Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - Delta Politics - with Mike Murphy

Episode Date: August 28, 2021

The Pandemic has either caused a crack-up in our politics or accelerated the crack-up that was well under way. And just when it looked like things were stabilizing, the politics of Covid have evolved along with the Delta variant. Ground zero for how this is playing out right now is California. California is home to approximately 40 million people and the 5th largest economy in the world. It’s about to have an election on whether to re-call its incumbent governor, Gavin Newsom. How California voters have experienced government regulations — from lockdowns, mask mandates, school closings, and not to mention double-standards — shapes the political environment there. Is this a harbinger of what’s to come to our national politics? To help us understand what’s going on in California is the strategist who masterminded the last successful recall election. Mike Murphy was the chief strategist for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s election in 2003, which was a re-call of then-Governor Gray Davis. Mike’s campaign resumé goes well beyond California. His past clients include the successful gubernatorial campaigns of Mitt Romney in MA, Jeb Bush in FL, John Engler in Michigan and Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin. And that doesn’t include all the Senate races he’s worked on. Mike has also worked on campaigns in Europe and Canada. And he was the chief strategist on John McCain’s maverick presidential primary campaign in 2000 and remained a close advisor to the late-Senator McCain for years. Today, you can catch Mike on the top-rated podcast, “Hacks on Tap” with David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs. He’s a political analyst on MSNBC and NBC, and he co-authors a weekly newsletter with his latest political analysis: hacksontap.bulletin.com. At the University of Southern California, he is the Co-Director of the USC Center for the Political Future. This episode covers a lot of pandemic-related political trend analysis. But first, given the tragic news out of Afghanistan this past week, the episode begins with Mike’s thoughts on President Biden and this crisis. Regardless of what one thinks of President Biden’s policy in Afghanistan, a lot will depend on how our president performs in reassuring the American public and our allies abroad. This episode begins with a discussion on President Biden and Afghanistan and then the second half looks at political trends during the Delta phase of covid.

The mentality of the voters here was, we're an outdoor state. We're not New York where you're boxed up in an apartment or a crowded movie theater infecting everybody. We have a house with a backyard and a pool. That's what kept us from becoming serial killers during COVID. But all that California lifestyle stuff

was kind of shut down. Because, you know, government bureaucracies always react the same way. They move late, and when they move, they spring and they do overkill. Then they started to loosen. But when COVID came back, I think people were just like, oh, not again. Welcome to Post-Corona, where we try to understand COVID-19's lasting impact on the economy, culture and geopolitics. I'm Dan Senor.

The pandemic has either caused a crack up in our politics, or at least it's exacerbated a crack up that was well underway. And just when it looked like things were stabilizing, the politics of COVID have evolved, along with the Delta variant. Ground zero for how the politics of Delta is playing out right now is California. This state is home to some 40 million people, the fifth largest economy in the world, with over 20 million registered voters. It's about to have an election on whether to recall its incumbent governor, Gavin Newsom. How California voters have experienced the pandemic and the policies of the state from lockdowns and mask mandates, school closings, and not to mention double standard from elected officials, undergird the political environment in California. Is this a signal of what's to come to our national politics?

Well, there's nobody better to help us understand what's going on there than the guy who masterminded the last successful recall election in California. Mike Murphy was the chief strategist for Arnold Schwarzenegger's surprise election to governor in 2003, which was a recall election of then Governor Gray Davis. Mike's campaign resume goes well beyond California. His past clients include the successful gubernatorial campaigns of Mitt Romney in Massachusetts, Jeb Bush in Florida, John Engler and Tommy Thompson in the Midwest, and too many others to list. And that doesn't include all the Senate races he's worked on, including Spence Abraham's first race in 1994, where I first worked with him and got to know him. Mike's also worked on campaigns in Europe

and Canada, and he was the chief strategist for John McCain's maverick presidential primary campaign in 2000. He remained a close advisor to the late Senator McCain for years. Today, you can catch Mike on the top-rated podcast, Hacks on Tap, which he co-hosts with David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs. I highly recommend giving it a listen. I'm a subscriber. Mike's also a political analyst on MSNBC and NBC, and he co-authors a weekly newsletter with his latest political analysis. You can subscribe to that too. It's hacksontap.bulletin.com. We have a lot of political trends to discuss with Mike today, but before we do, given the grim news out of Afghanistan this past week, I did want to start by getting Mike's thoughts.

After all, he's advised a lot of leaders in crisis. And regardless of what one thinks of President Biden's policy in Afghanistan, personally, I'm highly skeptical it will work. If the president's going to succeed, a lot will depend on how he as president performs. Is he large and in charge? Will he reassure the American public? Will he reassure our allies abroad? And what message will he send to those who seek to do us harm? These are questions I had for Mike. So we'll start with President Biden and Afghanistan, and then we'll discuss broader political trends during the Delta phase of COVID, which he's seeing firsthand in California and may be coming our way nationally. This is Post-Corona.

And I am pleased to welcome my old pal, not old, long time pal. Literally old, long time and old. Jurassic. Mike Murphy. To the podcast, I actually think I met Mike for the first time in 1994 while we were both working. I was just a junior entry level nobody. But Mike was running the Spence Abraham for Senate campaign in Michigan, which is an iconic campaign in American political history. And we've been friends ever since. We have. I remember you back then. You weren't a nobody. You were the guy we'd pin blame on for any problem. But you were great. And we've been, as you say, friends ever since. Exactly. So, Mike, we brought you on to talk about California and the recall effort and what it tells us about, you know,

where politics is heading during the pandemic as a result of the pandemic. But before we do that, I would be remiss if I did not spend a few minutes with you talking about events over the last couple weeks in Afghanistan. You've talked about them on your podcast on Hacks on Tap. Without getting bogged down into the policy issues, I just want to take a step back because you've advised a number of leaders who have dealt with national security crises or have dealt with managing crises at the state level, and you're obviously a keen observer of how presidents perform generally and specifically in crisis. You know, Biden, President Biden right now, we had a very grim day this week with, you know, 13 Americans dead, you know, countless scores of Afghans killed. And we obviously are all hoping and praying that there won't be more of this.

