Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - The Invisible Primary - with Mike Murphy

Episode Date: May 8, 2023

In this episode, we go deep on the current phase (the invisible primary) of the 2024 presidential primaries with Mike Murphy, who has worked on a number of presidential campaigns, as well as run 26 gubernatorial and US Senate races across the country. Murphy was a top strategist for John McCain, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. He’s a political analyst for NBC and MSNBC. He’s co-host of the critically acclaimed "Hacks on Tap" podcast. Mike is also co-director of the University of Southern California’s Center for the Political Future. Articles we discuss in this episode: Mike Murphy -- "Iowa Is a Big Problem for Trump" -- https://plus.thebulwark.com/p/iowa-is-a-big-problem-for-trump Matthew Yglesias -- "Ron DeSantis is struggling without the Covid issue" -- https://www.slowboring.com/p/ron-desantis-is-struggling-without

What is happening now is the invisible primary in a visible way to the hobbyist class, with a lot of cable noise that is moving polls around. The only polls I'm really watching nationally are these polls that show what does Trump really have. And CBS has a new one, which is, I think, a pretty good way to look at it. You know, I'm for Trump till the end of time at around 24%. They have no Trump ever at around 23, 25, somewhere in there. And then they have about 70% resonate to, you know, maybe Trump, but really maybe somebody else, kind of the let's move along, curious about others. So that's the real race. one housekeeping note before today's episode the next episode we'll be having on retired

general hr mcmaster who is national security advisor in the trump administration and is currently at stanford University at the Hoover Institute. We'll be talking about a range of national security issues from Russia and China to the Middle East. So if you have questions, send them in. Just record a voice memo and send it to dan at unlocked.fm. That's dan at unlocked.fm. Please keep it to under 30 seconds. Tell us your name and we will select a couple of those questions for General McMaster. Now on to today's conversation. Welcome to the invisible primary of the next presidential election. As we get deep into it, could it be that everybody is wrong about everything?

Won't a Republican candidate lose his party's nomination if he loses Iowa and New Hampshire? Won't an incumbent president be in trouble if close to 30% of his party's primary voters are polling against him? That's right, 30% of primary voters are polling against him for his re-election. These are just some of the questions I have for our old pal Mike Murphy. Mike's worked on 26 gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races across the country, including 12 in blue states, something that's certainly getting harder and harder to do. He was a top strategist for John McCain, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. I first worked with Mike way back in 1994 and have been involved with a number of campaigns

with him over the years. He's currently a political analyst for NBC and MSNBC. He's co-host of one of my favorite political podcasts, Hacks on Tap, which if you're not a subscriber already, I highly recommend that you become one. And he also pens a political newsletter called the Hacks on Tap Newsletter. Mike's also co-director of the University of Southern California's Center for Political Future. Welcome to the Invisible Primary. This is Call Me Back. And I'm pleased to welcome back to the podcast, longtime friend and fan favorite of the Call Me Back podcast, Mike Murphy.

Mike? Hey. All right, Mike. I called you back. I did it. It was either that or a restraining order. So I figured, oh, Christ, I better call him back. And actually, I'm very happy to be back here.

It's one of my favorite things to do, pal. All right. Well, thanks for doing it. And everyone knows your bio who listens to this podcast. They heard it in the beginning. But before we formally begin the conversation, I want to go back into the time tunnel for a more appropriate introduction. So, Alon, let's play the jingle.

Let's roll the tape. He used to have a big career, but now he's had enough. Podcasting's like therapy. His shrink says it's rick stuff. Radio Free GOP. Oh, wow. That's the old intro jingle from Radio Free GOP, which was my Trump-hating therapy podcast,

named by Vanity Fair, one of the best podcasts I did in 16. I remember well. I was an avid listener. Let me ask you, what happened to it? What happened to Radio Free GOP? Well, you know know um first interesting thing i ever did in the real workplace was i got to uh intern around wwj news radio 95 your information station in detroit michigan when i was still in high school and i became a fiend

wait what did you do for them you know you know get coffee kid yeah yeah Oh, you know, get coffee, kid. Yeah, yeah, got it. And, you know, pound on the bathroom door, because the midday talent is drunk again at 42 seconds. You know, it was the old culture of radio, where, like, the new guy would come in to read the traffic report, and they'd set a script on fire, and he had to ad-lib the whole... You know, it was great. And anyway...

This was an era where, like, you know, kids from our respective worlds actually had jobs. Right. Well, you couldn't Google. You had to show up and get yelled at. That's how we were all trained. Right.

By the way, to make a long story short, I love the old era of Big Boss Radio, and I hated Trump. So I did this podcast. I actually found the guys, Pams and Jams and Dows, who were the king of worldwide jingles for 20 years. And I said, why don't we re-sing one of your great old classic tunes? So the music is an old famous radio jingle, but the singers came in for a six-pack and a little cash.

And we did about 30 jingles. The thing had a lot of production. A great producer named Jeff Fox helped me with it, has done a lot of stuff. Anyway, I did it for a year. Then Trump gets elected. Yeah. And I'm like me with it. He's done a lot of stuff. Anyway, I did it for a year. Then Trump gets elected. And I'm like, you know. And then the podcast went dark. You ghosted us.

I did. I ghosted my loyal listeners. The theory was I know some finance guys who met with Trump, who I've hated since Jersey when I worked for Governor Whitman. He was a problem there. But they said, you know, this is just, as he will tell you, he's just putting on an act for the rubes. It'll be better now.

And remember that's when they were trying to get Romney in and, you know, Rex to all. I remember it well. So I said, give him a chance to succeed. I won't piss all over him for six months. And so I, I went dark and I thought about bringing it back, but I was busy with a thousand things and then Axelrod and I, who are dear old personal friends going back when we were puppy consultants, we would literally run campaigns against each other and go meet in a secret bar to have a beer. It was like the old Warner Brothers cartoon with the sheepdog.

Hey, Fred. Hey, Luke. Checking in and out. We had kind of a tradition for decades of, on Sunday, having a phone chat about what's going on in politics. Even though we're on opposite sides, we're good friends. So he called up and said, why don't we turn this stuff into a podcast? So eventually that turned into Radio Free GOP. Now, because the Republican primary is looking interesting, I'm toying with a return this summer of

radio-free GOP as I say. Now the format there was I would do a bit of a monologue about what I thought was going on in politics and then I would interview a political hack about their career with inaugural guest Mitt Romney which broke my heart because we recorded it in La Jolla and the original idea was we would record it going up and down the car elevator. But the damn thing was too noisy. So anyway, it may come back, but right now Hax is really where I... It was sort of a precursor to Hax. I will say, by the way, while you and Axl are out, here's a little fun little fact for Hax on tap, the Hax on tap fanbase. You guys weren't always on the opposite side. A little known fact was that in 1998, the Clean Michigan campaign, Vote Yes on Proposal C,

which was a bipartisan campaign about cleaning up brownfields and environmental remediation in Detroit. And it was a program funded by Bonded Debt, and the co-chairmen of the campaign were Spence Abraham and John Engler and Mayor Dennis Archer of Detroit, who was an Axelrod client, and Spence and Engler were your client. I was the campaign manager of the campaign. I remember having to negotiate. I had to get on the phone one Sunday in Detroit with Axelrod negotiating Dennis Archer's role in the TV spots, since we raised all the money for the campaign, and obviously we wanted Spence to be prominently featured.

He was facing re-elect. Right, two years later. Right, right. And so Axelrod was like the captain, the chief of Dennis Archer world. Right, and you had to work it out with him the Chicago way, as I remember a bowling bag full of cash dropped off at a bus station. And we agreed to give him 50 birth certificates for new voters, too. Anyway, I don't know if the statute of limitations is out on that one yet. Kwame Kilpatrick was buzzing around that.

