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Welcome back to this week's horse race. We'll be talking about Trump and the pandemic with Ben Dominich of the Federalist, North Carolina with J. Miles Coleman of the Saboteurs Crystal Ball. We'll talk about Bernie Sanders dropping out of the race and all other things political and pandemical with Carlin Bowman of the American Enterprise Institute.

The horses are at the starting gate. They're off. This week on Trump Talk, I am joined by one of the most charming intellectual raconteurs in the American conservative spectrum, and that is Ben Dominich, publisher of The Federalist, which is a must-read website, and also the host of The Federalist podcast. Ben, welcome to The Horse Race.

Henry, it's great to be with you. Thank you so much for those kind words. I know it's always a pleasure to talk to you about what's going on within the world of politics and your insights have been very valuable and challenging over the years. And so I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you today. Well, I'm here talking with you and I'm glad that you are going to be joining me because I want to know how you think the president is doing. Is

Is he handling this in a superb, fabulous fashion? Is he failing so abjectly as much of our media says, or is it something in between?

Well, it's always something in between, isn't it? The thing that's so odd about the way that the media talks about the president is they talk about how he's inconsistent, that he bounces around, that they talk about him in ways that I think are kind of surprising after so many years when we see that he's very consistent in the approach that he uses, which is to say he likes to engage in online

on all different levels at all times, using all different weapons in his arsenal, meaning that he can go from joking about models one day to being very serious about the need to stay indoors and socially distance another day, to getting into it with the media at all times, to comparing the ratings for his performance with The Bachelor. So to me, that's all of a piece. It's the package that you got with this president.

I actually think that he has, after some early stumbles in various respects when he was talking about this, kind of found a pretty consistent way to talk about it and has done a pretty good job when it comes to the approach he's used in terms of the press conferences. The problem that I really have is more with the –

degradation that I think we see at this point in America's trust in a lot of different institutions, including the recommendations that they get from medical officials, including a change in attitude towards the World Health Organization. Where you write, the Washington Post has a good piece out today on the latest Harris poll numbers indicating a dramatic rise in the number of Americans who are taking

a, shall we say, Trumpian posture towards China, particularly on blaming them as it comes to this current situation. And I think that that's something that speaks well to the president's instincts as having a real departure from the rest of the Washington political class, which has been all around accepting the idea of a surging China over the past decade plus.

And I think that on balance and looking at the situation right now, I think he's done a better job than those early indications might have given you to expect.

Yeah, I mean, he certainly fumbled around, discounted the virus as late as late February. And then, like any good politician and also good statesman, seems to have pirouetted rather quickly into a let's fight it even at high cost model. But yet he seems to get no credit from that, from the people who cover him every day. Why is that?

Well, the media's biggest story will always be themselves, Henry. And so even in the midst of a global pandemic, won't someone think of the journalists who are being yelled at? Look, I understand that both the media and the president benefit a bit from this antagonistic relationship. Sometimes I do think he yells at people unjustifiably, but sometimes they really are asking a lot of stupid questions.

And, you know, going back and saying, you know, well, sir, you know, when you said this, you know, in the first week of February, do you think that that was, you know, entirely 100% truthful is also one in which the networks themselves, you know, have to look at the log in their eye. The last Democratic debate that we had on NBC, for instance,

in February, there was not even a question asked about the coronavirus. We were shocked to see the level of diminishment of this issue in terms of folks who were on the next evening at Fox. I was looking around at a special report, as I am happy to occasionally be on that panel, and everyone was, you know, both of any ideology was just shocked that this was not an issue that was gaining more prominence.

And I think that the President, while, as you said, sort of late to the game, did, one of the things he does do is he listens to people and he watches a lot of TV.

which means that when the TV shifted, when the coverage shifted, I think he responded to that. And he listens to so many people that when they started all being more consistent in what they were saying about it, you know, it's a long time ago, but even back in January, even the esteemed Dr. Fauci was saying that, you know, we needed to be more worried about the flu and issues like that. And that was when we still were hearing from the World Health Organization that

there was no evidence of human to human transference of what would become something that we know now to be incredibly easy to transfer between humans. So look, I think he's in a tough spot though. You know, he has basically

Of our own volition, we have wiped out the economic gains that we've seen, dramatic gains under his presidency and his leadership, and frankly, under an economy that was ready to rise after a lot of slow growth that we saw during the Obama years. And now he goes into the fall with a situation that is markedly different from what things looked like even a few months ago.

It's going to be a real test to see how he handles that. My concern is primarily that the team that he has around him on the economy might not be as good of a team as he has around him on health policy. And that's something that I think should be of concern, not just to people who support the president, but people who care about the economy as a whole and America's future and what the negative ramifications could be for millions upon millions of working class Americans

who don't have the luxury, as you and I do, of being able to continue to work from home. Yeah, that's one thing Deborah Saunders at the Las Vegas Review-Journal wrote about in a good column a couple of weeks ago, is that this is a shutdown engineered by people who can work at home that will mainly impact people who can't.

And if anything, that would give Trump an excellent opportunity, were he not the president, to run a populist class war. But of course, being the president, he's not going to be able to do that. But how do you think...

The president can reconnect with these working class voters. Do you think that they hold it against him? Or do you think that this is something where they understand why it had to be done, but you'd better darn well be on their side and soon in order to make sure they're not the collateral damage in this war?

