Let's Find Common Ground - Presidential Debate: What Just Happened?

Episode Date: September 13, 2024

CPF Co-Directors Bob Shrum and Mike Murphy share their reactions on the historic presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris and the implications for the 2024 presidential election. They discuss who won, how their debate performance helps or hurts their campaigns, and voters' reactions to their messaging.    Featuring:    Bob Shrum: Director, Center for the Political Future; Warschaw Chair in Practical Politics, USC Dornsife Mike Murphy: Co-Director, Center for the Political Future; NBC Political Analyst

Welcome to the Bully Pulpit from the University of Southern California Center for the Political Future. Our podcast brings together America's top politicians, journalists, academics, and strategists from across the political spectrum for discussions on hot button issues where we respect each other and respect the truth. We hope you enjoy these conversations. Good afternoon. I'm Bob Schrum, the director of the Center for the Political Future at USC Dornsight. With me is the co-director of the center and my longtime political adversary and good personal friend, Mike Murphy.

We're here to talk about what happened in that debate the other night. We'll talk for a while, and then we're gonna open it up to your questions. I'll give you my initial reaction, which is a lot of presidential debates don't matter that much. By almost all of the polling measures,

John Kerry won all three debates against George W. Bush, and he narrowly lost the election. But sometimes debates, in my view, critically do matter. In 1960, I think it was essential for Kennedy in that first debate on national security to cross the threshold as someone who could handle these big issues of foreign policy when we were at the height of nuclear tensions in the Cold War. In 1980, I think, Ronald Reagan gave an extraordinary performance in that debate with Jimmy Carter, which he obviously had carefully prepared for. Kamala Harris prepared for this. That was obvious. She was, I thought, masterful, might use a less praiseworthy adjective.

She baited Donald Trump continually. He not only took the bait, he eagerly seemed to seek it out. I don't know that it will be as consequential as 60 was, as 80 was, those first first debates but it has already had some major impacts she's raised a lot more money she now has a cash advantage over Trump of over a hundred million dollars there are two polls out today that one from morning consult which is used by political one from Vipsos showing her now five points ahead. She won't take anything for granted.

That campaign won't take anything for granted. They'll keep fighting. But all you have to do to know who won the debate is A, look at the fact that Trump refuses to debate again, and B, look at the reaction of the people who normally would be saying he won the debate. Initially, they were all disappointed. They said they were disappointed.

Lindsey Graham said he was disappointed. The Fox commentators said they were disappointed. But now what they're doing is they're blaming ABC, they're blaming the moderators, they're blaming anybody and everybody except Donald Trump. So that's my reaction to this. I think it was a great launching pad or a second launching pad for Harris. So far she hasn't flubbed any of the big things that she needs to do in this campaign to win. Mike?

Hello, Bob, and welcome to everybody joining us. No, I thought she unquestionably won the debate, or I might say she baited Donald Trump into magnificently losing it. It was Trump's worst debate ever. He did himself real damage, and you could see that in the dial groups, and now some of the polling, though I think we need a little more time for it really

to soak in, but there's no question she had a good debate and Trump had a horrible one. Now will winning the debate mean winning the election? I think that's going to be the interesting question. I think it moved her forward. She had a lot to win or lose at this debate. She enters it quite undefined. She didn't go through the primaries. She was anointed when Joe Biden stepped aside and swept in with a huge wave of euphoria by Democrats who were down in the dumps and then got excited. She had a good convention. She did a good acceptance speech to the nomination. And because a third of the country don't really know who she is, she could have let Donald Trump define her. Instead, she didn't. But I'm not sure this debate did all it... Let me just say,

if I were at the Harris campaign, I'd be very happy. The tricks worked. All the cy-war work. Hey, they hate you at Wharton, where your dad bought you in. So he, of course, exploded. The pets being eaten. All the madness was on full display. It was a real lesson in the difference between prepping for a debate and just showing up. So on every dimension, I think the Harris people are and should be happy. That said, I'm not sure she did everything she could do

to move the audience at home. We know from a lot of the data that most voters, particularly softer and decided voters, of which there aren't that many and not that many states, but they don't like the squabbling when they go back and forth and all that. They want to know about her because they don't know her. They want to know what they're going to get from her in the future because they're not sure. So she had moments where she addressed that pretty well, all the turn the page stuff. But I think she could have talked to the folks at home a little more. I think what happened was the baiting tricks were working so well on Trump and he was doing himself so much damage, she thought this is working. So I'm just going to keep on him and see just how

much I can make it head explode. And for that she got a well deserved win, a solid win, an undeniable win. But optimally, to connect at home the way she needs to to land this thing, I thought it wasn't bad, but I thought she left some opportunity on the table. So for that reason, I'll give her an A minus, when I think she could have in this one got the rarest of all things in A plus. But that's a sidebar criticism about lost opportunity and opportunity costs.

Fundamentally, Trump had a terrible debate which will hurt him, and now for the next 10 days, the narrative of the campaign will be, she's got momentum, she's doing well, and Trump is a crazy old man. So we're gonna hear a lot about which Trump advisor's getting fired. Trump will go out and attack in a louder message.

