Are Democrats Sleepwalking or Bedwetting Over Biden's Polls?
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Hi, welcome back to my election podcast, Somebody's Gotta Win. This is Tara Palmieri. I'm Puck's senior political correspondent, and it's a fiery 93 degrees in Washington, D.C. So appropriately, the fire alarms are going off because yet another poll shows Joe Biden and Donald Trump neck and neck. This is a poll that I'm going to be doing

This time, it's a Wall Street Journal poll showing 46% support in a head-to-head rematch. And this comes after a New York Times Sienna poll showed the same in August, with the two men tied at 43%.

A smattering of these polls, including this one, show about two-thirds of Democrats think that Biden is too old to run for re-election. So obviously there's some really big concern here about the electability of the incumbent president, Joe Biden, and whether he's really the best guy to take on Donald Trump, since it seems like he will be the Republican nominee.

Before we get started, I want to do a full disclosure with my guest, Jim Messina, who was the architect of Obama's 2012 reelection campaign. He's also been called Obama's White House fixer, and he seems to be holding the hose out trying to cool down Washington.

Jim, it seems like you're going out on a limb here telling everyone to chill out. You have a new slideshow titled, quote, Biden's strong case for reelection. As a full disclosure to our listeners, are you advising the Biden White House or the campaign in any capacity? Are you doing this as a favor for your friends and fellow Democrats?

I am not, although I am co-chair of one of the super PACs out there, American Bridge, but I'm not paid by Biden or do any of this stuff. And Tara, the reason why I did this thing and the reason why I believe this is because I work all the time and I tried desperately to take a trip in August and take some actual fucking vacation. And my vacation was ruined by bedwetting Democrats, losing their minds every time these polls you just talked about came out.

And so I said to my team, let's just go look at the data. Let's just go look at all the data and figure out who has the best cards. And I'm a big poker player. And the truth is, if this was head-to-head Texas Hold'em poker, you'd rather have Joe Biden's cards than the Republicans' cards. That's just simple. And I tried to lay that out in a phenomenally amazing deck that we released this morning. So you say that Democrats shouldn't be wetting the bed over these poll numbers.

But I think maybe they should be. Polls have never been really able to tap into the Trump phenomenon. Sure, he lost in 2020, but barely. And if you look at the polls back in 2020, Biden was supposed to have a pretty decisive victory over Trump. Some polls showed him up between five and 10 points, but he actually only won by a pretty marginal percentage.

And before that, Hillary Clinton was supposed to have completely obliterated Trump, and yet he still won. So now we're supposed to look at multiple polls that showed Trump...

from reputable places, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times that showed Trump actually neck and neck with his opponent and not see Trump as somehow stronger than he was before, or maybe even interpret it that the current Democratic candidate, after perhaps, you know, losing the shine of being president or just the fact that he's aging and it's not playing well, is somehow not a weaker candidate than establishment Democrats or

perhaps willing to admit. I don't know. It's hard to square that. I'm just, I'm interested to hear what you think. So here's what I would say to that. First of all, what you and I can very much agree on is that I'm sort of the king of the all polling sucks thing in DC. Um,

I stupidly went on national television and said that all pollsters should be shot, which was not my happiest moment. Oh my God, I can only imagine the Twitter bots going after you. Oh my God. Yeah, it was brutal. My amazing wife had me sleep on the couch that night. But the truth is,

You know, what I do now, do for a day job, is help people around the world get elected. We have 13 presidents and prime ministers. And what you're seeing all around the world is these polls be absolutely wrong. So, yes, the 2020 polls are wrong. By the way, Tara, the 2022 polls were wrong. It said that Republicans were going to have this big moment. So I think all of these polls, I think the scientific thing in the mathematical community is fucking stupid.

Like these polls just don't make any sense. And they don't make any sense because you can't pull a race with two well-known people like this this far out. And who's actually going to take these polls? And there's a bunch of scientific research about this are just partisans on both sides. The second thing is I totally think this. Even these New York Times, Wall Street Journal polls, you think they're partisans that are taking them.