I think that question is the biggest one facing us at the moment politically because yes, you're talking about a lot of people across the country who perhaps liked Bernie Sanders in 2016, eventually voted for Donald Trump and delivered the Midwest to him in such a significant fashion. Those same people, their reaction to this is something I'm very curious about. In fact,

It seems like a world away, but two months ago, as things looked like they were about to start wrapping up,

We were planning our coverage for the summer and I plan to send a couple of our journalists who did Midwestern coverage in 2016 back to the same communities where they met people before to circle back with a number of the different union hall members and others in these places to see what they thought of the president four years in. I'm still very curious about that. I am talking to a lot of politicians across the country.

after I'm done talking to you, I'll be talking to a Midwestern mayor who's handling this, who I'm curious to sort of see what their reaction is to this. The general tenor of what I'm being told is that there's a strong degree of frustration, that they feel like, you know, hey,

the counts in our state are much below what we had once worried. We have only a limited number of cases and a very limited number of deaths. And yet we're treating this in much the same way in these communities as if we were as densely populated as New York City or something along those lines. And I think that that is going to be a real question mark for a

I think it's important for him to start charting a path out of this that speaks to working class priorities. Steve Mnuchin, I mean, no offense, but I think people would have more confidence in the working class appeal of one Scrooge McDuck than Steve Mnuchin. You know, you see the guy come up-

You know, it's, I mean, nothing against the guy, you know, it's, it's like, I'm not going to shame him for being successful, but the point is that he does not radiate the appeal of someone who cares about working class priorities. He seems like someone who only cares about wall street. And I think that that's something that the American people feel and see in this current climate as being something where, you know, I just don't have confidence in this guy looking out for my priorities. We have a, a,

piece at The Federalist from Chris Bedford, who's one of our senior editors, who was very early in sounding the call on this, in part because he's very much of the Tucker Carlson viewpoint and worked for Tucker for years. But he has been really sounding the alarm on the structure of these help for small businesses being not necessarily the ideal for what it is and that

There are a number of question marks still about the way this is all going to play out. Throwing a bunch of money at the problem has a lot of appeal in Washington, but it's the way that that money is spread out that will have a big impact. And I'm not sure that we can look at this. We may look back on this as a situation where in order to stabilize the stock market, they did moves that actually didn't help out Main Street America as much as we needed to.

Well, that's a continual worry of mine with the Trump economic team, that they tend to focus on the interest of capital and think that the interest of capital is

automatically translates to the interest of workers and whether or not that's true on an economic level. And that's a separate debate. I know as a political analyst, it doesn't work on the political level. You have to be seen to be directly helping somebody, not indirectly through some sort of Rube Goldberg mechanism of the belief that it'll eventually flow down to people. And if they haven't grasped that in the way they've constructed these programs, they're going to find, or the Trump political team will find a harder,

uphill climb than they ought to have. If you wanted a beautiful example of exactly what you just said, Henry, it would be going back and listening to Nancy Pelosi making the argument for getting rid of the salt deduction. It's basically Nancy Pelosi making the argument for trickle-down economics. And it's like, you know, on principle, I agree with what you're saying, me personally, but you realize this is a really bad look. LAUGHTER

So you said something earlier I wanted to circle back on, which is Trump listening to people and then them becoming more consistent. My read of the Trump presidency has been

that regardless of what Trump may say, and he seems to be kind of like Austin Powers coming out of cryogenic freezing, that he seems to lack an internal monologue at times when it might be beneficial just to be quiet. But if his advisors are united,

or roughly united, he tends to do what they want. And I'm wondering if you, A, kind of see that as a similar leitmotif of the Trump presidency, and if not, let's have that discussion. But if you do, how does that impact where he goes from here as increasingly it looks like you may have a war between the economic team that would say, let's get back to work, and the health team that says, let's stay the course?

I think that he is going to face that divide. And I do think your analysis there is correct. Once he starts hearing things more consistently from the right voices in the room, he does tend to, over time, move in that direction. Well, everyone's saying that we need to do this, so we should probably do this, even if it's not necessarily the thing that I want to do or I think is necessarily right. And he'll even have this sort of

conversational monologue, or at least he would when he would hold events in public about, well, maybe we'll do the thing or maybe not. We might not do the thing, but we probably will do the thing because they all tell me we should do the thing. My takeaway about this current climate is I think he's paying

We are experiencing a unique combination of pandemic and purposeful economic shutdown, totally unique historically, by the way. We do not see this kind of thing historically in the modern sense. With a situation wherein all but one of the major leaders of both parties in Washington

Meaning the president, the speaker, the minority leader in the House, the minority and majority leaders in the Senate are either from New York or California. And that means that the experience in New York or California has an outsized representation at the table. And so I think that the president is honestly going to respond to this based on what he sees coming out of New York.

And as we see the numbers there, you know, while numbers of deaths are still, of course, unfortunately, very high, we also are seeing perhaps some beginning optimism. And frankly, Governor Cuomo has been saying a lot of the things that the president has been saying and maybe saying a little bit more eloquent. He says myths instead of fake news, for instance, about various things. And the press is less offended by him.

