If Biden Doesn't Run In 2024, Who Will?
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Yes. Yes. Not currently running. Is this like a, like you're like, Ooh, I've got a really spicy question for you guys. Do you have a blender? Um, yeah. So I have never had one before, but I got one of those little ones, you know, for smoothies. Yeah. And I just had my first smoothie and I'm never eating normal food again. Like you don't have to cook. You don't have to chew.

I've had a smoothie before. How lazy are you, Galen? You don't want to chew? Yeah, I don't want to chew or cook because the things that you can put in a smoothie are such a pain in the ass to chew, like kale.

Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk, and I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving. All of us at FiveThirtyEight have been off for the past week, so bear with us as we wake up our politics brain on this Monday morning. We're going to have to dive right in because we are just a week away from Election Day in Georgia, where Herschel Walker and Raphael Warnock are competing in a Senate runoff.

Early voting is underway, and we're going to check in on how that race is looking. We'll also take a look at what is on the docket in this upcoming lame duck session in Congress. Republicans will have a majority in the House next year. In fact, I don't think we've recorded a podcast since that was made official. So let me officially say Republicans will have a majority in the House next year. So there is just a little over a

month of unified Democratic control left in Congress. And then we're going to spend the rest of the podcast on, yes, a 2024 Democratic primary draft.

Before we left for Thanksgiving, Nate and I discussed the news that former President Trump is officially running in 2024 and debated his odds against Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. When it comes to Democrats, Biden will have to make up his mind about whether he'll run within just a few months. If he does, will anyone challenge him? And if he doesn't, what's the field of possibilities look like? Here with me to discuss is politics reporter Alex Samuels. Hey, Alex. Hi, Galen. Also.

Also with us is senior writer Amelia Thompson-DeVoe. Hey, Amelia. Hey, Galen. And senior elections analyst Nathaniel Rakich. Hey, Nathaniel. Howdy, Galen. How's everyone doing? Are our politics brains turned on yet?

They never turned off, Kaelin. Oh, mine turned off. I feel bad for you. No, no, mine turned off. That makes me sad, Nathaniel. Yeah, that's bad. I'm like a robot. I have to power down sometimes or I don't function at all. I'm like this computer that I'm using right now. I have to restart it every Monday. Otherwise, it freezes while we're recording the podcast.

For that. Nathaniel, not even like mid turkey stuffing and gravy where you like, I'm going to take a minute to give thanks and not think about politics.

Well, first of all, Galen, turkey is disgusting. So I was not eating turkey this Thanksgiving. But no, I yes, of course, there were there were momentary lapses of judgment in which I failed to think about politics for a few seconds. But thankfully, we still have Georgia. We still have California's 13th congressional district, which remains unresolved to to keep us engaged. After Georgia, what is the next election?

That's a great question. So we have, let's see, the Chicago mayoral election. First round is coming up on February 28th. We have a few special elections before that. I think I want to say it's January 10th. There is a special election for the Virginia State Senate, which could be important considering Democrats just have like a two seat majority there.

We have there are going to be special elections in Pennsylvania's statehouse, which will be important because, as folks may know from following our live blog last week, we're

Democrats won 102 seats and Republicans won 101. But one Democratic member passed away and then two others are going to have to resign to take other jobs. So Republicans are going to temporarily have more seats in the Pennsylvania State House for the beginning of the session. But then these special elections are going to be what gives Democrats the majority. And they're in safe blue seats, but the elections have to happen. And we don't know exactly when the timing of those are going to be. So, you know, the elections will never stop, Galen.

All right. Good to hear. I'm sure you wanted all that detail. Be careful what you ask for, Ewan. Okay. Well, in the meantime, we do have one high profile election that we're still covering, which is that Georgia is once again going to a runoff at Senate election. In the first round, Warnock won 49.5% of the vote and Walker won 48.5%. The Libertarian candidate won 2% of the vote.

So Warnock won a similar runoff last year, but historically runoffs have seemed to benefit Republicans in Georgia because the electorate has tended to be older and whiter. So, Alex, how do you see those dynamics playing out this time? Is 2021 or the sort of historical runoffs that came before that more of a reference point for this election?

So that's a question I've been wrestling with as well. I'm just getting ready for the December 6th runoff. And I really think it's, you know, this race could go either way. I think what's complicated in making the comparison to 2021 is that a lot of factors were different back then. You know, in 2021, control of the Senate hung in balance, whereas it does not this year. Democrats have already clinched their 50 seat majority.

And in 2021, you also had former President Donald Trump essentially telling his base to not trust Georgia's voting process. And that did dampen turnout among Republican voters. This year, of course, you know, when Trump announced his 2024 presidential run, he specifically said, you know, go out and vote for Hershel Walker. I think it's to be determined whether he's actually going to make a stop in the Peach State. But

You know, it's kind of hard to like make an apples to apples comparison between what happened then and what happened now. But I think the results of this race will obviously show whether 2021 was more of an aberration or if it's indicative of Georgia becoming a purple or, you know, just slightly more competitive state for Democrats running statewide. Nathaniel and Amelia, how are you thinking about this question?

I agree with Alex. You know, we do have this track record of runoffs favoring Republicans in Georgia. But

the Georgia of today is not the Georgia of the, you know, 1990s or the 2000s. So I'm just really interested to see what it looks like. You know, obviously, you ask any 538 or this question, they're going to say, let's look at the polling. So far, as we record this, we've seen two polls of the Georgia runoff so far, one that gave Warnock a four point lead and one that gave Walker a one point lead. So obviously, it's just two polls. Hopefully, we'll get more

But as of right now, it looks like maybe Warnock has a small advantage if you just average those out. We will hopefully be publishing a polling average in this

race if we get five polls from at least three different pollsters, which is our threshold for publishing polling averages. But but yeah, you know, I think everybody, you know, the one thing we can say for sure is that is going to be competitive. It's not like there's going to be this huge turnoff drop that's automatically going to favor Walker or Warnock for that matter.

