Conventions Coming Around The Corner (w/ John Heilemann)
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Hi, I'm David Plouffe. And I'm Kellyanne Conway. Welcome to the Campaign Managers Podcast. Well, Kellyanne, you and I have talked on this show a lot about Wisconsin. We had Craig Gilbert on last episode who knows everything about that state. And let's start. We obviously have to talk about the state of Joe Biden and his candidacy that's quite fragile right now. But I think this Wisconsin poll that just came out today, it's for AARP.

That may sound weird to people who aren't into politics, but they release a lot of polls with two bipartisan pollsters and have historically been pretty accurate, I think. But it showed, you know, something we've talked about, but more dramatic. So we've we've talked about this difference between Biden and Democratic candidates for Senate, Trump and Republican candidates for Senate. This one actually showed a 12 point difference between Biden and Baldwin. So Baldwin was at 50. I think she led by five.

Biden was all the way down at 38 in the five way, which included RFK and the other candidates. So this, I think, captures the concern. Obviously, Biden, we're talking on Tuesday.

Biden has shorn up some of the party, particularly the Congressional Black Caucus, AOC, some others. But there continues to be a lot of concern, especially from senators and members of Congress who are running in tough districts. So I'd like to get your take on that poll before we talk about all the inside baseball stuff that's going on in the Democratic Party, which would be painful for me to talk about, but it's something we've got to do.

I can't wait, but this is a good appetizer. Indeed, that Wisconsin poll is eye-opening because as you and I both know, David, Wisconsin is the swingiest of swing states. Donald Trump

One in 2016, the narrowest of margins in Wisconsin, and then Joe Biden turned around in 2020 and did the same, both by less than a percentage point. And I think before this very fraught political moment for Joe Biden and the Democrats, no one really thought of Wisconsin as being a five or six point

for either candidate. I've been fairly critical of the ABC News Washington Post poll at the end of October 2020 showing a 17-point lead for Joe Biden. That's just not true because it's not just Wisconsin. It wouldn't be true of Trump. But I've also been pretty hard on our Republican Senate candidates that they're underperforming

Donald Trump, you say that Joe Biden's underperforming the Democratic candidates. I'm saying that Republican Senate candidates are underperforming Trump. Look, a rising tide may lift all boats, but as you know, these Senate candidates become their own mini presidential contest in each state, if you will. They've got plenty of money, plenty of name recognition, plenty of airtime debates, the whole kit and caboodle. But I would be very alarmed by, I'd be more alarmed by this poll in Wisconsin showing Donald Trump taking a

Five point lead over Joe Biden and at 50 percent in a state that the Biden folks have said they need to win to win the White House again. I'd be more concerned about the Wisconsin poll than I am about five members of Congress who Joe Biden probably has never heard of or a couple of blind quotes from some folks who work in the EEOB across in the West Wing. I'd be more concerned about the polls because this is the reaction of the swing state voters.

to that debate and to the angst of the Democratic Party since. The other thing that caught my eye, David, I'd love to get your comment on is Biden's been spending like a drunken sailor on ads in these swing states. And I think his big spending has amounted to a big zero. Maybe it was bad timing.

Because you had the debate in between the first big tranche of spending and this next tranche of spending. Maybe it's the message. Maybe it's the messenger. The message, of course, was $50 million plunked down to call Donald Trump a convicted felon. I feel like Trump swatted that back on the debate stage by telling Joe Biden, your son's a convicted felon.

And then, of course, we know that not much has happened in the polls in a negative fashion for Trump since then. And I'm really struck also, one last thing I want to say, because we had Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report on our program as a guest a couple weeks ago. Cook Political has now moved as of today. They've moved their rankings again.

Presidentially, Arizona has gone from toss-up to lean-R, which means Trump. Georgia, toss-up to lean-R. Minnesota wasn't even on the list before, likely D to lean-D. That's why President Trump is looking to expand his map to places like Minnesota, lost it by a point and a half in 2016.

Nebraska, too, as we've told our listeners and viewers, David Plouffe, that you got Maine and Nebraska, that second congressional district in both are chopped up. New Hampshire, likely D to lean D and Nevada toss up to lean R. So you see this movement by the nonpartisan political prognosticators in reaction to the debate and in reaction to the reaction to the debate.

Yeah, well, as a Democrat, it's basically bad news everywhere. In the presidential race, some of the Senate races obviously look like they are withstanding –

you know, Biden's two to three point erosion post-debate. Now we'll see. That's a fascinating question. Like what's more likely? Is Biden more likely to grow and get closer in this case to Tammy Baldwin's number? Or is that Republican Senate candidate more likely to get the Trumps? We'll see. But yeah, listen, I think now you and I have both been through a lot of races in a lot of cycles. So we've seen,

polls move. We've seen the Cook political report move hell back when we used to do house races, right? And then obviously they can move back. And we had Jason Miller on last week. And, you know, he said, of course, they think they're still narrow as it may be a pathway for Joe Biden. But this is where my focus is. We'll talk about all the angst in the Democratic Party. But as I've talked about this publicly, I'm

listen, I'm not a Democratic delegate. I'm not a member of Congress. So ultimately, my voice and the voices of people like me are going to be less important. But I think where I can have some authority to speak is the state of the race. And, you know, as you and I talked pre-debate, you know, I was very clear Joe Biden is behind. He's more behind now. So as much as there is a focus on should Biden stay or not, fine, that's, you know, a discussion we're going to continue to have at least for a number of days. The big question is, is if he stays,

How can he get back into this race? And I still think he's probably now at his bottom. So let's say in Wisconsin, in a two-way, maybe that's 42, 43. In a poll where you're looking at all the candidates, third-party candidates, like 38, very low. I don't think you can go much lower than that, but that's a long way to climb back up to a win number, right? And so that's really my question is, and the ad's right. I mean, listen, Donald Trump has been spending heavily, as far as I know, the data I've seen in Pennsylvania, $1.5 billion.

but not in the other battlegrounds. And yet the race has obviously moved more in his direction. I assume we're going to begin to see a lot more Trump advertising starting very soon, all the way to the election. So Biden has to do a few things here. I mean, the most important thing by far is get more voters saying, OK, I've given this a second thought and he seems like he might be up for it. How does he do that? You know, obviously, a strong convention speech helps, but I think people grade that on a curve.

uh, I think he's going to have to do a lot more interviews. I think he should be doing town halls on CNN, on Fox with local affiliates in, in these battleground States and talking to voters and just get out there with no net. There's a lot of risk associated with that, but that's kind of the point. Like if you can't do that, you know, you're never going to climb back. And so that's, I think the important thing to focus on, which is,

Is there a pathway for Joe Biden to win the presidency? I think given our divided country, Donald Trump still has high unfavorables. I think there's a pathway. It is exceedingly narrow.

And this is where I'm trying to push him out. Well, I think, listen, I think some are concerned about his ability to do that because it's going to take political skill, even athleticism to do that. You and I have both been part of races where you're behind. And generally the ones that you are able to come back, particularly when you're down three to five points, you know, that doesn't sound like a lot, but it's a lot. Two things either happen. Your opponent completely self-immolates, right? Scandal, right?

Or, you know, you just find it. You know, you find that athleticism. Right. And you're able to put your opponent on the defensive. You're able to rally voters. And I think that's the challenge is we haven't seen that from Joe Biden in 2024. Might have seen some of that in 2020. So, yeah, my party split. I think there's people who think, well, listen, he won the Democratic primary, beat Trump last time. And it's very close to the election. We shouldn't change horses. Right.

I think the other folks, and they tend to be people who are either running in swing districts or states or know those, are deeply concerned. And so I think we're talking on Tuesday. I think the big moment the rest of the week will be the Thursday press conference he's doing after the NATO summit concludes. I don't know yet. Is that going to be an hour, an hour and a half? Is it going to be 10 minutes? How many questions does he take?

