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What a week it was. And the horse race has you covered for all of it. We'll be talking Trump with Victor Davis Hanson, going over all things political with my Washington Post colleague, Karen Tumulty, and talking about the U.S. Senate races with Inside Elections editor and publisher, Nathan Gonzalez. The horses are at the starting gates. They're off.
Well, joining me to talk Trump on this week's episode is a man well-versed in Trump himself, the author of the book, The Case for Trump. His name is Victor Davis Hanson. He's senior fellow in classics and military history at the Hoover Institution, which is at Stanford University. And this is his first time on the horse race. Victor, welcome aboard. Thank you for having me, Henry.
Well, the president has again been in the news a little bit over the last week or two because of this virus pandemic. How do you think he is handling the crisis and how do you think he is handling the politics surrounding the crisis? I think he's handling the crisis very well. The politics, he's thin skinned, so he replies in kind and retaliatory fashion when he's smeared or besmirched. That is not always helpful, but
It does create deterrence on the other hand, but more or less he was in a very good position once he realized that the virus was not going to be, at least in its initial stages, like a normal flu. I don't think it'll be quite as lethal as a flu year, but it won't be normal in the same ramifications. And I think once he realized that, he's done a pretty good job. He was also pretty well equipped to do it if you think that
The things he's been most criticized for, closing the southern border, the earlier bans from countries like Iran and North Korea and some of the Middle East travel bans, the green lighting of medicines beyond the reach of the FDA for last chance patients. All of these things. And then, of course, the signature policy of distrusting the Chinese, what they say, and trying to
bring industries back. All of these were pretty much good prerequisites for the policies that he's adopted now.
Well, particularly his distrust of China, as you mentioned. He shut down air travel, not just to China, but from anyone who had been within China the 14 days before they came into the United States, and he was attacked. Joe Biden said that there was hysterical xenophobia. And where would we be if he hadn't have done that? I think we can adjudicate that because Joe Biden has not come back out and said,
Not only do I believe you were racist and xenophobic for issuing a travel ban, but I want it taken down. I want it ceased. Desist. Stop. Let people in. But he never says that because he doesn't actually. I think one of the things that Trump's ability as a leader, he has what the Greeks call pro-noia foresight. And by that I mean...
He has a feeling where we should be in 90 days, 100 days. And he knows that this lockdown is not sustainable financially and economically. And he knows enough that he can't say that because it'll be warped and misinterpreted as callous.
But he's making the argument that the lockdown will cost lives, and it will, by missed doctor's appointments, surgeries, suicides, substance abuse, as we're cooped up in these homes. And he knows he has to make a decision, and that decision was always out there, and that is that some magical golden mean –
He has to say the damage from the virus and the damage from the economy is a 50-50 choice. And when the damage from the economy gets greater, he's going to have to jumpstart this economy sometime in the next 10 days and just hope that like a person in a coma on a respirator who's taken off, the economy revives.
It's funny you mention that. That's actually my column from Wednesday, is that we're not killing the economy. We're putting it in an induced coma and hoping that the stimulus revives it. We're not sure that it will. Well, the whole Western world is banking on it. Yeah. So 10 days, that's a pretty rapid scenario that I know Trump said,
country back to normal by Easter, which is a little over 10 days from now, a little over two weeks. Do you think that's realistic? Or do you think the number of deaths that will be coming in the news from the patients already in the pipeline is going to keep the president from being able to do that? Well, I think there's some, the answer, of course, is more data. And that could be quantified by both more testing of people who are actively carrying the virus,
Because I think the more we get, at least here in California and to a degree nationally, we've seen that lethality rate go from 4 to 3 to 2, and now it hovers between 1.2 and 1.4. That's 98.6%. When that lethality rate gets below 1% and gets into the 07, 06, 05, then the president can legitimately say this is a flu, that the effects of it are. Right.
And that will restore confidence and it will justify a jumpstart in the economy. On the same token, it's very important, I think, to have these antibody new tests, titers, because there's a lot of people on the West Coast who realize that, as the Italians have, that this virus...
could have been here in late November and that Chinese are I keep lying about the date when they first knew it from January something now all the way to December 1st and they there's some articles coming out of the Italian newspapers that it was there in late November because there's a suspicion among the Bay Area people where we were getting seven eight thousand uh Chinese Nationals per day in this month including two direct flights from Wuhan to lax and SFO
that a lot of us were exposed to it and either didn't know it or had actual symptoms that were attributed to a rare early form of influenza B. That's what we were told when we got it. So there's something wrong with the modeling is what I'm clumsily trying to say, that if you look at these early models that were issued in
January and February, we should be in the multi-million number of cases and we should have hundreds of thousands of dead. But, you know, it's not happening quite in California in particular and no one can quite figure it out. We don't know, but there's something mysterious about the virus. And then this study today from Oxford where people suggested that in the UK there might have been a lot more latent immunity because the virus had spread
than they had anticipated. They were again trying to explain the inability of these early models to bear fruit. Well then, whether it's 10 days or three weeks, we're looking at a short suppression, which of course is not nationwide in the United States. There are places that are under lockdown orders, but there's plenty of places, as we know from the Fuhrer over Governor DeSantis in Florida, that
are largely open for business. So if that's correct, we could be looking, if not Easter, then certainly by the end of April, a return to quasi-normal with a better capacity to handle the continuing lingering cases. I think so. And then we have to put this other
factor in play that this holds issue because it's unlike the swine flu year of 2009. It's completely weaponized by the election year and the Democrats have not been successful, the left hasn't, in leveraging a news event
or a crisis, an impeachment, a Mueller probe, whatever, and getting the results that they anticipated. And so some of them are quite overt when you read what they're writing about coronavirus and Trump, and it's a methodology used to ensure that he's not going to be president. And the more that becomes transparent to the voters, I think, the less happy they'll be about it.
