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Welcome to The Horse Race. This week, we talk with CNN political analyst Harry Enten about why Joe Biden's lead is slipping. We also talk with White House correspondent Deborah Saunders about what it's like to cover top President Trump during the pandemic. Finally, ad of the week, we'll look at a series of ads that examine the role of humor in making a candidate's campaign message stick. The horses are at the starting gate. They're off.
Well, joining me this week on Round the Horn is one of the most insightful and one of the most numerate and one of the most funny of all of America's political analysts. And that is Harry Anton. Harry is officially the senior political writer and analyst at CNN. But he's the guy who does the models and he's the guy who analyzes the numbers and I think is probably the best political analyst and political commentator that they've got going. So, Harry, thank you for joining me on The Horse Race.
Thanks for having me. Shalom. Hope you're doing okay. Yeah, I'm surviving. But then again, I'm just in suburban North Virginia. You are in ground zero of ground zero of ground zero. Tell my listeners where you are in Skonson, whether there is a living being that can be observed on the streets where you live.
I am. I'm in midtown Manhattan on the west side. And I look out the window right now and I do, in fact, see a few people walking. I'm seeing if they have masks on. I think at least a few of them do. Of course, when I go out, I always wear a mask, which is, of course, what we should be doing. But look, it's New York, baby. You know, a one bedroom. It wasn't what I thought it was going to be, but it is what it is.
Yeah, you actually thought that a one-bedroom didn't also mean office, studio, entertainment center? No, I didn't think, although I will say this much. I lived in a studio from 2012 to 2019 and upgraded to the one-bedroom in late 2019. And I think that decision is one of the few in life that I will not regret.
Well, Midtown Manhattan doesn't vote like the rest of the country, and it's obviously suffering the pandemic from the rest of the country. But you are the man who understands the rest of the country. How do you see the political situation as we stand? You've been doing some interesting tweets on how maybe the polls are showing some softening in that mid-April Biden bump. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, look, we're
We're still six months from the election, right? And I'm basically taking a look at all the different pieces of data that I can look at, some of which can be modeled, some of which really can't be modeled. But, you know, especially given the election result in 2016, that I think surprised a lot of us, you know, I'm not leaving any stone unturned. And what we do see in some of the national polls, which I think you were hinting at,
is that Biden is still ahead, right? He's still ahead. But if you take an average of the polls, most recent polls, and you look at the prior poll from those pollsters, especially those in April, you might see Biden clicking down a point or two nationally. It's not a substantial decline by any means, but in a political environment in which the president's approval ratings and in which his horse race numbers against Biden
have been so steady, even a point or two difference from what it used to be, to me is noticeable and at least notable.
You know, one of the things that I think still has not gotten through to the vast majority of TV political pundits, although you, of course, recognize it, is that the president doesn't need to win the popular vote. You know, he didn't win the popular vote in 2016. He lost it by about 2% and still had a comfortable electoral college majority.
Where do you see the break-even point that if the gap between Biden and Trump is X percent, this gives Trump a chance to repeat what he did in 2016?
Yeah, you know, this is one of the great questions that I've sort of been looking at and playing with and trying to understand. And remember last time, of course, basically the break-even point was about three points nationally, right? Clinton won nationally by a little bit more than two, and she lost the quote-unquote tipping point state. That is the state that was sort of the median state in the Electoral College with the electoral votes, Wisconsin, by 0.76 percentage points. So the difference between those was about three.
I think that's a pretty decent starting point, but I would not be surprised. I wouldn't, or I should say, I wouldn't be shocked if Trump say lost the national popular vote by five and still managed to pull it off in the electoral college. I don't think that's a probable outcome, but it wouldn't be a shocking outcome. So for Biden to really feel comfortable, he'd have to be winning the popular vote by more than five.
and almost certainly more than three to have a probable shot of winning the electoral college.
Well, so your tweets have been saying that the most recent polls have Biden up like I'm doing this from memory here, like four point four, something like that right in between those zones. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. You know, if you take a look at the most recent polls, some of which are higher quality than others, and we perhaps can get into that a little bit later on. You know, if you take an average of all those polls, you know, you're looking at a Biden margin a little bit south of five.
Right. You know, if you were to take a longer term average, it might be, you know, it's closer to six. But certainly the fact that it's within that five point window, at least right now, and given, of course, we're six months out, gives you an understanding that Trump, especially given the chance that, you know, that the that the national polls could be off by a little bit. Trump would certainly have some percentage chance of winning. That was non negligible if these were the polls on Election Day.
So walk through the listener through what does it look like a Biden plus five, but Trump victory on election night that if the, if the cusp state was 0.76, as you point out, uh,
What has to be happening with the popular vote for that to move? Does that mean that there's more wasted votes in safe blue or safe red states? Or does that mean that Trump is actually gaining something in the swing states that move that cusp number, that number where he can win the electoral but lose the popular by such a large amount?
Yeah, I mean, obviously the first thing that jumps in my mind is Texas, right? That has to be the state that sort of jumps in. That was a state that obviously Trump won last time around by, I believe, nine percentage points. And that is a state that obviously Beto O'Rourke did fairly well in as the Democratic candidate for Senate in 2018, losing by a little less than three. And if you look at the Texas polls so far, at least the high quality ones,
it suggests a significantly closer race than in 2016, although one in which Trump is still probably favored. It would not be surprising to me if you were to draw out the electoral map and you were basically to say that Biden increased his popular vote margin, but still could not get a majority of electoral votes that it would include
the fact that Texas would be significantly closer. It probably means that Biden carries a state or two that Clinton did not, including probably Michigan and perhaps Arizona or Pennsylvania, one of those two, but then no more, right? So essentially you would need sort of a combination plate whereby Biden were...
would probably win a state or two more than Clinton did. But at the same time, he would come closer to, but not win a big state or two like Texas or maybe a Georgia.
