The Dispatch Podcast - Welcome to the 2024 Elections | Interview: Ben Jacobs

Episode Date: January 8, 2024

Political reporter Ben Jacobs examines the state of the Republican primary and explains the different strategies that Donald Trump’s opponents have embraced in hopes of dethroning him. Also: —Why caucuses are unfair; —Jamie’s caucus speech; and —The idiosyncratic choices of Iowa voters. Show Notes: -Watch this episode on our YouTube channel -Nature of Trump's campaign broadly -Article about Speech for Jim Gilmore Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Jamie Weinstein. My guest today is a good friend of mine, Ben Jacobs. He has worked for The Guardian and the Daily Beast reporting on politics and campaigns and now does freelance for a wide variety of publications. And we'll be traveling to Iowa as you are probably listening to this podcast now to cover the Diocauses and then on to many other states to cover the primaries. He also lived in Iowa as a college student where he, he went, that's where he went to college. So I brought Ben on to do a little bit of an explainer on the Iowa caucuses, how they work, kind of the mechanics, what strategies tend to work, what strategies tend not to work, and also discuss, obviously, the state of the Republican primary and what we might see happen on caucus night. So I think you're going to find this informative and interesting, but without further ado, I give you my friend Ben Jacobs. Ben Jacobs, welcome to the Dispatch podcast. Thanks for hopping.

Ben, I want to begin on just understanding what a caucus is. What is the Iowa caucus? What are the Iowa caucuses? Do you use caucus or caucuses when you say it? I've seen both variations. And how does it differ? Cockay. Cockay.

And how does it differ from the primaries, the New Hampshire primary coming up for listeners who just may not be familiar with the differences? Well, you know, the caucus is something, the basic concept of a caucus is a party-run primary. And Iowa, you know, the one thing that sort of people get confused is that the Democrats, when they were doing a caucus before the DNC jumped in, had a lot more rigmarole than Republicans did. That for Republicans, this is basically a firehouse primary,

that folks are showing up and casting a ballot. It's an in-person vote that there's none of the sort of realignments. There's all this sort of complicated stuff that, you know, when folks are trying to get their heads around the Democratic stuff. This is basically folks, folks are showing up at school or someplace like that at a specific time and then casting a vote in a party run primary. It's not terribly different from a conventional election other than it's a different term. And sort of a lot of what's driving this is that it's a party run process.

And there's, you know, you have to show up at a specific time. There's not an entire, you know, 12-hour range of a day to vote. But other than that, the mechanics of this, just people showing up and vote. Yeah, explain that. Because I actually think this is interesting to listeners. I guess the Democrats used to have a different process for the caucus of trying to persuade people. But what we're going to see in the Republican caucus coming up is basically the only difference from a primary is that people are going to show up at a specific time and place, probably going to have to hear some speeches from a representative of a candidate who may be prominent and a good speaker. but in many cases may not be a very good speaker or prominent. So just explain that dynamic. This is the only difference is you have to show up, but it's time and place and hear a speech. Yes, yes, yes.

That's the key fundamental mechanical difference in terms of what's going on. Because this is a party process, this is also used for the parties to elect various party officers conduct party business that, you know, it's a precinct, happens at a precinct level, So then they elect people to a county convention, go on to a district convention and state convention for sort of all the business of the party, which happens after the primary vote. But before that because everyone's gathered, you know, that this is, there's the folks give speeches on behalf of their specific candidates, that there's, you know, that every member of the Trump family will show up at a caucus site, for example, go to different places and speak. but you have 1,700 roughly precincts in the state of Iowa so that you'll have 1,700 speakers, give or take, so that it's not always going to be prominent that some places, in a lot of places, frankly, it'll be folks from the community speaking on behalf of their neighbors, and it's a less effort to organize around the candidate that obviously a ton of people will show up knowing who they're voting for, but not everyone will. chance to persuade or a chance to sort of nudge people at the last moment and try to see if you can get a change of heart.

It doesn't. Even the most eloquent speech, of course, can't always persuade people, as I'm sure Jamie can testify to. But it does add a slightly different field of this, that this is a much more, not informal, per se, but sort of more old-fashioned sort of thing. that it's something that you know that it's more out of sort of a 19th century concept of politics in some ways well what ben was referring to that i i i'm able to comment on is as ben suggested that you don't even have to be an iwin to give the speeches and i was not aware of that when

i covered the the caucuses in 2016 and at a journalist party the night before uh one of the caucuses Ben informed me that I actually was eligible to go to a caucus and speak on behalf of Jim Gilmore, a candidate who was running in 2016, who wasn't actually competing in Iowa and didn't have any representatives on the ground. So in fact, I went to the caucus and gave a speech on behalf of Jim Gilmore on Ben's suggestion. Unfortunately, he got the exact number of votes he would have gotten without me, which was zero. But, but, I mean, I guess how is this fair in a certain sense? The New Hampshire primary, you have a whole day to go and vote.

