Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Focus Group podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark. And this week, we're talking about the second wildest Senate race in the country, Pennsylvania. Now, if you want to hear about the first wildest, you can go back and listen to my Georgia episode with Molly Ball from a couple of weeks ago. The Republicans have nominated Dr. Oz, a sentence that only makes sense in a post-Trump world.
And the Democrats have nominated John Fetterman, a dressed-down mountain of a man who looked like he was going to shitpost his way to flipping a Senate seat.
But the realities of his recent stroke and millions in ads from Republicans painting him as soft on crime have made this race incredibly tight. Dr. Oz barely won the GOP primary despite receiving Trump's endorsement. His unfavorable ratings remain quite high. But the night before this focus group, the two candidates had their only debate in which the effects of Fetterman's stroke were very apparent.
Oz had already started to close the polling gap with Fetterman going into the debate, and the debate likely increased Oz's momentum in the final weeks before the election. Now, we attempted to field a group of undecided voters who watched the debate to see how it impacted their thinking. But ultimately, the group was strong Oz leaners, and the debate moved them solidly into the Oz camp.
But there's still a lot we heard from this group that is worth unpacking, and I'm eager to dig into how the debate might impact the final days of the race.
My guest today has made his bones electing Democrats in places like Pennsylvania. Former Bill Clinton strategist and host of the Politics War Room podcast, the one, the only, James Carville. James, thank you for being here. Well, thank you, Sarah. I'm a big fan of the bulwark, obviously. I can't tell you how many focus groups I watch as a campaign manager, which I did for a long time. I've always...
found them not determinative, but very helpful and, you know, key part of trying to develop campaign strategies. And this one was illuminating in some ways.
Yeah, so I got to ask you just out of the gate before we listen to some of this focus group. So Fetterman got a lot of hype early on, including from my colleague Jonathan Last, huge Fetterman fan. I was more of a Conor Lamb person myself. But how much did you buy that early hype? Well, first of all, I was very active for Conor Lamb. My man, my man. We raised money for Conor. He's a good friend of mine. I was with him before I went to primary.
And I don't say this with any glee or like I told you so. If he were a Democratic nominee, we'd win this thing by five points or more. And everybody knows that. And, you know, of course, when Fetterman won, I said, look, I'm head of the Louisianans of Fetterman or whatever. You know, I was pulling for him. I was. I still am.
But I think when you look at this, the big decision and people are saying, well, maybe shouldn't have debated. Once he decided to stay in the race, he was almost committed to have to debate. I'm more the stay in the race was the real key decision, much more than the decision to debate. So you you think he had to you think he had to do it? Because I was going to get into this later. But this is like the central question for a strategist.
Could have been much worse. I said, well, now in retrospect, maybe you shouldn't. But it would have loomed in people's mind. Knowing what I know now, if they had to do it all over again, well, don't debate. But that would have come with problems also.
Can I ask you, though, I understand you're saying knowing what you know now, but presumably the people who are around him, the strategists who are making this decision, they did see him. They were aware of how significant the problems are. Well, Sarah, what I would say is I've talked to people that had seen him at other events. I talked to someone who saw him at a fundraiser in North Shore, Chicago, New York.
He had a rally after the debate. He sounded better. I think he's had good moments. I'm trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. I had some hope that he would be better and kind of reassure people. My understanding is, and I hate to comment on this because I have no real expertise in
But the recovery can be uneven and people have bad days and good days. And it so happened that they had a catastrophic day. Yeah. And maybe they didn't anticipate that. I want to go out of my way to give them the benefit of the doubt. And I have heard this. No, yeah. Listen, I was just on Kara Swisher's podcast the other day and she interviewed him and she said he seemed really good. So I think you're right. There's definitely people who've been talking to him who've seen different versions of this. Right. And they said, you know, he's got a little...
a little process and issue, but it's not bad at all. I hope he's a lot healthier than he showed the other night. I really do. Yeah, well, let's just set up this conversation. We just have a little bit of the debate we want to play just so people can get some context. So let's play that first. What qualifies you to be a U.S. senator? You have 60 seconds. Hi. Good night, everybody.
I'm running to serve Pennsylvania. He's running to use Pennsylvania. He got his Pennsylvania house from his own inlays from a dollar. Let's also talk about the elephant in the room. I had a stroke. He's never let me forget that.
And I might miss some words during this debate, mush two words together, but it knocked me down, but I'm gonna keep coming back up. You know, what I support, I support on Roe v. Wade. That was the law of the land for 50 years. He celebrated when it fell down, and I would fight to reestablish on Roe v. Wade. That's what I run on. - He said very specifically in his primary debate, when he was still debating, that he would support 38 weeks
of mandated rules by the federal government that would prevent any state from blocking it. As a physician, I've been in the room when there's some difficult conversations happening. I don't want the federal government involved with that at all. I want women, doctors, local political leaders, letting the democracy that's always allowed our nation to thrive, to put the best ideas forward so states can decide for themselves. Mr. Fetterman, there is that 2018 interview that you said, quote, "I don't support fracking at all." I do support fracking.
And I don't -- I support fracking, and I stand, and I do support fracking. -Okay. Thank you, Mr. Fetterman. -Why haven't you apologized to that unarmed, innocent black man who you put a shotgun to his chest? -I made the opportunity to defend my community as the chief law enforcement officer there. Everybody in Braddock, an overwhelming majority community of black community, all understood what happened.