That's right. Well, Kwame Kilpatrick. They went undercover in the prison system. Right. Kwame Kilpatrick, who was at the State Assembly Leader for the Democrats in Lansing, and he and Archer were like the faces of the Democratic side of the campaign. And I remember telling Spence he had to spend time with Kwame Kilpatrick. He's someone he should know. Young guy.

I said, he's really going places. And Spence holds that line over me all the time. He really is going places. Yeah, he's someone he should know. Young guy. I said he's really going places, and Spence holds that line over me all the time. He really is going places. Yeah, he's going upstate. Penitentiary. Or going to college, as some of your Wall Street friends like to call it. Right. All right.

So, Mike. Yes, sir. Let's talk about 2024. Number of topics I want to hit with you today. But for starters, I am struck by the conventional wisdom which is being manifested in the form of panic, at least on the Republican side. And it seems to be, here we are in the spring of 2023, and what is undergirding that panic is a sense,

I mean, we can get into all the all the what has changed the dynamics of the primary but a sense that we're not there's this feeling the way people talk about that we're not in the spring of 2023 but we're like in the summer of 2024 already when in fact this feels really really early to me at least for anyone to get panicked so explain to us and if you give any historical context, that'd be great, where we are in this process and just how early and how many more kind of cycles, so to speak, have yet to get going before we're in the main game. Sure. Well, that is a great question, because we are in the middle of what used to be called, an old political science term,

the invisible primary, which is where people who want to be considered and used to be called, an old political science term, the invisible primary, which is where people who want to be considered and want to be president are slinking around trying to build the networks and supporters they need in the inside game. Major hard dollar bundlers, potential big check writers to a super PAC, operatives on the Democratic side. Party chairman types. Yeah, poobahs. Yeah. And what has happened in our current era of politics as a reality show and every flavor of news network you'd ever want that turns into an opinion network like Dracula's Castle when the sun goes down, it's all out in the open now. So we have this whole kind of fantasy football season.

And the people who are most addicted to it are the individual high-dollar donors because they always want to be the smart money and figure out what's going to happen first. So they're generally, and look, I love these people. They're my friends. I work for them. But that class of donor are kind of important hobbyists. And they get very excited very early because they want to be the smartest guys in the trade.

And so they run around and they're very susceptible to the whims of conventional wisdom, including national polling, which most of us who do this know national primary polling now is simply a noise meter of cable TV 10 days ago. Uh, it's very untethered. Very well candidates like Donald Trump, there is some truth in the polling, but for most of the people, they don't exist. It's like giving you an egg, stick of butter, flour, and sugar. What do you think of my new pie? Has it even been in the damn oven yet? And this crowd is the first to jump and the first to panic. So there's major exhaustion with a few, but a relatively small number of exceptions with Trump.

You know, one, and a lot of these people were for Trump last time. He's got a magic formula to win. You know, they got seduced like everybody else. Now it's like, he's crazy. He's the one guy Biden can beat. Oh my God, we can't do it. And some are actually figuring out maybe the guy's not a patriot after all. So there was a jump and a hop. The flashiest thing in the noise meter world and the easiest to find as a mega state governor was Ron DeSantis. So there was a big stampede

there. And then it turns out that he had what we will call a bumpy launch. Hasn't even launched. He hasn't even launched. Yeah, he hasn't officially. A bumpy period. Preseason. And they, of course, immediately panic, looking for the next shiny object. And that'll happen.

But you have to understand the process. And the process is the candidates go to these two oddball states that get an incredible amount of media attention, which you monetize. You win, you get momentum and exposure worth zillions of dollars. And these states, think of them as shopping malls, where the voters are locked in a shopping mall with huge glass windows, and there's a different candidate in each one.

That is only true if you're living in New Hampshire and Iowa. Now, on the Democratic side, if it were contested primary, they have a new calendar. You can argue South Carolina, Michigan, other states. But fundamentally, we're in this kind of laboratory thing. So the great old Kennedy aid from Teddy's first campaigns and veteran delegate counter, now deceased, Milt Gwertzman coined a great saying 20 years ago, the Gwertzman rule, which is ignore all national horse race polls in a primary until after the first contest. Nothing truer has ever been said. So what is happening now is the invisible primary

in a visible way to the hobbyist class with a lot of cable noise that is moving polls around. The only polls I'm really watching nationally are these polls that show what does Trump really have in terms of really strong support. Because he's the product they've all tasted. He's the only product there that people know on a national basis. And CBS has a new one, which is, I think, a pretty good way to look at it. And I'm going to be off by a point or two. But they've got, you know, I'm for Trump till the end of time at around 24%. They have no Trump ever at around 23, 25, somewhere in there. And then the other, they have about 70% of people agree with the statement, and I know it adds up to

Madoff math, but 70% resonate to, you know, maybe Trump, but really maybe somebody else, kind of the let's move along, curious about others. You know, maybe Trump, but really maybe somebody else kind of the, let's move along curious about others. You know, whenever, if you're running a Ford dealership, you call up a customer six months before the lease, yeah, I may come in, you know, I drive a Ford, but first I'm going to go to Kia, Toyota, Mercedes, and BMW, your, your, your, your chance of putting them in your iron are thin. So that's the real race.

And what's going on is people are trying to be the attractive candidate to the other 25%, could be 80 by the end of the year. And it's the beginning of the beginning. I was in Iowa two weeks ago. I gave the Culver speech in a political center there, which attracts a lot of the state polls south of Des Moines, at Simpson College. And I hung around an extra day.

I tripped over Nikki Haley twice in the lobby in Des Moines, ripping around the hotel, chasing voters. She's working hard to her credit. And I was, the local hacks who live this every day out there are like, it's early. But the state is totally open for business, you know? And I think that's all being missed nationally,

where people have somehow fallen into this conventional wisdom. It's either DeSantis or Trump now, and if DeSantis is doing bad, that must mean wet streets cause rain, Trump will do great. So Trump's the nominee, he's back. I didn't hear the word Alvin Bragg once in Iowa.

But when you talk about national polls, and I want to get to your trip to Iowa in a moment, when you talk about national polls, it's not just national polls that could be misleading this early. It's state polls, too. The Des Moines Register poll, which is a great poll. We know some of the folks involved. Except when it's wrong. Except when it's wrong. Except when it's wrong. And a year before the 2016 Iowa caucus, it had Governor Scott Walker

and Senator Rand Paul leading the Iowa caucus in terms of polling, and then boom, a year later, Ted Cruz wins with Donald Trump coming in second, and Scott Walker and Rand Paul were nowhere. You know, Phil Graham and Steve Forbes in 2016

in the caucus couldn't be stopped. 1996. 1996, excuse me. Yeah, and they both got about 10% of the vote and got crushed. Yes, it is so early. Primaries, surge late. Didn't Dole in 88? Dole won the Iowa?

No, Robertson won the? No, I think Dole did in 88. Dole in 88, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So these things are very logarithmatic. We're only beginning the sampling period, but it is beginning. And the problem is the donor class

wants to predict the future, and they know they can't call up Treskin because that won't answer it. So they over-consume polls and have these reinforcing bubbles, and there's a panic. I mean, I've been trying to, I mean, I like Tim Scott a lot. I think they've had a bumpy launch, but the truth is everybody has a bumpy launch. You know who had the bumpiest launch of all time? Barack Obama stumbled his way

out of the gate in 2008 and was a certified lousy candidate at the beginning. The real question isn't how bad they are at the front. It's how quickly they can improve. Because they get out of the warm bathtub of their home state with the softball questions. Senator, great to have you here. And then they go to the show. And they think they're going from AAA to majors. No, they're going from Little League to the majors. And they get knocked on their ass. And then they either decide to get better, and they've got staff who can get them there, or they don't. We're beginning that period now. Writing off DeSantis now, writing off Scott,

and finally, I want to try to get Brian Kemp to run, because on paper, I think he's super formidable. He doesn't understand, I don't think. Just for our listeners, Brian Kemp is the governor of Georgia, just re-elected despite a challenge, primary challenge to him that was orchestrated, directly orchestrated, recruited by Trump. And Kemp won decisively. Yeah, he crushed Trump.