While I'm personally skeptical of the administration's policy right now and their approach to Afghanistan, I'm certainly rooting for them to succeed in getting Americans out safely and getting our troops out safely and getting Afghans who worked and risked their lives, worked with America out safely and getting our allies, the Brits and others out, without any more harm and chaos and violence. But it seems like a part of this depends on the president's ability to convey and communicate to the American public, to our allies around the world, even to adversaries. How would you evaluate how President Biden has been doing over these last few days? You know, it's been really rough politically.

You know, we don't want to get bogged down in policy, but they basically accepted the Trump slow motion surrender. And then they thought, okay, actually Biden, to his credit, has always consistently been for withdrawal from Afghanistan. And we can argue if that's right or wrong, but he ran on it and he won. So I think he had a mandate to do that. And the polling says the public supports him. So the political side, that looks like the easy part. The problem is there's nobody standing up and saying, no, you're wrong. We need 10 divisions in there. So he's trying to focus his political communication on the debate that's already won. And what's relevant is what people are seeing on television, which is what's happening right now on his watch, which is the bungling of the withdrawal. Now, that said, a lot of Republican voices who, you know, have been in the cheap applause business now for a long time are doing their worst to their shame on the bombings yesterday because ISIS suicide bombers are not something the president of the United States can control.

So even if, you know, Field Marshal McCarthy had been in charge of withdrawal with his brilliant strategic insights, this still could have happened. So I think there's some cheap shots going on. But fundamentally, Biden has a problem because he owns a very messy thing. And he's in the worst situation for a leader, which is he's not really in control the next four days. ISIS-K or whatever their name is, the Afghani affiliate, they can start lobbing mortar rounds in. There are lots of things. I mean, look up the history of Deng Bien Phu. Nothing's worse than holding one airstrip when you're surrounded. And Biden inherited that situation. I don't think he prepared for it. I think the plus of a troop should have been earlier and they could have held Kabul longer. And I think

the Taliban does want a deal because they know they've won. You know, they can be gracious in victory, so to speak. So politically, yeah, it's bad, but your question is the right one. Two years from now, or actually a year when the midterm elections roll around, will this be a big fulcrum issue? And I don't think it'll be as big as the meat and potatoes economic issues will be, but there's two aftermaths. One is it's changed the narrative on Biden from super competent, sharp guy who's also full of empathy and not crazy like Trump. Now he's a guy who bungled Afghanistan in a very Trumpian way, unprepared, unprofessional. And then in the communications, he's been stubborn. Whenever you're in the second thing, by the way, I should answer that before I dig in on the first.

The second problem is the future. You know, Afghanistan may make a lot more bad news going forward. The economy is collapsing at the speed of light there, which means there's going to be a lot of domestic strife. It's a civil war that's been going on for 40 years, and the Taliban is not going to end it, at least immediately. There are a lot of factions, and who knows who really runs the Taliban? There are guys sitting in the Four Seasons, you know, making jokes about Ohio State and ordering the meatballs that our negotiators talk to. And to their credit so far, you know, because it's in their interest, they seem to be kind of helping. But they've got their own internal politics, and God knows where that will go.

So Afghanistan, Biden now owns it, which is terrible because he doesn't control it. And owning something you don't control is always the worst situation to be in politically. He'll be advised to change the subject, which is generally the best advice. But part of changing the subject ought to be to a new policy in the region to take the initiative back. He's got to rebuild his relationship with the Europeans who feel totally screwed, which they're shocked by because they thought that was over with Trump. So all these narrative problems are going to haunt him. And then finally, the tactical point I think they've blown in the communication at the White House is the only way to change the channel on something like this and move on

is to take responsibility. And Biden has been very stubborn. His tone has been stubborn. He's been very reluctant. He's basically said, hey, hard rocks, wars are tough. And I did the right thing by pulling out. The second point, he can win. But until he says, look, the situation right now, massive mistakes. I own it. We're going to work our way out. And a week ago, I would have beheaded somebody on the national security team publicly to let the energy out so they can move on. That was a mistake not doing that. At President Biden's press conference yesterday,

he kept saying that the Taliban was our partner and he doesn't necessarily trust them and he doesn't have to trust them because he just has to assess their interests and it's in the Taliban's interest to work with us. Now, I spoke to Ryan Crocker, who said, you know, who was ambassador to Afghanistan under Obama, and he was in Lebanon during the, he was at the embassy in Beirut during the bombings there. I worked with him in Iraq. He's seen a lot. And Ryan says, we may say that the Taliban, we may assess that it's in the Taliban's interest to work with us, but that doesn't mean they have a handle on things. It doesn't mean that Afghanistan is now becoming this like petri dish for foreign fighting groups that the Taliban may not be able to protect against. They haven't been in Kabul, as one former Marine said to me.

The Taliban hasn't been in Kabul in 20 years. We're now depending on them just because it's in their interest. We're depending on their capabilities? Yeah, I think the, I mean, theoretically what Biden said is right, but you can't look at the Taliban like a nation state. You know, it's the toughest armed gang in town and it's the dominant Pashtun outfit and the Pashtun are the dominant minority group. But the idea they have a firm grip down to the precinct level, so to speak, you know, is a big open question. So it's, you know, and this is a problem of all politics. It's about incentives. For the Taliban leadership, behaving, getting us out, and getting aid money to prop up the evaporating economy is desperately important.