Oh, yeah. I mean, ask the scientists. Oh, yeah. There's no question. They're skewing too heavily. Like the average American swing voter who actually is a dying breed out there thinks about politics four minutes a week and is the hardest...

person to get in a poll. And it's why pollsters, you know, when they're drinking at your favorite Washington, D.C. establishments will tell you that the margin, the error rate in these things is just way bigger than advertised. The second thing is we don't have a national election. Showing a 46-46 poll, which I had to comment on this morning on MSNBC, is silly.

Because we don't have a national election. We have an electoral college and we are down to seven states that actually are going to decide this presidential race in that thing. Second, I am not in any sense saying Biden has this wrapped up.

I am saying to Democrats, this election is going to be close. This country is divided about 47-47, and we're going to fight over the rest of them. And so anyone is going to—it doesn't matter who the nominees are of both parties, with the possible exception of, you know, if the Republicans would give us some of the Senate candidates they'd run, maybe that's different. But

any normal Republican, normal Democrat, we are going to have a very close election in the battleground states. That said, the purpose of my discussion in all the press and the deck we did today was just to say, who has the best cards? If you look at those seven states, who would you rather be? And I think it's clear you'd rather be the incumbent Democrat running for reelection. You have to admit that Biden is not coming in as strong as he was in 2020 when we were in the middle of COVID. Absolutely.

Absolutely. And Joe Biden's current approval rating is exactly the number that Barack Obama had on the same day in 2011 when everyone, including Nate Silver, were writing Barack Obama off. Remember, Nate Silver put Barack Obama on the cover of the New York Times Magazine and said, is Obama toast? Yeah, but Nate Silver has gotten a lot of polls right.

wrong. Right, correct. And that's why I think it's silly you're asking me about polls. But we're not talking, we're talking about poll after poll, New York Times, Wall Street Journal. And I think one thing with these polls that I'm noticing is that there is a phenomenon happening where Trump is getting more popular with each indictment, not just within the Republican Party, but also nationally. No, not with these swing voters. Where he's getting more popular is he's getting soft Republicans back.

And so if you look at all these polls and, you know... But don't you need them? Don't you need soft Republicans? Sure. But if you look at the numbers in the camera, which poll they had on CNN, oh, there's a new CNN poll this morning. And they talked about why he's getting more populars, because he's getting the soft Republicans back, which you need. But then they talked about the amount of people, which is going to be true in this race, that say they don't want to vote, right? They're sickened by...

like the same rematch and all this stuff. Who are those people? Swing voters. Yeah, but they are not just swing voters. They're people who, and this is Trump's challenge, Trump has so delegitimized the system that CNN asked who these actual voters are, and they are way more likely to be Trump voters.

And because they are now saying the system's rigged. Donald Trump told me the system was rigged. You know that's true. You've reported on this. Part of the 2022 upset with Democrats doing better is the Republican turnout dropped in some of these battleground states because people didn't go vote. And so that's another reason why I think, and I'm not saying this race isn't basically tied. So they're responding to polls, but they won't go out and vote, you think? I'm not sure. What I think is that

There are challenges on both political parties to turning out their voters in a rematch against the candidate that both ran against last time. Right. I do sense that there is just this general, I guess,

I don't know, the mood in the country right now is a sort of malaise about a rematch. And I think that that's that's definitely reflected in the fact that, you know, two thirds of these voters say that Biden is too old to run again. Right. I mean, how do you deal with that as a Democrat? You can't make your your candidate any younger.

No, what you do is two things, which I think the campaign is doing really, really well. First of all, you go out and not take anyone for granted. They have the largest and biggest Democratic messaging paid media to black and brown people they announced last week, which I think is super important. And they're a bunch of right, because that's the part of the coalition that is has a lack of enthusiasm right now.

Black and brown voters. Exactly right. And so they're not taking anything for granted, which Democrats did for 40 years until Barack Obama. And they're starting to go straight after it. The second thing is you get into a choice. And once you have a choice, you drive that choice. And that's what I that's another reason why these polls just were too far out. Well, 500 and sorry, 450 some odd days out.

it's just too far. Now, you and I can stop pissing about polls and just agree, this is a very close election. It does not matter who the nominees of both parties are. It is going to be incredibly close.

