Trump's Slump
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Welcome back to the Horse Race. It's taken me a week longer than I had thought to get back in the groove. Moving is really hard. But that just gave me more time to set up a star-studded list of guests for this episode. Selena Zito and The Atlantic Magazine's Ron Brownstein joined me this week for an engaging deep dive into the fates of President Trump and the Republican Party. The horses are at the starting gate. They're off. They're off.

Joining me this week for Trump Talk is the inestimable Selena Zito, a reporter and columnist for The Washington Examiner, a reporter for The New York Post, and a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal. Selena, welcome back to The Horse Race. Thanks so much for having me. If people want to find me, all my stuff, they can just go to selenazito.com, and that's where it's all housed.

Selina Zito dot com. That's where the magic happens. True. Yeah, for sure. So you have been a chronicler of the Trump movement, for lack of a better phrase. You have personally met with the president a couple of times and indeed interviewed him recently. What do you think is

He has been doing right over the last couple of months since COVID hit. And what do you think he might have been able to do better?

So let's think about that for a moment. I don't, I mean, this has been an incredibly uncertain time. And one of the most important, and I know that's sort of like the cliche that everyone says, but it's very true. During this, during the virus and in the after weeks of the death of George Floyd in police custody,

I have continuously been out there talking and listening to people. And here's the most remarkable thing that you will probably learn from this conversation in that people are not interested in talking about politics.

It's not that their position has moved away from whatever was important to them. It is just that community and health and family and economic stability have busted through the forefront of what's more important in their lives than what they're thinking about politics.

And I think that if you listened to voters, whether they supported the president or not, I think he gets a mixed bag on his response to the coronavirus.

mostly based on, you know, his sometimes throwaway lines that he uses in his press conferences and his joking, which people are taking seriously in a time that is very serious. It's probably not the best time to be joking. And so I think

at the end of the day, where Trump is is exactly where he started. He remains popular and stridently supported by the people who voted for him in 2016. He is looked at skeptically by the people that either didn't vote for him and/or sat it out more by the people that sat it out.

And he is repulsive by the people who have firmly placed themselves in the never Trump camp. And it wouldn't matter if he had done absolutely everything right. They would still be in that same position. So what does that mean going forward? Is there anything that this man can do to

that will help him win reelection. Because if all he does is get 95% of the people who voted for him in 2016, he's clearly a loser.

Yeah, I mean, that is the challenge for him. I think a lot of this has to do with, is Joe Biden able to basically be William McKinley and stay in his basement—McKinley stayed on his front porch—

And pretty much not have to get out there among the people and interact, do consistent interviews, and more importantly, answer questions on a continuous circle in the way that most candidates typically do.

If Biden is able to do that and pull that off, and also, very importantly, not debate, he stands a pretty good chance of defeating the incumbent president, something we haven't seen since 1992 when Bill Clinton defeated incumbent president George H.W. Bush.

But I would caution people from believing that that's what's going to happen. Because this is 2020, and I have a pretty reasonable expectation that there's going to be a thousand different things that happen between now and November, and the polls are going to move up and down. And here's another thing that also makes me sort of cautious in saying this.

that Trump is toast based on looking at the polling. Not that I think polling is wrong, but I think that responses to polling is inaccurate. And what do I mean by that? Well, in 2016, in the states that mattered, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida,

Voters in those states, 34% of them who voted for Trump, and remember, 2016 is like a Disney movie compared to this, right? 34% of voters did not tell a family member, friend, and or pollster that they were going to vote for the president.

I can't get that stat out of my mind. And also, after talking and listening to voters about their sentiments, in particular voters that didn't support him in 2016, you know, I'm really sort of hesitant to say that it's over for Trump. And again, I want to make sure that I reinforce this. I'm not saying polls are wrong. I just don't not...

convinced that with people's distrust of large institutions, in particular the political class, their hesitancy to tell anybody how they feel about anything because they distrust them so much is pretty bold. And I'm not convinced that there's a lot of honesty going on in the polls that are taken.

Well, it'll certainly been recorded across the world that a lot of times candidates with Trump's profile under overperform what their poll strength suggests them to be. Not all the time, but a lot of the time.

And in 2018, the polls tended to be accurate on a national basis, but were very significantly off in key places in the upper Midwest, like Iowa and Ohio. And that would be exactly the sort of place where you would find people who may like Trump, but don't trust the establishment, including pollsters, and just don't take phone calls.

And here's the other thing. This election is not about him in the same way that 2016 was not about Trump. This election is about these voters' lives. It's about the things... It's about their communities.

