An Unconventional Convention
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Welcome back to Beyond the Polls. This week, I'll talk about the upcoming Democratic National Convention with Elaine Kamar and examine whether the group once thought to be the crucial demographic, the people who disliked both Trump and Biden, still matter now that Harris is in the race. Let's dive in.

Well, listeners to this podcast know the term double haters. That's something that had become the phrase of the year for political analysts because it looked like they were going to be the group that was going to decide the election. These are people who disliked both President Biden and Donald Trump. At the beginning of the year and going well into the middle of the year, that was a sizable number. Depending on the poll, it would be between 20 and 25 percent of the entire audience.

electorate. Now, to put that in context, the largest that we had measured previously in an election was 18 percent who did not like both

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in 2016, and their votes made Trump the winner, not because Trump won the popular vote, but because enough of them voted for Trump that he got close enough in the popular vote to win the Electoral College. So when you're looking at 20 to 25 percent, it's Katie bar the door. This is going to be a whole lot of fun for sophologists and data nerds, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then Kamala gets in the race and suddenly all these numbers get thrown out.

And then suddenly Kamala's own favorability skyrockets over the last week. That's still not positive in the sense that there are still more people who dislike her than like her.

But we no longer have 20 to 25 percent. And in the New York Times Siena poll, it looked like the double-hater category had almost disappeared, that the combined favorability between Trump and Harris reached into the mid-90s. So, demise of the double-haters, back to the old world? Not so fast.

I love the New York Times-Siena poll and I think they do a great job, but it is only one poll and one ought to look at averages until one sees enough of a trend that one can say, well, this is clearly the way things are going. And right now, the Times-Siena poll is a bit of an outlier. I took a look and calculated the averages from the polls that have been taken with at least two field days, which means asking questions for at least two days.

since Biden's dropping out of the race on July 21st and found the following.

that Harris has a 43.5% favorability rating for these polls on the RealClearPolitics average website that were taken with at least two days, either July 21st, July 22nd, or all their days after that. Trump's favorability rating on those same days, in those same polls, is 43.9%. Well, do the math.

That means there are 12.6% who aren't favorable towards either of them. We don't yet know how many of them disapprove of them. A significant number do. Both Trump and Harris are upside down in their favorability ratings, meaning more people disapprove. But a significant number of people in Harris's, on the average, have no opinion of her. In other words, she's still having opinions formed. They might go in the favorable category. They might go into the unfavorable category.

But what we know is that this is a sizable number. It's not 20 to 25 percent. It's not 18 percent. But it is higher than any other election in recent memory. It's much higher than the three or four percent of double haters that we saw in the 2020 election. So what that means is, yes, the double disapprovers are still an important category. They are still an important group that could very well decide the election.

Now, why is this important and why should we be looking at the number of double disapprovers very closely over the next couple of months? That's because the data say that if you...

View a candidate favorably. You are almost certain to vote for that candidate. What do I mean by almost certain? Oh, well, you're listening to the right podcast. Yes, you are, because I've got the numbers. 2016 exit poll. There were 2% of the people who said they were favorable to both Clinton and Trump. As I always say this to an audience, I add that I'd like to meet those people.

I have never met one of those people, but apparently one in 50 of your fellow American voters fit into that category in 2016. If you were only favorable to Clinton, 98% voted for her, 1% voted for Trump. If you were only favorable to Trump, 98% voted for Trump, 1% voted for Clinton. In other words, the favorability number is incredibly predictive of your vote.

In 2020, the exit poll did not break out the only favorable. They only had the regular favorable numbers. And that's, of course, because there was such a low double hater category. So these numbers will be slightly different.

lower, but if you were favorable for Biden, if you came into election day having a favorable view of Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., 94% voted for him, 4% voted for Biden. If you had a favorable view of Donald John Trump, 95% voted for him, 4% voted for Biden. So what that means is that tracking the favorability numbers is an excellent way to track the expected vote.

