The Dispatch Podcast - Back to Fundamentals

Episode Date: October 5, 2022

Axios Senior Political Correspondent Josh Kraushaar joins Sarah to explain what happens when the Democrats’ sugar rush drops. Are the fundamentals still favoring Republicans in the midterms? What's going on in Georgia? Can candidate quality block a red wave? And how’s 2024 shaping up? Join for a healthy fix of pre-midterms political punditry and prognostication. Show Notes: -Josh's Axios piece on the state of play for November Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome back to the Dispatch Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isger, joined by Josh Crash Hour. He is the senior political correspondent at Axios and the author of the Sunday Sneak newsletter that you can sign up for at Axios. Josh, thanks for being here. Hey, Sarah. It's great to be back on the dispatch podcast. We have tons to talk about. You and I are just sort of political junkies. So I didn't even make an agenda for this conversation. But let's start with the vibes. Right. Over the summer, there's like high Democratic enthusiasm vibes. We're seeing some of that in the polls. Then we hit Labor Day. And things felt like they shifted. We're now seeing polling data move toward the Republicans. Do you think that is? an actual enthusiasm marker or just a post-Labor Day tightening of races. People come, quote-unquote, home to their partisan bases after Labor Day anyway. So we always like to focus on the vibes,

but sometimes the fundamentals in any election matters as well. And we've known for some time that this is the first midterm of a president who has Democratic control of Congress. People are not happy about the direction of the country, even when things were looking a little bit better for Democrats. The wrong track numbers were still pretty bad. The president's job approval didn't really get much above 43, 44 percent. Those are numbers that signal a really rough environment for the party in power. Now, what you've seen lately is sort of the sugar high of the abortion issue, perhaps dying down a little bit. Not that it's not an issue. It's still an issue that's driving Democratic voters to the polls. It's an issue that may have changed what looked like a category four or

five wave election for Republicans into maybe a category two type storm. But the environment has always been pretty good for Republicans. The problem for Republicans is that they've got a lot of bad candidates running in an important race. It's not that they don't have the wind at their backs, it's that you have folks like Blake Masters in Arizona in the Senate race. You've got Maastriano in the governor's race in Pennsylvania. You've got Herschel Walker now in Georgia with baggage that at one point in time would have eliminated these candidates from contention. Now, we're in a crazy time in our politics, Sarah, where, like, Trump has shown that some of the craziest stuff doesn't necessarily dislodge a campaign or, you know, take a campaign.

But these are damaging developments in all these races. And there are others in the Senate House and governorship. So the wins at Republicans back. The candidates, though, that's the big problem for the Republican Party. I think people would be angry at me if I don't talk about the Herschel Walker thing with you for a few minutes here, even though it's a little early to make any predictions either way. But let's break it down a little. Daily Beast comes out with reporting on Monday night that Herschel Walker, they say, paid for his girlfriend's abortion in 2009. They have her receipt for the abortion on September 12th. They have a check from him on September 17th for $700, as well as a card that he signed to her that said, get well. He then goes on Hannity, denies it,

says that he's just a generous guy. He gives money to people all the time, sends get well cards all the time, that he's planning to sue the Daily Beast, which, as you know, would require him to prove not only that the allegations are false, but that the Daily Beast knew that they were false at the time that they published them. I think, though, that the other thing that people are pointing to is not just that this allegation hits, but then his son, who had been supportive of him, had campaigned with him, has come out on Twitter. Denouncing his dad is almost a nice way to put it. I'll read a quote, you're not a family man when you left us to bang a bunch of women, threatened to kill us, and had us move over six times and six months running from your violence. How dare you lie and

act as though you're some moral Christian upright man? You've lived a life of destroying other people's lives. How dare you? I actually think this is a one-two punch, which is different than simply the abortion allegations standing on its own. But as you say, we have the Access Hollywood tape from 2016 that Trump survived, despite at least one person on this podcast, very much predicting his demise in the wake of that tape. Me, that was me, to be clear, not Josh. And we live in a different political age than we did say back in 2002 was it? I worked, no, 2003, I was working on the Jack Ryan campaign very, very briefly in Illinois. And Jack Ryan was running against this promising young state senator dude named Barack Obama, and they unearthed his divorce records.