It's about their place in this society and in this culture. And I think that is something that we have to pay attention to and remember when we wonder why someone is going to vote for Trump. Well, it's not about him. It's about these voters. And right now they feel...

very, very not only disconnected from culture and society, but they also feel as though institutions like our profession, institutions like the media, is constantly putting them down and or getting the story wrong. And unfortunately, when they get the story wrong, it tends to not be

in the favor of the person that's making the assessment. And so, that's sort of the challenge and the problem that is going on within our culture. I haven't seen a willingness to fix or change. I hear this a lot.

voters about both the Republican establishment and the Democratic establishment. You know, both sides of this coin often complain about these voters having supported Trump, either because they used to be, you know, like a Mitt Romney or a John McCain conservative, and or they used to be a Hillary Clinton Democrat. What these voters often say to me is, you

You know, I don't see anybody saying, you know, saying...

and being reflective and saying, hey, this guy beat us. Maybe we weren't doing some things right. Maybe we should take a look at what we got wrong. There's never that sort of soul searching among the political class. And even though it sounds like too deep in the weeds, trust me, people think about this.

Well, a lot of Democrats seem to think that Joe Biden, because he's folksy, he's older, he's white, he came from Scranton, that he can win back enough of that concern to be able to send them to victory, that they don't actually need to pay too close attention as long as Biden's personality reassures just enough of the Trump voter to

Bring them back in the Midwest. Do you get any sense when you're talking with people that that Washington theory that Biden plays better on that? I understand your life segment of thinking. Is there any validity to that based on you talking with people?

Well, here's the problem on that front. Biden has made some choices throughout his vice presidency that proved to be...

different from that sentiment. And more importantly, if you... Let's just focus right now on Western Pennsylvania and Ohio, and also Scranton area of Pennsylvania, on the energy sector. Biden has been all over the place on the energy sector.

And he has placed both Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York congresswoman, as the chairs of his climate change task force. Both of these people...

Sanders, as a presidential candidate, and Ocasio-Cortez in her role as sort of the head of her party, have said that fracking and/or fossil fuels under their control would be eliminated, stopped, done.

If Biden thinks that he has people's back by making this political move, if he thinks voters will continue to think, oh, yeah, he's got my back, that's not having their back.

And that's local politics. And these energy companies have already faced sort of a devastating setback during the coronavirus. As we start to regroup and the country starts to open up, they now know what it looks like for not utilizing and using fossil fuels. They are not going to want to relive this.

So changing course just a little bit, you've recently had the opportunity to hit the trifecta of the Trump administration in some ways. You've been able to personally interview the president, the vice president and secretary of state. Can you share with horse race listeners what you gleaned from that both individually and collectively?

So, I interviewed President Trump in Allentown, Pennsylvania at Owens and Minor distribution plant in the Lehigh Valley. It was the second time he was out since the virus began. So, he was in a really good mood. You could tell that this was someone that was very, very happy.

to be out and talking to people and listening to people. I think that Trump is someone who gets his energy from people and also from traveling. And he really wanted to... You can go and check out the transcript at selenazito.com. I put the full transcript on the...

In the story, and what was fascinating to me, no matter what question I asked him, his answer was all about Joe Biden.

And that's all he wanted to talk about. At one point, I said to him, after I've asked him three times about China, I said, you're not going to answer me, are you? He said, yeah, no, I'm not. But Joe Biden, so he was anxious and excited to define Biden in that moment. The interview with Pompeo.

He was willing to talk about China, and he really wanted to talk about sort of sanctions and penalties and accountability to the communist China on the coronavirus. He was very strident and very forthcoming. That was the day after I interviewed Trump. And then when I interviewed Vice President Pence this past Friday,

He had just left a... I interviewed him here in my hometown of Pittsburgh. He had just left a listening session, and trust me, he did a lot of listening and not very much talking with African American pastors and community members, talking about their concerns and fears for their community, talking about...

ways to have the police and the community work together. And they also talked about the destructions that have happened in Black-owned neighborhoods and how heartbreaking it was.

And one of the things I thought was fascinating in that interview was all of them, including Pence, who we know is faith is very central to his life, were very emotional about the lack of church, you know, and how that has been impacting people emotionally throughout not just the virus, but also through the riots and then the protests.

And so he was there to talk about opening up the economy, and we eventually did get that. But I get to that because I spoke to him at a plant in a northern suburb of Pittsburgh. But I think the most interesting thing, and the full transcript, again, is available at swingmuseo.com, the full transcript of our interaction. I think the...

To me, the most interesting part of the interview was his discussions about faith and race and the tragic death of George Floyd. So that was that. Yes, that's the trifecta. I got all three. So when do you think that you'll be able to...

Resume your infamous peregrinations throughout the Midwest where you travel off the interstate and into real people's lives in bakery stores, coffee shops, and wherever they gather. Well, here's the thing. I never stopped. Ooh, a lockdown scofflaw.