If Harris is able to get some of those people who are on the sidelines right now into the favorable category, every one of those people becomes a vote for her. Conversely, if they stay on the sidelines or if they go into the disapproval category, that creates a problem for her.

Because then what you've got is the situation that she stuck roughly on par with Donald Trump. And there's reason to think that this average slightly understates Trump. And that's because it was brought down significantly by one poll that had him at only 36% favorable. Well, he hasn't been as low as that in an average in a long time. Polls are always within any set of polls. There's always one high poll. There's a low poll.

But you could probably say that his real favorability rating is probably closer to 45%. His favorability rating in 2020 was 46%. In the recent Wall Street Journal poll, his favorability hit its highest ever. It's still not high historically, but what we know is that he seems to be able to get somewhere in the 45% to 46% range of favorability.

So that means that Harris has to turn a number of these people on the sideline into Harris voters. And then she has to win a majority of the remaining double disapprovers. So this is a category that's much smaller. It may very well start to disappear from conversation. But the closeness of this race makes it incredibly important. And furthermore, let's recall that because of the composition of these candidates' coalitions,

In the Trump era, Democrats must win the national vote by probably two points. In 2020, they had to win by about 3.7 points to win the Electoral College because Trump seems to be getting more non-white votes. That means he's getting votes in blue states that he wouldn't have gotten before. So the gap.

between the popular vote and the electoral college win margins is different. But the Democrats probably need to win by two points, maybe a point and a half in order to win the electoral college. So if all Harris does is get her favorabilities up to 46 and Trump gets back to the 45, 46% range, then that means that even though there's only six or seven or 8% double haters,

they will decide the presidency. They will decide the presidency. If they split, then Harris doesn't have the lead that she needs. If they split for Trump, then Trump wins. If they split for Harris 60-40, she's got a shot of winning. So these are numbers that you'll be hearing from me over the next month,

or two months. If they develop in a certain way, you'll probably be hearing about them from me throughout Election Day. But don't forget the double haters. They may be fewer, but they haven't faded from view yet, and they remain, perhaps, the most interesting and important demographic in the electorate.

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Well, Vice President Kamala Harris's surprise entry into the presidential race has flummoxed a lot of listeners and followers. And nowhere is it more difficult to figure out what's going on and how she can get the nomination than trying to figure out the rules of the process that will enable her to do so. And here to talk about this and also all things Democratic Convention is Elaine Kamar, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

and the author of The Quadrennial, Primary Politics, Everything You Need to Know About How America Nominates Its Presidents. Elaine, welcome to Beyond the Polls. Well, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Well, in addition to your work as a scholar, you have worked in democratic politics for quite some time. You were a member of the Democratic National Committee, if I recall correctly.

Yeah, that's right. I got on the Democratic National Committee in, I'm trying to think now, I think it was 1997 when I left the White House and I was immediately on the Rules Committee.

And I have managed to be there ever since. For the first couple of cycles, I was on this committee for the reason that most people are on the committee, which is I had some political connections. I, you know, first it was Al Gore, then I supported Howard Dean for party chair, et cetera, et cetera. But lately they keep me on because I wrote the book and

And so and I've become the sort of unofficial party historian. And so they keep they keep me around for that reason only, which is very kind of them. But I don't really have any political clout anymore. And I but I'm still a member of the committee. Yeah. Well, unlike Kefalis in in the Plato's Republic, you're not wandering off to give sacrifices to the gods. You're still in the room when they're talking about. That's right.

Well, so that means you do know what's been going on. Tell us about what the rules are and have been because this process has started and is nearing completion. How did it get to be that we went from Joe Biden saying I'm not going to run in the 21st to creating a process by which Kamala Harris appears to be the all but official nominee?

Okay, well, I think let's start with the fact that there's a difference between the two political parties on this question. In the Republican Party, you are bound to vote for, at the convention, the person you were elected to vote for. And if you don't, if you decide to change your mind on the floor, it doesn't matter. The secretary of the convention will record the vote according to how it came out of your state.

