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Welcome to The Horse Race. I'm Henry Olson, and this week I dissect Super Tuesday and Biden's resurrection with political journalist Matt Lewis, preview next week's crucial Michigan primary with Detroit Free Press reporter Todd Spangler, and talk all things Trump with American greatness publisher Chris Buskirk. The horses are in their gates. They're off! ♪
Joining me on this week's Round the Horn is Matt Lewis, good friend and a senior columnist at The Daily Beast and a political commentator at CNN. Please subscribe and catch his podcast, which I have been a guest on many times, Matt Lewis and the News. Yes, those of you who are into music, it is a shameless ripoff of Mr. Huey Lewis of Back to the Future fame. Matt, welcome to the horse race.
Thank you, Henry, and welcome to the podcast sphere. Yeah, I feel like now I get it. When are you guys going to teach me the secret handshake? Could you believe I've been doing this now for like a decade and they still haven't taught me the handshake? I think we have to go chase down the secret cabal of Uber podsters and tell them we have to be let into the inner circle now.
Get Adam Carolla and Mark Maron on the phone, man. Okay. Okay. Done. But Super Tuesday, super for super sleepy Joe, wasn't it? Really stunning, actually. Better than our wildest expectation. I mean, if you were rooting for Joe Biden, it – look –
I mean, the fact that Elizabeth Warren came in third place in Massachusetts, the fact that Mike Bloomberg didn't,
mess up Texas for Joe Biden. The fact that Biden won Minnesota, I think he never even visited there, didn't run a single ad there. And so really a stunning reversal of fortune from just a week or so earlier. Yeah, well, as long as we're doing pop culture, reversal of fortune, that film about Klaus von Bulow, maybe we should steer away from that for Joe. Mm-hmm.
Well, it was amazing and just so quickly too, right? And you really can't underestimate South Carolina, which was on the Saturday before the Tuesday. That was clearly not just a big night, but a huge night, maybe in American history. We'll see. Yeah. No, I mean, I've been following politics for 50 years or so, and I have never seen a 72-hour turnaround like that one.
Yeah.
And then to have your two competitors for the moderate lane, including a woman who was going to win her home state, decide to give that up for the greater cause. I have never seen that in politics. People usually with type A personalities who think that they should be leader of the free world have to be drug with their fingernails clawed into the cliff to get off of it and get out of the race. But...
Yeah.
allowing Trump to win to basically do a hostile takeover versus the Democrats, which it is amazing how quickly they fell in line, how quickly they got out. Mayor Pete gets out the day after South Carolina. Amy, as you know, as you noted, uh,
amazing that how quickly they got out and endorsed Joe Biden in Texas. And then Mike Bloomberg, you know, he stayed in, of course, through Super Tuesday, but then got out immediately. Really stunning how fast they did that. And I think that's a really important point, because if they had
you know, messed around and dragged their feet and thought about it and, you know, going back home to South Bend and think of talk, you know, talk about it with family for a week or two. You know, it just it had to happen the way it happened. And it's pretty amazing that it did. Yeah. I mean, going back to 2016, I like Marco Rubio a lot. I like voted for John Kasich, although I've clearly soured on him over the last couple of years. But you take a look and say,
After the Republican Super Tuesday, it made sense. Kasich should have dropped out before that because it was clear he was going nowhere. But Rubio, at least there was a reason to stay in after South Carolina. Let's see what happens. But after that...
There was no path forward for Rubio and there was never a path forward for Kasich, yet they stay in. You know, Rubio makes the decision that Klobuchar didn't, which is to stay in to fight for the home state and then drop out after the home state. And Kasich just stays in forever. And there was a theory. I mean, there was a theory. And that cost Ted Cruz. Not that I think Ted Cruz would have been. You know, what made it work for Biden was Biden was able to coalesce.
The majority lane and effectively Ted Cruz was a Sanders like candidate who was a factional candidate. But still, who knows what would have happened if they had gotten out? No, I totally agree. But in their defense, there was a theory that the way to stop at some point it was too late for any one of them.
to win the nomination. And so the strategy was stay in. Kasich should stay in and win Ohio, thereby depriving Trump of those delegates. Rubio should stay in and win Florida, thereby depriving Trump of those delegates. Well, we know how that worked. We know how that worked out. Well, one for two, you'd be in the Hall of Fame if it was baseball, 500 batting average.
And Cruz in Texas, the same premise. But this also gets into the difference in nominating procedures is that with the Republicans, winner take all. If somebody could convince themselves once they were behind that they could turn it around, there was a big delegate upswing with the Democrats' proportionality. While it encourages people to stay in for a while because if nobody's going to break out, everybody can break out.
On the other hand, once it's clear that you're not going to break out, there's no chance. Moving from 15% to 30% doesn't get you 100% of the delegates. It just gets you 30% of the delegates. Yeah. So, yeah, it's not perfectly – it's not Apple – I mean it's not a perfect analogy. I don't know if it's apples and oranges, but it's different. And, I mean, to me, the biggest – there's a leadership thing, right? So, like, the Democrats still respect –
Barack Obama and Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, they still have a certain amount of credibility whereas George W Bush I think really didn't have much juice to help Jeb a rush a Limbaugh or Fox News were much more likely to be the leader of the Republican Party Than John Boehner or Paul Ryan or Mitt Romney So that's one of the differences. I think the big the other big difference is obviously the african-american community and
which tend to be modern nowadays, tend to be the most moderate and pragmatic and largest voting bloc. I think that the Democratic Party, because of the African-American vote, is much more moderate and pragmatic than the Republican electorate. I didn't fully appreciate that, but I think it's pretty clear now.
