The Texan Podcast - Polling, Policies, and Presidential Debates: SMSS Ep. 7

Episode Date: September 17, 2024

This episode on Send Me Some Stuff, Brad, Cameron, and Rob discuss everything policy predictions, polling percentages, and presidential debates. The team takes a look into the Harris Campaign's newly released policy issues, but start off with a dark and stormy image fro the Atlantic.Cozen O’Connor Public Strategies - The Beltway BriefingListen for of-the-moment insider insights, framed by the rapidly changing social and...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

You know, that's not the only explanation to this. I think Rob did a good job of laying out the geopolitical side of this, but a lot of it's personality, too. And the Cheneys are disdained among much of the Republican Party right now. You know, in that, I've heard it described as a politics of cooties at this moment. Okay. And, you know, like if Trump supports something, there's wide swaths of people that are going to hate it because he supports it. Same with Dick and Liz Cheney.

Look at the state level, Rick Perry. Right. My newsletter basically was on that this week. And there's a lot of politics of cooties at work hello and welcome back to send me some stuff the podcast episode number seven I am again joined by Brad Johnson, our senior reporter. I'm Cameron Abrams, but we're also joined today by our assistant editor here at The Texan, Rob Lausches. Rob, why don't you tell the people who you are? I'm Rob Lausches. And you approve this message?

And I approve this message, yeah. I'm Rob. I'm the assistant editor at The Texan. I don't think I'm quite as well known as my esteemed colleagues here, but if you've ever heard the Daily Rundown, then you've heard my voice. If you've ever read an article from The Texan, you've read an article that I've edited, so I kind of have a little hand over everything a little bit. Rob, you sound a little nervous. I sound a little nervous i am a little nervous i haven't actually been on the camera in a while what you get camera shy just a little bit but i haven't been on the podcast in a long time not since the last time one of y'all uh skipped work and i had to fill in for somebody on the podcast so but rob keeps us all in line in the office he's the first person who sees all the drafts. He's the one that does all the first edits. He is a very important person here at the Texan. Well, if you need to, to settle your nerves, if you need to picture Cameron in his underwear, you can do that. I don't think I'll be doing it.

But you do whatever you want, Brad. I'm a seasoned veteran. I don't need to do that anymore but the reason why we're having Rob join us today is he is going to be replacing Brad as the guest as the established co-host here at send me some stuff and so it'll be me and Rob moving forward on sending some stuff. Brad will go back to his normal duties of smoke-filled room, making his weekly appearance on the weekly roundup. Brad's a very busy man. Yeah, and Rob will do a bang-up job, I'm sure, even though he will have a lot less actual sports knowledge, even though he likes to act like he has sports knowledge.

So the Scotty Scheffler references are just going to drop off. Well, in this podcast. The average episode will have fewer Scotty Scheffler references in the post-Brad era. I still have Weekly Roundup and Smoke-Filled Room, so I'm sure the greatest player in the world Scottie Scheffler will come up once or twice in those but yes handing the baton off to Rob so that I can focus on other things and not have another

hour and a half of my week taken up Brad what do you have to even do what do you need that hour and a half for? So many activities. Are you busy or something? Or is it like a busy time for the Texan? I guess. It's news. It's always busy, right? I guess it's always busy, yeah. Well, it's been busy recently. It has been. Cameron, why don't you tell us why it's been busy? It's been very busy. We got a lot of stuff to get into. We have the debate that's going to be taking place today. We're recording this on September 10th. Podcasts will be coming out after the debate happens, but we'll still talk about some of our predictions, some of the polling that we have.

We're going to talk about Kamala Harris's policies that she's posted to her website there was a big story about I don't know a week ago seven days eight days the DOJ tenant media Russia influence maybe we'll get into that and there's a not a widely reported story but I think it would be interesting to talk about it if we have time. Power outages in California affecting highly populated areas. So if we have time, we might get to that. But I wanted to start off with a bit of a fun topic for us is there is an Atlantic cover. And the Atlantic giant magazine, everyone knows it.

And they're very well known for the cover images. Well, this brand new cover is actually the first time, apparently, that it doesn't have any type or headlines or anything on the cover. It's just an image. Well, if you're watching the video, it should be on your screen right now. Maslow, please put it up on the screen. And for those just listening, I'll do a brief description. It's a shot from behind of Donald Trump leading a circus carriage that has an elephant caged in the back being led by

a horse where Trump is holding a giant whip in his hand. It appears the swamp of Washington DC is parting for him as he heads towards the Capitol. Just a provocative image, to say the least. But what's interesting is from some of the reactions I've seen online of it, it's had the opposite effect of maybe what the Atlantic wanted to portray. I mean, it is a pretty cool image, just like whoever made that. It looks like something out of Something Wicked This Way comes. Yeah. It's just, you know, this sort of nightmarish circus.

I don't know what that is, but I'll take your word for it. Ray Bradbury, classic American author. Yeah, the guy who wrote, what's the book? Fahrenheit 451. The book book. Yeah. The book about books, yeah. Specifically burning them.

I think The Atlantic was trying to portray, oh, my gosh, be worried. Trump is coming to Washington again. And he has the GOP encaged. Encaged, and there's dark clouds, and this is something people should be worried about. You see there's darkness in the background, whereas there's light over the Capitol. Well, that's the thing. He's like the oncoming storm. Well, is he the oncoming storm or is the sky parting for him?

