Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - Haley's path & Biden's only move - with Mike Murphy

Episode Date: December 3, 2023

There are two storylines we have been following closely that are not necessarily shaped by the minute-to-minute developments in Israel, but their outcomes could have an outsized impact on U.S. policy on Israel, Gaza, and the broader Middle East. The first is the Republican contest for president. The next debate is this coming week – December 6. In the last GOP presidential debate, the issue that attracted the most airtime was the October 7 war and America’s response. The second story is the growing problem President Biden is experiencing in his political base registering high disapproval of his support for Israel. In the next episode, we'll resume with our weekly check-in with Haviv Rettig Gur from Israel, but today we check in with Mike Murphy on U.S. presidential politics. Mike has worked on 26 gubernatorial and US Senate races across the country, including 12 wins in Blue States. He was a top strategist for John McCain, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, and Arnold Scwarzenegger. He’s a political analyst for NBC and MSNBC. He’s co-host of the "Hacks on Tap" podcast and he has a newsletter on substack. Mike is also co-director of the University of Southern California’s Center for the Political Future. To subscribe to Hacks on Tap: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hacks-on-tap/id1467297559 To subscribe to Murphy's substack newsletter: https://substack.com/@mikemurphy1

I think Biden should condemn it. I think tone is tricky. I don't think it's a panacea for his political problems, but he's already in the business of enough with the Palestinian radicalization. So yeah, he can slap back at campuses a little. And I think it's the only move he's got, because he's never going to appease them. So he might as well stand up against it. There are two storylines I've been following closely that are not necessarily shaped by the minute-to-minute developments in Israel, although either one of them could have a big impact on U.S. policy towards Israel. The first is the Republican contest for president of the United States. The next Republican presidential debate is this coming week on December 6th. If you recall the last GOP presidential debate, the issue that got the most airtime was

October 7th and America's response to the Hamas massacre. The second storyline is the growing problem President Biden is experiencing with elements in his base coalition on the hard left that, shall we say, disapprove of his strong support for Israel. Now, I do not believe it's as much of a problem as some observers believe. In fact, I think it's an opportunity for him to take on some of the craziness on the left in its response to his policy towards Israel that would actually be a strength for him in the general election. But we will get into all of that because I wanted to take a short break from the Minute to Minute on Israel and check in with my old pal, Mike Murphy, who we haven't had in a while,

to discuss what's likely to happen in U.S. politics, both the Republican primary process, as well as the Democrats' plan to get Biden reelected and the impact all of this could have in the Middle East. Because as the old saying goes, when America sneezes, the world catches a cold. Mike, as many of you know, is a longtime Republican political strategist, although not so much Republican anymore. He's worked on 26 gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races across the country, including 12 wins in blue states, something that's getting harder and harder to do for Republicans. He was a top strategist for John McCain, for Mitt Romney, for Jeb Bush, and for his close friend Arnold Schwarzenegger. Mike's a political analyst for NBC and MSNBC. He's co-host of one of my favorite political

podcasts called Hacks on Tap, which if you're not a subscriber already, I highly recommend that you become one. And he also pens his own newsletter on Substack that is worth checking out. Mike is also the co-director of the University of Southern California's Center for the Political Future. Mike Murphy on American politics heading into 2024 and its impact on an extremely vulnerable Israel and volatile Middle East. This is Call Me Back. And I'm pleased to welcome back to this podcast my longtime friend and a fan favorite on the Call Me Back podcast, Mike Murphy. Murph. Hey, Dan. I noticed on your Twitter handle you have a I stand with Israel icon. Because I stand with Israel, my friend. This one is not super complicated and postmodern for me. You know, people say we need a ceasefire.

Yeah, well, there was one. And then Hamas sent a murder squad into Israel to slaughter as many kids, women, civilians as they possibly could. And Israel is our ally. It is a democracy. It is like all democracies imperfect. It has its challenges. But in this moment, I think what side to be on is pretty clear. People will say, oh, Mike, come on, you don't want war. Of course not. But I also know it's part of Hamas's doctrine to hold the population of Gaza hostage. No elections, none of that. We're not going to have democracy here. We're going to run a thug-driven dictatorship. And they like civilian casualties because that is information warfare. So they're more than happy to hold people in

buildings and, you know, let them be collateral damage. And it's very tough for the Israelis to fight an opponent that welcomes casualties among civilians on its own side. It's a true terror organization. And, you know, I think the good guys and bad guys here are clear. The problem is the tremendous collateral damage that Hamas is creating by starting this war and the way they're waging it. Yeah, I got to say the depth and breadth of the barbarism of October 7th. It's unbelievable. It's been a close observer of conflict and war and terrorism in the Middle East for a long time.