In the Democratic Party, we had a rule like that back in 1980. We called it the robot rule, where if you decided to vote for somebody other than the person you were elected to represent, you could be taken off the floor of the convention and substituted by an alternate who would do the proper thing.

That rule became the focus of a big fight between Senator Ted Kennedy and President Jimmy Carter, as Kennedy wanted to take his fight for the nomination all the way to the convention and convince Carter delegates that they could vote for Kennedy.

Kennedy lost that fight because everybody knew that this wasn't really a fight about the rule. This was a fight about were you going to desert President Carter or not. But very quietly in the years after the 1980 convention, the Democrats got rid of what had become known as the robot rule. And they substituted a rule that simply said delegates shall in all good conscience be

vote for the person they were elected to represent. So there's now in the rules, no mechanism for yanking somebody off the floor or holding them to it. It's in all good conscience. Now,

By the way, ever since 1982, when we adopted these rules for the convention, so we're looking at four decades now plus, there's never been any controversy about this rule, right? Nobody's even thought about this rule. And then we had the 2020-2024 season and that disastrous debate by Joe Biden, and then

and a feeling, a widespread feeling, both inside the party and outside the party, that he could not be our nominee. Then it became apparent that

The power actually rested simply in the delegates. We didn't have to do anything new. We didn't have to create a mini primary, nothing like that. The fact of the matter was those delegates were already elected. They already had their plane tickets to Chicago, and they could pretty much do whatever they wanted to do.

So it became clear as time went on that, yes, it was possible to replace Joe Biden if, in fact, you had another candidate.

That's and fortunately for the party, Biden dropped out. He endorsed Harris. And not surprisingly, those delegates with with really a speed that even a stop that even I was astonished at those delegates started meeting in their delegations. So there were there were two tracks going on. Think about it this way.

Among the elites, everybody was concerned, well, what does Obama think? What does Nancy Pelosi think? What does Bill Clinton think, et cetera? Maybe they can get a nominee. Maybe they can create a town hall or a debate or some such stuff like that. Meanwhile, all those people have only one vote. I have one vote. Barack Obama has one vote. Now, there was nothing magic going to happen

You should just go up to the floor someday and say, hey, Mr. One Vote. Yeah, exactly. I don't think I'll quite do that. But anyway, what started to happen, Tennessee was the first state, but then states rapidly followed, which is as soon as Biden endorsed Harris, the delegation started meeting. And lo and behold, they were all

practically unanimously for Harris. These were Biden people. They'd gotten to know, they were disappointed that not only that he was not running, but really that what had happened to him, you know, they were sad about that. But Harris was the person. And a lot of things contributed to this, but basically what happened over the course of about four days, it was really remarkable.

And I'll give you an example of how it happened. For instance, I'm a Virginia delegate by virtue of the fact that I vote in Virginia. So we got a questionnaire. We all got a questionnaire from the Virginia Democratic Party saying, do you intend to vote for Kamala Harris?

check this, someone else, because of course there's nobody else running, check that. And overwhelmingly people say Kamala Harris. My husband, who is a Maryland congressman and a Maryland delegate, they met in a massive Zoom meeting and they took a vote and they voted for Kamala by acclamation. So every state party did it a little differently, but basically what was happening is that the duly elected delegates

We're deciding, OK, this is where we're going. And now we've got a nominee, basically. And this week we may formalize that. And how will the formalization take place? There was this process where people could announce that they wanted to run. And my understanding is it's Kamala and some non-politically connected people, to put it obliquely.

And I believe we're recording this on Tuesday. I believe today is the deadline that you have to have 300 delegates support your nomination publicly in order to make it. Is that correct? That's correct. That's correct.