And Nathaniel, should we expect that pollsters are going to be out in the field? Should we expect to get five polls from three different pollsters or have they all turned their politics brains off to you?

Yeah, that's a great question. Um, we don't have any kind of special Intel on that, but I think there are two factors that are working against, um, having more polls than, or at least as many polls as we had in 2021. And that of course is a, um, control of the Senate isn't on the line. So the interest in the race isn't as high. And then B also there's less time, um,

to conduct those polls because in 2021, which was part of the 2020 cycle, those runoffs were held in early January. Georgia changed its runoff law to hold earlier runoffs in the future. So now those runoffs, of course, are happening in early December.

So that gives us some sense of where the polling stands today. We don't have much of it. But Amelia, do you think we learned anything about the two candidates' coalitions that might give us some sort of hints about where things are headed in the first election?

Well, I think we did learn something important, which is that Walker is a weak candidate. And we saw that because he ran considerably behind all the other Republicans on the ticket in November. So Walker is going into this, you know...

He's just going head to head against Warnock. There's nothing else on the ticket. And that could be bad for him because it's also possible that having a more popular Republican like incumbent Governor Brian Kemp on the ballot may have brought some people out to vote for him. I think it's possible that some people who were more lukewarm on him who voted in November might just stay home. And the impact of...

of Trump's endorsement and involvement is going to be interesting to see too. Obviously, as Alex said, he is taking a different tack this time by saying, yes, go vote and vote for the Republican candidate. Democrats seem to think that that will also not be helpful for the Republican. There's a Warnock ad that was running that was just

Trump endorsing Walker. That was literally the whole ad. So, you know, that gives you a sense of how at least some Democrats are seeing the potential impact of Trump's endorsement of Walker. Of course, though, we'll have to see whether Democrats are as enthused now that control of the Senate isn't on the line. And, you know, it's possible that turnout could be lower there, too.

Another flip side to that is, you know, Walker was the only statewide Republican in Georgia who did not win outright in November. And it could be possible that Republicans now are more energized because they don't want this to be the one loss for them.

So I can see a potential argument for that, too. And I think in talking to a few Republican strategists in Georgia, there seems to be this sense that now that Walker has Kemp's campaign infrastructure in a sense, and now Kemp is very vocal on the campaign trail for Walker more so than he was in November.

that could also help him too. And so far, you know, again, we just don't know Trump's plans for Georgia. We know former President Barack Obama will be there for Warnock, I believe on December 1st. But Trump hasn't announced plans. And if he does, I...

I don't know if that will help or hurt Walker or Warnock. So that'll be interesting to watch as well. Does Biden have plans to go down there? Biden hasn't announced anything, to my knowledge. Runoffs are weird. And we're also in a kind of, it seems like, new era of higher turnout elections. And a lot of those historical comparisons that Alex and Nathaniel, you've looked at, were in an era when turnout was...

we might have just expected to be lower generally. So I think that also throws a wrench into things. It's possible that, you know, people just voted. It's only four weeks to the next election. They're still kind of tuned in. They haven't turned off their politics brain. And they're more likely to go vote on both sides than they might have been in a past runoff.

Yeah, it's interesting. The other argument could be that there's voting fatigue almost. I don't know if that's a thing that truly exists, but Warnock will have had to sort of run a statewide campaign four times and win. Maybe people are tired of voting. Is there anything, and we just went through a whole cycle addressing these questions, but of course, early voting has begun. And so folks are looking at those numbers and I think elections watchers are

have noticed just like how high Democratic turnout seems to be amongst early voters and how high Black turnout is in particular. We generally caution people not to focus on the early vote, but is this unique in any way? How should we think about this, Nathaniel?

I just wouldn't, honestly. I mean, early vote, like, you know, yes, you know, you see a lot of, you know, the early vote so far has been, you know, very democratic. It's been, you know, democratic counties have been the ones that have generally been offering more days of early voting than

in Republican counties and that's obviously part of it. But some people are like, oh, you know, Republicans are shooting themselves in the foot by not allowing early voting. But like the reality is early voting is just taking voters who would have voted on election day anyway and kind of redistributing them earlier in the cycle. And in those Republican counties that aren't allowing early voting on certain days, they're just going to vote on election day. We know that Republicans prefer to vote on election day anyway.

Um, so in the end, you know, it, it, it's really just kind of, you know, it, it, that's not like you get extra credit for jumping out to an, an early lead in a race. You know, it's about who crosses the finish line, uh, first, right.

Yeah, I actually so I, to be totally honest, didn't turn my political brain off entirely either. So I saw some of your tweets over the break, Nathaniel, and I saw you say that there's there's no evidence that early voting actually produces higher turnout overall and that it may actually lead to lower turnout. That seems counterintuitive to me. But what does the research show about the overall impact of early voting?

Yeah, I think it seems counterintuitive to a lot of folks. But the theory behind that is that, you know, you don't have a sense of urgency that is taking place when Election Day is just one day. And every kind of social and campaign message is get out and vote on X day, December 6th, November 8th, whatever it is. And if you have a kind of a multi-week period, there's less urgency for folks to get out to vote.

But overall, yeah, the research on early voting, I would say the consensus is that it doesn't impact turnout. There have been some studies that have found a negative turnout impact. But generally, I think it's

it's it's seen as a um you know it it just doesn't impact that and again you know the fact that a democratic county might be holding early voting it isn't because of that research i don't think you can say that oh these are people who would have who are now extra voters in the electorate they're probably people who would have just turned out on election day anyway

With Saturday voting the Saturday after Thanksgiving, which obviously has passed by now, with that early voting period being reinstated and it was mainly Democrats and Warnock who were challenging to allow it to go into effect. So if Democrats are really hammering hard on early voting, then like, isn't there an argument then that they see a detriment if there aren't more early voting days? Yeah.

