Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Hey, pull up a chair. It's Hacks on Tap with David Axelrod, Robert Gibbs, and Mike Murphy. I don't think he's going to be there. Do you have a message for me?
We're going to take care of Florida. Robert Gibbs, remember those days when we had to decide when to send the president and whether the Republican leaders would meet with us and all of that stuff? I thought that was a pretty good answer from Biden. Very good answer.
I remember, too, we were having to answer those questions because those nagging political reporters are always asking us, when are we going to do these things? Right. And one of them is with us today. Oh, did I say that out loud? Sorry, I didn't realize he was on the phone. I remember him being in the crowd there, Jeff Zeleny. Hey, guys. One of the truly great political reporters in the country, my colleague from CNN. But we've known him in many incarnations, including at the Des Moines Register, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times.
gibsy has that print lineage which makes him extra good as far as i'm concerned same here same here zeleny we're going to get to you're you're in iowa and we want to um you're in iowa right uh new hampshire actually you're in new hampshire that's right you're new hampshire the other state yeah we're going to want to uh get to uh
both Iowa and New Hampshire in a second, but I want to start out with something. I want to ask both you guys about it. We had new jobs numbers on Friday. The president spoke to these job numbers. We faced some pretty tough times in recent years. A pandemic that took more than a million of our friends and neighbors, a million fewer people sitting at our dining room or kitchen tables, people we raised and loved, people we grew up with, gone.
the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. It wasn't that long ago that 20 million Americans were out of work. But the American people didn't give up. They never give up. They've never given up. And today we have the strongest economy in the world, the lowest inflation rate among the major economies, 13.5 million new jobs,
So Jeff Zeleny, this is, you know, this is kind of classically Biden. He wants to jawbone the American people on the economy, but he's sitting there with a 33% approval rating on the economy. How much of this is getting through? So far, not much. I mean, it's a question that comes up in every conversation you have with a voter, Republicans, independents, and Democrats.
The cost of gas has gone up, has ticked back up a little bit in recent weeks. Inflation is down overall, but the cost of goods from going to a fast food restaurant to shopping to rents are still high. So people mention this all the time. But
I think it's one of those things, if you talk to the president's advisors, they know that he has to keep hammering it and hammering it and hammering it. The question is, is he a good salesman on this? And he's not the best communicator either.
in the world, but has a lot to communicate. A couple weeks ago, I was in Michigan talking to some voters in a place where actually that benefited from one of Biden's plans on the infrastructure law. This town, Charlevoix, Michigan, was getting a new ferry because of money from this, a very local thing. And I talked to
some passengers boarding the ferry. And one guy said something that sticks with me. He said, I wish the Democrats were more like Trump in this regard and just talked a little louder and sold things a little more and weren't as apologetic about things. So I think that's part of the deal. President's trying to sell it, but is anyone listening? I'm not sure.
Gibbs, the question is how you sell. And you remember Biden was always, when he was the VP, he was always very much in the place of you just have to shout from the rooftops what we achieved, recovery summer and all of that. I think that was, he generated that idea and so on. And what we found, as you remember, was you kind of have to meet people where they live.
And so you want to kind of put the pill in the applesauce and present it carefully. And the question is, do people feel like, I mean, you know, do they, he used a lot of superlatives there. And I think he has plenty to be proud of.
The question is, does he actually lose people by overdoing, by overemphasizing, by not recognizing where people's heads are at right now? Well, I think in the beginning, he certainly tries to ground himself in...
the sort of journey economically that we've gone through both before his presidency and certainly during the beginning of it, particularly when it was dominated by COVID. But I think, Axe, you mentioned it, the vice president was like this. I think everybody in that building is like this, you know, past and certainly future. And that is, you want people to listen to
a series of statistics. You want to compare them. You want to show people the progress that you're making. And as you said, it's not necessarily where every person lives. They don't watch the ups and downs of the stock market. They don't see, they don't necessarily look at the jobs report or the unemployment claims or things like that. And I think this is one of those things. And I think it's in particular here, I think statistically the economy is
And the economy looks strong. I think to Jeff's point, you still have pockets of it that feel like real pain points for America. Yeah, I mean, they do watch the cash register at the grocery store.
They do watch the gas. They do watch the numbers going up on the gas tank as they fill their car. And they know if they'd like to get a new house, that a loan is really expensive right now. Now, part of that is the Fed's brought those interest rates up so the economy can slow down, hopefully not go into recession. So, look, I think he's battling a lot of things here. I think they're trying to do the best they can. I agree with you that you sometimes have to be careful
Like I said, that you don't remember having this argument a lot in 2012. You you've got to ground yourself in where you are and not get too far ahead of where the American people are. You have to lead them to where you want them to go. And I think they're going to spend a lot of money and they are right now on TV trying to let sure people make sure people understand exactly what Jeff talked about. Where where's that new money going? What's the impact of it?
What is it building that makes people's lives better? I just wonder if you have to ground it. There are a couple of questions I have. One is, do people not give him credit because they felt like the economy was always going to come back after the pandemic anyway, and he didn't have that much to do with it? But there was a poll, Jeff Zeleny, in the Economist YouGo poll, did an interesting thing in their last poll this week, I think,
They asked for his rating on economy and jobs, which was 40%. His overall was 41. So it wasn't that variant. It was on par with some of his other ratings, better than others. But when they asked him about inflation and prices, I think it was 33%.
