Pod Save America - Vance Vance Revolution

Episode Date: July 18, 2024

JD Vance makes his debut as Donald Trump's running mate and doesn't exactly hit a home run. Joe Biden tests positive for COVID, details leak out about Chuck Schumer's tough-love conversation with the president, and the DNC blinks in the standoff over its plan for a virtual roll call. Jon, Lovett, Tommy, and Dan break down a truly packed day of news, from the problems with Vance's speech to the latest polling about the future of the Democratic ticket. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Levitt. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. I'm Tommy Vitor. We're recording this on Wednesday night in beautiful Milwaukee, the site of the Republican National Convention. We're going to be leaving soon for Charlie Kirk's after party in the name of unity. I didn't get invited to that one. It's unity. You didn't get invited. We're all Ben Shapiro's plus four.

But before we go, we're going to talk about J.Dd vance's big speech and the rest of the highlights from night three of the rnc uh we also find out today that the dnc blinked in the standoff over whether to rush a virtual roll call vote to officially nominate joe biden who was supposed to be campaigning in nevada today until he tested positive for covid uh poor guy can't catch a single break also all kinds of reporting about Pelosi, Schumer. They're all showing him bad polls. They're all showing him bad polls. All the, yeah, so we'll see.

We're going to talk about that later. But first, we just watched J.D. Vance's speech here in a hotel room together, which is now how we watch all political performances we'd like to forget. That's what we do, we go to a hotel, watch a, is now the second worst time I've had in a hotel with you boys recently. I don't want to talk about the worst.

So there's also Biden's speech. So his speech was about 45 minutes. There was like an hour. It felt like an hour felt longer. There was some, there was a lot of his bio. There was a lot hour, felt longer. There was a lot of his bio. There was a lot of economic populism. There was a lot of Trump worship, but not necessarily in that order, not really in any order. But we do have some highlights. The first one is he started

off the speech talking about Trump and the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. I want all Americans to go and watch the video of a would-be assassin coming a quarter of an inch from taking his life. Consider the lies they told you about Donald Trump and then look at that photo of him defiant, fist in the air, when Donald Trump rose to his feet in that Pennsylvania field, all of America stood with him. I just wanted to play that one because it really made me mad that he is still, we talked yesterday about his tweet after the assassination attempt where he basically blamed Joe Biden's rhetoric for the assassination attempt. This was, think about all the lies they told about Trump and now think about him putting his fist in the air after the assassin's

bullet like he and other speakers have done this there's there's been a lot of they tried to kill him this week they when you know we're finding out more about the the shooter the fbi found his phone in the phone he was searching for biden events trump events date of the dnc date of trump rallies it seems other officials other officials it's merrick garland it does seem so far like this is a kid who like hated politicians and was clearly disturbed and yet this whole art republican convention and then again with jd vance there is this they want to connect it somehow to trump that just really pissed me off i don't know you guys well he said he his whole line jd's was, Trump called for national unity right after an

assassin tried to take his life. And okay, sure, but you pointed the finger. And you were saying things on Twitter that were essentially incitements saying that Joe Biden's rhetoric is the reason Donald Trump got shot with no information, no evidence, just because, I assume probably because you're a right-wing hack and you desperately wanted to get named the vice presidential nominee and you knew that kind of outrageous attack dog shit would get you noticed by the Trump team. after he did a couple minutes of Trump worship at the top, and then he finally got to his bio and sort of his message of, you know, he's trying out this sort of the MAGA version of economic populism. Let's listen. We need a leader who's not in the pocket of big business, but answers to the working man, union and non-union alike.

A leader who won't sell out to multinational corporations, but will stand up for American companies and American industry. The people who govern this country have failed and failed again. Where a working class boy born far from the halls of power can stand on this stage as the next vice president of the United States of America. All right. So, Lovett, what'd you think of the speech? So I think a sign of a bad speech is you're not sure it's over till he just stops talking. That I really had absolutely, because it was- Couple different endings.