And there's also – the problem is that by the time we got to 2016, the moderate aspect of the Republican Party had no strong leader. The moderate leadership of the Republican Party – I don't mean moderate-moderate, but the more temperate type of conservative – all got in behind Jeb.
And, you know, Jeb was, as I wrote at the time, like a political Rip Van Winkle. He woke up after a long sleep and it's like, what's this political discussion going on around me? Totally. But one could one could have made the same argument about Joe Biden as a man from the past. And yet Democrats seem to have seem to have settled on him. We'll see. Well, let me ask you this, Henry.
Do you see this as now Joe Biden's race to lose, that he is clearly the frontrunner? Or do you see this as a 50-50 proposition that could still be a contested convention? No. I think this is now Joe Biden's race to lose. And it's very difficult for me to see how Bernie turns it around. Bernie tried to run as who he is.
which is not a Democrat, a small-S socialist, or in some cases a big-S socialist, but basically he was going to run for a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party.
But there was never a majority for that. He could only win that as long as there was a divided field. And what was quite clear was that the Democratic establishment saw that. They saw the threat and they did everything they could to try and reduce the divided field. I don't think anybody thought that it was going to coalesce in the degree that Biden did. They were just trying to keep him in the game. But with the states going forward, it's very hard to see where there's a big state.
that is naturally a Bernie state from here on, given the coalition that Biden seems to put together. And in the next two weeks, we'll have another quarter or so of the delegates come up, largely in big states with significant African-American populations. Aside from Arizona, there's none that has a significant Latino population, which is the only clearly non-progressive aspect of the Democratic electorate that Sanders beats Biden among.
So it's just very hard to see where he is after March 17th. Now, he may choose to say, I'm 78 and they did it to me again and I'm going to make sure they just have heck to pay. But he's going to have to have a sort of 72-hour turnaround of his own. And the fact that Elizabeth Warren did not or will not, I think she's out now, but it was clear she was not going to endorse
Bernie on the way out, that's a big damage. I understand why she doesn't do it because he's now damaged goods and she's a Democrat, not a socialist, even if she's a progressive Democrat. But it's very hard for me to see where Bernie rescues himself so that we're not looking at a Biden fait accompli by March the morning of March 18th.
Is it still like for a long time it looked not only mathematically possible, but it looked maybe not likely, but very plausible that there would be a contested convention and in the sense or a brokered convention because nobody would have the 1991 delegates. Is that even now, now that everybody is out except for Biden, Bernie and Tulsi, is that now even possible?
within the realm of possibility? It's within the realm of possibility, but it's severely unlikely. Basically, the contested convention possibility was premised on the idea that Bloomberg would break the 15% barrier in the large states on Super Tuesday. If he did that in both Texas and in California, he would have picked up another 50, 70 to 100 delegates. If Warren had won
Massachusetts and broken the 15% threshold in Texas. She was looking at the possibility before the Biden coalescence of a couple hundred delegates, and that was a reasonable thing to look at.
And then you would have had a very strong chance for a brokered convention. But right now, because they fizzled out so fast, it is very unlikely that we'll have a brokered convention. At the worst, I think we would see one candidate go in with a plurality in the high 40s, and then Biden would just wait it out until the superdelegates delivered the nomination.
All right. I have one more question and then I'll turn the podcast back over to you. Oh, no, this must be fun. This is a happy podcast. Who cares about who questions who? When I get to talk to Henry Olson, I take advantage.
Why is Bernie doing so well with Hispanics? Is it just that he put in the time and the effort, or is there a reason why he's doing so well with Hispanic voters? You know, I'd really love to know the answer to that. He did do better among Hispanics than among African Americans in 2016. Clinton carried them, but not by huge margins. But
It could be that the sort of Hispanic who votes in Democratic primaries is to the left. I have not looked at that specific subset. You know, we talk about maybe they are not as afraid of socialism as the average American. I don't know. Yeah. Well, again, we're talking. We often look at these primary electorates and say, oh, well, this translates to the general electorate. Well, no, it doesn't. You know, like.
Like Bernie says, I appeal to the young. Well, for the young who are active in democratic politics, he does.
But he's not dragging tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of new young voters into the polls. So, you know, I think we can say, look, Bernie's got an appeal to some young, but not all young. And I think that's the way we should look at Hispanics. If you are a Hispanic active in the Democratic Party, it appears that you like both the personality and let's face it, that Sanders has a Democratic version of Trump's masculinity. Yeah.
Yeah, that's interesting. You know where the other you sort of and they may like a more left wing policy. And but again, this is a subset of Hispanics. It is not all Hispanics. Good point. I was surprised that Biden is actually driving turnout like the states that had the highest turnout were Biden states, not Bernie states. That was really interesting.
Well, I think there's a couple of things about that. One is I think – and I don't think anyone's had the time to get into it at the precinct level. But you take a look at Virginia, which is about one of the centers of never-Trump republicanism, obviously.
Meaning that not people who are currently Republican because they've exiled themselves from the party, but the sort of person who disliked Trump so much that they have decided to vote actively in Democratic elections and for Democrats, the Romney Clinton voter, if you will.
And that's where you saw the largest turnout increase. And that's the sort of person who would say, I want to beat Trump. There's no party registration holding me back because there isn't in most of the states that voted on Super Tuesday. You could just walk up and say and pick a ballot and not have to fill out a new registration form. And my guess is that in that that helped fuel Biden's
win in a lot of these suburbs. You take a look, Minnesota, you take a look, Biden gets nearly 50% in the suburbs around Minneapolis. Biden did well in the suburbs in Texas. Biden completely swept the suburbs of D.C. and the suburbs of Richmond. And I suspect some of that is fueled by people who say, I want to be Trump. And right now it looks like Biden's the guy.