And I got to say, even I have been totally shocked by it, not just by the 1,500 to 2,000 Hamas operatives and then other hangers-on that crossed the border on October 7th. But the recognition that, sadly, so many more people must have been involved when you think about the logistics, the training, the moving of equipment, the fundraising. No, it was their Manhattan Project. They've been at it for a long time. And there were intelligence failures when you have a terror hang gliding school, you know, you, you wonder, but the Israelis do a good job of having really brutal self-examination of their military operations afterwards. So that's something we could actually do better here. But my, but my, but as horrified as I was, and I, and I treated it like, this is something we've never seen before. One of my kids, you know, you always get these like insightful observations from kids. One of my kids said to me,

you know, dad, I said, you know, we haven't seen anything like this, both what's happened in Israel and then the cascading events over here in the West and major cities and on college campuses, the seeming outrage being directed against Jews for objecting to being slaughtered. And my son said, you know, Dad, the Holocaust, World War II, he's 1930s, 1940s, you know, basically like a little, you know, a little shy of 100 years ago. That's not that long ago. I'm not suggesting that we're about to have another Holocaust, but he was just making the point that we tend to think that we've been living in a very civilized world for a long time. And my son's point was, it wasn't that long ago. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's also the tough one about this, because you can't turn on cable TV and not

have your heart broken, is we have not had these. This is the modern internet information cable TV age. I mean, there were protests breaking out at Harvard that how come we aren't going to let the trucks into Berlin in 45? Well, the fuhrer is trapped in the bunker and can't get a warm cut of coffee. You know, he might be out of fuel. We didn't have CNN reporting when we burned Dresden to a crisp or they burned Coventry. That's not to defend it. War is inherently a sin. It's massacre. You think with these big monkey brains we have, we would have a way not to make a high principle of organizing ourselves to kill other monkey brains on a mass scale, an industrial scale. But that seems to be the gift of especially

the 20th century. And now here we are with this new dimension of information war. So it is a thorny problem. And I look geopolitically, I worry about the Israelis because they have to destroy Hamas. It's existential. They're surrounded by hostile groups that want them, you know, as you can hear the chant at an elite university, from the river to the sea. But it's not going to be hard for the next terror group to recruit broken people out of the rubble of Gaza. So long-term strategically, this thing is a big problem. But tactically, they really have no choice. Yeah. Well, what I keep trying to get people over here to understand is there's about 200,000 people who've had to evacuate their homes, probably more between the South and now also the North, because the folks who live in Northern Israel are worried

about a Hezbollah version of October 7th. Right. So these are all people who have left their homes. And in many cases, these kibbutzim, these homes are one kilometer, two kilometer, three kilometers, in the case of Southern Israel, from the Gaza border, from the Hamas-run border. People here don't know that Hamas is Staten Island, and you're living in Manhattan. Right. Yeah. Exactly. And so imagine if Hamas is Staten Island, and a bunch of Manhattanites have gotten out of Manhattan because Hamas is in Staten Island, and now the government's trying to persuade those Manhattanites to move back to Manhattan, they got to be pretty damn sure that you've gotten Hamas out of Staten Island. Yeah, and they don't trust the government to begin with between some of the trouble Bibi got himself into unwisely and the intelligence failures.

And the failures of October 7th, right. So Israel doesn't have a choice. In other words, if Israelis don't feel comfortable living in certain parts of Israel, they're not going to feel comfortable living in any part of Israel. It's not like, oh,

I won't live on the Gaza border, but I'll live in Beersheba or another, just an hour to the north. Or live on the Hezbollah border or the West Bank border. Right, it's just, it's a tiny place. So if they're that insecure,

it's going to feel really, really insecure. And that's why Israel has no choice in terms of when they say eradicate Hamas, they really mean eradicating Hamas, because, as you said, it is existential. Israelis will not feel safe living in this country after what happened on October 7th. One argument I wish I heard more from the Israeli government or whoever their messaging people are is Hamas is a slave state. There's no free will in Hamas. You're there. Now, half the population we know from whatever polling we can get is kind of pro-Hamas and radicalized. But still, it's not a place where the people with guns ask a lot of permission.