But that'll be a big moment because if he if he does not perform well there, then I think it's going to add fuel to those that want to switch a route here. If he performs adequately, you know, he probably survives this. And then I think we're as a Democratic Party, you know, we're way behind Donald Trump right now. And as you and I both know, everybody's talking about one hundred and twelve days or whatever. You don't have that because ballots get mailed out 80, 90 days from now.

Right. So I'd be curious, by the way, and maybe your answer is none, but like, what are the options? Assuming Biden weathers this storm in the party and he ends up going to Chicago as our nominee, sort of tactically, what have you seen in the past when someone's in this tough of shape to kind of scramble back? Sure. Well, look, you and I both know in the cases of Senator Obama and Mr. Trump in their respective campaigns in 2008 and 2016, you don't fold up

and melt into a ball of tears the moment that scandal hits or there's a crisis afoot. In fact, if anything, people like to see how you handle the unexpected and the unknown and the X factor. So I think in 2008, if I may, that happened when it was revealed that Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the longtime pastor for Michelle and Barack Obama, I believe, married them, baptized their daughters, if I'm not mistaken. Obviously, they were active in his church.

He was surfaced as, you know, anti-American, anti-Semitic, GD this and GD that, 9-11 is an inside job, etc. And Senator Obama, I believe, was forced to give a race speech in Philadelphia in March of 2008, I believe, saved his primary candidacy, went on to beat Hillary Clinton and

And when the presidency, two terms, we, of course, had Access Hollywood, October 7th, 2016. Who's counting on that Friday? And again, people calling for him to resign. I mean, we had statements, written statements from Republican elected officials, high level ones. I look up at CNN. They were like two pages long. The statements had footnotes. They were conjugating sentences. They could just say, you know, get out of the race. I have a wife. I have a daughter. So

So we know people can say, I think what feels differently here, David, about Biden's predicament is that people just think it's not one incident. In other words, like Donald Trump's like, that's from 11, 12 years ago. I remember saying it, locker room talk, what? I believe it was Senator Obama. He was able to say, you know, this isn't the way I feel. It's the way the Reverend talked. And I can't disclaim him more anyway, any more than I can disclaim my white grandmother. Remember it like it was yesterday. It was 16 years ago.

I think this feels different for Biden because there has been such a pile on from the donor community, from the grassroots, from the elected officials, from the candidates, but not from his family. And not as far as I can tell, David, from the delegates who decide who the nominee is at your convention in over a month from now in Chicago.

And I think Joe Biden is going to stay in the race as long as he can. Why wouldn't he? Here's a guy who ran for president three times in two different centuries, finally got the brass ring, will forever be credited by plenty of the country with getting Donald Trump out of the White House. And I think, as I said many times, he can get credit for elevating Trump.

I think she's a terrible vice president, but elevating the first woman of color to that position. I feel if anybody had confidence in her competence, he would have been gone a long time ago and definitely within the last two weeks since the debate. But for all this nonsense about we have Kamala, Kamala rising, Kamala, Kamala, nobody had faith in her two weeks ago. I think she's been the biggest impediment to getting rid of Biden before this point. But listen, my friend, can you close your eyes and picture Kamala Harris?

hosting the NATO summit this week? Well, listen, I think most people can't. Well, I can. I actually, I believe that a switch carries risk as every major decision does. Right.

Right. But I really believe at this point, Kamala Harris probably gives you a better chance to win because I think she can. I do because I think, listen, every candidate has strengths and weaknesses. Right. So Biden, would she do as well with some of the older seniors in Wisconsin? Probably not. But would she, I think, have a better chance?

of basically putting together the Democratic coalition that has done very well in presidential races. You mean the Obama coalition? Well, it's a blend of Obama, Biden. But at the end of the day, we'll see. I mean, as you know, even a vice president or someone like Ron DeSantis, who seemed like, hey, I'm governor of Florida, like I don't, betting doesn't concern me. I'm going to be fine. You get on the national stage, it chews you up.

But at the end of the day, I think a lot of Democrats are getting more comfortable with the prospect of Kamala. It took them maybe the last few days to do so when it was clear Biden was staying in. But I agree with you. Listen, I think the assumption should be.

Joe Biden's not going anywhere. We have a Biden Trump race. We're going to exit the conventions with Biden behind. And so the question is, can he come back? And the best I can come up with is, quite frankly, he's got to somehow alleviate. He's not going to leave it. Everybody's concerns about his age, but the voters that are actually available to him and the only way to do that.

Is to kind of basically take off the training wheels and campaign kind of gonzo style, which again is going to be hard for him to do. But that's where we're kind of between a rock and a hard place, because what I know is I think this race naturally tightens a little bit. But again, Trump was ahead pre-debate. He's ahead now. So you got to catch him.

You've got to catch them. You know, you're behind a couple of touchdowns or even, you know, four points at the fourth quarter. You've got to throw the ball and you've got to take some risks. And so, you know, we'll see at the end of the day. But, you know, listen, it's hard because Biden, what I think is right now Biden is on course to lose this race to Donald Trump unless he reassures more people about his fitness.

Does that mean that Kamala Harris or another Democrat would automatically perform better? It does not because Biden has some electoral strengths and they're more unknown. But I think the big thing is I always look at headwinds and tailwinds in politics. There's two headwinds. Biden's too old. The debate exacerbated that. And we are bleeding too much of the natural Democratic coalition. I'm not suggesting we're going to get all that back, you know. And that was pre-debate. That was pre-debate, but we've made it a little worse.

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Let's get you started with 15% off and free shipping. Visit fieldofgreens.com and use promo code MANAGER. That's promo code MANAGER at fieldofgreens.com. I'm curious though, Kellyanne, so you've obviously, you know, managed Donald Trump's campaign when he won it in 16 and buys him in the White House. It's been striking to me, just I'm observing, I'm not saying whether it's smart or not, but

He has been very modest with his appearances post-debate. It's very smart. And so I guess he was on Hannity last night. That was Monday night of this week. And then he did a rally in Florida today. But what's your sense? Obviously, he's got the convention next week. Did they basically just say Biden's obviously struggling? We're going to kind of let him flail around and we'll basically stay quiet all the way to the convention or to the VP pick? Like what's going on there?

Well, President Trump is doing plenty of things that don't meet the public eye that are in the service of his candidacy and his presidency. That I know for sure. He does pipe in with a truth social post here and there. For example, today, it being Tuesday, David, he talked about NATO and what he was doing with NATO, forcing them to pay more to the common defense, something that many of them are doing now, probably because of Ukraine. But many of them are doing and he would do that again tomorrow.

I think it's really smart for President Trump to not insinuate himself constantly into what is a very rough, perhaps the worst in a while, news cycle for the Democrats. And it's an extended news cycle. You know, David, since the June 27th presidential debate,

I have heard the word Joe Biden more than I've heard the word abortion coming out of the Democrats. That tells you all you need to know about how the rug was pulled out from under you as a party. People feel like it's chaotic and crisis and they're just trying to break glass because of emergency and get rid of Biden. I don't think that would help because

Because Kamala Harris is not ready to be commander in chief and president of the United States. There's no indication she can be. She's got a different kind of energy and acuity issue, David, in my very humble view. She doesn't work very hard. She hardly shows up for work. Look at her public schedule, if you don't believe me. It's very frustrating to lots of Democrats. It's been incredibly frustrating to Kamala Harris staffers who have told

mainstream media outlets who can't do enough to fall over Kamala Harris positively. They have told those mainstream media outlets, like Politico, like the Washington Post, Kamala Harris does not like to prepare. She doesn't work hard. She doesn't open the briefing books. That gives us very little confidence. And I'll say this too. She's been there the entire time. Therefore, she is complicit in the coverup and the concealment of Joe Biden's true condition. There is no one, there is no one who believes that

that Joe Biden became physically and mentally compromised

On the day of the debate, that it was a cold, that it was COVID, that he was tired from flying around the world. Nobody believes that. But so many people insisted it was not true. Do you know there's an ad running in Montana right now showing Jon Tester, the senator, the incumbent senator, he's got a big race on his hands, and Tim Sheehy, former Navy SEAL, independently wealthy guy running against Jon Tester in a state that Donald Trump did and will carry by about 20 points.

