The NPR Politics Podcast - Michigan Votes; McConnell Vacates

Episode Date: February 28, 2024

President Biden won the Michigan Democratic presidential primary Tuesday by a wide margin, despite a push by those upset by his administration's policies about the war in Gaza to vote uncommitted.Meanwhile, former president Trump won the state's Republican presidential primary, as widely expected.And, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced he would leave his leadership position in November. He is the longest-serving Republican leader in the history of the Senate. This episode: White House correspondent Asma Khalid, campaign reporter Elena Moore, senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, and political correspondent Susan Davis.Our producers are Jeongyoon Han, Casey Morell & Kelli Wessinger. Our editor is Erica Morrison. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Well, hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Elena Moore. I cover the presidential campaign. And I'm Tamara Keith. I also cover the White House. And today on the show, the message from Michigan. Michigan voters held their presidential primaries last night. And as expected, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump easily won their respective races. But the results also showed that they have got some challenges. I want to start with Biden, who won 81 percent of the vote. The next highest total came from uncommitted voters at 13 percent, or just over 100,000 votes. It was a campaign led by folks who are upset over how the president is handling the war in Gaza. And Alina, what was the mission? What was the message that these

uncommitted voters were trying to send? I mean, they're trying to send the message that folks are angry and hurt in Michigan, and they want policy changes from Biden before the general election, like now, immediately. The group running the push to vote uncommitted is called Listen to Michigan, and it was started largely by younger Arab and Muslim organizers based out of Dearborn, this city really near Detroit that has a really large Arab and Muslim population. And for the organizers and volunteers behind this know, behind this campaign, they will tell you they voted for Biden in 2020. They are largely Democrats, but they say that the president could face a real challenge in the general if he doesn't do two things that they're calling for, which is advocate for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza and stop sending USAID to Israel.

All right. So how does this vote total relate to previous years? I know that the uncommitted vote in a number of previous election cycles has certainly received several thousand votes. Yeah, I mean, voting uncommitted isn't new in the state. And notably, I mean, if we go back through time a little bit to 2012, when it was the last time we had an incumbent Democratic president on the ballot, former President Barack Obama, Uncommitted got over 20,000 votes, and there was no big campaign like this. And when there has been a big campaign, like in 2008,

over 200,000 people voted Uncommitted because there was this movement to support then-candidate Obama because he wasn't on the primary ballot. So, you know, there are examples to couch this in recent history. But I think what is key here is that Michigan is such a swing state. You know, Biden won it by just one hundred and fifty thousand votes. And so every vote could really matter here. And of course, again, Michigan has a substantial Arab and Muslim population, especially in southeast Michigan. And people here are just super angry and upset. So, Tam, how is Biden world reacting to all of this? I mean, on the one hand,

100,000 voters certainly is substantial. It is a lot of people. Nonetheless, four out of five voters in Michigan still say that Biden is their man. And, you know, it strikes me that depending on what side you are on, you can certainly interpret these results rather differently. Right. So let's go back to some of the numbers that Elena was talking about based on what Biden folks are telling me. So 13 percent were uncommitted this time. In 2012, about 11 percent were uncommitted. So on a percentage basis, on a share of the electorate incumbent president who's largely unopposed. Close to 800,000 people turned out to vote and something in the neighborhood of, you know, over 600,000 chose President Biden. But obviously, having 100,000 people show up and say that they

are uncommitted to President Biden, they aren't committed to former President Trump, but they are definitely uncommitted to President Biden and they are very upset with him on a very specific policy basis. That is a problem for them. I received a statement from a Biden campaign advisor who said, we understand that it's an emotional, painful, difficult situation for a lot of people. And then the statement goes on to say that they are going to continue to fight for every single vote in Michigan because Michigan really does matter. It's one of these key states. And then though they end this statement saying, we also know that nearly all of the folks voting uncommitted do not support the extremism, the xenophobia and incompetence of Donald Trump.

