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Welcome back to Beyond the Polls. This week, I talk with Michael Puthorzer, former political director of the AFL-CIO, about how Democrats can win. And then I'll rant about how Harris's selection of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz affects that trajectory. Let's dive in.
Every new presidential candidate has one decision to make that attracts international attention and that's a decision who will their running mate be this is something that as you've heard on this show before Usually does not have a lot of impact on the presidential outcome that's because people vote for the top of the ticket not the bottom of the ticket and
And even excellent candidates don't attract that much nationally to their higher up. Poor candidates don't necessarily drag down the person who put them there. But what it does do is indicate something about the person's thinking. When Hillary Clinton picked Tim Kaine...
It showed that she was a cautious politician because she picked somebody who was about as plain vanilla as you're going to get in the Democratic Party. When John McCain picked Sarah Palin, it doubled down that this is a guy who likes to be a high roller. This is a guy who likes to take high stakes, high risk bets.
Of course, that high-risk bet didn't pay off, but it said something about who he was. So we weren't necessarily surprised when three or four weeks later, he said in the wake of the 2008 financial crash that he was going to suspend his campaign and fly to Washington to solve it, and then find that, in fact, he did nothing when he got there, that this was a guy who was prone to rash, impulsive decisions that not just were evident in the
the selection of the vice president, but were evident because there was an indication of who he was. So what do we know about Kamala Harris? Well, what we know about Kamala Harris now is that she is somebody who wants no division in the Democratic Party.
She had people who were arguably more charismatic, somebody like a Josh Shapiro, somebody who could bring a resume as an astronaut and the husband of a terrible political assassination attempt.
that critically and permanently created brain damage to his wife, former Representative Gabby Giffords. I'm talking about Mark Kelly of Arizona. We had a telegenic national figure in Pete Buttigieg, who would have been the first LBGTQ member on a national ticket and probably would have gotten some national play for that, but also knew how to sell a message. But
But, you know, the thing is that each of these people had baggage, you know, that Kelly was representing a swing state in Arizona. So he hadn't always been on boards with all of the Democratic candidates.
interest groups. Shapiro as somebody who was notably more moderate, he had been supportive of school vouchers at one point, so the teachers union weren't thrilled. And obviously pro-ceasefire advocates did not want somebody who was clearly in Delaney on the other side. And so what you had was she picked somebody who made nobody angry.
You know, the Tim Walz has won in swing territory or what was swing territory when he was there. The old congressional seat that he represented is now safely read. He is somebody who has a progressive record, but a moderate record.
Life history and demeanor, you know, he may support various policies that progressive like, but he doesn't come from central casting of progressive view. And what she did was basically say, what I need to do is make sure that I have no enemies within the party.
And that says something about how she's going to run this race. I think that when you have somebody who could have said to a progressive wing that is losing primaries within their own party, another member of the squad, Cori Bush lost her nomination race on Tuesday and immediately took out after AI PAC, the pro-Israel group that largely financed her opponent. Um,
And she could have said to that group, I hear you, but we're going in a different direction.
and said, you know, I know you're not happy with Josh Shapiro, but Josh Shapiro represents a wing of America that I think needs to be represented. She could have gone to labor with Mark Kelly and say, yeah, he's not 100 percent. He's not as good as I would like. But the fact is, Mark Kelly is the sort of man that I think can succeed me in the White House. And I think he's somebody who can appeal or help me appeal to a lot of people who actually aren't
Open to voting for people like you so what will this mean? Well if this is the way she thinks what we can expect is When she's put under pressure and eventually she will be put under pressure whether it's from the media or whether it's from events She is still the vice president and any event that happens in the world she will have to be called upon to have some reaction to and or in the debate and
She's going to have to think. And one of the things we saw in her abortive presidential campaign is she found it very difficult to navigate the internal differences in the Democratic Party. She would come out in favor of something and then get blowback from another wing of the Democratic Party and backtrack on it.