Okay, so you can hear how Fetterman was struggling to, like, get his sentences out. And I want to say the one thing that struck me was just how fast Dr. Oz was talking. Like, my auditory processing is fine, and I was struggling to keep up with Dr. Oz. And I couldn't tell if he was doing that on purpose or if he just, that's just how he talks, you know? But in any event, it wouldn't have surprised me if Fetterman was missing a lot of what Oz was saying. Yeah.
It might be. And one of the other things, Sarah, I was repeatedly told is they don't like ours in Pennsylvania. He had a 54 negative over the summer, which is high. There was real skepticism about it. You could sense through...
The clip you just did, the ambition and the glee that he had, and he was talking fast because he knew Fetterman was doing poorly. I mean, I would certainly say for somebody who is obviously a well-trained physician, which you can't argue that that's what he is, he seemed pretty gleeful that Fetterman was having some processing issues. But, you know, it's politics. I mean, when you put yourself out there, that's the kind of thing that can happen to you.
What did you think about how Fetterman addressed the issue just at the top of the debate when he was like, look, there's an elephant in the room. I had a stroke. I think his staff, that was a very good response. I'll give that an A plus. Hey, look, the problem he had is he just had an off night. And, you know, if you listen to that focus group, which were predisposed to vote Republican anyway, but they were particularly brutal.
I was a little struck by the lack of humanity in it. But again, people generally don't feel sorry for U.S. Senate candidates. We've got a bunch of the reactions to Fetterman's performance. Yeah, fair warning, they are not compassionate, but let's listen. Even prior to the debate, the guy hits me as kind of like a thug. And after the debate, there was no question whatsoever
He still hits me as a thug, and I feel bad about his medical problems and his inability to really be able to answer questions clearly. But I just can't believe the guy is even...
How he was close or ahead at some point in time in this election just amazes me. The way he carries himself, his reputation being too soft on crime and too loose on policy as far as drugs go. And just every single box is checked off the wrong way as far as I'm concerned for Federman. And it always has been.
I just don't get it. Last night he did awful. I feel he should be concentrating on getting better. I feel when he had his stroke, he should have dropped down and had somebody stronger run. And then maybe the Democrat party would have, would have been, did better. But last night it hurt. At one point I looked away and just listened because I just, it hurt me. It just was this awful. And, uh,
And then like he would blurt out things. And when Oz was talking, he would blurt out, you know, I just it just I just it's awful. I definitely knew I was voting for Oz. I know Oz is a professional speaker and he's done the TV shows and all, but he did so well. And I agreed with every single thing he said. I wasn't confident in his ability to do the job.
He didn't come off polished and he seemed to be having some difficulties in just speaking and comprehending what was being said. And I was probably leaning more toward Oz prior to the last night's debate, but that just strengthened my choice.
I've never really heard Fetterman really speak extemporaneously, just from, you know, that it wasn't in a commercial or wasn't scripted. I said to somebody today, I don't know if his act last night was truly 100% a result of a stroke. Maybe the guy isn't that intelligent. And he just, you know, he can't put two or three cohesive sentences together. And it was just exacerbated by a stroke.
I don't know. You know, I just think, you know, we never saw him on a press conference. We never saw him in any type of interviews. All we saw was like the little sound bites that were that were managed by his by his handlers and commercials with the hoodie and the shorts and the goofy goatee. He just he did look like a like a like a bouncer to sleazy bar. You know, and I'm thinking like like how is this guy going to represent Pennsylvania in the Senate?
Okay, so those comments are pretty brutal. I want to reiterate, though, something I said at the top. Like, we were trying to get undecided voters, and you have to do a screen for these voters two weeks out. I think these were a bunch of people who were Republicans who...
who were not completely sold on Oz because they saw him as a carpetbagger. But it was a pretty Republican group. There are two Biden voters and one person who left it blank. But I would not at all call this a swing voter group. This was a right wing group. But I still was surprised as conservative as this group was.
I was still surprised at the way that they talked about Fetterman, not as somebody who was a stroke victim, but as somebody who like couldn't get his act together, couldn't put two words together. Like it was an incredibly harsh indictment. And you sort of were alluding to this before that you were surprised by just like the sheer lack of humanity of it.
Well, first of all, I could think of things people say critical about Fetterman. I was not for him in a primary. The one word that would never come to my mind to describe John Fetterman would be a thug. I might say he's a showman. He's too loosey-goosey. I could think of critical things to say about Fetterman. In my wildest dreams, I don't think he's a thug at all.
In fact, I think a little sungishness in politics sometimes is called for, to be honest with you. But if you voted for Kathy Barnett, you're not going to vote for John Fenneman. I'm sorry. Who I actually thought had the best description of MAGA of anybody. I think that she had an utterly brilliant analysis.
that we just let Trump because he agreed with us. But MAGA was there before Trump, and it'll be there after Trump. And I think that I went into that podcast with your cohort, Mr. Last. I said, you got to understand, when Trump goes, none of this is going away. You're not rid of anything.
Before you can listen to the rest of this podcast, and I know that you want to, you got to go over to the bulwark.com and become a Bulwark Plus subscriber. You get a lot more than just this podcast. When you become a subscriber to Bulwark Plus, you get the secret podcast with me and JBL where we tell you all our secrets. You
You get access to all of the newsletters, the Thursday night live stream, lots of stuff. So go become a Bulwark Plus subscriber and you can hear the rest of this podcast right now.