Yeah, I think there's a distinction between what a campaign would prefer and just kind of looking at it from a, you know, kind of purely data perspective, like from a campaign's perspective, absolutely. More early voting is better because once, you know, if you have somebody, you know, is a strong supporter and they have turned out to vote.

you know, on the Saturday before Thanksgiving or something, you can kind of check them off the list. You don't need to chase them down on election day. You know, I do think it makes Republicans jobs harder by not encouraging early and male voting among their their voters. But in the end, you know, I'm someone who's generally fairly skeptical of campaigns impacts on

on elections, you know, a good campaign can be worth a few percentage points, but, and, you know, that can be canceled out by a good campaign on the other side as well. And so, you know, ultimately I think that, you know, people who want to vote, obviously some people are prevented from voting through things that are no fault of their own.

that is generally not a huge number of voters and you know campaigns not everybody who votes on election day obviously is somebody who's had their door knocked on by a campaign a lot of people just turn out to vote because they themselves want to vote and a lot of people who are contacted by campaigns

Say, OK, great, thanks. Bye. And, you know, then they go about their day the way they were going to do it, whether that was to vote or not. So from a campaign perspective, I get it strategically. I think that probably a lot of Democrats do believe that early voting helps them. I just don't think that's very well supported by the evidence.

And I also think that a lot of Democrats just kind of normatively support early voting because it does make voting more convenient. Even if it doesn't increase turnout, it kind of allows voting to fit into a person's schedule better. And, you know, it's not just the binary of does a person get to vote or not. It's about how easy it is for them to vote. And Democrats support early voting for that reason.

All right. Well, we are going to continue watching this final week of the Georgia election. But let's move on and talk about the lame duck session that is getting underway in Congress.

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There's still a little over a month left in the current session of Congress, which will be the last time for a while that Democrats have full control of all levers of power in Washington. Before we left for the break, some of the most high profile items that Democrats hope to address were the Respect for Marriage Act, the Electoral Count Reform Act.

and raising the debt ceiling. And because for this part of things, my politics brain was turned off. I haven't gotten a sense of whether there are other things that have been added to that docket since. What have you all seen? Are there other things that Democrats are going to try to sort of pass or address in the coming month?

I think there's been some talk that Democrats may try to finally pass a marijuana banking reform bill. Basically right now, because of sort of arcane stuff in federal law, marijuana businesses, even in states where marijuana is legal, can't generally get accounts at banks because of federal regulations. And

As a business, you can imagine that that might be quite a serious problem. You just have a huge amount of cash on hand. So there has been a push for quite a while, and this bill has gone through a lot of different revisions to try to deal with that and to try to deal with some other marijuana reform measures. There's also an assault weapons ban that has been getting some discussion, but even

Even though the Biden administration was sort of making some noises like they thought, oh, this might happen. It seems like there aren't votes for that. So even though there might be some talk about it, I wouldn't put that one at the top of my list of things to watch. Interesting. I hadn't heard about the marijuana banking bill, but we'll have to watch it.

Otherwise, in order from maybe likeliest to past to least likely, let's begin with the Respect for Marriage Act, which would sort of codify protections for interracial and same-sex marriage that the Supreme Court has already sort of ruled as precedent, along with some other things regarding religious freedom. That, before the Thanksgiving break, had made it through the filibuster. Right.

Is that a done deal now? Do we all the Republicans who helped it get through the filibuster? Will they ultimately vote for the bill? And do we expect this to become federal law by the end of the year or by the time Congress changes over?

I would think so. They were able to get a pretty significant group of bipartisan senators on board, particularly Republicans, because I think there are some last minute changes to the bill protecting religious liberty. I think that's how they were able to get a pretty overwhelming swell of support from both Republicans and Democrats on this measure.

That's right, Alex. Yeah, there were some religious liberty protections that were added that basically were caveating that religious organizations like churches or nonprofits or faith-based universities can't

their tax exempt status for refusing to perform or recognize same sex marriages and churches can't be required to perform safe sex weddings. And that was seen as powerful enough that this bill got some support from some pretty unexpected quarters, including the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormon Church.

and the National Association of Evangelicals. To be clear, not all Christian conservatives are happy with this. There has been plenty of pushback from other Christian conservative organizations like the Heritage Foundation,

other important groups on the religious right, saying that these religious liberty protections are not substantial enough, and that this could still cause problems for people who, and religions who don't believe in gay marriage. But the fact that this got support from the LDS church and one of the biggest associations of evangelicals is significant. I think it's

a sign of how firmly the debate about gay marriage has shifted from should gay marriage be legal to how do we carve out protections and exemptions for

faiths and institutions and religious people who don't believe in gay marriage. And that's something where the Supreme Court has had a long line of cases. And I expect the Supreme Court to continue to hear those cases. And now it's something that was very important in getting so much Republican support for this bill.

Yeah, so there were 12 Republicans who voted to advance the bill. They didn't ultimately vote on the bill. It was to get it through debate so that it could be voted on. Those were Roy Blunt of Missouri, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Susan Collins of Maine, Joni Ernst of

Iowa, Cynthia Loomis of Wyoming, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rob Portman of Ohio, Mitt Romney of Utah, Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Tom Tillis of North Carolina, Todd Young of Indiana. As folks may know, some of those people are retiring, but what are the surprises in there and what is the motivation for voting this through? Todd Young's a little surprising. Yeah, I mean, there are certainly some people on that list, Galen, who aren't known for being moderates, but I also like

You know, it's not like any of the super hardcore conservatives, you know, it's not like Ted Cruz signed on to this. So, yeah, I'm not sure like anything super jumps out at me. I just I think it's a kind of, as Amelia said, it's a reflection of how the debate on gay marriage has moved and how, you know, same sex marriage has become normalized even for a lot of people who, you know, opposed it 10, 15 years ago.

I mean, is there an aspect of strategy here, which is like, let's take this debate off the table so we don't have to talk about it in future elections or, you know, what have you? I mean, because it's interesting that like this specific group of 12, but not more, but also not less like a it was kind of like, you know, just enough plus two to get it past the filibuster. I'm curious just why those 12 people.

