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Welcome to the first episode of Beyond the Polls with me, Henry Olson. This show is dedicated to something you don't usually get in the mainstream media or the partisan media echo chambers. Honest, serious, in-depth analysis of the 2024 elections. Most election analysis starts and stops with one question. Who is up or down?
Each week, my guests and I will dive into American politics and ask the other questions that people don't usually ask. Why is a candidate up or down? Where can things change and in what direction? What do candidates need to do to change or maintain their status? When might that happen?
Who, what, where, when, and why. The five W's used to be the staple of journalism. On beyond the polls, they still are.
Each show will have four weekly segments, Republican Rumble, which will be dedicated to the GOP presidential nomination contest, Paroling Polling Barometer, where we'll discuss anything else that has to do with the elections and sometimes some lighthearted topics in addition.
State of Play. Each week, we will dive into a particular important state, whether it's a general election swing state, a important GOP primary or caucus state, or in many cases, both. You'll be hearing from the state's most seasoned expert on politics and therefore get more nuance into what's really going on there. And then...
Ad of the Week. Ad of the Week is where I take a television ad that one of the campaigns is airing, and I explain to you why this works, or in some cases, why it doesn't work. We'll go into things like, who are they targeting? What can we learn about their message? What does this tell us about the campaign strategy, and how likely is it to succeed? You'll never see a television ad from a political campaign the same again after a few episodes of Ad of the Week.
We're also going to have an occasional segment as necessary. This program will have that segment in place of Ad of the Week, and that's a Democratic deep dive. Right now, we do not seem to have a competitive race for the Democratic nomination, even though President Biden does not seem to be beloved. He is light, but many polls show that Democrats would prefer someone else runs, but Democrats
compared to who's actually running, they'll take Biden. We're going to talk with somebody this week about why that is and whether that might change.
For the beginning, we're going to go bi-weekly. That's because we're having a lot of news, but not enough to really fill a weekly episode. That's going to change as the race for the nomination heats up sometime in December. Then in 2024, we're going to add congressional races, probably in February when the primaries start, but definitely by the time they come in earnest, which is March and April.
Beyond the Polls with Henry Olson. You're going to get more information than you've ever had before, and I hope it'll make you a more informed and more interested observer of American politics.
Joining me this week on Republican Rumble is Dave Weigel, national political reporter for Semaphore. Dave, welcome to Beyond the Polls. Very good to be here in the brief break I have between trips to Iowa. Well, that's why you're on the show, is like you're traveling all around the country seeing these people straight up. And that means you get to answer the $60,000 question.
Why is Donald Trump have such a huge lead in both the national polls and the state polls? Does he have it wrapped up?
I think it's very simple. The Republican Party built an apparatus around Trump. I mean, he helped build it, too, but the party was going along with this for five years. And there's a permission structure that a lot of Republicans participated in to say that, one, Donald Trump is the most charismatic and electable person in the Republican Party, and two, that if he's accused of something bad,
or he loses an election, you don't need to believe it. There are questions, it's illegitimate, et cetera. And kind of anticipating some more questions about the legal trouble he's in, but because that's defined a lot of this primary, I mean, he gets in the race in late November and the investigations are starting a few months later before half the field is in. Because that's been such a huge story in this primary, I think that's the best way of illustrating why he's so powerful. The Republican Party is still built around...
President Donald Trump, the way they still refer to him. So given that the indictment that came down on Tuesday is the third, but the first one that specifically references the January 6th events, what effect, if any, do you think this will have on the race? Yeah.
I am most interested in what effect it has on fundraising because there's evidence that the Alvin Bragg indictment was such a shock to people that that really helped the Trump campaign fundraising. Jack Smith's investigation, slightly less so. This is another phase of the Smith investigation. This one, I think, has...
gotten such a furious reaction from most Republicans and a tempered reaction from more than last time. I think it's going to have a smaller positive effect for Trump, not a negative effect. I still think that the, again, the meta-narrative Republicans have told about January 6th, not the bulwark Republicans, but the Kevin McCarthys, the vague Ramaswamis, protects Trump when he's criticized like this. The idea is...
All right. He is being charged with something that we think is illegitimate and a distraction from from investigations into Hunter Biden. That has been the almost unanimous response from every Republican who has not left the party over Trump.
So given that, one of the things that came out over the weekend is that Trump's campaign committees, all multiples of them, spent more than they raised in the second quarter. And the vast bulk of what they spent was on legal fees related to the various investigations and the various indictments, not just for himself, but also for people who have been roped in who were part of the White House era Trump universe.
What do you think this indictment will do with respect to that? There's word that they're trying to set up a legal defense fund, but can he realistically expect to fund the legal defense fund without cannibalizing his campaign fundraiser? Well, he is cannibalizing it. One thing he did lose after the presidency was the RNC's generous funding of his legal defense. That's not happening. It's been Save America that's been doing this.
Save America has been doing this for quite a while, though. Save America is founded in the wake of the 2020 election, ostensibly to get a recount. People have been giving to that millions and millions of dollars for two and a half years.
at this point, I think pretty aware that it's not going to help overturn the 2020 election. So I don't think there's even a caveat emptor going on with donors to these PACs. I've not seen much evidence that people are giving to Trump and then saying, I didn't realize I was funding a legal defense fund. Returning to my first point, in the dialogue of the Republican Party, these investigations are so illegitimate that it's worth it to fund
to help him fund his defense. It might be frustrating that it's not going better, but I've not seen the same outrage that you might see with any Trump story, I think. How would this happen in a race for governor, a race for mayor? I think it'd be more of an outrage.
You are seeing wealthy people who had donated a lot to Trump in 2020, skip 2016 perhaps, which came back in 2020. Some of them are drifting to other Republican candidates. I think there might be a little bit more of that. They're not your donor who's giving Trump $10 a month or responding when he gets a text on a day like yesterday, a fundraising text. But the...
The people who had been giving, we saw Anthony Scaramucci giving $500,000. Chris Christie, I don't think Scaramucci was in danger of coming back to the Trump camp. I think there are more donors who are going to look at this and say, what's the point of giving to a Trump super PAC? I'm going to continue hedging my bets with other candidates, or I'm done. I'm going to go give to Tim Scott. I'm going to go to Nikki Haley. I would expect to see some large checks moving before I see the small donations move.
So what does that mean with respect to Trump's ability to actually fund a primary campaign?
know that whatever other problems the DeSantis campaign has, he's got tens of millions in the campaign accounts still. He's got tens of millions more in the super PAC. Then you've got the Koch committee that's raising tens of millions to oppose Trump. You've got the Club for Growth that's raising tens of millions to oppose Trump. You've got Scott's tens of millions. You've got like 15 or 20 millions that Nikki Haley is throwing already into the race. If
If Trump's spending all of his money defending himself in court, he's not going to be spending that money defending himself in the court of public opinion with Republican voters. Is he so well entrenched with Republican voters that none of that matters? Or can ultimately the simple avalanche of $300 million against him with almost no ability to respond on the airwaves begin to change Republicans' opinions?
