The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump's Election Headwinds

Episode Date: January 4, 2024

The former president faces challenges convincing voters he deserves a second term. We explore what they are.A similar episode regarding the challenges facing President Biden's re-election bid was released on Dec. 28, 2023. This episode: political correspondent Susan Davis, White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson.This episode was edited by Erica Morrison. It was produced by Jeongyoon Han and Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. 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

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at AutographCollection.com. Hi, this is Acacia from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and I just collected my 50th tree sample as a volunteer with Adventure Scientist. Ooh, birds. This podcast was recorded at... 1.57 p.m. on Thursday, January 4th, 2024.

Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but one thing that won't change is my love for the great outdoors and knowing that I'm doing my part to help protect our nation's forest, whether that's from illegal timber harvesting or invasive insects. All right, enjoy the show. If there is one thing I've learned about our listeners, they really love the outdoors. Yeah, definitely. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Frank Ordonez. I cover the Trump campaign. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And it is officially 2024. The Iowa caucuses are just days away. And former President Trump remains the frontrunner for the Republican nomination. Trump continues to dominate the primary field, but he would face unique challenges in a general election campaign against President Biden. Last week, we talked about what Biden's

election headwinds were. So today we're going to talk about Trump's. Franco, before we get to that, let's be clear, he hasn't really faced much headwinds when it comes to the Republican primary field. He, as we sit here today, seems favored to win Iowa. What is his campaign focused on in the run-up to the caucuses? Yeah, very favored to win. I mean, he's going to be spending much more time in Iowa these next two weeks, even though he is favored, especially compared to the last several months. I mean, the focus is making sure that his supporters don't take anything for granted and show up at the caucuses on January 15th. I mean, Trump is leading every Iowa poll, basically, by double digits. And while so many political experts, they like to talk about surprises in Iowa and New Hampshire

and these early states, his lead is just so great. And his team is really looking for kind of a knockout punch against, you know, his rivals. Mara, I don't want to be too predictive. We always want to be cautious about that here. And it is hard to make predictions, especially about the future. Absolutely. But it's also worth noting to me, despite Trump's strength, perceived strength in the primary field, his campaign also went up on air with its first attack ad this week against former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley. How much room for surprise or movement are you giving yourself wiggle room in when we talk about the Republican primary nomination? Well, first of all, I just want to say that covering politics is a lesson in humility because every day we get to find out that all the things we thought were true were wrong. However, I think there is not a lot of room for an upset.

I think this is a race for second place. I think it would be very surprising for somebody to beat Trump for the nomination. And so far, all of the things that we thought were going to be headwinds for him actually turned into tailwinds, like 91 counts against him. What universe is it where it's a good thing, at least for the Republican primary, to be indicted for things like mishandling top secret documents and trying to overturn a free and fair election? Sure. We'll talk more about that. But for the sake of today's pod, we are talking about Trump as presumptive Republican nominee and what the challenges... He is the incumbent.

Yes. And what the challenges he would face in a general election campaign. And Franco, I'd start here. It seems like the most obvious headwind is that he's lost to Joe Biden before. Yeah, I mean, for sure. He's lost to Joe Biden. Three years ago, you can make an argument that he also lost to Joe Biden again in the most recent midterms as, you know, many of the candidates who kind of shaped themselves in the mold of Trump or that Trump endorsed also lost in the midterms. are trying to take to Iowa in these last couple of weeks, arguing that about his electability and that he can't beat Biden next year. I mean, here is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis just this week in Waukee, Iowa. I don't think Donald Trump ultimately can win an election. I know Fox News is going to say, oh, he's winning this poll. He's winning this poll. These polls are garbage.