And it's not a place where they worry about civilian casualties. So if you're advising President Biden, first of all, how would you grade President Biden's performance and leadership and decision making? I would give him an A, but I'll chip him down to an A minus because there's been a little too much leaking the cross pressure of the Israelis, which is a clumsy way to do it. Because the minute the bad guys, particularly Hezbollah, which has a lot of military power and is watching this, sees any daylight between us and the Israelis from leaks and things like that, they're incentivized to try something. And when they do, even the mighty IDF is going to be stretched, particularly in the air. And it's not a mistake. We have two carrier groups there. So that's how it escalates badly. So I would hope the – and I'm sure they are. The Biden people don't be too clever by half about trying to publicly pressure Israel through leaks because that can give bad actors the wrong impression. But fundamentally, I give Biden an A

and I think he's been, and his national security team have done a very good job. And it's been politically expensive for him. Yeah, I tell my friends on the right who have a knee-jerk tendency to criticize Biden, as I usually do, I say, if you would have told me on October 7th that within 24 hours, this barbaric existential genocidal war would be waged against Israel, and the commander-in-chief of the most powerful military in the world would not only give a powerful statement in solidarity with Israel, but within a matter of days would get on Air Force One, fly to Israel, go to a meeting of

the war cabinet. I mean, it wasn't just some two-podium press conference. He goes to a meeting of the war, as though he's a member of the Israeli war cabinet. And he meets with families of hostages, and he meets with survivors, and then he gives the speech from the Oval Office, and then he, you know, I can go on and on and on. There's a lot of stuff happening behind the scenes, too. I mean, it's not perfect.

There are things I would do differently, sure. But on balance, that's pretty damn good. Really damn good. Really damn good. And it's grown up. I mean, he's in a position of great political vulnerability right now. And they're not letting that dictate his foreign policy. They're taking more hits at a time when I'm sure they don't want to, to do the right thing here geopolitically and for U.S. interests and for the relationship and for democracy in Israel. Yeah. So I guess my question then, if you're advising Biden, he's got, there's two polling data points I want to reference. One was this NBC poll that came out a couple of weeks ago that I think had everyone, all my Democratic friends panicked, which showed how unpopular the Biden administration's policy towards Israel is among this young demographic, both on the left and in the kind of the left flank of the base, and then also even among some younger independent voters. And the second, which kind of contradicts maybe

the first polling point, was just where they do the fave-unfave on different organizations, political personalities. They test a bunch of brands, and one of the brands was Hamas. And Hamas polled overall top line at a favorable rating, I think, of something like 7%. They're even lower than Congress. They are clearly extremely unpopular. So on the one hand, you have this entity that Israel is at war with that is extremely unpopular with the American electorate. And on the other hand, you have a problem with the president's base. So how do you reconcile those two and what should he do about it? Well, Biden's got multiple problems. One, he's linked to an economy and perception is reality that people perceive as bad.

And then some moron at the White House decided, well, let's take what people hate and stencil our name on it. We'll call it Bidenomics. I mean he just did – we talked about this on Hacks on Tap last week with the great Adam McGurney, our guest. They just did a press conference where the big angle was, this is the fourth cheapest Thanksgiving or something. And since inflation, it's impossible to decipher. So whenever you run a campaign and, hey, you're wrong about what you think, let me straighten you out, which is what every incumbent wants to do, and clearly Biden does, you dig a deeper hole. So he's had a problem with younger voters. Now, most of those younger

voters tilt Democrats. So the conventional wisdom would be, and historically there's a case for it, it's fairly easy to get Democrats to go back to being Democrats, especially when Trump's out there, whoever the nominee is, should it be Trump? And they're like, well, I'm mad about Biden, but I can't eat the crap sandwich called Donald Trump, I'll reluctantly go back to Biden. So I think that is the thread the White House is hanging on. And I think a lot of those loose voters, in the end, it ain't an essay question, it's multiple choice, and Biden should be able to get a bunch of them back. But the other cultural problem he's got is younger voters are not as locked into Israel, particularly on the Democratic left, as their parents were.

And you can look for a lot of reasons for that. Part of it is that the memories of what the Jewish people went through in the Holocaust and the original fighting to create Israel have faded. Second, the Netanyahu government has been clumsy and heavy-handed, in my view, in domestic politics and have kind of created a bit of a thuggish reputation. Don't forget the attraction of what I think of social scientists called luxury opinions among the young. I never – I'm such a right-wing kook. I always got pissed off at the hip Che Guevara t-shirts. Remember that iconic look? I mean we've been here before.

Young people like stupid things like that. I get it. And that combines. And then, you know, the Democratic left is very multicultural. And in the African-American community, and I'll get you canceled now, but some of those progressive communities of color, there is, and you can label it different things, but there is not as much lockstep support for Israel. And there are worries about growing anti-Semitism. So those things all combine. And I guarantee you the White House political people are very concerned about it.

