The Press Box - Election Aftermath Edition. Plus, The Washington Post’s Dave Weigel.

Episode Date: November 9, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker weigh in on the aftermath of the 2020 election. They discuss major headlines that include Trump running for reelection in 2024 (2:30), review all the media stories that ran after Biden won the election (9:00), and then discuss who covered election week better: CNN or MSNBC? (32:00) Then, Washington Post political reporter Dave Weigel joins to discuss covering the 2020 election (49:00). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David, Donald Trump's campaign team set up a voter fraud hotline, which ABC News reports has been, quote, bombarded with prank calls from people laughing or mocking them over Biden's win. Prank calling the Trump campaign's hotline has already become a trend on TikTok. What I want to know is, is someone already writing a think piece calling this the TikTok election? The serious question. Okay. How would you know the difference between a real call to the voter fraud hotline and a joke call to the voter fraud hotline? Oh, that's a great question.

I mean, yes, some of them might bear out to be true. But I kind of find it hard to imagine that there's a big, there's a substantive difference between, you know, Chris Almey, a prank calling, not that he actually did it, that please FBI, we're good here. Chris Ahm made a prank calling the voter fraud hotline and like somebody who lives 100 miles down the road in like, you know, Pennsylvania making an earnest call to the voter fraud hotline. Wouldn't it sound basically the same? Yeah. And the accusations we've seen so far have basically been pranks.

Yeah. not only have they not borne out, they've had an absolutely bizarre quality that sounds like people just misunderstanding what voter fraud is or desperately trying to come up with a scandal that will hand the election to Trump. Trump campaign has changed the number, by the way. I'm not sure that is going to be the fix for the prank calls pouring into the voter fraud hotline. But we shall see on today's show, David, a review of the juicy how Biden won and how Trump lost stories. Who covered election week better? CNN or MSNBC. Plus, the Washington Post, Dave Wigle, stops by all that and more on the press box

and part of the Ringer podcast network. So, media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. Before we dive into the How They Did It Stories, David, let's hit a few headlines for Monday morning. First up here, according to Axios' Jonathan Swan, quote, President Trump has already told advisors he's thinking about running for president again in 2024. Do you want a reaction on that or are we just reading headlines right now? I think I kind of want a reaction. I mean, listen, like I've been saying listen a lot.

On the one hand, he's a guy who hates losing who, you know, there's no better way to, you know, when to take back the loss than to win again in four years. on the other hand, if you want to take a more sort of, you know, arched angle on the whole thing, he's out a lot of money. And the only way that he can keep going around and collecting money from people is to have a campaign fund that's set for some vague point in the future. So to keep the machine sort of chugging along, you have to say that, right? Yes. And I think even more broadly to just keep the camera on you, especially with, the Republican Party because let's face it, who cares about Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz if Donald

Trump is threatening to run for president again in 2024? Yeah. And all that will do is gum up the works for a couple of years and keep everything. Look, he wasn't going away anyway. He was going to be influential anyway, but this is going to keep him right in the middle of the news. Yeah. And his hands wrapped around the throat of the Republican Party.

Mm-hmm. It is, it's perfect, perfectly Trumpian. And anything that he does post-presidency, I mean, even if he's just going back to, you know, running hotels and golf courses and whatever else, I mean, he keeps the spotlight on those things, too. Headline number two, the New York Times reports, quote, the drugmaker Pfizer announced on Monday that an early analysis of its coronavirus vaccine trial suggested the vaccine was robustly effective in preventing COVID-19. Guess who's taking credit for the good news from Pfizer? That's right, the Trump administration. We could play Joe Biden's remarks this morning, which were pretty amazing about wearing masks and things like that. But I just want to say, if in fact we are getting closer to having a vaccine, it makes the idea of not having tons of not having tons of.

of not having tons and tons of needless deaths in the United States, all the more important and all the more poignant. The whole point was to keep people alive until you have a vaccine that will keep people alive. And it makes what has happened over the last, how many months, that much more enraging. Yeah. You know, and then on the other side, you have,

Donald Trump Jr. theorizing that everybody knew this was coming but Pfizer and whoever else kept it a secret so his dad would lose their election.

He'd lose the election. The November surprise. That's the, I think that's the kind of election interference that we can all agree is a wonderful thing. Withholding information,

I mean, really, this is just the mirror image of, if that's true, and listen. Oh, come on. whatever but if the fyser withheld it no no no no if it but even if it were true it's just a perfect mirror image of what happened with with uh with the with the hillary four years ago and um and you know kind of sort of a perfect in cap on on the trump era we've already had the overwork

twitter joke inject this into my veins about the coming coronavirus vaccine thanks to chat orzel for that one and finally david i cannot resist this one since we're a media podcast yesterday day, the Trump staff papered their campaign headquarters with a Washington Times front page headline from 2000 that said, President Gore.

Ha ha! The Trump campaign says, see, sometimes the media is wrong. Spokesman Tim Marta tweets reminder that the media doesn't select the president. David, there was just one problem. That was not a real Washington

Times headline. No. So the campaign of the guy who's obsessed with fake news, put up a literally fake version of a conservative newspaper. Yes. Okay. I actually didn't do the Google image search research that I, that I plan to do for the show. My guess is if you just Google, you know, 2000 election result and search for high-res images, that was the one that came up, which is why it was the Times. That was my first reaction, but maybe it's not. It does seem particularly weird that, well, I mean, the time that the Washington Times came out immediately to say that they never that was never there never a front page that

ran it was clearly doctored that your kind of ideological you know compatriot on the news in the in the in the paper business is immediately shooting down uh you know just your whatever kind of pep rally this thing is it's sort of damning right i mean you would think that the new york time i mean sorry that the washington times is where you would go if you wanted to get a fake front page newspaper made for your bedroom wall, right? If you're someone on the Trump campaign, hey Washington Times, can you just say like, Donald Trump is the king, you know,

or something, that's where you would go. But they just said, no, absolutely not true. And by the way, whoever Photoshopped that, couldn't even be bothered to figure out the font. Like, you know, what the font is a website that people have access to. You can, you know, it looked completely fake. I mean, it was just utterly fake.

And then they tweeted it out. That's the worst part. They tweeted it out. Whoever tweeted it had no idea that this wasn't real. It's just, whatever. I love the idea of going to amusement parks. And, you know, when you didn't take your picture and it's on the front of Time magazine, it would be on the front of the Washington Times, you know, gave you a one of those to put up in your house.

By the way, didn't Donald Trump have fake a fake Time magazine with his face? He did. All of the things that we've forgotten about Donald Trump in the past four years, all of the things that would be, I mean, the things that we remember about other presidents, George H.W. and the grocery line, you know like bill clinton playing the saxophone bill clinton boxers or briefs whatever like the things that we remember compared to the things that we've forgotten about donald trump it's just unbelievable it is incredible there's a trump tweet for that and there is a trump fake time cover for that we got to do a little more on the landscaping story david we mentioned this in the last podcast

but we were trying to get in so many things that this deserves some space to breathe If you haven't seen this on Saturday morning with Joe Biden all but confirmed as the next president, Donald Trump tweeted from the golf course, lawyers news conference four seasons, Philadelphia 11 a.m. Yeah. That was followed by a tweet from the account of the actual Philadelphia four seasons. To clarify, President Trump's press conference will not be held at Four Seasons Hotel Philadelphia, be held at four seasons total landscaping. no relation with the hotel. So in this case, seasons like, this is when you plant the tulips, this is when you plant the marigolds and the periwinkles. Got to get that stuff right.

Yeah. Trump then deleted his original tweet and moved back the time of the conference. Big press conference today in Philadelphia had four seasons total landscaping, 1130 a.m. It also resulted in this immortal lead in the Philadelphia Inquirer, which got passed around a lot on Twitter. what began five years ago with a made-for-TV announcement of Donald Trump's presidential ambitions from the escalator of his ritzie Manhattan high-rise ended Saturday with his aging lawyers shouting conspiracy theories and vowing lawsuits in a northeast Philadelphia parking lot near a sex shop and a crematorium. Pretty straight lead, but awfully good. Well, I mean, last time we were here, we were talking about how, you know, networks were cutting away from Trump speeches in some sense. I mean, I think on some level because they knew they didn't have to deal with them anymore.