He's gonna feel these polls, he's gonna react to them. We're gonna have a bit of a Trump meltdown, and that's good for her in two ways. One, it takes the spotlight off her and puts it on him, which is's good for her in two ways. One, it takes the spotlight off her and puts it on him, which is always good for her. Whoever the election is a negative referendum on is going to do well. And second, we are close enough now to election day that when eight or 10 days are burned up on who's Trump going to fire and how crazy is he, that is a huge win for her because every day where nothing changes, that is a huge win for her. Because every day where nothing changes

starting today is a better day for her than it is for him. Time is the most finite resource now and it's not going to be about the bad economy and how she's part of the Biden team. It's not going to be about the border. It's going to be about the suitability of Donald Trump and it represents more, I believe more than 20% of the days left before absentee ballots start moving in many states. So they have a lot to be happy with over the Harris campaign,

but I believe they still have some work to do to define her to the American people through what they will get from her. I think that's still not an answer question, which is an opportunity for Trump. Yeah, I think the Harris campaign would agree with that. And I think they will use their financial advantage, which I predict will only grow to continually introduce and reintroduce her. She's got a new spot today on reproductive rights. She'll have another spot on the economy. By the way, I've got my coffee cup that says I love my dog.

I've gotten in honor of Trump's comments that Haitian migrants were eating dogs and cats and people's pets in Springfield, Ohio. I found that repellent because I think it's a racist dog whistle. But Mike, how could he possibly get into saying something like that? I mean, it is just not true.

Well, I think somebody, he saw it on television somewhere and he decided to amplify it. You know, he's not the king of facts. He just saw an opportunity. And you know, I's not the king of facts. He just saw an opportunity. And you know, I think Trump's weakness is he can construct in his head an alternate reality. They stole the election from me.

The mobs of immigrants are eating dogs. There's a feast going on in Springfield, Ohio. Even the Republican governor came out and said, you know, that's crazy. So once he gets it in his head and he believes it, he goes out and pounds it. And he does believe it. That's that's kind of his madness that equips him for this. So I think he thought, well, I'll make this famous. It's terrible for her because she's the borders are, you know, that the campaign that a smart Trump campaign, and there are people there who know what to do, but he doesn't listen to his own people.

He's his own thing. They think this campaign and their rights should be a negative referendum on the economy, inflation, and the border. So this was a way I think they thought to widen and illustrate the border in kind of a sensationalist way. The problem is it's not true.

And so the whole debate becomes Trump's madness and veracity rather than the border is out of control. So I tweeted in the middle of the debate, I think I just saw Chris LaSavita and- Suzy Wiles? Suzy Wiles, I was blanking on her first name, putting on fake mustaches and sneaking out of the back of the building with plane tickets to Paraguay.

Because it could have been a worst night for them and they know what they needed and they know they didn't get it. You know, I wanna stay on this for one minute because I've been, as you have Mike, involved in an awful lot of these debate preps over the years. I don't think Trump prepared.

I think what they call policy time, where they sit around the table and just chat, is absolutely the wrong way to prepare for a presidential debate. I think he was probably told not to say some of the things that he said. He was certainly told to give a more coherent answer on abortion than the one he gave, which left people with the impression that he's proud of being the father of taking away reproductive rights from women. So I think, I mean, am I wrong? Are Suzy Wiles, Chris LaSavita, and all the rest

who are afraid to tell him, you can't say that, you need to say this? I don't know, I think they might have a little, but he doesn't say that you need to say this I don't know I think they might have a little but he doesn't respect them or listen to them he layered them of Corey Leandowski who's a lunatic and Corey's thing is let Trump be Trump everything he says is great he probably high-fived them yesterday because he's trying to tank the other two and I I think one or two of them will be gone by the end of the week. If you're Chris Sabito, why are you staying for this?

Well, he floated the debate with Laura Loomer, the social media presence who, inarguably, I think, engages in racist appeals all the time and may very well have told him, look, you got to use that Springfield, Ohio thing. But if you look down though, I think Elon was into it too, because Elon is the chief proponent of the immigration open border. All the allegations will culturally change the country and turn us into a socialist wasteland. So I think, I think there's a little bit of the, the Elon thumb on this scale too, for, for that kind of.

That case. He's, I guess he's right about a lot of that, but not the socialist wasteland because he's an immigrant and he has changed the culture of the country. I would argue for the worse. So Trump's not going to debate again. What does that tell us? Well, obviously whoever wants a debate is losing. And if Trump 10 days from now has not had any forward progress and has not been able to reframe the debate a little bit more about her weaknesses, which do exist, then he might want to debate. You know, Trump is transactional, so I never take anything Trump says written in ink, always in pencil. But right now, my guess is the

rage has turned internal, and there'll be a couple days of that, then there'll be a new plan, and they're gonna try to get it back to the economy and the border stuff. But if they don't, you say, he's gonna suddenly pop up on social media and say, I'm ready for a debate anytime, any place, anywhere.

Yeah, a challenger, because he'll have some new dog eating thing in a week that might have more veracity in it. Because you know, there is economic pain out there. I just, I followed the automotive industry because I'm involved in the electrification world. And the average, there's this big problem right now in car sales with sticker shock.

People who bought a car five years ago and think, all right, I was able to do it for $499 a month, they're coming in and seeing 699, 750. And there's a, sales are going down. So the bite of inflation is still in people's everyday lives. And if they can connect her, which is tricky, because she was criticized as being kind of a weak secondary, even failing vice president.