and it showed that his wife had complained that he had pressured her to have sex at a club in Paris. And so to be clear, a Republican dropped out of a Senate race in the early odds because he had intramarital affair. That's not the age we live in now. It's not. And to go back to the Access Hollywood comparison, this would be like if the Access Hollywood story dropped in Ivanka spoke out. against her dad. Like that is the equipment. So you've got a double whammy. You've got the Access Hollywood comparison, but then you also have Christian Walker, who is this 23-year-old son of Herschels, who's a TikTok conservative influencer. I don't know if you have TikToks. I actually

don't not have TikTok on my phone. I don't get it. I don't understand it. But Christian Walker has developed a young conservative, like Gen Z following for being very conservative. And now he's speaking out against his dad at this crucial moment. Look, this is like a really ugly reality show, and that's what our politics has become, it seems, in many ways, that the control of the Senate is looking like it's going to come down to Herschel Walker and Dr. Oz. If you told me that in 2003, I'd be like, well, what are we living in idiocry? Are we living in what world? What earth two are we living in? But that is the political reality right now that Republicans are, openly speculated that they may need to win with Dr. Oz, who actually I think may have a

better chance now, and he's doing pretty well in Pennsylvania. But Dr. Oz may be the more likely Republican to win as opposed to Herschel. Which is fascinating, because my prediction as of last week was Republicans probably lose Pennsylvania, if they win the Senate, the map is lose Pennsylvania, pick up Nevada and Georgia. And you're right. Now it's like, well, I mean, A, I think the chances of them winning the Senate have ticked down a little. I think you'd have to say that in the wake of Herschel Walker, who's, you know, on polling average, he's been down about two points for the last two months. It's actually been very consistent in the polling averages. At the same time, even though I think we might see that number dips some more. I think you could see three, four, five point margin

for Raphael Warnock in that Georgia Senate race. I think if you see that in the next seven to ten days, that alone doesn't mean that it's what it's going to look like on Election Day, and we shouldn't jump to any conclusions just because we see a polling dip. Yeah, I mean, Hershey Walker has been leading some polls. Senator Warnock has been leading other public polls. The polling has been all over the map. I've talked to Republicans before this story came out who think, who are getting really confident that Herschel Walker is going to win.

Now, I think that may have been a little overconfidence, and I even anticipated that something like this might come out in the final few weeks, So Walker debating. He's going to debate one time before the November election. This is a race where his campaign has done a good job of keeping him under wraps and kind of gotten him to the talking points lately. But he is a mess when he's out and doing interviews and he's had trouble just articulating policy positions or where he stands on key issues, no less all of us other baggage that's out there. Look, there are a lot of Republicans. The big Republican organizations, the Senate Leadership Fund, which is the super PAC that Mitch McConnell is connected to or the National Republican Senatorial Committee, they are doubling down on Herschel Walker. They know that this race is hugely important for them to win the Senate majority.

So unless the numbers totally collapse for Walker, they're going to be in this to win it no matter what comes out in the skeletons of his closet. Another thing that I think the Walker campaign has been very deft at, maybe because they didn't have much of a choice, I'll grant you is expectations. You know, you mentioned the debate. Nobody expects Herschel Walker to sound like, I mean, I've compared it to like Al Gore, right? In 2000, Al Gore sort of notoriously

ran a campaign like as the smart articulate candidate and George W. Bush was the moron. And then right ahead of the debates, they realized the huge mistake they had just made. And you had Al Gore out there saying he's actually an excellent debater. And Richards is a better debater than I am. And he crushed her and everyone, like, S&L made fun of it. I mean, it was so ham-handed to try to switch those expectations at the last minute. Again, you have Herschel Walker out there saying he's not a smart guy that he expects Warnock to wipe the floor with him and stuff. So going into these debates, whether it's Georgia or Pennsylvania, do you think any of them will matter? And what would be moments that would actually change the trajectory, if any, given the expectations, frankly, in both

Pennsylvania and Georgia are kind of already pretty set. So, Sarah, you know what this debate reminds me of? It's the Biden-Sara Palin debate in 2012. Remember when Sarah Palin was like, you know, Joe Biden's a vice, you know, he's a senator, he knows out of debate, he knows pa. And she lowered expectations, I think, to the point where pretty much everyone agreed that she did pretty good, did a pretty effective job at that big one-time VP debate in 2012. I think that's a smart play by Walker lowering expectations.

just a good old country boy competing against a preacher, preacher. He has a good team around him. That is a smart political downplay expectations. But look, there's all this other stuff now. This is beyond the debate at this point. It's can you tell the truth? Can you be credible about your very, very messy, to put it mildly, personal life? Another thing that is sort of creeping up is split-ticket voters.