And obviously there's some connection to the way that everybody is just laughing at this. But, you know, in any just terrible situation or in many terrible situations, I should say, sometimes all it takes is just like someone to say that exact right joke. And that just takes all the tension out. and then everyone's just laughing and everything that was bad is it completely forgotten? Like, the four seasons total landscaping was the that joke

of the Trump administration. All the pain that we went through and there's going to be lasting pain, don't get me wrong. And all of the agony of the election week, it just, that was the moment where everybody just like, just realized they were allowed to laugh again.

And we all just bent over and laughed hysterically for two and a half days. Yes. We laughed a little more even when Rudy Giuliani showed up at four-season total landscaping with a Trump-Pent sign stuck on the garage door behind him. He rambled about Joe Frazier, sure, and Wilson's dad. And then during the news conference, the race was called by the networks for Joe Byte. What amazing timing. Here's how Rudy react. What is it called by? All the, oh my goodness, all the networks. Wow. All the networks. We have to forget about the law.

Judges don't count. All the networks, all the networks, all the networks thought Biden was going to win by 10%. Gee, what happened? Come on, don't be, don't be ridiculous. Networks don't get to decide elections. courts do well first of all

I believe and this is my first hand account I haven't actually looked this up I believe the election was actually called before the press conference started moments before and this is just another subtle

I mean low key indictment of whatever the operation they're running over there that it took they were you know preparing to go on and nobody was paying attention to what was going on the outside world

it took it and he had to find out because of that in real time but it was just perfect there was no better situation. I mean, there's nothing that could possibly be funnier than watching Rudy Giuliani having to grapple with reality in front of cameras in real time for everybody to see. And really, I mean, isn't that just a perfect distillation of the Trump administration and especially the post-election Trump administration that it's just idiots screaming in the face of reality and, and pretending

it doesn't exist? But then in this case, actually having to literally scream about reality when people bring it up. It's, I mean, it's, it is so, it's such a sad statement on what Trump has done to our political system, but there's a part of me that just wants to see it keep going for a little bit longer. It was an interesting subgenre of Trump fan or Trump, you know, associate reaction to the election results to do what Rudy did there. It was kind of like that televangelist that we saw just laughing that Biden had won the election where you just. I'm not even really going in on the facts at this point or ginning up fake charges of voter fraud. I'm just going to kind of scream or laugh at the idea that this happened.

I guess that's one way to do it. If you don't have anything at my fingertips, I'm just going to go, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. That was a great impression of the laugh. You know, I agree. I find, I found myself watching that. What's a televangelist's name? Kenneth Copeland. Yeah, Kenneth Copeland.

Yeah. Kenneth Copeland. Yeah, he's a real piece of work. I found myself watching Mr. Copeland, Reverend Copeland, sorry, laughing. And not, I was, I was completely unsure as to whether or not that was supposed to come off as a real laugh.

Like, I think I got the sentiment behind it, but the laugh was so fake. I mean, and it must have been deliberately fake, but then he sort of segued into what seemed to be a real performance laugh. The whole point of this is that I am, happy to not have to parse the meetings of crazy people doing performative laughter anymore. I'm happy that we get to move on to, you know, normal politicians holding in their laughter

or whatever is going to come during the Biden administration. A ton of Twitter jokes, as you might imagine, about the landscaping press conference. Thanks to all of us, all of you who sent the lawn and order Twitter gag in. Yes. We also had this joke format. This was from Ben Mathis Lilly over there at Slate. explaining the joke again to my furious wife as we stand outside Labernadan landscaping.

This is the bad night. I love this one. Pizza slices on our anniversary. Also from the writer Sasha Eisenberg. Correction, the press conference at the White House announced would be held, quote, at the Ritz. We'll actually take place next to the Ritz Crackers Incap display in the snack food aisle of the Wawa at 7912 Roosevelt Boulevard.

Yes. The Bin Mathis Lillian one was, I think, my favorite one. There is also Gabriel Roth at Slate tweeting. I just tagged this one at the very end that he said it reminded him of the time. Again, this goes back to all the things we've forgotten about Trump. I remind him of the time when the campaign had to prove that there was a product called Trump Stakes. So they went and bought some steaks to the supermarket and wrote Trump stakes on them. Yes.

This was a thing that happened that we don't even talk about anymore. They had a fake display of Trump stakes that just were not Trump stakes at all. This was the Location Scout version of Trump states. What do you think happened? I want to, because I do want to say this. The Philadelphia Inquirer had a nice TikTok of everything that went down. The one thing they could not answer, or at least they had to take at face value, was it Trump administration's insistence that this was the plan all along, and it was just a

communication error when it came to telling the president where the thing was going to be. But everybody from, you know, the reporters on the ground there at the press conference up to Jake Tapper on CNN or like vocally derisive of that entire I mean they are sure that it was supposed to be at the hotel and that somehow that got botched. It was almost certainly supposed to be. The New York

Times wondered whether it was in a part of Philadelphia. This is far northeast Philadelphia where the Trump people could have a press conference without everybody celebrating in the streets. Right. Which I guess depends slightly on the timing of when the election

was called. There were a bunch of demonstrations in Philadelphia, right about count the vote demonstrations even before the election was called for Biden. So perhaps they were trying to just find a safe space within the city of Philadelphia to have this press conference. Even that doesn't quite seem right. We don't have to give the spin award, David, to Corey Lewandowski. Did you see this tweet? All great Americans in Pennsylvania use four seasons total landscaping. They love this country and our American patriots.

Thank you. So is the patriotism of the landscapers? but I don't this is again I'm happy to not have to parse through this but what like what does it mean that Cory Lewandowski is like 50% self-aware that he would write this tweet to begin with it doesn't get you anything back right it does like what it who you're you're trying to impress at this point he may be managing Trump 24 that's what it gets you I mean I this is the thing right he's got all these people and he is not letting go with them and you see the way these they're for such a tiny number of Republican senators

I've actually congratulated Joe Biden on weighing the election. They are scared. It is incredible. By the way, one more tweet before I get out, before we let this go, Jim Acosta, everybody saw this, but I have to give it credit. Jim Acosta, who has done some really, had some really, apparently some great sources inside the Trump White House. I mean, always has, but has gotten some nice little scooplets out on Twitter over the

past week or so. But he tweeted on the seventh, Trump advisor tells me the campaign has nothing concrete. That's a quote in terms of voter fraud. and then Andy Lassner, who was, I guess, a producer at the Ellen Show, said, yeah, well, I bet they got concrete at four seasons total landscape. Oh, man.

Jokes for days. The jokes will never end. And that's what I said. I'm so glad that this happened. So we can all have something to laugh about that's not just the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. We spent the last 24 or so hours, David, reading this huge collection of how Biden won

and how Trump lost stories. This is a particular journalistic genre. Yeah. Kind of pre-reported and largely in the can, and then they're unveiled the moment the election is called. It's not quite the sort of level of detail and narrative you get in the campaign book. It's kind of the dime novel version of the full-blown campaign book. But you do get a lot of juicy things.

So let's go through a few of these, and I'll put them on Twitter too, so people, can read them and parse them as you will. First of all, this is from the Politico version, which is a really good story. Brad Parskell, remember him, Trump's old campaign manager? He tells Trump, according to this story, in February, that the coronavirus could put Trump's re-election campaign in danger.

