The Chaser Report - Bye Bye Biden: It's Joever | David Smith

Episode Date: July 22, 2024

Assoc Prof David Smith of the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney joins Dom Knight to cover yet another historic day in US politics, as Joe Biden has announced he is dropping out of the presidential race. Plus, has Kamala Harris got the nomination sewn up already? Who’s her likely VP? How will Donald Trump cope now that he’s the old guy? What bizarre twist is next? Is this just a US election podcast now? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report, which is essentially now a US politics podcast, certainly at this point. How can we talk about anything else? And once again, we're very likely to have him backing up after the epic RNCD brief, Associate Professor David Smith of the US Study Centre at the University of Sydney, co-host of Chaz's very long PEP podcast, which I understand has also been doing bonus version. as well. So everyone is talking about this

at great length. David, welcome to what I understand is your seventh interview of the day. It's actually the ninth now. Okay. Well, this is what you do and we kind of live for days like this, don't we. So was it only two days ago or something? We were wondering would this actually happen? And then I woke up very early

this morning. So it's covered that yes, Joe Biden had jumped via means of a letter to the American people or in fact to fellow Democrats, which Elon Musk has already suggested wasn't real and was posted by someone who has access to a social media account. So everything is wild. I love that Elon Musk is actively discrediting information on his own social media platform.

Like this is a social media platform that Joe Biden chose to make the most important announcement of his life and Elon Musk is like, it's not real, you can't trust it. That's why he's so good at running Twitter. Into the ground. Yeah, that's right. And Elon Musk has gone all in for Trump, which I gather. means a massive degree of investment is giving many, many millions of dollars, I think a month between now and November, far more than any other donor. And people are wondering if it's

electric car regulations. And then Donald Trump got up and basically shat on electric car regulations. So I don't know what's going on. But let's try and make sense of this bizarre moment, this latest bizarre moment in US politics after this. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore. FIS is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month. Certain conditions apply.

Details at fizz.ca. All right, so first things first, David. It's been a long day you've been ingesting information as you do at a rate of knots. What do you think pushed Biden over the edge? So the most convincing account that I've seen was his two most trusted advisors, Michael Donnellan and someone Ritchetti, who've been with him for a very long time, finally sat him down and showed him swing state polling that was conducted internally by the Democrats, which he had not seen, which showed that he was in a difficult to impossible

position to win. Apparently, that was the moment when he was finally convinced. And up until this point, it wasn't clear whether the pressure campaign was working or was backfiring, because there were all kinds of reports over the weekend how upset he was at Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama suggesting that he couldn't win. So yeah, we really didn't know

until today whether all of this pressure was just going to make him dig in even further or step aside. But apparently he has actually come to the realization that it was very unlikely that he could win. And the reason why he did it so suddenly

was because he didn't want to make it look like capitulation to pressure. Yeah, it sounds like an amazing moment. I gather that some of the envisors got summoned down to his beach house in Delaware, which I must say I haven't previously ever heard of as a beachside destination. It's a Rojobeian beach or something. I can't what it's called. Some sort of very biblical sound.

Roboth, yeah, yeah, it sounds like. It sounds like something out of one of the grimmer chapters of the Bible. Yes, it should be on the Dead Sea, really. And they had to sit there with him, I think, socially distancing, it says. So imagine the awkwardness of being there with a guy who's got COVID and is very sick, sitting there and just running him through the numbers. And the story that I read suggests that, yeah, he really just wanted to go through it. And it was the polling, but then also the representations from senior Democrats.

So essentially the Speaker of the House and the House majority leader, both said, look, our caucuses are not on board with this. You have to go, Joe. Yeah, yeah, that was the other thing. So apparently Chuck Schumer said, if you don't go, then on Monday, everyone in the Senate's going to publicly come out against you. I think there was a sense that it was getting to not if but when. And if he, because time was really running out for him to step aside. It really had to be in the next week or so.