So you remember back to 1984, Ronald Reagan wins 49 states, something unimaginable today. And for the last 20 years, we've seen just a rise in partisanship, a fall in split-ticket voters to the point that we thought they were extinct, the fewest competitive congressional districts that we've ever seen, really. And yet, if you're looking at the polls right now, you can't help but notice that Pennsylvania, Georgia, New Hampshire, even Ohio, they could all have split. ticket outcomes where one party wins the gubernatorial race and a different party wins the Senate. So you know what all those races have in common is that they have really weak candidates. And you know, this is like, you know, I've been covered politics for 20 years. You've been kind of doing at the same time. And I forget about some of these elections, right? Like we talk about all these campaigns you've worked on or I've covered.

I was talking to someone the other day about the Claire McCaskill Todd Aiken race in Missouri, which is now a pretty red state. I forgot that Todd Aiken didn't just live. lose that race, but he lost by double digits. It was not a close race, even though that should have been a really good pickup opportunity. And yes, we've gotten more partisan. Yes, we've gotten more tribal since 2012, but really bad candidates always lose winnable races. And sometimes it's not even close, right? Doug Mastriano was probably going to lose Pennsylvania because he's so extreme and so, you know, the campaign is fairly incompetent that it's a double digit loss is looking much, much more likely at this point.

Blake Masters doesn't seem to want to be appealing to your swing voters. And that's not helping. I wanted to ask you about Blake Masters, because you brought him up at the beginning, too. Why do you think Blake Masters is such a weak candidate? Because when he first came on the scene, I thought some of his ads about not needing two incomes to be able to have a family in America sounded very reminiscent of some Democratic ads. I remember from, like, Iowa in the 1990s. Some of it is just style, right? I mean, Kerry Lake is, a good chance of winning the governorship, and she's arguably just as extreme or outside the mainstream as Masters is, maybe more so. But it's how he comes across. It's how he feels like he

needs to portray his views on a whole lot of issues. He tries to be confrontational for the point of just being confrontational. He says things, he said things in the primary, at least, talking about banning abortion, talking about the Unabomber being an underrated political thinker. again, these are things that would probably be disqualified, not just in 2003, but probably like 2015, any one of the things that mastered the abortion comments, he also wanted to privatize Social Security, that was also on record in the primary on video. This is stuff, any one of those things would probably be disqualified just five, six years ago. Now, again, because we're more tribal and more partisan, it's not having as much of an

impact, but look, his numbers are well below where any Republicans should be. in Arizona and the McConnell Super Pack pulled out $9 million on his I mean if you're not he might have lost anyway but he's probably going to lose by a bigger bigger margin because he's been outspent largely because Republicans have very little confidence in his campaign interestingly there's certainly some parallels to be drawn between Blake Masters in Arizona and J.D. Vance in Ohio but the big difference is that Ohio is a plus nine plus 10 Republican race so you have to fall a lot further in Ohio to lose as a Republican. Nevertheless, Tim Ryan, the Democratic nominee, really sort of a masterclass in how to try to win a, how a Democrat should try to win in a deep red

state, right? He's actually trying to persuade voters, appeal to Trump voters, say, I get it. Like, I understand the tariffs issue and the trade issue and look at my record. It's actually better. But I wonder if you, if you think these Peter Thiel can't. candidates have a future in the Republican Party, or if the, even if J.D. Vance pulls it out in Ohio, whether that'll be too tight to make people see that as a victory. So the one thing that the Peter Thiel candidates all have in common, so you've got Vance, you got Masters, and you've got this guy, Joe Kent, who beat Jamie Herrera Butler in a Washington State congressional primary. The one thing that they all have in common is that they're badly underperforming where a Republican should be.

So we talked about master masters. And we'll probably a generic, Doug Ducey would be leading or at least be tied with Senator Kelly. I would, given this environment, given the fundamentals, I think at least you could expect someone like Ducey to be tied if he ran for the Senate against Mark Kelly. You know, again, you talk about Ohio. That's a Trump plus eight state. I think J.D. Vance is going to win, given that partisan nature and given how Republicans are now spending money on his behalf. But, you know, look, it took a lot of money and he's probably not going to win it by eight points. probably going to be like half that when all is said and done. And, you know, again, Washington

State, this is a pretty Trumpy district. It's, I think, is a Trump plus three district. And it's one where Republicans are getting a little worried about their nominee that he could cost them what should otherwise be a safe seat. So we'll wait until Election Day to see where the results are. I mean, this is where the polls are and the expectations are at this point. But it does seem pretty clear that the three feel candidates running on this national conservative heterodox kind of positioning, especially on foreign policy, they're underperforming where Republicans should be. And you can't win swing states. You can't win swing districts with that time. You're losing Republican states and Republican districts. Imagine the bluer states and the swing states

that would come in play if that was the Republican Party message. Do you think Republicans take back the Senate? Well, I think the number of seats either party can win is pretty low. Like, the majority is going to be no more than 52 seats and maybe 51 seats. You know, I'd say it's at least a 50-50 proposition. If you asked me before this Herschel Walker News came out, I would have given Republicans, you know, a slight advantage. But this Walker stuff all of a sudden makes it more of a pure toss-up. Pennsylvania, it's going to come down to Pennsylvania. It's going to come down to Dr. Oz.

