The Press Box - Covering a Virtual Convention and NBA Playoffs Notes. Plus: Politico’s Alex Thompson on Biden and Obama.

Episode Date: August 17, 2020

The Democratic National Convention kicks off tonight with speakers including Michelle Obama, Bernie Sanders, and Quibi CEO Meg Whitman. Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss what we can expect and what a virtual convention could look like (2:25). The NBA playoffs have also commenced, and they address the league’s newest free agent, Shams Charania (21:05). Then, Politico reporter Alex Thompson joins to discuss his experience on the campaign trail, and what Barack Obama really thought of vice president Joe Biden (27:30). Plus: the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week, and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline of the Week. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David, Meg Whitman, the CEO of Quibi, is speaking at this week's Democratic National Convention. What I want to know is, could anything be a sign of worse luck for the Democrats than the CEO of Quibi speaking at their convention? As many people, including Josh Barrow pointed out, she's actually listed on the, whatever, the notes that the DNC Senate, out as Meg Whitman, former CEO of Hewlett Packard, which I, which speaks to exactly. I think that answers the question for you. I mean, that's what I'm sure, you know, you could imagine Bill's reaction if you went out on a speaking tour, billing yourself as like former writer for slate.com, you know? Mr. Curtis, what have you been doing since the, uh, since the, uh, since the slate day is

kind of a blank spot here. Yeah. More people will stream the Democratic convention or consume it, then we'll have. have consumed any show on Quibi, right? Oh, absolutely. Yes. So Meg Whitman, the CEO of this streaming service that has been like an exploding cigar is getting more play by giving a political speech than actually coming up with shows.

Do you think she's going to wear a Quibi shirt, like, on to the stage? You remember, like, this is going to date me significantly, but when Macy Gray, like, popped up on the video of music awards, the Grammys River wearing a dress advertising her new album dropping? That's what Meg Whitman needs. to do. Just like, you know, quibby, quit be free for a year with this code, you know,

and just, and just like, you know, act like, act totally normal like she's not doing it. I am, I am so into that. It's time for the press box. A part of the ringer podcast network.

Hello, media consumers. Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here with lots to get to today. We'll do some NBA playoff media notes. Like is the league's biggest free agent, a reporter? Shom Sharania.

Plus, Alex Thompson, excellent reporter from Politico, joins to tell us what Barack Obama really thought about his vice president, Joe Biden, and what it's like to cover 2020 from the couch instead of the campaign trail. All that plus David guesses a strain pun headline and the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But David, tonight is the first night of the Democratic convention. Yeah. Which is a virtual convention. Oh. And if you're thinking, wait, I don't really. really understand what virtual convention means, you're not alone.

This was Anderson Cooper on his CNN show last night. So I just, I mean, I don't know if we know the details on this, but I'm just, I don't quite understand what it's going to, I still don't understand what it's going to look like. It's, say it starts at 8 p.m. I mean, is there somebody emceeing it? Like, what's the first thing people see? I was so heartened to hear that. Is somebody emceeing it?

Because I felt like I had missed a big article. or some sort of memo that had gone out. But in fact, nobody really knows what the Democratic Convention is going to look like until we see it tonight. But David, a few details leaked out Sunday, late on Sunday. I'm going to read them to you

and you tell me what sounds good about the Democratic Convention and what sounds like it might be a train wreck. All right? Okay. All right, number one, this year's Democratic Convention is going to be a shorter convention. in the before time we'd be in the FISA forum in Milwaukee for like six hours a night from Monday through Thursday. This year, because the FISA forum has been abandoned, the Democrats are only going to do two hours a night.

And the broadcast networks will probably only show one of those hours at 10 p.m. Eastern. I think we're both totally good with shorter convention, right? Amen. Yeah, yeah. That's great. I mean, listen, the speeches were interminable, but it's not just the primetime speeches, which is, I guess, is what we're going to be seeing, right? But in previous years, it's everything that came before. It's sort of that Super Bowl aspect of, you don't quite know when the real game starts.

So you just end up watching like 14 hours of, you know, lesser Castro brothers speak. Totally. You're like, why am I, you're like, why am I watching Chuck Schumer right now?

And you realize like, oh, wait, this is like 7 ET because they didn't want anybody to watch this, but CNN is carrying it anyway. Which brings me to point number two, no more long speeches this year.

Outside of the DNC's five set piece speeches, those are the Bidens, the Obamas, and Kamala Harris, the average length for remarks will be just two minutes, according to Reed Epstein and Aestead Herndon in the New York Times. Two minutes. Bernie Sanders, who's one of the big speakers tonight, gets only eight minutes. So are we on board for sound bite length speeches from,

democratic politicians. Yeah, absolutely. And I kind of, I mean, I know that some of them are going to be pre-taped. I don't know if that's a point that you're about to get to. But there's length, I mean, there's like, you know, required length and there's practical or functional length, you know, I mean, the length that these speeches actually run. If they can actually keep them to that size, that length and, and have them still be, you know, concise, have them, have them say everything the candidate wants to say in that span of time, that could, that could be a hugely positive change. It's almost like they're changing the rules for why you get to speak in how long.

