October 30, 2024 • 47 mins
Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall parses why Trump’s MSG rally was so insane. CNN political analyst Ron Brownstein examines polling versus early voting.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
And President Biden called Donald Trump's Madison Square Garden rally
simply embarrassing.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Pretty good assessment.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
We have such a great show for you today, Talking
points memos. Josh Marshall stops by to parse why Trump's
Madison Square Garden rally was so insane.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Then we'll talk to.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
CNN political analyst and writer for The Atlantic Ron Brownstein
about what he is seeing in early voting. But first,
the news, a lot of news.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
So Molly, what was miss during the Trump rally at
MSG was actually really important was a CNN interview with
Tom Holman, who you and I covered in our Project
twenty twenty five documentary for being one of the architects
of the immigration policy in the next Trump administration if
they get in.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
He is the former Ice head and this is his
plan for mass deportation of a documented immigrants. And let
me just say, it's not like he hid this. He
went and said this on sixty eight minutes.
Speaker 5 (01:18):
Why should a child who is an American citizen have
to pack up and move to a country that.
Speaker 6 (01:25):
They don't know because their parent absolutely into the country
illegally had a child knowing he was in the country legally.
So he created that crisis.
Speaker 5 (01:33):
While Homan ran ice.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
In what became one of the most controversial policies of
the Trump administration, at least five thousand migrant children were forcibly.
Speaker 5 (01:42):
Separated from their parents.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Who were prosecuted for crossing the border illegally.
Speaker 5 (01:47):
You've been called the.
Speaker 7 (01:47):
Father of Trump's family separation policy.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
How does that sit with you?
Speaker 6 (01:53):
It's not true. I didn't write the memory of a
separate families. I signed a memo. Why did I sign, am?
I was hoping to save lives? Why you and I
are talking right now? Child's going to die on the
board it so we thought, maybe we prosecute people, they'll
stop coming.
Speaker 5 (02:09):
Maybe and if Trump wins the second term.
Speaker 6 (02:12):
I don't know of any formal policy, but they're talking
about family separations.
Speaker 7 (02:15):
Should it be on the table I.
Speaker 6 (02:17):
Think needs to be considered.
Speaker 5 (02:18):
Absolutely so.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Anyway, the point is they're planning mass deportation, and we
know this because they're telling us on sixty minutes.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
I mean, I think it's very jarring that he's basically
saying that it doesn't matter if a member or your
family's here a legal or not, that they're just going
to rip you apart. And I want to make a
point too that you know, Trump has said that he
doesn't know these Project twenty twenty five people. He's repeatedly
on video said I'm hiring this guy to do this,
So there's no wiggling around this bullshit.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
I mean, he worked in the Trump admin and he
worked on Project twenty twenty five, and he's planning to
deport But I think the scariest part of all of
this is they're deporting boas documented and under documented immigrants.
So this will mean that if you have a family,
and we saw a lot of reporting about this, most
(03:08):
families you'll have one illegal member of the family. Well
now it will be that everyone else in the family
will get deported.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
So Molly jd Vance, you know, Charisma King, here's some
thoughts about how people should feel about the remark from
Tony Hinchcliff at the Garden saying that Puerto Rico is
a floating island of garbage.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
So I just want to pause for a second and
talk about this for one more second. So Republicans from
Florida and from a lot of states to the Puerto
Ricans are freaking out right. There are half a million
Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania, the must win state of Pennsylvania,
so they are all freaking out. Okay, now listen to
(03:50):
jd Vance's very sensitive response to Puerto Rican people being
offended by having their island be called a pile of garbage.
Speaker 8 (04:01):
I've heard about the joke.
Speaker 9 (04:02):
I haven't actually seen the joke that you mentioned, but
I think that it's telling that Kamala Harris's closing message
is essentially that all of Donald Trump's voters are Nazis,
and you should get really pissed off about a comedian
telling a joke that is not the message of a
winning campaign, and most importantly, it's not the message of
a person who's fit to be the president of the
(04:23):
United States of America. And my own view on this is,
look again, I haven't seen the joke. You know, maybe
it's a stupid racist shoke, as you said, maybe it's not.
Speaker 5 (04:33):
I haven't seen it.
Speaker 9 (04:34):
I'm not going to comment on the specifics of the joke,
but I think that we have to stop getting so
offended at every little thing in the United States of America.
Speaker 5 (04:42):
I'm just I'm so over it.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
So if you're bad Bunny or j Loo and you're
offended by the fact that the comedian a Donald Trump
Broop's rally called Puerto Rico a pile of garbage, well
Evans has a message for you.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Get over it.
Speaker 4 (05:03):
Yeah, we should say Trump only won Pennsylvania by point
seventy two percent and Biden won by one point seven percent,
but Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania are three point eight percent
of the population, so a lot of movement could happen there.
Speaker 7 (05:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
And also everyone is in damage control about this comment
except Jade Evans, who was telling them to get over
it because they are being two pc and sensitive when
they're offended that their island was maligned by a racist.
I mean, I think we should just say that fifty
(05:37):
cent the performer was offered three million dollars to perform
at Donald Trump's rally, and he said, no, three million
dollars a lot of money. It's a lot of money,
and it shows how toxic the Trump rallies are because
he was he was offered three million dollars to perform
at the Madison Square of Bardon rally and he said no,
which good on him, and then also good on you know.
(06:01):
We've been waiting to see if George W. Bush will
endorse Harris, but we have seen that his daughter Barbara
is actually canvassing for Harris. Another thing that is really
shows just how unusual the Trump election is that the
fact that pretty much both on the left and the
right have aligned to support Harris.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
Somali in both Washington and Oregon. Drop boxes we're set
on fire and Phoenix police have the suspected custody. What
are you seeing here?
Speaker 2 (06:30):
This has happened in a couple states, someone who's unhinged
setting fire to drop boxes. We're seeing a lot of this,
and look, we're of course we're seeing this. Donald Trump
is encouraging it. Here's a guy who's setting fire to
drop boxes in Arizona, but we saw somebody doing it
in Washington State, and I'm sure we'll see more of it.
And that's why we all have to be super vigilant
(06:51):
and careful. It's really just exactly what we don't want.
It's exactly what has not happened, and it's the kind
of thing that only happens once Donald Trump, you know,
Donald Trump is encouraged his kind of behavior, so none
of us should be surprised.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
Somali. Mister Trump a man who's known for reading the
room really well. He said the massive Square Garden rally
was a LoveFest.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Funny because you'll remember he said that the January sixth
insurrection was a love fest. They love him, right, Donald
Trump calls it a love fest when his people do
stuff to protect or to elevate him, or to storm
the capitol. That is Donald Trump's idea of a love fest,
(07:36):
but it is no one else's idea of a love fest.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
Yeah, one might think he's only concerned with the reaction
towards him when they were clapping for him, so he saw.
Speaker 5 (07:45):
It as good enough.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Right. But you know, he did do this press or
at mar Lago today as a way of trying to,
I think, enact a little damage control after the Sunday
Madison Square Garden rally went so off the rails.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
And I think.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
That that question where he said it was a love fest,
that's another really good example of how Trump is sort
of unable to help himself. Like this smart answer there
would have been like there were some thing's got out
of hand, but we love the people of Puerto Rico,
and we know that they're Americans just like everyone else.
But instead he just was like there were no bad jokes.
(08:23):
It was a love fest. So I do think like
this between him and JD. Vans, they really have handled
this just about as poorly as anyone could handle it.
And it's hard for me to imagine being a Puerto
Rican American and not feeling like these people do not
have my best interests in that sounds right, which of
course they don't. Josh Marshall is the editor of Talking
(08:48):
Points Memo. Welcome back to the Fast Politics Josh Marshall.
Speaker 5 (08:54):
Thanks for having me again.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Here we are six days from.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
The election that will side whether or not we have
elections anymore discussed.
Speaker 10 (09:04):
I was telling someone I have been trying to embrace
the uncertainty because I think that's where we are right,
it's uncertain. I wrote a piece that there's a difference
between the closest election ever and the most uncertain election ever,
and I'm not sure it's that close.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
Well, we don't know. I think that's a really good point.
Speaker 10 (09:22):
Yeah, it's high uncertainty, and look at a certain level,
if it's super close, it's very uncertain. That's kind of
you know, that's kind of the way it works. But
I do think and every election, every high stakes election,
contains a lot of uncertainty. But I do think that
there are factors that make this one more uncertain, more
(09:43):
possibilities than usual, and a lot of those have to
do with polling, with trying to understand what happened in
the sort of the mechanics of the twenty twenty election,
in terms of the COVID pandemic, changes in polls.
Speaker 5 (09:55):
All this kind of stuff.
Speaker 10 (09:56):
When we look at these polls that I think, as
we all know basic say, it is like literally tied
to the extent that things can be tied. There's a
lot of assumptions that go into those polls. That's always
the case with polls, but there's probably even more this time.