I think you answered it with the last part of that, that he's so well known. What everyone else is spending money on is getting known to the degree Trump is. DeSantis is still running bio ads, I should say, never back down. The super PAC that's functioning as the arm for the campaign is still running biographical ads, getting people to know Ron DeSantis. Nikki Haley's super PAC doing the same thing. They have to spend money just to get to the point where Republicans know them as well as they know Donald Trump. I think they are getting there.
They haven't made a lot of gains yet, but their favorables are increasing. For Trump himself, because he was president and because he has this ability to both reach out in his own communication channels
And just this connection with the base. He's gotten away with not even needing to use earned media. Donald Trump has been allowed back on Twitter if he wants it for six months, and he has not returned to it. That's one example. He could go on CNN again if he felt like it after that town hall. He doesn't. And he has been running, I think, the closest thing we've seen to a Rose Garden campaign, maybe since Jimmy Carter.
in 1980. That's the only comparison I'm going to make, but he doesn't need to work as hard as these candidates do. He doesn't need to hold the same rallies. The rallies still draw crowds. They draw smaller crowds than he did in 2020, which is something other candidates have paid attention to. Answering your question by saying, yeah, he doesn't need to do as much. It is not a problem for him that he's burning this much money on legal defense. And frankly,
The fact every story about his legal defense, I think that is earned media for Trump. The way that Republicans process this, you look at the New York Times poll. It's 13 percent of Republicans think that he committed a serious crime. Serious meaning enough that what is going he's going through is justified. All right. Well, that's every time the rest of the Republican electorate hears a story about this, they are getting hurt.
a reminder that Donald Trump is running for president and that the, you know, the quote unquote deep state doesn't want him to win. I was struck yesterday, you know, this, you know, avalanche of comments. Kevin McCarthy, at this point, the highest ranking Republican in the federal government, refers to Trump as Biden's main political opponent. Well, what's the implication there? The implication is that, yeah, there's a presidential primary, but the guy we all know who's winning this thing is Donald Trump. And
that's why it's so easy for him to get around this. I think other candidates would have a problem that is just unique, unique suit of armor available only to Donald Trump that they don't have.
So let's talk a little bit about the polls. As of Wednesday morning, the real clear politics average at the national level had Trump at 54, Ron DeSantis at 18, and then everybody else in single digits. The New York Times poll that has created a big stir had Trump a little bit more ahead than that, but not much. I think it was like 50-something to 17 over DeSantis and everyone else in single digits.
The thing that stood out to me at the New York Time poll was it's breaking down of the electorate that they say that 28 percent is open only to Trump and 25 percent is not at all open to Trump, which leaves 40 percent in between and 7 percent for whatever reason they didn't classify. Do you roughly agree with that or would you say that those estimates are wrong in some way or another?
They feel right to me. The last swing I made through Iowa, I was meeting quite a lot of voters who were even intending to, they showed up for another candidate, or they intended to vote maybe for another candidate, but Trump was still their favorite. They were trying to talk themselves out of voting for him. I think that's accurate. The Times poll is very compelling. I would like to see more polling in Iowa, because the latest one we saw was Fox Business reporting
uh with a couple partners finding a slightly closer race clearly trump with the advantage but uh both desantis and and tim scott in double digits that also feels right to me i do think that in iowa where trump has um not to go all 1988 through 1980 throughout the podcast but he's got a couple of john sears 1980 issues going on right uh so he's he's he's
using his incumbent advantage but not going back there as much as other candidates he's fought a little bit with governor kim reynolds in a way that other kinds of not he's alienated some people literally lost endorsements over that i believe that it is closer in iowa that's right but not close enough for somebody is in is about to pass him right now and national polling i think they're great for showing us what the electorate thinks about the candidate but
They're less helpful for the primary. I would like to see more in Iowa because every other candidate's strategy is...
When Iowa or I think at this point, if it was close enough, let's say it was Trump only beat somebody by five points in Iowa, there'd be enough momentum to slingshot into New Hampshire and South Carolina and try to make a race out of it. That's their theory. Nationally, there's no hope. And then what we learned from these national polls is that the Republican base trusts Trump so much that it's hard for anyone else to break into their conversation.
So here's some of the crosstabs from the New York Times poll I want to run by you. They asked favorability. And among the only Trump crowd, Trump's favorability is 97 to 1. Ron DeSantis is 61 to 23.
Among the anti, you know, people who are not open to Trump, Trump still has 29% favorable, but 69% unfavorable. DeSantis is viewed favorably 53 to 35. And then in that middle, you have Trump 90 to 8 and DeSantis 80 to 10.
So DeSantis seems to have established a credibility or at least a favorability with that swing vote and that his problems are on the flanks. You know, hardcore moderates can't stand him because he's too Trumpy. Hardcore Trumpies can't stand him because he's some of them because he's running against Trump. But in that middle, they're.
Trump only has a small advantage. What do you have to what's your reaction to that? Do you think that that's roughly accurate? And if so, what's the threat to the Trump campaign from a candidate who is actually well liked by the people who are giving him his majority?
Less than I think a lot of opponents thought, because you hear this from some voters in Iowa. We're all limited in how many voters we can talk to, but you hear from some voters worry that Trump alienates more people than they would like. There are Republicans. Let's not...
pretend a monolith is is unanimity there are republicans a smaller share maybe a court in some polls a quarter or some polls a little higher who do think yeah trump lost the election he could he should have won it uh the head opinion is advanced as far as it needs to for desantis uh but that's true that they they do like a lot of these candidates that is not however unique uh in the in the i can go through other campaigns but
In 2019, if you polled Democrats at this same point, when they had a very large field, very competitive primary, they didn't like most of the candidates. There was no candidate that they, as they got to know Elizabeth Warren, they liked her. As they got to know Pete Buttigieg, they liked him. They did not become anti-Biden. They retained their feeling that Biden was the most electable Democrat, which is why he ended up winning. But they really liked these other candidates. And I remember it becoming a source of frustration for some of the ones polling even lower, like Cory Booker. They'd get
polling back, people liked them. They just were not convinced that they had a path to nomination or they could beat Trump. And they didn't think Biden could. So some of these Republicans, DeSantis especially, might be swimming in that same pool of, great, I've introduced myself to Republican voters. They really want me to have a role in the next Trump administration. The sort of Buttigieg pool, I would say. I
I totally believe that's happening now. And I have found from talking to Iowa Republicans, both party activists and just the people showing up for stuff, they like most of this field. They don't like the guys who are attacking Trump, like Will Hurd and Chris Christie. To an extent, they know less about him. They there are some who resent what Mike Pence did, but
on January 6th. There are some who respect it, but they generally like this field. They've liked getting to know Vivek Ramaswamy. They've liked getting to see Nikki Haley and Tim Scott. They've liked getting to see Larry Elder, who's not really in the conversation, but is well-known with the conservatives. Then they've not made the extra step and said, I like them so much, I'm going to bail on Donald Trump.
who I voted for and donated to and who delivered me the end of Roe v. Wade and who started to build the wall, etc. I could give you the whole skimp, not the whole Trump speech because it's about an hour long, but they go there. It's like, OK, these are great candidates. I hope one day they can help us out and get elected to something else. So let me close with the last question, then, which is how does that change?