I mean, and he's the only one who's done that, which is a good narrative. And is a rock-ribbed conservative. Right, and he's generational, and he's got great numbers in the Atlanta suburbs. So he's a very good politician and knows how to do this. I don't think he knows if he spent three days in Manhattan, he'd understand all that DeSantis money with the fickle nature of donors if he had a great lunch would jump right over there. Because generally you sit around the Atlanta state capitol and think,

oh, how the hell are we going to raise $100 million, Clem? But whether he'll figure that out or not, he's hinting he won't run. But boy, he is somebody with an opportunity. And I think Tim Scott also, but he's got to up his game. His first tour of Iowa, and I heard a lot about it, he absolutely crushed the Polk County Lincoln Day. Who cares, you may think. Well, Polk County is Des Moines.

It's the biggest county in Iowa and large crowd in his element and he destroyed it. On the other hand, he wasn't ready for basic media questions. He just got in trouble in New Hampshire again because he hasn't been prepped up. So I'll be watching to see if he can improve. What I like about his positioning is he is a non-grievance conservative. And I think an Uncola like that could do pretty well. Now, the other problem he's got is every time somebody does one of these things for the first time, they fall for the same mistakes. Because what makes sense in your local state reelect, you figure, well, I just need to do the Iowa and New Hampshire version of that. The first thing is if you are the pure 150% blue ribbon, social conservative in Iowa, traditionally your first or second and often first.

And from nowhere and president Santorum, president Huckabee, president Robertson have all run that strategy. And the best day of your life is caucus night in the Iowa caucus. Cause the social conservative block mostly goes to you and you do really well. And then your campaign is essentially over. You've scared away the donors and you have to go bounce to New Hampshire, the much more secular Republican primary with a lot of independence in it. And we always joke in New Hampshire primaries that the,

the best subtext slogan, and can I curse on this podcast? Yes, yes, yes. A lot of children who tune in. Nobody knows you were in the Barney suit. I don't know if that's publicly been ever disclosed. But anyway, fuck Iowa. That's a pretty good, particularly if the Iowa candidate doesn't look right. And so Scott ought to borrow, in my view, the George W. Bush playbook

of be evangelical friendly, incredible, but a hell of a lot more optimistic, a different thing moving beyond Trump. Then I think he's got a real shot. But to get back to what you said at the beginning, we don't know any of this yet because we actually have to have a campaign. Right. The campaign is not unimportant. We find out what they've got, if they can improve,

what their strengths and weaknesses are. This debate in August, should it happen? In August, the summer debate, the equivalent of the summer debate, the first summer debate before the 2016 primary, something like 27 million people tuned in in the Republican debate. So, I mean, there's like a lot of people who know nothing about these candidates. Right. And they're all going to blow it because they're all going to be underprepped, think their

local act will work, show up. And then it's like the old Hollywood story about, and I'll update it so I don't get us canceled. But the most beautiful man or woman from, you know, Barneyville, Indiana, decides, I should go to Hollywood. They get on the bus, and they get off, and they look around, and there are 50,000 other incredibly beautiful people. Well, they're going to be on that debate stage doing their thing. They won't be prepped appropriately. They're going to look around and say, oh, my God.

And then Trump will be, and I think he will show up, he'll be setting the lectern on fire, you know, which is kind of why I hope Christie runs. So there's another junkyard dog. The problem for the other candidates is they're just going to be sitting there, can't we all come together, please? Gee willikers, which will translate into, oh, they want to be vice president. That's the problem Scott will face.

So still, your point is right. It's your first big stage. If I were running a presidential right now, I'd have about 25% of the candidates' time on prep. Okay, I want to come back to Iowa in one second in the piece you wrote about it. First of all, you do think Trump will participate in that first debate? I think he will threaten not to until the end, and then he won't be able to stand not participating. Got it. It is a mistake for him not to participate, because then he gives some... One of the reasons McCain in 2001 won the New Hampshire primary was we showed up in the Northwoods in New Hampshire for an early debate with Steve Forbes and all the... Poor Forbes. McCain kept sneaking into his make-up. Hey, Steve, how you doing?

Look, I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but explain that flat tax thing to me again. Is it gold coins? You don't just to be a dick. I mean, he was nice about it. And poor Forbes was a sweet guy. Well, you see, the problem is the central bank. But we were all there, and we all got to steal the mic,

and the narrative was George Bush is too busy in Texas being an important, invincible frontrunner. And that's where the first embers of momentum for McCain, because he gave us the stage. I got banned for a long story that'll be in my book I'm working on, but I got banned from the debate for getting crosswise with the administrator of the station, a PBS station that McCain used to call Nurse Ratched. But stay tuned for that. Anyway, bottom line is the debate will be big. And it'll be unavoidable.

It'll be unavoidable for Trump. He can't miss a stage. Yeah, he's the center of the universe. Yeah, exactly. And there's a risk for him if one of them takes off at the debate. Right, why give him that opportunity? Okay, and then just, you mentioned his name. Chris Christie's not someone that folks are talking about as a serious candidate,

but I think what you're saying, which I hadn't thought of, which is that it almost doesn't matter if he's a serious candidate because he can play a serious role. Yeah, he's totally catalytic. That is really what his story is because if he, how do I put this? If he tries to do to Trump what he did to Marco Rubio in a New Hampshire debate. Now, the media will say Trump won

because all he did was wrestle Christie all night long and nobody else got a word in edgewise. But it will do damage. Nobody voted for Christie when he ran for president. And he was supposed to be the regional guy who was going to do well in New Hampshire. He made a maximum effort up there where really all his spending and time was. And he finished like fifth.

I mean, and nothing happened for him. But he was catalytic for Rubio. And he can be catalytic for Trump too. Do I think he'll be the nominee? Not at all. Do I think that he could add an interesting, you know, you're going to have madman Trump, a bunch of shy Chamber of Commerce Republicans who will take a while to learn how to actually be strong in a modern television debate, and one very large angry Doberman running around

basically biting Trump. That does add a new dynamic. So for entertainment value alone, I think it might be interesting. Okay, so now I want to go to this piece you wrote for The Bulwark called, Iowa is a big problem for Trump. By the way, I continue to believe that if Trump... It's hard for me to see any candidate winning if they can't win Iowa, New Hampshire, or both. And I'm hearing more and more from friends who've been involved in politics in Iowa or New Hampshire, both saying they think that Trump's path to winning either of the states, either respective state, is tricky, and that you wrote about Iowa.

And so you say here, you point out that Trump won 24.3% of the Republican caucus vote in 2016, leaving him second behind Ted Cruz. Yeah, Cruz beat him by about 6,000 votes, which was about four and a half points. So Trump got about 45,000 votes and change out of 187,000. Cruz did 51,666, by the way, for you Christian numerologists. Okay. Yeah, he lost, but because it was the first time, that was enough for Trump, and then he won New Hampshire. This time, the problem is they've seen the act, and there's a lot of new stuff out there. When I was in Iowa, I saw a lot of Republican activists. I used to do Terry Branstad's campaigns.