So by the time my listeners hear this, we'll know whether or not there is actually any opposition, because clearly the vice president has 300 delegates. Yes. She, in fact, I signed my delegate petition literally last night being a baby boomer and not so adept at computer stuff. I had to figure out how to cast my vote, but I just signed my official nomination papers yesterday. And

Yeah, I mean, what the other thing that goes into this that I, you know, you alluded to here, simply nobody else was running. You know, nobody else was running. If you think about it, and I'm sure there are people who thought about it. Okay. I mean, but think about it. The disastrous debate was at the end of June. The convention is the middle of August.

In that period of time, you would have to raise money

Create a national infrastructure. Make 2,000 to 4,000 phone calls to individual delegates. Move around the country and meet some of these people. You'd have to then do all the TV interviews, et cetera, et cetera, perhaps have a debate if there was a couple people in it, et cetera. In other words, to create a national campaign that quickly,

It's pretty difficult to do. Even for people who were mentioned, like a Gavin Newsom, who's governor of a big state, or Gretchen Whitmer, even people who are substantial in their own states. The fact of the matter is, you know, how many people does Gavin Newsom know in Pennsylvania? I don't know. You know, how many people does Gretchen Whitmer know in Florida?

You know, I mean, so they really, you know, if you run in the primaries, you've got a good six months to a year to learn about the country. Learning about a big country with different politics, even within your own party, in two months, that's pretty difficult. And you can see why nobody stepped up to the plate. Nobody said they were running. No one serious said they were running. Right.

So my understanding is that, so let's say that there is nobody else who gets a 300 delegates. She'll be the only person on the ballot, so to speak. And there will be a virtual roll call sometime between August 1st and August 7th. Is that correct? That's correct. Yes. So she will be officially elected.

nominated, although they'll still go through with the convention sometime within the next week. What does this mean for what happens at the convention?

Nothing particular. This is, and I will tell this briefly. I've been practicing this because I've been asked to talk about this on television, and television is even faster than a podcast is. But basically, long before Joe Biden had that disastrous debate, the Democratic Party was facing the following situation.

The state of Ohio has the earliest filing deadline in the country, August 7th, for its presidential candidates. And the DNC's convention doesn't even open until August 19th.

So they were going to miss the filing deadline because they wouldn't have an official nominee. Now, in many past years for both the Democrats and Republicans, this was just taken care of. Nobody even noticed. Right. The legislature just took care of it, made an exception for that year. Nobody even talked about it. OK, this year, the Republicans in Ohio got into I guess I can say this on a podcast. They got into a pissing match with each other.

And they were, you know, putting all sorts of poison pills onto it. They were opposing it. I mean, it was a real, the Ohio Republicans have been sort of at each other's throats, the sort of MAGA and the non-MAGA types. So what happened is they, it got delayed and delayed and delayed and delayed. Finally, the governor, the Republican governor said, what the hell are you guys doing? Called them into special session. They passed a bill.

But they didn't pass the bill by two thirds. They passed it by majority. That meant the bill doesn't go into effect until September, opening, therefore, the possibility that in September, the secretary of state would say, well, this this bill, you know, is only in effect now. It doesn't apply to last to our filing deadline.

And and in the meantime, Heritage and other right wing think tanks were talking about all sorts of lawsuits and things they were going to do. As the Democrats looked at this, they said, holy moly, we can't run the risk of not being on the ballot.

in Ohio, even though it's not a great state for Democrats. We can't take that risk. And so they decided to do a virtual roll call for the nomination. We did this in 2020 because of COVID. OK, so we've done it before. We know how to do it again. You get all these computer codes, you've got layers and layers of security, et cetera, and you vote. We did it in 2020. I suspect it'll be no issue.

Once Kamala was the clear nominee of the party, the clear preference of the party, it became easier to decide that. If there had been a couple other people in the mix, this could have been very tricky. But once she had the delegate votes, once enough state delegations had told their members and it was clear she had the votes, this is going to be pretty much pro forma.

One of the things that's happened in my lifetime over conventions is what used to be a real political event has basically become a four-day infomercial for the nominee and for the party.

