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I will confess that I don't belong in a conversation with this esteemed group at any hour. I can't do math. Oh, come on. I can't do math. Shut up. No, no, no. This is out of my depth. And I'm too tired to talk, so it's fine. Oh, I mean, that's the point of these, right? The only thing we're missing is the wine, and it really gets fun.
Hello and welcome to this late night RNC Reaction edition of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast. The second night of the Republican National Convention just concluded and I'm sitting down for a late, maybe a little sleep deprived, kooky conversation with two of my colleagues who are Washington Bureau Chief at ABC News, Rick Klein. Welcome to the podcast, Rick.
Thank you. First time in a long time. This is exciting. I know. I'm excited. It's great to have you. And also here with us is co-author of Politico Playbook, Rachel Bade. Welcome back to the podcast. Thanks for having me. Tired as I am. I hope I sound coherent. Oh, always, always coherent. But honestly, that's part of the deal, right? We're approaching midnight central time. So think of this, if you're on the East Coast, we may be all ready to tomorrow.
And forgive us if we get a little kooky, like I said, but we got a lot to talk about because we didn't do a late night podcast after Monday night. We were busy doing emergency reactions to the VP selection. And so between the first night, which was kind of interesting, it was Make America Wealthy Once Again. And the second night, which was Make America Safe Once Again, with some underlying themes of the
The first night, labor, we heard from the president of the Teamsters Union, which was pretty significant, who basically trashed corporations in prime time at the Republican National Convention with Scott Walker, former governor of Wisconsin, who signed Act 10 into law, sitting in the audience. And then the second night was really a who's who of maybe people who don't necessarily agree with Trump or wouldn't naturally be a part of his campaign.
coalition or ran against him when he ran for president this time around. Rachel, let's start with you. What has been your takeaway of the Republican National Convention so far? I mean, this is not going to sound profound by any means, but tonight I was just reminded once again how much this party still remains Donald Trump's party. I mean, it was a who's who's of former Trump rivals coming to the stage.
to basically, you know, kiss the ring. I mean, you had Nikki Haley get up and finally make a full-throated endorsement of Donald Trump.
encouraged the people who backed her over him to back Donald Trump at this point, basically making this argument that, look, we might not agree on everything, but you got to vote for Trump because the opposite would be terrible. You had, what, Ron DeSantis coming up right after that. The crowd seemed pretty receptive of him. I mean, I will say Nikki Haley got a couple of boos, so that was...
You know, not total immunity there. Also Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and Ben Carson. From what, 2016? Yeah, the 2016, all the people he laid waste to. People that, I mean, you could do a whole convention night just lining up the awful things they said about Donald Trump, right? And to me, I totally agree with Rachel. I mean, this is the Trump party. We've known it for a while now. But when you see the convention like this, and I think particularly because of Saturday and...
and the way that sort of galvanized and energized so many Republicans, there's just no dissent at all, and it's owned by him. It's a wholly owned subsidiary of Donald Trump. It's really remarkable. And it's also fascinating when you juxtapose it with what's going on in the Democratic Party right now. I mean, I don't know if we want to talk, how much we want to talk about what's going on in terms of the meltdown about whether Biden should be the nominee or not, but usually...
We're used to Democrats being the party that sort of keeps together and is in lockstep unity with the leadership. And that's not the case right now. And instead, you have Republicans who are constantly knifing each other, lining up one by one right behind Donald Trump. And I'll also say, Galen, I was at all the 2016 conventions, obviously watched the 2020 virtual convention. So twice before, Trump set a shot at this.