Because I always felt like it was about, to some extent, power within the party, right? Chuck Schumer, to take him as an example again, is a powerful Democrat. So there's almost some expectation. Well, of course, Chuck Schumer is going to get 10 minutes during the Democratic convention. Yeah. Now with a shorter convention, we're like, you know, Chuck Schumer, maybe we'll give you 30 seconds. Or maybe actually we'll just have you nodding on a webcam and smiling somewhere while somebody else who is more designed to directly appeal to potential voters or fire up Democratic voters is going to talk. Yeah.

It's almost like a value change, is it not? I mean, it's a value change. And listen, I'm not going to take anything away from Chuck Schumer and his implicit desire to be on camera for as much time as possible. No, no, I'm in the other way. I think that I don't want to devalue Chuck Schumer's self-importance at all. But I do think probably party-wide, this is a change that, in country-wide, this is a change that, you know, has people have probably been angling for for some amount of time. It's just hard to find the excuse.

I mean, I don't know, how, who's going to, what politician is going to be willing to be the first one to take the, to do the two-minute speech, especially if the next night they're like, you know what, that didn't work. Let's go back to two hours. That's a good question. You also mentioned the huge capacity for technical problems, even if the Russian hackers don't show up. So Michelle Obama's keynote speech for tonight is already recorded. It's already banked. Bernie Sanders is going to speak live tonight, but he also pre-recorded a speech in case all technological hell breaks loose. That's just another little side story here. Item number three, David, all political conventions are produced for

television. But this year I feel we're taking the next step. And it's even more of a TV show than a political convention. For one thing, the DNC has musical acts. Billy Eilish, Common, the chicks, our old pals, John Legend, Fort Worth's very own Leon Bridges, all performing at the DNC. Here's a clip from David Axelrod on CNN. I thought that nicely summed up the difference between new Zoom convention and old arena convention. I'm of the mind that yes, you sacrifice some of the excitement and energy that comes from having crowds, but there is more control and creative opportunities when you're actually producing television shows, which is what they're doing.

They're going to have celebrity hosts every night I understand to kind of weave through all of this, a lot of testimonials, a lot of videos, some entertainers. The speeches will be shorter. it will be faster-paced. My guess is it will be better viewing than the kind of anachronistic kind of convention that we're used to. Yeah, I think that's absolutely true.

We've seen this in other, you know, arenas, I guess, no pun intended. Certainly, the NBA has become more of a television show. You know, my first love professional wrestling has taken itself out of stadiums and gone into basically a closed set, become much more of a television show than whatever it was before ever.

you would define it. This is, there's a lot of crossover, obviously, between pro wrestling and politics, and this is another example of how they're, this is, they are pivoting, I guess. They're, they're,

they're, you know, kind of leaning, I mean, the TV production, TV production has always been a huge part of politics. I mean, at least for the past 50 years,

60 years, but I mean, a long time. But now they're sort of giving it the weight of being the primary part, right? I mean, it's not just the show.

It's not just the presentation. It is the production. And yeah, that's going to be, in a lot of ways, likely shortening the length of speeches. That's a, you know, this is because of COVID, but they're finally sort of keeping up with the times. That walks us into a question I saw brought up in the Washington Post, which is, so we're moving from a kind of sea spani arena thing

where politicians are going up and speaking often for ponderous lengths of time into a more slickly produced television show. If you are one of these elusive, persuadable voters out there, are you more persuaded by the former, or are you more persuaded by the latter? And what I mean by that is, is there something about the old school nature of it that would have kept you watching,

whereas the second kind of more slickly produced version, you think, ooh, this feels like propaganda. This feels like the Democrats trying to sell me something in the form of an ad. What do we think about that? Well, obviously, I think of, you know, if they do the propaganda well, you don't acknowledge, you don't know that you're watching propaganda, I guess. Sure.

I mean, listen, I don't think you and I would be doing this podcast. And I'm sure a lot of the people listening to this probably wouldn't be listening to it if they didn't have some affection for the sort of old-fashioned pomp and circumstance that went into, you know, conventions of your. It's the same reason we like, you know, go to church, watch golf and stuff, you know? I mean, these are, it's, it's part of what makes us, you know, what makes up our DNA. But we're not immune to, to make a commercial or make a speech or do anything with the

intention of, quote, unquote, going viral does not make it a separate thing from what we're interested in. It just makes it a sort of slightly different category. And we're not immune to the effects of it, right? I mean, I don't, I don't think that, I think that for, you know, I think that being back into a corner could, like this could really suit, you know, you know, the party and American politics, you know, overall really well. So we'll see, though.

A bunch of Democrats just fainted when you mentioned the convention is going to be like going to church or watching golf. No, the old convention. The new convention is going to be like hanging out with Logan Paul on a, I don't even know what they do. Chuck Schumer just fainted at that idea then. I actually saw Reid Epstein and the York Times that pointed this out a couple times that this is not a joke. Democratic convention planners or bigwigs were influenced by this April's NFL draft in planning the convention. So David, just think of this.