People have had to make assumptions about what the electorate
looks like and stuff like that, and those could be mistaken,
(10:19):
and those could end up giving us a result that
swings a few points in either direction, and obviously, in
our day and age, a few points is like you know,
a landslide.
Speaker 5 (10:29):
There's a lot of uncertainty, are real uncertainty.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Right, And I think what's really.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Important here when we talk about this is that Trump
historically gets at an electorate that is a non voting electorate,
and that's why he won in twenty sixteen. He was
able to re summons those people in twenty twenty, though
he didn't win. And now you know, it's almost a
decade later, we are all fucking tired.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
The man is still running.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
And again the strat is is still the same, double
down on the really offensive staff and hope that the
low propensity ones and twos come.
Speaker 10 (11:09):
Out, right, Yeah, for better or worse, we know at
many levels, you know, Donald Trump calls the shots. That's
what the people who love him love about him. I
think that is real about his campaigns, right. And one
of the things that you know, it's been a lot
of talk for the last year that he finally has
Chris Lasovita and Susie Wiles and there you know, they
(11:31):
have figured out how to tame him, not tame him
from being fairal and crazy, but make him seem normal, yes,
to run a real campaign. I think what we have
seen in these final weeks is that he's running a
He's running a Trump campaign there too, but he's going
to double down. He's not a reach out kind of person.
(11:52):
He's a double down kind of person. And he's going
to try to get hold of his people and get
hold of his people who maybe are ready to be
his people, but weren't his people yet. You know, this
whole idea that you know, there are people out there
who love Trump but they've just never voted before, and
get them to vote. There's you know, there's more people
he does that. He wants to, you know, demoralize the opposition.
(12:14):
A lot of head faking and stuff like that. So
it's he's a double down kind of guy.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Right, So Sunday he had this Madison Square Garden rally.
This is part of these weird rallies he's doing, like
the one he did in California. He had one in Coulchella, right,
Couldchella Valley, This one where all these people got stranded.
He had another one in another blue state. And the
(12:39):
idea here is that they are control fundraising and they
create this atmosphere of winning. But this one athlete spare
of Puerto Ricans endorsing Kama Harris, including Bad Bunny, j
Lo and Ricky Martin discuss.
Speaker 10 (12:58):
Yeah, it's you know, it's hard, always hard to know,
you know, what celebrity endorsements mean. I mean, I would
have been a little surprised if Jlo endorsed Trump. So
you know, if you had told me she endorsed Harris
six months ago, I would have been utterly unsurprised. But
I do think this has broken through in a significant way.
(13:18):
I think it's clearly broken through with people in the
Puerto Rican community, which a lot of people think, ah,
in New York, Puerto Ricans who live in New York. Obviously,
lots of Puerto Rican Americans. I mean, there's no such
thing as a Puerto Rican American. Pert Ricans are Americans
part of the United States. Many live in Florida. A
significant number live in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
So half a million.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Did you know half a million Puerto Ricans lived in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
I did not.
Speaker 5 (13:44):
I did not.
Speaker 10 (13:45):
I don't know how much that's concentrated in the eastern
part of the state or Pittsburgh or just kind of everywhere.
Doesn't matter though, right, yeah, exactly, it doesn't matter for
these purposes. I do think that that is the most
kind of eye popping remark. There's a lot, a lot
of things this guy said, everybody knew going in this
is going to you know, they're setting themselves up for
(14:05):
sort of a replay of the first go around in
nineteen thirty nine.
Speaker 5 (14:10):
Right, what they did is sort of a Nazi rally.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
The German American booned yet booned.
Speaker 10 (14:16):
Yes, yes, I think the whole thing has kind of
broken through a bit, just in the sense that it's
not a shock to anybody that there are a lot
of like racists and weird people around Donald Trump, but
from the perspective of the Trump campaign that you don't
want that to be your closing argument, right, like, we're
super racist. And I think this could have some impact
(14:37):
on the results of the election because it's you know,
because it seems to be very close, and you know,
there's a lot of other things that this and other
people there said. It's just everything works best for Trump
when they keep the sort of you know, the really
fairal degenerates kind of in the back room, you know,
(14:58):
with a with a direct lawn to the base. But
when you bring them out in front of normal people,
things get a little shaky. And it wasn't a great
time to bring them out in front of normal people.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Yeah, and It's funny because it's like Elon has devoted
himself to helping the Trump campaign in any way possible.
You could make the supposition that this might be connected
to this recent reporting from the Wall Street Journal, which
on the news side does amazing stuff and has all
this reporting about how Elon has talked to Vladimir Putin
(15:30):
more than once, right, which technically is someone who sits
on a pile of government contract and has very high
security clears is pretty problematic.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
So you could see where he might have some motivation there.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
But he does seem and he didn't maybe seem this
way as much four years ago. He does seem to
be one of that crowd of this sort of deep
and dark white national I mean, you know, I won't
say he's a white nationalist, but he certainly does not
seem uncomfortable with Stephen Miller.
Speaker 5 (15:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 10 (16:00):
I mean, he may not be, but all his friends are, right.
I mean, you know, maybe in a way it doesn't matter.
It's what he says and his friends and who he
gives money to and all that kind of stuff. I mean,
I think that Elon Musk in general is kind of
overdetermined in the sense that he's just a weird on
(16:20):
several levels, guy who's very impulsive, who clearly has some
issues in his personal life that have driven some of this.
And I get the sense that he's just you know,
sometimes people get really into bling, that's their new thing,
and fascism is Elon's new bling, and he's really into
(16:43):
it right now. And it wouldn't one hundred percent surprise
me if it was something he wasn't as into in
a few years. And again, I'm not like excusing him.
He's just an impulsive, weird person and he's fixated on this.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
It seems like a celebrity who's got you know, who
has got a cause that they're sort of interested in
but might not be interested in a couple of years.
I mean, I think it's the capricious nature I've been
so struck by as someone who you know, grew up with,
you know, not so famous, but a little famous people
and also a lot of people who had some money.
(17:18):
Was that what this election shows so deeply is that
the corrosive facts that wealth and power have on the
human soul. I mean, I am just stopped by the
people who come out and you know, they really are
their tax bracket. Trump ists. Right, they may or may
not believe, but maybe they believe that, maybe they don't.
(17:39):
Who cares again, but they have you know, decided that
the tax brackets, may you know, to pay less taxes,
they will go along with white nationalism and possibly the
end of democracy.
Speaker 10 (17:50):
In some ways, it is a very much a thing
for a certain kind of liberal to think, like, well,
is he actually white nationalists? Is actually this? Do they
really believe this? As is often the case in life,
it doesn't really matter what you believe, it's what you do.
And clearly these are people who, you know, if someone
(18:11):
came up to me and said, Hey, we're going to
go watch alligators have sex and then we're going to
cut their heads off and put their heads onto our
heads and dance around in the blood, I would say
that's so weird. I no matter how cool you are,
I can't. That's too weird for me. And you have
(18:35):
these people who it's not too weird for them.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
I'm going to do this annoying thing and bring up
a tweet.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
I hate it when people interview me and bring up
a tweet, But this I think is relevant because I
think it's a really important idea.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
I'm going to read the tweet as very annoying. But
this is who Trump is, and this is what Trump
is them is.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
But there's a.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Part of this that isn't widely known and this is
absolutely one hundred percent sure to a lot of reporters,
and that is that there are a lot of these
pop operatives I'm now you know, speaking stemborraneously and staffers
under thirty who are in fact to come from for
fin So explain that to our listeners and maybe with
(19:13):
a little more clarity.
Speaker 10 (19:15):
So, oh right, So there's a series of online communities
that go back a number of years, and there places
where the in cells hang out and the white nationalists
hang out, and a lot of you know, hardcore racist,
far right things are just part of the vernacular and
that's that kind of world. And so they are online
(19:36):
spaces that have that four chan is one of them.
There's eight chan. There are used to be certain subreddits.
There's you know, just all these kind of places out there,
and there is a whole cadre of young Republican operatives
and staffers who not only have spent time there, but
in so many of the cases being there in the
(19:59):
sort of post game or gate that whole kind of world.
That's where they decided they were Republicans, or they decided
they were far right. The point is that that was
where they had their political awakenings. Basically, this isn't surprising necessarily,
but this kind of got on my radar because, you know,
I am in charge of this news publication and I'm
(20:21):
almost never the reporter. I'm seldom the immediate editor. But
in our big stories, I'll get brought in just to
kind of kick the tires and whatever. And in story
after story, sort of like, okay, the person who got
who's getting in trouble for their you know, for their
old tweets. Maybe maybe that person came from four chan,
but okay, turns out his boss started at four chan
(20:44):
two and like and and okay, here's the here's the
guy who is not as bad and he was.
Speaker 5 (20:51):
A source for us. Wow, he's also from four chan.
Like wait, what's going on here?
