The Dispatch Podcast - Chaos vs. Community

Episode Date: July 31, 2020

As our colleague Jonah Goldberg always says, the parties have never been weaker than they are right now. Democratic political strategist Joe Trippi joins Sarah and Steve today on The Dispatch Podcast to discuss how parties no longer have the power to push out irrelevant, personality driven candidates from the establishment. According to Trippi, this phenomenon is here to stay: “You’re going to have 20 or 30 people in both parties running from now on,” he tells Steve and Sarah. Political outsiders now see throwing their hat in the ring as a win-win situation, because “the worst thing that happens to you if you lose is you get a TV show or you can sell books.” As we approach November 3rd, Joe Trippi believes that Trump allows Democrats to speak to both sides of the aisle, meaning unenthused progressives and politically homeless Republicans. Speaking for progressives, Trippi tells Sarah and Steve “He both inflames our base to turn out and he’s making it possible to reach Republican voters that we could never have hoped to reach.” Check out today’s podcast to hear Joe, Steve and Sarah discuss campaign mechanics, including the Biden veepstakes and both presidential candidates’ fundraising efforts. Joe Trippi has been at the forefront of numerous Democratic presidential, gubernatorial, senate, and congressional campaigns for nearly 40 years. Most recently, he was the senior strategist behind Democratic Senator Doug Jones’ historic 2017 victory. Show Notes: -That Trippi Show -Sarah's new newsletter The Sweep Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to our special Friday Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isker, joined by Steve Hayes. This podcast is brought to you by The Dispatch. Visit The Dispatch.com to see our full slate of newsletters, podcasts, and make sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. We'll hear a little later from our sponsor today, Keeps. So we're joined today by Joe Trippie, famous Democratic operative. He ran the Howard Dean campaign, which for me, back in my early baby operative days, I watched with awe what they were doing and starting and reinventing at that point. He's got a new podcast out called That Trippy Show in which he talks about campaign mechanics. And his latest episode is on his insights into why the Trump campaign has gone dark in Michigan.

Really great for campaign nerds like me. You're in for a treat today. Let's dive in. Steve, I'm particularly excited to have Joe Trippie here because I followed so many of his races before. But do you want to just take a second to talk about y'all's history together? Because I was listening back to a 2016 interview you did with him. And there's some fun stuff that y'all talked about that we've got to bring up. It's amazing.

I listened to that same interview and then I shared it with you, Sarah. I probably should have shared it with you Trippy. so that we weren't just bringing it up out of the blue. But, you know, that's how we, that's how we roll here? Yeah. I was thinking about this, how long have we known each other, Joe, for 15, 20 years or something dating back to our early, early days on Fox doing election nights and debate nights and primary nights and the whole thing.

And neither one of us are doing those anymore. You've moved on. And I think Fox is worse off with. without you, I'm not doing it, and I think probably that could be an improvement that I'm not doing as much better. No, no way. The coverage is probably much better. But it's great to have you, excited to be doing this. And why don't I start with this interview that we did in 2016? I think it's the only, one of the only times I've sat down with my recorder and we did a formal interview and i don't know if you remember the setting um but it was before the vice presidential

debate at i believe it was longwood university in virginia yeah and we were both going to be doing some fox later that night and we got to talk and and the things that you were saying in my mind for one profundity after another after another and i finally just stopped you and i said joe can i just record what we're record our casual conversation together so i did it's 30 minutes long there's another six minute nub and another part of my recorder and i listened to it before uh we got together today and i have to say it's like you were nostodamus in terms of telling us what what was coming um you talked at some length about uh how the parties were splintering and fracturing, how hot button, how candidates that ran on hot button issues

were going to be able to sort of rise up and seize the attention to kind of do these hostile takeovers of parties. And you even predicted Kanye 2020 in 2016. I do remember that in 2016. The best place to start, I think, is to ask you to give us just your general overview of kind of where we are with the parties. And to update your theory that, you know, the way to win in politics, the presidential level in the near future, whatever they do with presidential primary calendars, whatever other adjustments they make, will be to run on these hot button issues. This is exactly, I would say, I mean, certainly how Donald Trump got, got, won the Republican

primary and got elected. This is also, I would say, exactly what was happening in the Democratic primary until South Carolina. And then South Carolina, there was this sort of rising up and return of the establishment. I don't know if that's the right way to put it. But let's start there. Do you think that your theory about these sort of external candidates and these runs that they can make by seizing a hot button issue or three hot and button issues will continue to grow to the detriment of political parties? Yeah, well, I think that's definitely what's going on. I think what happened in the, I actually think it was clear that that was going on in the Democratic primaries this time, except for one problem. There were.