I continue to do my job every day. I never drove five and a half, further than five and a half hours because I get back home. So if I would leave at 5 a.m. to get somewhere, like I did a great story. One of my favorite stories during this pandemic was in the town of Bristol, Virginia slash Tennessee. The town is

divided right down the middle. One side of the street was open, the Tennessee side. One side of the street was not, Virginia, and sort of how that impacted people. That's also the home of country music. That's where it began in Bristol, Tennessee. And it's also the home of the Bristol Speedway, NASCAR racetrack, short track,

third largest stadium in the world. It's a magnificent place to behold. But I also, I drove downtown. I was incumbent with Maryland at a homeless shelter. I spent the day looking at the impact that the virus had and the stay-at-home order had on black communities, focusing mostly on Youngstown, Ohio, with

And just, you know, as with most ethnic groups, the black community tends to be incredibly clannish, which means there may be multiple families living in the same house. I know it was that way for me as an Italian growing up. And the barbershop tends to be the country club of the...

of the community. It's where they network. It's where people go and sit and talk and find out what's going on and find out where people need help. And the same goes for the church. And so that was a really... That was a tough story to write because...

you know all that was shut off and and that that sense of community which is so vital and important to the black community was taken away so i was also in kentucky when a prison was let out

Oh my gosh, 173 prisoners and they were sent to treatment facilities because of addiction issues. I did a lot of stories in Ashtabula, Ohio about how the crime rate had gone down, but the addiction community was really suffering.

and suicides and overdoses had gone up. So I've not stopped traveling. I think I was out every day. I still am. Just got back from West Virginia. A young 22-year-old young man just beat a Republican young man, 22 years old, Riley, just beat a...

seven-term, five-term incumbent in the West Virginia primary last week. So, yeah. Wow. Well, I look forward to talking with you again in the summertime, and I look forward to following your travels and your work by logging on regularly to selenazito.com. Selena, thank you for coming back to the horse race.

Thank you. You can sign up for my email there. I have left Twitter, so you can sign up for my email. They're free, they're fun, and they're not fattening. That is, I can account, I can personally attest to the three Fs, free, fun, and not fattening.

General election ads usually try to pitch their appeal to the voter demographic that will decide the race, the median swing voter. That differs from district to district and from state to state. So it's always a good idea to have some idea who those voters are when you're running a campaign. And you can also discern who that campaign is targeting by looking at the ad.

This week's ad of the week is from Montana's Democratic Governor Steve Bullock, who is challenging the Republican incumbent, Senator Steve Daines, this fall. His first ad is a clear clue about the voter demographic he thinks is going to decide the race. Let's listen. As governor, I've worked to do what's right for all Montanans, not just one party or point of view. And I'm going to keep working for you every day until my term is done next January.

And after that, if you give me the chance to serve as your senator, I can tell you this. I won't answer to party bosses and won't take a dime from corporate PACs. I'll work with both parties to do what's right for Montana. I'm Steve Bullock, and I approve this message. This ad accomplishes its goal through words and through pictures. Let's focus first on the words. I'll bet there's one word you didn't hear, the word Democrat.

That's right. The Democratic governor of Montana, a man who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination briefly in 2019 before dropping out, never uses the word Democrat. He emphasizes that he'll work with both parties, that he'll put what's right for Montana above partisan interests. And he says he won't listen to party bosses and corporate PACs.

Do you get that, guys? Steve Bullock isn't a partisan, even though he is clearly somebody who has one party that he has been a part of. Now, why would you focus on that if you were Steve Bullock? Well, maybe it has something to do with the fact that Donald Trump carried Montana by 21 percentage points in 2016.

That Republicans have carried Montana for president for decades and that no one thinks that Donald Trump is going to be in trouble here in 2020. In order to win, Daines leads to lose voters that Bullock needs to pick up. Bullock needs to pick up Trump voters who are open to voting for Democrats. Now, it turns out there are plenty of them. Bullock is a two-term governor and he won his last campaign by four percentage points.

In a lot of key counties, he ran as many as 32 points ahead on the margin from what Donald Trump was able to pull off. In Lewis and Clark County, Trump won by seven points, but Bullock won by 23. Cascade County, Trump won by 22, Bullock won by 10. Missoula is a democratic bastion, both because of the old mining towns there and also because of a university.

Clinton won by 15, but Bullock won by 34. And Flathead, way up in the north near Glacier National Park, Trump won by 35, but Bullock lost by only 15. These four counties account for over a third of the vote. And you can see that Bullock has a history of running well ahead of other Democrats that he's been able to get this Trump voter before.

Two other counties have over 20 percent of the vote, Yellowstone County and Gallatin County. Yellowstone, Bullock lost by one, but Trump carried by 27. And Gallatin, home to Montana State University and also home to part of the Big Sky Resort Network, is more Democratic. Clinton won by 10, but Bullock won by 15.

Again, he's done it before. He thinks he can do it again. So the words say some things, but the pictures say even more. You can't see them, but I encourage you to click through on the link to watch the ad yourself if you're downloading this from the Ricochet podcast section. He has pictures of military people. Two of the pictures that flash on the screen have people in combat fatigues.