This is by far more strategic and organized than either one of those, including the one when he was actually president, in my view. This, to me, is Susie Wiles and Chris Lasavita running a strategy. The idea of putting all of those, quote-unquote, real people voices in the primetime hour to give maximum exposure, you're...
the way that they kind of have lined up these themes to align with who Donald Trump is. I think the speech by the Teamsters president was one of the most interesting speeches I've ever seen at a convention. It's a bold play to give over 20 minutes to a union leader, a guy who's traditionally been very supportive of Democrats and by Democrats,
And to listen to that, and I love that you recognize that Scott Walker was right there, because I had the same thoughts. Scott Walker ran because he took on these unions. He's sitting there just a few feet away from a guy who's talking about how these big companies and big corporations are evil, and we've got to fight for the little guys. And I'm thinking, if you're watching that at home...
and you're inclined to give Donald Trump a bit of a shot. Here's this guy with his chowder accent, a trucker, who's talking about how he's getting a voice here with Donald Trump and J.D. Vance at his side. And that is just a totally different world. I was trying to look up to see the boxes to see like how many, you know, how many of those boxes were populated by people that were exactly the people that were being targeted by him in the speech. But a really interesting idea to go with. And just the themes have seemed coherent to me.
Yeah, I have to echo that point. I mean, I was covering Wisconsin politics during Scott Walker's tenure as governor. I was here in the aftermath of Act 10, which went a long way to dismantling public unions. And then I was here for Right to Work, which disempowered private unions.
And so in Milwaukee, the largest city in Wisconsin, like I said, with Scott Walker in the crowd, the team turns union president basically saying corporations would treat Americans horribly if not for unions. I mean, he targeted specifically corporations like Amazon and the likes.
It was really something. I was, you know, just sitting watching the speeches tonight, talked to a whole bunch of people, and the guy I was sitting next to during the Teamsters Union speech loved it. He's a longtime Republican at this point, but he told me he voted for Bill Clinton. He was from Michigan. He was really into it. I sat next to another woman tonight who said...
why do we have to get rid of the country club Republicans? We did great, you know, Reagan did a great job, you know, we were a wealthy country and the country club Republicans always accepted everyone. And she was commenting on how one of the themes tonight was,
As the Republican Party, we accept everyone. We accept former Democrats. We accept people of color. We accept unions and the likes. And she kind of didn't get it. So it was two different versions of the Republican Party that I sat next to on each night. One was sort of this ascendant
you know, working class, upper Midwestern, voted for Bill Clinton kind of guy. And this other woman was a longtime Republican and she will continue voting for Republicans, but was a little bit like, I don't, this isn't necessarily the party that I would create if I got to do it myself. And let's not forget, like just today, there was an interview with Donald Trump that
I believe it was from June, but Bloomberg just posted this interview with him, and he talked about lowering the corporate tax rate even more. So, I mean, like, they're trying to clearly appeal to both audiences here, and maybe it's working because, you know, you have people in the audience who like it. And for that woman you were just talking about, you can point to, look, Republicans are going to continue to do tax cuts if they get back in charge. And so maybe there's, like, a little bit of...
of everything for folks here. And that's what they're trying to do. They're trying to expand the tent. Well, you get at a really interesting, important point for covering conventions, which is it's the parties putting their best foot forward and trying to appeal to the people that they think they need to win over in order to secure the election. So two nights in,
How is the party thinking? Who do they need to win over to secure the election? To me, they're just thinking upper Midwest. They're not thinking about winning over the highly educated suburban voters from collar counties surrounding Atlanta, Detroit, even Milwaukee, Phoenix, for example, that Biden overperformed with in 2020. They're thinking, especially with J.D. Vance as well, the location being in Milwaukee, they're like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, get
Game over. Yeah, that Rust Belt, right? I also think people of color, they found basically every black elected Republican they can and have given them prime speaking spots. That was particularly a theme of Monday night. You've heard a lot of diverse voices on that stage. I also think this two days in, I don't think I heard one speaker say the election was stolen. That's such a good...
I don't remember the last time that you had any gathering of Republicans, like a CPAC or a state convention where that didn't come up a lot.
