Romney's Top Strategist on How Harris Should Land the Plane
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Hi, I'm Tara Palmieri. I'm Puck's senior political correspondent, and this is Somebody's Gotta Win.

Well, Kamala Harris did it. She went into the lion's den. She sat down with Fox News' Brett Baer and she held her own. It was a contentious interview. She was pushed. I personally enjoyed it. I feel like she earned a great deal of respect for me for doing it because it was tough, but I think it was a good interview and it actually showed her prosecutorial skills, showed that she could handle an adversarial environment and that shows leadership.

For those who listen to this show regularly, you know that I like to play the contrarian and I enjoy being feisty. So it's no wonder that I like a contentious interview. I'm curious to hear what you think, though. How do you think the interview went? You can email me, Tara at Puck.News. I think that if you are a Democrat and you're watching that interview, you think that Brett Baier was unfair and he was pushing too hard. And I think if you are a Republican, you think that...

her answers were too broad, that she just scratched at the surface. But really, the people who matter right now are those tuned-out swing voters and the independents and Republicans who she was trying to reach on Fox News. We'll see how they reacted to this interview. She did finally have an answer to a question that Republicans have tried to dog her with for a while, and that's how she would be different than Joe Biden. Her answer was broad. She said she's a different person who has different thoughts and life experiences, and crucially, she's a different generation of leadership.

It scratched the surface, but it was an answer nonetheless. I'm guessing that in future interviews, when she's asked this question, she'll probably have to give more detail. But Harris is charging forward into unfriendly territory to expand her base. And I say more power to her.

Trump, meanwhile, canceled an interview with CNBC this week. He sat down with Fox News' Harris Faulkner to talk about women. He also held a town hall with Univision where he was asked about spreading rumors about Haitian residents in Springfield eating their animals. And he said he just reports the news. He also spoke to Bloomberg's editor-in-chief, John McElthwaite.

On this show, I speak with Mitt Romney's former top strategist, Stuart Stevens. He is an anti-Trump Republican and advisor to the Lincoln Project. He gives his theory of the case for the election and some advice to Harris on what her final argument should be to voters. Because let's face it, guys, we're in the homestretch. We're almost there.

Thank you, Stuart, for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. Thanks for asking me to the party. So I wanted to ask you, what did you think about my mom and the fact that she had a hard time ranking her top priorities when voting? I mean, she really seemed to have a lot of conflict when it came to Roe versus Wade, versus the economy, prime immigration, and she saw it

the candidates having strengths and weaknesses, but she really just couldn't say what her top priority was and what was going to drive her to pick one candidate over another. Well, I would say if your mom doesn't vote for Harris, it's going to be a very troubling indicator for Harris. I thought she was charming. I loved that episode. And I think that there actually is

a microcosm in your family of what is happening across America. There are a lot of women who are going to vote for Harris, who probably aren't like waking up every day, arguing with their husbands about it, who are going to vote for Trump, but they're going to vote for Harris. And I think that when you see these numbers, I mean, there's something extraordinary seems to be happening here, that Harris is on the verge of winning white women.

No Democrat has won white women in our lifetime. The elusive suburban white woman that Democrats just can't win. It really would be amazing. Suburban white women, by the way, we're talking about. Is that what it was? Just suburban white women? Oh, you think it's all white women? I saw some number that Trump, that she was one point behind. So, you know, one of my little pet things is that we don't talk about race enough in our politics. Because if I said to you, you know, Romney won young voters under 30. That's a true statement if we're talking about white voters.

You know, say Romney won women. There was a huge gender gap against Obama with white women. I think Romney won white women by 16 points. So Trump's coalition was 85 percent white in a country that's 59 percent white. And I think that that is driving more of this of all our politics than we talk about enough. I'm confident at the end of the day for all this talk about African-American men and all this.

Trump is not going to get more than 10% of the African-American vote. Even though they think that they can get 15 to 20%. That's what his pollster said yesterday on my show. Goldwater got 7% and 64. Trump got 8%. That's one point every 56 years.

I don't think it's suddenly going to change in 24. And I can't tell you how many races I've been in working for Republicans, good pollsters, where we the day before the race, the day before the election, we were getting 15, 16 percent of the black vote. But I can tell you how many times it happened. Never. But what do they just stay home? That's a vote for Trump, right? Well, you know, turnout is a big thing.