Because he has a D after his name and is with them on all the social issues that they care about. But the point is that I think the president will respond to seeing that. And what he sees in New York, I think, will ultimately inform when he wants to reopen. He can tease potentially Trump.

something like it'd be really nice to get back by Easter. But the reason that he doesn't do that is because the people around him very consistently said to him, it's too early. We can't do that yet. And he listened. But I think that as we look to the future and getting to a point where people can go back to work and where we can have a gradual reopening that

you know, tells at-risk people or people with uniquely risky conditions to stay at home, where we can say, you know, look, this is something that affects everyone, yes, but it does affect you if you're over 45 and if you have certain conditions far more than younger workers, then I think we're going to have to get to a point where that starts to reopen. And I think the president's going to take some cues from what he sees in New York City. For the rest of the country, though,

We live very differently than people do in New York City. We do not live cheek by jowl. And so because of that, the lessons that are taken from the New York experience are going to lead to some political divides that could be unexpected and could have some real ramifications in the fall.

What is as we wrap down this segment? What is the one thing you think that Trump needs to do in the next couple of weeks to both help the country and help himself? I think the one thing that he needs to do is to start talking in a serious way about what coming out of this looks like economically.

where we recognize that there's not one crisis going on here, there are two. And while we are going to have to go through a significant period of change and shifts in behavior, we need to also have confidence about what's going to come in the future. One underrated aspect of this that no one is really talking out outside of the policy community related to it is what happens in the fall when it comes to schooling.

There are so many working families across the country where single parents or both parents working, they depend on public schools to both teach their kids but also to watch their kids. That's something that I'm hearing more and more from parents concerned that local superintendents are perhaps teasing, "Well, maybe in the fall we don't have kids go back to school in the same way."

There needs to be a plan on that. And people need to be able to have confidence that those types of things are being considered by their leaders, not just, you know, in their states or in their cities, but also at the federal level. And so I think that's what the president needs to start to do in order to give people comfort that, hey, at least there is a plan exists and we're not just doing this by the seat of our pants. Well, on this night of Passover, I'll just say from your lips to God's ears. Thank you very much, Ben, for joining me on the horse race. And I look forward to having you back.

Great to be with you as always, Henry. In the last segment, Ben spoke about how polls are showing a large rise in distrust towards China as a result of the coronavirus, which of course originated in the communist-controlled country. There's one candidate in a runoff in Texas for a congressional seat has decided to take advantage of this and use that to propel herself into Congress.

the ad is from kathleen wall and that's this week's ad of the week let's listen china poisoned our people president trump has the courage to call it what it is the chinese virus kathleen wall has his back wall will cut off trade aid and support to china fight to replace made in china with made in america and stand with president trump to face down the chinese threat

China is a criminal enterprise masquerading as a sovereign nation. It's time to fight back. I'm Kathleen Wall and I approve this message. Most ads try and create a favorable aura around a particular candidate by talking about the candidate's background or by talking about a range of issues. This one takes the exact opposite.

It talks about China, and it talks about the literal and visual attack that it says China is launching on the United States. The ad starts with a picture of China in red, both the color of communism and the color of the flag of the People's Republic of China, and it shows little arrows in red and yellow, the colors of the PRC flag, saying Chinese virus literally crossing the

Pacific Ocean and entering into the United States. So in the first five seconds, the visuals grab you. If you think that China is either responsible for or negligent towards the entrance of coronavirus into the United States, you're riveted to this ad. It then immediately translates that into Trump and Kathleen Law.

Trump is somebody who every Republican is trying to wrap their arms around as tightly as they can in any Republican primary, and Kathleen Wall is no different. She cites his name a number of times. She has a picture of her with Trump in a number of cases, and of course has Trump himself saying the words Chinese virus.

The visuals again also reinforce the message. For most of the commercial, her name is on the screen, Kathleen Wall, and Wall is in big capital letters. So you focus on her last name to try and remember it. And then as she says things like, cut trade and aid to China, the same words appear on the screen.

And then, of course, you conclude with a very Texan closing where she's on horseback with the one time she departs from the Chinese element of the ad where she's on writing on horseback in a casual way to say that she approves this message again with her name blazoned on the screen.

This won't work if people feel weakly about China. It's one thing to say that you think that China is problematic or that you think that China is to blame for the coronavirus. It's another thing to say that that's your primary voting

uh... mechanism however wall trailed after the first round despite uh... massive amounts of money that the wealthy fundraisers deploying our own behalf and i think what she's doing is saying i've got a gamble in order to get to where i want to go she lost the congressional race in another district two years ago this is maybe her last chance to get to congress so she's taking a gamble that if people aren't buying her maybe they'll buy her when it's associated with something they care more about

I don't know if it's going to work, but I think it's a pretty good gamble for somebody who's behind and needs a jolt. And the excellence of the production values and the simplicity of this ad is why it's this week's Ad of the Week.

Well, as the political world has slowed down, it hasn't stopped. And certainly we've had a lot of news about the virus and the pandemic that is consuming America and indeed the world. And here to talk with me about all of these things, as well as Bernie Sanders' announcement that he's dropping out of the Democratic presidential race, is Carlin Bowman, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and one of the nation's leading experts on public opinion. Carlin, welcome back to The Horse Race.