He's pictures with people in construction industries and people doing factory work. He has a picture of him giving a press conference. And on the background, it says Montana Medicaid and Medicaid beneficiaries. And he has a picture of him speaking before the Butte America Foundation, whose symbol is in oil, Derek. All of these cohere to say he's going to make a class-based appeal.

He's not going to take money from bosses or corporate PACs, and that has two meanings. It's not just party bosses. It's workers versus managers. He's patriotic, the military. Medicaid, he's for social support that people of working and poor backgrounds need more. And construction factories and oil, Derek, he's not one of those crazy enviro-Democrats who goes off and tries to put people out of work.

In his words and in his pictures, Steve Bullock clearly targets that he thinks a working class, moderate person who found Trump appealing but has also voted for Democrats himself in the past is the person who's going to win this race.

Just two years ago, Jon Tester, the Democratic incumbent senator, won reelection, one of only two Democratic senators to win reelection in states that Donald Trump carried, by doing much the same as what Bullock did. He beat his opponent by 18 points in Lewis and Clark County, six points in Cascade, 37 in Missoula, and lost flathead by only nine, again, running massively ahead of where Donald Trump was.

Yellowstone, he lost by only four, where Trump carried it by 27. And he put up a massive swing towards the Democrats among upper-income suburbanites and upper-income educated people and young people in retiree-heavy, upper-income, New Montanans-heavy, and university-heavy Gallatin County, beating Bullock's margin, winning by 21 points.

The national rating services all have Deans as a favorite. And given the overwhelming Republican trend or tilt in Montana, that's probably the right thing to do. But Bullock's campaign ad shows that he knows exactly what he needs to do in order to pull off the upset and hope that he can become Montana's next state senator. And that's why his ad is this week's ad. ♪♪

Joining me this week on Round the Horn is one of America's great political journalists and political demographic experts. That's Ron Brownstein. Ron's currently senior editor at The Atlantic Magazine and a senior political analyst for CNN, where he both writes a column and shows up on your television screen on a regular basis. Ron, welcome to The Horse Race. Well, thanks for having me.

Well, Ron, everyone in the political world has been noticing that Trump's job approval has been dropping. Biden's lead has been gaining. And there's a lot of speculation that maybe it isn't over, but maybe it really is over. What is your thought about the polling trends of the last six weeks and what it means for November? I think we are in a situation that is fundamentally similar to where we have always been in one big respect.

which is that Donald Trump seems to me very unlikely to win the popular vote. That's even less likely now than it was a few months ago. But that doesn't mean he can't get close enough where he can hold on to 270 electoral college votes, probably by winning Florida, Wisconsin, and Arizona by tiny margins. It's not inconceivable that he could do that.

Look, as you know, I believe that Trump's political strategy, the strategy he has imposed on the Republican Party really can be reduced to a single sentence. And the sentence is that he is squeezing bigger margins out of shrinking groups,

at the expense of alienating the groups that are growing in society and in the electorate. And because the electoral college magnifies the impact of those shrinking groups, as does the Senate, and here I'm thinking about non-college evangelical and rural whites, it is possible for this strategy to work in 2020.

uh, you know, in the basis that we're talking about losing the popular vote and winning the electoral college. And that strategy can certainly hold onto the Senate for a while, but I do feel that, you know, if you talk to any business executive in the world, would they invest in a strategy that is fundamentally about increasing your dominance of markets that are shrinking at the price of alienating the consumers in the markets that are growing? And I think that's where Trump has taken the Republican party, uh,

And we saw the evidence of that in 2018. And even if he survives in 2020, I think that will be even more apparent after November. I actually agree with you, even though, as you know, as we've talked over the years, I've been a longtime proponent of a Republican strategy that moved to incorporate blue collar voters into.

But the strategy can only work in the long term if you also hold on to your suburban voters and pitch the appeal to blue-collar voters in a way that it appeals across racial and ethnic backgrounds. And that if you're not doing that, what you're doing is trading one losing coalition, which is the Romney-era Republican coalition, with another losing political coalition, which is what the Trump coalition is. Even if, as you mentioned, it could, because of the demographic gap

of where his voters live, prove successful in the House, White House and the Senate for a few years to come. Long term, though, it bodes a disaster for the Republican Party if you cannot increase support of

among suburban voters and among minorities, particularly the Mexican-American voter who is increasingly growing in size and strength. Well, Henry, you've been very clear and consistent, even eloquent on the need for a blue collar republicanism that could extend across racial lines. To me, the question is whether an execution that is possible. And but

The reason I say that is because the question becomes, is it possible to get the super majorities among non-college whites that Trump achieved in 2016 and is relying on again in 2020? Is it possible to get up to that level without signaling a level of, you know, overt racism and pandering to racial resentment that drives away both suburban whites and

non-white, blue-collar voters who might be working class voters who might be attracted to elements of your economic agenda. I mean, the studies that were done after 2016, Brian Schaffner, Sides and Vavrick, Identity Crisis, I mean, all of them showed that resistance to both racial change and changes in gender roles