So, you know, it's very clear the prism through which people are looking at the economy. What I wonder about is, you know, his fundamental sort of the fundamental vulnerability really has nothing to do with this so much as it does with perceptions of age.
And the danger is that if you were seen as sort of touting or describing a country that people aren't feeling, does it accentuate the notion of being out of touch? I think it certainly could. I think, you know, communication challenges...
are probably central to this White House more than policy challenges at the moment. And I think, you know, the president leads that. He's not out there all that much. And I think when he is, you know, people have a hard time looking beyond what they see.
I mean, it would be sort of fascinating to know if this was a different time, like say a century ago or so, and we weren't seeing the president out there as he's moving slowly and things. I think it's just a lot of perception about him as a strong leader and things. But it gets back to Price. I am in New Hampshire now, and I was talking to a woman last night who said, I voted for Biden. She's an independent. I voted for Biden last time. I want him to do well. But she said...
just disappointed at him. And I said, "Well, why is that?" And it all got down to how expensive things are. She just finished school, shopping, et cetera. So that's the challenge. But of course, this is a comparison contest. So that's a year from now, people will make those choices. Yeah. I was just reading a piece from The Economist about the European inflation situation, which is much worse than
The U.S. like Biden isn't responsible for that.
Okay, U.S. is outperforming these other countries, yet Gibbs is just not getting a lot of credit for it. Yeah, I mean, look, I think in some ways where he's probably a victim of the own success in the United States. We haven't dealt with huge swings in inflation, certainly to the level of which we saw over the past few years in a long time, right? 40 years, yeah. The Fed had really strong inflation targets, and sure, we had recessions. We went through
the shocks of 2008, 2009, 2010, middle-class families were certainly hurting, but most of that was on the jobs front.
maybe some on certainly on the housing front. But I don't I think this is a little bit of a different type of beast. It affects a lot of people. You can certainly be pretty happy, have a good, stable job. But all of a sudden, what you find out is it's not just gas that fluctuates and goes up seasonally. But yeah, you're paying more for milk and eggs and things like that. We should mention those numbers have come way, way down. Rents, used cars, all of those things.
I think Jeff's point, though, that he made a second ago is really the most important one. And this is a moving number and a moving level of perception. And in reality, my guess is the White House would be a lot more concerned if the election were being held, say, in this November than next November. They've got the long arc of the ability to try to get this trajectory to continue to go down and therefore more people to feel like,
the economy has normalized and ultimately think about the economy in a different frame and through a different lens. They're going to keep battering that issue like the defense lines, to borrow from another story in the news, and hope that they don't run into a whole bunch of landmines along the way because
Next week, the football season starts, and this is what people are going to hear. They said millions would lose their jobs and the economy would collapse. But this president refused to let that happen. Instead, he got to work fixing supply chains, fighting corporate greed, passing laws to lower the cost of medicine, cut utility bills, and make us more energy independent.
Today, inflation is down to 3%, unemployment the lowest in decades. There's more to do, but President Biden is getting results that matter. I'm Joe Biden, and I approve this message. Actually, I think that was a little bit of a subtler approach. You know, there's more to do. It's sort of a work in progress kind of thing and a more robust narrator.
For sure. And I think also unpacking a little bit what is in all these just gigantic pieces of legislation. They talked about lowering drug prices. That is probably one of the most significant things that has happened in the Biden administration. No voter that I have talked to in the last couple of weeks has mentioned it. I don't think it's trickled through, but if you've been spending...
a ton of money on these specific drugs. People who are paying for this will know. So I think that is one of the challenges also, just unpacking all of the robust –
legislation and laws the president has signed, but he's also going on offense here. And thinking back to when you all were running the reelect in 2012, I mean, you would have killed for an unemployment number like this. You would have really killed for some of these strong economic metrics. So it must be frustrating to them because the metrics are good, but just the message and the messenger is a little more challenging. Yeah.
Well, I think you mentioned it, Jeff, but I think part of it is that the metrics by which people are viewing it, as we just talked about, is different, right? Traditionally, you think about that, and it's why presidents come out every month and talk about jobs created, because that's always been the measure of a healthy economy, probably vexing for, as you said, for the White House to see such strong jobs numbers growing.
And yet somehow have people feel like things aren't going. I do think, you know, you mentioned the ad, you played it, may have some issues with the music track on that ad. But I do ask to your point, if you live in one of six, seven, maybe eight states, a billion dollars of what that
what you just played is going to basically be in front of people, but a lot more than a billion, actually, uh, pro Joe Biden, uh, between now and November of 2024. So I think I worry less about some of what, what Jeff talked about that people aren't going to understand the fairy. I think they'll get those stories. I think they'll get them in a very localized way. The real question is whether to your point, the beginning is, do people feel like they're,
Do they feel like when they go to the cash register that people really feel like, oh, you know what? Prices have come down. This is a bit more normalized. And they understand that we've sort of gotten rid of the remnants of kind of a COVID economy. We're not medically in that COVID mindset as much anymore. Right.
but we certainly are dealing with its economic impacts. Well, we may be more in the mindset of the COVID because the thing is obviously- And the first lady has it today, so yeah. The first lady has it. Now there's a watch on the president to see whether he can go to the G20-
conference at the end of the week. But just generally, I mean, I'm getting calls all the time and texts and emails from friends who are, I mean, it's clearly gearing up and the fall is going to come. That will be back. So Jeff, Zelany, you mentioned that there also, it's going to be a choice
and not a referendum. That's certainly something that any incumbent president counts on is turning it into a choice. Biden always likes to talk about, don't compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative. I actually think Trump is saying the same thing. Both those guys are singing from that hymn book. But
You have brand new, fresh national polling. Ooh. Yeah. Jeff Fox, give us a little bulletin stuff here. Yes, there it is. Breaking news with Jeff Zeleny. Jeff, what do you know?