There's nothing really difference with the caucus other than, again, you have to go to a time in place to cast your ballot, and that time is like 7 p.m. at night when some people might not be able to get away from their family because they have kids to go in caucus. Some people might have to work. I remember leaving the caucus in 2016. I went and got a subway sandwich. That employee there, you know, he had to be at his job. He could not go if he wanted to do and vote for Jim Gilmore in the Iowa caucus.

How is this a fairer process than a private? It seems to me kind of unfair. It's different than a primary. But, you know, remember, part of this is about organization and that, you know, caucus is, it's part of it traditionally, it's sort of dealing with tacking on. sort of a presidential selection process to a traditional, to a party organization process. So it gets a lot more people involved in the party process that, you know, after the folks are voting, folks are then, you know, dealing with suggestions for party platform, for party offices,

and gets people in. But it's a test of organization that it's, it's measuring a different muscle than a primary is, that it's, you know, particularly about being able to organize people and get people out who, you know, are more sort of passionate and committed to this, that, you know, it's a type it, the argument would be as, you know, that we're dealing with a nominating process, not not an actual election and sort of trying to figure out what, what, you know, that they're different candidate skills that the necessity to build a strong organization is different than the necessity to inspire a marginal voter to show up at the last minute to appear at a

polling place and that it's different skills in different parts of the candidate, that this is obviously, yeah, creates its own issues, but it's, you know, that this is part of a nominating process, an internal party process rather than, you know, an actual democratic election. so that this competes in different things and measures, measures different, different skills for Canada. Well, I want to follow up on the types of muscles that it deals with, the Iowa Caucus, the different types of skills. But I just want to make clear to the listener that I gave a speech of behalf of Jim Gilmore, not because I supported Jim Gilmore, but as somewhat of a lark, if you remember he ran in 2016, he was something of a Twitter punchline, and this seemed like

a somewhat funny stunt. I was not a Jim Gilmore supporter. I was, you know, as opposed to a member of the militant Jim Gilmore online base, the Gilhive. Ben, Ben likes to bring this up every now and then on Twitter and suggest I am a Gilmore supporter. But to the question of the different muscle that this exercises, is there a strategy? I mean, every time the Iowa caucuses, come up every four years. You hear of a candidate. He's going to all 99 counties in Iowa, and I think that's the number to win. Or, you know, they're going to flood Iowa with operatives like, you know, Howard Dean did when he was running and lost. Or, you know, they're going to live in Iowa for a few months and focus on Iowa. And living in Iowa is going to be what brings them ahead. Is there any

strategy that has proven to be the strategy you want to employ if you want to win Iowa or overperform what people expect you're going to do in Iowa. I mean, I don't think there's any individual strategy. And to put the caveat, the Democrat system actually is slightly different. The Republican system is one man, one vote. The Democrat system actually slightly more, or did rather, we should speak of it in the past tense, may its memory be a blessing, slightly more resemble the electoral college, actually. But, you know, the idea of going to 99 counties, that it sort of has a twofold thing, that one of it's actually going out and going to all 99 counties and going to places like Adams County, Iowa, which

has a population of 4,000 and trying to appeal to the handful of voters there. But it's also a marketing line. It's a punchline. It's a sign if you're committed to this grassroots campaign, and that it's sort of, that it's as much messaging ploy as a strategy. that obviously once you've gone to, you know, 90, the difference between going to 98 and 99 counties isn't that significance in terms of the numbers you've read it, but it sort of has its own branding, particularly because Chuck Grassley, who's been in the center from Iowa for 40 plus years, has sort of made it a point to go to all 99 counties. But that it's complicated because you're dealing with, you know, that obviously the best way to over, you're dealing with a collection about expectations, which is what a lot of these primaries are setting expectations in doing that, that if, you know, if someone go into all 99 counties and appearing four times and individually greeting every voter at every pizza ranch, that sets the expectations very high after the level of expected, you know, level of that. effort you're putting into it. So that it's a measure of doing that. But obviously, the more time you spend an eye, the better. That traditionally, you know, helps people to win. It doesn't always help people to win. The example of this on the Democratic side, speaking of Twitter punchlines,