Well, you're preaching to the choir here, Henry. You know, I don't like to use the word hero to describe myself, but I do think I'm the unofficial leader of this Virginia, you know, conservatives for Biden in the primary movement. No, I was wrong.
Not going to out you on my podcast, but yes, you are. I've outed myself everywhere, man. Oh, no, no, that you have. Anyone who follows you on Twitter knows exactly where you stand. I respect your courage and I respect your principles. Thank you. I have to say the the really hard part is that.
It's almost a thankless thing, though, because when I tell—as soon as I say, but I'm not going to vote for someone who's pro-choice in the general election, I all of a sudden, instead of like—
Instead of Democrats sort of being like, well, thank you, because normally, you know, you're a conservative and normally you would be voting for Trump and you're not going to do that. So that's a net plus for us. And thank you. It's more, yeah, it's a little more hostile, as you can imagine. Oh, yeah. They're not happy. Yeah. Well, as somebody who is...
My writing is favorable to Trump on some things, not favorable on other things. And so I've been getting it from both sides now for a couple of years. And it's amazing how calling it like you see it just doesn't fit. You're supposed to be on team red or team blue and just stick with the manager and don't question. The better business model, and this is why we have so much tribalism, I think, within the
commentariat, it's not just infecting politicians and activists, but within the commentariat between pundits and writers and intellectuals is because there's not a lot of benefit to being nuanced. I mean—
Go all in. Right. Own your brand. Own it. If you're going to be for Trump, be for Trump because there's not you know, there's not a lot of benefit not to be on everything, you know. Right. And then if you're going to be anti-Trump, that's not enough to call him out when he deserves it. You have to basically vote for a socialist. Right. If that's the nominee. So, yeah.
Yeah, no, without naming names, I think we both know people whose views switched on a dime in both directions. People who are more nuanced on the left in their private life who have suddenly become... And people who once held more nuanced views on the right who have suddenly become... And it is, you know, it's profitable. But, you know... I would look down my nose at them and regard them as hacks, but...
The truth is I just don't think I could do it. It's not that I'm above it. I just don't think I could pull it off. I mean I don't think I could – I don't think I could be phony. Like to thine own self be true. I just don't think I'm that good of an actor.
Well, good. Good. That way, when you get your nomination for when you move into the acting world and you get your nomination for best supporting actor of that orange man, the retrospective on the Trump four years, I can vote against you in the academy. He said he was not a good actor. He doesn't deserve a reward for something he thinks is bad. Smash cut to be like defending everything Trump does and everything.
you know, who, why should he only be able to serve eight years? I mean, one, you know, FDR got four terms. Well, let's not talk about, uh, let's not, let's not go there with, uh, entrenching, entrenching, uh, dynasties and propping up cadavers for the presidency. Um, last question, where do you bring up? Uh, I know we're probably, I know we're probably almost out of time, but, um,
I'll talk about the other side. Joe Biden has clearly lost a step. We've got three possible presidents, all in their 70s. One of them's a sort of crotchety old socialist who just had a heart attack. And then the other two say things from time to time that leave me to question if they've lost a step or many.
But what's happening now with Joe Biden, now that it appears that he is going to be the nominee, you are about to see Republicans really ratchet up talk of dementia, talk of—there's going to be all these videos of him. And the truth is I have no doubt that Biden has lost his step. I mean, none of us are the men we were a couple years ago. But Biden has always been—
a weird gaffe prone guy who said weird stuff. So, um, but I do think there's going to be a narrative that he's, uh, that, that he's lost it. And, and on top of that, they're going to say, well, the danger is it's not just that he's lost a step. It's that he is going to be manipulated by left wing forces who are, you know, he's going to be a pawn in the game, uh,
So it's going to get ugly. They're going to try to do to Joe what they what they did to Hillary. Yeah. And the fact is, Joe's given just in the last week, we've got Joe a video of Joe Biden saying that he's running for Senate when he's campaigning for president in South Carolina. And then he starts to recite the Declaration of Independence and can't do the famous line of, you know,
It was something like, we're all endowed by our, that thing. Yeah, no, he actually says, you know,
He actually says, you know the thing. And then he mixes up his wife and his sister on stage on the congratulation night. If I were Trump, look, this is politics. You've got to bludgeon the guy, and that means raising the personal stakes. But he could have done that in 1987. I mean, that's the thing. Well, and that is the thing. I think you'll see a lot of people making that explanation, and then I think you'll see –
If the Trump people are smart, you'll start to see Biden much more – just like Trump was much more fluent, much more coherent in 1987 when you look at his clips, Biden was remarkably much more. The fact is both of these guys have lost steps and they're displaying it in different ways. And I think that makes –
Biden's vice presidential pick crucial for him. The column, my Thursday column makes the argument for Amy Klobuchar, which is doubling down on the image of reassurance,
taking her strength, hyper competence and detail orientation and saying or implying that she's basically a deputy president and picking somebody who's nearly 20 years younger so that you don't have a question of two old people, which
Elizabeth Warren is obviously mentally fit and obviously physically fit, but she is going to be 71. If she were the nominee for vice president, she'd be 71. So you'd have a dual septuagenarian ticket. And I just think that as fit as she is, I think that's a bad image for somebody who clearly has lost a step.
So I'm out with my Biden-Klobuchar recommendation for Biden. Who would you pick if you were Joe Biden? Well, let me just say I think you're absolutely right in the sense that because of the perception that Biden has lost a step, the running mate is even more important than ever. It has to be someone who is younger, younger.