there were too many of them. Each one of them grabbed, you know, Yang grabbed the Yang gang and had his hot issue. Bernie had his, Warren had her selfie lines. I mean, everybody sort of got that you could raise a lot of money and gain a lot of traction. But there was still, so that sort of splintered and allowed, Biden, who had a lot of structural support within the party to get past all of them, despite not having any of that stuff, no digital prowess, no kind of banging on a hot issue. But I also think what was different, what got Biden through was, and it's happening today,

is that within the party, the hot button issue actually was calm leadership. In other words, his, you know, the contrast between Trump and Biden was overwhelmingly supported by rank and file Democrats beyond that contrast between Trump and hot button Bernie or Trump and hot button Yang. In other words, what was going on was actually Biden's Trump hot button is, hey, I'm community, he's chaos. I mean, there's actually a hot button there, you know, my theory, that's actually helping him, even though it's not hot. I mean, not what you and I would normally, oh, yeah, that's so obvious. So, you know, I think what's happened from the beginning this time is this whole campaign has been about chaos versus community. And the hotter a Democrat got, the more they look like they might just add to the chaos. and Democrats over time, you know, going into, that made Biden really stand out as that stable, calm

leader in the chaos versus community fight that I think is going on now and now is working to his benefit in the general election. So based on that thesis and perhaps based a little bit on your 2016 Kanye moment, is AOC, then the next Democratic nominee, whether that's in 2024 or after? Well, I mean, the thing is it's all both parties are essentially done. You know, this is now about personality. You could make the case that that had one, that that, that's been something that's been happening for a while. You could make the case that Obama was the first real sort of personality driven campaign,

I mean, more him than the party. But who do you look to as the rising people within the Democratic Party who could accomplish this? Well, there's going to be, I think there will be the same thing. You're going to have 20 or 30 people in both parties running from now on. Part of this is, hey, the worst thing that happens to you if you lose is you get a TV show or you can sell books. So there's no real impediment to not going. right? We saw this with the Republican Party in 2016, how many, you know, record number of candidates. You now saw it with Democrats. So because the party no longer has the ability

to stop, quote, irrelevant candidacies, it doesn't have the power to do that. And if I can get three or four hundred thousand people to just start me up, I mean, just to get me going, I can make a case out there and keep growing. So I think what's happened is the parties don't have a whole lot of power. They're donor. You used to have to make sure that you had sucked up to the donors, to the big donors in the party, or you couldn't get off the ground in Iowa and New Hampshire. Well, not true in either party anymore. So I think trying to say, well, which ones? There's going to be, there'll be three AOCs, maybe five running. I mean, She may be running against, you know, somebody else in the squad may decide they're going to run, too.

So I think that's it, but it will be personality and driven. And the one thing that's happened, too, at the same time, and this started first in the Republican Party. It happens in both parties, but the first cycle of it with Tea Party happens to the Republicans is, you know, is sort of the ideological purity group who can be solidified behind a candidate. They have a, in this environment, they have, in this sort of hot button environment, they have a big leg up early on in the rest of the, in the rest of the, against the rest of the field. Howard Dean, the guy ran, I managed his campaign in 2003, 2004, against the war in Iraq, and four civil unions for gays,

which was thought at the time, even within the Democratic Party, to be disqualifying. That was one of the attacks they made on us. But we attracted a lot of that ideological fervor within the party. Somebody, you know, is going, just as the Tea Party kind of derailed a lot of Senate races

that the Republicans could have won, you know, as it was hitting its peak, I think there's going to be the same kind of thing that will happen with Democrats eventually, where that the group that wants ideological purity that doesn't understand that what, you know, in this democracy, we've got to compromise. I mean, I'm much rather compromise with Kasich. The people that are screaming don't let Kasich come to the Democratic Convention. Well, wait, it's, it's, you know, politics is addition, not subtraction. You want to bring people in right now. I'd much rather be having a conversation nationally with the KSix of the world about what we're going to do about solving some of these problems, then the two ideological pure groups going at it, nothing getting done. So I think that'll be the fight. Now, I don't know who's going to win that argument. Right now, Biden is winning it. In this moment because I think people have, you know, have seen it sort of go over the cliff on the hot stuff. And in three and a half years, Trump has, you know, created fatigue on that. I mean,

right now, there's just sort of a fatigue like, okay, even if I'm, uh, want to fight, you know, part of this being triggered by all the hot stuff that's going on out there, I've had enough of it for now. Can we just chill? So I'm not, but I don't think that. That's going to mean it goes away, you know. It seems to me that you've seen a divergence between the parties on that question of ideology, because I think you can make an argument that Democrats have, in some respects, become more ideological. And Republicans with Trump as the party head have become far less ideological. I mean, it's far more personality driven, as you suggest.