The ad is John Tester saying six months ago that Joe Biden is fully competent, that he stands behind him. So why was everybody lying? I saw him in breaking news. And I think this is a problem for Kamala Harris and others. And I think smart Democrats like Hakeem Jeffries and Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer know it. They know they've been up close and personal with Joe Biden and refuse to tell us the truth. They are part of the concealment and the cover-up of

of a sitting president's physical and mental decline. And I can't believe that. What I would say, you know, you and I both worked in the building. And so there's two aspects of being president. I mean, there's more than two, right? But roughly speaking, there's the performative aspects where I think, you know, Biden clearly has declined. Then there's the, you know, having the right meetings,

asking the right questions, making the right decisions, having the right phone calls. And I think Kamala Harris and other Democrats would say they still believe Joe Biden is executing that at a high level. So she'd get that question. It's a tough question. She'd have to answer it. I think if she were to run and again, this is kind of fantasy land because as we speak today, I think we're looking at Biden Trump.

What you at least would get is a lot of energy, barnstorming the battleground states, tons of interviews, tons of social media content. Like there'd be an energy there that I think would be helpful. But at the end of the day, just going back to this, you know, one thing I've learned in life is, you know, there's very few decisions where any decision of any weight is not like there's ultimately an easy one that's good and, you know, one that's bad.

You know, this is tough. But at the end of the day, you know, we're talking on Tuesday, press conference Thursday. President Trump picks his VP, I guess, Monday. Right. The convention like I think by the end of this weekend, this will be firmly settled.

And listen, my view is I understand there's some Democrats and some some pundits, even some of my Republican friends who are now and who are now engaged in trying to beat Donald Trump think we shouldn't be having this conversation. But to me, it's a valid conversation. To me, it's healthy. This wasn't just a candidate who was sailing to victory at a bad debate. Right. There was a there was an issue heading into the debate. He made it worse. And there's a valid question about not just the campaign, but the next four years.

Ultimately, it seems like he's going to stave off those that want him not to run. You mentioned Tester. Listen, I think it is important that John Tester, Sherrod Brown, some of these Democrats in tough races have not been saying they think Biden should stay, and they've been very careful about that. So no, this has been an eventful 10 days in American political history. It will continue. As a Democrat, I don't like where we are in the presidential race. We are behind right now. And while there is time,

to narrow that gap. Nobody out there should underestimate how hard it is to close a gap like that.

particularly when you have concerns about things like age and fitness. And there's already some concerns around the economy. Well, I think Joe Biden is doing a better job of prosecuting that question of who fights for people like you. There's some headwinds there. So the reality is, I think there are far too many people who are saying, hey, Biden beat him last time. He'll beat him again.

You know, it's no different than sports. You know, rematches are not the same game in our culture. So much has changed since then. That's not. And I think it drives me crazy a little bit because, you know, Donald Trump is 78 and to me is showing some signs of decline as well. But voters see it differently in terms of that. Well, listen, half half the country doesn't think Donald Trump's fit to be president. That's crazy.

It's kind of a sad stage for Ferris. He's actually doing 25 points better on that. Yeah. So look, David, I hear you on everything. And I will say this, the, you use the word athleticism.

In terms of that's what you need to do is running for president. And I don't know why the folks around Joe Biden, and there are many, and they all wanted their name in these press reports about I'm at Camp David. I'm helping prepare for the debate. Oh, my goodness. As if that's a trophy. And they were fooling us in making us think that Joe Biden is some kind of trapeze artist. He's some kind of triathlete behind the scenes.

And I feel people, they feel betrayed. I know there's been a lot of iron fire placed on Jill, Jill Biden's shoulders, clearly not a real doctor because look at her husband, but Dr. Jill Biden's shoulders. And the fact is, I get that. I do. I think we all have loved ones. It's a very common human experience to have a loved one

who declines and they deserve our love, our support and our privacy, their privacy. They shouldn't have the bully pulpit and the be commander in chief. But I want to go beyond Jill and Hunter Biden for the moment. That's one thing. And into these other folks, because

You famously said the bedwetters, you know, you famously said bedwetting. And I don't know if we all I think maybe people think of that more as a word than athleticism when they think of Joe Biden. But I think the bedwetters now had a point. And that I believe is your term to describe the Democrats who are worried about Joe Biden and Donald Trump coming back and everything. But I actually think it's a little unfair to Joe Biden to have these candidates, these members of Congress and Senate.

pretend that he's the reason that they may lose. If you're that good in your district, if you're that good in your Senate seat, you can insulate yourself from that. You can stand on your own accomplishments, but they're so addled with Trump derangement syndrome and they so tethered themselves to Joe Biden to build back better, to inflation reduction act, which did no such thing, took $300 billion from Medicare, according to CBO.

and wasted on stuff like electric vehicles and kickbacks to PBMs and whatnot. I mean, they're all saying Biden get off the stage because of 90 minutes out of the 55 year career. I just don't know that that saves your party, a party that you and President Obama helped to build into one that was optimistic and forward looking and policy driven, even if I disagreed with the policies and I did.

It just seemed to be a happier, more forward-looking, more substantive time for the Democratic Party. And that, I think, is the beauty of what you can bring to this podcast. I'm curious what you, as a close advisor to President Obama, who worked closely with Joe Biden, thinks of the state of your party right now. You're going to Obama's hometown into Chicago for that convention. I mean, walk us through that. Do you think your party can ever reclaim that?

That kind of energy, that youth outsider, Jimmy Carter, almost 100, God bless him. I hope we can celebrate him on this podcast. But he was 52 when he was elected and Barack Obama in his 40s and Bill Clinton in his 40s and

J.F.K. in his 40s. These are young men that were leading the Democratic Party. How do you get back to that? Well, we have a lot of talent out there, a lot of talented governors, some talented senators, some talented attorney general. I mean, if you think about Josh Shapiro and Mark Kelly and Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff and Gretchen Whitmer, like Chris Murphy, a lot of talent. And so, you know, that will come right now. Obviously, it looks like they will be on the sidelines as it relates to the presidential race.

28, 32. I'm very confident in the bench. And listen, I think some of our senators, the reason that they are in such strong position is they've run good campaigns, in part talking about the roads and bridges that are being built to clean energy investments. So a lot of what passed, they are using both positively, but also contrasting that with the Republicans. So I feel pretty good about things. I think the challenge is right now, the top of the ticket is struggling. And I think that the question is,

John Tester clearly has the ability, you know, let's say Joe Biden does lose Montana by 20 or 22.

That might be a little bit beyond his reach, but let's say somehow he lost it by 16. Like he could overcome that same with Sherrod. Some of these other Senate races, you know, there's less elasticity, right? And so that's just a reality is, you know, in every state, whether it's a close house race or Senate race, the question will be if your top of the ticket doesn't do well, what's the most we can withstand? Is it four points? Is it six points? Is it eight points?

But it's fascinating because you've all also talked about I talk about, hey, these Democratic Senate candidates are overperforming Biden. Hey, that's good news because some of them will win or should win. And then Biden needs to figure out how to get those voters back. You focused on, hey, a lot of these Republican Senate candidates are underperforming Trump. So to me, this is a fascinating question. And I don't know whether we're going to have a historically high number of ticket splitters. I doubt it.