How do you see, it's certainly evident that there are many people on the left who thought that they didn't get him with Mueller, they didn't get him with impeachment, but this is the thing that's going to get him because clearly he quote unquote failed. But yet, as we speak, Trump's rating, job approval rating, is at a record high on the real clear average.
It is his disapproval. It is at a record low. Every poll taken within the last three or four days has him his job approval up by between three and five points. So the initial reaction is contrary to their expectations is, hey, I actually trust that this guy's doing the right thing. How do you think they will react to this? And more importantly, how do you think the president will react to this?
Well, I think the problem is they have a basic misunderstanding of leadership skills, and they define it in terms of how long have you been in the Senate or whether you were governor or whether you were a Rhodes Scholar or whether you went to Harvard Law School.
And he's completely sui generis. And by that, I mean he has certain skill sets that are necessary to survive in Manhattan and deal with crooked unions and social activist groups and crooked politicians and regulations and zoners that are actually pretty valuable when you're president of the United States. And they've never got that. To the degree they do, they always call it a low cunning. He's cunning. We grant that. But he has a sense that...
that this crisis, cause he's calm and he, he's been in financial peril before. So he's been there and he, they didn't, I don't think they ever anticipated that these crises is what he does very well in much better than when everything are calm, because then he starts to editorialize when there's no need sometimes and they go off and there's no new cycle and they can magnify a gap. But now, uh,
he, he, he's very calm. He gets his team together and he's, he lets people know that he's going to make the decision and it's going to balance a versus B. And, and,
It's amazing when Fossey got off the reservation and started to ankle bite Trump in these interviews. Trump pretty much must have made it clear to him that he's not irreplaceable because now today he's almost in a fawning fashion saying there's no daylight between them. And he has great respect for Trump and he has that ability. He doesn't. If you come into Trump's office and say you can't fire a or you don't dare get on the wrong side of B, he doesn't care.
And that turns out to be valuable in a leader. And then the second thing, he knows where he wants to be, as I said earlier, where he wants the country to be in April. So where the public is interested, they just want to be able to go out and think, if I get infected, it's going to be like the flu. And I can deal with the flu. I know 30,000, 50,000 die, but I can psychologically deal with the flu. And I'm worried about this because it's not the flu I'm told.
And they need to be told that 99% of you may have a bad case or two, but it's like the flu. And if they can be told that and it's accurate and it's not disingenuous, then they will take advantage by late spring and summer, cheap gas prices, low interest, the natural relief that comes from surviving a catastrophe, etc.
and the nascent efforts to move these key industries like pharmaceuticals and medicals back to the U.S. And there will be an economic rebound probably by July or August. And that's what the Democrats are most, I think, most afraid of. They want to continue this crisis mode because they don't want to go into an election with a good economy.
It's been clear that they have been afraid that the economy can wash out all of their efforts to bring Trump down for quite some time.
So it seems to me that you're saying is that the response is right. He's with a few temperamental moments aside. The politics is right. What do you think about Trump's possibility for reelection? I know it's seven and a half months out. And as we've just seen in the last month, black swan events or unexpected events can sweep away all prognostication. But assuming that there's another, you know, China doesn't, you,
use this as cover to take Taiwan or something like that. Where do you see, are you confident the president can win reelection? Are you 50-50? Where do you stand and why? I would say 60-40.
or maybe even higher for two or three traditional criteria. It's not a popularity contest. He's going to run against someone, and that someone is Joe Biden. And Joe Biden has been offering daily commentary, supposedly after being rested and calm in the familiar comfort of his own home. And if anybody's watched those clips, it's sad. It's almost an anatomy of somebody who's befuddled and enfeebled.
almost like a Robert Mueller testimony before Congress. And that's going to help Trump because he's not running against Andrew Cuomo, who would be at least far more rhetorically challenging. And then in addition to that, Trump seems to, in these crises, he does very well. He does better than without crises. And that pattern of
initial shock, media pounces, lower rate, and then he recovers. After a while, Nietzschean sense, anything that doesn't kill him makes him stronger. So he's better at it. He's getting better and the media is getting worse. And that will help him. And then...
I didn't think it would happen, but he has united the Republican Party in a way I've never seen in my own lifetime. And whether it's because of... Get to Smoothie King today and try the new blueberry, raspberry, or watermelon lemonade smoothies. They're all made with real fruit, real juice, and no bad stuff. Just check out the no-no list at SmoothieKing.com. Try the new lemonade smoothies at Smoothie King today. Self-survival or whether they really like it.
it or they see that he's able to push these agendas they've never been able to get through. I don't know what the reason is, but the Congress, the House, the Republican Party have all concluded that they're either going to die or live with Donald Trump. He's either going to preserve their Senate majority and win back the House. And there's no such thing as having distance between you and Trump. So the party is united and
And they're going to run against a weak Democratic candidate. If it is Biden, I think it will be. And he's getting he's sucking all the oxygen out of the room. And the Democrat media exegesis that the more you see Trump in a crisis, the worse you're going to like him. I'm not going to show him anymore because he's a pathological this or that.
that it doesn't seem to be borne out by any evidence, that the more that you see him in action, he gets the attention, and he's almost conducting himself as if he's on The Apprentice. He's going to get high ratings, and that creates this cycle where the people get angrier and angrier on the left, and then they get more desperate, and then they say even crazier things, and then he sort of goes quiet. So...
He's able to handle it pretty well. And then we have to get back, and you know better than I do as a political scientist, that if you go back to 1900, is it 18 presidents? About 85% of all presidents get reelected as incumbents. And the ones that don't usually, it's Jimmy Carter or George Bush, they're looking at a recession that somehow they are felt to be culpable for. And I don't see it happening.