Forget the idea of Zoom and going to different places and all that and cameras and all that stuff. A major party's political convention has been aesthetically influenced by the NFL draft. What a time to be alive. Amazing. I don't, listen, if they want to give, yes, the NFL draft deserves the credit for everything. If they just turned the entire production of the convention over to Adam Silver and the NBA, wouldn't that be in that positive and not just because we generally like their product, but because they figured out how to do fake crowds and the immediacy of empty rooms, you know, I mean, and make it really feel like you're watching something with weight and significance,

even though, you know, in lesser hands, it might look like a YouTube highlight reel or something. I mean, I think that there's a lot of, there is a lot of examples. out there. There are a few very significant examples out there for the DNC to be to be copying from and let's hope that they get it right. So on that note, at political conventions, the crowd is usually a character. Four more years. Lock her up. Well, Michael Scher and the Washington Post reports that in fact the DNC is going to do something like the NFL draft. They're going to have real-time reactions, I'm quoting here, of delegates that can be broadcast to the country as if they were in the same room as the speakers. But Axel

made this point on CNN where he said, look, the convention this year is going to be more like a fireside chat than a giant political speech. And I feel that that really benefits Biden. Because I'm not sure if Biden has the energy to light up an arena and say bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive like he did back in the 2012 of the DNC. But he can come off very well, as we saw on Wednesday in a more intimate setting. What do you think about that? Oh, man.

I mean, I think the gist of what you're saying is right. It's a little bit, you know, whether or not it helps him, a little bit disheartening the thing that he would be so, he would so favor one format over another. But, you know, personal distress aside, I don't know if, fireside chat was not,

I mean, that's not a phrase that, that I, you know, went to on my own, but I think that's a sort of interesting point of comparison. Well, just think of it like this. Trump is an arena band, right? Trump is Metallica. Part of Trump's power, no matter how crazy it is, the words that are coming out of his mouth,

is the fact that the crowd is just going bonkers when Trump is talking. So if you take that away from both of them, that hurts Trump to me a lot more than it hurts Biden. Yeah, for sure. I think that certainly without a crowd and without, the chance and without everything else. And frankly, with an audience who is having to pay attention to the words you say, as opposed to the manner in which they're delivered,

I think that certainly benefits Biden. In a contest of actual words and real ideas, you know, Biden's going to win out. All right, David, one absolute media favorite at convention time. I speak of the convention party turncoat. This is the person who's out. member of one party or was a member of one party, but then speaks at the other party's convention. Sure. This year's turncoat is John Kasich, former Republican governor of Ohio and a former Fox News host

who is speaking Monday night on behalf of the Democrats. And the party turncoat, I feel, always works in this particular key, which is more in sorrow than in anger. He either says explicitly or implicitly, I didn't leave my party, David. my party left me. I was a Republican when there was such a thing as normal Republicans, or I was a Democrat when there was such a thing as normal Democrats. And now they have left me.

Remember Joe Lieberman at the RNC in 2008. The late Zell Miller, remember him, former Democratic governor and senator from Georgia, who appeared at the RNC in 2004 at Madison Square Garden. I was actually in the hall for that speech. Listen to a little bit of Zell Miller from 2004, bemoaning the death of bipartisanship. Time after time in our history in the face of great danger, Democrats and Republicans work together to ensure that freedom would not falter.

But not today. Motivated more by partisan politics than by national security, today's Democratic leaders see America as an occupier, not a liberator. and nothing makes dismarine matter than someone calling American troops occupied rather than liberated. That's less of a I didn't leave my party, my party left me speech than I didn't leave my horse and buggy. My horse and buggy left me. Yeah, Zell Miller was a real, I mean, it got a lot of attention at the time.

I find it hard to imagine that any fair-minded person watched that and said anything else other than, you mean, how was that guy not a Republican two days ago, but whatever. You know, I mean, that was, he was, he was one of the stragglers, you know, one of those, the last little Dixiecrats hanging on. And, uh, he had his moment in the sun. Yeah. It was also important to remember that Democrats had voted overwhelmingly to give Bush the authorization to invade Iraq, including John Kerry, who was running for president in 2004 and Hillary Clinton, who would run twice later. But never mind that. John Kasich, by the way, on CNN yesterday, hinted that another former Republican official. will endorse Joe but.

So David, there are even more turncotes yet to come. All right, it's time for the overworked Twitter joke of the week, David, where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received.

All right, David, in the Champions League quarterfinals, notice my confident narration here like I have any idea what I'm talking about. Byron beat Barcelona by a score of 8 to 2. it was an overworked Twitter joke to write you ate to see it

you ate to see it thanks to Kyle Boone and 12 News as Mitch Carr David do you ever feel more divorced from world culture than when people are talking trash about soccer online boy I'd hate to be Barcelona right now you ate to see it is not I mean

yes that is a like direct reaction to that score but that's also we all know that we all have examples of tweets that we just have in our pocket. We've talked about this. Waiting for the right time, the perfect time to roll him out. That is just an example of the world having, like every soccer fan in the world having that joke in their back pocket and waiting for the score to be the opportunity of them to roll it out. David, there was another boat parade on behalf of Donald Trump. They are still doing this, at least in Pinellas County, Florida. Listen to the metaphor Fox News host Pete Hegesith lunged for right here.