I know Iowa pretty well. Longtime governor of Iowa. Very successful. So I saw the Branstad generals who were still around and pretty active, and I saw some young field people who worked for the party and have been around and know the grassroots pretty active. And I saw some young field people who've worked for the party and have been around and know the grassroots pretty well. And traditionally, there's kind of two armies in the Iowa primary, which is even more pronounced in the caucus, which is the regulars, including a moderate wing nobody talks about that goes back to Governor Bob Ray, clearly in the minority, but

not a small useless factor. And a big Christian conservative thing, maybe 40% of the vote, 35 to 40, which is well organized. And that's why the Santorum's of the world tend to surge late. He won the primary of 29,000 votes out of 121,000 in 2012, though Mitt will argue he was like five votes. I mean, Dave Koch was going to call me an hour. God damn it. We won that thing. But anyway, they were both at about 29,000.

So I was stunned that not one of them thought Trump was going to win the caucus. They can't tell you who's going to win the caucus, but they don't think it'll be Trump. They think he'd spent one kid who, uh, I don't want to out him. Cause in the Republican party now there there's your public view and your private view. And most of them believe the private view, but want to out them because in the Republican Party now, there's your public view and your private view. And most of them believe the private view but want to wait for the public rowdy to get to the private view, re-Trump.

But somebody who's very in touch in a big section of the state said, look, of the 20 strongest Trump grassroots types I knew from 16, half are gone and of the 10 that are left... Half are gone, meaning passed away or moved out of the state? No, no, they're no longer, they're looking for somebody else. Ah, so they're up for grabs. Not this time. He was great, but no more.

And then the other half, maybe half of them, which would be 5 out of 20, are pretty hardcore, and the other half are leaning that way but waiting for a campaign. So, you know, we'll see. But if Trump, the invincible frontrunner, the former president, the media can't call him frontrunner enough. The media believes he can't be killed. I don't know why.

It's like Rasputin. Well, we can't kill him. Yeah, then somebody shot him in the face and he died. So, you know, you can kill Rat Spear. But anyway, if Trump goes in the Iowa caucus and loses, and Superman can't pick up a locomotive, and some of the Iowans, and this is kind of my gut, though I was like afraid to say it until I heard from a lot of them, think he could wind up third.

That's a crushing blow. And then can he bounce to New Hampshire? Now, the New Hampshire primary is really the New Hampshire Republicans and independent primary. And with nothing going on on the Democratic side, there's going to be a lot of loose vote that want their famous New Hampshire Pepperidge Farm, we tell the country how to vote. That voice will be there, and it's not going to be for Donald Trump.

So I think he loses both of them, and then he melts like the Wicked Witch. If one of these new people can get their act together. And just quickly, one more thing that of course nobody in the DCCW is paying attention to because they miss this stuff and they're late. The Democrats for good reason got rid of the Iowa caucus because they had a crazy apportionment system. Nobody could count the votes. Nightmare.

Forbid Buttigieg. You know, he won it legitimately and got nothing. Because it took days and days for that to be declared. Yeah, they were doing the whole thing in base nine math and underwater. And then he missed the bounce. Yeah, yeah. He didn't get it at all. And they, anyway, there are a lot of factors. But in 2022, 172,000 Democrats and Independents voted on caucus night.

And remember, in these caucuses, you go out in the snow and hang around and avoid the gaze of the local veterinarian you call 3 a.m. if you're out in a rural county somewhere who's for one candidate. And on the third ballot, you might wind up being for that candidate and still have a veterinarian. Anyway, it's tricky. But people do the work because they're Iowans and they, it's important to them as part of their identity. So you got 172,000 people who showed up for Buddha judge or, or Warren or Biden

or Klobuchar with nothing to do on caucus night except sit home and be irrelevant. Now, I guarantee you there will be some giggling college Democrats who will try to show up at a Republican caucus and vote for Trump. But I was pulled aside because people recognize me from being wallpaper on cable TV for so long. One guy, I'm a Democrat, but I'm going to show up. I think it's important that voices be heard on caucus night, you know, from practical Iowans. And I doubt I'll vote for a Republican in the general, but I'm sure as hell I want to speak against Trump in the Iowa caucus. So how do you do it? Well, in the old days, the Iowa party loved to have non-Republicans show up during the heat of the caucus because they thought we'd sign them up as Republicans at the door.

It's a party-building deal. And that's how it worked forever. Now, some of the Republicans who are worried about this, and do I think 170,000 Dems are going to show up? No. Do I think 20% of them might, or at least look at it? I do. And the Republican caucus was about 185,000, the last contested one, which is bigger than normal. But if 30,000 people show up, that's 20% of the vote.

That's a material change. So in the legislature, some Republicans are talking about no more of this show up and be a Republican. You have to change your registration to Republican. At least they're going to fight over the number, but call it 70 days out. I think it might be a little tighter. Well, and that's controversial in the party because some regulars remember the good old days where we'd sign them up and we've been many new Republicans. It's great. How do you change your registration then? You go on the secretary of state and you spend 18 seconds

clicking two clicks. Not that hard. So this caucus could be a little different, a little less Christian, a little more regular, and definitely even more anti-Trump than it would be normally. But doesn't this have all the makings of a mischief-making Democratic IE effort to get a bunch of these formerly Democratic caucus goers to meddle in the Republican caucus, similar to what they did in Republican primaries in 2022, getting the most Trumpy candidate nominated in the hope that the Democrat could win and that this is like they want Trump as the nominee. I've seen it for 30 years. It's very hard to get people to vote for somebody they hate, even on some clever scheme like this. Those IEs were basically about getting Republicans to vote for Trump.

Ah, that's interesting. You know, it wasn't like, hey, Bernie people, can you all put on a red hat? I will not. I've been, you know. Right. So there'd be some mischief, but I think you're going to have a lot more. That's a key point. So this mischief making in 2022 in the midterms was just that.

It was boosting up Republican, I mean, Trumpy candidates in the eyes of Trump-sympathetic Republican primaries. Yeah, the ads are all like, boy, he's too conservative. He's too strong on the border. He's too mad at Joe Biden, the greatest man in the world. Now, the one time I've seen it happen, and it wasn't organized, it was generic, which is one of my favorite media missed-it-again carps, was when Eric Cantor lost. They're like, oh, because of Trump and Laura Ingram, Republicans turned on him. Well, one, her show wasn't even on the air in that district.

You know, that's overlooked. Right. She made a campaign appearance there. But the real story is Virginia is very rare. It's one of the few states that doesn't have party registration. So a whole lot of Democrats showed up to screw Eric Cantor, who they hated. Um, so a lot of Democrats are gonna show up up i think and independents who lean democrat don't forget them in both the new hampshire primary because there's no democratic primary anymore

and the iowa caucus although you're gonna have to go through some rigmarole online to be a republican for a month the guy i talked to knew all about it yeah i go online vote and then i'll change back um they're there to vote against somebody they hate, Donald Trump, because Trump is, Democrat hate for Trump is like power of the fusion of the sun. So it'll be mixed, but I'll bet it'll be at least six to one do-gooders versus giggling college Democrats. We'll find out. But somebody ought to poll that group.

By the way, Ann Seltzer, I know you don't make a move without Dan Senor. The register, let's go poll 600 of them. So for our listeners, Ann Seltzer is a prominent, prominent, the most prominent. She owns Iowa. Yeah, she's the most prominent blue chip pollster in Iowa. She does the poll for the

Des Moines Register that we were referring to before. Anyways. You want to know what cattle think about ethanol? She's your woman. She owns Iowa. I'm complimenting her. I know. She's the best.

She's the best. She's great. And if you're listening, we're fans. Okay, so New Hampshire. You ran McCain's surprise primary win in New Hampshire in 2000. You have a home in New Hampshire. You've done a lot of politics in New Hampshire. Yeah, I keep trying to vote there, but the California

Revenue Authority, so one thing they do well in the state government of California is figure out if you're trying to live as a tax haven resident in New Hampshire. Not just California. Not just California. My friends in New York State, not me.