Speaker 10 (20:55):
And this would just keep happening again and again and
again and I and I realized that it was pervasive,
and not only in sort of like you know, the
you know, there's always like maybe a dozen members of
the House GOP Caucus are the ones who are constantly
getting in trouble, not just those people staffers for relatively
normal Republicans, you know. Also, and I think a lot
(21:17):
of people remember that during DeSantis's primary campaign, there were
a few times where his campaign would drop these these
you know, kind of viral videos and they had, you
know a lot of kind of like muscle bound dudes
in like swim trunks and.
Speaker 5 (21:38):
A lot of stuff that.
Speaker 10 (21:39):
To people outside of that world look pretty home erotic
and just a lot of kind of crazy stuff. And
this background of mine being somewhat involved in a lot
of our investigative stories, I got it immediately because I
know that like half the people, half the guys under
thirty on his campaign, they started out like on four
Chan and then like in cell message board, and that's
(22:01):
how they communicate. And it's only when you sort of,
you know, when a campaign drops that and everybody's sees it, like, dude,
what what is what did I just see? What did
I just see? So that's it's that whole thing. It's
very real and something that occurred to me a couple
days ago. It used to be that you scratch any
democratic campaign and either the candidate or the top people
(22:22):
they first met on the McGovern campaign. I mean, I'm
dating myself here a bit, but you know, back in
the nineties, the odds okay, and a decade from now
it's going to in Republican campaigns fortune it's going to
be oh yeah, yeah. We first worked together at four chan.
We first created a dank meme at four chan.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
I wanted just interject for a minute because I think
this an important point that relates, which is JD. Bans
comes from that world, probably more so even than Ronda Sandis.
But what I think about I think about this a
lot because I saw him in that vice presidential debate,
(22:57):
which he did do better than Trim in that debate.
He is actually wildly unpopular. His favorability ratings are lower
than Donald Trump's. He struggles with really the same problem
that DeSantis does. Trump isn't without Trump brought to you
by someone who has the charisma of a you know,
(23:18):
of flat eyed Coke is not a winning message, right, Like.
Part of why Trump is able to get away with
this stuff is he was a celebrity for many years.
He makes it seem funny and not scary, you know,
whereas Jadie Vance. I mean, for example, the joke the
floating pile of garbage joke that we heard on Sunday.
(23:39):
Jad Vance said, why I didn't see it right, which
of course is ridiculous, and then he said, we should
be less offended by things. You know, this is obviously
well and like you tell that to these groups of
Puerto Ricans who are offended by having their country be
called garbage, that they should lighten up. I mean, like,
I don't think that's a wins.
Speaker 10 (24:01):
No, it's not a winning message. And I have to
imagine that a lot of Democrats or Democratic operatives would say, like, Okay, cool,
we'll put together a commercial for it, a commercial based
on it. You dudes can run it, you can have
the copyright, let's get it everywhere.
Speaker 5 (24:15):
I don't even think it's cynical.
Speaker 10 (24:16):
A lot of Democrats are like, they are not upset.
They're like, hey, thanks for taking the mask off. It's
just the right time.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Let's let every you know, I mean, a week before
the election, it's a good time to do it.
Speaker 5 (24:29):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 10 (24:30):
And the thing is with Trump is that he's horrible,
but we don't understand him and cannot fight him effectively
if we don't understand he has a real charisma. It
may not be your kind of not you, Molly, but
you know, everybody's charisma. But that is what allows him to,
you know, kind of do these things and to an extent,
(24:51):
get away with them. And whereas you have someone like
JD Vance he says something, Oh yeah, kind of like
angry lonely cat ladies and just he he'll say something
and everything's just silent.
Speaker 5 (25:01):
Everybody's like ooh, like no one likes you JD.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Yeah, No, I think that's right. We're in the home
stretch of whatever this is. But it does certainly seem
like a really important data play. Thank you, Josh Marshall.
Speaker 5 (25:16):
All right, talk to you later.
Speaker 7 (25:18):
Are you concerned.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
About Project twenty twenty five and how awful Trump's second
term could be? Well, so are we, which is why
we teamed up with iHeart to make a limited series
with the experts on what a disaster Project twenty twenty
five would be for America's future. Right now, we have
just released the final episode of this five episode series.
(25:40):
They're all available by looking up Molly Jong Fast Project
twenty twenty five on YouTube, and if you are more
of a podcast person and not say a YouTuber, you
can hit play and put your phone in the lock
screen and it will play back just.
Speaker 7 (25:55):
Like a podcast.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
All five episodes are online. Now we need to educate
a Maria Workens on what Trump's second term would or
could do to this country.
Speaker 7 (26:04):
So please watch it and spread the word.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Ron Brownstein is a senior political analyst for CNN and
a senior editor at The Atlantic.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Welcome back to Fast Politics, Ron Brownstein.
Speaker 8 (26:20):
Ay, Molly, anything going on?
Speaker 7 (26:23):
Nothing? Nothing? Not eight days until the election.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
So one of the many, many things I like about you,
besides the fact that you're so smart and so sane,
is that you also have been doing this for a
fairly long time, so you really know what this should
look like.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Okay, so what the fuck is going on?
Speaker 5 (26:43):
Go?
Speaker 11 (26:45):
Well, look, I mean I think you know, if you
look at the totality of the polling, clearly Trump gained
some ground in October. He hurt Harris with the ad
barrage but portraying her as week on crime, week on immigration,
and extreme on transgender rights. And you know, even before
the debate, one Republican said to me the Harris Trump debate,
(27:06):
one Republican said to me something that I think has
really borne out when they said, you know, if we
win this race, we're not going to win it through
the interactions between Harris and Trump, whether in the debate
or the daily news cycle, and we were reminded of
that again on Sunday, this person said, if we win
the race, it's going to be just by you know,
doing to her essentially what we do to Democratic candidates
(27:27):
in the Swing states since time immemorial, portraying them as
a you know, soft on crime and immigration and out
of touch liberal. And that campaign has been very powerful
and very pronounced, and clearly it has had some impact
on the national polling and even the polling and the
key swing states. But when it was all, you know,
now that we are in the final stretch, it's pretty
(27:48):
clear that even that offensive have not pushed at least
the former Blue Wall states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin
out of reach for her. And there are reasons to believe.
I think that she can still win those states even
with a smaller margin in the national popular vote than
Biden had, and maybe only as big a margin or
(28:10):
even slightly smaller in the national popular vote than Hillary
Clinton had. And we can talk about that the Sun
Belt states are murkier for her. Those are states where
non wide voters people of color are such a large
portion of the electorate that even marginal gains for Trump
in them could make all of those states tough. And
obviously North Carolina has been tougher Democrats anyway, But in Michigan, Pennsylvania,
(28:34):
and Wisconsin, which have always been in the most plausible
path to two seventy, not only for Biden but for her,
I think the race is well within the margin of error.
And as someone smarter than me said to me, you
know months ago, that means it is within the margin
of effort. You know, a lot of people are kind
of agonizing and you know, doom scrolling and checking polls
(28:54):
every hour. You know, if poles say that Michigan, Pennsylvania
with consin are with a point or even two points,
it really doesn't matter which way the pole says. What
it's really telling you is that the states will that
state will be decided by things that have not yet happened,
either interactions on the campaign trail, or perhaps even more important,
(29:15):
the quality of the campaign and organization that each side
can execute in the final days. So the way I
look at it, whatever happens in the sun belt. This
race is within reach for her through the rost belt Michigan, Pennsylvanus, Constant,
the three states Trump knocked out of the blue wall,
and it really is within the reach of either side
to bring this home.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Okay, now I'm going to ask you a question just
for me because I'm interested in it. This is a
brain tease. Okay, I'm going to read you a tweet.
This is something I'm obsessed with. Okay, Pole after poll
shows Harris leading among those that have already voted, even
narrowly in Florida. So these are exit polls. This is
the point this sky says. Unless I'm missing something, either
(29:58):
A polls are badly misreading this group, so.
Speaker 7 (30:02):
The exit polling is wrong, which is possible.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Or b early voters are bluer than we think and
thus party affiliation is not really telling the story.
Speaker 8 (30:12):
Yeah, I saw that too.
Speaker 11 (30:13):
You know, I myself find early voting almost impossibly opaque.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
And that's the conventional wisdom about early voting is that
it just doesn't tell you anything.
Speaker 11 (30:24):
Really, it's not maybe not exactly that. It's as a
lay person, you do not have access to the full
layers of information. You need to see if there's any
signal in the noise, because you know, the number of
people from each party who vote early doesn't really tell
you that much if either or both parties are simply cannibalizing,
(30:44):
as the saying goes their day of voters and moving
them to early. You know, what you really need is
something that tells you how irregular voters, how many irregular
voters are coming.
Speaker 8 (30:55):
Out for each side.
Speaker 11 (30:57):
And there are people who do that kind of deep dive.
You know, Tom Bonyer may be more famously than anybody
else on the Democratic side who feel good about what
they are seeing in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and not
as good about what they are seeing in the sun
Belt a swing stick. So which kind of you know,
which kind of fits into this general that I'm offering here.