And they would like to make the problem go away. So that is why we're at a new moment now. We've had a ceasefire. We've had some hostages traded. There's some joy. And there's quite a game of power. Hostages returned. Hostages returned, not traded. The people traded of these really prisoners were actual prisoners. Right. Fair enough. Criminals. Fair enough. But from a voter perspective, it's like, well, both sides are doing something good here. It's going to be very hard to restart this thing. And you can see the administration is fostering, we want this to go on. There's been enough fighting. Hamas has damaged enough,

and they're trying to cross-pressure the Israelis, which is not a small factor for the Israelis, which is not a small factor for the Israelis because the great risk to Israel is being totally isolated. So then, you know, we'll see where it goes from here. I'm sure the administration is hoping they can fix their political problems by a ceasefire. Of course, everybody has the same dream. We'll get the Palestinian Authority in there and they can run the zoo because we can actually deal with them. But the problem is everybody loves them except their own citizens. You know, there's a reason they lost control of Gaza back in 2006. So and then lost the low grade civil war after that. So anyway, it's a pickle, but I know Biden wants it to be over and declare victory. But the reality on the ground means that that's going to be very hard to

do. So I think they'll keep managing it. They'll keep trying to be a beacon for a ceasefire and getting aid in there. And in the clutch, they'll stick with Israel. So I'm pulling up this tweet that President Biden issued in the last couple of days. I think he clearly wants to, if it's his preference or his advisor's preference, extend the ceasefire. So he writes, Hamas unleashed a terrorist attack because they fear nothing more than israelis and palestinians living side by side at peace to continue down the path of terror violence killing and war is to give hamas what they seek we can't do that and then he you know anyways sure he's right but israelis across the political spectrum want hamas gone and so there's no there's no i mean this he's this this but Israelis across the political spectrum want Hamas gone. And so there's no,

there's no, I mean, this, he's this, this statement he put is like circa 1995. Um, we just, you know, we can't give the terrorists what they want. So we have to go make peace right now. And the Israeli mindset across the political spectrum, including the left is eradicate Hamas. Right. The problem is it's impossible to eliminate the idea of Hamas. It's possible to eradicate the – but then you get Hamas 2.0. That's the hard part. Yeah. But that's always the – I mean whether it's taking on ISIS or taking on – No, no. Step one is you get the guys with guns and then you move in. Yeah. You just got to remove the threat and there may be a threat again in the future. But when it's existential, you got to remove the threat. So let me ask you, the fact that Hamas is so unpopular, if not despised... Yeah, but in that poll, if you tested Palestinians, you would add much different data.

And the court of public opinion is being fought over Palestinians, not as much as it should be over Hamas. But don't you think there's an opportunity for President Biden to have a sister soldier moment and take on these protests in the U.S. against Israel that some of them are like pogroms. I mean, really. And just and just and a lot of them are being organized by parts of his own party base, the Democratic Party base. And for Biden to take that on, almost like Bloomberg did a little bit now, it's easier for Bloomberg to do in that Wall Street Journal editorial he wrote, he penned a few days ago, which was very good. But literally just say, look, I'm all for free

speech and people got to, you know, institutions have to respect people's right to express themselves. But some of what I'm seeing is outrageous. Senator Schumer did a version of this on the Senate floor this week, which was, which there were parts of that speech that were very strong. And I think if Biden did that, I'll tell you, Mike, I have a lot of non-Jewish friends who are center left, who are Democrats, who are watching what's happening now, even though they don't feel personally threatened by it, they are freaked out by it. They do feel that it represents like disorder, chaos, like things are coming undone. And they feel like it's not right. Even though again, it's not their, Israel isn't their issue necessarily,

but they still feel like it's like an extension of the intersectionality and the woke chaos of the last few years going to a whole other level of crazy and i think if biden confronted it there are those sorts of voters and that even people maybe even to the right of those voters who would um respond positively and i got to believe there's what in a general election there's something like five million voters or so they could swing either way they They voted for Obama, they voted for Trump, they voted for Biden. Yeah. But yeah, no, look, I think Biden should condemn it. I think tone is tricky. I don't think it's a panacea for his political problems, but he's already in the business of enough with the Palestinian radicalization. So yeah, he can slap back at campuses a little, kind of a John Silber thing. And I think it's the only move he's got because he's never going to appease them.

