Pod Save America - “Herd mentality.”

Episode Date: September 17, 2020

Trump publicly rebukes his CDC Director for testifying that masks are effective and a vaccine might take awhile, he faces tough questions from undecided voters in a live town hall, and the results of our new Pollercoaster survey with Change Research show that infrequent and undecided voters are most persuaded by Joe Biden’s plans on the economy, health care, racial justice, climate, and education. Then communications guru Anat Shenker-Osorio talks to Dan about the most effective ways to talk to voters in the homestretch.

This is a life-changing election. This will determine what America is going to look like for a long, long time. This is the most important election in the history of our country. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's pod, Dan talks to political message guru Anat Shankar-Osorio about the most effective ways to persuade voters in the homestretch. Before that, we'll talk about Trump going to war with the head of the CDC, what the president's town hall might tell us about how he'll handle the debates, and the results of our latest change research polar coaster survey of new and infrequent voters.

But first, check out this week's Pod Save the World to hear Tommy and Ben call bullshit on the Israel-UAE-Bahrain peace deal, dig into what's going on with the Taliban peace talks, and chat with former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Mike McFaul, about the protests in Belarus and how a Biden administration should approach Russia. Also, make sure to check out the latest episode

of Mystic America, where Ben talks about ending our endless wars in the Middle East. It's an outstanding series. I highly recommend you catch up if you haven't had a chance. I also highly recommend that you subscribe to Crooked Media's nightly newsletter, What A Day. It's a quick, informative, very funny rundown of all the day's news. It's written and curated by our own hilarious Sarah Lazarus and the Crooked team. You will love reading this newsletter. Go sign up for what a day at crooked.com slash subscribe. All right, let's get to the news.

The top headline in the New York Times homepage last night was Trump again scorn science on vaccine and masks, which I imagine is exactly what the campaign planned as the message of the day, just seven weeks before the election. Want to get that Trump scorn science headline. So here's what happened. Centers for Disease Control Director Robert Redfield made two important statements during his Senate testimony on Wednesday. First, he said that universal mask use could end the pandemic and added, quote, I might even go so far as to say that this face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against COVID than when I take a COVID vaccine. Second, he said that even if a vaccine

were approved now, it won't be, quote, generally available to the American public to get back to our regular life until mid-2021. Later that day, Trump called a White House press conference to publicly rebuke Redfield for offering, quote, incorrect information on both the effectiveness of masks and the timeline for a vaccine. Here's what Trump said. I saw the statement. I called him. I said, what did you mean by that? And I think he just made a mistake. We're ready to go as soon as the vaccine happens. I think it would be very soon. When I called up Robert today, I said to him, what's with the mask? He said, I think I answered that question incorrectly. I think maybe he misunderstood it.

So I want to dive into the specifics on both the mask comments and the vaccine comments. But like just overall, do you think anyone in the White House or in the campaign believes that Trump going to war with his CDC director is good for him? That a that a political plus? Well, someone in a campaign thinks that just not Trump's campaign, because the important context here is that Biden went out and gave a speech yesterday that said that if he were elected president, he would listen to the scientists when it came to the vaccine and was worried that Trump wouldruling the scientists on the vaccine. So no, John, it is not good for Trump. I think Trump is probably, I'm not sure how much more damage he can do to himself on how voters view his management of the coronavirus. It has been pretty steady, high in the beginning, a little lower the summer, and then kind of steady for the last six weeks or so. But every day he's tripping

over his own two feet when it comes to the pandemic is a day he is not doing anything that will help him come from behind, which is where he is in this race. I agree with that. I think voters' judgment of how he handled the coronavirus crisis is pretty set in stone when it comes to the past six months. I think the question now is people want to know, how do we get back to normal? You know, when can I sort of resume my life? When is a vaccine coming? And I think the problem for Trump is,

it's not just, did he do well in the past on handling this pandemic? It's who do you trust in the next six months, in the next year, in the next year and a half to finally get us out of this? And there's a path for him to be that person. No, there's not. There is not. Well, I'm saying if he went out there and said, I'm going to listen to the science on vaccine, it's going to take a long time. We're going to have a universal mask mandate for a couple months. We're going to then open things back up. I'm going to have rapid testing at every school, at every home. We're going to get this out

there now. Like he could at least maybe improve his current ratings on that. And yet, like, why is he still fighting over masks even now that he's like occasionally wearing one? Like, what was so bad about his CDC director sitting in front of the Senate and saying this mask could end the pandemic? What is that bad for him? Well, I think just to your, the point you just made, yes, Trump could do all those things, but it would have to be a different person than this Trump.

Trump, I don't think he can actually improve. I don't think he's capable of doing the job that he would need to do over the next few months to improve his standing. But he could damage Biden's – how the public views Biden on the coronavirus, but he's too busy stepping into his own self-created messes. The mask thing is interesting. I think there's two different ways to think about it. One is Trump views the mask as a monument to his failure to get coronavirus under control. So he's like offended when he sees it. And so it's just like he views that mask thing through the prism of what it says about him, what it says about his own weakness. And the second part is he is very, very, very attentive to the very, very far fringe of the Republican Party.

There is a sentiment of thought among the far right about masks being this infringement of people's constitutional rights. They're not good. And it's the same reason why he is unwilling to denounce QAnon is he never wants to lose a single member of his base. And he's afraid that if he becomes too pro-mask, he will lose those voters. Yeah, he needs to be president of Republicans all the time. On the vaccine timeline, why does Trump need people to believe that it'll be sooner than

what the CDC director said? Because he just promised like 24 hours ago that they would have one before that very special day, which also happens to be the first Tuesday in November. Now, this is once again speaks to just how short sighted he is, because people are going to vote on that quote unquote special day and they will know on that special day whether a vaccine has come. He would be much better off talking about some shorter timeline that was past the election day. You know, his, you know, the movie, the Trumpian equivalent of Nixon's secret plan for peace in Vietnam. But he's putting himself in a position where people will know on the day in which he is telling them to vote, not to vote earlier, but to vote on that day in person, that he

failed at that. So it's once again a, you again, he is doubling down on a particularly stupid tactical move he made. I mean, you know what he's going to do here. We're going to hear from one or more of these drug companies that the trials have gone well. And he's going to, hopefully, that would be great. And he's going to use that news to say the vaccine is here. It is happening. And then all of these pharmaceutical companies are going to throw out all kinds of caveats and be like, you know, the the phase three trials went well, but we still have not manufactured yet. We're still a ways from distribution. We're not going to have it for months. And then Trump's going to be like, oh, forget them. Like they're like he's just going to take the headline

and then lie and say that the vaccine's right around the corner. That could work with his voters, but who he already has. But we've seen in polling, the Navigator coronavirus tracker looks at this question about who you trust more in a vaccine. And Democrats in Congress are overwhelmingly more trusted than Trump. And Democrats in Congress, although more popular and trusted than Republicans, are like 18 points underwater. So he's already sort of, I think, did not like, on the list of October surprises

and things I worry about, Trump being able to fabricate some sort of myth around a forthcoming vaccine is very low on my list of concerns. So as you mentioned, Joe Biden gave a speech earlier that day, as luck would have it, about he gave the speech after a two hour briefing with his coronavirus advisors to talk about his

plan to end the pandemic and distribute a safe, effective vaccine to the whole country. Here's a clip of Biden's speech. So let me be clear. I trust vaccines. I trust scientists, but I don't trust Donald Trump. And at this moment, the American people can't either. Last week, Senator Harris and I laid out three questions this administration is going to have to answer to assure the American people that politics will not play a role whatsoever in the vaccine process. What criteria will be used to ensure that a vaccine meets the scientific standard of safety and effectiveness? What's the criteria? Second, if the administration greenlights a vaccine, who will validate that the decision was driven by science rather than politics? What group of scientists will that be?