Couple different endings. It really circles back. He hits the bio a lot in the speech, but not in a way that's particularly effective because the speech was so poorly structured. It starts with a whole section of just, you know, pledging fealty to Trump and all that is good about Trump. Then he gets into his bio, which was, I think, probably the strongest part of the speech, which is walking through his bio while talking about all the different policy positions Biden has taken that he views as being wrong? Yeah, he did this riff where he said, you know, when I was in fourth grade, Biden supported NAFTA. And NAFTA, you know, a lot of jobs left where I'm from and all across the Midwest. When I was in high school, Biden gave China a sweetheart trade deal or voted for it. When I was in college, he supported the war in Iraq. The war in Iraq, you know, so then there was jobs sent overseas, kids sent overseas to die. The war in Iraq, you know, so then there was jobs sent overseas, kids sent overseas to die.

And then he said, you know, basically that Biden was wrong on all these issues. Trump was right on all these issues, even back then. Right, so I think that was like, if you were to take one section of the speech, I feel like that was like probably the part that I thought was the strongest. And I bet what we'll hear on the stump too,

it felt like the start of a stump speech. But the problem is it was in the middle of a meandering and hard to follow speech with a lot of lines, a lot of rhetoric, a lot of long pauses for applause that I felt like didn't really land. Like none of it really landed that hard. Even the bio, I felt like this is, he has an incredibly compelling stories on the ticket because of that story. You would think you would start with that story and use it to kind of frame the entire speech, but it felt really cobbled together, which was a relief. That's my feeling about it. It was strategic idiocy. The speech was, it was terrible. This is, no one knows anything about J.D. Vance. I know he had a bestselling

book, but not that many people read it. You know who knows about that? Elite podcasters. Yes, exactly. He had, he had a movie was made of his of his book almost no one watched it and this is his one chance there'll probably be about 12 to 15 million people watching this tonight it will be seen the clips will be seen by more people you chance you stand up there and introduce yourself to the nation right the vp generally doesn't matter that much but it's going to matter more in a campaign where the candidate is 78 years old and so this was his chance to do it. He failed miserably at what should have been absolutely up. The only reason he's on this stage is he has a compelling personal story and tells it well. And he did not do that. His story is mixed up into a bunch of different

places. There's no coherence to it. And you have to credential yourself with your story before you make all the attacks. I think the high school, middle school Joe Biden thing, it's a clever way to get at Joe Biden's age and separate him from working class voters. But you have to tell your story first. But he was confused because they were so enamored with the fourth grade, high school, college line that they made it the story

instead of telling the actual story. It was terrible. And I am shocked it was so terrible. We were at dinner before this and I was like, this is going to be a great speech yeah we were all very worried about the speech it should have been a easy the easiest thing in the world for him to do because his delivery was fine some people have a good story but they can't tell it his delivery was totally fine it was the speech it was fine it's he he gave a he sounded i wrote this note down he he wrote a book he's been on the book circuit tour he's been on probably had a speaker's bureau

before he was in congress did the speaking tour he sounds like someone who's just been talking to like too many crowds of ceos other people random organizations about his book like he didn't actually have the cadence that you need in a convention hall he didn't you're and like he was waiting for the applause for the applause kills to ride the applause. Waiting for the applause kills me. It never built, they don't build to anything because they just let the applause die down and then start up again. Like when Obama delivers his version of this speech,

which was obviously famously far better, he's like rising through these moments and like building to something. That was a big point in speech prep in 2004 was you have to ride the applause. Don't stop, talk over it because, you know, it might sound loud in the hall, but at home they will be able to hear you this time. It was, it was the reverse. You almost couldn't hear the applause at home,

but JD was pausing and sort of awkwardly waving to everybody and it just didn't work. And yeah, the, the bio has to be your, your anchor that explains who you are and informs your belief and gives you credibility. And he just didn't do it. There were also just like it jumped all over the place. There was a point where he did this very corny thing where he talked about his three kids back home. And if you're watching, daddy says, put your butts in bed.

And then he immediately did a hard pivot to fentanyl overdoses. Well, I guess that's probably why it took the time to turn the TV off. I was like, how did we get here? It's like such a cliche, even in like Emmy award speeches, like, all right, mommy won. Now go to bed, kids.