Oh, for Trump, yeah. And the light's coming through. This is the Atlantic, so probably not parting for Trump. Just as the Red Sea parted, the swamp parts for Donald Trump. So any other reactions you guys have to this cover? Anything you guys seen online that you've seen from people reacting to it?

Well, to use a term now made popular by the youths of this here world, the elephant looks very demure yeah well i wouldn't say this is a brat image but um yeah it's it's definitely very interesting and i don't think the atlantic uh is having the the fallout from this image that they thought they were going to have. But let's move on to some. Here, I wanted to get my two cents.

Oh, go ahead. I think the Atlantic publishes a lot of liberal-leaning think pieces, but they also publish conservative-leaning think pieces, especially from people who are more critical of Trump. And those people, like the old guard of the Republican Party, they're more likely to see Trump as a figure who's sort of taken over and is almost occupying the GOP. And I think that attitude is more common among the sort of old leaders of the Republican Party, that Trump is just this guy who's, you know, he has the GOP in a cage, right? But this seems to suggest that the GOP, they don't really want to be with Trump, but he's just taken over it, right? But the problem is Trump has a lot of very genuine support from a lot of, you know, ordinary voters in the party. So this reflects

the kind of attitude of like old guard Republican leadership, if not necessarily the perspective of the average Republican voter. I mean, there's a lot of plenty of Republican voters who view Trump as somebody who's like enslaved the party, but he also has a lot of genuine support from Republican voters. So, you know, this is just interesting. You can see this coming from a specific viewpoint. If you're looking for a political podcast that goes beyond the headlines, check out the Beltway Briefing. I'm Howard Schweitzer, CEO of Cozen O'Connor Public Strategies. Every week on the Beltway Briefing, our team of former Republican and Democratic presidential appointees, Capitol

Hill veterans, and political advocates shares behind-the-scenes perspective that cuts through the noise. If you want the inside scoop, subscribe now to the Beltway Briefing here or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, there's a reason that Trump is the most powerful endorsement in Republican primary politics. That is not borne out in the general election. No. There are a number of examples of his endorsement falling flat on its face. But in the primary, I think it's safe to say he is. And everyone covets that.

We saw in the Texas primary. Yeah. is and everyone covets that we saw in the texas primary yeah uh everyone who was not outright against trump tried to get the endorsement or tried to get him to stay out of the race and we saw that there were multiple races that just flipped the dynamic on its head even for something down ballot as State House when he has no idea who he's endorsing. No. None whatsoever. About the only one you could argue he knew who he was

endorsing was David Covey against Dave Phelan. But that's more that has more to do with the incumbent than the challenger. I think you only bring that up because you're the guy who told him about that. You told him about that. You told him about David Covey, isn't that right? Oh, yeah, when I interviewed him.

I totally forgot about that. When I interviewed Trump, I asked him if he was going to get involved in the speaker's race because he had threatened it before. And that was before, I think, anyone had jumped in. And he goes, you can look it up. It's in a transcript on our website. He goes something like, well, who's running against him? Would I like him? Like asking you for advice. Yeah, he's asking me for advice.

That was strange. He said, what is it he said? He said, well, tell David to get ready. I think it was the exact term and it was like three months later that he finally gave the endorsement so it was a long time between but you planted the seed david was doing a lot of waiting it's like inception it's like you gotta plant a little seed of an idea i think it has more to do with dan patrick probably than myself but you know i don't I guess I'll take some credit.

Absolutely. You got to take your own side because who else will, right? Exactly. I'll give myself a big old pat on the back. Yeah. And I think it's a good point that you bring up, Rob, about the changing dynamics within the GOP since Trump came on the scene in 2015 and that's something before we get into some of our debate discussion I think that's something we could talk about is

recently we saw Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney both come out in support of Kamala Harris, which is a very interesting change to how liberals, Democrats viewed the Cheneys, specifically Dick Cheney, during the Bush era. They used all sorts of monikers to describe Dick Cheney. Some of them that cannot be repeated. That cannot be repeated. But there was also another clip of Bernie Sanders talking about the Dick Cheney endorsement of Kamala Harris, where he said something along the lines of me and Dick Cheney may not agree on anything at all, but if we agree on preserving democracy or something like that, then we can be on the same team. So something

along those lines. I butchered the quote there. And then we see with Trump getting the full endorsement of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., getting the support of Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democrat nominee for president. Or she ran for president. Trump has also— Remember that? Well, that's a— When she knifed Kamala like crazy. In the white suit, yep. When she knifed Kamala like crazy. And we've seen this weird teaming up of ideologies in this recent race.