And thirdly, how can we be sure that the distribution of the vaccine will take place safely, cost-free, and without a hint of favoritism? So Biden is saying we have to listen to the science and not Trump when it comes to a vaccine. Trump and the Republicans are now accusing Biden of being an anti-vaxxer. Who will the American people believe? So, you know, two, like, it's two different realities. Who could decide? I mean, you are seeing, you know, I see this not just from the Trump campaign. I see it from asshole anti-anti-Trump conservative journalists. You know, there's this whole, oh, there's a lot of wows from reporters when certain Democratic candidates

like Cal Cunningham in a debate in North Carolina said, I'd be hesitant to take Donald Trump's word for it on a vaccine. And reporters are somehow surprised that Democrats are saying this. Like, is this something that could have traction that's not like Democrats are playing politics with a vaccine? No. I mean, can there be a series of really bad press coverage that could sand down the edges of Trump's giant problem on this? Yes. Is there

going to be a world in which the public all of a sudden trusts Trump on a vaccine as much as a Democrat or more than a Democrat? No. But we deserve better press coverage on this because saying that you do not trust someone who has already announced that he is going to politicize the vaccine process is a completely common sense and natural thing to say. Like you wouldn't trust Trump to give you a tissue, let alone a vaccine. He told us to drink bleach. Here's the thing is why they all look stupid. And they did all look stupid.

The other people who question this, because they most of the questions were before Trump's press conference yesterday. So it's like, what are Democrats saying about vaccines that now they might not trust Trump? And they all say that. And then Trump calls a press conference where he rebukes his CDC director's comments on vaccines, where he rebukes his CDC director's comments on the effectiveness of masks. Like whenever possible, Donald Trump makes sure he seizes the opportunity to substitute his judgment, which is based on making sure he is reelected for science, for the judgment of scientists everywhere. He's done it time and time again.

It is basically like the hallmark of his leadership through the pandemic to overrule science again and again. That's the hallmark of his entire presidency. Climate change, pandemic, every other thing. And it is not something that is new to him. He is someone who, as we've talked about before, has raised false conspiracy theories about vaccines for years. Yeah. Now, look, I mean, I think for people who are hoping for a vaccine that is effective, safe, and that is distributed quickly, which I certainly count myself as one of those people. I think we can be sure that if there is a vaccine that works in a

phase three trial, it is not going to be like Trump and a bunch of scientists that let us know this. This is a global race for a vaccine. There are scientists all over the world who have been working on this. There are companies all over the world invested in this. There are scientists all over the world who have been working on this. There are companies all over the world invested in this. There are governments all over the world invested in this. I believe that we will know if a vaccine is safe or if Donald Trump is just telling us a vaccine is safe. We will know the difference because this is such a global effort. But I do think the question that voters are going to have to answer is, and Biden hit at this in his sort of last criteria that he mentioned, is who do we want distributing a vaccine

in this country? Which candidate do we want distributing a vaccine that's safe, effective, and it's going to go to the people who need it as fast as possible. Do we want Donald Trump, who basically punished blue states during the beginning of the pandemic? Do we think that Donald Trump is going to fairly and equitably distribute vaccines to everyone in this country? Or do we think he's going to take care of his people, people who voted for him, Do we think he's going to take care of his people, people who voted for him, people supported for him, rich people and not everyone else? Like if I were Biden and the Democrats, I would start pushing on that more than anything else, that the distribution of this vaccine in the hands of Donald Trump is going to be a fucking disaster. And it's going to be politicized because he politicized everything else. Yeah, I think that's a really good point and an opportunity for the Biden campaign. Like, do you want your kid's teacher to get a vaccine?

Do you want firefighters to get a vaccine? Or do you want Tucker Carlson to get a vaccine? Like those are the choices, right? No, that's exactly, and of course that's gonna happen. Of course that's gonna happen. He said at the press conference yesterday, if you took out the blue states, there wouldn't be that many deaths,

which is also incorrect. It is also incorrect because like five of the top 10 states with the most deaths in this country are red states well well if we get if we do our job some of them become blue so right yeah there's that if we convince trump that losing florida will shift the balance um into the blue column he he might play along with that trick. I will also say from yesterday, like the one last thing I was surprised about at all is that I'm surprised that this is the territory that Trump wants to focus the campaign right now is who can better manage the pandemic, because it doesn't seem like territory that he should want to fight on. he should want to fight on. You know, like he's done his law and order stuff, his crime stuff. You know, he's obviously tighter ahead on economic issues, but he keeps coming back to the pandemic and talking about the pandemic when every single poll shows Joe Biden with an enormous lead on who

can handle the pandemic. And Donald Trump just keeps stepping right into it. John, it's been almost four years now, and I'm getting the sense that he is not some sort of master strategist. There is not a game plan here. He has not read Sun Tzu. It's very possible that he brings to bear the strategic acumen of a rat in a maze trying to get cheese, right? We are living in a Pavlovian presidency, right? Like that is what is happening. The only thing I wonder,

just trying to look at it from every angle to see if we're missing anything. I wonder if we are missing like a desire for normalcy that will make people or enough people want to believe Trump, that maybe masks aren't really needed, that a vaccine is just around the corner, that we just need to get back to our lives, that we don't want to keep wearing masks, that we won't want to keep staying at home. Is there any evidence in the polling that that desire for normalcy exists? There is evidence that there is a strong desire for normalcy,

but it is going in the opposite direction of what Trump wants. Right. Right. Like there are many, many, you know, as, as we say, both on this podcast and apparently on stress balls in the merch store,

we worry about everything, panic about nothing. But I don't like, I don't think we're missing something here. It may turn out to be not as consequential as we want it to be, that people will may value other things when they go into that voting booth. But I don't think they're going to all of a sudden adopt Donald Trump's view of the pandemic. Because all of the polling, even among Republicans, is that people want more

social distancing, not less. They're worried about opening up too quickly rather than too slowly. And they believe in masks. And that has not changed. It's been very steady for a very long period of time. So Trump hasn't been able to control the racist narrative all week. On Tuesday night, he appeared on an ABC News town hall in Pennsylvania. The president faced questions from moderator George Stephanopoulos and a group of undecided voters who pressed him on quite a few issues. I just want to go through a few of these exchanges. Here's Trump answering a question about systemic racism. You've coined the phrase make America great again. When has America been great for African-Americans in the ghetto of America?

Are you aware of how tone deaf that comes off to African-American community? Well, I can say this. We have tremendous African-American support. You've probably seen it in the polls. We're doing extremely well with African-American, Hispanic-American at levels that you've rarely seen a Republican have. Because that pushes us back to a time in which we cannot identify with such greatness. And I mean, you've said everything else about choking and everything else, but you have yet to address and acknowledge that there's been a race problem in America. So if you go, well, I hope there's not a race problem. I can tell you there's none with me. I just a lot of parts about that exchange. They're special. But I really I really enjoyed him answering the question about systemic racism by saying, we're doing phenomenal. You've probably seen it in the polls. You've probably seen how well I'm doing with black voters in the polls. I'm sure, I'm sure you have.

I think, you know, that was a, like that exchange is fascinating in a whole host of ways. Like the question is truly incisive and brilliant because it gets at the absolute core of what Make America Great Again is all about. And we don't talk about it as explicitly enough, which is Trump is running on a restorative nostalgia appeal to a time in which white people and white Christians in particular had total control of the political power in America. And what has fueled a lot of the enthusiasm for Trump among some segment of the population is this fear of a changing America, where there's going to be a moment in the not too

distant future where white people are a minority in the country, where we've just recently had a black president. And he's basically saying the question goes right at the core of that. Now, Trump did not get that, right? That did not. which is odd for someone with such an in-depth, studious knowledge of history that he did not fully comprehend that. But it does go once again to what we've always talked about, which is one of the better messages against Trump is Trump first, America last. And Trump can even take a question about systemic racism and view it through the prism of his own reelection. And also it also it's like, you know, is there, I hope there's not a problem in America. Well, certainly not a problem with me, right?

