The NPR Politics Podcast - Pandemic, Economy, Character: Hear How The Candidates Make Their Case

Episode Date: November 1, 2020

It has been a long campaign, but the messages have stayed consistent. Hear how the candidates pitch themselves to voters.This episode: campaign correspondent Scott Detrow, campaign correspondent Asma Khalid, and White House correspondent Tamara Keith.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

Greetings. This is Parkey in New York City. I'm starting up my car and heading out to eastern Pennsylvania for three days of safe, socially distanced, door-to-door canvassing. This podcast was recorded at... It is 1256 Eastern on Sunday, November 1st. That's right. It's November, the month we vote. We made it! Things may have changed by the time you hear it. Enjoy the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the presidential campaign.

I'm Asma Khalid. I also cover the presidential campaign. And I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House, which means I cover the presidential campaign. We're so close, everybody. We are so close. And yet it's going to be a long couple of days, I fear. I am way too tired for the point at which we are right now. So close, so far to go. I said it's the month we vote, but of course, over 90 million people have already voted according to the U.S. Elections Project. Still, the candidates are making those final pitches. They're spending those final hours of a long campaign in an all-out push with events across the country. You are so lucky that we've taken this journey together.

We've taken this journey, this beautiful journey together, and it is. It's been an amazing journey, but we've accomplished so much. Three days, we can put an end to a presidency that has failed to protect this nation. Three days, we can put an end to a presidency that has fanned the flames of hate all across this nation. President Trump holding a lot of rallies over the weekend and tomorrow, stopping in Michigan, Iowa, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Joe Biden has been a bit more targeted., stopping in Michigan, Iowa, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Joe Biden has been a bit more targeted. He was in Michigan yesterday holding

a couple of events with his former running mate, former President Barack Obama. He's in Philadelphia today, and he will spend tomorrow holding a lot of events with his current running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, all across Pennsylvania. And this is pretty interesting. They just added a last minute stop in Cleveland, Ohio. Today, we're going to talk less about where they are and more about what they're saying. We're going to take a step back and talk about the big picture message that both of these candidates have been running on. Tim, let's start with you and President Trump. Four years ago, his message literally fit on a hat. What has his message been this time? Well, in some ways, the message literally fit on a hat. What has his message been this time? Well, in some ways, the message that fits on the hat fits for the current moment.

He is talking now about, I mean, it's sort of a joke, but he says, make America great again, again. And, you know, his plan had been to run on an awesome economy and prosperity and let's keep this going, keep America great. But then the pandemic came. And so now his message is more like, let's get back to where we were. Take us back seven months, normal life, record setting everything in a normal life. And next year will be the greatest economic year in the history of our country. So, Tam, I got a question for you, because, you know, Scott and I have been reporting on what the arc of the Biden campaign message looks like.

And one thing that I will say for anybody who listens to Joe Biden is that it has been remarkably consistent since the moment he launched his campaign. He's been talking about the soul of the nation. This is our moment. This is our mission. May history be able to say that the end of this chapter of American darkness began here tonight as love and hope and light join in the battle for the soul of the nation. And the point of criticism that we've been hearing from some Democrats is that this cycle, it feels like Donald Trump has not had a consistent message that was supposed to be about the economy, as you said. Now, I don't know what it, to be honest, is always about, but it feels like it's constantly shifting. And, you know,

analysts say a good campaign needs a concise, easily digestible, very simple message. And frankly, Donald Trump had that with make America great again, or build the wall in 2016. And he doesn't seem to have it this year. Yeah, President Trump had some pretty consistent messages last time, drain the swamp, Hillary is crooked, you know, build the wall, trade deals are bad, you know, I'll make the best deals. It was pretty simple. And he came back to it again, and again, and again, what I will say is, and I was just out with him, went to four rallies yesterday. His message is consistent. It is in there. But he's giving a 90 minute speech. So if you took

out all of the sidetracks and jokes and talking about birds running into windmills, you'd have a relatively consistent message, which is kind of the same message he had before. I'm running against the establishment. I'm the outsider. Joe Biden's the establishment. He's been around forever. He's not going to help you. I will. And then on the coronavirus, it's like, you know, I'm the one who's going to bring you out of this. Look, you're at a rally. You can all be together with masks off. Everybody should be like that.

