The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump And Biden Are Both On The Trail, But Their Campaign Events Are Worlds Apart

Episode Date: October 26, 2020

President Trump is working to enthuse his supporters with rallies full of grievance and conspiracy, harkening back to his successful 2016 run. He cites the energy at his rallies as evidence that polls showing him down are wrong. Meanwhile, Joe Biden's closing argument is the same as his opening argument: Donald Trump is a unique threat to the nation and I represent a return to stability.This episode: campaign correspondent Asma Khalid, campaign correspondent Scott Detrow, 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

This is Nathan in snowy Minneapolis, Minnesota, and I have to choose my words carefully. My partner of four years listens to the pod. I just hypothetically left my uncle's jewelry store having hypothetically picked up a beautiful engagement ring for a hypothetical marriage proposal in the near future. This podcast was recorded at... Whoa, hold up. I feel like this is very wild. Did this person just like hypothetically

maybe propose to their partner on our podcast? Is that just what happened? No, I think they, I hope they actually do the proposing before the podcast drops, though. Sorry, that was a little wild. I was like, what just happened? I'm supposed to give you the time.

207 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday, October 26th. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but I'll have almost certainly moved my marriage plans from the hypothetical to the sure thing. Ah. Wow. Best of luck. I hope nothing intervenes for him to turn almost certainly into not doing it.

Because it's out of the bag now. I know, it would be embarrassing if they don't say yes. Well, congratulations. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I'm covering the 2020 campaign. I'm Frank Ordonez. I cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And guys, happy final full week of campaigning.

Can you guys believe that we are almost done? There are only eight more days left in this presidential race, and the campaigns for both Donald Trump and Joe Biden are trying to rally their supporters to vote. Biden continued his habit of these small, socially distant events in Pennsylvania over the weekend. What we don't want to do is become super spreaders, but thank you so much. I wish I could see all of you back there, but thank you, thank you, thank you for being here. While President Trump, of course, held massive, huge rallies, despite the spike in coronavirus cases.

I felt like Superman. I wanted to get back. And he talked a lot about his own recovery from the disease. I didn't want to cancel anything. Franco, you were traveling with President Trump over the weekend. So tell us, where did you all go? And I mean, what do these rallies feel like? Yeah, you know, I was part of the pool of reporters who joined him for the weekend, visiting six critical states, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin, New Hampshire and Maine. And, you know, as you could hear in that clip, there is a lot of enthusiasm amongst supporters, thousands at each rally singing and dancing. At one point, aides of Trump kind of were leading supporters in the YMCA dance that's played at the end of each rally. You know,

Trump is dancing too. You know, the campaign is really trying to recapture some of that 2016 mojo. And frankly, he blames the media for not giving him enough credit. He told us repeatedly that the crowds show he's winning. This is not the crowd that comes in second, okay? You know, when you leave, it's like a poll, right? Except much more accurate. It's really quite amazing because all this is happening, as you noted, during a pandemic. People are packed in. Some are wearing masks, but most are not. You know, yes, it's outside, but very few are trying to social distance. And, you know, if I can just say one more thing, you know, the pandemic has really threatened Trump, and it's threatened

himself, and it's threatened the people around him. And now we're hearing about close aides to the vice president testing positive. You know, this is not a small thing. You know, I have to tell you, this is the phase where we know a whole lot of nothing, but people are looking for anything to think they know something. You know what I mean? Like, it's this holding pattern where, you know, everyone's looking for any granularity in the polls or size of rallies to think that they can predict what's going to happen. And we just don't know. You know,

there are a lot of indications of a somewhat tightening race. We have Biden still with a significant lead nationally, but in those key states that decide the outcome in the electoral college, there has been a bit of a tightening in a lot of those places, which is something that the Biden campaign has said that they expect they have been expecting for a while. And I just, you know, just to sort of blow everyone's minds, if you were to take the races right now that are within the margin of error in these states, look at Texas, Georgia, Iowa, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, and Arizona, if you were to take all of those and somehow swing them to Trump's direction,

it would be a 259 to 259 race with Pennsylvania, the tipping point state. And that tells you a lot of why both candidates are there a lot. Yeah, I was gonna say over the weekend, that is where Joe Biden was. He held a couple of socially distant rallies in Pennsylvania. It's also a state that former President Barack Obama visited as well. It's the first time that we saw Barack Obama out on the campaign trail in person for his old running mate, and he chose to go to Philly. I mean, it speaks, I guess, to what you're saying, Domenico, that Pennsylvania is this really key state politically.

It also seems like Biden has this sentimental attachment, though, to Pennsylvania, right? He talks about growing up in Scranton. Home is where your character is etched, your values are set, where your views of the world and your place in it begin to be formed. For me, it was 2446 North Washington Avenue in Scranton, Pennsylvania, at my grandpop's table. But, you know, I'm also struck by how much the map does seem to change this year, because if you talk about, you know, Pennsylvania as a state, Democrats traditionally won. We've also got a map where Joe Biden is traveling to Georgia tomorrow, which, frankly, is just wild because the last time a Democrat actually won the state of Georgia was when a Southern Democrat was on the ticket, Bill Clinton in 1992. And, you know, we talk a lot about the Sun Belt being more at play.