Your daddy says go to bed. Like, how are you, like saying it out loud is an incredible feat. Process wise, one guess as to what might've happened is the speech writers wrote a speech that they needed to have for whoever the nominee was. And then once they found out it was J.D. Vance, then you insert J.D.'s story

into the Trump messaging speech. And then the assassination attempt happens. So then you add that topper in. So now you've got an assassination attempt topper into your bio, into the Trump worship. Classic structure. By the way, this was my prediction for the Trump speech. This was that there would just be larded up toppers,

which is so far happening. But just substance-wise too, I think it's interesting that all of the issues that the Republican Party and Donald Trump have vulnerabilities on in this election, abortion, election denial, sort of all kinds of extremism, with the exception of immigration,

which is sort of core to Donald Trump's political philosophy, weird word to say, Donald Trump's like politics, and J.D. Vance's as well. And sort of this trying to present themselves as economic populists, even though they want to give tax cuts to rich people and deregulate everything. Those were like the two main issues. None of the other issues that really like trip up Republicans. You heard in this speech as much tonight. Yeah. It's always when they get to the, the,

the working class politics, it's all just vibes, right? It's just working. They're, they're doing working class vibes. They're talking about immigration. They don't mention the corporate tax cut.

The ruling class. They mentioned the ruling class, but there's no, never actually policies on that. This is a real liberal elite comment or thing to notice but i can't wait it's uh it's just always striking to me that a speech that can begin with a long intro about an assassination attempt ends up at a place where you're bragging about your grandmother having 19 loaded guns in the house and no one kind of sees the weirdness there the disconnect between maybe maybe our gun fetish

in this country is part of the problem, not a thing we're proud of. I'll tell you my reaction to that was, which is also like my recollection of the book is it's a lot about how this kind of grievance and sense of being under threat is a way of avoiding facing up to the real problems. He's very hard on his community.

It's not understanding. It's super harsh. And that's why that book became a liberal darling because it was actually like kind of being honest about the ways these places were supposed to be responsible for what had happened. so we have had now a full day or two to digest all the jd vance takes our eyeballs could handle one notable subplot is that the republican national security establishment isn't too happy with vance's isolationist views especially on ukraine that did not come up tonight i don't

believe he talked about ukraine tonight you made a reference to the big tent on national security issues right and america first a lot of america first right but sort of yeah yada yada over ukraine yeah i mean he lied about donald trump opposing the war in iraq even though last month in an interview with ross douthat in the new york times jd vance admitted that actually in 2003 trump said something that said he he said he supported the invasion of iraq so jd again said something that said he said he supported the invasion of iraq so jd again a month ago said he knew trump was full of shit on that front and then tonight gave him credit for it and apparently big some big republican donors aren't too thrilled with his protectionist views so they probably like that democrats are also pushing around videos of

vance saying he wants a national abortion ban he said that in 2022 there was also a clip of him on tucker carlson where he said that we're we're being ruled by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable with their own lives i remember when that happened i remember that he really has this like he's had this like real hard edge over the last couple years when like tucker and some other speeches that you're like anything else stand out to you guys since vance was announced that has made you either think he'll be he'll be valuable to the Trump campaign in this way, or, oh, actually, he's going to be, this is a real vulnerability now that Democrats can exploit. Dan, what do you think? I think that the whole discourse is probably

overstated. I mean, the vice president generally doesn't matter very much. Now, you can absolutely fuck it up like John McCain did with Sarah Palin, but then it's not really not really about the vice president's about what the vice presidential choice says about the person who made the choice you know the idea that they're going to park him in pennsylvania michigan wisconsin and he's going to be some sort of rust belt ambassador for trump and he said all the states he said he said him over again over all the blue all states tonight yeah a couple times i'm sure he'll go to those states a lot because those are the states that if Trump wins one of those states, the election is probably over. But there's nothing in Vance's record, his performance in Ohio, his policy positions that suggest that he has some sort of secret sauce that is going to help him with those voters. think pieces about how he and Josh Hawley and these cadre of Republican eggheads are coming together to try to create this policy framework around America first populism. It all it is, is tariffs and mass deportations. Yeah, you know, and he does this performative bullshit where he's