Trump's response, according to the article, this fucking virus, what does it have to do with me getting reelected? Oh, my God. Yeah. quite a quote now and again let us remember who is informing these things let us think about all that but quite a line there from

Trump I mean I think it's not that hard to guess where that insider tidbit came from right I mean the well Brad Bar Scal is also writing a book too by the way which is one we left off of the amazing ironies of the Trump that all came full circle on Saturday but yeah

put that on the list another nugget from these things which was there was an amazing amount of in the Democratic Party about Joe Biden doing a campaign out of his basement. Because you'll remember, it wasn't just that Joe Biden wasn't doing rallies. The Democrats, because the coronavirus decided they weren't going to knock on doors. Yeah. They were not going to do conventional campaigning like we know it.

And a whole bunch of people got scared. They got scared at the beginning of the coronavirus because guess who the Democratic face of the virus was? It wasn't Biden. It was Andrew Cuomo. And there was this real sort of where's Biden question among Democrats. It undermined Jen O'Malley Dillon, who was Biden's campaign manager. That bet turns out it paid off quite well for Biden. But that was, you know, I think if you're looking for the texture of what scared the Biden people during this campaign or made them second guess themselves, it was Democrats saying, why aren't you out campaigning or out campaigning more?

Yeah. I mean, we talked last time about how if the. plan was to let Trump punch himself out, you know? I mean, then it was a, it was a brilliant plan. If had he lost, this is where everybody would be. Like you know, I mean, David Axelrod, I mean, it was already all over that, right? I mean, at the time. So, I mean, it's not, it's not hard to imagine that that would have been the first place, the first question people would have asked, right? I mean, you had this opportunity to be, to stand and start contrast to the president, you know, one of the most significant moments in our country's history. And there was a lot of where's Biden at the

time. That said, you know, he was, well, I mean, it was a stark contrast to not be just out there making a fool of himself every day, like, or, you know, not being in the public eye, because Trump was certainly out there a lot at the beginning, if you remember. And frankly, from a political point of view, I mean, it probably, I mean, it's, it's not hard to imagine that it was, that it was, it turned out to be lucky that Biden didn't have more opinions on the record, right? I mean, like, so much of everything that Trump had to attack. Biden on on COVID, aside from the lies about swine flu, were the ill-informed points of view that we all had at the very beginning, right? And if there had been more of those floating around,

maybe that would have been a better, you know, a better knife during the campaign. Who knows? But it certainly ended up working out, or at least it seems like it did, or maybe it didn't matter at all. And we're just listing the things that happened and saying, that's why, you know, Biden won. Well, it certainly didn't not work. We could probably say that. I was also thinking just right before the end of the election. I know the term October surprise is now sort of like Friday news dump, where everyone is so hyper aware of it that we're talk more about October surprises than actually experience October surprises.

But Joe Biden getting sick with the coronavirus would have been the ultimate October surprise. And I genuinely think whether he would have lost the election or not, that would have really shaken everybody. And, you know, again, he's an older guy. He's in a risky category. But that was something I would think the Biden campaign was trying to avoid at absolutely all costs. Yeah.

Especially after what had happened with Donald Trump. Interesting details, David, from the endorsement of South Carolina Representative Jim Clyburn. Remember, that was hugely important in Joe Biden's own path to getting the Democratic nomination. He endorsed him right before the South Carolina primary. Biden wins that primary. All the dominoes fall, and suddenly Biden's the Democratic nominee. Clyburn, quote, revealed that he informed Biden advisors

months earlier of his decision. That is his decision to endorse. But Clyburn resisted pressure from the campaign to go public because he thought it would pack more punch just before the South Carolina primary. Quoting Clyburn here, I told them I was going to endorse, but I had to do it on my schedule

because I didn't want to just endorse. I wanted to win the race. so the Biden campaign is struggling. They need all the help they can get. Come on, you got to get out public for us. And Clyburn says, no, no, no. I'm going to wait until right before the primary. Yeah.

And what happens? It works. I mean, it's not hard to imagine that it would have felt a little bit more like politics as usual had he done it a lot earlier, right? Or at least it would have had time to sort of metastasize, you know, evolve into that sort of line of thought. And there was stories at the time, if I remember correctly, that kind of dogging Bernie Sanders

because Bernie Sanders hadn't had declined to even ask Jim Clyburn for his support. I believe that there was some quote from Sanders or some hypothetical that was just sort of like, why should why even bother? I mean, maybe that's, this is slightly a vindication of Sanders

when you look at it this way, right? Because it's like, yeah, why even bother? He actually threw in with Biden way before Sanders probably would have had the opportunity. The New York Times' story, which was by Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns, got a little more into Biden, Biden's response to the protest, though. I get into that with Dave Wigle later, so we'll put that aside.

But I must leave you with this one, David. Truly the wows of detail of all the campaign postmortems, also from Politico. It's about Kimberly Gilfoyle, former Fox News host, Trump campaign advisor, girlfriend to Donald Trump Jr. She was running the fundraising part of the fundraising apparatus of the Trump campaign. You're going to be shocked to learn, David, that there were some problems with the apparatus as run by Kimberly Gilfoyle. But here's the detail. Some donors were horrified, but what they described as Kimberly

Guilfoyle's lack of professionalism. She frequently joked about her sex life and at one fundraiser offered a lap dance to the donor who gave the most money. Ladies and gentlemen, the Donald Trump campaign. Yeah. Who would have thought, for all of us that know Kimberly Guilfuel and her employment history, who would have thought that she would have been doing that sort of thing.

And finally, David, remember when we're doing our prop bets? Yeah. Most of which were nullified by the sheer length of the election. I know what you're going to say. I felt like I had lost a big bet when this happened. We wondered whether George W. Bush would call and congratulate Joe Biden before Donald Trump did. Well, Bush did on Sunday called the election fundamentally fair and said its outcome is clear. in a statement. So if you took that $1,000 to your favorite New Jersey casino, David, and put it on,

George W. We'll call Biden before Trump does. Congratulations on your new SUV there in Princeton. You know, George W. certainly has a, I'm sure, more widespread of popularity than he did when he left office. That's sort of the normal trajectory for presidents. And there are some people who are, I mean, wise people who are justifiably still apoplectic about everything he, all the bullshit he pulled as president. But you, you, when it, when it, when it actually happened, it did sort of feel like this was the one truly good thing. George W. Bush could contribute to modern politics, right? Just to sort of be like, you don't actually have to be the grand old man of your party or whatever to act as one and to have the effective one.

And he was, you know, gave this, pulled this sort of figurehead move that I think really, really affected everything that came after it. Yeah. And like I said, it's, it's a lot more courage than a lot of current Republican senators have showed in the face of the same circumstances. All right, David, time for the overwork Twitter joke of the week, 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 were always gratefully

received david last week we asked what the go-to twitter joke would be if joe biden won the election again we did not plan for a three and a half day election so of course given those circumstances it was an overword twitter joke to write you could say he was just biden his time we would also have accepted after the results came in, Biden, colon, his time. Thanks to Ben Matthew Cox and Chad Orzel for those. After Biden's big speech on Saturday night, David, the equivalent of an Andes after-dinner mint,

Notre Dame beat number one Clemson, after which fighting Irish fans rushed onto the field and mobbed the players. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write, I think Notre Dame covered the spread. Thanks to Will Holland. Also, wait, sorry, can I just make it? Can I just rant at this point? Yeah, please.

We're going to, there's going to be many, much, lots of time for Trump post-mortems after this. But like, the Trump era, which now will continue because of the lovely, lovely folks that you just mentioned that don't have the guts to say anything right now to the president, the people that are out there, mealy-mouthed, with mealy-mouthed, like, you know, the defenses of what Trump's doing, right now as if some, you know, some vague, terrible thing has happened in our election process when they all know that that's utterly untrue. But you can make your like no nothing, you know, the return of the no nothing party headlines or jokes or whatever. But this is really like, it is, it is incredible that this is, that how many people are like pointing at, how many people are pointing at like mass hypocrisy and clinging to that as, I mean, if you looked at Twitter right now,

you would think that the Republican platform are like passive voice conspiracy theories and pointing out mass hypocrisy. Right? Like the entire Republican, like philosophical, philosophical evolutionary line dead ended with Al Gore has a private plane.