And it's really that constant weather veining that led her from being viewed as a very positive potential presidential candidate to being somebody who was pretty much mired in the polls until she attacked President Biden in a June debate and came up again and then sank right back as people took a look at her and said, no, that's not the leader that we want. So she dropped out before the first state even voted before the Iowa caucuses.
If this is the way she does things, this will show up again. This will show up when there is a difference between Democrats that she is called upon to take a position and she's not sure where to go. And this might be why she has those famous word salads, which are legendary all around media, where she'll talk for 30 or 45 or 60 seconds.
and basically have a whole lot of words that connect together in something according to sentences, but don't actually make a point that's cognizable to people who are listening. I suspect that that's because that's a way she has developed to avoid making those difficult statements that will come up.
If that's the case, then what we'll be doing is seeing various mini gaps in September and October. Now, what's the positive way of looking at this? Well, the positive way of looking at this is that what she did was take a look and she decided that she wanted somebody who she saw like herself, somebody who is a strong but practical progressive who knows how to get things done. Now, if that's the way,
she thinks, then the previous errors, the word salads is simply a matter of not having been prepared well enough by staff. The 2019 efforts were simply trying to go on a national basis when she hadn't
mastered national issues, which is something that happens. We saw that with Scott Walker, who was a very popular governor in Wisconsin, thought to be a top tier candidate. He repeatedly stumbled when he was out of his state specific comfort zone. It even kind of bedeviled Ron DeSantis for a while that he seemed most comfortable talking about Florida and less comfortable talking about where he would take America.
If this is a sign that she says, I am a progressive who is practical, who is happy to take the quarter of the loaf rather than 100% of the loaf, and I'm going to
go in that direction. And Tim Walz is somebody who's like me. Well, this would actually be a strong sign for the vice president that the vice president would then be able to navigate those challenges as they arise with that in mind. What would a practical progressive say and do in these circumstances? That would be kind of the optimal choice for Democrats. I think that's what they want to see.
They always knew that with Joe Biden, they did not have a progressive. They had an old fashioned liberal, which is different than a progressive. And Biden's, as I've said before on this show, his particular superpower as a politician was knowing where the center of the Democratic Party is at any one time and effortlessly occupying it. But they knew on the progressives that that was what they had.
You know, I think they suspect that with Harris and with Walsh, they have something a little bit different. Somebody who's not going to fall on their sword like a member of the squad would on progressive principle, but somebody who in their heart actually shares many more of the progressive principles than Biden did and maybe even than Barack Obama did. So,
Those are my views on the Waltz campaign. Again, it's not going to really matter that much unless there's something in his background that none of the vetting teams uncovered. And I'm not talking about a policy stance. I'm talking about a serious personal flaw that has never been found before. That's highly unlikely given how long he's been in public life. So what we'll have is somebody like Vance who is going to support the top of the ticket.
somebody who more importantly indicates how the top of the ticket thinks and what they value. And as a result, if the positive view is correct, then I think what Donald Trump has is a challenge of his life on his hands.
But if the negative view is correct, I think what we'll be seeing is sometime in September or October, some discussions of the weaknesses of the new Democratic presidential nominee and how Trump responds to that could very well be decisive in the final outcome.
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Lack of enthusiasm had been felt towards President Biden for a variety of reasons. All signs seem to point to a tremendous amount of enthusiasm for the new candidate. And here to explain why that might be and what's going on and how she can win is Michael Puthorzer, the former AFL-CIO political director, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, and publisher of the very interesting weekend reading, his own Substack publication.
Michael, welcome to Beyond the Polls. Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Well, let's start with that enthusiasm question. Is that what you're seeing? We hear massive crowds, massive donations. Are liberals and progressives happier with this candidate than they were with the incumbent president? I think that it's obvious that there's been an enormous burst of energy since all of the events of the last month transpired. And I want to be precise here. I think it
reflects the enthusiasm about the prospects for succeeding in November, rather than necessarily disapproval in what the base that I think you're talking about, about what Biden was actually able to accomplish over the last three and a half years.