If you want a vaccine to kill the virus, a job to support your great family and freedom to live your life, then I am asking you to vote for Republican, vote for Trump. Let's keep it going. He's also increasingly minimized the coronavirus, even as we surge to record new cases. We are going to talk about the coronavirus, which is obviously the message more than anything else, in a moment. But first, Asma, you mentioned that story that we're both working on. It's airing on your real live radios on Morning Edition tomorrow morning. It's like a podcast, but live. Asma, walk us through, like you said, the thing that we are struck on is that if you look at Joe

Biden's opening video, his I'm running for president, here's what I'm running on, his opening video and his closing video are almost exactly the same. Yeah, right. I mean, characters on the ballot that Donald Trump, he says, four years of a Trump presidency could be an aberration, he feels. But eight years is just too much. He feels like it would fundamentally change the character of this country. But if we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation. And this is something he has been saying on and on and on. And Scott, you know, what I'm struck by is we both covered the primaries.

This was a message that during the primaries, I will say, did not seem to always resonate with his fellow Democrats. Right. Like there were definitely vocal progressives who were angry, who wanted a more sort of angry tone. And Biden was this sort of call for decency, morality, bipartisanship. And it worked for him eventually in the primaries. And it has largely been the same message that he's carried through into the general election. And let's let's shift to the coronavirus, though, because I think if message one for Joe Biden is I'm running to make sure that Donald Trump is an aberration, I think message one A is and I'm also somebody with a very central plan to address the coronavirus. But there's also like

a human element to it that, you know, is again, not just talking about his cases, but talking about it as human beings who've suffered. That's something he kept coming back to at a speech that I was at last week in Warm Springs, Georgia. No family, no friends, no loved ones beside them in those final moments. And it haunts so many of the surviving families, families who were never given a chance to say goodbye. Scott, you know, Joe Biden is somebody for whom empathy has been this kind of core central tenant of how he has run as a politician for years. And I think what to me is so fascinating about this moment that we're in right now is when you talk about COVID-19, part of Biden's message is this return to normalcy, listening to scientists, et cetera.

But it's not just what he's saying, it's how he's been saying it. And, you know, he is somebody who has experienced multiple losses in his family. And so when he speaks about COVID, he does really, you know, address the sort of personal sacrifices that many folks have dealt with, whether they've lost family members through COVID. I and many of you know what loss feels like when you lose someone you love. You feel that deep black hole opening up in your chest and you feel like you're being swallowed into it. And I think that what I've been struck with is that as the president, you know, what you're describing, Tam, seems to almost try to ignore the death toll ticking up. Biden seems

to be speaking to people's fears around that particular climate. And Tam, empathy is not something that President Trump has really leaned into that much, if ever, over the course of his presidency, has he? No, I mean, I think that he is someone who is driven by strength and weakness. And certainly when you talk to his supporters, they will point out like, look, I want that guy on the world stage going toe to toe with Kim Jong Un. And so for President Trump, coronavirus also is a matter of showing strength and like we're not going to let this thing get us down. Or or when President Trump had coronavirus, now it is rallies. He says, I felt so good after I took those drugs. I just wanted to rip my shirt off and show the Superman sign.

I wanted to negotiate a trade deal and go out on the campaign trail. Like, showing strength is a really big, important part of the Trump brand. And focusing on an illness and focusing on people dying is not part of that brand. All right, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to talk more about the big picture messages from President Trump and former Vice President Biden, including how they talk about each other. And we are back. And let's talk about how the two candidates talk about each other. Asma, what are the big overarching themes of how Joe Biden characterizes President Trump? Well, largely, I will say that he has deemed him to be fairly incompetent.