Thousands of Patriots hit the high seas for a record-breaking Trump boat parade in Florida. Crowds of Trump supporters showing up on boats and bridges. They needed more than 1,180 boats. Did I see that right to break the record? They ended up beating it with 1,600 boats. Dron footage capturing the sheer size of the parade as it stretched through Pinellas County outside Tampa. And those are your headlines. That's pretty cool looking, Pete, isn't it?

Yeah, Guinness Book of World Records Boat Parade. The Spanish Armada's got nothing on Trump supporters down there. It was an overword Twitter joke to write, they do know what happened to the Spanish Armada, don't they? Kind of reminiscent of Brad Parscale comparing the Trump campaign to the Death Star. It's like, did you get to the end of a new hope? See what happened to the Death Star? No.

And finally, David, Herman Kane, GOP, presidential candidate businessman, passed away back on July 30th. His Twitter account made an announcement of his death and had the funeral information in the days after that. But then two weeks after his passing, Herman Kane tweeted. It was just the most generic anti-comala tweet you can imagine, too. With so many good reactions to that.

Take a picture of yourself holding a newspaper. That's from our very own Jason Concepcion. Another one, like Prince, Herman Kane left hours of unreleased materials behind it his death that can now be mine for post. I love this one. Fess up, who said Herman Kane three times into a mirror? And finally, the reason people keep tweeting on here even after they die is because this is hell.

Thanks to John Foggi, if you took the gloomiest possible interpretation of Herman Kane's recent tweets, congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. In the notebook dump, David, it is NBA playoff time. playoffs start Monday, quadruple headers today on ESPN and on Turner on Tuesday. So let's do a couple of quick media notes. First of all, is the big free age of the off season. No, it's not a player because at the end of August,

Sham Sharanias contracts with the athletic and stadium will be up. Both outlets want to retain him, but given that the NBA playoffs are going to go through early October, the pressure will be on for an outlet to go get his services in the middle of the postseason. Shrani has been with the athletic in stadium since 2018, and lest we forget he is 26 years old. What do you make of that impending free agency? I don't even know.

I mean, one would assume, or it would be easy to assume that, you know, his employers are wise enough to sign him to a very short-term extension as soon as this new postseason system was laid out, but it might also be really in his interest. to just say no. I mean, I don't know. He's one of a very, very few people

in professional sports journalism who are, if not indispensable, then irrepressible, right? I mean, if he said, I'm not saying a new contract and the athletic stadium said, fine, we're not going to give you any airtime, that wouldn't really change our perception of Sean's, right?

He's a benefit to them and not, I mean, they're as much more so than there a benefit to him. I mean, yeah, than they're a benefit to him. I, I, it's really, really interesting. If he jumped ship in the middle of the playoffs, yes. I mean, it's not exactly Hulk Hogan joining the NWO, or I guess that's not the right metaphor.

It's not exactly ravishing Rick Rood showing up on Monday Nitro the same night he was on Monday Night Raw, but it would be pretty exciting. And what a boon for whoever got him, right, that you now are getting New York Times and whatever. I mean, anybody else, stories written about you because of this coup you pulled. off, right? You mean, that's a, if you're looking, if you're, if you're a sports desk and in need of a, you know, little PR push, that could be enormous. Absolutely. I mean, can you imagine on the ESPN pregame show, Woj is on there and he goes, you know, I'm not going to break this little nugget. I have somebody else who wants to break it. And then just out of a

door, Shams walks out, that'd be absolutely incredible television. Yeah. Yeah, with the stadium championship belt around his waist, that would be just really incredible. Just like throws in a trash can. Another thing I wanted to bring up for you, David. As you know, I really value my role here at the ringer as NBA tap the brakes guy. It can be a lot of NBA triumphalism going on. I just, I want to be the guy going to let's just,

let's just take a breath, everybody. I said that at the beginning of this bubble when people were saying even before the first NBA game, that hey, the system worked, the bubble work, the NBA figured this out, whereas the other leagues have been slower to figure this out.

I'm now getting to the point between the story that Zach Lowe had an ESPN the other day about the NBA helping develop the saliva test that is now becoming this very helpful thing for the world in terms of testing for the coronavirus, in terms of the NBA having basically locked down the bubble quite effectively as they head here into the postseason. Again, knock on what it could change tomorrow, but so far, so good. Are we about to enter the greatest era of NBA triumphalism in history? Have we just, have we opened the box now? And maybe deservedly so, if they pull this off, not only pull off a season in the middle of a huge public health challenge, but actually develop or help develop technology that can make the public health challenge better,

I might even have to just resign my office as NBA tap the brakes guy. I might be leading the charge. This is incredible. You're not even mentioning the possibility that they, that, you know, heaven forbid, MLB or later the NFL actually has to like cancel, like, you know, short, in the season early or cancel some significant number of games. I mean, if they, if they just outpace the competitors, then that's huge. But you're right. If they're working in on like a geopolitical scale, um, I mean, I guess it wasn't that long ago that we're

having conversations about Chinese geopolitics, uh, vis-a-vis the NBA. So I guess that's not too, too surprising. But yeah, I mean, on the scientific medical side, that would be, man, that That would be wild. But talk about using your powers for good instead of evil. That's been pretty incredible. Yeah, not a Josh Hawley geopolitical scale, but a just unbelieveable, uncontrovertibly useful geopolitical scale. That's incredible. One more note for you about betting odds.