(31:18):
I also have been struck by that polling. And look,
I mean, there is reason to believe. I think it
would not be crazy if Kamala Harris won a higher
percentage of previously Republican leaning independence, particularly college educated independence,
than Biden did for two big reasons. January sixth had
not yet happened, and Dobbs had not yet happened. In
(31:40):
the twenty twenty election. And you know, as I wrote
this week, I think it is highly likely that Harris
not only can, but probably must run better than Biden
did in these big white collar inner suburbs around Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee,
but also around Madison, Pittsburgh, and Grand Rapids. I mean,
(32:00):
there is a metro path for her through the former
Blue Wall states, and you know that is probably I
think where there's election is going to be is going
to be decided.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
So now explain to me kind of what it looks
like right now, the early voting, it's hard to make
sense of we have North Carolina, I mean, what should
she be doing now?
Speaker 11 (32:22):
The big picture is that if you look at polling
both in the swinging states and nationally, obviously polls differ,
but the basic story they are telling is very similar,
which is that Harris has regained a lot of the
ground Biden lost among voters of color, but she hasn't
regained all of it, especially among Latinos and especially among
(32:44):
Latino men. I mean, there are reasons for Democrats to
hope that the big declines among black men that some
polls are showing is an illusion that will not pan
out but it is hard to imagine that everything we're
seeing among Latino men is not real.
Speaker 8 (32:58):
At least you know, some of it is not real.
Speaker 11 (33:00):
So she has regained a lot of the ground Biden
loss among people of color, but not all of it.
On the other hand, like Biden, she is running very
close to the twenty twenty Democratic level of support among
white voters, which remember, was enough to win six of
the seven swing states. Right, so she might be down
(33:20):
a tick among white voters without a college degree, she
might be up a little bit among white voters with
a college degree.
Speaker 8 (33:27):
But the net is that she is very.
Speaker 11 (33:29):
Close in both national and state polling on a consistent
basis to where Biden was among whites.
Speaker 8 (33:35):
Depending on the data source.
Speaker 11 (33:36):
You used, Biden one between forty one and forty three
percent of whites, and look at something like the New
York Times poll was exactly forty three, the CNN national
poll was forty one. Consistently, she is right CNBC was
forty one. She's right in there. And so what does
that mean. That means that even a marginal decline, even
a slight decline in her support among voters of color
(33:58):
makes it really hard in the Sun Belt battlegrounds because
in those states, voters of color are a really big
portion of the electorate, and even a small change in
their preference is hard for Democrats to overcome.
Speaker 8 (34:10):
So Arizona, Nevada.
Speaker 11 (34:12):
You know, if Latino men really break away from Democrats
anywhere near the level we're seeing.
Speaker 8 (34:16):
Hard to win.
Speaker 11 (34:16):
Georgia still seems to be right in play, but even
a few point erosion with black men might be tough
to overcome.
Speaker 8 (34:24):
North Carolina has been tough to begin with for Democrats.
Speaker 11 (34:26):
On the other hand, if you are maintaining the national
the Biden level of support among whites from twenty twenty,
that leaves you in a much stronger position in Michigan
and Pennsylvania, where whites were about eighty percent of the
vote in twenty twenty, and in Wisconsin where they were
ninety percent. I mean, the paradox that Biden faced is
still kind of true. Even though Harris has improved a
(34:49):
lot with non white voters and become much more competitive
than he was in the Sun Belt, the reality is
is that her best states are still the ones that
are older and less diverse. Right, So one last point
about all this, imagine a world in which Harris doesn't
run as well among non white voters as Biden did
(35:10):
and way below what Clinton did in twenty sixteen, because
she ran even better.
Speaker 8 (35:15):
Among non white voters or does a color than Biden did.
Speaker 11 (35:17):
Imagine where Harris doesn't run as well as Clinton did
among voters of color, but she runs significantly better among
white voters, which is what she's backed to do.
Speaker 8 (35:25):
I mean, by holding.
Speaker 11 (35:27):
Biden's support among whites, she is locking in the improvement
that Biden made over Clinton from sixteen to twenty among whites.
So if you're down among non whites and up among whitest,
your net margin follow me here in the national popular
vote may be about the same.
Speaker 8 (35:46):
As Clinton's, which was only two points.
Speaker 11 (35:48):
Your national popular vote may not be any better than Clinton's,
but you would be better positioned than her to win Michigan, Pennsylvania,
and was. As the political scientists say, it is a
more efficient political coalition. Democrats have become accustomed to the
idea they have to win the popular vote by a
lot in order to squeeze out an electoral college majority,
and no one, no one would prefer to try to
(36:10):
win as a Democrat with a two point lead in
the popular vote rather than Biden's four and a half,
but it is not out of reach for her. She
may fall short in at least one of those three states,
but it is not hard for me to imagine a
world where the same popular vote national margin as Clinton
had can translate into two hundred and seventy Electoral College
(36:31):
votes for Harris in a way that it could not
for Clinton.
Speaker 7 (36:34):
Okay, now I have two questions.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
One is I want you to talk about what happened
last night at Madison Square Garden. The comedian whose name
is Tony Hinchcliff made a number of racist jokes.
Speaker 7 (36:46):
And also misogynistics jokes.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
He made a joke about oj Simpson, but the joke
that may have really cost the campaign the most votes
was his joke about how Puerto Rico was a floating
pile of garbage, almost.
Speaker 7 (37:00):
Like a mirror.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Hour later, we had j Lo, we had bad Bunny,
Mark Anthony did a video today, but Ricky Martin. So
we've had a number of Puerto Rican celebrities indors Harris,
and it reminds me a lot of You'll remember that
when Donald Trump was tweeting out these or retweeting these
fake Taylor Swift endorsements. That led to Taylor Swift endorsing Harris.
(37:26):
And remember when Trump said that Jamie Diamond was going
to endorse him. That led to Jamie Diamond saying that
actually he would take a cabinet position in the Harris administration.
But yes, so Donald Trump helped get a lot of
endorsements for Harris.
Speaker 7 (37:41):
Is it too late for something like that to move
the needle?
Speaker 11 (37:44):
Someone showed me a private Democratic poll that had Pennsylvania
within half a point, you know. So the answer is
there are five hundred thousand Puerto Rican citizens in Pennsylvania,
and I believe you. John Fetterman tweeted today that four
hundred thousand, roughly four hunred thousand of them can vote.
So Trump was counting on improvements with those voters as
(38:04):
part of his winning coalition. And first of all, the
tenor of the overall rally I think was a signal,
like everything else we're watching, that Trump thinks he has won,
that America is on board for a full scale kind
of cultural purge and racial purge, that they can just
kind of, you know, let it go. And also, I
(38:25):
mean they also believe that the more extreme and outrageous
you get, the more likely you are to activate rarely
voting conservative men, younger men, non college men, all of that.
So it's it's like they turn up the volume because
they think that's the only way they can reach these
people who are disconnected from the political system.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Right, but that they then very likely take a chance
to really alienate.
Speaker 8 (38:48):
That's the thing.
Speaker 11 (38:48):
The way I've been phrasing it is that for the
final week.
Speaker 8 (38:52):
To me, the question is what is the question?
Speaker 11 (38:55):
Like Trump started his speech yesterday, I believe with the
question that we're Republicans want to be the question are
you better off than you were four years ago?
Speaker 8 (39:03):
Now? It may not be fair.
Speaker 11 (39:05):
Given all the growth in the job market and all
the billions of dollars hundreds of abilities osma vet right.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
But a straight economic message you could see delivering for
a Republican right.
Speaker 11 (39:15):
But you know, most people, because of inflation, say they're
not better off than they were four years ago. And
that's especially true among families living paycheck to paycheck, which
include a lot of you know, in black families.
Speaker 7 (39:24):
The irony, though, is that four years ago we were
in the middle of a pandemic.
Speaker 11 (39:29):
Right that lead that aside, If that's the question it's
a hard road for Paris, but there is no reason
that has to be the question. I mean, the other
question that America is grappling with, that could be the
dominant question in the final days, is are you willing
to risk returning this Donald Trump? Who is this overtly racist, xenophobic,
misogynist and authoritarian.
Speaker 8 (39:50):
Are you willing to return him to the White House.
Speaker 11 (39:52):
The answer is yes for a lot of people, but
there are certainly some voters who might be dissatisfied with
the economy, might trust more on the economy, who simply
are not willing to.
Speaker 8 (40:02):
Take that risk. And this is not a theoretical proposition.
Speaker 11 (40:05):
We saw it in twenty twenty two when Democrats won
an unusually high percentage of voters who disapproved of Biden
or disapproved to the economy and still would not vote
for Republican alternatives.
Speaker 7 (40:16):
Right than Nicki Haley voters.
Speaker 11 (40:18):
Part of Nicki Haley voters, but you know, even probably
some blue collar white women and some black and Hispanic men.
In the end, I mean, I think Trump is trying
to execute and maybe appropriately enough, after this rally with
its nineteen thirty nine echoes, he is trying to execute
a pincer movement. I think it is highly likely, given
the way they portrayed Harris as his out of touch
(40:39):
coastal liberal, that he will run even better than he
did in Trump country, small town, rural e serban America,
mostly non college white. It's a lot of conservative Christians,
you know, very resonant with the social issues. And I
think primarily because of inflation, it's likely that he will
make at least.