And somehow, some way, it has not. We had Carrie Lake spoke, Marjorie Taylor Greene, plenty of people who talk about it all the time. They did not talk. I think that's so interesting. And I have to think that that's coming from the top because, you know, Trump himself just, I think, wants everyone to be on their best behavior. Maybe it's because of Saturday. Well, you think Trump is telling people not to talk about the election being stolen? Oh, it's Suzy Wiles. Yes, I think it's the Trump campaign. You just talked about that. It's the Trump campaign.
The leaders within the Trump campaign. Not Trump himself. The Trump campaign is that the word out, you know, milder language. And I think specifically on this, I can't imagine this would happen, that we'd have this many speakers who say all the time the election was stolen, that on the biggest stage they're going to get, don't even mention it. Yeah, I mean, there was a video at one point that they played today where Trump spoke...
to camera and he said something about 2020. And that's something they play at the rallies all the time. That was the only time. Yeah. That was like a pre-baked thing. Oh, okay, so I didn't even realize that. But no, in terms of like, you know, messaging and how tight of a ship they're running right now, I mean, I had some reporting earlier this week about Susie Wiles, Chris LaCivita, and some of the inner circle meeting right after the shooting happened early Sunday morning. And another thing they talked about was we don't want the speakers to
to go off on tangents accusing Democrats of being the ones behind this assassination attempt. And you don't actually hear a lot of that. You haven't heard a lot of that in the past 48 hours. I mean, you heard a ton of it in the hours after Trump was shot. Including from J.D. Vance. Yes, including from J.D. Vance. And they made this decision that, look, Trump could be a sympathetic figure now for a lot of these swing voters who don't know who they're going to back.
And why do we want to, you know, why do we want to go there? Like, let's look like the bigger guy here. And they've been able to do that. And for this group, at least, I think, and I've talked to a lot of people about it. We heard speakers that say the same thing. It kind of validates a worldview that puts Donald Trump on a pedestal.
because he came so close to death on Saturday night. This idea of divine intervention, we heard it from Ben Carson, we've heard Marco Rubio, Tim Scott hit it very directly, if you didn't believe in miracles before. I think for this base, it's become part of the lore very, very quickly.
And Donald Trump, who understands the imagery, showing up every night of the convention with that big bandage, you know, watching this is a piece of it. The bandage, which, by the way, some of the folks in the audience are starting to don't on their ear. Imitating Trump. Yes. Yes.
I bet you by Thursday night, we're going to see a bunch of people in the audience doing that. Just a sea of Vincent Van Goghs across the floor of the RNC. It's like the Band-Aid from Nelly. Was it Nelly who did the Band-Aid on his face? I don't know. That's a reference that lost on me, but I'll try.
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You mentioned speaking with Trump folks throughout the week. And so I should say, you guys have the inside track. You talk to these people. You understand how these campaigns work. Oftentimes, FiveThirtyEight is looking from the outside. And so from a FiveThirtyEight perspective, we'd say something like, you put on a good convention. It's basically a load of advertising for your candidate, for your party. It is ultimately helpful. And you might see in national polls, you get a convention bounce of
two points or something like that, but usually it reverts to the mean. Okay, put the, like, that sort of nerdy...
vision of a party convention to the side. Like, what does it mean to the people involved in all this? What does it mean to the party? Like, does it accomplish something? Does it set policy? Because I think a cynical person would say, well, they're just saying whatever they want. They're going to say unity. They're going to say they care about labor. They're going to say they care about this part of the American public or that part of the electorate. But that it's just to win. And at the end of the day, this is a show.
I mean, I do think it matters. I think that just watching Donald Trump come into the arena, I think that that honestly, it wasn't a speech. It wasn't some sort of chant. But him walking in the arena the first time on Monday, it was a Monday night,
You could see that he had none of the swagger he typically had. There were moments when he looked like he was going to cry. And, like, that does something for people. I mean, it really moves people, and not just, like, hardcore Republicans. Like, it's... And so I do think, in that regard, yeah, I mean, rallying the base, absolutely. I can think of three things that tell the story to me of why conventions matter. So I'll take one at a time here. First thing, I think, is that people don't necessarily realize...