We're a much better predictor of support for Trump than any indications of economic distress. So I kind of wonder if it's a little bit of a contradiction in terms. You know, you're not going to get up, I don't think, to 70 percent of

among non-college white men without sending some of the signals that Trump has sent. Now, what's interesting is the evidence that as this has proceeded there, when, when race relations are in the forefront of people's minds, uh,

There's a price that Trump pays for his approach, not only with the suburban whites, but pretty clearly with the non-college white women. I mean, they don't like this level of conflict. They may agree. I've seen polling by the Public Religion Research Institute and others. They may agree with some of the cultural sentiments that Trump expresses. At least most of them do. Uh,

But they don't like the level of conflict. They don't like having to tell their kids why you can't tell a classmate to go back to where they come from. And you've seen probably just out as we're talking, the poll in Iowa, the Ann Seltzer poll, which is not particularly favorable to the Democratic poll. I think it's considered straight down the middle or even slightly Republican leaning. It had Trump trailing among non-college white women in Iowa by double percentage.

digits. That is an unsustainable number. That is kind of landslide territory if it's sustained and replicated throughout the Rust Belt. Because I was thinking this morning, if we divided all of the big voting blocks into men and women, non-college whites, college whites, Hispanics, African-American, Asian-Americans, and others, is it possible that at this point, the only one of those 12

subcategories that he's leading among are the non-college white men? I think it's entirely possible that that's the case right now. And even if he moves in to better territory, which is something I'd like to discuss later in our interview, is he would still lead among only a couple of them. You know, going forward, I do think that a non-college

libertarian or overly small government focused conservatism and a focus on social issues that is more on how to secure liberty for all, including the religious, as opposed to some sort of an implied or explicit denominational freedom.

founding on social issues, which is all too often what one finds in the Republican Party, I think that can be something that is successful after Trump. And if you are able to do that, you may not need that relatively small but

clearly in this environment, influential group of people who are moved more by racial resentment because you would more than make up for that with increased margins among Hispanics, return of many suburban voters. And that when it comes into it, that what Trump's

Real innovation was was not being angry and racially resentful, but in fact, showing the Republican electorate or showing the Republican elite that the Republican electorate overall is much more open to a broadly nationalistic view.

we're all in it together message than had previously be understood. But I certainly understand that if people take from Trumpism that what Trumpism is, is racial resentment and anger, then that is a losing path for the Republican Party. And it will become even more of a losing path if it is something that is pursued by somebody without Trump's particular marketing skills.

And part of the challenge, though, is that once a party sets down a path, it becomes hard to reverse it because the people who are least comfortable with it are the most likely to leave. And that leaves behind the kind of the rump that is most comfortable. Just think about a couple of these polling results from the last couple of years. PRI 2019, two thirds of voters who approved of Trump's job performance said discrimination against whites is as big a problem as discrimination against minorities. In PRI polling,

and this has probably changed, at that point, four-fifths of voters who were favorable to Trump said police shootings of African-American men were isolated incidents, not part of a broader pattern. And then Pew last year found that roughly four-fifths of all Republicans said that people finding discrimination where it doesn't exist is a bigger problem than failing to see it where it does. The numbers on, do the growing number of newcomers, you know that familiar question, do the growing number of newcomers strike?

strengthen America or threaten traditional American values. I mean, that's between two to one and three to one at this point among Republicans. So someone, if they want to change the tone, has to run that gauntlet and win a primary, uh, against the party that is now tilted toward voters who I think are many ways united around, at least until now, uh,

the proposition that systemic racism no longer exists in society. And that in fact, we are being threatened by the demographic changes that are remaking society. Now, Bill Clinton in 1992 won the democratic nomination and, and did impose a change on the direction of the party. When you would say the primary electorate was not necessarily disposed toward it. He benefited because the most likely candidate to carry the traditional flag, Mario Cuomo, who I think his birthday was just the other day, uh,

decided not to run. So it can be done, but I don't think it's simple to say that the party can simply kind of, you know, slough off the Trump years if he loses, uh, like, like, uh, like a skin, uh, and just start over. I think, uh, there is a, he was responding to a genuine portion of the coalition, uh,

And frankly, he's probably not going to go anywhere. I mean, he's probably going to stick around and try to influence what happens next. I bet anything if he loses, he dangles the possibility of running again, as you have pointed out to me in 2024 for years, if for no other reason than to ensure that he stays in the spotlight and eclipses anyone else who might kind of emerge to lead the party in a different direction.