Of course, up until June 21st, the infomercial was being prepared by the producers of Biden-Harris. And now the infomercial is being prepared for the producers of Harris plus whomever she names, we've told probably within the next week. How does her late entrance make this happen?

Harder for her or does it is it is she just going to basically do the same sort of themes and stuff that had been planned for the Biden Harris campaign or is this make a real difficulty for her to put together something coherent on the fly.

I don't think she has much choice. OK, I think 90 percent of it. She has to just go with whatever the Biden Harris producers were planning. I mean, she she has so many other things to do, you know, making sure the money comes in, making sure she moves around the country, et cetera, that that I I would. In fact, if I were advising her, I would say, don't spend too much. Don't worry too much about your your convention, but.

Plus, you know, I worked for Al Gore when he ran in the White House and then when he ran in 2000. And you can't, as a vice president, you can't really go far away from the president you served. Because if you do, if you decide to stake out your own position on Gaza or your own position on Ukraine or something, everybody's going to say, hello, weren't you in the White House for four years?

Were you so were you so ineffectual that you couldn't, you know, make an impact on this policy or that policy? So she's pretty much she's pretty much stuck, whatever she may think in her heart of hearts. She's stuck with Joe Biden's message, with Joe Biden's, you know, with Joe Biden's policies. And I think that that's what will be reflected at the convention.

Now, as an aside, that is going to be difficult for her, given that Joe Biden's job approval rating remains quite low historically, although there is a bit of an uptick now that he's not running again. Her own favorability has increased, but it is still negative. And obviously the Trump campaign is going to try and tie Biden around her ankles and sink her to the sea with it. If she can't distinguish herself from

Isn't that a real problem for her, given that the Biden administration has been trying for two years to turn these numbers around and have been unsuccessful in doing so? Well, yes and no. OK, it is it has become very clear, given the outpouring of excitement following her candidacy.

that really what was tying Biden by the ankles was his age and his performance. It wasn't his substance. It was the guy was just old and looked it, talked it, acted it. And also because of that was not very effect was was ineffectual at bringing the message back to the Republicans.

Of the many cringeworthy moments in that debate, perhaps the worst one was his answer on abortion. That is, you know, that's the silver bullet for the Democratic Party these days. And it is to prosecute that with under the aura of freedom.

Freedom, which used to be, by the way, most of my lifetime and yours, that that was something the Republican Party owned. They were very good at talking about freedom. And all of a sudden, with one Supreme Court decision, the freedom argument comes solidly into the Democratic camp.

And Biden just couldn't do that. And Kamala Harris does it beautifully. So I think that what you've got going on here is they simply didn't like the candidate. They thought he was too old that he couldn't communicate effectively. And I think my guess is that it's a lot more about style than it was about substance.

and that she will continue to, that her very style alone is causing a great deal of excitement. Now, there's one or two areas where the substance is important. And I'd say the biggest one is probably immigration, followed closely by inflation. I think she still has, I think she has problems there. But I think this was largely a style question.

You think that, you know, vice presidents who do run again sometimes do either chafe at being beholden to their president. Richard Nixon wanted Eisenhower to have a more expansionary fiscal policy and said to his dying days that that cost him the 1960 election.

And Hubert Humphrey wanted a stop to the bombing in Vietnam and didn't get it until the Sunday before the election, probably too late to help him significantly. Do you think that Biden is willing to do something different to help Harris on something like immigration? Or do you think this is something where Harris might be willing to say, we tried policies differently?