One of the factors of Romney losing was, it was the first time, and I think it's accurate the only time, that the percentage of non-white turnout was higher than white. Which, gee, guess what? Turns out African Americans were really motivated to reelect the first African American president. What a shock. So I don't think that there's going to be a decrease in intensity among African American voters.

When you have an African-American woman running for president. You don't think it's like the Stacey Abrams thing where she wasn't elected and there was a feeling that black men weren't going out enough to support her? I'm no expert on what happened in the Stacey Abrams race, but what percentage of the African-American vote did she end up getting? I don't know off the top of my head. Yeah, I suspect that she lost because she just underperformed among white voters.

Why? Because, you know, the governor was an acceptable choice and very difficult to beat an incumbent governor. They rarely lose. So in Pennsylvania, it's only happened once since World War Two. So I don't know. I see the race is very stable.

I think we live in a world in which there's 47% of the country is MAGA, 53% is non-MAGA. 47% is MAGA? I think 47% is Republican, and then they can stomach Trump, no? Well, you're right. It is probably closer to 44%. Oh, I thought it would be more like 30% is MAGA. No, I don't think so. If you look at 70% of the Republican Party,

does not believe that Biden was legally elected. What was that, 44%, you said? 70%. 70% of Republican voters. Of Republican voters. Okay. And if you look at the primary, this was the deciding line. If you believe that Biden was legally elected, you overwhelmingly were less likely to vote for Trump as a Republican. So if you look at the vote that Haley ended up getting, these are all people who believe that Biden actually won the race.

So it's sort of like this threshold level of belief that you have to have to be part of this cult. And it seems to me that what the goal of the Harris campaign should be is to coalesce as much of this 53% as they can. So we wake up in a world today in which Liz Cheney and Bernie Sanders are on the same side. Wow. Yeah. That seems to me they're doing a pretty good job.

In fact, I think they're running a brilliant campaign. Is Liz Cheney, though, appealing to Republicans? I think Liz Cheney definitely helps if you look at those voters who say were Romney-Biden voters. Okay. It's very important. So Biden won by 7 million. Nationally, 160,000 actually, right? If they're exactly in the right places, yes. Clinton won by 3 million.

So at face value, Trump needs new customers. He needs to expand his base of voters. A larger percentage of his voters are no longer with him because they're older voters. So what have they been replaced by? I don't see how Trump is out there attracting new customers.

He seems to be going around the country daring people not to vote for him. And I think at a certain point, people are going to take him up on it, a large percentage of them. How is he daring people not to vote for him? Just by fucking up? The Jews, it's going to be your fault. It's going to be your fault. But he's doing that in a private meeting with donors, right? I don't know, but it certainly was out there. It got out into the news, but yes. I mean, he goes to Detroit and says that she's going to make...

America, Detroit. Yes. I love the ad that the Harris campaign made. You bet. You know, you goddamn bet we will. So I think that what is essential is that Harris hold on to that Biden vote, that some of them voted for Romney. I think Liz Cheney definitely helps in that. I think all of those Republicans help. It's a much overused phrase, permission structure. But I think that it does help

make it easier for you to do something you've never done before, maybe once, which is to vote for a Democratic candidate. I also think that what Liz does that is so critical, she frames the race that this is not a normal race, which I think is one of the essential elements that is true and Harris needs to win. This isn't a race, this isn't 2012. I mean, when we lost in Iran, they went to bed tired, we were disappointed, but we didn't fear for the country.

Okay, we lost. Things are going to happen we didn't like, fine, but that's how it's supposed to work. You move on. That's not true in this race. And I think that the higher the stakes are in this race,

the better it is for Harris. But the democracy messaging, the existential threat messaging, it's not working. And their polling is showing it's not working and they've pulled back on it. You don't hear Harris talking about existential threats or democracy. Biden tried that and they were like, that's not working. And they saw it. Listen, I think... I don't disagree with it. I'm just saying it doesn't penetrate. No, no, I understand. But I think in campaigns, you see this message has taken us this far. We need to go...

and talk to people about other things. You're not discounting this. At a certain point, you're going to get voters who are motivated by that. But if you go back to 22, this was a big thing. People said, you know, it's going to be about inflation. You can't eat democracy. You can't fill your car with democracy. But I think it was a key factor. Not just Roe versus Wade. I feel like that was the big

It was a big factor. All of these things are. It's not an either or. But look, there's not a focus group, a poll or strategist in America that told Donald Trump, you know, you're really going to help yourself if you go out this weekend and talk about military tribunals for private citizens and generals.

