The NPR Politics Podcast - 2020 Update: Trump Woos Big Donors He Spurned In 2016; Dems Address "Electability"

Episode Date: May 7, 2019

The Trump 2020 campaign is making a new effort to bring in fundraising help from establishment Republicans who sat out 2016. Plus, while Joe Biden makes the pitch that he's the most electable, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris push against the notion. This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, Congressional correspondent Scott Detrow, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Annyeong-haseyo from Seoul, South Korea. This is Andrea at Seoul American Middle High School, where I just high-fived my AP Government and Politics students as they went off to take the very last AP Government exam at this school. In June, after 60 years, Seoul American Middle High School will be closing. Lots of changes. This podcast was recorded at... It is 10.40 a.m. on Tuesday, May 7th.

Things may have changed by the time you hear the podcast. All right, here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover politics. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. So today, we're talking 2020. We're going to talk about the Trump and Biden campaigns. But first, we have some very important business to take care of. Do you know why? No. Why? Well,

Mara, let me tell you why. Today, right this moment, it is our 500th episode. We're catching up to morning edition. We are very slowly. Who is about to celebrate its 40th anniversary. Years. Back to that in a second. But we started this podcast back in November of 2015, 800 years ago, basically, to follow a presidential election. So I guess it's appropriate that in episode 500, we're talking about the next presidential election. We are going to look back on those 500 episodes on Thursday's Weekly Roundup, including a Hall of Fame of Can't Let It Goes, which should be fun. And Mara is definitely in that Hall of Fame. I think that is fair to say. But Mara, you mentioned Morning Edition. They changed their

theme this week. There was a lot of feels for listeners on the radio about changes. We've got some changes here in the podcast as well. Not as drastic, though. If you looked in your podcast feed, you may have noticed that as of today, we've got a new logo for the Impair Politics podcast. We figured after so many episodes, we should change things up. Same podcast, new logo. I kind of like the new logo. Yeah, it's awesome.

Mara, do you have any thoughts? I'm looking it up. Clean lines. That's it? No, that's been our logo for years. Well, anyway, it's in your feeds right now. Check it out. Don't let us ruin the suspense.

All right. All right. All right. So, Tam, you just did a story on this. There's a lot of ways where Donald Trump's 2020 campaign is very similar to his 2016 campaign in terms of the tone, the approach, the states he's going after. But if you peel off the top, if you look at the structure of the campaign, it approach, the states he's going after. But if you peel off the top, if you look at the structure of the campaign, it is radically different, isn't it? So this is an analogy that at least Scott will understand and some of our listeners. But

in 2016, the Trump campaign was the Millennium Falcon. It was this scrappy thing that, you know, sometimes you had to bang on to get to work. The Hillary Clinton campaign was very Death Star-like in its size and scope in Brooklyn. Yes, I'm with you. And now Trump 2020 is building its own Death Star. It is a much more sophisticated campaign. And the biggest example that I can point to right now is something that's going to happen today in Washington, D.C. at the Trump Hotel. It is a kickoff event for something known as bundling. right now is something that's going to happen today in Washington, D.C. at the Trump Hotel.

It is a kickoff event for something known as bundling. There is going to be a program where the Trump campaign gets its most influential supporters to go out and raise money from people inside their networks. People who raise $25,000 will be in the Trump train. People who raise $45,000 will be in Club 45. People who raise $100,000... That sounds very familiar. Yeah. Just like a regular Republican presidential campaign. Or like Hillary Clinton's campaign, who had hillblazers who raised $100,000. Jeb Bush had a similar program. George W. Bush had a similar program. In fact, this bundling program that's being launched in this flashy thing was developed with consultation from a Republican who created George W. Bush's bundling program.

So, OK, and we know, you know, just a few weeks ago, we got a picture of how much money Trump's campaign raised in the first quarter, and it was a ton of money. know, you know, just a few weeks ago, we got a picture of how much money Trump's campaign raised in the first quarter. And it was a ton of money. But, Mara, how much difference does that make? Because one of the things that for all the disorganization and seat of the pants approach to the 2016 campaign, one of the things Trump did really well was was go a long way without having to spend much money, getting a ton of free media, dominating the national conversation, having all this money. What difference does that make? Well, first of all, he'll, dominating the national conversation. Having all this money, what difference does that make? Well, first of all, he'll still dominate the national conversation, I think.