Um, but also competent and also highly qualified. So it has to be all everything. I think Amy also checks the box electorally, right? I mean, if it's, if you're going to make the electoral play to try to take back Pennsylvania, Michigan, maybe Wisconsin, uh, Minnesota, maybe even who knows, um, then she helps. She, she certainly doesn't hurt at least. Um, um,
I do wonder, though, about the African-American community, because this coalition has been without a doubt the savior of Donald Trump. Of Joe Biden. No, I'm telling you, Joe Biden. If it's the savior of Donald Trump, the anti-Trump forces ought to go home right now.
The thing, the African-American community is important for any Democrat, but for Joe Biden, they made his campaign possible. And so will there be pressure to to select an African-American running mate? And if there is, I mean, it would be understandable that Biden would would feel, you know, not only pressure, but just out of loyalty, right?
So that's the question. Yeah, I think it's a huge question. In my column, I argued that, look, he's got enthusiasm there. He ought to bank on that and go elsewhere because I do think he has to put a woman on the ticket. And if you've taken out African-American men, then you look at what sort of African-American woman checks the box of
Old enough to step in, young enough that it's not two septuagenarians, experienced, blah, blah, blah. And you've got Kamala Harris, and that's about it. And then you ask the question, is Kamala Harris the sort of person that you want to run with that reassures the voters? Is she gaffe-free enough? Does she reassure and –
Yeah, I mean, I think she's as good as many or better than many people who have been picked. But is that a risk he wants to take? And does he need to take it? And I think that's an assessment that they have to have. And the other question is, does the African-American community necessarily want or demand racism?
uh, that you make that pick. And, and, and I mean, look, it's not like Kamala did great in South Carolina. If she were doing well in South Carolina, she wouldn't have gotten out. So, you know, I don't know. I will say one of the great things, one of the reassuring things about,
There's been a couple reassuring things about 2020. One is that the adults are still in control of at least one political party. The inmates are not running the asylum in both parties. But the other reassuring thing is that identity politics isn't as bad as I thought in the sense that you had a group like the African-American community. You could have imagined that they would have said, well, look, we're going to go for Kamala or we're going to go for Cory Booker.
That would have made sense, but they didn't. They said, we're going to go for Joe Biden because he's been there for us. He was President Obama's vice president. He was loyal. He came here. I mean, you know, he paid his dues. He put in his time. He has the experience. They made a choice that defied the notion of identity politics. So, you know, would they demand a running mate? I don't know.
To be continued. Well, Matt, thank you for your insights, and I look forward to having you back on the horse race. Anytime, Henry, man. Thanks for having me. Joining me on State of Play this week is Todd Spangler, the Washington correspondent for the Detroit Free Press. All eyes are going to be on Michigan for its crucial primary, and Todd's going to give us the lowdown on what's going down in the Wolverine State. Todd, welcome to the horse race. Hi. Thanks for having me, Henry. I appreciate it.
Well, Michigan's always a crucial state in general elections, but now it's going to be maybe the make or break state for Bernie Sanders. What are you seeing on the ground there? Well, strangely enough, so far, things on the ground haven't picked up nearly as much as you might think, just given, as you say, that all eyes are on Michigan at this
I mean, Super Tuesday was such an enormous kind of shock to everybody's system, I think, that that, you know, and in Bloomberg, you know, Mike Bloomberg had spent millions here on advertising. And really, everyone thought he's making a firewall in Michigan. This is he's going to stay around till this. No, he's gone. So all that organization is just sitting there waiting to see what's going to happen next. And now you have Liz Warren. She's out.
You know, she's also somebody who had organized here. She was the first person in the state to have an organization this time around, even really more than than Sanders. And so people were sort of moving into their place to see what's going to happen. Super Tuesday was it was was a much a very, very big deal now. So so here's what what kind of seems to be happening at this moment. Michigan moved to a.
much more liberal absentee ballot system this year. So it's a lot easier to get an absentee ballot this year. We've had like 800,000 absentee ballot applications come in. About half of those have been turned in already. A lot of people want to change those ballots now because a lot of them didn't vote for Joe Biden or vote for Bernie Sanders, and they want to change the ballots. You see some of that happening.
Can they change their ballots?
for what we expect will be a pretty big rally. He's got something out in Grand Rapids. We haven't heard specifically from the Biden folks when they're going to be in town. We know they're going to be in town. They're going to be in town over the weekend. We wouldn't be surprised if they're here maybe up to Election Day. Amy Klobuchar, Midwestern senator who just got out, endorsed Biden, she's going to be here for a few days trying to get out to voters and pump that up.
What's happening behind all that seems to be a quieter kind of, okay, Michigan's a big union state. Are there efforts behind the scenes in that institutional democratic circles to try to get people out knocking on doors and get their voters out for Biden? Because he's been more of their guy in some places. But on the other hand, you've got
people who are in the locals, who are at the more grassroots level, who are Bernie supporters. Are they thinking, we had this in the bag. We thought we were going to win this. We were ahead in polls that had been taken in Michigan. Now it's not so certain. We've got to get our game going even better than it was going before. I mean, realize going into this, people thought that Sanders had more of a leg up because four years ago,
Bernie had his first big surprise win here. I mean, the Free Press, the organization I write for, as well as all the other media in Michigan, had polls that showed Hillary Clinton up by 20 points.