So he might as well stand up against it. And he's kind of done that with the Democratic left before. He did it on single-payer health care, much less inflammatory issue. But he's been – he used to be when he first ran kind of middle-of-the-road Joe. And then he became the spending king and that's a long story. But yeah, I fundamentally think that is a good messaging for him and he ought to do it. All right. So that's our advice for President Biden. Now let's talk about your advice. We solved his problems. Now let's talk about the Republican primary, which I think you and I are maybe the last two

cockeyed optimists that believe that this primary could twist and turn in a number of ways, and that Donald Trump is not the prohibitive frontrunner. He's a frontrunner, but maybe not. No, he's not invincible. It's not, oh, the race is over, national polls show he's a front runner but maybe not no it just he's not invincible it's not oh the race is over national polls show he's 30 points ahead in delaware yeah okay so so mike so i want i do want to get to what could happen in this election but but you and i have talked previously and you made this comp this comparison to the race to look at that is a good model is Walter Mondale versus Gary Hart, 1984, Democratic primaries. That's the race to look at if you want to understand how someone who looks as strong as Donald Trump does today could actually maybe not lose the nomination, but suddenly have a real race. I've kind of said two things for two years. One, I don't think he's as

strong as he looks. And somebody is going to emerge and give him a run in the early states. And they will have a chance to upset him. He's still the frontrunner by a mile. But something's going to happen. So here we are. We're finally into just about December. The primaries run very late in terms of the actual voters. The media industrial pundit complex was telling you who's going to win or lose a year ago. And they're glued to polls looking through the rearview

mirror at the wrong places. So what's happened? Well, not really through a particularly adroit campaign because they all had kind of terrible campaigns. But through just being the best political athlete, Nikki Haley emerged from the non-Trump crowd to kind of win the preseason. And she is the only one who tried to run a campaign with some Iowa appeal and plenty of New Hampshire appeal, knowing that was the great potential iceberg state for Trump because it's got a lot more independence and non-Trumpy voters in it. So right now we're in a situation where Trump's number one in Iowa. DeSantis and Haley are fighting for number two. And everybody else of any means except maybe on the spoiler side on the Trump coalition, Vivek Rama, Lama Ding Dong or whatever, he's chirping away there. But he's not a big, big factor. Now, I think as of a month ago when Haley raced up 150% second in the Iowa Register poll, the most credible public poll, and DeSantis had plummeted about 30% to 16.

They were both at 16. She was passing him. What has happened since then is she's done very well in New Hampshire. She's the clear only game in town second there now. DeSantis has melted. And Tim Scott's out of the race, as I argued in the bulwark. So congratulations, Senator Scott, you did the right thing. Christie should get out now, too. And frankly, so should DeSantis, but he won't. So the question now is, can Nikki beat DeSantis, because it always helps to beat somebody in his decline and come in second to Trump and make history in Iowa and then springboard to beat Trump in New Hampshire.

And then, unlike Gary Hart and like a lot of other upset candidates, including my old horse, John McCain, have something to go down to in South Carolina and beat him there. And as a former governor, she has a lot more going there than any other New Hampshire upset in history has. A tough order, but it's lined up. And every day, she's moving up. The only question now, I think, that will be answered, other than the two more debates where something could happen, but Haley's done well at the debates, better than anybody else, is will the endorsement of Iowa by Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, who's no superpower, but, you know, fairly popular Republican governor of DeSantis, proper up. Generally, I think endorsements work better in small politics, like you're running for county commissioner and nobody's heard of you. Oh, the governor's candidate, as opposed to big

presidential stuff. So that's question one. Question two is one of the leading, most people would say the leading Christian warlord, Bob Vander Plaats, who, by the way, ran for governor in 2006 and got beat in the primary. So explain, let's just, just for our listeners, because some of these names aren't familiar. So Bob Vander Plaats is a major leader in Iowa of the, you know, Christian conservative leader, his endorsement historically matters a lot. It signals where a big chunk of the Christian evangelical vote in Iowa is going, which matters a lot in Iowa caucuses. And the fact that he was willing to endorse a non-Trump candidate was a big deal. Yeah, yeah. But he'd been signaling for a while. I always wonder about

what these war alerts can deliver. I ran a primary against him for Governor Tausend's sake. You know, we cleaned his clock with a regular Republican. But he is a factor there and is his endorsement and Reynolds endorsement enough to prop up DeSantis enough to beat Nikki Haley, put her in the third place in Iowa where she'll still have some momentum. But it will not be the kind of energy she would love to zoom into New Hampshire with. Haley, put her in the third place in Iowa where she'll still have some momentum, but it will not be the kind of energy she would love to zoom into New Hampshire with. And I think that's a jump ball. It was interesting. Another name nobody knows except operatives who've worked in Iowa, Marlis Popma.