And many of the same people who were driving the rise of the Tea Party in 2009, 2010, making these sort of ideological demands of the Republican Party trying to pull the Republican Party to the right, trying to get the Republican Party to be serious about debt, deficits, and spending, all of which I agreed with philosophically. many of the leaders of those that movement are are now just trumpists and they're they're supporting a guy who you know does not seem to be to be charitable does not seem to care much about debt deficits spending the kinds of things that drove the tea party so was that how do you explain the differences is that first of all is that correct analysis and secondly why is that why are Republicans gone sort of ideology free and Democrats seem to be more kind of doubling and tripling down on ideology? Well, I mean, first of all, I think it goes to Trump. I mean, he has done both things. I mean, he somehow has taken the Republican Party over, you know, changed the way people

respond on a lot of these issues. It's driven by his personality. At the same time, his personality creates that, you know, whether it's the outrage of the day or whatever from the, you know, where it's caused this sort of emergence of ideological purity on the left. I mean, the ones they want to go out and just, you know, punch back at all costs. And we got to, you know, the whole group that says, look, we've got to really energize our people because we just need to turn more of our people out this time versus trying to get the basics of the world and other Republicans who are bothered by Trump to who looking for some other vehicle, some other way to come over. Well, I keep arguing we can do both. I mean, and by the way, Trump is what lets us do both.

He both inflames, you know, our base to turn out. And he's making it possible to reach Republican voters that we could never have hoped to reach, whether it's those women in the suburbs or younger Republicans or, you know, and now I think even some business, what I would call business Republicans are, you know, are leaning or looking. So I think that's, but here's where I think the danger or the fallacy is in sort of like thinking through the party thing is, you know, I don't think Trump's ever going to go away. I mean, for the Republican Party, when let's argue Trump loses. Are we really kidding ourselves and don't think there won't be mega rallies that he'll be doing all over the country in 2021 and 2022, jumping in on Republican primaries,

punishing anybody who opposed him, and aiding anybody in a primary to elect a Trumpism to the senator of the house. And that's what I mean that where this has become sort of so personality driven is that's the danger now. That, you know, usually, you know, the, the, the, they sort of former presidents fade away in terms of participating in their party or being partisans out there or trying to impact the direction of their party. I don't see any way Trump does that. whether it's Trump TV, I mean, I'm not, and I'm not casting even an aspersion on him. What I'm saying is I think that's the real, that's his personality, that's who he is. And unfortunately for the Republican Party, he's, he, I don't know how you get away from that.

Because he's not, I don't think he's going to just go quietly into the night, win or lose, frankly. Shifting gears a little, but with the background of everything we've just talked about, does Biden's vice presidential pick matter. We think we're going to get it now in the next, you know, few days here. And if it does matter, what would you be advising him behind the scenes? What would you look for? And I've sort of split this into three buckets with Steve of someone who can take over being president, someone who can be a partner as vice president to you, sort of what he was to Obama, or someone who can help your candidacy heading into November. How would you prioritize those? Somebody you can govern with and work with. I don't think, I think the whole thing now of a vice presidential nominee being, you know,

sort of helping you pick off a state or some, or heal some part of the party divide is all overblown. I think any of the three or four that they're talking about are not going to, you know, be a big plus in that regard or do any damage in that regard. So I don't think that one, I think that's the least important. I think being president, you know, being able to step into the job is, you know, that's important, but I also don't think that's going to be the critical thing. I think what's what you have to look at is there's two things. One, how are we, because this is going to be a horrendous mess to try to dig out of. I mean, this is not going to be easy. I mean, both the the on the public health front on just how do you come at local school districts how are we coming

out of this it's i mean the the economy um this is this is going to be a i mean makes what obama faced uh what in and biden faced in in 2008 2009 uh i think it not even close to what to what you're going to have to govern your way out of. And I think it's going to have to be somebody who can help. He's picked somebody who can be what he was to Biden, an equal partner, I mean to Obama, a partner who can help him get things done and govern. Now, what I do want to say about the candidates, though,

So Kamala Harris, whether she fits that or I don't know what their personal relationship is, but the one thing that she has over everybody else, I think, that he's considering, save maybe Warren, is all of them have been, all the rest of them have been really untested. I'm not talking about being vetted and there's nothing in their background. I'm talking about in the heat of a presidential campaign, you know, attacking. somebody in the debate, seeing all the fallout afterwards, watching your numbers go way up, cratering, I mean, all that stuff that Kamala Harris has been through is an asset that not even Susan Rice has in that sphere. She obviously was under pressure at times, but I think

I'm just talking about in that campaign, heat of the campaign, the others are all untested, and I think that might impact how his team advises him and thinking about it. it. Quick follow up on that because you dismissed to some extent that's stepping in as president. Does that mean that you, how do you think Trump's attacks on Biden in terms of his mental acuity? Are those landing? And is that not going to factor in to their vice presidential pick then? Well, no, I don't think it's landing. I mean, everything that I've seen continues to show that even on the you know on that attack joe biden's does better than you know if you ask which one do you think uh has more cognitive ability to be president it's biden not trump um so i don't think

that's going to land i i think that again if i'm biden it's chaos versus community and i want somebody who's going to help me get us out of this and this is the person i've made the case that He's never going to pick Keisha Lance Bottoms, Mayor of Atlanta, to be his VP. But I would make the case that if he said, look, if you look at coronavirus, if you look at police reform, racial tension, if you look at small businesses that have to come out of this somehow, the local school districts that have to decide, are we sending our kids back to school? Who has been in the front lines of that? It's your local county officials.