Or is your assessment five weeks or five and a half weeks or five and a half months before the Iowa caucus is that it's really all over? I mean, is it all over? But if it's going to first, yes or no, is it all over? If it's possible, even like a 10 percent chance that it's not.
How does somebody translate that? I like Trump and I like DeSantis and I like Scott from but I prefer Trump to I prefer someone else. How does that happen? I'm in the there's a 10 percent chance.
zone. And not even just to, not even hedging my bets because I'm a word, but in club video, I mean, things, things can happen. People, people can blow it. I mentioned John Sears and Reagan, Reagan winds up winning in 1988 after all, but people can be hubristic and make mistakes. And you know, Trump did not win Iowa when he ran in 2016. He did not click there the way he's clicking now. So I think what would it take is a candidate who is not,
necessarily grappling with Trump and saying, I agree with the Jack Smith indictment, but it's saying, look, there's a, there are, we love the guy and I want, I think he's the greatest president of my lifetime. However, I think we can build a bigger coalition and win some people that Trump couldn't win. They need that to, and they have, you know,
not six months, they have five months to make that argument. Look, sometimes you convince people in the third or fourth conversation, not the first. So that is the bet, is you're not going to say Trump is so awful that we need to get rid of him. You're going to say,
what trump has done to this part but can't we build on what he did uh and win that that neighbor you have and this this is something i saw larry elder do but i thought it was effective uh you know do you know somebody at work who doesn't like to talk about politics do you know do you have a relative who used to be republican now they're not uh and i think if you go to the pope county or dory county these parts of iowa that actually stayed blue or gotten bluer
Yeah, there are lots of people like that. I think there are limits because there are lots of people that everybody knows in Iowa, especially who didn't like to vote Republican and switch because of Trump. And they stayed there. That's a very common story in Iowa, more than any of these really primary states. Right. I mean, it went from a state that would vote for Barack Obama and a Democratic governor, Democratic state Senate to an all red state.
So it's hard to make that argument there. Hey, the Trump version of the Republican Party, the one that had a pretty great 2022 even in Iowa, trust us, we need to move on. But I think that is the only argument you can make. I don't think it's going to be he is so compromised that he cannot serve or that he's so old that he cannot serve, which is something I think Haley hints at with her mental health test. It's about Biden, but there's implication. I think it needs to be
We need to take this to the next level, which is kind of a vague argument, kind of the Tim Scott argument, definitely the DeSantis argument. And then be the most compelling of the 12 people who are making that argument. Tough. I mean, 10 percent might be overestimating it. It might be closer to two or three percent. Anyone thinking that some news story is going to come down like a meteor and blow up the Trump campaign, that has to be overestimated.
off the mental register by this point. That's just not happening. There is no story that can convince people, oh, I'm going to trust the media and the legal system and Trump is a crook. That's not going to happen with the Republican electorate. Well, Dave, how can my listeners follow your work?
You can go to Semaphore.com, which I'll spell it, S-E-M-A-F-O-R.com. And I write a newsletter called Americana that's from the campaign trail. As we're talking, I'm checked in for my flight to go to Ohio to cover the ballot referendum there. I try to cover races from around the country and the presidential race. So, yeah, go to Semaphore, subscribe to Americana, and follow us on every social media network. It's just at Semaphore. So you can follow us there, too.
Well, Dave, thank you for joining me on the inaugural broadcast of Beyond the Polls. Thank you so much. It was great to be here. We're very lucky to have with us on Democratic Deep Dive, one of the great observers of American politics and of the Democratic Party, Rui Teixeira, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the Politics Editor at the Liberal Patriot. Rui, welcome to the inaugural episode of Beyond the Polls. Thanks for having me, Henry. It's an honor to help you kick this off. Well,
The honor is mine in front of the man who predicted when David Brooks was saying that the Democratic Party was dead, had his book, The Emerging Democratic Majority, that said, no, actually, we're rising. And we've, in fact, seen three consecutive elections of Democrats getting a majority of the popular vote in the presidential election, which I believe is the first time since Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the only time.
since the Civil War, aside from Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But despite this democratic prosperity, I want to ask you, normally an incumbent president who's got the sort of job approval ratings among his party that Joe Biden has is breezing to a reelection, and so it appears. But nonetheless, there's a few interesting clouds, which is why it's worth talking about. And that is,
The fact that in polls in April, about half of Democrats polls said that Biden should not run again. In the July Harvard-Harris poll, about a third said that. More said that they were worried about his age. Why is it that people like Biden among the Democratic Party but wish he wouldn't run again? Well, I think the factor you mentioned right there is like hugely important. I mean, he is.
He's like 80. He's like an old 80. Or is he 81 now? I can't keep track. Yeah, I think he's 80, but he might be 81 by the time we put this up. Right. All right. So he's pretty old. But the problem isn't just that he's old. It's that he looks and acts old. And he just doesn't seem to be really with it part of the time, right? He does and says...
things that are suggestive of some sort of decline. I mean, the kindest way to put this is he's lost a few miles off his fastball. Everybody knows this, and he's not likely to get better. So this is really sticks in people's craw that, you know, this guy is a representative of our party.
But he's not very impressive and he's not likely to get more impressive. And we're worried about that. You know, we got four more years here. People who follow things closely think, well, gosh, OK, he's president. Let's say he keels over or whatever. Then we get Kamala Harris, who people also don't like.
particularly people who pay close attention to Democratic politics. And we're talking about Democrats, because I'll have a lot of Republicans that say, of course nobody likes Kamala, she's blah, blah, blah. Right, but a lot of Democrats do not care for her either. So that's a big problem. I think the fact that... I don't think we should underestimate the effect of the inflationary burst on not just voters who aren't Democrats, but on Democrats. That that has taken...
despite the hectoring from, you know, our econopundits about how great things are and how much they've improved, I think for a lot of even Democrats, it's, you know, it's been a mixed bag, right? They feel like it hasn't been a, you know, tremendous success despite all the legislation that has been passed. So they're worried about that, about the fact that
The economy just doesn't seem to have overall and over the two-year period done that well. And they're worried about how that not only appears to them, but appears to other voters. You know, the Afghanistan thing was not handled very competently in most people's opinion. And I think among Democrats, and there are a non-trivial amount of Democrats who are not all that enamored with the socially radical turn of the
Democrats in the Biden administration. There are a lot of people sort of at the edges who are unhappy about that and are totally with the program and don't think Biden's really
done that much to change things. And then, of course, there's another side of the Democratic Party who thinks he hasn't gone far enough, you know, and they hate him for that, right? So, you know, the people who are happiest with Biden are really just the loyalist, yellow-doggish, at least in today's terms, Democrats. And I think softer Democrats,
Some older Democrats, some young progressives, some white college non-liberals who vote for the party, Hispanics.