That ring a bell? Marlis Popma. Remember Marlis? Famous Iowa operative. Grassroots operative. Pro-life, connected to the social conservatives, but very pragmatic. And she's supporting DeSantis, isn't she? No, she's for Haley.

She just announced last week. Ah, she's for Haley. Yeah, or two weeks ago. She walked into a Haley event and said, I'm undecided, but having heard her, I'm for her. My guess is she wasn't that undecided that morning because she's a shrewd operator. But anyway, I would not be surprised if Nikki holds on to second. I think the DeSantis hype is a little overdone. I think Vander Plaats is overdone, but I wouldn't bet my house on it. I think it's very close. Now, the other thing going on, and you know all about this, is the Koch Network, which is kind of a rich guy club that

meets to plot the future of the Republican Party at very nice hotels. They're for Haley. Now, a lot of the people in that world had already moved from Haley. Many of them have been DeSantis, then Scott, now Haley. But my guess is, based on that and other things and momentum in general, Nikki, who was strapped for money at the beginning of the process, good lesson candidates, don't blow all your money early, will have more voter contact spend than anybody in Iowa and in New Hampshire, expensive Boston television, and in South Carolina. So she's had a big ammunition train pull up. We'll see what she can do with it.

So are you, I mean, among the things that's interesting about Iowa for me is all most of the major players from Vander Plaats to to the governor to to to Mara Lispatma to a whole bunch of state you know officials and county officials that most of our listeners haven't heard of are all lining up Haley or DeSantis and if I mean it was just interesting that for all this talk about Trump's lock on the party. Now, it may all be moot because for reasons we can get into, they may wind up just start and we've alluded to they could just start dividing up paths to the nomination and make it impossible for a non Trump candidate to do it. But just the mere fact that so many of them are willing to publicly come out for candidates other than Trump says something. Yeah, no. And Trump lost a cruise last time. You know, we will see. The other thing,

and I've mentioned this before, but I'm going to keep pounding it because the media has not picked up on it. There's another caucus of Democrats with about 170,000 people who voted last time, Democrats and independents who decided to caucus for the Dems. You can also caucus for the Ours as an independent. The DNC, they've canceled the Iowa Democratic Caucus for the first time. So you got 170,000 proven caucus goers who are used to getting out in the rain to have an opinion that the country they know is listening to because Iowa knows how important they are. What's to keep 20,000 of them from showing up in caucus as a Republican? I had somebody stop me on the street in Des Moines

six months ago, said, oh, I'm a Democrat, but I'm going to caucus. I can go online and change the Republican of two clicks and I can change back because I don't want that bastard Trump to be what Iowa stands for. So do I think 170,000 will flood? But we know. But we've never had this before. And if 20,000 or 10 percent, 17,000 do, that's material because the whole Republican turnout thing will probably be between 180 and 190,000. So you could have a mysterious 8 to 15 percent of the vote that nobody's polling, nobody's looking at pop up, and none of that is for Trump. All right. Can we go back to 1984? I've become obsessed with this. Can you explain what happened to Mondale, how he was almost like the Trump, not in terms of style or ideas, but his positioning in the process? He was like Trump in the Democratic primaries,

and what happened? Yeah, well, you know what? I'm a Mondale fan. So, Fritz, I hate to go back to this thing. And in the end, he won. You know, he was kind of like the Russian army. He had more men than they had bullets. But what Gary Hart did was he mugged him in New Hampshire and retail state. He was a very attractive candidate. In many ways, he had the better message. Mugged him in New Hampshire? No, the great Iowa mugging was Bush in 1980 against Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter before that because the Iowa caucus used to be a fundraising dinner and the clever Carter guys in 76 with their unknown governor

thought, where do we break through? So they made the caucus a thing and that's where Jimmy Carter kind of emerged. It wasn't like the death match we have now, who wins or loses. They just made the contest count in the national media,

and Carter exceeded expectations. I can't even remember what he got. I don't even think he won it, but the Mr. 1% got 11 or whatever. So what happened to Gary, and it happened to us with McCain in 2000, is you go get them into your terrain with a lot of independent voters in our case, and you beat them there. But then they've got so much body weight. It's like, all right, you killed the whale.