But you see that in terms of having the Democratic nominee actually campaigning in Georgia. You've got, you know, his running mate Kamala Harris going to Nevada in Texas. It just, to me, indicates that, sure, there are different paths to 270. But the way that that map looks, it seems to suggest that Democrats really realistically think they have a shot at some of these traditionally Republican states. Definitely. I mean, demography is what it is. And, you know, things keep moving where Georgia was a place that Democrats didn't used to be able to compete in. And now they're very close. Texas was a state where they didn't used to compete in. And now they believe that they can get pretty close. Where is the president planning to be physically himself

this week? Because, you know, a candidate's time is considered one of the best indications of maybe strategy. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, he's going to continue this breakneck pace. You know, he's got three events today in Pennsylvania. Then he's heading tomorrow to Michigan, Wisconsin, Nebraska. Nebraska, huh? Yes, you wouldn't expect that, but it's true. And later in the week, he's going to Arizona and Nevada. It's really a crazy pace. I mean, he's campaigning like he's behind.

And in some ways, that's how he likes it. These rallies, the crowd, the theatrics, they're all out of that 2016 playbook. But after nearly four years in office, though, he's not really the outsider. And, you know, he's being judged on how he's handled the pandemic, you know, and the pandemic has killed 225,000 Americans, and it continues to disrupt daily life. So, you know, he has, he now has a record. All right, let's take a quick break. And when we get back, we'll talk more about what we all are watching for in this final week. Voting is crucial. And I don't give a damn. I just don't care. Is this a man? It was we,

the people. The land of the free and the home of the brave. Not we, the white male citizens. Misrepresentative democracy. A new series about voting in America from NPR's Throughline. Listen now. And we're back. And Domenico, one thing that you've brought up in the podcast before is this idea of a feedback loop that can develop inside of campaigns, you know, in the final days. And it is an important dimension. So I want you to explain what exactly it is. Yeah, we're sort of in this reality distortion field right now where we're in this final week

and within campaigns that are doing well, you know, they can sort of get themselves spun up into thinking that they're going to lose. And in campaigns that are losing, they find all kinds of ways to justify all the work that they've been doing and figure out how they're going to win. And no one really knows, right? I mean, we're in this turnout phase, people are trying to get their votes out. And this year, the big wrench that's thrown into all of it is Coronavirus, too, because you can't do the normal stuff that you would do, you know, all those programs to get people out, knocking on doors, it's much more risky this time around. And we're going to see if those different ways of doing it have had an impact.

You know, Dominica, you mentioned that how campaigns are operating this year is different because of the pandemic. And it makes me think that, you know, in addition to where a campaign is spending time, which we talked about in the first half of the show, you know, one other crucial dimension is where they're spending their money, whether that's on advertising or other resources, but you know, largely, I'm thinking advertising. And it feels like that might be more important than it is in traditional years. Right? Well, what's surprising about this is how in past years, we talked about, you know, how people were moving away from big television ads, and, you know, maybe moving into digital and, you know, trying to do moving away from big television ads, and, you know, maybe moving into

digital and, you know, trying to do different kinds of campaigning. We're seeing all of that. But it may be that television matters even more this year, perhaps than past years, because so many people are at home much more often now. And what we've seen is already, both campaigns and the groups outside groups supporting them have spent more than a billion dollars in total TV ad spending really on six, right, and really on six big states, Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona. Those states are getting about nine out of every $10 spent on ads and Biden and people supporting him are far outspending

Trump and people supporting him. Now, the Trump campaign and people supporting him will say they got outspent in 2016. So what should be the difference? Of course, the president hasn't been able to do these kinds of rallies that Franco had been talking about in the same sort of way, despite his, you know, boasts that these are the biggest crowds he's ever gotten, which is just not true. You know, Domenico, I was just kind of curious. I mean, you mentioned Florida. In Florida, it's such a huge race. It's so important. And already nearly 5 million people have turned out and voted early. I'm just fascinated by, you know, these numbers that I think nationwide, it's more than 60 million people have voted.

I mean, what do you make of that? Well, it's funny, Franco. Just as we're talking, Florida now has surpassed 6 million people who voted early. And almost 61 million people total have voted early across the country. Texas is the other huge one. 7.3 million people have voted early across the country. Texas is the other huge one. 7.3 million people have voted early in Texas. That's over 80% of Texas's total turnout in 2016. Of course, Texas wasn't really contested as strongly in 2016. So President Trump is almost certainly going to get far more votes

than he got in 2016. But we're going to see record turnout for sure in Texas. And Florida, my goodness, 6 million. Trump got 4.5 million, 4.7 million or so in 2016. So we are seeing record turnout. That is the biggest takeaway from these early vote totals. They're expecting maybe the highest turnout rate since 1908 of about 65 percent or slightly higher than that. You know, one nugget I've noticed in a couple of polls is this question about people who've already voted. And there seems to be this fairly wide partisan discrepancy amongst people who say they've already voted who are supporting Joe Biden compared to President Trump. Is that something that, you know, folks are kind

of over analyzing at this point and over interpreting is maybe being a positive for Biden? And should they not be doing that? I think it's something we don't quite know just yet, because, you know, a lot more Democrats are telling pollsters that they're going to vote early or by mail, and a lot more Republicans are telling pollsters that they're going to vote day of in person, you know, but what we are seeing is a disproportionate number of people based on surveys, based on some of these groups that do modeling for this far more appear to be Democratic votes. And, you know, a slightly lower number of percentage of people who are saying that they're going to vote for President Trump on election day. So we don't exactly know, but a lot of people are pointing to this, at least as marginally a good sign for Democrats. All right, well, that is a wrap for today. You can sign up for a roundup of our best

online analysis by heading to npr.org slash politics newsletter, or by following the link in the description of this episode. I'm Asma Khalid. I'm covering the presidential campaign. 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.