the weekend before the election and sanders won barely so you know and and all those headlines are still sitting out there i'd rather not talk about them but but but but the point is everybody thought okay sanders has got sort of a thing going here if all things go being equal particularly with biden being down he wins but man the biden surge lately has just been such
And Bloomberg getting out and sort of the coalescing around this, you begin to think – and don't forget, African-Americans, particularly in Detroit and in Flint, are a big part of the electorate here. You turn out those votes –
you can win this thing. So this is going to be very, very interesting, very interesting two-person test this time when, you know, 10 days ago, we thought this was going to be, you know, everybody running around the state. You touched on two groups I was going to ask you about, the African-American community, which clearly has fueled Biden's resurgence, but also, you know, urban Blacks voted more for Sanders, particularly in Detroit in 2016, than rural Southern Blacks.
even though Clinton still carried them heavily. Do you see any indication that there is some sort of residual Sanders support in the Detroit area African-American community? Or is that just kind of faded and we're going to see another 70 to 75 percent Biden thumping? No, I don't.
I think that there is residual support for, for Senator Sanders in urban areas in, you know, in Flint and in Detroit without, without question. I mean, you do have several black ministers who have come out and endorsed and thrown their support behind Sanders. That's going to, that's going to play into part of this. You have, you know,
You know, like Rashida Tlaib, the congresswoman, you know, she has endorsed Sanders. I expect she will be an important surrogate. She represents part of Detroit. She has what used to be John Conyers' district.
It may help Sanders in some ways that Mike Duggan, the mayor, the white mayor of Detroit, has endorsed him well, well, long ago, endorsed Biden because Duggan being mayor has had to make decisions in Detroit, which have run afoul of some people in the community. You do have that kind of split between the institutional part of Detroit's black community and then not.
And so absolutely, Sanders can can dig into that. Now, the question is, Biden has those ties to labor in Michigan and to the African-American community in Michigan, the NAACP in Michigan without question. He has those connections. He's going to work those connections. So, you know, will he bring Jim Clyburn in here? I wouldn't be at all surprised if he does. Will he invoke?
John Conyers, probably so. I mean, he is somebody who has been around and who can do those things. Well, he invoked Barack Obama. Without question, he's going to be making that connection. If people see, whether it's African Americans in Detroit or it's suburban moms in Oakland County just outside Detroit, see
Joe Biden as the most likely person to beat Donald Trump, then he could absolutely continue to ride this momentum that he has been riding for the last week or so. So unions in Nevada, you had the culinary union try and argue, stay away from Sanders because Medicare for all is going to take away your gold plated health care plan we've negotiated for you.
You've got the auto workers union who have got good old health care plans that they've negotiated with the big three. Are they any sign that they're going to get involved for Biden on the same issue? And then is Sanders going to hammer? If Sanders hammers Biden on trade, what sort of impact do you think that'll have?
Well, so on the first part, Henry, the UAW has had their own problems with some legal issues and things like that. I don't expect the UAW to be involved in this in really any outfacing way for one candidate or another. I do think they are encouraging people to vote. I just think they're not trying to move them one way or another. And not just because of those legal problems. I think, I know, they...
see a lot of their members as being Bernie supporters. And we had a story about this recently that, you know, there's a lot of union types in Michigan who look around and say, sure, the retirees have great health care. They negotiated great health care, you know, in those those contracts, you
pre-Great Recession, pre the auto rescue. I mean, that all happened. But for people who came after, it's a much different kind of deal. And they're looking around saying we could use better health care in some cases or in some cases look around saying, but my cousin's kids, they don't have health care. I mean, so there is a question about whether some sort of generalized health care might be better. But again, is it pragmatic? Is it something they can get? Do they
as an institution, trust Bernie to follow through on this the way that they've had a history with Biden. And that's going to play out maybe not so much in the endorsement field as in the sort of behind the scenes, are people moving? Are certain ministers in Detroit, are certain union types working to get out the vote for Biden in a way that really didn't work for Clinton here four years ago?
What about you? What about the trade issue? Yeah. Do you think that if Sanders goes in on set for seven days and says the reason that you have all these problems is because Joe Biden has been bad on trade and he's let foreigners take your jobs? Do you think that might be the sort of game changer? Sure. I mean, it's it's it's absolutely what Sanders I would expect Senator Sanders to do.
Because, you know, it worked last time to a degree when Donald Trump was doing it against Hillary Clinton in Michigan. That said, I think Trump is the larger issue here. So, sure, when you can knock Trump
It's not that difficult to knock Biden around to find something in his record that you want to beat him up on because he's got a long record. And he has, you know, all kinds of corporate ties with, you know, in the state of Delaware. And he supported, you know, free trade agreements that in Michigan have been anathema because of the perception that, you know, jobs have been moved to Mexico, etc.,
And yes, that there will be a number of people who say, no, I don't. I do want somebody who does this. I expect Biden will come in and also say, hey, there's been a lot of trade agreements. A lot of Democrats have voted on those. We've been right in some cases. We've been wrong in some cases. We all learn our lesson. We need to move forward and make sure we have we have we have great trade deals and probably point out that he's getting support from some people who are
pushed to have the most recent revise of NAFTA made better because Democrats pushed the Trump administration to change it. I mean, I'm guessing that will be sort of the answer to that and that he was fully for that. It can change, sir. It can push him a little bit. I don't think he has as easy a time on that question here as it not coming up at a place like South Carolina. But
Will it be enough versus the question of electability and Trump? Right now, I have my feeling is that the electability issue is a stronger one for Biden than the trade issue is a negative one for him. It doesn't mean he's going to win. I just mean that I think that, you know, he is riding a crest here that pushes some of that stuff away.