So nobody thought she was the powerhouse Dick Cheney mastermind of the White House. So now it's kind of hard to pin the economy on her, because she was so much in the far shadows. But if they can find a way to do that and get the economic pain that's out there and there's a huge deal in voter land, you know Trump may have time for one more bite at the apple but the clock is running out and right now we're talking about dog cannibals. Yeah I think that as I said earlier they're going to use that financial advantage. And I think we're going to see a very big wave of advertising on the economy

coming from the Harris campaign. I also thought she handled the whole question of Joe Biden very well. He kept attacking Joe Biden. That's who he wanted to run against as if he was running against him. But At one point she said, I'm not Joe Biden. And she did it in a way that was not disrespectful to the president. It was very smart. And I think people are beginning to look at her as her own person. She's having a rally in North Carolina today, a state where polling suddenly shows that it's a toss-up and where it's now been moved by most of the commentators to being a toss-up state,

when four or five months ago people said, hopeless, Trump's going to win it. You believe it though, do you think she in the end will carry North Carolina? I don't know. Here's what I think. Look, Reagan converted what would have been probably a narrow two or three point win, fairly narrow in the electoral college into a landslide. I mean, he won by 10 points in a three-way race because we forget that John Anderson, the Republican congressman from Illinois, was running as an independent. In the world we live in,

which is so polarized compared to 1980, I think a landslide is more like six or seven points. If you win by six or seven points and you manage to get 306 to 325 electoral votes, that's about as good as you can probably do in today's environment. I think it's possible that that could happen for her. I think it's possible she could run the table in those battleground states, maybe not carrying all of them, but carrying most of them. But so much depends on where we go from here, on whether or not there are external events that help shape this election, on how he behaves, because I think suddenly his behavior has become, and you were talking about

this earlier, his behavior has become a central issue, not just in that debate, but it's now becoming a central issue in this campaign. I mean, today he announced that he's establishing his own cryptocurrency. That would not have been what I would have advised him to do. I'm going to take all my stock winnings through social where I'm down 97%. I'm going to roll them into the Trump crypto claim. But you're right. Look, it's becoming a referendum on him. That's a winning race for her. So she can keep it that way and rag the puck, as we say in Canadian politics, and beat the clock here. I think there's a, you know, I think, let's put it this way, she is better off now than she was 72 hours ago. And all that is because of him. She did well, but he had his own Biden debate. He got unmasked.

Joe Biden was unmasked as being at an age where it's hard for him to effectively serve as president, particularly into the next two years. He got it unmasked as being a bit unfit, more than a bit in my view. And so it's gonna, I think, have a pretty devastating effect on him unless he can somehow regain agenda control here,

which will require a disciplined message off repeated. And that's something he's never shown much ability to do. That Donald Trump in 2016, who was a better candidate than this Donald Trump, might've been able to wrestle it back. But I think he's gonna show up with some guys saying, hey, Sinead, my schnauzer. They're gonna find their Joe the plumber guy, and that won't do it.

You know, it's funny because everybody said he lost all three debates to Hillary Clinton. And I suspect if you take the debates as a whole, that's true. But the first half hour of that first debate, he relentlessly focused on foreign trade, on NAFTA, pinned her for NAFTA. She said, you know, Bill Clinton did that, not me. Well, I don't think people bought that. And then got her on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which at that point she was against, but she had called the gold standard of trade agreements. I don't think that Donald Trump is here anymore.

Yeah, no, I agree. I don't think the toolbox is the same. Now, you win the debate on two levels. I generally think whoever wins the campaign in the end won the debate just based on results. But there is kind of the chattering class which interprets it, and that can drive some of the polling. And I think she overwhelmingly

in this case won that debate. The debate at home I think she won too. The dial say that, the early polling says that, but I'm not sure it was quite as much of a breakthrough at home. We'll find out. We're really going to know where this race is in another four or five days and then we'll know. My gut is she's done pretty well, but that's where that lack of connection. And she made one error, I should just quickly talk. There's so much laudatory coverage. I think it's overblown and it's whiny

and it's all they've got, but the followup questions to her could have been tougher, particularly on her fracking answer. But for some reason, she has a terrible answer. She acts like her position in 2019 doesn't exist. She says, in 2020, I made it clear I'm for fracking. Well, that is true, but it was one tortured line in the debate. She's never done the smart answer, which is, as vice president,

you get to learn a lot, you see everything, you take a wider view. And I've learned more facts and my position has evolved to what I think is right for the country. Instead she did the Trumpian thing with by repeating a falsehood 10 times. Hey, you know, it, it, it undercuts her cause she's the anti-Trump. So I'm hearing from some people out in the field that it was a win for her, but it wasn't the slam that the pundit world, which grades it on things that are a little different than regular voters.

But again, it's quibbling because fundamentally, her campaign is in a stronger situation now than it was before in a meaningful way. And she's a little bit on fracking in the position that George H.W. Bush was on the Reagan tax cuts in 1980, which he had called voodoo economics. And then once he got picked, he had to be all for them. Voters didn't seem to care that much about it.

