The Bulwark Podcast - Symone Sanders-Townsend: Let Joe Run

Episode Date: December 16, 2022

The case for Biden to run again, the hate-mongering GOP, and the expectations around Kamala vs the realities of the vice presidency. Symone Sanders-Townsend joins guest host Tim Miller for the weekend pod — and also chats about why she switched from Bernie, and the Trump fans in her own family. __________________________ Join the gang from The Next Level in Seattle this January 21 for an evening of politics and savage love with our special guest Dan Savage. Learn more at TheBulwark.com/NoBS Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to the Borg podcast. I'm Tim Miller in for Charlie Sykes, who's still on vacation. We have a great guest today. But first, a few quick plugs. If you missed yesterday's episode with Derek Thompson of the Atlantic and the plain English podcast. So good. Couldn't have enjoyed it more. Make time for that over the weekend. You might have also caught last night on Twitter, King Lear. I mean, Elon Musk was a mass banning journalist who shared public info about his private jet travels. Any of you who follow college football coaching news know this is a quite common practice, but it led to an Elon meltdown and I think more signs that the Twitter dumpster fire might be imploding on itself. So I just wanted to make sure you guys know other places to find us. We have an increasingly awesome community on Reddit, the Bulwark subreddit. I joined Post last night at Tim Miller.

I know some of the other Bulwark folks are doing that too. Charlie did. I think he's Sykes Charlie. And we have a special Christmas offer for those who want to join Bulwark Plus. It's only eight8 a month. You get the secret podcast. You get the live streams on Thursday night. And most importantly, you can also comment and reply to us on our newsletters and podcasts. You can troll us, tell us what we did well, what was wrong.

These days, we're getting hundreds of posts a day from people in this community who are commenting, going back and forth. There are no Nazis, no trolls, much better place to engage than Twitter. So give somebody a Bulwark present for Christmas, $8 a month or join yourself. Lastly, our Seattle event, January 21st on Saturday. Get your tickets at thebulwark.com slash no BS. Okay, we have an amazing guest today, Simone Sanders Townsend.

She's had a crazy career. She's a spokesperson for Bernie Sanders in 2016, for Joe Biden's campaign in 2020, and then for Vice President Harris in the White House. Now she has a show on MSNBC, Simone, four o'clock on Saturdays and Sundays, and on Peacock on demand Monday and Tuesday. This is going to be so fun. But first, a brief interlude. It's Friday from our girl Beyonce. Simone, what is up? Was that your record of the year? Okay, it was. And I was definitely in here dancing in my kitchen. And now I want to sign up for Bulwark Plus because I want the secret podcast.

The secret podcast is good. The tease was good. I was like, ooh, what is the secret podcast? I give my unadulterated opinions everywhere, as you know, Simone, because I'm an open book these days, and I've been around too long to not. But there are other folks at the Bulwark who like to let their freak flag fly a little brighter on the secret podcast, you know, that they don't it's not for everybody. It's just for family. Their real opinions are for family. So you come hang in with us. I'm just so happy you're doing this with me. Thank you for coming for a weekend podcast. We've got a ton of stuff to go over. But I want to do a little palate cleanser here before

we get to the news. I don't know if you saw this, but Donald Trump teased that he was making a big, big announcement. I assume most of you have seen it by now, but I think it's worth just listening to it from the horse's mouth. So let's hear Donald Trump's big, big announcement that came out yesterday. Hello, everyone. This is Donald Trump, hopefully your favorite president of all time,

better than Lincoln, better than Washington, with an important announcement to make. I'm doing my first official Donald J. Trump NFT collection right here and right now. They're called Trump Digital Trading Cards. These cards feature some of the really incredible artwork pertaining to my life and my career. It's been very exciting. You can collect your Trump Digital Cards just like a baseball card or other collectibles.

Here's one of the best parts. Each card comes with an automatic chance to win amazing prizes like dinner with me. Dinner with me. There's the prize. That's what we have we've heard enough of that all right um what do you think big announcement okay better than lincoln first of all first of all i saw this on my twitter feed yesterday and but i did not know that this man a former president united states of america recorded an intro company video yeah oh wow man i don't know what that was was that what you were expecting from his big announcement no but it's basically giving all of his last grips of the last 10 15 years so

trump stakes trump the game you know trump airplanes your trump airlines yeah trump you um yeah you know um once a grifter always a grifter i guess my main observation for this was and we've beaten all this to death but it's like how can you have voted for that person to be the president twice and not just want to crawl into a hole and die of embarrassment that is is, I do think, the great mystery for me, you know, among the self-important class. I'm not talking about his super fans, but, you know, among the John Cornons of the world. How does he not just want to die?

Not even the super fans, but even just like regular people who believe that Donald Trump was a very good businessman and he knew what he was doing, who believe, you know, folks who believe the blatant lies that he sold them. I would venture to say that those people, one, probably have not heard his pitch that he's better than Lincoln and like get his NFT. Also, what is an NFT? I'm still struggling to understand why we're paying for these things and where they live. We fielded that one yesterday on the Derek Thompson podcast. You can tune in. He's an expert on all this stuff. It's a short, short, short version of TLDR.

