The NPR Politics Podcast - Fifteen Days Out, Some GOP Lawmakers Are Distancing Themselves From Trump

Episode Date: October 19, 2020

Joe Biden warns that nothing is certain, while Donald Trump says everything is still possible. Just over two weeks out from the election, the campaigns are in full turnout mode. Despite the president's confidence, though, Republicans are beginning to message that they will be an effective check on a Biden presidency.This episode: congressional correspondent Susan Davis, White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Christian from Rantoul, Illinois, and I'm about to get LASIK eye surgery. This podcast was recorded at 2.05 p.m. on Monday, October 19th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Like hopefully, I'll have 20-20 vision. Okay, here's the show. You know, I kind of want LASIK. I'm still holding out. I might get it.

It's the eyes, though. Scary. It's kind of want LASIK. I'm still holding out. I might get it. It's the eyes, though. Scary. It's kind of exciting. I've always had good vision, and now I'm starting to kind of not be able to read as well. Things are further away, and my fonts are bigger, so I might have to get reading glasses. So I think we're going the opposite directions. Well, I hope it goes great for him. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Frank Ordonez. I cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.

And I think it is finally safe to say it. We are in the home stretch of this election. It's just 15 days to Election Day and the campaigns are traveling all across the country to the states they believe they need to win. Here's Joe Biden at a rally yesterday in North Carolina. We'll always have your back, I promise you. So please, please vote and help get out the vote. We got to keep the incredible momentum going. We can't let up. And President Trump held a rally in Georgia on Friday night.

We got to run the table. We got it's automatic because it's just the way it falls. You know, winning the electoral college is a very, very hard thing to do. And we just ran the string. Right. But it's a very hard thing to do. Franco, let's start with the president. What was his message over this weekend?

Well, you know, I mean, it really wasn't a clear one. President Trump was in California and Nevada. You played the clip from Georgia. It's a state that he won handedly. So it's kind of curious that he's there at all at this point. You know, the campaign would rather be focused on a message that Trump is best suited to revive the economy. But frankly, this weekend, he was, you know, more painting himself as a victim, making personal attacks against Joe Biden, you know, also making attacks on his attorney general. Today, he's attacking Anthony Fauci. You know, it's a lot of personal animosity.

And really, you know, the contrast between the two campaigns over the weekend, over the last week, couldn't be more different. How so? Trump is holding these big rallies. They're outside, but frankly, they're so packed. It's as if the pandemic didn't exist in many ways. Then you have Biden. He's holding these small events, these drive-in rallies where social distancing is really a centerpiece. And that's for obvious reasons. You know, a big part of Biden's message is that Trump mishandled the virus. So it makes sense that that Biden would would incorporate that into his own campaign and,

you know, and argue that President Trump is not taking this seriously. Domenico, what do you make about where the candidates are spending their time right now and what it says about where we are in the race? Well, look, I mean, when I talk to Republican strategists, they talk about the seven core Republican states that need to be held. In other words, states that have, you know, kind of leaned toward Republicans in the last decade, whether in gubernatorial Senate races or in the presidential, and they point to North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Texas, Arizona, Iowa, and Georgia. So when you see President Trump spending all this money on the airwaves in Arizona, Iowa, and Georgia. So when you see President Trump spending all this money on the airwaves in Ohio, Iowa, and Georgia, it sure feels like a defensive crouch, but they

need to win those seven states to be able to then build on them because even with those, it's not quite enough. And one strategist said, look, there's so many electoral votes in Pennsylvania and Republicans have done pretty well with registering voters there that that's probably the tipping point state. You know, there is at least by the polling, the suggestion that the president is the underdog in this race. Biden has been leading in all the public pollings and in many of the battleground states. But the president and his campaign seem to feel really confident that they can still win this. Right, Franco? Yeah, I mean, that's certainly some of the messaging we heard from the campaign, that they feel very confident that there is a strong ground game, that, you know, they were

behind in 2016, and that like then they're being counted out. And look, you know, Joe Biden is also saying, you know, look, things look very good for us, but we cannot get complacent. We can still lose this. Yeah, polls are polls, but this is the turnout phase of the election. And especially with coronavirus, it's been more difficult to do the traditional things like door knocking and registering voters. And another Republican strategist I talked to this morning said that in this final phase, the feedback loop inside a campaign can become really distorted. Campaigns destined for defeat find ways to believe there's still a chance, and campaigns headed for victory can be overly nervous. And I think we're seeing a whole lot of that on both sides. Domenico, what's the reality check on the polling as we see

it now? I mean, how does it compare to maybe four years ago when people thought Hillary Clinton was going to win and obviously she did not? I mean, is Trump's situation so dire or can he still pull out a victory? It is pretty dire. I mean, you know, he's down by 11 points in an average of the national polls. He's down in all of the swing states. Of course, if you looked back at 2016, you would think a lot of the same things. There are some key differences, though, between this time around and 2016. Number one, the volatility of the polls. If you were to look at the national average, just look at the chart on the real clear politics

average of those polls, you saw a lot of expanding and a lot of contracting based around news events. This time around, that's not happening. We've seen from March on a pretty clear, consistent lead from Joe Biden of about seven or eight points or more. And with Biden at or above 50 percent all the way through, it's very straight line. So it's very different than last time. Also, a lot of the pollsters learned a lot of lessons about waiting, who to wait for by education, in particular by place to include more rural voters. But we never know. We don't know until election day what actually, if all of those things are correct. And remember, polls are snapshots in time. And in 2016, one thing that did happen in the final couple of weeks