You know, Tam, that last line to me is striking because there does seem to be this debate within Biden world about how big of an issue or how big of a challenge the president's positions on the Israel's military campaign might pose for him. You know, there are some folks who say that this is a relatively small population in one particular state. There are other folks who say, no, this is a much wider, deeper problem. And there seems to be this debate about once you actually have Donald Trump on the other side, how people will vote. I echo what Elena says. There is a deep anger that I have heard from many Muslim and Arab voters. You know, Biden's campaign manager went to Michigan last month and a whole bunch of local elected leaders refused to meet with her. You know, I've met people who are so deeply angry, who were committed to the Democratic Party for

years, who have lost countless family members. I don't fully know how you persuade a population on this issue. And to use a phrase that's been going around a lot, this isn't necessarily in November going to be a choice between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. It could also be a choice between Joe Biden and the couch. Tam, does the campaign see those uncommitted voters then as persuadable with some sort of affirmative message? They see them as persuadable. They are going to continue to try to persuade them. They readily admit they're probably not going to get all of them. But they are hoping that the situation in Gaza is going to improve, that the advocacy that the Biden administration

has been doing and negotiating to try to get something of a longer lasting ceasefire will succeed, that somehow before November, the situation in the Middle East will improve, that the Palestinian people will have some control over their own fate or some governance or something that doesn't exist right now, and that the bombing will stop. They're working towards that. But you know, the challenge here is that foreign policy is now completely intertwined with this domestic political challenge. And the president of the United States is unlikely to make dramatic policy shifts, even with 100,000 people, making it very clear that they are upset with his policies. Let's talk about the Republicans, because we haven't even discussed what went on in the Republican primary at all so far in this show. Donald Trump picked up 68 percent of the vote, but you had the former governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley, who got 27 percent.

I would say that that was a comfortable win for Trump, but it is also certainly perhaps a smaller margin than some folks expected. And to me, Alaina, it suggests that Trump also has some weaknesses, potential weaknesses in the state. These two candidates are losing a portion of, you know, their primary electorate and kind of to different causes. You know, one side has a legitimate primary contender and one side Biden is facing basically folks who are disagreeing with himself and are choosing no one over him. Nikki Haley got 300,000 votes, which is a lot of people not voting for Trump in a Republican primary. But Nikki Haley has no path to the nomination. Former President Trump is going to get the vast majority of the delegates from Michigan.

He's going to get the vast majority of the delegates from Super Tuesday, which is next Tuesday. And yet there is weakness. The other thing I would note, though, is that Trump totally phoned it in in Michigan. He spent almost no money on the air, like fewer than $50,000. Nikki Haley spent half a million dollars in ads. And Trump held one rally like 10 days before the election. Meanwhile, Biden had spent mostly last year, but Biden and his allied super PACs had spent about $5 million. It's a sign that they are taking Michigan very

seriously. And presumably Trump at some point is going to start dumping money into the state, too. You know, to me, that is the key question. And I don't know that we'll have an answer to that today. But which group is perhaps more persuadable? Are the Haley voters more persuadable to come around to Donald Trump in November? Or are these uncommitted voters in the Democratic primary more likely to come around to Joe Biden in November? And I guess that is a storyline we will continue to follow. Yeah, that's what the campaign is for. All right, Tam, Elena, thank you both so much for your reporting.

Let's take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll have some surprising news to discuss today from Capitol Hill. And we're back. It is a monumental day on Capitol Hill. And we're back. It is a monumental day on Capitol Hill. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced he will retire from his role as the Republicans' leader this November. He has held that role since 2007. Here he is speaking on the Senate floor this afternoon. Father, time remains undefeated. I'm no longer the young man sitting in the back, hoping colleagues would remember my name. It's time for the next generation of leadership. Notably, McConnell said he was not stepping down from his Kentucky Senate seat, saying, quote, I'm not going anywhere. To help us make sense of what this moment means, we are joined now by two of NPR's top congressional experts, Deirdre Walsh and Susan Davis. Hello to

you both. Hey, Asma. Hi. So, Sue, it is, I think, hard to understate how influential McConnell has been as a leader, both in the majority and the minority. Let's begin with a big question, but what is his legacy in this moment? I don't think that anyone would dispute, including Mitch McConnell, that his most lasting legacy was his work to reshape the judiciary, both in terms of lower courts and getting more conservative appointed judges to the judiciary, but most specifically and most impactfully, his 2016 decision to deny Merrick Garland a Supreme Court confirmation