The real, the reason I think it gets so much attention here is because Pennsylvania is potentially such a critical state in the outcome of the election. And she's struggling a bit there. I think there's a scenario where she loses Pennsylvania, but wins Nevada and Georgia and makes it up. We're gonna see, we might be in a different world here if Trump keeps melting down in another week.

But if you were prepping her, you've done a lot of debate prep, you would have had a better answer than fracking on deny the old position. Cause I think it makes her a politician or am I wrong? Where were you? She, I, I mean, I think it might be somewhat wrong in the sense that I think this may not be a voting issue. Just as Bush's flip flop on the Reagan tax cuts was not a voting issue,

but I, she could have said, look, I ran with Joe Biden in 2020, and he was in favor of fracking. And we sat down and talked about it. And then as vice president, and go into your answer, because I saw more and more of what was going on. And the need we have for energy independence, the need that Europe has not to be dependent on Russian natural gas. That's why I have the position I have today. And I think if you're going to be President of the United States, you have to respond to the facts on the ground. Right. Well, that's the Churchill line. When the facts change, my view can change.

Yeah, you can't just take a precooked position. I just didn't like denying the obvious fact that she was against Franken. It's okay to admit you evolved. Doing otherwise turns you into a slippery politician. You start sounding like Trump, and that is not good for her. There was only one big speed bump on an otherwise great debate. Yeah. I saw, yeah, I would say a speed bump on a highway that she really went down at a very fast rate and kind of left him on the side of the road.

Well, he actively steered himself off the cliff. I mean, she triggered him to commit the bait suicide. That, that is what I view. I believe that. So I talked earlier I believe that. So I talked earlier about the prep. If he does another debate, do you think he can prep differently?

Oh, no. Do you think it can be different? The biggest myth is that anybody manages them. It was frustrating to me to hear about his savvy campaign team during the primaries. And I said at the time, many times, no, no, he's not in any danger. He's cruising along in a Republican primary of no serious opposition.

So there's no, there's no management here. The management question will be when, when the, the, the stuff hits the fan and they've got to control his activity and can they do that? And then we now know, nope, they can. There are two, we've had two Trump eruptions. After he was shot, there was a moment of sympathy for him in the country. So they said, all right, let's make the acceptance speech,

the new kinder, gentler, wider, less caustic Trump. And they wrote that speech and he started giving and it wasn't bad, but he felt the hall and nobody was breaking up the furniture, screaming, lock her up or anything. And in his own weirdness, he decided, well, I'm failing, so screw this. And he went off the prompter and did his routine,

which strategically was a step backward, not forward. The routine was good. So there was a great opportunity to do the smart thing. Instead, he did the instinctual barrel Trump animal thing. And at the debate, because he didn't prep, he probably sat around and yes, men threw a few questions at him and he gave a crappy answer. And they said, great, you're really going to get her. And Laura Loomis said, make sure you bring up the pet thing. You know, these clowns around him. So I, there was smart advice for him to access,

but he's not interested in that. He just goes by instinct. There was no prep. This thing, this will be shown to candidates for decades of prep versus no prep in a high stakes debate. Yeah, I wanna ask one other question and then get to audience questions cause we have a lot of them.

What did you think of the moderator's SPAC checking Trump? I thought it was great. And I thought there ought to be more of it. I think the follow-ups on her could have been tougher. I think it's legit to say they were a little tougher on Trump, but that's okay with me because Trump's been able to bluster his way through other debates with not enough. I didn't think the CNN, the debate with Biden, the follow-up was very good. It wasn't terrible.

I thought Jake had a few good ones, but I thought they set a new standard for kind of how to deal with these lawless debates. And so I give David Muir and the whole ABC team a salute. Yeah, the new thing today is, well, Lindsay, the other moderator of the debate, she belonged to the same sorority in college that Kamala Harris did. Now they're 13 years apart. They went to different colleges.

There are Republicans as well as Democrats who belong to that sorority. Do you think all these excuses that Hugh Hewitt and other people are trying to make for him will have an impact at this point. No, it's just a narcotic for the base that has to have something to say. And we have something that has a little truth to it, like they were tougher on followups with Trump. You then can hang a conspiracy on that for the Trump believers who know he had a bad night and need something, need a unified field theory to explain it so they can hang

in there. But in the undecided, movable voter space, I don't think that has any traction at all. Yeah, I don't know how many big opportunities you get in the presidential campaign. You're right about the opportunity that was presented by his convention speech. He decided not to take that opportunity. If I had been advising him, which of course I wouldn't be, I would have pushed him very strongly and I would have warned him to say,

this is not gonna set the hall on fire, but that's not what we want. That's not what we want here. We wanna reach some of these folks in the suburbs, especially women, who are thinking about not voting for you, even though they've often voted for Republicans, or even usually voted for Republicans. Right.

Second big opportunity was this debate, where I think he could have come in with a coherent message. I wouldn't have agreed with it. I would have thought parts of it were completely wrong, but it could have been a lot more persuasive. So I'm gonna turn to some questions that Diane Wallace, I think we kind of answered this, what did you two observe that showed effective debate prep?

I'd say Kamala Harris showed effective debate prep. Donald Trump showed how stupid it is not to have debate prep. Yeah. I don't agree with that. She, she was polished and she speaks with a good economy of language. She's very clear and precise. That's partially the legal experience. And so she was loaded up.