It seems to me the issue that the Democrats have right now is their candidate, right? He's got a major electability issue, which is his age. Trump has a major electability issue. It's his legal issues. It's Trump. It's the chaos. It's all of that. Why wouldn't the Democrats just hold a primary and choose another candidate? Wonderful question. Thank you for asking. So here's just, again, history matters, right? Which is that in, with the exception of 1988, Reagan to Bush.

When the incumbent president of one party doesn't run, usually for reasons of term limits, the other party has won the presidency. We are a country that loves flipping back and forth. Seven out of our last eight elections, both presidential and non-presidential, have been change elections, meaning the presidency or the House or Senate flips.

So if you're a Democrat, you are much better off to run the incumbent president. Second, we've already had this election. Trump versus Biden, we have played this out and Biden wins. And that's before 91 indictments. Now you're going to say, wait a minute, Jim. But barely won. Barely won. Yeah, barely won. That's right. And you're about to say, wait a minute, Jim. And you're in the middle of COVID and Trump suppressed his own voter turnout at the same time.

Yeah, but Biden's voter turnout was lower than expected as well because they couldn't do traditional turnout. I mean, they didn't have an actual ground game. I thought the mail-in ballots helped him.

In some states, some states didn't, but they also couldn't chase door-to-door stuff, which of course is incredibly important. Just the way Democrats do turnout campaigns, they couldn't do. And partially that's why you saw lower turnout in like Milwaukee than what the models expected. I would expect that people were just home sitting around bored and mailing in their ballots and just watching TV and paying attention to politics that way. You would be wrong. That's not what the data says. Really? Yeah.

Yeah. The data says that both sides did not get... Part of why both sides thought that the election wasn't going to be as close as it was, and that includes the Trump people, as you well know, Trump's campaign was telling reporters they had lost when the polls closed, was that neither side correctly figured out who was actually voting in that election. Well, actually, Trump's people really thought they were going to get slaughtered before the election by Biden. They

They thought it was going to be much worse than what it was. They were surprised, frankly. That's why I'm looking at these polls and I'm like, wait a minute. If Biden's really not leading Trump, then that means Trump has a really good chance of beating him.

Look, Donald Trump does have a good chance of beating Joe Biden. But if you look at both of them, who would you rather be? And who would you... I'm the cheapest guy in the world because I grew up poor. And if I had to place a dollar bet, which I would never bet on anything, because why would you bet your money? Me neither. I did not grow up with money either. No. So I would bet my $1 on Joe Biden for all the reasons we talked about. And so that's why I'm the bad guy. Now, look, again...

you know, I have no idea who listens to your new podcast, but I'm sure lots of Republicans are screaming, yes, but you know, dun, dun, dun. I'm not saying this election's not going to be close because it is, because it's America. We are the most divided country in the world. Other countries around us

Now, we participated in the last Mexican election. 60% of voters swung back and forth. We did the UK election. 50% of voters swing back and forth. Both sides admit there is no more than 8% to 10% of swing voters out there, probably much less. So you care about persuading those people and turning your base out, those two things. And that's why this election will be really close.

Okay. Well, I want to talk to you about this phenomenon where Biden just like won't attack Trump. You know, every week there's a good reason to attack him. There's legal issues, the kind of things that in a normal campaign, you know, from the dog catcher up, you know, to state congressional, you would be attacking your opponent if they were under investigation. But Biden won't do it. How long can he continue like this, never even mentioning Trump's name and

never really defining the fact that this makes them unelectable. Meanwhile, Trump is laying down all the groundwork saying this is the Biden Justice Department prosecuting me. He doesn't really want to, you know, he doesn't want a fair election. This is how he's trying to destroy my chance at gaining power again. It seems to be sticking because Trump's people agree with this. They believe it. And there's no response from Biden camp. How long can Biden continue with this approach? And do you think it's the right approach?

I do think it's the right approach and for two reasons.