And that's what he did. But sometimes the thing with Trump is like a tree falls in the forest on Truth Social or at his rallies or wherever. Maybe it gets picked up by the mainstream media. But the casual swing voter who's not obsessive like us and already knows how they're going to vote is maybe missing that. Like on the show, I said, oh, mom, what do you think about the fact that he's going to be a dictator? He said that. Are you sure, Tara? He's really said that. I'm like, yeah, mom. And I'm sure they're running ads with him saying that. Right. For some reason, they haven't.

haven't hit my mom, but still. You know, in the Lincoln Project, we spent the last few years looking at the voters that were going to make the difference in four key states, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Michigan. Comes down to a universe of about 900,000 voters. And we are sending, we started in April, digital messages to these voters. So it's our goal to deliver over 3 million of these before the election. So I think, you know, this is a race that's going to be won or lost on your phone.

And this is why you need to keep saying the same things. I stood up and cheered when I heard the vice president say in an interview yesterday, she was saying, well, aren't you being repetitive? She goes, we call that discipline. On Charlemagne the God. Yeah. When she was asked about talking points. I was like, yes, that's my candidate. That's a candidate that's going to win. You look at 2004 when I worked for the Bush campaign, you know, you get off the plane or helicopter and say, there's a bunch of people out there that want to kill us. We ought to kill them first.

Yeah. OK, great. That's a message. She's starting to have a stronger message. They're tweaking it. They're tuning it up. So think about that. I think it's a really good point because candidates either improve or degrade. And it's very rare at this stage in a campaign that a candidate improves because fatigue starts to set in. And this is probably an advantage. She hasn't been running for president for a year and a half.

Right. Like most candidates are at this point. We're not like, son of a mill worker right now, or, you know, the phrases. Although my values haven't changed is probably her thing right now. That's probably her line. I think it's a good line. Trump is clearly degrading. Oh, he's been degrading since he started running in 2016, though. And this is the thing. Today is the best day you'll get Trump. Tomorrow it'll be worse.

The next day, it'll be worse. But how do you explain his rising poll numbers? Like, how do you explain that he's outdoing himself in 2020? I don't really buy that he's rising much. You look at these things. So if you go back and you look at the race before Biden got out, right? Say Trump was maybe three points ahead. So now he's anywhere from two to five points behind.

That's a six, seven point shift. Well, we don't know that he's two to five points behind. It depends on what poll you look at. If you look at the RealClearPolitics average, they say that she's up two points nationally, but he's up in the battleground states. Yeah, but they're averaging in a bunch of junk polls. Okay. What poll do you think is a legitimate poll to look at? I think the mayor's poll has proven to be a very good poll.

And I like them because they publish their call stabs. What about Marquette? They have a new one out that shows her up just one point and they have traditionally pulled down. I mean, they had her at 53% and Trump at 47%. So where was she at 50? She was at 53% like a month and a half ago or something. And now she's at 48, 47. I just know this because people have been sending it around all day in like a panic. And he's at 47 and he's still at 47.

Yeah. That's the key to me, that he can't break this 47. Don't forget, this is a guy who ran one race in his life with 46.1%. That's it. Republicans decided that the world had changed because of that. Well, the world hadn't changed because of that. I think that Trump is the incumbent in this race, that it's more a referendum on Trump

than it is on Harris. And I think the Harris campaign is aware of the necessity to keep that. I thought what they did yesterday

Whoever came up with that, I would go buy that person a drink. How do we get people focused on Trump in our rallies? Let's show a Trump bite of a rally in our rally. Yeah, that's Trump's move. Roll the tape. Yeah, it was simple, but absolutely brilliantly executed. So, you know, the way I think you ought to look at polls here, it's like your bathroom scale. It may not be accurate, but it's probably accurate to itself. So it probably says if you're gaining or losing weight.

And that's the trend that what would be a very bad sign for the Harris campaign. If you saw Trump getting up to 49, over 50, and her dropping down to 47.

That would be a really bad sign. One poll, she's at 51. Any poll that shows over 50 is pretty remarkable. They had her at 53 in August in Marquette polls. Yeah, that's pretty amazing. That was when he was having a hard time hitting her, though. That was when they were struggling to land a punch and she was just rolled out, DNC, flawless type of campaign. She was riding high. You know, one way to look at this is, right, how many Biden voters does Trump need? A lot.