would be John Delaney, who announces presidential candidacy as a Democrat in 2018 before the midterms. Went to every county repeatedly. It was a three-term. congressman and then dropped out the week before the caucus after spending untold to amount of his money and sort of just, you know, people have to have to buy what you're selling. What issues from seeing some of these town halls resonate most right now with Iowa voters? I mean, other than ethanol, everyone knows that, you know, there's an ethanol kind of, I mean, maybe you can explain it a little bit, you know, that Iowa pushes, you know, a particular angle on ethanol subsidies. But is there an issue in the Republican primary that gets people cheering

louder than others? I know that when I covered the race in 2016 in Iowa and then elsewhere in 2012 in 2016, surprisingly pro-Israel messages seem to get the loudest cheers from an audience. But is there an issue that you've noticed gets the loudest applause? I don't think there's an issue that sensitive to the lattice of pause, but the one thing I caveat is that ethanol really is much less of an issue than we've seen the past, that after all, Ted Cruz, who was against the renewable fuel standard subsidizing the production of plant-based fuels in the United States, one, the Iowa caucuses in 2016, but which is part of a number of things that obviously fewer people are involved in agriculture these days, that you have bigger farms. You have more. You have more

people involved in agriculture at this point who are, you know, that's still important to the rural economy, but has less of an impact when you're dealing with, you know, there are fewer small family farms, but also it's all about national issues. Like ethanol is not, you know, Fox News isn't doing segments about ethanol. Fox News is doing segments about, you know, trends, high school athletes. And, you know, we live in a much more nationalized society. And that makes a big difference at sort of a level to which some of these local issues matter. And it's the same thing that you've seen with how people approach campaigns. That, you know, that the endorsement of your local state legislature is less important than that of an online right-wing influencer.

That, you know, we are in a much more nationalized politics world. And that the sort of issue palette resembles a lot more of what, uh, of what folks are thinking about nationally than sort of the local issues that the one caveat to this is there is a pipeline uh from iowa to north dakota um from ethanol plants to pump sort of the carbon dioxide there out into a caverns in north dakota which is a big green effort and that has ferocious opposition on the right uh you know that's something Vivek Ramswami's been talking a lot about, sort of, this is a government taking your land, and this is actually, you know, opposition to the ethanol industry, though mostly done in the

surface of opposition to the idea that carbon dioxide is an issue, sort of protection about, you know, people's, you know, about eminent domain for land, but that's the only real way in which this is popping up in a significant way. Can you speak to, I mean, there's obviously, calls mainly as it relates to the New Hampshire primary from some Republicans for Chris Christie to drop out in order to hopefully consolidate the vote around Nikki Haley. But my experience in Iowa is that it's kind of idioticocratic on who's someone's second choice. I remember asking one voter in 2016 and who you're deciding between. It was like Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, and Hillary Clinton, which was like, okay. I mean, how do you line those up? Is it your experience that,

you can naturally figure out just by who the voter supports as their number one choice, who their second choice would be? Or is it truly that idiosyncratic that a lot of these voters have very weird rankings on how they would make their candidate list? Oh, a ton of voters are idiosyncratic. I mean, but it's sort of putting the idiosyncrasies into patterns. But sometimes those patterns are very different. That the one thing to use an example from the Democrat caucus in 2020 is that you had a lot of folks who were between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, for example, and then a lot of folks who are between Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg, which got in terms to sort of an education divide, a class divide, sort of how folks talked about

politics. That was sort of a beer track versus wine track thing to use that, that language, democratic politics. You know, obviously the Republican primary process is a little bit different. different this year because, you know, the key issue that's looming over all of this is Donald Trump, which is a divide that hasn't really existed in the past, even when Donald Trump was running in 2016 and how to deal with Donald Trump and skepticism over Donald Trump. And particularly in, you know, but that becomes a little bit more self-sorting as people see polls if your number one issue is stopping Donald Trump. people

you know Nikki Haley may finish second in Iowa Chris Christie may finish you know around there

with Asa Hutchinson and Ryan Binkley in Iowa who's Ryan Binkley is he a candidate running Ryan Binkley Ryan Binkley is a candidate he's visited

all 99 counties he spent $7 million he's on the ballot in just about every state and you know the mainstream media led by Jamie Weinstein is keeping Ryan Binkley from getting his message out.

Is it possible he does better than Chris Christie, this person that I would suspect that no one listening to this podcast has heard about? Sure. You know, he's spent $7 billion in Iowa and Chris Christie hasn't, you know, Ryan Binkley showed up at their Lincoln Day dinner and spoke Chris Christie did not. He spent $7 million, Binkley. So he's personally financing this campaign? Yes.