It's all about, it's literally all about him. Also, the only thing he can say about racism in his mind, the only thing he says every time he's asked this question is basically the economy he inherited from Barack Obama included some of the lowest levels of unemployment for black Americans. That's it. That's all he can say. He has nothing to say about his own actions over the last four years. He has nothing to say about what he's going to do in the next four years. He has nothing to say about any other problem that confronts black Americans in this country.

Nothing. He has one stat about unemployment that he just says over and over again. And, you know, we're going to talk about sort of what this all means for the debates. But I think if you're Joe Biden, you know that all Trump has ever said, can ever say in public when he's not hiding behind his tweets, you know, about black Americans is they should basically be happy that before the pandemic, there was a good unemployment rate. That's that's Trump's message. Here's Trump standing by his comments that the coronavirus will just disappear. And we are going to be OK. We're going to be OK. And it is going away. And it's probably going to

go away now a lot faster because of the vaccine. It would go away without the vaccine, George. But it's going to go away a lot the vaccine it would go away without the vaccine george but it's going to go away a lot faster we go away without the vaccine sure over a period of time sure with time it goes many deaths and you'll develop you'll develop herd like a herd mentality it's going to be it's going to be herd developed and that's going to happen that will all happen but with the vaccine i think it will go away very quickly. You know, everyone focused rightly so on the phrase herd mentality, but he follows up with it's going to be herd developed. It's going to be herd developed. You know, that's something that people say. It's true.

It will be herd developed. I mean, I also like it's always the case with Trump that we can mock the ridiculous words he uses because he's dumb and he doesn't understand anything. But there's something incredibly frightening about that answer, because following a strategy of herd immunity in this country would mean millions more deaths, millions more deaths. And he just sort of that, that he's just fine saying that. I mean, this is been a problem for many years. We, we become ourselves included overly focus on the dumbness of Trump's words and not the dangerousness of his ideas. And this is exactly like, we're all dunking on him for herd mentality. We will probably even name this podcast herd

mentality. That seems highly likely. We can't, we can't't we can't now as long as long as well i'm trying to cut off mr uh elijah seo cone at the pass here by by making the sausage on tape um so but as you would call it smash that subscribe button yes he would um but yeah it's's incredibly dangerous. And it is ultimately what the strategy is. Yes, of course it is. It is the one that eventually gets Trump to where he wants to be, which is the virus spreads less, but that's because it has already infected and killed lots of people, with him doing the least amount of work. To solve the problem of the virus quickly is hard. And he has spent his life avoiding hard work. And so this is the path of least resistance for Trump. Someone, as he

pointed out in his press conference yesterday, who is tested all the time, everyone he comes in contact with tested, that is not a privilege available to the rest of us who would suffer in this herd mentality strategy, if you will, as we are herd developing this. Herd developed. His strategy is basically to tell older and sicker people stay home think that will protect them which it won't because they all live with people who will be going out uh into the world when working and he wants everyone else back to work because he thinks like you said that will fix the economy that will get everyone back to normal and the you know the people who were very vulnerable to this virus like hey best of luck to you best of luck to you in his convention speech he said

you know we are protecting them they're not doing anything to protect vulnerable populations at all they're basically just telling them hey be careful that's it that's all he's doing that's that's the that is the trump plan for the virus basically he it is whatever comes first, herd immunity, herd mentality, or a vaccine. That's his plan. And here's an exchange with a voter who asked about health care. I think this is an important one. I was born with a disease called sarcoidosis. And from the day I was born, I was considered uninsurable. That disease started in my skin, moved to my eyes, into my optic nerves, and when I went to graduate school, into my brain. When it hit my brain, I was automatically eligible for disability for the rest of my life. I chose instead to get a bachelor's degree, a master's degree, a PhD,

and become a professor. It's great. It is great, except I still have similar health care problems. It costs me, with co-pays, I'm still paying almost $7,000 a year in addition to the co-pay. And should pre-existing conditions, which Obamacare brought to fruition, be removed? No. Please stop and let me finish my question sir should that be removed within a 36 to 72 hour period without my

medication I will be dead and I want to know what it is that you're gonna do to assure that people like me who work hard we do everything we're supposed to do can stay insured. It's not my fault that I was born with this disease. It's not my fault that I'm a black woman and in the medical community I'm minimized and not taken seriously. I want to know what you are going to do about that. So, first of all, I hope you are taken seriously. I hope you are.

And we are not going to hurt anything having to do with pre-existing conditions. We're not going to hurt pre-existing conditions. And in fact, just the opposite. If you look at what they want to do, where they have socialized medicine, they will get rid of pre-existing conditions. If they go into Medicare for all, which is socialized medicine, and you can forget about your doctors and your plans, just like you could forget under President Obama. I just have to stop you there because it just on a couple of points. Number one, Joe Biden has ran against Medicare for all in the primaries, but much more importantly,

Obamacare guaranteed people with preexisting conditions could buy insurance, guaranteed they could buy it as the same price as everyone else, guaranteed a package of essential benefits, guaranteed that insurance companies couldn't put a lifetime limit on those benefits. You fought to repeal Obamacare. You are arguing. Well, I essentially did. You are arguing in the Supreme Court right now to strike it down.

That would do away with preexisting conditions. No, so that we can do new health care. But you've been promising a new health care. So I thought that was interesting for a couple of reasons. The first is just that in the first question about systemic racism. It is really hard for him to have interactions with real voters. Like Maggie Haberman had an interesting take about the town hall. She was tweeting Trump by only doing rallies and almost never doing town hall

forums has been insulated from the kind of voter interaction that usually help incumbents as they're running. But he craves adulation and many of his aides enable it. So this town hall is bracing for him. What do you think of that? Well, I think that's right. Trump lives in a bubble, right? It's not just his Fox News right wing media bubble. It is that he is completely surrounded by people whose entire existence is to profit off of Trump, right? So he never hears bad news. He never hears criticism. He only hears what he wants to hear. And that includes the polling in his own campaign, right? There's that famous story of when Brad Parscale came in, showed him polling, they showed he was in trouble. Trump basically threw him out of the office, threatened to fire

him. And he came back magically a couple of days later with better polling and everything was good. And so when he has to actually interact with people who exist outside of the Trump media ecosystem, it's like visiting another planet. He doesn't know these people exist. He doesn't know they have these critiques of him. He doesn't know about their concerns. He just is completely detached from reality.

And that is a problem, not just in the context, as we're going to talk about, of what happens in debates when he has to deal with this, but it also affects his campaign strategy and his messaging because he is campaigning to be president of a country that doesn't actually exist outside the confines of Fox News. And that is why he does things like that press conference we referenced earlier, because he's not living in the same reality as the rest of us. Talking about the debates, what did the town hall tell you about how he might handle these debates, especially the second one, which is a town hall. I mean, the other thing that I noticed from this is the difference between like a Trump press conference and this is like Trump can't yell at voters either. He'd like to, but he can't.

He can yell. He yells at reporters all day long. He gets challenged, but he gets challenged by reporters. He calls them fake news and then he moves on. When he's faced with voters, he can't play that game. And so it's a little tougher for him. But what did you think about when you were watching this town hall about what that might mean for the debates?

I mean, I think it's a huge warning sign for him, particularly as you mentioned that second debate, which is a town hall one. As you say, he can yell at reporters. The other thing he can do in the White House briefing room is he has a bunch of plants in there, right? He did this yesterday where he's like, he gets a tough question and then he's just like, oh, OAN, Fox, Breitbart. Like he always has a safe harbor zone.

He's got a lifeline, yeah. And that will not exist in that debate. But the other, the thing that I think we should just modulate expectations is, which he can just vomit up a bunch of words that don't mean a ton.

And unless he is very specifically and aggressively pressed on those points, he can look out of touch and that is bad for him. But it's just very hard to press Trump because he will just change his lie in the middle of the conversation. We just saw that he can say a lot of words, most of them not true, many of them nonsensical. And at the end, it's hard for someone to pull out a coherent thought from them. And that is somewhat to his benefit, I think. It is. I think in that last clip about pre-existing conditions, George Stephanopoulos did an admirable job trying to fact check him. I do not know that any of the moderators in the debates will be able to spend that much time fact checking Donald Trump.