He got 7 million more voters. So how many Biden 20, Trump 24 voters are there? I don't think a lot. I don't think he's made that case. Now, there was a case to be made. If Donald Trump had gone out on that debate stage and said, look, I'd never run for office before. I got elected. It was a tumultuous president. But I've learned a lot. I'm going to be a better president next time. That would have said people, OK, I'm going to maybe listen to this guy.

Instead, he went out and was like the worst of Donald Trump. And he can't improve the same way that J.D. Vance cannot say what his own children know, and that is who won the last presidential election. Yeah. It's the limits to Trump. It is the bargain you must strike with yourself, with your own sense of power.

self-worth to be for Trump. I totally understand what you're saying, but I've got to tell you, my mom has been getting bullied by people in my family for wanting to vote for Kamala Harris, something she said in a whisper at the end of my campaign. I mean, at the end of my podcast. Look at me saying as if it's a campaign. I think there is an enthusiasm on the ground. That's what I'm hearing from the Trump campaign. And they feel it. I mean, David Axelrod said Trump would win the election if it were this week. I don't think David's right.

Okay. David, you can come on the pod. I think David, who I have tremendous respect for, has decided to play a role of being someone who's going to try to keep people grounded, to say, don't think that we've got this won. And he could be right. I mean, Trump could win today. But look, in the Romney-Obama race, Obama was never more than a point ahead. Okay.

OK. You did have the hurricane at the end, which is kind of funky. I don't think it decided the race. But still, you have to ask yourself, I think, in these situations, what part of this campaign is Trump doing a better job of execution than the Harris campaign? And I don't see that it's any. Their campaign right now is to keep Trump

out of the storyline. He wants to be front and center. The Trump campaigns, yes. Yes, they realize that if it is a referendum on him, he does not win. But he likes to be out there. He likes to do his rallies, likes to play music, dance, say crazy shit, do media. And so they're picking and choosing

certain venues and styles of media that allow him to talk to the bros and the first-time voters who knows if they'll even come out with the kind of ground operation that he has. But they're making a point of really trying to keep him out of the mainstream conversation. That's a bad place to be in a campaign, particularly with Donald Trump. Donald Trump can't run a stealth campaign. They're trying to run out the clock. That's what someone on the campaign told me. They're like, we're trying to run out the clock. Famously, this Republican consultant, Arthur Fekalstein, ran the candidate campaign

I followed Jesse Helms, who was in a wheelchair. And at the end of the campaign, only something like 20% of the people knew he was in a wheelchair. You can't do that with Donald Trump. And it is a problem with this campaign. There isn't a campaign out there that Trump could be prosecuting. They think they can win. Immigration, inflation. But he can't execute that campaign. You know, you can't say...

a message about inflation and then say, I'm going to execute the former chief, joint chiefs of staff and expect people to really hear the inflation message. If they even hear any of it, that's where I think people are at. I do want to ask you though, really quick though. I totally understand you. I'm really fascinated by the turnout in Georgia today. Record number for early voting, 250,000 ballots cast. And I recorded this on Wednesday, by the way, for people who are listening. The

The top turnout day in 2020, although it was during COVID, was 136,000 in Georgia. So what does that mean to you? We don't know the breakdown yet. We don't know if it was Republicans or Democrats. But when you hear that there are 250,000 ballots cast in one day in Georgia on their first day of early voting, what does that say to you as a strategist? Well, I would ask, is the Trump campaign hoping for a super high turnout in Georgia? No. No.

They don't. They want a low turnout. Unless they believe in these first-time voters, maybe. First-time voters don't show up on the first day. That's fair. They have to be dragged out of the House, right? Yeah. And, you know, there's a process here. There's a good case to be made. Joe Trippi makes this case. There's a Simon Rosenberg very well. The Democrats won the 22 race in October.

that by early voting, it's not just that you're voting early, but in all the turnout mechanism lists and everything, when you vote, you're taking off that role. So it allows the campaign to focus on increasingly lower intensity, lower propensity voters. Right. And so there's not a Republican in the world that would look at what happened in Georgia and honestly say, that's a really good sign. Now, is it determinative? No, but...

I think it shows that people are really eager to vote in this race.

And higher numbers are going to favor Harris. I've heard that inside the Trump campaign, they feel very encouraged by the early voting in Pennsylvania right now. And Republicans are registering more voters than Democrats, although they were already behind. They have historically been behind Democrats, but they have had higher registration. That's like a fact in this race. They feel pretty good about early voting. That's just based on my sourcing. You know, I just look at this as a Republican in presidential races. We carried it in...