And I think if he hadn't, there would have been a push that would have meant that we wouldn't have been seeing what we see today, which is outpourings of love and affection for. Joe Biden and all the op-ed saying this shows what a great public servant he is, instead you would have really seen a lot of bitterness and acrimony. So it's probably good for everyone concerned that he actually went out on his own terms in the end. Okay. So even though the national polls are still very, very tight, certainly winnable, you would think. I mean, the trajectory of post-debate seems to me as a non-expert at all, as though he has absolutely no chance of winning from here unless things change dramatically. But the numbers are not. any wider than they were a little while ago,

except in some of those latest polls, as we said in our last episode, which you can listen back to. So he's jumped, and I understand that rather than, and perhaps this is part of the grand conspiracy, David, the reason for the letter on, on X or Twitter was because he didn't want to arrest the nation

while he was still so obviously sick because the man, the poor man, has COVID still. I mean, what an awful time to have to deal with all of this. Yeah. The other really significant thing was a few minutes after, that, because he posts this letter and mentions nothing about Kamala Harris, which immediately led to panic. A few minutes later, he posts his full-throated endorsement of Kamala Harris.

And while the big story of today is Biden stepping aside, the other half of that story is then how, I think, astonishingly quickly, almost the entire Democratic Party got behind Kamala Harris. In the hour or so following Biden's announcement, there are a lot of news stories about okay so what happens now will there be an open nominating process you know here's the 10 candidates that it could be by the end of the day every one of those other candidates

had announced their support for Carmelah Harris which she's almost certainly going to be the nominee because nobody serious is running against her some people are yeah let's let's give Mary Williamson at her time so my favourite story of

the day was that Joe Manchin The senator from West Virginia, who announced not only his retirement this year, but that he was no longer a Democrat, said that he was considering re-registering as a Democrat and weighing his options for running. I can't think of many people actually less popular in the Democratic Party at the moment, with the possible exception of Bob Menendez, who's just been convicted for corruption.

So yeah, Kamala Harris is not facing any serious opposition. And I think we should assume that she will be the non. And this is really interesting because her initial comments, I can't remember the exact phrase that she used, but it was something like, I'm going to run and earn the nomination. So it seemed as though she wanted to convince people. Barack Obama certainly seemed to suggest that he wanted a process to be gone through at the DNC, as though it was actually a sort of live contest. That was one of the first comments made.

And Anthony Scaramucci, the most brilliant analyst we have over on the rest of politics, was saying that people should be asking him why he's essentially trying to stop Kamala Harris at this point by not anointing her at this stage. I don't know if he's actually clarified his support subsequently. I haven't seen anything saying that he has, but it is going to be a process of a coronation now, isn't it? A lot of the state party machines have already met and they've pledged their delegates behind Harris. So is it game over? Yeah, I think so. So a lot of donors did want a more open process and a lot of people who were editorialising today wanted a more open process. Obama was quite careful with his words. He said he wanted a process that would

produce the best candidate possible. But it just looks like basically no other actual politicians, office holders or party organizers in the Democratic Party wanted it. They wanted the process to be as quick and clean and uncomplicated as possible. And Carmore Harris might not even be the optimal candidate, but by deciding on her so quickly, they're probably giving her the best chance that they can to wage an effective campaign. There's also a really important practical consideration which is that because she was part

of the Biden-Harris ticket, she still has access to a lot of the donations that came in, whereas another candidate might have had legal problems with that. She may still have legal problems with that. Republicans are planning challenges to it. But it's clear that of

everyone who could have built a campaign from scratch, Kamala Harris, with the Office of Vice President as the person who was endorsed by Joe Biden and the person with the access to the money clearly had the best charts of actually being able to build a campaign from scratch. So, you know, the process that appointed the nominee was not some kind of open convention process. It was basically just three straight hours of endorsements from Democrats who might have run against it. So this means, in essence, that we'll go forward to the DNC, the Democratic Convention.