And there will be a time when it's not the right approach. But right now, it's clearly the right approach. Because one of the criticisms, which I think is fair, of the Democratic Party modern is we can't stick to one message and drive it. And we are bad at messaging. And right now, Biden, the White House, and the campaign are driving his economic message as hard as they can, as far as they can. And there's still much more work to do. And they should absolutely do that because that is the most important.

things. But no one's covering it. I'm sorry. Like all these official events, no one's covering it on the cable news channels. Most people don't know anything that's happening. Maybe if Biden shows up in your small town, it's on your local news or in a city, but I don't think it's getting the same sort of coverage as a Trump indictment, which had happened like, I don't know, four times over the summer, sucking up all the news. So how do you break through that noise? So number one is

They have an economic message that they absolutely have to drive. The Democrats get criticized fairly for not sticking to a message. The thing they currently trail Donald Trump on is economics. What holds Donald Trump up nationally is he is seen as better on economics.

And so what Joe Biden has to do is fix that problem. They understand this. And they are in a 30-city tour. They're doing all this stuff. And you're about to say to me, well, they don't get a lot of coverage on that stuff. It's actually not true when he goes into those states. And again, you and I talked about this earlier. This is a seven-state campaign. And in these markets, it's absolutely. The second thing is they need to start spending money. And

And they are finally doing that. They have a national TV buy up last night or this week. They're doing Monday, Thursday night football tomorrow night. They're spending tens of millions of dollars driving this message, which is this other thing that they have not happened. The second thing is there's a great James Carver quote out there. Don't,

when your opponents drown him, throw him an anvil? Like, why would the Biden campaign talk right now? Like, every day, the national news is driving 91 felony charges, and Trump is having to defend this, and they're going straight at it. Like, get out of the way and focus on what you have to do. Now, to your point, when there is a nominee, when they're deeper into the process,

when it's clear that Iowa and New Hampshire didn't give them a different opponent, then you start driving that really hard. That's what we did in 2012 with Mitt Romney. He hadn't even officially won the nomination. And we went up and just defined him before he could define himself. And then he gave us the famous 47% comment. But we didn't do that until we drove the economic narrative for several months. Right. I mean, you did...

I didn't realize that you had been driving the economic narrative, but I do think that you laid the groundwork pretty quickly that Mitt Romney was a corporate raider, you know, private equity guy. I just wonder with Trump, like he really with his truth social and being covered day to day by the media, he has this bully pulpit that I think, you know, the Biden administration just doesn't have when they're talking about the economy. And I wonder if he is, you know, shaping the race in a lot of ways.

Because Biden is not actually responding to any of this. And after a while, it starts to seep into the consciousness, I think. So I think you're asking the right question, Tara. And I think there's a time for everything, right? And the question is when you do that. But I would slightly disagree with you that I think the national press is doing this for Biden. Like they're wailing away every day at these indictments. There's more stories this morning. Like this morning, another thing that Eugene Kerr, the

the Carroll case and how he has a different court case on that. Like, this is what people are talking about and driving in, you know, in the battleground states and focus groups. I'm saying people are talking about it. But I agree with you that eventually this has to occur. But just why, if you're Joe Biden, would you do it now? You would sit there and let everyone else do it, at least in my opinion. But, you know, you and I are quibbling over timing. It's going to happen. The question is when.

I just think Trump isn't Mitt Romney. I think you have to handle him like a different beast. Totally. But he's also way more defined than Mitt Romney, right? I mean, what can you really tell voters about Donald Trump that they already don't think? That's the challenge for every one of his primary opponents. And it's certainly Joe Biden's challenge because you have such a defined candidate in Donald Trump.

Well, he's defined himself as a victim of Biden's Justice Department. He's like the ultimate victim. You can't show me a swing voter who thinks that because I've looked at this really closely.

So you've looked at polling. No, I've looked at focus groups and I've looked at what people are talking about on social media. And when you do social listening, which I think you and I would agree is more important than polling, it's just not the conversation swing voters are having with each other right now. But you live in this logic free zone called Washington, D.C., as do I. And

or we are denizens of such. And there you'd think it's all people are talking about all the time, but it's just not what people in Wisconsin are talking about.