88, Bush carried it. And then until Trump, no one carried it. And we always thought we would get close. I mean, I can remember in Romney, we had a Saturday night at midnight for some reason for the Tuesday election. We had a massive rally, thousands of people. We left thinking we were going to win Pennsylvania. It's like, nope, you're going to come close. You're not going to win. So I don't know. I think she'll win Pennsylvania. By how many votes though? What percentage point? I think she'll win by a hundred thousand. Oh, okay.

That's what I didn't want to buy. Or maybe 140. I can't remember. I think he won more like 80. 80. Okay. So he's going to beat, she's going to beat Scranton Joe. Okay. Yeah, I think so. This message is a paid partnership with Apple Card. If you want to take control of your finances, Apple Card is where it starts. It's a credit card that can give you up to 3% daily cash back

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In this ad for the Mobile One brand, I have 30 seconds to talk about driving, which might be what you're doing right now. Maybe you're in the car, you're free, you're in control, on an open road with an open calendar. Your mind is wandering, and you're going with it. Or maybe you're stuck at work, in meetings, or emails. Or worse, meetings about emails. And if that's the case, there's only one question. What?

Why? Mobile One for the love of driving. Visit loveofdriving.us slash radio to learn more. So both of the candidates are, well, more so Harris than Trump, are going outside of their bases this past week and trying to talk to voter segments that they're having trouble with. Trump spoke with Harris Faulkner of Fox News to speak about women.

That was funny. He's the daddy of IVF. He's the daddy of IVF. And he then said he was happy that the issue was being kicked back to the States. Harris, I'm recording this before her Bret Baier interview. You know, it's interesting because Fox offered to host a debate earlier. Her team turned it down.

And now she's ultimately come back to Fox for an interview. That's a confident campaign. I've heard Democrats say it's desperate. And I've heard, you know, Democrats say it's confident. It's not desperate. It's confident. Look, say what you will about Fox. Brett Baier is a very good interviewer. Yeah, he is. He's a very good interviewer. And he's a very tough interviewer. I mean, he did one of the best interviews on Donald Trump, probably. Yeah.

And that'll be a tough interview. She's going into the lion's den. She would have been better off going on Hannity, honestly. Oh, let's see what happens. That's of their choosing.

And I don't see how you say that's incredibly that anyone would argue that that's not someone who believes they have the confidence to go in and do well in this setting. Then why are they so iffy about Joe Rogan? I mean, to me, that's a layup. I agree. They ought to do Joe Rogan. I imagine they'll end up doing it. I think they should.

These Rogan conversations are so kind of weird and looping and strange. But you kind of got to roll with it, and it's an opportunity to show your personality. Right, win people over, young people, men. I could see Joe Rogan and the vice president hanging out together and enjoying each other.

Yeah, I would encourage them to do it. She's just got to know what she's going into and she's got to kind of come in there relaxed. She's got to be ready for whatever comes at her. She's performed at a very high level. You know, it's really hard to have these consistently good days that she's had. So how do you think her pivot to the middle is going? I think if you look at her...

acceptance speech. It was a speech almost a Republican could have given. Right. You know, one of the things that is always frustrating us in the Lincoln Project is the Democrats' reluctance to embrace the iconography of patriotism and the flags, the planes, the military. She's up there talking about a lethal military. She's calling out Putin. She's talking about opportunity. This is a very Republican message. And, you know, there's aspects of her policy that isn't.

like the price controls type. But that's something Trump would do, frankly. Yeah, probably so. Yeah. But in the general American embrace of her campaign, you know, she's the pro-Ukraine candidate. He's the pro-Putin candidate. She's trying to steal back nationalism from the Republican Party, which has long tried to own that. And, you know, if Democrats are successful at doing this, it's going to transform our politics for generations.

You know, it's not just her. I mean, it was Nancy Pelosi who went to Taiwan. And, you know, I don't think we talk about this enough, but, you know, for decades, the most consistently anti-Soviet Union, anti-Russian element in American politics was a conservative part of the Republican Party. And that's now the pro-Putin part. I mean, this is like Churchill's party became the pro-Nazi party. How did this happen? You know, I don't think we talk enough about the fact that Putin wanted to elect Trump and he elected Trump. And what did he get? Well, it turns out he got a lot.