And presumably also increase Clinton's already wide winning margins in places like New York and California. I mean, I don't really see how I don't really see a universal, though. Maybe it exists. You know, I never say never in which Trump does significantly better in California, probably does a little bit worse. Yeah.
Maybe, you know, New York was actually a state in which Trump didn't do so awfully for a Republican last time around, losing by a little bit more than 20 points. It wouldn't be surprising to me, especially given that the pandemic, obviously the coronavirus pandemic has taken a more of a stranglehold in New York, uh,
than in any other state in the nation. And Trump's approval ratings on it are not particularly good. If you see that Trump's numbers, their decline in New York or, you know, anywhere else in the tri-state region, there were a few Quinnipiac University polls that came out from both New Jersey and Connecticut, both of which showed Trump doing worse right now than he actually did against Hillary Clinton. So, yeah, I would say that your point is valid.
So you've made a couple of points about high quality poles so far. How do you define a high quality pole versus a low quality pole? And what are some of the pollsters that you find regularly produce high quality poles? Yeah, so, you know, that's a great question in so far is that it depends on what I'm looking for, right?
If I'm taking a national poll, perhaps my sort of categories of high quality polls are a little bit wider than they are on the state level and it's because of basically this divide between online and telephone polling. Obviously, traditionally speaking, when we think of polls, we think of calling someone up on the telephone or on their cell phone.
And that is no longer the case, in fact, for the majority of polls right now. For a state level high quality poll, essentially I'm thinking that it's a probability sample. That is that there's essentially random selection of the participants in the poll. They cannot opt into the sample. You can't go online and say, "I want to be part of that panel."
Essentially, it's a random selection of the participants. They are reaching people across the board, whether or not they have a cell phone or a live telephone pole. And also, traditionally speaking, when I'm talking about high quality pollsters, I'm talking about pollsters who are very clear about their methodology and don't really hold anything back, whether that is by releasing certain samples to, say, the Roper Center, which is sort of this polling facility.
polling warehouse that has historical polling data or whether it's through membership of some other committee, whether it be APOR or some other polling organization, that tends to be the high quality stuff on the state level. Nationally, it's a little bit more inclusive because the online polls that you can opt into
it's much easier to weight those towards the population as a whole than it is in the states where oftentimes these online opt-in polls, you can't really get enough participants in any individual state to really make them sort of look like the rest of the population. - What do you think about robocalling? That the PPP, public policy polling, does the random sample approach that you talk about, but they don't have a live interviewer on the other end.
Some people say that makes it a bad poll. Some people say it doesn't make a difference in quality. Where do you assign robo-polling? Yeah, I mean, look, if this were 10, 15 years ago in which most people had a landline, I really wasn't actually that opposed to what you're calling robo-polling. And indeed, a lot of congressional campaigns do polls in which what they'll essentially do is robo-poll the landlines and then live interview the cell phones.
And that to me is actually, you know, personally speaking, I'm OK with that. I do not have you know, I would look at that poll and I would say, yeah, I'd look at that number and take it into account. In fact, there are a few pollsters who do that in which I see the numbers and I say, OK, that makes a lot of sense in terms of the pollsters. I think you asked earlier on, you know, who are the who are the consistently high quality polls?
you know, that are, that I look at in the States, you know, CNN does some good high quality polling. Obviously my buddy over at the New York times, Mr. Nate Cohn does a lot of good high quality polling. Uh, you know, Marquette university in, uh, uh, Wisconsin that Marquette university law school, Paul Charles Franklin's another high quality Paul Monmouth university with Patrick Murray. Uh,
out of New Jersey, a lot of high quality polls. And I, you know, also obviously Quinnipiac does some good stuff as well, as well as Marist. Essentially, if you have heard of the pollster and, you know, they're seeming to get their numbers on a CNN.com, chances are they're a pretty high quality poll. If you've never heard of a pollster and you go onto their website and you don't know who the heck any of these people are, in fact, perhaps they don't list who the people are who are doing the poll, maybe you shouldn't trust it as much.
One of the elephants in the room of modern polling is the question of waiting, that even with the random digit dialing or random sample approach, there's a disproportionate, so many people no longer take phone calls, that there's a disproportionate number of people within different categories who will pick up the phone and answer a survey. And surveyors
or pollsters try to adjust for that by weighting the calls that they do complete against various benchmarks that represent their estimate of what the electorate looks like. Where do you come down on the weighting controversy? And do you think the high quality pollsters do a good job of that? Or does that introduce some form of bias that can only be revealed after the election itself?
Yeah, now you're talking my language. You know, oftentimes people, you know, I suppose before what you weren't, you know, you were speaking maybe Southern English as opposed to my New York English. But look, here's the deal. The deal to me is pretty simple. You know, oftentimes, you know, you'll see these polling articles and at the end they'll mention, you know, the margin of error. And I'm like, I don't, you know, as long as your sample size is,
say above 300, 350, 400, 500, depending if you're polling nationally or on the congressional district level or a local race. I don't really care what your sample size is and what your margin of error is. What I really care about is whether or not the sample that you get is adequately representative of the electorate that you're trying to poll.