How are you going to move the body? And they wear you down over time. That's Nikki's little secret trick. She's got something to do in South Carolina if she strikes gold in New Hampshire because she's a pre-aware title down there. Now, the other problem, and I was one of the people saying, Biden, you've had a great Democratic standards, great first term, don't run again, get somebody else out. What happened to Hart is what would happen to somebody if Gretchen Whitmer tried to run

tomorrow. She will miss all the deadlines to file a lot of delegates. So she can win primaries and have no delegates. What happened to Hart was he didn't have the campaign infrastructure to go into states and organize delegates, which takes time and money. So he could win and he wouldn't get delegates for it. And this primary is not about votes. It's about delegates, delegates selected by votes. So Hart didn't have the ability to scale up once he beat the big gray Mondale machine. And to get back to your question, Democrats were,

they saw Reagan, they hated Reagan. They thought he might be vulnerable on age, but they didn't see in gray Fritz Mondale, a superstar. They saw in Gary Hart, a rock star, generational, ran against Reagan's age well. And that led to the moment of romance in New Hampshire. There's a good book. Well, there are a couple of good books about it. You can Google them. But it's a little different this time because the parties with the event of cable TV and the internet, everything is so nationalized. Yeah, but I just want to, so 84, Mondale's way ahead. He's over, he's polling over 50%. No one else is near him. The last, I looked at this up, the last poll in Iowa before

the Iowa caucuses was, was Hart, was, sorry, was Mondale somewhere in the fifties, like in the mid, mid fifties. And then you had Jesse Jackson and John Glenn tied for second at 13%. Right. And Glenn being the great story of, go ahead. Yeah. Then Rubin Askew, who was he, was he governor of Florida? Yeah. Great governor of Florida. I have a picture of myself as a young punk. I snuck into the Democratic National Convention in Frisco. I'm standing with Rubin. Okay, so he's fourth.

He's fourth. Fifth is Alan Cranston, the senator from your home state now, California. Well, my resident state. I'm from Michigan. Sorry, not your home state. Your resident state. That's right. And then in sixth, in sixth was Gary Hart.

That was the last poll. Well, look at howard dean same deal right but the results come out the results come out the results come out mondale still gets 49 he gets 49 so he kind of his results in 84 in the iowa caucus were pretty close to his poll his polling numbers but the surprise was gary hart shot up to second. Right. And then what happened? Well, then he beats him in New Hampshire. Exactly.

And you ride that wave of momentum. So here was the unstoppable Walter Mondale that suddenly had to fight for the nomination all the way to June. Right, and stomped him out with body weight, but it was a real race, although they had that delegate problem, which kind of doomed him from the start. Here's the thing to remember, and this is most pundits, when they're not fixing their hair, are reading Twitter feeds from other pundits and trying not to look dumb on television. Not true of everybody, but true of a majority, I would say.

So when they cover polling, the normal polling talk, let's say we have a hot governor's race in Ohio, is, wow, Flabbergast moved it four points. You know, this race is tightening up over Smedrick. Well, in a general election, about 88% of the vote is, or 90%, it's either tribal Republican or tribal Democrat. They're not going anywhere. And then you might have, let's call it for easy math, 10% that's persuadable. So when 30% of the persuadable vote moves, you see the polling a three, three and a half point movement. Wow, three points. So then they think, well, if you're 20 ahead and a big movement's three points, you're never going to catch them. In a primary, it's a herd of very

similar voters. They're all Republicans. Some may be a little more moderate, some more conservative, some more Christian, some more libertarian, but they're all cows. They're all one kind of animal. And so when 30% of the Republicans decide to move, you get a 30% swing, not three. So big late moves in primaries at almost every level, when there's a tension to them, are not uncommon. I've done campaigns where our guy six weeks out is 22 points behind and we win. So that is the history often in the Iowa caucus. Howard Dean was the invincible front runner, and in about two weeks, Kerry crushed him. So we will see. Movement happens in primaries. And there's some 50, a little less than 50 days left before the Iowa caucus, which is, to your point, a long time. Nikki Haley has gone up from 6% to 16% in the last poll.

You know, and that's probably not her ceiling. Right. Now, she has two debates. No errors, please. Do well. She's got money now. That number went up over the course of two debates. Yeah, the debates helped her.

And she's got dough. Nobody's going to beat her on television, and she may beat some other people. So, you know, there's a lot of dry kindling and there's some kerosene here. It's still a long go to get all the way there. If DeSantis would get out, it would be easier. Christie needs to get out because he's making 8% to 9% in New Hampshire who want to be for Haley waste their vote. I predict he will. He's smart enough to know that maybe after the final debate. You think Christie's going to get out before November? I think he's going to get out and endorse Nikki Haley.

That's my crazy prediction. Because that's the worst thing for Trump, which means it's the best thing for him emotionally. But he'll take his sweet time getting there. I just think Christie's having so much fun. Yeah. I think he's enjoying himself. Yeah, he can do it three days after the Iowa caucus.