It's the most successful covert op in history, for sure. Including some COVID tests, according to Bowers. According to COVID tests, yes. Trump sent him COVID tests in the dead of COVID when people were dying in the streets. Why not keep our greatest enemy alive? Okay, here's the thing. Trump's team, they have an ad up today based on her comment from The View.

You know, she was asked, what would you do differently than the Biden administration? And she said, not a thing that comes to mind. And they're like, that refutes the theory of the case of her campaign, that she's the change candidate. And she really has, in fairness, like she's really executed a pretty flawless campaign.

Just by nature of being this historical candidate and sounding different and looking different than Biden. And she's given off change vibes. But now she's starting to be asked questions about like, OK, let's get beyond the vibes. What are you actually going to do different than Biden? So what does she do now? I know there's been some reporting that she's working on where they can draw the contrast or getting her prepped with a line for that. But like, how do you how does she do it? How should she? I think that's both campaigns doing what they should do.

I think it's very difficult if she says yes, and then you're going to get into a thousand questions about what it would be. What this will be about, the change element is the future. What is it that she's going to do that's different?

And she is doing policy things that we know Biden wouldn't have done. He hadn't talked about. That's what people are going to focus on. Like the $50,000 tax credit for the mortgage. Everything. I'm not sure. It wasn't a tax credit, but it was $50,000 forgiveness for mortgage payment. All this stuff. And, you know, I think that sometimes...

We get too in the weeds about this. Let's see, a guy's been president versus the first black woman president, and she's not going to be the change candidate. It's going to be like, we've been voting for too many of these black women. We got to let, you know, give the white guy a chance. I just don't think it jives with reality of how people look at these two candidates. He's an old white guy who was president.

She has energy. She's younger. She's African-American. She's, you know, a female. I think that by, it's like the way NBA centers don't talk about how tall they are. You just know. Well, I think that that worked. I really do for a long, for a while. And I think that the issue now is that people are wanting a little bit more than that. It doesn't surprise me at all that Trump's campaign doing this. I would do the same thing. Because voters

voters are saying it too in focus groups. I mean, they want to know. And she did a great job of the debate. She showed she had command capability. She's ready to be president. She showed leadership, I think, essentially, and change. You know, she scored all those points. But I think, you

that was the thing that people wanted more on. They wanted specifics. But who knows? I mean, maybe people are just saying that because they want a reason not to vote for her. Although I feel like when after talking to someone like my mother, who said the same thing, that she wanted more of a reason to know how she's going to be different than Biden on the economy. I think she wants a reason to vote for Kamala Harris. And I do think that those transgender criminal ads paying for

transgender, illegal migrant criminals. I haven't seen the ad myself, but they're very powerful is what I've been told. And they hit to the group of people that you're talking about, the center right people, because it's about taxpayer funded. It's not that they're against transgender people. You know what I mean? It's about... You know, my view on this is that Republicans, to a large degree, never became comfortable with same-sex marriage.

We just sort of shut up about it because it wasn't worth talking about anymore. It was a loser issue. And that this anger about trans is a lot of an attempt to claw back. I don't think it's an anger about trans, though. I really think it's about the taxpayer funded part and the fact that it involves criminals and illegal immigrants. To anyone, they're going to be like, wait a minute.

This is a little off. Yeah, it would never test to the good. I just don't think that the presidency is going to be decided on. I don't know. Listen, I asked my mom like the first. I know I'm using my mom a lot, but I asked her about it. I've talked to other people. I've talked to Republican pollsters. I'm like, yeah, polls real well. That's why we keep blasting it everywhere. Listen, there's a lot of things that poll well that don't.

don't determine an election. It goes to this theory of regression analysis, trying to build onto what really makes people change their mind, which is very difficult in politics because the hardest thing in politics is being able to link cause and effect. It's like how many people are pro-terrorists? Not many, but how many people are going to decide to vote based upon terrorism?

smaller number. So look, we're very messy as people and as voters. But if there was a terror attack recently, we would probably have that at the top of our issues. I forget the exact number now, but some shocking number of people voted for Barack Obama who believed he was born in another country. Yeah, I'm sure. So they would be able to hold these two truths in their minds at the same time. That means he's illegal. But no, I'm still voting for it. I mean, it...

How many people voted for Bill Clinton in 96 who said character doesn't count? Not many. And how many people, when they voted for Clinton, thought that he represented the best of character? Or in 92? Not many.