And, you know, if you look at the 2016 numbers, the problem was that the people that we were getting on the phone in those Midwestern swing states were not representative of the groups that they were supposed to be representative of. That is, you can wait up. Let's say your poll doesn't have enough white voters without a college degree. Right. That was a big problem in 2016, say, in a state like Wisconsin or Pennsylvania or Michigan.
You know, you can wait up those respondents that are white voters without a college degree, and that might get you some of the way home. But the fact is, if those white voters without a college degree are not representative of the larger universe of white voters without a college degree, all that waiting in the world ain't going to do you any good.
So, look, I'm all for waiting. Obviously, you know, I'm for waiting up, making sure that our electorate that we're projecting looks like the electorate that will actually turn up on Election Day. But at the end of the day, it really is. A, is your sample starting off at least somewhat representative? And B, are there variables that you can wait up by that can pull it closer to being representative if it doesn't start off with? And that, I think, is one of the big questions heading into 2020.
You know, you just put your finger on the biggest thing that I'm concerned about with respect to interpreting the polls, which is we've had over the last decade a large number of high-profile polling misses at the statewide level, and some of them
Like in Nevada, you just have to know that whatever pollster is polling in Nevada, it's going to overpoll Republicans. And there's a very consistent bias of two to three point on the margin bias in favor of Republicans. And that's because of the difficulty in contacting Hispanics. But in the Midwest and in areas with large numbers of whites without a college degree, places like Kansas, places like Kentucky,
And in 2018, Iowa and Ohio, where the state polls did not forecast Kim Reynolds winning reelection in Iowa, did not forecast an easy win by Mike DeWine in Ohio. There seems to be a systematic problem with not the waiting problem, but with what you put your finger on, which is that the sort of person who picks up the phone, particularly if they're a white without a college degree, is not representative of the broader electorate.
Are you seeing – I just kind of went on my own little soapbox, and I'm going to say, do you agree? But I will ask, do you agree? But, of course, this is – the thing that I love about you, you'll tell me that I'm full of something that New Yorkers – Malarkey. That's right. You'll tell me I'm full of malarkey. You'll put a bus. I'll drive it down to my house with that. Oh, yeah.
But one, do you see something similar? If you do, how are you trying to look at it? Because I know you're serious about the numbers and you're honest with yourself about what the shortfall or the shortfall, you know, the difficulties with taking a look at the data that you actually are presented with. You know, there are two things that keep me awake at night, one of which is that every Wendy's and Popeye's in the country will shut down.
Besides the honking and the normal Manhattan night once the pandemic is over. Right, right. Besides that, besides that, besides that, one is the loss of fried chicken. And the second is whether or not, you know, these polls are actually representative of what's going to occur and whether or not there is a systematic bias. Right. And look.
Sometimes, you know, you expect the bias to go one way and it goes another way. You know, in 2012, for instance, the polls on the state level tended to underestimate Barack Obama.
and, you know, he won by a wider margin than we expected that even nationally, that was the case. And then if you were to try and project that forward to 2016, that obviously was not the case. However, we did see in the 2018 midterms that at least in a few of the Midwestern states, there was again, that systematic underestimation of the Republicans. You even saw that in the Indiana Senate race, right? Where Donnelly did not do as well as perhaps some of the polls indicated. So look, I'm definitely keeping my eye out on it. I will say that
Fortunately, fortunately, fortunately, at least for those of us who are trying to accurately project what is going to occur or at least accurately tell you in the moment what is occurring, there wasn't nearly that same bias in Wisconsin, in Michigan, in Pennsylvania as there was. There wasn't that in 2018 as there was in 2016, even if it was in a few other Midwestern states.
That's one thing that I think is something that at least I can feel at least a little bit decent about. The other thing that I'm also looking at is the pollsters perhaps who did get it right either in 2016 or 2018. What are those pollsters saying now?
And for me right now, they are showing that Biden is up in those important Midwestern states like Michigan, like Wisconsin, like Pennsylvania. Obviously, it's close enough whereby, you know, I wouldn't be floored if they missed. But at this point, it's close. It's a wide enough margin whereby I feel pretty secure in suggesting that Biden is up right now in those areas.
but certainly not secure enough whereby I would say, you know what, I'm going to go become a big bear and go hibernate for the rest of the election cycle. So one of the things that I think is noteworthy about the upcoming race is that Trump, as a absolute share of the vote, is in most polls, if not all polls, running behind his job approval numbers.
That is not historically the case that going back as long as we have good polling data, which is, say, 1972, by Election Day, a president pretty much tends to get the share of the popular vote that he's also getting on job approval. So the noticeable gap is unusual.
There are people who say that, yeah, that's there, but that's because there are people who will grudgingly say Trump's doing a good job, but they'll throw up their hands and say, I don't want any more of this malarkey. And then there are people who say, well, in the end, this is going to be the conflict point that the person who says he does a good job will end up coming home. Do you have a horse in this race, or is this just...
A bunch of sound and theory signifying nothing.