Well, hey, we do have a new poll. I guess that should be the drumbeat of a new national poll, which also comes with, in addition to the drums, all the caveats that we should put forth with every national poll. Presidential candidates' primaries are conducted state by state, but national polls do give us a sense of where things are, the mood, et cetera. And we have a new CNN poll out today, and it shows that former President Donald Trump still has
incredible command of this race. This is a poll that was taken in the aftermath of the debate. So it had time for the debate in Milwaukee a couple of weeks ago to settle in. And the poll shows that 52% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independent voters support him, compared to 18% for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. And those are the only two in double digits. So 52%
supporting Trump, 18 for DeSantis. It goes down from there. Nikki Haley and former Vice President Mike Pence are at 7% each. So look, this really shows that this is still Trump's race. But state by state, it is certainly at least a little more competitive in Iowa and New Hampshire. But one other interesting number in this poll, around one in five
Republican voters say they would not support Trump under any circumstances because of the charges he's facing.
So look, that's at 20%. He can certainly win without those, but that does give you a window into there are at least a slice of Republicans looking for an alternative. Yeah. It's a small window. You've got to be very agile to get through that window. But there is Gibbs in that CNN poll, 83% of Trump supporters said they were
certain. I think, tell me, correct me, Zelen, if I'm spreading falsehoods, but I think 83% said they were firm in their choice. That's right. And so if you do the math...
83% of 52%. You know, you're up around 41%. That may be his floor right there. The question is, I mean, if you apply the same math to DeSantis, half of his voters said that he'd be down to 9%. And, you know, you just have a muddle, a
Among everybody else. And I guess the question is, does Iowa, does New Hampshire propel someone forward and turn this into more of a two person race? Well, it almost has to. I mean, look, a couple of points. One, and nobody better than Jeff to talk about Iowa.
even though his two feet are standing in New Hampshire. But I certainly feel like if they don't, if somebody doesn't stop Donald Trump in Iowa, it's going to be, quite frankly, I think extraordinarily hard to stop him. And, you know, the New York Times had a piece late last week, you know, where we've all been talking about these court dates that he has. And Lord knows you need a spreadsheet to keep up with all those court dates. I hope his lawyers have a good spreadsheet.
But, you know, the big trial doesn't start until the day before Super Tuesday. It's really conceivable that if somebody doesn't slow him down in Iowa, that he rolls through Nevada, South Carolina, and
New Hampshire and then into, you know, 18 or so states and Super Tuesday. And boy, they haven't even they haven't even finished jury selection. And he's got such a ginormous chunk of delegates. The Republicans have all thought that the legal system would be their cure for Donald Trump. And it doesn't look like that's likely. He could be nominated and convicted on just about the same day.
The way the timetable is working out. And Zeleny, one of the interesting things about your poll, as well as the Wall Street Journal poll in which Trump had an even larger 46 point lead over the weekend, was in both polls, Republican voters basically shrugged off.
70% of them in both polls sort of said, yeah, we think this is political. No, we don't think he did anything. Now, there is that small minority that you mentioned, but it's really kind of astonishing. And we should point out that Trump has made market gains in your poll significant.
since April, I guess, was that the last time? When was the last time that you guys were in? There was a poll in June as well. But certainly market gains from April when the first, I mean, look, there's a literal rallying around the flag here with him. And I think this is definitely reflected when you talk to voters about
I talked to a handful of voters at a Republican picnic yesterday on Labor Day in Salem, New Hampshire. One woman who said she does not plan to vote for President Trump. She wants to turn the page. And I said, oh, is it because of the indictments? She's like, oh, no, that has nothing to do with it. She doesn't think any of that is true. She just believes that he can't win in a general and some other things. That's a separate conversation. But look, I think this is all based on where people get their information.
I mean, that's what is at the root of all of this. I mean, when these indictments are sort of ridiculed on Fox and other conservative and right-wing programs—
You know, that's what people think. And there are so many of them. It's so confusing, etc. So, you know, history will be an interesting guide on this. And we can't go back in the way back machine. But if we could, it would certainly be interesting if the Alvin Bragg indictment would never have happened in Manhattan. And it had taken several more months until maybe there was a rallying around Trump. Would DeSantis have sort of gotten his sea legs? Would someone else have come up?
I don't know. This is certainly going to be an interesting history of the race, how Trump benefited and consolidated some of the party during all of this. Yeah. I mean, I'm struck, you know, you look at the numbers, I think I wrote them down in the CNN poll. I mean, obviously, if you're a Pence voter, you're definitely not in, you may be part of that 20, not 20%, but maybe you're in that 20% of Republicans that aren't going to vote for Trump.
But, you know, obviously the dynamic here particularly- Yeah, there's a guy who may want a way back machine. I don't know. Or not. The interesting dynamic obviously is going to be the number of people that are ultimately dividing up that other 48% in the CNN poll. And how long does that dynamic last? How long does-
Does it stay away from either a DeSantis or somebody else being able to coalesce enough to make a difference? You know, the journal poll is even, as you said, more stunning.