Thanks so much, Henry. I'm delighted to be with you. Well, let's start with the news. We've been expecting Sanders to drop out for a while, or at least the possibility of it. But of course, he stayed in for the longest period in 2016, even when it was clear he had no chance to win. But yet now he's out. What do you make of that? And how do you see the Democrats unfolding between now and their now postponed convention?

to use the popular cliche the political race is really frozen and i don't think people were paying a great deal of attention to it or to mr biden or mr sanders i don't know how well bernie sanders did in the strange wisconsin uh primary yesterday he had certainly won i think all counties but one in 2016 and so it's possible that

He didn't think he was going to fare well in Wisconsin. That's certainly what the polls would have suggested. That being the case, I think it made the most sense for him to suspend the campaign as he's now done.

His supporters at this point aren't very enthusiastic about Joe Biden. So I think it remains to be seen whether or not Biden can convince them. And perhaps he can because of the deep animosity toward Donald Trump that they should come out and vote for him. So I think that the race frozen may be a little bit too strong. Obviously, there's an enormous amount going on below the surface in terms of digital advertising and the like. But at least at this point, Biden's not going to get a lot of attention in speaking from his basement.

Yeah, I guess his daily Corona brief, his firings, I messed up there. Corona virus briefings aren't either going very well or he stopped them because I certainly don't hear anything about them anymore.

No, I've heard not a thing about them. And I think the fact that he called the president was a very smart move overall to show that he's willing to extend his hand. But at this point, I think that the campaign is just going to be postponed for a while. I've been looking at the very favorable impressions of Biden

among Democrats and comparing them to the very favorable impressions of Trump among Republicans. And Biden's very favorable numbers in some polls are not particularly strong. So that's something I'm going to be watching going ahead. I think that's really important. You've got to be able to turn out

turn out Democrats and have Democrats enthusiastic about you. Now, as we get closer to the election, as it's Donald Trump versus Biden, I think most of those people will come back in the line. But certainly some of Bernie Sanders supporters could endorse another candidate, could just decide to stay home.

Well, certainly that's something that Trump is encouraging, that his tweet within an hour of Bernie dropping out was talking about how, again, the DNC establishment ripped Bernie off and how they should join his side. And he has one word, hyphen, trade.

How successful do you think a conversion effort as opposed to a depression effort would be? How likely is it that a Bernie Sanders voter is going to actually cross over and vote for Donald Trump as opposed to just say there's not a dime's worth of difference between these two septuagenarians?

I would be very surprised if they would vote for Donald Trump under any circumstances. It's much more likely they'll stay home. And it's really hard to motivate people if they've just decided to give up and they may have just decided to give up. Well, maybe that's what Trump's tweets are, is that he's read his Dante and these are all codes for abandon hope all ye who enter here. Yes, indeed. It's possible.

He certainly has a lot of money to spend in the campaign. Oh, gosh, sure he does. I mean, although it is funny, we talk about how much money there is in campaign, and it still always pales in comparison to even a few of the largest private advertisers. But then again, private advertisers can't get a whole lot of free media coverage from their activity as opposed to candidates. Absolutely. Think about it.

When you think about what Procter & Gamble spends each month, what they're spending now, and compare that to political spending, it pales in comparison.

So where does Biden go from here? He's now the only candidate, barring, God forbid, something terrible to happen to him. He will be the nominee. And he has said that he was going to announce his vice presidential selection process and I suppose his screening committee sometime soon. Does this kind of move that up so that

since there's no longer any contest to stay relevant. He almost has to create relevance by having a vice presidential sweepstakes that the media will swoon to cover. Absolutely. And I think there'll be strategic leaks about what his kitchen cabinet to speak of is looking at in terms of vice presidential candidates. I think it might be important that he start appearing with Barack Obama if Obama decides he wants to do that now that the race is essentially over. I think

that could be important going forward, even though in many states in the primaries and the exit polls and in the entrance polls, Democrats or people who voted in Democratic contests said they wanted policies that were more liberal than Obama's. But still, Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, they're very powerful and very popular. And I think it would be important that they perhaps start appearing together since Obama has been on the sidelines. But I think the vice presidential contest will also generate interest.

interest overall and they'll be a front runner du jour. Yeah, I was talking with my son who was interested in the race and he's kind of become a little bit of a Democrat and had not yet heard Sanders had dropped out. And I was trying to explain how don't be surprised if when you get to the vice presidential process,

you start hearing names of people who represent different factions in the Democratic Party, even if they're not being seriously considered, so that you reassure the members of that faction that they will have a seat at the table.

Absolutely. So we'll be hearing on and off about Kamala Harris, about Elizabeth Warren, the more progressive women in the contest. But we'll also hear about some of the more centrist women, Amy Klobuchar, Gretchen Whitmer. I think those names are going to be mentioned a lot in the next couple of weeks. And the fact that it's a woman will also be important, I think. Yeah. No, that's one thing is that having a...

Having a woman means that some people who you might otherwise be putting out there, like a Sherrod Brown of Ohio, are clearly off the table. But one thing I was thinking, not that I think he'll put her on the table,

ticket, but talking about Tammy Baldwin, the only open lesbian in the Senate, would help reassure both she's strong in the Midwest, in Wisconsin. It would be a good political nod to that key Democratic constituency if she emerged as at least, if not a finalist, one of the people that had been winnowed into the semifinalists.