No, I mean, look, at the end of the day, the most important, the most, the best way to project who's going to win is just to look at the top line, right? Look at the horse race number. That being said, I'm of course fascinated by what is driving vote choice, right? And so I think within the approval sort of argument, there are two ways in which I would perhaps suggest that the numbers that you're seeing make sense. One would be, you know, there's a
share of the electorate right now that is undecided. What I am interested in, uh, is the net approval rating, right? The approval rating minus the disapproval rating and whether or not that matches up with the margin that Biden has versus Trump in a given state or in a given content or, or nationally. And that tends to be, uh,
The gap between the net approval rating and the margin tends to be smaller. They tend to be more closely correlated than, say, Trump's own approval rating versus the share of the vote he's getting. So that's part of the explanation. But I think the other part of the explanation, which to me is a very sort of under-discussed, perhaps because it's that sort of that level one and a half, although I don't really think it's that complicated.
is, you know, there's such a thing called a favorability rating, right? Which is, do you have a favorable or unfavorable view of a particular candidate? And what we see is that in the polls in which the net approval rating tends to be higher for Trump than say what you see in the horse race. And that was true of a number of Fox news state polls, whether they be in Michigan, Pennsylvania, um, or Florida, uh,
The net favorability rating, the favorable minus unfavorable for Trump, tended to be much closer to the gap in the Biden-Trump margin. So, in fact, there may be some voters who approve of the job that Trump is doing, but perhaps don't necessarily hold a favorable view of him, which kind of reminds me a little bit of what happened with Bill Clinton.
in both 1996 when he was running for reelection, as well as trying to project what would happen when his vice president Al Gore was running in 2000, where Clinton's approval rating was 60%. And yet the presidential race was quite close that year between Bush and Gore. But the net favorability rating for Bill Clinton, in part because of the Lewinsky scandal, obviously, the net favorability for Clinton was closer to net even, which was exactly where the presidential race pretty much ended up.
Fascinating. I will start to look at that as I do my own work analyzing the polls. You are also known as a modeler, and your model, I believe, was pretty dead on in 2018. Explain what an election model is, how it differs from a poll, and how you go into constructing it to try and get the most accurate prediction at the most granular levels.
Yeah. So, I mean, you know, look, a model is basically you're taking the parts that we're all talking about here. Right. You know, approval ratings, economic, you know, different measures of the economy with strength. Incumbency, say that's something that you might be looking at if you're looking at a Senate or House race. Incumbents tend to do better. And you basically take all of these different parts. You go back over time. You figure out which parts best correlate with the result.
And then you basically say, okay, given if you want to say this variable gets 5% of sort of the weight, this one gets 15%, this one gets 20%, so on and so forth. You say, okay, that's what's worked best historically. Let's now apply those weights to the current cycle. And you basically project forward to figure out, okay, this is what we would
project would happen. And then based upon how good that model might have done in the past, you say, okay, these are our bars, but it's nothing at least on the top level that is ultra sophisticated, right? It's not something that is sort of, oh, we're doing some weirdo thing and oh my goodness gracious. It's more the building of it, putting those parts together and then figuring out sort of how to write the computer code that is the more complicated part.
And that's where fried chicken comes in, is it helps fuel you as you're writing the code deep in the late early morning hours of a New York in a New York one bedroom. That's exactly right. You know, I will say this much. Modeling is probably one of the things that leads to the most unhealthy outcomes for an individual's heart. But you know what? It's one of the things that leads to the happiest outcomes in terms of an individual's taste buds.
Give my readers a background of your background, that you don't come into this from having been a campaign consultant or from having been a print journalist. What is your background and how did you come to be where you are? Yeah.
Yeah. So my, I, you know, I'll give you the very brief story, which is my father took me into the voting booth when I was very young in New York. Uh, you know, New York used to have those lever machines where you'd go from the left to the right. And it was really fun when you're like a five-year-old and the old, the old Jewish ladies who, you know, ran the polling stations would give me Stella Dora cookies. So I was really enthralled by that. Uh,
And then, you know, I happened when I was a young guy, was able to watch Election Night 2000, thought it was just so amazing, so interesting. And so I really just began studying elections a lot. I was fortunate enough to go to a school in New Hampshire. And the reason I did so was so that I could vote in the first in the nation primary back in 2008.
Really enjoyed, studied government, you know, working, worked on a blog while I was in college, then spent six months, the first six months out of college on my parents couch because I was unemployed. But then fortunately was able to get a job with The Guardian, which, of course, is the UK paper.
Spent a little over a year and a half there, then went to work for FiveThirtyEight, of course, which is the statistical journalism website with Nate Silver. We did some modeling there, cracked some code there, numbers there, was there for four years and have been at CNN for the last a little over two years, coming up on two and a half years. But I don't do campaign stuff. The fact of the matter is, is that my one and only interest
is helping to inform the reader or the television viewer or whatever medium I'm reaching you on, podcast, whatever, of what I think is the best chance of something happening. And one side or the other is going to win. And my job is to tell you which of those not to root for a particular side. Well, you do a pretty darn good job of doing it. How can my listeners follow you aside from reading CNN.com?
You can obviously, once the coronavirus pandemic perhaps lessens at least a little bit and TV coverage begins to focus back towards the election, see me on air. But in the meantime, you can see me or at least read my thoughts on Twitter. And I'm at Forecaster Enten. Hopefully you can spell Forecaster. E-N-T-E-N is how you spell Enten. And of course, it means ducks, D-U-C-K-S in German. So there's a little bit of background on my background a little bit.
Uh-huh. So you're the forecaster, Doc. You're the one who quacks the loudest or the most accurately. You know what? Hopefully, I'm not just the loudest in the room. I'm the most accurate. But at least I'll be winning some prize, even if I'm not the most accurate. Well, Harry, it's always a delight talking with you. And stay healthy, stay indoors. And I'm looking forward to having you back on the horse race. My pleasure. Looking forward to be back.