was a significant tightening. We had the James Comey you know, a lot of strategists I've talked to say that they don't see anything that big changing the direction of the race. But we're going to have to see, you know, who winds up being right. So does all of this mean that the debate this week is even that much more high stakes for the president, especially considering that after the first debate, he took a pretty sizable hit in the polls. Yeah, I mean, look, this debate is probably the last best chance for Trump to gain some momentum. You know, it's the largest engaged single audience night that they're going to have until Election Day and until they make either those victory or concession speeches. One thing I think we're starting to notice is, and it's happening all along, but particularly in the close, the sort of down ballot effect that the top of the ticket is having. And there was this really interesting moment at the president's rally in Georgia on Friday, because on stage with him was Republican Senator David Perdue,

who's also up for reelection and in a close race. And he had this moment where he basically had everyone in the political world talking. But the most insidious thing that Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden are trying to perpetrate and Bernie and Elizabeth and Kamala or Kamala, Kamala, Kamala, Kamala, I don't know, whatever. Perdue, obviously, they're making fun of Kamala Harris's name. His campaign later said he didn't mean anything by it. But I think thing that I thought of was George Allen in the Senate race in Virginia. And that first YouTube moment, political YouTube moment, where George Allen called a Democratic tracker who was following his campaign, Makaka. Remember that? He said, oh, Makaka back there. And it really struck a same kind of thing to me, where that really got so much attention.

And it took somebody who was supposed to be such a big potential Republican star really down a few pegs. And really, I would say, is sort of the hinge point of when Virginia started turning from red to blue. And maybe that's happening in Georgia, too. I don't know. We're going to have to see. It surprised me because Perdue in the Senate has not really been that guy. He doesn't really speak that way. He's a very successful businessman. He's very polished. And seeing him at a Trump rally, you know, sort of talking and sounding like Trump to me was an indication that he's just hugging the president and his supporters as close as possible in the close of this election because he needs all of

Donald Trump's supporters to also vote for him down the ballot if he has a good chance of winning on election day or in the runoff that might come. All right, let's take a quick break. And when we get back, we'll talk about some of the Republicans who are seeking some distance from President Trump in the homestretch. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Google. Google's free tools are designed to help millions of businesses around the country adapt to a new way of working. From updating their business hours, to switching to curbside pickup, to activating online booking, small

businesses are staying connected to their customers with Google. They can even add gift card and donation links on Google so they can get support from their community. Explore Google's free tools for small businesses at google.com slash grow. A lot has changed since Senator Kamala Harris was Attorney General of California. If you don't go to school, Kamala's going to put you and me in jail. We're going to get into her controversial record and what it might mean if she is elected vice president. Listen to the Code Switch podcast from NPR. And we're back. And it's safe to say that not all Republican senators up for reelection this year

that they could serve as a, quote, check on a Biden presidency. We heard it last week from North Carolina Senator Tom Tillis. He told that to Politico in an interview. Texas Senator John Cornyn essentially suggested that Republicans needed to hold the Senate to be a check on Biden as well. And we also heard last week from Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, who in a taped audio of a town hall with his constituents just sort of laid into President Trump. From where I sit as one of the most conservative guys in the U.S. Senate, I'm now looking at the possibility of a Republican bloodbath in the Senate. And that's why I've never been on the Trump train. So I have to think, Domenico, when people start running as a check, that sort of suggests that

his own party doesn't have a lot of confidence that the president can be able to win this election. Yeah, look, it's not usually a good sign when suddenly you have people who need to win in these swing states trying to separate themselves from the person that they're going to be tied to at the top of the ballot. Of course, they don't have any, you know, information that the rest of us don't have. You know, they have internal polling. And I think that what we're seeing is that the internal polls and the public polls are certainly matching up to show that Biden has an advantage. And where I think that Republicans have been talking about this in down ballot races in particular is in the suburbs.

Republicans have always needed suburban voters, right-leaning suburban voters to be on their side. And women overwhelmingly have just said they've had enough. And Republicans really need them to be there for them to be able to win. So they need to be able to separate themselves somewhat from Trump's public antics. Franco, this is a president who has enjoyed almost unparalleled unity from Capitol Hill in the last four years. So it seems all that more notable that we're starting to see this distance. But also, the president doesn't always take it well when people inside his own party start criticizing him. No, I mean, we've seen it over and over again, how the president has gone on the attack against

members of his own party, you know, from, you know, former House Speaker Paul Ryan to, you know, Mark Sanford of South Carolina. Jeff Flake of Arizona. And as you guys pointed earlier, you know, President Trump has a very strong base in these senators and congress members communities. And it goes a long way. And the fact that Ben Sasse is doing this, it does seem to indicate certainly he feels a little bit more confident. Exactly. And, you know, President Trump certainly operates like it's Trump versus the world at all times. And people who oppose him, he goes after them.

He was able to kind of win in 2016 while kind of taking on everyone with a, you know, with a fire starter, essentially. But you wonder, he's going after some of these swing state Republicans, going after even Dr. Fauci for talking about masks. You know, look, eventually you kind of run out of people to go against you to have enough of a base to help you win. My question to both of you, though, is, is it too late? Can a Republican down the ballot at this stage really seek any distance from Trump in the voters' minds? Maybe at the margins. And if they've been doing so for some time and there's some credibility

behind it, if they have some favorability ratings that are pretty high and people believe them more, then I think at the margins, I'm sure their campaign managers are saying, look, we can get a couple points here if you can just show some separation. But I agree with you, it's very difficult to do. This is Trump's party. And down the ballot, you might as well replace the R with a T. All right, let's leave it there for today. You can find all the ways to stay connected with us by following the links in the description of this episode. I'm Susan Davis, I cover Congress. I'm Franco Ordonez, I cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. And a special thanks to our funder, The Little Market, for helping to support this podcast.