I know a guy there who carries his phone around in a Faraday cage because he knows they're tracking him. Okay. Governor Sununu. Governor Chris Sununu of New Hampshire. Good guy. Friend of mine. I'm a donor. So what is your view, A, of him as a candidate for president, and do you think he'll jump in? Well, he's a pal of mine, supported him, know him, and it's hopeless. Hopeless? Well, let's not say it's completely hopeless, but here's the problem. One, being the great moderate hope is not how you win a Republican primary. You know, all these reporters, well, none of these guys are brave enough to attack Trump.

Yeah, because the argument is beyond Trump. It's for idiots like me to attack Trump. I'm not on a primary ballot. You want to be beyond Trump. Had is saying, you can be mildly critical, but everybody wants the Aaron Sorkin movie where all the Republicans put on their old army uniforms and go put handcuffs on Trump.

The whole thing is a big therapy animal for liberals who would love it emotionally. They're still mad that he's not in prison, Alan Bragg. So Chris's problem is great governor would be a terrific general election candidate and a good politician. And by the way, he knows, oh boy, I lose the presidential preseason and I wind up vice president. What a loser I am. So there are some reasons to raise the national profile. But because the Democrats killed the first in the nation, New Hampshire primary, which is like going to Detroit and saying, why do we make these stupid American cars? They're mad. And so if he says, hey, I'm going to ruin the Republican primary by running so the media

doesn't cover it because it doesn't mean anything now, favorite son, they're going to torture his ass in his own state. There's some of these early polls, the methodology, you know, you got to be a Wari consumer. But there's an Emerson, which is an OK poll from a month ago showing the presidential primary there. And the incumbent governor, Sununu, who's well-liked, was doing third place because he is screwing with the franchise. And so he'll underperform in his own state, maybe badly out of voter anger. It won't be a true measure what they think of them.

And then where does he bounce to? South Carolina? You know, where by the way, you've got two potential favorite sons of one of them, Scott or Haley can be the Trump beater in Iowa. Because remember, the credential, if you beat Trump in the Iowa caucus, he's now a two-time loser that Joe Biden can be. He is over. He's changed the channel. And now you're on rocket fuel. And if you can beat him again in New Hampshire and bounce to South Carolina, you're going to do it right. Right now, they're not doing great in South Carolina because they haven't done the magic yet. They haven't beat Trump.

You know, the old first rule of southern politics by the great political philosopher, world wrestling champion Ric Flair, to be the man you've got to beat the man. Well, that's really what this boils down to. And Iowa and New Hampshire are fertile places to beat Donald Trump. I've got to say, I've had a nickel for every one

of my New York donor friends who heard Governor Sununu on the Axe Files podcast. David's your co-host. That's where the primary voters are. God, this Chris Sununu's great. I heard him on the Axe podcast. Do you think he'll run? I'm thinking what you're thinking, which is

that's probably not a great sign if the excitement about the Chris Sununu primary is on the Axe files. No disrespect, David. He needs to move to New York and try there. Right. Because he's in a purple state. Look, he's a great candidate.

I'd vote for him in a minute. But, you know, it's just the terrain will favor somebody a little different than him. The two best are Scott and Brian Kemp, if he can be gotten in the race. They're generational. They're optimistic. Kemp has real primary chops. Scott has potential, but like Kamala Harris or Mike Dukakis or a million others, he's grown up in an environment where there aren't general elections,

which is a plus in a Republican primary, but it also, you've been to a college that doesn't teach math. It's tricky. So we'll see. But I'm hoping for Kemp to get in and or Scott to beat Iowa with a Christians plus strategy, not the cul-de-sac strategy of Huckabee, in Iowa and bounced to New Hampshire.

Okay, I want to talk to you about DeSantis in a minute, but before we do, talk to me about, because now we've gotten the first quarter of the year before the presidential finance report's out, and there's, at least among the political press, a lot of analysis and interpretations and reinterpretations of these FEC reports to try to make sense of what's going on in the money chase game of this presidential election so far. So can you just give our listeners here a quick tutorial on this and why it matters and how to think about it.

Oh, it's the great sport. Because at this phase, this whole presidential thing is kind of like value investing. You really want the weighing scale, not the voting noise meter. And so you've got to look at the fundamental stuff. Campaigns all play the same game. They put out a press release. We're going to file an FEC report showing we've raised $30 million. Incredible.

Before the report is actually available to the press. Now, in the old days, it was kind of like a CEO talking about earnings. We didn't lie because they were going to come out, and we didn't want to blow up our credibility. Now, and Nikki just got caught in this. They announced like $11 million, but they were like double-counting some stuff. And within that global number, there are different committees that have different value. Just to be clear, when you say double counting, not in violation of any rules or regulations.

No, it was puffery. Right, right, exactly. I'll give you a great example. She has multiple committees. Yeah, multiple committees, and they took the top line from all, but one of her committees then gave to another committee, and they counted that. And these are not filings.

This is just dumb press secretary bragging in a dumb way, or more likely dumb press secretary or smart press secretary being forced to. I don't know how it happened, but we got to show a big number out of the box, or we're toast. So they did some very violent engineering to come up with this. So there are two issues. One is you give a million dollars to I Love Nikki Haley for president, Super PAC, and you give your $3,300 to the hard federal account,

the actual presidential account, which is limited at $3,300. And then the other one makes a donation at $3,300. So you can inflate the number to fool the press. The other thing to keep an eye on, the hard number is more important than the super PAC number. So just for the terminology here, hard number refers to the donation a donor makes to an actual candidate committee versus soft dollar, which is to an independent effort like a 527 or C4 super PAC.

The independent efforts cannot coordinate. With the campaign. Right. With the candidate's campaign. So they can go run ads and do useful stuff. People fall in love with them because it's easier to raise that money. Because you go to Warren Buffett and you say, Warren, I'm running for president. He says, I love you.

Here's $3,300. Yeah, but I've got a super PAC. Oh, okay, here's $3 million. A super PAC can take the big dollar, but it's not as useful. It can't do stuff with your voice. It's hard to orient. Cruise people, excuse me, the Santa's people are talking about using a super PAC to organize Iowa.

Good luck. So the hard dollars are important. So you go through the FEC to look at the most important number. How much cash do they have? Now, there's another herring in there. The limit you can give to a candidate's committee, and corporations can't, got to be an individual, is $3,300. When I started, it was $1,000.

That's a good little compounding inflation. $3,300. And you can give two $3,300 checks, one for now and one for general election purposes. So some campaigns will count both checks, even though you can't use the second one unless you win. Right, unless you're the nominee. Yeah.

So if you go through Nikki's report out of the box, she has $4 million cash on hand, which means there's no campaign by Labor Day. She'll run out of money, unless they can get a lot of new income in, which maybe they can. I'll bet they're sure trying hard. Good debate to performance.

She generates some energy. Yeah, and she made a move on abortion, but they didn't live up to it. So the other thing is you go to any campaign manager. And when you say make a move on abortion, you mean on the issue, not against abortion. She's just trying to bring some. No, no. She wanted to grab the mic and say, look, I get it.

I'm female. I'm the communicator on this. And then, of course, they said, well, where are you? 20 weeks? You know, did you have a policy? Oh, I'm a woman. You know, she teed it up but couldn't hoop the ball. She should have.

She needed a better speech, and they needed to think it through rather than go for the easy calories of a press conference that went nowhere. But anyway, when you look at the FEC report, you got to know, let's say 4 million cash on hand. You really want that number right now if you're a long shot like her to be 8 or 9 million cash on hand in the federal account. She couldn't raise it. Maybe she can.