And I think it's just that there was a pretty universal recognition that he would not be the best candidate to advance the party's fortunes in November. And so there's a great deal of respect for his having stepped aside and a kind of excitement that there's going to be this change. I think the other aspect of it that
really gets to, maybe we're going to talk about a little later too, is that the main defection from Biden over the last three and a half years has famously been with younger voters, especially, and voters of color. And I think that Harris's dynamism and relative youth
is connecting, right? And that Biden was, by listening to your podcast, is well known, was underperforming state Democratic senators in states they were both running. And I think this is kind of a demonstration
one of many, that what was happening was that many young people and voters of color who had voted for Biden in 2020, and maybe not even enthusiastically then, were not willing to sign on when pollsters called them in July or in June. But really significantly, they had not moved to Trump
Right. The whichever polling you're going to look at only four or five percent max of people who said they voted for Biden in 2020 were saying they were going to vote for Trump. There were about another 20 percent who were parking themselves in undecided and third party.
And overnight almost, what that group nearly halved and all of it went to Harris. Right. Which is a reflection that it really wasn't that these voters were becoming Trump curious or really interested in MAGA.
But we're just not satisfied enough with Biden to tell a pollster in June that they were voting for. And that's what we're seeing. So we're not seeing people saying, I like Kamala. We're seeing people say, I know I don't like Trump and she seems OK.
Right. And for some people, even better than OK, to be clear. I mean, I think that that in many communities, the sort of feeling of generational alienation with Biden and the sort of gerontocracy that's emerged is very palpable. And I think this is
This is being perceived by many Democrats, younger Democrats, as evidence that the party is now orienting on those kinds of things towards their generations. Well, you wrote a very interesting article on your Substack recently called MAGA Election Versus Normal Election.
Could you give my listeners a brief summation of what that argument that you presented is? Sure. So for quite a long time, up until 2016, the voter participation always stayed within a very narrow band.
In a way, it's so narrow, in fact, that when I show people a graph of it, they're pretty shocked, right? That from election to election, it rarely would change by as much as two points, right? And then you go into the first election after Trump won. And just to be clear, you're talking about turnout as a percentage of voter-eligible people, not turnout as a percentage of registered voters. Correct.
Correct. Although it would be the true of the other, but I'm always talking about like the actual eligible population. And so going from 2014 to 2018, the midterm before and after Trump,
The turnout rate went up by 14 points, right? Twice as much as it's ever happened in American history, right? Because what Trump's first two years and the MAGA agenda did was convince an awful lot of voters that now presidential elections and congressional elections, there was a lot more at stake.
And so it has brought tens of millions more people to the voting booths. And that group that's come out because of this sharp, sharp difference between MAGA and
And Democrats really leans toward has leaned in every election towards the Democrats. But the voters who voted in 2016 and 2020 gave both Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton a two point margin. Right. Those voters didn't change net over four years.
But 30 percent of the people who voted, as far as we know, a historical record, had not voted in 2016. And they favored Biden by 12 points. So you add that two points that was sort of the stasis and that 12, and he goes from two points to four and a half and he's president. And you saw the same thing in the midterms in a kind of
you know, real world natural experiment, where in the states like Arizona and Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and so forth, where the battle has always been ground zero, turnout was just as high as it was in 2018 in the 2022 midterms. And again, in a way that is so ahistorical,
Whitmer, Evers, Shapiro did better in what should have been a red election year than they did four years earlier in what was a blue election. And that's because in those states, voters who wanted to keep their abortion rights or the other key national issues just showed up. You look at some of the most democratic states like California, New York, and New Jersey,
And turnout went down by about 10 points. And that's where Democrats lost the seats that cost them the House, because in those states, MAGA and Trump really weren't issues. And so those contingent voters who had decided to vote because of Trump just stayed home. And so what I mean by a MAGA election or a normal election is,
A normal election would be not much more difference between the candidates than there had been historically before Trump, where basically, well, certainly Biden would have been in great jeopardy because it would be about how satisfied people were with the job the incumbent party was doing. And that's what a lot of the models are built around.