It's your local mayor. local town officials. I want one of them in, that's the experience America needs today in Washington. I want a partner with me in the White House because what this is going to be about to get out of this is the full force and resources of the federal government of the United States of America working closely with local mayors, local town officials, local county officials, dealing with the important problems they have, giving them the effective guidelines and guidance in resources to deal with it. And that's why I'm picking her. And you want to know who should step in to be president of the United States? Well, we need that. We need that right now. Now, what I'm

saying, so I'm just saying you can make a case. And by the way, that gets back to the chaos versus community. We, this is about you and your community. I mean, I could make an argument. In fact, I've been making it. There's no way they're going to do that. Don't, don't get me wrong. but I'm just sort of pointing to, I think we've overthought what we mean by, what we mean is not another, you know, 60-year-old senator who's, you know, who's been involved in, you know, on Armed Services Committee. You know, that may look like somebody who could step right into the presidency. I'm not sure how that helps get out of the problem.

And I think right now, you know, first thing, do no harm. Don't pick somebody you haven't betted. Don't pick somebody who might melt under the, under the heat, you know, the floodlights of a presidential, you know, campaign. But who am I comfortable with, who I know I will be able to work with and who adds something to the problem? And it may not be another senator, you know, that's all I'm saying. Who do you think of this? No idea. I mean, I have no real insight into it.

You've got to help, you got to help, give us a gas. Okay, I'll, Karen Bass, I'll, I'll throw that, her out as, as somebody. Because of that, I think that's the person that's closest to him, emotionally connected to him, that he, he would trust in the way I'm talking about. But I have no idea who he's going to pick, none. Yeah. Let me ask you a question. You and I have known each other, debated each other for a long time. We don't see much eye to eye on policy issues. You're a strong, proud, progressive. I'm pretty conservative, libertarian. Yep. So you come from, I mean, you know, ran Howard Dean's campaign. He made sort of a left-wing approach. As you said, he opposed the Iraq war at a time when it was polling at 80%. or something, in 2003, the early parts of that campaign, he was for civil unions. You come out of sort of that wing of the party, and correct me if you think I'm wrong,

but are you concerned, given what we talked about, the increasingly ideological movements, I think, I would say, again, more on the Democratic side than the Republican side because of this Trump. Does that concern you at all? I mean, we're seeing this sort of rise of this new wokeism and identity politics not just being part of the Democratic coalition. I would say in many ways driving Democratic coalition. Are there any words of caution there? Or do you view this as a positive trend? Well, look, I think it's something that the Democratic Party has swung back and forth on from the beginning, from the whole 40 years I've been in politics. You know, Ted Kennedy primaries, the sitting president of the United States, Jimmy Carter. Why? Because Jimmy Carter's

too middle of the road and Ted Kennedy, it's time for liberals to take the, to take the reins of the party. You get all, you know, the liberal wing literally, you know, took control of the nominations, you know, you know, from that point on until 92. Why? Because the DLC, pro-business the Democratic wing and Jimmy and excuse me Bill Clinton are arguing that the progressives have taken

over the damn party we need to we need to become more pro-business and move to the middle to win he wins right so then and that starts that era and then we start swinging back again right and so the the difference is I think

and it's the same thing I mean you know whether it's we've always, because we've had that split, you can point to any cycle and point to, you know, three amazing, crazy, whatever you want to call them, you know, pure liberals over here. And at the same time, you've got a Conor Lamb getting elected in, you know, in Pennsylvania. So what I'm saying is it swings, though. there's years where all of a sudden like 2018 frankly most of the people that won those marginal seats were pretty were more mostly moderate um uh democrats uh not they weren't uh you know

pure progressives i'm not saying they weren't progress but i'm just saying so i i think um the the the problem is uh like i said um the party longer has any influence over that, though, right, is what I'm saying. I mean, that may not be a problem. I'm just saying, but both parties, I think, kid themselves if they think they have any control over that anymore. That now, if Donald Trump emerges, God help you in your party, if you think, you know, oh, we can get the donors. I mean, and you found that out in 2016. Let's like face reality here every all the um the established donor base etc in the in the republican party was with somebody else or trying to prop up somebody else anybody else don't let this happen

um didn't work um and by the same that's by the same token could have happened uh this year with with like Bernie and and you know this isn't about not being not liking Bernie Sanders I'm just saying, I think, you know, it would be a different general election, right? I mean, we would be, I think there would be a lot of, it would have to be a turnout your base election under those circumstances. I think Democrats would lose a lot of the support out there that they might, that Biden might be able to get. I mean, I think that's one of the reasons Biden is moving, you know, into these double-digit