Oh, I think she will be winnowed into the semifinals. I was interested to see in a recent Michigan poll the closeness of that Senate contest, which might argue from Democrats' perspective that you might consider Gretchen Whitmer just because of down ballot concerns in a state like Michigan. John James seems to be doing pretty well.

Yes. That's one thing that stands out when I look at the polls is that Peters usually leads, but to be leading with 45 or 42 percent like he is in every single public poll, that's usually a sign of weakness for the income. Absolutely. Absolutely. It was a two point race in one of the polls the other day. I thought that was significant.

Well, Gretchen Whitmer is somebody who I thought did a very good job in that drinking that poison chalice that's called the response to the State of the Union Address before coronavirus. I thought, well, here's a woman in her mid to late 40s. She looks good on television. She speaks well. She exudes energy, but without crossing into that manic stage, that

can harm people. And now she's one of these governors who seems to be attracting good attention because of their handling of the virus in that state. I know you have data on this. What does the data tell us about either Whitmer in particular or about the governors generally?

Governors generally are doing very well. Prior to coronavirus, we saw the interesting phenomenon that some of the governors, such as Charlie Baker and Larry Hogan, who were governing in a more bipartisan way, they really had very high marks compared to other governors. But since the coronavirus has begun and taken over

uh all of our taken over so much of our attention you see a number of other governors getting very very high marks in terms of their handling of the situation there's obviously cuomo in new york dewine larry hogan gavin newsom jay inslee just very very high marks overall and americans tend to be a little more positive about their governors than they do about people in washington but these numbers are much higher

than we've seen in a while. And I think it speaks to performance, and also to the fact that these people are really projecting the fact that they care about everyone in their state, and they're on the issue overall. Whereas Washington is sort of seen as a little bit behind the curve, and people have never been very satisfied with either Trump or Congress, and so both of them are getting pretty mediocre marks in the polls. What else does the

polling show about Americans and coronavirus. People have talked about a Trump bump, and now we're talking about kind of a Trump slump. Is there anything to that? The numbers are moving within a pretty narrow range. It's clear that he did get a bump up for a short period of time. It seems to be receding in most of the recent polls. We're literally getting three or four polls a day from different pollsters. But what I think is most interesting is how America

Americans have really responded to what Dr. Fauci, what the CDC, what the administration has asked them to do. We see just huge changes in public opinion and the number of people who are paying close attention to this and taking the behavioral actions that really could make a difference in many places in the country.

washing their hands more and more. They're staying away. They're not going to meetings. They're not going out to eat. I mean, that has obviously very serious consequences for the economy. But what you're clearly seeing in all the data is Americans

emphasize keeping the public safe before trying to reopen the economy. Those numbers are very, very dramatic overall. People think we're in a recession already. They think it's going to get worse before it gets better. They're trying hard to comply.

The numbers on job loss, furlough, and several pollsters are tracking this on a regular basis. They're going up there, and some of the consumer confidence numbers obviously have plummeted overall. We should get the University of Michigan's Consumer Confidence Index tomorrow, Thursday, and that's the one I watch most closely because it has a 50-year trend line on some of these concerns, and so that will be particularly interesting.

There's some partisan differences, clearly on administration performance, clearly on media performance. Trump and the media are at the bottom of the list in terms of people, in terms of the organizations or people that the public trusts to give them good data on the situation overall. And again, that's not unfamiliar. But governors, as we've said, local governments are getting very high marks right now. And again, it speaks to the fact that

institutions or officials that are closer to people have a real opportunity to perform well or perform badly, but I don't see too many of them performing badly at this point. Yeah, I mean, the worst I've heard is kind of like mediocre ratings for somebody like Brian Kemp or Ron DeSantis as opposed to general rejection of them.

Absolutely. DeSantis is lagging a bit compared to these other governors we've been talking about. There's no question about that. And, you know, again, I don't know all the facts about whether he really delayed some of the important things that he needed to do in his state. But clearly, I think the public there has seen a performance problem. I mean, competence matters, performance matters, and that's what we're seeing in these data overall.

Do people express hope that things will be better by the end of the year, or is that not being asked very much? It's being asked by quite a few pollsters. The pollsters are asking, how long do you think this lasts? How long before life returns to normal? And in one of the recent polls, 20% said it would never return to normal. Now, it could be that it's going to be different, but most people expect by June, September,

that are June, July, that things will be returning to normal. So they are very hopeful. And I think that's a natural, something we've seen in the American people in so many ways. We saw, interestingly, after 9-11, a spike in the number of people who said they prayed, the number of people who said they were patriotic. We haven't seen the same spike on prayer, but yet you get the sense that the public's actually sort of pretty confident

pretty calm. They're doing what they're, they're compliant. And I think that's really been important. They are going along with what government tells them, what the federal government tells them needs to be done. And they're, that's pretty impressive in a, in a country where we have a lot of differences, but we're all going along with it. And there you, on those kinds of behavioral things, you don't see significant differences between Republicans, Democrats, and independents. What about trust in government? That is a

Number that's been low for decades, you know, jumped up a little bit, I believe, around 9-11. Are we seeing trust in government increase as the face of government is governors and health experts more than politicians? Or is it still pretty low?