What does that sort of tell you guys? Where we're seeing Liz and Dick Cheney supporting Kamala. We're seeing former Democrats, people that might describe themselves as centrists, leaning more towards Donald Trump, whether it be Silicon Valley types, crypto bros, those types of individuals being more vocal about supporting a Republican presidential nominee. What does that sort of tell you about the current political landscape? If you want my opinion, I think that the most defining feature of our current political landscape is your attitude towards the American supported, like liberal world order, right? So you have after the fall of the Soviet Union, you have this belief that the U.S. is, you know, the hyper power,

right, that the government, the American government will and can support a world of independent nation states, a rules-based international order, you know, free trade, relatively free migration, and that, you know, after the fall of the Soviet Union, right, there's really nowhere to go but up from here. And I think that Trump's election in 2016 represented a real breaking from that viewpoint by a lot of people. So you had Trump say, actually, things aren't getting better, things are getting worse. Our country's getting so much worse, and we're suckers, and we're being taken advantage of by all these other countries. You know, this is stuff that he was saying, I think, back in the 90s and 2000s, he was still expressing this attitude, because he's just got this very

sort of, hmm, maybe like a pragmatic businessman attitude. He's like, what are we getting out of this? You know, we shouldn't just support this, all these other countries for free, right? That's, that's, I think, where he's coming from. And I think your attitude on this, the liberal world order and the role that the U.S. will play as a global leader, I think is really the most poignant political issue of the time, is whether the U.S. should continue to support all these other countries, support this liberal, like, for example, in Ukraine, right? It all boils down to, do you believe that defending this country is in America's national interest? Because, you know, standing up to dictatorship anywhere is standing up to dictatorship everywhere. Or do you say, actually, there's no direct national interest for the U.S. at all. It's just a foreign conflict in a very faraway place, and we have no interest in it. So just to boil it down, is it more just a nationalist versus globalist perspective? I don't want to say globalist perspective because Trump, I think he believes in the idea of American leadership, right?

He just believes that American leadership should be, I think he believes that American leadership should not be like selfless or self-sacrificial, right? He believes that American leadership should be in America's primary interest, you know, and he views as we're not going to make sacrifices for other countries. We're not going to, you know, America is not going to hurt itself simply to support another country just for charitable reasons. And so, you know, it's nationalism versus globalism. I'd view it more as a kind of multilateral leadership for the U.S. versus more unilateral leadership of the U.S. Because Obama, with his sort of more multilateral leadership, was reacting against the George W. Bush administration, which had attempted to corral all these other countries to support the Iraq war. And,

you know, this is where America got the kind of reputation of the cowboy cop of the world, right? And Obama wanted to pull away from that. And now Trump is like, actually, Obama went way too far. And while we're not going to get as involved as the Bush administration did, we are going to be a little bit more self-interested, I think. What do you think, Brad? I see a lot of this in the context of the party shift we've talked about before, where the Republican Party is becoming the more coalitional party, and the Democratic Party is becoming the more coalitional party and the Democratic Party is becoming the

more ideological. And I think you can see that play out with the Cheneys in that, you know, they have an ideological view of foreign policy. Getting involved in certain things is usually a net positive, even if there are drawbacks. It is worth pushing the envelope on democracy globally, whatever form that takes, however we describe that. But then there's the reaction to that of those who are already predisposed to dislike the cheneys and it this move re-entrenching them in their side of things their new new home generally, which is the Republican Party.

You know, that's not the only explanation to this. I think Rob did a good job of laying out the geopolitical side of this, but a lot of it's personality too. And the Cheneys are disdained among much of the Republican Party right now. You know, in that, I've heard it described as a politics of cooties at this moment. Okay. And, you know, like, if Trump supports something, there's wide swaths of people that are going to hate it because he supports it.

Same with Dick and Liz Cheney. Look at the state level, Rick Perry. My newsletter basically was on that this week. And there's a lot of politics of cooties at work. You know, I've heard this not in the politics of cooties, but I've heard the current um teaming up of people so in how people are viewing a harris presidency versus a trump presidency as this being the double hater election where if someone they can hate trump but if they hate harris mo, they're going to be on Trump's side. But if they hate Trump more than they dislike Harris, they'll be on Harris's side.

Well, you know, there's some polling that I saw recently. I think it was earlier this summer where they were asking. So of those who voted for Donald Trump and of those who were going to support Donald Trump, and at the time it was Biden who was on the ticket, and of those who were going to vote for Joe Biden, they asked, are you voting for Donald Trump or against Joe Biden? Are you voting for Joe Biden or against Donald Trump? And Republicans, when asked, I think it was like 70% said for Donald Trump.

But it was a pretty close breakdown of those among Joe Biden voters who said they were opposing Donald Trump versus supporting Joe Biden. I am not sure how that works out with Harris at the moment. But, you know, maybe that says something about the current Democratic constituency. And, you know, it is absolutely true that the political left has made opposing Trump its foremost political goal. Yeah, we see that in political advertisements all the time, calling Trump an existential threat to democracy. The Project 2025 agenda. Project 2025. He's literally going to overthrow the government. They position him as this existential threat. Well, and I think it was the same.

The reverse was true with Barack brock obama for republicans i think the do you think do you see there's a difference though in how um media is utilized in these two different areas that you described where when obama was running it was more traditional media where people were consuming information on television and radio whereas now people were consuming information on television and radio, whereas now people are consuming information on social media where they can more easily find themselves in ideological bubbles of information. Do you see media playing a role in how individual candidates are being described or being positioned or how issues are being portrayed to people. And if you think media plays a role, do you think this is something that's here

to stay? And do you think it's going to affect politics long term? Or do you think people are going to retreat back to hopefully getting a wider swath of information? How do you sort of see the media that confirms their priors. I don't think that's new. The speed with which you get that from the internet and specifically social media, that's new. But the accessibility for new people to come out and make their name in the media space is also new you know it used to be that if you wanted to be on tv you had to meet certain you know qualifications you had to get hired by a tv network right whereas nowadays it's like social

media is like public access television where it's like anybody can say anything they want to and there there's really no limit to how what's the word i'm looking for there's there's there's no limit to how fast people can can create i think new information and let it go out into the the media ecosystem there used to be some kind of at least some kind of limit on that you know you turn on the TV and then you turn it off and then you go about your day, but now your phone hits you every day with new information nonstop. The news cycle lasts, you know, it's not even a 24-hour news cycle anymore. It feels more like a 12-hour news cycle. Well, yeah, and that's sort of, the reason why I brought it up in this context is if we were to say 20 years ago, a Republican, former Republican vice president endorses the Democrat candidate for president, that would be a huge story. Something that would remain in the news cycle for a week, two weeks possibly.