There's something weird going on right now because sports books aren't sure who the favorite to win the title will be. I often feel that there's a lot of hypey talk right before any sports postseason. This thing is wide open. Anybody could win the title. At least according to the sports books, this is actually true. According to ESPN, it's the first time there hasn't been a clear-cut title favorite

heading into the playoffs since 2015. The beginning of the Golden State Warriors run, the Warriors were the overwhelming favorites in each of the past five post seasons, with odds never longer than plus 175. This season, though, the favorites' odds, whether it be the Lakers, bucks, or clippers, are about plus 250 on average.

So that's kind of incredible, right? Yeah, I mean, obviously there's so many more variables. I mean, and sometimes, you know, the, the sports books lose by relying too much on everything that's happened before, but more often than not, obviously, they come out ahead. I just, it's really hard to pick, you know, based on a very minimal number of games. Because certainly you have to sort of divorce this from everything we've seen before this season, certainly in seasons before. And, and to couple that with the, you know, no home courts, no, I mean, there's just so many weird things going on right now. It's really intriguing.

And yeah, and this does seem like a wide open field just in even separate from all those idiosyncrasies. So, David, there was a really good piece late last week in Politico about the real relationship, the often tricky relationship between Joe Biden and Barack Obama in the White House. The piece's author, Alex Thompson, joined us to expand on that. When a lot of Democrats think about the relationship Barack Obama and Joe Biden had in the White House, they think of the kind of buddy cop movie we'd be breaking. down on the rewatchables. Alex Thompson, one of my favorite political reporters, has a new story of Politico that shows the Obama-Biden relationship is way more interesting than that. It's more like a nuanced character study we'd be breaking down on the rewatchables. Alex Thompson is here to talk about a story. How are you, Alex? I'm doing great. Thanks for

having me. Let's start with some journalistic behind the scenes. How long did you work on this piece? About six weeks. But I had my other, basically had two editors fighting. And so I had to still keep doing some pieces during the week while I was working on this on the backbender. Wait, there's like long form editor and short form editor at Politico that are warring for your time, essentially? In this case, that was exactly what happened. Did you find people in the Obama Biden world eager to talk about the relationship or reluctant? They were reluctant until I got to the point where I had enough reporting that essentially they realized that it was going to be a newsy story. And so they might as well sort of speak to me.

But at first, I remember one person told me out the record, not off the record, but on background, saying like, listen, your hunch here is true, but no one, it's not in anyone's interest to talk to you right now because they want this to be a seamless, you know, baton, baton exchange from Obama to Biden. And they want to keep up the buddy, the buddy cop routine. So that's a happy Rubicon to cross as a reporter, right? you're not going to talk to me, but now I know this much. So you have to talk to me because otherwise the story is going to be worse for you, right? Exactly. I mean, it's such a great feeling when, because especially you don't know if you're actually going to get there at the beginning. And people are just saying no, no, no.

And then by the end, you know, I had Ted Kaufman, his long time to you, a staff, the guy who's heading up his presidential transition talk to me and Anita Dunn, who was in the Obama administration. and then is a senior advisor on Biden's campaign. Talk to me. Jen Saki, the White House Communications Director during the Obama years, talked to me a bunch of Clinton people. So it just took a while. But once you got there, sort of the floodgates came up.

And then at the end, people were like, you know, oh, I know I didn't talk to you before, but do you have time to talk now? They're asking you. Yeah, exactly. So the simple version of Obama Biden is this. Biden is the ultimate, loyal, second in command, and Obama has this huge affection for Uncle Joe. What's the real version of the relationship that you found? So, like any sort of spin, there is like a kernel of truth in that story, and that is that they

have a very close personal friendship and a relationship, often based on sort of their mutual devotion for their families. But the truth is that they are incredibly different politicians who were put together, in a shotgun marriage, and that not only do they see politics differently, but they practice it incredibly differently. And as a result, there was tension the entire time with, you know, Obama officials rolling their eyes at Joe Biden or old Joe. They thought he was old news. They thought that he had, you know, they had lost this, I mean, before this presidential race, they always viewed him as a guy that had lost a step, that had lost his fastball.