Speaker 8 (40:57):
Some progress at crack these.
Speaker 11 (41:00):
Towering traditional Democratic advantages in the central cities among voters
of color.
Speaker 8 (41:06):
So where does she go to offset that?
Speaker 11 (41:08):
Well, partially she starts with a cushion because Biden won
the states that she has to win. But where does
she go. She goes to the inner suburb. She goes
to the racially diverse, well educated, generally doing pretty well.
Like inflation is kind of a pain, but it's not
really an existential crisis for people in Montgomery and Delaware
County and Oakland County and Kent County and Gaine and
(41:28):
the Wow Counties, Waukesha and so forth. And there are
the voters who could say, yeah, I don't think the
last four years have worked out that well, but I
am not willing to take the risk of going to Trump,
and if you ask me today, she can, and she
probably must do a little better than Biden did in
all of the places I just mentioned, the four suburban
(41:49):
counties outside Philly. Biden won them by two hundred ninety
thousand votes, which was itself one hundred and fifteen thousand
more than Hillary. She may have to do better yet
Oakland County he doubled the margin of Hillary.
Speaker 8 (42:00):
She might have to do it better.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
Yet.
Speaker 11 (42:01):
Dane County, it just keeps growing, turnout keeps going up,
and the Democratic margins keep going up. She's probably going
to have to max out there to squeeze out Wisconsin.
Not a simple path, no guarantee that she can do it,
but not an impossible one at all. I mean, really
within the margin of effort, as people say, for her
to generate enough of the vote she needs in all
(42:24):
of those three states to squeeze them out, even if
the national popular vote is much closer than it was
in twenty twenty, and maybe as close or even closer
than it was in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 7 (42:33):
All right, so now go along with me on this.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
What if the polls are just wrong, What if she's
doing better what if they're just waiting them to are heavy,
to try to not underestimate Trump yet again, could be sure?
Speaker 11 (42:50):
I mean yes, I mean you only find out the
polls are wrong after I mean, maybe that's right, but
I kind of feel like, you know, in some ways
that were like past that question.
Speaker 8 (42:59):
If after all of this, the polls.
Speaker 11 (43:01):
Are telling you it's within one point either way, they're
telling you that either side can win these states, and
their polling probably can't predict which one it will be
because it isn't surgical precision to that extent where you
can look at it and say, well, you know, she's
up at half a point in Wisconsin, so she's going
to win, and you don't know.
Speaker 8 (43:17):
I mean.
Speaker 11 (43:18):
One thing Democrats do have to worry about is that
in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, the next circle of irregular voters
does tend to lean more toward non college whites who
are probably going to vote for Trump, you know, sixty
to forty. But there are also a lot of high
propensity Republican leaning voters, women in particular, but maybe even
some men who are not going to go along with
him in the way they did last time. Because of
(43:39):
the two things the two big things that have happened
since then January sixth and Doc and also just this
you know, turn toward ever more overt kind of authoritarian
and racist. By the way, I can I just make
one point on that it always gets a lot of
focus when Trump says things that are outrageous or you know,
just patently offensive. In John Kelly's interviews, we focus on
(44:01):
the fact that he had praised Hitler and said he
wanted Hitler's generals from yesterday's rally. We're focusing on these
remarks about Puerto Rico. But I think it's really important
for people to understand that it's not just rhetoric. There
is policy attached to this in each case. I mean
what John Kelly, The most important part of John Kelly's
interview was not that Hitler, you know, Trump said ad
Myron things about Hiller. It's that John Kelly said, Trump
(44:23):
repeatedly as president wanted to use the military against American
citizens on US Street, and as I've written, he has
multiple specific proposals to do that. And similarly, at the
same time this rally was happening in Madison Square Garden,
one of Trump's top immigration divisors was on sixty minutes,
and he said something that was so incendiary that I
(44:47):
am astonished for we're not talking.
Speaker 8 (44:48):
About it more.
Speaker 11 (44:49):
Today he was asked, how would you avoid family separation
in madics deportation, He said, no, we want to separate
them at all.
Speaker 8 (44:55):
We'll deport the kids too.
Speaker 11 (44:56):
There are four million US c citizen children Latino US
citizen children who have at least one parent who is undocumented.
So the Trump administration is now openly talking about deporting
potentially millions of US citizen Latino children as part of
(45:17):
the mass deportation.
Speaker 8 (45:18):
I have not heard that before yesterday. And maybe the
courts would stop.
Speaker 11 (45:22):
Them, though I'm not sure John Roberts would stop Donald
Trump from anything that he wants to do in the end.
But when you were talking about deporting not only undocumented
people but millions of citizens, you are starting to veer
deeper into the realm of ethnic cleansing. And again, you know,
the paradox and all of this is that Trump is
not only hoping for he is counting on significantly improved
(45:45):
performance with Latino voters, especially men, even as they are
now talking openly about deporting potentially millions of US born
citizen Latino kids, We just kind of wrap your head
around that, you know, their expectation that they can get
away with this, you know, kind of stereo broadcasting that
kind of message white yes and counting on Latinos to
(46:08):
move for them on the economy.
Speaker 7 (46:09):
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
Ron No Moon, Jesse Cannon, Molly.
Speaker 4 (46:18):
The fallout continues from Tony Hinchcliff's really stupid joke about
Puerto Rico. What are you seeing here?
Speaker 2 (46:24):
So, Puerto Rico's Republican party chairman has threatened to withhold
his support from Donald Trump unless he issues an apology
for the offensive remarks that Tony Henchcliff made on Sunday
at Madison Square Garden. He called the island a floating
island of garbage. The comments sparked a lot of condemnation,
(46:46):
but we haven't seen an apology. And if I know
anything about Trump, and I know a little bit, unfortunately
for me, it's that I would be very surprised if
you get an apology for this. You'll remember that Donald
Trump still hasn't dissape out North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson.
Speaker 3 (47:05):
So I think it's very.
Speaker 2 (47:06):
Unlikely we're going to see an apology here, since what
we saw in Chady Vance say was that everyone should
suck it up and be okay with racism because we're
all too politically correct.
Speaker 3 (47:19):
That, my friends, is our moment of book.
Speaker 1 (47:23):
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best
minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
And President Biden called Donald Trump's Madison Square Garden rally
simply embarrassing.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Pretty good assessment.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
We have such a great show for you today, Talking
points memos. Josh Marshall stops by to parse why Trump's
Madison Square Garden rally was so insane.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Then we'll talk to.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
CNN political analyst and writer for The Atlantic Ron Brownstein
about what he is seeing in early voting. But first,
the news, a lot of news.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
So Molly, what was miss during the Trump rally at
MSG was actually really important was a CNN interview with
Tom Holman, who you and I covered in our Project
twenty twenty five documentary for being one of the architects
of the immigration policy in the next Trump administration if
they get in.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
He is the former Ice head and this is his
plan for mass deportation of a documented immigrants. And let
me just say, it's not like he hid this. He
went and said this on sixty eight minutes.
Speaker 5 (01:18):
Why should a child who is an American citizen have
to pack up and move to a country that.
Speaker 6 (01:25):
They don't know because their parent absolutely into the country
illegally had a child knowing he was in the country legally.
So he created that crisis.
Speaker 5 (01:33):
While Homan ran ice.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
In what became one of the most controversial policies of
the Trump administration, at least five thousand migrant children were forcibly.
Speaker 5 (01:42):
Separated from their parents.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Who were prosecuted for crossing the border illegally.
Speaker 5 (01:47):
You've been called the.
Speaker 7 (01:47):
Father of Trump's family separation policy.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
How does that sit with you?
Speaker 6 (01:53):
It's not true. I didn't write the memory of a
separate families. I signed a memo. Why did I sign, am?
I was hoping to save lives? Why you and I
are talking right now? Child's going to die on the
board it so we thought, maybe we prosecute people, they'll
stop coming.
Speaker 5 (02:09):
Maybe and if Trump wins the second term.
Speaker 6 (02:12):
I don't know of any formal policy, but they're talking
about family separations.
Speaker 7 (02:15):
Should it be on the table I.
Speaker 6 (02:17):
Think needs to be considered.
Speaker 5 (02:18):
Absolutely so.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Anyway, the point is they're planning mass deportation, and we
know this because they're telling us on sixty minutes.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
I mean, I think it's very jarring that he's basically
saying that it doesn't matter if a member or your
family's here a legal or not, that they're just going
to rip you apart. And I want to make a
point too that you know, Trump has said that he
doesn't know these Project twenty twenty five people. He's repeatedly
on video said I'm hiring this guy to do this,
So there's no wiggling around this bullshit.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
I mean, he worked in the Trump admin and he
worked on Project twenty twenty five, and he's planning to
deport But I think the scariest part of all of
this is they're deporting boas documented and under documented immigrants.