who don't feel like things have gone that well for them under the Biden administration. I mean, you can look at their ratings of Biden and what he's done, and they're all very negative. And these are people who primarily are working-class voters and have heavily concentrated in relatively low-paying and working-class jobs. And they don't feel it's been that great for them. Of course, again, things are improving. And economic columnists will assure them that
you know, they should be jolly well grateful for how good things could have gotten. But I don't think that's the way they look at it. So I think you put that all together and it spells a lack of confidence in Biden as a leader and as a standard bearer who can lead the party forward, you know, in the next administration and not keel over. So I think,
Looked at in that way, it's not that hard to believe. People never loved Joe Biden anyway. I mean, let's remember that he was the choice of the party, not because everybody thought he was so great, just because he was less crazy than the other alternatives. He occupied the moderate lane. You know, more Democratic voters than people like to give him credit for are, in fact, moderate.
and aren't interested in a particularly radical transformation of society. And he spoke to them. He said he was going to get things back to normal. Well, I think for a lot of Democrats, things haven't gotten back to normal. And obviously that's true of the American voters as a whole. And I think they look at Biden, they look at his age, they look at him, you know, kind of ambling around and they think, hmm, is this, how quick are we going to get back to normal here? The temperature doesn't seem to have been turned down.
There was that problem with the cost of living going up so fast. Well, yeah, things look better now. But I just don't think he inspires confidence in people. Like, I am the leader who has a plan. One way I put it, one way I think about it sometimes, Henry, is, you know, you had a lot more enthusiasm on Democrats for someone like Obama or someone like Clinton. Because people could, like, look in the mirror and say, I'm an Obama Democrat. I'm a Clinton Democrat.
Do people really look in the mirror and say I'm a Biden Democrat? Those other guys, they put their imprint on the party. It's more like the party has put his imprint on him. So he's like a placeholder for the party. The party is not a vehicle for his vision. And nobody really feels like...
You know, that's something they want to very few people feel like that's something they want to sign on to. I mean, I think there's a variety of liberal columnists who may in fact try to make that case. You know, gosh, it's just great to be a Biden Democrat. But I just don't think that has a lot of purchase among rank and file party supporters. I've long thought that if Joe Biden were a superhero with a big B on his chest, that his superpower is finding where the center of Democratic politics,
public opinion is at any given moment and occupying it with vociferous sincerity. Exactly. That's well said, Henry. Thank you. But so given this, why isn't there a serious challenger? And could there still be a late entrant into this race to take advantage of these obvious and glaring weaknesses?
Yeah, could there be? Sure. Well, I mean, there already are some entrants. I mean, I guess what you mean is plausible entrants. Well, that's exactly what I mean, is that we're talking about a flake and a flake. Marianne Williamson is not somebody who's going to occupy the White House. And Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is somebody who's not going to occupy the White House. But yet, Joe Biden...
is only pulling below two thirds of the vote in polls against these two weak candidates. Yeah, yeah. He should really be getting like 85 or 90, right? Yeah, exactly. And the fact that he's not is indicative. Yeah, I mean, I think there's a possibility someone more serious might get in, but I think it's pretty low, you know, possibility. I think that the overwhelming sense of the Democratic infrastructure is he's the incumbent,
You know, it's not clear we have a better alternative. You know, it would be a risky proposition to throw our weight behind some other candidate and hope it won't wind up being Kamala Harris if he gets out of the race. And we're much better off
Just sticking with Biden. Yeah, he's old. Yeah, he's got problems. Yeah, people don't love him. But he's probably good enough to beat Donald Trump. And I just think that that calculus is going to overwhelm everything else at this point.
You know, we never know what could happen if, like, Gavin Newsom wakes up one day and says, I want to be president so much that I must save the country from Joe Biden's certain defeat at the hands of Donald Trump or whomever. But I really see it as an outside shot. And I don't see any of the people who are lurking in the wings there
really acting like they're serious about, you know, damn the torpedoes. I don't care what other people said. I'm going to run. I'm going to take...
I'm going to rip that bee off of Biden's chest, his superhero costume, and I'm going to be the guy or the gal. I mean, what do you think? Do you think it's likely to happen? Likely, I don't. But the thing that strikes me is in modern politics where you don't need to have friends in the party infrastructure. I mean, RFK has raised like $11 million in his super PAC because people don't
There's enough people with enough money who will ignore those signals that I keep thinking what the closest analogy in my lifetime that this
seems to bear is 1992 George Herbert Walker Bush. There was an ideological thing. Bush was actually older than he appeared because he was in good shape and mentally fit. But conservatives were unhappy and they could not find a serious person with who had a future in politics.
And finally, Pat Buchanan gets into the race in like November, somebody who had media skills and actually saw an upside. And of course, he made a career out of doing better than expected and became a serious candidate in 1996 and became a much more influential figure as a result of that. And so what my question has been is,
Who's the Pat Buchanan of the Democratic Party, the sort of person who either doesn't have is either doesn't have or is never going to be the fanboy or fangirl that will never get fanboy or fangirl applause from the Democratic establishment and says, you know.
There's an opportunity here for me to vault myself to national attention, whether it's media attention or whether it's I'm going to be head of the progressive wing in the inevitable time when Biden ages out. And this gets me ahead of the game. Just strikes me that in modern politics, there's a lane here and nobody's seizing it.
Right, well, but I think the phrase you used a little earlier, Henry, really gets to the quick of this, which is who out there who doesn't have a future in politics conventionally defined? And I just think all of the people that might come to our mind are all people who think they do have a future in politics. They think they could be the 28th presidential nominee or otherwise trying to work their way up the system.
I mean, the Pritzkers, the Newsoms, the Whitmers, the Polices, the Josh Shapiros, you know, even someone like AOC. I mean, she thinks she's going to be senator. I mean, she thinks she could be president, right? So why would she risk the wrath of the Democratic establishment and the punditocracy by getting out there and running against Trump?
Joe Biden at this point. I'm just not seeing it. You really need someone like Pat Buchanan who doesn't give a, you know, I guess I'll say, doesn't give a good gosh darn. I'll try to keep it clean here. And who would that be in Democratic terms, you know? I mean, who's an analog? It's an interesting question. Probably not anyone in actual, probably be like a columnist or something like Buchanan.
I mean, I'm really flailing here to come up with someone who would be a good analog to Pat Buchanan. To the Democratic Party who would be both willing to do it and would have enough initial name recognition or whatever to actually get the thing off the ground. The only one that comes to mind for me is Rachel Maddow.