They only have, you know, have some sort of weasel about how we wanted to do better. But bold experimentation channel you're in our FDR and then say, but I'm going to do something different. Do you think she might be willing to make that break on a key area like that?

immigration and say, I supported what we did. It didn't work to the way we wanted to, but here's what I will do. Or is she just going to be more like a Nixon and kind of, well, kind of hope the big guy does something different, but I'm behind him until he signals otherwise? Well, that's a really unknowable question at this point. But what I would say on that is,

It's the immigration, the immigration problem has been coming down. I mean, the numbers crossing the border have been coming down. Some of that, I think, can be attributed to Biden taking a tougher stance on this than any Democrat has ever taken. And the word has gone out that you can't get asylum anywhere.

et cetera, et cetera. It's very difficult. So I think there's a little bit of an improvement at the border now. And what she might simply do is repeat what Biden did recently. It would be nice probably if she said, you know, we were a little late to the party on this one. We probably should have done this earlier.

The thing that could really screw up Harris here is related to something that just happened, which is this ridiculous stolen vote in Venezuela.

You know, and as it is, some huge number of the amount of people in the country have left the country and some of them coming, a lot of them coming here. So the question is, if we see another surge at the border driven by Venezuelans escaping this horrible regime down there,

That may push her and Biden into some more extreme measures. And that's the only way I can probably see that happening.

What about the vice presidential selection? How important is this for her as opposed to a normal presidential nominee? Or is it simply another case that when somebody becomes president, it tells you something about who they are and how they're looking at the campaign, but that it's not particularly important for her?

You know, my theory about vice presidents, and I wrote a book a couple of years ago called Picking the Vice President, is it becomes very important when the president looks vulnerable. So, for instance, Sarah Palin was a particularly disastrous choice for McCain because he was 70, which compared to this crowd of this group of presidents.

He was pretty young, but he had had cancer, you know, several times. And so it was there was a bigger chance than nothing that, you know, the vice president might become president. And as we remember, Palin's, you know, real lack of experience and really lack of knowledge and judgment was a disaster as she as the campaign went on. So and you want to contrast that with Dan Quayle.

who became George Bush's vice president. And everybody thought, oh, God, this guy was sort of lame and he wasn't up to the job, et cetera. But nobody really it didn't make any difference because, you know, Bush, I think at that point was in his early 60s. He was obviously hale and hearty. He lived he was jumping out of airplanes in his 80s. You know, this this guy was not going anyplace. So I think it matters when people think that something could happen to the president.

So I don't think it particularly will matter. There's and usually the vice presidential pick doesn't matter. So what role do you think President Biden will have at the convention?

And that's probably going to be this wonderful valedictory film will be shown in primetime. It would be unusual if the president didn't come to make a in-person speech. But these are unusual times. What do you think President Biden's personal role will be in the convention proceedings as a speaker?

My guess is he will appear early in the week, kind of like what Reagan did for Bush's convention. And there will be an outpouring of love and affection. He will make a speech, lay the groundwork for why his work should be continued in a Kamala Harris administration. And I think that's it.

You know, that's it. He's clearly still trying to with his announcement about his proposals about the courts today. He's still trying to sort of tie up some loose ends and put some put some policies down, make some make some statements about where he think things should go. But I don't think he'll have a huge role at the convention other than as a respected former president. Yeah.

uh... so where do you think the race will stand at the end of august i mean right now we've seen a surge in popularity for her spas i said she's still upside down in the favor abilities she's still behind in most polls either national or swing state although not all to be fair uh... and we tended to see in recent years the legendary convention balance that used to be significant

back when dinosaurs ruled the earth and I was young. You know, be smaller. It's almost like the continual campaign has smoothed it out instead of the bump of information. Do you think that Harris, if Harris isn't ahead,

By the first polls after the convention, should that worry the Democrats or is that just the way things are these days? And it's not an indication. Conversely, if she does get into a lead like two or three points after the convention, should that send chills up Trump's spine?

Well, that would send chills up Trump's spine because that really hasn't happened, you know, in this whole race. So that would be that would be different. I think what people will be able to do by the end of the convention is look at the swing states.

That's where the name of the game is. The national numbers, especially in this very polarized situation where you have California, the 800-pound gorilla of the states, being so overwhelmingly Democratic, and she's from California, so there'll be a huge distortion there because California has fewer electoral college votes than its population would warrant.