This week on Trump Talk, we are joined by Deborah J. Saunders, the White House correspondent and a columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Deborah, welcome back to The Horse Race. Henry, thank you for having me. Well, it's been a different experience covering the president during the pandemic. What is some of the things that stick out most in your mind for how things have changed and maybe how they've also stayed the same?
Oh, that's a good question. Well, one way that it's changed is that most of us are covering the White House from our homes because the White House is practicing social distancing and has been some time, at least with the press corps.
for weeks now. And so they basically, the Correspondents Association has told us not to go into the White House unless we have a seat in the briefing room and they rotate the seat. They've gone from 49 seats to 14 and I get a chance every two weeks for that seat or I'm pooling. Of course, I'm home now because I was pooling an event with the vice president about a week ago.
And I talked to his spokesperson, spokeswoman Katie Miller, and she did not have a mask on. I did have one on. It was an event outdoors at a rehab center in Alexandria.
But because of that, we found out the next day that Katie Miller had coronavirus and I got tested. I was negative. But Dr. Fauci, Dr. Hahn and Dr. Redfield from the task force have all decided that while they too tested negative, they should self-isolate out of an abundance of caution. And if they're going to do it, I'm going to do it.
So, yeah, they've been saying for years that among an old vaudeville gag is that if somebody's doing well, they're killing their audience. And sounds like the Trump staff might be taking a little too literally.
You know, I mean, people have been highly critical of the White House for the way that they don't wear masks. And let's be real about this. The press corps, we weren't wearing masks a whole lot either. I'd say maybe the press corps was a week or two ahead of the White House. But at a certain point in time, after they basically told the public to wear masks, and as you may recall, back in March, they were telling people not to wear masks because they wanted to save
medical masks for healthcare professionals, there was such a horrible shortage. So, but I think the idea of setting an example seems a little foreign to them. So I go to this, cover this event in Woodbine at the rehab center in Alexandria and all the press corps have masks on.
Not necessarily if you're standing away from everybody before the event started, but nobody from the task force had one on. Now, it was an event that was outdoors, and I think the chances of spreading to somebody outdoors are really slim. But the thing is, you're supposed to set an example, some say. So they should have just looked like they took it more seriously. And that's the problem that they have to cope with.
It's kind of a symptom of the broader problem, from my view, of this whole pandemic response, which is that for all the criticisms from the usual sources, I'd say the American response has been somewhere from average to good compared to other countries, particularly given our federal system that makes it harder legally for a centralized one-step-all system.
response. But the rhetorical guidance has been, well, let's say spotty. And this sort of thing where you say one thing and do another is not necessarily a one-off for this White House. How have you viewed the presidents and vice presidents, in particular, rhetorical or public image performance during the pandemic?
Well, let's go back to masks for a second, because we know politicians don't want to be seen with masks other than Nancy Pelosi. Andrew Cuomo doesn't wear one. But it's such a nice Armani mask. I know. I was trying to find out. I was online last night seeing where I could get one. I wanted to order one. Same place you can get her $2,000 ice cream refrigerator, I think.
Probably. And when we saw the Senate had a hearing about the coronavirus yesterday and the senators in the room, generally they're asking questions. They were social distance. So they didn't wear masks. And so the people in the White House, their argument is as long as we're social distancing, we don't need to wear masks. And that was sort of an argument that you heard pretty early on in March. That's what task force members were saying. The medical people were saying this. So, yeah,
And they're probably pretty right that it really is pretty, it is hard to catch the coronavirus if you're standing away from people. So that's been their argument and that has been the way that they conduct themselves. But you also have to sort of tell people that this is what you should be doing. And that means some people have to do it. In the case of the vice president, he wasn't wearing masks. He went to an event at the Mayo Clinic where
where, uh, everyone else was wearing a mask. He did not. And he got a lot of criticism for it. He later said I should have worn one. And, um, and then, um,
He did wear one at an event shortly thereafter, and then he's back in Alexandria going to this event with no mask. So it's sort of like you get the feeling that it's an unspoken rule from the Oval Office that people shouldn't wear masks, at least it was, because they don't want to look like they take the virus too seriously. They don't want to look afraid of it, and they think it makes people look weak. And woe be to the person who violates that sort of corporate culture
By wearing one. And so we'll see how much. And, you know, you show up for a briefing. I was at a briefing last week on Friday and everybody in the press corps had a mask on. I think that might have been the first or second time that it ever happened where every press person had one on. And then Kayleigh McEnany comes out. Obviously, she's not going to wear a mask while she's at the podium. Right. But there are other people from the press office and they sat with one seat between them, no mask.
And I think that's the sort of thing that they have to do to change, to show that they take it seriously. The criticism has really been for the White House is that they didn't seem to take it that seriously. Do you think they're taking it?
Seriously, not the masking aspect. Do you think that the inner sanctum of the White House still takes it seriously? Or do you think that this has moved on in their minds to a now let's get the economy reopened as quickly as politically possible?
That's a great point, Henry, too, because the other reason they don't want to wear masks in public so much is they want to move on to getting the economy going. And let's face it, we know that they take it seriously because they shut down the economy. They basically told people to stay home. And obviously their actions show how seriously they take it. But I think
everybody I know sort of feels a little bit immune. It's human nature to think, well, yeah, okay, I'm 65, but I'm okay. I think a lot of people who might have what they call comorbidities, like age, that they tend to think that they're going to be okay. And as long as they do a lot of things, it'll be good enough. And there hasn't been anybody there who really slammed the hammer down and said, I don't care what you think.