that just was the practitioner of an old way of politics that had become extinct with the rise of the Obama phenomenon. And, you know, there's debate of whether or not that's true or that's not. And we're going to be able to, if he wins, we'll be able to see that tested in real life. But the thing is, you have to realize that this didn't just happen in a vacuum and that Joe Biden, like, felt that all eight years. He felt this sort of this technocratic eye rolling, as one person put it to me. He felt the disses. He felt disrespected. And Leon Panetta, who was, who served in Congress with Joe and then was Obama's Secretary of Defense

and Bill Clinton's chief of staff, he told me that oftentimes it felt that Biden's loyalty to Obama was not reciprocated. And so this has carried over into the 2020 campaign, too. where Biden is in many ways fueled by this desire to prove Obama wrong and to prove Obama's inner circle wrong about him. And it could actually influence the Biden administration as well. Back up just four years because one big point you're making your piece is the 2016 election, right? It was not absolutely clear that Hillary Clinton was not only going to be the nominee of the Democratic Party, but was going to be sort of Obama's off the record choice to be

nominee of the party. How did that come about and how did that affect Joe Biden? Well, it's the ultimate snub, right? Where Joe Biden is a loyal BP for six years and Obama in ways very like very subtle in ways not so subtle essentially says, I want her. And, you know, for a guy that's pretty proud and it has long felt, you know, defensive about accusations of being a lightweight, You know, I think this really wounded Joe Biden to the extent that, you know, it was little notice at the time, but in his 2017 book, Promise Me Dad, near the end, he talks about how Obama have long been sending him signs that he didn't want him to run. And this, there's a narrative, this is, again, one of those things that has been spun into a narrative that, eliminates any sort of tension between the two. The narrative that you're going to hear out there is that Biden was going to run, but then his son got sick and died. Bo Biden of a very aggressive form

of brain cancer. And that was the only reason why Obama weighed in against because he was protecting Joe. And that narrative, again, there's kernels of truth in there, but it's mostly fiction. And the truth is that Obama, and especially those closest around Obama, preferred Hillary. So that's an interesting tension that comes up in your piece, too. And on the one hand, there's the Obamaites technocratic sort of style of politics versus the Biden backroom. Let's go get Mitch McConnell over a beer and make a deal style of politics. And then there's this idea that they're just very different people. And Obama and Hillary are high academic achievers their whole life. who are on this specific track into politics.

They're very similar people. They read briefing books. They just have this very, very, very specific idea of how to live their lives. And Biden is very different than them. Yeah, Biden, Biden is not a binder person, as some former officials put it to me. And he, you know, he admitted as much in his book, you know, his 2007 book, where he says it's important to read the briefings and prep. But he always viewed it as it's a lot more important to have a sense of the person.

And even Biden, you know, takes a little bit, you know, gives Obama a little bit of an elbow in his 2017 book where he's like, I thought the president could be, could take too long, was too ponderous, would just get sort of stuck in his own head, whereas Biden is, you know, self-described gut politician and has always been. And this difference between the way that they approach issues where Obama and Hillary were incredibly academically gifted. They always do the reading. You know, Biden is not that guy. I mean, you know, he is a guy that had to repeat the third grade.

He got season D's his first three semesters at University of Delaware except in PE, an English lit class, and he got an F in ROTC. He's a guy that finished 75th out of 80 or 76 out of 85 of his law school class. You know, he is not an academic. But he's also the guy that got elected at 29 years old in a year when Nixon won 49 states. And, you know, it's a different sort of smarts, but was too often dismissed or was often dismissed as the Obama folks is just not smart. So Obama's sending all these subtle and not so subtle signs. to Biden in 2016 saying, I really don't think you should run for president. What does Obama make of Biden's initial campaign in 2020 for the presidency?

Well, you know, it's interesting. There was a lot of reporting around the time where, you know, Obama is like, you don't have to do this, you know, don't, you know, he was he was also seemingly very concerned about Joe Biden not embarrassing himself. Then throughout the entire primary, you start seeing these anonymous. honestly source quotes from Obama himself, which is, you know, don't underestimate Joe's ability to F things up. And at one point saying that, you know, Obama was talking to another presidential candidate, another Democrat, and said, you know, when I was running, I really had this, you know,

this connection with the voters that I've lost, but, you know, who really doesn't have it anymore is Joe Biden, you know, and, you know, even Joe Biden's, you know, AIDS will tell you that, you know, Obama didn't weigh in for Joe in the primary as much as he weighed in for Hillary in 2016. Now, they'll again spin this as saying, well, this was agreed upon because we didn't want the primary to be as divisive, and we wanted Obama to be a unifying figure at the end. But the truth is that Obama world and Obama himself just didn't weigh in for Joe as much as he waited for Hillary in 2016. And it was always one of the hardest things to believe.

I didn't want his endorsement anyway, as Joe Biden said when he didn't declare for brother. Yeah, right. You didn't want Barack Obama's endorsement, right? I mean, that just seems you can let Obama off the public hook of saying he's not going to endorse his former V. But that's not the same thing as saying, I don't want your endorsement, which is just. Well, the interesting thing about that answer also is that, like, I agree with you. It's mostly ridiculous.