And, you know, I think certainly the DeSantis campaign expected to be in a much different position at this point. I mean, down three to one is certainly not where they thought this thing was heading. Jeff, what do you hear out of Iowa? And we all saw the Des Moines poll, which obviously is important. But do you, anything anecdotally that you're hearing or seeing that would suggest that
somebody's capable of or somebody's organizing towards being able to beat him and beat Trump in Iowa.
At this point, he's beginning what is the start of the fall campaign in an extraordinarily strong position. And even in addition to that, his campaign is actually being run in a much more sophisticated way than in 2016. That may be the biggest sort of difference maker of all here, not Trump necessarily, but his campaign staff.
I mean, it's widely believed, and I have long believed, that he would have won Iowa in 2016 had he actually understood the rules of the caucus and understood how to organize. He didn't get a lot of his supporters to these individual town meetings, which they are all across the state in all 99 counties. So now he has a good organization.
Having said that, I do think when you talk to Republican officials like Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, Senator Joni Ernst, Senator Grassley, and other local officials, they say that they do hear from so many people who want to turn the page.
And they do believe that there is still an opening for someone to compete head to head with him. It certainly comes up in conversations with Republican voters. It used to be so difficult to find a Republican voter who would sort of speak ill of Trump. Now it's virtually the opposite unless you're at a Trump rally. So many Republicans, if they're evangelical or others, are eager to find someone else
But the question is, they're all divided among such still a big field. So at this point in September, if the heat ever stops and we head into fall, it's Trump's game. I mean, someone has to take it from him, and no one is even close to approaching that yet. Okay, then let's take a break right here, and we'll be right back. ♪
One of the interesting things about both the national polling and the polling that Ann Seltzer did in Iowa is that DeSantis does. I mean, I think his campaign has been poor in many ways from the time that he was the hot ticket back in the fall, remember, and he was nipping at Trump's heels.
But he still maintains a pretty high favorable in the Wall Street Journal poll. It was 70. It had been 84, but it was still about 70. It's pretty high, I think, here by some measures. In her polling, he was favorably viewed by large numbers of voters. He's clearly the second choice.
of a lot of voters. I mean, there are some metrics that would say he's the guy who can break through. The question is whether at the end of the day, it does come down to the candidate and how people perceive them. And, um,
And the question is, they can like you. Tim Scott is very well liked and he's got a boatload of money and he's running a lot of advertising, Zeleny. But, you know, he isn't making a lot of headway. He's not. And I think that debate performance really kind of awakened some Republicans to, does he have the strength to sort of go the distance and eventually compete with Trump? Now, if you're looking for an alternative, never mind Joe Biden, you know,
That is something down the road. It's who can go toe-to-toe with Trump. And the Tim Scott performance and his advisors will say, oh, he was intentionally not getting in the mix and doesn't want to get in the food fight and the battle. Well, mission accomplished. Right. We'll see about this second debate, which is just at the end of the month here. But I think he will leave certainly, or he certainly has engendered goodwill and people generally like the guy. Do they see him as a leading choice candidate?
Not yet. You know, Ramaswamy, you guys, you know, he was certainly a presence at the debate, irritated a lot of people who he probably doesn't mind irritating. But, you know, Republicans, a lot of Republicans liked him.
uh what what they saw but you know everybody's saying like he's he and he is he's sort of a trump guy he's he's like trump's biggest booster on that stage but he's also very very deft at playing the culture war thing gibbs and in that sense he's fishing in the pond at which desantis was hoping to score
in the campaign. I just think this thing is setting up to be what Trump wants, which is kind of a divided muddle. Well, what you see is there's now a competition between, I think, Pence and Ramaswamy. Pence, I think, is going to go give a speech to sort of pivot off of Ramaswamy. I think you've seen the DeSantis campaign is merchandising Trump.
opposition research on this. What's interesting is there isn't, again, I think most of them thought, and certainly DeSantis thought, by this point, it'd be a lot of people way back and him and Trump sort of one-on-one. That was his strategy. Right now, there's three or four people who are competing in sort of the semifinals to get into that contest with Trump. I'm going to be fascinated to see
Does Trump show up at the Reagan library? You know, they don't have a great relationship, Trump and the Reagan library. I don't know that Trump felt maybe he felt initially there were some some dropping in in some of those national poll numbers that Zeleny mentioned about not competing. But that kind of bounced back pretty quickly. I think if you look at these polls, you wouldn't say, boy, he really missed out.
I'm not sure Trump's going to play campaign for a while. And I think the longer that that draws out, the bigger advantage Trump certainly may have with that. I'm interested to see, to Jeff's point, can somebody capitalize on some of this debate stuff? Because it certainly wasn't Tim Scott. Nikki Haley feels like she's got a bit of her sea legs. Mike Pence seems to be...