A sex scandal like Bill Clinton's second term, or I don't see economic recession caused by Trump's policies. So it's hard to see. Or a non-popular war that destroyed the second term of George Bush or the first term, full term of Lyndon Johnson. Yeah. Yeah, or a party divided. This is one thing that –
The media aren't reporting, and I understand it because Trump didn't have a serious challenger. But the fact is, what the RNC is saying is true, is that Trump is getting record high or near record high percentages of the Republican votes in the primaries. And he is getting large turnout in the Republican primaries that are held. And that suggests
genuine enthusiasm among the Republican electorate, which is not a majority, but among the Republican electorate for the man who is their leader? I think so. I think that the average Republican or even conservative independent says, is it better to have a closed southern border or not? Better. Is it better to be suspicious of China? Better to be suspicious. Is it better to frack and produce energy and be the world's greatest producer of gas? No. Better. Is it better to...
try to bring industries and control our own deaths, et cetera, better to deregulate. And on all those issues, he's on, without very few exceptions, he's on the majority side of not just Republican public opinion, but probably the public in large, 51% issues. And when you start polling, and again, you know that better than I do, but when you start polling the new Green Deal or stopping fracking or abortion on demand or getting rid of ICE or forgiving Americans
making Medicare for everybody. They don't poll 51% on all those issues. He's going to be running on issues that he's carefully selected that have a 51% majority. And Biden has stuck with this AOC contamination of the Democratic Party that he's going to have to manipulate that or warp it somehow without getting, you know, how's he going to take Pennsylvania when he wants to stop fracking?
That is a huge, huge question. And you saw it today that apparently Biden and his daily briefings said that in the next round of stimulus, which people in Washington think there will be, there's a good, reasonable chance that Democrats can get some sort of Green New Deal, to which my tweet was.
no chance in the nether regions, for lack of, to put a nice word on the four-letter word that I did use. But this is the problem that Biden has, which is that a third of his party is crazy left and
And he has to keep their excitement on board. But to keep their excitement on board moves him away from the center, which is the only chance for him to beat Trump, is to be viewed as the non-offensive non-Trump as opposed to the non-offensive vehicle for Sandersism. That's a dance that he is not very good at playing.
No, and he's crapped himself with this primary rhetoric and statements. I mean, when he's on that debate stage and Trump turns around, as we know he will, and points his finger at him and said, there's thousands of families in the suburbs all over America, Joe, and on January 31st,
There were 10,000 to 15,000 people coming in, many of them exposed or infected with that virus. And I made a tough decisions and you criticize me now, right now, you, what would you have done? That's going to be an issue that a lot of suburban families are going to really thank Trump for. Well, as a, as a last question, then Victor, as a, as a,
Professor and an expert in classics and classic statesmanship, where do you think Trump exhibits really classic Ciceronian or Caesarian virtues that a leader has to have? And where do you think he's deficient? Well, there is a tradition, especially in Roman politics, Caesarian politics, where people of the upper classes or the wealthy classes are
There were certain people, not all of them, Pompey didn't have it, Caesar did, Augustus did, even though he's more distant, and Pericles did, who was a member of the aristocracy. But this empathy with working people, and whatever it is, Trump, that's what the left never understood. He was a populist, and they said, that's impossible. But when he comes out with those shiny shoes and the hair and the tan and the tie, he's
People find that genuine and authentic in a way that when Hillary Clinton says, I'm so tired, or Joe Biden fakes an accent, puts you all in chains, or John Kerry put on a duck outfit, duck hunting. So he's authentic, and the working classes feel that, and they feel that he really cares about muscular labor, and that's his great strength. Yeah.
And he crafts a position and an agenda and policies that reflect that populist. So that's really important. The only criticism, it's what everybody has of him, that
When he makes a retaliatory, I don't think people object to his tweets because if you look at them, they're not preemptory. They're retaliatory. And people like a guy to give it back. And they didn't like the Marcus of Queensbury McCain and Romney campaigns. They preferred Lee Outwater winning ugly than losing cleanly the way that Romney did and McCain did. But that being said, Trump goes the next step. So he...
He'll just say, you're stupid, you're a loser, you're ugly. That kind of stuff tends to, and a lot of people bother them. I don't know to what degree that prevents him from voting for him, but I do think that given his record, he should be polling in 53, 55, maybe even 56 or 57, and he's not. And that's because he goes that extra step
and i understand why he does it it's to create deterrence so you don't tread on him but i think he goes a little bit too far and that hurts him and there is a balance there too he can't go back to you know don't tweet and don't reply to your critics so they want to destroy him they don't want to defeat him they want to you know physically politically
career-wise, utterly destroy him. And it's an existential fight to prevent that. So I understand, and I couldn't take the pressure that he's under. There's no way I wouldn't last a day with the stuff that's been said about his family and his person. But I think he doesn't need quite, after he tears somebody back or he nukes them in an exchange fire, he doesn't need to go that extra step of humiliating them.
Well, we'll see whether or not he can restrain his sumos for the remaining few months before the election. Victor, thank you very much for joining me on The Horse Race. Thank you for having me, Henry. Enjoyed it. Well, this week, joining me on Round the Horn is a colleague of mine at The Washington Post, Karen Tunnelty, who is a political correspondent and an expert in all things American politics. Karen, thanks for joining me on The Horse Race.
Great to be here, socially distanced from you, sitting here in my house. Yes, and I'm sitting here in my fiancé's house, and all those people who said that Facebook and social media were driving us into isolation, well, now I think they get to eat their words because it's the only thing that's keeping us together. Exactly. Well, today we're celebrating the apparent deal that has been cut between the Democrats and the Republicans with Speaker Pelosi's
approval being provided through Senator Schumer and staying in contact. And she gets to spend, as you told me recently, her 80th birthday tomorrow in social distancing, no candle, no cakes, no friends. She just gets to herd cats on the House floor to get unanimous consent. Is that like a fun way to spend your birthday or what?