like, he said this in the Ross interview, where he's like, more aligned with the Bernie bros and some people in my own party. But that doesn't mean anything. And he says a nice thing about Lena Khan once and that seemed to be seen to be that he's some like transformative figure in Republican party. He's not. And the reason that it all doesn't really matter is his policy positions do not matter. Donald Trump's do. And at the convention on Tuesday night, Steve Scalise, the Republican whip stood up or the Republican leader, I guess, stood up and said in the first hundred days, we are going to make the Trump tax cuts permanent. Right? Like that is the Trump Vance agenda is tax cuts for the rich.

Yeah, the sort of populism of the tax policy is hating universal child care more than you hate a child tax credit, but trying to stop both. Before we move on from J.D. Vance, it was reported that J.D. Vance reached out to Vice President Kamala Harris. They had this cordial phone call. And then the Trump campaign put out a response to setting the date for the vice presidential debate between J.D. Vance and Kamala Harris. And their statement was, we don't know who the Democrat nominee for vice president is going to be, so we can't lock in a date before their convention to do so would be unfair to gavin newsom jb pritzker gretchen whitmer or whoever kamala harris picks as her running mates points for trolling yeah they're

having fun points on there yeah they're also scared shitless that that there might be a change can i just flag one other thing that jumped out at me about jd's i think he's so new on the stage that people are trying to figure out whether he's sincere or, you know, was the hillbilly elegy JD Vance the real one or is today the real one? This anecdote jumped out at me from a New York Times profile of him. So they talked to a person named Sarah Nelson, who's a former classmate of JD Vance's, who's transgender and was once close friends with both JD and his wife. and was once close friends with both JD and his wife. And Sophia Nelson recalled that JD delivered home-baked treats when Sophia Nelson had top surgery. And then they stopped talking in 2021 when he started embracing these vicious laws. There's an Arkansas bill opposing transgender care for minors. So it's clear that a few years ago, before he was in politics,

JD Vance saw the humanity in people first. And he didn't care if you were transgender or not. He'd go to your house and bring you brownies or something. And now he is more than happy to be vicious and nasty and harm people who are his friends if it gets him on the ticket. He is a man driven by visible, palpable ambition and nothing else.

Yeah, work for him tonight. Yeah, but it's funny, but it's also why it's like that guy, maybe that, you know, you would never know seeing that guy on stage that he has that incredibly compelling story because he is ambitious and he did become what he needed to become to get there.

And he looks much more like a tech guy in a vest at this point, doing an impression of a politician. And it speaks to actually his credit and how smart he is and how far he came, but it doesn't make him that much of a, it's also why he did so poorly in the rust belt parts of ohio against him right people can smell that bullshit from a million miles away the only time i laughed out loud tonight at all uh was during usha vance's speech which was fine this she's um the jd vance's wife she seemed a little nervous it was sweet but it wasn't great but she said uh he had one overriding

ambition to be a husband and a father. And I literally like, I broke out laughing because clearly he's the most ambitious person possible. Some other ambitions. 39-year-old vice presidential nominee. A few of their notable speakers from tonight, Don Jr., his fiance, Kim Guilfoyle, soon to be obscure again, Governor Doug Burgum,

got passed over. Former Trump aide, Peter Navarro, who got out of prison today after serving four months for refusing a subpoena from the January 6th committee. Apparently brought the house down. Brought the house down. Many people said it was the most applause at the convention since Trump walked in the room on Monday night. Love it, love it.

Is this just still because fucking, what's his name, Kushner Googled trade and came up with this book? That guy goes, anyway, sorry, what were you going to say? I don't know. It was, they love a convict, you know. Yeah. And then there was convictions there you go there you go there was also a video that they played of gold star families who had lost uh loved ones during the withdrawal from afghanistan it was the families of service

members who were killed at abbey gate in those final days of the Afghanistan withdrawal. And there was a six and a half minute pre-taped video where they talked to, you know, moms, wives, you know, sister brothers of the families talked about, you know, who these service members were. And they also talked about, you know, they showed footage of President Biden at the dignified transfer ceremony at Dover looking at his watch. They talked about how things didn't go well in the conversation with Biden and the families. And then they said in this video that. Do you want to play a clip? Should we play this clip? Yeah, why don't we play the clip? The administration, the White House, our president has never once mentioned their names. Not one of them.