So they're all going to Dale Carnegie. But that doesn't mean sub-warlord Eleven, who's part of a faction that doesn't like the leadership, that his incentives may be to prove what a badass he is by going and burning down a girls' school. You know, because their politics are about the super fundamentalist and the guys who did the suicide bombing, or at least claim credit for it, you know, versus the kind of current leadership world. So, yeah, it's in their interest, but who is they? Are they unified or not, or will that be part of the 40-year civil war as they fight that out now going forward? And the only thing I know pretty much for sure or I'm confident in is that the domestic situation in Afghanistan is going to get worse in the next 100 days, not better, for economic reasons if nothing else.

And that always causes more strife. And you've got a tribal society without a big national identity with, you know, everybody has a gun and they've been living in violence for 40 years. So I just don't see the Rose Revolution here. And again, Biden's problem is he controls almost none of that. Yet, at least in the media narrative, he's going to be held accountable. So he owns something that's unownable. And it's a real tough situation for him. So in terms of, to your earlier point about shaking things up on his team, in 1979, when Carter gave his, you know, his famous malaise speech, and that was obviously, you know, the Iranian revolutionary had overthrown an American ally and triggered the second oil

shock of the decade. There was the Three Mile Island meltdown. And then obviously inflation was skyrocketing to double digits. He gives the malaise speech in July. And then they did this cabinet shakeup. They fired five cabinet members, five out of 12, they thought would be a sign of, you know, a show of strength. After Mogadishu in 93, Blackhawk down, Les Aspin, who was defense secretary at the time, stepped down. Do you expect there to be some kind of shakeup? Or is all of that constrained by the president's sort of lackluster willingness to take responsibility? I don't think he will fire anybody because Biden is a loyalist. And firing somebody is just a messaging device to try to move something forward. I think it's in Biden's interest to, one, take more responsibility himself. He's been late at that. It's almost beyond the point where it would work. And that was the biggest mistake. But two,

some new faces to reconstruct the team, not for the sake of reconstructing it, but to message a new start in the region, to admit we'd have problems. I mean, I said this on Hacks on Tap. What I would do if I were Biden is do a 9-11 commission, a fast-moving one, bipartisan, keep the political hacks off it, and rip the Band-Aid Israeli style off the entire failure, all the way back. Obama will look bad. Bush will look pretty good because he wiped out the Taliban and handed it off, but he'll look bad. Trump will look bad. So now Biden is surrounded by other people's failures as well as his own. And we have a pretty adult conversation about what went wrong here, which I think would be good for the entire apparatus. And it would give Biden some political

cover. In the short term, I would fire somebody big and I would do a little bipartisan foreign policy. And as part of my Biden argument for normalcy, I'd say we big and I would do a little bipartisan foreign policy. And as part of my Biden argument for normalcy, I'd say we got to get out of the world of partisan foreign policy because we've got a real regional crisis. The Russians and Chinese are moving in, our rivals. And so we're taking a new look. We're going to be extremely transparent with the failures and we're going to rebuild it. And here is a credentialed old school Republican. You know, he needs Jim Baker minus 15 years to be part of the team. I think that would reset him pretty well, but I don't think he's going to do that. And I think, you know, the other problem he's got, this thing is so loaded against him now. The Republicans

are probably going to win the midterm elections in the House for historical reasons, redistricting, and just, you know, the reality there are a lot more vulnerable Democrats up than Republicans. So the press will write Afghanistan helps cause Biden massive political defeat, even if it doesn't. You know, that's going to be the analysis, which is often wrong. So this thing kind of has a life of its own. So Biden needs to make some big moves to kind of reset it going forward, assuming he can get through the next four days, because a lot more terrible stuff can happen. And even our amazing, you got to take the hats off to what they've done there with the vast numbers they've been able to airlift us. It's extraordinary. Over 100,000 people in a matter of –

Yeah, it is stunning. Only the United States of America could do this. I mean it's really – you look at the history of airlifts, whether it was India tried to – it got something like 90,000 or 100,000 Indian nationals out of Kuwait right before the first Gulf War. Obviously Israel has done a number of these sorts of airlifts. There are plenty to compare to in history. This is right up there. Oh, no, it is. And we've invested a lot. It's funny. I was a consultant in the Pentagon 10 years ago, and the admirals would always talk, well, the Air Force would always talk about how

easy it is to sink an aircraft carrier. Why do we have aircraft carriers? Because when you build an aircraft carrier, the pilots in the Navy have something to do, and you need 10 ships to protect it so you get 10 more captains. Now, the Navy guys always say, you know what the Air Force is really good at? Whenever we need a soft service ice cream machine delivered across the world in three hours, boy, they can do it. Cargo. But the truth is, the Air Force is great at that. And this has been incredible. But now a lot of that capacity has got to move over to pulling our people out. So the civilian situation is going to get tougher fast, and that will be more bad optics and more short-term bad trouble. So anyway, it's a political mess for Biden. I think if they think they can just throw a switch and move over to the Recovery Act and $2 trillion to $3.5 trillion in new spending, they're making a mistake.

They've got to let the energy out of this with a change up and regain the initiative. And just forget politics and diplomacy. They got to go get back in business with the Europeans, which they had started to do. And now they're now they're in the hole again there. So heavy lift, not going away, going to be part of their lives for the rest of his term. One last question on that. When you say not the rest of his term, or you say it will be with him for the rest of his term. Again, when you speak to the Biden people, they have this view that, you know, some bad news cycles how the press, the national press, which had given Biden this sort of seven month plus incredible honeymoon, he could do no wrong. And it feels like overnight they have turned on the administration. Right. Yeah. And which is the nature of that beast. You know, Obama got a little easier because there's also an identity politics component to that, which the media is bonkers for.