leads in some of these states, because what I've been seeing in focus groups is that The GOP women in particular are, you know, when you say look over across the aisle, when they look at Bernie or a hot, whatever you want to call it, Democrat, they, what they literally start to say is, look, you know, I just want to end the chaos. If this is going to be your chaos versus my chaos, I'll stick with mine, right? I mean, that's sort of the way they look at. Instead, they look over it. And there were others, not just Biden, but they said when they looked over at Biden, Globuchar, there were people that you could see them sort of look at and think, well, maybe, maybe, maybe I could do that, right? But there are plenty on our side that, you know, you run AOC, we ain't getting them.

That doesn't mean one of them can't win, but it's going to have to be a totally different strategy. I think Biden, the reason he's succeeding is because he solidifies enough of the Democratic base, and certainly we're going to have to energize more, you know, energize some of it. But he, and again, Trump solves that. A lot of his, you know, Biden's lack of energy with some of our voters, Trump solves that. They're energized to stop Trump. But more importantly, when you put the two things together, that and the, what Trump is doing in terms of driving people away, or at least causing them for the first time in many of their

lives to look at, am I going to vote Democrat? Am I really going to do this? There's Joe Biden. And, you know, he's not, they can say they're going to storm your out of the cities and come get you. I don't think people might buy that about elements of the Democratic Party. I don't think they're ever going to buy that about Joe Biden. That's, that's their problem, you know. I think that's, one of the interesting things is that Trump went dark in Michigan. He's gone dark. Dark. taking his ads off, and so is his I.E. And, you know, first I started thinking, gosh, they've given up on Michigan. How can they do that?

I mean, that means his electoral college vote is shrinking in a place he's got to win. And then it hit me, maybe they haven't given up on it, but maybe they've figured out that the law and order message is not working there. And so instead of... Yeah, that's what Stepion has, it looks like when he has taken over, this is his sort of show of force that he's really taken over that he's pulling down their messaging

to try to tweak it for a couple days because they went dark in a lot of places for Wednesday and Thursday and I think today as well I want to do a little cross-promotional work here Joe so you have your new podcast that I mentioned in the introduction that trippy show

and I started a newsletter called The Sweep both of which have the same idea which is for me we both worked in presidential campaigns quite a bit. And for me,

sometimes watching pundits on TV or on cable news is a little like what it must be like to be a former professional sports player when you see someone say, well, Bob, it's all about which team scores the most points.

And you're like, what? Yeah, I guess. But sort of missing the point. And so your show is really breaking down what the mechanics look like behind the scenes, the decisions that are getting made and how they get made.

You mentioned Michigan for instance, and what that means to you as someone who's been in that room when you decide to take down ads and why you would do that. You mentioned I.E., that's independent expenditure units. A lot of people have no idea that there's these outside groups that can't coordinate with the campaign, but are spending a ton of this money. When we say, you know, Trump and his allies have spent $900 million so far, it's not the campaign. A lot of it is these independent expenditure groups, often super PACs. So, okay, given all of that setup,

the DNC came into this with an enormous monetary deficit compared to the RNC. But there's also just incumbents have four years to continue their winning campaign, keep those people on payroll, keep boots on the ground in some of these states, field operations,

that the challenger, who has to go through a grueling primary, spend down a ton, if not all of their money, and then start building up field operations, their data and digital teams. They come in at a disadvantage in terms of time, money, and people.

I mean, they've got a personnel as policy, right? Yeah. How do you see this? What are the biggest deficits on the Democratic side for the Biden team and down ballot for that matter because they all get affected by the DNC and how much money there is on that?

And do you see any deficits on the Republican side, perhaps? Yeah, well, look, I think, I actually think most of the challengers on the Democratic side are like as flush as they could. I mean, I've just never seen anything like it. And that again goes to the, it's mostly driven by Trump in terms of low dollar donations and things like that to these campaigns. They're outraising their incumbent Republican senators, a lot of them. You've got to be able to deploy the money too. I mean, you and I both know that money comes in a month before.

It doesn't do you a lot of good. Yeah. No, well, they're all pretty much flush now. The real problem in the Democratic side is there aren't, there isn't enough experienced talent in the party to work in all these campaigns. In other words, what I'm saying is normally you would have four or five. the Biden campaign has sucked up a lot of the best, you know, press secretaries for this state, that state, campaign managers, you know, running this state or running that state. So you've got a presidential campaign, you know, that is like that the party believes this is the,

you know, this is the most important campaign election in our lives. A lot of the best have gone there. And then you have all these different Senate races and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, house races out there that are competitive and where there's a real, you know, real chance at picking off, you know, far more than the three or four seats that people talk about. And so a lot of it is, it's, I think there's more finding the people, there's a lot of inexperienced campaigns out there. But, you know, the other side of that is, I think, you know, some of the best campaigns I've been involved in were made up of people who hadn't done it before, right?