It'll still have the same impact. Okay. So now – and DeSantis' path? You're basically – Well, one, you need the cops to break up the fistfight in DeSantis' world between his own super PAC and him. I mean I've never seen this before. It's a nightmare. But I think if he is third in Iowa, there'd be some pressure to get out because

he's got nothing going in New Hampshire. And I'm sure this whole thing has been like dental surgery for him and Casey. They're not happy campers. But we'll see. The sooner he gets out, the better for America. Okay. A world in which Trump wins the nomination looks like what? Like what's the path? Oh, the path is right to Portugal, because Trump could win again. But I mean, what does Messi look like in terms of DeSantis, Haley, Christie? I think it's only fair to our listeners to hear the worst case scenario. We're now providing some best case scenarios. What's the worst case scenario? In the great tradition of the Vichy Republican Party, except perhaps for Christie, who won't. There'd be massive Democrat panic and

pearl-clutching about Biden because the Biden campaign has not shown a lot of aptitude to be able to fix their massive problems. I blame Biden for that. I think he's micromanaging the campaign. That's my gut. I have no facts, but I just look at the stuff they keep doing. And Biden's never had a tough general election. You know, Delaware's always been a walk. You can argue against Trump, but my God, if you can't beat Donald Trump. But now you poke somebody in the street, they tell you old and they tell you economy. And young voters will say, you know, Israel or whatever. So they got a heavy lift and a good campaign could do a lot of that lifting. But I don't think there's a lot of confidence that Biden can't. That said, Trump is still Trump and general election voters would love to kill him.

It's only Biden's weaknesses that open him up. And historically, a weak challenger can beat a troubled incumbent because most people make their first decision. Do we keep this guy or fire him? And the most dangerous polling number for Joe Biden, it's been this way for a year, is yeah, you hate Trump, but who's better to handle the economy? And Trump beats Biden by double digits. That's like McDonald's can't make a hamburger anybody can eat. And that's why Bidenomics is not the way to solve that problem. What my podcasting partner Axelrod would say, and I think he's right about this, is Biden has to make it a choice. And my version of that is he has to make it a debate on who wins, who loses if Trump wins. Because if Trump wins, Trump wins, only Trump. Trump's motive is Trump. Trump takes care of Trump. Biden's got a good heart. I want to surround him with the

cabinet. They have a reticence about that. I'd have Buttigieg and Raimundo and Mitch Lander there. What is the reticence? Do they feel that it makes Biden look even older? I haven't talked to him directly about it, but yeah, we can't surround him with young stars. He looks old. Well, you've lost the old thing, so get the young super team around him because Kamala sure doesn't do it. And they'll be doing a lot of base events. They'll pander to young voters or say Kamala is their secret weapon. They work hard to get voters of color back in line. And they will beat the hell out of Trump. I would make it less about Biden v. Trump and more about the two

outcomes and the two motives. But that should be coming. But right now, it's still the fourth best Thanksgiving in economic history. OK. And in terms of down ballot, Congress? Who knows? We put the elders from Footloose in charge of the House Republican Conference. So we're going to go have a big abortion war and get our clock clean like we have three times in a row since we decided to make national congressional politics about abortion. Now, Trump, interestingly, one of the great Republican pro-choice presidents, despite all the, you know, the mocklinations, feels this in his bones. So he'll probably try to pivot away a little in the general because he knows it's a death trap. But the true believers in the House seem to want to fight it out, and it's a huge weapon for the Democrats. So normally when an incumbent president people are mad at about the economy,

he gets whomped, the House gets a whomping too, but the Republican brand is such an ugly alternative. You know, who knows? It's like a race to see who can lose more. All right. Other than that, it's all great, and the world's on fire. Chinese have some new aircraft carriers, too. So everything's going our way.

And, yeah. And access to military assets in the Middle East. All right. Call me Mr. Sunshine here. I'm here to bring tidings of joy. I'm looking for green shoots. I've been having a series of very depressing podcasts over the last few weeks, so we're looking for you to come on to, you know.

You should call the Hallmark people and do a Christmas and Hanukkah special with some of the new designs. All right, Mike, we'll leave it there. Thank you. Thanks for having me, pal. Fight on. That's our show for today. To keep up with Mike's work, you can find him on X at Murphy Mike.

You can follow him at his Substack newsletter. Just search for his name. And he's been writing a lot for The Bulwark, which you can also find on X at Bulwark Online. And we'll be back on Monday for our weekly conversation from Jerusalem with Haviv Retikor from the Times of Israel. Call Me Back is produced by Ilan Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.