Sorry, I interrupted you. You're talking about a piece you did on never Trumpers and the vote for. New York. And I know Ryan Binkley can fascinate many people, so I understand. But that there's a real effort to get independence in New Hampshire where, you know, you can, if you're not a member of an affiliated political party, you can take a ballot in either party primary to take a ballot in the Republican primary and vote for someone to try to stop Trump, which at this point is Nikki Haley. That's the relentless. Because it's really the, you know, the only show in town, or was until Dean Phillips hopped up, and it's a question of how much of a show Dean Phillips making the Democrat primary, even without Joe Biden on the ballot, and that it's an opportunity to take a ballot. And if you're able to, and, you know, there are a lot of independents or, you know, people who vote like Democrats or people who vote like Republicans depending, but they're sort of cautious about the label to get involved, you know, to show up and try to try to be an independent. to Trump, and you don't need a lot of people in New Hampshire to make an impact that if it leads to Haley win or close, you know, a narrow call for Trump who won New Hampshire handling in 2016, that that's enough to move the needle and to make some sort of incremental difference, even though Haley is obviously a down-the-line Republican.

She, you know, she, no one's ever accused her of inciting people. to destroy the capital. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having life insurance can be serious. That kind of financial strain on top of everything else is why life insurance indeed matters. Ethos is an online platform that makes getting life insurance fast and easy

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Go to Squarespace.com slash dispatch for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code dispatch to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Well, we're kind of speaking broadly about the Iowa caucuses. I think now we're getting a little bit more specific on the current caucus. So let's delve into that a little bit. It has anybody handled Iowa, particularly well, any candidate, Republican candidate, this cycle that you have been impressed

on how they've been organizing, how they've been on the stump in Iowa, particularly good on the stump. Like I remember John Edwards when everyone talked about how great of a stump speaker he was in Iowa when he ran. Is there anyone that stands out? Donald Trump. But how many times has he been to Iowa? Not a ton. He's not, but not a ton, but in how they've sort of managed the campaign and the mechanics of the campaign that are different than 2016, instead of doing it within the limitations that at this point he is a former president traveling with all the sort of grandiosity of a former president, that Iowa initially was going to be the state where Trump was really vulnerable, that Trump lost Iowa in 2016, that Ron DeSantis has the endorsement

of certainly a corality of Republican state legislators. They spent a ton of money. They have a big operation there that, you know, they've lined up a lot of key conservative influencers in the state. You know, Iowa was, you know, Iowa is an state that sort of felt uniquely set up there that Iowa, of course, is at this point, it's entirely Republican at a federal level, but it doesn't have a single federal Republican, every federal Republican who was in office in 2021 voted to uphold the 21 21 election. You know, they all, for example, if you want to use another sort of MAGA vibes test, all the House Republicans voted to expel George Santos. That it's, but it also has, you know, this big conservative, legit social conservative base, that there's a big divide,

you know, that there's obviously the Republican Party. has become increasingly evangelical. But, you know, that if you look at the exepoles, these are people identify as evangelical and go to church every week, as opposed to people identify as evangelical and go to close church less. This is, in a lot of places,

real old-fashioned church. This isn't sort of, you know, televangelist megachurch. This is, it's a slightly different feel to it. And DeSantis, you know, hasn't been able to make the sale, but Trump has done, enough that they've gone out and done the events and done the work to build an operation

when that that looks like will not only be successful, but you know, at this point we're treating this the as a competition for second place that no one thinks Donald Trump's going to lose Iowa, that this is all about whether Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis finished second that we're treating this like, you know, the NCAA playing game. in Dayton, that this is a competition between two 16 seats to see who might go on to have a chance to play the one scene in Trump. So when you land there, and I think you're going tomorrow, well, when this comes out, you'll be probably in Iowa on Monday or on your way.