When people hear the question about trust in government, I think they think about the federal government. So I doubt very much that it will increase. There have only really been three times in the modern era, 84, 85, in the Reagan era, then 1999, 2000, and then again briefly after 2001, where that famous question, how much of the time do you trust the federal government to do what's right,

was asked. And in all three of those cases, we saw it tick up. It lasted a while because of a good economy with Reagan. It lasted a while in 1999 and 2000 because of a good economy. And it did lift a lot of other boats. People felt good about a lot of things that had nothing to do with trust in government. It was

really interesting phenomenon. We saw the same thing, obviously, for a brief period of time after 9-11. But I don't expect ratings in government, ratings of the government to tick up, in part just because the numbers are so negative and so low. And I think people really think they hear the federal government when they hear that question. Yeah. So put yourself in the shoes of...

President Trump, if you can. And it's June and things are not back to normal, but we've stopped social, you know, that the optimistic scenario comes about.

What would you do if you were President Trump at that point? Would you take a victory lap? Would you try and keep expectations moderate? Would you go on the attack against the media that has never let up their attacks on him throughout all of this? What do you think would be good for Trump to do in a scenario where it's June and things are looking up?

Well, we know a lot about Trump's personality and his inclination to take a victory lap will be strong. I'm sure if things are, in fact, turning around, if the curve is really flattened by June. And he should be able to take some credit, even though there were serious missteps along the way, to the extent that he can surround himself with someone like Dr. Fauci, who has the highest ratings of, I think, anyone in America.

on public opinion right now. To the extent that he can continue doing things with him, I think that would be important overall, even though they seem to be on different pages at different points. But, yeah,

I think we just have, I mean, Trump will be Trump again, probably, and take the victory lap. It could be premature, particularly if there's a second wave of this, given how long it takes to make a vaccine. If there's a second wave or a second problem in September or October, that could really dent his standing overall. But, you know, he's not known for being modest. To say the least. Is there anything...

With respect to daily life that or attitudes towards non-government, non-political things that jump out at you from the polling that you've seen.

There are a lot of interesting things about daily life. Let me just mention a few of them. People seem to enjoy working from home. Most people are developing a routine. Parents are having a little tougher time than the population as a whole, as might be expected with children at home. That's always, you know, it's a big adjustment, I think, for families overall, and that's clear in the data.

In terms of other things in daily life, as I said, one of the most interesting things is how many people have been working at home and Gallup has a good trend on this.

how many people are enjoying that. And I think that's really quite interesting. Apparently gardening is going up and all sorts of those kinds of pursuits. There is a segment of the public that's anxious. We certainly saw that after 9-11, and you see it in the data now, a small segment that say their mental health is worse. But for the most part, people are

are getting along. They're seeing more of their neighbors. I think that's a big plus overall. They're getting a few things done around the house. I wish I were getting more done myself, but again, they're just a lot of interesting little tidbits in these. And as I said, about half of Americans have said they prayed about the coronavirus. And so I think this shows something we've known for a long time. Americans love their country and want it to be successful.

Well, this week we're going through two very holy periods and two important religions that Jews will be celebrating Passover and Christians will be celebrating, or at least all Christians besides Orthodox Christians.

Protestants, Catholics and so forth will be celebrating Easter, but they won't be able to congregate in most states. They won't be able to go to services. Are people talking about that or mentioning that in polls as something they wish they could do? Or is this another one of those life activities that despite how much they might normally look forward to Easter Sunday, they're just putting on the back burner?

I don't think most people who are active members of churches are putting it on the back burner. Churches are doing extraordinary things in terms of live streaming services. And I know of at least three virtual Seders tonight where people are just gathering around the Zoom lens. And I think that's very significant for the people who are already religious. As I said, about half of Americans are praying. Churches have had to do a pretty fast turnaround in terms of

ramping up their virtual activities, and I think many of them are doing it just extraordinarily well. Only a small number of, there's been some news stories about conservative Catholics who are angry that the churches are still not holding services and people are seeking those out, but I think that's not true for most people. And whether or not they'll tune into a mass on Easter Sunday or have a virtual Seder tonight remains to be seen. I haven't seen enough data on that. Both

Pew and Dan Cox at AEI with an American perspective survey did look at religion in a time of the coronavirus. And that was really quite an interesting survey. I hope we're able to go back in the field and look again at some of those findings.

Well, what are you looking for in a political matter over the next couple of months? I mean, clearly this is something that we haven't experienced as a nation in a century with respect to a serious pandemic that has this level of closures and

Probably not a political event that has been as riveting or as disturbing to as many people since at least the great financial crash, if not 9-11. So what are you looking forward to thinking? Okay, this will give me some sort of insight with respect to how the nation's politics resume as the immediate pandemic response starts to fade.

The recovery from the 2008 recession was so long and so painful. And I wondered if it, and I'll be able to tell as we watch more data about corona, whether or not that

effect that that effect on public opinion was so deep, deeper than anything I've seen, much deeper than 9-11, much deeper than the 82 recession or the early 1992 recession. The great people thought their financial institutions were going to collapse.