But money does make a difference. I mean, this is a metaphor for the whole Trump presidency. He kind of took this big departure from Republican orthodoxy on ideology, and he married it to the tremendous corporate resources and money that the Republican Party has. And he passed a kind of traditional Republican agenda on tax cuts and deregulation and judges while it was overlaid with this kind of xenophobia, populism, nativism to appeal to white working class base. And the way this works in terms of money is that what Trump can do now is he won last time, 77,000 votes spread over those three key states. This time, he can use that money to go prospecting in this universe that the Trump campaign has defined, 26 million voters they think are gettable, to boost white working class

turnout, to find every elderly white person in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania that they think might be open to voting for him that either didn't do before. And money is important for that. They've already spent twice as much money on social media as all the Democratic candidates combined. So money actually matters because it can fund a sophisticated data operation where they can find, they say they have identified every single voter that they want to go to. And this money represents something else, which is establishment buy-in. The fact that they have this program, you know, in 2016, candidate Trump said, I don't need donors. I don't need donor money. And he was very public about it and very critical of his opponents. And the fact is, the donors didn't want him either. Although he had some key billionaires. Republican money people were on the sidelines, including this guy, Jack Oliver, who now has helped them develop the bundler program. So there were all of these Republicans who were sort of

never Trumpers. I talked to Anthony Scaramucci, who did a lot of the fundraising for Trump's campaign in 2016. And he said they had this list of regular Republican donors. They called a bunch of them and they got a lot of rejections. And now those very same people are kind of on board with Trump because guess what? He gave them tax cuts. He's giving them judges. He's doing the things that they want. Which shows you how complete the Trumpian takeover of the Republican Party is. It's not just the base. It's the whole RNC. It's the whole thing. And that's why you don't hear a peep from Republicans in Congress when he does things that they violently disagree with in private.

Tam, you mentioned that this bundling event is happening at the Trump Hotel. I think it's worth flagging that just as the case in 2016, where fundraisers were held at Trump Hotels, the campaign headquarters are at Trump Tower. This campaign is also going to steer a lot of money back into Donald Trump's businesses, isn't it? Indeed. And also steering a lot of money into Brad Parscale, the campaign manager, his businesses. He does. He has like an online advertising sort of business. So that's the other business model of the Trump presidency. But then again, like people who support Trump want to go to the Trump Hotel.

I mean, where else would they have it? They want to bask in the glow of the chandeliers at the Trump Hotel. So he's raising a lot more money. He's doing it in a much more establishment way with a full buy-in from the Republican Party. Is there anything else that they're going to do differently using this money in 2020 compared to 2016? Well, they're not changing the message and they're not changing the geographic strategy, the electoral vote strategy, except for they talk about Colorado or Minnesota, which is a long term pipe dream for Republicans. They're going to focus on those Rust Belt states, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. They claim that they are going to expand the map. Of course, the key difference is that he will not be running against Hillary Clinton. He will be

running against one of 21 as of right now. That number is probably going to grow in the next week or so. Twenty one Democrats right now. Joe Biden has a wide lead over all those other Democrats, and he is positioning himself as the likely nominee of the party. We're going to talk about that after a quick break. Support for NPR and the following message come from the American Beverage Association. America's beverage companies are working together to support families as they reduce the sugar in their diets. Coke, Dr. Pepper, and Pepsi are providing more great tasting options with less sugar or no sugar at all. Smaller portion sizes, clear calorie labels, and reminders to think balance.

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And let's turn to the other side of the field and talk about former Vice President Joe Biden. Scott, you were out on the campaign trail this weekend in South Carolina following Biden around. And, you know, we actually haven't talked about him much since he declared his candidacy. So you were there with him. What was his message like? You know, it's interesting. In a lot of ways, Joe Biden is already trying to position himself as the party's nominee. A big part of the appeal of his candidacy, we've seen this with the voters who are already saying they're going to support him or give money to him, is that there's a lot of thought

and we're going to come back to this. There's a lot of thought that Joe Biden is the best Democrat to beat Donald Trump because of a wide range of reasons, including the fact that he's an established name. He was vice president for eight years. Again, circling back to that point, because it's certainly a tension point. But Joe Biden is running on this general election type strategy. The three parts of his campaign that he talks about is that he is going to unite the United States.

He's going to, as he puts it, save the soul of the United States, arguing that Donald Trump is this, you know, diversion in terms of the things he stands for, the divisiveness, the way that he's destroying allies around the world. Biden's pitch is, you know, if we get him out after four years, we can reset the course. If Donald Trump has eight years, that fundamentally changes this country. And finally, he talks a lot about rebuilding the middle class. So he is making this explicit pitch, especially to the type of Democrat that gets the most attention, if not the factual reason for the defeat of Hillary Clinton. The, you know, more conservative, maybe more rural, white middle class Democrat who may have drifted to Donald Trump. He's trying to reassemble the Democratic coalition, college educated people, mostly women, African-Americans, where he has a reservoir of

goodwill and the white working class, a chunk of which defected from Obama to Trump. And Scott, you were in South Carolina, which is a state that has a very large African-American voting population on the Democratic side. Did his pitch change at all for that audience? Yeah, just a little bit. And that's why I really wanted to be in South Carolina, because Joe Biden has put himself in a lot of places going to a lot of, you know, Midwestern union type settings, really kind of talking to that white working class voter. But, you know, as Mara said, if you look at the polls, he has a commanding lead among non-white voters in the Democratic primary, like 20 points or so among Bernie Sanders' and the teens.