Honestly, I don't feel like Joe Biden cared. He just had no empathy for us at all. I do think incompetence played a huge factor in what happened. Bad decision, bad leadership, and it all starts at the top. Joe Biden should not be leading this country. There was no point in making that hard deadline, August 31st. It was 100% a political stunt. He let my son down.

He let the 13 down. He let the 45 wounded down. He let those 174 civilians down. He let our country down. And then what hurts the most is that they could be here. Yeah. And then after that, the parents of the fallen came on stage and they read the names one by one. And it was, I thought, an incredibly powerful, well-done and brutal political hit. Biden did reach out to all those families, right?

Well, he met with them at Dover during the transfer of their remains back home. But I think this was that really tough scene that Jen Psaki actually writes about in her book where I think he tried to talk to them about his loss and losing his son. And I think that helps him connect with some of the families, but others were offended by it and it didn't go well.

And I don't know, look, I'm not sure anyone can say anything that would make you feel better in that moment if you just lost a loved one but yeah so then there was don jr he went up to speak he then introduced his daughter kai trump who's much better than him by far she did more to humanize don Donald Trump, her grandfather than anyone I had heard. And then Don Jr. unfortunately got back on stage after she was done and continued speaking. Here's some of his speech. Who's running things?

Does anyone really know? Is it Jill? Is it Hunter? Barack Obama? Maybe it's the ghost of corn pop. Remember Build Back Better? Instead, we got broke bumbling Biden. What a good mistake.

The corn pop thing is a real deep hole. I was going to say, you have to be the biggest junkie, left or right. That's 2019, right? It's also- It's a deep cut for political junkies. It's also logical nonsense. It's not a good- What does it mean?

Oh, maybe it's corn pop. This old story he tells. It doesn't make sense on its own terms. Yeah, a guy he argued with when he was a lifeguard in the 50sies. Like remember Build Back Better? No, no one remembers Build Back Better. That's the problem actually. We now call it the IRA and no one knows what that stands for either. Yeah. And nobody knows it happened and nobody will never know. Have you heard about the chips that? Yeah. And then, and then next year it'll all be turned into highway funding anyway. But John Jr. always has the energy of just like a coked out, drunk, terrible customer at a restaurant calling a waitress sweetie.

You know, like that's just sort of like his whole vibe forever. Just the life of doing that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Donald Trump's granddaughter, Don Jr.'s daughter, 17-year-old girl, talked about him as a grandfather, calling her when she's at school, talking about the golf game. Like all the humanizing stuff you'd expect from a family member and then they bring out his son and he just does this red meat screed that was you know probably should have been left on rumble.com or wherever he usually does his podcast yeah where does that where does he speak from his voice it's all it's up here he

speaks up high it's up high it's front of the throat but it's hard lines like teddy roosevelt's man in the arena in the arena has a name and it's donald trump i mean every convention is of both parties is just fucking chock full of way too many cliches but the last couple days have been really do you know our best days are yet to come have you heard that it's also like maybe they are maybe when they made maybe when they went through and did their unity pass on all these speeches they took out all the good lines. That could be, too. I bet the division lines were probably the toughest stuff.