I don't think they have that or they don't seem to have that sense right now. They're pretty high on the stimulus that's already been passed and right now suggesting that even more should be done. And if the checks get out to people, if small businesses are feeling some relief, if we see businesses getting back to business, I think –

that, and if the economy, I don't think it's going to necessarily come roaring back, but if the economy looks like it's coming back, let's say by June, then I think the race resets and it perhaps resets at a little bit higher level for Trump.

than it is right now. The latest polls today show Biden leading, and I think it was going to be by a few percentage points, a little bit larger than some of the other polls overall. But I think the race resets if those other things happen. I'm a little worried about the fact that

It took so long to recover from 2008 and I had just never seen anything like that before in public opinion. The lag effect was extraordinary. And I don't know whether that will be the case, but a lot depends on what happens by June. Well, it's certainly going back to 1983, 84.

By election day, I think unemployment was still somewhere around 6% and inflation was down, but it was still running at around 4 or 5% or so. But the change in an 18-month period from what people had expected or experienced, I should say, was so great that it created that halo effect around Reagan, mourning in America for those of us old enough to remember that ad. Absolutely.

If unemployment really is going to be 15% to 20% in the next month, as some people think it is, it's conceivable, do you think, that if it's down to, quote, unquote, only 9% by October, that people will have a similar wow, we're back feeling? Well, I don't think they're going to think we're back, but they're going to think we're moving in the right direction. And that, I think, you know, that's a pretty high number. I mean, we saw it also spike to 10%, I think, in, was it...

2009, it spiked to 10%, but we haven't seen anything like that, anything higher than that. And so that's since the Great Depression, and this looks like it's going to be much higher for a while. And again, I'm worried. I don't really know how much of a lag effect there is because the public was clearly a lagging indicator earlier.

after 2008 and 2009. It really took till about 2013, 2014 for people to think things were a lot better. And that this is much worse in terms of the numbers we're seeing right now. So I'm pessimistic about that. Well, I'm sure President Trump's team is looking at all of these things and hoping for the best, but planning for the worst. Well, Carla, thank you very much for joining me again on The Horse Race. And I'll love to have you back in the summer.

Thanks so much, Henry. I enjoyed it. So this week on State of Play, we're moving south. We're moving to North Carolina, the Tar Heel State, which is one of the most competitive states, both for a key Senate race and in the presidency. And I'm joined by a wonderful young elections analyst, J. Miles Coleman, the associate editor of Sabato's Crystal Bowl at the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, who is an

amazing demographic political cartographer and an expert on all things political and particularly North Carolina. So Miles, welcome to The Horse Race. Oh, sure. Thank you for having me, Henry. Well, could you let my listeners know why is it that North Carolina has moved from being the home of Jesse Helms and a pretty strongly conservative and hence Republican state into being one that's a genuine toss-up?

Yeah, I mean, even when we thought of the South as being more of, you know, the solidly democratic region, North Carolina was still kind of an exception back then because, as you said, in the Senate we had Jesse Helms for a while, right?

I think maybe one of the factors that's driven it into being more kind of a swing state now is you have a lot of voters who are not native of North Carolina. My family there is a perfect example. And I remember before the 2012 election, public policy polling data that poll, I think there...

They pretty much poll North Carolina regularly, and they had a poll of the presidential race. Overall, it was about even, which tracked closely with the ultimate horizons. But one of the things they asked is if you were a...

native North Carolinian or not. The North Carolina natives would have gone for Romney by 15 points, whereas the people who were not from Romney, they were much more Democratic-leaning. So I think demographically, the influx of people from New York or Pennsylvania have maybe tilted it a bit more,

A bit more to the left, I think, at least in presidential elections, since Obama, at least the Democrats have done a better job of organizing some some of their key constituencies like like blacks, for example. So those type of things would make it into more of a swing state these days as opposed to Republican Union state.

So break down the North Carolina into either regions or voting blocks that correlate with regions. Now, where are the Democratic strongholds? Where are the Republican bastions? And if you're a casual person, a casual election follower who is looking on election night for the key places, you know, I look at this county or I look at this area and whoever wins this wins the state. Break the state down into those bastions and swing areas for my listeners.

Yes, sure. Well, traditionally, the split in North Carolina has been very much an east-west thing. If you look at the 2008 governor's race, that's a perfect example. You had Governor Bevin Perdue, who was from out east. The Republican in that race was Pat McCrory, who was from the shanty.

Charlotte area and that was really I would say the last big traditional race in North Carolina with this type of east-west With the East trending Democratic and the West trending Republican. Yes. Yes. So but now like a lot of states these days, it's more It's more become an urban world type of thing. I remember

growing up when I started to follow the 2008 presidential election. In the Charlotte area, we used to have the best Congresswoman. Her name was Sue Myrick. And her base was in the South Charlotte area, which has historically been rock-ribbed Republican.

it would be one of those things where, okay, well, Obama would get kind of close in my dad's district at that time, but Myrick would always win with over 60% of the vote. Now her district, or like her base region in South Charlotte, a typical wealthier suburb that maybe pegs towards trending towards the Democratic Party,

That's basically all blue now. So it just shows you some of the changes that are taking place there. I know that generally speaking, there are very few across the board and in a number of states we've seen as things have become more polarized, we've seen fewer and fewer

for your kind of genuine bellwether counties. North Carolina kind of fits into that bill as well. Some of the counties are maybe Watauga, which is where Appalachian State is up in the kind of northwestern part of the state, down in the other extreme of the state in the south at least.

New Hanover is traditionally thought of as a sewing county as well, which is where Wilmington is. I've always, if you follow me on Twitter, of course, you know I talk a lot about Robeson County in the kind of southeast as well, which has a very large...