You've seen it on the ballot. How many times now, 2018, 2020, 21, 22, most recently in 23. And the whole election will end up being a referendum on his behavior. The one flaw with that is that Republican voters don't agree. There are many Republican elites that agree. But Republican voters, when they're polled, say they think he is completely electable. And a lot of them think he was elected last time. That has been a point of fascination to me about, you know, every election is different than one before it. But in 2024, I think I've thought about this a lot, because how many times in this podcast in 2020 did we say when we talk to voters, the number one thing they wanted is who

could beat Trump? Electability, electability. And that doesn't carry through to 2024. Well, no, they think he's electable. But what I would say this is that when you look at sort of polling head-to-head matchups, one that really stuck out to me recently was the latest Wall Street Journal NBC poll that shows, as most polls do, a Trump-Biden matchup very close. And when they poll Biden against someone like Nikki Haley, she was 17 points ahead, like a spread that we don't even really see in matchups anymore. And to me, Mara, that point is, you know, sure, Trump might win, but he's also the only Republican that could lose

to Joe Biden. Yes, I think that Trump is probably the only Republican Biden could beat. And maybe Biden is the only Democrat that Trump could beat. But what's really interesting about this is, yes, voters care about electability, and a lot of Republicans think he's perfectly electable. But also, there's something else about Trump. Their devotion to him is so intense, and it's kind of like a cult of personality, that that connection, and especially because many Republicans think he's being persecuted and these legal cases are witch hunts, they make the bond with him overcome any other kind of abstract or cerebral considerations like electability. All right, let's take a quick break and more on this when we get back. And we're back.

And obviously, Trump's multiple criminal indictments and legal challenges are going to be a big factor in the general election. We devoted yesterday's entire episode detailing all of those legal woes, so we're not going to go through it again today. But, Franco, it's worth talking about in this context because when you pivot to a general election, you know, so far we can say that they have not been a headwind to Trump in the nomination fight, but that could shift in a general. Yeah, it could shift in a general. I mean, so far it's been a tailwind. I mean, it's really stoked Trump's campaign. watch his poll numbers go up as well as his fundraising go up as the indictments came in. And it also froze his rivals, forced them into kind of this litmus test where they had to back him or else risk losing kind of the Republican base. But come the general, as you're pointing

out, yes, that could totally change because there's a lot of concerns about kind of the chaos that surrounds Trump. And I think you can make the argument that while these indictments did help him in the primaries, they did not help him in the talk of the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago. You can make the argument that it hurt him and it hurt Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections because it was at that same time all that was coming on, that kind of chaos, that uncertainty. And Biden pointed to that during that time. So that could hurt him again in 2020-24. And Trump has doubled down on the rhetoric of the stolen election. He

is not trying to move on at all. He's calling the January 6th defendants political prisoners, hostages. He's offered to pay their bail. So he is really he's not trying to move beyond that. That also seems to me when we're talking about who that matters to, because it's worth noting that it feels like the deciding voters in this election are an incredibly small pool of either independent swing or I say, skeptical Republican voters who might not want to vote for Trump again. But it does seem clear that these are voters that are tired of the January 6 argument, that are tired of looking backward and didn't support Trump's efforts then. So that is clearly an obvious headwind for him. Yeah, potentially. Potentially. Potentially. It could be outweighed by the incredible fervor that these

prosecutions raise among the Republican base. I mean, Mara was talking earlier about kind of Trump being the, you know, the pseudo incumbent. I mean, you have a race of essentially two incumbents going at each other. In the past, it was a referendum of the person sitting in office. This is kind of a referendum on both of them. But it's also like, who doesn't have an opinion on Donald Trump? Or Joe Biden. That's why this is a turnout election, not a persuasion election. They're both incumbents. They're both unpopular. Big majorities of Americans tell pollsters over and over again, they don't want this matchup. They would like to have two completely different choices, and it doesn't seem like they're going to get that. Well, the most obvious structural headwind to Trump, potentially, again, we don't know how it

will play out because it's playing out in the courts, but he might also have a problem getting on the ballot in certain states. Just last night, Trump said he would challenge a Colorado decision to keep him off the ballot there before the Supreme Court. But, Mara, clearly the most obvious thing you can say is not being on a ballot is a headwind. Yes, although given that we're such a divided country and given the weird way we elect our presidents, by a winner-take-all, state-by-state contest, not by popular vote, it really only matters if he's kicked off the ballot in a battleground state. But the Supreme Court is

going to resolve this issue. And it's a really interesting question. Should someone be on the ballot if they have violated the 14th Amendment, which says anyone who foments an insurrection cannot run for office if they've taken an oath to uphold the Constitution, or the principle of let the voters decide who they want to be president. My only pushback on that is that I'm not sure I would agree that it would only matter in the states that it could occur because I've thought a lot about this since the Ohio election this year, in which Republican legislators in Ohio tried to literally change the rules of how you change the Constitution. And there was an overwhelming turnout in a low turnout time in August where people didn't like that. It was a different debate between changing the rules of the game. And I do think American