You know, much more alive than I think he was two months ago. I mean, I think two months ago. Well, alive in his performance, not alive in polling. He has very, very... I was shocked, really,
at how high his negatives are. I mean, his numbers, Jeff, was it in your poll where he just, it's like he's cratered since the spring. You know, and of course, he's sort of emerged as a principal kind of figure in this whole court drama. Right. Yeah, his negatives are super high. His negative is among Republicans, very high. One question as I sit
in New Hampshire today, seeing him at a couple events on Labor Day and going to spend a little bit more time on the road with him. They are sort of holding out hope for some of these independent voters in New Hampshire who can play in a Republican primary. Will they give a lift to Pence? Of course, Chris Christie also going after the same set of people. Haley, of course, she is as well. And Trump has signaled he's not doing the Republican debate at the Reagan Library. He can always change his mind, but he has
I'd be surprised if he would. So this race could be, as you were saying, Robert, he could be on the sidelines for at least a couple more months and it may not matter. It benefits him probably. I mean, it feels like he's doing most of his campaigning around these court dates.
that that is what's firing up the base. Last thing on this is on the almighty versus the alternative. You know, two problems for the Republican candidates who are trying to take Trump down is he continues to poll very competitively with Biden. I mean, they're basically in a tied race. In those races, he's getting strong Republican support in the polling. And the other thing is,
if you start making the argument that he can't win in the face of that polling, you can see where he can easily turn it and say, you're playing exactly the game that the deep state and all those people want, which is they're throwing these cases at me to try and slow me down here, to try and stop me from being the nominee because they know I'm the strongest candidate. And I think that's what you're going to see him argue. It's really, it's a very, I mean,
Remember, and maybe I've said this before, Gibbs, but you and I shared this ride together. Actually, Zeleny as well. But Obama once said during our campaign when we were under fire, this stuff would be really interesting if we weren't right in the middle of it. I kind of feel like that as an American. I mean, this stuff would really be interesting if we weren't right in the middle of it because, man, we're going to look back at this race as one for the books.
It's interesting. You guys, I'd like to hear what you think about this. I talked to New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu yesterday and I said, is this race effectively over? And he laughed and he's like, oh, God, no. And then he used the analogy of the 08 race. He's like, was it over when Hillary Clinton was ahead of Barack Obama by 20 points and the Clinton machine couldn't be
defeated. So he's using that as an analogy, obviously many, many, many differences between then and now. Yeah, huge differences in that, you know, we knew that first and foremost, the biggest issue that animated Democratic voters, we had a clear contrast with Hillary Clinton on. I was struck by the numbers that, you know, Jeff, you guys were talking about with the CNN poll. I mean, Donald Trump's vote is at 83%, you know,
feel it feeling pretty strongly about their vote for Trump. There's not a lot of wiggle room. I think, you know, Murphy, if he were here, would would be would have spent the last 20 minutes bemoaning us even mentioning national political polling, despite Jeff's caveat at the beginning of the. And I do think he's right that both New Hampshire and.
and Iowa, those states can swing and they can swing quickly. Lord knows, Zach, you and I, I remember being backstage at an event a few days before New Hampshire, up a comfortable 10 points and learning of some developments with Senator Clinton that changed the dynamic. But that meant you had to have
people that were, had the ability to want to look for a different candidate. And I think that to me is the biggest thing in this race right now is that the Trump vote doesn't feel like it's moving anywhere. Well, there's a, there's another issue here, which is that people often ignore Hillary Clinton was never the strong favorite in Iowa. She would, in fact, John Edwards led for most of that race, uh, in, in, in polling. And, uh, so, uh,
Iowa wasn't a particularly strong...
state for her. I mean, Trump is in a much stronger position in Iowa. He's in a much stronger position in New Hampshire. Governor Sununu sounds to me like the immortal John Bluto Blutarski from Animal House. Remember the exhortation he gave? Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Should we stop him? No, he's on a roll.
You know, I think what he's trying to do is Jeff probably thought this too. He's trying to create some space, tell enough New Hampshire voters,
Hey, hang on, hang on. Some of this is going to change. Don't give up. Don't get disillusioned. I just don't know whether the clock is going to cooperate with his prognostication. Yeah, one thing I think we can say for sure, and then we got to move on to some other things. DeSantis, whose super PAC is sort of running his campaign, and Jeff Rowe, the strategist, is running his super PAC, told donors that,
They needed $50 million to close out Iowa. I don't think DeSantis is going to be around very long if Iowa doesn't come through for him. And that's very clear from this meeting with the super PAC. All right, hold that thought. We're going to take a short break. And now a word from our sponsors. ♪♪♪
Jeff, you cover a whole range of things, Washington, in addition to covering the country. We might be headed into a government shutdown. What are the political implications of that as Congress returns? And the reason I ask that is it seems like Kevin McCarthy, every time a big issue comes up, he's playing like Rubik's Cube.
to try and avoid his caucus blowing itself up. And he wants to get a continuing resolution done so the government doesn't shut down. And now he's tied it to, well, if we shut down, we can't do investigations and maybe even impeachment. And listen to what Marjorie Taylor Greene had to say over the weekend. I've already decided I will not vote to fund the government unless we have passed an impeachment inquiry on Joe Biden.
This is interesting, Jeff, because McCarthy has begun to sort of show a little leg on this impeachment inquiry thing. And it seems like he's going to try and tie these two things together to get his right flank to grudgingly go along on this budget resolution.
I mean, it sure is looking like that. And look, he's pulled a few rabbits out of a hat and I think surprised some Republican members, some longtime observers who kind of privately have said really throughout the year, well, this is the one where he won't be able to do it. And he has done it, but it's because he has continued to make these concessions to the Marjorie Taylor Greene's and others. And now it appears to be tied to an impeachment inquiry. That is certainly...
Right. Yeah, luckily we're not recording any of this so that people can't call us on it. Oh, we are? Are we on? Yeah.