A MAGA election is one that looks more like a ballot initiative election, right, where people understand that if they elect them, there's a national abortion ban or they might lose their pre-existing conditions or, right, there are palpable, there are very specific things people could lose. And that's an election that MAGA and Trump almost never win.
And I make sure one other sort of broader point, if you remember in 2016, after Trump flipped the blue wall,
chock full of white non-college voters, the prevailing conventional wisdom was Democrats were in deep trouble because the future would belong to that kind of formulation. Since then, there have been 27 elections in the five electoral college states, and they've lost 23 of them. That the only elections they've won in those battleground states are Kemp twice,
Ducey in 18 and Johnson in 2022, right? Because in those states, voters understand the stakes.
Now, why is it that voters there act differently? I mean, President Biden gave a national speech in front of Philadelphia's Independence Hall. He was making statements which clearly would have been reported nationally. Why is it that voters in some states understood this as
as a MAGA election in 2022, while Democrats or Democrat leaners in other states seemingly did not, according to your thesis. Yeah, a big, big part of it is the way the media covers the races, right? So that in 2022, for example, the media in Georgia or Pennsylvania or Wisconsin or Arizona were both nationally and locally, right?
constantly underscore that control of the Senate was at stake and constantly underscored that the Republican gubernatorial candidates were election deniers, right? And that... Although obviously not in Georgia, and that would be a distinction. Right. And that's why he won by as much as he did. But the rest of them, they were, right? And the...
And we're at a point where folks who are not habitual voters and partisans really don't trust what either party tells them.
And so if the narrative about what the election is about isn't being reinforced by nonpartisan actors or by the media, then it's very difficult, if not impossible, for Democratic candidates to convince people that the stakes are as large as they are. And that that's just where we are now.
So argument is essentially a turnout argument, which is that Democrats can win if they turn out low propensity, but semi-interested voters and tell them vote as if your life depended on it because it does. But that it's essential not only that the Democrats do it, but that the media does it as well. Right. And to be clear, that is what Fox and the rest of the right wing media do.
environment has been telling those voters for quite some time. Right. And so it's really whether there's whether it's symmetrical, essentially. So when I look at media consumption, when there are some national polls that will ask, where do you get your media?
What's striking is concentration on the right, you know, that, you know, close to 50 percent will say they rely on Fox News and other large percentages will say things like Newsmax or OANN or conservative radio.
Whereas on the left, it's very diffuse. You'll get some people who say MSNBC and some who will say NPR and some who will say New York Times, some who will say CNN. But it's just not as concentrated. So whereas in conservative land, you have a few platforms and a few stars who can drive a message in progressive land.
You don't. How do you deal with that if that unity of non-campaign message is essential to the success of a progressive national campaign? So I guess I think your observation is really important. The one thing.
that I'd want to just change a little bit in the question. Sure. I don't think that being against a MAGA future is a progressive position, right? I don't think that
And I think that is why Trump lost in 2020 and why they lose. It's because, as it was in France recently for the last presidential election, it's because of the formation of a coalition from center-right to labor-left, right? And so I think that's what's happening here. I don't think this is like progressives are winning these elections or the left, right?
or within the center. It's that when there are figures like Trump or MAGA, they either win or lose based on whether the rest of society coalesces against them taking power. And so I don't think it's not about progressives. But the point I wanted to make was that
Progressives, let's say, progressives and centrists, because I was speaking of progressives in part because they do have different media consumption even than independents who will be less likely to tune into SNBC. But that simply makes it harder, which is that if the independent is getting news from the local six o'clock news,
in their state. You know, it's a lot harder to get that. So how do you, if that's so essential, how can a campaign or a collection of actors
create or influence a set of circumstances so that the six o'clock news in Green Bay will talk about that in the same way that Lester Holt will in the same way that, well, not the same way because Rachel has her own thing, but same way that the people in MSNBC will. They'll be striking similar themes. How do you do that?