I talk to people outside and the first thing they talk about is Biden's age. Even like Democrats, Republicans, they think, oh my God, Trump is going to be the nominee, isn't he? He's going to be the nominee. They talk about dread, about the fact that both of them are going to be up against each other. Like that's what people talk about. They talk about why can't DC give us better options than what we've got? They talk about the system that is sort of

rigged, essentially. That's what real people talk about. Totally right. I totally agree with you. You're so right, Tara. But it makes my point to you. They don't talk about what you just talked about. They don't talk about Donald Trump defining Joe Biden's Justice Department. They don't have no idea about that stuff. That's just untrue social. That has nothing to do with what average voters, they talk about stuff you're talking about. But that's the thing. I think people really want choice and we're not really giving that to them, are we, in a way?

They feel like they don't have a choice in this election. And I bet there'll be low voter turnout because of it.

It's an interesting question. I think there's really interesting work being done by both parties on this question. And, you know, why was turnout higher than both parties expected in 2022 and a similar thing, abortion? And so does that be another issue? Or, you know, to your point, in a rematch, do people say, Jesus? You know, I think, again, part of why I think the polls are so wrong is to your exact point, who's actually going to vote in this election?

And on what side? And do you actually know? And so I think that is, to your very smart point, why I care less about these national polls, because figuring out who's going to vote in a rematch election is similar. I went back and looked at every rematch Senate election, which is an interesting theory of that case. And

And voter turnout was lower in Senate elections the second time, but it was always unclear who was lower for. And so, you know, it really was driven by local issues. So I do think it's one of the things that both sides are going to struggle with. So if there's a depressed voting, who does that affect the most, do you think?

It depends on where, and again, we're talking seven states. And like the CNN poll this morning says it hurts Trump. There's conventional wisdom that I probably agree with, that press voting hurts Democrats because they have harder people to turn out, young voters who don't vote as much and African-American and Latino voters.

But again, the poll this morning said that's not true and it hurts Trump more, which is different than what I think people in DC think. So I think you have to look at those seven states and start to say, okay, in Wisconsin, who does that hurt? And in Wisconsin, it's probably very different than Nevada, for instance. In Nevada, lower turnout definitely hurts the Democrats, no question.

you would argue in Wisconsin, in Michigan, it probably hurts Trump because Trump has a narrower base to turn out. So it just is really different. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. You know, for me, fitness has always been about finding that groove, whether it's hitting the pavement outside, which I've been allowed of, or dialing up a sweat session indoors.

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I did notice that in your deck, you mentioned a lot of the things, a lot of the issues that are going to come up. But you never mentioned migration, immigration. Why is that? It seems to be really flaring up right now in the blue states. If you look at Eric Adams and even Kathy Hochul and Maura Healey in Massachusetts, they're attacking the president right now over migration. You're seeing hundreds of thousands of people coming into blue states. I mean, it almost feels like it's the crime issue of 2022, like the sleeper issue that might impact the suburbs.

the way that it did in the House? I mean, you didn't mention that. I'm just sort of curious as to why. Yeah, we did a deck after the 2022 election saying, great, Democrats overperformed. But the two lessons that I hope they learned that stopped them from holding the House and doing better were their inability to have a message on crime and immigration.

And when you look at where they didn't win seats, Orange County, Washington State, New York, it was because of those two issues. And so Democrats do have to do have to deal with both of those issues going forward. And I think you've seen Biden try to separate himself on crime and be very different than Democrats.

than the progressives in his party, and I think in a very Bill Clinton smart way. And immigration, I honestly just got left on the cutting room floor. We were already too long, and my team made me cut that one. But it is absolutely going to be an issue. You mentioned that Biden could be fucked over if there's a third party, a true third party movement that pulls votes from him. How do you see that happening? So I do. And again, history matters here. You know,

As great as the Clinton campaign in 1992 was, it's probable that Ross Perot elected Bill Clinton. Ross Perot got 13% and 19% in his two bids and got zero electoral votes. And so it doesn't matter who the third party is, they're not going to get an electoral vote.