It's another scam. Okay. It's, it's all I need to know. I need enough to be conversational, but the real regular people, they still believe that Donald Trump is like very good at what he does. Very knowledgeable that he was a good president. And I'm talking about not the, regular people. They still believe that Donald Trump is very good at what he does, very knowledgeable, that he was a good president. And I'm talking about not the QAnon super fans, but folks that are like, yeah, I'd vote for him again. It literally blows my mind. I had the most craziest conversations about it over Thanksgiving with my husband's family in Richmond. It's insane.

The Townsends have some Trump voters? The Sanders folks have some Trump voters as well. Oh my, I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah. Some people in my very immediate family and, you know, for folks that don't know and haven't seen me, I'm a bald black woman from North Omaha, Nebraska. So yeah, I know some working class black folks who voted for Donald Trump not once but twice. I'm throwing away the show notes right now because this was on my map for later in the show. But I just I just want to dig in right right here. You then have some insight into I think, a ongoing question about the Republican Party's kind of strategy going forward.

And that is, you know, if you talk to the smart Republican strategists, who, you know, rejected the path that me and my, you know, rhino moderate squishes proposed back in 2012 is, you know, rejected the path that me and my, you know, rhino moderate squishes proposed back in 2012 is, you know, that the party maybe moderate a little bit on, on gay issues and on immigration and appeal to people in the suburbs and appeal to women and, and, you know, don't be so virulent in your opposition to abortion and, you know, maybe, I don't know, believe in some basic elements of science, right, that that was our proposal. They rejected that.

And they claim that this rejection is to pursue a different strategy, which is to put together a multiracial working class coalition of working class voters that might be attracted to, you know, the more populous version of the GOP. We've seen a little bit of success in that regard with Hispanic voters, particularly along the border and in Florida, not so much really in other parts of the country. And we haven't really seen a ton of success of that with Black voters. Maybe on the margins, he did slightly better than Mitt Romney, who was like a car elevator, vanilla, about as unappealing as possible to working class Black voters, I would think, just from a brand standpoint.

Do you sense that they are succeeding at that at all? Are you concerned that working class Black men in particular might start to trend Republican? Is there something you think they could do better or worse? How do you assess that? So I think that there are a couple of things going on, right? Like, first of all, I think this idea that the current strategists of the Republican Party apparatus had that they can really make good inroads with Black and Latino voters, to your point, particularly Black and Latino men. And maybe if we run more candidates of color, that will happen. And I think what we

saw in this last midterm election, frankly, is that you cannot just put a candidate of color, that will happen. And I think what we saw in this last midterm election, frankly, is that you cannot just put a candidate of color on the ballot and believe that Black people are going to vote for them or Latino folks are going to vote for them. It doesn't work like that. Representation is important, yes, but people are looking for substantive representation. And I do not think that, you know, some of our current friends who are in charge over there in the Republican Party after I had his term, that they understand that part. I do, though, think that it would be very just incorrect and stupid to believe that Black working class voters are going to just continue to vote for the Democratic Party. And case in point, my own family members who have voted for Donald Trump in the past, which I do think was specific to Donald Trump.

So in 2016, again, he was a businessman. It was a lot of anti-Secretary Clinton language happening. And I'm just like, oh my gosh, I can't, I literally go home and I'm like, what is happening here? But it's very important. That's why I got to talk to real people. And in talking to real people, that's when I was like, honey, it might not be working out well for the secretary come election day. And case in point, that's what happened. In 2020, it was more so of people were very just down on the COVID piece of it. They did not blame Trump as much as maybe the rest of us did. I do think that the president, Donald Trump, had a lot to do with our

state of play when it came to COVID-19, his inaction. The people did not connect that to President Trump. And many of them still said he's a good businessman. And we're like, do you not see that the people are like, he's broke? And they're like, no, he's a good businessman. He knows what he's doing. It's the people that work for him or Dr. Fauci that we can't believe. And you think that these are things that are just parroted in the annals of the Internet. But these are real things that folks were saying in communities. And I think we have to listen to real people. I think that the way the Republican Party apparatus actually makes inroads with voters of color is to I don't even want to call it moderate, but be where the people are. To be very clear,

I always like to say there are gay Republicans in America. So the idea that the Republican party apparatus has turned into a anti-LGBTQ hate mongering, like let's put it in legislation to keep the community down is insane to me. The idea that women, hello, white women have been keeping the Republican Party afloat for eons. One could argue taking a lock them up approach for their bodily autonomy is not going to bode well for them down the line. I love having you on as guests. This is what I had you as a Friday guest, because I'm just going to put a quarter in

the machine and just kind of let you roll. I can sit back, drink my coffee. Okay, one more question on the work class, folks. And then I want to take a step back a little bit and talk about your trajectory. Is your sense that the potential opportunity among working class voters of color more on the culture side of things that they don't kind of like some of the elite, if you will, or do you think it's on economics? If you're Republicans, on economics, like getting more populist on economics?