Well, I think that it's a very appropriate way for Nancy Pelosi to be spending this birthday. I think she would prefer people not mention this birthday. But it is a pretty heavy lift that she has in front of her here legislatively because she can get this thing through with only two people in the chamber. But to do it, she has to have the consent of everybody.
every single one of those 435 members. And, you know, the House doesn't act unanimously on pretty much anything.
So what are her expected thorns in her side? Now, part of me wishes that she would embrace her birthday and somebody would stand up and say, four score. And, you know, four score years ago, Nancy Pelosi joined our world. But in the absence of such iconium on the House floor, what are her difficulties? Who does she have to spend the next 24 hours twisting the arms and buttering up?
Well, I think this is going to have to be a joint venture of her and Kevin McCarthy, because there will probably be some Republican voices saying, you know, we don't pass things that we don't have time to read. Already, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,
who is expressing some reservations about this bill, Justin Amash, same thing. So it is going to, there's going to be a lot of sort of socially distanced handholding going on here, a lot of conference calls going on, a lot of pressure being applied on people. But I think that, you know, people were sort of mystified as to why Pelosi introduced
this piece of legislation that she did earlier this week, which was sort of criticized as essentially a Democratic wish list.
It's very clear she never had any intention of bringing that bill to the House floor. But in doing this, she was able to, number one, put pressure on Mitch McConnell that he was going to have to do some serious negotiating with the Senate Democrats, which he ended up doing. And I think it was also, you know, this is a messaging document for her own members.
It certainly showed a number of them that she has their back with respect to some of their key priorities. That's right. And again, it is, you know, it's a thing that I think it was heavily, heavily criticized when she did it. But you sort of had to understand that, again, this is something she never intended to bring to the floor. So what happens if she's unsuccessful? Yeah, certainly.
McCarthy can lean on the Republicans. She can lean on the Democrats. And then you've got Justin Amash, who's an independent, who was castigated by Republicans when he left. And clearly as a libertarian, if not in name only, if not formally, is not exactly susceptible to pressure from the speaker. What happens if one of these cats stands up and says, I object? Where do we go from here?
We, I say this as the country, we are in a world of hurt because right now the House is out of session, which means that to even, you know, get this process going again, you're going to have to actually put all these people on airplanes and bring them back and reopen all of these negotiations.
So the stakes really could hardly be higher getting this thing to unanimous consent. It does sort of remind me a little bit, though, of what Pelosi had to do to get the Affordable Care Act passed, because she also was operating with absolutely no margin for error. There were no Republican votes to be had. She had to do it with her own members. And so you saw her doing a lot of, you know,
gestures to the more conservative members of her party on abortion, gestures to some of the liberals, but essentially sort of trying to get people there. I wouldn't be surprised, for instance, if she promises maybe some of her more liberal members votes on other things down the road. But I, you know, I just don't know how she's going to pull this together.
And people are talking about stimulus phase four. It may be that she promises to push things in stimulus phase four that she wasn't able to get in stimulus phase three.
That's right. And maybe that will be some of these things like the, you know, the minimum wage requirements that she had in the bill or some of the environmental stuff. But she's a she's a very, very pragmatic politician at heart, I think. Well, her heart is liberal, but her brain is very pragmatic.
Yeah, well, she learned at one of the masters, wasn't her father a Baltimore Democratic ward healer or city boss when she was growing up?
You know, it's very funny you should mention that because I do have this big essay that's posting late Wednesday night and will be in the paper over the weekend. She talked about that. Both her father and her brother were mayors of Baltimore. Her father was also a congressman and a member of the Maryland legislature. But she talked about when she was being raised, the youngest of six and the only girl, she
She was not raised with expectations that she would go into politics. As she put it, her mother wanted her to be a nun. Her father wanted her to go to college in Baltimore so she would continue to live under his roof. As she put it, she said, my brother Tommy was groomed to be mayor and I was groomed to be holy.
Well, you've had a long discussion with the speaker recently. Tell us some of the highlights that you'd like, you think cast a light on who this very important person in American politics is. Well,
Well, and, you know, I was saying Nancy Pelosi is not an easy interview. The hardest thing is to get her to sort of open up and talk about herself. And so it was a very unusual interview that she actually did this and that she did it on video, which is something else she hates. This is why you don't see her, for instance, on the Sunday shows a lot. But she talked about how she really did never,
picture as she was growing up and even into middle age that she would ever actually run for office. She saw herself as a fundraiser. She saw herself as an organizer. And of course, she saw herself as a mother of five children that she had in the space of six years. So she talked a lot about her own very, very unlikely journey to becoming the most powerful elected
American woman in American history. But she also talked a lot about the lessons she learned along the way about power, and also the types of lessons that she really wants to pass along to sort of the up and coming generation of women leaders. What are some of those lessons?
Well, one thing she said is that power, nobody is ever going to give you power. It's something that you have to go out and get for yourself. But she said, once you have it, you have to use it. The other thing she said that she is doing very consciously is that she is trying to make many more of her friends,
female members subcommittee chairman, even as early as their freshman terms. And she wants them to be on committees where they are dealing with issues like national security and, you know, military affairs and economics and science, you know, kind of the issues that people don't necessarily associate with women politicians, she said, because for these women to advance, they are going to have to have those credentials. Mm-hmm.
How does that go over with the male members of her conference? Well, I think that she's also made a number of the men freshmen, you know, subcommittee chairman. You get a gavel when you're in your first term.
But I think that generally in the Democratic conference, this is celebrated. When Nancy Pelosi got to Congress in 1987, there were fewer than two dozen women in the House. There's now over 100 of them.
And, again, this is something that we've really seen a lot of progress in a very short time, even as a lot of women, I think, are sort of disappointed that they're not going to see a woman running as the party nominee for president this time. But, of course, we had a lot of qualified and very strong female candidates running
And they weren't able to persuade a Democratic electorate that was nearly 60 percent female to back one of them. And I think that has to be something that Democratic women have to ponder is that how after the year of the Democratic woman in 2018, how is it that people like Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar came close but didn't get to the brass ring in a party that demographically seems to favor them?