So what are you looking for on Election Day when the returns come in? What would be the sort of early signals that, hey, maybe Bernie is going to pull off his second straight upset? And what would be the early signals of, no, this is a Biden resurgence, the sequel? It's a really good question, because, as I said last time, you know,
Bernie ends up winning a narrow victory, but he ends up winning after, you know, we're expecting Clinton to run away with it by, you know, multiple by double digit points.
And she and she did win in Wayne County, which is Detroit and the immediate environment in Oakland County, which is the second biggest county in Macomb County. I mean, so she won the places she was supposed to win. And everywhere else in the state, basically, Bernie piled up numbers. So if you were voting Democrat in rural or older industrial areas, you in many cases were voting for Bernie Sanders. And so.
So I guess I'll be looking for that same thing, but I'll really still be looking. The votes are still largely here around Detroit and be looking to see how is Bernie doing there? Because I would expect him to do much the same as he did in certain other areas. But what is he doing here? What's he doing? Or is Biden putting up numbers that will make it
Easier for him, particularly when I'm looking at a county like Oakland County, for instance, which is a big suburban county right outside Detroit. It's voted Republican at times lately in presidential races. It's been a Democrat, but it had Republican county executives, Republican council. It's a very chamber of commerce. It's where Mitt Romney grew up and other stuff. I'm going to be looking at that to see.
Is Biden really running up numbers there, looking at a place like that, looking at a place like Macomb County, which, you know, you would expect...
On the cultural end, it might be more Biden area, but then, you know, it's a sort of area where they really come out for a character. They really, you know, if you're a strong political personality, a Trump, for instance, you know, it's a place that comes out for you. How is Bernie doing in Macomb County? And I'm looking at places like that to see really what is happening. But I don't I don't necessarily expect an early night. OK, great.
Well, Todd, I think we've got a really good rundown. I appreciate you for letting us pick your brain here and learn about how the race is unfolding in Michigan. And thank you for joining me on the horse race. My pleasure, Henry. Thank you.
On this week's Ad of the Week, we will get out of the presidential race and into congressional races. When a candidate is running for the first time, what they have to do is establish what's called in the field name recognition. That means it's getting voters to know what your name is, who you are, and what you stand for. This week's Ad of the Week is a wonderful example of an initial ad from a candidate who's never run for public office before. It's from Lynn Homrick.
who is running in Georgia's 7th Congressional District. And let's take a listen. We will raise taxes. Yes, we will. Nothing for the wall. We're going to go in there. We're going to impeach the mother******.
That's the best they can do in Washington? I'm Lynn Homrick, and here's my story. I'm a businesswoman and the mom of four. I'm running for Congress to strengthen our economy and make sure American values are celebrated, not attacked. I'll work with President Trump, and I'll take on the career politicians from both parties to get results for you. Lynn Homrick hates politics, loves Trump. I'm Lynn Homrick, and I approve this message.
Homrick is running as a Republican. She is a former executive at Home Depot. She'll be self-funding her campaign, although she's not a centimillionaire. She's clearly a multimillionaire. And the appeal that she needs to make is to a Republican primary electorate.
but also, since she's broadcasting on television, to an electorate that isn't solidly Republican. The Georgia 7th District voted for Trump in 2016, but with under 50% of the vote. It was one of those seats that had a lot of what's known as Romney-Clinton voters, affluent, moderate Republicans who disliked the president. And it voted Democratic for governor and for many state legislative races in 2018. So how does she thread the needle? How does she look...
to be conservative enough to win a Republican primary, but moderate enough that she's still viable to run in the general election.
Well, let's start with who she points out at the beginning of the ad. There are pictures of Bernie Sanders, a Democratic socialist, saying he will raise taxes. You have a picture of Nancy Pelosi saying no money for the wall. And then you have a picture of Rashida Tlaib, the congresswoman from Detroit, who said let's impeach the bleep.
when she gave her winning address after winning for Congress. So what does she do? She picks three people from the far left of the Democratic Party
saying things that moderate suburbanites who switched over to Clinton wouldn't like, that most moderate suburbanites may not like Trump, but they didn't want to impeach him and they don't like profanity. They may not like Trump, but they tend to agree with him on things like impeachment on the policy. And then, of course, classically, they don't want to have their taxes raised. So she points out the contrast between her and people who both conservative Republicans and moderate Republicans
ex-Republicans or moderate swing voters would agree are the adversary. Then what does she say about herself? She focuses on a lot of non-ideological issues. She's a businesswoman, again, unifying that base. You talk about being a mother, unifying that base. And she also says that she hates politics.
Again, you're talking about trying to appeal to the person who wants to drain the swamp and the person who doesn't like Washington politics because it'll regulate and raise taxes on their businesses. Again, it's a very subtle but very clear attempt to unify those two groups.
When you look at when she's talking about ensuring that American values are upheld, there's two things. The word on screen say America first, which is clear signal to the Trump voter. But she's talking with older men wearing either Make America Great caps or more often a Vietnam vet cap.
And again, she's trying to associate herself with patriotism, a unifying factor, not a dividing factor.
The only time she gets in and kind of makes a nod to the Republican base is when she says in the close, hates politics, loves Trump. She's got to say that she loves Trump to get through the primary, but she's built the primary appeal of her message as something that is unifying between the two camps that she needs. Win the primary, but also win the general election.
There's a word that doesn't appear in that ad. It's Republican. There's another word that doesn't appear in the ad or doesn't appear more than once. Conservative.
She's not running as the hard right candidate because she knows if she runs as the hard right candidate, she has a good opportunity to lose the general election. So this is an excellent example of how you get a name out, how you associate it with values and ideas that can allow you to win your election, and you do it in a way that's succinct and attractive so that it sticks with the viewers.