This is how we're going to behave anyway. And that's really an image problem because let's face it, I mean, they've really mobilized this country to get things going. Not only did they shut the country down and then they're prodding people to move forward now and reopen, but when you look at what they did with Russia,
With ventilators and all the ventilators that came out when you look at what they did to get masks out and other personal protective equipment. And the testing, I mean, the idea that you would go from deciding, okay, we're going to do testing. And 62 days later, you know, they've produced it and you've got all these different companies working to put together their own tests. That's like amazing. That's something that's never been seen before.
So Trump really does have a point when he says he's basically not getting enough credit for doing things that are really hard to do. Yes. He has, he has a point on that. He's done a lot of difficult things and he's, and he's done a lot of things that, that, uh, I mean, he's done a lot of things. Well, I think, did he, did he not take it as seriously as he could have earlier? Yes. But that's true for almost all of us. Right. Uh, and so, uh, that's true. But on the other hand, um,
I think he also has been his own worst enemy because he says things at times that everybody knows aren't quite true. So you're just not sure what to think. For example, he said anybody who wants a test can get one a couple weeks ago. And then he's repeated it sort of again Monday until he had to sort of walk it back. Well, not everybody should want a test.
And of course, we all know that not everybody can get a test because we didn't know about this virus, let's say, until January. And the fact that we have tests out there now and they are available for people who really need them, I think that says a lot. I think that shows a lot of progress. The latest kerfuffle that will obviously be
Replaced by another kerfuffle in the next 48 hours is the cutting off of the press conference, the asking of a reporter, why don't you ask China about that? Which, of course, since the woman is of Asian American heritage, the reporter who asked the question has inevitably produced the cries of racism or prejudice from the usual suspects. Are you beginning to get a sense in...
your coverage of the White House, that there is going to be a consistent pivot to the twin themes of blame China and let's do what we can to get the economy open, that that's where they want to fight the election on?
Well, let's add one other thing, blame the media. And we know this president really likes to, that he considers the press court of the perfect foil. And so when he calls on Weijia and, and, and then he says to her, you know, blame China. And the question she asked was why do you say that we're the best when Americans are dying? Isn't that where your, your emphasis should be? And, you know, I,
I haven't always asked perfect questions myself. That's not my style. I don't, that's sort of really more of a rhetorical argument than a question in my mind. Uh, and so he bristled, right. Which I think is pretty, uh,
Anyone would expect that. And then he goes into this thing where he, you know, he knows who Weijia is. He said blame China for a reason. He did it on purpose and she was ready with a response. We know that Trump does seem to be prickly when it comes to female reporters and he's been
more confrontational with female reporters of color. I mean, that's just a reality. But also, they really want to blame the press for the fact that they're not getting the credit that they want. So, you know, and they were the perfect foil, but let me just sort of
Peel back the curtain for a second. One of the dramas that's been going on is the White House Correspondents Association has worked really hard to put up these social distancing rules. We want to make sure that it's safe to cover the president in their social distancing. But the other part of that is basically, you know, Louie Gohmert, who was in the White House last week, some press people were asking him about
social distancing in their behavior. And he said, if anybody in this room has the virus, we've been tested. It's you guys in the media. So they're ready to like blame it on the media if anybody gets it, which is sort of funny considering I'm at home after I talked to Katie Miller and I had a mask on and she didn't and she was positive. But anyway, so they're trying to...
They're making it really confrontational and they want people to focus on how much they hate the media so that they'll look at other stuff less. And I think it's a deliberate strategy. It's worked really well for Trump. And there are journalists who play right into it. Do they play right into it because they want to play that part in the drama or do they play right into it because they're kind of bumbling into it and get sucked in?
Well, that might have been the case earlier on, but anybody who's, you know, somebody who's covered the White House for as long as Waja has, she knows what's going to happen. I think she's not surprised by what happened.
And she was ready with a comeback for that very reason. So I think that there are people who have roles. There are different kinds of reporters. There are people, I mean, I'm somebody who's sort of there to get a story and my questions tend to be about the coronavirus or something else like that, or about the White House and what it's doing, things like that. There are other people who ask very confrontational questions, not looking for an answer, right?
And and that's something that is, you know, it's it's something that's elevated their profile. And so you get this this relationship where the president knows who he can call on to get a certain kind of question and he can be ready to react in a certain way. It's both. It's great for both sides, not necessarily so great for everyone else.
Are you beginning to get a sense from the White House when normalcy will start to return with respect to covering him? He likes to travel. He's going to travel sometime soon, I expect. How is that going to run if you're going to be moving out of the White House so frequently, but there's still social distancing in effect?
Well, in a way, the travel pool, I don't think you get much smaller. So if you're traveling with the president when he's when he's doing events, that sort of probably won't change much. I don't think we're going to see rallies for a while. And I think the thing is, though, Henry, it's never going to get back to what it was when you're in the bill, when you're at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
There are different avenues that are cut off and things may change. I mean, remember, we we didn't have a briefing for over a year from the press secretary. Now they're back again. And Kayleigh McEnany has shown herself to be very able. And she goes out there. She keeps her briefings for under 30 minutes. And she tries to, you know, she she she's she's.
confrontational too, but in her fashion. But how long will that last? Will it last through the term? I don't know that. Things do change quickly, but I do think that the hostility there is
I mean, you really feel it. So there's a woman from a network OAN and she has been showing up and standing in the back of the room, even though she's not she doesn't have a seat anymore. She used to be part of the pool rotation. She had a seat, but then she started showing up because the White House invited her.