Right? Like they don't believe anything except tax cuts and Al Gore has a private plane. That is the entire party. And we're just seeing that, we're just seeing that play out all over social media right now. Aha, he wouldn't wear it a mask.

Yeah. Oh, wait, that picture was from 2019. Oh, never mind, but he wouldn't wearing a mask on that one. You wouldn't wear a mask. Or all the people who were like, oh, it's okay to celebrate in the streets that you're president, that you're not a candidate won. But it's not okay to go to church. Not okay to celebrate a football victory. It's like, come on.

Like, it's like, it's, God, yeah. Finally, David, when the votes had at last been counted on Saturday and the projections made that Donald Trump had lost, it was an overworked Twitter joke to recall a nonsense word Trump once typed on Twitter and write, it is finally O'Fifi. We would have also accepted our long national nightmare is O'Feefei. Thanks to Travis Barnett. If you were holding onto that one for months, congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week.

In the notebook dump, David, we got a note from listener Squirt. Gun Warriors. Thank you, Squirt Gun Warriors, asking us to weigh in on the central media question of last week. Are you a CNN person or are you an MSNBC person? I think I answered this a little bit the last time. When were we here Saturday night? I don't know. We were here all the time. But I started out the week in MSNBC person or with MSNBC as my main channel and transitioned over the course of the week to CNN. Then by I, in the post-election, let's see, where are we? Again, what day is this?

Yesterday, I found myself watching MSNBCs again because CNN was back on their usual Sunday rerun schedule, which was sort of an odd choice, but, or at least for part of the day. But, and I was flipping back and forth pretty much between all the channels, just watching the celebrations and the streets and everything. But there's no, it's hard to imagine there'd be a celebration of John King without him being coupled with Steve Kornacki. Steve Kornacki is justifiably the hero of this election. We all knew

he was going to be going in and he held server, whatever the sports metaphor you want to say is. Can we say the cable news hero of this election? Can we? We're not put above like Stacey Abrams is organizing in Georgia, are we? The media hero.

The media hero, sure, sure. No, no, no, he's more important. I put Steve Kornacki above Pfizer right now. He's just the best there is. But the, no, but Kornacki was the cable news champion of the week. It was amazing that he was able to exceed

our expectations. But, you know, we talked a little bit about how he and Maddow played off each other. Rachel Maddow ended up in quarantine and reporting from home for the last, for at least the last day, the last cycle of the week. You know,

John King and Wolf Blitzer's little Abin Costello routine had a lot, going for it and and and they seem that they're their their back their banter seemed to to only get better and better as the week went on anyway I I find it hard I find it hard to really pick a winner but at the end of the week by by as as my as I was as my exhaustion was mounting and I was just looking for anybody like anything to lighten the mood or to just like say the kind of pointed thing that I was thinking on some level, John King really stepped up, really sort of bringing the material. He started, I mean, and his, his best stuff came when

everybody else was getting exhausted, and probably because he was exhausted too, but he made, his stuff, you know, as he was just explaining the process and the way things are supposed to go to everybody watching at home, it was, it was high-level stuff. So you think John King was more prepared to run a marathon than Steve Cornack? was. I think I honestly believe that John King after three days of literally no sleep, I think they said that he had said he had had something like five hours of sleep in two days or whatever. I think that, you know, I think John King after a couple of beers is, uh, is probably a better performer than the John King that walked in on day one. Wait, are you, are you drinking these beers or is John King

drinking the beers? No, I'm not saying John King drank the beers, but I'm saying if he were drinking beers, John King would probably be the best person on television. Cornacki is just a machine, though. Here's the thing about John King that was amazing is he was really good at explaining the context over and over again of what we were seeing. Yeah. And Cornucke was really great, as you say, but he was really diving into the numbers and stuff like that. Whereas I felt John King, either because he was getting this note from a producer just came up with his own, was just resetting constantly. Here's the vote you're seeing. Here's why this vote is going so dramatically to Biden, which was a great antidote to all the conspiracy.

theories about why are all these late votes for Biden? How could this possibly be happening? Yeah. He kind of has a lot of, you know, and of course he was a, can he, it was is a, you know, conventional political analyst correspondent on CNN. So he just had that gene about him. And I think that is a larger difference between CNN and MSNBC. Yeah. MSNBC feels a lot closer to what we know is political Twitter.

And, you know, when I think of that group of Kornacki, of Maddow, Jacob Soberoff, people like that, they just feel like they're very, they are speaking to a crowd that is reading a lot of resistance Twitter and political Twitter. Nothing wrong with that, you didn't mention Chris Hayes, who's actually, whose Twitter account, his Twitter feed was literally one of the indispensable parts of the week. I mean, give him credit for that. I was, I mean, the thing, he retweeted everything, I mean, almost everything you needed to see over the course of the week, but. Absolutely. But I just found when I was toggling between the two, sometimes I wanted like here is the direct feed from Twitter into my brain you know where let's go and then sometimes

i kind of wanted classic newsman newswoman a little distance a little holding it at remove which i think was on cnn i think it's an interesting difference well and listen it's if you look at the i mean just look at the lineups look at the people that are talking to on these two channels msnbc was a steady i mean featured a steady rotation between their prime time basically opinion opinion talking heads, right? And CNN was doing everything they could to get their more or less straight anchors on the air with equal time. Right? I mean, it's a, it's a different type. I mean, I'm sure, I did see Chris Cuomo over the course of the week, but mostly you're talking about Anderson Cooper and, and like you said, Wolf Blitzer, John King. I mean, it's, it's, you know,

it's a different lineup. Jake Tapper. I mean, it's a different sort. And, and, and, and, you know, with MSNBC, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's more of it, it's more of a, it's, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a lot, it's, it's, it's, it's not, I mean, it's, but you, but you, but you, but you have to wonder whether or not he was more reluctant to actually just explain how impossible a Trump comeback was earlier, because he didn't want to seem ideological, right? And John King was in a position where, you know, no, no, I know CNN's taken its lumps clearly over the past four years, but he was being the news anchor or the news person whose job it is to actually tell you what's happening and not just to give you the minute details. He came closer to anyone else to telling us that Trump couldn't possibly win days before it was called by anybody. I found on CNN there were more analysts I wanted to hear from. Oh, yeah.

There's that first panel, which usually gets the first crack at the news, which is Jake Tapper, Dana Bash, and Abby Phillip. Mm-hmm. And then you go to that second panel, which is Anderson Cooper, David Axelrod, Gloria Borger, Van Jones, and Rick Santorum. Mm-hmm. All those people, with the very notable exception of Rick Santorum, I am happy to hear from. Rick Santorum sitting forlornly at the end of the desk, especially when the desk is so spread out that he's like 30 feet away from Anderson Cooper and like almost visibly or like audibly crying is a much better version of Rick Santorum than anything else we normally. but I totally agree

it there the CNN had not only that's I mean people that you wanted to hear but they also had I mean every time it was the same people over and over again but it always seemed you know slightly fresh which is a hard thing to keep up over the course of the week I'm not a huge hockey fan but it was kind of like hockey where they send in the

first line and then the second line that you always have people that are ready to go like when people start to wear down they start to kind of repeat themselves yeah the Santorum thing was wild because he is in this role, I guess, because Jeffrey Lord imploded in front of us and just turned into a supernova. But there was this weird dynamic where Rick Santorum,

as a Republican, would say something that was halfway responsible or halfway generous and then banjo. I really appreciate you saying that. Yeah. Like we have sort of come to this truce and I just appreciate you meeting me one quarter of the way. down the road on this particular item, whatever it was about election fraud? I mean,

and thank God it wasn't closer because I'm sure that's not what Santorum would have done. One more, I mean, just to say, I know we're talking about CNN, but you're talking about the second line. I mean, MSNBC had a very different, a very different,