Yeah, Ron Johnson's got to get his old speech back. All right. We'll be right back. All right. All right, let's talk about the upcoming Democratic Convention and Joe Biden, whose streak of luck continued today when he tested positive for COVID right in between campaign events in Las Vegas. White House said he's got mild symptoms, no fever, will be isolating at home in Delaware. Hope he gets better soon. President's also dealing with more bad political news. just before we recorded this

abc reported that chuck schumer told biden in a meeting on saturday that quote it would be better for the country if he ended his re-election bid we then learned this morning that schumer and hakeem jeffries encouraged the dnc to move back the date of the virtual roll call to nominate biden this is what we were talking about last episode. In response, the Rules Committee put out a letter today saying that the voting won't start now until August 1st. So that by some time, though not a lot for the rapidly growing group of congressional Democrats who have publicly called on Biden to step down from the ticket, that faction officially grew by one big name today as Adam Schiff, who we talked

about yesterday as well, said publicly what he was reported to have said in private. In his statement to the LA Times, Schiff praised Biden as a great president, but said, quote, I have serious concerns about whether the president can defeat Donald Trump in November and called for him to pass the torch. This all comes as comes the new associated press poll shows that two-thirds of all democratic voters now want joe biden to withdraw in a new blue labs analytics poll shows basically every other potential democratic candidate running ahead of biden in the swing states where to begin where to begin uh let's start with the schumer news dan you think it's as big as it seems yeah i think i think it's it's a very big deal because there have been rumors for a

long time that there's a bunch of senators who privately went by in a step aside remember it was like two weeks ago it feels like 100 years ago when mark warner was organizing a meeting that then got canceled we only as of right now have two senators who've come out. Well, I guess one senator and one senator to be Schiff and then Peter Welch of Vermont. This could lead to more. Schumer and Biden met privately on Saturday right before the assassination attempt on Trump. So we never really got any readout on what happened in that conversation. We now know that Schumer was more direct than I think a lot of people assumed. You know what's interesting, though, is I'm thinking the timeline now, Schumer and Biden meet on Saturday, Biden does the Lester Holt interview Monday, in which he was no less defiant publicly about staying in. But unless now I'm now I'm rethinking

it. Did I miss anything? Or what do you think? I think there's two ways to see it. One is, as we talked about in the last pod, Joe Biden has to be defiant until the very moment he's not. There's no other option. I think it is interesting. There's this dynamic. People really want Joe Biden to make the decision. And there's an understanding that Joe Biden is a aside, and then the assassination attempt happened. It was just interesting that Schumer has this meeting, Biden is defiant on Monday, and now we're getting the leak. It does seem like people are starting to come to grips with the fact that it's going to take more pushing than pulling, and they're going to have to be more public than maybe they had hoped. Yeah, I think the initial strategy was to try to have these conversations privately and politely. And now people are going public with demands, not requests. I did see that Jeff Zeleny, a great reporter at CNN, just reported that President Biden is now more receptive to the push for him to leave the ticket.

He's gone from saying Kamala Harris can't win to asking if Kamala Harris can win. So it does seem like senior Democratic sources saying this to zelany yeah it's uh in private conversations he's getting a lot he's being he's sounding a little more receptive even though he's not publicly the other possibility here is that schumer had this conversation with biden and biden was not so receptive and schumer thought that maybe there would be some movement on this and there hasn't been. And then maybe that's when it leaked to John and Carl. Now, officially, Schumer's office put out a statement that was sort of a non-denial. That was like, unless the source is Chuck Schumer or Joe Biden themselves, this is just idle speculation.

It's like, okay, well, could be. What a strange way to introduce a new thought. And they also said that Leader Schumer conveyed the views of his caucus directly to President Biden on Saturday. I'm not sure what that was clarifying. Well, yeah,

and we know that most of the caucus at this point, I mean, there was reporting in the caucus meeting that John Fetterman asked everyone,

okay, who's actually on board with Biden? And only four senators raised their hands. That was from last week. So, when was J.D. Vance

in a mustache? Also, Menendez was still there at the time. So where was he on this? Well, it depends on who makes me a better offer. So you got Schumer and Jeffries were both pushing the DNC to push back the roll call vote. Nancy Pelosi is working behind the scenes to try

to uh get joe biden to step aside so it does now seem that the entire leadership of the democratic party is uh is working on this now what has ever given us less hope than the entire leadership of the democratic party working on something i mean i think the it can mean that they are working to create a path for Biden to step down. It could also mean that no matter what happens, the best move for the party is to handle this virtual roll call in the most transparent, fair-minded way. Because even if Schumer, you get a different report, Schumer didn't make that case to Biden, it's still in his interest to handle the virtual roll call better because it's going to lead to a massive upro still in his interest to handle the virtual roll call better because it's going to lead to a massive uproar on the party. If you were to go with the plan,