but the way that he phrases it also had like I think hints at this tension about Joe trying to prove himself. And it's just like such an odd answer to say like, oh, I told me I want it because I wanted to do this on my own. And there is some truth like even after the South Carolina primary when Joe won and that was what fueled his comeback, he was telling his, his aides, remember, Obama didn't lift a finger to help us. And then his advisor needed done. told me that, you know, Joe felt it felt deep down that he didn't want this just to be an Obama third term or anything else, which, again, is sort of contradicted by the fact that he had Obama and basically every single ad he ever had. But there's, but there, again, it sort of hints

at this tension that Joe is grateful for the connection with Obama, but wants to show that it's not just Obama's doing, that he is doing this on himself and proving the doubt. is wrong. One interesting media sidebar in your story is the way that Obamaites are basically the political media right now, at least in terms of talking heads on cable news. You have David Axelrod on CNN. You have the Pod Save America guys. How did Team Biden and Biden himself perceive the comments from those people during the primaries? Well, it appears that they took them quite personally. Even after Joe Biden won, Democrats who talked to his campaigns that they just fumed after David Auxerod and David Ploff wrote this New York Times op-ed that told them how to win

the presidency. And, you know, I think it's also notable that even as tons of candidates, almost perhaps every candidate that ran for the primary, made an appearance on PODC of America, but Joe Biden never did. And, you know, Tommy Vitor said, the Zoom is always open, but he couldn't speak for the campaigns scheduling. And it hasn't gone unnoticed either because the POS of America guys, about two and a half months ago, started talking about it on their show. They said, like, we're confused. We don't really understand what's happening.

Like, why he hasn't come on. But it's, again, like, one of those little public signs that speaks to a deeper tension. in the relationship because a lot of those Obama guys were dismissive of Biden's chances. And clearly he, like Biden or people on his team, heard that. Yeah, you've got a great quote from a former Biden official. It says, I don't think he really cares about what a 30-something Pod Save America host thinks about him. And that honestly might be why he's the nominee. It was really great.

Yep. You did make the point about Joe Biden's academic track being slightly different than Obama's and even Hillary Clinton's. You mentioned he repeats third grade. So Soledadad O'Brien, who has turned into this unlikely lefty media critic, tweets when your piece comes out, when Politico informed me that Biden had repeated the third grade, well, that was such useful information that if that it forced me to rethink my entire value system as a voter. Now, that is a tiny note in your piece that is clearly being used not to disparage Biden, but to just show them as a different character than these other people. How does a tweet like that play with you? I mean, I just, I tweeted back at her and thanked her for reading the piece. I mean, there are people that are going to try to, you know, they want the narrative to exist.

And some people tried to think I was picking on Joe, but I, but I wasn't. And it's just, it's one of those factoids, like you said, that speaks to how. different. You know, Biden is, I remember there was, in one of the Obama biographies, there was this, you know, it went into all these love letters. He was writing at like 21 and 22 that had like this very trenchant literary criticism of poets and all these things. And, you know, Joe Biden just wasn't doing doing that. They're just different people. And this was a way to illustrate that. Let's talk about your career. When you start writing, what did you want to be when you grew up? Oh, I had no, I had no idea. And I sort of stumbled into, I sort of stumbled into journalism. I had, I think I had like eight jobs in two years after college. And then I actually got lucky and I became Marine Dowd's researcher at the New York Times when I made the switch to writing. And that was a job that was posted publicly online. And I did nine job interviews with like basically all of her, you know, with all these New York Times luminary.

that I've been reading for years and then also her gay best friend who happened to live in L.A. where I was living and got the job. And that's sort of how I, you know, it was a J-school by fire, let me tell you. Yeah, I can imagine. You come to Politico, you got assigned to the Elizabeth Warren campaign. Is that right in 2020? Yep. Yep. That was right. When it comes to campaign assignments, I always imagine this behind the scenes lobbying effort that it's like the candidates lobbying Biden to be the Veep? What actually happens and how do you wind up with that assignment? Well, in this case, actually, if there was sort of a, there was an internal politics, lobbying sort of thing, I was too new to Politico to really participate in it and just sort

of got saddled with whatever I was assigned. I mean, actually, I was originally assigned to Bernie, but then because we were in a state where I think the editor, didn't necessarily take, didn't think Biden was going to do it. That reporter also, there was a reporter that had both Bernie and Biden by herself. And then so eventually we just like switched up all the roles and I got, I got Elizabeth Warren. And when I was assigned Elizabeth Warren, another sign of how bad I am at internal politicking, I think she was like just raised $5 million and was, you know, fourth or fifth in the polls. and everyone had already written her off for dead.

So I kind of got lucky in that I got to follow a campaign that really had some narrative arc to it where she rose and then she fell. And then she was like maybe a comeback and then definitely wasn't going to make a comeback. You know, as opposed to someone like Beto who just peaked the day he announced. Yeah. Now, if I'm a sports writer, right,

I'm not supposed to root for the outcome of a game. But if I'm the Golden State Warriors, beat writer and the Warriors go on to win the NBA title, that is going to be way better for my career than if the Warriors don't win the NBA title. So is the Elizabeth Warren beat writer, campaign writer, how does that play in your mind? It's such an interesting question because it's, you know, you're, you'd be stupid not to realize the incentives, right? Because, I mean, you just look at what happened to all the Trump reporters from the 2016 campaign. If you were lucky enough to be assigned Trump at the very beginning of that race, you were probably a very successful reporter

right now with like a big salary and maybe a TV gig and maybe a book deal. And so I think it's dumb if you don't realize the incentive structure. I mean, I think in my own head, I'm always trying to check myself to make sure that, you know, that self-interest isn't swaying my reporting one way or another and just trying to play it straight. So long way of answering that, you know, I wasn't rooting for Elizabeth Warren. I was really interested in the story of her and her candidacy and how she got to where she was. But yeah, I very much, I try to always avoid any sort of rooting interests. But if it just happened to occur that Elizabeth Warren won the nomination, that wouldn't be the worst thing in the world you know every every honest political reporter says right if i'm not rooting for it but