And it would be a substantial moment in the presidential election cycle. But in how our media information environment works now is it was a 12-hour story. And people comment on it. They have their reactions. And then they move on to the next thing so it's just interesting the the media space we find ourselves in is are even people like Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney if they are supporting Kamala Harris for president does that say something more about the type of information that they're consuming that they truly believe the things that they're saying in terms of Trump being some sort of threat to democracy?

Or are they doing it for some other reason, whether it be they're trying to coalesce the sort of establishment candidate with other establishment figures in the media space or in government or is it a confluence of multiple things that you can't just choose one it's multifaceted so I don't know I just think it I just think that's very interesting in the lead-up to the debate I think we should probably move into that the debate's happening today september 10th um something i wanted to touch on before we talked about the debate a little bit was there was some interesting polling that came out of the new york times sienna college poll. I had some numbers in our docket. Question was,

if the 2024 presidential election were held today, who would you vote for if the candidates were Kamala Harris and Donald Trump? 47% said Kamala Harris, 48% said Donald Trump. But what was very interesting is they also broke down some of the swing state polling. See in Wisconsin, Harris 50%, Trump 47%. Michigan, Harris 49%, Trump 47%. Pennsylvania, Harris 49%, Trump 48%. Nevada 48%. For Harris, Trump 48%.

Trump is leading in, according to this poll, in North Carolina, or he's tied in North Carolina, and he's tied in Arizona. So close in all these swing states. Does, this poll was conducted September 3rd to September 6th. Again, pre-debate polling. Does this tell you anything about how the country is feeling about these two candidates? What does this poll tell you guys? Why don't you go, Rob? Sure. I mean, I think it's just very close, right? Obviously. But I mean, you know, before Biden dropped out, the polling, I think I remember, was still relatively close. You know, a lot of people, I don't think that Biden, I mean, it was still. Trump was high single digits in most. In a high single, okay. Yeah. As in terms of a lead. And then, of course, his lead skyrocketed

after, I don't know if skyrocketed, maybe that's a bit hyperbolic, but after Biden's debate performance, you know, Trump's. Oh, yes. Sorry, that's what you're, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, and I mean, before that, though. Yeah. It still seemed like it's well, it's maybe a bit of a toss up. We don't know. And then you have the debate. You have the assassination attempt. You have Biden dropping out. And it's like, whoa, Trump looks really, really good. And now Harris being selected as Biden's successor to to run in 2024 has caused a big outgrowth of support because there were a lot of people who weren't excited to vote for Biden. You know, they either were doubtful that his policies had made a positive impact on their lives or they weren't fans of him personally or they were just voting against Trump. But I think that Harris has, she has driven, I think, some genuine optimism. I think she's injected some energy. Yeah. I mean.

And, you know, I think the energy is because she's not Biden. I think that that's true. I mean, there were a lot of Democrats in 2020 who were like, please, don't make me vote for Joe Biden. You know, give me someone else. Give me a more progressive candidate. Well, take 2020. She ran. And she performed very poorly.

Absolutely. So as a candidate standing by herself, she was not up to snuff. But after four years of watching Biden, not quite four years, almost four years, of watching Biden clearly deteriorate mentally and physically. In 2019, you can see in the debates, he sounded so much more... Sure, but it's way different now. Yeah, right? No, it's true.

And then you have these reports come out of Democrats consigning themselves to another Trump administration. I mean, politically, they were depressed. And then all of a sudden, the switch flips and they have a reason to hope again not for not of anything for her own merit as a candidate but because she is not the doddering old fool that had been there yeah you know so um i that that's the reason that the enthusiasm bump is so big. Well, we saw a huge enthusiasm bump after Kamala Harris was essentially anointed. There wasn't any primary or votes for her.

All the superdelegates just transferred their votes to Kamala Harris, and there was a big boost right after that. But it seems like the race is tightening once again. Correct. Because her honeymoon period is starting to come to an end. And now that the debate is, by the time people are watching this, the debate will be over. But this is the official end of the honeymoon period.

Everything afterwards now is going to be Harris on whatever merits she has as a candidate after this debate well do you think her strategy so far has been essentially tailored to the type of candidate that she is being she hasn't done any solo live interviews she did the interview with Dana Bash and Tim Walz was right next to her and the interview was 35-45 minutes they didn't really get too deep into policy or anything but that's really the only time the public has seen her in a in an interview yeah to gauge their perception of her where on the other hand Trump is going on every podcast he can imaginable you know live

streamers all sorts of things so logan paul boxing stars vibe celebrities golf podcasters you know well the and this was the case also with trump against biden but the main thing each of these candidates have going for them is that they're not the other person yeah and that's the main thing each of these candidates have going for them is that they're not the other person. Yeah. And that's the main case for Donald Trump. He's not at first Joe Biden, and now he's not Kamala Harris. And I think even in 2016, he wasn't Hillary Clinton. Right.