I felt like a different than usual sort of progression of what their broadcast schedule was over the course of the week. I guess Brian Williams was sort of in his usual slot, but a lot of the time they had, they had just more of a panel thing, for the, you know, for the beginning of the night. And then they had Chris Hayes coming in, again, back to Chris Hayes, who obviously I'm a fan of,

but had him coming in at the midnight slot, like midnight to two. Yeah. And sort of him and a punchy Cornacki, just kind of doing a two-man, you know, doing the two-man game. Like, you know, running out of the high post was like, really, I mean, was it was, was to me, as someone who had been watching through the days and was still interested in hearing anything that might happen post-midnight, that sort of burst of energy I thought was it was really effective too. Agreed. Totally agree. This may only

appeal to you and I because we're just completely sick, but MSNBC's graphics are so much better than CNN's graphics. So much better. What is the deal with CNN when you turn it on? It looks like a business news channel, which just has all this data all over, has data going down the screen, it has data on the bottom

of the screen, and it's just way too busy. Yeah. And the whole set and the graphics just look like they're from a completely different era of cable television. Well, part of the thing is that the set looks like the graphics, right? I mean, I made fun of that a couple of one of our early episodes, but the set itself is this technicolor red, white, and blue, like the floor, the walls,

everything. And so there's not a lot of distinction between those things. You almost feel like your anchors are floating on a green screen. But you're right. I mean, this is, there is serious, there is serious like broadcast philosophy, the broadcast theology about how all this stuff looks. You can talk to your sources at ESPN. They'd probably talk to you more vocally about, you know, the crawl and the sidebar during PTI or something that they would actually about like the talent and the people they employ. These are things that people care and think a great deal about. Obviously, there's a different philosophy, but MSNBC overall from, you know, the on-screen graphics to just like the logos of the shows. I mean, it's just a just a cleaner. I mean, listen, we're talking about

matters of degree here, but it is a cleaner, more modern presentation for sure. NBA writer Dan Weiki tweets at us, how do we feel about the use of vote as a plural by the map guys. There's a lot of votes still out there. Why not votes? Look forward to you guys leading with this next week. Wait. I was not,

I did not notice this at all. Was this actually happening? Yeah. Oh yeah. The plural of vote is vote. There's a lot of votes still to come. There's a lot of votes still to come in. There's a lot of vote left in Allegheny County.

They were saying that constantly. John King definitely said that over. I think I just, I totally missed this. If I had heard it, I would have probably been upset about it. I think this might have changed my opinion of John King. I just want to say,

I don't think I have ever watched that many hours of cable news straight in my entire life. And I am amazed at the familiarity I now have with everybody on MSNBC and CNN. For sure. For sure. My wife and I were driving across the country over the weekend, and we had the serious radio on where it has the live feed of CNN and MSNBC as radio, somebody would make a point.

I'd say, that's Abby Phillip. Or that's Jake Tapper. Or that's Gloria Borgier. If you gave me the audio of like random editions of SportsCenter during the day on ESPN, I could not tell the anchors apart. No. With that skill. I really couldn't.

And that's allegedly my job. I'd be like, who's that? I could tell you every single person on CNN and MSNBC. it was wild. It was really just, and now I forget everything I know, I think. Well, do we got, we should probably, you know, every once in a while, we get a, we get a reader question about who you're like, you know, election night dream team is. Is it before we forget it all, we should be, do we need a hand out to proletives or should we save that for the future? I'm happy to, I'm happy to do it right now.

Why not? Our historian is John Meacham. Just kidding. who are our anchors well the anchors the anchor is maybe the most interesting one right it was I mean

Mano got a lot of the anchor seat until she got sick but then Brian Williams is certainly more the conventional anchor Jake Tapper I thought did just a masterful job on CNN but again is not necessarily like you know

a definitional like you know anchor but he might be the leader in the clubhouse for me What were you going to say? I was going to say, I think Anderson Cooper, Jake Tapper, maybe if we do a two-man game here where one has the board person and one has the panel of opinion people.

So the kind of double anchor, I think those are my two. I really do. I would, I mean, I love Anderson Cooper, but I don't know if he would be, if, I mean, I think I might go Jake Tapper first team and then either go, you know, the Chris Hayes off the bench, second team or if you want to keep it more conventional, I, I still have a really irrational love for Brian Williams throwing it to opinion people. I just love his real awkward, his like awkward chummy, almost like Charlie Rose-esque, like let me get in on the joke segways. I'm just

problematic people left and right here, but, but there's something, but Brian William, Brian Williams might get the second, might get the second chair for me. I certainly loved, I talked about this before, the Matt O'Kornacki back and forth in the end more than. John King and Wolf Blitzer. So I think I would probably go Matt out Cornacki for my, for my, you know, board and person with the person, you know, the numbers cruncher and the throws it to the numbers cruncher person. Abby Phillip is 100% up there. Dana Bash was, was every time that she talked, I found myself like doing a double take about

something that she said in a good way. They both had a great weekend. Yeah. I felt by Saturday they were both just maxing out. Like they were great all week, but they were really crushing it on. Saturday morning when I was listening to it. Yeah, I totally agree with that. But yeah, I mean, I would, I mean,

thankfully we have like 85 chairs that we can fill with this whole thing. I thought it is cable news, right? Yeah, Axelrod was, Axelrod is great, but Axelrod, you know, in small doses, and that's how they had him lined up, right? I mean, I just, I think Axelrod, when he has something that he wants to say is,

and is not just throwing, we're throwing it to him for its obligatory two minutes, is a lot better. I mean, it's just really good. I never thought he'd be this good at being on TV. Also, Jim, Jim Acosta had some moments, you know, being at the White House and getting to cover.

And of course, he's got his own history with the Trump White House, but being able to sort of sum up what the mood was like when it became clear that Trump had lost. He had a good weekend, too. Yeah. So I would definitely put him on the list. Though I think I'd probably lean a little bit

toward a lot of MSNBC's reporters. Yeah. we're just talking about those too. By the way, I keep forgetting Savannah Guthrie was just incredible on NBC proper. Lester Holt as well. We're talking about conventional anchors. Lester Holt was great, but Savannah Guthrie was like everything nice to, wonderful

that people said about her after the Trump interview or town hall or whatever. She is on fire. All right, this election night, this election night dream team officially has 92 members. Oh, listen. This is like the naked gun we're not actually trying to, we're not, you know, we're not trying to impress anybody. We're

trying to impress our peers, right? Or not our peers. We're just trying to impress the people who have these jobs on television. I don't care what the people the networks think of us. All right, David, speaking of impressive, segue, you know one of our favorite political reporters is Dave Weigel, the Washington Post. Oh, yes. Wanted him to weigh in on election stuff, but also how the election was covered. Here's Dave Weigel. Folks, it's Dave Weigel. We cite his stories and tweets here all the time. Washington Post political reporter. He writes the newsletter, the trailer, which you need to subscribe to if you don't already. Dave, you've covered a bunch of presidential campaigns now.