I don't know if Lynn Homerick is going to win her multi-way contested primary, but I do know from an ad like this that she knows what it takes to win, and if she's got the money and the discipline to continue, she's going to be a contender. Watch Lynn Homerick, look for her ads on Twitter, and look for her ads on YouTube, and the fact that she's able to break through with an initial ad like that is why she and her ad is this week's Ad of the Week.
This week on Trump Talk, I'm joined by Chris Buskirk, publisher of American Greatness and host of his own eponymous podcast, The Chris Buskirk Show. Chris, welcome to the horse race. Oh, thanks, Henry. Well, lots of stuff going on in the world, lots of stuff the White House has been involved in in recent days. What stands out for you as something that made an impact from President Trump?
You know, there's, as I look at it, there's sort of two big, big things going on in the world right now, at least in our world here in the United States. There is, on the one hand, you've got Super Tuesday, or as Joe Biden likes to call it, Super Thursday. And then you've got coronavirus. And I think that there is a political dimension, or at least a potential political dimension to coronavirus, which could be important. But the easy, I mean, the easiest, or
easier thing to, I guess, talk about first is the Super Tuesday results and then basically the
narrowing of the Democratic race, effectively at this point, just to Joe Biden and to Bernie Sanders. Elizabeth Warren's out now. And Tulsi Gabbard is currently being erased by all of the liberal feminists who are wondering why a woman can't become their nominee. But they seem to have ignored the fact that Tulsi is still in the race. But the results there, I think, are
Interesting. I mean, you're sort of the expert on this stuff, Henry, but I look at this as the Democrats doing what they're actually quite good at doing, which is enforcing party discipline. I think they are a pretty effective party. But I just I keep looking at the stuff that Biden is doing. I mean, he has to be considered at this point the presumptive nominee. And I just I don't
quite get why the Democrats think that's such a good idea. I understand their rationale, which is basically we're going to you guys got your grumpy old uncle elected and we're going to run our grumpy old uncle against him. But somehow that doesn't seem like the best strategy.
course of action politically. How do you think Trump has Trump? How do you think Trump is going to react to this? You know that in the past couple of weeks, he's been overtly making a play for Bernie supporters, you know, basically stoking the flans of look, they're going to do it to your boy again. And of course, he's been in for Sleepy Joe and the Hunter Biden to
for months now. Is there any sign that he's cackling over this or do you think that the president has a different approach?
Yeah, well, look, I think they have planned to run against Joe Biden all along, and we are going to hear a lot more about Sleepy Joe for sure. Many, you know, I'm laughing. I mean, this is sort of just a footnote to this whole to the whole history here. But basically, Mike Bloomberg spent 700 million dollars to now be known as mini Mike to the entire country for the rest of his life.
And that I can't see that he got anything else out of it. When it comes to the Bidens in particular, I think this is who the Republicans and the campaign have been looking to run against. So you're going to get Trump doing Trump. So you're going to be he's going to be doing a few things. Number one is he's going to do what he always does, which is he's going to try and define somebody by their nickname. So it's going to be Sleepy Joe. And every within a month or two or three, everybody's going to be thinking of him as Sleepy Joe.
Number two, is there going to be all... But maybe given the way that Biden has been mixing up names and saying he's running for the Senate when he should be running for president, maybe it should be sloppy Joe. Which just sounds delicious, but also might be more apt. There was also slow Joe, which you had started calling Biden years and years ago, which is... But they all work. And they all leave the same impression, which is that this is a guy who's not... You know, even in his prime, he wasn't great. And, you know, look...
I think everybody realizes that this is a guy who's lost a step or two. He has all of these gaffes. He's always been a gaffe machine, but some of this stuff is beyond just misspeaking now. And the, the, as the campaign wears on, it's going to take a toll on Biden. And I think that his campaign is ultimately going to try and limit his public appearances. But,
The Trump aspect of it, he's going to try and define them. That's number one. We're going to hear a lot about the corruption in the Biden family, the Biden family racket. And Peter Schweitzer's new book, which does a lot of work on this, I think is look, it was great.
timing for Peter, he's going to sell a ton of books and the investigative work that he did is going to become fodder for the whole conservative media ecosystem and for the campaign and for the campaign's surrogates and sort of campaign adjacent organizations. And then number three, I think, and you touched on this, Henry, which is
The Trump campaign wants two things from Bernie supporters. They want some of them to vote for Trump and they want the rest of them not to vote at all. And I think they are – and this is what Trump obviously is trying to do. There's this group of people for whom Bernie is number one and Trump is number two. You saw that. I think the number was like 12 percent in 2016. Yeah.
So crossover voters, they want to try and grab some of those people. But really, I think they want to blackpill, to dishearten young Bernie supporters who are very energetic and they just want them to forget it, stay home. And that would be very important in a place like, say, Arizona, where I live, for example. Yeah.
And then I guess the fourth aspect is to try and woo back some of the sort of suburban exurban moderates and or moms who went for Democrats in 2018. And I think the pitch there is everybody's working. Wages are up. Things are good. You thought I was crazy. You may not like me all that much, but –
You have a job. Your husband has a job. You can go on vacation this year. And even if you think I'm garish, your life in particular is pretty good. Why risk it on Joe Biden? Yeah, I've thought for a long time that Trump would never be self-aware or self-deprecating enough to do this. But I've thought for a long time that the perfect Trump undercurrent slogan is Trump, not perfect, just better.