I don't know that there's a kind of a new territory in the Trump era. I don't know that there's like the same kind of, you know, here are the three things you do. I think that that to a great extent, it depends on the those media institutions that you ticked off, but their decisions about how to cover the election.
And I don't think that the Democratic Party has much sway over that. I think that it has to do with everything from, you know, clicks incentives to, you know, at the more established institutions like the Times, you know, their own self-perceived sense of what's at stake in the election.
So, you know, one of the things that influences this is events, you know, that if the stock market, I mean, the stock market is recovering now, but it obviously had a sell off at the beginning of the week. Unemployment is trending up. Yeah, it's not bad, but is definitely trending up. Yeah.
Is that something that by the sheer logic that events matter, that in 2022 events weren't getting in the way, you know, in the sense that inflation was still high, but it was coming down. There wasn't any changes on the unemployment report. Putin.
had invaded Ukraine, but there wasn't the sense of urgency that there was early in the year when we didn't know whether Zelensky would live the night. Does the success of framing it as a MAGA election, in a sense, depend on events also conspiring to not throw an alternate election
issue that requires discussion, like a 20% drop in the stock market or a collapse of lines in Ukraine, or, you know, in a positive way, you know, a crisis in the Middle East that is resolved by American statesmanship? Well, I think there's no question that events matter, although I think it's important to temper that with when those events happen. You know, I think that that
Given how sorted the electorate is and how much the actual outcome is going to depend on voters who are paying the least attention, that it really comes down to what the world looks like in October.
And because, you know, how many game-changing events from COVID to whatever have we seen over the last eight years and not seen much change in the overall balance of forces, right? So I think it really comes down to what kind of foundations both campaigns and parties have laid for
when the decisive audience shows up in October.
It's early. As we're recording this, Harris just named Governor Walz as her running mate, and they're just starting their multi-city, multi-swing state tour. Do you see indications that Harris is doing this, or is she kind of straddling between running as if this were a normal election versus running as if this is a MAGA election?
I think she's doing both, which is really pretty encouraging. I think that they're not inconsistent the way that she's framing it, because what she's doing is picking up in a way on the original formulation Biden had in terms of fight for the soul of the country or however you want to frame it.
to one where she's saying there are actually two very clear futures and that this is an election about which future people want. And one of those futures is the MAGA future that she's contrasting the energy and excitement she's bringing to it.
Now, you were, as you say, the former AFL-CIO political director. So you have some experience in the which respected from my standpoint as a former campaign consultant, black arts of tactics and so forth. Yeah. You know, there's hundreds of millions, if not over a billion dollars between the different Democratic or progressive groups. You know, we've been hearing about all these massive fundraising holes.
what would you be doing with that money? I mean, obviously, you'd be putting money on television and digital ads and so forth. But help my listeners understand that if you were God Emperor of $750 million of progressive Democratic money, how would you deploy it in order to maximize the chance that you frame this as a MAGA election and hence drive the turnout that's necessary for victory? Sure. I think that
I think that the most important pieces here are to, for campaign spending, is going to be on reaching the voters who have been paying the least attention and who have the least connection to the political process.
and making clear what the stakes are, what those two futures are. And so I think that is fairly straightforward and that a lot of those resources would go towards making sure that the
to credibility of the threat is underscored. And so then use an example, and especially since this is beyond the polls. And I think that we would all be a lot better off if we spent more time looking beyond the polls. So, right, for
Essentially, as long as the question was asked, the question, you know, candidate X, you know, supports overturning Trump, how important would that be to your election decision? And invariably, not very. And that was because polls don't capture
people's ability to project, to anticipate how they're going to react to something that they don't believe is going to happen, happening. It doesn't take much attention to politics to know that actually overturning Roe is a bad political play in a lot of places and that it's really had an effect on politics.
Right. But it was it was beyond polling to see that. Right. And so I raised that because part of why that happened is not especially in the first year that more voters became supportive of Roe.
It was because the people who were always supportive of Roe got really energized and decided that not only they have to vote on this issue, but they had to make sure every one of their friends understood what the stakes were in the election.