But, yeah, no, no, now they've turned. So it's up to Biden to give him some new chew toys. And I think, you know, Pelosi fighting on details of a massive, in my view, ridiculously large spending bill is not enough. He's got to go recapture foreign policy because he's always been the foreign policy guy. So it's not like, you know, Babe Ruth can strike out for five days in a row and no longer be able to find the ball field and say, well, I'm taking up hockey now. No, you know, everybody's going to be talking about what the hell happened to Babe Ruth. So he's got to go hit some foreign policy home runs. He'll be able to do the European thing. And we'll see about engaging with China. But he's going to need a regional strategy there. There's a lot of work to do. And building a little bipartisan team of stability around him as part of the restart would be very good political optics.

You know, in 75, after the fall of Saigon, we didn't really learn for several years how bad things were in Vietnam, really, until like the boat people came and we start hearing all these horror stories. But we're going to, what's going to be the surround sound now for the next who knows how long, maybe the whole term, as you're, as you said, is just every Afghan has a smartphone and is like beaming up images of chaos to TikTok and, you know, Instagram and wherever else. And so we're going to be flooded even after we're gone. And even after these successful evacuations, we we I'm not sure we'll be able to tune out the horror of what may be unleashed on the ground in Afghanistan. Yeah, I think so. Now, the Taliban, if they can get a

grip of things, are going to take over the cell phone servers and get deep into that business and try to cap it off. Not easy to do, but they're not known for their soft methods. So we're, you know, we're going to watch that. But my guess is there will be, they will eventually, if the domestic stuff gets worse, they don't get bailed out with aid, their domestic politics embroil them, they will go brutal, and part of brutal is to try to emulate a North Korea model where modern Western secular cell phones are part of the problem. Those networks are not that hard to take down if you've got a lot of guys with guns near the government.

Okay. Let's move from chaos to I don't even know what to describe what's happening in your state of California, maybe circus. The future. Yes. That's the problem. Everything good or bad happens first here. Exactly. Can you just explain how COVID policy in California is impacting the politics? First of all, what is COVID policy in California generally? And then what is it doing to the politics?

Well, originally, again, it's very locally driven. And, you know, it was masks and shutdowns that's where the anger was um the shutdowns really retail businesses yeah yeah you know restaurants i have friends in la who weren't allowed to go to parks weren't allowed to take their kids to the park or to the beach no it was it was very la county again you know there's fights within la county between some municipalities and others but it was the shutdown stuff. Part of the thing, too, the mentality of the voters here was we're an outdoor state. We're not New York where you're boxed up in an apartment or crowded movie theater infecting everybody. We're out on the beaches or we're outside all year round.

I mean, you know, we have a house with a backyard and a pool. That's what kept us from becoming serial killers during COVID. But all that California lifestyle stuff was kind of shut down because, you know, government bureaucracies always react the same way. They move late, and when they move, they spring and they do overkill. And so the first thing was lock the virus down by masking everybody up. Then they started to loosen. But when COVID came back, I think people were just like, oh, not again. And Gavin had this

particularly symbolic screw-up because he got pretty good reviews at the beginning for moving fast. They moved fast in Northern California, and they kind of got ahead of it there. But then he got caught in the ultra-expensive elite restaurant, you know, pasta chablis. The French laundry in the Bay Area. French laundry, exactly. One of your hangouts, Dan. You're well known there. So not only was he past the $900 bottle of wine, well, everybody else couldn't. And not only they couldn't, in the L.A. County and other urban communities here, there are a million small restaurants and small stores which were all shut down. So everybody had a brother-in-law who was going broke with a business they sweated for 20 years to build.

And so, meanwhile, he's clinking champagne with billionaire tech buddies up there. Then it turns out his kids were at the private school while the other schools were shut down. You know, there's some economic studies that really, really hang a lantern on this. The economic shutdown in COVID, and part of the reason now while all employers are saying, I can't get anybody to come work, is linked to the school shutdown. Because when schools are down, people are home. They'd rather take the Biden check than go work because who's going to watch the kids? And so, you know, well, Gavin didn't have those problems, but I did.

And they're ruining my life and my economic life because I'm not working or my small business because I can't hire anybody. Real rage. And Gavin's always had this kind of smiling, nice, golden retriever, likable, lightweight kind of image. And so the fact that he's leading the charmed life, I mean, I had one well-known California Democrat call me up, more moderate, and say, you know, I'm so tempted to run against him because he's seeing the COVID crisis in a tech guy's jet at 30,000 feet. And I'm seeing it in the bodegas right here in my county. And there was a hell of a campaign there with a good street politician. And all these guys decided not to run because they didn't want to get

vilified by the party. But they're all wishing they were on the backup ballot now to give, you know, because the slogan would have been, we got to get, we got to change governors, but we got to change to a Democrat, a better Democrat, you know, and, oh, there are two of them that I know who are both like, well, I should have taken the risk. So as I mentioned in the intro, Mike, you were, you ran the, I think it was the last successful recall election campaign in California, right? Schwarzenegger's campaign. Yeah, there aren't a lot of them. In 2003, Gray Davis was the governor. He had a lot of problems.

Dennis Miller, the comedian, used to joke we're paying minibar prices for electricity. There were blackouts. There was a very unpopular tax on cars. So he got in trouble. There was a recall petition, and he wound up being recalled, which wasn't all apparent at the beginning of it. But the end was the election of my old client, Arnold Schwarzenegger. So before we get into what's happening now, just tell us how you wound up in it,

because the whole thing happened so quickly. Yeah, it was like a 50-day sprint. I got a knock at my door at night in D.C. and it was somebody, I'll keep the names out of now, from former Mayor Dick Reardon, who had been the Republican mayor of L.A. The modern MAGA crowd would call him a super rhino, but he was a very successful governor of Los Angeles. He'd been a mayor, successful mayor of Los Angeles. In the what, in the 90s? Yeah, yeah. And he'd been out of office for a while. He was popular in the L.A. media market in particular.

