The NPR Politics Podcast - Roundup: Dems Fret; GOP Prepares; Majestic Mustaches

Episode Date: July 12, 2024

After this week's NATO summit in Washington, D.C., President Joe Biden held a rare, solo press conference to try and allay concerns over his mental fitness. It came as a new NPR/PBS News/Marist Poll has him in a statistical dead heat with former President Trump to win in November. Plus, Republicans get ready to hold their convention in Milwaukee. We look at what to expect. And, the facial hair of politicians — and NPR personalities. This episode: national political correspondent Susan Davis, White House correspondent Asma Khalid, and senior political editor and correspondent Ron Elving.The podcast is produced by Jeongyoon Han, Casey Morell and Kelli Wessinger. Our intern is Bria Suggs. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. 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.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Sarah from Kansas City and Ashley from Delaware. We were college roommates 10 years ago and we keep in touch by listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. This show is recorded at 12 17 p.m on Friday, July 12th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but we will still be bonding over this podcast. Okay, here's the show. Oh, I love that. We're like making connections for people. I love that. We're like making connections for people. I love that, too. Shout out to my college roommate, Gracie, who I am still in touch with, but who does not listen to our podcast.

So she'll never hear this. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. And I'm Ron Elving, editor correspondent. And today, despite his difficulties, the latest NPR-PBS News Marist poll says President Biden is running even with former President Trump in a head-to-head race.

It comes as Democrats, including donors and lawmakers, are putting pressure on President Biden to drop out of the race. But during a press conference last night, President Biden suggested that was not going to happen. You earlier explained confidence in your vice president. Yes. If your team came back and showed you data that she would fare better against former President Donald Trump, would you reconsider your decision to stay in the race? No, unless they came back and said, there's no way you can win. Me.

No one's saying that. No poll says that. We're going to talk extensively about Vice President Kamala Harris today. But Asma, I want to talk about our poll a little bit more because it does speak to the moment that we're in. Yes, it showed Biden slightly ahead 50-48 in a head-to-head against Donald Trump. That is a statistical tie within the margin of error. But there's some warning signs inside our poll for the president as well. That's right. You know, and Biden slips when the third party options are introduced, with Trump holding then a slight advantage, 43 percent to 42 percent. Nearly two-thirds of the more than 1,300 respondents in this poll said that they believe Biden lacks the mental fitness to be president. That includes almost four in 10 Democrats.

And Sue, as you know, that has been the focus of so much political conversation these past few weeks. Absolutely. And we should note that our poll also tested other Democrats in head-to-head races against Donald Trump. And it shows that essentially any Democrat is running statistically even with him right now. One of those Democrats tested, Vice President Kamala Harris. Asma, this is a very complex moment for her considering where she is in the conversation. How has she been positioning herself in the weeks since the debate? Well, she is not entertaining any of the speculation about her potentially or hypothetically taking over the Democratic ticket. She has said that Biden is the candidate of the speculation about her potentially or hypothetically taking over the Democratic ticket. She has said that Biden is the candidate of the party, period. She is trying to do two things in

this moment. She's trying to refocus the conversation on Trump while also being a validator and defend Biden. The one thing we know about our president, Joe Biden, Biden is that he is a fighter. He is a fighter. And he is the first to say, when you get knocked down, you get back up. I mean, Ron, the vice president by design exists to serve if the president cannot. So it makes sense that in this current internal Democratic debate that Kamala Harris should be at the very top of the list if Joe Biden somehow decides to bow out, although, again, he's not indicating he's willing to do that. Absolutely. So there's no vacancy yet. But if there's a vacancy, the vice president is the first person you think of. If, in fact, we were talking about Joe Biden resigning the presidency

or somehow becoming incapacitated, then she would be the president in effect, and possibly more than in effect, she might actually have to be sworn in. So there are some analogies for that. What we don't have is any real clear precedent for going to a convention where the party has not entirely settled the question of whether their incumbent president or the incumbent vice president should go forward as the nominee. That is a, at least in modern political history, that is not something we're familiar with. So we're truly in terra incognita. Asma, in your reporting, do you get the sense that there's any wings of the Democratic Party or activists within the party that are

agitating for Harris to take over? You know, I will say there's certainly Democratic activists, Democratic lawmakers, even we've heard from who suggest that Harris represents a younger generation of the Democratic Party. And this is something Biden suggested a few years ago when he ran that he would be a bridge candidate to a younger generation. So folks do see Harris in this view. She has, I think, broadly in the role of vice president evolved over the last few years. I think some of our listeners probably recall that when she first stepped into the job, you know, it wasn't particularly a comfortable fit for her. She stumbled particularly on that assignment to

figure out the root causes of migration. But I will say, I think after the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe versus Wade, she really found an issue in which she is very comfortable in, in which the Democratic Party also really, really needs her. And so I will say going out, covering her, seeing how voters are responding to her, it feels fundamentally different now in the last several months compared to how it did at the outset of her vice presidency. Also, there's also a part of this campaign that in many ways Republicans and Donald Trump have been running against Kamala Harris from the start. They have raised Joe Biden's age and mental fitness long before the debate performance. And they are prepared to run against a Kamala Harris candidate if they have to.