you know yeah i mean yeah no if she had become the nominee um you know i i would have been in a very good position um you know my journalism but then i also wouldn't have had the chance to write this obama biden piece so you know you just got to take the story where it leads but you know it would be dishonest to me to not realize that uh professionally Elizabeth Warren uh you know being the non nominee would have put me in a very different direction. So in March, the coronavirus comes in and suspends basically all in person campaigning, minus one Trump rally in Tulsa, I guess another in South Dakota. Your colleagues, John Harris and Eli Okun wrote the other day that journalists are spending

more time on their asses than ever. I enjoyed that phrase. What's been the biggest change versus the way you'd normally be covering a campaign right now? I mean, everything has changed. and yeah I mean right now I'm sitting on right now I'm sitting on my bed and I'm not in Milwaukee which is where I should be and yeah I mean you're you're not seeing events there's not as much there's just not as much stuff to cover too because there's just not as many the campaign isn't doing as many things everyone is moving just a little bit slower and

you know Joe it's weird because we have we have the same number of reporters, but only one candidate. And that one candidate isn't even doing as much as he was doing in the primary. You know, there's no need to sort of switch off and go to different, you know, to, you know, to pick up slack for another reporter because there's just not enough things going on. So it's the most bizarre sort of political reporting that you could imagine trying to do this in quarantine. I'm trying to think of this like, I mean, there's lots of digital zooms going on, but it's just, you know, it's just not as, it's just not the same. I don't know if any other better way to put it. We're talking on the first day of the Democratic National Convention.

And to try one more sports writing metaphor, to me, the DNC is a little bit like the Super Bowl. Because when you go to the Super Bowl, there's journalism to do about the Super Bowl. But then there's the benefit you get from sources and subjects seeing you. at the Super Bowl. So how much of you going to a convention would be column A and how much would be column B? Oh, definitely a lot of column B when it comes to at least when I've gone to conventions in the past. Because it's really, I don't find it that valuable to go there to see the speeches in person because I think it's just as good on TV. The real value of going is that you can meet up with sources.

And that's the other thing about the virtual campaign trail that's really. change is I actually think it's made it easier for the Biden campaign and not to leak because, you know, you're not out on the trail and like seeing an aid and, you know, getting drinks and maybe they tell you something they shouldn't have over drinks. And that has also been a, you know, a bad part about not being in Milwaukee is you don't get the chance to go out to the parties and maybe people slip you, you know, piece of gossip just because you're there. You got to like really chase down the gossip a lot harder now. So this is like the closed locker room in sports writing too. If you're not there and you can't annoy them in person, it's much easier to ignore your text or ignore your call than it is

if you were actually in front of these people. Yeah, it's actually really shows you why shoe leather reporting is still really important because you just realize how much better able you are to extract information when you are literally in person and they can't escape you. All right. Alex Thompson, his new piece at Politico is the president was not encouraging what Obama really thought about Biden.

Thanks so much for doing this, Alex. Hey, thanks, aren't you're having me. This is great. All right, it's time for David Shoemaker. Guesses the strain pun headline. Yeah.

Clapped like a fake fan at the DNC. Thursday's pun TV show title about a new gambling thing on ESPN Plus was better days. Better Days. We got to vote for Mo Better Blues, which we've used in other contexts. Today's headline, David, comes from Ray's bait shop. It's from the Austin American statesman, again. The statesman, which we used to mock when I was at the Daily Texan,

has become like Esquire in the 60s all of a sudden. Here's story. Matthew McConaughey, UT's very own, did an Instagram live chat with Dr. Anthony Fauci. The headline is Fauci gives Matthew McConaughey blank. And the pun will come from a famous, piece of Matthew McConaughey pop culture. David, what was the Austin American statesman's strained pun headline?

Gives him, God, I feel like I'm just, there's no way I'm going to get this. Matt, McConaughey pop culture, a piece of McConaughey pop culture? Yeah, so give us the big ones. Are we going like bongos here? No, no, much recent. This is an actual thing, an actual thing. I just didn't specify TV or movie on purpose. Oh, okay.

Um, so not an off the field, Matthew McCona Hayes. What? He did those car commercials. That was, uh, it's an actual, an actual piece of art here, a good thing. What movies is he done? That's a TV show. A TV show. I think there's only one.

I know. What was he on? Why can't I think of it? HBO. Oh. Uh, war in the south. Yeah, uh, true detective. All right.

So he get, um. Fauci gives Matthew McConaughey This is strange, don't tell you. Cool. True. True infection. True. That'd be quite a story.

True. I have no idea. Fauci gives Matthew McConaughey make a true directives. True directives. He is David Schuemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris Almeida, production magic by Erica Servantes. Okay, so the Austin American Statement is not Esquire in the 60s. Resolved.

We're back with listener mail. Hit us up right now. And please join us Thursday because nothing makes this Marine matter than you missing our lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.