Because they're going to look at how to, you know, doing it differently or buying it. The Dean campaign, I was the only, literally the only person I think who had been in a presidential campaign. We failed, okay? But I'm just saying we did a lot of amazing things. So I'm not really worried about the money side of it or where the DNC is on money. And by the way, I think they've been doing a hell of a job catching up. in the last quarter, and I expect to keep seeing that. What about data in digital, you know, especially having these voter files, voter scores?

This is something, by the way, listeners, I'm going to cover in the sweep this week of what that means. But, you know, it's long been the, at least common wisdom on the Republican side that OFA, Obama for America, which turned into organizing for America, never really consolidated on the Democratic side. they spun off into a lot of different vendors, consultants, et cetera. And so all of that knowledge and wisdom was lost to some extent on the Democratic side. Whereas the Republican side, perhaps because of its swampiness, FLS, targeted victory, these, you know, it doesn't really matter listeners, if you don't know who those are, but these are vendors who have stuck with the R&C and it's a revolving door in terms of people working at the R&C versus people working for the outside vendors,

downside, very swampy, upside, that knowledge gets passed on over and over again every cycle. Yeah, I kind of think all this is overblown because I think this is all, again, it goes to what I've been saying. I think everybody's made up their minds. I don't mean this in the, you know, that there isn't movable stuff out there. But I think you either want to reelect Trump or you don't. You either want Biden or you don't. There's a group out there that might be, you know, kind of doesn't like either one of them right now. They're all overwhelmingly for Biden. I'm not sure $5 billion of television and $10 billion on digital is going to change that dynamic. This goes to, so my newsletter is called the sweep because I compare the dynamics of the race to the 44 pound granite stone and curling

that's going down the ice. And then the campaigns are these little brooms that are trying to sweep the ice. They may make a little difference on the margins, but you're not really moving that 44 pound stone from where it's going. So you're saying that maybe it's not a 44 pound stone this cycle. Maybe it's a 150 pound stone this cycle. Yeah, absolutely. And I think now that doesn't mean that there's not going to be some state that one of them wins by, you know, 9,000 votes and we go back and say which one of them, you know, had the best data analytics. They let them target that, you know, and get that done or the best organization. That's certainly possibly going to happen. But the other side of this is, look, all that matter, all of this matters a lot in a two-point

race, like 2016, matters a lot. If this is a 10-point race or a nine-point race, eight-point race, none of it matters. I don't mean that. I mean, there's not enough data analytics shifting going on. Totally true. It's not like Trump, Trump was down by 10, but he won by two. That's not going to happen. So you have to do it all. But the other point I would make is what we started talking about in the Democratic side. There was a guy who couldn't digitally organize his way out of a paper bag, who had no selfie lines, was getting creamed by Bernie Sanders online, raising money, clearly had no data analytics or even run any TV ads of note, who named Joe Biden, who emerged, and

everybody was criticizing it. No digital way behind, has no money. he's dead, et cetera, et cetera, and he survived all of it. And again, it goes back to what I'm saying. He's literally, that's his hot button. He's not any of that. And, you know, and frankly, like, if you sit there trying to figure out how you're going to get on a Zoom call and actually hate the technology because, damn it, I got to figure

out how to do this again, there are a lot of people out there. I mean, it's not the end all and be all. It will make a big difference. That advantage, and I do agree about the advantage they built because of the way they did it within companies and not within just one campaign. And so when Trump goes, that's the one thing. Those databases will still exist because they exist inside a corporate structure, a company, not they don't go away with his campaign. I think that advantage is real. I think it's a disadvantage for the Democratic Party, and it's one that we're, and by the way, that's always been the case.

The Dean campaign developed and pioneered. Why? Because we had to, no one in our party was going to give us any money or give him a time of day. The Obama campaign took that, learned from it, built on it, had more powerful tools, and the Republican Party did nothing. Why? Because George Bush is president and we can raise money with big checks and big dinners and we don't, we know. That's, yeah. And so they sat through that. Then Obama wins. We go, man, we are geniuses. We've got this all figured out. They'll never catch us. The Republican Party goes like, oh, man, we got to invest a ton. We got to like figure out how to how to beat them at this. We've got to build a better mouset than they built. And they do. And now to some extent, I think, think that it's all turned the other way again. We're now, you know, scrambling to catch up. To the extent, I think the Trump campaign obviously keeps building what it's done, but I think a lot of, you know, sitting on, they think they did it same, you know, we know how to do this,

we did it this way. That last time we're going to do it again. We'll see. You know, that's, I'm not sure it's a big enough advantage given where the president is and the whole he's, Doug himself, I'm not sure that we're going to be close enough. You know, this looks a lot to me, sort of like 1980. You know, you had Jimmy Carter, unpopular president, running for re-election. You had Reagan. People were concerned about his age. I mean, I know, you know, a lot of the same, you know, it's more pronounced with Biden and Trump,

but you know what I'm saying. And we, I just remember. waking up on election night, you know, it was pretty clear Reagan was going to be the elected president. What wasn't clear to anybody, I don't think, was that 12 Democratic Senate seats were lost that night. Twelve. Yeah. I mean, we're talking about Birch by and, you know, I mean, George McGovern. Looking at that, Republicans looking at that right now. If you look at the polling, I mean, yeah, that's what I'm saying. The conventional wisdom has swung from Republicans keeping the Senate to Republicans losing a handful of seats.

And now there's talk, 6, 7, 8 doesn't seem crazy. And, you know, there was a Frank Luntz briefing to the Senate Republican conference maybe a month ago. And I think he raised the possibility of even more people who were not focused on right now, not being in the Senate any longer. Is that, do that exactly see this? Yeah. Yes. And that's exactly what happened in 1980. In other words, we thought three or four of those Democrats were in trouble. We did. But no one thought they were going to wake up to 12 Democratic Senate seats being lost. And like I said, you're talking about George McGovern in South Dakota. I mean, it was, these are birch by, I mean, these were giants. Some of these were giants in the party. Not to put you on the spot, but to put you on the spot, who would those? If we're talking about, you know, fill in the blank on election night, it's been that kind of a night for Republicans.

Who are sort of in that next tier that we're not really talking about? We're not seeing national Democrats push a ton of money into those Senate races. But if it's a landslide, landslide, they might not be in the next Congress. I'll name one, by the way, that people are counting on that Joe probably won't mention himself. Republicans are counting on taking back that Alabama seat so that in order for Democrats to win the Senate majority, they need to take four seats plus the White House. But if this is really a thing, Doug Jones holds on to his seat quite handily. Yeah, well, I mean, I think they're wrong on both counts. One, we're, you know, I'm in the Jones campaign. That isn't a done deal the Republicans have it.

It's, you know, it's competitive, but we are well situated to win it. I think he will be reelected. But I also think they're wrong about the other side of it is like that that'll be the race that decides the majority. No, I don't think so. This is going to be much more than the four seats, five seats that would put Alabama be the decider. In fact, if that's the case, it's going to be Georgia because both of those Georgia's Senate seats have a January runoff. So we could be in the situation where, well, either we've won the six, seven, eight seats that I think are possible. and I, like, Alaska is one that I think, I think Texas, I mean, Texas could be one. I mean, I'm just, there, there are places that I'm not, that we're sort of looking at and we're going like, nah, not going to happen in Texas, not going to happen in Georgia.

They'll get close, you know, but produce not going. And I don't, I don't think that that's, I just think that some of those are going to go. In other words, I'm not saying, Purdue, Texas, Alaska, you know, are all, you know, it's going to be a, you know, white, you know, just wipe out. But I do think we're going to wake up, the three or four that we're talking about, Alabama and a couple of the ones that we kind of like, you know, look at and shake our head and go, that's not possible. We're going to wake up and find out, yeah, it happened. The difference, obviously, between 80 and today is we probably would have seen the 12 seats. with all the polling going on. We didn't, you know, there was no 80, 1980 was not like, you know,

everybody and their brother having polling firms out there and, and, you know, Fox and ABC and the Washington Post all doing polling in these races. So, which is kind of like, though, what happened in 2016, frankly, there wasn't a whole lot of polling in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania because everybody assumed that's a blue wall. It's not, no need to poll. there. I don't think that mistake's going to happen this time. I think everybody's going to be pulling everywhere. So we'll probably start to see some of these Senate seats come into play.

I mean, we're talking about there'll be more, we won't be as surprised as we were in 1980 because we'll, we'll be able to see it ahead of time a little bit, at least put them on the radar. Let's pause for a word from our sponsor, Keeps. Guys, two out of three men will experience some form of male patterned baldness by the time they're 35. You either know them or maybe you are in that group. The best way to prevent hair loss is to do something about it while you still have hair left. You used to have to go to the doctor's office for your hair loss prescription. But now, thanks to Keeps, you can visit a doctor online and get hair loss medication delivered right to your home. They make it easy and deliver your medication every three months. So you can say goodbye to

pharmacy checkout lines and those awkward doctor visits. Keeps treatments can take up to four to six months or more to see results, so it's important to act fast. The sooner you start using Keeps, the more hair you'll save. Find out why Keeps has more five-star reviews than any of its competitors and nearly 100,000 men trust Keeps for their hair loss prevention medication. Keeps treatments start at just $10 a month, plus for a limited time, you can get your first month free. If you're ready to take action and prevent hair loss, go to keeps.com slash dispatch to receive your first month of treatment for free. That's k-e-e-e-p-s dot com slash dispatch. Do you give advice to candidates and what is it in a presidential year of how, like down-ballot candidates, of how they can try to

get out from the national trends, how they can run their own race? Well, yeah, you have to to keep it local. If you're in that situation, you've got to keep this you versus your opponent and keep it local. And that's really, really, the one thing I'll tell you is that that's very tough to do with Donald Trump as president. I mean, for both sides. I'm not, I'm not saying, oh, that's a problem for the Republican Party. I'm saying if you're in one of those places where you're fighting this out and you're trying to stay out of that, you know, out of being sort of either tied to Trump's anchor or to Biden's, for that matter, it's very difficult to do in this environment because of the way Trump polarizes things so much. In the Jones race in 2017,

we would go into the lead, and then, you know, Trump went to the panhandle to give that rally for more. More went up by four points. What happened was a lot of the Republicans that we had won over on the, this is between us and Roy Moore, and we were winning that battle with him, would get polarized and go home and vote party, you know, and say, no, I'm voting for Roy Moore. And so he went up by four points that Friday night, may have been Thursday night. I think it's Friday night. Saturday, we were tracking. He was up by three. Sunday, he was up by two. Monday, he was up by one. Tuesday, we won by 23,000 votes. I've always thought, Did Trump come, came in on Sunday and not on Friday?

Roy Moore would have been elected the senator because that's the way Trump can create a diversion or a attention-getting moment that's that polarizes people. And that would happen, by the way, he didn't have to come to Alabama to do it. It would just be something that happened, you know, in the coverage on Fox, ABC, CVS, CNN and, you know, and, you know, on something he did yesterday that temporarily causes people to retreat and then it recedes. It's really fascinating to sort of like track it. And by the way, it's getting less and less. And there's, what's fascinating to me is it's not working like that anymore. In other words, you know, something that might have sort of made four points move is now, you know,

two, one. And it used to take three or four, five days for it to sort of drift back. It's now, you know, could be gone two days later. I mean, people, there's an, it's like a fatigue of, like a Trump fatigue of those kind of antics are, are getting him diminishing returns. And particularly with older Republicans, which I think has to be COVID, I don't have any data to fully understand what it is, but I think it's got to be COVID. related that his handling of the crisis has caused and their concern for their health and

being vulnerable has created a problem. So we're so thrilled that we've had you here. And we always end on something a little less work related, a little less business. So your podcast is called that Trippy Show. And it has like the 70s motif for the font. And it made me think, I mean, your last name has been Trippy your whole life. And I was wondering, what was your, did you have a nickname in junior high in high school that people called you? Because your last name was Trippy at a time where that word had some heft. Everybody for my entire life has called me Trippy. No one calls me, Joe. No one. I think at the beginning of the podcast, I called you Trippy, didn't I? Yeah, as I was saying, everybody from day one. I remember, I ran for a student body

vice president of San Jose State University, right? And and I didn't do anything. I didn't do anything. And when I ran for the student council the first time,

won by a landslide. And I realized after it, I wrote in my book that I think the only thing if I had like been Tommy Tommy Muskelyne or something like that. Maybe I would have done better, right?

I mean, it was like, it was trippy. That's what it was. It was the name that did it. So, but yeah, it's that trippy show. And I hope people will check it out wherever you get your podcast. Steve, I have to ask, did you have a nickname growing up? I never really did. in college

a friend of mine tried to get people to call me Biggie because we'd go to Wendy's and I would always get the Biggie fries and Biggie Drink

but it never I'm not Biggie Smalls I mean it did not really take it. Somehow I feel like when people tried to nickname Steve he like beat them up or something he was like the cool kid who like you couldn't nickname.

Did you have one? I did. In fact, I had a nickname in high school so much so that nobody knew my real name when I graduated. So when they announced, you know, when you like cross the stage and they said my real name, people had no idea who that was in my class. And then they were like, whoa, wait, her name is Sarah. And this nickname was. And the nickname had a nickname. So the nickname was Muppet was the formal name. And then I was called Mupp for four years. Mupp. Mupp. Yeah, because my freshman year, people thought that when I laughed, my head, like, went all the way back like a Muppet. And, you know, being a child of the very early 80s, there were a lot of Sarahs. So it was pretty necessary to have something that was not just Sarah. That's funny. That's funny.

Thank you, Joe, so much for joining us. It's a treat to nerd out with you on campaign mechanics, and I hope we can do it again soon, especially as this cycle continues. And just like 2016, a lot of the mechanics that I think we take for granted or like, well, you have to do this, you know you this, get thrown out the window in 2016, and now they're getting flushed down the toilet in 2020 with the pandemic. So it'll be really interesting to talk to you maybe when this is all over to see what surprised us this time. Absolutely.

Absolutely. Really enjoyed being on. Thanks for having me. And let's do it again, definitely. Thanks, Trippy. You know,