She better or she, I should talk about the cash flow of presidential because the early burn kills you. Explain. Well, the other trick is you're the campaign manager and you're going to file your report at the end of the month, the quarterly report. You open your desk drawer, what are you going to see in there? You're going to see a million unpaid bills. You're stiffing everybody you possibly can to keep your cash number high till the end of the last day of the month. Then you pay everybody. So you have kind of a factoring

loan going on. So the 4 million is is probably $3.46, you know, because there's half a million in liabilities there that you're supposed to list on the report. But, oh, the accounting kid was sick. You know, the games are played. The problem with these things, a lot of them think coming out of their home state, what sure worked in, you know, Barneyville, is, I've got to get in early because I'll beat the other guys. I'll be able to go to Scott County four times before summer. So they do that, but then you have this war in the campaign, all of which cost overhead

money between the scheduling department. Hey, we got your number two speaking slot after DeSantis at the barbecue wing ding in Black Owl County south of Cedar Rapids. Great, you've got to be there. Oh, the finance committee just called. Money Back Senor is going to host an event in Chicago. We think we can do $150,000 hard money. And don't forget, we agreed to the ethanol breakfast.

And you got to be back in South Carolina because the next morning, our state finance committee thinks they can do $200,000 at breakfast. So how do you do all that? Who do you cancel on? Well, campaigns never want to offend anybody. You don't cancel. You charter a plane. So planes are timed. People think candidates fly around in Learjets because it's comfortable.

No, it's the only way to grab time. But next thing you know, you've spent $640,000. And by the way, you're often traveling. You're traveling between Davenport, Iowa and some small airport in New Hampshire. And there's not exactly direct flights, even if you want to fly commercial. You get in at midnight. You do the New York pair of breakfasts, east side, west side, or financial district, east side. Then you get on the plane.

You go rushing off to the annual ethanol conference at 10 a.m. in Des Moines. You do an hour and a half there. Then you're on a plane to Chicago fundraising lunch. Then you got the meeting with the Pritzker's third cousin who might be a Republican. They try to get the 200 grand for, or to bundle money. And then you go racing back and you got to have the meeting with the Lieutenant Governor of Iowa who really wants to have one. You can't snub them. And then you're driving like mad for Blackhawk County to do the wing ding event. And then rinse and repeat. The next day you're driving like mad for Blackhawk County to do the wingding event, and then rinse and repeat. The next day, you got to be back for something the next morning. And

then, of course, you got LA at noon, which turns out to only raise 40 grand because everybody lied, not 200. You lose more on the jet going there, et cetera, et cetera. So the burn rate of this magic carpet mentality of whipping around the country trying to get a jump also burns up all your money. And this happened to Scott Walker. A lot of these early flamers, you know, they're just the comet. It happened to Pawlenty, too, in 2012. Right. You wind up on Labor Day in Iowa when it really starts, and you're broke.

You have a million cash, and you've already found the $18 million that's there for you, and that was hard work. So, yeah, I'm going to be watching Nikki's cash in 60 days, see if she can get herself back in the hunt. I mean, Kamala Harris, people forget, Kamala Harris pulled out before even a single vote was cast. Yeah, for all that glamour and glory. And again, you've got to watch the cash flow. I tell people running,

50% of the incoming money goes into an escrow account. You can't touch if it's not early state voter contact, no earlier than Labor Day. You just bank it in a one-way door and you starve and by the way sometimes you can't make the chicago event you reschedule it because it'll probably be disappointing anyway all right let's talk about ron desantis so you you wrote here uh in that same bulwark piece uh the conventional wisdom on 2024, I'm quoting here, the conventional wisdom on 2024 has flipped. Again, at first Trump was toast,

then Ron DeSantis was a juggernaut, then the New York indictment supercharged Trump while DeSantis was revealed to hate puppies while DeSantis was revealed to hate puppies, small children, and humankind in general. I just want to, for our listeners, underline

that is a quote from Murphy, not from me. Murphy. I like DeSantis. I do not think that he hates puppies, small children. I want that FTC job. But let me say, I was speaking in the, I was mocking the voice of conventional wisdom. Because he's hot, he's cold.

And what I say in the piece later is, he'll get a second and third look. Right. And I've said this on Hex and Tap a lot. Beginning this summer. Yeah, and I think I say in the piece, well, he's been written off by the always first to panic donor class.

Donor class, right. He's still very much an interesting, what's he got, we'll take a look at him, a candidate in Iowa. Right. Now, I think, and I think a lot of consultant types think this, that he's, I make a joke in the piece that Dale Carnegie was born only a few miles from the Iowa border. He may want to make a pilgrimage or go online.

His skills need to go up. I've seen this before. Mega governors don't need to be good at retail because they can raise a lot of money and they can run 80 million bucks of television ads and that if you're in new york or california florida you know there are ways and whenever they want to speak to the the press they have the state capital press corps that's basically assigned to them right and they platform yeah right so i think de santis will get another look I think some of his messaging has power. He's got a new 90-second video up, kind of a bait spot, but they're spending some money on it, which isn't bad.

It shows him doing the culture war stuff, which there's a market for. And at the end, the guy puts a DeSantis sticker over the Trump sticker on the pickup truck. I mean, he's trying to be Trump-lite, younger, better, less crazy, more electable. I'm seeing candidate skills that would trouble me. I think there's plenty to worry about. The talk on the consultant street is not good on him based on screams of muted pain from his organization, where there's a lot of power centers, all the squabbly

stuff, and apparently his spouse, which is totally appropriate, is very powerful in the campaign, but maybe a little myopic based on a career in local TV news rather than national politics. Certain confirmation bubbles in that. We will see. We will see if he can ride the wave, and I'm not writing him off yet.

The other thing, you know, speaking of Nikki's... Hold on, I just want to ask you one question on the personality side. So, so I was struck by this piece by Matt Iglesias in the, in his sub stack, who I don't usually agree with, but this was an interesting point, was that we, we typically, when we, when we identify candidate qualities that are the keys to a candidate's success, once the candidate heads for like a bumpy patch, we look at those same qualities and say those same qualities are liability.

And he writes here, and I'm quoting, when Obama was up in the polls, we were told people like his calm, cool demeanor. But when Obama was doing poorly, he was cold and hard to relate to. And, you know, I do think there's a little bit of this with DeSantis. His personality when he was riding high was no different than his personality now and somehow before he was tough he was fearless he was you know not you know yeah i agree it's overdone but he has not been a droid you know you're playing a six-string banjo with the media and you can learn it and they have certain biases that then kind of rise and fall.

A lot of it's artificial. But DeSantis, where he's getting killed, is when he's in a room with other Pauls. He doesn't slather all over them in the normal practice. I want to say before I get gunned that this governor here, Kim Reynolds from Iowa, is America's greatest governor, what she's done for ethanol, three-legged cows, and the new Iowa start early, start late,

educational scholar, whatever the hell it is. You lather them up, and you're back slappy, and then the reviews filter out to the press from your staff, not your campaign. The others can instead of, because they're all cultish almost. Do you realize he made the governor stand there for 17 minutes without acknowledging her incredible work for Humboldt County? My God.

I'm not saying she's against him. So you get those reviews. You've got to play the small room right, and he doesn't have a gift for that, but he can learn it. So I don't smell a superstar candidate there, but I know this. Guy's got transferable in his hard money account like over $65 million. Oh, I think more than that. I think north of $80.

Yeah. I think north of $80 million. He can ante it. Tim Scott has probably by now $25 or $26 million in his hard account, which ante's him in. Plus, he'll have a big super PAC with limited utility, but it'll be big. He's Ellison's form. I was in San Francisco yesterday.

And Ellison's giving him like 20 or, Tim Scott, like 20 or $25 million. Right, and that could show up too. The Super Pinks are funny. I did Jebs. And I'm sitting there one day and a guy from Wall Street calls up, relatively famous,

and curtain direct. I know Trump. He's an asshole. He's got to be stopped. I want to send you some money. What's the wire account. I said, great. And I give him the wire account and I thought, oh, there may be 150, 250 grand, $10 million showed up the next day.