So he was looking at running. One thing leads to another. Two days later or a day later, I'm walking on the beach in Malibu and talking to him. I'm looking like Nixon in my East Coast stuff right off the plane. We pass a big party at Jeffrey Katzenberg's house, which was hilarious. It was a very LA thing. It needed a soundtrack. So we very quietly start setting up a campaign. Meanwhile, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who I didn't know was thinking of running, and had had some consultants and everything, he had run a successful initiative. So we'd been planning a political career for a long time. So we do some polling, and literally I'm supposed to meet with Reardon

and give him the data the next morning at breakfast, and he tells and literally I'm supposed to meet with Reardon and give him the data the next morning at breakfast. And he tells me I'm not running. I'm going to support Arnold, who had announced the night before on the Tonight Show. I got an early tip off because a friend of mine was on the staff and had played me a cell phone tape of it as it happened because the big question was what he announced. So an hour later, I'm in Arnold's office, which is hilarious because he has all the movie props there. And Arnold knows the old KGB trick of not talking a lot because, you know, he's so famous, you're kind of intimidated. And I gave him a few tips. The place was complete pandemonium. It kind of had an advanced man vibe around the campaign. A lot of people trying to figure out what color name tags and code names

to have. And this thing was swirling around Arnold. And one of the local consultants who was terrified that I was in the building because, you know, oh, no, wolf in the hen house. This is going to be the big thing. Came rushing in talking about the Today Show at 3 in the morning. Was ready for him tomorrow. It was so exciting to be on the Today Show. And then rushed out, chased out by Dick Reardon, who wanted to endorse Arnold

but didn't think much of the staff. And Arnold looked at me, Today Show, and I go, well, I don't know why you want to get up at three in the morning and take trick questions. You're already famous. Do you have any answers? And then there's this long silence. And then the other guy ran in the room again and said, Mike, Mike, we want you to feel welcome here. You ought to handle the radio. And at that point, I said, you know, I've got this campaign in Eastern Europe, and I've got a flight to catch. Good luck. And I left.

And then I got a call from Maria Shriver seven days later in a former Soviet republic asking me how soon I can be in California. And they did the Today Show, and it was a small disaster. So anyway, I had a great fun working with Arnold and a bunch of good folks, many of whom are already there. I don't want to trash the whole staff by any means. They were good. You know, we did it together.

It was fun. And so, yeah, I've been to the recall world. Remember, two elections. That's what people don't always understand. One, you've got to vote yes or no on keeping the existing officeholder. Then you've got to pick somebody from a big jungle primary regardless of party. So just because on the ballot, just because this is, this is a, this is a quirk that's pretty unique to California, right? California election law. So you, you, when a recall is organized,

you, you get two questions on the ballot. The first question is, do you want to recall the, the incumbent governor or not? And if you vote no, then that's the end of it. And you submit your ballot. If you vote yes, then you's the end of it and you submit your ballot. If you vote yes, then it goes to a second question where all the other alternatives, candidates, are listed with the exception of the incumbent, right? Right, and there's no runoff. So, you know, you...

You can win with 14% of the vote. Yeah, theoretically, though, there's always 100 people that are porn stars and Arianna Huffington, you know. Right, Gary Coleman. You guys had to run against Gary Coleman. Yeah, yeah, no, no, believe me. The whole world was there.uffington, you know. Right. Gary Coleman. You guys had to run against Gary Coleman. Yeah. Yeah. No, no. Believe me, the whole world was there. Guys in aluminum foil suits. Right. But there were a couple. There was Tom McClintock, the conservative Republican congressman was there. Cruz Bustamante, the lieutenant governor. There was Arnold. You know, there were there were a couple of legitimate candidates.

OK, so I want to I want to talk about the mechanics of how all this works in a moment. But first, just in terms of setting the stage of this is happening in the context of a very hot, polarized political environment around COVID, right? And sort of, it's like just like the Delta variant, the politicalization of COVID has also evolved. Yeah, no, no, I agree with the thesis, but the California thing is a little different. So when the first COVID go around, there was a lot of frustration with Governor Newsom. And some of it was the partisan stuff, which is,

I don't want to wear a mask. You know, he's shutting down my restaurant. This is ridiculous. We'll get herd immunity if everybody gets sick, all the kind of stuff that was around back then. So people went out mostly on the Republican side and started gathering petitions to do a recall. And they actually got the petitions. Not easy to do. It's a million, you know, a lot of a big state. Then people started getting vaccinated because there's a long lead time to this. You get the petitions and you go, you have to get them validated and on and on. So it takes a while. Then the COVID thing started to turn and the federal government opened up the spigots for money and people started calming down

and Gavin's numbers started coming back. And the recall at the beginning was seen as very partisan, which you never want in California because if you ever divide up California on a partisan basis, the blue side has a massive advantage. So anyway, now the recall's on the ballot, but the enthusiasm for it has dropped. The polls get better. None of the big Democrats want to run as a backup. Then Delta comes around as we get close to the September election, recall election, and Gavin's numbers start to tank again. Now, it's not just COVID, though. That's what people are missing. There's a lot going on now in California to piss people off. COVID is

the biggest. But in California, you have a housing crisis where nobody can find affordable housing, particularly working class people. You have a massive homeless crisis, particularly in Southern California, but really everywhere, where rich guys in Beverly Hills who are on their way to the Pelosi fundraiser are watching people take craps on their lawn and their $12 million houses. The sheriff of LA County is a Democrat. It's a great line that nothing converts a liberal like somebody taking a shit on their front lawn. And that's really going on. I spent a lot of time telling my seven-year-old when driving around LA about people living in tents everywhere.