But Kellyanne, this is a very strange election. I mean, we've got polls showing Biden actually doing quite well with seniors, better than 20. We got Trump doing well with younger voters like Biden.

I don't know. I think we should all be a little humble in terms of how we assess what ultimately is going to happen as these votes actually get cast. But to me, that's a question I'm really wrestling with, which is how much ticket splitting is actually going to happen. Yes. And ticket splitting. I was talking to Nathan Daschle, son of former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota. Really smart guy. He is writing an entire piece about the death of ticket splitting. People don't do it anymore. I think I read that.

Before, had somebody said to me, I wish I had known this on my own, but there's only one state, I believe Maine, that went differently for president and Senate.

in the last however many cycles. And it's pretty remarkable. But, you know, David, I think the ticket splitting also, we need to talk about the power of incumbency, which isn't helping Joe Biden now. It's actually hurting him, in my view. You talked about athleticism, but let's face it, in 2020, he was just doing like sort of shoulder exercises. We never even saw his body. You know, we never even saw the full Joe Biden. He was sitting

in his basement in Wilmington famously. And I think people didn't take that seriously enough that less Joe Biden was more helpful for Joe Biden. And now he is being pressed by your party to speak more often, to do more public appearances. Let's see the press conference at NATO. Let's do the interview with George Stephanopoulos. Let's do another debate on September 10th with

With Donald Trump, he somehow is being asked, by the way, by some people are not exactly spring chickens to show his alacrity and athleticism. But something that really strikes me at this moment is that we have different coalitions of voters who are refusing to play to type.

Hispanics, African-Americans, union households, young people, as you say, seniors, suburban men and women together. And the one I wanted to mention is LGBTQ. There's a big move by the log cabin Republicans to try to help Donald Trump. They've got money to work in the precincts, to knock on the doors. The GOP platform was just changed and

I was with Melania Trump last night for a very small event at her home in New York with the log cabin Republicans and Rick Grinnell, a former ambassador to Germany for President Trump, acting DNI director, I'm sure on the shortlist for big jobs in the next administration. He said this is the first time since he's been old enough, he's about my age, and he's the first time

that he can remember that there's a platform that doesn't make him feel less than or attacks him somehow, or doesn't feel as inclusive. And I feel like my party's at a moment for, I don't really care what the pundits say and the resistance media says, uh, cause they sound ridiculous on the daily. They are resistance to Trump that is, um,

There's something happening in this country where people are saying, look, you can't put me into a box based on my age, my marital status, my geography, my parents' politics, my income, my household education. I think it's really fascinating. And I did want to mention that. And you mentioned something about being humble. We should all be humble. I don't think that President Trump would mind me sharing with everyone on our podcast. He says this routinely.

He says, everybody just needs to put their head down and be humble and win. Doesn't like talking a lot about who's going to serve in the White House, who's going to have this position in the cabinet, who's going to, he's a golfer. They're superstitious with their yips as I hear. I'm not a golfer, so please forgive me if I'm saying it incorrectly.

Golf is a game, not a sport. Don't hate me for saying that. It's true. But anyhow, I'm trying to learn. The point is he has said, be humble, put your head down and win. And then I think it's also why he hasn't insinuated himself into the news cycle. I also think, frankly, David, it's why he let Biden speak in that debate. He was letting, he was giving him the grace and the latitude. I mean, it ended up being, I think, a little bit of a suicide mission for Biden at times, God forbid, but he let him speak.

He gave him that latitude. And even when Biden was struggling, instead of pouncing, he said, I have no idea what he said there at the end. And I don't think he does either. We sure the heck have no idea what he said. He said we beat Medicare after something about COVID and whatnot. So I just look, I think the parties are having a reckoning with who exactly forms their base.

who they can rely upon, what's happening at the convention level. And you're right, politics, as much as things stay the same, they do change. And that's what makes it so exciting. And despite all that, somehow, I still think we could be heading to a close presidential election, but Joe Biden's got a lot of work to do.

Well, we're going to get in all this with our guest, John Heilman, who's been an observer and scribe and commentator on politics through many cycles across many decades, and now is leading a lot of the coverage at Puck and has a great new podcast called InPolitic. John Heilman, welcome to the Campaign Managers. So, John, you wrote a story that came out on Monday. I think it was titled Biden versus the world. And Kellyanne and I were talking about that earlier. It was a fascinating, well-reported, as it always is,

piece by you. What's crazy though, is a lot's changed between when that story posted and today, 36 hours. How do you assess where we are today in this question of, is he going to be the nominee and what are the landmines left that he's got to traverse? Well, I mean, first I would say that throughout this entire thing, meaning the post-debate period,

The reality that you can't force him off the ticket, that he had to make the choice to get off the ticket, has always meant that the likelihood of him leaving the ticket was small. Just being Joe Biden, knowing what we know about him, but attribute it to whatever you want. His psyche, the history, his belief in himself, whether you call that narcissism, whether you call that deluded, or whether you call that...

admirably confident, whatever. He was not going to look up. There was never a scenario where Joe Biden was going to sit down after the debate, look at the debate performance, and then come to his own, have a soul-searching moment, and come to the conclusion that, you know what? I think I'm going to get off the ticket. So the question has always been, I've always thought it was somewhere at the upper bound of a 10% chance and more like probably a 1% to 5% chance that this could happen.

So in that sense, not much has changed. It was never very likely. It's still not very likely. I'm looking at news alerts today conveying what has felt to me to be the case for at least 24 hours with stories that have come in.

uh axios congress's despondent biden rebels see their outflanked revolt crumbling while the wall street journal democrats effort to push biden off the ticket loses steam and and i that's and that's consistent with what what it's felt like for the last 24 hours they went on offense i mean one of the things that i in that piece was uh that i that you talked about david was that not only was he dug in but they had started to develop the strategy an actual strategy um

the strategy of defiance basically, which was, you know, and the us versus them, it's all these elites in the political class, the donor class, the know-it-all pundits, um, are trying to drive me off when the real people in the democratic party want me to stay on the ticket. And so I'm not going to succumb to what the elites want. I'm going to spite for you. You know, I'm going to, and that's a, a populist kind of posture that, that has worked for Biden, um, politically in the past. Uh, it,

It was the first time that there was any sign of a strategy, right? I mean, like an offensive strategy. And then yesterday you saw him do the 18 minutes on Morning Joe, where in an unscripted way, he was able to talk. He was talking to those guys for 18 minutes. People thought he seemed feisty and more aggressive than he had in the past. He sent that letter to...

to the Hill. He did a really important politically, an important call with the CBC and got the Congressional Black Caucus, the most important organized faction on Capitol Hill, other than the Senate Democratic Caucus, if you could call that a faction, to come out for him. Overnight, the Hispanic Caucus came out for him. So what changed is

So rather than one theory, which was that House and Senate Democrats are going to get back to Washington, be all in the same place, and they're all going to get torqued up, and this is going to push a lot of people who were privately think Biden's going to lose into the public. Instead, they got to Washington and they did what Democrats often do, which is folded, broadly speaking. And as of right now, I'm not saying it's over, but

There was never a world where Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Nancy Pelosi, Jim Clyburn, probably the four sitting members of Congress who would matter to Biden, would go and have a conversation with him and say, you've got to get off the ticket. If they didn't have something, if they had something, unless they had something close to unanimity.

in their caucuses. And they don't have anything close to unanimity in their caucuses right now. So I think Biden, in his efforts, not necessarily, I'm not saying this is the right thing for the party or the right thing for the country, but if the goal was, I want to stay on the ticket, his day yesterday did him a ton of good in the sense that he moved that ball forward. I think now, in the absence of a significant stumble, another thing, a public thing, like in his news conference on Thursday night,

I think he's going to be the nominee, then there's going to be no real challenge to him at all. John, I agree with you that it's going to take more than a handful of members, backbenchers who are cordoning on cable TV or a few mid-level staffers in one of the agencies who are giving blind quotes to people like you.

to complain about Biden. It's going to take much more than that to kick him out. I had Michael La Rosa on my new Fox Nation show, Here's the Deal, which drops the same day as his podcast. And of course, he was Jill Biden's communications director. He worked special assistant to President Biden. He just made a good point. He said they're not going anywhere.