She was ready for everything. And I think you could kind of tell by her grin that she thought debating him stuff might work, but it turned out it'd be on work. And we wound him up and he was spinning up into the atmosphere. So I think she couldn't believe her good luck, which is this guy is going to do Harry Carrie here now. I can't believe it, but let me keep at it. I thought she even got like 5% to get a little bit gratuitous and smirky about debating him, but I don't blame her. She, she realized early,

she had a little shaky beginning, but then she started doing well and started figuring out how easy it is to bait him and then he'll unscrew his head and then she just sat back and had a field day. Yeah, I do think that very first moment where she came out, went behind his podium and shook his hand when he clearly didn't intend to shake hands.

I think that probably threw him. No, no, she had the, she was on the offense and kind of controlled the whole thing We hear about violence all the time in the news yet we rarely hear stories about peace There are so many people who are working hard to promote solutions to violence, toxic polarization, and authoritarianism, often at great personal risk. We never hear about these stories, but at what cost? On Making Peace Visible, we speak with journalists, storytellers, and peace builders who are on the front lines of both peace and conflict. You can find Making Peace Visible wherever you listen to podcasts. Okay, Patricia Hanzo asks, what are your concerns about the safety risks to poll workers? And if

we're going to count every ballot, are new measures in place now to prevent fraud and tampering. I'd be happy to take a whack at that but Mike. Go ahead Bob. Well first of all we've amended the Electoral College Act to get rid of some of the ambiguities that President, then President Trump wanted Mike Pence to exploit to reject the electoral votes from various states. Number two, the Department of Homeland Security has now declared that January 6th, when the electoral votes are finally counted

and the winner declared will be a national security event, which means that you can't have a repetition of what happened the last time. There will be plenty of troops, plenty of police, plenty of law enforcement in Washington to prevent disruption. Then you get to the question of what's going to happen in the states. And you know, you have people in Arizona trying to fool around with the rules and saying, well gee, maybe if I have a reasonable basis I don't have to certify the election results. That's almost certainly against the law in Arizona and I suspect that that law would

be enforced. Same kind of things going on in Georgia. I don't know what Brian Kemp, the governor of Georgia, will do about that. But at the end of the day, I think courts do not want, you know, I worry about the Supreme Court on some things, on a lot of things. I don't think they want to get into the position of interfering that overtly in a presidential campaign. I thought they were wrong in 2000, but there was at least a justiciable question there, which is how do you count these ballots in Florida, which are in dispute? This, I think, would be, it would be ridiculous for a court

to say, oh yeah, some local guy in county X can decide he's not going to certify the ballots because he's got doubts about voting machines. I just don't, I think that's pretty far-fetched. Mike? There is a strong institutional cultural urge inside the judiciary to never screw up an election. I mean, I've been in all kinds of elections where in referendum elections, the T's weren't crossed. They never want to yank stuff off the ballot and control elections. That's one of the reasons some of this Trump stuff has been delayed.

A judge wants to rule on the law and not create a public storm that could affect an election. Just as an institution, they hate it. Doesn't mean they can't, but it's very atypical. So I'm with you. I don't think of Waldo, somebody finds a ballot jammed into a machine the wrong way, we're gonna hold a presidential election.

Very rare to find that happening. I also think there is a risk of trouble, but the reddest states that love Trump the most, Trump's going to win. So it's hard to riot in Mobile, Alabama, over the results in East Detroit, Michigan. And as you say, the machinery of the state is prepared this time. And the Electoral College Act, which got like no press, was a very good development done by Republicans and Democrats together in the Senate quietly and effectively to patch the software problems we have, or many of them, in the whole Electoral College system,

which was relying on individual honor. And they decided it was time to edge that in modern politics. So yeah, you can't have renegade electors anymore. Yeah, right, right. I mean, it really was significant and it was reassuring to me to draw up some both parties said, all right, let's let's fix this. So for all those reasons, I'm not I'm concerned, but but I'm not in a lather about it. Okay, back to the campaign with Kimberly Bliss who asked, is there any reason why Harris shouldn't talk more about Donald Trump's mental problems? Many doctors have come out and said

that he embodies the characteristics of narcissist, sociopaths, that he's not up to the job. Why isn't she talking about the elephant in the room? Well, one, it's out there already. And two, one of the challenges, and we both live with this as political consultants, is many voters think all voters are like them. So the way to win the election

is to shout whatever they think. So people who think Trump is mentally ill would love Kamala to go out and say you're mentally ill. It would make them feel very good. A lot of people watch campaigns, they want therapy. They want it to make them feel good. Undecided voters don't want a name-calling contest with personal insults about mental health. Some, after that debate, are jumping to this conclusion themselves. It was a pro-democratic group, one of the large super PACs ran the dial testing. What we mean

by that is a representative sample of voters watch the debate and turn a dial up or down based on what they like or don't like, and then they discuss it. I got a little report on it in real time and right after the debate. And it was fascinating to me that in the discussion, a lot of the undecided voters were starting to, or soft voters, were diagnosing Trump. And in a high stakes debate after your performance, when people want to diagnose your problem, that is a very bad night. And so some of this is happening on its own and you don't need Kamala Harris to scream it to make it effective.