with a pretty clear line on who the president is going to be. We can talk in a moment about who the vice president might be, who she might choose, and indeed how that process will work. But yeah, Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, was an interesting one. I saw a few reports early on from polls as close to him suggesting that he might be able to outperform Kamala Harris in a contest. But given the massive uncertainty of replacing the top of the ticket already, this sort of unprecedented, to use our favorite word,

every single thing that happens in this whole election is unprecedented, in that no one's ever dropped out, that no sitting president's ever dropped out this late before, it would be a huge shift to someone who many Americans wouldn't know much about, whereas Kamala Harris, even though she's probably still fairly obscure, you mentioned she hasn't had much time, really,

in the public eye, even as VP. She's the one who's been designated as the next person when, if Biden, something would happen to Biden, which it kind of has, she's the person who's been approved by the nominating process and also the argument that, what, 14 million Democrats chose Biden. They also chose Harris in case Biden couldn't do it. Yeah. One of the difficult things about this, and I think one of the reasons Biden took

so long to drop out, was that polling about Democratic alternatives was always so inconclusive. So some polling showed Harris doing a little bit better than Biden, some polling showed her doing a little bit worse. It generally showed all of the other possible candidates doing a bit worse. But that probably was, as you say, because most of them, half the country doesn't know who they are. Even the governor of the most big and prominent state, half the country still doesn't know who Gavin Newsom is, let alone would know who Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania or Gretchen Whitmer is. So even if she has been fairly low profile, as a vice president, at least everybody actually knows who she is, which is a pretty important.

thing. So I think that that was another thing that really fed into what was effectively the coronation today. It was what game theorists call a focal point. It just became very obvious to everyone that she was the choice and it was obvious to everyone that she would be the obvious choice to everyone else as well. So just just getting behind her was the obvious unity move. Yeah, and it's a little bit like what happens in Australia and in the UK. which is so used to these frequent changes of prime ministeries. It used to be called the Australian disease, but now the UK has been on board with it as well.

It just seems as though the most obvious air apparent people want a contest, but then someone would stick to head up. Peter Dutton, of course, Anthony Albanesey, the second time around. And just, that's it. People just go, look, this is a path of least resistance. And there's surely a bit of calculus there that if she were to fail, the people who are planning to run them in the near future and Gavin Newsom surely is one of them.

We'll have more time to get their ducks in a row. Okay. Okay, let's take a moment to play some heads, and then we can think about what this means for Donald Trump and who the vice president might be. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore?

FIS is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at FIS.ca. news you know you can't trust. So Donald Trump had a, he could have perhaps had a moment of gracious farewell to his opponent. But that's not the way he chose to go, is it, David? He could have said farewell to Joe Biden with, you know, thanking him for his service.

Perhaps a little patronisingly, he went in hard. Yeah, no, he really, he really did go hard. There was also no acknowledgement of, oh, you know, Donald Harris will be a strong candidate. I look forward to competing with or anything like that. No, no. It was very typical Trump. And it's a great reminder that Trump has not changed at all.

I remember in the hour, the great year to fire, David. In the hours following the shooting, we were speculating about, how might this have changed Trump? It turns out that was wasted speculation. He, Trump has apparently complained that he had spent all of this money and effort on attacking Biden and now he has to do it all over again. Yeah, he posted on truth socially. He wants to, he's

accusing them a fraud. He wants his money back. I didn't realize he'd actually truth from that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He won't as if the Republicans have a claim for all the money that they've wasted. And it's worth noting, David, that the timing of this is actually fairly delicious from Biden's perspective. I know we were saying he needed to go and, you know, choose the

time and it was sort of dragging on. But he's chosen the exact moment that takes the wind out of the sales of the Republican National Convention. And they've had their convention. They can't have another convention. So they spent all that time running against Biden, who's now no longer the candidate. Yeah. And so they've really got to recalibrate their campaign. They, I'm sure they did have attacks on Harris waiting to go and I'm sure that we'll see them pretty shortly. But Biden has now deprived them of their greatest asset, which was Biden