Well, I think generally the Supreme Court and specifically Justice Clarence Thomas created kind of a problem for Republicans in his concurring opinion in the Dobbs ruling over the summer where he was saying, you know, we're not taking up –

issues that are potentially implicated by the Supreme Court's ruling overturning the constitutional right to abortion, like same-sex marriage, like contraception, which were supported by a similar legal reasoning to the Roe ruling. He was saying, you know, we're not dealing with those in Dobbs, but I want to deal with those in the future. I think we want to rethink those. And that got a lot of play politically, um,

I think a lot of people heard about it. It was something that I've heard a lot in conversations with voters. And so I do think there is a sense in which Republicans had some extra motivation to deal with this, just because the idea that the Supreme Court might swoop in and

take away same-sex marriage protections is kind of in the zeitgeist now. And especially after an election where the Dobbs ruling already seems like it was a pretty big problem for Republicans, I think just kind of like nipping that one in the bud may have been seen as a good move. And, you know, they can say, you know, it's bipartisan. Like, it's just, it's also not, the law is not

codifying same-sex marriage in the sense that it's telling states what to do. It's creating federal protections for it. And it's saying that states have to recognize same-sex marriages that were performed in other states. So I don't know how much that mattered, but it's sort of

It's a little bit of an easier case to make, I think, because it's sort of addressing this question of whether states have to kind of recognize what happened in other states, but it's not a mandate to states. All right. The next item on the docket is the Electoral Count Reform Act, which is a bipartisan attempt to address some of the

issues, quote unquote issues, I don't know how you want to describe it, that led to January 6th and some of the avenues that Trump's campaign advisors, lawyers, whatever, and he himself pursued to try to overturn the 2020 election. What is the likelihood that this passes and to what degree would it change how elections are conducted in America or counted at least in America?

Yeah, I think this one also has a pretty good chance of passing. I believe that 10 Republican senators have already come out in favor of the kind of compromise bill that's being championed by Susan Collins and others. And of course, that would be enough to overcome the filibuster.

Did even Mitch McConnell say he supported it? Yes. Mitch McConnell also came out in favor of this a few months back. So it does seem like it'll be on a glide path to passing. But basically, yeah, Galen, you know, this is a bill that would patch some of the loopholes that were exposed on around January 6th, 2021.

So some of the provisions include it would clarify that the vice president's role in counting the electoral votes is purely ceremonial. So, you know, Donald Trump's theory of, you know, Mike Pence can just overturn the election is clearly debunked.

It would also raise the threshold for objecting to the election results to one fifth of the members. So currently, if one member from each chamber objects to, say, Arizona's electoral votes, then it kind of kicks it to a debate about that. And now it will require a fairly substantial minority. And then it also kind of clarifies things for, you know, kind of the

the scenarios that people have talked about for 2024, which is what if a state sends two competing slates of electoral votes, one Democratic and one Republican to Congress, which one gets counted? And basically it clarifies that the one that the governor certifies, unless the state law says otherwise, is going to be the one that Congress counts. It also provides for an expedited judicial review of these disputed

electoral votes. So a court would immediately be able to step in and kind of cut the constitutional crisis off at its feet, hopefully. So, so yeah, so, you know, I think it would go, you know, a pretty good way to fixing some of the, the pathways that were exposed. Yeah.

In the 2020 election, of course, you know, it's not going to do everything. A lot of what happens, of course, elections are administered on the state and local level. This is a federal bill, so there's only so much that it can do. In addition, I think there is an element of, you know, it patches the holes from the last time, but that doesn't mean there aren't other holes that have yet to be exposed. Right.

But, you know, I think that in general, I've heard kind of positive reviews of this reform bill from people who were concerned after the 2020 election.

And let's wrap on the debt ceiling. From what I understand, the United States will reach its debt limit sometime in 2023. Of course, that will be when Republicans control the House. If passed its prologue, there's some suggestion that Republicans would try to use raising the debt ceiling to extract concessions from Democrats like spending cuts in certain areas, some of the like a redux of some of the debates that happened in 2011, 2012, and

And so there has been some talk about Democrats raising the debt ceiling in advance of any of that happening to try to get out in front of it and prevent that game of chicken from happening. How is this looking? Are Democrats going to raise the debt ceiling?

This is something that the Democrats could, in theory, do unilaterally through the process known as budget reconciliation. I think this year it doesn't seem like they have the votes in the Senate to do that. Senator Joe Manchin in particular doesn't.

has not signaled that he would be on board. So even though this is clearly something that the Biden administration and a lot of Democrats in Congress would like to get taken care of so they don't have to deal with a messy and politically damaging showdown in the first few months of next year, I think this one is less likely to happen in the next month.

So politically damaging for whom? Like, is there any sort of consensus about how those showdowns in 2011, 2012 shaped public opinion about Democrats and Republicans in Congress? Like when when that happens, who gets blamed?

I think a lot of it has to do with the framing. And basically, there's been discussion of Republicans sort of saying we're not going to vote for a debt ceiling increase unless you Democrats give us cuts, spending cuts that we want.

And, you know, it might depend on what those spending cuts are. If it's cuts to something like Social Security or Medicare, then that might reflect badly on Republicans because those are pretty popular policies. If the Democrats are being perceived as kind of like wanting to spend a lot of money and not wanting to agree to common sense budget cuts, then they could reflect poorly on them. So,

I think in some ways it's a little bit of a messaging game. And raising the debt ceiling is something that Americans are not crazy about in general. And people kind of think about raising the debt ceiling in the context of maybe a household budget or something.

Not that that is really a good comparison, but people just don't want the country to go into more and more debt generally, if you ask them that question. So, you know, there are opportunities for Republicans to leverage this and say, if we're going to do this, then we need to make cuts in other places. But if they're suggesting big cuts to popular programs, then I think that could backfire on them as well. So I think a lot of it depends on how things actually play

out. All right. Well, we will see. But let's get to our 2024 Democratic primary draft. So Biden has suggested that he intends to run in 2024, but he hasn't been super firm on that intention, saying that he would make up his mind for sure after the midterms. And it's a question Biden gets a lot because of his age. He just turned 80 and he would be 86 at the conclusion of a second term.