In fact, that would hurt it. It would politicize the conclusion. So as much as Democrats would love that, I already know how they're gonna vote and they don't need a therapy animal attack to make them feel good. So that would be a mistake for her. Well, I tend to agree with that because the press is now focusing on these questions.

Right. And it's out there in the ether, it's out there in the public dialogue. So I think it matters now. Here's one we can have a little fun with. How much will the Taylor Swift endorsement affect voting turnout, especially among younger voters? I think it will have zero or negligible impact on turnout, but is yet another big force that makes the election

about Trump by the way he responds to her. So it's good for her. Endorsements are generally massively overrated, but she's a big force in pop culture and it's great. And I love the fact that she was putting the sparkly boot into him right after he blew the debate. The timing of it was perfect. I'm sure they had it planned. Yeah, I tend to disagree a little bit. I think that she will have an impact in terms of registering a lot of these younger voters. And in an election that, as we know, could be very, very close, you know, 10,000, 20,000, 50,000 votes can make a big difference.

So I'm not I don't think we'll know until afterwards. But I also agree that Trump reacting to what Trump should have said was, well, fine, she's entitled to endorse whoever she wants. Instead, the Trump campaign attacks her, which I think is political malpractice of the first order, just draws more attention, you know, just creates a mess. Patricia Anzal feels very strongly that the media and elected officials must announce the racist Haitian attack by Donald Trump. Why is that racist comment being ignored? It's being discussed.

I mean, Dana Bash did five big minutes of it right after the debate on national television. So I don't buy the presumption that it's being ignored. You could argue it ought to be more of a center. You might see democratic surrogates if he keeps it up, start saying that more to put it into effect. But among grumpy swing voters who are not woke Democrats, when people start making attacks about racism, there can be a pushback.

It's tricky, tricky stuff. So, but I just don't believe it's being hidden. And I think a lot of the Trump stuff is so self-evident. When you talk about it, you make it too political and that's not an advantage. So people can see that for what it is and it is being covered, I believe. Yeah, I think it's more than being covered. I think it's become part of water cooler conversation.

Yeah, totally. You know, there are some things that happen that the next day you go to your office, you go to work, and you say, did you see that crazy thing on television last time? And I think that's happened. I think it's entered the popular mindset and popular culture, and people are talking about it. I do agree that it is deeply regrettable, and despite the political risks of saying it, I'm going to say it, and I said it earlier, it's a racist dog whistle.

These black Haitian immigrants are eating your dog when the only person I know of who may have eaten a dog recently is Bobby Kennedy. Yeah, yeah. I think you're right. But you're right. Look, a lot of the immigrant stuff has racist subtext. It always has in American history. When Trump says these immigrants are coming in here, people aren't closing their eyes and thinking of Swedes.

You know, they're going to be people of color, brown or black skinned. So it is a racist dog whistle, but I think people get that. The sad thing is in our pop culture, some people like hearing it. Yeah. Okay. Now, next question. this is from anonymous. Traditionally presidential campaigns spend quite a bit of money and energy on internal polling which I understand is more sophisticated than public and media polling. This is right up your alley Mike. Campaigns message manage their messaging based on these internals. Are there classic indications of a floundering candidate in how they change, how they address issues when they're losing? Going negative, losing message discipline, whatever.

Yeah, I mean, there are two ways a campaign can flounder. The message isn't working or internally it's melting down and there's no command structure. And that's kind of what's happening in Trump world. The only command structure is whatever Trump feels like saying that day. What the energy of the Trump campaign should be on is how do we let this fire of bad debate burn out as quickly as possible and change the topic. The shrewd thing they ought to be doing is saying, okay, we're going to put a muzzle on Trump for a day or two,

you know, or put him like a foul pin, whatever you have to do to shut him up and stop making news. Let the debate story get old, and background to the press, all right, she's four points ahead, she's gonna be president. Have you vetted her?

Does she have an economic plan? You know, and get the, move the microscope back onto her off Trump. Right now they're feeding the fire of a debate on Trump, which is not good. So that's the kind of stuff a smart campaign would be trying to do,

but that requires precision, discipline, and kind of a full front offense. Cause in a real campaign, all right, we're gonna send the candidate out to make this contrast speech on economics, to draw out our plan, which is thin and undefined. And she's trying to do the Ming Ba's campaign where she doesn't say anything. We're going to change up the advertising to do that. And frankly, we challenge her in order to debate on the economy in three days, an offense

with all the parts of the campaign working together. There's none of that with Trump. It's flying around insulting people. And as he sees bad polling, the insults are going to get worse. So I think I think they are floundering. Yeah, I predict none of that will happen. I agree with you. I agree. By the way, she does have an economic plan.

I mean, Goldman Sachs has assessed it. The Wharton School has assessed it. He has an economic plan, but the problem here is how does she communicate this to the voters? They need to understand that she has a plan, you may not like it, you may like it, to help, for example, first time home buyers be able to buy a home.

They need to understand that she has a plan that's real on the child tax credit. And that while his plan, according to Goldman Sachs, would explode the deficit and lead to a recession, that's not true with her plan. Well, I can argue with that. Her plan is a blank check to the middle class, the old democratic trick. The point is she can make an argument. The specifics of her plan have been assessed by economists and by these major, uh, Wall Street institutions. Uh, but the challenge I was about to say is to communicate those things to the

voters who still have yet to make up their minds. Don't know who she is and what she's for. Right. To the extent they know they know liberal and that's not helping. So she's like that. I'm not sure that's true. I- Well, the New York Times poll was pretty clear. I know, but that was before the debate.