It's known for the Lumbee Indian tribe, which has historically been a heavily Democratic constituency, which has kind of gone the opposite of the state and kind of has, as a minority, they've trended a lot more Republican, which maybe isn't what you would expect. They're a very culturally conservative tribe, so maybe some of the...

issues like that have driven them to vote with ralph hoboken but it's it's uh one of those things i always like about north carolina there's a lot to kind of look at uh and i would say the county where the state kappa bottle is uh wait which is uh ralph raleigh seems to be has uh

has traditionally been only a swingy to light blue county. There's been a lot of influx there of suburban death outers. In the 2016 election, Hillary won Wake by 20 points, I think. You know, it's the second most populous county. But the fact that she still lost by four points overall shows you how red some of the –

some of the Republican parts of the state have got. Generally, the Republican bastions have been in kind of the western part of the state. And then, interestingly enough, I was talking about migration earlier. There's been an influx of wealthy retirees in some of the coastal counties as well.

Hanover, Onslow, which has been kind of a rare situation where this immigration into the state has driven it rightward. So there's a lot of stuff happening in North Carolina. Well,

Well, I was looking at different counties while you were talking, and Robeson County was one that came, one of the few counties that came close to the statewide margin and had one of the largest swings to Trump's. And New Hanover, the one with Wilmington, had a swing to Clinton, but still came very close to the statewide margin. So it looks like

To me, you nailed the two bellwether counties such as they exist, you know, that if Trump's going to win, he's going to need those sort of Lumbee Indian voters, the North Carolina's version of the Obama Trump voter to stay with him. And it's going to need to minimize the swing away from him among, you know, more wealthy or retirees and suburban people like you would see in Wilmington.

And then maybe one more, uh, one more I would point to as well is, uh, just east of Raleigh is Nash County, uh, which is actually where, uh, Gov. Cooper is from. Uh, Nash was interesting because it was one of the, uh,

It was one of about a dozen so counties that were up. I'm talking nationally that were for McCain in 08, but Obama in 2012. And it flipped back to 07.

Trump in 2016. And a big part of why Obama was able to flip it in 2012 is he was able to turn out the black vote out there. So maybe if Biden is able to flip Nash back, it'll be a good sign for his operation with the black vote there.

Well, I know what I'm looking for on election night now, Nash, Robeson and New Hanover to let me know, as I predict races in live time on Twitter, how that thing is going. Well, tell me about the Senate race that Tom Tillis, the Republican incumbent, won in the 2014 wave. And he is rated by most observers and I believe by your publication as well as a toss up.

Tell us a little bit about that race and whether or not we should expect it to basically follow the presidential patterns or if there's something else going on that we should know about. Yes. Well, we wouldn't rate Tillis as an especially strong incumbent. He was, even in 2014, a lot of most handicappers would say, okay, well, if...

If the Democrats keep a few competitive races, North Carolina is probably going to be one of them. Well, guess what? He won anyway. And I think maybe that spoke to more to how ready he was and him as a candidate. He's been a pretty anonymous senator most of his term, although, generally speaking, his negatives have slightly –

been ahead of his uh causes that ever rate ratings so he's very uh he's very anonymous in our state uh his democratic opponent is going to be uh cal cunningham who he's not a juggernaut but if the democrats were going to win the race cunningham would be kind of adequate an

enough to really be able to win. We can see in the primary he kind of had some, it was looking like Cunningham may struggle. Some Republican groups were trying to do what we call pull a McCaskill and crop up one of his other opponents, Ericus.

submit, but it never, you know, it didn't really work. But looking towards the general, North Carolina is a state where there's still some crossover about, we would expect, as you kind of alluded to, we would expect the Senate result to track pretty closely with the presidential race. But I feel like if

Trump is winning the state by maybe one, two, even three points. That wouldn't automatically mean that Tillis would win. Well, are there any other races that we should be looking for as we look at the fall elections? Certainly there's a governor's race, I believe that's up. And there's house races, but you never hear much about them. Why is that?

Yes, so, well, in terms of our governor's race, Governor Cooper, even though he won by a very close margin in tiny, he's been generally popular. His approvals have been around 50%. I think we currently rate his race as Leans Dem. So he's definitely looking like a favorite. In terms of our congressional race, as it says,

We just got our third map of the decade last year, and it was drawn so that North Carolina has 13 seats. It was drawn to be a pretty rock-solid 8-5 delegation in favor of the Republicans. Maybe the closest thing to a competitive race there would be the 8th-day-day district, which now has all of

Fayetteville. It kind of runs out to take some red counties by the Charlotte area, but we still have that as likely. In the eastern part of the state, Congressman G.K. Butterfield is going to have

probably a bit closer of a race this time because he got a somewhat less friendly seat uh but he has a pretty strong brand out in east north carolina so we would still expect uh him to uh him to win well thank you for enlightening me about all things north carolinian and i will look forward to uh having you rejoin us on the horse race certainly

That's it for this week's Horse Race. Next week, we'll be talking about lots of primary races that are going to be held for House and Senate seats over the coming months. And we'll talk with Yuval Levin, editor of National Affairs, about where he sees the state of reform conservatism and the state of the Republican Party going into the post-Trump or the Trump second term era. I'm Henry Olson, and I'll see you next week.

so