Wow. And then I heard from him again, when I refunded a million, eight of it afterward, cause we were very careful with our cash and like, I've never gotten a goddamn refund before, you know, kind of just would spend the 1.8 million. It could have gone. I don't know. We spent more against Trump than any candidate. But so those guys have the money to endure the rocky beginnings and grow.

Haley, who's pretty good, I'm not a big fan, but has skills, she may never get to the show to make her pitch if they don't. I don't see another five to seven hard dollars show up. One point that Iglesias makes in this piece, though, is that so much of the key to DeSantis' rocket fuel was how he managed COVID. And that was actually an incredibly impressive contrast to how not only the Democrats ran COVID, and particularly Democratic governors like Cuomo and Newsom, but how Trump managed COVID. Well, it also gave him a platform.

He was the big COVID, so he got to own cable TV and get a little bit famous. But he won. He routinely beat Trump among Florida voters who know both of them in the early data. But he won COVID. COVID's behind us, and so now he's sort of missing that. That's Iglesias' piece.

Yesterday's man. Right. Because he won the argument, which was impressive, but he's taken the issue off the table, and that's kind of made him a man without a voice or a cause right now. Yeah. I think where they're going to land is a little bit of charm school, and a lot of the toughest job in America fighting the evil woke left needs the toughest jerk in town.

So, you know, you try to define the job to fit the guy you have, and he's always going to have a little jerk on him. A really smart mutual friend of ours, who I won't name because he has a career, said, and this is a good conservative, I look at DeSantis and there's no love in him. And I thought that was very telling. They've got to fix that. He's never going to be the lovey-dovey guy, but if he's the smiling warrior, because he's always going to be the warrior, and they're running the warrior now.

It's basically he's Buford Pusser going to Washington. I think they're going to need more than that. We'll see. I wouldn't bet on him, but right now we don't know yet. I want to spend a few minutes on the Democratic race,

and then we're going to take a couple questions, and then we'll let you go. One very quick footnote. Notice how we haven't mentioned Pence at all. Everybody's four-flops. Fair enough. But again, see if he can sell some tickets. He'll have a shot. All right.

So, Mike, before we move on to our listener questions, I want to ask you to spend a few minutes on the Democratic primary. And, yes, there is a primary. So let's start with the fact that RFK Jr. and Marianne Williamson right now are polling somewhere collectively at about a third of the Democratic primary electorate. Again, I know we're not supposed to focus on polls,

but still, RFK Jr., 19%. Marianne Williamson, 9%. They're polling much higher than Nikki Haley and Tim Scott are in the Republican primary. And we just spent 45 minutes talking on or off about Haley and Scott. And yet our Democratic friends don't want to talk at all about RFK Jr. and Marianne Williamson. But they seem to be like a vessel for something going on. Yeah, well, they are.

I mean, one, they're both, particularly Kennedy, is what movie folks would call a pre-aware title. Oh, Kennedy's running. Well, you know, there'll be a second look at what kind of Kennedy. And especially among older Democratic primary voters. Right, right. I mean, they're going to, he's going to do badly on the 100 car washes. That is the nature of running for president. Also, the Dems had a very, in my view, somewhat too clever by half plan to change their nominating deal. Iowa was technically screwed up.

It wasn't diverse. So we got to get rid of Iowa. Uh, New Hampshire can be rocky. Biden got slaughtered there last time. So we're going to fool around. Now we're gonna put South Carolina number one. Uh, lot of African Americans, good Biden numbers, you know, does nothing for you in a general election, but who cares?

We want an easy first state. And secret agenda that they won't talk about, and it's not that high on their thing, but got to somewhere to happen. And Kamala has to start somewhere. That's where she ought to start. uh so they've created this vacuum among angry somewhat how do i put it entitled new hampshire democratic primary voters who are used to being the biggest thing in the world for decades now they're like sorry you don't count anymore so of course on primary day they're going to make trouble and they got a kennedy who actually even with all the crazy vaccination stuff and everything was kind of a crusading do-gooder

and has a lot of connection to the Boston media market, which is the real key to the New Hampshire primary because New Hampshire effectively, politically, is a satellite of Boston. So the guy's got some name idea there. Not all of it bad. It'll get worse. Biden's snubbing the entire state. And then you've got Marianne, who flies by on her magic carpet

and has her own little sliver. It's kind of like when Arianna Huffington put on the white robes and ran for governor of California in 2003. Her ad, she was floating around like some sort of deity. So Biden will be embarrassed but not stopped. I read this interview of RFK Jr. in Tablet magazine, long-form interview that David Samuels did. It's interesting.

I mean, there's elements of crazy in it, and then there are certainly elements of not crazy. Like, it seemed like he's thought this through a little more than I would think. Yeah, but it's a sideshow. Biden's going to be the... So you don't think this is like a Papap Buchanan against George H.W. Bush in 92 or a Teddy Kennedy against Jimmy Carter?

It's not as big as Kennedy Carter. Okay. What about Buchanan-Bush? Yeah, I... He's going to be embarrassed, but Biden has... You were involved with that race. You were running ads against Buchanan. Right. I killed him in the Michigan primary. And you killed him and yet, but you were also... And his speech is, it's America first. And his driveway, it's a in the Michigan primary. And you killed him, but you were also an early...

And his speech is, it's America first. And his driveway, it's a Mercedes-Benz. It's a Mercedes-Benz, right. But bottom line is, Biden will be embarrassed, but he has much bigger other problems. And there's nothing he can do. They made their bed when they shoved New Hampshire out, and they created an opportunity for trouble,

and now they've got a renegade Kennedy who's going to make some trouble there. Okay, so now let's talk about Biden. Leave aside these primary opponents, although again, could they be an expression also of just lack of enthusiasm, a lack of enthusiasm for Biden among Democrats? The data certainly shows that. Again, I know you're skeptical of early polls, but the number of Democrats who don't want him to run is striking. Here we go. Of only 14% of Democrats under 50 in a recent Monmouth University poll preferred Mr. Biden to run again. I mean, it's, you know, so he's, there's an enthusiasm issue on the Democrats. Yeah, there is, there has been for a while, particularly younger Democrats, some extent in the African American community.

I quote that number a lot when I want to irritate Axe, but there are two numbers. That same poll, who are they going to vote for? They're 90% for Biden. So the question between lack of enthusiasm and not voting, that's a big distance. I think we overestimate in a presidential year the whole enthusiasm gap thing because when I'm counting votes, I don't care if somebody threw my lever with orgasmic glee or if they said, oh, crap, and just, you know, they both count the same. So Biden's bigger problem is if the economy darkens, the country is ready to punish him. And in his favorable, unfavorable ratings, it's begun. It's been going on for a year.

They don't love the guy. He's not Trump. And they're preparing for another campaign and not being Trump, which I think they can probably win. But what if it isn't Trump? You know, they're like the British generals in Singapore. They're ready for the frontal assault and they kind of have this con confirmation bubble, well, the, the Mongrel like Japanese army of inferior Asians could

never go through the mountains behind us, which, of course, they did by carrying artillery. And next thing you know, the mighty fortress of Singapore has a meatball flag over it. So if I were the Biden campaign, I'd spend a lot of time modeling somebody else because the Trump thing, they know what to do. But I think they got trouble. I think sometimes they may underestimate it. My guess is deep inside, they know.