Journalistically speaking, what are you going to remember about 2020? Less than I'll remember from other elections is because really starting in 2012, I was going out a lot more and seeing candidates on the ground and asking them questions and doing interviews with all of them. I mean, there was lots of ways to cover the election, and that was the first one I did from the bus, quote unquote. and then more of that in 2016, and then less all of a sudden this year

because of the pandemic. So I think there's, I'll remember this is, mostly is the year of covering more things remotely, which I think I'm pretty happy with what I wrote during the election, but I think to the extent I missed stuff, I decided to blame it on that, right? You know, if I,

there's a normal year, I think I would have done a Texas, I didn't write to that much of a Texas this year. It's nothing personal. I just was like, my thing was, well, there's only so many, it's harder to travel, only so many places to go. And if Texas is breaking against Democrats, they, they were, you know,

breaking for Democrats, then Republicans did something very wrong. So I should probably be somewhere else. So I never went there. I think in a normal year I would have gone there and I would have, I flatter myself in thinking I would have understood a bit more about some of the inroads the Trump campaign was making with Latino voters, with some black voters. I think that's the only story that I, when I look at this race, I think, I wish I was in, I saw that in person and could have seen the shift because it was harder than other years to get a sense of how things are moving on the on the ground. I mean, even I was in Iowa and Minnesota, the final few days of the election, I left thinking I'd give that to Trump by a couple points. I'd give Minnesota to Biden by

couple points. That was right, but I don't think that got every nuance where a normal year would have. Can you explain a little bit how when you're on the ground you make those kind of judgments like who are you talking to? How do you get a sense of which way a state is going to? going? Well, it's a good question. So the idea that we just kind of sit around and say, what do the polls say? Let's go based on that. That's not true. Polls are interesting at the very start. Money is interesting at the very start in determining who has built a campaign organization that's beyond hype. Because a lot of campaigns, and I circled back with a bunch of them when the votes were mostly in, the ones where maybe there's 100,000 votes to count,

but they lost already. And there's people, and I wasn't shaming them. I was, I was saying, you know, hey, last time we talked, you said you had this race within one or two points, you lost by 12, so what happened? And that's been revealing because people just had polling and modeling that was off and down the Democratic side did not do as much door-to-door canvassing as they would have been a normal year. But they turned out their voters. I mean, the thing about this election is that Republicans turned out a lot more voters and Democrats turned out even more. if you look at the Senate map basically once again, and I think this record goes back to 2012 now because that was a year when Claire McCaskill is able to win

Joe Donnell was able to win their Senate races. Since then, I mean, we've had two presidential elections and nothing's broken in a Senate race against the candidate who is carrying the state, right? So Democrats were hopeful, well, maybe even if we're running a bit behind in a state like Iowa, maybe we can win the Senate race. Maybe if we're behind in a place like North Carolina,

we can win the Senate race despite the candidate scandals. That just didn't happen. Same thing for Republicans. I mean, they had a candidate in Michigan, John James, who has not yet conceded the election, but he's lost it. It's between 60 and 80,000 vote margin. And ran his whole campaign as a Republican who is not like Donald Trump.

He was a quote unquote, black guy from Detroit. I'm quoting him from one of his ads he ran where he said, whoever the president is, I'm going to stand up if they're not working for Michigan. and did everything he could to run a different campaign. And the margin in that Senate race is within a point of the presidential race. And it's distorted a bit by there being a Green Party candidate who moves some boats. So no ticket splitting apart from Vermont.

And I mean, really, once you get past the lobster and Hedy Topper belt in New England, almost no ticket splitting whatsoever. And so the way that's played out in local races is there's a lot of, Democrats who gained in the suburbs and a lot of Democrats who lost in rural areas that if you asked them a week ago, they did not think they would do worse than rural areas. And they didn't. They got as many votes as they got last time. It was just that Republicans turned out more people. I mean, I'd point to, I'd point here to West Virginia as the state where Democrats did not think they would compete. They thought, well, it's going to be hard for Joe Biden, who has not done as much to alienate West Virginia voters as Hillary Clinton to do worse. Biden's going to get about 40,000 more votes than Hillary Clinton did. But Trump's going to get a lot more, too. So the margins are very, I mean, the states that diverge from patterns and from the popular vote really like Florida in a Republican direction, Colorado in the Democrats direction, Minnesota in the Democrats direction, but not a lot else. I mean, this is not a remaking of the map like we saw in 2016. I think of you as a guy who quotes voters you meet at rallies and other places, a lot to kind of understand or at least try to sample what people are thinking.

Did you feel you lost anything in 2020 by not being able to talk to those people as much? Yeah, I did. I mean, I was talking about it just before and how I hope that I would have been had I, I mean, just honestly, had I gone and I did this in 2014. I wrote a story in 2014. It was how Democrats were eating it in the Rio Grande Valley area of Texas. And the theory Republicans had at the time, which I think was borne out by that election, was there's just a lot of Latino voters who are not culturally that liberal.

they vote for the Democratic Party because the Democratic Party is dominant there and is responsive to them and delivers on most of what they want. But Republicans are making inroads on social issues. Democrats hated the story. It was true. And I think there are stories like that where you kind of had to sit someplace and marinate. I feel like more of those could have been done by me, but they were done by other people. I don't think there was, I don't think anyone looks at this election and says no one wrote the story of X. I mean, if you're talking about what I've just been talking about Latino votes in Trump,

that has been smart reporters in Texas and Florida writing that story for six months. I mean, the only people who missed it were the ones just, you know, dialing up Beta O'Rourke for a quote and him saying it's more competitive than you think. But if you were on the ground, I don't think you missed it. I don't think you missed. There was no one missing the president's resilience in parts of the Midwest. He was doing better in places. And then no one really missing how why the reasons why Biden was more competitive than Hillary Clinton.

He was better liked. He had Pennsylvania roots, all those things. So I feel like the media came out of this looking pretty good. And even in polling, the polling forecasts were not great, but the pollster, it's individual pollsters who I think did a terrible job modeling the electorate and not that much worse than they did in 2016. There's nothing I look at this election and say, we're totally shocked by how this happened, which I think you could have said after the last election.

And you couldn't really have said after 2018. I mean, the only, you've now had two cycles in a row, 18 and 20, where Democrats' ambitions in Florida get screwed up by gaining, you know, way less in suburbs than they're losing in strong Republican areas and losing among conservative Hispanics. That accelerated, but that's not brand new. With the benefit of hindsight, there's a certain inevitability about Joe Biden. He led his Democratic rivals in national polls for big chunks. The primary, he led Donald Trump in polls forever. was it hard, do you think, for reporters to understand Biden's strengths as a candidate? Do you think they had him pretty well nailed? Well, so that's, I think, notice I've been carefully talking about the general election. I think in the primary, I personally missed some stuff that was happening in the primary. And again, I think it's down to who I was who I was talking to, with an exception. I mean, I looked at South Carolina and my baseline was, all right, this is a state that Biden is counting on in the primary. Things look very good for him there,

for lots of reasons. However, I don't see the same level of support that I, a fandom that I saw for Hillary Clinton when I was there in 2016. I just didn't. And it caught up later. I mean, Biden clearly, he never lost a huge lead with black voters in South Carolina, but he gave them later. The first half of the primary when people were looking at Biden in Iowa, New Hampshire,

and talking about how he was losing them, obviously correct. I mean, and I look back the stories I wrote at the time, I think, everything I wrote about people's policy rollouts up. I mean, I think there was a fascinating policy debate in the primary, but the degree to which Democratic, and the degree to which Democratic voters were focused on electability instead of particular issues, that also held up. What happened in those first two states is that the Democrats with the most exposure to candidates week after week after week, two things. One, they wanted to make history. So you had a lot of suburban voters voting for a female candidates are for people to judge, who would have been the first gay nominee for president.

And you had Biden not doing as well in the stump as those men. Just as somebody who spent a lot of time with all these candidates, but a judge and Warren were far and above, of the candidates no one had seen before compared to like Bernie Sanders, far and above the most compelling to people in the room. And Corey Booker did a little bit. But you would see these rooms of people won over. They'd have a list of their six favorite candidates.

And Biden was low on the list. and they thought he was past his prime. And they also, and I wrote about this a little bit in the trailer, the newsletter yesterday, where they had an idea of the electorate that was incorrect and that Biden wasn't that interested. That wasn't that necessarily a great fit for. If you go back to the rhetoric around the primaries, Iowa, let's focus on that. Democrats had come to Iowa, everyone, you know, Warren, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, everyone would come there and say, not the 2016 was a fluke, but 2016 happened because we didn't

spend enough time in these places. We took stuff for granted. We're never going to do it again. And everybody ran the campaign. Everybody promised to run a campaign that was going to excite new people. And the premise was always that Donald Trump fell over the line with the ball because the election interference, which was, I mean, which was true. There's lots of, lots of evidence to suggest that the coalition Trump built might have been too weak to win the election without Hillary Clinton's email getting hacked without her getting pneumonia with all the things that happened to her, the Comey letter. But so Democrats talk themselves into, well, we have basically an emerging electorate that's probably, if everybody turns out, like 55% of the country.