And again, you should watch the interview because Pelosi addresses that. And she says, you know, in the end, you've still got to win. And again, she's very pragmatic about that as well. Before we turn away from the speaker, as a California expat, I got my start on the redistricting wars in the 80s. So, of course, I have...
know a little bit about Phil Burton, the classic master of redistricting modern art, whose untimely death set up a special election, his widow fills a seat,
And then Nancy Pelosi, in a city dominated by aggressive elected Democratic politicians, becomes the nominee and wins in her first bid for elective office. How does she talk about how she decided to make that transition and how she managed to outmaneuver all of these other people for what would have been essentially a lifetime seat?
She does talk about this, and it's funny. My first job in Washington was as the California delegation reporter for the Los Angeles Times. So what happens is Phil Burton's widow, Sala Burton, at the age of 61, is struck with cancer. And she summons Nancy Pelosi, her very close friend, to what is literally her deathbed. And she says, Nancy, I'm not running for reelection at that point.
Pelosi at least said it wasn't clear to her how sick she really was, but she is in the hospital. And she says, I'm not running for reelection. I want you to run for the seat. So Pelosi goes back. And at that point, she only has one kid left at home. Her daughter says, mother, get a life. So she tells Sala Burton that she will run for the seat. Sala Burton
announces that she endorses Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi, then Sala Burton dies within two weeks of this announcement. So Pelosi decides to run for the seat. It's a very, very crowded special election. There are a number of politicians who have much more qualifications than she does. I think there were three county supervisors in the race.
And so she had to beat out a lot of other candidates. Now, she did have the Burton machine, at least what was left of it behind her. But she also had in sort of the tradition of the daughter of the mayor of Baltimore, she had collected a lot of chits over the years. She had been the chairman of the California Democratic Party, the Northern California Democratic Party. She had raised a lot of money for a lot of people.
And so she did have a pretty good political network. So she was able to basically add the Burton army to her own army, and it was enough to get her elected to Congress. Barely. It was a very close race, but she was able to do it.
Well, no wonder she ultimately looks back on all of these candidates and says, you know, to channel the motto of the owner of the football team across the bay from her, Al Davis of the Oakland Raiders, just win, baby.
Exactly, exactly. Although, again, by then she is already 47 years old. This is pretty late. And she did say that she didn't even know how long she'd stay in Congress, much less did she ever think she'd run for leadership. But what happens is the Democrats lose the House and they keep losing and they keep losing. And she decides they're doing it wrong. And so that's when she decides to make her own bid.
And that was after Gephardt, if I remember correctly. That was she she did run for a year before Gephardt left. She runs for whip and knocks off Denny Hoyer. Ah, OK.
So that's the beginning of their pas de deux that's continued for the last two decades. Well, actually, they had been interns together all the way back when they were in college in the same senator's office. So this may go way, way back. Oh, wow.
Well, let's turn a little bit to the national scene, not the coronavirus national scene, but the national presidential scene. We basically had not just a lockdown of our lives, but a lockdown of national politicking. Primaries are being postponed.
And Bernie Sanders is still in the race, although most people look and say this is it's a formality that Biden's going to go on and become the nominee. But of course, with so many primaries being postponed, do you think that plays into Bernie's apparent decision to stay in the race? He's already said he'll debate Biden in April. Where do you think this goes from here?
You know, I just think it's so hard to predict because everything now is so overwhelmed by this national crisis that we are in. I do think it's hard to imagine how Bernie Sanders gets this thing back.
But these are some pretty important weeks and potentially months for Joe Biden to be laying the case for his own election as president. And he's been pretty silent through all of this. He certainly has. And then, you know, there's a clip making its way around the Internet now or through social media of him saying,
He had such a good debate performance before the March 17th primaries. And then there's this clip where he's answering a simple question on a live interview and can't finish his train of thought and just trails off by saying, oh, anyway. How much do Biden and his advisors want him to be out there? And how much are they worried that too much of this being out there runs the risk of
whatever it is that causes him to lose his train of thought, becoming more of a meme. You know, I just don't know. They've got to find some way, though, to be out there and to have his voice as part of this whole national conversation that we are in. So they really don't have much choice than, you know, again, finding some way to make him part of it. Yeah, which they have not managed to do so far.
No, no, it's just I was trying to think if there's any kind of situation like this that I could recall. And I just can't think of one. Possibly, you know, it was really interesting. Teddy Kennedy, when he decided to challenge Jimmy Carter for the presidency in 1979, I believe he announced the very weekend that the hostages were taken.
That was when the Roger Mudd interview played, was the weekend of the hostages. And what people don't remember is that Jimmy Carter's approval rating in the weeks and
And even the months after the hostage crisis began, went through the ceiling. Essentially, you know, the country rallied behind him, at least for a while. And it really choked off all the oxygen, I think, for Teddy Kennedy's challenge.
Yeah.
up into the high 50s or the low 60s. And then after the failed attempt to rescue the hostages, it all started coming back down to earth. But there's about a five or six month period where if the election had been held in March rather than in November, Jimmy Carter would have won a second term.
Right, right. So it really does show you how, first of all, these things are just impossible to predict, but also that you can have great changes in these campaign dynamics come about over very, very short periods of time. Right.
which has got to be something that Sanders, who, you know, for all we like to forget, but it's worth remembering that even today, Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat. And, you know, other people would have party loyalty or party factions that they are part of. You know, this is a guy who's basically barged into a party from the outside and
Maybe he looks and he says, I don't know what's going to happen to Joe Biden in April. I don't know what's going to happen in May. Look at this big pot of delegates on June 2nd. My supporters still love me. Let's just roll the dice and see where it comes up.