Yeah, I think that's the great $64,000 question of the Republican Party is there's no reason to dispute all of those data that you just said. The question is, does that mean that those are primary motivating factors in people's votes, that I'm completing a column for The Washington Post where I show that

Trump's margin among religiously motivated voters, people who attend church at least a week, were record highs in 2016, that he won all of his margin. He obviously lost the popular vote, but he came even close because he won massive margins among the fifth of the people who said the Supreme Court appointment was the most important margin.

factor in their decision. I could easily imagine many of these religious voters or religiously motivated voters answering many of those questions the way you just stated that they answered, but that doesn't mean it's their voting priority.

And that's one of the things that the questions I like a lot of the people who you cited earlier, but I know most of them and none of them are Republicans. None of them are familiar with the intra Republican constituencies. And so consequently, questions like voting priorities and factional alliances never occur to them. I would recommend anyone to read Emily Eakin's research into the five types of Trump voters where she clearly delineates who is

within the Republican coalition, what their voting priorities and preferences are. And you come up with a much more nuanced and much more hopeful picture while also not just throwing away the idea that, look, there are people in the Trump coalition who are motivated by these things that are not only problematic politically, but very, very bad for the future of America. The, the, you know, looking back at Trump's victory, I was really struck, uh,

that if there were analyses done, cumulative analyses of all the exit polls during the Republican primaries in 08, 12, and 16. And it was striking to me how similar the pathway to the nomination was for both McCain in 2008 and Romney in 2012. Each of them, if you look at the cumulative analysis of all the exit polls, each of them won almost exactly half of Republican voters with a college degree.

and one third of voters without a college degree. And, and in both of those elections, the primary electorate split according to the exit polls, at least 50, 50 between those with and without degrees. So, you know, I, there was, there was a lot of similarity. You had McCain Huckabee and Romney Santorum in 08 and 12. And each time you had one candidate who was primarily the champion of the white collar upscale part of the party. One candidate was primarily the champion of the blue collar, uh,

and evangelical part of the party. And the white collar candidate won. You know, in 2000, Bush managed to be the MBA who said Jesus Christ was his favorite philosopher, you know, managed to cross that divide. Reagan obviously crossed that divide in 80. Dole,

Never really had a full scale opponent, but to the extent he did, it was similar to the 08-12 alignment where Buchanan was the blue collar evangelical candidate and fell way short. What happened in 2016? 2016, once again, in the cumulative exit poll, it was 50-50, college and non-college in the total electorate. But this time,

In perfect mirror image, Trump won 50% of non-college Republicans and only one third of college Republicans. I think it's the first time, and you might have a better sense of this than I, but I think it's the first time there was a true split between the blue collar and white collar wings of the Republican Party and the blue collar wing won. And particularly important in that

And what I wrote about a lot at the time was that the college-non-college split extended to evangelical Christians. And the reason Ted Cruz didn't get very far is because while he won college-educated evangelicals, Trump won the non-college evangelicals almost everywhere and by big margins. Their class mattered more than their... Look at who they were voting for, right? I mean, so...

I think to me that showed there is an audience for kind of Trumpism, you know, that extends into what had been seen as kind of the heart of the social issue constituency in the Republican Party. He introduced other social issues. And again, in that PRI polling, you know, which is very good on questions of religion, white evangelicals are by far

far the religious group in American society, most uneasy about most of the changes we're talking about. And you, you know, I saw a tweet from Eric Erickson after the Supreme Court decision on, uh, firing, you know, LGBTQ rights at work. He said, you know, basically this is exactly what he, this is a sort of change that we, we elected Donald Trump to stop from happening. And I think that's right. Um, so the challenge for the Republicans, I think will be, uh,

to find a way, again, this can work in the short term. You can get bigger margins out of shrinking groups, but at some point you have to speak to the growing American. By the way, I actually have a point at which I think that will

I have an endpoint for this, Henry. I think Trumpism can cease to be a viable strategy for the Republican Party and will be seen as no longer being a viable strategy precisely on the day it can no longer hold Texas, which is coming sometime in this decade.

Well, I think I see the intra-Republican fissures differently than you do. In my book, The Four Faces of the Republican Party, co-authored with Dante Scala at the University of New Hampshire, I look at the ideological fissures. I see that what happened in 2016 is that Trump brought a fifth face, a fifth faction that was predominantly blue collar, but predominantly non-religious. If you take a look at the turnout,

in the Democratic and Republican primaries and caucuses, 2016 was the first time that Republicans almost had parity. In fact, more Republicans voted, more people voted in the Republican primaries and caucuses in 2016, cumulative all the way through until California voted. And that, when it came in, gave the Democrats a narrow lead. But what that means is that

There was a Trump-specific group that came into the party that was not present in 2012 and 2008. And that skews those figures in some way. When you look at the ecological breakdown, Cruz does well in all of the areas that the Huckabee, Santorum –

And Buchanan, probably. Yeah. Yeah. Buchanan. Thanks for reminding me. Well, one thing we show in our book is that in 2000, there was in 2000 in Iowa, the group that is very conservative evangelical voters actually George Bush won them. But with a plurality, if you combined Gary Bauer with.

with Alan Keyes, whose names are familiar only to the most political junkiest of political junkies. They combined, won 45% of that vote in Iowa. Yeah, they won more than Bush. They won more than Bush. And my point is that that's the only time that a candidate from the far religious element of the party has not won Iowa, is when it was basically split three ways between moderate evangelical and two extreme evangelicals.