And I think to an even bigger extent, Kamala is not Donald Trump. And I don't necessarily put that on the candidates. I put that on the electorate because that's the way they have started to view these things. It's, sure, if I vote Republican or if I vote Democrat, I'd broadly agree with them. But I still think they suck as a party. But at least they're not the other guys But at least they're not the other guys. Yeah. At least they're not the other guys who want to, quote, destroy the country, whoever that is. Like polarization has increased over the last, you know, 30 years. But it also

seems that frustration with the individual parties has increased. I think people are less likely nowadays to identify with like broad institutions like political parties, right? Being like, I'm a Republican, so I'll vote for whoever it is. You know, I don't care who the candidate is. I feel like in the social media age, it's become a lot more individual. It's become a lot more personal. Well, and you can look at the campaign apparatus side of it that goes to that. It's a testament to that dynamic because the parties are shells of what they used to be. Parties used to run everything politically. They used to, you know, the smoke-filled room, shout out to our podcast, our other one, but smoke-filled room became a proverbial saying for a reason.

And it was true that backroom discussions by party officials were what decided who were the candidates for a specific position. The reason why you can't really name any presidents from the Gilded Age is because the presidency was very weak and Congress was very strong and the political parties were very strong in that time period. But now the parties are basically glorified joint fundraising committees for the presidential candidate in their campaign. You remember that Trump submitted his – what was it? The Republican platform was one that the Trump campaign submitted and the GOP signed off on. You can tell it was written by Trump because it has all of those weird capitalizations in the middle of the document. Cameron, to get to your first question, the polling, a couple of thoughts. First of all, it's not the popular vote that matters.

It's the Electoral College. And this looks like this is a popular vote thing that shows Trump ahead. If that were to hold, that would be notable. And that's the first time a Republican has won the popular vote since 2004, I think, when Bush won his second term. But what really matters, as we know, are Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan. Yeah. Well, two comments I'll make. First one, going back to what you're mentioning about smoke-filled rooms, we saw that still happen with the Democratic Party with how Kamala came into the position of being the

Democratic nominee. There was no open primary. It was Kamala, Biden endorsing Kamala, and then everyone getting behind her. And the smoke-filled room conversations that I wrote about quite a bit and redacted in the lead-up to Joe Biden dropping out was things being leaked to the media about Pelosi saying this to someone or Schumer saying this to someone else. About how they were nervous about Biden being the candidate. So things were happening behind the scenes. You can only imagine all the phone calls and text messages that were being made. Where Trump has still been able to hold the position as the outsider for the Republican

Party. Where if we take again the Dick Cheney, Liz Cheney endorsement, they're part of the establishment party of the Republicans. And if they aren't enthusiastic about Trump, what about people that are more aligned with a Dick Cheney worldview that may not be vocal enough or confident enough to come out in opposition to Trump and endorse Kamala, but they are just not going to be a trump supporter so the smoke-filled room things still happen just happens more with the democrats at least my perception it takes a very extreme example like a presidential race yeah um you don't really see that much of anywhere else. And then it took, you know, it took a president having clear mental decline and tanking in the polls so much that you couldn't avoid it any longer.

That the party apparatus finally kicked in and flexed its muscle. But I would even argue 2016 doesn't entirely fit that mold with the superdelegates because those are generally elected officials who hold those positions. Not all of them, but that's a large part of them. It wasn't entirely the party apparatus doing that um you know greasing the skids for hillary over over bernie but um yeah that those i think those are the exceptions that prove the rule because it's so rare when it did happen or when it kind of happened when it did happen this year and when it kind of happened in 2016, there are massive, surprising examples of the party being the party and not just—

Well, I think the Hillary-Bernie situation is emblematic of what you're talking about, though, because Bernie was very much running as the outsider candidate even though he had been a senator for decades right but he still positioned himself as the outsider saying he was going to fight the party establishment yet when he didn't get the nominee what did he do endorse hillary clinton and what is he doing now again endorsing kamala harris so Who's he going to endorse? Donald Trump? Well, we've already seen Republicans endorse Kamala Harris.

Why can't RFK endorsing Donald Trump? Tulsi Gabbard, former Democrat, endorsing. Yeah, but they're not the same as... Bernie hasn't been kicked out of the polite society in Democratic circles. Tulsi and RFK have. You have to ask yourself why, though. Is it because he presents himself as an outsider candidate, yet he falls in line when push comes to shove?

And those smoke-filled room conversations are being had. And they allow him to be this charismatic outsider but when things need to happen he gets in line like these are the types of things that we in the media speculate about we don't know he's not getting in line because the chairman of the democratic national committee twists his arm and forces him to do it. He's getting in line because people like Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, you know, other existing elected officials with real power. It's not like party bureaucrat types.

Like who's the chair of the Democratic National Committee? Like I actually don't know off the top of my head. I don't either. And it's, you know, but it's elected officials. But it's the elected officials, right, who actually run these things. It's not like the party bosses that used to exist, right, who used to, like in the 19th century, who weren't elected officials necessarily, but they controlled the political machines. And that situation doesn't really exist anymore. Politics is a lot more

individualistic now. I think that's just a feature of media, in my opinion, you know, in a society where the most you could see of a candidate was they either came to your town, or they printed a picture in the newspaper, right? I think it makes more sense to default towards the position of saying, well, I trust this party. They're the party that represents me. And as you mentioned, Brad, like, for example, the Democrats have become a lot more ideological.

The Democrats used to be the party that incorporated everybody from, like, pro-segregation white Southerners to Northern black Democrats in cities. It was this really big coalition industrial labor laborers now we see the republicans trying to get the labor vote yeah i mean you had like fdr put together this massive coalition of people across the country who you can argue did not have natural interests that sympathized with each other, but nonetheless put this all together. And now the Democrats seem like they're a lot more ideologically unified. And that's just a feature of the parties

changing, right? As the parties have become more ideological in general, they're a lot more based on, I think nowadays, values rather than interests. They're a lot more based on what you believe rather than sort of what you are. Well, and we could go into a whole discussion about what those different values are between the two parties. But the second point I wanted to bring up was how you said this, as always, is going to be decided by the Electoral College. and we're seeing how these two campaigns harris and trump are focusing on swing states came across an article here in the current um they just have it's a long article but i just found this one uh portion here where it says of all the swing

states both parties are spending the majority of their ad dollars in pennsylvania since the march 5th primaries democrats have spent 99.4 million in Pennsylvania or 28% of their battleground states spend meanwhile Republicans have spent 89.4 million 35% of their swing states been according to ad impact so like you just mentioned it's going to be come down to a few states like it did in 2020 again and we're seeing that reflected in the ad spend in these swing states so well and part of the calculus is from what i've read and looked at myself there's no scenario where kamala can win without Pennsylvania. And so that creates a dynamic of Kamala has to put most of her effort into that state

because it's 20 electoral votes, so it's a really large chunk. And then if Republicans can block her from that, that does the opposite thing in the direction they want. We'll see if not picking Josh Shapiro for running mate will end up being... That just still boggles my mind. I don't think Walls has been a disaster. I don't think J.D. Vance has been a disaster. But I also don't think either of them were

great electoral picks now if you're trying as a presidential candidate if you're trying to pick someone for something else which i think there's a strong argument that vance was picked as a governing uh partner not a not an electoral partner because ohio's safe red that's gonna go to trump um if if your argument is that then fine but like that doesn't help you win the race and now it's just become a talking point it's gonna it's a monkey that's hanging over the heads of democrats um what if we had picked shapiro yeah we had this pretty popular relatively moderate governor of the most important swing state in the country and we passed him over it's kind of like um you know Romney picking Paul Ryan instead of Marco Rubio in Florida

it just doesn't make a ton of sense. It doesn't. But a point I want to touch on that you just mentioned, the choice of J.D. Vance, if people believe that Trump picked him to be more in charge of policy, the specifics of sort of enacting a Trump policy plan. What was very interesting is he echoed exactly that in a recent conversation that he had on the All In podcast. They actually had a summit where they had a bunch of different speakers, people like Peter Thiel, and they had Elon Musk there, a bunch

of other tech people. But J.D. Vance came to this summit and said exactly that, that he is more interested in the specifics, the actual minutiae of policy. It was very interesting to, he said quite a few things in terms of if he would have certified the 2020 election people can go should go listen it gave a very interesting breakdown of what he would would have done but yeah I think the pick of Tim Walz over Shapiro we have to remember at the time of the vice-presidential pick by Harris, there was a lot of discourse happening about how Kamala would handle the situation between

Israel and Hamas. And Shapiro is the Jewish governor of Pennsylvania and there was a lot of pushback. We saw this at the DNC actually where Palestine protesters were kept outside of the convention behind a gate, behind a wall. And so I don't know if those dynamics played into the selection, but if you're just looking at it

as purely politics and if you really need to win Pennsylvania, it's just a mystery of why they didn't go with Shapiro. Do you guys want to talk some predictions about the debate today? Things you might expect to come up? Things you might be looking for, maybe? Things you want to hear each candidate say? Anything?

Why don't you go, Rob anything why don't you go rob why don't i go well i think you see i know that they uh there was some debate over how they were going to handle the microphone situation if they were going to maintain the sort of uh system they used for the biden trump debate where the microphones would be muted when the other person was talking because i think that kamalaala Harris has the opportunity to deliver a real zinger if Trump says, you know, well, if she gets elected, we're not going to be able to do this. Harris can say, because you'd be in jail and echo Trump's 2016 zinger back at him. I mean, you know, I don't think I think it's difficult to out Trump Trump in terms of being this very abrasive personality on the debate stage.

I'm not really sure who in politics can do it. I think when other people try, it usually comes off as a little sad. Is this the only scheduled debate for the general? Yes. I believe it is. I don't think they agree to any others. Okay. So they probably won't.

Yeah. If you all want to hear what I have on my debate bingo card. Let's hear it. To bingo cards made by a very talented person in our office. Shout out to Maslin. It should be up on the stream right now. Actually, it should be, yeah, to share with the viewers. Or maybe we should tweet them out, actually.

Right now, actually. We should tweet them out today. We have mentions like for example convicted felon new nickname for Kamala somebody falls on stage the coconut tree somebody calling somebody weird

Texas being mentioned which you have to hope for right project 2025 cat ladies, sleepy joe we don't know Project 2025, Cat Ladies, Sleepy Joe. We don't know what it's going to be because I think, Cameron, you made a point before we started recording that Trump and Harris have never met before in person. Isn't that right? That's right. Yeah.