And what Bernie Sanders has that's pretty unique is a spigot of money that he can just turn on at will. This guy is never going to run out of money, which is the thing that usually forces people out of a race. Yeah.
Well, you mentioned the Carter surge. Wednesday, President Trump's job approval rating hit its high point since his inauguration. It's still low, historically speaking, but
As more polls come online, one suspects that he will go through that and begin to approach parity for the first time. He's at 46.3% Wednesday morning, probably will be over 47% once some of the older polls drop out. How much of this obvious rally around the flag effect, which also hit and benefited President Obama for about a month after the death of Osama bin Laden,
What does your political instincts tell you? Is this something that the president can build on and help relaunch a faltering reelection effort? Is this really a one or two month rally around the flag boomlet that will fade as soon as the crisis goes away?
Well, my own hunch is that he needs to sort of begin. And again, I'm about to say things that I'm not even sure Donald Trump is capable of. But, you know, I think that the country is giving him.
a second look here. And were he to sort of drop the daily, you know, temper tantrums, tirades about his enemies, and if he could just sort of focus on getting the country through this, he's not going to lose any of his base. And he might actually,
you know, attract a little bit more support from people who are either having their doubts about him or who were pretty disenchanted with him. Because it does not appear that he's going to have, you know, the kind of robust economy that he had been counting on. Yeah. Well, they say you never get a second chance to make a first impression, but it looks like the virus might give Trump that
elusive second chance to change a first impression. And again, I don't know if he is, you know, temperamentally capable of this, but the more that he can look like he is just serious and focused as opposed to temperamental and in a constant Twitter rage, I think the better. Yeah.
Yeah, I actually have been surprised that Donald Trump is a person who has cultivated a public persona all of his life. And...
consequently to have not learned the ability to adapt with circumstances, something I thought would come naturally to him. The fact that he has not over his political persona in five years is still the divisive, angry person as opposed to learning how to pirouette to a different persona the way any politician who has spent that long is able to do. That has surprised me. And I guess this is his last chance to see if he's capable of it. Exactly.
So a final question, then Biden steps up on the stage, either in Milwaukee or digitally somewhere to get the nomination. Who is his running mate and why? Well, he's already said it will be a woman. And by the way, I should always let you know, I'm terrible at predicting things. But right now, I might give the edge to Kamala Harris.
Because she got out of the race early enough that she, you know, sort of maintained her political viability. I think she is...
has been pretty good in these settings where she gets to sort of use her prosecutorial skills, which would potentially be the debate stage this fall. I think that having an African-American running mate would really be a big incentive for a lot of African-Americans to vote. And of course,
The fact that they didn't show up in places like Detroit and Milwaukee and Philadelphia, I think that's one of the big reasons Hillary Clinton is not our president today.
Well, you know, I think there'll be a lot as all of these things usually are. There'll be a lot of people who go in and the people who go in may think they're in the final hunt, but they're really just for show. My guess is it's really a two woman race between Amy Klobuchar and Kamala Harris. And we'll find out which one of them gets the nod.
That sounds pretty smart to me, too. Well, Karen, I will look forward to watching the video and reading your essay when it goes online on our mutual employer, The Washington Post. And thank you very much for joining me on The Horse Race. It's been fun. Thank you for having me. Thank you.
This has been an unusual time in America, and so I've chosen an unusual ad for this week's Ad of the Week. It's from Democrat Amy McGrath, who is challenging Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for his seat in Kentucky. It makes extensive reference to the current coronavirus crisis. Let's listen.
Hi everyone, I'm Amy McGrath. And like many of you, I'm cooped up at home with Eric and our kids. But we know we're fortunate. Because of the coronavirus, we decided to focus our campaign on helping families and seniors throughout Kentucky. We launched Commonwealth Common Health so our volunteers can assist Kentuckians in need during this crisis. You can sign up at amymcgrath.com. I approve this message because we all have to look out for each other.
Well, you can see that the ad is all about the coronavirus crisis. But what you can't see, because this is radio and podcast, is what the visuals are. Amy McGrath is standing in what looks to be her family room. And in the background, you have her husband playing with three kids. Now, unlike a lot of political ads,
The kids are on stage. They're just running around doing what they normally do. They're hitting themselves over the head with foam bats. They're playing. And it's quite clear that this is what the McGrath household, in an ideal sense, looks like. Surely there'll be times when they're a little angrier, but they're behaving like normal kids.
The sound is also a little bit off on this ad. Hear the echo. Normally, commercials are perfectly produced in a way to remove any normal problems that you would have recording in a live setting. They don't try and do that here because that's not what they're looking for here. They want you to think and see that you are in Amy McGrath's home living Amy McGrath's life.
Notice she doesn't say anything about Mitch McConnell because it's not time for partisan attacks. It's not time for attacks or contrast. It's time to come together. And that's what the ad is about. The ad is about coming together and identifying her with that spirit.
One of the visuals on the ad as she's talking straight to camera is her name. It's on screen for the first seven seconds so that as she's talking, you can see who this is. It's Amy McGrath. And at the end, when she's talking about her Commonwealth Common Health Program, that comes up visually on the screen with amymcgrath.com.
which then transitions over to her logo, Amy McGrath KY20 for U.S. Senate, when she's saying the federally required phrase, I'm candidate name and I approve this message because.
This is a nice way to campaign without seeming to campaign during the time of the coronavirus. She's going to need all the positive goodwill she can in order to win a normally red state against one of the most experienced and brass knuckles campaigners in modern American politics, Mitch McConnell. She's probably not going to do it.
But it's ads like this that make it thinkable that she can. And that's why Amy McGrath's coronavirus family ad is this week's ad of the week.