That's right. She's long been a sort of favorite target for some conservatives. But I do think that the attacks on her are escalating after the debate. We saw the Trump campaign put out an ad that said that a vote for Biden is really a vote for Harris. And then we heard Trump himself at a rally this past week in Florida going on the offense against both Biden and Harris. And that's not something we traditionally hear from him. The radical left Democrat Party is divided in chaos and having a full scale breakdown, all because they can't decide which of their candidates is more unfit to be president.

Sleepy, crooked Joe Biden or laughing Kamala. I mean, Ron, there's certainly a subtext here that the Democratic Party, irrespective of what's happening now with Joe Biden, hasn't had a whole lot of faith in Kamala Harris in the first four years of the Biden administration. Like there are, aside from the Republican attacks, there are also clearly Democratic doubts that she has what it takes to win. Many people remember the campaign that she ran in the early stages of the 2020 cycle, mostly 2019. And apart from landing a few good solid blows against Joe Biden, ironically enough, in one of the debates, she didn't really have very many strong moments in her campaign, essentially fizzled out before they got to Iowa and New Hampshire. So that's not a great

recommendation to be an independent presidential candidate. On the other hand, fizzled out before they got to Iowa and New Hampshire. So that's not a great recommendation to be an independent presidential candidate. On the other hand, she did provide something the party needed in 2020. It needed more outreach beyond white males. It needed somebody on the ticket besides Joe Biden who could bring in and harness the energy of younger people, people of color, and women voters. And this, I think it's clear to say Kamala Harris provided some of that, at least symbolically. We don't have a lot of evidence that she was the reason Joe Biden won in 2020, probably had more to do with Donald Trump, but she did fill a need. Now, they have a very different need now. And it is not the same as somebody who is a

supplement to a candidate. It is a need for a candidate. And yet, for all kinds of structural and legal reasons, if Joe Biden can't answer the bell or is persuaded that he can't answer the bell, she is in position to take over in a way that no one else is. Ron, I do think that part of why we're seeing her name sort of tossed about in the conversation more than you did, maybe let's say two years ago, is because the Democratic Party sees one of their most persuasive issues to win this election in the fall as reproductive rights and abortion. And the White House has put Harris front and center.

She has been the main messenger on this issue. And I do think because that is the issue Democrats see as being one of their most important winning issues, that's been part why the conversation around Harris herself has changed. One thing I thought was interesting, Asma, is last night I watched a focus group of Trump to Biden swing voters in the state of Florida. It was a focus group run by Rich Tal of Engageist, who has also conducted focus groups for NPR. And in that focus group, it kind of echoed, the anecdote echoed what our poll said. It was still a pretty static race. It hadn't moved anybody off the fence from their original positions after the debate. But when they subbed in Kamala Harris instead of Joe Biden and gave these voters the options, she did better than Biden because what she did is she got people who are willing to vote third party off the fence and back supporting a Democrat.

And I think that that is a factor here that can't be under counted because it's pretty clear from our poll and all the data we've seen. This is a hyper polarized environment. Democrats are going to stick with Joe Biden no matter what. Republicans are sticking with Trump no matter what. It's those inbetweens. It's the stay homes. It's the third party leaners. It's the swing voters that are really up for grabs. And there is some both polling data and anecdata that suggest that shaking up the ticket might draw in more of those people who are, quite frankly, very unsatisfied with the two top of the tickets right now. Let's remember, too, that if Joe Biden were to step aside, or if he had to step aside, that nominating Kamala Harris only fills one of the slots on

that ticket. So some other person could yet be added who might change the atmosphere, the discussion, the discourse one more time. I think this is all a really interesting conversation. But I do think we should be very clear that as of now, Biden is sticking in this race. I was speaking this morning to a senior Biden campaign advisor. They feel optimistic about how Biden's press conference went last night. And so I think we're in this weird position where after the news conference last night, Biden, his team, they feel like it was sufficient. At the same time, though, I don't think that press conference completely quieted Democratic angst. And so we're in this sort of weird in limbo phase where I don't know if anything has been entirely resolved. And yet after that press conference,

at least two more Democrats on Capitol Hill called for him to get out of the race. All right, let's take a quick break. When we get back, we're gonna talk about how Republicans are getting ready for their convention. And we're back. And the Republican National Convention starts Monday in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and former President Donald Trump will accept the nomination for the third time to be the party's nominee. Ron, a couple of weeks ago, I don't think that we thought that the Milwaukee convention would be the less newsy one of the two this summer. But considering what Chicago might be like, it looks like this might be a fairly routine convention experience.