the DNC was pushing quite aggressively just 24 hours ago. Yeah. So let's talk about that. So we talked about this last night and it seemed like it could be as early as next week that they were going to start this thing. Now they're saying no voting can start until August 1st, and they do want to wrap it up by August 7th, which is the kamala harris and the party unites behind kamala harris then we're off to the races they can do the virtual roll call she would have to pick a running mate rather quickly beyond that it doesn't seem like there's a lot of time if they're going to start voting in august would they just maybe punt the whole virtual roll call altogether in that scenario i think you would either punt it all together you would move it back, right? Like we, based on everything you read, and everything there are Republicans in Ohio say, and I recognize we're taking that with a grain of salt, the odds that somehow they go back and change the rules so

that Biden or some Democratic nominee cannot be on the ballot in Ohio seems quite low. And it doesn't see like that risk is not so high that you would short circuit a process to pick our new nominee. So you can move it back. If you look at the deadlines of the other states that we talked about, like California and Washington, you can move it back a couple of weeks and either wrap it up right at the beginning of the convention, or you could wrap it up at the convention and take on, like there's no good option, right? Do you want to have a good process to pick your best nominee? Or do you want to manage the legal risks that come from low likelihood of success lawsuits preventing ballot access. You probably want to side with a longer process helps you pick a better nominee with actual voting

in the convention. Yeah. So let's talk about some of these, the polling that Biden and others woke up to this morning. So this is from Blue Labs. And what they did is they interviewed 15,000 voters across seven battleground states to test different options for the Democratic nominee. That's quite a bit. Top line, alternative Democratic candidates run ahead of President Biden by an average of three points across the battleground states. Nearly every tested Democrat performs better than the president. This includes Vice President Harris, who runs better than the president, but behind the average alternative. The top testing alternative candidates, aside from Harris and Biden, in alphabetical order are Mark Kelly, Senator from Arizona, Wes Moore, Governor of Maryland, Josh Shapiro, Governor of Pennsylvania, and Gretchen

Whitmer, Governor of Michigan. And of course, we mentioned that AP poll that shows now two-thirds of all Democratic voters want Joe Biden to step aside, including every major demographic group. So what do you guys think about that blue lab polling? Look, I think it is, everybody is sort of looking for polling to validate more confidence in this really uncertain moment. I think it is reassuring if you want to make a change that there's polling that shows even before a campaign has begun that these candidates start in a stronger position. I just think you have to take

it with a grain of salt. You go into it, yes, because you are concerned about the swing state polling. You're concerned about the polling you're seeing about Biden, not just that the top line had to head numbers, but the extreme concern people have about his age. But you go into it not because you think these other candidates are already polling better, but because you believe if you make this change, then you have a candidate. And that candidate can do the politics you need to do to ultimately overcome the disadvantages that Biden had. You know, all these alternative Democratic candidates are running ahead of President Biden. That includes Vice President Harris. So she'll like that. Not great for the vice president is voters are looking for a fresh

face, according to this polling, and those closely tied to the current administration perform relatively worse than other candidates. So that's interesting and notable and also probably tells you something about how Republicans would message a Harris candidacy. They would tie her to Joe Biden, obviously, and some of the challenges recently. Also interesting, some of the gains for these candidates are coming from winning undecideds and those who are supporting third parties, but they are also pulling votes from Donald Trump.

Which is great. And you keep your base as well. So, you know, listen, there's a lot of data out there right now. Let's say on balance, it has been generally worse for Joe Biden than Donald Trump. There's a couple of polls that have him tied or up a little bit. So it's noisy out there. But, you know, this polling from Blue Lab suggests that some alternatives could fare well in November.