I don't think it's realistic for us to think that they will. I think they should. I think he's, you know, in a perfect world, they would. But I think it's gonna be hard. There's a there's a time limit on these debates. I don't I also don't believe that Joe Biden wins that debate by playing fact checker for an hour and a half on Donald Trump's lies. Like, I don't know that that gets him anywhere. I think like to me, Biden's argument about Trump should be that he's a weak, ineffective president who's in over his head, Michelle Obama's line,

because he can't focus on anything other than himself. This is what we've talked about. And, you know, we know, according to the research, like that is what the largest and broadest group of voters believe to be true about Trump. That includes undecideds, infrequent voters, some Trump voters. So everything that Biden says about Trump should fit within that frame. If Trump lies on that stage and the debate stage about protecting pre-existing condition, which he will, Biden should say, do you even know that your administration is in court right now trying to eliminate these protections? Are you aware that your budget has eliminated these protections three years in a row? Can you explain why you've

been promising people a health care plan for four years, but didn't actually do anything? Like Biden had this great line that a few weeks ago where he said, does he even know he's president? And I think Biden making him out to be a doddering old idiot early on who's completely out of touch with people and basically is so absorbed with himself that he allows the chaos around him to just like hurt the people that he's supposed to govern is probably the most effective message. And then after Biden says all that, he pivots to, you know, I was part of a team that actually passed health care reform and I'm ready to do it again. Here's my plan. And he looks like the more competent president who's also in touch with the needs of the American people and cares about them and will fight for them. So it seems to me that like there is a way to fit Trump's lies into a

frame of Trump has no idea what the fuck he's doing as president. Two points on this, which I generally agree with. One is you're correct that Biden is not three Washington Post fact checker Pinocchios away from becoming president. We you know, he's running to be president, not the editor of Politico fact. That is also he does need to correct lies about his record. Because as we're going to talk about, there is a tremendous dearth of knowledge about what Biden stands for. And if Trump goes on stage and lies about it, and both the moderator and Biden do not correct him, that could be damaging. Second, I think the other way to look at this is when we think about trust in politics, we often think about in terms of honesty.

And I think that's a mistake. Voters tend to believe that most politicians at bare minimum shade the truth and often lie. And that's particularly true of Trump. Like that is baked into the cake. That's the entirely stupid, seriously, not literally construct that exists out there. Trust in politics, particularly presidential politics, is more about capacity than honesty. And what that means here is not do you trust them to tell you the truth every time,

to say completely accurate statements, it's do you trust them to make your lives better, to keep the country safe, to protect you from a pandemic? And that's where the approach you talk about makes a lot of sense, which is undermining the idea that Trump is up to the job of president, as Michelle Obama said, as Barack Obama said, as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris said throughout this campaign. And while doing that, you have to also build up their belief that you can do it. So it's going to be a bit of both. The debate is fascinating and incredibly scary, as we've talked about. 84 million people watched the first debate in 2016. I suspect that number could be higher this time,

given the inability to... I'm sure that in 2016, some number of people had plans outside the House that may not be available to them right now. I do wonder how much Trump's performance is going to matter relative to Biden's. I think Biden's performance is going to matter. No, I think Biden's performance will matter more than Trump's performance, I think.

Like 10x more. I think we know what kind of Trump we're going to get on that debate stage. We all know he's going to lie a bunch. He's going to get defensive when Biden puts him on the defense. He's going to yell about things. He's going to make up shit about Biden. He's going to act like his presidency has been the best thing ever. He's going to seem off guard.

There's going to be a whole bunch of times that Trump says crazy fucking things that'll be trending on Twitter. Like we know it all. And what we're about to talk about with the poll is the question is not can Joe Biden like put Donald Trump in his place, right? Like people have largely decided what they think about Donald Trump. The question is, can Biden both defend his record from Trump's attacks without seeming defensive and give people the confidence, like you said, that he can bring this country out of a pandemic, manage an economic recovery, and just basically lead this country better than Trump has? And actually has plans, and does he have plans that would tangibly improve people's lives and a path to get those plans done. That's what Joe Biden

needs to do. And there's a lot of people who don't have a strong opinion of Joe Biden that will be looking for that. And so if Joe Biden spends all his time in a back and forth with Trump, if he spends all the time fact checking Trump, if he spends all the time attacking Trump, he will miss the opportunity to do those things. And I would bet anything that in debate prep right now, you know, they are telling Joe Biden no matter what, before you walk off that debate stage, like, here are the three things you have to do. And I bet a lot of those things are, you know, making sure people know what he stands for and what he do as president.

So let's talk about the latest installment of the Crooked Media Change Research Polar Coaster Series. You like that noise? You like the sound effects that we've added? It only took us like eight of these to figure it out. All right. Who did we poll this time? to figure it out. All right. Who do we poll this time? So between September 9th and September 13th,

we surveyed 3,098 new or infrequent voters across the six closest battleground states. Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. We define new and infrequent

as three different types of voters. Voters who registered for the first time in 2016, voters who skipped 2016, and voters who skipped 2018. Why did we pick these kinds of voters? Well, we spent a lot of time focused on people who switched their vote from one party to the other, Obama-Trump voters or Trump-Biden voters or Romney-Clinton voters, and we spent a lot less time on the people who are deciding between voting and not voting, even though these are

people who could transform the entire electorate because there are a lot of them. Anything else to add about why we chose this group of voters? Well, it's an under, as you point out, it's an under-scrutinized group. And they very well can be how Biden wins. This is a group that, as we'll talk about in this poll, are critical. And if you turn them out, they could make the difference in six battleground states. We did this poll not to give the Biden campaign advice or provide guidance to the DNC or a super PAC or anything. It is to inform our listeners, the folks who have adopted a state, who are volunteering in various ways, how to communicate with the people on the other end of that phone or in their lives who are reluctant voters, who are new to this, who are thinking about voting.

We want to give them actual specific message guidance. And this is, I think, a way to offer people actionable advice on how to turn out the people in your lives that you are talking to because we all know a lot of voters like this, particularly in the current environment we're in. Yeah, because believe it or not, if you are an organizer or volunteer and you are text banking or phone banking or reaching out to voters, your list is not going to include a lot of the MAGA hat wearing Trump supporters that the New York Times interviews in diners. If, I hope not, otherwise the lists are wrong. But your list of people will probably include a lot of people who are deciding whether or not they vote in the first place. Hopefully, you know, infrequent voters, new voters, people

who are, you know, who are undecided still. And so we do hope that the messages that we tested will help you in your conversations with these voters. So what do we find? I'll just do some top lines that we can dig in. We found that Biden leads this group of voters 49 to 37 percent, which is an improvement over how Hillary Clinton did with these voters who split this group with Trump 35 to 30 percent in 2016. Biden's biggest gains over Clinton are among suburban voters, Latino voters, young voters and women. Biden's biggest gains over Clinton are among suburban voters, Latino voters, young voters, and women. These voters overwhelmingly say that they intend to vote in 2020, even though a lot of them are infrequent voters. Only 3% said they're definitely or probably not voting, and only 5% said that there's still a maybe. 76% rate their motivation to vote a 10 out of 10. 76% rate their motivation to vote a 10 out of 10.