We've got an electorate that clearly can win these Midwestern states. And indeed, in Iowa, they had a pretty great 2018. They gained some ground. They almost won the governor's race. They flipped one statewide office. They added two house seats, I should say. They had one. They had one and they went to three. And that didn't happen. I mean, it turned out more Republicans voted as they were able to do. It didn't happen. So look again at I, and I'm, I've been kind of monomaniacal about just read about the

vocount numbers because, look, campaigns were interested in those. That was campaigns when they, they don't tell you the truth all the time. But when they say stuff like, we're more interested in our internal polling than the public polling. That's not a lie. They definitely, they're definitely more interested in what their own numbers say. And in Iowa, yes, Biden got the kind of votes, the Democratic Senate nominee, got the kind of vote total that if they looked at it election day last time, would have said, okay, we did pretty good. So for example, so in Iowa, again, where no counties flipped, nothing changed hands, Biden didn't win anything that Hillary Clinton couldn't win. Hillary Clinton got 650,000, 669 votes. Biden so far, and it's going to go up, got 757,733 votes. And so you look at that, if no other, if no Republican had turned out who didn't before,

if the electorate was exactly the same, well, that would have been like a two-point race at the top of the ballot. That would have been enough in the Senate race, probably, I think, by it would be in a recount right now, but more Republicans voted. So it didn't turn out that way. And I think that it wasn't just reporting on it. I think that was a lot of expectations about the electorate, the Democrats, had inculcated from how they lost last time turned out to be challenges for them because they

weren't winning those people. And the conversation with them this week is less, what did we do to alienate those folks? I mean, some of that. You see the takes that's people very sure that it was some online exchange about Walt culture that pissed everybody off and 10 alien voters. But no, Biden ran the kind of campaign that people wanted and hit all the marks. The question for them is are there people who are now activated voters who we can reach out to? And once we start knocking on doors again, once we start canvassing again, because they did in 2018. They, they absolutely were able in swing seats to have people knock on their neighbors' doors for months and months and convert voters, not just turn out new ones. So it was tough to wrap one's

mind around Biden's strength of the primaries because he wasn't wowing people on the stump. And was there something else that was just that everybody was slow to understand, wow, this guy's going to win the primary? Well, it was mostly about the black vote, and I'd say everyone got that. It was clear that voters thought the more electable candidate was the one they wanted to vote for whether or not they agreed with him. And this was kind of the most, probably the most scabrous exchanges I had on Twitter were right after, even after Iowa, I said, look, if the Bernie Sanders theory of politics is, I'm going to turn more people out that's going to change the electorate, that just didn't happen. He got fewer votes than he did four years earlier.

A lot of new voters came out and voted for Buttigieg, voted for Warren, but not that many. And when the votes were kind of in, which is a, you know, a phrase is hard to apply to Iowa this year without getting into why. But when people finally had the raw count of the votes, beyond the electoral college nonsense of how the caucuses decided, the Democrats got more votes in suburban counties and urban suburban counties. And there's nothing, there's like, there's no mega city in Iowa. but like Polk County is Des Moines and then a bunch of suburbs, Dallas County is a bunch of suburbs. Democrats did a lot better. They turned out new voters in those counties and they did worse in places that they've lost in 2016. So they actually had been declining. And I think because of the speed of the primary, maybe not a lot of, I wrote a little bit about it. Not enough attention was paid probably to the inability of Democrats to change these electorates even in the primaries.

I mean, you had South Carolina, for example, the story there was higher turnout, and it was bigger than it had been in a long time. But you didn't have as many black voters turnout as you did for Barack Obama. That turned out not to be determined in a state like South Carolina, but had the election been one, you know, had to go on one point in Trump's direction across the country, he would have won again. And I think people would spend a lot of time today saying, well, gosh, why were black voters not as excited as we thought they'd be after all that? You tweeted this last month. If Biden wins, there'll be an effort to retcon 2020 as a layup election that any Democrat could have won. So before we retcon this, what did Biden do well, do you think that might be underappreciated? I think the number one thing here is that there was a moment that could have swung the election against him,

which was Memorial Day Week weekend. And for months after that, unrest in cities over police killings of, of black men. That was something that I think a lot, there was a lot of punitary and I made fun of it saying, oh, if there's unrest, that means Republicans are going to do better. The people misread the mood, and they misread the reality. It's different for, if you make the 1968 comparison, it's much different for Richard Nixon as a non-incumbent to say Democrats are mismanaging the country than it is to, as an incumbent, say, I'm president and it's these mayor's fault. So Biden, Biden, I think, intuited that this is a risk.

and intuitive that it wasn't just something he could hide from. So he didn't, as some Democrats I saw, suggested, avoid the issue and refocus on health care. He grappled with it, and he said, look, if I'm president, we're going to have more concordance and commissions between people involved in this. We're going to restore what the administration did that maybe wasn't appreciated until he was gone

in terms of consent decrees from the Justice Department. we're going to tackle this problem. And whereas the Trump response was, I'm going to send a National Guard and crush the riots and the Democrats are going to wreck the suburbs. I think Biden, somebody who's been around for a very long time and had won, remember, he won his first and his third Senate elections running about 25 points ahead of the Democratic ticket.

He was a very intuitive politician about that. He was from a state where it is possible for there be a backlash to protests that alienates white suburbanites. and he was, I think, masterful in how he handled that. And even at the very end of the election, remember, there was a police shooting in Philadelphia. It was telling, I thought, that Republicans didn't make it a huge part of their messaging because Biden had defanged them again and again on that issue. And it didn't move things.

Biden did better in the suburbs of Philadelphia this year than he did than Democrats did four years ago. He did better, actually, in some counties than Barack Obama ever did. So he had a very good understanding of how to get through, you know, what's, I guess, what's usually euphemizes unrest. What's seen as just difficult times for the country, racial unrest. He, by leaning into it, I think, was very effective in a way that it's easy for to imagine some Democratic nominees not. I mean, I don't know how, because they didn't contravene Biden. I don't know how a Sanders campaign, a Buttigieg campaign, et cetera,

would have handled that. The Buttigieg campaign, when there was unrest in Southbender in the campaign, didn't handle that great. I mean, it came back and had some. town halls and got food. So Biden was much more effective at something that I think really, if it couldn't have turned the race, it could have moved the conversation away from what into territory Trump was comfortable on. And Biden was very good at not letting that happen. It's such a fascinating question. I think we're starting to see unpacked in these how Biden won pieces is how much credit to give to Team Biden in the general and how much is circumstance, coronavirus, et cetera, and how much is the way Trump rant in his campaign? How do you,

at this early stage, put it in those three buckets. Well, that's an interesting way to put it. So I think Biden deserves a lot of credit. And our thing I didn't mention just now is that the Hillary Clinton campaign, state Democratic parties have stories about people who were screaming at them in Michigan, screaming at the Hillary campaign, I should say, telling them from Michigan, from Wisconsin, from Pennsylvania that things didn't look as great as the Hillary campaign thought they did. And the Hillary campaign had models that made them believe that they were safer in pivot states than those people thought.

And that didn't happen this time. The Biden campaign was very good at working with state parties and listening to them. So I think that as a strategic move, it did not believe its own hype, much less than the Trump campaign. There's no moment you can say Biden took some risk based on a theory of how the electorate worked. No, they were very cold and analytical about it. And they never stopped for a second pouring money on Michigan and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, even at moments where it looked like they were breaking away. So I think for that, and I think for the president, he ran it unfocused and undisciplined campaign.

But more than that, just he did one thing that I think was written about, but underappreciated, which is just literally using the federal government to hand out favors to people. So whether it was there's a Senate race in the last. We're going to open up this forest for energy exploration. Or, and this is important. Most presidents and most presidential candidates would get a bipartisan achievement like the CARES Act, you know, handing out money to people and say, look at the bipartisan achievement I just did. Trump does not behave that way.