So look, I mean, we'll see. I mean, one thing that could help President Biden more than anything is Speaker McCarthy's impeachment inquiry. But back to the government shutdown. Yeah, it's like, by the way, it's like a choice between a punch in the nose and a knee to the groin for McCarthy because either one of those things will be damaging for the Republican. No question. He's clearly trying to give himself some more time.
on the government funding. They know that government shutdowns are not good politics long-term or people in the country. It might be okay short-term to sort of rally their own supporters and base. But look, that's why he's asking for a November date to give more time for this. Mitch McConnell probably summed it up best when he said, it's a mess.
And it is a mess. So as the Senate comes back into session today, the House comes back next week, this is going to be a very major challenge. It's almost impossible to imagine a scenario where they could –
come to a resolution to keep the government funded, um, under the normal timeframe of this month. The house has not even touched appropriations bills. Uh, so it's, it's a mess, which is why McCarthy's trying to buy more time. The white house Gibbs jumped on Marjorie Taylor greens comments. It's incredible that she is commanding that kind of attention, but she's kind of become McCarthy's kind of loony tenant or Lieutenant to the loony, right? Yeah. Uh,
And in fact, that drummed out of the Freedom Caucus because she was thought not to be pure enough because she's playing ball with McCarthy. But I took that as a signal and the White House jumped all over it. Well, understand too, McCarthy can lose like three people in his whole endeavor and still pass something with Republican only votes. Add in the fact that you've got almost two dozen Republican members that represent districts that Joe Biden won in 2020, as Jeff said.
you know, you've got, what, basically three and a half weeks to get 12 appropriations or 11 appropriations bills done. Or a continuing resolution. They're tens of billions of dollars away from where Senate Republicans are. So Mitch McConnell isn't going to come rescue the day in any of this. And it's going to be a huge mess. As Jeff said, this is the interesting dynamic of a presidential race that on a Tuesday, it could be muddled and not looking so great. And maybe even the general election polling is
as anxiety-ridden as it was in the Wall Street Journal, but a lot is left to play out, particularly in the broader sense. And I think this is going to be fascinating because Marjorie Taylor Greene, just as we're clear, that impeachment thing was like one of four or five things that she listed that she needed. It's not at all, to me, clear that
even a quarter of those things that she listed would even work in the Republican Senate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think the main thing was that she implied that if she gets an impeachment resolution, I know she said the other stuff, if she gets an impeachment resolution, she'll support the continuing resolution. That was this sort of implication I read into. What I read into the White House was don't throw me into the briar patch. But this whole thing reminds me of the joke
about the guy in the woods, you know, that old joke about the guy and his friend run into a bear and the one guy is frozen and the other guy throws his backpack down and puts on his gym shoes. And the one guy says, what are you doing? You cannot outrun that bear. And the guy said, I don't have to outrun that bear. I just have to outrun you.
And I think that's sort of what the Biden folks are thinking, that the Republicans will destroy themselves, you know, that he just that they'll give him.
Trump and they will tack so far to the right that all these things that we talked about at the beginning of this thing won't matter at all? Well, you got to think too that for McCarthy, the easier concessions, and I don't think any of them were easy, but the easier concessions are done, right? Now they're going to get harder. Now the demands are going to get higher because that's what the stakes are. And look, federal spending is animated, quite frankly, a lot of what happened at the beginning of
of this year around the debt ceiling and whatnot. So I think there's a number of Republicans in the House that are quite eager to have this fight. If that means shutting down the government, so be it. That's bad for them. But I'll tell you what, he's also got like 14 or so guys in swing districts who don't want any part of this. And at some point, there's going to be one hell of a row inside of his own
caucus. I mean, he knew what he was signing up for, but that guy has to have... But you mentioned McConnell, and we should... I just want to spend a minute on that, Zeleny. You obviously saw the tape from Kentucky the second time in a month when he froze up. And you just get the feeling that they're not being very open about what actually is going on with him
But this is something everyone's going to be watching. Without a doubt. I mean, this is something that when it happened the first time publicly by the Ohio clock during a regular Senate news conference, certainly got a lot of attention. His staff said it was a...
dehydration issue. And like most things in Washington, people move on to the next thing, but happens again over recess. So there's a real challenge here for Leader McConnell, a health challenge, it seems, first and foremost, and second, likely a long-term political challenge. Now, there's no doubt that he has the support from the vast majority of
his conference. I mean, so people this week as senators come back will certainly rally behind him, but it's largely based on sort of how he does. I mean, he, they, you
might be inclined to, his staff might be inclined to change his schedule and not have him out in the public eye very much, but that certainly wouldn't be good. Raises questions. Yeah. So he kind of has a routine. He gives a speech on the Senate floor, and then he walks back to his office. We've all walked those halls a lot, but I certainly have with him. And it is probably about a
a 30 second walk, maybe a 45 second walk. He's not in the public eye very much, but when he is all eyes will be on him. So look, I think that some of this also stems from his, um, affliction with polio as a child. He's, uh,
Long had sort of a shuffling as he walks, and it's likely connected to his concussion from earlier this year. And it leads into voters were talking about that over the weekend, actually, just the age of candidates. That's now in the public consciences with Biden, with McConnell, with Pelosi, with Feinstein.
So this is a challenge for McConnell personally, no doubt. The video is hard to watch. It is. To your point- I feel for him and I hope that he's getting the treatment that he needs and that he recovers.