So the question that I look at is that the way to get into the final dance for Republicans since 1996, be one of the final two or three, is to rally that quarter or so that vote on evangelical issues. And the fact is that Dante Scala's research has shown that that's even true in 2016, is that Cruz won that group. But what always happens is that that voter group alienates everybody else in the Republican Party. Yeah.

So notwithstanding the blue collar, white collar thing, which is real, too, the fact is that Trump was the beneficiary in the later votes where people who liked Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush had to say, which of these two undesirable people do we want? Do we dislike least? And John Boehner, who I consider at the time to have been kind of like the spiritual head of the moderate conservative party.

Trump coincidentally or not coincidentally chose the weekend or the week before the Indiana primary to say that Ted Cruz was a spawn of Satan or Lucifer's devil or something. He actually used that and said that he had Donald Trump on a speed dial. And Trump annihilated Cruz in Angelical Heavy, Indiana, as the somewhat conservative voter got their cue there.

And that's another reason why I think Trumpism, the question is, I think where you and I would have a disagreement is, can Trumpism exist without the divisive personal elements of Donald Trump and without the divisive racial elements that Donald Trump clearly brings to the political scene? I think it can. Obviously, you think it can. No, no, I think it can. In future years, which one of us is right? Yeah.

No, no, I think, I think, I think I obviously you could, you could, you could try that formulation. I think it would require a very different, I think the two, the two challenges are one, it would require a very different coalition to win the general election because you would not get to the level of non-college white support that Trump does without that signaling. I don't think you would get, you would,

you'd win most non-college whites. I don't think you would get to the super majorities that he achieved. And second, I do think there's a challenge of getting through the primary. If there is someone like a Tom Cotton who is running, uh, you know, it'd be, it would be interesting to see who is running as the inheritor of that. Can you, could, could, could the white collar wing again, as it did in 08 and 12 beat that kind of, you know, uh, racially infused nationalism, uh,

that, uh, that, that we saw from, from Trump. And of course, the other thing is that Trump happened. And even if the Republican party, you know, even if he lose, you know, if he loses and Republicans lose the Senate and people want to kind of move on, it's not clear to me, the entire electorate is going to let them move on. I mean, you know, the millennial generation, uh,

will exceed the baby boomers as a share of eligible but not actual voters in 2020, certainly will exceed them in actual voters by 2024. And you cannot sugarcoat Trump's numbers among people under 29 or even 34. I mean, they are astonishingly low. I mean, his approval sometime is in the 20s. I mean, it'll get as high as 30 depending on what's going on, but often it's 24.

among people under 35. And that is a growing share of the electorate. Someone said to me something interesting the other day that, you know, we think about Biden,

when Biden used the language about being a bridge to the next generation of democratic leadership, in some ways he's also a bridge to the next democratic coalition, because if you had nominated Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, you would have needed to significantly increase millennial young person turnout probably in order to win because they would struggle. They might struggle the same way Democrats, every Democrats is 2000 has struggled among older voters. And,

Biden's potential to run better, and he is running better in polling among older voters, kind of gives you four more years to let the demography work through so that by 2024, you don't need heroic turnout increases among millennials for them to really make a big impact simply because the denominator gets so much bigger. And I thought that was an interesting argument. I mean, this puts less weight, certainly a Biden nomination puts less weight on the transformation of the electorate that Democrats have been banking on

simply because he has the potential of doing better with the people who most reliably vote, which are older white people. I think that's an excellent point. And we shall see whether or not these gains that he is showing and the strength among older people manages to hold. How do you see, turning back to the current race, where do you see things playing out from here? And also, you mentioned very early on that

there is a chance that Trump could do what he did in 2016, lose the popular vote and win the Electoral College. So question one is, how do you see things playing out over the next couple of months? And question two is, what's the cusp point? How much can Trump lose the popular vote by and still have maybe a coin flip shot of winning the Electoral College? So, you know, I think, look, if we think about the arc of Trump's

career. He won in 2016 and defied the polls because he increased turnout among non-college white and rural voters more than polls anticipated in the key Rust Belt states. And I think that's pretty clearly why the polls were off in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Though

Those are states where Democrats have been defying gravity for years. I got sort of levitating is the word I used in a piece early in 2016, where they've been running better among non-college whites than they had anywhere else in the country. And, you know, in some ways it was an unsustainable position to be so much better there than elsewhere. And Trump exposed that and Hillary Clinton took her eye off the ball and he wins this narrow electoral college victory while losing the popular vote. So in 2018,