And I think after the debate, people may say, you know, she's up to the job. She's an affirmative personality. She talks about the future, not the past. She's not a bag full of grievances about what happened in this election and how people are conspiring against me. I think it may be that she's in that position, but I do agree that we won't know that for sure for another four or five days.

And maybe even longer as the debate sinks in and we have the polling. Now here's an interesting question. Please comment on the upcoming vice presidential debate. What will you be looking for? Mike, you want to start? Well, I'll be bored out of my mind because nothing can follow the fire rating act we just saw.

So I think it might have low viewership. You know, Waltz is an affable guy, but JD Vance is not an idiot. He's not particularly well liked, but he's fast enough on his feet that he'll be able to prosecute the most liberal governor in America thing on Waltz. So I'll be curious to see how Waltz handles that,

because I like Tim Waltz. I think he'd be a great next door neighbor, though his persona is more centrist, affable and his congressional record was than his issue record as governor. So will JD Vance be able to open that, that chasm a little and exploit it? On the other hand, JD Vance has a to open that, that calves them a little and exploit it. On the other hand, you know,

JD Vance has a lot of explaining to do about cat ladies and all this stuff he's dug in on. So I think Waltz, who's a decent communicator, should be able to pin him back on a lot of that stuff. So I think actually in impact, it'll be a huge nothing burger. And it'll pale in comparison to what we just saw. But, you know, I'll probably watch it. Well, we've never seen anything like the debate we

just saw. How do you top it? I mean, yeah, I mean, the Trump-Biden debate was sad for Democrats, difficult, ultimately led to him leaving the race. But I've never seen a conflagration on the debate stage quite like the one that we saw with Trump and Harris. I think Walz will be very well prepared for this debate. And I think if they try to make him America's most liberal governor, he's going to try to take it to school breakfast and school lunch. Of course. For every kid in public schools. Cause if you do the specifics of his record, most of them are probably appealing to most people. And I think he'll be prepared to pivot and go after Vance,

who for example, has suggested that school teachers who aren't married and don't have children are someone or other derelict. I mean, there are so many opportunities there. I think people will watch it. I don't, it's not gonna have the audience. This did. I mean, people talking about this had 65 million people.

That doesn't count streaming. That's what's this. Yeah, no, this one is gonna have huge, just the memes and the TikTok stuff. I mean, you can't look at social media and you don't have pictures of cats with rifles and you know, all, and crazy Trump stuff. So yeah, this thing's gonna get full saturation,

the Taylor factor, all of it. So Anonymous, again, asks. Oh, Anonymous. What is something Kamala said or didn't say that disappointed you? I guess, Mike, you'd say fracking. I got more, but go ahead. Well, then so is anonymous. How about dodging questions on Afghanistan withdrawal or on our policy changes. And aside from the immigration issue, what do you think of Trump's final claim that Kamala had 3.5 years to implement some of these reforms

and for whatever reason did not? Well, I'll take the last one. I think it's a stupid argument. People don't think the vice president of the United States, except maybe in the case of Dick Cheney, gets to go out and implement the policies he wants. Vice president has to support the policies the president wants to support. I think on immigration, for example, she did pretty well when she pinned former president Trump

on the fact that he had told the Republicans in Congress not to pass a tough border bill, he had told the Republicans in Congress not to pass a tough border bill, which Biden had agreed to and she had agreed to because he wanted the issue instead of solving the problem. I think she did pretty well there. Mike? When Trump is setting his hair on fire, it doesn't matter, but her policy issues were all thin.

Her thematic stuff was great. Turn the page, had enough, no more of this. It was right in the voter mindset and I thought was highly effective. But on the policy stuff, she was light as a feather. Now she got away with it because Trump was doing lunatic stuff, so it didn't really matter. But I talked about the fracking answer, I agree on Afghanistan. And to your question about why didn't she enact anything, well one is Bob said I fundamentally agree with him.

Vice presidents don't get to enact that stuff and she was not a big player in the White House. Vice presidents kind of are on a scale of how influential they are and she was at the low end of the scale. Not her fault really, the president decides that. But nobody in the administration said that we got to run it by Kamala Harris, the heavyweight. It just wasn't the way she was treated, fairly or unfairly. So I think it's kind of unfair to accuse her of why didn't you enact anything. Well, I was Ed McMahon, not Johnny Carson, so I don't get to do the monologue. But the campaign would want to, as any campaign would, create kind of this mirage that she

was big key player and she's flying around campaign would, create kind of this mirage that she was big key player and she's flying around the world, the line of stuff. And that's all hokum. But it's true of most vice president. Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, there's the famous moment in 1960 when President Eisenhower was asked at a press conference that Vice President Nixon was out there running on

experience counts, can you name one policy or one thing where he had some real impact or some real influence and he said if you give me a week I might think of something. Well there went the experiences I mean and then Nixon got asked about it in the first debate. So I think that's true. I believe to invoke George W. Bush, which I don't do often, that she was misunderstood on the basis of her 2019-2020 campaign for president. I don't think that campaign was authentically her. I think there was a misreading of where the Democratic electorate was. That's how she got into I'm against fracking. And she had a great start, great announcement speech, but then never had a coherent, disciplined message that lasted longer than a week or two weeks.