It goes back to 1987 when they were, you know, gobsmacked with these credible allegations of plagiarism and people kind of abandoned Joe Biden. Then he was supposed to be president one day and waited his turn, ran again two times. And it's going to take a heck of a lot more than that. And I agree with you. But here's my question for you.

What exactly did some of these members or donors or candidates or activists or reporters even, what did everybody learn at the debate that was brand new? I learned nothing new about Joe Biden's agility, ability, acuity, and energy. That is what we've seen from the beginning. Now, maybe people are upset that millions more saw it and it can no longer be concealed and hidden. But seriously speaking, what do you think was new? What was the reveal?

I think that, well, look, people have, there's no question that there are people, especially on the right,

who have either believed or have said, sometimes those things are the same, sometimes not, that Joe Biden has been cognitively impaired, too cognitively impaired to be president since before he became president. I mean, the argument that argument is made by people on the right for a long time. I can't be in their heads and know whether they really saw evidence of that or whether they were just saying that to make a political argument or whether they actually saw it.

I think that the volume of people who I've seen a lot of episodes of that democratic bedwetting in my time, as has David Fluff, who I think maybe the first person who introduced me to the notion of democratic bedwetting a long time ago. I like the term now as a player. I bet. Yeah. Thank you. It's being misused quite frequently. We can talk about that later. Yes. And I'm not sure that they, right. I think there's a good argument that they're not bedwetting right now at all, that they're actually just having a realistic assessment of the, of the,

of the risks. But I, I think I've seen a lot of episodes of it. They almost, it's almost as reliable as the sun rising in the, in the East and setting in the West. But this was different in the sense that, and, and, and this goes back to a tangential point I would like to make about, about elites, but you know, don't donors and electeds in particular, uh,

A lot of them, I've never seen people express as much anger and a sense of what, given how consistent it's been, doesn't seem to be made up. That people felt the sense of betrayal and the sense of resentment

towards various factions of people inside the Biden White House, people inside the campaign, people in the administration in general, they felt like they knew Joe Biden was not the Joe Biden of 2020. And they knew that he wasn't the Joe Biden of 2012. But what they saw in the debate stage, especially in a setting where the campaign had begged for this setting, they wanted this setting. It was crucial. Yes, to save his presidency. And for him to perform that badly in a moment that they had asked for, it was,

I think a lot of people thought that Biden looked worse to them, appreciably worse to them than they had ever seen him look before. And they were, again, they say, you know, as much as you can judge anybody's honesty about this, people were like, I didn't, I, you know, I knew he was, he was not the guy he used to be, but I also did not know he was that

So basically Biden 2048. Yes, it was kind of the, and I think that, I think that sense of shock on a lot of people's part, again, even realistic, see people who would never have said to you, at least privately, they would have said, yeah, I know he's not, you know, he's not, he's not what he was, was. John, why is that okay?

I'm not saying it's okay. Why is that okay to have a president of the United States and commander in chief is quote, not what he wants? Well, I mean, we had Ronald Reagan for eight years and we know that Ronald Reagan, but it was not what he once was in 1987, 1988, either Kellyanne. I think people that we've seen, we said Franklin, Franklin Roosevelt wasn't what he was toward the end of his term either. I think the question of that there's a, there's obviously a very subjective set of arguments that people make about, is this person fit to be commander in chief? And I think on the basis of, if you look at the,

at the, at the result, nothing cataclysmic has happened in the Biden administration. The, the, the record of accomplishment is, is whether you like the results or not, it's not like he hasn't gotten stuff done. The P you know, if you've talked to these people at, at NATO, for instance, right now, you know, the leadership of the, of the Western Alliance, you know, looks at Joe Biden's performance on that front and says he's done a great job. So there's, there's external validation that he's doing the job, at least doing the job adequately.

But I'm not here to say, I think the whole thing is obscured, a set of conversations, whether you think right today he is fit to be president.

I just don't know that many people who looked at that debate performance and think, yes, that guy will still be fit to be president United States a little more than four years from now. And this has always been the problem. There's always been the problem with the Biden argument, which was the thing of the kind of audacity of saying when you're already declining in a normal way that 80 year old octogenarians do to say to people, I would like to have four more years and be in the office until I'm closer to 90 than 80. There's something inherently ludicrous about that. Um,

And so I don't – I think those are all reasonable questions. People – I think, you know, someone who stood up right now and said, I would like to see a cognitive test on the part of the president before I could effectively say – a real rigorous battery of cognitive tests before I could say that I think he's fit to be president right now. If somebody made that argument in good faith – I don't mean a partisan, but I mean just a citizen – I wouldn't be like –

You're crazy. I don't think that's perfectly reasonable. Donald Trump made that argument. Donald Trump made that polite request as a citizen. I'd love them to take them at the same time. That would be good theater. And we'll ultimately see. Because I think Trump, in a way, it's, you know, Trump benefits from the fact that, you know, he's obviously shown some decline in terms of memory, presentation. Oh, please. Nobody can keep up with him.

We can look at the tape. I mean, there's been declines in 16, certainly even 20, but it's obscured by Biden. So, John, one question I have is,

And I do think, you know, the comeback line they tried to use was, hey, a bad 90 minutes doesn't make up for three and a half, three years. And I know Joe Biden's been a good president. But again, elections are always about the future. And I think voters are thinking about, are you fit for the next four years? And so Kelly and I were talking about this earlier. I mean, I think there's a super interesting challenge because Biden is losing this race. He was losing it pre-debate. He's losing it now. And I just, it frustrates me when that isn't part of the conversation about what should we do here. It's like,

We are losing. So generally when you're losing a race by this amount, which doesn't sound like a lot, maybe to people, but when you're losing by three to five, it's a lot in competitive races. You know, it takes a lot to overcome that. It's going to take,

him campaigning super hard and doing tons of interviews and tons of content and yes, you know, town halls and the voters now, because if he doesn't do all that, you're not going to answer the question. Yes. And I think it's hard. You're not going to win the election. If 75% of the people have questions about your fitness. So as you're talking to people and by the way, probably in the Trump campaign, Republicans, Biden, like,

How are people assessing that? Because, you know, we're talking on Tuesday. So that is now what, 12 days post-debate. You know, Biden did Stephanopoulos. He called in the morning, Joe. He does have a press conference Thursday. We'll see what that's like. But a lot of time has elapsed. And I always want to remind people, you don't have four months to turn this around. Mail ballots start going out.

Okay. In like less than 90 days. So how do you assess that? You've covered a lot of these things. You've now spent a lot of time with Biden World because I don't think there's another route. I wish there was where he could like Rose Garden his way to recovery. I don't think that is in play. Yeah. And this actually, I could start just by saying the thing that I wanted to say before about elites. I mean, there's a lot about the way that they, part of the mishandling of this crisis is

has been part of what generated a lot of anger on a lot of people's parts, supporters of Joe Biden's parts, has been this kind of the gaslighting of people and telling them that this is, that argument that you just said, Plouffe, the, well, 90 minutes on debate stage doesn't invalidate three and a half years. And it's like, no, it doesn't. But that's really not what we're talking about here. What we're talking about is two things. One is, is he infighting Trim to take on Donald Trump? And then the other is, is he capable of being president for another four years?