She's a chicken. She'd never do it. I don't see her as a Democratic Pat Buchanan, not at all. Well, I was just trying to think, because Buchanan had already had his TV exposure on, not Crossfire, on
The McLaughlin group, not that he was the host, but he was on at the time. And of course, Maddow is a household name for progressives and would have credibility in the sense of if you're going to challenge Biden from the left.
You know, running as and that would be if I were her, I would actually shape it in terms of, you know, we want to shape the future of the Democratic Party. And that means having enough strength at the convention to make sure that the Democratic Party's platform respects democratic values.
But again, I don't think she's going to do it. I mean, unlike she's probably much, although Buchanan was doing well for himself financially. You know, I think Maddow is a couple of rungs above that. Yeah, she's doing fine. So then we get to the question of Democratic delegate math, which is that unlike the Republic, you know, one of the things I like about the two parties and their nomination systems is they
kind of betray their inner values with their delegate apportionment. For the Republicans, it's kind of like loosey-goosey, and states get within certain guidelines a whole lot of leeway. You can do winner-take-all. You can do proportional. And the Democrats, it's completely centralized. Everybody, 15% floor, pure proportionality. Every state has to have sub-state regions. Most of them choose congressional districts. A couple of them choose senatorial districts.
We are marching to central committee orders. So, so comrade Tashara, what that, what that means though, is that if RFK gets 15%, he gets 15% of the delegates and he's pulling a little bit below that. It's a little hard to see where he doesn't get 15%.
And that's not going to be a threat to Biden, but it means in this Democratic Party, if he stays in the race and it looks like he's the sort of person who wouldn't drop out after a few early losses, you know, suddenly there's 600 delegates who have been handpicked by RFK's campaign to be on the floor and presumably influence the platform.
Is this got any potentiality of mattering, or is this going to be the sideshow to end all sideshows? Well, I guess I'd probably pick the latter, the sideshow to end all sideshows. I mean, RFK is such a loose wire that it's not clear...
You know, exactly what he'd attempt to exert pressure on and how sick. I mean, there are things he could try to exert pressure on that would have absolutely no effect or would just make him look like an idiot. Then there are things he could exert pressure on that would actually embarrass the Biden people and actually cause them real heartburn and possibly force them to do something they don't want to do just for the sake of shutting him up.
But I just think it's so hard to predict because he's so hard to predict. You know, I mean, which of his sort of cluster of issues that he cares about would he pick?
You know, it'll be interesting to watch. It'll be entertaining, I think. I'd say that much. Hey, you know, we're going to be entertained on the Republican side. Democrats might as well have their own little sitcom operating. That's right. Well, and that's what people are looking for. Voters just want to have fun. I mean, there was a great finding in the New York Times poll about, you know, people don't really like Trump, even on the Republican side, but they just think he's a lot more fun. Yeah.
Well, there's your candidate, Cindy Lauper. Democrats just want to have fun. So, okay, okay.
So there's a lot of warning clouds. There's a lot of possibilities, but they're almost certainly not going to happen. For various reasons, Joe Biden continues to be the luckiest man in American politics. Well, let's just stipulate here, Henry, that exogenous events could change things a bit. Like if he basically friggin' keels over at some point. I mean, not literally dies, but just has an event on the campaign trail that
It really underscores how feeble he may be. I think that
that could really would increase the probability of some of these other things happening. Well, like the Mitch McConnell brain freeze. Mitch McConnell, just for the listeners who may not follow Washington stuff with the level of granular detail that we do, Mitch McConnell's giving his press conference and literally mid-sentence he stops and can't say anything for 40 seconds and he's let off the stage. Yeah, that might do it. That might do it. So what's the drop dead date in the calendar?
Obviously, if this happens to Joe Biden on May 15th of 2024, the delegates have already been selected. They're loyal to Biden. It'll be a non-primary battle to see whether somebody wants to push him off. What's the drop-dead date in terms of the calendar if you actually want to be a semi-serious candidate?
on the Pap-Buchanan model? Well, you know, you probably won't win, but you're fighting for a cause or you're fighting for yourself or likely you're fighting for both at the same time. Are we talking about Labor Day? Are we talking about Thanksgiving? Can you boo a Bloomberg and get in the race a little before Christmas, knowing you'll miss the first four primaries, but you'll get on Super Tuesday ballot? What is the drop-dead date where we can pass and say, okay,
this is the contours of the race absent Biden literally being unable to run. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I mean, like you say, maybe...
you know, the Bloomberg date is a drop-dead date. I really don't know. I mean, also, Bloomberg had all that money. So, you know, sort of controlling for that, maybe your drop-dead date is, in fact, significantly earlier. So I guess depending on the level of this hypothesized exogenous Biden event, you know, who knows? It could even be later than that. I don't know. Matt Taibbi, who is always an entertaining read, had a piece the other day about
But, you know, this is chaos. You know, this presidential election is chaos, you know, from and we're just getting started. So, I mean, I'm really loathe to make any hard and fast predictions about almost anything at this point, because there are so many wild cards in this particular deck. Well, Rui, thank you for joining me. Where can people find your work and tell us about your forthcoming book?
People can find my work regularly on the Liberal Patriot Substack newsletter, to which I urge everyone to subscribe. And I will also write... And to which I will admit I am a subscriber. There you go. And I'm a columnist for The Post. That comes out once a month. But the real thing I want to urge people to do is please pre-order my book on Amazon, Where Have All the Democrats Gone with John Dukes, where we reveal all the secrets...
of how the Democratic Party evolved from its early 2000s iteration, which gave rise to the Obama coalition, to where we are today, where neither party, and I think you probably agree with this, Henry, is capable of forging a durable majority at this particular point in time. So that comes out on November 7th, and I urge everyone to think about giving it a look. That sounds like we've gone from the emerging Democratic to majority to the emerging Democratic... The LNA? Yeah. Yeah.
Well, thank you very much. And I appreciate you joining me on Beyond the Polls. Thank you, Henry. Anytime.
Joining me on this week's polling barometer is Carlin Bowman, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and one of the Capitol's most perspicacious polling watchers. Carlin, welcome to be on the polls. It's a delight to be with you, Henry. I haven't seen you in a while. I haven't seen you in a while either.
Let's start with the general election that President, former President Trump tells everybody that he's leading Biden by a large measure in the polls. And of course, there are a couple of polls that do have him ahead. But the real clear politics average this morning had Biden ahead by about a point, 45 to 44. That alone, the fact that Trump is
is competitive by any standard of analysis will surprise many of our listeners. Why is that the case?
Well, I think Trump has a very strong base. We've seen it in the polls over and over again. There are many people who say they're more of a supporter of Donald Trump than they are of the Republican Party. And that number is a very hard number overall. Plus those strong supporters, you have some who are somewhat supportive of Donald Trump and they could go either way. But still, that strong support is the base that gives him the closeness in the overall race.