Routine in the sense that there is no question it is entirely the Donald Trump show. Only question is who else gets to share some of the stage time with the former president. And right now, the betting seems to be getting heavier on one particular man in the three-person field that the president had narrowed it to. And I think that probably at this point is producing a certain amount of tension within that camp because they're afraid that if there's too much attention for J.D. Vance, that will begin to sort of threaten Donald Trump just a little bit. And if he hasn't made up his mind and he is at all concerned about having to share the real excitement of this convention, as opposed to just a few moments on stage, he might feel a little crowded by the ambition of

J.D. Vance and also think ahead to what the latter part of this next term might be like as J.D. Vance increasingly insisted that this was the Trump-Vance administration and that he was going to continue it in his first term as president. So that's a consideration. I like that you've already figured out that J.D. Vance is going to be the likely vice president. Clearly, that's who you've picked in the veep stakes if you think the Ohio senator is definitely on the short list for the running mate that we don't know yet, at least of this taping. Well, there's every reason to think that Trump might still remember some of the things that J.D. Vance said about him back before he got on the Trump train. But all that is essentially water over the dam if Trump can forget it. Vance just seems to have more electricity than the other two people that we've been talking about. Although there is always that theory that Donald Trump would rather share the stage with somebody relatively colorless like Doug Burgum, the governor of North Dakota. And a third person in that triumvirate, if you will, would be Marco Rubio, the senator from Florida.

As Trump likes to say, there might be some problems with the Constitution because you can't have two candidates from the same state. But we could get past that. I feel like that's been a little bit of a signal that he's not really that serious about Rubio. Ronna, you've covered a lot of conventions. I think for a lot of our listeners, especially at least in the context of the Democratic Party looking at the convention, there's this question of like, why are these still necessary? What is the point of these conventions? And why do they still exist? They have two functions. One is a legal one. The convention delegates actually choose the nominee. While we have been saying, of course, for months that we knew it was going to be Trump and Biden, and that's not wrong, it doesn't become legal until the convention does it.

And so that's how they automatically get their access to all 50 state ballots because these are ongoing major parties that regularly get big chunks of the vote. And therefore, under state law, they get on the ballot and whoever they nominate is a ballot access candidate. So that's a big function. And normally, we don't think about that too much. But this year, at least in the Democratic Party, it's getting to be kind of tense. On the Republican side, not at all. But the other function of the conventions, which has been front and center in recent decades, really ever since we went to the system of having the delegates chosen by primaries and caucuses rather than by internal party processes. And it's been, you know, 50 years now since we've been using this new

system. And under this new system, generally speaking, there isn't a lot of suspense, but there's a lot of time to fill on network television. And that is absolutely priceless advertising time for both parties, major nominees. And those people are going to use it to the max. We're going to get four nights of Donald Trump advertising and Trump hyphen whoever the running mate is advertising. And the Democrats will just do the same for their ticket. Awesome. This is also an opportunity for a Republican Party that sees an incumbent president down and on the ropes to kick him in primetime over and over and over again. And the White House seems pretty aware of that because they've made a point to schedule a little counter-programming next week. Yep, that's right. He's going to be out on the campaign trail a bunch.

He's doing an interview on Monday with NBC's Lester Holt. And you can imagine a lot of eyes and attention will be on that. But he's also going to be doing a series of events in some key states like Nevada. He'll be speaking at the NAACP's National Convention. He'll be visiting also a large Latino convention. And so these are key demographics that he needs in order to win his reelection. You know, one other really interesting thing, I'd be curious to get your thoughts, Ron, is that he's going to be visiting the LBJ Presidential Library.