What does it mean? You know, it is big. So there's frustration over that. There's frustration over wildfires there. You know, there's just a lot of stuff. There's a big scandal with unemployment benefits, billions of dollars connected to the covid relief. So, you know, fraudulently obtained. And is there just also the normal kind of cultural wedge issues, issues around immigration? There's some of that, but the immigration thing is not as big here. It's nowhere like in Arizona or in Texas. We're a majority minority state now in overall population. And the Republicans since Wilson, when it worked and the state was a lot more Caucasian, have had that around their neck for a long time. It's very

powerful in Republican primaries, but that's about it. So there's frustration with Newsom, who's kind of a likable golden retriever kind of Paul. And so the numbers have spiked. Now, it's not just here. Almost every incumbent in the country, regardless of party, had their numbers drop during Delta. Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan, Democrats in trouble. DeSantis is in significant trouble now. Abbott's numbers are starting to crack. So if you're a big state governor right now, it's not real good because you're in the big job and people are pissed about COVID and the economy. The wrong track number, which is bad for all incumbents, is rising.

People unhappy with how things are running. So the recalls had a little bit of a comeback. Then last week, some of these public polls last two weeks have been popping up, showing, you know, two points, three points, four points. And a panic has broken out because there aren't a lot of major candidates on the other side. None of them are well known, and they're all Republicans with the exception of one Democratic YouTube star, who's now in second place because he has a D after his name. The most credible candidate who I would like to see win is Kevin Falconer, who's the former mayor of San Diego and is a totally

grown-up, responsible, real Republican. And he's earned plaudits, right, for how he's dealt with the homeless problem. Yeah, he's good. He'd be a great governor. The problem is he's, like everybody in the Republican Party, afraid to take off the red hat. Now, he's been subtle about it because, you know, they're in the same meeting. You've been in these meetings. Well, we got to make the base happy. Well, I guarantee you there are other people who are going to wear a red hat and a red suit and make the base happier. And he hasn't raised a lot of money, so he's kind of stalled down at seven or eight percent. Larry Elder, the longtime Southern California talk show host, who started as kind of an interesting libertarian, but in the marketplace he's in, it got a little crazier over time.

He's the leading candidate with about 20% of the vote based on name ID. None of them really have big, muscular campaigns. But there's a fair amount of Democratic panic going on that turnout on the democratic side could be low which means talk show host larry elder could be the next governor of california so so let's stay on this i mean the numbers are extraordinary so gavin newsom won his first term a couple years ago by the biggest margin and what was 2018 right his first term was 2018 he got elected in 2018 so he won by the biggest margin i was looking 2018, right? His first term was 2018. He got elected in 2018. So he won by the biggest margin, I was looking at the numbers, in California history. Democrats

outnumber Republicans today, at least by two to one in California. And the state is home to, among independents, most independents lean Democrat. So two to one registered Democrats, independents lean Democrats. Joe Biden, you know, crushed Donald Trump in 2020 in California. So this race shouldn't be close, even with everything you're describing going on. I'm not sure it's that close. There are three big factors driving it. And people are only talking about two of them, though you kind of alluded at the third. The first factor is people are mad about Gavin. He hasn't had a particularly good campaign. He is in a low attention state, the one guy everybody knows. So if you want to get mad and punish somebody about politics, I don't care if it's a wildfire, a homeless situation in your

hometown, Afghanistan, Democratic tax plans, whatever, There he is. So he's the state punching bag. The second big factor, which is better for Gavin, that people talk about is there's no Arnold. There's no acceptable alternative that moves things forward on a nonpartisan basis. There are just a bunch of Republicans. And the Gavin guys are doing their whole thing. Everybody's Trump. So do we really want a Ron DeSantis governor, you know, of California? They're trying to partisanize it. And when you have kind of an interesting California can do better, move on, famous alternative like a Schwarzenegger, you know, that doesn't work as well.

But there is no Schwarzenegger. There are a bunch of different Republicans. So the third thing that you alluded to, but most people are missing, is just how blue the state is. Now, back when we did the Arnold race in 2003, the original recall, the party registration numbers at that time, there were about 6.6 million Democrats. There were about 5.3 million Republicans and about 2.3 million DTS, declined to state, which is how we say independence out here. Now, as of the latest report in July of this year, the Democratic number has gone from 6.6 to 10.2 million. The Republican number has gone from five, I'll do the exact number because it's hilarious. This is 2003, 5,290,000. Today, thank you, Donald Trump,

it's 5,300,000. Essentially flat, well, the Democrats have exploded in size and the DTS has doubled from 2.3 to about 5 million. So you go from a delta of about a million four more Democrats than Republicans back in 2003 to right now, you're almost 5 million more. So Gavin has to get like such low Democratic turnout and the Republicans have to get really high turnout and win all the DTS, who are split. They tend to be wealthier, fiscally more conservative, but culturally more democratic, more college educated, which is a problem for the modern Republican Party. Thank you, Trump, again. So bottom line is, Gavin really has to screw this up to lose. Now, most people think turnout is going to be on the low side. There's not a lot of interest.

The early absentee ballots coming in, which people love to overanalyze, look like we're going to have a decent but not overwhelming turnout. So I'm not seeing the big hole for Newsom. So can the recall happen? Yes. At my most, you know, dubious about Gavin, I'd say a one in three shot. But I think in my heart, I think it's a one in four shot. But, you know, dubious about Gavin, I'd say a one in three shot. But I think in my heart, I think it's a one in four shot. But, you know, the press loves a contrarian story and they love a cheap robo poll. So you see one of these two point forty eight, forty nine or forty seven, forty nine polls that some publisher bought for 100 bucks on the Internet and splashes all over TV. The political class everywhere starts to get excited or on the Democratic side,

panic. But I think he's going to inch into a reelection. So Edward Isaac Dover from The Atlantic wrote a piece about, he just interviewed Newsom, and I'm going to quote from him. He said the California polling, he was writing about like kind of the politics of vaccinations and the political behavior, the voting behavior of people who are vaccinated, which is such a bizarre kind of sub-demographic that we now have to refer to. It's like the soccer moms are over. Now it's the vaccinated voter. You know, a consultant and I, just to interrupt for a second, we had a bet which one of us could get the following phrase into the New York Times first. I told this to Joe Ebertson on a panel, and she almost stabbed me with a pen. Optino, upwardly mobile Latinos. We thought we'd make them the new soccer moms.