It checks a lot of boxes for them with their surrogates, with their supporters, to be able to give them primetime speaking slots. It's useful for them to stroke the egos of the people that go out there and be big validators. And they're going to be on Fox and on conservative media and out doing rallies for months and months and months. And they can say they spoke at the convention. That's actually, they think about that. And it's useful who gets the slot.
The second is, and I've always thought about conventions, part of it is obviously trying to reach undecided voters. Part of it is storytelling that I think is important for the identity of a party. The platform's irrelevant, especially this year. No one cares about it. And I think Trump- Well, let me follow up on that, but keep going. The platform is just like an all caps Trump speech. It does not actually matter policy-wise.
But the conventions mattered for a party to tell the story that it wants to think of itself as, right? You're up there with people who validate the worldview of Republicans. You find people who tell that story, people whose life stories have risen up. And wow, I'm a Republican because Marco Rubio is successful and because this individual whose son died from fentanyl feels betrayed. I mean, that's a big piece of all of this. And the last piece of it,
sort of related is that it is the only opportunity that you have to get a huge audience on television, on linear old school television, places like ABC News.
that a lot of actual voters consume. A lot of people watch these things. And I'll tell you, taking behind the curtain, the Trump team and the Biden team will do the same thing, very particular about what exactly, how long we are on the air, what speeches are going to fall within that hour, what programming they put up inside of it. It's an opportunity to put that on in a full display. Yeah, you were mentioning that it looked like he might cry. And I, you know, that kind of sort of
theater criticism or commentary, like, I get a little like, oh, I don't know, am I seeing something? Am I not? Like, should I say that it looks like he might cry because that's my own interpretation of this? Like, how do I talk about that? You could just see it in his face. But yeah, like, everyone was mentioning it and so...
At the same time, combined with the fact that this gets such a big audience, people always talk about the influence of a place like Fox News. Sean Hannity gets the most viewers of anyone and it's about three million a night. These things, we're talking tens of millions of people who are tuning in and you can shape how they, maybe, maybe, you can shape how they view your party a little bit, although we should say that it's
the most politically engaged people who are gonna be watching this throughout the whole night. And the most politically engaged people are also the most partisan people in the American public. You mentioned the platform and we did a little textual analysis of the platform, which I thought was super interesting with the help of our producers.
The last platform, which was written in 2016, was seven times the length of the current platform, which is a little over 5,000 words. In 2016, it was around 38,000 words. And we looked at mentions, right, of words throughout the, because 2016, a lot of policy.
2024, not as much. But you look at the word "the border," for example, in 2016, in all that policy, mentioned 17 times.
in 2024 mentioned 27 times in a much, much shorter platform. Abortion mentioned, I think, a dozen times or more in 2016, once in 2024. Same with marriage. I think it probably gets that same sex marriage. Unity, not mentioned once in 2024. It was mentioned 41 times in 2016, mentioned zero times. It's probably because of the last minute. I
minute. I mean, it was the last minute. They didn't have time to edit it. I mean, literally, I said Sunday morning, right, was when they decided, okay, Unity, that's going to be the theme after, you know, the shooting. Yeah, they didn't get around. If the shooting had happened a week earlier, then Unity would have been 175 times or something. How many people worked on this project, Haley?
Counting the word. How many people worked on it? Control F. One producer. Control F. So if one person spent time on this, then maybe three people total read the entirety of that document from 2016. I'm not one of them. Neither am I.
But I think for all of the traditions that Donald Trump has shattered in American politics, I think like calling out the platform for not really mattering, I think is one that might be followed. I'm not saying that there's going to be like an all caps platform going forward, but you save yourself a lot of heartache. One of the reasons, though, just to say 2016, the Trump team didn't have time to write a platform. They were too busy, like trying to figure out how they won the nomination and what they can do from there and like and then stopped.