And that what and that those were the stakes was reinforced by the media. So your question about what kind of spending ought to be done? It's more than just doing ads, because ads are the Democrats saying who's essentially not being believed, because if they were, people would be voting for him, saying you really should be scared about this. Right. But
if the groups that really care about the, say, Project 2025 targets are out there saying, yeah, this is real, like this community really going to be deportations or we're really going to lose collective bargaining or whatever, right? That if those nonpartisan trusted institutions are activated, right?
then I think that's the best use of resources. So what would a successful convention look like? I mean, this is going to be the last time that Harris really has the earned media playing field largely to herself. I'm sure Trump will try and counter program a little bit because that's what he does. But the four days in Chicago are going to be the last time that she owns the earned media space. What should she do with it?
I think among the things that she'll want, marks that she'll want to hit, one is really making voters who have not already signed up emotionally
become committed, right? And obviously, you know, the swing voters in October are not watching the Democratic Convention in like the middle of August, right? But their friends are,
Right. And and so it's really about mobilizing and getting the commitment of the ambassadors and also not providing fodder for concerns about the ticket or what will happen or, you know, that sort of thing.
So no mess ups. Continue the twin track message, MAGA. And here's my vision of the future and activate the people who will go out and subsequently activate the people who activate themselves about three weeks before the election.
Right. And if I can use an example of what I mean about that kind of contagious excitement that is organic versus just doing everything in this kind of row TV ad kind of way. I think you'd agree that the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs
but don't have the most fans in the country, right? And like probably not all that many people actually cared about which of them won this last Super Bowl. And yet more people watch the Super Bowl than anyone in history, right?
And it's because, obviously, of Taylor Swift. And because that made it cool. That made it buzzy. That made people who didn't watch a single regular season game show up at a Super Bowl party to watch or whatever. Right. Elections for the last three cycles have been a lot like that, too. Right. Where politics is in surround sound 360 and your friends and family are activated about it.
And that's contagious. That's part of what's getting people to vote in such greater numbers. So last question, what do you want to see? What would be a good candidate?
situation for Democrats to be in as the calendar flips to October 1st. We're looking at seven weeks and you're happy. Not only what are the polls saying, because obviously you'll want to be ahead, but what are you seeing around you that says, hey, this is really working? I think we're going to get that energy in October. I think a few things. I think the, you
I think what we'll want to see is the extent to which voters understand what the MAGA agenda is and whether they believe it will actually happen if Trump is elected.
To me, that's the kind of thing that we should be watching in polling now. As campaign experience you have too. But in a way, calling these races is a misdirection because it's not like if you're watching the Olympics that if you're ahead in a race, you are ahead in a race, right?
This is a completely different situation. This is a situation where like the people who are going to decide it, like just not paying attention now.
And so you're making progress in the race if you're getting more people to pay attention to it on your own terms, whether that is translated into the horse race yet or not, right? And that's why in 2004, if you remember when they started doing the Swift boat ads, initially there was backlash.
And and they got a lot of criticism and there was no discernible change in the horse race. But Karl Rove understood that he needed to take the high ground on Iraq away from Perry when it got to October.
Right. And so that's where just obsessing every day on the horse race misses what any high end campaign professional knows, which is you want to make the election about what you win. Right. And the process up till October is laying all those bricks.
Right. So going into October, what I want to say is that we're talking about all those MAGA plans. Right. That that's what's in the media. That's what people are talking to each other about, that the rallies are still getting a lot of attention and so on. Right. Because that's how either side wins. Well, how do my listeners follow you and your work?
Thank you. Yes. My sub stack weekend reading, which is just weekend reading.net. And do you have a social media presence? Yes. At Mike underscore pod horse or on Twitter or X. Yes. And we'll see whether Elon changes it to something else next year. Well, Michael, this has been a fascinating conversation and I really appreciate you joining us on beyond the polls.