And she gets called on every time she's there. And that's sort of an example of the OAN is trying to make it look like the horrible anti-conservative press association has gone after us because we're conservative, when in fact she had a rotation seat. She was treated like everybody else. But this is the kind of thing that they do to just sort of have people at each other's throats. They want people in...
in the briefing room to fight with each other. And I think that's something really designed to do that. And they want somebody to be fighting with the president or his spokesperson.
Well, they want they they want reporters to fight with each other, too. So, I mean, for example, when when when the president asked the question of Waja and then he turns to Caitlin Collins. Right. And he says, I'll take you. And then she says, no, I'm going to give it back to Waja. That's something that a number of people, you know.
in the press room do. And when, when she says, okay, well now I want to ask my question. And the president says, no, I'll go to someone else. You had your chance. And then he cuts it off. He's trying to get people to other people in the briefing room to say, aha, you guys ruined it for us. I don't think it's going to work the way he wants it to work, but that's the idea. Well, last question. How do you see Trump?
Taking the summer with respect to his, you've got coming up a couple of months, some states are going to move faster, some states are going to move slower. Is Trump going to be highlighting the faster moving states, which tend to be the Republican states, and giving them more visibility using the White House briefing room or using the press conferences?
He has an event today with a Democratic and a Republican governor in the cabinet room. So I think he is going to try to reward governors with whom he has an agreement. I definitely think you can expect that. And, you know, I mean, I don't know, Henry, I don't know what's going to happen from one month to the next anymore. Do you?
The only thing I know is that chaos and kerfuffles are going to be the order of the day because that seems to be a concept.
Yeah, I mean, I just I'm not sure what's going to happen. I will say one thing. This is an agile White House and that when they see something isn't working, they often can pivot away from it. So I think that Trump really wants to get out there and he wants to do rallies. Maybe he'll come back and start doing the briefings again or there'll be more Rose Garden events because you know that he loves to mix it up and he loves to be on camera.
We'll see what happens after. But I really, I'm not going to predict what's going to happen next. I don't think I'd be right. Well, Deborah, thank you very much for your insights and welcome back. Thank you for coming and joining me back on The Horse Race. Thank you, Henry. My pleasure. Television advertisements are always meant to make a point, even if that point isn't necessarily clear to the viewer because the viewer isn't in the inside of the candidate's strategy. However...
Candidates also know, and their consultants also know, that ads have to break through a lot of clutter. That just because you've made a good point in 30 seconds doesn't necessarily mean that the person is going to remember you. And that's particularly true for a candidate who is unknown. That's why some of these unknown candidates try to use humor
Break through the clutter so that you'll remember their name and their point. The classic entry in this genre is Mitch McConnell's 1984 ad that many say made him a United States Senator. Let's listen. My job was to find D. Huddleston and get him back to work.
Huddleston was missing big votes on Social Security, the budget, defense, even agriculture. Huddleston was skipping votes but making an extra $50,000 giving speeches. I just missed him when Dee skipped votes for his $1,000 Los Angeles speech. I was close at Dee's $2,000 speech in Puerto Rico. We can't find Dee. Maybe we ought to let him make speeches and switch to Mitch for senator. The humor is rather obvious just if you listen to it.
There's this guy, he's got a bunch of bloodhounds, and he's trying to chase down the Democratic incumbent, Dee Huddleston, because Dee Huddleston allegedly is missing votes on important issues to Kentuckians in order to make speeches on the side in luxurious locations. This is a wonderful ad because it, first of all, has the arresting visuals of a guy holding a pack of bloodhounds, waving a shirt, which presumably has Dee's scent on it,
As they're running all around the state and then ultimately all around the world. You have a video when he's talking about missing the speech for Los Angeles, where there's this guy reading Variety magazine by a swanky hotel pool and the bloodhounds go passing by. Then he's on a tropical beach and this guy in a beach chair points down the ocean, down the beach.
when he's trying to find Dee Huddleston. So it's the sort of thing that you don't usually see in a commercial and it won't help stick in your mind. It's also very suited to Kentucky. There's the outdoors element. There's the Kentucky element. There's the bluegrass music playing in the background. Then finally, you have the question of how do you get the person to make a decision once you've told them that Dee Huddleston isn't the sort of person that you think that he ought to be? Well, that's where you come up with the catchy tagline, switch jobs.
They never explain who Mitch McConnell is. They never actually give his name. They just say switch to Mitch. And that's something that sticks in your mind. It's a mnemonic device. At the time in 1984, Kentucky was not the deep red Republican state that it is today. Republicans have very little statewide presence outside of ancestral region of central Kentucky.
Kentucky, Hill Country, that had not unionized in the coal era and retained ancestral ties to the Republican Party, to the Civil War, and before that, even to the Whig Party in the 1830s and 1840s. Dee Huddleston had been thought to be safe from competition because he was basically the sort of centrist Democrat that this state had preferred for over a century. But Mitch McConnell wrote Roger Ailes' famous Bloodhound ad, and its humor was
to become senator and now the Senate majority leader that everybody in politics is talking about. The modern classic in this genre was used just a few years ago. It's what made Joni Ernst a senator. It's called Make Him Squeal, and let's listen to that. I'm Joni Ernst. I grew up castrating hogs on an Iowa farm. So when I get to Washington, I'll know how to cut pork.