But there are still about 9% who are undecided and 9% who say there's a chance they could vote for another candidate still, which is a larger share of uncertain voters than we see in normal polls of the broader electorate. Dan, what does the poll say about who these voters are and what they think about both candidates. This poll, unsurprisingly, shows that this is a group of voters who engage with politics and political news less than certainly we do, and obviously people who subscribe to a podcast like Bouts of America. It also shows, I mean, you can see this in the numbers, which is nearly half of the undecided voters in this poll have no opinion on Joe Biden. Think about that. Crazy. Right? Here is someone who was vice president of the United States four years ago,

been on the national stage forever, been the Democratic nominee for six months, and they feel like they do not yet have enough information to have a conclusion about him. A shockingly high number of them also don't know enough about Trump. This is the hardest group of voters to get. As you point out, there's lots of good news in here. They are more favorable to Biden than the electorate here. They are more favorable to Biden than the electorate overall. They are more engaged. And I think we even thought possible at this point, given all the conversation about enthusiasm for Biden and concerns about politicking in a pandemic. And I think the really interesting and important part is this

undecided number shows there's real room for growth for Biden with this cohort. Yeah, that was also interesting. Like, you know, and this is typical among undecided voters, but the undecided voters in this poll are largely negative about both candidates, but they're much more strongly negative about Trump. He's got a negative 53 percent favorability rating than Biden, who has negative 38. So there's obviously, like you said, more growth for Biden. And it's also important to remember, because we're going to talk about, you know, anti-Trump messages versus pro-Biden messages. Most of these people have made up their mind about Donald Trump. You know, there's still some who would be swayed by different information about him, who haven't

completely made up their mind, but they are strongly negative about Donald Trump. And yet, even though they're strongly negative, they still haven't decided, which should tell us something. That it's not just more anti-Trump stuff that's going to put them over the edge because a lot of them have made up their mind about Donald Trump.

I also thought it was interesting that undecided voters here said that the way they're going to make up their mind is more research on their own about the candidates. 47% said that, which is scary because God knows where they're going for information. And then listening to the debates, 19% said will help them make up their mind. So that, you know, one in five of these undecided voters say that the debates are going to help them make up their mind,

which goes to the importance of the debates. Before we get to the message test that we did, what other good news did you see for Biden in this poll? And what, if anything, concerned you? I mean, the other good news is we tested 16 different questions about who you trusted more on these issues, like economy, COVID, crime, immigration, health care, tell you the truth, a whole bunch of things. Biden led in 15 of those 16. And this is in a world in which the voters do know very little about Biden. So their feelings about Trump are so strong that even in issues where they probably could not name one element of Biden's immigration plan or healthcare plan or crime plan, they

default to believing Biden is better than Trump. That is a strong base to start from that you can only strengthen by providing more information. So I thought that was an important piece of good news. Now, because we can never focus too much on good news, here are the concerning things. And we'll talk about this, some of this a little more in a second. Trump still retains some surprising strengths, particularly on the economy. But also these voters are hearing a ton about rioting and looting. And this buttresses other findings we've seen in other polls recently, which is Trump and the right-wing media machine has had real success in moving the

conversation somewhat off of coronavirus onto an issue, the impact of which they are massively exaggerating. And so these are people who engage with traditional news less than your average voter, and they are hearing a ton about rioting and looting and crime. And that says the problem is much bigger than Fox News. These are not Fox News watchers, by definition. They are not people who read Breitbart or The Daily Caller or watch Tucker Carlson. They are people who are organically getting a lot of information that is pushing the issue environment in Trump's direction. And that is alarming somewhat in the context of this race because, as the poll shows, Trump is not particularly trusted on solving the problem Trump wants to focus on. But it is a gigantic problem

for democracy writ large about how bad and flawed the information ecosystem currently is in America. It's really important what you said, that they're not just Fox News watchers either, because basically we asked, we had a list of items and we said, what do you fear? either because basically we asked we had a list of items and we said what do you fear right and the growth of racism in america was feared by 72 percent of voters including 75 percent of independents and 43 percent of republicans we then asked white supremacists what do you fear about right supremacists also was very feared by a lot of voters and 30 percent of republicans which is somewhat hopeful i I guess, depending on how you look at it. I would have thought it would have been worse. But so these are these same voters

who fear the rise of racism in America also fear looting, rioting and crime in American cities. 66% of voters feared that, including 51% of Democrats. And now that was right after climate change on the list. So slightly more people, voters, feared climate change, which is a good thing. But it was above fearing COVID-19 on the list. So more people were afraid of looting, rioting, and crime in American cities than the virus, the deadly virus that's spreading through the country, which is a very scary thing, I think. Yeah. I mean, you saw, we saw a similar finding in the New York Times, Siena College polls over the weekend in some of the four states.

This is a, we should not be dismissive of the fact that the right-wing media advantage in this country is gigantic, right? You know, this, most of this- And it's not just, and it doesn't just exist on Fox. It exists on Facebook, primarily on Facebook. Yeah. YouTube, like there are all kinds of sources that are getting to these people. And the mainstream media is also falling for this,

right? As part of the both sides-ism, they're giving undue weight to Trump's coverage. And sometimes the stories written about it are very fair and they point out that Trump's exaggerating and he's full of shit on all of that. But it is the headline and the images that are getting shared all across social media. And it is permeating the public consciousness in a very concerning way. There's also we basically offered a list of sort of lies and conspiracies and asked if people believe them. And 30 to 40 percent of voters, mostly Republicans, believe every conspiracy we tested. Biden having serious mental health issues. Biden is a puppet. Biden wanting to defund the police. Only 9000 Americans have died of covid. All of these lies. A lot of Republicans believe them. Fortunately, obviously, almost no Democrats and

fewer independents. And then we asked for one word descriptions of Biden and Trump. Trump, the most common words were like liar, corrupt and strong leader, I think. Biden, the most common words were like liar, corrupt and strong leader, I think. Biden, the most common positive word was honest, which is good. That was the most common word to describe him. The most negative word was puppet. Some focused on age and frighteningly, 2% of voters use the word pedophile, which is a QAnon conspiracy. It's a right wing conspiracy.

It's bubbling up there. You know, they were just about all Trump supporters. But this is something that is like bubbling up in the dark corners of the Internet now, which is, you know, sometimes we know like the conspiracies like, you know, there's going to be rioting in every city and, you know, Trump's lies about COVID. But there are other conspiracies that are sort of like in these dark corners of the internet that sometimes we miss. And I think this is one of them. Well, if by the dark corners of the internet,

you mean Trump's Twitter feed because he retweeted one of these 25 hours ago. I definitely count that. I count that as a dark corner of the internet for sure. Yes. All right, let's talk about the message we tested. Dan, you wrote a memo about this for your outstanding morning newsletter, The Message Box.

You want to tell us about what you found and tell us a little bit about The Message Box. I don't know that we've actually talked about it on the pod. We have not actually talked about it. We've referenced it a lot. We have alluded to it. And as anyone who watches campaign experts react, our YouTube series on ads knows I'm a particularly awkward promoter of my own enterprises. So, um, I was, I actually ended up with like, was going to announce it on a podcast and then your son was born hours before we, uh, your wife went to labor hours before we did it. And I was so consumed with doing your much harder job of moderating the podcast that I completely forgot to do it. And here we are six weeks later. So the message box is a political newsletter I started about six weeks ago with the idea that, one, I wanted to write more in-depth about what is happening in politics, but it also was born

of this vision of politics I have where we in the Democratic Party do not do enough to empower our supporters to carry the message for us. In an age where everyone has access to social media and a smartphone, if we give them the sort of message guidance that we give politicians in campaigns, they can help us take on this massive right-wing media advantage we're talking about. So it's called the message box. The goal is to do political analysis, but also offer people actionable advice on how they can communicate with voters in their lives, much like we're doing right here. And I am contributing a portion of every subscription every month to the election to Black Voters Matter, Latasha Brown's group we've talked about here many times.

Message box subscribers are already on pace to raise $5,000 for Black Voters Matter. My goal is to double that by the election, which math suggests is quite, quite challenging. But if you would like to subscribe, it is messagebox.substack.com. And it is also my pinned tweet, because I know you are constantly all on my Twitter profile page,

so you will find it very easily. So that's the newsletter. In the newsletter this morning, I took what we found in the poll and wrote out a strategic memo about what we do with it. And as we mentioned, there's lots of good news in here. There is room for growth. So the question is, how do we grow Biden's march? And how do we turn those undecided voters into Biden voters who are going to turn out in a pandemic? It is a two-step process. The first is Trump continues to maintain an economic advantage.