So this will mean that if you have a family,
and we saw a lot of reporting about this, most
(03:08):
families you'll have one illegal member of the family. Well
now it will be that everyone else in the family
will get deported.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
So Molly jd Vance, you know, Charisma King, here's some
thoughts about how people should feel about the remark from
Tony Hinchcliff at the Garden saying that Puerto Rico is
a floating island of garbage.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
So I just want to pause for a second and
talk about this for one more second. So Republicans from
Florida and from a lot of states to the Puerto
Ricans are freaking out right. There are half a million
Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania, the must win state of Pennsylvania,
so they are all freaking out. Okay, now listen to
(03:50):
jd Vance's very sensitive response to Puerto Rican people being
offended by having their island be called a pile of garbage.
Speaker 8 (04:01):
I've heard about the joke.
Speaker 9 (04:02):
I haven't actually seen the joke that you mentioned, but
I think that it's telling that Kamala Harris's closing message
is essentially that all of Donald Trump's voters are Nazis,
and you should get really pissed off about a comedian
telling a joke that is not the message of a
winning campaign, and most importantly, it's not the message of
a person who's fit to be the president of the
(04:23):
United States of America. And my own view on this is,
look again, I haven't seen the joke. You know, maybe
it's a stupid racist shoke, as you said, maybe it's not.
Speaker 5 (04:33):
I haven't seen it.
Speaker 9 (04:34):
I'm not going to comment on the specifics of the joke,
but I think that we have to stop getting so
offended at every little thing in the United States of America.
Speaker 5 (04:42):
I'm just I'm so over it.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
So if you're bad Bunny or j Loo and you're
offended by the fact that the comedian a Donald Trump
Broop's rally called Puerto Rico a pile of garbage, well
Evans has a message for you.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Get over it.
Speaker 4 (05:03):
Yeah, we should say Trump only won Pennsylvania by point
seventy two percent and Biden won by one point seven percent,
but Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania are three point eight percent
of the population, so a lot of movement could happen there.
Speaker 7 (05:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
And also everyone is in damage control about this comment
except Jade Evans, who was telling them to get over
it because they are being two pc and sensitive when
they're offended that their island was maligned by a racist.
I mean, I think we should just say that fifty
(05:37):
cent the performer was offered three million dollars to perform
at Donald Trump's rally, and he said, no, three million
dollars a lot of money. It's a lot of money,
and it shows how toxic the Trump rallies are because
he was he was offered three million dollars to perform
at the Madison Square of Bardon rally and he said no,
which good on him, and then also good on you know.
(06:01):
We've been waiting to see if George W. Bush will
endorse Harris, but we have seen that his daughter Barbara
is actually canvassing for Harris. Another thing that is really
shows just how unusual the Trump election is that the
fact that pretty much both on the left and the
right have aligned to support Harris.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
Somali in both Washington and Oregon. Drop boxes we're set
on fire and Phoenix police have the suspected custody. What
are you seeing here?
Speaker 2 (06:30):
This has happened in a couple states, someone who's unhinged
setting fire to drop boxes. We're seeing a lot of this,
and look, we're of course we're seeing this. Donald Trump
is encouraging it. Here's a guy who's setting fire to
drop boxes in Arizona, but we saw somebody doing it
in Washington State, and I'm sure we'll see more of it.
And that's why we all have to be super vigilant
(06:51):
and careful. It's really just exactly what we don't want.
It's exactly what has not happened, and it's the kind
of thing that only happens once Donald Trump, you know,
Donald Trump is encouraged his kind of behavior, so none
of us should be surprised.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
Somali. Mister Trump a man who's known for reading the
room really well. He said the massive Square Garden rally
was a LoveFest.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Funny because you'll remember he said that the January sixth
insurrection was a love fest. They love him, right, Donald
Trump calls it a love fest when his people do
stuff to protect or to elevate him, or to storm
the capitol. That is Donald Trump's idea of a love fest,
(07:36):
but it is no one else's idea of a love fest.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
Yeah, one might think he's only concerned with the reaction
towards him when they were clapping for him, so he saw.
Speaker 5 (07:45):
It as good enough.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Right. But you know, he did do this press or
at mar Lago today as a way of trying to,
I think, enact a little damage control after the Sunday
Madison Square Garden rally went so off the rails.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
And I think.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
That that question where he said it was a love fest,
that's another really good example of how Trump is sort
of unable to help himself. Like this smart answer there
would have been like there were some thing's got out
of hand, but we love the people of Puerto Rico,
and we know that they're Americans just like everyone else.
But instead he just was like there were no bad jokes.
(08:23):
It was a love fest. So I do think like
this between him and JD. Vans, they really have handled
this just about as poorly as anyone could handle it.
And it's hard for me to imagine being a Puerto
Rican American and not feeling like these people do not
have my best interests in that sounds right, which of
course they don't. Josh Marshall is the editor of Talking
(08:48):
Points Memo. Welcome back to the Fast Politics Josh Marshall.
Speaker 5 (08:54):
Thanks for having me again.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Here we are six days from.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
The election that will side whether or not we have
elections anymore discussed.
Speaker 10 (09:04):
I was telling someone I have been trying to embrace
the uncertainty because I think that's where we are right,
it's uncertain. I wrote a piece that there's a difference
between the closest election ever and the most uncertain election ever,
and I'm not sure it's that close.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
Well, we don't know. I think that's a really good point.
Speaker 10 (09:22):
Yeah, it's high uncertainty, and look at a certain level,
if it's super close, it's very uncertain. That's kind of
you know, that's kind of the way it works. But
I do think and every election, every high stakes election,
contains a lot of uncertainty. But I do think that
there are factors that make this one more uncertain, more
(09:43):
possibilities than usual, and a lot of those have to
do with polling, with trying to understand what happened in
the sort of the mechanics of the twenty twenty election,
in terms of the COVID pandemic, changes in polls.
Speaker 5 (09:55):
All this kind of stuff.
Speaker 10 (09:56):
When we look at these polls that I think, as
we all know basic say, it is like literally tied
to the extent that things can be tied. There's a
lot of assumptions that go into those polls. That's always
the case with polls, but there's probably even more this time.
People have had to make assumptions about what the electorate
looks like and stuff like that, and those could be mistaken,
(10:19):
and those could end up giving us a result that
swings a few points in either direction, and obviously, in
our day and age, a few points is like you know,
a landslide.
Speaker 5 (10:29):
There's a lot of uncertainty, are real uncertainty.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Right, And I think what's really.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Important here when we talk about this is that Trump
historically gets at an electorate that is a non voting electorate,
and that's why he won in twenty sixteen. He was
able to re summons those people in twenty twenty, though
he didn't win. And now you know, it's almost a
decade later, we are all fucking tired.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
The man is still running.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
And again the strat is is still the same, double
down on the really offensive staff and hope that the
low propensity ones and twos come.
Speaker 10 (11:09):
Out, right, Yeah, for better or worse, we know at
many levels, you know, Donald Trump calls the shots. That's
what the people who love him love about him. I
think that is real about his campaigns, right. And one
of the things that you know, it's been a lot
of talk for the last year that he finally has
Chris Lasovita and Susie Wiles and there you know, they
(11:31):
have figured out how to tame him, not tame him
from being fairal and crazy, but make him seem normal, yes,
to run a real campaign. I think what we have
seen in these final weeks is that he's running a
He's running a Trump campaign there too, but he's going
to double down. He's not a reach out kind of person.
(11:52):
He's a double down kind of person. And he's going
to try to get hold of his people and get
hold of his people who maybe are ready to be
his people, but weren't his people yet. You know, this
whole idea that you know, there are people out there
who love Trump but they've just never voted before, and
get them to vote. There's you know, there's more people
he does that. He wants to, you know, demoralize the opposition.
(12:14):
A lot of head faking and stuff like that. So
it's he's a double down kind of guy.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Right, So Sunday he had this Madison Square Garden rally.
This is part of these weird rallies he's doing, like
the one he did in California. He had one in Coulchella, right,
Couldchella Valley, This one where all these people got stranded.
He had another one in another blue state. And the
(12:39):
idea here is that they are control fundraising and they
create this atmosphere of winning. But this one athlete spare
of Puerto Ricans endorsing Kama Harris, including Bad Bunny, j
Lo and Ricky Martin discuss.
Speaker 10 (12:58):
Yeah, it's you know, it's hard, always hard to know,
you know, what celebrity endorsements mean. I mean, I would
have been a little surprised if Jlo endorsed Trump. So
you know, if you had told me she endorsed Harris
six months ago, I would have been utterly unsurprised. But
I do think this has broken through in a significant way.
(13:18):
I think it's clearly broken through with people in the
Puerto Rican community, which a lot of people think, ah,
in New York, Puerto Ricans who live in New York. Obviously,
lots of Puerto Rican Americans. I mean, there's no such
thing as a Puerto Rican American. Pert Ricans are Americans
part of the United States. Many live in Florida. A
significant number live in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
So half a million.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Did you know half a million Puerto Ricans lived in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
I did not.