process when he was nominated by former President Obama to fill the seat of the conservative justice Antonin Scalia. This decision, of course, left that seat open through the election. Donald Trump won that election, and it paved the way for Donald Trump to then appoint three conservatives to the court, reshaping the court for potentially the next generation. You can draw a straight line from Mitch McConnell's decision to that outcome. This is something that I think Mitch McConnell is very proud about. And I think that's also part of Mitch McConnell's legacy is he's also been one of the bigger boogeymen in American politics. To the right,

that made him a hero. And to the left, that made him one of the people that has helped drive division, hyper-partisanship, undermining the courts as more political institutions. And so he is a very consequential figure, but for very different ways, depending on where you sit politically. I interviewed McConnell after the leak of the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, and he was very much leaning into the legacy that Sue described very well in terms of his specific individual role in shaping the federal judiciary. He threw a lot of shade at former President Donald Trump, who appointed a lot of these judges, but McConnell essentially said he was the one who made a lot of the recommendations and was charting the strategy in terms of the confirmation of the Supreme Court justices. One thing that McConnell, I think, now in hindsight, got wrong during that interview was he claimed at the time that that decision would be a wash politically.

That's striking. I don't even remember he said that to you, Deirdre. That was the news out of that interview. And I was struck by how confident he was in saying that at the time and how since then, obviously, we've seen that play out a lot differently than I think he even expected. Deirdre, you're up on Capitol Hill. You've been reporting on this story. I want to get a sense from you of what you are hearing from senators. How are they responding to this news? I think there's a split. I think a lot of them are reflecting on McConnell's tenure. A lot of Republicans are saying how important a figure he was in the party and how much he's done for the

party, both politically and legislatively. A lot of the things that Sue touched on in terms of his role as a dealmaker, his role as a political operator who helped support a lot of candidates and elect a lot of Republicans over his time as leader. But there are some in the group that voted against him for this term who were basically saying, you know, good riddance. I mean, Josh Hawley from Missouri was one in that group. And and he told me, you know, I was calling for this months ago. And, you know, he wouldn't endorse a successor, but he basically said, you know, McConnell is responsible for all this corporate money and the fact that we can't pass legislation addressing tech companies. And so whoever succeeds him has to change that. So there is a brand of Republicans. J.D. Vance is another one who said that he

thinks that this is good for Senate Republicans because he believes Trump will win in November and that Trump needs a Senate Republican leader who he can work with. And McConnell was not that type of leader because they did not get along and were not on the same page. So I think it'll be interesting. Do you have a sense of who may be vying for McConnell's role? Well, there are the so-called three Johns that have expressed interest in following McConnell as leader. The number two, John Thune from South Dakota, the number three, John Barrasso from Wyoming, and Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn. I just find it comical that they are all John. All white.

And Vance joked like, I'm backing John, which is like his way of not answering who is supporting him. I'm for John. But Vance said there could be others. I did think it was interesting that Senator Rubio basically said it takes a special brand of crazy to want to run for leader in the modern era. And, you know, he said, we need a strong leader. But the sort of description of the job has really changed recently. I do think it's worth noting, too, in that context, and Deirdre's right, the three Johns are the names you hear the most. But both Cornyn and Thune have been in the past Trump critics. You know, John Thune just endorsed Trump this past weekend, which makes me wonder, did he know that Mitch McConnell might be announcing he was stepping down?

John Thune, after Trump lost in 2020, basically said, like, this guy can't win elections. We need to move on. He has also since endorsed Trump. And look, like, Trump likes loyalists. He likes people that he feels like are going to be loyal to him and their past, what a Trump person might look at as disloyalty or questioning of Trump could be seen as negatives against them in this race. If Trump does become a factor, I agree that every senator you talk to is going to say Donald Trump's not going to be a factor in this race. I don't think that we can look at what happened in the speaker's race and say, like, he might not be the defining factor. But to suggest that his support or opposition couldn't be a serious factor in a leadership race is pretty foolish to me. with Mitch McConnell, right? If you talk about the bill to have, you know, additional funding for Ukraine and Israel, he has been able to find some small areas of commonality, I would argue,