He has a 49% economic approval. He has a 12-point advantage among the undecided voters over who they trust to manage the economic recovery. And interestingly enough, the two best messages that we tested, the most persuasive ones with the overall population in this poll and the undecided voters are about health care and comparing and contrasting Biden and Trump's economic plans, focusing particularly on how Trump wants to cut Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy. So as we've talked about before, there's a two-part process to take down Trump in the economy. First part is showing voters that he is a plutocrat, not a populist. And we do that by talking about the things he actually wants to do

and has done, including most importantly, his tax cut. And the second is informing people of Biden's plans. They simply do not know enough about Biden's plans to come to a conclusion on the economy in particular, because Trump has this aura of credibility from his business experience, as bullshit as it is, and the pre-COVID economy. The second piece that I took away from this poll that is absolutely critical for all of us who are trying to help Joe Biden win is we need to help voters know more about Joe Biden and his plans. They simply do not know enough.

You know, as we've mentioned, nearly half of the undecided voters have no opinion on Joe Biden. They know very little about his plans. And we did this exercise where we asked people what they had recently heard about the two candidates. And yeah, very good news as relates to Trump. These non-engaged voters, the number one story was the Woodward book. And the number two story was the Atlantic article, right? So like that, as we say, tough blow for the nothing matters crowd. But for Biden, the most popular answer was nothing.

Nothing. They couldn't remember hearing anything about Joe Biden. And so what that says is negative information about Trump is getting to these voters organically and positive information about Biden is not. So we have to lean into pro-Biden messaging. It doesn't mean you stop negative contrast messaging about Trump, but you do it together. And a message that is just negative against Trump is of limited utility with these voters, at least, compared to a message that compares and contrasts the plans of the two candidates.

And so we just have to, in our conversations with voters, in our social media postings, in our conversation with families and friends, spend more time talking about what Joe Biden would do as president to help overcome this right-wing media advantage. And I just want to give people some specifics. So we tested pro-Trump messages as well. Trump's best message was on the economy. And it is, Joe Biden is proposing a $4 trillion tax hike that would kill jobs and collapse the economy.

Donald Trump says he already built the greatest economy in history during his first term and will do it again in his second term so that we have full employment, soaring incomes and record prosperity. I tried to be as fair to Donald Trump as possible when I wrote that. That is what he says, basically. And that's what his advertisements on the economy are saying as well. his advertisements on the economy are saying as well. That message tested the best of all the Trump pro-Trump messages that we tested. And yet it tested worse than every other pro-Biden message that we tested on every other single issue. The number one testing message of all, as you said, actually, this was tied with with health care. This is our economy message for Biden. Donald Trump says the economy is great because the stock market is up and wants to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security in order to fund more tax cuts for the

rich. Joe Biden says a strong economy depends on a strong middle class and wants only the wealthiest 1% to pay higher taxes so we can expand health coverage, invest in clean energy and infrastructure and create 5 million manufacturing and technology jobs. So the message works because it does a few things. It does have a contrast with Donald Trump. It talks about what Joe Biden would do in terms of values. It does what you said, which is it turns Trump into a plutocrat, not a populist. And it gives some specifics about Joe Biden's plan. The health care message we did has even more specifics about Biden's plan. We say that Biden wants to give everyone the choice to enroll in a Medicare-like insurance plan, make sure no American pays more than 8.5% of their income on premiums, which is a policy I'm

sure no one knows about Joe Biden's health care plan. I didn't even know that exact statistic until I was looking it up the other day, and bring down the cost of prescription drugs by allowing Medicare to negotiate with drug companies. So I think and you've talked about this a lot in polls. Messages that tend to pop are ones that give voters, you know, their value statements, but they also give voters new information that they don't have. They have a piece of new information in there. And there are so many pieces of new information about Joe Biden's plans on health care, on the economy, on climate, on race.

We should mention that three of the other messages that tested almost as well as the economy and health care, they were very close, are a message on race. For everyone who's now afraid of a race message because of what we found on looting and rioting, Joe Biden's message on bringing the country together and supporting peaceful protesters was very powerful. His message on climate was very, very effective at moving voters and his message on education, which has been such a sleeper issue, I think, in this race. Joe Biden has some great education proposals from universal pre-K for three and four-year-olds to making four-year college free for anyone making

under $125,000 to making community college absolutely free for anyone making under $125,000, to making community college absolutely free for everyone, to forgiving student loans in exchange for national service. All of these proposals have the ability not just to find favor with some of these undecided voters and undecided voters saying that they're going to agree with that statement, but it actually moves vote. And we found that after testing all of these messages with voters, the horse race number actually moved three points in Biden's direction to 52 from 49, which is basically a bigger jump than we've seen in almost any of the change polls that we've done. So this cohort of undecided, infrequent voters are persuadable and messages about Joe Biden's plan can move them into his column. Very important. Yeah. What is really fascinating and important here is that this poll shows that these voters want to support Biden. They like his policies. They find his messaging persuasive. They just

have to hear it. And, you know, some people responded to the various pieces and tweets we had about this morning saying, you guys have been saying voters need to know more about Biden for months. What does this say about his campaign? Well, the fact that these voters are super engaged is a very positive sign for Biden's campaign. But these are the hardest voters to reach in every election, whether it's Obama, Joe Biden, anyone else. And we're going to be trying to persuade them all the way up until the moment the polls close on election day. That is the task, right? And it's the gains we make among these voters between now and election day that could very well decide the election.

Because this is a group of people who want to support Biden. They just have to be convinced. And we know that the arguments work. And so the roadmap is clear. We just have the work to do between now and then. I also think it is very difficult to break through in this media environment where everything is about Donald Trump all the time. And look, like Donald Trump says crazy shit and argues with his CDC director, right? You're Joe Biden and you're in his campaign.

Let's say you thought, you know what? We're not gonna swing at that pitch because we need to get our manufacturing agenda out there. Joe Biden goes and gives a speech about his five-point manufacturing agenda. That's not going to get covered or break through when Donald Trump just rebuked his CDC director publicly, right? So sometimes you have no choice but to respond to Donald Trump to get into that cycle. I do think paid media helps. I think the debate is a huge opportunity to deliver this message. And the thing that none of us could forget,

we're like, shouldn't the Biden campaign be doing X, Y? Like, we're all the Biden campaign. We're all part of it. We all have agency here. And as we're tweeting, as we're sharing on Facebook, as we're talking to friends and relatives, it is up to us to deliver messages about what Joe Biden would do as president,

who he is, what he stands for, and not just talk about how bad Donald Trump is. And I am often the worst offender of this. On this podcast, we do it. On Twitter, we do it, right? And it's, again, it's hard to avoid. Donald Trump does horrible things. We need to call them out. That's just the way it is. But I would try to spend more time, all of us sort of getting the word out there about all of Joe Biden's plans, which are very popular with people. Very popular. Yeah. The balance has to shift. No one is saying you have to stop saying Trump is bad. And the poll actually suggests you need to keep doing that. Yeah. But the balance has to go from almost all negative Trump to much closer to 50-50, if not more on the Biden side.

Like we need all of us as a group of people who are talking to voters over index on the pro Biden stuff, because that is where we are swimming upstream. And by stream, I mean the Facebook algorithm. All right. When we come back, Dan will talk to Anat Shankar Osorio about all of this, about messaging to new and infrequent voters in the homestretch. Anat's done a lot of her own research. And so it's a great conversation. Stay tuned right after the break. Anat Shankar-Osorio is the founder and principal of ASO Communications and the host of the Words to Win by podcast.

Anant, welcome to Pod Save America. Thanks so much. We are obviously hitting the stretch run here. We are under 50 days. You have recently done a lot of work about the messages that we should be using down the stretch. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, for sure.