Dr. Oz, the, you know, the eyes of the Republican Party are going to be attuned to Pennsylvania and Dr. Oz's campaign. So Nevada is looking good for Republicans. If you look at the polling that Senator Mastow is, Cortez Mastow is losing in the latest round of polling to Adam Blacksalt. But you have Walker's latest problems in Georgia, and then it comes down to Dr. Oz and John Fetterman in that big Pennsylvania Senate race. I want to talk about Nevada just a little bit, because the two races that I'm probably most interested in as, you know, bellwethers for 2024, I'm really watching. Nevada and the Los Angeles mayor's race. I'm very curious how those two shake out. Nevada, the Latino vote, do we see a shift in Latino men moving closer to the Republican Party or staying

home from the Democratic Party as some Democrats fear in that state? And in Los Angeles, where you have two Democrats running against each other, Karen Bass sort of endorsed by every national state Democrat really, against Rick Caruso, who's largely self-funded. But keeping that race very tight, again, campaigning in a lot of Latino communities in the city and campaigning largely on these quality of life issues, crime and homelessness, will be very interesting, I think, sort of for larger predictive reasons to watch those two races. Curious what do you think about those? If there's any other races that you're watching for those larger trend questions.

So starting with Nevada, that is one of those, I always believe demographics is destiny. and one thing we saw, like in 2018, it was the suburban vote that moved from the Republican Party and the Democratic Party in the wake of Trump. And that was a key. When I look at states and districts with high sort of upscale suburban voters, that's more of a Democratic constituency these days. Republicans actually won a lot of rural and exurban districts back in 2020 when they did really well in the battle for the House. In Nevada, you've got a mix of both, you have a lot of working class or middle class workers around the Las Vegas. area that are not affluent. They're working at the casinos. They're feeling the pinch for because of the

high gas prices in the state. The pandemic did a doozy on the, on the travel industry and the casino, the casino industry down there. And it's really put a pinch on a lot of the workers that have been the lifeblood, a lot of Hispanic and working class voters that have been the lifeblood of like the Democratic Party machine. Harry Reid is no longer around. And the Hispanic vote that large, but including in Nevada, is not as engaged with the Democratic Party. And some of those working-class voters are actually becoming a little more Republican, a little more conservative. They're voting their values. They're voting their pocketbooks, which are taking a pinch lately. So that Nevada is a much more working-class state. It's a much more Hispanic state than a lot of

the other battlegrounds. And those two constituencies have shifted to the Republican Party in recent years. So, yeah, there's a risk for Democrats that the state could go Republican. It could be a pretty Republican sweep in the state of Nevada, not just in the Senate race, but Republicans think that is their best opportunity to flip a governorship, the state of Nevada, with Governor Cicillac, and there are three House seats that Democrats hold that could go Republican. The Los Angeles mayor's race is a little different. I mean, it's a Democrat, Democrat race where they, issue of crime is really a major, major issue. There was a poll in the Los Angeles Times that

caught my eye because I'm not following the mayor's race as regularly as some of these other contests. But it was really interesting because it showed that Caruso, the more moderate tough on crime candidate, was doing a lot better when more people voted, when the turnout was higher. And Karen Bass, the congresswoman, was doing better. She had a double-digit lead if it was a lower turnout with sort of white liberal voters showing up. But if more Hispanic voters turn out, that the poll suggested would be very good news for the more moderate Rick Caruso. And you're seeing that, I mean, Democrats have become the party of these white bougie progressives that control the party leadership that tend to have a lot of influence within

the party leadership. And yet a lot of their voters, a lot of African-American voters, Hispanic voters, Asian American voters, are not with that program. And you're seeing these divisions within cities, within some blue states and districts. You're seeing it in Oregon, like you're asking about other races where you can see these trends percolate. In Oregon, you have a divide with the Democratic Party, where you have a nominee from governor, Tina Kotech, who is super progressive. And then there's another Democrat who's running as an independent because she thinks that the Democratic Party has gotten crazy and too far to the left on issues like. crime and homelessness. And that's opening up a really big opportunity for the Republicans to