voters look at something like a court taking someone off the ballot. Yes, they want to decide. They want to decide. Don't take away my vote. I totally agree. Yes, that could reverberate. That could reverberate. Yes, that could reverberate. But we have to see how the Supreme Court is going to wiggle out of this one without trying to weigh in on whether Trump actually fomented an insurrection, which I don't think they want to do. being on the ballot is already playing dividends for Trump and fundraising and stoking supporters and, again, freezing his rivals to make sure that they back him on this. So, I mean, I think there are some kind of middle ground Republicans and, you know, who would be concerned about, you know, thinking that Democrats may be taking it too far.

Danielle Pletka Franco, I do think it's worth, again, focusing on this point about democracy and what's at stake and how voters will view the two candidates, because one thing we do know is that voters do seem to care a lot about democracy. The two candidates seem to speak very clearly that democracy is on the ballot in 2024. But there is this radically different view about what that means. No question at all, Sue. I mean, for Democrats, they're looking at January 6th. They're looking at kind of Trump's language about being a dictator for a day, all these tendencies, promises to kind of wipe out the administrative state or kind of change how Washington is run. There's a lot of concern about these kind of authoritarian tendencies

that Trump has been displaying. And you can make the argument that more than he did, say, in his last campaign with much stronger language. On the flip side, you know, Trump is saying that the real threat to democracy is not the right wing, but the left wing, the radical left. He is kind of cloaking himself in this fight for democracy and pointing, as Mara was just saying, to these ballot initiatives, pointing to the indictments against him, which he says is proof or an evidence of a double standard, of another standard of justice against conservatives than Democrats. And he says he's

doing this, you know, as we've all heard his very popular line, they're coming after you, not me. I'm just standing in their way. Which is a standard demagogue's line. But Franco is right. Trump went from I alone can fix it to I am your retribution. So it's gotten much sharper. Voters that are concerned about democracy, they tend to be on the Democratic side. Yeah. And I think that's why in this context, it might actually be a headwind because Trump is proposing from a policy matter, sort of a radical remake of American democratic norms. Yes, the end of the Justice Department would no longer be independent. He plans to go after

his enemies. I am your retribution. He plans to change the professional civil service to something completely political. Yeah, there's no doubt about that. And it's hard to see him pivoting to the general election with a different message after the primary. Turnout. And one thing that Trump has continues to do is sort of question the integrity of elections and how Americans vote. I'm thinking specifically his continuation of questioning mail-in balloting. And this is something that when you talk to Republican strategists, they want to rip their hair out because it is actually a quite safe way to vote. And for a long time, Republican voters embraced mail-in voting. So to me, it seems like if Trump keeps discouraging the way you vote in 2024, that could backfire. No, I mean, it did backfire, according to many Republican strategists in the midterms. And they felt that that had an impact in, say, for example, Arizona. I mean, so much so that the Republican Party continues today to try to change the language. Even Trump himself at CPAC this spring talked about the need for a changing of thinking in mail-in balloting. But his tune, as of late in recent rallies, has really changed. And he's actually going back to talking about

mail-in ballots as a rigged part of the process. We don't want mail-in voting. And we want one-day voting. You know, these things that last for 48 days and you see them wheeling things with wheelbarrows, dumping them, ballots. No. What we want is we want one-day voting. We want paper ballots. So we want voter ID.

This is – I mean, Sue is so right. I've talked to so many Republicans who just want to, they just want to plots. It's bad all the way down the ballot. This is one of the reasons that many Democrats think there is a Democratic Senate today, because in that Georgia special election, Trump said, it's all fake. It's all rigged. Why should you go vote if it's all fake and rigged? Also, one day voting is a concept of the past. More and more votes are cast long before Election Day.

And that is a trend in how America votes that does not seem to be turning back. Trump is just on autopilot. He's been saying these things for a very long time. During his time in the White House, he used to say the more people who vote, the worse it is for Republicans. I mean, he actually said that. So he doesn't change gears too quickly. All right. Well, that is it for us today. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Frank Ordonez. I cover the Trump campaign. And I'm Mara Eliason, national political correspondent. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.