Trump's response was, I did this. And it was, I'm going to put my name on it. You're going to get a check with my name on it. And there's evidence that for people who are only paying kind of attention, a little bit of attention to election, might not be Republicans, might not be coming back in two years or four years. They said, oh, yeah, Trump's the kid who gave us, who gave out money. Same thing. I think in Texas, it's hard to assess exactly what happened in the Rio Grande Valley area, but one thing is that Trump just, even after Congress denied him money for the border wall,

does Trump kept pouring money into, I guess, the border industrial complex. So I think I think Trump did very well was using the power of the presidency in ways that are frankly illegal to win votes. Not everything I just mentioned, but there were tons of violations of the Hatch Act and what what administration members can do. What he was less effective is it's still what was he going to do if he was reelected? It was utterly unclear what his plan was if he won a second term. The party decided not to have a platform. Now, do people who are not professional reporters care about that?

I don't think there's a ton of evidence. I'm glad it's not a new norm. If it turned out that the party doesn't need to stand for anything and just builds around the leader, I don't love that. That didn't work. The fact that Biden had a platform that was negotiated from members of the party, the Bernie Sanders wing, et cetera, it gave Trump a little bit of ammo to attack the left. But again, Biden was very comfortable saying, I'm not of the left. I can deal with anybody. And it gave him stuff to run on that I think was important.

And in the groups I've talked to that did outreach to younger voters, it really got out there that, for example, Biden would decriminalize marijuana, that Biden had a, Biden would, reverse as much as he could of what Trump did on climate, which is quite a lot. I mean, Biden could get in with a pen on January 20th and just start nixing a lot of things Trump did. So you're going to have, I think, I'm not sure if those are three buckets, but I think Biden did those things well. Biden kept the left in line. Biden avoided doing anything stupid. Trump did abusing the powers of his office very well, was much less good to explain what the heck he was running on. I mean, there was a point, and this was kind of important. And this was kind of infamous. I was talking to Arkansas, Senator Tom Cotton before the election,

kind of reminisced about this. There was a point there where the Trump campaign was running ads in Pennsylvania, some which said Joe Biden's responsible for mass incarceration of black men and put people in jail, some which said Joe Biden is soft on crime and is going to let all the rioters take over in the suburb. You can't have both. It does not make sense. And they went for a lot of stuff that didn't make sense because, and I think people talk a lot about this. They've just were so online. They were so interested in responding to what the president was seeing on Twitter and Fox News. That became the campaign messaging. Now, the down-ballot campaign messaging was smarter, and it tried to avoid some of these pitfalls, but they did a lot of it. They made a lot of bizarre

focuses because their base cared and other people didn't. It's such a fascinating way to think of the two campaigns, Trump being very online and Biden being seemingly not online and not caring about whatever intermural dispute was happening in resistance Twitter that day. Just being like, eh, you know, back to back to our message. I mean, the Hunter Biden thing is a great example where the Biden campaign just bet like, look, I have, this is him

in his mind. I have a brand. No one thinks I'm corrupt. No one really does think, we saw in the polling. Do when asked who people thought was honest and who was trustworthy they thought Biden was. And this story, and this story is weird. Unlike, unlike WikiLeaks, unlike

everything that happened in 2016, This is Rudy Giuliani coming out with dirt that he obtained from strange sources. It's not the same thing as Julian Assange publishing internal Clinton email. So they made this bet that this is a weird story. We're going to deny it. Nobody cares. That was correct. And the Trump bet that voters at the last minute were going to decide on some scandal.

Now, I don't know. I need to see more on this because there's evidence that voters who made up their minds in the last week of the campaign were a little warmer on Trump. But that could be for a lot of reasons. I don't, I saw no evidence that was Hunter Biden stuff. I think there's more that people when looking at what would change if Democrats took over were more happy with the economy than Democrats wanted to admit. And I'm kind of stealing this point from Josh Barrow.

I think it's totally true. The economy wasn't great, but it was everyone knew it was because of a virus. And things were better for low-age workers because the labor market was pretty tight. And so I do think if a Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren had him to the nominee and tried to run on how the economy looks good, but actually it's terrible. I don't think that would have worked. I think what Biden did was more effective and saying, we can recover,

we're recovering, but who are we recovering for? Subtle difference there, but Biden was more successful. Last question, we'll let you go. You've done straight reporting. You've done slate-style reporting, think pieces, you did a podcast. What is satisfying for you about writing a newsletter?

Well, one thing is I get to, I have a lot of freedom to follow what I find interesting. The frustration is that, that there's too much stuff that's interesting. And so working at the post where there are so many great reporters, people should subscribe at washingtonpost.com, et cetera. There's so many great reporters working on stuff that there's some stuff I know, okay, I'm happy to help, but there are people here who know 10 times more than me. And there's some stuff I'm interested in that I know no one else is writing. So I think that, and I think being able to tell the story of the election

incrementally in one voice has been good. I've liked doing it. I do look, back, I think I'm going to self-audit when it's over, and look for the stuff where I think I was a little bit too bullish on one thing or a little too bearish on something else. But it all was girded on something real. It wasn't just, here's the latest polling. Here's what that proves about the country. Once I was able to get back out there, I think having one place to collect all that stuff and then also share the best of what the post is reporting, I'm pretty happy with having that as a way to tell the election. I think if somebody was unable, every other website and the internet crashed and they could only read everything on the newsletter,

I think they would miss maybe some details about House Republican recruiting, but not many. And that's a fluke just because the special election in California happened a period when it wasn't really safe to travel. I think otherwise I would have been there. I would have written a second story. I wrote one instead of two. That's about it. That's the only thing I look at it and say, I think you would have missed this if you read

my newsletter. Yeah, I just think in terms of telling the story of the election, if there were with straight reporters, I often need their pieces and then their tweets to understand how they see the arc of this. Where with you in that newsletter, I can just read the newsletter. Yeah. I'd be a little more explicit about this is happening. This is not happening. I think you're right about that where I didn't need to always do the inverted pyramid lead.

And I could sometimes keep a conversation going based on something that the readers had seen in the previous of days edition. And that meant I didn't have to start everything. Well, like, yeah, as in an electorate unsettled by chaos, something, something. You know, it's fun to be able to say, all right, this, so this is happening. Here's what matters about this. And girded it up with good reporting. But no, I think it's a good way to do it. But again, like it's impossible.

If I was just doing this on an island somewhere, I think I would have missed a lot if it wasn't for all the people I work with at the Post. Absolutely. All right, Dave Weigel, subscribe to the trailer, read the Washington Post. Subscribe to that also. Subscribe to everything. Thanks so much for coming on the best. funny on journalism. We need it a lot. Amen, sir. Thanks for coming on the press box.

Awesome. All right. It's time for David Schumaker. Guess is the strained pun headline. Yeah. Last Wednesday's headline was claim that Sharpie pins ruin Arizona ballots, misses the mark. I believe Sharpie Gate, by the way, has been resurrected today if I read Twitter correctly before we came on. Today's headline, David comes from Danny Sullivan. It's from the front page of last Thursday's Toronto Star.

last Thursday. So when we were still counting the votes, it's a pun on a Trump campaign catchphrase. What was the Toronto Star's strained pun headline? Lock it in? Build that. Remember, we were counting votes at this point. I know.

Count. Count. Damn. Trump campaign catch phrases. We did not know the result. Unclear. We were standing around. Waiting, waiting, waiting, wait, wait this train.

Think of those red hats and they say. Make America wait again. Make America wait again. You had to lead me to that one, but it was worth it. That was great. Great stuff, Toronto Star. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis.

Research by Chris Almeida, production magic by Erica Servantes. We're back Thursday with more post-election cleanup. And Dwight Garner, book critic from the New York Times, will be here talking about his new book for Brian, David, along with Anderson Cooper, Savannah Guthrie, Abby Phillip, Gloria Borgier, 19 people on the big board, three or four D desks and 18 reporters in the field. We'll have more Luke Warpakes about the media.

See you then, David. See you later, Brian.