And this is a president who has often likened himself to these key historical moments as somebody who's passed a lot of pieces of major legislation like Johnson. But there are parts, I think, of Johnson's legacy that he would want to remain distinct from. Well, how about the one where Johnson says, you know what, I've got problems as the nominee of this party, and therefore I am going to step aside and I will not seek nor will I accept the nomination of my party. Now, there's a quote from

LBJ that some people at least would like to hear Joe Biden quote right now. All right, before we take a break, we should note that NPR will have special coverage of the RNC on your local member station hosted by yours truly and at NPR.org, as well as the Politics Podcast, which is going to be in your feeds late every night with a recap of what happened. So don't worry. We'll have you covered. Let's take one more break. And when we get back, time for Can't Let It Go, the part of the show where we talk about the things from the week we just cannot stop thinking about politics or otherwise. Ron, what can't you let go of this week? 1968 just won't go away. It just keeps popping back. There was a headline in a Wall Street Journal this morning about how the protesters in Chicago want to make 2024 great like 68. And for those who don't know the history, there were massive anti-war protests in the streets

of Chicago that turned into a battle for Michigan Avenue, as it was called, between the police and the anti-war demonstrators. And it turned into a fight even inside the convention hall that year in 1968. And it was all in part because of the Vietnam War and also because the party was in disarray because LBJ had pulled out, as I alluded to earlier. And it was a tough convention to emerge from. Interesting point about that in 68, though, was that they did eventually turn it over to the vice president for LBJ, a guy named Hubert Humphrey, pretty well known in his own right. So there's that for them to think of. But there's just 68 all over the place. The Rolling Stones are on tour, and they

apparently have dropped reference to Who Killed the Kennedys, one of the famous lines from Sympathy for the Devil, one of their signature songs. that was first changed in 1968. Now they've dropped it entirely. People are full of conspiracy theories about that. So it just doesn't want to go away, and it does not seem to be going away anytime soon. The one constant in our politics from 1968 till now might be the Rolling Stones because they are still touring. When you said that, I legitimately will say I was surprised. I did not know that they are still touring. When you said that, I legitimately will say I was surprised. I did not know that they were still touring. Well, and you know, you'd have to say that we haven't done a poll yet to ask people if they think that Mick Jagger is too old to be the

lead singer. Hey, Joe Biden could use a little bit of that Mick Jagger energy. You know what I mean? I've seen Mick Jagger performing and he's still got it. He might not 1968 still got it, but he's still 1998 still got it, I think. Sue, what can't you let go of this week? J.D. Vance's beard, the potential running mate of Donald Trump. There was a report this week in the Bulwark that if it's not J.D. Vance, one of the negatives against him, and I admit I don't think I knew this prior to reading this story, is that he has a beard. That's a negative. So people don't like the beard? Well, specifically Donald Trump, that Donald Trump is known, I did not know this, but has been vocal in the past about how he does not like facial hair on men. He likes people to

be clean shaven. As we have well established over the years, the way people look matters a lot to Donald Trump. Hasn't Donald Trump Jr. had a beard? This is part of my can't-let-it-go. It's a little bit of the psychology here, is that his own son, named after him, Donald Trump Jr., has been known to sport a beard. I do have to feel like I have to disclose something here. I'm a bit of a pro-beard myself. My husband has a beard. I think that men look very nice with beards. But it is funny to me that in the like, what do I need in a running mate? Facial hair could be part of the issue. Although Donald Trump spoke about this himself. He was asked about the report. He said he has no issue with the beard and said that J.D.

Vance looks like a young Abraham Lincoln, which is probably the finest compliment you could give a 39 yearyear-old Republican. So, Ron, I know you probably have many feelings about facial hair. I don't know if all of our listeners know this, but you have a spectacular mustache. Well, that... Have I left Ron Elving speechless? I read you out. Talking about the mustache is what takes the words out of Ron Elving's mouth?

We finally found it? I've heard it described as a poor man's John Bolton. Yeah, well, or a Scandinavian. There is a longstanding prejudice in American politics against people having beards. Now, of course, obviously, Abraham Lincoln and others in his era all had beards. It was absolutely automatic. You had to have it to show you a real man, a grown man. But that's been out of fashion for many, many, many years, many generations. So that's a longstanding prejudice, and it may be about to be broken.

Asma, what about you? What can't you let go of this week? Okay, so mine is rather lighthearted. So I was reading that there are plans for this Devil Wears Prada sequel. And I don't know if you all saw the original, but I loved the movie. I love lighthearted things that I don't have to think about that much when I watch TV or films. And the Devil Wears Prada is like that. But Entertainment Weekly is reporting that a bunch of people from the original cast are in talks to come back, including Meryl Streep. So, like, the chances of it still being good are high. I would imagine so.

She's been amazing in, like, pretty much everything she's been in. Post-election. Something to look forward to in 2025, no matter what. That is it for us this week. Our executive producer is Muthoni Matori. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our producers are Jung Yoon Han, Casey Morrell, and Kelly Wessinger. Our intern is Bria Suggs.

Special thanks to Krishna of Calamar and Dana Farrington. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. And I'm Ron Elving,

editor-correspondent. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.