sense of that.

I think it's a very valuable thing. And again, I think it also helps you put shifts in perspective to it. It gives you something to compare to. So I think it gives you a basis for comparison. And I think it also forces you to realize things may not be as locked in as you think they are.

So I know as a Twitter follower of yours that you often do that, that something comes up and you'll tweet from 1984, 1992, including wonderful old video of how things were covered. What is your Twitter handle for people who would like to follow you on that much maligned platform? Yes, it is. At Steve Kornacki, K-O-R-N-A-C-K-I.

And I should say for our listeners, on the day of the cancellation of the blue checks, you were still alive and tweeting because at the time you didn't have one. It was I was sitting in my office and I got this message from somebody. They said, if you tweet something right now, you will have the entire world's attention. Well, Steve, it's wonderful to talk with you again. And thank you for coming back on the horse race. And I'd love to have you back before Election Day. That'd be great. Thanks, Henry. We got free!

Well, it isn't football. It's voting. It isn't Monday night. It's Tuesday night. But this is another edition and indeed the last edition of Primary Night in America. I'll be out the next couple of weeks. So I'm going to be covering three weeks worth of primaries in this. So hold on to your hats and round the horn we go. The big event on Friday.

August 18th is going to be in Florida. There's a number of important House primaries there that anyone who wants to know both about the composition of the upcoming House and about trends within their parties would be wise to look at. Up in north central Florida, Florida 3 has a contested race to succeed Ted Yoho, who is retiring. The winner of this will win this safely read district. And there are five people who have enough money and enough endorsements to be in the hunt.

The putative leader is former chief of staff for Ted Yoho, Kat Kamat. She's a woman who has had some very interesting ads on. If she wins, I may very well use one of her ads as an example of how humor is an example of gaining attention in an ad. But she has not got

This locked up. There are four other people, James St. George, business person Judson Sapp, Clay County Commissioner Gavin Rollins, and former Gainesville City Commissioner Todd Chase, who have raised enough money to be competitive.

Pay attention to Rollins and Chase, just because as I've tried to drive home on my Twitter feed on election night, people who have geographic bases tend to outperform the district in those geographic cases. This is a six-county seat, but the easily two largest ones are Alachua, which is dominated by the city of Gainesville, where Chase has been a representative, and Clay, which is where Rollins is currently a county commissioner.

If Camax is going to be upset, it wouldn't surprise me if it's from one of these two people, not because they have as much money as Judson Sapp, but because they have a regional base on which to draw from. There are two primaries that are worth noting in Florida 15th.

This is a seat that was won by 10 points by President Trump, and it's on the west coast of Florida. But it's one where there is a competitive challenge to the Republican incumbent, Ross Spano, because Spano has been under investigation for potentially violating federal campaign finance laws with respect to his election in 2018. He's being challenged by Lakeland City Commissioner Scott Franklin. And a poll that came out on Thursday from St. Pete Polls, which is a pollster with

experience in polling in this area.

showed it to be within the margin of error. Spano 42, Franklin 41. So this is a race where both sides are earning a lot of airtime and media time because Franklin's got the money to compete. The Club for Growth, which has not had a good record in primaries in the last month, is behind Spano. It'll be interesting to see whether or not Republicans are willing to toss out their one first term representative in favor of Scott Franklin on Election Day.

Democrats think that they can win this seat as well, and they have a competitive primary too. Alan Cohn has been endorsed by six different unions and is running against state representative Adam Hattersley. Hattersley boasts endorsements from the Sierra Club, Vote Vets, only one union, but his endorsement list features a number of African-American and minority elected officials as opposed to Cohn's. This is not a seat with a large minority population, but as always, minorities are

heavily Democratic, and so there'll be a much larger share of the Democratic primary electorate than in the general electorate. Hattersley is a state representative, and again, watch that geographic base, but state representatives in Florida do not represent a huge part of any congressional district. Watch both of those races, both to see trends within each party and also to see whether or not the Democrats can take on a weakened incumbent or a new Republican nominee.

Florida 19 is a west coast of Florida seat that is based in Collier and mostly in Lee County. It is being vacated by Francis Rooney, a Republican who has held the seat for a couple of turns. This is a multi-weight race as well. There are five candidates who have raised at least a quarter of a million dollars, three that have raised over a million and two that have raised over two and a half million.