And the part of the argument that again has pissed people off, and I think, you know, I find it, you know, just on its face, just sort of, again, not tenable.

that it's the notion that it's elites who have doubts about him. 75% of the people in the country have doubts about him. Half of the people in the Democratic Party think he's too old. These are voters. And you can claim that every single poll that's ever been taken on this for the last three years is wrong, but that's ridiculous. It's the case that it's been a profound concern, legitimate profound concern for people all over the country for a really long time. The elites on Capitol Hill, I guess, who are the elected representatives, if they have concerns, it's

only because they're talking to voters. They are, you know, they're, yes, they are, they like their cushy jobs and they blah, blah, blah. But in the end, if he wasn't dropping in the polls and if they didn't think it was going to take them down with him and potentially cost Democrats the House and Senate, they wouldn't be saying any of these things. You can cast that at know-it-all pundits if you want. You can cast it at donors because those are your, you know,

Fair enough. You know, although I get, I will say not that I could ever write out half a million dollar check to anybody, but if I did, you know, I'd be pretty, I have some questions also and, and they're, they may be elite, but those doesn't make the questions illegitimate. And I do think all of that, David is what they've been focused on is the

is the short-term tactical things to get him through. That the goal here has just been, how do we... And you know how it is. Both of you guys know. In crisis moments in campaigns, what you see is, you know, your time horizon shrinks to, you know, as close to three inches in front of your face. And you're just trying to survive hour to hour, day to day. What do we do to get through to tomorrow, through this next wave of press criticism, through the next wave of allies who are turning on you, whatever? I don't have a sense that they have...

a long-term plan for how you're going to overcome the kind of small but persistent disadvantage deficit that Mitt Romney in 2012, as you remember well. You guys sat there with your two to three point lead in the battleground states and nationally, and we're like, yeah, we're worried this race, this is a real race, but as long as we're consistently two to three points ahead in the battleground states and nationally, we're going to probably win this race.

If I were the Trump campaign at this point, I would feel like that. And I particularly feel like that. And this is the thing that I don't think, again, that I've not other than the second debate. And I want to ask Kellyanne whether she thinks there will be a second debate. But that's I'll put that off for one second.

The whole point of this debate was, I'm sure you guys have said this, was to do what every incumbent who has a shitty approval rating needs to do. Turn the race into a choice rather than a referendum and get the focus on Donald Trump, who has a lot of political liabilities and is really unpopular in a lot of parts of the country. And instead, you've made it not just that you fail to do that, but you have done the opposite.

you made the entire race about joe biden not just today but for the foreseeable future the scrutiny that he's going to be under uh every time he goes out in public every time he does an interview every time he does a speech and he is going to make mistakes he's going to make mistakes and all of them are going to be blown up whether you say out of proportion or the correct portion it doesn't really matter because all it's going to be now going forward how do you turn that around i mean you're i look i

I don't think they have a plan. That's what I can answer you as a reporter. I'm not a campaign strategist. I don't know what either one of you would do to try to turn that around. But boy, that was not just a missed opportunity, but that's a missed opportunity that has a long tail. It goes forward into the indefinite future. And the one thing you can point to as a moment where that's not just paid advertising or

scripted conventions, you know, doing a bunch of, you know, do some more interviews, whatever. But none of that's going to turn around the fundamental framing of the race. The only moment that's out there on the horizon is this ostensible second debate, which again, I mean, I, you know, Kelly, I don't know if you, if you, if you know, if I were managing Donald Trump's campaign, I would never do a second debate with Joe Biden.

I would never do the second debate. I would say, I don't want to put that poor old man through this and take the win. But do you think there's going to be a second debate? I hope so. I hope there's a lot of debates. I think they're a form of direct democracy. And there's so much talk that Joe Biden lost the debate, but I believe Donald Trump won the debate. And those are two different things. He basically...

He debated Joe Biden to a draw on abortion, which almost no other Republican seems to be able to do. They all have marbles in their mouths or they're hiding under the desk where you're sitting right now or both. And he talked about how Biden had emboldened Iran, then stockpiled $80 billion in his funding Hamas and other terrorist organizations. He talked about the border. He talked about inflation. He talked about poverty.

policy when he could. And so I think that Donald Trump can win another debate against Joe Biden. He ought to do it. I feel there's going to be tremendous pressure for Joe Biden to make us all unsee what we clearly saw and can't unsee, which is his pathetic debate performance. I don't think he's Barack Obama 2008 is my point, 2012, pardon me, where you had that first bad debate against Mitt Romney and then you come back.

because you're sitting President Barack Obama. I think it's very different in this case. But I have a question for you, David, if you don't mind. I just want to ask, you know, John, it's not just it's not just Democrat. I would expect Democratic office holders and candidates and activists and donors to want to protect their own, to want to say Joe Biden's the guy with them all the way. And let's face it, they also don't have a lot of faith

in Kamala Harris. If they did, they could have gotten rid of Joe Biden a long time ago. People are worried that what all the Kamala Harris staffers have said to reporters like you in quotes, in blind quotes, that she doesn't work hard, she doesn't open the briefing book, she doesn't prepare. They're worried that's true. So we'll put that here in the ether.

I'm wondering about the media. I have to ask you, I mean, the media has made the mainstream media has been all in for Joe Biden, um, addled by Trump derangement syndrome. What is the responsibility of our fourth estate to be unbiased, to not be part of the resistance, to be reporters, to go for the news stories and not always give their opinion. I think the media has been very complicit in all this. And I'm somebody who always tried to deal with the media.

Even when they were jackasses to me, I worked for the country and I tried to at least explain what policies were happening, what world leader was coming and why, what the tweet meant. And so I just want to know, don't you feel there are people in your business that are just part of resistance, Trump derangement syndrome, and are complicit in having pretended that Joe Biden was not declining? Right.

So I think that one of the things that in the same way that David talked about how bedwetting is misused when what it is in the part of a lot of people just in general about this are having trying to take an honest, clear-eyed, real-eyed assessment of the circumstances. And that's not bedwetting. That's not panic. That's a clear-eyed assessment. And this will be a point about which we could debate all day. But essentially...

Every single time anybody ever invokes the phrase Trump derangement syndrome around anybody that I... Are there people who are deranged with hate towards Donald Trump? There certainly are. I would say that in many cases in which it's applied to people, and I'll say when it's applied to me, my only answer to that is I'm not deranged at all. I'm extremely clear-eyed. There's one candidate on the ballot right now who's a clear and present danger to the future of American democracy who said he wants to be... I could go on all day about this. You know the lines, but he's...

He's a criminal.

He tried to overturn a free and fair election. He doesn't give a flying fuck about democratic norms or the Constitution, as far as I can tell, and is someone who has exhibited every possible inclination and indication that he wants to be an autocrat, a dictator, an authoritarian. I think that recognizing those things is not derangement, it's clarity. And so my position as a journalist, I don't write for the New York Times. I've never been a straight news reporter. My position has always been I report like crazy, but I've written

thousands, hundreds of thousands of words as a columnist. And as a columnist, my bias is very clear. My bias is I'm on Team Democracy. I'd like to see the American experiment continue as the way it has over the course of the last 250 years. And so I'm very comfortable criticizing Donald Trump and not... I have had Democratic administrations and Democratic Congress people and Democrat senators mad at me over the 30 years. I don't give a shit about the Democratic Party.