So where we're focused most squarely is in a couple of spots. What I would lift up most immediately is how we talk about voting and the election itself. Right now, understandably, there is a lot of panic. In fact, maybe not even enough panic around all of the nefarious deeds that Trump and his ilk and various Republican attorneys general and so on are implementing in order to keep people from voting. And so it can seem like the right thing to do to raise the alarm. But in fact, what we have seen in testing is that that has a concerted demobilizing effect on the folks I like to call our high potential voters. In other words, if we keep spreading the message, this is the Titanic, people are not going to want to buy a ticket. Is it, you know, I was thinking about this after reading your work, which is fascinating, that, you know, in the Obama 2012 campaign, we had a big debate

about this, right? Because so much voter suppression laws, voter ID laws put in place since 08 and 12. And we had this big debate about how do we talk about it with this same fear about demobilization? We eventually discovered through our own research at the time that if we talked about it in the way, particularly to Black voters, about these Republicans trying to stop them from expressing their political power, it could turn them out. But what was different between that conversation in 12 and what's happening now is the conversation was about whether you would be prevented from voting, whether it would make it harder for you to vote, whether it would be long lines. And the conversation now, which I think is very different,

is will your vote count? And the context is even a bigger problem because the risk of your vote not counting to yourself is so much greater because you're not just going to be inconvenienced or have to take time off work away from family. You're potentially exposing yourself to a virus. Is the vote counting conversation part of making this a bigger problem? Absolutely. And basically, I think we have this instinct and it's understandable because, you know, to speak in broad terms, people who are listening to this podcast or less in a presidential year, barely even votes. And the notion of kind of going deeper and being more politically engaged really renders us bad judges of what messaging works and doesn't, because we necessarily filter that through our own experience and we think this works on me, this riles me up. up. But actually what we see is that when we use threat-based messaging around the votes not counting, around all of the nefarious deeds happening and everything that you laid out, it evokes a fight or freeze response. It evokes fight out of our activists, but it evokes freeze

out of most people, especially given everything you said, that it is incredibly challenging to be a voter and, in fact, dangerous. And so the advice that we're giving, which we've posted publicly, and obviously I'm more than happy to share, is that we need to do a few things. Number one, we need to avail ourselves of what President Obama did so beautifully. It's something we call messaging from inevitability. It's where you make what you're doing a matter, not of if, but when, right? It's yes, we can, not no, we're not sure, we may, might, if everything comes together perfectly, but the enemy's really big. So first of all, it's messaging from inevitability.

Second of all, it's ascribing motivation. So when we talk about the horrible things that Trump is doing, it's really, really important to not just list the what, but to list the why, to explain the nefarious deeds. So what that means in the messaging is instead of saying Trump is destroying the post office, or Trump is rigging the election, or Trump is stealing the election, all of which make people feel like why even bother? It's not going to matter. What's the point of even trying? What we need to say is Trump knows that he is losing. So he is trying to X. He is attempting to Y. So we need to actually lift up the fact that he is losing, we are winning, and he hopes that by

sowing chaos and stoking fear, it will stop us from voting at all. But we're on to him and we count on us. So we actually lean into what we call social proof. Social proof is the middle school theory of messaging. It's where you basically say, this is what everybody's doing. And the reason for that is because humans at the most fundamental level, we're social creatures, and we want to do what we perceive our in group or our social affiliation is doing. You know, you talk about framing this in the context of Trump losing, which sort of connects to a conversation you and I had when we talked about campaign ads on our YouTube series a couple months ago. And at the time, we were talking about how to frame Trump's authoritarian instincts or behavior. And since we had that conversation, believe it or not, things have gotten much worse on that front. You know reports last night from Bill Barr doing things. What is, based on your research, the best way to push back on Trump's messaging, law and order messaging, authoritarian messaging, et cetera? Yeah. So to me, it's kind of two separate things. There's the authoritarian messaging,

and there is the law and order. So if it's okay, I'm going to take them separately. Please do. Yeah. So on the question of how we characterize Trump, it's actually fundamentally vital that we not reinforce the image of Trump as a strongman, as an authoritarian leader. This is an understandable instinct, but it is absolutely wrong. And it's wrong for a number of reasons. Because remember, if they're already engaged, if they're already listening, if they're already tweeting, if they're already hot and bothered, they're not our problem. We're not working on persuasion or mobilization with those folks. We have to think through who are the folks who are our high potential voters. And when we tell them this is an authoritarian strongman, again, it reinforces this sense of why even bother?

This is a lost cause, and most people are not out looking for a lost cause. It's also not persuasive. In fact, what we see is that the most persuasive way of portraying Trump is as a weak loser, portraying Trump is as a weak loser, pathetic, bumbling, ineffective, corrupt, sure, but not an authoritarian strongman, a weak loser. That is in fact a much more apt and effective way. It also drives him more crazy. And you think that's good, the driving him crazy? I mean, I think that it scratches an itch among highly political people that we seem to need scratched. It's not the primary reason to do it. But when we drive him nuts, it is when, I mean, I would say it's when he gets off his talking points. He has no talking points, so there Party get off their talking points, because it's when we sort of hit a nerve with them. The separate question of how we address law and order, that's a different question. How would you address it? Yeah. Okay. So

the law and order issue is a trap. And it's a trap where they are holding out bait and sadly and unfortunately, unstrategically and immorally, I have feelings about this. You may be able to tell. Yes, I can tell. It's good. We are taking that bait. Basically, instead of having a conversation about who we are, what we stand for, what we're going to deliver, they dangle this shiny object, which is law and order, and we all agree tacitly to stop talking about COVID. We agree to stop talking about jobs. We agree to stop talking about economic well-being. We agree to stop talking about having an actual functional plan to make sure our families can get and stay well.

And we agree, yes, fine, we're going to have a conversation about law and order. So first issue, now we're on their turf. Now we're having their conversation and we're not having ours. Second issue, the way that we address law and order almost inevitably, and it doesn't need to be this way, I have an alternative and I will supply it, almost inevitably is going to send our base packing. Because remember, the choice for the disaffected base is not between Biden and Trump, it's between Biden and not voting. You have to give people something to vote for. And promising them Republican light, promising them authoritarian light, promising them

genuflecting at the altar of quote unquote law and order, what that does is it says to people, you should be thinking about riots. You should be thinking about looting, right? It says to people, you should be thinking about riots. You should be thinking about looting, right? So when our candidates are saying, a riot is not a protest, looting is not protesting, what you're doing is you're calling rioting and looting top of mind. You're bringing that into people's brains.

It's also not persuasive. So the theory that we need to do it because of the white lady in the diner in Wisconsin that, you know, pundits across America love to offer us up as evidence, or the white ex-coal miner in West Virginia, you know, whoever is speaking in broad vowels that we're supposed to take as data, one of my favorite things, they're not persuaded by it because what you've actually done is you've wandered onto the opposition's turf and you've agreed to have their debate. So the question is what actually works, right? What we've seen in our testing, this is an example of an actual message that we've tested

that hits it home with that persuadable middle that we're told we're supposed to be chasing and is actually a forthright statement of our values and it goes like this. No matter what we look like or where we're from we want our families to be safe, our voices to be heard, and our rights to be respected. So we start by naming a shared value we don't start with the problem. We claim the moral high ground. But Trump is trying to divide and scare us into silence by sending federal forces into our communities, stopping people from protesting and provoking aggression. With the election coming up, he hopes to distract us from his corruption and failure to ensure we have the care, security,

and support we need during this pandemic. By joining together Black, white, and brown to demand liberty and justice today and to vote in record numbers in this election, we can swear in a government of, by, and for the people. That's what we say. And I 100% agree with the danger of following Trump down the rabbit hole. You saw the same thing in 2018 with the caravan and which candidates decided to buy the premise of his argument in which candidates decided to explain what he was trying to distract you from and why he was being dishonest with you. You know, the thing that I, you know, we just did this poll of new and infrequent voters with change research that we talked about earlier in this podcast. And one of the things that I found very concerning in it is the number of people, and this is a group that is 12 points pro-Biden, right? Relative,

is the number of people, and this is a group that is 12 points pro-Biden, right? Relative, you know, 12 points pro-Biden, much more pro-Biden than the electorate overall. And, you know, per your point, less politically engaged than even the average voter, yet their biggest fear that they cite is rioting and looting, more so than COVID. And like, I definitely think part of that is perhaps some Democrats and certainly a lot of media folks falling into the trap there. But it also just sort of bespeaks the power of the Facebook-powered right-wing media advantage that is changing that. And I take it from this that you think that the... How do you get that conversation back to COVID or the economy or where you think it is? You know, do you have thoughts on that?