and his age. They can't campaign on that anymore. It'll be interesting to see how much people associate Harris with the things about the Biden administration that they don't like. And certainly what we will definitely see are claims that Harris was the architect of the border disaster. I'm sure we're going to see a lot of that from the Trump campaign. But the single biggest thing that has turned people against the Biden administration is cost of living problems. And I don't know how that's going to play out. It'll be interesting to see how Kamala Harris will try to take credit for popular things from the Biden administration, but maybe distance herself from other things. I don't know how that's going to play out. I think that Trump would still be the favorite to win,

but this has definitely made it quite a bit harder for him. He seemed to have a very clear path to victory if Biden had stayed in. Everything that their campaign was doing seemed to be working. So they really have to recalibrate now. I do wonder also if at this point he wouldn't be regretting not having picked a woman as his VP candidate. Instead, picking a man who has on the public record some fairly extreme anti-abortion positions, supports a national ban, supports using the Postal Service to ban RU-486, whereas you have a woman at the top of the Democratic ticket when the single strongest issue for Democrats is abortion and reproductive rights. That could be something that's a bit difficult for the Trump campaign to deal with. I'll also say just slightly

tangentially, although I'm sure Musk is injecting a lot of money into the Trump campaign, they may come to regret having Musk as a major donor, because a lot of major donors insist on getting involved in the campaign itself. Can you imagine constantly having Musk on the phone complaining, why aren't you using all the great memes I'm sending you? Didn't you see that DEI one that was so good? Why aren't you using it? So they may come to regret having Musk as a major bank. Well, they bought Twitter.

He's run to by the Trump campaign as well. It is so interesting. There's an ad from Kamala Harris's 2020 campaign that's been doing the rounds. Let's play a bit of that here. He's a world leader in temper tantrum. She never loses her cool She prosecuted sex predators He is one

She shut down for profit colleges That swindled Americans He was a for-profit college At Trump University we keep success And you can see how well this sets up The juxtaposition of a former prosecutor And we know that Kamala Harris's greatest moment Certainly in the Senate

Were when there was a Judiciary Committee inquiry And she was getting stuck into someone from the other side. We saw that prosecutorial side of her, as we've discussed before, David. But this ad really leans into it. And the contrast between a former prosecutor and a convicted felon, I mean, I'm not the first person who said this, but it's a pretty tasty possibility if Donald Trump even debates her. Yeah, we're yet to see that. The Trump campaign wants to change the host. So it had been agreed. I think that it would be ABC would be the second post. so I'm sure he's going to want to change it to someone more right wing.

Yeah, I mean, I imagine that the debate will take place, but under what circumstances, who knows? I remember that in 2020, she was actually a reasonably effective debater against Joe Biden. She was, the little girl with the busing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But then the rest of her campaign, though, wasn't that good.

She struggled to have any kind of impact. She struggled to raise money. There was a lot of infighting in the campaign. I mean, she'll have a far more impressive campaign apparatus around her, around her this time, I'm sure. But it will be interesting given one of the issues that the Trump campaign loves is crime and law and order. They love to talk about crime all the time, despite the fact that crime rates have actually been plummeting recently. Not that that has ever affected a law and order campaign at all. And not that Joe Biden made that point in the debate.

It would have been quite a good one for him to make in the debate if he'd managed to marshal his thoughts. Yeah, one of his many missed opportunities. But, yeah, so I would imagine that if crime does get brought up, then that response is kind of ready made, yes. Yeah, so that will be a fascinating moment. But also, yes, running against a woman, we saw what Donald Trump did to Hillary Clinton in the debates where he was sort of walking around the stage behind her.