Ted Cruz from stealing it at the convention. Like, they had way bigger fish to fry. And then in 2020, COVID happened, and they kind of forgot about it, and they just, like, like, control-F'd for 2016 and made it 2020 and, like, didn't even touch it. So this was the one that, like, Trump looks at this and says, well, this is stupid. Like, it's picking all these fights or taking all these positions. Like, this is what I stand for, and I'm going to write it, and I'm going to put exclamation points. Yeah, I mean, clearly he's totally changed the way Republicans are talking about abortion. I mean, like...
House Speaker Mike Johnson, the most pro-life Republican, is totally fine with this idea of not touching a nationwide abortion ban and not having or at least severely watering down abortion in the platform. And then also the border, clearly that's the top of what voters care about.
So that's what they're going to talk about over and over again there. I also think, to the point about the words that weren't in there, unity being one, I think this is going to be a really hard convention to tell the historical, give historical perspective around. I don't know what we're going to learn about polling out of this convention because it happened to happen, it happened to start two days after an assassination attempt, after the president, the former president was struck by a bullet.
I don't know what we're going to learn about this convention that isn't going to think about it kind of starting with that bullet. Yeah. Well, and coming off the heels of two weeks of Democrats considering whether or not to, or I mean, I don't know if Democrats were considering it, many Democrats calling for and Biden considering whether or not to stay in office.
Okay, then. They're thinking about it right now. It has not stopped. It has not stopped. Wait, yeah, I should say, I was trying to get a hold of you during all of that. You were super busy. Oh, sorry. You were talking to all of the lawmakers figuring out who was calling for Biden to get out. Where does that all stand right now? So from the outside, it looks like the momentum has slowed with the dump Biden movement. People are not coming out right now and saying Biden needs to step aside. But I can tell you,
behind the scenes, people are just as freaked out and people are just waiting. I mean, folks don't want to interrupt the RNC. They're kind of hoping that Republicans sort of hang themselves with whatever they're going to say publicly. They want people to see that. And they're also reacting to the shooting on Saturday, feeling like it's sort of disrespectful to do this right now. But there is a realization that time is running out and you do have Democratic leaders who
who are publicly saying they're okay with Joe Biden, they are working behind the scenes right now to try to push him out. I mean, there is a letter being organized right now by a lot of top Democrats trying to get the DNC to push back this sort of virtual vote they're going to do to nominate Joe Biden. You have people like Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer conveying to the president that people are not happy. I don't—the question I have
is like, when are they going to say this directly? I mean, we know that Nancy Pelosi is sort of orchestrating all of this behind the scenes. We know that she doesn't think Joe Biden can win and she thinks that he's going to take Congress down with him. And so it's going to come to a point where these guys are going to have to go public or meet with Biden himself and confront him. And so I'm just waiting for that moment to happen. But it certainly seems to be building toward that. Okay.
I think Rachel is exactly right about the dynamics. The shooting and the RNC kind of softened the public talk because it was reaching even on Saturday a fevered pitch because Joe Biden did calls with lawmakers that Rachel reported extensively on that did not go well. And more people were saying out loud what they weren't before. I think even in the last, you know, news cycle and a half to see Adam Schiff's remarks at a fundraiser, quote unquote, leaked.
you know addition to this letter that's going on behind the scenes and more details about these about these interactions the concerns are still there and i actually think this is this is gonna sound like an ad for five thirty eight but i think the polling i don't remember a time where the polling played as much into the real-time uh... machinations because because all these politicians are political animals so a new poll comes out they're sharing it they're talking about it they're using it it's showing up in you know in their in their tweets and their communications with each other
you know, a week from now, if Donald Trump is up eight or 10, I think it's like meltdown mode all around. If though it stays- - Wait, the fact that you even went to those numbers, I'm kind of shocked. - Sorry, I was doing it for dramatic effect because like eight or 10, like that's really four or five nowadays, right? - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. - But what I'm saying is nothing's moved in this race, right? Your polling average tells the story. Like it's been where it's at for a really long time within a couple of points. If that changed,
It didn't change after the debate, right? Well, it moved two percentage points in Trump's direction. Which is significant in this world. Even if it doesn't change. I mean, I think Democrats are hoping that it changes so they can use this as evidence that they need him to go. But...
they are convinced, like thoroughly convinced that he's toast. And so honestly, even if the polling sort of stays the same, I really don't think it's going to change this effort. I have been following the betting markets throughout this entire process. And let me tell you, they've been kind of useless. Every time a little piece of the narrative changes, they swing wildly in one direction or another. So as much as I love the betting markets, I'm putting them to the side. And so I want to know from the insider's perspective, is he going or is he staying?