Speaker 5 (13:44):
I did not.
Speaker 10 (13:45):
I don't know how much that's concentrated in the eastern
part of the state or Pittsburgh or just kind of everywhere.
Doesn't matter though, right, yeah, exactly, it doesn't matter for
these purposes. I do think that that is the most
kind of eye popping remark. There's a lot, a lot
of things this guy said, everybody knew going in this
is going to you know, they're setting themselves up for
(14:05):
sort of a replay of the first go around in
nineteen thirty nine.
Speaker 5 (14:10):
Right, what they did is sort of a Nazi rally.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
The German American booned yet booned.
Speaker 10 (14:16):
Yes, yes, I think the whole thing has kind of
broken through a bit, just in the sense that it's
not a shock to anybody that there are a lot
of like racists and weird people around Donald Trump, but
from the perspective of the Trump campaign that you don't
want that to be your closing argument, right, like, we're
super racist. And I think this could have some impact
(14:37):
on the results of the election because it's you know,
because it seems to be very close, and you know,
there's a lot of other things that this and other
people there said. It's just everything works best for Trump
when they keep the sort of you know, the really
fairal degenerates kind of in the back room, you know,
(14:58):
with a with a direct lawn to the base. But
when you bring them out in front of normal people,
things get a little shaky. And it wasn't a great
time to bring them out in front of normal people.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Yeah, and It's funny because it's like Elon has devoted
himself to helping the Trump campaign in any way possible.
You could make the supposition that this might be connected
to this recent reporting from the Wall Street Journal, which
on the news side does amazing stuff and has all
this reporting about how Elon has talked to Vladimir Putin
(15:30):
more than once, right, which technically is someone who sits
on a pile of government contract and has very high
security clears is pretty problematic.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
So you could see where he might have some motivation there.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
But he does seem and he didn't maybe seem this
way as much four years ago. He does seem to
be one of that crowd of this sort of deep
and dark white national I mean, you know, I won't
say he's a white nationalist, but he certainly does not
seem uncomfortable with Stephen Miller.
Speaker 5 (15:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 10 (16:00):
I mean, he may not be, but all his friends are, right.
I mean, you know, maybe in a way it doesn't matter.
It's what he says and his friends and who he
gives money to and all that kind of stuff. I mean,
I think that Elon Musk in general is kind of
overdetermined in the sense that he's just a weird on
(16:20):
several levels, guy who's very impulsive, who clearly has some
issues in his personal life that have driven some of this.
And I get the sense that he's just you know,
sometimes people get really into bling, that's their new thing,
and fascism is Elon's new bling, and he's really into
(16:43):
it right now. And it wouldn't one hundred percent surprise
me if it was something he wasn't as into in
a few years. And again, I'm not like excusing him.
He's just an impulsive, weird person and he's fixated on this.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
It seems like a celebrity who's got you know, who
has got a cause that they're sort of interested in
but might not be interested in a couple of years.
I mean, I think it's the capricious nature I've been
so struck by as someone who you know, grew up with,
you know, not so famous, but a little famous people
and also a lot of people who had some money.
(17:18):
Was that what this election shows so deeply is that
the corrosive facts that wealth and power have on the
human soul. I mean, I am just stopped by the
people who come out and you know, they really are
their tax bracket. Trump ists. Right, they may or may
not believe, but maybe they believe that, maybe they don't.
(17:39):
Who cares again, but they have you know, decided that
the tax brackets, may you know, to pay less taxes,
they will go along with white nationalism and possibly the
end of democracy.
Speaker 10 (17:50):
In some ways, it is a very much a thing
for a certain kind of liberal to think, like, well,
is he actually white nationalists? Is actually this? Do they
really believe this? As is often the case in life,
it doesn't really matter what you believe, it's what you do.
And clearly these are people who, you know, if someone
(18:11):
came up to me and said, Hey, we're going to
go watch alligators have sex and then we're going to
cut their heads off and put their heads onto our
heads and dance around in the blood, I would say
that's so weird. I no matter how cool you are,
I can't. That's too weird for me. And you have
(18:35):
these people who it's not too weird for them.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
I'm going to do this annoying thing and bring up
a tweet.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
I hate it when people interview me and bring up
a tweet, But this I think is relevant because I
think it's a really important idea.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
I'm going to read the tweet as very annoying. But
this is who Trump is, and this is what Trump
is them is.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
But there's a.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Part of this that isn't widely known and this is
absolutely one hundred percent sure to a lot of reporters,
and that is that there are a lot of these
pop operatives I'm now you know, speaking stemborraneously and staffers
under thirty who are in fact to come from for
fin So explain that to our listeners and maybe with
(19:13):
a little more clarity.
Speaker 10 (19:15):
So, oh right, So there's a series of online communities
that go back a number of years, and there places
where the in cells hang out and the white nationalists
hang out, and a lot of you know, hardcore racist,
far right things are just part of the vernacular and
that's that kind of world. And so they are online
(19:36):
spaces that have that four chan is one of them.
There's eight chan. There are used to be certain subreddits.
There's you know, just all these kind of places out there,
and there is a whole cadre of young Republican operatives
and staffers who not only have spent time there, but
in so many of the cases being there in the
(19:59):
sort of post game or gate that whole kind of world.
That's where they decided they were Republicans, or they decided
they were far right. The point is that that was
where they had their political awakenings. Basically, this isn't surprising necessarily,
but this kind of got on my radar because, you know,
I am in charge of this news publication and I'm
(20:21):
almost never the reporter. I'm seldom the immediate editor. But
in our big stories, I'll get brought in just to
kind of kick the tires and whatever. And in story
after story, sort of like, okay, the person who got
who's getting in trouble for their you know, for their
old tweets. Maybe maybe that person came from four chan,
but okay, turns out his boss started at four chan
(20:44):
two and like and and okay, here's the here's the
guy who is not as bad and he was.
Speaker 5 (20:51):
A source for us. Wow, he's also from four chan.
Like wait, what's going on here?
Speaker 10 (20:55):
And this would just keep happening again and again and
again and I and I realized that it was pervasive,
and not only in sort of like you know, the
you know, there's always like maybe a dozen members of
the House GOP Caucus are the ones who are constantly
getting in trouble, not just those people staffers for relatively
normal Republicans, you know. Also, and I think a lot
(21:17):
of people remember that during DeSantis's primary campaign, there were
a few times where his campaign would drop these these
you know, kind of viral videos and they had, you
know a lot of kind of like muscle bound dudes
in like swim trunks and.
Speaker 5 (21:38):
A lot of stuff that.
Speaker 10 (21:39):
To people outside of that world look pretty home erotic
and just a lot of kind of crazy stuff. And
this background of mine being somewhat involved in a lot
of our investigative stories, I got it immediately because I
know that like half the people, half the guys under
thirty on his campaign, they started out like on four
Chan and then like in cell message board, and that's
(22:01):
how they communicate. And it's only when you sort of,
you know, when a campaign drops that and everybody's sees it, like, dude,
what what is what did I just see? What did
I just see? So that's it's that whole thing. It's
very real and something that occurred to me a couple
days ago. It used to be that you scratch any
democratic campaign and either the candidate or the top people
(22:22):
they first met on the McGovern campaign. I mean, I'm
dating myself here a bit, but you know, back in
the nineties, the odds okay, and a decade from now
it's going to in Republican campaigns fortune it's going to
be oh yeah, yeah. We first worked together at four chan.
We first created a dank meme at four chan.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
I wanted just interject for a minute because I think
this an important point that relates, which is JD. Bans
comes from that world, probably more so even than Ronda Sandis.
But what I think about I think about this a
lot because I saw him in that vice presidential debate,
(22:57):
which he did do better than Trim in that debate.
He is actually wildly unpopular. His favorability ratings are lower
than Donald Trump's. He struggles with really the same problem
that DeSantis does. Trump isn't without Trump brought to you
by someone who has the charisma of a you know,
(23:18):
of flat eyed Coke is not a winning message, right, Like.
Part of why Trump is able to get away with
this stuff is he was a celebrity for many years.
He makes it seem funny and not scary, you know,
whereas Jadie Vance. I mean, for example, the joke the
floating pile of garbage joke that we heard on Sunday.
(23:39):
Jad Vance said, why I didn't see it right, which
of course is ridiculous, and then he said, we should
be less offended by things. You know, this is obviously
well and like you tell that to these groups of
Puerto Ricans who are offended by having their country be
called garbage, that they should lighten up. I mean, like,
I don't think that's a wins.
Speaker 10 (24:01):
No, it's not a winning message. And I have to
imagine that a lot of Democrats or Democratic operatives would say, like, Okay, cool,
we'll put together a commercial for it, a commercial based
on it. You dudes can run it, you can have
the copyright, let's get it everywhere.
Speaker 5 (24:15):
I don't even think it's cynical.
Speaker 10 (24:16):
A lot of Democrats are like, they are not upset.
They're like, hey, thanks for taking the mask off. It's
just the right time.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Let's let every you know, I mean, a week before
the election, it's a good time to do it.