Because if you don't treat those kind of things, they can fester. Well, one thing, too, I mean, the transparency we do get off of these episodes is how quickly we get news that McConnell talked to everybody that's thinking of replacing him in leadership and that everybody tweets out or puts out a supportive statement that they think McConnell is healthy.
And we just talked to him on the phone. He sounded great. I mean, the speed at which they get that stuff out there is impressive. Clearly, they're not wasting tons of time in the doctor's office. They're going straight to the telephone lines.
You know, one last thing on this. You know, Biden made a very, he called McConnell and he gave a very supportive statement about McConnell, who's been his friend for a long time. He also did that thing at the top when DeSantis decided he wouldn't meet him in Florida at the site of the disasters. Dumb.
Yeah, I think it was. I think that wasn't helpful to DeSantis because it looks so overtly political, which is something that I think has plagued him throughout. But it also helps Biden when he looks bigger. And I think on both calling McConnell and expressing himself as he did on DeSantis, that is helpful to him. Let's take a short break and hear from our sponsors. Listener Mail.
Thanks, Mike Murphy, for recording that. He has such a lovely voice. Anyway. It's higher than you think, but it's nice. Yeah, exactly. Well, he's got, as you know, he's got a lot of range.
If you have letters for the hacks, just send them to hacksontap at gmail.com and we will do our best to answer them. So Jeff Zelle, Michael asks, would a Biden versus Trump choice in 2024 cause voter turnout to be lower than normal? I assume the most loyal supporters will try to get their candidate elected, but would there be disinterest with two undesirable choices?
Look, that is something you hear a lot from some worried Democrats who think that the enthusiasm just may not be there for President Biden, which also leads to the sort of adjacent question of a third party. Yes, third and fourth. Exactly, with the no labels or the- Green party. Or the idea of the green party. So look, I think that low interest-
would certainly be a challenge for both sides, but for the Biden campaign first and foremost, because his supporters may not be as rabid, if you will. But that's the challenge and burden of the campaign to make this a referendum and to once again, if this is a rematch, remind people of the difference. But when you ask voters about the idea of a Trump-Biden rematch,
It's hard to get the sound of an eye roll on television, but if you could, I mean, that is person after person after person. I interviewed a husband and wife in Salem, New Hampshire on Labor Day, and she's like, oh, no. And the husband liked the idea, but he said, yeah, Trump would win that. But more people are in the oh, no camp, I think. So yeah, enthusiasm would be a big challenge, no doubt. But Gibbs, I think there's such a thing as negative enthusiasm.
And both parties, I mean, I think there's a widely held view among Democrats that Trump
Trump 2.0 would be the sort of Delta variant of democracy and that the second Trump term would be a kind of reaping of vengeance. And he's done nothing to disabuse anybody of that. And because of what Jeff talked about earlier, what people hear, their news sources, there's
ferocious opposition to him among Republicans who believe, you know, another Biden term would be a disaster, perhaps would yield, you know, a president Kamala Harris, who they equally detest. I mean, it could go the other way. Yeah. And look, I think, you know, we're going to have lots of conversation in the next few months about, you know, what does this mean? Does this mean the rise of third parties and all this sort of stuff? I mean, I think to me in the end, and you see this in focus groups,
certainly on the Democratic side, the concerns they have for Biden around age get wiped away when you throw up that Trump is running against him or would be running against him. As a Democrat, you begin to forget certain things because you're focused on the bigger picture. You know, I think when you think through third parties and whatnot, I think in the end, people are going to stay around for this vote. They're going to put aside and deal with a lot of the pluses and minuses of each of their candidate
But they're going to want to participate in it because nobody running in the third party or fourth party or fifth party or sixth party is going to endanger to accumulate anything close to what is necessary to win a state, let alone be elected. No, they could tip the race, though. They certainly could tip the race. And I think but I think most people are going to be keen on that. I think most people are going to understand, hey, if I vote for Kanye West or Cornel West, that I'm just literally throwing my vote into something that, quite frankly, takes it well out of my control.
Andrew Robert says, could you comment on some of the possible causes for Georgia's state GOP being able to buck the MAGA trend, so to speak, specifically with the reelection of both Kemp and Raffensperger 2022 and their continuing ability to push back against some of the 2022 election lies and conspiracies? What makes Georgia different? You're a Southerner. Well, what makes Georgia different, I mean, is just particularly is the way Kemp and Raffensperger have approached this. I mean, one, they've been
First of all, one's the governor, obviously one's the secretary of state. They conducted the election and they've been pretty clear and pretty upfront from the get-go that the election was fair, that it wasn't stolen, that it wasn't rigged. And so they've been upfront about it and they've talked about it. I think secondly, both those two had to run for reelection.
They continued to sort of campaign on pretty tried and true conservative principles and just didn't get into a lot of frontal back and forth with Donald Trump, even though Donald Trump was trying to get into it. So they didn't antagonize voters. And I think, look, that's in some ways a similar dynamic to the way some of these candidates are trying to figure out how to approach Trump, you know.
