The Ricochet Podcast - Beyond the Polls (There Be Dragons!)

Episode Date: August 25, 2023

There's post-debate analysis, and then there's post-debate analysis with Henry Olsen. Henry talents with numbers and genius for the politcal metaphor will make you rethink Wednesday's showdown in Milwaukee. Henry takes us through the snap polls, considers the candidates' new prospects, and posits a game changer (or two) that the casual debate watcher may have overlooked. (And once you've enjoyed this eye-opening discussion enough to make you hungry for more, you can hop on over to listen to Mr. Olsen's very own podcast, Beyond the Polls.Plus, Peter's back! Hear all about his peregrinations, along with other chatter about well-charted waters.

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Decencies apply. See OnPost.com. Go ahead, Peter. Sorry. No, I was going to say to take it from... I'm just used to your not being here, so I'm just jumping... Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. Read my lips. It is the Ricochet Podcast. And guess who's joining us? The itinerant Odessian Peter Robinson. It's me, Rob Long, and Steve Hayward, and we are joined by Henry Olson to talk about, well, you know what, politics, etc. So stay tuned. What has taken place here is a travesty of justice. We did nothing wrong. I did nothing wrong. Whether or not you believe that the criminal charges are right or wrong, the conduct is beneath the office of President of the United States.

Welcome to the Ricochet Podcast. This is number 656. 656 podcasts. That's how many we've clocked. That's crazy. I'm Rob Long coming to you from New York City and join me is Steve Hayward. Steve is in a very unusual location. Can you you can disclose it, right? It's not I can't. I can't. I'm sitting in John Hughes office at Berkeley Law School at this very moment. Where is John?

Is he can we is he listening in? No, he's on his way. He may drop in and wave to the screen at some point during the hour. Well, make sure he does no more than that, please. It's not yet noon. So there's no reason for John U to show up. And that voice you heard, which you may not even remember or recognize, is the voice of my Rekuschade co-founder, Peter Robinson, who has been on, I think, quite literally, an odyssey. An odyssey, yes.

Where have you been this summer, Peter? The longest. We sent our youngest off to college as COVID was hitting. So, this is the first summer when the world has been open since we became empty nesters. And we traveled. My wife kept saying, what if we do this? And in the winter, I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, fine. And lo and behold, she stitched it all together. We traveled more than we ever have before in our married lives. Wyoming, New York, Greece, to which I'll return in just a moment, back to New York, out to the Hamptons, and then a week up in Tahoe, which just ended yesterday. Damn. Greece was fascinating.

This is where the odyssey comes in that Rob was referring to. We spent a day in Athens distance, there was an aircraft carrier visible. And the guide said, yes, yes, of course, that's one of yours. Interesting. Interesting. We have an aircraft carrier you can see in the Mediterranean from the top of the Acropolis. The Brits have two. The French have one.

We have 11. And one of them sails the Mediterranean, more than one from time to time. Then off to the little tiny island of Patmos, which is much closer to Turkey, it's just two miles off the coast of Turkey than it is to the Greek mainland, which is about 150 miles away. And there we were staying with very good friends, lovely, wonderful people, both of Greek background. And we met, it turns out that we four were among the few Americans on the island. So, again and again and again, it was Europeans, the European view of the United States. And there were several older people there who were very pro-American, very pro-American, because they could remember the help that Harry Truman, they were children, but they could remember the help that Harry Truman gave them after the war, when there was a communist insurgency

in the north of the country and a civil war. And we helped the good guys win. That was remarkable, that there are still people, that was such an event in Greece, civil war, people being killed, that people who were children at the time remember it and remain grateful. And then, of course, well, the presidential politics came up again and again. I was not able to enlighten them because I'm as confused as anybody could be. But Ukraine came up again and again. And the basic European attitude was, you know we can't fix this. When are you going to?

Very. That was the Greek attitude? No, no, no, no, no. Excuse me. I have to say that wasn't, this was a conversation with a Frenchman, an Italian, and Frenchman, Italian, and then there was an American who was just listening and smiling as I took all this in. Because he knew what was going on. Well, he knew the European, but they simply took it for granted that it was our job. Which is very strange because I have to say, in terms of Ukraine, the French and the Italians,

and especially the Germans, and ultra especially the English, I should say the British, are stepping forward and showing the kind of leadership that we have been wanting them to show and the kind of commitment to defense, defense buildup and defense buying and defense whatever that we wanted them to show in the light of Ukraine. Well, they are stepping forward and beginning to show a little bit of what we want them to show. The Germans talk a good game, the English actually play a good game, but they're all two or three steps behind us. We're right behind you. You go first.

You provide the material and weapons and advice and intelligence that they really, really need and then we'll come along and fill in as best we can is roughly the attitude. Excuse me, roughly the case. I think that's a fair representation of the case. Anyway, I suppose this is a segue into the debate. We have Vivek Ramaswamy saying we should get out of Ukraine. We have Nikki Haley and others saying, no, don't be ridiculous. You have, I love Nikki. I don't know why, it's not in itself an especially memorable line, but it was a good one, turning to Vivek and saying, you have no experience in foreign policy, and it shows.

All I can tell you is on this little fly speck of an island, where this, at the top of the island is a monastery that has stood there since 1088. The Byzantine Emperor John Comemnus II, I'm sure I have that wrong, gave the island. Oh, I don't think it was the second. I think it was the fourth. I'm not sure. Actually, there's a museum in the monastery with this long scroll in Byzantine Greek, which is signed at the bottom in red. Only the emperor could sign in red, we were told. There's an actual signature of the emperor of the day from 1088. And that, the island, to this day, I was told,

retains a special legal status within Greece. It's a kind of state within the state. Technically speaking, it's the monastery that runs the whole island. But it has very thick walls. It served not only as a religious center, but as a kind of fortress. So, for 900, almost 1,000 years, this island has seen empires rise and fall and pirates attack. Oh, yeah. So great. And of course, 700 years before that, we have St. John taking refuge in a cave.

He's in exile during whose persecution? Diocletian's persecution of the Christians and experiencing the vision that he then writes as the Book of Revelation. So, it's a flyspeck of an island, but the sense of, I don't know, talking about Ukraine, talking about American presidential politics, you get the feeling that the present is only a very thin layer on mound after mound after mound of history, of human experience. There's nothing cooler I think historically than the Mediterranean. All around

every single country that rings it, every single island in it is just riveting. I hate to do this, can we just put a pin in that briefly? Of course. We're going to get back to Mediterranean talk, although it might make you sleepy and if it

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That's Ball & Branch, all one word, B-O-L-L-A-N-D, branch.com, promo code RICOSHAY3. Some exclusions apply. See the site for details. We thank Ball & Branch for sponsoring the RICOSHAY podcast and for making such incredibly great sheets. Let's just get into the politics of it all. Why not? We are joined by Henry Olson. Henry's been here before. We're welcoming back. He's a Washington Post columnist, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Listeners need to check out his newly launched podcast series, Beyond the Polls, which I'm sure is going to be um uh burning up for the next uh nine months uh and

that is available of course here on the rickshay audio network all you got to do is go to rickshay audio network and subscribe to it and you will get it um i think every week um henry can illuminate me on that uh welcome henry olson welcome back to the podcast. Thanks for having me back. Henry, give us again, once again, the name of your podcast, your campaign podcast, which is going to be, you're going to be recording from now until somebody wins this darn thing. Yeah, well, it's called Beyond the Polls. Beyond the Polls. Okay. There is nothing beyond the polls, Henry. What are you talking about? Well, my goal here is to evoke thoughts of the original Star Trek. I end every episode like that. We're going to reach for the stars and venture beyond the polls,

discovering life and new civilization. Dallas Hope. It's every other week until Thanksgiving. Every other week, all right. When enough is going to be happening that i think we can justify listener uh audience for a weekly podcast and then it will be weekly all the way through to election day to the end okay so um it kicked off let's just i mean i know it's been skirmishing and yelling and screaming and tweeting and retweeting and all that stuff. But really, it just kicked off this week, the Republican primary fight.

And I'll just give you my impression. You tell me how wrong I am. If you shut your eyes, or you didn't shut your eyes, you opened your eyes, and you just ignored the big orange elephant not in the room, and you just looked at that dais those are the republicans running for president assuming all the republicans running for president were on that dais it was a pretty good lineup i mean some i like some i don't like some i want to be president some i would i'm not so crazy about but they all these were not the seven dwarves these were not also rams these were

like some accomplished men and women up there what am i missing you're not missing anything you know that obviously some are stronger than others and some are in better position or more experienced than others but um every one of them had a debate moment, even if some of them were small moments and others were big moments. And I think the real weak sisters, she used the old-fashioned phrase, were weeded out. You know, we didn't have a Perry Johnson or a Larry Elder or a Ryan Brinkley. Those people weren't on stage, and it really showed. There was no Marianne Williamson moment. To take it from the bottom up, so to speak, talking of weeding out,

can we also say that by the end of the debate, there really was no longer any conceivable justification for Asa Hutchinson, a good, kindly, accomplished man, but not going to be president and not adding anything to the race. Or for Doug Burgum, a tremendously impressive businessman, a fine governor, a major figure in the state of North Dakota, but this is not his moment. He started at the wrong level. Senate maybe, presidency four years from now, cabinet position in the meantime. Those two should drop out today

fair yeah so i i'll agree 100 with asa hutchinson he wins the jim gilmore award for um yeah the only reason i'm not 100 agreeing with bergham is the guy tore his Achilles tendon that day. So if I had the physical stamina to rip my Achilles tendon and show up and not be completely zoned out on painkillers, I would want to be winnowed into the next round. So I don't think he's going to win, but if he's willing to spend $10 million of his own money. Which is nothing to him, apparently. He's at least a billionaire, right? He says he's only a centimillionaire, you know. So my goal, my proposal to him is, okay, you're not a billionaire, you say you're a centimillionaire. Give me the difference. Are you actually? I won't call it even. But I don't think he's going to be president. But the fact is, we don't know whether he would be

a better performer, but for the personal accident. So let's see how he goes in a second. Okay. Next one up, if I may, working my way up from the bottom. And then Steve Hayward has to come in when we get to the really tricky bits. But this is a question I have to appealing, impressive in all kinds of ways, but if he couldn't find a moment to break out in that debate, is it over for Tim Scott? Over? No, because anybody with $30 million of Super PAC money and a personal story that has excited you yes that is not over even me is what you mean henry especially is that um look this was unbelievably

weak that this should have been a moment where as you say he could have found a moment where, as you say, he could have found a moment. The Washington Post-Ipsos 538 joint poll that came out yesterday had everybody having some extreme reaction. Some people was negative, like Hutchinson said they lost the debate. Some people were positive on that, like DeSantis or Nikki Haley. Scott was notable that he had neither positive nor negative strong reactions. He was kind of like, you know, to borrow from Ariel Cuomo talking about Walter Mondale in 1984, he was the Palenta of this debate. Now, you know, Cuomo, after the Mondale campaign, said, well, that's kind of an insult. He said, no, Palenta's nourishing. It's a staple. No, it's bland. That's what he meant. That's what Tim Scott was. And you can suffer problems like Vivek Ramaswamy, who I'm sure we'll talk about, if you show some

charisma. But the worst thing in a debate format like this is to be bland. And Tim Scott was blander than tapioca. Blander than tapioca. I'll jump in here, Henry. And if we have time, by the way, Henry, I do need to do a mea culpa. You were right about the pitch clock in baseball, and I was wrong, but maybe later. So actually, let's do Vivek. By the way, I understand that's the correct pronunciation of his name is Vivek,

which means it's only a matter of time before Trump or somebody calls him fake Vivek. It seems to me that's sort of obvious. I'm getting, I'm sort of getting up to the Trumpian idiom of campaigning. As you know, Republicans always flirt with the novelty candidate, the outsider who's even outside of politics, going back at least to Pat Buchanan in 92. And often they're front runners for a while. You know, Herman Cain in 2012, Ben Carson, Trump, the ultimate outsider, right? And it looks to me like Vivek is this year's novelty candidate that people are going to get excited about,

and then he's going to fade. Is there a scenario in which that pattern is going to break this time, and he's actually going to make a serious run for it? So here's the thing. I tend to agree with you that Vivek is this year's novelty candidate. I like that, you know, that that approach of categorizing him. But the thing to understand about the Republican primary is basically three types of voters, the voters who will always vote for Trump, the voters who will never vote for Trump and the voters who could go either way. The people who could go either way right now are splitting overwhelmingly for Trump. But that's the sweet spot. So the question for me is, can Vivek get the attention of the people who will never vote for Trump? And the answer is pretty much no, because those are the remnants of the

moderate old guard Reaganite wing. They want a Mike Pence, a Nikki Haley, a Tim Scott. Yes, Peter raises his hand. Congratulations. You are a demographic subgroup. You know, you are highly likely not to want to back Vivek because he is not what you are or what you want. And then you've got the Trumpians, and I could see the Trumpians liking him, but they'll never abandon Donald Trump. So the question is, does Vivek Ramaswamy have a shot to basically shoot up the middle and get 50% of the people who can go either way against the competition from Ron DeSantis and everybody else? And I just don't see it. There was a line, I feel bad because it's such a good line, and I did not note whose line it was. Anyway, it was in my Twitter feed, and somebody said, somebody

wrote this and I thought, that's it. Vivek was new at the beginning of the debate, but old by the time it ended. Yeah, that's for sure. Yeah. In other words, his manner, I actually, I'd like to ask, just pause on this for one moment, because I found him insufferable almost from the beginning, but certainly by the end, just in personal, not even at the policy level where I guess I like about half of what he says or two-thirds of what he, but even before you get to that, I just thought, this man is a walking mouth.

We've all met, we've all run into this apple polisher in class, this trying to move, just annoying human being uh and yet i was watching the debate with friends good friends and a couple of them just loved vivek so we had this strange this this guy really what the barbell reaction love him or hate him what does that portend if anything for his political standing henry well you know the thing is uh it all depends on who hates him you know is that if the people who hate him are the people who were never going to vote for him anyway it's actually a good reaction because the you know you've alienated the people you you drive people from moderately against you to passionately

against you but where he needs is a breakout moment and that means he needs fans and if getting enemies means you get fans and that's the trade-off um but if what it is is the sort of people who would vote for him maybe the sort of people who would say i like trump i'm looking for an alternative to trump they're kind of looking at the santas kind of looking at scott and then they look at and their reaction is ew well, well, that's death. Now, typical Peter to ask one of these style questions, right? But I'm going to ask another one, Henry. Now, I didn't watch the debate because I'm a snob,

and if it ain't Lincoln and Douglas in that format, I'm not showing up. But I've read a lot of the accounts. If I'm going to ask you a dumb question, except you'll give a smart answer to it, who won or who do you think helped themselves the most, and why? So I think I actually tend to agree with the results of the poll that I mentioned, which is I think DeSantis helped himself a lot. I think he helped himself a lot by being both forceful and being a reasonable adult in the room. I think Ramaswami may have helped himself on the margin because people are talking about him.

Again, the worst thing in the world in a debate like this is to be blander than tapioca. He was spicier than, let's just say, chikamasa. Continue. Ethnic humor is welcome on this podcast he's not he's not somebody who people are forgetting about so to that extent it helps him he's got a huge road a huge mountain to climb uh but that's not bad and i think nikki haley really helped herself you know is that i uh

i think haley came across as a person who is knowledgeable, a person who sounds like an executive who can make decisions. And she is more to the old guard taste than the center of the Republican Party wants. But to the extent that they want a fighter who is not irrational. She fits on that. So, you know, the rumor that was floated by the Haley campaign is that they had a great online fundraising night in the 24 hours after the campaign. You know, great for the Haley campaign, maybe half a million dollars in one night. You know, it's not like they're Trump's money machine. But I think Haley helped herself as well.

Yeah. All right. One more and then I'll yield the floor. Thought experiment. If Trump had shown up, obviously a very different debate. Speculate on exactly how different it would have been. And is that good or bad for the rest of the field? My head is just thinking we're in two parallel universes right now between Trump and the rest of the field, which looks more normal. This abnormal world we've been in since 2016. Yeah. You know, look, if Trump were the debate, everything would be about Trump

because if Trump is in the room, it's always all about Trump. The one thing that I know would have happened is you would have had a Mike Pence versus Donald Trump moment. Yes. And, you know, I think rightly, you know, I was reading online all, you know, I worked right for the Washington Post and, you know, I was with conservative commentators live blogging the debate. And even they were asking no questions about Trump and online on Twitter, you know, where it's much more left-wing, it was where there's no question about, that's what Republican voters want. They don't want a Caitlin Collins, congratulations, I'm going to represent the Acela corridor and all my questions. I actually want

to talk about things Republicans are focused on, rightly or wrongly. But there's no way we could have avoided a Mike Pence versus Donald Trump. trump yeah and i don't think donald trump wants that ah uh i think as long as mike pence is the reason pence is so crucial in this and why i hope someday he will stand up even more than he did on the other night is mike pence is the only person who can say along with donald trump i lost right right and say i was your running mate i wanted to win i backed you you backed me and we it wasn't all square but we lost fair fair. And that's why, Donald, you asked me, you put yourself above the Constitution. Because literally, you know, what Trump is doing in denying that he ever asked Mike to do that is basically playing word games. No, I never used the word Constitution saying that you should put yourself above the Constitution.

I said you should interpret the Constitution in ways that the words are meaningless. In some bizarre way. Yeah, which means that he can be a law professor at harvard now but um yeah yeah i don't think donald trump wants that because so um that fraud narrative is punctured right yeah republicans will start looking elsewhere uh so do you think that i mean i've got a bunch of questions but i want to because you got to be talking about pence because i i always have i've been saying for a year that pence is the silver bullet pence is i think the only maybe the only living american certainly the only living american in politics who has emerged from his relationship with donald trump with a shred of his integrity and honor and manliness,

if you really want to get right down to it, intact. Does Donald Trump going to show up at any of these debates? I don't think Donald Trump will show up at a debate unless one of two things happen. I think he will show up if he starts to plummet. Yeah. There's this assumption in the media and it may be right you know just have to recognize that there's something in the media that nothing can be done to bring donald trump down until you start acting like the media has for the last seven

years and attacking donald trump i actually don't agree with that you know i think that we in the republican party to talk to republican electors you actually have to kind of be more sorry than hate than than hurtful. You know, hey, you know, sorry, this is happening to you. So, you know, if I were going to deliver the nuclear submarine that will hit Trump below the waterline, I would do it after Thanksgiving, not when the media wants me to, which is right. Right. But if that, you know, there were apparently 13 million people who were watching the, you know, I'm sure disproportionately Republican primary and caucus doors. If you start to see Trump's numbers go down and then after the second debate, you start to see Trump numbers come down. Then I think Trump comes back. The only other way I see Trump going on the debate is if it does narrow to a two-person race, then I think he comes

back. Because if it narrows to a two-person race, he can lose it. Can I ask you a larger question about the Republican Party since you mentioned it? Because it's always seemed to me the Republican, you know, everybody in a party always says, my party's filled with stupid people. We can lose, we can fumble any opportunity, right? Republicans never miss the opportunity to miss an opportunity. But I'm old, right? I can remember people running for president. And I cannot remember, as I said at the beginning, a dais with four distinguished governors, ex-governors of some pretty important states, Mike Pence, governor, the white VP, Nikki Haley, governor, Chris Christie, governor, Rhonda Sanders, governor,

Doug Burgum, governor, and Asa Hutchinson, a senator and an entrepreneur. This is exactly what Republicans say they want, chief executives, conservative chief executives in various different states um are the republicans gonna blow this because they're gonna say look we got this a-list here and we're gonna go for uh something else i mean how likely is it the republicans are just gonna blow this opportunity may i add a quick addendum to rob's observation about the impressive standing of those people? It included a woman, it included two East Asians, and it included an African American.

All right, now, our Republicans... I spent last week in Iowa asking evangelicals, you know, where do they stand? My column about that will come out, so I'm not going to scoop myself. What I will say is one person was aware of their county to a degree that I didn't expect. They actually knew that Trump had finished fourth in that county in 2016, and they said correctly, and he finished behind two Latinos and a black man. So in other words, in Iowa, in Iowa. Right. You know, because remember, Cruz, Rubio and Carson. And now we've got Scott and Ramaswamy and Haley.

The Republican Party electorate has yet to nominate a nonwhite, but it continues to show itself very open to nonwhites in a way that the Democrats, with the exception of Barack Obama, has yet to show. So with that, what I would do is slightly dispute your premise, Rob, which is I don't think the middle voter wants chief executive i think they want i think they are not certain if they want somebody with experience or not but you know i remember seeing in the last cycle that you know if you had if you were running for congress in a republican seat the thing to do is say that you were a MAGA fighter and an outsider. Not having political experience was a plus to the swing vote of the campaign. It is not a plus to the old establishment Republican. But, you know, newsflash, the establishment Republican is now a minority in the Republican voting primary process in most places, and especially in deep red places.

So I dispute the premise in that way. The larger question is, can Republicans blow it? Well, look, my view is that it has been for a while that both parties' bases continue to push themselves to victory, going back to 1994, by pointing out the overreach of their opponent and then they overreach themselves it's a continuing match of tennis where as soon as you break serve you double fault and give it back to them the democrats do it you know and so this is a political version to switch metaphors of who wins the irresistible force or the immovable object? Really, which one stops being less incompetent?

We've got a president with a 41.6 percent job approval rating. Biden is less approved of today than Donald Trump was at a identical stage in his presidency. No president in history has won re-election with a job approval rating this low. He gets the benefit of running against somebody, if Donald Trump is the nominee, who is equally unpopular. And what this means is a rerun of 2016. In 2016, the election came down to the 18% of Americans who didn't like either candidate, and they broke in the last week to Trump. I call them double doubters. We now have over a fifth of Americans already who don't like either of the two leading candidates. So, yeah, the Democrats can blow this, and the Republicans can blow it. So what you're saying is that Republicans will have to work very hard to lose this election,

and they're already at it. That's very good, Peter. So, Henry, by the way, you certainly win a special award for metaphors. The richest metaphor is in 10 minutes. We had polenta, chicken masala. Chicken tikka masala. Yeah. All right.

All right. So back to the debate. One or two more questions about the debate, if I may, before we get to – and Steve, I think, wants to ask about the opposition, Joe Biden and so forth. Chris Christie, you mentioned a moment ago that the press wants somebody to run against Donald Trump just the way the press wants him to do so. And Chris Christie's doing that. And as far as I can tell, getting nowhere. I actually thought Chris Christie had two of the finer moments during the debate. One of the questions was, did Mike Pence do the right thing on January 6th? And Ron DeSantis gave this excruciatingly long answer in which he tried to change the subject and Bret Baier wouldn't let him do it. And then he sort of grudgingly said, yeah,

he did the right thing. And then on to Chris Christie who said, Mike Pence did the right thing and he deserves not just a grudging acceptance, but our gratitude. It was a beautiful answer. And then at the very end, when Chris Christie got that cockamamie answer question from Martha McCallum about UFOs, if you were president, would you level with the people? And Chris Christie got a couple of jokes out of the UFOs. And then he said, it's job of the president to level with the American people about everything. Beautiful. Okay. So I thought, Chris Christie is really good at this game. He is a man of substance and experience, but he has positioned himself.

There's nothing to him in this campaign, but he's an attack dog going after Donald Trump, and he's getting nowhere. Is that correct, or is he saving everything for New Hampshire? Well, I think this is like 10 Cloverfield Lane. The fact is, John Goodman is a crazed murderer and aliens invaded the earth. Both can be true. Christie is not going anywhere. Mike Pence is the second least popular of the Republican nominees. About 50 something percent of Republicans have favorable impression. And Chris Christie is the least popular. He's flip side of that. He's like 65 percent negative and 30 something percent positive. So he is not going to be elected. The fact is, Donald, the swing voter is somebody who likes Donald Trump actively, thinks he was unfairly targeted, thinks the election was probably stolen, isn't concerned about January 6th, but they're willing to look somewhere else. So Chris Christie's not talking to that book. But Chris Christie is getting support among moderates, and that means he could very well, if DeSantis fades, he could very well finish second in New Hampshire.

All right, so this brings us to the big, so Chris Christie going nowhere might finish second in New Hampshire if DeSantis fades, which brings us to the big question we haven't addressed. As of two, three months ago, DeSantis looked like overwhelmingly the likeliest opponent to Donald Trump and in a pretty good position to knock Trump off. He was reelected governor this past November by an enormous margin. He assembled, as far as I can tell, the most impressive collection of major donors he was getting he had a meeting in what palm beach or west palm of a hundred plus billionaires as far as i could tell is roughly what the guest list amounted to um and he seemed articulate and tough

and the general formula donald trump without the crazy, that made a lot of sense to a lot of us. And he's had nothing but trouble. Question one, how come? Question two, did he turn himself and the campaign around in the debate? I'll answer question two first. I don't think the campaign was in as bad a shape as people think. The thing is, I look back at the numbers, is that people tend not to move challengers immediately when they get into the race. So you take a look, and Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders didn't suddenly jump up when they got in the race. Obama pretty much stayed level in national polls for months, even though he was gaining ground in Iowa.

So I think part of this is the national media's attempt to re-nominate Trump so that they can re-elect Biden. So they're downplaying DeSantis. And I think he had a very good debate. There are two snap polls I've seen. DeSantis was the person who was rated by viewers as having the best debate in the Washington Post 538 Ipsos poll, and he was a narrow second to the vague in a snap poll conducted by Theresa May's former pollster, James Johnson, who is now polling in the United States. So they're basically within the margin of error of each other a couple of points. He had a very good debate. I think that the larger question is why did it drop? And this gets to the question of who's the decider? Well, after it looked like Trump was a loser and

before all the indictments came down, the person in the middle, the person who likes Trump but is willing to consider someone else, thought DeSantis looked pretty good. And then the indictments come down, and that drives those people to want to support their first choice for now. But then you have what Trump did, and Trump immediately went after DeSantis, and he went after DeSantis on entitlements. And the media doesn't want to notice that, but the fact is the Republican Party is not orthodox Ryanite, not orthodox AEI, to refer to my and Steve's former employer, on this question. They actually would rather raise payroll taxes and keep benefits. You know, I had a poll of 20 Trump voters, and I asked them, which of these two do you prefer, even if

none is exactly right? Keep Social Security benefits level, even if payroll taxes rise, or keep payroll taxes the same, even if benefits have to be cut. Trump voters, 63 to 37, preferred the level benefit question. So I think that hurt a lot more to the voters that DeSantis needs. And then you have the third thing, which is, you know, that DeSantis, I think, did not have a great start to the campaign. But the first two things, it's the indictments and it's Trump's attacks on DeSantis. But he's still there. The fact is, he is still in second in Iowa. He performed well in the debate. He is still in second in South Carolina. He is second or third in New Hampshire, a much more moderate state. I saw a poll in Pennsylvania that had Trump won 57% there in 2016. He's only ahead by 18 over DeSantis. DeSantis, for everything that people are saying, is still the only standing alternative to Trump. Did we just spend the last 20 minutes wasting our time? Is Trump going to be the nominee? Can even Ron DeSantis take him down? Is there really an open-endedness to this race, or is it over, Henry? Well, there's a difference between being over and open-ended. I would still

say that there's a 70%. I would have said before the debate there's a 75% chance Trump will be the nominee. I think I'm down to 65% or 70% because DeSantis and a couple other, you know, if there's, you know, the fact that Haley easily outperformed Tim Scott could be an odd game changer, you know, in the sense that Scott was gaining momentum. But if Scott can't perform well on live television, time and time again, all of the ad's money in the air and in the world is not going to save him. He may be the sort of person who ends up at 10 percent, which is where he's roughly pulling right now. So I think it's still overwhelmingly favorable.

The thing is, I'll tell you an anecdote that's going to make it into my piece. It's not scooping, but give you an indication. I'm sitting in the air talking with average Joe Republican evangelicals. And we're talking, talking, talking. And I say, one of the guys said, you know, we haven't had a chance to look at the alternative show. And I said, oh, so you're going to watch the debate next week. They didn't know the debate was taking place. Yeah.

The median primary voter did not tune into the debate. The median primary voter is not following the ins and outs. They will do it when the election starts to get closer, and that's when we'll know. Yeah, see, all of us political junkies, we follow these things at the greater level and forget that point that you just made, Henry. But can I change the subject, in part because it turns out that DeSantis' swoon in the polls happened almost immediately after I went down to Florida to spend a day talking to him. So it might be my fault. Without a doubt. I blame Ryan.

Okay, I got it. You don't mean Paul Ryan. I know the Ryan you mean. All right. I want to talk about the other side of the street, the other team. You know, I remember doing research years ago and finding the story in the New York Times from around January 1st, 1968, where the chair of the Democratic Party said, we've got our nominee, it's Lyndon Johnson. The Republicans are the ones who have all the problems. Well, we know how that story turned out. And so at this point in 1967, as you probably know, on the Republican side,

George Romney was tied or ahead of Richard Nixon. And so we know how that story turned out. So, you know, the old Mark Twain line that he actually never said that history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. I look at Biden and I say, he's going to pull a Lyndon Johnson or they're going to have to affect that kind of outcome. He's going to have to go. How likely do you think that is? And do you have one or two plausible scenarios about how that happens? OK, so here, one, everyone on the Democratic Party knows that he's too old. The polls show that Democratic voters, depending on the poll, between a third and a half of Democratic voters say he's too old. He's got two nobodies and he can't break 70% in the polls. So here's my three

scenarios. One is the guy is 80. If Mitch McConnell can have a brain freeze on camera because of a health condition, that's not necessarily debilitating, but reminds you that Mitch McConnell is 81 years old. Joe Biden has that. He's toast. It just it's it is when George H.W. Bush got sick in Japan and threw up on the diet. Right. It wasn't a serious health risk, but it fed into a growing narrative that he was kind of not in control. Or when George Romney got brainwashed. Or when George Romney got brainwashed. That's right.

You never know what's going to happen. So that's the first scenario that I don't think is implausible. I'm not, you know, 20% chance that he has some sort of on-camera or off-camera health reverse that just can't be ignored. Second thing, let's not talk about 1967. Let's talk about 1991. Happy President George H.W. Bush. Right. Got people who wanted an alternative to him. All of the people who thought they had a future in politics said, no, I'm not taking on a

sitting president after he just won a war. Are you freaking nuts? And it takes a media person who wants to make a name for himself to jump in the race. So I look and I say, where's this racist hippie camera? You're going to say Rachel Maddow, aren't you? I've said Rachel Maddow before. Oh, have you? Maybe I heard you. Because she would be the, well, if you listen to my podcast, you've heard me because I mentioned it. That's it. But look, that's the sort of thing. She's probably making too much money.

But what about an ashy valley? You know, somebody with some credibility in the progressive base who's 30 or 40 years younger who says, look, we just can't have grandpa do this anymore. And what's the incentive? The fact is, the progressive wing of the Democratic Party has no obvious national leader for 2028. It's not going to be the vice president because they never trust her to begin with. As funny as it is, the real progressives don't trust Kamala Harris. And Bernie and Elizabeth have aged out. So I look at this and I say, this is a huge market opportunity for an entrepreneur to come in and make themselves either the candidate or the list broker. And it just strikes me that when there's a $100 bill on the ground, sometimes

people ignore it and sometimes somebody picks it up. So the filing deadlines are November. And so we've got two months for the Pat Buchanan scenario. And then you've got the third scenario, which is wildly implausible, but I like to tell it. So which is let's say you're Joe Biden and you're self-aware. You know, you're too old. Let's say you are Joe Biden and you're self-aware, and you also know that dropping out of the race would tear your party apart because Kamala hasn't established herself. She can't clear the field.

You'll have seven or eight candidates, and you will have a race that makes the Republicans look like Sesame Street. So what do you do? You freeze the field. Right field right right you get the delegates yeah and then on august 1st after the republicans have made your nomination but three weeks before the convention you say that a recent my doctor my annual physical tells me that unfortunately my health has declined in the last 60 days i I didn't know. Yeah. Oh, Sean. And then what you do is try and stage manage a convention that is now completely staffed with your lawyers.

So that is the implausible but third way that this happens, that they actually know he can't run again. And this is all kabuki theater. And that stage convention nominates whom? Well, I think that depends who they see as the nominee. If it's Trump, it might be somebody... Oh, I see. Right. And also, you've been seeing this constant

effort to try and reboot Kamala 3.0. I think Joe Biden would like to go out having endorsed a black female as his successor. I see he has to be able to beat whoever it is and so I think she's got like eight or nine months under this implausible but after the last few years saleable to Hollywood scenario um uh that uh you know if she's sitting

on July 31st and she hasn't turned it around in some way, then I think it's more likely that he goes in another direction, in which case, you know, it could very well be that he gives a list of three or, you know, I think if I were him and it wasn't going to be Kamala, I think he's got to choose between Whitmer and Newsom. The only reason that it's not a good idea to put both of them on the ticket is there's not a minority. But, you know, if you said it's going to be Newsom-Whitmer, Whitmer-Newsom, Newsom would probably not like that. I could see that. He'd take it. That way. He'd take it. He'd take it.

A governor from the biggest state, which is 20% of the delegates needed, and a governor from the next state, He'd take it. He'd take it. position right now because we in general in politics but the people at the top of the ticket treat the vice presidency like it's a marketing ploy rather than what it's supposed to be which is somebody who could actually step in put it this way if if if biden's vice president had been anyone competent or anybody you know reasonably accomplished he wouldn't be in this trouble the democrats would be in this trouble isn't this really just because they just treat this the the the second part of the ticket is kind of a way of you know marketing and segmenting and too clever by half kind of uh audience getting well clearly they did that but what i'd say is why, how is this any different?

You know, like, why is it that Dwight Eisenhower thought it was a great idea to put a first term U.S. senator who hadn't finished their second year yet as his vice president, the name of Richard Nixon? You know, Richard Nixon is, Richard Nixon is 39 years old when he joins the ticket. Richard Nixon, one of my favorite old clips is, if you go back and look at it on YouTube, there's this moment where they do the old hands above the podium. And Richard Nixon is so excited that six years after he was a discharged Lieutenant J.G., he's standing on the stage as the partner of the greatest man in human mythology, that he's literally pointing to his hand with a grin on his face.

Look at me! Look at me! Yeah. That's a very Nixon moment, by the way. Yeah, it's a very Nixon moment. So, you know, it's like Spiro. Richard Nixon said, you know, I've got all the people in the entire country, all these distinguished governors and senators, but this unknown guy county executive of baltimore county

and a two-year governor of maryland he's the best qualified it's always been about this but yeah this time they got that yeah this time they what the thing is that i think they thought i think biden thought that she was better than she is yeah that's right the the failed campaign should have clued them in but um i think biden wanted amy klobuchar but uh she didn't defend herself against the insinuations of racism and that left him with no choice but to choose an african-american and then you take a look and it's her or c Booker and who would you choose? All right. Point made. It's Spartacus or Kamala.

Yeah, point made. Henry, thanks for joining us. Once again, I'll remind people, the podcast is called Beyond the Polls. It is available right here on the Ricochet Audio Network. It's going to be every other week until the burner goes up onto high and then It's going to be every other week until the burner goes on to high,

and then it's going to be every week until we either close up shop or we successfully anoint a new president. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you. I know we'll see you quite soon. Great. Well, thank you for having me back.

Henry, thank you so much. Beyond the polls. If you love politics, you'll lovery olson thanks henry so this is just like a ted like i felt like we're just like you know how it is when you're you know you go to the you're in a fancy hotel but buffet no i don't know how it is you do no and you're kind of walking to your home you're walking to your your table and you pass all the brunch buffet stations. There's a guy who gets a dozen waffles and all that stuff. And you just think, oh, my God, I can't wait to sit down and eat everything.

That's kind of what we just did for this. If you love this stuff, for the next year or so, we just had kind of a little walk through the buffet. And I know we're running late, so'm just gonna go right to it by the way if you are listening to this podcast and you are a fan of Ricochet, Ricochet Audio Network that's where Henry's podcast appears and this one too, you should go to Ricochet.com and join Ricochet, we'd love to have you be

a member of Ricochet, we do all of this stuff we do have great conversations online a lot of great people, we also do in real life IRL meetups. There's one August 28th in Montgomery, Alabama. That's going to either happen before or after Paul Ray's lecture at the Air Work College. I would not miss Paul Ray's lecture at the Air Work College. He is a spectacular speaker, thinker, and a longtime Ricochet member and contributor.

Labor Day weekend in Cookville, Tennessee. There's going to be a whiskey tour and a little state park waterfall view. And the meetup is going to be in Cookville, Tennessee. Come and go to Ricochet.com and find out more about it. And then if this is too soon,

the notice is too soon, we got a long one for you. Long. You got plenty of notice for this one april 8th in texas ricochet is going to meet up to look at the eclipse so um mark your calendars texas meet up omega paladin member omega paladin is organizing april 8th to watch the soul total solar eclipse april 8th um That's going to be great. Which town in Texas? Texas is a big place, of course. I don't know yet.

But it's happening. It's happening and we know one thing that's going to happen on April 8th. It's going to be an eclipse. And we know another thing that's going to happen. It's going to be a ricochet meetup. Where exactly? Somewhere in Texas. You know, somewhere in Texas. To narrow it down.

In between Labor Day and April 8th, there are going to be a bunch more meetups that are going to be organized, and if you would like to organize one, just simply go to Ricochet.com and join Ricochet, and put up a date and a time and a place, and Ricochet members will join you for

dinner, cookout, whatever you want. That's what we do show up um so ricochet.com please join now before we go um i want to just i want to just get my licks in right now bad news ridiculous news this is why i think that uh that um that ron desantis may may experience a surge masks gentlemen no are back no no no no no there is an uptick in covid19 or some variant or something i no longer pay attention to those things yet uh and they are you know for instance there's a college atlanta saying no parties or large student events on campus for the next two weeks uh the studio lionsgate in

santa monica california i know that suit you very well i know the people run that they are now requiring all employees to do self-screening for covid daily before reporting the office and i think a mask mandate is on its way um have i thoroughly depressed you no i mean no this is good for desantis this is all i care about I mean, this is good for DeSantis. This is all I care about at the moment. This is good for DeSantis. That's actually not that great for Trump. DeSantis is the one, as you know, our friend Jay Bhattacharya got a call out of the blue one day.

I am deeply aware of this because I happened to stop by Jay's office for our two or three time weekly jabber the day after it happened. And the man on the other end of the line was the governor of Florida. And they talked for something like three hours. And Jay said, I have never talked to anybody, even at the Stanford Medical School, who was as well-versed in the research. He's read all the papers he knows more and ron de sandus refused to shut down well there was a moment when he shut it down but then as he's got into it he opened california right back up by the way he wasn't the only one brian can't give credit to brian camp brian kept it right and was criticized by the sitting the sitting president for doing so

trump took him to task for doing it by the way rob why is it that you would know so much about this well as you know peter i'm working on a long form uh podcast about and i really thought to myself i i'd be honest with you i'm not i'm mad that kovitz coming back because i just think i know i can't keep adding stuff to this i gotta like it it's gotta be smaller and uh we're we're talking about it again and i feel like what i was hoping to do was to create a kind of an eight chapter audio series where if you you could listen to it at your leisure and you could store it in your computer people could listen to it in 10 years and it would be a snapshot of what we went through to never go

through again and it seems like we're going through it again so can i just ask a sort of an overall question about that, your project? How are you, this is the first, we've talked about this for years and now Rob Long is actually doing it, a long form, a serial podcast. How do you like the medium? How are you enjoying it? It's great, it's a lot of fun

because you can kind of like, you know, you meet people, you think, oh, can I call you up and just record, can I ask you those questions again? And you can kind of like, you quilt it together so you get all this audio get all this audio you know i got tons now hours and hours and i'm getting more and more hours i have to wait some it's been delayed because of people are not around in august um right and then you stitch it together and it's easier and easier to do now with all this like ai technology frankly it's amazing um put it this way

when i started we were doing another podcast and we had a bunch of about china and we have a bunch we had hours and hours of interviews and i had to go to get them transcribed right i had to go to get a transcription service and this is like this is like nine months ago barely nine months ago cost a thousand dollars per hour, no, just for the all, you know, but the grand was a lot, right? Right. Now it's AI-designed for free. Are you kidding? So yeah, so it's pretty great. And then you gotta get all the edited audio and you gotta get music in it.

It's gonna be really great. It's gonna be a real story. And I was hoping it would have a happy ending, but now I'm worried that it's really just to stay tuned for the sequel. But maybe not. Maybe if we all remember it's still pretty raw. We remember the disaster of our response to COVID. Almost entirely wrong in almost every realm. Let's hope that Cooler has prevailed. heads prevail hey rob i know we're running long

but i but i would be you're talking about catastrophe which puts me in the mind of the rise and fall of empires which reminds me that at the top of the show you said there's no place in the world as interesting as the mediterranean put a pin in that we come back to the pin in closing well i just feel like oh i i guess what i just love talking about it i can talk about so i spent i was i've been i've been in spain i was in spain last week i was in mallorca and then earlier this summer i was in the south of france um and last summer i was in tunisia and this is typical rob by the way yeah i know it's like i know you could be you could be as i was saying to rafael nadal everywhere you Yes, everywhere you go, right? Everywhere you go, you see some weird, you know, sailing around the Balearic Sea.

And then, oh, what's that? That's a crusader fort. Now, I don't know what the crusaders were doing in Mallorca, but there they were. I thought you were going to say everywhere you go, you find a sign that says Rob Long was here. That's right, right, right. Yeah, I wish. I have a feeling that was, you know, you know the summer's over let's we gotta like uh get back to work uh speaking of back to work this podcast was brought to you by ball and

branch so you support them by supporting us they've been loyal advertisers for a long time they have a great product uh i know james always tells you to please take a minute to leave a five-star review an apple podcast and it does seem like we say it all the time and here's why because it really does matter. It's all about these complicated algorithms. You can help work the algorithm to have new listeners discover us, keep the show going.

And of course, we'd love to see you in Ricochet.com. We'd love to see you in the comments. We'd love to see you mixing it up with our other members. So go to Ricochet.com and join the conversation if you're a member. And if you're not a member, join Ricochet, and then join a conversation, start one of your own, and we hope to see you at one of our meetups. Steve

and Peter, see you next week. Next week, boys. Ricochet. Join the conversation.