See, I think you're exactly right on that, Henry. And if there are, you know, you're right on both counts. Number one is that would be the great thing.
that would be the great undercurrent slogan. The other part is, is that he's certainly not going to be the guy to say it, but there are people who can say it for him. Yeah. And so I would hope that the people in the campaigns orbit kind of get that message because that's the message that they have to get out, uh, to particular groups that could go either way. Yeah. Well, let's talk coronavirus for a couple of minutes then. Uh, you know, uh,
The media is, if there's, it says the old Saturday Night Live character, Roseanne, I think it was Roseanne, Roseanne Adanif, isn't one thing, it's another. You know, they always have to have something to beat up on Trump. Now it's how supposedly awful his coronavirus response is. But even some Trump critics said that, boy, you know, the press conference where he,
put Mike Pence in charge and introduced the team was actually a picture of restraint. How do you think he is doing right now? And what do you think the risks are? And also the potential upside of a successful management of the spreading pandemic?
So I think, I guess, here's how I would frame this from a political perspective, which is that coronavirus has the potential to be Trump's Katrina. It has that potential. I'm not predicting that, but if the virus was to get much, much worse and the government's
Trump's response to it was deemed in general by the public to be insufficient. And fairly or not, sometimes in crises, it can be an unfair criticism, but fairly or not, that would really, I think, harm Trump materially if that were to happen. But there's a lot of variables before you get there. If the coronavirus just seems to is if it turns out that it's highly seasonal and it just sort of burns out as the as the weather gets better.
That I don't that I think probably just goes away and by the time it's June people are just talking about normal campaign things and
The other aspect of it is, and by the way, that press conference where he put Mike Pence in charge, I thought was actually quite good. It was the best thing that I've seen our government do. The gold standard for people interested in this subject, by the way, I think is the government of Singapore. They do both in how they've handled it and how they've been communicating on it. And Mike Pence should probably have somebody looking at how to model what they were doing. Having said that,
The response in general, I think, has been too restrained. The CDC didn't get its act together until basically this week. And so to some extent, we are at the mercy of the virus to see if like Seattle this week is the equivalent of the city of Wuhan in the middle of
January or are we able to control? In other words, is there a seed population that's now going to spread it throughout Seattle? Hopefully not. And again, this is one of these issues where it could consume everybody for the next two weeks and just go away or it could become a big deal. And that's very challenging for a politician, for anybody in office is how do you deal with these things that in a lot of ways are out of your control?
You mentioned Seattle. One thing that immediately pops to mind is the large homeless population there. What happens if we, right now it's not the case, but what happens if we eventually find out that it's being spread or that the people who are homeless are particularly victims? Do you think that's something that changes the political equation for Trump because homelessness is a question that would be laid at the feet of the progressive Seattle City Council?
Yeah, it can. It absolutely could. I mean, because there's two populations that I think are particularly vulnerable. One is people who are homeless, and the other one is the elderly. And, you know, in a bad case scenario, maybe not worse, but bad, and it could actually be worse, is you see, like, assisted living facilities and nursing homes becoming just, I mean, just absolute death traps because the mortality rate is so high for older people. And how that plays politically...
Again, the response is going to be really important. But if you see these very liberal cities, Seattle, San Francisco, New York, Washington, D.C., that have pretty sizable homeless populations and the virus was to get a foothold among those populations and start killing people.
That's I mean, I hate to reduce it to politics, but that is a big challenge for those cities. And it's and if it's contrasted in the public mind with a federal government that actually is doing things competently again to reduce it to the politics, which is in some ways sort of inhumane, that probably cuts well for the Trump campaign.
Is there anything you see? Obviously, the stock market's gyrations are something that Trump can't control, but he's watching. Is there anything else in the next week or so that you see coming up that presents either an obvious challenge for Trump or a opportunity?
Yeah, I think the things that I actually think the coronavirus is a massive opportunity for Trump in general. And I think this is where his usually astute political instincts seem to not be operating on this issue because the coronavirus gives him the opportunity to talk about issues.
The issues that got him elected, things like border control, things like having increasing manufacturing in the United States and the implications of that, meaning raising people's wages, national sovereignty. I mean, he could be making points like, hey, 90 percent of the antibiotics in this country are manufactured in China. That's stupid.
We need to have a domestic manufacturing capability of antibiotics and of other of other drugs. We cannot depend on China. And this is why. And let's work on that.
I mean, the tweets write themselves. It's been astonishing to me that he hasn't touched on those issues. Maybe that's the sort of thing to best talk about after the disease has either been controlled or it's run its course rather than have people criticize him for talking about politics when they still haven't gotten their act together. Prove competency and then pivot to the next step.
Yeah, well, I guess just one little thing on that point. Yeah, I thought about that. Sometimes it's kind of, is it too soon to talk about this? The place where I think you actually really can talk about this and be in total good faith is on the drugs. It's to say, we're going to engage our pharmaceutical companies to start working on these things here right now because we may need them. And it's a matter of potentially people's lives. I think he can talk about that in a way that's
totally good faith and actually useful because it has the additional benefit of being true. We are in a situation where we need to have those resources made available domestically.
Well, maybe I'll write about that. That's an excellent idea, and it's certainly one that is frightening that in a case of conflict with China, it could actually shut us off from being able to take care of our own sick. Chris, it's been great talking with you, and love to have you back, and thank you for joining me on The Horse Race. Anytime. Thanks, Henry. Okay.
That's it for this week's horse race. Next week, we'll preview the all-important Florida primary and assess whether Bernie Sanders still has a chance or whether Joe Biden has put the race to bed. I'm Henry Olson, and I'll see you in the Winter Circle.