win in Oregon. You're seeing that in Washington State, too. I don't think Patty Murray is going to lose, but the reason everyone's talking about Tiffany Smiley is because the issue of crime is a huge, huge one in Seattle and the Seattle suburbs. So what does that tell us about 2024 and a presidential cycle? I mean, A, I guess you have to start with the, there's two elephants in the room? I mean, one is, does Joe Biden one and run? One is, does Donald Trump run? But thinking of just the parties as a whole and who their constituencies are, you know, I saw one piece of data where Democrats now hold a bigger advantage among white college-educated voters than they do among non-white voters, i.e., the Democratic Party is becoming more highly educated, more white, more well-white,

at the same time that the Republican Party is becoming all the opposite of those things. More working class, more non-college educated voters, and more racially diverse. Now, I want to be clear, when I say more, I mean trendline, not absolute terms. The Democrats still hold an absolute advantage with non-white voters, of course. But it's slipping. It's slipping. And those same white liberal voters are the ones who hold positions on some pretty key issues well outside the political mainstream.

And the issue of crime is, I mean, that is a dominant issue in some of these races. The Monmouth poll that came out this week had crime as the number two issue across the country. Abortion was number seven. Crime was number two second to only inflation. And I just don't understand how you have so many Democrats in key positions that are not understanding that you, it's not just, they finally got to the message that you can't call for defunding the police. You've got to fund the police. Now they've done a 180 on some of the messaging on that.

But it's about progressive prosecutors that aren't prosecuting, you know, misdemeanors and felonies in these cities. It's about these guys getting released on bond and continuing to commit crimes in major metropolitan areas and cities across the country. Quality of life has declined not just on an economic level, which is the number one issue, but it's on the safety issue, safety and security issues that are just central when things go bad to many voters' decision-making processes.

So, Pennsylvania, in Wisconsin, the Senate may just get decided on the issue of, if Dr. Oz wins in Pennsylvania, it's because Fenerman was seen as too far to the left on crime. If Ron Johnson, who's very vulnerable, if he loses the Mandela Barnes, sorry, if he defeats Mandela Barnes, it's because Mandela Barnes was seen as far to the left on the issue of crime. So those, like those liberal, white liberal boutique issues, immigration also is. in that playbook where the positions on the left tend to alienate a lot of folks in the middle, that could cost for the Democrats, the Senate. Like, they certainly have a chance to win it this year and hold on to their narrow majority, but they're blowing races of their own

because they have candidates to the extreme or too far to the left on some key issues. I'm sure you're on the exact same campaign email lists that I'm on. And it has looked to me that Republicans have been incredibly disciplined on this crime. issue. You cannot get them off the crime message, especially hitting a candidate like Fetterman. I mean, every day, you know, you and I are both getting oppo, basically, on Fetterman, and it's all the crime issue. I feel like Democrats, we keep seeing stories from reporters at least talking about abortion, sticking on that abortion message. But A, as you've said, on any poll, abortion might be in the top 10, but it's in the bottom of the top 10, and it's hovering sometimes.

it drops below the top 10 lately a lot more. And two, I am still not convinced that it's actually abortion and that we're not just seeing people give the answer that is sort of the partisan shibboleth answer in some of those polls. And that the trend lines we saw happening over the summer towards Democrats were because of a lot of other stuff happening at the same time. Gas prices falling. Joe Biden having legislative wins, you know, sort of a change in the Ukraine-Russia situation a lot of things that moved very quickly all in that end of June, July time frame, the same time Dobbs came out. It's not to say that abortion is meaningless to Democrats. It's not. But we seem to rely on these polls a lot where people sort of see what the partisan answer is.

Republicans did the same thing when you gave them options like abortion, now immigration. That scene is like the partisan answer versus, you know, splitting up issues like economy, inflation, jobs, things like that. And Kristen Sultes Anderson has done a great job explaining why some of these, what's the most important issue questions, can actually be as much misleading as they can helpful if you're just looking at the, you know, oh, top 10, look, there's abortion. Yeah, and Kristen's analysis is invaluable. I mean, she's one of the best out there.

And her analysis on the, like, it sometimes can be very tricky to read some of these issue polls because of the way the question is worded because of how you kind of divide up the issue questions. You know, the one thing I say about the kind of where the politics are on what the most important issue is, you see the basis of both parties reacting to secondary issues like the Democrats, well, abortion, to be clear, abortion is a motivating force for Democrats to go to the polls. It's a base issue and maybe it flips some of these suburban women that are making up their minds in the final days. But it largely is the biggest impact on the campaign trail is but they energized the Democratic base, which was a moribund in the spring of this year.