They had nothing to do with the election, but we thought we could sneak it into the media coverage, and of course we did. But I agree with your point that it's a scam and they always find one thing. Right, exactly, exactly. So he writes, California polling has revealed that, I'm quoting here, that pandemic politics is more complicated than recall supporters insist. Large majorities of Californians believe that the state's latest wave was preventable. But most Californians don't blame Newsom for it or Trump for that matter. They blame holdouts who have refused to get vaccinated. And polls are also showing that the vaccinated are much more likely to vote.

Yeah, no, no. Look, I believe that. What has helped Newsom after six weeks ago when Delta really surged and it was hurting him is now we're starting to have the political fault lines be on why don't we get tough with these jerks who won't get vaccinated. And Newsom is on the right side of that fight.

If I were him, I'd double down even more. I think it's a winner. But, you know, Newsom's going to get what he needs out of Northern California, and I don't think he's going to get, which is the Democratic base, and he's not going to get killed enough in Southern California. And a real alternative, like Kevin Faulkner, just has not had the money and attention in the crowded field to break through. So because John Cox is running and he's

a guy who ran before, who's kind of a regular Republican, turned himself into kind of a Trumpy guy. He's running around with a grizzly bear and a bus. You know, there's just too much noise over there. So could it happen in a perfect storm yeah but i i think it's i think it's the the the tide is backing off a little and the big blue wave here is so big bigger than it ever was in 2003 when it was still big that newsome is really going to have to screw up to lose this thing but even if he wins you know to your point deep blue state um you know is an enormous advantage it it but but the but the shakeup, the crackup, it possibly even getting close, even if he wins, tells us a lot about what could happen in some of

these swing races the year ahead. And I guess, so you alluded before to everything happens in California first, right? Like Reagan redefined, you know, modern conservative conservatism there when he was governor in the 60s obviously prop 187 pete wilson in 94 put immigration as a real wedge issue uh on the map uh before immigration was a kind of mainstream political issue in our national elections and then arnold your race in 2003 he was like the real first celebrity personality, I think, in California since Reagan. And he won a year before, as I recently read somewhere, that race was a year before the first season of The Apprentice went on the air. So it was, you know, Kevin McCarthy, I remember saying to me that Trump was going to win. And he kept referring to having a front row seat to Arnold's race in 2003. And it had all the same feel to it.

The way Trump connected with voters reminded him so much of how Arnold connected to voters. And so, first of all, I guess, why is California this place where everything happens first? Seriously, to me, it seems like such a mess of a dysfunctional state. Why does it tell us where things are going? It does. We work better than New York City. It's quite a bar. Well, that's the other big, they're like, you know, the three big, four big games are Florida.

Right. Which is doing an epic job of screwing up COVID. New York City, which is a tragic tale, maybe to be reversed now with Eric Adams, we'll see. Texas, which I don't think has a governance as impressive as its state. And California, a lot of problems, mostly by the left ideology out here. We're governed from the left without a lot of competition, which is a problem regardless of where you may be on the spectrum yourself. You know, the competition works in politics, too. California is pop culture driven.

It is a low awareness state politically. Many people are migrants here. So they don't they're not as entrenched. It is a very socially free thinking state, accepting state. You know, many people say it's the best part of the American dream. You can come here and earn your way to be who you want to be, which was very much Arnold's narrative when he ran and the state really embraced him. So and it's really big.

People have no idea how big California is. L.A. country. Yes. And, you know, economically, I think we're in the top ten. But L.A. county has over 10 million people. That's basically a Michigan, you know. Right. I mean, so there are five people. I know a couple of them. I always tease them. There are five supervisors who run L.A. County. Nobody knows who they are, but they're like the co-governors of Ohio. I mean, the power they have is tremendous. Nobody's heard of them. So big. And if you are famous, which means a celebrity thing, starting with, with Arnold, um, you get an edge up here. Uh, and so it was kind of natural. It would happen here first. You can argue going back

to George Murphy and Ronald Reagan. It's not really a new thing out here. Uh, and you know, the entertainment business here, particularly in Southern California, is not seen as some flaky, crazy thing like it might be to a voter in, you know, suburban Minnesota. Here it's part of the industry. You know, I mean, it's like cars in Detroit. Right. It's very normalized. Same with music. Right. So if you were advising Democrats running in 2022, based on what you're seeing in California specifically, and then just more generally trends nationally, what would you be advising them?

Well, I think the main thing I tell any Democrat is one, which is perennial advice, but it's always true. Be ready to win kitchen table issues, my guess is, unless the economy really tanks, if we get through COVID and the booster shots are out there, the economic growth and optimism will continue. I mean, I worry about all the deficit spending and inflation and, you know, the Fed spraying money at everything. But if that bubble continues, people are going to be happy about the economy and the Democrats ought to be able to make some hay out of it. If it stumbles, they won't. The Republicans are out there trying to lose because they're only playing primary politics about masks around American and just the stupidity that's taken over the party. So, you know, keep

the needle on them as much as you can. Make it as much as you can, a referendum, and don't screw up a good economy and things coming back by putting a pair of clown shoes on your elected officials. And even the good Republicans are too gutless to stand up. They're all caught. I mean, I do think the narrative in the Republican Party, which would affect the elections, could change. Because as you know, in politics, one big anecdotal win, and then the mindset changes. We all remember Harris Wofford in the special election for Pennsylvania. It went out of nowhere talking about health care. Now everything is about health care. Right.

Well, I'm watching the primaries. Clinton ran on it in 92 with the same guys running his campaign that ran Wofford's campaign. Right, right. And nothing in politics like a win. I mean, I still remember when Eric Cantor lost, all the debate about how Laura Ingram, with her vast army of talk radio disciples, swung the election. Well, I looked that race up. There was only one radio station that took her, and it only hit one small county there. So it was a wet street cause rain thing. What really happened in that primary, by the way, is Virginia has no party registration.