Lots of people are probably yelling at their TV, just attack Trump, just go at him, just do the Chris Christie. And in reality, if you look at Christie or Pence, as we talked about, they're negatives. That's why they're so hot, right? That's not how you're going to sort of beat Trump. And I think in some ways, Democrats should be thankful that Kemp isn't in this race. Now, obviously, that dynamic would be very different. But the way that he's approached this, and I think they've been very focused on Trump
making sure particularly
since they each ran for re-election, they've seen, Georgia's been a great little laboratory, right? When they get very focused on the fact that the elections were stolen, every one of those candidates has lost and lost convincingly, right? Two Republican senators that got thrown out in the 2020 special election, Herschel Walker, who did poorly. Brian Kemp wins that race, and so does Raffensperger, because they're focused on
uh, not calling out making this thing up like it was rigged. Yeah. Zeleny. I think that it's fair to say that those guys were in a different position than the candidates who were actually running against Trump. Very. Oh, for sure. But one thing is the same though. I mean, they, uh, I think George is a little bit ahead of the country and the exhaustion factor of all the 2020 election lies. Cause it's been literally a local story for three years. And, uh,
I remember being down there during the presidential, not as much because Biden hadn't won it yet, but during the Senate race last year, certainly. And you would talk to Republican voters and they just sort of...
Never mind if they bought the election fraud or not. They just didn't want to talk about it. They wanted to move on. And I think that was led by Governor Kemp and Raffensperger. It was their election. And they said, no, there was no fraud in it. But look, totally different than Trump's Republican rivals for president, no doubt about it. And we should point out that Kemp is also a former Secretary of State. And I do think that there was this sense of, hey, we did this right.
And we're going to defend our state and defend the process. And probably there are Georgians who appreciated them doing that. Gibbs, you have one for me? Axe.
Eric asks, what causes the waxes and wanes of state political parties' competence? Florida is the obvious example of just ranking competence. But now there are questions about Pennsylvania. Isn't there a basic playbook on how to competently run a state political party? Why hasn't Stacey Abrams' organizational techniques synthesized and replicated to other states? What say you?
What's difficult is when you don't have—I mean, generally, the governor of the state is going to have a lot to say about who the state party chair is, and that state party chair is going to—
is going to have the muscle of the governor's office and political direction from the governor's office behind them in states where that doesn't happen. Oftentimes, the state parties wither, you know, and you have states like Michigan where the state party has just been overtaken by the most right-wing elements there to the benefit of the state's governor, who's a Democrat, Gretchen Sessions,
The interesting example, counterexample, is Wisconsin, where a very, very competent state party chair was appointed, helped elect a governor, helped elect—
senators win referendums. I don't know whether he was actually state party chair, come to think of it, when Evers, do you remember, Jeff, when Evers was elected? Not the first time, I don't believe so. Ben, what do you mean? Yeah, so that maybe supports my view that generally you get strong state parties when you have a governor and
And you get less strong state parties when you don't have a governor. But I and I'll let you guys I would let you guys opine on that. But we have one more bit of business before we go. And I'd feel terrible if we didn't get to it. Play the Bill Richardson clip. We're going to ask about the American who's being detained. Humanitarian private business.
So that was Ambassador and Governor Bill Richardson who passed away this weekend in his sleep at the age of 75. Robert, you and I remember Bill Richardson as a worthy opponent and then an ally in the presidential race in 2008. But guys, he was a larger-than-life personality who just loved –
politics and was joyful in politics. And he's a reminder of what Mark Leibovitch wrote a great piece in The Atlantic this weekend, that was not just an ode to
Bill Richardson, but to the day when politics was more fun than the grinding affair that we see today. And of course, Zeleny, he did heroic work after he left office in saving lives of hostages around the world in very hostile places.
In very hostile places. And one was a former colleague at the Chicago Tribune, Paul Salopek, was captured in Sudan. And I remember actually being on a trip with then-Senator Obama, and this news was happening. And so Governor Richardson at the time was instrumental in freeing so many
American hostages and captors. But the memory I have him and the image right when I saw the sad news that he passed was back in Iowa. When his campaign events, he knew he was unlikely to win the nomination, but boy, that didn't stop him from having fun doing it. And he was at an Iowa Cubs baseball game campaigning. He was out on the field and surrounded by press, which of course he loved. He loved the camera and he loved that exchange. And he was such a joyful candidate.
There was not as much joy from the Clinton side of things when he endorsed your candidate, Senator Obama. It infuriated them, but he did it. So he was a principled leader and just an American legend in policy as well as politics. Everyone should go read Lebo's piece if they can in the Atlantic. I think in there is that great line that I think he told many probably that
He didn't mind being called a professional politician because he certainly didn't want to be called an amateur politician. And, you know, I don't want to minimize any of the things that you all have talked about in terms of just what he was able to accomplish well outside of any official office in getting people out of bad places. But you're just struck by his sheer love of the game and just how much fun he
He always had doing it. So rest in peace, Bill Richardson. Well, wherever he is, he's undoubtedly already organizing. And may his memory be a blessing. And you guys have been a blessing. It's been great chatting. Zeleny will be checking back with you, doing that thing that fat asses like us are not, which is trudging around New Hampshire on Labor Day weekend. So we can bloviate better when we have someone who's actually on the ground
doing stuff. We love fresh anecdotes mixed in with the bloviating. It helps the TV side of me too. No, it's great. I mean, people, these voters are a key part of the process here. And voters, we learn a lot from voters. They're on the leading edge of these things. So it's the best part about covering a campaign without a doubt, talking to voters. I believe in that so deeply. I mean, we spend a lot of time talking about polls. We did it here
But people are beautifully, wonderfully counterintuitive sometimes. And the only way you find out is to get out there. So we're glad you are. All right, fellas. We'll see you next time. Travel safe, Jeff. All right. Thanks, guys. Safe travels, Jeff. Bye, guys. Bye. Bye.