Never bet against Nancy Pelosi. Never bet against Nancy Pelosi. So he's going. It's so hard to say. I mean, time really is running out. And like she has her legacy on the line right now. But it's interesting because Pelosi was privately pulling for Biden behind the scenes. I mean, you know,
Jim Clyburn coming out and backing him in 2020, putting him over the top to get the nomination against all these progressives who said he was sort of like a has-been and they were not interested in him. She was one of the people working to make sure he got that position. Now she's one of the people leading the charge to try to take him out. And it's really hard to go... I mean, like, if Pelosi...
Former President Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries all said to him, you have to go. It's really hard for me to think that he will not listen. But look, it does seem like he's very much doubling down right now. Not knowing any of the machinations that are happening behind the scene for the people who are trying to get him out, I would imagine that they use the RNC and all of the events sort of of this week and the weekend,
to basically lay the foundation for after things have settled down and there's no longer a bunch of people calling on him to step down publicly, he can go and give a really patriotic legacy defining speech that will make it look like he wasn't actually pushed out, but that he came to this conclusion after weeks of consideration. Because I would have to imagine if the guy's thinking about his legacy,
The more people who are just going to call for him publicly to get out, it becomes this whole, well, the only way I can save my legacy is by staying in and winning. And I think people like Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi are savvy enough to know that if they said it publicly, it would probably... Yeah, and you're putting him in such an awful position. And even saying it privately could backfire, too, because his relationship with Obama is famously fraught. And, you know, Pelosi, to me...
Rachel's right. She's the critical player in this. She's older than Joe Biden. And I think that generational thing matters to Biden. He doesn't care. He's not much of a relationship with the younger generation of lawmakers, but he's served Nancy Pelosi for a long time. He respects Nancy Pelosi and her judgment. And I do think if she were to come to him, it would it would it would change things. But that's where this whole thing about the virtual convention, I think, gets really interesting, because
I've reported this out and talked to people about it. There really isn't a great, compelling reason that this virtual convention has to happen anymore. Ohio's changed its law. Yes, they changed the rules. They can change it back. They can change the rules back and go back to it and have a normal convention. This started out as kind of the backup plan in case Ohio was going to be difficult and they would have to draft some kind of concessions. But now I feel like the Biden loyalists
are using it as like kind of an escape hatch. We don't have to do this now. We can do this next week instead of next month and push up the timeline. And there is significant pushback about it. And if you think about it, the pushback is directly a direct challenge to the president because he has said publicly, this is not a debate. I'm in. It's over. Guys, settle down. So anyone who continues to raise it and he raises through the process of the Democratic National Committee, I think it's very, very interesting. And it is not
a recipe for a good convention either. If they're there, if delegates arrive in Chicago feeling they were forced into voting for Biden too early and, you know, squelching all kinds of dissent, especially after the way that they ran the primary system, it is going to be an ugly scene inside of the room to say nothing of the protests or anything else outside of Chicago. It's just hard to imagine anything resembling the Republican unity we've seen thus far when we get to Chicago next month.
President Biden is certainly acting like he's still worried about this. I mean, all these progressive priorities that he's sort of throwing out or has been throwing out in the past, what, three days or so? What is the most recent one? Something about Supreme Court reform. He had, like, not weighed in on that for a really long time. He resisted it for a long time. Yeah, making all these promises to progressives, this is what I'm going to do for you in the next term. So, like...