So let's talk about what the alternatives might be in our first post midterms 2024 Democratic draft. I have already randomized the order of this draft using random.org. Thanks, folks over there. And it will go Nathaniel Alex Galen.org.

Amelia. And this is going to be a snake draft because we believe in fairness here at 538. And to clarify, the question here is who is likeliest to win the Democratic nomination in 2024? It's not necessarily who is likeliest to win the presidency or anything else. That's the question we're trying to answer. So is everyone ready?

I just want to say I object to doing this in 2022, Galen. I'm not ready. I think that we should wait till 2023. I think that would be the civilized thing. But now I'm here. I'll participate. I've got my game face on. I just wanted to register my discontent. There are already candidates running. So we have no choice but to cover. That doesn't mean we have to do this now. We can wait until January.

This, in fact, isn't even our first 2024 primary draft. I think we did one maybe in the first half of this year. It was not asked to participate. I would not have condoned that either. This is clearly a site-wide policy debate that we need to have internally about whether this is appropriate. We'll do. I'm here now. I won't blow it up. I promise. I'll be good. Okay.

Nathaniel, and we're going to try to get through maybe three or so rounds of this. So we'll try to motor. I know we've already spent a good amount of time discussing what's to come in Georgia and in Congress. But Nathaniel, take it away with your first draft pick. Hmm. Who should I choose? The first pick, most likely Democrat. You know, Galen, I think I'm going to plant my flag. The suspense is killing me. Yeah, I know, Rick. It's just... I think it's going to be...

President Joe Biden. That is my pick. Boom. All right.

Do you feel like you need to give an explanation or do you want to just leave it there?

Then I think he's virtually assured of the nomination if he were to run again. I think he would only get probably one or two kind of fringe challenger from kind of the progressive wing of the party. I don't think any significant and more moderate establishment figures would challenge him.

And so, yeah, so I think he's got a critical mass right there. And then in the 50% of scenarios in which he doesn't run again, you'd have, that's obviously a very splintered field where you might have some Kamala Harris, you might have some Pete Buttigieg, you might have some Gavin Newsom. So yeah, if you had to pick one person to kind of start the draft off with, it's got to be Joe Biden. Yeah, Nathaniel, I don't think you're going to get too much argumentation from us against that. So Alex, go right on ahead.

I'll stick with the Biden trend and I'll say Vice President Kamala Harris. I'll choose her for number two. Not happy about it because I am on Amelia's team that I think this might be a little early and I do think Biden is going to run again. But for the sake of this fun, fun game, I will say Kamala Harris. Okay.

The reason I say her for anyone who wants me to elaborate is there was actually a morning consult survey from December of 2021 to September of 2022. And Harris led pretty significantly in a potential field in a Biden list 2024 primary. So she had 28% support as of late September and

Um, second to her was Pete Buttigieg who had 13% and then everyone else, you know, AOC, Gavin Newsom, Amy Klobuchar, they all had, uh, you know, under 10% support. So I just think the fact that she's in the white house now, obviously that would be a big boost to her candidacy if she decided to run again. Um, I also think that she would perform, um,

Well, with black voters who, as we know, resurrected Biden's once failing presidential campaign. And I think if she could get the support of folks like Clyburn and other prominent names in the South, she could make a name for herself if she decides to run for the presidency if Biden does step down.

All right. I kind of feel like I got the worst draw in this draft because I don't get two picks, but I also don't get one of the two obvious ones to start off with. Nonetheless, I am going to pick Pete Buttigieg. And I will use history as something of my guide here, which is that it frequently happens that folks who perform well in the last presidential primary vote

or usually oftentimes the runner-up, will go on to win the next primary. Of course, in this case, that would be one Bernard Sanders. I think that if the argument is going, if Biden is stepping aside because of his age,

in part or in large part because of his age, I think that that will be a sort of high profile issue in whatever Democratic primary ensues. And while I do think progressives might be amongst the most motivated to turn out in such a primary, I think that the time has probably passed. Although this was like a tie for me in some ways between Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg.

Okay, so now why Pete Buttigieg? He performed very well in the 2020 primary, particularly given that he was a mayor. He won the Iowa caucuses. He performed well in... Did he? He did. I mean, we don't condone how early he claimed victory, but he ultimately did win the Iowa caucuses as they were structured. Yeah, kind of. Bernie Sanders won the popular vote.

It's ambiguous. It is too early to start debating the Iowa caucus. The delegate calculations were ambiguous. There was some sloppiness. I think it's better said that Buttigieg and Sanders were the co-winners of Iowa. So once again, backing up my feeling that it's sort of a tie between the two of them. But I think...

There's other polling to back up that he is in a higher place now. The polling that Alex just mentioned puts him behind Kamala Harris. He has the highest approval rating of any member of Biden's cabinet. I don't know that that means a whole lot because cabinet members aren't usually super high profile, but folks generally like him. He has some crossover appeal between sort of the college educated portions of the Democratic Party.

electorate and the more sort of working class portions of the Democratic electorate that still exists. He clearly has some issues with black voters, but I think improving his name recognition over the past four years will help him in that arena potentially. I think, and here's where I would, why I would, how I would sort of pit him against Kamala Harris is

is that first and foremost, we just already know what their campaigns look like. She didn't make it to Iowa. He was a quote unquote co-winner. And I think that if Biden doesn't run, it will become competitive. I don't think that it will be a sort of walk for Harris because I think that there's enough hesitancy about her performance in 2020 and her performance as vice president that folks will challenge her. And I think Pete Buttigieg-

has already sort of the reporting behind the scenes shows that he's already preparing to do so should the opportunity arise. And yeah, he has some of the things that would make him a formidable candidate, which is kind of youth and a sort of crossover between some different parts of the party, but generally trending towards moderate. Yeah.