He's far ahead. And I talked to a lot of voters at this event, and a lot of voters said it just comes down to that association with Barack Obama, that track record with Barack Obama. And having heard that over and over from voters before the event, it really, like, to the point of it just, like, I was sitting there in the back of the room laughing. I watched my buddy Barack stand up there. I watched him talk. By the way, he's a hell of a guy. Only person I could confide in was my friend, and he is my friend, Barack Obama. I heard you playing the tape with my buddy.

My buddy, I shouldn't be so casual. President of the United States, Barack Obama. He's Joe-bama. Yeah, like, seriously, this happened't be so casual. President of the United States, Barack Obama. He's Joe Bama. Yeah. Like seriously, this happened at least five times. Just like, Barack Obama, my friend. We're really friends. You know what's so interesting about that is that the other candidates left that lane wide open for him. It's like you listen to the rest of them. Barack Obama didn't exist. Barack Obama is one of the most beloved and revered Democrats in history. And the other candidates not only haven't talked about him much,

but some of them, Bernie Sanders, are running to obliterate his greatest accomplishment, Obamacare. They want to throw it out and start again with some, you know, Medicare for all. And, you know, Biden isn't doing that. Yeah. And some of these candidates like Kamala Harris, especially goes way back with Barack Obama. She was out stumping for him in 2008 when she was San Francisco district attorney. There's others as well, but it's Biden. Elizabeth Warren created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. So they all had an opportunity to do this. They didn't take it. In comes Joe Biden. And, you know, the interesting thing about Joe Biden, he's definitely running on electability, but he's not really running on inevitability. In other words, he is the frontrunner in terms of polling numbers right now,

but he's a pretty shaky frontrunner. I can't tell you the number of Democrats I have talked to who still feel that he's a disaster waiting to happen, who still are kind of waiting for this mirage of his frontrunnerness to dissolve. And as a matter of fact, one of them said, if he can survive the next three to four months, he can be the nominee. Three to four months? That's how fragile he's considered? So that's what's pretty interesting about that. But Democratic voters, despite the fact that they seem to be really voting with their heads, not their hearts right now, you know, feeling they just want to beat Trump. Biden seems to be the best person to do that. You cannot be a successful candidate unless people are excited about you, not just because they think you're the best of the weak bunch.

They have to be excited. So that's what I'm waiting for Joe Biden to flesh out his program, you know, and come up with things that Democrats can really a forward looking vision that Democrats can be excited about. So, Scott, this electability thing, let's let's dig in on this. Yes. Yes. This has I mean, we have repeatedly said in the podcast that when you look at the polls, when you look at our conversations with voters, this is the top issue among Democrats, just anybody, any human being who can beat Donald Trump to the point where some polls that's been interesting are asking, would you rather have a nominee you agree with more or is more electable? And people say, I want more electable. And this has become a very layered conversation to the point where several other candidates are really

feeling the need to take it head on. There is a lot of angst out there that Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016 because of sexism among the electorate. And the fact that a record number of women were elected to Congress in 2018 does not seem to have tapped that down. So I was in Houston two weeks ago, and a lot of candidates came through speaking at this forum that was specifically designed to speak to concerns of of of minority women voters. And Elizabeth Warren was the last person up. And she was asked this question head on. You know, what do you say to people who say they like your ideas, but maybe they're worried about a woman as the nominee and losing to Trump? And she blew the roof off this forum with this answer. Are we going to fight because we're afraid?

Are we going to show up for people that we didn't actually believe in, but because we were too afraid to do anything else? That's not who we are. And Warren isn't the only one. Kamala Harris was speaking in Detroit this weekend, and she talked about this electability issue too. There has been a lot of conversation by pundits about the electability and who can speak to the Midwest. But when they say that, they usually put the Midwest in a simplistic box and a narrow narrative.

And too often, their definition of the Midwest leaves people out. It leaves out people in this room who helped build cities like Detroit. There is this idea that Hillary Clinton didn't lose in the upper Midwest because white guys who work at factories didn't vote for her. She lost because people of color. Oh, I don't think it's an idea. I think it's a clear fact. Yeah, they didn't turn out. And then a lot of young people decided to vote for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson.

Yeah, if Milwaukee and Detroit are a little more excited about Hillary Clinton, I think she's the I think she's the president. Pennsylvania is a little bit of a different case, but certainly in those two states. You know, the other thing, can we just stipulate here, does anybody here doubt for a second that there won't be a woman slash minority on the Democratic ticket? There will be in some position. Doesn't Cory Booker say, my vice president, whoever she is? Yeah, I mean, I think that's pretty clear. There will be a woman slash minority on the ticket, and there will be somebody on the ticket who can appeal to those Midwestern states in some configuration.

All right, that is a wrap for today. We will be back as soon as there's political news that you need to know about. We are super excited that we have made it to 500 episodes. It has been a wild ride, and we're going to recount a little of that in our Thursday roundup, so look for that in your feeds.

500 more. I mean, we could get there by, I don't know, 2020? Probably by the end of the election we might be at another 500 episodes. Woo! I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover politics. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.