I do care about democracy. And at this moment, there's a very stark choice between those two, between the two people. One candidate is committed to it and one candidate is not. And I think that I can't speak for the rest of the people in the press. I'm never going to try to like, there have been things that I've seen that the press has done that I would never have done myself. And there's things that I feel really uncomfortable about. I'm not a spokesman person for them. I'm not going to answer for them either, but I can answer myself. And that's my position on this topic, which

I appreciate you clarifying that you have a point of view and you're willing to... I've said it hundreds of times. To support a guy who you're admitting isn't all there. But Kelly, I've also been willing to write critically about Joe Biden and I've been willing to say plenty of things that have been infuriated, that have been infuriated by the... You've said things that have infuriated me through the years. Yes, indeed. But I think, and listen, Kelly, and I appreciate the Trump derangement syndrome moniker is something that I think a lot of folks in...

McElroy would like to use as kind of a catch-all defense against some of his clear, not just anti-democratic actions, but, and that's one of the reasons with all of Joe Biden's challenges, and they are profound.

There's still a narrow pathway for him to win because I think there's enough voters out there right who aren't sure they want to hand the keys back to Donald Trump. I also have to say back on mechanics. Well, back on Kamala, it's not just that back on Kamala. I think there's also Kamala Harris derangement syndrome on the right. And my view is we talked about this before we talked to John, which is.

So there's risk. And this is bullshit because it's not going to happen. But in the Aaron Sorkin world that Kamala Harris were to get elevated, I actually think she potentially could be a strong candidate. There's risk there. We'll see how people do. You're going to have to work harder. Well, it would be a different campaign, but she'd be doing six events a day and tons of interviews. But that's neither here nor there.

I'm curious, John, one of the things Kellyanne and I have talked about both earlier in our conversation today and in prior episodes is this fascinating divergence between the presidential race and Senate candidates. We saw it in the Wisconsin AARP poll today, 12 point difference. You know, as you're doing reporting today,

What are you hearing about that? Like I'm sure. And both, both Democrats and Republicans, there's a fascinating question is Kellyanne will rightly say, Hey, as much as I say, Hey, Biden's underperforming democratic Senate candidates, he's got to figure out how to close that gap. She'll say these Republican Senate candidates are underperforming Trump. Like what are they doing? Like, what are you picking up? Like, do people have a theory about why that is? Are we potentially going to have historical tickets splitting here or the smart folks you talk to think it's going to narrow? What's your sense of that? I,

I think people think it's going to, I think both those two things are possible, David. I think like the notion that we're going to see more tickets splitting than we've seen in the past is possible in some of these battleground states. Number one, number two, I think most people think that there's going to be some, or at least thought prior to the debate that there was going to be some convergence of those numbers. But I mean, honestly, like, you know, Adam Schiff was on television over the weekend and I'm going to paraphrase what he said when he did one of the Sunday shows, he said something like,

Donald Trump is a criminal. Donald Trump is, and he rattled off a whole bunch of negative things about Donald Trump, and also has been someone who has not been politically popular as the leader of the Republican Party. He has attributable, a lot of Republican political struggles since Donald Trump took office have been tied to him. And in midterm elections and in the presidential election 2020 and in the midterm election 2022, Democrats have gotten

have had a lot of political success by tying the extremism of the party to Trump. And Schiff's point was, this race shouldn't be close. There's only one reason why this race isn't close. It's because of Joe Biden's age and the questions around his age and fitness. And Schiff was very open about saying that. And I think that explains a ton of it in places like where there are voters who don't, the Democratic Senate candidates are not 81.

And you have these voters who are in those gettable voters, those swing voters or whatever, available voters or undecided, uncommitted voters, whatever the phrases are we want to use for them, who are determinative of elections. And right now they look at Tammy Baldwin and they think, well, I like Tammy Baldwin's policies better than these extreme Republican policies. And I don't have to worry because she's not 81. I don't have that question. Biden is unusually...

uh, isn't unusually, it's still a weakness of his candidacy. And other than these democratic Senate candidates, uh, are, are afflicted by that. And I would say on the other side, look, you know, Donald Trump is the, whatever you want to say, the, the, the Trump, uh, mini me's the Trump, Trumpy candidates, MAGA candidates, the MAGA policies, the extremism is not popular. And Trump is, as is, is the one person who defies some of that gravity himself personally. He's,

There are no other. Kelly, I know, is going to agree with me about this. There's no there. No matter how much you have kind of chips off the Trump block, most of those candidates are cut rate versions of Donald Trump. They do not have his force of will. They don't have his personality. They don't have his charisma. They don't have his feral, you know, that the presidency has. Trump is, you know, again, I just got done saying I think that he's uniquely dangerous to American democracy, but he has power.

a he has power as a candidate and and the fact that he's over performing the kind of pale limitations and in some cases the crazier invitations of him that doesn't surprise me either I think those are they're it's very unique what you have in these tickets to these two people at the top of the ticket well Kelly and if you don't mind let me just because John I think there's obviously Biden's weakness as it stands as part of the reason but when you look at Trump outperforming Republican Senate candidates

It is because he is doing better with younger voters, with black voters, Hispanic voters. And so, you know, my sense is it's a blend. Some of that is Biden related, but some of it is Trump. I think in many respects is a stronger candidate this time than 16 or 20. That's what I tell Democrats, which is he's polling better.

And he is showing more strength in more parts of the electorate. So as we think about how we win this race, you better not discount that. I mean, as you do reporting on that, is there, I guess I'm a little bit worried. There's a sense that, well, those polls are all bad and there's no way Trump's going to do that well with young. But I feel that that's where there could be some derangement syndrome happening on my side. Yes. What's your sense of that? I mean, look, you have Joe Biden sitting on him again, all these things. I'm not going to say the, you know, the fish rots with the head down thing, but, you know,

When you have the president of the United States on television saying he is basically sounds like when he says, we don't, I don't believe these polls. That was, he said to Stephanopoulos the other night, I don't believe the polls. He sounds like. He said, we have different polls. I'd like to see those. He's one of these, he's one of these now unescue the polls people, you know, and, and look, I mean, I am, I think that polling is not an exact science and there have been, there've been fundamental problems in a lot of the polling. Much of it has actually been,

significantly, consistently understated the size of the Republican electorate in presidential elections. But you now have people who basically in that bubble, in that bubble of epistemic closure on the left, people who basically go, I'm not going to believe all these polls. They're all consistent. They all say there's some kind of conspiracy going on here. You know, these Democratic media organizations that want all these clicks, they're skewing the polls. And Biden essentially put the golden seal on that, you know, on Stephanopoulos basically said, I don't believe these polls. I think they're all wrong. It's a toss up race, right?

now, which makes you think either that someone's not telling him the truth or that he's succumbed to that kind of conspiracy thinking about polls that just isn't frankly helpful. And I think that has been the case also, that the reasonable people in Joe Biden's universe, to speak to what I know as a reporter, is that they have not said, the Jen O'Malley Dillards of the world are not people who sit around going, these polls are all wrong, they're all made up.

they look at the decline in support for Joe Biden among young voters, African-Americans, and Hispanic voters and say, this is a problem. Some of them have drifted to Trump. Some of them are just going to stay home. We have to solve that problem. And their hope was that the way they do that was by making this a race about Trump. And then when people, because people have

largely in America, my experience traveling around as I do is that the vast majority of people, really political people, not very political Republicans and Democrats alike is that the most frequently asked question I get is, is this really the best we can do? These two old fucking dudes, this crazy one over here. And this, this, this feeble one over there, like,

Can we really not, can we not find a couple of guys to run who aren't in their, either in their 80s or on the cusp of their 80s? I hear that question everywhere from people of all stripes. So people have tuned out the race and Democrats in Joe Biden's orbit thought, once we get them to tune in,