First of all, in office, you know, Trump kind of perpetually validates the saying when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. His focus is overwhelmingly on mobilizing his base. And by 2018, we see the price of that, the first price of that, actually 2017 in Virginia,

makes that initially clear, which is this erosion in white-collar suburbs, not only in places, in metros that have been leaning Democratic before, like Philadelphia or Minneapolis, Chicago, New York, New Jersey, Nova, but also places like Richmond and Charleston and Houston and Dallas and Atlanta, Salt Lake City, Orange County, where there had not really been much evidence of weakness. So that's the first piece that hits him, which is an erosion, a decline, particularly among

college educated white women, but also, you know, a narrowing among college educated white men. I see no evidence that that's going to be any better for him in 2020 than it was for Republicans in 2018. And it might even be a few points worse. I mean, particularly the college white men, I think might not be, might move further away from him. He's probably going to lose 60% of college white women and, you know, college white men will be a coin flip, but maybe a slight edge.

To Biden, the new element, the thing we did not really see very much of in 2018, is this signs of erosion among older whites who have pulled away pretty clearly over his handling of the coronavirus and the suggestion among by some Republicans like Dan Patrick in Texas, pretty clearly sending the message that, you know, your health and safety was less important than

than reopening the economy. And it's the combination of these two things that are creating such a broad electoral map for Biden, even though I think he is unlikely to expand the electorate very much,

Maybe the protests will do that for him, but it's possible that he will expand the map without expanding the electorate is the bottom line. And he can do that because, you know, white seniors matter everywhere and they matter a lot in Arizona and Florida, as well as Michigan and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. So I think Trump needs to get back to 46%

47 to have a chance of winning the popular winning the Electoral College but I think it's going to be tough for him to get up that high again obviously the best the clearest route to do that would be winning back more of the older whites by launching kind of cultural attacks on Biden and tying him to China and blaming China for the outbreak I think that's his most likely path to success but

but I think it is tougher because Biden's, if Biden holds his strength among older whites, that translates into a broader set of states than mobilizing more younger non-whites. Mobilizing more younger non-whites probably wouldn't win you Michigan or Pennsylvania or Wisconsin. It might win you Arizona. Um, uh,

But doing better among older whites is kind of applicable everywhere. So without being, you know, a data head like, you know, some of the some of the websites, I would say that Biden's strength among older whites reduces the odds that Trump can win the Electoral College while having a big deficit in the popular vote.

So then the last question, Ron, let's take that insight that the key thing for Biden to basically lock the door on Trump getting back in the game is to hold enough strength among older whites so that he can, as you say, expand the map without expanding the electorate.

Does his vice presidential selection matter in that? And who do you think he could choose that would both respond to intra-democratic party pressures and not threaten that hold on improving the margin among Democrats?

older white voters. And by the way, as we both know, older whites are disproportionately non-college. And I'm guessing, I haven't seen the numbers on this, but I'm guessing Biden's improvement among older whites is heaviest among non-college older white women.

Uh, it would kind of fit with what we've seen in the decline for Trump among non-college white women in general, relative to 16. Um, I can't imagine after all this that he doesn't pick an African American woman. I, I would be kind of really surprised. I mean, are you going to pick the, you know, the Latina, Latina governor of New Mexico after all this? Are you going to pick Elizabeth Warren, who I thought made some sense for him, uh,

After all this, I think it comes down to one of the African-American women contenders. And while there are issues about Kamala Harris in terms of how the activist community, the Democratic Party views her more as a cop than as a reformer and all that, I don't know how you get past her. I mean, could you pick Val Demings instead of Kamala Harris, who's been vetted at the national level? Could you pick Susan Rice, who is focused on foreign policy when

The country is obviously so convulsed over domestic issues. Keisha Lance Bottoms, very, very talented. She's been the mayor and a city council member. Stacey Abrams, kind of the same story. I don't see him picking Stacey Abrams. I don't think he would view her as being ready to be president. If I had to bet, I would think it's going to be either Harris or Demings and

I would think it would be Harris in the end. It would be kind of a do no harm, I think, for older white voters. I don't think she's a figure who Trump can kind of, you know, raise into something that, you know, the radicals are coming to take over America. And while, again, the most activist elements of the civil rights community, the African-American community probably would be disappointed in her. They clearly would prefer Abrams. I can't imagine there would be a mass backlash either.

Well, Ron, listening to you and talking with you is always like going to a graduate seminar in American politics and then sitting down with the teacher. I really appreciate your time and I'd love to have you back on the horse. Oh, it's great. Same here and happy to do it whenever. That's all for this week. Join me two weeks from now for another look at the topsy-turvy world of American politics only on The Horse Race. I'm Henry Olson, and I'll see you then in the winner's circle.