And so the I don't think the national polls will tell us much. I think if they're Democrats generally have to be ahead a couple of points in the national polls to also swing, move the swing states. So I think what will happen is by that time, there'll be a lot of attention, if not before, to what the ticket looks like in swing states. I think there's two other things happening, though.

I think that the importance of young people and their enthusiasm for her is not necessarily being captured in the polls. And I don't know if you have kids, but I have grown up kids who are in polling terms, young people, and they don't answer my phone calls.

Okay, so I don't know if they answer it. They don't answer anybody's phone calls. This generation doesn't talk on the phone. If you're not texting them, you don't exist. So there's a worry there. I've heard pollsters express this, that, you know, there's a chronic under sampling of young people. So that's going on. And I also think that in some of these places where if you look at the 2020 vote and you look at the 2024 vote,

The age groups that were voting for Trump, the over 65, there are, because life goes on, there are fewer of them in 2024 than there were in 2020. The age groups that were voting for Biden and then Hillary and Obama before him, there are more of them in 2024 because as people age, they tend to vote more regularly. Right.

And so there's this basic demographic switch going on here. Fewer white men, more young people of color. You know, you don't have to take it from me or from people in politics. Look at commercials these days. Look at commercials. Commercials are...

First of all, soap detergent, people who manufacture soap detergent do not have any interest in being woke. They only have interest in making money. What are the commercials? The commercials are people of color, they're biracial couples, they're brown children and white children and all these. They're talking to this different America.

And this is a pretty different America than you're in my generation. Oh, yes, it is. Tattoos and all. Yes. I do have young kids and the phone is used for texting. Why would one actually? Why would one actually? Yeah, exactly. Why would you talk on the phone?

Well, Elaine, this has been marvelous. I think my listeners and I have a much better understanding of both the how and the why of what's transpiring before us in the Democratic Party. Where can we follow your work?

You can go to the Brookings website, and I write frequently there. That's brookings.edu? Brookings.edu, and you just put in K-M-A-R-K-A-M-A-R-C-K, and you'll find my publications. And then I have a short...

an e-book called Picking the Vice President, which you can download. That's particularly relevant right now. And of course, I have my book, Primary Politics, Everything You Need to Know About How America Nominates Its Presidential Candidates. And that gives you a long and deep history of this process.

Well, I hope all of the professors on this listening circle, the thousands who download this, will run out and order those books. I hope so, too. We need to help you out here. Thank you. And order my book while you're at it. Come on, guys. Thank you for joining me, and I hope to have you back on Beyond the Polls. Thanks so much. Nice to talk to you this afternoon.

Ryan Seacrest here.

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One of the more interesting races in the country is a challenge to incumbent Cori Bush. She's a Democratic member of Congress from the city of St. Louis and part of the suburbs in St. Louis County. And she is known as a member of the squad, that group of far-left progressives who started

With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bush came in, I think, in the same cycle and a couple others, Ilhan Opressi and Ilhan Omar, and since have been joined by other former Democratic Socialists of America or other people who...

view themselves as being even further in the progressive camp than people who will call themselves progressive. She's being challenged by the chief prosecutor of St. Louis City, and that's a man named Wesley Bell. Wesley Bell has a good introductory ad up, and I would like to go through and explain why this is a good introductory ad. Let's listen.

This is a pivotal moment for St. Louis and our country. I'm Wesley Bell. I reformed the St. Louis County Prosecutor's Office, protecting women's health care by refusing to prosecute abortions and getting wrongful convictions overturned. In Congress, I'll fight for a progressive agenda, like lowering the cost of prescription drugs and bringing back the child tax credit. That's why I approve this message.

Well...