What do you think about the, how much of a structural problem do you think it is that there's no pandemic to excuse Biden from campaigning in his basement? I think they can overcome that. They'll find another way to kind of keep a front porch box around him. And, you know, the one thing Joe has going, his job approval ratings aren't that great, but people think his motives are good. And that's worth a lot in politics. Even if they think you're not that great at it or you're old, which is a huge problem for him. If they think you're trying to do the right thing because you care about the right stuff, people like me, we're Republican candidates, sometimes have a lot of trouble. That is worth a lot if they can hold that number together. And before we go to

questions... Who the Republican is. A young generational Republican who is not going to run on a six-week abortion ban, but is going to go to the answer that Tim Scott gives badly now that I hope he'll get better, which is I will pass the most pro-life legislation that can reach my desk, which the minute after the primaries will be, which is a consensus that can reach my desk. And they wind that stuff down and sell change, vigor, and optimistic conservatism. They are very much in the hunt. Does Biden's age, he'll be closer to 90 by the end of his second term, if he has a second term, then closer to 80 years old.

Does Kamala, therefore, become a bigger issue in this campaign? Yeah, totally. And the one big and small failure they've had, which strategically is a big failure, they haven't fixed Kamala. She's not a great politician. She's good in the Democrat inside game, but that's about it. As you pointed out,

she couldn't get to a single contest with her kind of overhyped presidential campaign. Here it's easy. You get the Dem nominee because you've lined up 20 Democratic groups and unions. You never have an election in California, so that's not a big credit. And you know they kind of screwed her by saying why don't you go handle the impossible border, report back. So they haven't done it. They gave her the border and they gave her voting rights. Yeah, yeah. It's like setting her up for

failure. Well yeah and also she has staff trouble, but they can't wish it away. They've got to improve her because she's going to get a better look. Yeah. A really serious one. Mike, before we wrap, let's go to listener questions. Viewer questions. I'm excited. Yeah, let's go.

So, Lon, let's roll in the first one. Love the show, and thanks for calling me back. I'm now an avid listener of Hacks on Tap. Oh, thank you. Despite the fact that DeSantis seems to have gone from flavor of the day to flash in the pan, is anyone capable of pushing out the two frontrunners off their thrones or rocking chairs? Is any Republican candidate capable of grabbing any of the oxygen? And if it's Tim Scott or anyone else other than DeSantis, will they have the

ability to raise the funds needed to defeat Trump? Great question. The answer is yes. If DeSantis continues to falter, some other Trump alternative will get discovered and get hot. Now, Scott's got his up game or he'll have DeSantis too, where he doesn't meet expectations, which is why if I, again, Ryan Kemp, I'd really be looking at this. But if Scott can do well or Pence somehow, who's right now, everybody's like weak third choice, but he's in it and he's got a story. And then, you know, we're just kind of see if DeSantis has the right second look to have that comeback in the summer, late summer in Iowa. So it's wide open, but the energy is not DeSantis or Scott. The energy is how do we move beyond Trump with somebody who's not a rhino Trump hater.

That is the vacuum that somebody is going to fill Somebody great at it can win the nomination Somebody not great at it may fail in the end And it would be Trump Though I think the odds are Trump loses Iowa, New Hampshire And is not the nominee But it's murky We need a super great candidate I haven't seen one yet

But as I said earlier about Obama They all start bad I want to see what these folks look like by August In the field in the early states. That was, so I'm just looking at this here. That was Dan from New York. Not this Dan, but that person who sent in a voice memo. It sounded like you talking to a Dixie cup, Dan.

No, no, no. It wasn't me. It wasn't me. The illusion we have listeners here. It's Dan Rose from New York. Yeah. I've got three listeners, and I get each one of them to send in a question. All right.

The next one is from Dave from California. Go ahead. Yeah, this is a question for Dan. The man, love your show. I heard you say in the preview teaser of the Mike Murphy episode that you were actually skeptical of Trump's true support. And I'm wondering, how could this be? election, that this crazy person actually has a shot at winning the presidency and that we cannot dismiss his voters or the fact that even those who say they will not vote for Trump will still vote for him against Biden. Wondering what he's done that's so different this time around.

I'll take a stab at it. Thank you, Dave, for the question from the Golden State here, a great tax haven. We can't be prisoners of the past. There are patterns that maintain, but the Trump of 2016 is very different from the Trump now. We've seen the movie. We've had the experience as Republicans, good and bad. Very seldom are the sequels equal or better than the original. It can happen. And Trump, his own performance is much weaker than it used to be as he's aged and become crazy bitter about stuff. So in 1939, there were some very smart, very brave people saying the key to the next war is cavalry. And they didn't last long in the Polish high command. So I think we have to be open

to what the voters are telling us now, which is they are hungry in the Republican primary in the key early states for an acceptable alternative to Trump. They are looking for that. And in 10 months, we're going to know if they found one or not. And I do think one argument that no one,

and it's a process argument, but I don't think it's unimportant, is starting to remind Republican primary voters think one argument that no one, and it's a process argument, but I don't think it's unimportant, is starting to remind Republican primary voters at some point that if Trump is president, he's a lame duck from day one. Which if you are a conservative culture warrior, you start to think, wait a minute, what do we actually can get done? Right, exactly. And some of the Christian sergeants in Iowa were like, look, we just have better bets. We got Trump. Remember, he didn't win the Iowa caucus.

And he worked out OK, thanks to Mitch McConnell and other stuff. But we know about this guy. It's transactional. So if we can do better, we will. Because the stakes are really high. The other thing they all say is, this is the one guy Biden could beat. They've got an old guy who's vulnerable. And we're going to find the worst old guy we have who's vulnerable? The stakes are too high against the woke left, against all the stuff they're motivated by, to fool around with a slow pony. And remember, Trump, the big winner

from business, was going to change everything. He's now the biggest loser in politics. He gave the country to Joe Biden and Pelosi and the Democrats, at least in their viewpoint. And so he just doesn't have the same old muscle and magic, and there's a boredom factor. Yeah, you know, it's funny. A friend of mine whose name I won't mention who ran one of the campaigns against Trump, one of the other candidate campaigns in 2016,

had recently met with Trump, and Trump was complaining about how the election was stolen in 2020. It was stolen. And he was like, Mr. President, with all due respect, the other guys just had better lawyers than you. You weren't ready. You weren't organized. It wasn't, you know, he sort of conceded to Trump.

And by the way, better lawyers wouldn't have saved it. Trump got his ass kicked. Obviously, obviously. But it just made Trump crazy that, like, he wasn't arguing with him about whether or not the election was stolen. He was arguing that he was outmaneuvered by smarter people, which is a different... Well, it's all ego. Remember, in 16... That's what I mean.

Trump's campaign was half about Trump and half about the country. Now his campaign is 100% about Trump's grievances against the last election. Much less appealing. Right. All right, Mike. We will leave it there, as always. Thank you. And look, the big news that was broken on this podcast was, one, you must have spent

meaningful time in your career in Barneyville, because it got two name checks. I stole that from Jonathan Winters. He used to do a routine about, I'm in Barneyville. I got two name checks. I stole that from Jonathan Winters. He used to do a routine about, yeah, I'm in Barneyville. I just always thought that was funny. And the other news that was broken is that that was like a tease of the return of radio-free GOP

that we got at the beginning. Maybe. Targeted to the Republican primaries, right? William Morris Endeavor has a team of agents investigating that. They're also beating a book proposal out of me, so stay tuned on that. It may be coming next year. All right.

Well, we will happily have you on to talk about that, and we'll get you on before. And until then, I'm always grateful that you call me back. Oh, I'm going to try to call Governor Kemp back next. Thank you very much, pal. It's great to be on. It would help if I had his number. All right. See you later. much, pal. It's great to be on. It would help if I had his number. All right. See you later.

Thanks. That's our show for today. I couldn't help but notice that one of the questions that came in from Dan Rose from New York, that he learned about the Hacks on Tap podcast

from the Call Me Back podcast rather than the other way around. So message to Murphy and Axelrod, I will be collecting royalties. And speaking of questions, remember to send in questions for HR McMaster about any issue relating to war in geopolitics. If you want to keep up with Mike Murphy, you can follow him on Twitter at Murphy Mike. Call Me Back is produced by Alon Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.