And so a lot of these things are pretty simple. Republicans usually win who does well on the economy. I think Romney won it by eight or nine. Where they lose is who cares about me and you care about my issues. And Romney lost that. Because he was a country club Republican. Sorry. No, I mean, look. He's a rich guy that worked at a private equity firm. I do want to ask you, because you are one of the top strategists in the Republican Party, what advice would you give? I was. You are still. I'm not a Republican. No, I know that.

You know, not the Republican Party as it is now, which is obviously the party of Trump. But what kind of advice would you give Harris, especially in regards to her closing argument? Contrast, contrast, contrast. So no more joy? No more joy. Well, I think there's joy in saying we don't have to have this. We don't have to wake up every day worried about what mood the president's in.

One of the great joys of being in a civil democracy is not having to worry about what the leader's mood is. One of the things we found is most effective in the Lincoln Project is to show people a Marjorie Taylor Greene or an angry Donald Trump or the guy in the Camp Osweiler sweatshirt and say, is this who you are? And it goes to this larger context. I think that Republicans have put themselves at war with the modern world. They get in a fight with Nike over Colin Kaepernick. What happens? Nike makes $9 billion.

DeSantis gets in a fight with Disney, the happiness company. You know, they got in a fight with NASCAR because NASCAR banned the Confederate flag. They tried to get in a fight with M&Ms. One of my favorite clients and old friends is Haley Barber from Mississippi. Haley had this saying, be for the future, it's going to happen anyway. And I think in that little simple message is something that Republicans have lost sight of. And there's not an embrace of optimism.

and the future. And the idea that a person is running for president of the United States saying America is a third world country, this is so antithetical to everything we have seen in our politics. Overwhelmingly, the most optimistic candidate wins. And

It shows how far we've come since Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan announced in front of the Statue of Liberty to send a signal of welcoming to immigrants. His last speech was an ode to immigrants. He signed a bill in 2086 that let everybody in the country who was there illegally before 83. Now we're in this anger toward immigrants, this hatred. I think it's very wearing. Trump is exhausting.

And he demands that you pay attention to it. And he has nothing new to say. Actually, the new things are really weird. Yeah. It's like a drug. It takes increasing doses.

to get the same high. And his team knows that, and that is why they have him in the background right now. So think about it. He's gone from lock her up to kill her. I don't think America is anti-immigrant, as you say. I really do think there's a problem at the border, which has been under Donald Trump, and we've had this issue for a long time. And so you can't tell people that there's not a problem there. It's obvious. You can see video footage. You can see

I'm not sure how everyone's neighborhoods have been impacted. I personally have not been impacted, but I'm sure a lot of people have been. It's often the lowest income people that are impacted by it, right? Well, consistently where there's the most fear of immigrants is where the fewest immigrants live. That's fair. Which makes sense because when you know these people, you're not afraid of them. Unless you feel threatened because you're worried about jobs. Yeah, and they see them and they know these people and they see that they're normal people.

Look, I think there is a border problem. There's been a border problem and immigration problem for a long time. I think it's what Harris says is absolutely true about the outrageousness that you had the very serious, more conservative than not border reform bill that Trump killed. But I think that there is a difference between stating in a credible fashion we have a border problem and stating that all our problems are because of immigrants.

And I think that you, it's like any conversation about immigrants becomes completely meaningless when you're into the eating dogs and cats. Oh yeah. I mean, that was absurd. It takes what could be a credible argument.

And it negates it and its effectiveness by overstating. Well, that's how you cause hysteria and fear and disinformation and highly educated, tuned in people texting me, asking me, showing me videos saying, is this real? What's going on here? Is this real?

And even for me, I'm like, I don't know if it's AI generated because it looks real, some of it, you know, and we are in this disinformation age that's very hard to keep up with even as a journalist. The largest decreasing demographic in America is non-college educated white people. They used to be 60 percent of the electorate. They're now 40 percent and decreasing. And that increasingly that education divide. And this is one of the great mistakes Republicans have made.

They've now decided that higher education is a gateway drug to socialism. And I think the Republican Party is not functioning as a normal American political party as much as it is an extremist movement. And we need to look at it like that. And there wasn't the moderate element in the Red Guard that ended up ending the Red Guard. It's this idea it's going to have to spin itself out. And it's getting increasingly, increasingly severe.

And I think that just turns off people. It demands too much from you. Listen, if Trump loses, which...