Yeah. So first of all, even though you didn't ask me, we don't call people infrequent voters, Dan, because we want to make the reality that we want. We call them high potential voters. Okay. That's good. I should, I wish I talked to you before I wrote a whole piece on it this morning, but I can edit it, I guess. So well done. Yeah. Or you'll just cut out this clip of me admonishing you. Now we, now we, now we can't, we can't, now that you've said that we absolutely can't cut that out. So this will, this will exist for the historical record. And it's not the first time. It won't be the last time. So your, your point is well taken. All right. So that's just an aside. That's just me proving that like, I'm never off. I only come

in one flavor and it's candid and that's it all the time for everyone. So let's play active. So you tell me the sentence and I will respond back to you. Meaning you be this infrequent, sorry, high potential voter. See, look, I did it too. It's hard, yes. You infected me. So you be this media person or you be this high potential voter and say the thing. I've been reading and seeing a lot about looting and rioting and Democrat run cities all over

the country. I'm worried about it coming to our community. What say you? I hear you, Dan. I mean, I talk to voters all day long since I'm running here for Senate in Minnesota. And, you know, it seems to me that most of us, wherever we're from, whatever our accent, whatever our background or zip code, we want pretty similar things, which is to make it through our accent, whatever our background or zip code, we want pretty similar things, which is to make it through our day and be able to spend time with our families and know that we're healthy and safe. But today, we have a handful of politicians who are trying to divide and scare us.

They want us pointing the finger at whoever they come up with, new immigrants, Black people, mayors, anything they can do to turn us against each other and turn us against people who are fighting for liberty and justice for all. I think that we all know that in order to make change, in order to make America live up to the promise of a place where every single one of us can breathe and be safe, we have to change things. And so if we're pointing our fingers in the wrong direction, if we're taking the bait and we're struggling and we're fighting amongst ourselves, they're going to continue being able to make off with the spoils. They're going to continue

handing kickbacks to their rich cronies, not protecting us from COVID and getting away with it. And that's why when I talk to voters, what I really see is people, white, black, brown, city, suburbs, we pretty much want the same thing, which is better policies for our families, the ability to make ends meet, and someone to actually take charge of this virus and look after all of us and respect our rights. That's great. You have my vote. I fully support you as the next senator of Minnesota. Sorry, Tina Smith. So you've just been primaried. I'm going to be running from California. Yes. Well, you know, pandemic. Everyone's doing a Zoom campaign, so you can do it from anywhere.

That's right. So last question before we let you go. We've been having a big conversation about both on the podcast, it relates to this poll, but just more broadly, the Democratic Party about the balance between negative Trump messaging and positive Biden messaging. You know, where do you think that where do you see that balance right now? Where do you think it needs to be? Yeah. So I think that if the left had written the story of David, they would have written a biography of Goliath. And I think that talking about Trump is how we got Trump.

And I don't just think that. I have reams of data, not just my own, but others. For example, winningly, David Brockman and Josh Kala, thank goodness, published a paper recently proving this over a really comprehensive study. Pro-Biden messaging, pro-Biden ads, pro-Biden approaches are much more effective than anti-Trump. And the reason for that is multifold. Number one, for high potential voters, we actually have to give them something to vote for. Because again, remember, for them, the contest is not Biden-Trump. The contest is Biden, don't participate. And so if you're not giving them a reason to go out and, as you rightly said, potentially risk their lives, or at least engage in something that's really complicated and that's rendered intentionally complicated in order to keep them from participating right we've made it very very hard and we've made it very very hard

specifically for black and brown people as we all know so first of all you have to give people something to vote for. You have to give them a sense of meaning and agency and a sense that we got this and that your vote actually has a chance of making change. When all you're doing is talking about Trump, what you're doing is you're reinforcing the sense of how terrible and horrible everything is. I mean, genuinely, do you think that there's a black person in America, except for, you know, Candace Owens maybe, who needs to hear another thing about how awful Trump is?

Do you think that there are black and brown folks in America who are like, oh, I had no idea he was terrible. Thanks for that new tidbit of information. There's nothing left to say about how horrible this barely human is. So first of all, and second of all, but you know, it's really just as simple as the analogy that when you take your kid to the pool, if your kid is running,

I don't know if you remember pools, they were like public places. I know that's confusing. If you take your kid to the pool and your kid is running, a competent lifeguard is going to yell, walk, because if you yell, don't run at a kid, they're going to run either out of defiance or because you literally yelled, run at them. We have to tell people what we want them to do and stop telling people what we don't want them to do. So just to put a fine point on that, does that mean like if we anointed you in charge of the entire Democratic Party, all the super PACs, campaign finance were, we put, we anointed you in charge of the entire Democratic Party, all the super PACs, campaign finance laws, be damned, the Biden campaign, everyone else,

would you run no ads to talk about Trump? Would you run no purely negative ads? Would you have some ads that were Trump's plan versus Biden's plan? Or Trump, you know, comparing the two? How would you think about that? Yeah, I wouldn't say I would never, ever, ever reference Trump. It would depend on sort of sub-demographics and micro-targeting and all of these subtler things. And obviously the conversation you and I have been having is broad strokes and there are nuances and there are differences and the differences are geographic and they're demographic and so on and so forth. And of course that's the case. But broadly speaking, what I would do is make the voters, make the voters that I'm targeting the protagonist of the ad. And what I would do is demonstrate in our ads and in our messaging and in our approaches,

all of the ways that everyday Americans are standing with and for each other, all of the ways we are pulling through by pulling together, and positing Biden and Harris as a means to facilitate that journey, as a way of propelling us forward, as an easier sort of path to tread to the beautiful tomorrow that we know that we can have and create together. And in that, of course, I would still have Trump sometimes. He would be the villain. Stories need to have villains, right? A story, the archetype of a story doesn't make sense without a villain. But I wouldn't lead with the villain. I would lead with the heroes, and the heroes would be the voters. And Biden-Harris would be the mentor on the journey. I'm, of course, speaking of sort of archetypal hero's journey storytelling, which is kind of the fundamentals of Western literature. And then I would posit our victory as a matter not of if but when, again, availing myself of this notion of messaging from inevitability. Because people want to be on the winning team.

And our tendency to say either this is the Titanic, would you like to buy a ticket? Or boy, have I got a problem for you? Or we're the losing team. We're down in fundraising. Everything is terrible. We might in fundraising. Everything is terrible. We might not win. Everything is horrible. So give us money. That's not logic that most people can follow. And so the reason why in the new messaging on how to talk about the election, where again, we're availing ourselves of all of these cognitive approaches that we know work.

Our overarching message is summarized as count on us. For the double meaning of both, you can rely upon us. We are going to do this thing. We are going to come through. You will be part of a larger grouping of people who are all dedicated together to get this thing done and also count on us because we need to count all votes. That is great. And I thank you so much. This is always such a fascinating conversation with you about this. Good luck down the stretch here and we'll be watching your work very closely. Same to you. Thanks for everything. Thanks to Anat Shankar Osorio for joining us today everyone have a great weekend

and we'll talk to you next week bye everyone pod save america is a cricket media production the executive producer is michael martinez our associate producer is jordan waller it's mixed and edited by andrew chadwick kyle seglin is our sound engineer thanks to t Tanya Sominator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Quinn Lewis, Brian Semel, Caroline Reston, and Elisa Gutierrez for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.