November. Yeah. I mean, we have been obviously pretty vocal about, you know, why we think Biden stepping aside would give us a better chance of defeating Donald Trump. But we should be honest that like none of the options in front of us are really great options right now. And because there's just so much uncertainty. And like you said, love it. Like you cannot have the polling be the only determining factor in this decision. And I'm sure if Joe Biden makes the decision to step aside, it's not going to be just based on the polling. And I think there are obviously risks that come with a Kamala Harris nomination. A lot of those risks, I believe, are probably tied to the fact that she is part of the current

administration. And there is this anti-incumbency vibe in the United States and all over the world right now. Can she overcome it i think so but racism and misogyny and you know all sorts of other currents i do think personally she gives us a better chance than than joe biden does at this point and then you think well what about these very popular governors and it's a fresh start and you know i think but getting to the point of an open convention figuring out which of those candidates is going to be and then making sure the candidate that we ultimately choose can withstand the national spotlight. Like it's just, there's no sure things here, but we're just, we're in a

tough spot. And it's about what do you think is the riskiest move? And what's the, what's the least risky move? All those candidates other than Kamala Harris right now are basically generic Democrats, right? With a slight buyer description, right? Generic Democrat who's a governor of a Midwestern state or generic Democrat who's a senator who was also an astronaut. And once they become the nominee, they will be defined. They have to define themselves and the Republicans will be racing to define them.

And that is, so these numbers are very, they're interesting. They're not particularly instructive about what a race would actually look like. And I think just, this is the point I make is there's no candidate here who guarantees a Democratic victory, not a one. There's no path that guarantees it. This is still a pretty Republican political environment. There's an anti-incumbent environment.

We are the incumbent party. People are angry about the economy. They're angry about inflation. We are the incumbent party. And so whether that candidate is Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, or one of these other people mentioned, they're still going to have to navigate those headwinds. And there's downside risk too, that any of these candidates could do worse than Joe Biden is doing. I believe that they all have a lower floor, but a higher ceiling than Biden, because we know that the voters are screaming for someone other than Biden or Trump. And if we give them someone who passes some set of tests for that, you could have a good victory, but it's not a guarantee.

It's just a question of what risks you want to take. Well, yeah, I mean, I think the concern about Biden, where that's coming from, is that every candidate has vulnerabilities and you have to fight back against them. But I think the vulnerability of a large subset of the electorate thinking you are too old is an unfixable problem because, you know, once they have that belief, they know no one gets younger. And I do think that's why the Schiff statement, the Schumer statement, it's important because it creates pressure. But I also think it just underscores that that fundamental reality of what we're discussing is not changing. The other thing is the fact that some of these Democrats are pulling Trump voters,

I think underscores on the other side of what Dan's saying is Donald Trump is a weak candidate. You know, as part of this polling that said two thirds of Democrats want Joe Biden to no longer be the nominee, a lot of Americans don't think Trump should be the nominee. These are both weak candidates. And voters have been saying for a year, not the elites, the voters have been saying this for a long time, that they want a different option. Democrats have been saying for a long time that they thought Joe Biden was too old. It was the everybody else hoping they could get to the end of this process without having to face that reality. But the debate changed that. And I think the fact that there are people out there saying, I'm right now a Trump voter, but I'm open to an alternative. I think just...

I think in that poll, it is 27% of Republicans would prefer that Trump be replaced as the nominee. And if we were in a normal election cycle, that would be a huge, gigantic number for someone who is at their convention, who won their primary easily, and one in four members of their party want someone else to be the nominee. That is like a flashing red light siren, weak candidate. But just because of the situation we're in, everyone's just throwing that number on like, look how strong Trump is. Only a quarter of his voters hate him.

Yeah. The idea too is like, well, you know, all these Republicans want Trump to step aside and no one's clamoring for that. You know, obviously Donald Trump is an incredible threat to the country, but politically they might be better off with somebody who wasn't carrying all this baggage.

Nikki Haley might've been a stronger candidate than donald trump could ever have hoped to be we'll never know and we'll never we'll never know okay one quick note before we go check out the crooked store uh you can shop our new collection of merch for the summer uh and feel good knowing that a portion of the proceeds from every purchase goes to support organizations doing incredible work across the country to ensure every voice is heard. Pick up an Only You Can Prevent Gender Reveals tee. I support that. For your next camping trip and wear a Hot People Vote tee

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