Immigration is a similar issue for Republicans where, you know, frankly, independent swing voters are not, unless you live on the border. If you're in Arizona, if you're in Texas, it's different, but if anywhere else, it generally is just an issue that drives the base, drives the conservatives to go to the polls. The issue of the economy is what drives independence. If you're having trouble paying for gas or groceries. The lot of independents are people who are not paying attention to politics like you and I are. They're not paying attention to Herschel. They're not paying attention. They're actually more normal than the two of us, right? And that's good. And they're not following the day-to-day headlines, but they are following the day-to-day gas prices.

And they are the folks who are going to break late. And all the data suggests they're probably going to break much more towards the Republican Party because the Democrats are in power and they're getting blamed for the state of the economy. And I think crime is also like the issue consistently that Republicans have held an imposing advantage on. And it's one of those issues, again, where I don't understand why it took Democrats so long to moderate their views on, like, funding the police. Like, that was easy to do.

It took almost a year for that message to get in place. Yes, you do. You know why? Because campaigns are staffed by the 20-somethings and early 30-somethings that are college-educated, much more likely to be white, wealthy, they fit into a very specific demographic. And by the way, this is true on the Republican and Democratic side. But the problem is for Democrats because Democrats who fit that demographic tend to be on the far extreme liberal side of their party, whereas Republicans who fit that demographic tend to be on the moderate side of their party.

So I totally agree with that. But I think when I started covering politics, more people in the campaigns, they put their views aside to win races. And I see less of that. I don't know if that's your impression too, Sarah, but I totally agree with your assessment, but it used to be that people could separate their own personal views from the politics, but now I see a little bit,

a lot of campaigns having a tougher time to do that. That's what you're seen in Wisconsin. Absolutely. That's what you're seeing in, like, even in Pennsylvania, it's really interesting because I think Federman's done a good job responding to the attacks, but fundamentally he has a record about,

he's like, as lieutenant governor, Fetterman is head of this parole board where he recommended lighter said or recommended people serving life sentences that did you know we're on good behavior in jail to get out early and it's based on his principles like that is what one of the things he stood for his entire political life his entire political career but now it's becoming a big political problem and he's having trouble trying to explain it to these voters that don't agree with him on some of his views on criminal justice. Can I give you my weird theory on why we're seeing that trend in campaigns that we didn't see before, despite the demographics

being the same. It is actually, my theory is that Donald Trump has helped Republicans in a totally unintentional way in this regard, because Donald Trump so effectively alienated the upcoming generation of college-educated students, that whereas, you know, certainly college students always skewed left. The numbers are now, it's not a skew. It's like all the way. There just are so few Trump identifying college students on these major campuses that the Democratic students on the campus never interact with them, don't know they exist. And so some of that polishing for campaign operatives was happening in those very formative years. Republican operatives like me were learning to speak liberal language. And liberal operatives,

we're learning to speak a little bit of conservative language to think about voters who didn't look like where they came from and all the people they were surrounded with, but not anymore. Trump killed off all of the Republicans on these college campuses. And so the Democratic operatives coming from that college cohort are showing up on campaigns, thinking that everyone they know thinks the way they do, therefore voters think the way they do. And they're missing that important friction that used to exist in college campuses. that is I'm obsessed with this topic because like it is as a reporter fascinating to hear it used to be a lot of times the conversations would be just on on the politics like what are people saying or thinking in any given state or district but now you do see candidates that are unwilling to moderate a position or unwilling to say the more politically correct thing because they just are in their in their bones they just do not want to you know go against their values or go against what they what they treat. really believe. And it's not just crime is one of the big issues. Education, like

Glenn Yonkin race in Virginia was such a good example of, you know, how the blind spot on some these cultural issues, you know, gender identity is the new, one of these new issues that's out there. And look, it's, it's, it's, you can, you can, you can, you can look at the polls and see where the public is. And then that's what politics is about. And that's what I cover, right? I mean, popularism as David Schorke, at least made popular, if not coined. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer

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dot com slash dispatch. Application times may vary. Rates may vary. Let's talk to Santis Trump before we go looking at the 2024 Republican field. And if you want to get into the 2024 Democratic field, happy to do so. What do you feel like happens after November on the Republican side? Are we going to have a repeat of 2015 where 17 candidates jump in the race? Is everyone going to sit and wait to see Trump is the first mover? Did the hurricane help or hurt DeSantis? What happens next? So, Sarah, I've been on record saying that I don't think Biden and Trump are going to run again. Like, I just, I'm betting first. Both of them. Yeah, I think we're going to see a fresh slate when all

a sudden done. Not that, you know, not that. I just think that's what the voters want. I think if you look at the polling, people may say they like Trump. They say, actually, they say they don't like Biden. They like Trump within the respective parties, right, with Republicans and Democrats. But look, I think there's sort of a centripetal force like pushing Biden and Trump together. Biden only will run if Trump is running and Trump wants. I think there's a good chance that we reset our politics. And that would be a wide open, that would present a wide open field on both sides. It would be ugly, ugly primary fights especially, well, on both sides.

But Descantles is so far ahead on the Republican side. I've gone back and looked at all the polls to find any equivalent. It's not there for the last 30 years. So the one thing I'll say about DeSantis is I think a lot of politics, presidential politics, is situational. And DeSantis is a lot more formidable if he's the guy that runs against Trump, I think. Some people think DeSantis would be a huge frontrunner if it was just him and other Republicans. I think DeSantis is able to build a broader coalition against Trump because there are a lot of sort of, I like Trump, but I don't want him to be the nominee again, folks, who will get behind DeSantis as that vehicle to stop Trump, or just as a preferred vehicle to look going forward instead of looking backwards.

If it's a wide open Republican field, a lot of DeSantis's vulnerabilities come out in the open. Like, I think DeSantis is, there's a lot of things, he has a lot of things going for him. He really reflects the id of the conservative movement these days, and that's really important. but he's also not very good in the I have a hard time seeing him at a New Hampshire Town Hall or an Iowa, you know, Iowa State Fair like that stuff, if Trump is out of the picture and you're talking about Glenn Yonkin

and you're talking about, you know, all these other Republicans, he would be a strong candidate, no doubt, but compare Yonkin. You look at Yonkin's more natural political skills and someone who also has been able to bridge the gap between the Trump skeptical voters and the pro-Trump Republicans. I think that would be a much more competitive type of contest

where DeSantis's positions, tone, ability to run for a whole national campaign would be scrutinized in a way that they wouldn't necessarily as much if he was going against Donald Trump. DeSantis also behind the scenes seems to have a bit of the John Kasich problem. People really like him forward-facing, but behind the scenes, you can't find a lot of Republicans who really like Ron DeSantis. And I mean in the like, you know, fellow governors or whatever who are like, oh, yeah, I love getting a beer with Ron. You're not going to find that.

And it was also as someone who had family members who really liked Ron, I mean, John Kasich, I was trying to tell them. I was like, no, no, no. Nobody likes him. He's not, I mean, not a popular guy among his own party elites at least. So that's an interesting issue. Okay. Democratic side, assume for a second Biden doesn't run, I feel like right away there's a decision of he either endorses his own vice president or he has to choose not to endorse his own

vice president. Yeah, this is why Democrats, they don't want, they think Biden's too old, you know, to run and they worry about that being the elephant in the room in 2024 if he does pursue a re-election campaign, but they also, if he doesn't run, worry about the. civil war that would take place within the Democratic Party. And you just mentioned one of the very uncomfortable questions that would have to be asked, whether Biden would endorse his vice president, assuming she runs. It sounds like if Harris has that opportunity, she's going to take it.

And she would start as a nominal frontrunner, as a sitting vice president who has name ID and has a profile compared to everyone else who would get in that race. But if you talk to Democrat, and this is so widespread that it's been written about many, many times. there are very few Democrats that have confidence in her political skills, and they think she would be a very weak presidential candidate in the primary and especially in a general election. The problem is she's a weak general election candidate, but if Democrats at sort of that national level turn their back on her, like Joe Biden or the other candidates who could run against her and, you know, cause real damage, I think they also stand to alienate a very important

part of the Democratic base. That's right. And African Americans were key to Biden's support. And They tend to back the people who have the experience. That was the genesis in African-American voters in South Carolina going with Joe Biden. And if you listen to Jim Clyburn talk about 2024 politics, he said that, like, Kamala Harris is going to inherit a lot of that support if she decides to run for president. So anyone who wants to take on Kamala Harris is going to have to essentially dislodge that default support that might happen, that would go to her, you know, assuming she runs. and, you know, starts out running a credible campaign. But look, I think there are a lot of Democrats that censor vulnerability. They think that she would not clear a field.