I can't imagine Kamala Harris will cop much of that. And I mean, certainly you'd imagine Kamala Harris would have been in more adversarial situations in the courtroom than Hillary Clinton experienced. and Trump's so much more of a known quantity now. So we'll see how that unfold. But she certainly wasn't seen as a strong candidate in the 2020 primaries. She didn't go very far along. So we'll see, I guess, whether her time in the vice presidential mansion,

what is it, the Naval Observatory has sharpened her instinct on that at all. But it's worth noting it is a historic moment. As a half-Indian, half-black woman, it's certainly going to galvanize some voters you'd think to get on board and black women are often described as the most loyal democratic voters. So you would think this will be a moment where they will come out in force and indeed African Americans in general. And that's another argument I've heard about why it had to be Kamala Harris,

because the idea of blocking her to put in a Gavin Newsom or something like that would have optically been not great. Oh, yeah, it would have been appalling, especially since. It's been widely recognized that one of Biden's biggest problems in the polls is losing black and minority. voters. Even though African-Americans supported Biden as a majority, Democrats always need overwhelming majorities of African-American voters to have any chance of winning elections because they never get a majority of the white vote. The last Democratic president who got a

majority of the white vote was Lyndon Johnson all the way back in 1964. So Democrats really need minority voters. And the fact that Biden seemed to be hemorrhaging, especially younger, minority voters was one of the things that made it look so increasingly unlikely that he could actually win. So I'm sure that this will definitely help. And it is a good reason for them not to go to a white man, even though there were, you know, quite a few white men who at least on paper looked like they'd be pretty good candidates. And particularly given that the other sides pick two white men with Jade Vance. There's absolutely no demographic boost in the choice there's no history being made unless you think, you know, bearded Appalachians or something like

that is some sort of constituency that J.D. Vance could be at the table. So finally, David, the question now becomes the vice president for Kamala Harris, assuming she goes ahead and secures the nomination as now seems amazingly enough. Who would have thought so quickly potentially signing up the change? They've renamed Biden for president to Harris for president. All the staff have been told they're working for her. She's just basically slotting in. Yes. One of the memes that's got a lot of views today on Elon. Network is the one that says they'll need probably a white man to calm the base, someone with a lot of international experience, someone who can win elections, a proven quantity, step

up, Vice President Biden. So that probably won't happen, I suspect. So who would they pick, do you think? Gavin Newsom can't do it because he's also from California. That's right. Has it got to be a white dude, or will they do something a little bit more adventurous? It doesn't necessarily have to be a white man. I think that given the swing state problem,

they will probably want to go with somebody from a swing state. And so the three obvious candidates would be Josh Shapiro, who's the governor of Pennsylvania, who's very young and only got a couple of years in that role, but very, very popular in Pennsylvania. Like three in ten Trump supporters think he's doing a good job in Pennsylvania, which is probably something no other democratic politician can say. He would also be the first Jewish.

wish vice presidential nominee since Joe Lieberman. Another option would be next door, Gretchen Whitner, the governor of Michigan. So Michigan is another absolutely key state that has been hit particularly hard in recent days by polling. It was probably the one that really completely undid Biden. She once again, very popular in Michigan, one election by 11 points in 2022 and is widely seen. is a very capable politician. The other option is Mark Kelly, who is the senator from Arizona.

So he's a former astronaut, which is, you know, always a good thing. He's also the husband of Gabby Giffords, the congresswoman from Arizona, who was shot in the head during an assassination attempt in 2010, but survived and has become a very prominent gun control advocate. So all three of them are people who they feel would bring a lot to the ticket. in terms of outside those, you know, those swing state personalities, there's been a lot of chatter about Pete Buttigieg. What Democrats really like about Pete Buttigieg is he's probably their strongest media performer.

Totally. He's really famous going on Fox News and other conservative outlets and just really holding his own. So a lot of Democrats really like that. Then there are a couple of Southern governors, Andy Bashir from Kentucky. His main credential is he managed to win in a very very. Trump-supporting state by five points. Yeah, Kentucky, amazing. Yeah, yeah, at the last election.

And then there's Roy Cooper from North Carolina, which is a genuine swing state. It's one that Democrats had really hoped to put in play in this election, but at the moment doesn't really look like it's in play. He's term-limited out of running for governor again. So he might be an option if they think that it could, if they think that it could represent again.