This week, we see a return of a feature that I've dropped for the last couple of weeks as the presidential primaries were heating up. That is the undercard. The undercard is the segment where we talk about congressional, Senate, and gubernatorial races of interest. And it's my honor to have one of America's and the United States' leading politicians
political analyst and prognosticators, Nathan Gonzalez, the editor and publisher of Inside Elections and an elections analyst of CQ Roll Call, who will talk with me about the state of play in the control for the United States Senate. Nathan, welcome to The Horse Race. Thank you for having me. Well, where do we start off, Nathan, that for the listener who may not be following this obsessively like you and I do,
Who controls the Senate by how much and who is defending how many seats so that we know which side has advantages and disadvantages before we tackle each individual state? Yeah, well, even before the coronavirus pandemic,
pandemic and COVID-19 outbreak. In a presidential year, the Senate and the House always gets the short end of the stick. It never gets as much attention. The presidential race is just the cast a shadow over everything. But what I've been saying for months now is that the Senate majority is in play. There is no guarantee that Republicans maintain control of the Senate. And I think it's
for there are a couple of different factors one of the biggest factors is that the playing field
is dramatically tilted onto on the Republican side. And what I mean is Republicans are defending, I think they're defending 10 states that are vulnerable right now compared to just two states where Democrats have vulnerability. If we just walk through those, walk through those quickly. Well, before we walk through the individual states, just the quick math is that for a majority of
Democrats need a net gain of four seats, but they can control the Senate with a net gain of three seats and winning the White House where a vice president, the new vice president would break any 50-50 ties. So this is another example of where the White House result and the control of the Senate are directly connected. Mm-hmm.
I was just going to say, which states do you think are likeliest to flip? I know that it's always uncertain and most of your analyses are in toss-ups, but there's at least one, I believe, that most people think is going to flip from one party control to another because of the underlying demographics of the state.
Right. I mean, the most vulnerable senator in the country is Democrat Doug Jones of Alabama. Even though the Republicans still have to choose a nominee, it's had to do a runoff between former senator, former Trump attorney general Jeff Sessions and former Auburn head football coach Tommy Tuberville.
But just the nature of Alabama, the president's going to win Alabama by a substantial margin, that puts Doug Jones in a very vulnerable position. And so when we look at that math, and I mentioned Democrats needing a net gain of
a gain of three or four seats, it's really probably four or five because they're likely to lose in Alabama the way things stand today. And if we stay on the Democratic side, the only other vulnerable Democratic seat that we see right now is Gary Peters in Michigan.
And, you know, the president won Michigan narrowly in 2016. There's no guarantee he'll do so again. But that race is kind of definitely in the second tier-ish of competitive states. Republicans could really benefit if they could pull that onto the battlefield even more because that could balance a loss elsewhere on their side. But right now, Michigan isn't a toss-up. If
And what do you think they have a good candidate in John? Is it John James or Josh James? John James, John James, a retired Army Ranger, I believe, helicopter pilot, businessman, happens to be African-American in a party that doesn't have a lot of diversity right now on Capitol Hill, raising good money.
and Republicans in Washington really like him. They think he's run a great campaign. Uh, I have been a little bit more skeptical in part because he ran in 2018 and lost to, uh, the other Democratic Senator from Michigan, Debbie Stabenow. And the race wasn't particularly close. I mean, it was five or six points. Uh, James didn't show that he was really over-performing what I think a typical Republican in Michigan, uh, would get. And so, uh,
We'll see. He is running against Gary Peters, who is not as much of an institution in Michigan as what Stabenow is. But also a lot will depend, I think, on the top of the ticket. So who do you rate as the most vulnerable Republicans right now?
I think the most vulnerable Republican Senator in the country is Cory Gardner of Colorado. And Cory Gardner is regarded as one of Republicans best, say best incumbents or best candidates. He has a style about him that is, he doesn't come across as a conservative fire brand and, and that kind of drives Democrats crazy, but he's also running in a very, I think a difficult state of this cycle. And the president is,
lost Colorado by, I believe, five points. I think that it will be a challenge for the president again, and Gardner will overperform the president. The president might be digging a hole at the top of the ticket that it'll be difficult for the senator to dig out of. And Democrats have a former two-term governor, John Hickenlooper,
And while Hickenlooper may not be the perfect candidate, he has the advantage of being a former statewide elected official in a Democratic-leaning state.
Beyond that, I think the next vulnerable senators would be Martha McSally of Arizona, Tom Tillis of North Carolina, two states that the president won in 2016, but I think are emerging as battlegrounds, particularly Arizona. And McSally lost the 2018 Senate race and then was appointed to this other Senate seat and is now standing for reelection for the rest of John McCain's term. And she's running against
Mark Kelly, who is Democrats, the retired astronaut, former retired astronaut and current husband of former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who was shot tragically a number of years ago. And he's also one of Democrats best fundraisers in the country. And so that's one of the marquee Senate races. We're also watching Susan Collins in Maine, a state that Hillary Clinton won in 2016. She has proven herself.
that she's proven her ability to win tough races in the past. But I think a challenge is that I,
I'm seeing nationally, it is difficult to have this brand that lives sort of opposite of the state's leanings. And what I mean by that is, you know, in last cycle, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota was supposed to have this kind of rock star local brand, and she ended up getting crushed by Congressman Kramer. If you look at Democratic Senators John Tester in Montana or Joe Manchin in West Virginia last cycle,
regarded as being rock stars in their states. And they won by just a few points against fairly mediocre candidates. And I think Susan Collins, this is going to be her most difficult race that she's ever had.
And just to quickly in the next in the next tier, we're watching the open seat in Kansas, where Republicans fear that if Chris Kobach is a nominee, that could be put that seat in play. Steve Daines in Montana, Joni Ernst in Iowa. Both Georgia seats are on the ballot this fall and even, you know, keeping one eye on John Cornyn in Texas.