There are two state representatives who are running, Byron Donalds and Dane Eagle, who have raised a lot of money. But the two lead spenders are William Figglesthaler and Casey Asghar, each of which have raised over $2 million. There's no polling that I'm aware of in this race that shows a clear favorite. But watch it to see whether or not, once again, the conservative self-funding outsider takes out

incumbent Republican office holders in a Republican primary. And finally, there's Florida 23. This is not a race where I expect there to be a upset, but Debbie Wasserman Schultz has been undergoing primary challenges for the last couple of elections because of her role in using her chairmanship as the Democratic National Committee to, as Bernie Sanders supporters believe, rig that

election in Clinton's favor. There's another progressive challenger who is taking her on, an underfunded one, but somebody who has still raised nearly $400,000. Jennifer Perlm is running. She has received the endorsement from former presidential candidates Andrew Yang and Marianne Williamson and the Bernie Sanders local chapter of Our Revolution. Expect Wasserman Schultz to win, but keep an eye on this just in case.

The following week, August 25th, there's only one race of note. That is the Republican runoff in Oklahoma 5. Oklahoma 5 is based in Oklahoma City, and it features businesswoman Terry Neese and state senator Stephanie Bice. As in some southern states, this is a runoff. They competed a few weeks ago, and Neese won the first round with 37%, and Bice, 25%.

In the first round, the Club for Growth went in heavy against Bice with their advertising, but did not endorse anyone. This time around, they've endorsed Terry Neese. We will see whether or not Bice can make up the deficit. In the first round, she basically did well only in her own state Senate district and did poorly compared to Neese in the remainder of the seat. And then on September 1st, we have a number of races in Massachusetts, as one might expect from Massachusetts.

All of the action is on the Democratic side. The big event is Joe Kennedy's challenge of incumbent Senator Ed Markey. Both candidates have raised millions and millions of dollars. Both have had a lot of outside support and polls show it to be within the margin of error.

Kennedys rarely, if ever, lose statewide races in Massachusetts, but it has been 72 years since the progenitor of the Kennedy political dynasty, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, actually 74 years since he won his first race. He was first elected to the House in 1946. Does the Kennedy name still work magic in Massachusetts? Watch this. They are both predictably progressive, but Ed Markey being a co-sponsor of the Green New Deal means that he has the endorsement

of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez might be enough to provide the difference. We have a primary challenge to a sitting Democrat in Massachusetts I. Massachusetts I is the far western part of the state, the Berkshires, for those of you who vacation there or know your geography.

Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse, who was elected in his early 20s and was both the youngest and the first LGBTQ mayor of Holyoke, is challenging longtime incumbent Richard Neal. He is challenging him predictably from the left, and he has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, less than Neal, but enough in this largely rural and small town district to put on a progressive campaign.

There are no polls here, and Morse has been rocked in the last week by a semi-scandal in which members of college Democrats suggested that he had misused his position as an instructor at a local university to date and have inappropriate sexual relationships with students.

The more that has received the light of day, the more question that has received. But it did dominate the news earlier this week. We will see whether or not in one of the most progressive districts in the country that is not based around a major university or in a deep urban area, whether or not a progressive challenger can take out a sitting Democrat.

Kennedy's run for the Senate has opened up a safe Democratic seat, Massachusetts 4, which is based in the Boston suburbs. There are eight serious candidates, none of whom have a geographical base that is large enough to dominate. This is as much of a Donnybrook and a free-for-all as possible, as one can imagine.

expect somebody to come out on top with this with less than a quarter of the vote and consequently, though, become the next congressperson because this is a safely blue district.

And then the final race I'll be taking a look at is another one of those upset races. Representative Stephen Lynch should not be in trouble, but he is receiving in Massachusetts a challenge from somebody who wants to bring progressive change. Robbie Goldstein has raised around $350,000. That shouldn't be enough in this Boston area district to mount a serious challenge, but we've had other examples of underfunded challengers upsetting incumbents. Lauren Boebert had only raised about $130,000 before she upset longtime representative

Congressperson Steve Tipton in the Colorado three Republican primary a couple of months ago. So just in case, take your eye on Massachusetts eight to see whether or not Goldstein can upset Lynch and provide further example of the rising tide of the left within the Democratic Party.

That's three primary nights in America for you to look forward to. And I hope that you enjoy them as much as I will. And please follow me on Twitter, Henry Olson, EPBC, for live election analysis on each election. That's all for this week. I'm going to be going on a working vacation in Montana soon and won't return until the first week of September. I hope you enjoy the conventions and politics as much as I will from the Rocky Mountains State.

I'm Henry Olson, and I'll see you in September in the Winter Circle.