Or do you think it's more like fighting these culture wars on COVID and on wokeness and blah, blah, blah? I think it is on the things that people have to deal with in their everyday lives, right? And so that we call it the economy. People call it what? Kitchen table issues. But if you are a working class Black

family in North Omaha, Nebraska, right where I'm from, maybe abortion is a kitchen table issue for you, right? Whether you are a man or a woman. In my opinion, the culture wars have never been a distraction. They've always just been the playbook for the Republican Party apparatus. And in recent years, they just went full blown like, this all we doing. We ain't got no plan for the economy honey we're just out here just hating people and it hasn't worked in the last couple of cycles like please get it planned people often talk as we talk about like my trajectory and whatnot when I made my switch right from call it a switch I mean I literally decided to go work for someone else

folks were like how could you you're not a real progressive blah blah blah and I'm like look I like thinking myself as a pragmatic progressive, like many Black women in America. And this idea that I think some people have incorrectly that Black communities, Black men especially, Latino communities are more conservative. They don't agree with the idea of abortion or pronouns or like pick your issue. I think that that is incorrect. I really do. And I think that people are painting with a broad stroke brush.

I think if folks really want to honestly appeal to, and by folks, I'm talking about my Republican friends, to voters of color, they have to come to the community with actual plans, not lip service. And there has to be an environment that is created that makes people feel as though that this is a place for me that I can

be. And the problem with the current Republican Party apparatus is that it feels very anti. It feels very anti-Black people. It feels very anti, you know, people of color, very anti-LGBTQ plus, very anti-women, very anti-anybody that's not a straight white man that's rich. And this is where I think the huge mistake, just as a prime example, was this paid leave thing and the fight with the rail workers. Yeah. And it's like, you know,

at least say what you want about Josh Hawley. I've said a lot of horrible things about that. Terrible human. About his like little limp-fisted insurrectionist, you know, scamper. All right. So I don't love Josh Hawley. But at least he is offering something to these voters.

So he supported voters, right? So he supported that, right? Like, we need to give these workers paid leave. If we're going to be a multiracial working class party, you know, we need to maybe put aside a few of these, like, you know, free market fundamentalist orthodoxies, right? And actually help workers. And that's a reasonable thing that families deserve to have leave if they're sick or if they need to take care of a loved one, etc. But the rest of the party is still wrapped up in like the old Paul Ryanism

on economics, you know, which is attractive to some of the suburban voters that they've lost, probably, you know, some of the suburban former Republican voters, but but these working class voters, you can't come to them with just pronouns, right? And then say, oh, you just want seven days of leave while I take 80 days of leave in Congress and I'm not going to let you have that? I don't think that sale is going to work. And that's why I think this whole strategy for the Republicans is fundamentally flawed. You know why I think Democrats did well in the midterm elections that just happened? Because they went out there and they were in communities talking about things that people are directly dealing with every single day,

but also not seeding the overarching democracy argument. And if you went to any town halls that Republican elected officials or Republican candidates were doing, or you saw interviews that they were doing on television, they're attacking wokeness, right? It is things that, where's your plan for the economy? Where's your plan for how I am going to put more money in my pocket to help me put more food on the table to feed my family? Where is your plan for that? And that lacked. And I think you saw Democrats do well in places where they talked about the things that are affecting real people's lives. And by the way, one of those things was the overturning of Roe v. Wade via the Dobbs decision and bringing the politicians into the doctor's office. Nobody wants that. I don't want anybody in the OBGYN except the lady that's doing the thing.

All right. We got down this time. But I just had to do once I found out there were some Sanderses that voted for Donald Trump, I just... Oh, yeah. There are Donald Trump people at the family reunion, honey. Yes. Yeah, I had to get educated. Can I be invited next year, maybe? I think, you know, we need to check our credentials if we're going to let you into the cookout, as the streets like to say. All right. Well, I'm interested. Okay, so let's just zoom it back. Some of the listeners might not know your whole background. And so I just I think this is interesting. It's telling as what perspective you bring to this. So in 16, you worked for Senator Sanders in his primary again, as a

spokeswoman, national spokeswoman against Hillary Clinton, extremely young in that job, I might say we did a panel together. And I thought I was young for a national presidential spokesperson. And you told me how old you were. And I was like, fuck this. Yeah, 25. Are you kidding me? I was like, I thought I was on the fast track over here. So you were showing me up.

And then in 2020, made a bit of a stir when you went to become spokesperson for then President Biden. And then the White House went on and did some work for Vice President Harris. So I want to get to all of that eventually before coming to MSNBC. But I want to just go back to that jump from Sanders to Biden, because you had some insight that I didn't realize in making that jump. When I first saw it, I was like, oh, man, like, hey, kind of what is Simone doing? Like, I don't, is Biden, does Biden even have it? And B, obviously, there's gonna be this huge backlash in Bernie world, and it's gonna seem like it's a very careerist thing. And I think with the benefit of hindsight, I don't feel that way anymore. So just talk us through why you made that decision at the time

to get on early with Joe Biden when there was a lot of doubts about him. There were so many doubts. It seems like so long ago now. It does. So when I went to go work for Senator Sanders in 2016, the reason I said I wanted to work for him was after I had a, it wasn't a job I applied for, but I ended up in a meeting, like an interview with Bernie Sanders. And we got in an argument. It was very hilarious. At the end, I was like, oh my God, he's not going to hire me. But we reconciled our argument. What was the argument over? It was about the economy and it was about the way that he was talking about it and devoid of race.

And you cannot have an economic argument that does not include race, in my opinion, because these things are not happening in a vacuum. Right. The chasm between the wealthiest people in this country and the poorest people in this country is the largest it's ever been. If you look further at race, the chasm between white people and Black people is like the Grand Canyon. So we have to account race. And so we kind of got into a little back and forth. He told me I had a fundamental misunderstanding, as Senator Sanders likes to say, quintessential quote. But we reconciled at the end. And throughout the totality of the conversation we had, the things that Senator Sanders was saying were the things that were popping up in the conversations I was having with the people that I knew, like my friends, like the regular people in America. Now people are like, you're not a regular person. Well, I was in 2015.

And that is why I wanted to go work for him. In 2020, I had the opportunity to talk to just about every single candidate, Democrat, who was talking about running for president. Met with all of them. Many of them asked me to work for them. Almost just about all of them. And the reason I went to work for... Bragg.

Yes, slight flex. Yeah, nice flex. I only turned down Scott Walker in 2016. So that is an anti-flex for me. FYI. Okay, sorry. Well, you know, I mean, Scott Walker was then what DeSantis is now, and look how that turned out. I sniffed that one out quick. Okay, so I'm not going to ask you to

list who you turned down, but okay, continue. But when I sat with then, at the time, Vice President Biden, former Vice President Biden, he said to me, I asked him why he wants to run for president. And he said to me in that meeting, what he would go on to say on the campaign trail and what I would venture to say, he will tell people what has motivated him to run for reelection if and when he does announce. And he was like, I really believe that we're in a battle for the soul of America. And he went down this long path of not just talking about Charlottesville, but all of these things that have happened. He said, there's a lot of struggles going on. He talked about the economic struggle. He talked about restoring our standing on the world stage.

And Donald Trump has just utterly embarrassed the—can I curse here? I won't curse here. Please, no, curse. He's utterly embarrassed the fuck out of us on the international stage, and somebody got to fix that shit, essentially. But this soul of America piece, I'm like, yes, this is what people feel. People were feeling that the soul of who we are as America, like we talk about the history and how we overcome all these things. It was crumbling. People were living in fear. You know, you had just had neo-Nazis marching on the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia. White

supremacists, a woman died. Like it was real and people were feeling that. And so I thought his argument was persuasive and I thought it was one that could connect to real people across America. I really felt like that's what people were feeling. And Joe Biden is someone that communities across this country knew intimately. Differently from Senator Sanders, in 2016, Senator Sanders did not have a support base, if you will, in African-American Latino communities. He wasn't a household name. One should argue between the 2016 run and the 2020 run, the work that he had been doing, he should have was about his argument was I felt how I felt in 2016. But also, I knew that he had the people. Joe Biden is somebody the communities knew and that they they would consider voting for him. I always had a soft spot for the vice president, but I didn't see that.

And I think part of that is because, you know, you you know, those communities intimately, you know. And one thing that was just to I was ratio that number one, that was what you just said. And people might say that's all that's BS. You don't pick who you're to work for, because they give a good answer to the question of why they want to be president. No, that's true. That was the exact reason why I picked Jeff. That is the exact reason why I picked Jeff over Scott Walker. I was like, Scott Walker could not couldn't explain like sounded like he was given a speech at UW, like lacrosse, a college Republican club. Like when I asked him why I wanted to be president, I was like, you don't have any deeper thoughts than like the basic chicken dinner,

like talking points. Like what? Uh, I was just. Because when it gets rough, when it gets rough, the person that really wants to be president, the person that had that good answer when you initially spoke to them, when nothing was really on the line except an idea, they're going to be willing to do the work that others are not. And even if it doesn't work out as well, like it did for me, as opposed to you, like at least you'll go down with some dignity, right? Like you don't go down just like grasping at every news cycle. Anyway, I thought that was a great insight though, while you picked Biden. Here's the other thing that I found. This is just anecdotally. But so after Trump, when I moved to Oakland and I took him to

this little yoga studio, it was like mostly kind of working class black women that go there. And you know, they let us gentrifiers come in from time to time. And so I went to a couple of classes there and I started asking the women, like, who are they going to vote for coming up in the, in the primary? And a couple of them, including Owens became a good friend, you know, said, well, I, you know, I liked Sanders last time and, uh, I like Senator Sanders, but I think I'm going to go with Biden. I was like, wait, you're deciding between Sanders and Biden. And, you know, in our DC Beltway mindset, it's like, oh, no, they're in two different lanes.

And they're on opposite sides. And, you know, people are deciding between Elizabeth Warren and Sanders and Biden and Amy. And it's like, no, that was, that was not how, you know, regular rank and file Democrats, and I think, obviously, based on what happened in South Carolina, particularly black Democrats, it was not how they saw the field. Right. Like they knew Biden and trusted him and didn't know some of these other interlopers and had mixed feelings on Senator Sanders and went with the guy that they trusted in the end. And I do think that you just kind of had an insight into that, that a lot of like the smarty smarts in D.C. didn't. I think it showed up in so many different ways in the campaign trail. I very vividly remember the segregationist gate, for lack of a better term, where some files were uncovered that apparently, you know, there was a segregationist member of Congress that then, while

now President Biden, when he was in- Biden liked to work with him. Yeah, he liked to work with him. And, you know, there was this whole new cycle about segregationists and all the people were asking. Senator Cory Booker notoriously was like, he needs to apologize. Like it was the whole thing. And I'm out there like Joe Biden is not a segregationist. He is not like, yes, these are things I had to I had to say because like he's not. But I was telling reporters, I told them off the record or the record on background. I'm like, ask people in the States. I was like, ask people in South Carolina. They do not care about this. It is not registering to them.

And I kid you not, the segregationist thing was like a Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday. We were in South Carolina at Clyburn's Fish Fry with the people. OK, the candidates are walking around talking to folks. They're taking selfies. Didn't come up once. Did not come up. People had a lot of things to say. No one mentioned a thing about segregationists.

The entire crowd was full of working class Black folks. So it is just this idea of we as a media apparatus saying something is important and it's resonating and this is an issue, this is concerning. But if you ask the people, it doesn't necessarily match up. And I think that the lesson that I take from all of my campaign and political experience that I'm trying to apply when I do now

as like a member of the media apparatus is to ensure that I am not getting caught up in what we think is true. I want to ask people what their reality is. And that is, I think, the biggest lesson we should all take. Like, what is the people's reality? How do you think, fast forward to now, almost 2023, you know, folks, rank and file kind of Democrats,

working class in particular Democrats, are feeling about like the first three years of the biden administration obviously there's some inflation concerns but he's got a lot done it's like where would you put you know infrastructure the most recent not really reducing inflation and inflation reduction act um you know the gun bill you know all the stuff that he's done because he's been extremely frankly productive over two years, unbelievably productive. How is that landing, do you think? Is that stuff that the D.C. bubble cares about and they haven't done a good job of making sure people get it?

Are people really starting to kind of appreciate the progress that we've seen? What's your sense? I think that people are starting to appreciate the progress, but only when it is laid out specifically. And I say that to say, we like to name the bills. Look at all the things he got done. What does that mean for people's everyday lives? The Inflation Reduction Act is important partly because it lowers the cost of prescription drugs. You go into a community, ask Mike, raise your hand if you had to go and fill a prescription this month. Raise your hand if you thought that prescription was too high.

It costs too much. The administration, I would argue, has been going out there and doing those things. We talk a lot about the CHIPS Act that was passed. The president has been going out. He did an event in Phoenix last week on the ground in the community about what this means, about the jobs that are being created, talking about the practical implications of it. Nobody covered it on television. it on their nightly newscasts. And the folks in that community, they heard it and it is they are feeling the impacts. And so every single time the president or the vice president or cabinet secretary or a member of Congress goes into their communities or communities across the country and talks about the practical implications of what they have passed and what it is doing. It makes a difference for how people feel about this president. I think for a long time, and still a little bit now, gas prices are down, but the grocery store prices are still up. My eggs is costing a little more, and I can't tell you how I got to fight the ladies at the Safeway on a regular basis to

get the good chicken. But that's what people are feeling. They are feeling that. But because the gas has gone down, they're like, okay, but you have to tell people. And I really do think that all of these sample polls and these surveys that are like, oh, 40% of Democrats don't want Biden to run for reelection. Yeah, if you ask somebody like,

do you think so-and-so should run for reelection? Okay, it's very different than if so-and-so runs for the election, will you think so-and-so should run for reelection? Okay. It's very different than if so-and-so runs for the election, will you support them? And I think the second question is probably more important than the first, because for all practical purposes, the man is running. Like he has said, he intends to. Okay. Well, let's just go there. You went there. Let's go there. What do you think? I mean, you got to spend time with him. You got to spend time with Jill in a way that I didn't and our listeners didn't. Like, do you feel like he's up for this? Yeah, I mean, I saw them. I was at the White House last week. Yeah, I really do. Yeah, I saw the President and the First Lady last week. We had a conversation. Like, I was at one of the

holiday parties. And, you know, I was at one of the parties where we got to have good chit chats. And I do feel like he is up to it. And look, as someone who worked in the last cycle for him, but also interviewed with all of these other people that also wanted to be the Democratic nominee. I have to say that, like, I think he has the most compelling argument out of all of them. Like, what's everybody else's argument? He's old. OK. But he beat Donald Trump last time. He beat out literally 19 other Democrats, young, promising the futures of the party who also wanted to be the Democratic nominee and therefore president. He got America vaccinated, passed all of these bills, like the child tax credit that people had the extra money in their pockets for almost a year. Like Joe Biden

did that. The gas part, like all the things. And so what is the argument that like he should not? If there is anyone who is entitled to run for a second term, it's Joe Biden. And so let the man run. Well, I don't disagree with that. But let me make the counter argument, granting all the things you said. The counter argument is twofold for me. One is five years from now would be the end of his term. You know, dude is going to be like 86. That is old. Okay. That's just old. And I love my elders. All right. Nothing against them. But 86 is old. Okay. And so that's one part of the argument. The other part is I worry a little bit, and this is what I care more about your opinion on. Biden benefited a bit from COVID during 2020. Let's just be honest. I think

he's done a great job. He's got a ton of energy. I'm not out there going, he's got secret dementia or whatever. All that is bullshit, and all the people spreading that nonsense deserve reprobation. But he still is a step slower. I think even, you know, Biden's pals would recognize that. And he didn't have to do the, Hey Toledo, Hey Ann Arbor, Hey Phoenix, Hey Atlanta, like flying all over the country. Like that puts wear and tear on a person. You know that you've been through that. Is he like up for that in 2024, like that level of campaigning? Well, I think the president is the only person that can answer that question. And I think we'll get our answer sooner than later on if he decides to run for reelection.

But that doesn't worry you a little bit, though, I guess is what I'm saying. I think in knowing the president, I know him to be someone that is not going to sign up to do something that he himself is not up for. Right. Or that he doesn't think he can deliver on. If he says it, that's because he thinks he can get it done. And if he says he's going to do it, like he's literally going to do it. He's somebody that is very clear about like keeping his promises on like the grandest of things, but also like some really small things. It's like, oh, sir, I didn't even remember you said that. And it's like, no, but I'm going to do this for you. And I'm like, okay, got it. Thank you. The people appreciate you. So I think that is a part of the decision that he is weighing. But to be very clear, the presidency is a very hard job.

Like you and I know, Tim, but like this man is the current president of the United States of America. And that's true. He has a very difficult job right now. And so peppering in a little campaigning on top of the crazy schedule that he already has, I don't think is so crazily out of the question that it can't be done. But how he shows up on the campaign trail matters. And frankly, I think who the Republicans end up nominating also matters. Because if they nominate a crazy, for lack of a better term, someone who is a literal extremist,

I do think that there are a number of voters are going to say, like, OK, the president, you know, may be a little older, but I'm going with him over X, Y and Z. Yeah. And I just want to be clear. I'm just kind of pressing on it because I want to explore the downsides because I'm torn on it. I think it's the question people have. I think people honestly have. And I think I know that they honestly have these questions. People are saying, regular people and people in the professional political class are saying the exact same things that you're saying. They're just not willing to say them out loud. There are people that are that have said, but he's older. He seems like he's lost it a little bit. I've been in conversation

with the man. He is fully there, pepped and ready to go. Sure, he's a little older, but look at all the things he got done. And if the only reason folks are saying he should not run for president is because he's a little older well is that not the most ageist thing we have like is that is that what we got we got ageism is is what is what it is yeah i mean sometimes it might be true though i mean all i'm saying is i'm torn about it i genuinely torn the nice thing about being a man without a party is that i can just say whatever the fuck i think um you know and so and i just i'm genuinely torn about The nice thing about being a man without a party is that I can just say whatever the fuck I think. And I'm genuinely torn about it. And I agree with you. I think a lot of people behind the scenes are, because I think on the one hand, we owe him. I mean, he saved us. Thank God it was Joe Biden. I'm not sure that any of some of these other candidates could have beaten Donald

Trump last time. It was really close. His message, you know, the reason you signed up was the right one. He's performed as well as you could possibly imagine him performing, in my opinion. I mean, I have some disagreements. I think that Afghanistan was kind of a botch, and I didn't love the student loan thing, but I think that that played well politically. And so I think that he's done about as well as you could have asked him to do. And so, yeah, I hear that argument, and I hear worries that an open primary might be a nightmare in its own way, right, on the Democratic side. And so I see both sides of it. And I think it's a tough call. I want to just go really quick to Trump, DeSantis, and then Kamala, and I'll let you go. There are some people, particularly my former friends, you know, who are out there saying on Twitter and on their shows that the Democrats actually, they want Trump.

Like, they don't even believe their own rhetoric about how he's a threat to democracy. And they wish he would win because they think he'd be easier to beat than DeSantis. What do you say to that? Is that something you feel? Are you secretly wishing for Trump because you think he's easy? Are you scared of him? I am very publicly wishing that Donald Trump is held accountable and that he ends up in jail because there are other people that if they would have done a fraction of what Donald Trump has done just on the documents of Mar-a-Lago alone, they would be behind bars as we speak. Literally, any other person would have been prosecuted by now. My own two cents. I do think that there are a number of Democrats, some of my Democratic friends out there wishing for Donald Trump, not because they don't believe

the rhetoric. They do believe he's a threat to democracy, but they also think he's very beatable. I personally believe this. Ron DeSantis is an untested character outside of Florida. And the brand that Ron DeSantis has created for himself, a brand that is literally the personification of all the anti that we discussed at the beginning of our conversation today. That has been widely, not wholly, but widely rejected in spaces and places across America, from the suburbs to the cities and in some parts of rural America. So the idea that the man that is a personification of all the things that literally blunted the red wave, I don't understand how he is the second coming of Republicans winning the presidency, clawing it back from the hands of Democrats. It just doesn't make sense to

me. And I think that people are just caught up in the hype and they really need to talk to some real people. Ron DeSantis is untested. And when he gets under these bright lights, I actually don't think that he'll hold up. Yeah, I think if you look to the midterms and you're like, man, the people of Arizona and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and Michigan are clamoring for Ron DeSantis and his don't say gay anti-vax nonsense, I don't think you're paying attention to what happened in the midterms. Yeah, they're not voting for Ron DeSantis. I'm sure he can win a Republican primary. I am very doubtful that he can get to 270. Yeah, I think it's possible. I mean, we're a divided country, right? So it's possible. I just I look at the states, you know, maybe he could do slightly better than Trump in Georgia. But I think he could do worse than Trump

in other places, like in the Midwest with the types of people you're talking about working class voters of color, even working class whites, I They might look at him and see that he's think he's a phony. He's an Ivy League, whiny, nasal voiced phony. And like, not I look at what happened. It's giving corny. Drop him down in the middle of Michigan and like, make him talk to people about the real things that they are dealing with every day. Like, put him in a neighborhood at Grand Rapids and see if people believe what he

says. And that's what I mean by being untested. Like, drop him off in Western Michigan and see how the folks respond to him. I just, I don't see it. It's giving male Tudor Dixon. It's giving male Tudor Dixon to me and she lost by 10 points. Part of the, this whole Biden discussion, I think, about why people are kind of unsure, why I'll just be honest, part of why I'm unsure about what the right thing to do is. Politically speaking, obviously, I think he should do what he thinks is right for himself. He's earned that. But politically speaking, what the right move is, is like his concerns about the vice president's political standing. You worked for her. Why are the vibes circling her so cloudy? What's the right word? You know, I just, I kind of don't get it.

Like on paper, it seems like it should work, right? I went to see her Oakland announcement when she announced her president. And like, there was a very diverse, big crowd there. And the speech was a little flat. And it's like, then she runs. And I thought that, to be honest, you saw this better than me.

You saw that the people were going to want Biden. I thought the people were going to want Kamala. I thought she was going to win that primary. She didn't even make it to Iowa, you know, then she gets picked and she did pretty good. I thought as vice presidential candidate. And then since she's been in there, like the vibes are off. Like, what is your read on what's happening with that? So I guess I would say, I would say three things. First, I think the historic nature of who Vice President Harris is and the expectations people have about that history have run into the realities of the vice presidency. Two things can be true at the same time.

She is historic. She is the first. She is dynamic. Like, I apply things I learned while working for her every single day in my life right now. Like on presentation, you mean, or on what? Not even just on presentation, but in how she moves in a meeting, how she asks questions and brings people in. The vice president is very exact. She is specific. There's depths to every single thing that she does. She never just does something to do it. She's meticulous. She is a lawyer. And I think it has worked out well for her.

All of those things are true. But as a vice president, you are the number two name on the door. You're not the number one name on the door. And so I think people want to know every single thing that she does every single day and how she got this win. And as a nature of the vice presidency, that is not what you do. She is a governing partner for the president, but understands that the buck stops with the president. At the end of the day, it is his decision. At the end of the day, it's not about what credit she gets. It's about what is best for the American people, this administration, and the president. And this vice president feels that viscerally and understands that very well. The second thing I would say is I don't think people are actually paying attention to the work that she's doing. They're just talking about what they think they know to be true.

Because if people were on her, you know, press list, if you just look at her team does a recap video every week about the things that she has been doing. She is traveling out there in communities to be very clear. The reason the White House used this bully pulpit to to continue to elevate the issue of abortion and a woman's right to make decisions about her own bodies. And chief among them doing that work was the vice president of the United States of America. She used her time as she was traveling all across the country, talking about all these other things that the administration was doing to meet with activists on the ground, state elected officials, state legislative leaders about what this means, what are the practical implications.

And the people who walked out of these meetings with Vice President Harris, talk to any of them. They have said, I've heard them say myself, that her presence, the White House keeping this elevated, let them know that this is important and that what they are doing is on the right track. That work is very important to make sure that the activists on the ground, the organizers who are organizing the people in these communities around this issue, Kansas, every place in America, New York 19, okay? It was very key. Look, I think that President Biden is going to run for reelection in the event that he decides he does not. He is not going to. I think that it will be a very robust Democratic primary. It will be a very it will be not a lack of fireworks. But the end, I think the vice president of the United States of America will come out on top.