It's interesting because the progressives were the ones who were so skeptical about him in 2020, and yet they're the ones who are sort of holding the line with Biden right now. People like AOC who are out there saying he's the guy and very much, you know, sticking with him. They see an opportunity. Well, the reporting suggests that his team went to the progressives and said,
They basically give you everything you want as long as you come out and say. Bernie Sanders is able to write a hundred day agenda. That's pretty cool if you're Bernie Sanders. So so I think a lot of the progressives who were used to not winning all of these policy arguments, even inside their own party, they see an opportunity here. Now he's our guy right now. You know, he has to listen to us. He can't he can't worry about the middle anymore because we're the guy we're saving him.
The CBC, I think, has been fascinating to me in this congressional black caucus, the way that they have held together and closed ranks to protect him. Again, there's a very safe district. They don't have to worry about their jobs like the frontline Democrats. And whether they're in the majority or the minority, they'll still have their seats. So there's a lot of political self-interest. Shocker.
But that animates a lot of this. Okay, final question here. Being at a convention right now makes me think back to the last convention I was at, which was obviously not in 2020 because I was all kind of virtual, which was Philadelphia 2016, the Democratic National Convention. I was on outside duty talking to protesters outside. It was 100 degrees like every single day in Philadelphia. Yes.
There was a lot of discord. I think people went into Cleveland thinking that there was going to be protests and kind of chaos. And inside the convention hall, you know, Ted Cruz's up and down the ballot, vote your conscience, all of that stuff. Yes, that did play out. But boy, was like the Bernie Sanders versus Hillary Clinton divide on full display in Philadelphia. Using that as the baseline. Yeah.
Is Chicago 2024 more or less discordant than the last in-person Democratic convention? - I forgot everything that happened before that, but I do, like Debbie Wasserman Schultz got fired or had to resign, right, as it started because of the leaks, was it WikiLeaks? - The email leaks, yeah. - Which just like ripped open the bandaid over all the Bernie Sanders stuff, you know, and Bernie, you know, Bernie came there and he endorsed Hillary, but it wasn't seen as being a heartfelt thing.
Look, I think there's a lot of similarities in the party being, you know, some in the party feeling that they were forced into supporting the person that was anointed. I mean, Chicago, I think, is more like a Philadelphia in terms of being a big city. Milwaukee's great. Every convention should be in, like, a Milwaukee or a Cleveland. It's the right size Midwestern city where the summers aren't terrible. Except for the delegations that got stuck an hour and a half away because there's not enough hotels in the city of Milwaukee. Fair enough. Lake Geneva's really nice.
But you could stay in Chicago if you want. But I think the legacy of conventions in Chicago, given 68, where, you know, the history there, the Israel-Hamas war and the protests that that brought to college campuses, the way that that's going to draw things out. And, you know, if Joe Biden is the nominee and is nominated there, I think they could easily be like,
greater than the 2016 turmoil, easily. - Oh yeah. And let's not forget that even if Joe Biden stays atop the ballot,
All these members who are in swing districts or tough states, they're going to want to distance themselves from him as much as possible. So it behooves them to actually be out there to continue to say this guy can't do the job. We need someone else at the top of the ticket. So it's not like all Democrats are going to say, OK, we tried to push him out. We lost. We need to unify. It is in their political interest to be against him. So you're going to have those voices as well.
All right. Well, we started by talking about the Republican National Convention and ended by talking about the Democrats. I guess it's just too compelling of a story, even when we're sitting right here in Milwaukee. But thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate it. It's been a pleasure. Yeah, right.
My name is Galen Druk. Our producers are Shane McKeon and Cameron Chertavian, and our intern is Jayla Everett. Special thanks to Mike Claudio and Lulu Chang for helping us out with this recording, this late-night recording this evening. As always, you can get in touch by emailing us at podcasts.538.com. You can also, of course, tweet us with any questions or comments. If you're a fan of the show, leave us a rating or a review in the Apple Podcast Store, or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening, and we will see you soon. ♪
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