And you and I could have a whole separate podcast on how fucked I think the electoral system is and how I think it's ridiculous. But we're in it. And so it is what it is. Because Trump doesn't need to win the popular vote.

No. That's another point. I mean, not even Trump thinks he's going to win the popular vote in his own campaign. They lost it by what last time? Seven. They're probably going to lose it by 10 or 11 this time if you believe demographics. Doesn't matter. We're in seven states battling away. And you're exactly right. That's the issue.

The question on third party is who is most likely to be a third party? And it's probably the squishy moderates who just couldn't vote for Donald Trump for a variety of reasons, but could vote for Joe Biden. And also, too, you know, incumbents aren't like the first time they do take on water. They do all these these tough things.

They don't have the shine that they have. When Barack Obama asked me in the middle of the Pacific Ocean to run his reelection campaign, I said to him as we swam around Hawaii, I need you to promise me you won't run the same campaign you did last time. And he said, Jim, what do you mean? You know, we won that.

And I said, yeah, but you're not the happy, shiny candidate you were last time. You're an incumbent with a record. Yeah, you're like, stay the course. Right. You have a record and you're in the middle of the toughest economy in 40 years. And so it's different.

And so those kind of swing economic voters are going to be crucial to Joe Biden. Remember last time that voters who disliked both of them favored Joe Biden by 13 points. And in a close election, that was 77,000 votes in four states, Tara.

It was a really close election. You start siphoning off those voters who can't stand, and I promise that number will be higher for reasons you laid out at the beginning of your podcast. So way more people say, geez, is this choice again? And if there's a third party taking away those voters, it is just very problematic. I say to people all the time, if you want Donald Trump to be president of the United States, you should do one of two things. Go give him money or support the stupid fucking no labels bid thing.

to get a third party. And then I come back to the same thing I asked you again. Don't you think the Democrats would be better off with a different nominee? No, I don't, for the reasons I so lucidly laid out earlier. That they won't beat Biden and it will hurt Biden. That's your take on it.

Two things that we already know. We have an incumbent who just did all this historic stuff, who already has beat this guy once, and who has a message. So no, I don't think we'd be better off. Because here's the deal. Okay, let's just play out the Palmieri theory of the case. And we're going to go to a primary. And I have met with 20... But why would you want the strongest person up against Trump, right? If it's an existential threat to democracy, if this is the country... You know, if the country is...

at stake, the battle of the soul. Wouldn't you want someone who is not going to be at the end of, really someone who's going to be, you know, in their late 80s by the end of their term? I mean, this comes up time after time with Democrats saying. We have a guy, right, but you asked me my political opinion. You didn't ask me what the poll said. And my political opinion is what history teaches us, is that you want an incumbent president who has a strong track record, who's already beaten the guy once. But let's just take your theory of the case for a second.

So I've met with, I think, 20 some people who would announce for president the next day if Joe Biden got out. So we're going to subject ourselves to a 20 some way primary. And like, let's say we get someone out of that primary that can't win a general election.

But that primary would obviously call the field into the strongest possible person, don't you think? Like, aren't primaries good for the party? I mean, I'm sorry, would people argue that Donald Trump was the strongest possible candidate in a general election against Joe Biden? Republicans? I mean, he might be.

Would all the D.C. people you were defending earlier say that? No. You and I are going to bars in D.C. I actually think at this point, people think that Trump would be a strong candidate against Joe Biden because of these polls that keep coming out. I don't think people think that compared to some of the other people in that primary.

They think that Nikki Haley would be stronger because she can win swing voters in Arizona, Michigan. Or Chris Christie, who has less of a chance than you and I do in that primary. But yes, yeah, people who actually could get swing voters. So basically you're saying the primary process does not pick the best person to take on a candidate in general? I'm saying it's the threat of democracy, which I think an election with Donald Trump is a threat of democracy and getting rid of it. You don't want to take your chances and you want to go with the strong hand, and we have the strong hand.

And I have, as you said, 23 amazing slides laying this case out on politicalplaybook.com. Thanks again for coming on the pod, Jim. It's always good to have a guest who's willing to spar.

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