And because of this, when then candidate Biden said he was going to choose a running mate in the lead up to it, he said he wanted to pick someone who he believes will be ready on day one, who could be president. He talked about being a bridge to the future. And so if he says he's not running, there is not a scenario where the current president does not endorse his current vice president. This is not an Obama-Biden situation. It's not the same thing. This is very different. He himself threw his support behind her when he picked her. And if you think the base of this party, Black voters, women, women of color are going to stand for the person that they helped get elected saying,

oh no, now this woman, this woman of color, the first to do it, a person who has been the first in every single thing that she's done and continues to exceed expectations and raise the bar. Actually, I take back what I said, not her. I'm staying out of it. Somebody else, that that's going to fly. It's not going to fly. And I think everybody knows that. But I also think that President Biden believes in her. So while it will be a robust primary, there's a lot of other people that think they want to be president too. Some of them work in this administration. Those people will need to quit their jobs. Meanwhile, the vice president of the United States of America is flying around on Air air force two being vice presidential okay doing all the things and looking looking like a freaking president

okay why we're over time but i have to i just have to know you just gave this huge speed and i'm interested i think that's so fascinating that you feel that way and i think that's maybe right but like okay so my my one follow-up then is I'll let you go. Why is there so much turnover? Like, why does she sometimes feel like she isn't answering questions well? Like, I want to get there. Like, help me get there. Like, don't you sense that?

That sometimes she feels a little, like she can't handle some of the Q&A? No, not at all. Isn't it concerning that so many people are leaving? Like, that there's not like Kamala people around? I think that there are Kamala Harris people. A number of the people that recently left, they have worked for her since she was a United States senator. But that never popped up in any of the stories, even though when I worked there,

I told the people about it. I'm like, oh my God, look at all these people that work there. So you're inside there. I mean, you're feeling like the people that she does have a trusted team and that this isn't the shit show that like the Politico White House playbook wants you to believe in us? I think that the vice president is someone that folks have never seen before. She's a black woman in America who has risen through the ranks of local politics all the way up to the White House and very quickly. And I think that there are a number of people believe that that is not something she should be able to do. I think that there is a misinformation and a disinformation machine that is dedicated to chipping away at who she is because people know how powerful she really is. That is why Fox News is dedicated to running all of these things

about her. That is why if you look at what is happening on social media, specifically the chatter around her and the targeting of her, they're trying to make fetch happen, for lack of a better term. People are consuming things via clips. And if you clip one piece of a speech, right, that is not in context and it's like, oh, she lost her footing there. She wasn't really good. I mean, I just don't think it's representative. I really think people need to take the chatter and juxtapose it with the reality, what is actually going on. I also think, knowing what I know and having worked in there, I think there is a recognition from her team of all the things that I just said, all of the things that she is up against, the high expectations, the constant targeting of her, the microscope that is on her, the fact that

she has never been treated just as an elected official, the press never stopped treating her as a candidate, right? Now they view her as a media apparatus. We all view her as a candidate and waiting. And it's a very different feeling. So I think there is a recognition from that on their part. And I don't think it's fully figured out yet, right? Like they haven't fully figured it out. This is something that no other vice president has ever had to contend with before. And that's what I just always try to remind people. This is not Joe Biden, Dick Cheney, Mike Pence, insert whatever other previous vice president you'd like into the sentence. This is Kamala Harris. And that in and of itself means that we have to maybe think about it a little differently. Yeah. Well, I just, I want to close the two nice things on this front. I

do love my little baby girl's shirt that she wears with all the white dudes and then Kamala Harris at the end of it. I love that t-shirt. I love the symbol. I love what she has achieved and it gets me a little emotional thinking about it. And I also, she made me a little verklempt at the Respect for Marriage Act speech. I did not realize this when she was attorney general, she married the two plaintiffs that were challenging Prop 8. So kind of going against what the state of California had just voted for, she married these two women as Attorney General, and they now have four kids, and they were there on the White House lawn, and that was getting me all emotional, too. So there's a lot there to like. Sometimes you just wonder, well, hopefully,

you know, she can put it all together. Simone, you're so amazing. Ask ourselves why we don't know about there to like, it's just sometimes you just wonder, well, hopefully, you know, she can put it all together. Simone, you're so amazing. Ask ourselves why we don't know about it. Yeah, that's true. Why don't we know?

You are, you are so amazing. Thank you for taking this much time. You're great. I love that we did this. I hope we can do it again soon. You have a Merry Christmas and, um,

uh, you know, Katie and Jason play us some Beyonce music on the way out. And, uh, we'll see you all back here on Monday with, I think, a next level takeover of this podcast. But I don't know. We might have another surprise.

We'll do it all over again on Monday. Thanks so much, Simone. Thank you.