So if you're a pissed off Democrat and you have nothing to do, you go vote against Cantor. In the post-election survey, Cantor actually won the Republicans. He didn't win them big enough, but he won them. But anyway, my point being in the primaries next year, if the Anthony Gonzalez in Northern Ohio, who voted to impeach Trump and has a real primary, but if he wins, if Liz Cheney in a multi-way race can get a plurality, Fred Upton and Peter Meyer in Michigan win, Jamie Herrera Butler out in Washington State, some of these people on the Trump death list, a bunch of them go win their primaries. Then the Republican electeds are going to say, hey, wait a minute, I got a little more room to move here. I don't have to be afraid of Stalin down in Mar-a-Lago. And because a lot of that power Trump has is based on perceptions of 2018.

Different world now. And I think an even more different world in six to 10 months. So, you know, a lot of this is the agenda for the midterms on that sort of thing. And what a Republican is, is yet to be set. But fundamentally, the midterm stuff is generally about punishing the new president's party and the economy. So if I'm a Democratic candidate, I want to own the economy. I want to punish the local opponent more than I'm going to get punished for a D after my name. And I'm going to want to create some special linkage and attributes of the district, be it casework, be it I got the I-4 bypass, whatever, to have my own brand to not be

totally chained to the national democratic thing, which could very well be punish the Democrats. And I'd also be very careful with this lefty budget stuff that they're trying because, you know, the press covers any government spending as a big political win. And out in voter land, it's a lot more complicated. $3.5 trillion. You know another way to say that? 82% of the cost to the U.S. government of the Second World War in adjusted dollars from then to now. It's a lot of damn money. Before we let you go, Mike,

you've been involved with campaigns for how many years? Oh, decades, my friend. My first campaign, first cycle I did anything kind of professional politics, I was still in college, was 1982. Okay, 82. And obviously managed or the chief strategist for numerous statewide and presidential campaigns over the past number of decades. You've worked in campaigns, advising candidates on IE efforts, et cetera, et cetera. Does COVID, leaving aside policy and kind of issue environment, just in terms of the way campaigns are run, have you given any thought to this last year and a half,

which looks like it's going to be longer now than a year and a half, right? We could be heading into another election cycle now that's completely shaped by this, by COVID restrictions. And is this changing the way campaigns, political campaigns are going to be waged? In fact, could this be the biggest change we're living through since you've been in politics? And do you think the changes will, at least some of them, outlive the pandemic? Well, you know, that is a great question, but it's a big one. There are so many aspects to politics you can put under that lens.

One is, you know, the technology of Zoom and all the ways that people don't have to leave the box to socially interact and the efficiency saved there. Our big campaign headquarters gone forever. Will people ever, you know, real rallies, all that. That'll evolve. But I think people like human contact and there'll be a comeback. There'll be a reformation.

But that tech is here to stay and it can save money and campaigns like any marketing organization want efficiency. The voters are much more tribal now. COVID has been very bad for the tribal spread of bad information, which is not a good thing because political bad information can spread the same way.

And it gets harder to find persuadable voters because everybody's dug in. And so, but I think that COVID has been a precursor to that. I think people are more cynical and beat down than ever before, which rewards people who do grievance politics, which have had a good run. But I also believe in things changing. You know, to try to predict politics, one thing you want to do, big trends, is keep an eye on pop culture. And during the Depression, it was interesting that many of the most successful movies were what in Hollywood we call blue sky movies. You know, you would have people and even comedies, they're always at the society party,

Margaret Dumont, or from the hardship of Kansas, swept up to this make-believe land and dreams coming true. And you're starting to see that in television. The big breakout hit among college-educated people has been basically major RFDs set in the U.K. Yeah, Andy Griffin goes to a bunch of cynical Brits. And so this blue-sky kindness thing is such a contrast to what we've been through and the Trump era. It has huge appeal to people. So I think the politics of kindness may have a comeback. And I thought Biden had a little of that energy in his campaign, but it is – talk about changing the channel culturally. I would keep an eye on that, which could start to change our political tone from where we're stuck now, which is I'm right, you're evil from both sides.

That certainly leaves things on an upbeat note, which we desperately need. There you go. A little lasso to finish. That's right. And, you know, well, I guess I'm going to rope you into coming back at some point, and we're going to do a little retrospective on some of your campaigns,

because, you know, there are a lot of gems in there that people don't know about. You know, they know about Mitt Romney and John McCain and Arnold Schwarzenegger. They don't know about the Clean Michigan campaign in 1998. Oh, boy. Or the Mike Harris. Northern Indiana.

I'm the inventor of the negative yard sign. Yeah, no, we're going back. Mike Harris, Ontario premier campaigns in Canada. I mean, there's a lot of gems there. Bush for governor before everybody was making fun of poor Jeb when he was an unstoppable machine. Right. Two statewide wins. And a couple of screw-ups, too, I'll fess up to.

So we'll do a retrospective. But until then, thanks for taking the time and sharing your insights. Always illuminating and always entertaining. Well, thank you, Dan, old friend. It was great to be here. If people want to hear more of my BS, they can just listen to Hacks on Tap or follow me on Twitter, at Murphy Mike. How's that for a plug?

Perfect. And I'm going to do it at the outro too, and I'm also going to tell people how to find your new newsletter. So thanks again, Mike. I don't think you can cut all that shit. I just did. All right. Thank you, Dan.

Appreciate it. That's our show for today. To keep up with Mike, follow him on Twitter, at Murphy Mike, and subscribe to the Hacks on Tap podcast. Again, I highly recommend it, and subscribe to his newsletter, which you can find at hacksontap, one word, dot bulletin, dot com. Post-Corona is produced by Ilan Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Seymour.