How much of what we see is in the general election, people coming home to their party, that people may not like Donald Trump within the Republican Party, but if it's a choice between Trump and a Democrat, they're going to hold their nose and vote for Trump. And similarly for Joe Biden, that there are Democrats who are not thrilled with him for a
they're going to put the clothespin on their nostrils and just cast the vote. How much of what we're seeing is that as well as a base for Donald Trump?
We know that most partisans, excuse me, are very loyal to their party. Historically, more than 90 percent of partisans vote for their party on Election Day. And so that is obviously very important overall. And so that's a good part of what we're seeing, I think, in the Trump support. So Tuesday's indictment of Trump is the first coming out of January 6th, the third overall.
Do you think that that will have any impact, or is this just another tempest that may not break the teapot? It's possible that this will be the first to have an effect on Donald Trump. That remains to be seen, of course. He has that strong base that just hasn't moved with
with the earlier indictments overall. But one of the things we've noticed in some recent polls, particularly the Harvard-Harris, is that a significant majority, a majority of Republicans themselves are saying that he was involved in trying to overturn the election. And I think that the,
This particular, these particular indictments may give that group pause overall. But thus far, his supporters have been very loyal. Republicans have been very loyal. And that's why you see other candidates reacting to the indictment in the way they have. They've been very cautious.
So one of the things that stands out to me when I look at the general election polls is depending on how you ask it, there's a large number of people who say they don't want either candidate to run. They don't want a Biden Trump rematch. It's much larger.
than the gap between the candidates, which again suggests the partisan effect. But Joe Biden is an incumbent president who's sitting at 45 percent in a two-way race against perhaps the most loathed American president of my lifetime, perhaps yours as well. And
That strikes me as interesting. What should we make of this? People who don't want to be forced into the choice, but when they do, they retreat to their teams.
Ben Sosnick, one of the political operatives, coined the phrase double-doubters. And so we've actually been looking at them fairly carefully for a while, particularly in a very large survey that AEI did. They tend to have higher levels of education. They tend to be more moderate. They tend to be a little bit more independent. And as such, they could perhaps go either way or they could sit out the election overall. They tend to vote fairly.
regularly though based on several questions in this poll overall in this poll biden leads trump um by about seven points but the de sanis race is much closer of course we're still 15 months away and that's a very long time in politics when you say doubters the status has not done very well double doubters are people who do not have a favorable opinion of biden and separately of trump
Now, in 2016, that was the determinative group that the polls showed the few polls that had crosstabs. The battleground poll, which is a poll between Celinda Lake and Ed Goh as a Republican and a Democrat, showed 18 percent were double doubters in September of 2016.
and they were largely undecided, and there was 18% in October, and they were largely undecided. And as we know, they went for Donald Trump by double digits, and that's why he beat Clinton. This year, I saw one poll that suggested there were 21% in the double-doubting category, so it seems to be as much or perhaps higher than in 2016. Is that what the AEI polls show? And do they also show a high level of doubt
independence or unwillingness to make the choice at this stage, or have they become more partisan than their counterparts were in 2016? They certainly show a high level of independence. They're more likely to identify as independents overall. And I think that number is a pretty good number at this point overall. I want to see more data, but as you suggested, based on the 2016 polls, this proportion looks very similar.
So Joe Biden's job approval is, as of Wednesday morning in the Real Clear Politics Average, at 42 percent, one point or so lower than Donald Trump's was at this stage of Donald Trump's presidency. Why is Joe Biden's job approval so low and what can he do about it?
People make their first impressions of politicians and presidents very early on. And I think Afghanistan in particular caused people to look at Joe Biden and just say, what are we getting here? And the condition of the economy in the last several years with high inflation, which is such a potent political indicator, I think is largely responsible for the president's standing. He
So the president is trying to convince them otherwise. He's running around the country touting Bidenomics. You know, Reagan...
Didn't use that phrase until after it was thrust upon him by the media in 1982 during the depths of recession, and he embraced it during the rapid recovery of 1984. Obamacare was something the administration avoided for years until it was clear he had won reelection, and then they embraced it. Here, Biden is trying to lean into the wind to change things.
Do you think it can work? And is there some evidence from survey data that perhaps people's opinions are beginning to change about the economy?
There's a very small amount of evidence at this particular point that things are beginning to change. One indicator that we look at very carefully is the University of Michigan's Consumer Sentiment Index. The University of Michigan has been in this business since the 1950s, and the long-term trends there are very significant. In the last two months, they have seen consumer confidence rise, and this is not what the new CBS News poll
that came out earlier this week showed a very pessimistic public about inflation at this particular point. But it could be that the Michigan numbers are sort of a leading indicator overall. It particularly rose among higher income Americans who felt better about the economy. And certainly there's been some good news on the economy for ordinary Americans going to the grocery store is still pretty painful. And now gas prices are going up again.
But I think for a lot of people in the upper echelons of the income strata, they're beginning to feel a little bit more confident that the recession is not in the office. In the modern realignment, it used to be that people in the higher income stratas tended to lean Republican. We know after 2016 that President Trump brought a number of historically Democratic working and middle class voters into the Republican Party. And there was an
almost equal and opposite reaction. It was like Newton's political physics at work, that educated and well-to-do people moved to the Democratic Party.
If the consumer opinion is firming up largely among people of six figure or high five figure incomes, is that a case of people who already like Joe Biden feeling better about the economy? Or could this be a case of people who are actually on the fence feeling better about the economy? Well, these people generally, you're correct. People who
who are higher income, higher levels of education, have been moving in the Democratic Party's direction. So certainly that's a good part of what this is. But again, they may be a leading indicator. It's probably premature at this point. But that's a good point. Well, if we're not talking about politics, we're talking about Barbie. That seems to be the case in the United States and worldwide in one respect.
What, if anything, is the besides the ephemeral feel good nature of a happy, well-produced movie? What, if anything, is there to read into Barbie mania?
Well, first, about 17% of Americans say that they either have seen or plan to see Barbie and separate Leopold and Heimer. So that's a very big chunk. I think it could be that Americans just simply want to return to movie theaters, that they've been away from them for so long that it's summer, it's always good to have a summer movie.
be overall. But it also, for many younger women, I think, says a great deal about modern feminism. We're now in the fourth wave of feminism. Interestingly, in public opinion polls, you've never been able to find more than four in ten women identifying with the feminist label. But that said, Barbie's gone through a lot of iterations in her career.
overall, and I think young women in particular find Taylor Swift and Barbie have a lot to tell them about where they are. There's a concept in sociology called linked faith.
and younger women in particular are much more likely than people who are older to say that their fate is linked to the fate of all women. So if you have a movie like Barbie this summer or the Taylor Swift concert, that's speaking to a particular generation about the problems and the potential that they have. So I think for many young women in particular, um,
the movie has been a kind of revelation. They're a very different generation, Gen Z overall, but it's also fun for people my age and the Baby Boomer generation. Well, the Baby Boomer generation would have embraced Barbie at the beginning of Barbie's career. Absolutely. I think I'm going to turn 62, and I think I'm going to
roughly the same age as the iconic doll model. And I'm looking forward to elbowing out a bunch of Barbie lookalikes when I file for social security at the end of the year. One thing to wrap up and pulling on what you just noted, survey after survey shows a few things about young women. And I'm thinking women in the 18 to 29 bracket. One is they tend to be less happy.
than women in older brackets. Secondly, they tend to be less likely, if not to be in a relationship, certainly to be married and childbearing than women at similar ages and previous generations. And third, particularly in the last few years, they are identifying as politically liberal.