Well, it certainly looks like the playing field is tilted strongly against Republicans, but the demographics of many of those states suggest a strong Republican lean. There's been a debate for a long time whether or not
Senate races are independent of national trends, meaning that you can build a personal brand or whether in the modern era they're largely dependent upon national trends, which is that incumbents or challengers will rise or fall with the parties.
strengths. Sounds to me like you fall pretty strongly in the dependent camp, that we're now looking at party votes rather than individual votes. And if that's the case, could you tell horse race listeners why that is? Well, I think there's been an evolution since I've been doing this and even in the last few cycles. And some of the pieces of data that I see are
In 2016, 2016 was the first time in history, or at least the first time since we've been popularly electing our senators, so I think a little more than 100 years ago,
where the presidential result and the Senate result matched up in every single state. And that doesn't necessarily mean that's exactly what's going to happen in 2018, but I think it's when you combine that with sort of those 2018 results that I was talking about with Manchin and Tester and Hyatt Camp, and you can even throw Claire McCaskill in there. I think that there is this strong trend toward, uh,
party line, you know, party line or partisanship when it comes to, particularly when it comes to federal races. And that's why Cory Gardner should be concerned or Susan Collins, Martha McSally, or Doug Jones in Alabama. And I think that those senators that are able to buck the trend of their state will increasingly become kind of endangered species.
So in 2016, Donald Trump got roughly 46% of the popular vote, if I remember correctly. He wins because of the electoral college, that he gets slim pluralities, although not majorities of the vote in the key Midwestern states and in Florida. What percentage of the vote, if the fates of Republican senators and
are tied to President Trump. What percentage of the popular vote do you think Trump needs to get to pretty much give them a fighting shot of holding narrow control of the Senate?
I tend to look at it a little bit differently. I mean, I'm trying to stay laser focused on state by state and district by district in the house. And I think that state by state, there are, um,
State by state is important because, you know, the margin nationally to me matters less than what the margin is in Colorado and President Trump's margin there or Arizona and North Carolina. So I think I know that there are formulas that work better for the House in potentially gaming that out. But I think it's harder to do on the Senate side.
Well, then let's take that. That's a fair point. Let's take a look then at Arizona, which is a state that Trump carried by about three and a half percent, although not with the majority of the vote in 2016. A state that voted Democratic for the Senate in 2018, although again, Kyrsten Sinema, the winner, did not get a majority of the vote. Where does polling right now tell us
McSally stands and where Trump stands, because I believe if I if I've the last polls I've seen, there's actually a gap between the two of them. Right. I think on the Senate side, the polling is consistently shown a fairly close race. Most of the public polls have shown Mark Kelly with maybe up a few points and
I, Martha McSally, I believe even released her own internal poll that showed it as a close race, which is not usually a sign of confidence for an incumbent. I see that the presidential result and McSally's fate are closely aligned. I mean, I think she is not dissimilar to many of her colleagues who she's chosen to kind of adapt to.
uh, the president's line or the president's maybe in demeanor in some sort of ways, you know, she is, she is basing a lot of, I think a lot of her electoral fate on, uh, on, on how the president does, you know, she's running her own campaign and raising money and doing all of that, but not trying to demonstrate any particular, particular independence. So if the president wins and he wins by, uh, a couple of points, I think that,
that McSally is in good position. But if the president doesn't win, or if he's barely squeaking it out, then I think Kelly has an opportunity to win because I believe Democrats combined with Kelly are going to outspend Republicans, maybe even in a significant way in this race.
So if we go by the 2016 results, but also factor in that the state like Arizona moved strongly towards the Democrats in 2018, you know, it suggests that Jones in Alabama goes Republican, but that maybe Gardner, Collins and McSally in their states go Democratic. So that leaves the Democrats up plus two.
And then they have to go into states where Trump won a majority of the vote, either or close to a majority of the vote, either North Carolina or Joni Ernst in Iowa or John Cornyn in Texas or one of the seats in Georgia.
If you were going to say that if Democrats on that trade start up plus two, which two seats do you think listeners should be following to see whether or not they get control? That's a great question.
The easiest answer would be North Carolina and Maine. I think those are the most vulnerable. But I'm already trading off Maine because Clinton carried that. If the Democrats pick up Collins and Gardner and McSally in exchange for Jones, they start out plus two, so that's a 51-49 Senate. Where's the next two seats? Tillis, and is there another one, or is it kind of like Tillis and they hope they get the White House? Well, Tillis and the White House or Tillis and...
sort of one of the other collection, meaning I can walk through those second and third tier races and explain why I don't think Democrats are going to win. But when we zoom out and we think, what are the chances that Democrats only need to win, you know,
to screw one of them up. I mean, maybe by nominating Chris Kobach or in Montana, which is a, which is the newest seat onto the playing field that Steve Bullock in this time of crisis, uh,
being the current governor is able to lead his state and improve his profile and leverage that into a good Senate campaign? Or Iowa, does the president's, the economy and the president standing in Iowa fall that puts Joni Ernst? So I guess it's more of North Carolina plus the
the democratic chances of winning one of the other uh seven states that we're looking at yeah well part of me is tempted uh in fact i'll submit to the temptation or the old spanish-american war slogan remember the main and the hell with spain sounds like a democratic strategy to victory would be um let's get maine into hell with danes um but uh
I think this is going to be really fascinating as we move forward to see whether or not the Democrats do emerge one of these other six or seven seats if trends move in their favor. And in a couple of months, I'd love to have you back on the horse race to talk about the state of play then and see whether something has emerged in that time, Nathan. That sounds great. Thank you.
That's it for this week's Horse Race. Thank you for bearing with us as due to the coronavirus, we are doing this all remote and trying to put many streams of guests and files together into one for your listening pleasure. Please excuse any errors or imperfections. Next week, we'll be doing it all over again remotely with guests. And this week, we'll be going back to our state of play feature where we'll be looking at a key state in this fall's elections.
I'm Henry Olson, and I'll see you next week in the Winter Circle.