I don't know if he's exactly used those words, right? But he has questioned the leadership that the president has offered over the past four years, specifically, as we were talking earlier about COVID. I mean, he feels like the president has dramatically mishandled that entire situation. But I think even if we look back before the pandemic was largely the big storyline of this campaign cycle, he has questioned from the moment that he launched his campaign, the sort of moral and ethical decisions that President Trump has made. And there was this point where, you know, he had pretty big losses, we were talking earlier,

in both Iowa and New Hampshire during the primaries. And so he went the night of the New Hampshire primary, he skipped out, left from New England to host this campaign launch party in South Carolina. And there his message, even during the primaries, was yet again about how divisive he feels President Trump has been. But I learned hate doesn't ever go away.

It just hides. It just hides. And folks, this president has done nothing but breathe oxygen into that hate and bring them out from under the rocks. And it has been the central through line of his campaign. And you've seen that in a lot of the ads in the final weeks of the race, just kind of a message of voting for your values, voting for what you care about, for what you want the country to be. It boils down to the we're better than this type message that he hopes can inspire

progressives who voted for Bernie Sanders, independents, and maybe even just enough Republicans who voted for Donald Trump last time to deny Trump the margins he won a few key states on. So, Tam, we have heard if you watch the debates, you have a pretty good idea of how the president characterizes Joe Biden's track record. But what would you say the big themes have been? Yeah, you know, I would say that President Trump has sort of struggled with how to deal with Joe Biden. But the thing that he comes back to the most is this idea that Joe Biden is part of the establishment and the idea that Biden's been around

for a really long time in Washington and Trump says that he didn't get anything done. I've done more in 47 months than sleepy Joe Biden has done in 47 years. If you dig through everything in the president's stump speech, that is one thing that comes out clearly is the idea of even though President Trump has been president for four years almost, that he is the outsider and Joe Biden is the insider. So let's talk about one last important thing, and that is how both candidates talk about the election itself, vote counting and voting, particularly voting by mail. And I think it's important to say, especially when we talk about what the president is saying, this is in the context of we saw the final wave of polls come in today.

Joe Biden has a pretty sizable national lead, something like eight to 10 points, depending on the poll you looked at today. And Joe Biden has a narrow but stable lead in most of the key swing states that will decide this election. That is that is the backdrop to this conversation. Tam, we have talked for months about President Trump, you know, raising mostly baseless allegations about mail-in voting and the potential for fraud. He has now started to focus about the counting of those ballots and the speed at which they are counted. And let's just spell out what you just said, which is that President Trump has been bashing mail-in voting and his supporters have listened. And, you know, in a key state, let's take Pennsylvania, of the absentee ballots that have been returned, about 16 million come from Democrats, which is nearly double the number

that come from Republicans. Republicans are planning their whole strategy about election day voting. They are going to dominate Tuesday's voting. And those votes in some states will be counted sooner than the absentee ballots. And President Trump, I mean, the Republican Party, the Trump campaign, state parties have been involved in numerous lawsuits around this. And President Trump is now raising alarms about the idea of ballots that come in after Election Day, absentee ballots. He is saying, no, no, no, no, no. You know, it's worth pointing out, though, Tam, here in this situation, as you were describing earlier, it just feels like Joe Biden and his campaign is like, OK, Trump is saying

these things that are just factually not correct, but we're not going to engage with it. And when you hear what Biden has largely been saying about this, you know, he has been trying to reassure American voters that every vote will be heard and that folks are not going to stop counting the votes and that he feels very confident in the electoral system of the United States. And I think what's notable is like he doesn't even seem to want to engage in this because in their view, there is no real legitimacy to what the president has been saying. I think that there's also something here that stands out, which is

that Joe Biden is an institutionalist, right? Like he was in the Senate. He believes in institutions and President Trump is not an institutionalist. And so you have the case of a president of the United States undermining the democratic system. It's just his default setting. And that's a really good point. And there's a whole lot of people in America who don't really love institutions right now. Absolutely. And we will be covering this election and the results as long as it does take to count and giving you regular updates in between. We will be on the air tomorrow, every single day next week, late in the night on Tuesday, whether or not we know the results. And as we mentioned before, a couple of times,

we will be on the radio nonstop this week as well. So if you haven't before, now is a great time to check out your local public radio station to hear our live election night coverage. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the presidential coverage. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Asma Khalid. I also cover the presidential campaign. And I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.

Thanks to everybody who's been listening to us throughout this two-year and counting election. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.