Joni Ernst, mother, soldier, conservative. My parents taught us to live within our means. It's time to force Washington to do the same. To cut wasteful spending, repeal Obamacare, and balance the budget. I'm Joni Ernst, and I approve this message because Washington's full of big spenders. Let's make them squeal.
This ad has much higher production values, as you would expect for an ad that's cut 30 years later. It doesn't employ an actor. It doesn't employ an odd circumstance that you don't usually see on television. But it does have Joni Ernst talking about castrating pigs and has a picture of a pig kind of looking up in surprise as she says that. She has her name on the screen, apparently.
which is something that people didn't do back in the 80s but do now. It says Joni Ernst, conservative, and as she's ticking off all these hot-button conservative issues about cutting spending and so forth, it says her name and the issue on the screen against the backdrop of a barn and against the backdrop of the pig. Just like with Switch for Mitch, it comes up with
a really catchy tagline that ties together the whole motif of the ad while also taking the anti-politician image that Joni Ernst is trying to convey and make it stick in the mind. Make them squeal.
that the final words of the ad made Joni Ernst a superstar. She had been a little-known or virtually unknown state senator in four small rural counties in the southwest of the state, well outside of any of the significant media markets. Nobody knew who Joni Ernst was before the ad, but afterwards, she was the frontrunner, and nobody could stop her. She's now running for re-election, and she's got to thank her campaign consultants,
that pig and make him squeal for being somebody who looks like she might be a fixture in Hawkeye state politics for quite some time. There are two campaigns that are trying the humor angle in this campaign. Neither quite hits the home run that make him squeal or
Switch to Mitch and the Bloodhound ads did. There's one in a primary challenge in a seat in suburban Buffalo, New York 27, that uses an IRS agent, i.e. an actor playing an IRS agent, to convey a certain message. So let's listen to this ad. The IRS does not endorse candidates.
But if we did, we'd choose Chris Jacobs. Chris Jacobs shares our values. He supported $5 billion in new taxes and voted himself a $50,000 pay raise funded by taxpayers. Imagine how he'd spend in Congress. We can't let Beth Parlato into office. She's like President Trump, a tax cutter. But Chris Jacobs, he's just like us, a tax lover. I'm Beth Parlato, and I approve this message.
You don't usually see somebody in a blue suit with a blue tie and a button-down shirt with a big IRS logo in the background on television. So simply the visuals stand out from the normal commercials. Here what the candidate is trying to say, Beth Pallotto, is that her opponent is somebody who's against Republican values.
She uses the actor playing the IRS agent to say that this person loves taxes and raised his own pay, things conservative Republicans tend not to like. And they use a visual of a phony IRS form that has Chris Jacobs' name and the charge displayed on the screen. And then, of course, the ad switches to say the IRS would never want this Beth person because, heaven forbid, she likes Donald Trump and would clean up the swamp.
It's not as funny as the Bloodhounds ad, and it doesn't have the memorable line like switch to Mitch or make him squeal. But it's something that might raise Pilato's name above the normal run of a challenger trying to win in a primary and certainly helps make Chris Jacobs look a little less conservative than he would like Republicans in that area to believe.
The final ad comes from a primary in New Mexico's 3rd District. These are two Republicans who are trying to take on a Democratic incumbent who just won this normally Republican seat in the 2018 landslide. Let's listen to this ad. I'm Yvette Harrell, and I approve this message.
A reading of never-Trumper Claire Chase's actual Facebook posts. Donald Trump's an a**hole unworthy of the office of the president. Claire Chase said Trump is beyond offensive. Ugh, throw up in my mouth. There are 836,297 reasons not to vote for him. Hashtag dump Trump. Now she's running for Congress, and Claire Chase changed her tune. It's an act. She's never Trump, so we're never Claire.
The issue here is trying to get the voters in the district to try and remember that the candidate that's being attacked is somebody who in 2016 made a number of Facebook posts attacking Donald Trump. The humor comes from the fact of the visuals. The visual has the name of the candidate and a slogan in the background that says that this is her Facebook post and has an animated picture.
of what the candidate supposedly looks like on a stage. And you've got an actress portraying her as if in her voice, reading the Facebook post as if this were the person herself. And the voice is somebody that can only be reminiscent of Moon Unit Zappa with the classic Valley Girl accent, trying to make her look not only anti-Trump, but a little bit ditzy as well.
One of the things about this ad is that because it's a little bit out of the box, it's attracted free media attention. That means that the newspapers and the television stations that are talking about this controversial ad are replaying it and amplifying the message. It's not clear whether this is going to work. The primary is not for another few weeks. But it's another example of how you try and use humor in an unconventional setting to make
the message stick. And that's ultimately what ads are meant to do. They're meant in a short, usually 30 seconds, almost never more than a minute, to make one or two key points, make them memorable, and motivate you to take action. It's unlike the sort of ads that
most companies do, which is meant to make you feel good, maybe move a couple of points in market share. In politics, you have to mobilize a large constituency quickly and forcefully. That means political ads have to be more direct, they have to be more sharp, and they have to cut through a clutter.
Humor is one way to do that. And if it works, it can work really well, as Mitch McConnell and Joni Ernst can attest. We'll be looking at humor in other ads of the week. But for this episode, I just want you to remember that sometimes he who laughs last not only laughs first, but laughs best and laughs all the way to Washington.
That's all for this week. The Horse Rake is going to be taking a break and will return next in two weeks. We'll talk then with National Review's Jim Carity and The Washington Post's Robert Costa. I'm Henry Olson, and I'll see you in the Winner's Circle.