And I was listening to a podcast that Matt Taibbi and Walter Kern do. And they were speculating, like we are, about what the debate might be like. And they had mentioned that Kamala and Trump had never met in person. pure physical nature of Trump, 6'2", bigger guy, loud orange skin, blonde hair, could be an intimidating factor when Kamala Harris goes up. She's 5'2", a woman, introducing herself to Trump. Just being in his presence could throw her off her debate game. I don't know. I thought that was an interesting insight. I don't know how much it's going to play. I just thought it was an interesting dynamic to bring up. But is there anything, Brad, that you might, you hope one of the candidates, either candidate talks about, like, is there an issue you

want to hear clarity on? Is there a policy position you want more fleshed out by either candidate in a debate? Like, anything along those lines that you might be listening for? Well, I don't think, I think most debates are, because of the way they're set up, you know, they're not Lincoln-Douglas debates. They don't really get into the nitty gritty of policy details. It's all slogans because that's all they have time for. I will be interested to see what, if either candidate is pressed on their foreign policy views, specifically the Russian-Ukraine conflict and also Israel-Palestine, I think both of the candidates could do for fleshing their views out on that a lot more. We are in a moment where the presidency is viewed from a foreign policy lens more than anything else domestic policy is all window dressing it's not to say it's not important but in terms of the role of the

president i think right now the limelight shines on foreign policy if i can interrupt i'm sorry really quick cameron but i wanted to bring this back to what I was talking about earlier with the whole idea that like your commitment to the liberal world order, you know, the sort of international commitments is the foundation of the modern political divide, right? This is why Cheney supports, is supporting Harris, because he views Harris as somebody who will maintain the United States's status as a world leader, whereas he views Trump as somebody who will trash that. But, I mean, even when Trump was running in 2016, I think the three biggest issues he dealt with were all sort of related to foreign policy.

It was, like, military intervention in other countries, trade, and immigration. And all those deal with the relationship between the U.S. and the rest of the world. And I think that was the defining issue in 2016. I think obviously there's a lot of, I mean, abortion, for example, is going to be a big one, right? That's something I'm expecting to see quite a bit of on the debate stage. It's interesting how Trump has to sort of walk this line on the abortion issue, where he himself has come out sort of more moderate than a lot of pro life Republicans. But at the same time, he has to keep those pro life Republicans on his side. And

it's an interesting little line he has to walk. But all that being said, the foreign policy issue, you know, the state of what is America's relationship to the rest of the world, I think has really been the defining question of this whole Trumpian era. Yeah. And what's interesting is that since Trump has done so many interviews, he's been asked multiple times about the Israel-Palestine conflict and Ukraine-Russia conflict. And every time he's asked about it, he says, if I was president, it would have never happened. Which is probably what he'll say in the debate. That's his go-to answer. What does he say? He's like, I'll call up Vladimir and I'll tell him

knock that off or something before he's even elected. I remember listening to a conversation, one of the interviews that Trump did, where the interviewer really pressed him on what he would do with the Ukraine-Russia conflict. And Trump said that he can't reveal essentially what he would do because then he would be showing his cards. And if he's elected, then he would ruin that strategy. And so as much as I want to hear what each candidate would do in a specific way in terms of addressing Israel, Palestine, and Ukraine, Russia, I think I have to sort of remember that they can't reveal specifically what they would do in terms of... They can apply that to domestic policy too it's it's a bit i would say it's just a little bit different as the stakes are higher but the

stakes are higher and you're dealing with individuals and individual nations whereas um if you're dealing with domestic policy you're you're more dealing you're right you're dealing with domestic policy, you're more dealing with... You're right. You're dealing with more irrational actors, the people in Congress. See, I think that this actually represents a kind of divide, is the people who are more committed to the liberal world order are actually more... They more so believe in the idea of the idea that the United States' plans should be very open, should be very transparent, that the U.S. has an obligation to make its intentions known to the world. Whereas if you're coming at it from a more Trumpian perspective of a more sort of, you know. Self-interest.

Sort of like a Gordon Gekko perspective of America, right? He's like, I'm going to come in here. I'm going to trim the fat. I'm going to make this thing work again. You know, I think he ran into these frustrations in his first term because I think he didn't realize just how slow government is and how difficult it can be to change things, right? Like he thought that he could go in there almost as the America's CEO and just clean it up and trim the fat and it'll all work well again, right? But Trump is more inclined to the belief that we shouldn't be

necessarily transparent about everything we intend to do, because it's not our responsibility to, you know, tell the world our secrets, right? I think Trump has the attitude that unpredictability is a strength in domestic policy. Like Trump has this attitude that if we tell everybody what we're going to do, then they'll take advantage of us. And he doesn't want to be taken advantage of. That's his biggest, I think, concern when it comes to foreign policy. He says, well, these guys, you know, Putin's not playing fair. Xi Jinping's not playing fair. Why are we supposed to play fair? I think is where he's coming from. And something about the upcoming or the debate today that I want to get your guys's opinion on is what something you mentioned Brad about how candidates in a