They would challenge her in a primary, and then it would get messy. Then it would be a battle between the party's progressive wing and the moderate wing. It would be an identity politics primary, where you'd have a lot of negativity thrown around in a way that could be very damaging for the party's long-term interests. And that's what Democrats are worried about. They just, they have worries. about Biden's age, and if Biden is presided over a weak economy, that's going to be another

vulnerability for 2024. But at the same time, boy, a wide open Democratic field with the divisions that the party is facing. That's not a welcome proposition either. I don't try, I'd rather, I try not to leave my house very often. I really prefer sitting home and being in sweatpants. So this is not a huge data sample. But pretty much every time I've left my house for the last three weeks, the number one conversation I stumble into is why is she such a bad candidate. Well, boy, some of it is just the gaffs. I mean, you can see. I'll start from the beginning. She was great when she was a Democratic senator from California on the Senate Judiciary Committee. I mean, she was putting lead on the target. She was one of the most formidable Democratic members

in the Senate. And then her presidential race fell flat as vice president has been gaff after gaff. And she can't get any momentum. And in fact, seems to continue to lose altitude. So three things. Number one, I always like to look at the back of a candidate's baseball card to see how they performed in politics. And even before she ran for president, she barely won in California in 2010. People forget that. She won by the narrowest of margins at her first statewide campaign. She had trouble even running against another dumb, and she ended up winning pretty comfortably,

but she faced only a Democrat in her one Senate campaign, and there were some issues about the competence of that campaign against Loretta Sanchez. And then she didn't even make it to Iowa as a possible frontrunner. in the presidential primary. So that's two big strikes and one big question mark just on her political record in a very blue state. You know, number two, she showed poor judgment in terms of where to position herself

within the party in that 2020 campaign. You had Bernie, you had Warren, you had so many Democrats running to the left, it was pretty clear that that lane was pretty clogged. She had this actually broader appeal as an attorney general as someone who, you know, could unify a lot of different factions within the party. She got excitement because of her biracial background or African-American background.

She excited a lot of different constituencies in the party. And yet she went to the left and she appealed to that narrow, narrow progressive slice instead of going to the Biden play, which was what allowed to win the nomination. And then third, just the gaffs, just the lack of good instincts as vice president, whether it's, you know, just most recently, you know, saying we had an alliance with North Korea when she was at the DMZ or, you know, having a ham-handed conversation with Joe Manchin at the beginning of her term in terms of trying to get him on board for a key. I mean, the list goes on. We could go, we could talk about that record for quite some time, but that she hasn't shown the ability

to do a good interview or to really kind of get the ball moving for her key priorities in the White House. All right. Last question. Biggest change is a reporter over your career in cover. politics. From my perspective, it seems to be the interview, right? Candidates no longer really feel the need to interact with reporters as much as they used to, probably because of the rise of sort of social media, the ability to talk to their voters directly in a variety of contexts, but also this perceived idea that there's sort of reporters on your team and those are the only ones you need to talk to and there's reporters on the other team and why would you bother talking to them, sort of the fall of the persuadable voter concept, I guess, or the rise in distrust of the media.

And I'm curious as someone who's been on the front lines this whole time, what do you think? Yeah, I think you hit on one really important change, which is that a lot of Republican campaigns don't view like CNN or a lot of mainstream outlets as fair, and they just don't talk to them. They live in their own ideological cocoon, and they think they can win an election just by talking to their conservatives or to Republican voters. You see this on the Democratic side, too, where some campaigns are in their own bubble. We just talked about this on the show, that they're in their own bubbles as well,

and they don't feel the need to talk to Fox or talk to folks. You know, they're not doing the people at a judge play. They're not, they don't want to go on Fox News, to talk to a very large audience, many of whom are receptive to some types of Democratic candidates. So there's the emergence of these bubbles, you know, within, within, uh, the campaign infrastructure.

You know, I also think just the need for speed, that there's a lot of, uh, you know, the new side, has spent up a long time ago, but we're at the point where news is broken on Twitter, you know, where there's a lot of, there's a lot of noise to the signal. And a lot of, I think this may be changing recently, but there's a lot of publications that sometimes use Twitter as an assignment desk and they don't have a better sense of where voters are. And I think it was when reporters had time to talk to candidates, talk to voters, be on the ground,

really kind of digest the news that they're reporting out. You had a lot more signal. Now you've get a lot of noise and a lot of hysterics, and sometimes it's harder in some of the coverage to see the really important news separated from the social media buzz and all that kind of stuff. And with that again, you can subscribe to Josh's newsletter Sunday sneak at Axios. I promise you I read it every week. Josh, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks, Sarah. With Amex Platinum, with Amex Platinum, Access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets

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