So I'd say those are the major. contenders at the moment. I've seen Raphael Warnock. The Georgia senator mentioned is another one who is capable of winning tight races in traditionally Republican places. I would certainly imagine that she's going to be looking for someone with swing state credibility because that's, that is a huge problem for Democrats at the moment. It's that all year their swing state polling has been trailing their national polling, which is obviously a rest of people losing. Yeah. And one thing that I've heard on that, David, is the notion that in what looks like a very tight contest, moving a popular senator from a tight state to the campaign might not be a good

use of resources. So we'll see what happens with that. But Pete Buttigieg, I must say, he's very rapid response to this on Bill Maher's real time has been doing the rounds as well. an extraordinary way of essentially taking the fight back to Donald Trump that he had in that interview just after this all happened. So worth checking that clip out almost in real time. That shows recorded live, so they were able to... But he was also able to be funny about it all in that moment too. So perhaps not the national profile of some of the other possibilities,

but if the VP is meant to be an attack dog, you'd think he'd do a very good job. What twist could possibly happen next, David? I don't know where we go from here. perhaps it's all played out, all the uncertainties, but I wouldn't have thought so. Something dramatic presumably will happen. Maybe J.D. Vance will have to drop off the ticket for some reason,

or who can even imagine. Maybe Yvanka will replace J.D. Vance in some strange twist. I can't imagine what will happen. But I just can't look away from this thing. It's absolutely compelling. American politics has always been strange, looking at it from an outsider perspective. But the weirdness of it is just really,

accelerated. I'm looking back at some things that I wrote in 2012, like when Mitt Romney chose Paul Ryan as his running mate, for example, that was one of the most dramatic things that happened in the 2012 campaign. We just seem to be in a different world now. Even though all of the seeds of this world were clearly not only planted, but already beginning to blossom back then. If we think of the Tea Party movement that was going on, if we think of birtherism around Barack Obama's birth certificate, remember that was how Donald Trump actually made a booed in 2020. And, sorry, in 2012, also the year of the Sandy Hook massacre.

So, you know, if we look closely enough, we can actually see all of everything that we're seeing now. Although I will say with Paul Ryan, And I think that might have been a reaction to the only other moment that I can think of that compares to this at all in terms of sheer wackiness, Sarah Palin. Oh, yes. In 2008, John McCain, picking another Maverick, possibly the, I mean, the Vice President normally has no impact at all, but that really was extraordinary, both comedically and politically.

That's all we need is Sarah Palin, so about getting involved in this again. I'm surprised she hasn't had a resurgence in the Magamara. Well, she ran. Yeah, she ran for the house. at the last midterm election. So Alaska is one of these states that has two Senate seats, but only one House seat. And Sarah Palin ran for it and lost.

Alaska was for the first time using its new ranked choice voting system, which meant that a Democrat ended up winning, even though there were multiple Republicans in the race. So, yeah, look, she tried to come back and she failed. I sometimes wonder whether Sarah Palin looks at Donald Trump's, whole trajectory and thinks that her mistake was just, you know, not being crazy enough. It should have been more brazen. That's what she should have done.

Extraordinary stuff. All right, David, well, thank you for making time for the ninth interview. Is this the last one or are you going on to something else? I believe this is the last one of the day, yes. All right. Well, thank you for saving it for us. We appreciate you joining us again. And look, when aliens invade tomorrow and want to position, you know, as VP or something,

I'll reach out to you again. Thanks for being there. My pleasure. Our Gears from Road, we're part of the Icona class network. And if you want more, check out Chaz's pep podcast, pep with Chas and Dr. Dave. Did you do one with him or is he found someone else to talk to for six hours today? We are doing one sometime in the next 48 hours. Okay, very good. Chaz has this thing of reading all the news in order a couple of days behind.

So I think in his world, Joe Biden's still the presidential candidate. He knows, but I did get a text from him this morning, complaining that he was still 325 articles behind in his reading and why couldn't Biden have waited a couple of days. Exactly right. I'm sure. Taz's convenience should have factored more into the president's decision. Okay, another historic day in the race.

Thanks, Dave. My pleasure. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore. Fizz is 100% online so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15. a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca.