The Dispatch Podcast - Mo Elleithee Talks New Battleground Poll

Episode Date: July 28, 2022

Mo Elleithee, founding executive director of Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics and Public Service, joins Sarah to talk about the complexities of politics. Results from a new Battleground Poll are in, and it’s clear that most Americans believe that the state of our politics is “really bad.” What happened and what can we do to fix it? Also on the agenda: Alaska’s interesting nonpartisan primary system, and the Democratic National Committee’s recent decision to make states bid for early waivers.   Show Notes: -Georgetown Institute of Politics & Public Service Battleground Civility Poll Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isker. And joining me today is Moe Alethi. Mo and I go way back. He was at the DNC when I was at the RNC. Now I'm hosting this podcast and he is the director, first director of the Georgetown Institute of Politics. They have a new poll coming out. We're going to talk about that and so much else to talk about. Let's dive right in. Mo, I miss meeting up with you at the food trucks. I miss our bipartisan French fry extravaganza. This is what's wrong with politics today. We need more bipartisan food truck excursions. People don't realize how real this was. So the RNC and DNC are about three blocks away.

and in between is where the food trucks all are. And we would stand in line multiple times a week together. It's how we became friends, really. That's right. We'd be trolling each other on Twitter and putting out nasty press releases about one another and then meet up at the food truck, order a taco, and have a good laugh about it.

I do. There's parts of that I regret a little bit in the sense that we even at the time knew that if folks outside knew how much we actually regarded each other and enjoyed each other's company that like that was, we had it as a joke almost that that was like a secret. And then we would, you know, say snarky things on Twitter. I regret that. I feel like we should have done both. You can be partisan and let people know that you respect the people on the other side. And I should have been more forward leaning in that and talked about how we went to food trucks. Just saw Mo with the food truck. Also, he's wrong about

health care. Right. Right. And it's funny now that I've in this, you know, sitting in my ivory tower of academia and hanging out with these students who are so much better than we ever were, Sarah, right? Like they really want to do this better than we are. But one of the things that surprises so many of them is when they hear people like me and you getting along and having friendly conversations, not just for the sake of having friendly conversation, but because we're friends. We actually do this in our free time. We actually hang out. That's exactly right. And I hear students who are like, wow, I'm surprised to see that because that's not what the digital world shows them about people like us. And that is a, that is regrettable. I think on so many different

levels. Yeah, because it is the norm. It used to be the norm. There were a lot of bipartisan friendships. Yeah, this was 2014. We're talking about. the 24-point cycle. Yeah. Well, and this is part of the problem of living in the social media era is the incentive structure just isn't there anymore for it, right? Like, if I were to, if I were still at the DNC and you were still at the RNC and we did tweet out that we hung out with one another, we get our butts kicked on Twitter, right?

Like, this is the incentive structure just isn't there. Well, here we are now, maybe both in more places that fit our personalities a little better than either of the party committees in many respects. That's right. And you'll have this new battleground poll coming out. I wanted to bring you on to talk about what the poll found and then expand on it a little about what it means about our political moment. So what are some of the top lines that you found most interesting? So this is really cool. We work with two legendary pollsters, one Democrat and one Republican, Salinda Lake on the Democratic side at Goaz on the Republican side. Two of them have been doing this battleground poll for about 30 years now together. They've

moved it over to our institute a few years ago, and we added a new component, a civility poll, where since 2019, we have been tracking what voters think about the state of civility in our politics? How bad do they think it is? Who do they blame? Do they want it? And so we're coming out with our latest one, and it's interesting. It shows, I guess, two universal truths. One, that one of the few things that unify us is a recognition of how ununified we are, that people think that the state of our politics is really bad. In this latest poll, we ask on a scale of zero to 100, how bad is it? Zero being no division at all, 100 being the edge of civil war.

The mean score is about just under 72, right? People think we are very high, very high, right? People think we are nearly three quarters of the way towards civil war. And that's actually just a slight uptick. They've been feeling this way now for a few years. Why, right? We ask people a series of questions in this poll about their friends and family. Who are they hanging out with?

and it won't surprise you, I suspect, to hear that people are self-segregating, right? That 60% of Americans believe that all or most of their friends share the same political beliefs, that 55% say all their friends and family vote for the same candidates, 57% say they're all in the same party. And it's not just with politics, right? a majority of Americans say all their friends share the same religious beliefs or the same ethnic group are in the same economic class. So we've sort of self-segregated ourselves into these tribes where we are just not engaging with people who are unlike us. And that leads

to a significant amount of polarization that I think our politics reflects. But having said that, people also are very, very clear when asked to make a choice between a candidate who compromises to get things done versus somebody who is more of a fighter, right, who consistently fights for their values, overwhelmingly people say, no, no, no, we want the person who's going to compromise to get things done. What that means is a different story, right? I mean, in some of our previous polls, we've asked people a question, agree or disagree with the following statements. Compromising common ground or noble goals we want our leaders to aspire to, right? Seventy-eight percent of people say they agree with that. I'm tired of people who compromise on my values. I want them to stand up

and fight on, fight the other side. Seventy-four percent of people say that. So sometimes it's as if people are saying, I want them to compromise as soon as, or I want them to find common ground as soon as they're standing where I'm standing will all be on common ground. But I think the underlying issue here is that people want results and they're willing to compromise some in order to get them. So the poll shows that, you know, people are pessimistic about the state of civility and polarization in our politics. It's in part because they've self-segregated, but they're offering a roadmap to political leaders to get us out of it, and that's by, you know, working together. Whether or not our political leaders

listen to it is a different story. There's one other thing. We did ask sort of the standard polling questions about the state of the country. It's bleak. Nobody, you know, universally people think it were headed in the wrong direction. But what that means heading into the midterms, because, you know, people like us always want to know that. I was a little surprised in the generic head-to-head over who should control Congress, it was statistically tied with a two-point edge for Democrats. 48% of people say they supported Democrats and 46% say they supported Republicans. Given the state of the country, people's view of the direction of the country,

given the president's really poor approval numbers, that's something that congressional Democrats can hold on to, gives them a reason for some optimism. I think a lot of it has to do with just sort of some of the Republicans that are being nominated in races around the country and not really having, not really offering an alternative. So lots of interesting stuff in the poll. We'll see how it plays out. On the compromise question, I've been fascinated by this question because it's not my experience. You can get everyone in your poll to say that they want candidates who are bipartisan, who compromise, who get things done, and then primary after primary after primary, we just don't see those candidates winning. We don't even see those candidates getting traction. And I guess I'm curious if we were to break down that poll based on whether they vote in partisan primaries, i.e., if it's 74%, are the other 25% all primary voters? 75% of the people who wait until the general election and then bemoan their choices?

Yeah, and I think that is such an important and legitimate point. Because I think our politics are being defined right now by those who vote in primaries. And you and I both know that the percentage of Americans who vote in midterm congressional primaries is a small percentage relative to people who vote in a general election. Our primaries, particularly given the way our districts are drawn now in congressional races, right? In house races, our primaries are driven by the most strident voters in either party. Some people like to, would call them extreme. Maybe they are, but they certainly are strident, right? They certainly are incredibly passionate and less compromising than, you know, your average

independent voter, your average middle of the road voter is not. is not bothering themselves to vote in a lot of primaries. What's also really interesting, though, is in this most recent poll, we ask people to just, how they define themselves. 67% of people in this poll consider themselves centrist. Yep. Which says a lot about how we all view ourselves, right? We all view ourselves as sort of middle of the road. But I do think you're right. If you were to actually just focus on your average Republican primary voter, your average Democratic primary voter in a non-competitive swing district. We would hear what we see in our election results. And that is

that they're much less interested in compromise, much more interested in someone who will be pure to their values. Since I have you, let's take a little frolic and detour on this theme of primaries, because you and I haven't gotten to talk about Alaska and their system. And I'm just so curious for your thoughts. For listeners, we've talked about this a little before, but Alaska's instituted a new nonpartisan primary system. So it's a total cattle call in that last congressional special race to replace Don Young, Santa Claus ran. I mean, it was like 40 people. Sarah Palin was in it, Begich, well, the famous Begages, Senator Begich's son, who's a Republican, even though the Senator was a Democrat, he ran in it. So the top four finishers from that go on to the general

election, and then it's ranked choice instant runoff in that. And I talked to a lot of people about this. I think our listeners in particular, of course, are hot to trot on these nonpartisan primaries for all the things we just talked about, that maybe you'll get different people to vote in a primary, Regardless, I think you will get different people to run in that type of primary. They will have different incentives for how to run their race in that type of primary. And then once they're in office, if they want to get reelected, they'll have different incentives of how to behave as an elected official versus always being concerned about being flanked from the side in a primary, whether it's the right or the left.

You know, for someone like you watching and other, you know, the New York mayor's race had something kind of similar to this. California does something similar, Maine. I don't know. How hopeful are you that this will actually make the difference? Assume for a second that it catches like wildfire and spreads everywhere. I'm still mixed. On paper, it looks like it's the perfect solution. And in practice, I don't know. I'm so curious. what you think. Yeah, I don't know either. Maybe because there haven't been enough real test cases in states that are a little bit more, or jurisdictions that are a little bit more swing. You know what I mean? Like, what? Alaska's not representative of the country. Right, yeah. I mean, and New York City, right? I mean. And San Francisco. And San Francisco or Louisiana, which has, I believe what people call a jungle primary or California, right? The whole notion of these sort of nonpartisan, totally open primaries and ranked choice voting I think are interesting, but I want to see them play out in a few swing districts and a few swing

states because, you know, what's happening is in some of these places, you're still getting very partisan results, right? It's just icing one party out even. more. If the top two finishers in a Republican state are Republicans, and then there's no Democrat on the general election ballot, or vice versa. But what happens in a swing district or a real battleground state would be interesting, because what's happening now is you've got these incredibly partisan primaries, and both parties are oftentimes picking the most partisan representative to put in front of a much more competitive electorate. If you were to have this kind of a system in a Pennsylvania or in a now Georgia or right

or some of these other really competitive states, would it change the types of candidates that are making it into that runoff? It's hard to say. So I'd like to see a few more test cases before I pass judgment. And you are on the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee, which, I mean, right off the bat sounds super sexy, but it actually is really interesting because you guys, the Democratic National Committee, is about to vote on the primaries. And it's been a whole process that I want you to talk about. But, you know, just taking Iowa, for example, and we see Iowa realigning so much more toward the Republican Party than the Democratic Party. And lo and behold, it looks very possible that Democrats are going to vote to remove Iowa as one of, as the first state. Maybe talk a little bit about that process on the DNC side, why they're reconsidering it, what you think will happen.

And then, yeah, perhaps we can talk about some of that realignment. Yeah, look, as a longtime staffer to actually like have a vote on this committee is really fascinating, to actually be a part of the conversation. It's really fascinating. I mean, look, Iowa and New Hampshire have been the first two states for both parties for, you know, 50 years. Our lifetime, basically. Like, we can't possibly remember a time before that. But I was kind of shocked when I went back and looked at the real history, and it hasn't been that long.

In 2008, the Democrats added two more states, right? Because of criticism that it just wasn't reflected. I mean, let's be real, right? the trajectory of these races, in both parts, the trajectory of the races are determined by those first two states. It's not really the number of delegates that the candidates are winning. It's the momentum that they're getting. And so oftentimes there's a clear frontrunner after Iowa in New Hampshire or the field is at least significantly winnowed down. And in 2008, there was a lot of criticism on the Democratic side that those two states were not representative,

of the entire country. And so they added Nevada in third place in South Carolina in fourth. And that's what it's been since 08. This year, the committee said, you know what, let's throw the whole process open. Let's not give these automatic waivers, right? And for the listener, what the waivers mean,

what this early window means is, you know, on the Democratic side, there is a certain date that states are, have to wait for before they can start voting, before they can start holding presidential primaries. But we've given waivers to four states to go early, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina, the early window. So this year, the committee said, let's not stand on tradition and give these automatic early waivers to anybody. Let's make them all bid for it. Let's make any state that wants to have an early primary make a case.

And there's a framework that the DNC is looking at, saying that the early window, by the end of the early window, we want to be able to say it was diverse that represented the diversity of the party and the diversity of the nation, that it was a process that reflected confidence in the system after, you know, at a time when everyone is like pointing and calling into question the competence of our electoral system, after what happened in the Iowa caucus in 2020, a lot of people are looking at that and saying, can we make sure that we have something that we feel confident, feel confident in? That it is inclusive, brings as many voters out, which I think for a lot of members of the committee means primaries over caucuses.

which, you know, caucuses tend to bring in far fewer people than primaries do. And can we get our candidates in front of as many competitive battleground state voters as possible? As opposed to getting states that are ruby red or deep blue, can we get a head start on the general election and do the party of favor by getting the candidates in front of general election voters as early in the process as possible. So with that framework, 17 states applied to be in the early window. We have said that we're going to winnow it down, that we're going to select four or five to be in the early window. And the conversations have been fascinating. We'll be voting next week. There's got to be at least one from each region of the country, right? So you had a handful of states

from the east, including New Hampshire, apply. You add a handful of states from the west, including Nevada, apply. A handful of states in the south, including South Carolina, apply. And Iowa is trying to hold on to that Midwestern slot, but I think is getting a very, some stiff competition from states like Michigan and Minnesota. So we'll see how it, how it pans out. But I think- Are you willing to tell us where you're voting? Well, look, I think I have not been bashful in saying that I do not think Iowa makes the strongest case from the Midwest. Nobody's voting for Iowa. No, literally nobody's. But New Hampshire in the east, it's hard to find a state that

is actually up for grabs in that region. And then Nevada in the West just makes a lot of sense. I mean, Arizona is an option. One of the things we're also talking about, Arizona didn't apply, interestingly. One of the things that we're talking about is not just which states, but what order do they go in? And should we think creatively about that? One of the things that came up in the last meeting was maybe have two states go first on the same day. Mo, you actually, you're a former presidential campaign alum as well. That's my nightmare. Or have Nevada and New Hampshire the same day and that way ensure that nobody can actually do it without a private jet.

Good plan. But it would send a message, right? And maybe it's not those two states. What if it's Nevada and South Carolina? What if it's New Hampshire and South Carolina? Who knows, right? You are privileging rich candidates with stuff like that. Well, and that's one of the arguments that some people are making against it. So I, you know, but the point is we're sort of exploring different options. The committee is saying we're just not going to stand on tradition. We're not just going to do it the way it's always been done. There's the you know, these criteria that make up the framework, I think it's going to look different. I think that much is clear that it will look different. There will likely be some new states in that mix at the end of the day. And the order might be, I mean, I will tell you, Nevada is making a very strong, very aggressive, very compelling case to actually go first. They also screwed up their vote counting, too. They've switched from caucus to a primary. They're now a state-run primary. That'll help.

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voters than at any time in the past, and that that is even overtaking, hasn't overtaken, but is overtaking race so much so that the Democratic Party now has a larger lead among college-educated white voters than they do against non-white voters. That's wild. So the Democratic Party is getting whiter and wealthier while the Republican Party gets more multiracial and more working class. And again, this is not to say that the Republican Party is now more multiracial than the Democratic Party. It is more multiracial than it itself was previously. Correct. But as that realignment's happening, we're seeing states like Iowa, for instance, go from a bluish purple state 20 years ago to like a full on, full on bright red state. I just don't see it going back. And I think that's being driven by this educational divide, working class divide. I'm so curious what the conversations are like in the Democratic operative class. Yeah. And look, and I think you're seeing the converse too, right? Some states where you've got more thriving.

bustling urban, highly educated workforces like a Georgia, right, with Atlanta or some of the others or North Carolina with Charlotte, right, are becoming more competitive. And so I think it's working both ways. Which is what you'd expect, right? The two parties in general are going to reach equilibrium. That's how a two party to anything system is going to work. But the, the Democratic are giving up the plurality of white voters who are non-college educated under this theory. What's really interesting, what's interesting is, if memory serves, the biggest predictors of how people voted in the last couple of presidential elections were their geography and their education level, right? The closer you live to the downtown of a major city, the more likely you voted

for the Democrat, the further away you lived from the downtown of a major city. the more likely you voted for the Republican. And same with education level. The more education you have, the more likely you voted for a Democrat, the less education you have, the more likely you voted for a Republican. Now, that is, you know, as you'd imagine, is a little less stark when it comes to, when you overlay that with race. But there's a trajectory that we're starting to see.

And I think that is a warning sign. Now, that should be a red flag for Democrats, who not long ago, we're the party for lower educated working class folks, right? Wasn't that long ago. That was Bill Clinton's base when he was elected in 1992, just 30 years ago. So I do think Democrats do need to think about why this is the case. Why is it that the Republican argument that the Democratic argument that the Democratic, Democratic Party is becoming an elite urban party, right, is taking hold a little bit.

Democrats do need to figure out why there is, you can't say hemorrhaging, but why there is some erosion of support. A consistent trend. Right. I mean, the fact that Donald Trump twice outperformed Mitt Romney with black and brown voters is something that Democrats really need to figure out. And we're seeing it still play out, even with Donald Trump, not on the ballot, losing that special election in Texas. Now, chances are they'll win it back, right? Right. Endless caveats on that special election that I've talked about before. But still, it's a thing. Right. It's, it happened. It happened. That's something that they've got, I think, address. And there seems to be some sort of a messaging disconnect going on.

I'm a, you know, former commas people, we always take it back to the messaging. You know, there does seem to be a little bit of a messaging disconnect. And Republicans are more than happy to seize on it, more than happy to seize on it. So we'll see if they can turn that around. But part of the David Shore, you know, Roy diagnosis is that actually it's pretty easy. Democrats stopped talking about popular policies that they support. instead started language policing people, talking in ways that normal Americans don't talk. Latin X being the major example, defund the police.

Yes. And then, like, so in that sense, it is a messaging problem. But the problem is it's been appealing to white college educated voters. So they are seeing this electoral uptick. They are taking voters away in the suburbs, for instance, from Republicans. And because Democratic staffers tend to be white college education. educated elites, they think that they're talking to a huge majority because it's their friend group, basically, and they don't see the people they're hemorrhaging because they don't

know a lot of people who work in unions in the Midwest and aren't college educated. This is why I want everybody who's involved in either party's messaging, strategic messaging decisions to get out of Washington and go work on an actual campaign somewhere, right? Like, I spent 10 years working without a permanent address, right? The first 10 years of my career, just hopping from state to state race to race before I got my first big gig in D.C. You know me, right? You cut me. I will bleed blue.

I'm a tried and true Democrat to my core. I've never met, and I've worked in Arizona. I've worked in New Mexico. I've worked in Florida. I've never met a Latino voter, Hispanic voter, who wanted to be called Latinx. I've never met a black voter who said, get the police out of my neighborhood. They've said, there's real problems with the police and we need to fix it because they are, there is real racial injustice going on and we need to fix that, but they're not saying,

allow for the Wild Wild West. What about birthing people? Have you met a lot of birthing people in any of those campaigns? I mean, it's just, right? People who have cervixes, that was one of my favorites. Because you then have to assume that everyone knows what a cervix is and whether they have one. You know, I just think, and look, and you know as well as I do, Republicans have many of the same problems, right? Oh, worse.

No, believe me, you can't, I will do a whole song and dance on the problems in the Republican Party. This is not one side is doing well. It's just the point being that the people, no, no, no, exactly. The point being that a lot of the people who are making a lot of these decisions are not going out there and talking to real people. They're talking to real activists. They're on Twitter, but they're not talking to real people. Democrats still, I truly believe, have the agenda that is, that will connect with to, you know, to Shara's point. that will connect with these voters of color with lower education levels, right,

that can connect with them as long as we actually are talking about them in a way that allows it to connect with them. And it's a combination of focusing on some language, focusing on some issues in a really skewed media ecosystem, right? It's rewarding all the wrongs. That's rewarding all that stuff. It's not like Democrats aren't talking about these things. Yeah. But when we say the other stuff, that's what then gets picked up. That's what then gets carried. It's sort of been like an extended version of legitimate rape. Actually, very few Republicans say stuff like that. But when you do, it's going to get an enormous amount of attention. And it's been like a slow rolling version of that on the Democratic side where, yeah, the vast majority of Democrats never said defund the, police, never said Latinx. In fact, in fact, said we don't want to defend the defund the police, right? A majority said no to that openly, including the president of the United States,

but it's starting to take hold. You're the Georgetown Institute of Politics. You spend all day every day with elite college students. Yes. I'm curious about your conversations with them on the illiberalism that I think is actually plaguing both parties. It's plaguing them. The symptoms are different of the illiberalism. But we don't have a classically liberal party anymore. Democrats say there's certain ways you can't talk about things. You're not allowed to have certain books because they're not socially acceptable. Republicans want to ban books because they're not socially acceptable to them. And that's just one example of the liberalism. The polls that you see about young people who say that they wouldn't be friends with someone who voted for

a different presidential candidate than them, much higher on the left than on the right, for instance, but that tends to be among college students. And so that makes perfect sense to me because the vast majority of college students are going to lean left. I don't know. You said you were very hopeful about your students and how much better they were than us. But then I see this stuff. I read these things that make me not as hopeful. Make me hopeful, though. Look, I can only speak to what I see. That's what I want. And, you know, the day after Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton, I had two students walking to my office, both of whom were big Bernie supporters, mainly because there was nobody more liberal in the race, right? Like, these were like true, true lefties. And I say

that with all the fondness that I can, that I can, who came in to my office and we're trying to process how Donald Trump could win. And part of the problem, right, and this goes to the self-segregation we were talking about earlier, you know, I kept hearing things like, I just don't understand. I've never met a Trump support. And that's a problem, right? Just as if you were to go into diehard Trump country and people would be scratching their head and saying, why are you so surprised? We've never met a Hillary voter. But what I loved about that was at the end of the conversation, both students said, can you make sure to invite some speakers from the Trump campaign in the coming months so that we can talk with them so that we can ask them questions

so that we can understand better? I hear that more. And I see that more. And I see. that more, at least on my campus, at least here at Georgetown, then the conventional wisdom would tell you happens, right? You know, you watch some cable networks and all you hear is that our college campuses are hostile environments and the woke mobs have overtaken them. Look, I think the students here progressive, I think the campus leans to the left. I think they've got very strong beliefs, but they want the conversation. And I will say, one of my favorite moments since I've had this job was when I invited your former boss, Sean Spicer to campus after he left the White House. And I had lots of angry emails from alumni saying,

how can you give this guy a platform? And my response, and the students, think see it this way. I wasn't giving him a platform. I was giving them a platform. I was giving them a platform to ask him questions. And they did. And he and I modeled a respectful conversation. You know, Sean and I have known each other and have been friendly with one another for a long time. I had a respectful conversation. The students asked him really hard questions. But they walked away with a better understanding of a perspective. And I think that's what a lot of students are looking for. We say to them all the time, our job in the United States, is to keep you safe from harm, not to keep you safe from ideas. And at least the students here

respond and react to that. And I think that is true on more college campuses than people give them credit for me. So there's ways in which the two parties mirror each other. I think the illiberalism is an example of this, where at the highest level, I think both parties are becoming more illiberal. But if you actually look into how they're becoming more illiberal, obviously it's not just a mirror image of one another or else one would be becoming liberal, probably. Something similar is happening on the campaign strategy front, again, just because I've got you and it's fun to talk to you about this stuff. It was a news story out this week that I was like, oh, I'm glad someone wrote this down because when I've gone and talked to Republican operatives

who are going to be staffing these 24 Republican primary presidential races, the one thing that they're all saying is we have no interest in talking to the press. It doesn't do us any good. We don't do it anymore. We don't do Sunday shows. We're not doing profiles in the New Yorker, whatever. There's no point. And to the extent there's a point, it's actually that we want them to write or say horrible stuff about us because we can fundraise off of that. So there's still Fox News, obviously. And there's a bunch of right-wing outlets that those candidates are are engaging with. But social media, just a lot of what has gone on in the diversification of the media environment means that candidates aren't talking to these same people anymore.

They don't have to. And so why sit there and have an hostile interview where a reporter who grew up on the East Coast has never owned a gun, doesn't know anyone who owns a gun, doesn't know anyone who voted for Donald Trump, is going to do an interview with, you, a Republican presidential candidate, like, they don't get you. They don't, they have no sympathy towards your policy positions. I'm curious if you've seen anything happen on the progressive left that mirrors that in any way of engaging in the bubble, if you will, I guess, when you think about 2024 or even 2022. Yeah, I mean, to, you know, some extent, sure. You know, there's a handful of Democratic operatives out there screaming at the top of our lungs to

to our peers like remember Twitter is not the real world right because it's not but but Twitter feeds have become the new national assignment editors right every reporter is on it they're reacting to one another in some cases retweeting has replaced reporting and it's created because everyone is on it because the entire political class and the entire media class is on it, it creates a warped reality, which then changes the behavior and the rhetoric and the language of some people. I think that's true on both the left and the right. Look, you know, Democrats don't go on Fox because why would they, right, for rationalizing that decision, the way you just articulated, people on the right, rationalizing, not speaking to the New York Times.

I'm one of the few Democrats on payroll at Fox. I'm a Fox News contributor. A lot of days, that's hard for me. But, you know, I made the calculus after I left the DNC when I was one of those people saying, let's never engage with the network. made the calculus if that was a mistake, that I can either go on the air and tell them what a Democrat is, or I can let Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity continue to tell them what a Democrat is. I believe that my explanation is probably closer to reality than theirs. And sometimes there's evidence that it can penetrate. Not if you're on Twitter, right? If you want validation of the dark side of humanity, look at my Twitter feed after any of my, after any of my Fox news appearances, right? It's pretty dark. But, you know,

pre-pandemic, I would be traveling someplace. And anytime I was outside of D.C., New York, any other airport I was in in the country, people would approach me and say, hey, you're that Democrat on Fox. And they might needle me a little bit, or they might, I'll never forget, being at this amusement park in central Pennsylvania with my kids about a year or two after President Trump was elected. And this was in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. This was diehard Trump country. And this big, burly biker-looking dude is like eyeing me all day.

I'm just walking around my kids. But he just like, I keep seeing him for hours. And every time I see him, he just keeps eyeing me. And he finally walks up and he says, hey, you're that DNC guy on Fox, right? It's like, yes, sir. My wife literally put an arm around each kid and took two steps backwards, right? This is his fight. I'm going to protect the children.

Like shoving me forward as she flees the seat. I was like, yes, sir. And he's like, man, I don't ever agree with anything you say. He probably used more colorful language than that. He said, but I like hearing it. Sometimes it makes me think. And sometimes it's just nice to know you're not one of the crazies. there. It goes back to the self-segregation that we led this conversation with. We've

self-segregated ourselves. We're speaking to our own. We're not speaking across the divides. And that completely and totally spills into the media ecosystem. Making the media ecosystem as polarizing, if not more so, than the political ecosystem. And that's a problem. And I think both parties are suffering from it. There's a reason why I think Pete Buttigieg did well. A lot of reasons why I think Pete Buttigieg did relatively well in the primaries. I think his going on Fox often was one of those reasons. I think that as 2024 starts to take shape, I think there's some Republicans that if they were to start going on what is considered mainstream or left-leaning media, it might actually do themselves some good. And it would do the national dialogue some good.

It's so interesting you mentioned Pete Buttigieg. There's this poll that came out in New Hampshire showing Pete Buttigieg edging out Joe Biden among Democratic primary voters within the margin. And it was all pretty tight. It was like 17, 16. Yeah, it was 17 and 16. I don't like, let's not overread this. But the fact that, I mean, a sitting president. I was even a question.

It was even close is wild or that a sitting president would be at 16%. in private rooms, when you're talking to fellow DNC members or Democratic operatives, do they think Joe Biden's running again? Yes. I don't know any Democratic operative who doesn't believe that at this point, Joe Biden is running again, right? Joe Biden says he's running again. I think Joe Biden believes he's running again. There's no reason to doubt that. Does that mean that can't change? No, right? Does that mean, there's still plenty of runway? But he's given no indication that we should even consider that there will be a change. And so I don't think poll numbers scare Joe Biden.

If anything, they probably make him more determined, especially considering that all the same poll numbers that show him to be quote unquote weak, also still show him beating Donald Trump. Exactly what the point I was going to make, right? Like for 16% he's sure going up with Donald Trump beating him pretty well. And with low approval numbers, the fact that Democrats are still edging out Republicans in the generic congressional head to head, that doesn't mean Democrats are likely going to keep both chambers, but they could keep one in an environment in which we shouldn't keep anything.

Yeah, and hold on to some governor's seats that maybe they wouldn't otherwise, looking at you, Pennsylvania. Maybe even pick up a couple of seats, you know, Senate seats that, I mean, Ohio, we could actually pick that Senate seat up, Pennsylvania. We could pick that Senate seat up. So, you know, these polls, you know, right? One of the most comments that anyone ever makes is, you know, these polls are just a snapshot in time. But they are. Yeah, I think people are. looking at Joe Biden and their feelings, a lot of anxiety out there right now, economic anxiety and political anxiety and cultural anxiety. That's reflecting in his poll numbers because he's the guy in the chair. But at the end of the day, he's still winning against the guy who's most likely to be in the chair on the other side. All right. Last topic. I want to talk about the Claire McCaskill strategy of picking your primary opponent. Claire McCaskill famously pours millions into Todd Aiken's

primary campaign spends way more on TV advertisement than he ever spent. Todd Aiken comes through the primary with Claire McCaskill, believing that that's the candidate that she was most likely to beat in her Senate, Missouri race. She does beat him. He famously implodes over the legitimate rape thing. It's like weird that it's come up twice in one podcast. Very strange. And since then, I think Democrats have dabbled with this idea.

And we saw a little dabbling around 2016, not that they put money in, but certainly on cable news and other places, Democrats were gleeful at the idea of Donald Trump winning the Republican nomination because it would be easier for Hillary Clinton to beat him. Oddly, Donald Trump beats Hillary Clinton, and instead of that being a really good lesson learned, Democrats seem to be now all in on this strategy, spending money in Pennsylvania for Donald. Mastriano to win the Republican gubernatorial nomination there. There was an asterisk on that for me. He won that nomination by quite a bit. Josh Shapiro, the Democrat, said, I knew he was going to be my opponent, and I just wanted to define him and rough him up as soon as possible. I bought into that at the time, or at least was willing to say that was an alternate reasonable explanation. But now we have Peter Meyer, one of the 10 Republicans to vote to impeach a president and his own party. Democrats constantly say, where are the sane Republicans? Why won't Republicans

stand up to Donald Trump? And now the D-Triple C, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, putting tons of money in to support his election-denying opponent at the same time that they have the January 6th committee saying election deniers are, this isn't a partisan, issue. They are an existential threat to America's system of self-government, but we're going to put money in because we think they'll be easier to beat by Democrats. The alternate is the Republican Party is already lost. There are already so many election deniers in office anyway. The risk of having one more isn't nearly as apoplectic as the reward of potentially holding on to a Democratic House. I'm curious how you see this from your...

So look, the Josh Shapiro argument is not one that should be lost on us, right? Like, there is something to be said about defining the other side early, making sure that general election voters know who, you know, how extreme these candidates are, that they're election deniers and blah, blah, blah. Like, I actually think that is important to do in a campaign. Except in the Peter Meyer case, the ads they're running, Arte's denying the election. The ads are he's just real conservative. If he likes Donald Trump, they are not, it is very different.

Right, right, right. No, no, no. That's right. So I think the execution matters of this, right? Like if you're out there getting involved in a Republican, putting ads out during a Republican primary saying, look at all the terrible things this one candidate does, that's one thing. That's one thing. If it is playing that, that's a different thing. Look, this is a brilliant political strategy until it's not.

Right. And that's that's a really dangerous gamble to take. Like if you are successful the way Claire McCaskill team was back in 2006. Is that right? No, I think it was 12. 10. 10? Might have been 10. Anyway, if it's successful then, sure. Like everyone, everyone at everyone at everyone at the time thought it was the most brilliant strategy anyone had ever undertaken. But we have seen what happens when we get what we wish for a little too well. You're right. In 2016, a lot of Democrats were gleefully egging on Donald Trump in the beginning. And we got what we wanted. We got him as the nominee. I think it's a dangerous game to play. Some of these candidates are going to win. Some may lose, right? But some of them could win. And that's not going to, there's no oops moment after that, right? There's no mulligan after that. We then have, Marjorie Taylor Green has more allies in Congress.

And we have seen the damage that can do. Right now, she's at least semi-isolated. But what happens when she gets more colleagues out there? Is that really a risk we want to take? And aren't Democrats undermining their own message that they actually see this as a real threat? if you're willing to take the gamble that someone is, that this person's going to get elected, then you must not think it's that bad if they do get elected because you propped them off.

I am not a fan of this strategy. I think there are other ways to make the point. I think there are other ways to do this. I'm sympathetic to the argument that defining these people incredibly early makes your job, makes it easier to beat them. Sure. But at the end of the day, and, you know, you and I have the luxury of saying this because we're not in the trenches anymore, right? We're not the partisan warriors we once were. Even though we may still be, you know, partisan or at least ideologically oriented in some way, right?

I am, it is terrible for the republic. It is terrible for the dialogue. It is terrible for our discourse. Unfortunately, that's not something a lot of campaign operators feel like they've got the luxury to worry about, because every day is an existential battle, right, for their candidate, for their campaign in that moment. But it's not good for us, generally. Fact checking in real time. Todd Aiken was 2012 against Claire McCaskill. The same race, by the, where Obama did such a good job of defining Mitt Romney before he had formally accepted. the Republican nominations. You almost have the two side by side, the difference between intentionally taking the risk that that person wins by messing with the primary versus

defining them early. And I think if you go look at those two sets of ads, you'll see a pretty different message. One is very clearly trying to undermine the person. And the other one is less undermining and more, boy, show is conservative, which of course appeals in a You know, what worked well in that mccasical race, and I think this is what a lot of Democrats are hoping, you know, where they're doing this again, where their hope is, is it elevated them with what they saw as a very strident Republican electorate, but at the same time undermining them with the general election electorate, right, win-win. That's, I think, the gamble. That's what they're hoping for. But it's a gamble. It's a gamble. And I think, I think our politics are in a different place today, right? And part of that is that Mo and I are still good friends who hang out across the aisle.

And we find actually a lot to agree on, even on policy stuff. That's right. Probably on more than we disagree on. I think that's right. And so, Mo, thanks for all that you're doing at the Georgetown Institute of Politics. Thanks for all that you're doing here at the dispatch. I love what you guys do every single day. This battleground poll came out today. We'll put it in the show notes. And, and, for friend to the pod. Always, Moe. You're welcome anytime. Thanks for having me. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime.

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