with the Republican leader in the Senate. I don't know if you're the White House, if you're the Biden administration, and you're looking at it all this, if you see a future in which you can constructively work with Republicans in the Senate. He and Joe Biden, there's very little daylight between those two men on their worldview when it comes to things like opposing Russian aggression and supporting democracies like Ukraine as allies of the United States. They share that view. Do the Johns share that view as well? Mostly. Mostly, yes, but they are more delicate in how they answer that question these days,

where McConnell from the beginning and for months and months and months has been leading this very public campaign, despite the fact that it splits his party in two in favor of this. And it's very important to him that this makes it across the finish line. It hasn't gotten there yet, but the tide seems to be turning a little bit in its favor on the Hill. But it's probably his last stand. And you're right, like at least Biden always knew what he was dealing with with Mitch McConnell, partly because he was such an established player. And McConnell, again, I think, lives by the old ethos of like, my word is my bond. If I tell you I'm going to do something or if I tell you I don't have the votes, like, I mean it. And those kind of rules don't really work the same way anymore. about McConnell's role in shaping the judiciary and his role, you could argue, in increasing polarization in the country. Because when we got this news, we just heard a little bit ago, President Biden say that he was sorry to hear that McConnell is stepping down, adding, quote, we fight like hell, but he never, never, never misrepresented anything.

I think that that speaks to the respect that people had for Mitch McConnell as a tactician. He was very good at the business of politics and the art of the deal and getting something done. Very famously back during the Obama administration when there was the so-called fiscal cliff at the end of 2012, and they just couldn't get a deal between the Obama administration and Congress. And Mitch McConnell and Joe Biden famously stepped up and cut the deal that kind of got them over the finish line. Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell go way back. They come from a different school of politics than the politics that I think defines Congress today. It was a different era. And they come up of the era that you could deeply oppose the policies and ideology

of the people on the other side of the aisle. But they've often found a common humanity and a friendship with the people that they worked with. And that was sort of a defining feature of the people on the other side of the aisle, but they've often found a common humanity and a friendship with the people that they worked with. And that was sort of a defining feature of the Senate, that there was a camaraderie among the 100 that you might not have even found in the House or in other places. That is less and less true today. The Senate is less collegial. There isn't as much of that like sort of old school back slapping way of doing things. I would also note that back when they were coming up in politics, the Senate was also a whole lot less diverse. There was less women in there. Like the chamber has also become more modern and more representative of what the country looks like. So it's not like the old glory days or when

everything was great. Don't take me as saying that. But they do come from a time and a place that I think they're both a little bit of relics for what their parties want today. of his generation, who that was the leading force in the Republican Party. And he's leaving at a time where former President Donald Trump, who he clashed with repeatedly, and regularly refuses to really comment on Donald Trump. I mean, the change in the party, in terms of McConnell's exit is notable for its timing. And I think it's going to be interesting to see sort of who comes next and how much they are influenced by former President Trump in the way that we saw in the speaker election in the House. I talked to a lot of senators today after the news who claim that Trump won't have the same kind of influence in picking McConnell's successor in the way

that Trump did in picking former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy's successor in the way that Trump did in picking former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy's successor. But I think that remains to be seen. I also think that a good point here is the leadership election for the next leader won't happen until after November's election. And remember, the control of the Senate's at stake, too. And Republicans are heavily favored to pick up seats, if not win the majority outright, potentially by a lot. And who gets elected, what kind of senator gets elected is also going to be a big factor into what kind of leader they want to lead them. And it's worth remembering at the start of this Congress, 10 Republican senators

out of the 49 voted against McConnell. You started to see this sort of movement away from his leadership and his worldview at the beginning of this Congress, I think there's reason to believe that would be an even larger bloc who want to take the party in a more Trumpian direction, particularly if Donald Trump were to win the election and they were to win the Senate majority. But take that also in reverse. If Donald Trump loses this election and Republicans don't win the majority, that could also scramble the calculations of like, OK, who leads us now? The party is still in a bit of an identity crisis. And this leadership election will tell us about, you know, where it goes in the future. All right. On that note, that is a wrap for today's show. But as you all can hear, there is a lot for us to keep an eye

on between now and November. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. And I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And thank you all, as always, for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.