debate they're not going to get into specific policies it's more about slogans it's more about sound bitesites. That's really what comes out. So when we're talking about who wins or who loses, it's more about how the mainstream media talking heads portray the debate is going to go or how people online position how the debate went. So how much weight do you put on the reaction to the debate? Do you think that sways people's minds more than what they actually, if they watch the debate, what they actually watch, what the reaction is? If you're just an average voter, do you think your favorite Twitter followers saying this person won or this person lost is going to be more impactful than what they actually see coming out of the candidate's mouth during a debate? I think the only way a debate is impactful practically on an electoral level's when you have such a wide disparity

between the performances like we saw in the first debate. Go back to 2012, the first debate between Romney and Obama. Romney ran away with that thing. And everyone at the time was saying, oh my gosh, he's got this in the bag. Of course he didn't. Part of that was the next debates were not nearly as lopsided in his favor

if he could be counted to have won it at all. But generally, debates just confirm those who's watching priors, except for this last one where you had the clear, unavoidable realization that Biden was not up to the task. We beat Medicaid. Yeah. Among some people, yeah, you beat it, you beat it to death. Saying his handicap was six. That was the funniest thing,

is that Trump was so stoic the entire time, and then when Biden says my handicap is a six, he goes like. Now, I think he was saying it was a six when he was vice president. I still don't believe that because a six is incredibly difficult to get. Just seeing Trump. But I don't think anything significant one way or the other is going to come out of this. Okay. And that's usually how it goes.

That usually is. There have been cases that doesn't hold up but like you said about the way things are said in debates it's short snippets they can't go into very long um you know soliloquies about stuff also viewers don't really want that right at least the average one doesn't so i just don't see it i don't see it changing much of anything regardless of what happens unless there is like unless unless something like the biden debate happened yeah someone has a stroke on stage or something i mean i don't know if y'all were just browsing through all the social media reactions but there were still people who were commenting like Biden ran away with that debate. I mean, Trump looked terrible. Biden looked great. I mean, I think you

posted a really funny meme once, Brad, in our work group chat saying, you know, it's like everybody, wow, my favorite candidate did so well in that debate, right? Because everybody's perception of the debate is shaped by their pre-existing beliefs about it. If you like Biden, you're probably going to believe Biden did well just because you like him. So that shapes the way you view it, even though unfortunately, Biden did not do well in that debate. The other thing, most of the voters who are truly persuadable are not going to be watching this debate. The debates have become partisan cheering events. And it's a good way to get clips to put out on social media. Yeah.

Just look at the Republican debates. Yeah. Probably a good way to fundraise. But it's not good in the way of persuading those persuadable voters, whoever they are. And they're very strange people, right? Like, seriously, I mean, how many people out of all of them that are going to vote in this election truly are stuck in the middle, unsure of which candidate to vote for? Now, you know, you might have a lot of people that hate Kamala

and are trying to decide whether they vote for Trump or just sit out, and vice versa, people that hate Trump and trying to decide whether they just vote for Kamala or sit out. But that group of people truly in the middle that doesn't know which way to pull the lever, they're a strange constituency, man. It's like the song goes, right? Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right. Here I am. Yeah.

In the middle with you. Yeah. I, I don't see, I think you reach those people through direct paid advertising. Or at least it's easier to do that because I don't think they're the kind of people that want to spend a Tuesday night watching a presidential debate that is going to have little to no impact on their lives other than providing an hour of entertainment. It will be entertaining. I sure hope it will be. That's all you can hope for anymore. And yeah, I'm looking forward to this. Something we didn't get into, Harris posted her policies to her website.

Finally, that was something everyone was sort of waiting for. A new way forward. A new way forward. And I'll be really watching to see, for really the first time, Kamala on a stage by herself debating in a presidential capacity. And something like you mentioned, Rob, is people have struggled to out-Trump Trump. Is Kamala going to take that strategy and try to be quick-witted and have comebacks? Or is she going to try and position herself as more stoic, focus on the issues, hit her talking points? And that's kind of what Trump did in the debate against Biden.

Trump kept his mouth shut for the first time. He just zipped a lip and let Biden talk. Yeah, I'll be very interested. That's what I'm going to be paying attention to is the posturing of both candidates. Because, like you just mentioned, trump took the more stoic approach in the biden debate and he seems to taking on this grandpa sort of grandpa donald like he's just been a lot more quiet recently you know he still puts stuff out on true social and you know every once in a while he has a viral clip come out, especially with the amount of podcasts he does.

But, yeah, I'll be watching how each candidate is sort of posturing and if they stick to talking points or if it devolves into a screaming match or them going back and forth at each other. It'll be also interesting to see if the moderators maintain the same kind of neutrality that they had during the last debate because they were very neutral. I mean, they just asked the question and let the candidate answer. I remember a lot of people were kind of upset at the moderator saying, well, they should have gone more after the candidate, sort of held them to greater standards of fact checking. So it'll be interesting

to see, because I think that an adversarial moderator gives Trump an advantage, because it, of course, makes people go, whoa, look at Trump, you know, they're going after him on the debate stage. And it remains to be seen how that will affect people's perception of the debate. You know, I think a lot of conservatives come at it from the perspective that when Trump does these presidential debates, he's debating the Democrat and the moderators. But I don't think the last debate gave that impression at all. So it'll be interesting to see how that affects it. And as a reminder to everyone listening, you can check out all of our reporting on the texan.news we have the smoke filled room podcast we have the daily rundown we have the weekly roundup we have precedented times newsletter fourth reading

redacted all sorts of stuff to satisfy your content needs but thank you for joining us for episode seven of send me some stuff and we hope to catch you next time