The issue with Buttigieg for me is his continued, well, I guess I shouldn't say continued, but in 2020, he really struggled with voters of color, which of course are such a big part of the Democratic base. And he needs to figure out how to at least get a critical mass of them. And especially when you compare against Kamala Harris, who would likely inherit a lot of Biden's support, of course, being a woman of color herself. I think it's going to be challenging for Buttigieg to do that.

Well, Harris was not still an option. But also, let me just say that Bernie Sanders did really poorly with voters of color in 2016 and seemed to increase his performance significantly with Hispanic voters in 2020 based on sort of making the pitch more aggressively and increased name recognition.

But he did that also through a very aggressive grassroots campaign in places like California and Nevada that, you know, he invested in that infrastructure really early. And the Sanders campaign was known for really knowing how to do that kind of campaign. And I don't know if I would trust Buttigieg to be able to pull out a similar improvement. Um,

The other thing I'll just say about Harris is that I totally take your point about the fact that she ran a pretty bad campaign in the 2020 primary and Buttigieg ran a much better one. But I'm not sure how much we can draw from that based on the fact that she would be going into 2024 successful.

presumably, you know, if Biden's not running, she's the vice president. Democrats are not going to want a really bloody primary that fractures the party. So she may be going in with a lot of establishment support, more resources. Maybe she's learned from the previous campaign what went wrong. So while I think it is important to remember that she was not an especially strong candidate four years ago, it's possible that circumstances will change for her.

Yeah, I agree with that, Amelia. I feel like it'd be, I mean, who knows what'll happen, but if there's already going to be a fractured Republican field, I can't imagine Democrats are going to want that on their side as well. And if Biden does step aside, I feel like Harris is kind of like the obvious candidate.

Second choice is because she's vice president. If she's the vice president and the president's stepping down, like Democrats are not going to want a bunch of people to come in and go for her jugular, you know, and then she goes in a super weak candidate when she already arguably has a disadvantage. Right.

You know, not that like Democrats can control who runs or what happens. We've seen from past experience that they can't do that at all. But certainly that would be, I think, the establishment's preference. Guys, I think we're starting to uncover the reason that Biden is going to be incentivized not to step down or step aside for 2024. And it's only going to become more clear as we keep going through this. Because it would be a hot mess.

We're not going to stop here. So Amelia, you got two picks. Go right ahead. All right, all right. So my first one, I'm coming in hot off of the 2022 midterms. I'm coming in with a fresh face. And my pick is Gretchen Gretchen. There you go. Nice. Gretch. Big Gretch. And this is for several reasons. Big Gretch, that's what they call her in Michigan. Yeah, I know. I don't know if... It'll take me a little while to get used to that one. Anyway, so she is...

She has been a very popular and successful governor of Michigan. She's had some ups and downs, particularly over handling of closures and mask mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic. But she's coming out of the 2022 midterms with, you know,

really solid victory, and also with Democrats just having done really well in Michigan. Michigan was a real success story for Democrats coming out of 2022. And I think Whitmer is particularly well positioned to run in 2024 if Biden steps aside because she has kind of made the issue of abortion her issue once

For years now, it's something that she's talked about. It's something that she's campaigned on in the aftermath of the Dobbs ruling. Even before the Dobbs ruling, she was out there saying, I'm going to protect the right to abortion in Michigan, a state where it was not clear that abortion was going to continue to be legal. Now, of course, after the outcome of the ballot measure on the

midterm ballot. It will be. But I think she's really established this as being an issue where she has a lot of credibility and it's a really important issue to Democrats right now. So, you know, I think in a different environment, would she come in with, you

more, you know, name recognition, more kind of wind in her sails than any other Democratic governor who came out of 2022 with a solid margin, like, you know, Jared Polis of Colorado, not necessarily. But

But I think abortion is going to continue to be a big issue going into 2024. And she's a particularly strong candidate. Plus, coming from a purple state, being the governor of a purple state generally is a really good place to be when you're launching a presidential campaign. So that's why I think Gretchen Whitmer is the first fresh face I'd pick. All right.

I'll, I'll take it. I'll take it. It's not Bernie Sanders.

I hear what you were saying, Galen, about if Biden steps aside because of age, that does make things difficult for Bernie Sanders, who is also quite old. But I think Bernie Sanders, because his base is so young and because it's so enthusiastic, he just I think he has a sort of claim to vitality that Biden can sometimes overshadow.

find harder to muster. And I also don't, I think maybe Bernie Sanders just doesn't care. You know, he will want, you know, if there's a primary that Biden is not in, he will want there to be a solid progressive candidate. And who's that going to be?

Who's the person who's going to, you know, sort of have the same name recognition as Bernie Sanders, have the same campaign infrastructure as Bernie Sanders? Like, he's done this twice now.

He did better among Latino voters in 2020. You know, I think he might say to himself, hey, third time's the charm and I'm the best hope for my wing of the party. And, you know, if it's a really fractured field, he might be able to pull it out. Yeah, I think I think that's right. You know, it's it is like hard to imagine Sanders running a third time given how old he is. But I think it's like for for drafts like this, you know, I think like

you know, the progressive wing of the party needs to be accounted for. And he is probably the single most likely kind of similar to Harris, right? The single most likely name from that wing of the party, even though, you know, he kind of has a lot of, you know, you can pick apart at the case very well. I'm really interested to see, I think he probably won't run, but I'm really interested to see what happens to the progressive movement in, you know, the wake of Bernie Sanders, right? Does he try to point to somebody and say, this is my successor or,

Or is it going to be five different progressives running, which would, you know, I mean, progressives are already kind of behind the eight ball, right? Because, you know, the moderate wing of the party, the party decides and black voters tend to support moderate candidates and things like that. And that would really, I think, you know, obliterate their chances. But if he did point at somebody, and I won't name names this time, but if he does point at somebody and says, this is my

you know, my person. Um, I think that person would be formidable for many of the same reasons that Bernie Sanders was formidable in 2016 and 2020. All right, Amelia, you have taken both my second and third picks.