If these are three characteristics of young women and they believe in linked or they linked fate seems to be something that is of particular importance to this generation. Is there a political impact behind Barbie?
Interestingly, I'm not sure that this starts with Barbie. It actually goes back for quite a while. If you look at the University of California's entering college freshman studies, they've done those since the 1960s. For a long time, young men were more liberal than young women. But that began to change in the early 1990s. So you have to sort of go back and figure out what was going on there then. And today, young women are far more liberal.
more likely to identify than young men as being liberal. And not in that poll, but in other polls, Democratic. And it's possible that the concept of link fade is something that's driving this particular generation to a new political home or to a political home. Young people often have been more Democratic than older people. They're not necessarily a generation that will
vote, we'll see. They're not particularly happy with either of these candidates at this particular point, but it may be that there's a kind of solidarity among this group, particularly after the abortion decision, that will keep them solidly in the Democratic camp, at least for the next election. Well, if the sequel to Barbie is Barbie 2 on the front lines against Dobbs, we'll know where Hollywood is thinking. Well, Carlin, how would my listeners follow your work?
They can look at the AEI website, www.aei.org, and just under my scholar bio, and that will keep them up to date with things I've been working on. Well, it's been wonderful to reconnect, and thank you for your wisdom, as always. And thank you for joining me on the inaugural episode of Beyond the Pulse. Thank you so much, Henry.
This segment, State of Play, is going to feature a different person every week who is an expert on their swing state, either an important state in the Republican nomination contest or a swing state in the general election, or in many cases, both. Well, New Hampshire is the first in the nation primary, and having...
Coming on with me today is the first in the nation primary expert, Dante Scala. Dante is the go-to person with everything New Hampshire politics as a professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire. Dante, welcome to Beyond the Polls.
Hello, Henry. Good to see you here. Well, let's just get right into it. It's New Hampshire. People have been coming since before the announcements. Heck, I got kicked out of a Kristi Noem event during the pandemic, where afterwards we had beers when Corey Lewandowski decided I couldn't hear her stump speech. And miraculously, she's not in the race. I wonder why. But who
Who has been there in the last few months on the Republican side and how often? Who's really paying attention up there?
In terms of frequency, I would put Nikki Haley nearer at the top of the list. I mean, she has been a candidate who has pursued the grassroots politicking, talk to one voter at a time tradition of New Hampshire primary politics, I would say to the fullest. And, you know, she started off with town hall meetings back in the winter and
and received, you know, had a good, robust crowd. I think there was a lot of pent-up enthusiasm among Republicans who hadn't seen a candidate in a competitive primary for quite a long time.
So I put Haley toward the top of the list. Vivek Ramaswamy has been here quite a bit and his gleaming bus. It's nice to have a campaign that you pay for yourself because you can go first class and provide that you have enough money to throw at things. And he's been here quite a lot.
as well. So I think at this point, we've seen just about all the candidates come through at one point or another. And Ron DeSantis recently has concluded another swing, and he's been a real interesting contrast. I saw him back at the beginning of the summer
And he and his wife both talked to a crowd of two, 300 voters who seemed, you know, at least amenable to listening to him, if not outright enthusiastic. And he came in and delivered a,
A stump speech that lasted about an hour with a brief intermission for his spouse to give her own mini speech. Didn't take any questions from voters until after everything was said and done. You know, very kind of untraditional New Hampshire way. And now he's dialed it after his troubles have.
in his campaign has really dialed it way back and is doing more along the line of house parties and so forth, speaking to smaller audiences. So...
One of the things people often talk about in the early states is endorsements. You know, candidates tout them, and it's not just endorsements from party officials or local or state legislators, but it's key players. You're not like, oh, they got the campaign manager of the last winning campaign or the person who networks with all of the grassroots groups.
Who's winning that battle? You know, if you had to say a top two or three on the endorsements and key staff front, is this a game that they're playing, number one? And two, who's winning it to the extent they're playing it? You know, what's striking so far, Henry, is how few campaigns are playing the let's build a local campaign organization game.
And I mean, I would put at the top of that list, I think, you know, Trump has a lot of
residual, at least, grassroots support. DeSantis, of course, has his super PAC and has been hiring local talent. But you get beyond those two. Maybe Vivek is making some effort toward building volunteer corps. But you get beyond that. What's striking is
There doesn't seem to be a there there when it comes to local campaign organization. So it's, you know, you do have people coming here, but that building up of local campaign organizations, you don't hear much about it so far, which is, you know, a bit jarring to me.
campaign operatives here who have seen veterans or several different campaigns, they're often lamenting what's not here and what's not. You do hear talk from the local arm of Americans for Prosperity.
that their local group has been getting out and talking to voters, trying to gauge where they're at right now. But it's striking that they seem to be making more of a splash than most of the campaign quote unquote organizations. Now, whether that's going to be a fall thing that they try to build, you know, perhaps so. But it makes me wonder how much
of what they have is really the candidate, you know, surrounded by a very small group of people who set things up for campaign events. But are they doing the blocking and tackling? And do they think it's necessary or worth the investment is an interesting question to watch. So what that tells me is that traditionally early states,
campaigns build the ground game to complement the air war. That's certainly what people are saying they're going to do in Iowa. Although we'll find out when I speak with our Iowa expert in a few weeks.
But it almost sounds like what they're doing right now is completely concentrating on the air war, that the candidates come in, they try and use these campaign events to leverage television coverage and media coverage and online discussion rather than using it to get 500 names that they're going to follow up with to build a block organization.
So that makes me ask, makes me want to ask, what about TV ads? Are some people on paid media? And also, what extent of free media, news and discussion coverage, is this generating outside of the obligatory? Nikki Haley was here today to speak to people in Merrimack coverage on MUI. There was a paid advertising issue.
I'm sure you noticed that South Carolina Senator Tim Scott popped a bit in the latest New Hampshire polling from my colleagues at the university's Survey Research Center. And by that, I pop, I mean, you know, high single digits. And
Not coincidentally, you've seen the Scott campaign, including his super PAC and so forth, so combined that they've been up on the air quite a bit over the past couple of months. And you also can put Doug Burgum, Governor Burgum, in that group as well. He's been dropping mail lately. And so I
I think you're seeing a couple of candidates capitalizing on paid advertising to inflate their numbers. And the fact that they have popped a little bit, you know, especially compared to Nikki Haley, just goes to show, Henry, that no grassroots politicking here, retail politicking, it's important to show up.