At first glance, this is kind of a standard ad. And in one sense, it is. It's meant to introduce Bell to the voters and provide a favorable impression of them. But there's some things it does that I think are particularly important in a Democratic primary situation. First of all, you should note that what he talks about is not necessarily controlling crime. In a Republican primary, if you were a prosecutor, you'd talk about criminals, putting criminals behind bars and so forth.

What he talks about is not prosecuting abortion cases, which means that when Missouri passed a restrictive ban on abortion, he said he would not prosecute cases underneath that statute. That's meant to appeal to Democratic voters who view the overturning of Roe versus Wade as an abomination. He uses his prosecutorial position not to use and fight crime themes, but to fight abortion.

abortion culture war themes. And then you have the other thing he talks about, term returning wrongful convictions. One thing to remember about this district is it represents, it's in the city of St. Louis. It has a large number of St. Louis County communities. One of them is Ferguson, where the Michael Brown murder and the riots erupted in 2014. This is a community that, of course, cares about controlling crime, but also has a large number of retentions.

particularly Democrats, who are concerned about police abuse and the misuse of criminal and misapplication of criminal law. When he's talking about overturning wrongful convictions, what he's doing is showing how a prosecutor can actually do justice according to the views of people who believe that old ways of doing things are actually unjust. So he uses prosecutorial strategies

status in both cases to talk to different elements of the democratic constituency.

This is a constituency that, besides being overwhelmingly and safely Democratic, has a significant black population, but also a white suburban population. The pictures in these ads show both sides. Roughly 60% or so of the people in the pictures that accompany the words are black. Roughly 40% are white. That's probably not too far off from the Democratic electorate, right?

Then you have the different areas. It starts with a view of St. Louis City and the famous arch. He talks about this is an important election for St. Louis. But a lot of the pictures seem to be in working class areas or suburban areas. Again, he's campaigning subliminally to both parts of the district.

And then we take a look at where he wants to be. Cori Bush can win reelection by saying that she represents what Howard Dean once called the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, which is, say, she's the real progressive in the race. Well, Wesley Bell is not ceding that territory to her. He talks about pushing for progressive values. He talks about lowering the price of prescription drugs. He talks about the child tax credit.

which is something of particular importance to lower income families, of which there are many in this district. And the picture that accompanies him talking about bringing back the child tax credit is him giving a high five to a young black girl on what appears to be an urban stairway. Again,

Nothing is by chance. These things are meant to say care about abortion. He's the guy for you. If you care about justice in the criminal justice system, making sure that we're not just putting people behind bars, but we're not putting people wrongly behind bars. He's the guy for you.

And he ends by saying, having a visual on screen that says, "Progressive Democrat for Congress." That's very rare when even Democrats will use the term progressive in their ads, in part because those in competitive districts don't want to tie themselves to the left, and other people tend to be campaigning in different ways and different constituencies. That means doubling down on that may not be in their interest. For Wesley Bell, it's absolutely crucial.

He's going to get the moderate votes who don't like Cori Bush. He's going to get it by virtue of the fact that he's not Cori Bush. What he needs to do is avoid having the progressive votes line up behind her because they view him as being too right wing. So he touches the main issues that touch...

suburbanites' hearts, Democratic activists' hearts, black families. This is a very good introductory ad for the things that he needs to do to win the race. It's going to be a tight race. His own pollster released an internal poll that had him up by six points. Typically, internals overestimate their candidates slightly. So what this means is that this is going to go down to the wire. She has money. She's up.

on the air with an ad where she has the family of Michael Brown talking about how Wesley Bell wasn't on their side. So this is going to go down to the wire, but it's ads like this that put Bell in a position where unlike other challengers, he's got a shot of knocking off the incumbent. And that's why it's this week's out of the week.

That's it for this week. Join me next week as I talk about how organized labor and progressives view the state of the race with Michael Podhorzer. Until then, let's reach for the stars together as we journey beyond the bowl. I'm Victoria Cash, and I want to invite you to a place called Lucky Land, where you can play over 100 social casino-style games for free for your chance to redeem some serious prizes.

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