So I feel a bit floundering at the moment. I think we're getting into an area here where it's like, who the hell knows? It's really like, what kind of campaign would they run? There aren't obviously structural reasons to think that they would do particularly well. And so I'm trying to think if I should go with a safe pick, like, you know, Gavin Newsom or Amy Klobuchar, or go with a more sort of non-traditional pick. Okay.

And for the sake of this game, I'm going to choose New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Ooh, spicy. In another world, I would pick Raphael Warnock. But I think the Senate is so important for Democrats. And obviously, there is a Republican governor of Georgia that...

All the party players would strongly discourage a run by Warnock because that would mean one less seat for Democrats going into a year where they expect to perform relatively poorly in Senate elections, which is 2024. But I think he has a lot of the makings of a Democrat.

very strong presidential nominee. Like he, he cross pressures voters in similar ways. He's a person of faith. He can speak as a pastor. He can speak as a black man. He can speak as somebody from a purple state. He can speak as a young person. There's all kinds of, and he gets politics. I think if you watch his ads, it's clear that he understands that politics are about persuasion and not just rallying your base. But I didn't pick. I think he's a very different candidate from, um,

Raphael Warnock, but he is a moderate. He is black and he is the mayor of a city of nine million people, which is larger than lots of states. He also, I think, understands politics in a way that a lot of Democrats that think they're playing to the base don't really get.

So he ran on crime in 2021 in an environment where that was not going to be the obviously popular thing to do in a Democratic primary and won.

He has like, you know, in that race against Andrew Yang, had like basically no followers on Twitter, but sort of got intuitively how the sort of machine politics work, what kind of things to argue, how to capture the attention of the traditional media. And I think that that helps in a campaign, especially in a campaign where a lot of people might be hiring a lot of campaign staffers who are not

more tuned into Twitter than what the actual Democratic base is tuned into, which is not ultimately super progressive, pretty diverse, concerned about crime and inflation and things like that. Nicely said, Galen. I know I kind of picked two and that was kind of cheating, but I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You did have to work for me. I'm going to go ahead and pick Warnock, which I was already planning on doing before Galen said his name, just for the record. Galen, you've made...

Yeah.

But like, you know, you said he could speak, you know, he already has shown that he can court crossover support. He convinced a number of Georgians to vote for himself and Republican Brian Kemp. He could I think he could do fairly well in the Deep South, particularly Georgia.

As a black man running in the South, I think it would be easy for him to kind of coalesce support in states like South Carolina and just like other southern states where black voters really have an outsized voice in the electoral process. And I think if he wins this runoff and the 2021 runoff, like that's a pretty strong opportunity.

message to run on, especially running statewide in a state like Georgia and just showing that he can, you know, if he can fend off Republicans two years in a row, I think that really just speaks to his strength as a politician. You know, everyone knows how good of a fundraiser Warnock is as well. So I think there's like a pretty decent argument for why he could be a plausible candidate.

emphasis on plausible 2024 candidate. But I think as we're kind of getting at, I think this, if nothing else, this chat shows more than anything why Biden will probably run for a second term. So my question, Alex, is having strongly considered picking him myself, how does he get over the hurdle of taking a seat away from Democrats in the Senate?

That would be the one knock against him, I think, especially with the 2024 map and Democrats having a lot more seats to defend that I think will be harder for them is my understanding. But so that would be the reason I'd say he may not run. But, you know, I think if the options are, you know,

Whitmer or some of the other people who have been said, I won't really. I think he's a strong. I mean, yeah, I think Warnock could say, you know, if we're in a situation where there's a super chaotic Democratic primary and there's no, you know, maybe Harris is perceived as being weak, you know, doesn't hasn't managed to consolidate a lot of support. You know, it could Warnock could be kind of making the case that like,

Yeah, you're going to lose a Senate seat, but I'm your best chance of winning the presidency. So in this hypothetical, I think, crazy world we are spinning here, there is an argument he could make. Well, let's also remember the, you know, what happened with Georgia in 2020. So Warnock can resign from the Senate to run for president. Brian, if he wins the runoff, Democrats have 51 Senate seats. That won't cost Democrats the Senate. Right.

And then there'll be a special election in 2024. And if Warnock wins, he can presumably he will, you know, carry Georgia because it's his home state and perhaps carry along the Democratic candidate in the special election there as well. So I don't think it's quite that problem for him. OK. Yeah.

All the dominoes have to fall, but it's possible. Yeah. And we would officially in that circumstance rename Georgia the voting estate as opposed to the state. Exactly. And then there would be another runoff. And just more runoffs. This is what America wants. More runoffs, more elections. I mean, I guess the other argument is if you're going to lose the Senate majority anyway. Right. Who cares about one extra seat?

But I don't know how persuasive that argument is. All right, we are going to snake along here. And up next is Nathaniel.

You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad. Reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Lipson Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements, or run a reproduced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Lipson Ads. Go to LipsonAds.com now. That's L-I-B-S-Y-N-Ads.com. Okay, Nathaniel, make your two picks.

Okay, so last time we did this in May, I did for my second and third picks, I did one progressive and one kind of moderate governor. And those were Elizabeth Warren and Roy Cooper. I'm going to stay with that tradition, but I'm going to change up the names because I want to get some new blood in here. So for my progressive, I am going to choose Ayanna Pressley from the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

I, I think that she so everything I said before about, you know, Bernie Sanders and the progressive movement, you know, I think they need to coalesce around somebody or else they're going to be totally divided and will fall. I think Presley is a really intriguing candidate.

if she emerges as the winner of the quote unquote progressive lane because she's also a person of color and can appeal to black people. And I think that that is kind of the missing ingredient for a lot of for progressives nationally. And I think that a lot of the members of the squad have shown this, as Alex and I have written,

You know, they have been able to combine the kind of progressive voting base, which is predominantly, you know, kind of like white college educated and along with the voters of color. So in Presley's case, you know, black voters in Boston and in AOC's case, Latinos. And so I think that would also be a very powerful kind of combination nationally. So if she were to run, which, of course, is a big question mark, and if she were to get, you know, the Sanders endorsement, which maybe is asking too much, I think she would be strong.