What will you be looking for on the ground? What story angle other than covering it are you particularly interested in? And do you think there could be a surprise? I mean, you said that we're treating this as 16 seeds, but what would surprise you, what would be, what would be considered a surprise on caucus night? At this point, what would be considered a surprise on caucus night because of where expectations are is if, you know, there's this dynamic, you know, strong second place performance from Ronda Santos, who has been moving in the wrong direction all year, that, you know, obviously, you know, would be a big surprise would be a really strong performance from Ronda Santos, who is. you know, move in the wrong direction and polls and everything over the past year. But they did invest heavily in Iowa. They have this big organization. They have, you know, as I mentioned before, priority of state legislators. They have all these conservative influencers. And it's whether all the

effort and all the sort of organizational muscle that they put in makes a difference on January 15th. It would be a surprise because it sort of, you know, we talk so much about this is about the expectations game is that yeah things have been you know everything that can go wrong with DeSantis's campaign has gone wrong that it's sort of you know that they've had campaign turmoil they've had

a candidate to sort of really really been under under a lot of scrutiny and just sort of taking hit after hit and negative story after negative story and it's you know a strong performance there which sort of reverse that. And if that happened, which is still a possibility that, you know, they've spent

untolds amount of money in the state, both on the campaign side and on the Super PAC side, that would be a surprise and that would make an impact in the race. And sort of really, really we figure, because right now the conventional wisdom, you know, is that this is head head between Haley and DeSantis. And if Haley finishes second, then DeSantis is done. And, you know, folks are already preparing, you know, to write DeSantis' political obituary. I imagine there are pre-writes that are mostly being done right now on this. So that would flip expectations. And obviously, if Ryan Vinkley wins, too, that would be a surprise. Let me just close on this, Ben. You know, we've kind of been talking about,

really second place here in Iowa, who's going to be second place? And it's possible that Trump will just roll through this entire primary season and caucus season. And there will have been really no competition. We don't know yet. Maybe things will be different in Iowa. Maybe the Nikki Haley will succeed in New Hampshire. But is there a strategy to unseat Trump that you have, that you think has not been tried by these candidates? Or are we just to take that if Trump wins this? primary, that it was inevitable. There was nothing that could have been done. Has anybody left anything on the table in the sense, in terms of strategy to displace Trump from the top seat? Yeah. Look, I think there's sort of a lot of questions about how you handle Trump in sort of the

uniqueness of Trump, that obviously what most candidates have done has been a campaign of sort of hugging and hugging Trump close, it's sort of that it's been like a boxing fight where the two boxers are sort of holding at each other without actually throwing punches, because it is really, really sort of delicate because at this point, if you're a Republican primary voter, you voted for Trump at least twice in two general elections,

if not in 2016 primary, you bothered to show up in 2020, that if a lot of the Republican voters who were deeply opposed to Donald Trump in 2016, the never Trumpers are Democrats now, and vice versa when you think about how many new voters that Trump has brought to the party. That, you know, this sort of his sum extent has been the Chris Christie candidate campaign, but, you know, you needed someone as going full Leroy Jenkins there to try to ease the blow. And in a way that hasn't quite happened that Christie should have done his Chris Christie thing and sort of less of a credible messenger on it to the to the base. But part of it is, you know, especially once the indictments happened, I mean, if we look back to where things were.

and particularly the order of the indictments has made a difference that Alvin Bragg going first probably shaped some of the coverage there. That, you know, Donald Trump this time last year, if you go back to January 6th, 2023, was a much weaker candidate. And the mechanics of that, the indictments in the entire process have changed things in a way that sort of led everyone to rallying around the flag that everyone, yeah, I mean, probably, honestly, if we were looking back in history, the key moments in the Republican primary happened roughly three years ago in the immediate aftermath of January 6th, that after that,

you know, if you look at where Donald Trump was, you know, his sort of much malign Mar-a-ago rollout in the immediate after the midterms, you know, the guy, immediately announced and had 40 congressional endorsements, give her to 20, 30, commercial endorsement that he showed up in South Carolina and early January at his weakest and had half the state's major elected officials there, that no one had quite grappled with the fact that even if he was still politically weak, he still was close enough to incumbent, and that the Republican Party let so much of the narratives around January 6 coalesce into Trump's flavor and so much of the narratives around Trump's term called Lesson's favor,

have created this very peculiar dynamic that has made things easy and easier for Trump amplified by folks' own missteps and the fact that Trump has been helped by being out of sight, out of mind, that be very curious what happens if you rerun this election with Trump on quit Twitter rather than truth social. when his what he's saying is much more visible that at this point you know

one of the one of the refrains of voters is that they didn't like the tweets but if the tweets don't exist and they're just being broadcast into a void on Twitter social it's much less out of sight out of mind

but you know you can run through 27 variables that I don't think any of this was inevitable you can see all sorts of scenarios in which things play differently for DeSantis or Dick Scott or I don't know. Maybe not Ryan Binkley. But the way things have gone out is that Trump has gotten almost every single break in the same way that he did in 2015-2016 primaries.

Ben, safe travels to Iowa. Thank you for joining the Dispatch podcast. Thank you for having me. I'm going to be able to be.