And that's where I think part of her reputation came from. I gotta tell you, having been involved in a lot of these things, I'm very impressed with how she's handled herself since she was suddenly elevated into this role. No, she, well, let me say one, I've endorsed her. I want her to win. Doesn't mean I'm a super fan of her career

I think you're bucking for postmaster general here. You're a very good advocate for her But I can't I don't want postmaster general something else. Okay, we're Working on a sentiment a of this. I I think your point that she was defined by the worst of campaigns I think she has some culpability in that, but when you lose, it's always worse. You know what I mean? That the history is getting written. Even poor Dan Quayle and potato, you know, which he read the card the teacher gave her not to embarrass her, but it lives with you forever. So I, I,

I can't disagree that she's fundamentally, I mean, look, my, my analogy for her is it's like the movie Twister. She was the rusty school bus that wasn't going anywhere and the tornado came by. And the tornado was based on the emotional joy of Democrats. Thank God we're not going to lose with Joe. And it picked her up and put her in the air at 40 feet and 400 miles an hour. And to her credit, the bus came to life.

It needed the tornado to get off the ground, okay? It had been stuck in the mud for a while, but she hasn't made any big mistakes. And I particularly thought her acceptance speech was very shrewd, had a lot of the right dog whistles. She got to the right of Trump on national security, which was both appropriate and smart politically. And she decided, you know what, I have a history of not being so good on my feet. So I'm going

to take prep really seriously. I'm going to get the best people in the Democratic Party. And I'm blanking on her first name, but done. The law,. Anita Dunn. No, not Anita Biden Dunn, the other Dunn, the lawyer Dunn. Oh yeah, okay. The debate prepping Dunn, not Anita. Anita's been put in a steel box somewhere. She's not part of it. She's in the super PAC. But the lawyer, former press secretary Dunn,

and I apologize because I ought to know her name. She did a tremendous job leading that debate team. But Kamala figured out, you know what, I got some improving to do. I'll do the work. And she showed up for an intensive professional debate. She took it seriously. And I think that's the best thing I can say about her

is somebody who's ideologically not where she is. It's funny, after her speech at the convention, which I like so much, I called one of her advisors and I said, you know, great job. The speech was right down the middle where it ought to be. I think you convinced the country she's not a communist. And the advisor said, well, she is, but yeah, I think we did a pretty good job. Anyway, she, unlike Trump, to get to my point of the strongest thing that I think the debate showed us

She is a serious person. Trump is not a serious person And I think that contrast is going to be working great for her now going forward She's certainly not a communist and I think throwing that speaking as a friend or a commissar. No, i'm No, i'm speaking as an anti-communist long time in icon. I know I Believe throwing that accusation around It's kind of which which president former president Trump does all the time is Doesn't not only does it work. It's probably counterproductive. He probably learned it from Roy Cohen who had been Jomans

It's silly. Yeah, is she a left-winger your heart? I think she is but she's no communist Roy Cohen, who had been Joe McFarland's counsel in the 1950s. It's silly. Is she a left-winger in her heart? I think she is, but she's no communist. Yeah, okay, maybe we'll end on this. I won't get to all the questions, but Linda Fowles asked, can you comment on Trump talking about the execution of babies after birth? Well, no, not true. It's just, yeah, as the fact checker said, it's not true. It would be murder. It would be prosecuted in any jurisdiction in America.

It would be prosecuted in the most liberal blue states. That again goes to this whole question of debate prep. And madness, because you can't prep, you know, a hyena to go out and, by the way, there's a great Twitter meme on this with Mike. I do not think if Trump wins, that you'll be postmaster general. No, no, I don't think I will. I'm holding out for Secretary of the Navy. But the great Twitter meme, it shows a picture of Trump in the debate.

70 year old, 78 year old baby killed it to pay. That's kind of what happened. But that's total madness. And Trump is just not in a reality zone. He's not serious. And he's got cognitive decline. And the other thing about Trump, when you step back, he's so irresponsible regarding the institutions. Because everything he does is throwing acid. Everything's fixed, lies. And that categorically, not so good for the old American democracy. So, an unserious person in serious times. Let's see how it works out for him. But we're seeing, I think the country got to look at them that hopefully will inform their decision. Well, I think this is one of the most important

if not the most important elections in a very, very long time. I want to thank all of you for joining us in our audience. And on behalf of Mike and me, I want to thank those of you who support the center. We do some, I think some important work in terms of trying to promote a politics where we respect each other and we respect the truth. And we'll see you at our next program.

We have a rich array of programming this fall that will deal with some of what Mike and I have talked about today. But as developments occur, we'll be following this election very closely and talking about it, hopefully, in a civil and respectful manner. Thank you all very much. Take care. Yes, I echo that. Thank you so much.

Thank you for joining us on The Bully Pulpit. It helps us a lot when you subscribe and rate the show five stars wherever you get your podcast. Follow us on Twitter at USCPOLFuture. That's USCPOLFuture. Follow us on Facebook and YouTube and visit our website for upcoming programs. This podcast is part of the Democracy Group.