But in order for it to really count, it's got to be part of a coordinated all of the above strategy where you're continually reminding people of who you are. And I think it also shows the limits of a free media strategy simply because...
You know, in this day and age, you see local New Hampshire media, I suspect like local media around the country, hollowed out to a considerable extent. And so you've got newspaper subscriptions declining. You've got one statewide television station. So there's a limit to how much juice you can get out of the free media.
compared to, say, you know, I was sitting in a McDonald's one morning a couple weeks ago, and Tim Scott appeared on the local television station at least a couple of times while I was there. And so I think that's how things are going here right now. So that then leads me to the question of,
of how they're performing in the flesh. That if they are coming in, they're going out, there's not really a ground game. There's a sporadic air game by some of the candidates. They'll obviously pick up Haley's super PAC has announced they're going to spend a few million in New Hampshire. I don't know. Are her ads up yet? Or is that
I think that's we're waiting to see them at this point. OK, so you have seen most of these candidates in the flesh that you like to go to one of their rallies and hear them. What's your thumbnail takeaways for each of them? And what, you know, thumbnail thumbs up, thumbs down. And what's their biggest strength and what's their biggest weakness?
I saw Tim Scott two, three weeks ago in Salem, New Hampshire, and I was struck one, but of all the candidates, he seemed among the most enthusiastic candidates.
to be there and do the retail politicking. You know, he showed up early, which was unusual. I think he had a plane to catch to get back to D.C., but rarely do you see these candidates there on time because they're usually hoping that a larger crowd will build. He was there early and he worked the crowd a lot, like lots of handshakes and selfies and so forth. And
Whereas, you know, Ron DeSantis, when I saw him, he seemed, you know, all the reports about, well, he's a little stiff, isn't he? I mean, that's the national media's take on it. That is not without foundation when you see him in person. And I think he's very much trying to get into that mode of, you know, but Tim Scott, it seemed to come, he seemed to come by it naturally.
And then I saw Vivek Ramaswamy also this summer. And what he brings to the table, you know, Tim Scott brings that positive, can-do, infectious attitude where even someone who's of the wrong political party from him still says, you know what? I kind of liked him despite my partisan affiliation.
Vivek Ramaswamy is kind of striking for bringing a vision that DeSantis lacks so far. In, you know, DeSantis, when he gave his stump speech, and again, it was beginning of the summer, it felt a bit paint by numbers. Like, hey, let me rattle off all the good things I've done for the state of Florida. And that would get some polite applause lines and so forth. But
there was a bit of a so what about DeSantis. And, you know, in terms of the vision, Vivek is very big on kind of bringing vision to the table. And he almost, you know, when he's there, it's like he's conducting a seminar of sorts. And he's talking about
how the country is suffering a national identity crisis, how we've substituted secular religion for actual faith, you know, cultural cancer. I mean, he's, when he talks about being, you know, there's all this talk about these candidates trying to position themselves as being the successor to Donald Trump. And it's striking how each of these three candidates, DeSantis,
Scott, Ramaswamy, maybe you can throw in Haley as well, kind of bring something to the table, but not everything. And it gets back to, you know, you think about primary politics and you want voters to be for something, not merely against something. And Vivek brings something of a, you know, like that vision of what the future needs to be. And
Scott brings that kind of personal charisma or magnetism. And DeSantis brings the record of accomplishments in Florida. So each one of them has something, but I'm still waiting to see if any one of them can bring it together and become that magnet. Because right now, like for DeSantis, people like him well enough. Conservatives are satisfying.
with DeSantis. But they're not enthusiastic the way they still are, remarkably enough to my mind, for Donald Trump. And that's, to me, that's something that needs to change over the next several months for somebody. So, you know, obviously Trump is leading in the polls nationally. He's leading in the polls in New Hampshire. He's leading in the polls in Iowa. Um,
But this raises a question for me. How much does Trump have to win New Hampshire by for it to be a win for him? To me, Henry, I mean, of course, you know, I can say it depends on Iowa and so forth. And that's I mean, I think if he lost Iowa, then.
the pressure is on to win decisively in New Hampshire, just like he did back in 2016, when he basically showed that Ted Cruz, you know, to use the language we employed in our book, was a candidate of the very conservative, socially conservative Republicans, but couldn't appeal to mainstream Republicans. To me, with Trump, he just seems so dominant now.
He's the central figure of the Republican Party now for the last decade, much like Ronald Reagan became the central figure of the party back in the 80s. Now, obviously, there are differences, but he is so front and center. It feels to me like whoever's going to dethrone him has to beat him early, like Iowa, and then cannot let him off the mat.
So to me, with Trump, it feels like a win's a win. Like if you get that plurality, you know, I think his floor right now in New Hampshire is 30%. So if he wins with 33% of the vote, but the next person down is say, you know, at 20, and then there's someone at 12, and then there's a bunch with 10 or below, to me, that's fine. Because
As long as these other, no one is kind of rallying the rest of the group, then that's, I think it gets more and more difficult the further we go on. Because I think we're seeing it now. There's just this default to Trump inevitability. Someone has to shatter that.
And can't let the pieces, you know, kind of it's like the Terminator, right? Like you can you can destroy the Terminator, but the pieces reassemble themselves. You can't let that happen. Yeah, I actually have a Star Wars analogy, which is that, you know, for establishment Republicans who want Trump to go away.
Their moment was the impeachment. And that's kind of analogous to Mace Windu storming Palpatine in the second Star Wars prequel and having him down. And he doesn't finish him off. And Palpatine comes back and throws Mace Windu out the window and destroys the Jedi with Anakin's help and everything.
The rest is history and a multibillion dollar franchise. But it's one of the great what ifs, Henry, to me is like, what if in the wake of January 6th, what if Republican leaders had enough of them had convicted and basically ripped off the bandaid and suffered whatever they might? Mm hmm.
But now what's the alternative? I think any alternative involves ripping off the Band-Aid in the slowest, most painful way possible over the next year. Well, let's leave on that somber note of pain and anguish for Republicans over the next year. Thank you for joining me. Where can people follow your work, Dante?
So let's see. I've been working on some articles. You can always find me at Granite Prof on Twitter and on threads. And most recently, I guess, published something on the New Hampshire legislature and how this citizen legislature has changed over time. Well, that's wonderful. Thank you for joining me. And I hope to have you back on Beyond the Polls.
Thanks for joining me at Beyond the Polls. I hope you enjoyed my guests and their insights and will come back in two weeks' time when Beyond the Polls returns. I'll be joined by Kyle Conduct, editor of Saboteau's Crystal Ball,
Harry Enten, chief election analyst at CNN, and Skylar Krupp, chief political correspondent for the Charleston Post-Courier, who will enlighten us about the crucial state of South Carolina. And we'll also have that fun feature, our first ad of the week. All that and more as together we reach for the stars and venture beyond the polls. Ricochet. Join the conversation.