Likewise. Great to be here. I'm Victoria Cash. Thanks for calling the Lucky Land Hotline. If you feel like you do the same thing every day, press 1. If you're ready to have some serious fun for the chance to redeem some serious prizes, press 2. We heard you loud and clear. So go to LuckyLandSlots.com right now and play over 100 social casino-style games for free. Get lucky today. ♪
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One of the marquee Senate races this cycle is Ohio's. That's where incumbent Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown is facing a challenge from Trump-backed businessman Bernie Moreno. Now, Ohio is a state that Trump is going to win. Trump won it by eight points last time. Even Harris in the race probably doesn't mean that Trump holds the same. He probably does a point or two better.
which means that Brown needs to basically convince one in every 10 of Trump voters to cross over and support him to have the slimmest chance of winning the Senate.
This ad is an indication that people behind Brown understand the challenge. And I think you'll understand why when you hear it. Let's listen. With criminals and fentanyl throwing our southern border into crisis, Sherrod Brown is fighting back. Sherrod voted for the toughest border bill in decades.
A bill endorsed by Border Patrol to swiftly deport migrants who commit violent crimes. Add 1,500 border agents. Ann Sherrod wrote the law that cracks down in the flow of illegal drugs, punishing Mexican drug cartels and their Chinese suppliers. Tell Sherrod Brown, keep working to protect Ohio. Well, did you think you were watching a Democrat ad?
Crisis, fentanyl, criminals, scenes of people swarming across the Rio Grande River, barbed wire. This is the staple of Republican ads this cycle. I cannot tell you how many Republican ads I have watched over this program when I'm viewing the ads that I select with the help of my producer, Perry, for the ad of the week. Uh,
I keep seeing the same thing over and over and over again. And here we see it. And it's Sherrod Brown.
You know, basically saying without saying it, that the Republicans are right, that the southern border is in crisis. Now, of course, this is not the message that the Biden administration has been telling. But if Sherrod Brown were going to play along with the Biden administration, he would get the 44 percent of the vote that Biden and Harris would have gotten in Ohio. And 44 percent in business makes you rich. Forty four percent in politics makes you a loser.
So what do we have? We have somebody who says, OK, I hear that issue and I'm on your side. And then we have what a Sherrod Brown do again. This could have come straight out of a Republican at deportation.
More border agents cracking down on illegal drugs. I've seen these things before in Republican ads. And he's basically saying, I'm as against the border crisis as you. And I want to take tough things. Now, note what he didn't say. He didn't say he would finish Trump's work.
That's probably because as a Democrat, he's opposed it in the past, and it's something that alienates Democrats. But the things he talks about, deportation, well, you know, that's something that many Democrats don't like, but many do, and independents do. And then we talk about more border agents, enforcement, enforcement, enforcement.
This is a smart message to emphasize. This is a smart thing to talk about because your target is that one in 10 Trump voter that you need, who's not a partisan Republican, not a partisan Democrat, but somebody who may lean Republican in the current aisle to get them to split their ticket.
One of the things I like about ads, this ad does too. Whenever you hear Sherrod Brown voted for the toughest border bill, you've got a picture of him. You've got his name on the screen.
And you've got a summary, easy to read, of the thing that the narrator is telling you. Again, activating the visual and the audio capacities of the viewer and the listener really helps amplify the impact of an ad. I still remain surprised so many ads don't do that. So what we have is an excellent example.
example of an ad that is designed to appeal to the very constituency Sherrod Brown needs. You never know whether something's going to be successful. All you can do is do the best that you can. We know ticket splitting is down a lot in the modern era. So getting that one out of every 10 Trump voter, well, you know, Susan Collins got something like one out of every seven Biden voters in the
Maine to switch tickets, and that's why she's the Republican senator for Maine. But other than Susan Collins, we have not seen that in a presidential year since 2012. We'll see whether Sherrod Brown can buck that trend, and if he does, ads like this will be a reason why. And that's why it's this week's Out of the Week.
That's it for this week. Next week, I'll head to America's great north, Alaska, to preview that state's pivotal house race and explore the state's complicated ranked choice voting system. Until then, let's reach for the stars together as we journey beyond the polls.
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