So 50% chance, let's be serious. Right now, things can change. Although I do think it's very hard to pull off an October surprise against Donald Trump because he is Teflon. But who knows? Maybe Kamala Harris gets her wind and I'm not going to try to make any predictions. But the party's going to have to change. I mean, it cannot proceed this way. They are going to need a candidate that can bridge the establishment,

quote unquote, establishment and MAGA to win. That is what they will learn. They will have lost enough money

Republicans who now call themselves Democrats. A lot of people believe that the Nikki Haley voters, a lot of them just are Democrats at this point. They're going to have to if they want to move forward. There will be a reckoning of the party. I had a going out of business sale with any optimism about the Republican Party. I think that what you're saying is absolutely true. I think it's a question of when. I think that they're going to have to continue to lose more races. So first of all, if Trump loses, he will run for president again.

Let's let's don't pretend he's just going to go away. Oh, my God. I wish you could see my eyes bulging out of my head. This is his business now. This is what he does. It's a family business. It might be Don Jr. You know, exactly. Either Ivanka run a wolf in sheep's clothing. Ivanka runs for president. The instinct here. And this is the tragedy of Nikki Haley. And Nikki Haley stayed who she was when she endorsed Marco Rubio, when she said that Donald Trump represented everything she taught her children not to be.

She could be running. She could have run for president and go, look, I thought he'd be a bad president. I didn't think he'd try to overthrow the country. Now, she wouldn't have won, but she'd have some sort of moral standing. But she raised her hand in a debate and said she'd vote for nominee if he was a felon and turned out.

She kept her word. Yeah, she not just kept her word, she endorsed him at the RNC. And frankly, I don't know, that whole primary was a mess. But you can't win when you're running for number two. I think everybody learned that, or three. The biggest thing, I think people, some people, I used to have trouble with this, but I forced myself in a very painful way to do it. The reason Donald Trump is popping the Republican Party is he gives Republicans what they want. That's what they want to be. Donald Trump didn't hijack the party, he revealed the party.

He saw in his animal instinct and looked at Republican parties, he could have run as a Democrat or Republican and decided if I run in the Republican Party, they care less about what they say they believe in than Democrats do. And they will accept me if I give them power. And also he has to be able to show that he can kill them at the same time, kill the dissenters. The whole premise of 16 candidates running in 16 was all you have to do is get one on one with Trump and you're going to win.

So they tried to kill each other because, well, I mean, the Republican Party is not going to nominate a guy that talks in public about dating his daughter. Don't be ridiculous. Of course, we'll beat him. Turns out they were wrong. Gross. I forgot about that one. So much out there. Oh, God. Honestly, Stuart, this is fascinating. Will we know who won on Election Day? You'll know by the next morning, just as you knew you knew in 20 the next morning.

You know, people forget in 2004, Bush didn't declare victory that night because there were enough provisional ballots out in Ohio that technically if Kerry got an extraordinary percentage of these ballots, it had to be about 80%, he could win Ohio. But Bush didn't go out. But think about this. What if Kerry had said the next day, I want Ohio, I refuse to concede? What would the Democratic Party have done? They would have taken his head off.

They would have said, John, you've lost your mind. You lost. Get over it. What would the New York Times have done? They endorsed him lavishly, slavishly, whatever the word is. They would have said, John Kerry has lost his mind. That didn't happen in the Republican Party. When Trump said this, they kind of nodded and agreed with him. And the media, like Fox, as we know now, didn't believe it, but they went along with it. And I think that that really highlights the collapse of the Republican Party.

And it's a tragedy. I expect that if he loses, like actually decisively loses, that he will run out into the sea in his pajamas. And I will be there. I'll be at Mar-a-Lago on election night. I'll be on a raft tube. Yeah.

And be out there. But it would have to be such a decisive loss. So, yeah. All right. This was great. Thank you so much. Thank you. I really appreciate it and would love to have you on again. Hopefully, you know, we're totally booked up until the election. But after the race, we can break it all down and talk about what we got right and what we got wrong. And we can find out who your mom voted for, maybe. Yeah, I think we know.

That was another episode of Somebody's Got to Win. I'm your host, Tara Palmieri. I want to thank my producers, Christopher Sutton and Connor Nevins. If you like this show, please subscribe, rate it, share it with your friends. If you like my reporting, please go to puck.news.tara.palmeri and sign up for my newsletter, The Best and the Brightest. You can use the discount code TARA20, all caps, for 20% off a subscription at Puck. I'll be back on Tuesday.