That's when our base voters will come home. And David, I think that they that one of the many problems of this debate performance is that, you know, again, you've now got another whole other set of challenges before you even get to that challenge. And I also think it does significantly, especially among Hispanic voters, but to some extent among African-American voters, understate the the the frustration that.

with the what they see as continued under delivery on the part of the Democratic Party to their concerns and that there are a lot of black voters who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 who thought, A, they were going to get one term and B, they were going to get more promises made and promises kept. And the combination of feeling a little bit like Biden

lied to them about his intentions about whether he was going to stay for two terms. And then the fact that they haven't gotten what they thought they were going to get out of the iteration. They didn't get voting rights act. They didn't get, they was not, you know, you look around a lot of, of, of urban African-American neighborhoods in the, in the country and they have not experienced what they thought they were going to get from Joe Biden. And so there's, there's disappointment in two different directions. And I think that, that, that,

the Trump campaign and Republicans in general, I don't think those are those aren't real, that there's not maybe, you know, he's not going to suddenly become the candidate of the majority of black America, but that he's made real gains. He's made real gains consistently over time from 16 to 20 to now. And I think to dismiss the possibility that he's going to make not giant, but measurable gains in those cohorts is foolish. Be crazy to do to do that. Yeah. So and that happens with Kamala Harris on his tickets.

I think that she has to eat and own all of these failings and shortcomings that you're mentioning, John and David, in terms of the core constituencies of the Democratic Party eroding. Doesn't mean that it's a mass exodus, but the erosion is there. You've got the Cook Report now moving. You've got them moving New Hampshire and Minnesota in their assessment assessments.

Nobody even had them on their six or seven swing states a month or two ago. You've got Donald Trump showing up and trying to expand his map. Well, and Virginia. And Virginia, which has been for the last month and a half, has been getting close. People haven't been paying attention to the fact that Virginia is suddenly a close race. Yes, Governor Youngkin told me that it's competitive and that...

President Biden will have to spend some time and resources there. This was a pre-debate conversation right before the debate. So I believe all that. Look, there's a risk too that you're not going enough. Hillary did this. She didn't go enough to the swing states. She took them for granted. We watched that and went there in 2016. But if you spread yourself out and you're not going back to the swing states, so Donald Trump would have to make the seven, eight, nine stops a day toward the end that he did before. And now the end starts earlier. So I wanted to ask you,

What you think the benefit of these conventions is you made the point that General Malley, Dillon and others around Joe Biden, his campaign, John and David thought, well, we're going to once you tune in, once you're dialed in to this race, our base will come back. And then they told people exactly when to dial in 9 p.m. on June 27th. And everyone did. And that was the mistake, as you say.

But now we're going to dial in again. We're going to tune in again to the two conventions, the Trump VP pick. There's always an October surprise, September surprise. What do you think could change the trajectory of this race for either candidate? I mean, look, one of the great pieces of wisdom that I've ever heard in my life covering politics was a nonpolitical thing that Bob Rubin, when he was Treasury Secretary, used to say, which was events will occur.

And in this race, you know, I don't see anything on this calendar. I don't think the conventions are going to change the dynamics of the race. That's what I was kind of suggesting before. And I don't see anything. There's a question about that, about that debate, whether it takes place or not. That is the only thing that's going to happen. The audience for that debate will be, you know, given what happened in the first debate will be stratospheric. And what happens in that debate is a thing that could have material impact. But I think in terms of

the biggest things that could alter the trajectory of the race are things that we can't, that we can't get, that there will be large events that will happen between now and then. I'm not saying that in some like pie in the sky way. I just mean, we've seen it in every presidential race we've covered something, things will happen. And those things will cause, will be real time tests for both the president, for both the nominees. Joe Biden will be president United States. He, you know, he will maybe be put in a position to demonstrate extraordinary leadership between now and the, and the election. There are things that could happen.

around Donald Trump in a variety of forms. And given this volatile country, but this what had been previously this stable race,

And so many people who hate these candidates, who just don't want, who kind of look at this race on both sides, who all along have been said, yeah, fine, I'll vote for Trump, but God, really? Or God, fine, I'll vote for Biden, but really? You know, that seems like the kind of race, very unusual. You guys know, we've had polarization with like very intense, very intense team. You know, everybody's like, I don't know if I like John Kerry, but man, I'm really with him. And you never had that with Biden. And I just feel like that's a recipe for,

events potentially reshaping the race in a way that they sometimes do. The financial crisis of 2008, obviously a huge example. But Comey in 2016, I imagine those are the biggest things because other than that, on the calendar, I don't think the conventions will move anything at all. I mean, again, in the absence of...

you know, some kind of Clint Eastwood in his chair. But even that didn't move the election. I mean, that didn't move that. That was really hilarious and crazy, but didn't move the race. I mean, I think, Kellyanne, you know, when you manage campaigns, you're responsible for campaigns, you obviously want to nail everything with perfect execution. But you realize that the conventions don't really reach hard to reach voters. Now Trump's got his VP. So that is a moment, right, to roll out. How does that person survive the scrutiny? Is there more excitement in the party, etc.?

But other than that, the only thing on the calendar is September 10th. And I guess the other thing I'd say is early voting. Look, so I do think because Trump, it was political malpractice to attack early voting. He cost his party votes. They're not going to make that mistake again. So if one party were to really have a better, not just early vote, but GOTV and the mechanics, as we've talked about, that could be something. That's not a calendar. That's a factor. But I tend to agree with John that you've obviously got the Middle East going.

What happens there? Netanyahu is a big wild card in that regard. As we, as we get into the fall, you've obviously, we just saw the Russians attacked a children's hospital in Ukraine. What happens with that? You've got obviously, you know, interest rates, inflation, but, but this is the thing when you're behind in a race, it's important or you're ahead, quite frankly, like,

What could really change things and what couldn't? And really, it is that debate. And I think it will be fascinating, Kelly. And you think Trump should debate. We had Jason Miller on. He said he's going to debate. We'll see. It would be quite unusual for him just just if looking at the like political state of the race to give Biden an opportunity to get off the mat.

But I also know Trump loves the spotlight and has confidence. So but absent that, it would really be, you know, a health event for each of these two guys. The other thing that happened, too, which is you had that second debate. It goes much like the first debate.

And then it's way too late for, for the Democrats. Well, you have two of those. You're in like absolute shitsville. You're heading to a landfill. Yeah. But way too late to move them out. Then what do you do? I don't disagree with that. You pretend Kamala's ready. You pretend she hasn't been part of the coverup. I think a second Biden performance, like the one in the first debate would also materially alter the,

the trajectory of the race. It would materialize it, not the direction the Democrats wanted to alter it. If we have a second debate, it would be a big deal. Yeah. John, thank you for joining us today. You've been a great chronicler of presidential campaigns and the electorate.

This is an unprecedented one. And you've really helped us sort of think through the moment we're in as it relates to Biden and democratic world and where the race stands and how we should think about the moments to come. And I think smartly say that the big moments that could change this are few and far between. So thank you for being on with us. And please be sure to check out John's new podcast in politic with John Hyman. It's great. And John, I will be eagerly awaiting your next episode. Pleasure to see you guys. Thank you for joining us. Thanks, John.

Well, as usual, David, we covered a tremendous amount of terrain because these news cycles are ever changing, won't let us rest. And thank you so much for bringing your A-game every single time to our podcast. I'm looking forward to being in Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention. Very excited to hear President Trump's speech as he accepts the nomination for his third time.

And very excited to learn more about his vice presidential pick. I'm sure that we will be discussing that next time. It'll be another momentous week in American politics. So we'll continue to stay close to all that and bring you our perspective. So for me, David Plouffe. And for me, Kellyanne Conway. Remember, it is easy to be enraged. It's essential to be engaged. Have a great week, everyone. Have the best week.

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