Um, for my next pick for the moderate governor pick, I will go with Jared Polis of Colorado. Um, he just had a very strong midterm performance, um, winning by, I believe almost 20 points, uh, as Amelia mentioned earlier. Um, I think he's at kind of the height of his powers, um, for a similar reason as Gretchen Whitmer. I would put him ahead of, of folks like, uh, well, I won't say other names. Wait, can you say his name? Yeah.

His name rhymes with Pavan Glusom. But yeah, I...

Exactly. So, yeah, you know, I just I think, you know, obviously, again, in the scenario Biden doesn't run, electability is going to be important to people. They're going to look around. Oh, Jared Polis, you know, cruised to reelection in a kind of swingy state, getting bluer. But but he certainly overperformed, you know, kind of what what people expected. So that's going to have a lot of appeal. OK.

I'm just going to throw a wild card out there and have some fun with it and say, why not Josh Shapiro? Oh, that's a good wild card. You know, that's a good one. Yeah. New governor of Pennsylvania just repelled a very far right challenger and he

beat him pretty handily. Um, you know, I think he's going to have a higher profile, um, just because of that in the, you know, going forward. Um, I just think he'll be a name to watch out for. I'm kind of just throwing names out there at this point, but I mean, I see him definitely as a viable contender. If this is, if that's the route he decides to go. And definitely if you're talking about coming out of 2022, he certainly belongs on that list. Right.

Yeah, it feels like the triad is Gretchen Whitmer, Raphael Warnock. I mean, we have to see what happens next week. And that's probably speaking too soon. That is speaking too soon. And Josh Shapiro. Are there any other clear stars? I'm asking for a friend. I mean, Fetterman. Who might use them as a pick. Fetterman, you know. Fetterman. Yeah, I was going to say Fetterman. Meme master. Yeah.

Batman knows how to make a TikTok. It's the only qualification for winning a presidential primary. He wants that Gen Z vote. And I don't blame him. All right. I am going to take one for the team and choose our friend Pavan, AKA Gavin Newsom. And the reason is because he wants it. And in...

At this point in the process, I think that is not a bad rationale because, you know, like who is going to actually run? Like, I kind of don't think I kind of don't think Raphael Warnock would run. I'm not sure who knows, but I kind of think he would run in a world where Biden doesn't run. Gavin Newsom is definitely running.

And so that at least improves his odds of winning somewhat. Why do you think he's definitely running? Well, because Harris would be the logical person to succeed Biden. They have a blood pact. Harris is the other star who came up through the California political infrastructure at the same time. And that would be...

That would be like a pretty wild betrayal. I think this is why Newsom came out the other day and said he wasn't going to run. I think he and Harris got in a room together, hashed it out, and decided it was going to be Harris. I don't know about that. I think that, do you think that Gavin Newsom, as ambitious as he is, and as audacious as he was in the run-up to the midterms, basically starting his campaign, talking first and foremost about national issues and getting on all the shows, etc.,

Do you think that he's going to watch a whole bunch of people challenging Kamala Harris and just say, yeah, I'm not going to, I'm not going to run. We have a, we have a pact. Like that does not seem. Maybe he's going to be Kamala's beep. California, California ticket. Oh boy. No one else wants that. Look, so my two reasons were one, he wants it, which at this point I think is enough of a reason to pick him. And two, the, the,

politics betters that Scottish teens, as we like to call them, clearly know something that I don't because they have they have given him a 14 percent chance. Or they don't know something that we do. Democratic nomination behind the

Mr. Biden himself. So that's my logic. Okay, Amelia, you get the final pick. And I'm just going to go on the record here saying I thought I had a terrible draw number at the beginning, and I probably have the lineup that people will be least excited about. All right, I'm going to end with another politician from Georgia, Stacey Abrams. She's free to do whatever she wants. She lost the governor's race. She does not have the problem.

the problems that these other people who hold pesky elected offices have now. And in all seriousness, she does not have a great winning track record, but she has really good name recognition compared to some of these other people we're talking about, like someone like Jared Polis, who, yes, has this cred as someone who has done really well in his purpley blue state, but most people don't know who he is.

And I think going into a primary, again, in this crazy world we're imagining where Biden doesn't run and there's kind of a, you know, a scrum between Democrats. She's someone where a lot of Democrats already know who she is and she already has a brand. And I think that will be useful going into a primary. And, you know, she could bring together different parts of the party. She's tried to do that with the...

I think limited success so far as, as Alex has written, but she was dealt a hard hand in 2022 running against Kemp. And so, you know, she might just feel like that. It keeps the momentum going. Pull a Beto O'Rourke. I hope it goes better for her than it went for Beto.

And also, you can also say for Stacey Abrams that she wants it. She was on this podcast and she said she wanted to be president. So she wants it. Okay. I mean, everyone wants it. The question is not whether people want it. The question is whether they appear to only want that as opposed to actually wanting to. All the other things that you can have in life. For people in the country. Right, right, right. Um...

Okay, so Nathaniel, you have Biden, Ayanna Pressley, and Jared Polis. Alex, you have Kamala Harris, Raphael Warnock, and Josh Shapiro. I have Pete Buttigieg, Eric Adams, and who was my third pick? Um...

Gavin Newsom. And Amelia, you have Gretchen Whitmer, Bernard Sanders, and Stacey Abrams. All right, listeners, if you have thoughts on how this went, you can feel free to share them, but let's leave it there. Thank you, Amelia, Nathaniel, and Alex. Thank you. Thanks, Galen.

My name is Galen Druk. Tony Chow is in the control room. Chadwick Matlin is our editorial director. And Emily Vanesky has been our intern for most of this year. She has moved on to what's next. And I just wanted to say thank you, Emily, so much for doing such a great job as our podcast intern in 2022. We really loved having you and we're excited to see everything you do next.

Folks, you can get in touch by emailing us at podcasts at 538.com. You can also, of course, tweet at us with any questions or comments. If you're a fan of the show, leave us a rating or review in the Apple Podcast Store or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening and we will see you soon.