Speaker 5 (24:29):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 10 (24:30):
And the thing is with Trump is that he's horrible,
but we don't understand him and cannot fight him effectively
if we don't understand he has a real charisma. It
may not be your kind of not you, Molly, but
you know, everybody's charisma. But that is what allows him to,
you know, kind of do these things and to an extent,
(24:51):
get away with them. And whereas you have someone like
JD Vance he says something, Oh yeah, kind of like
angry lonely cat ladies and just he he'll say something
and everything's just silent.
Speaker 5 (25:01):
Everybody's like ooh, like no one likes you JD.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Yeah, No, I think that's right. We're in the home
stretch of whatever this is. But it does certainly seem
like a really important data play. Thank you, Josh Marshall.
Speaker 5 (25:16):
All right, talk to you later.
Speaker 7 (25:18):
Are you concerned.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
About Project twenty twenty five and how awful Trump's second
term could be? Well, so are we, which is why
we teamed up with iHeart to make a limited series
with the experts on what a disaster Project twenty twenty
five would be for America's future. Right now, we have
just released the final episode of this five episode series.
(25:40):
They're all available by looking up Molly Jong Fast Project
twenty twenty five on YouTube, and if you are more
of a podcast person and not say a YouTuber, you
can hit play and put your phone in the lock
screen and it will play back just.
Speaker 7 (25:55):
Like a podcast.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
All five episodes are online. Now we need to educate
a Maria Workens on what Trump's second term would or
could do to this country.
Speaker 7 (26:04):
So please watch it and spread the word.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Ron Brownstein is a senior political analyst for CNN and
a senior editor at The Atlantic.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Welcome back to Fast Politics, Ron Brownstein.
Speaker 8 (26:20):
Ay, Molly, anything going on?
Speaker 7 (26:23):
Nothing? Nothing? Not eight days until the election.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
So one of the many, many things I like about you,
besides the fact that you're so smart and so sane,
is that you also have been doing this for a
fairly long time, so you really know what this should
look like.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Okay, so what the fuck is going on?
Speaker 5 (26:43):
Go?
Speaker 11 (26:45):
Well, look, I mean I think you know, if you
look at the totality of the polling, clearly Trump gained
some ground in October. He hurt Harris with the ad
barrage but portraying her as week on crime, week on immigration,
and extreme on transgender rights. And you know, even before
the debate, one Republican said to me the Harris Trump debate,
(27:06):
one Republican said to me something that I think has
really borne out when they said, you know, if we
win this race, we're not going to win it through
the interactions between Harris and Trump, whether in the debate
or the daily news cycle, and we were reminded of
that again on Sunday, this person said, if we win
the race, it's going to be just by you know,
doing to her essentially what we do to Democratic candidates
(27:27):
in the Swing states since time immemorial, portraying them as
a you know, soft on crime and immigration and out
of touch liberal. And that campaign has been very powerful
and very pronounced, and clearly it has had some impact
on the national polling and even the polling and the
key swing states. But when it was all, you know,
now that we are in the final stretch, it's pretty
(27:48):
clear that even that offensive have not pushed at least
the former Blue Wall states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin
out of reach for her. And there are reasons to believe.
I think that she can still win those states even
with a smaller margin in the national popular vote than
Biden had, and maybe only as big a margin or
(28:10):
even slightly smaller in the national popular vote than Hillary
Clinton had. And we can talk about that the Sun
Belt states are murkier for her. Those are states where
non wide voters people of color are such a large
portion of the electorate that even marginal gains for Trump
in them could make all of those states tough. And
obviously North Carolina has been tougher Democrats anyway, But in Michigan, Pennsylvania,
(28:34):
and Wisconsin, which have always been in the most plausible
path to two seventy, not only for Biden but for her,
I think the race is well within the margin of error.
And as someone smarter than me said to me, you
know months ago, that means it is within the margin
of effort. You know, a lot of people are kind
of agonizing and you know, doom scrolling and checking polls
(28:54):
every hour. You know, if poles say that Michigan, Pennsylvania
with consin are with a point or even two points,
it really doesn't matter which way the pole says. What
it's really telling you is that the states will that
state will be decided by things that have not yet happened,
either interactions on the campaign trail, or perhaps even more important,
(29:15):
the quality of the campaign and organization that each side
can execute in the final days. So the way I
look at it, whatever happens in the sun belt. This
race is within reach for her through the rost belt Michigan, Pennsylvanus, Constant,
the three states Trump knocked out of the blue wall,
and it really is within the reach of either side
to bring this home.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Okay, now I'm going to ask you a question just
for me because I'm interested in it. This is a
brain tease. Okay, I'm going to read you a tweet.
This is something I'm obsessed with. Okay, Pole after poll
shows Harris leading among those that have already voted, even
narrowly in Florida. So these are exit polls. This is
the point this sky says. Unless I'm missing something, either
(29:58):
A polls are badly misreading this group, so.
Speaker 7 (30:02):
The exit polling is wrong, which is possible.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Or b early voters are bluer than we think and
thus party affiliation is not really telling the story.
Speaker 8 (30:12):
Yeah, I saw that too.
Speaker 11 (30:13):
You know, I myself find early voting almost impossibly opaque.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
And that's the conventional wisdom about early voting is that
it just doesn't tell you anything.
Speaker 11 (30:24):
Really, it's not maybe not exactly that. It's as a
lay person, you do not have access to the full
layers of information. You need to see if there's any
signal in the noise, because you know, the number of
people from each party who vote early doesn't really tell
you that much if either or both parties are simply cannibalizing,
(30:44):
as the saying goes their day of voters and moving
them to early. You know, what you really need is
something that tells you how irregular voters, how many irregular
voters are coming.
Speaker 8 (30:55):
Out for each side.
Speaker 11 (30:57):
And there are people who do that kind of deep dive.
You know, Tom Bonyer may be more famously than anybody
else on the Democratic side who feel good about what
they are seeing in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and not
as good about what they are seeing in the sun
Belt a swing stick. So which kind of you know,
which kind of fits into this general that I'm offering here.
(31:18):
I also have been struck by that polling. And look,
I mean, there is reason to believe. I think it
would not be crazy if Kamala Harris won a higher
percentage of previously Republican leaning independence, particularly college educated independence,
than Biden did for two big reasons. January sixth had
not yet happened, and Dobbs had not yet happened. In
(31:40):
the twenty twenty election. And you know, as I wrote
this week, I think it is highly likely that Harris
not only can, but probably must run better than Biden
did in these big white collar inner suburbs around Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee,
but also around Madison, Pittsburgh, and Grand Rapids. I mean,
(32:00):
there is a metro path for her through the former
Blue Wall states, and you know that is probably I
think where there's election is going to be is going
to be decided.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
So now explain to me kind of what it looks
like right now, the early voting, it's hard to make
sense of we have North Carolina, I mean, what should
she be doing now?
Speaker 11 (32:22):
The big picture is that if you look at polling
both in the swinging states and nationally, obviously polls differ,
but the basic story they are telling is very similar,
which is that Harris has regained a lot of the
ground Biden lost among voters of color, but she hasn't
regained all of it, especially among Latinos and especially among
(32:44):
Latino men. I mean, there are reasons for Democrats to
hope that the big declines among black men that some
polls are showing is an illusion that will not pan
out but it is hard to imagine that everything we're
seeing among Latino men is not real.
Speaker 8 (32:58):
At least you know, some of it is not real.
Speaker 11 (33:00):
So she has regained a lot of the ground Biden
loss among people of color, but not all of it.
On the other hand, like Biden, she is running very
close to the twenty twenty Democratic level of support among
white voters, which remember, was enough to win six of
the seven swing states. Right, so she might be down
(33:20):
a tick among white voters without a college degree, she
might be up a little bit among white voters with
a college degree.
Speaker 8 (33:27):
But the net is that she is very.
Speaker 11 (33:29):
Close in both national and state polling on a consistent
basis to where Biden was among whites.
Speaker 8 (33:35):
Depending on the data source.
Speaker 11 (33:36):
You used, Biden one between forty one and forty three
percent of whites, and look at something like the New
York Times poll was exactly forty three, the CNN national
poll was forty one. Consistently, she is right CNBC was
forty one. She's right in there. And so what does
that mean. That means that even a marginal decline, even
a slight decline in her support among voters of color
(33:58):
makes it really hard in the Sun Belt battlegrounds because
in those states, voters of color are a really big
portion of the electorate, and even a small change in
their preference is hard for Democrats to overcome.
Speaker 8 (34:10):
So Arizona, Nevada.
Speaker 11 (34:12):
You know, if Latino men really break away from Democrats
anywhere near the level we're seeing.
Speaker 8 (34:16):
Hard to win.
Speaker 11 (34:16):
Georgia still seems to be right in play, but even
a few point erosion with black men might be tough
to overcome.
Speaker 8 (34:24):
North Carolina has been tough to begin with for Democrats.
Speaker 11 (34:26):
On the other hand, if you are maintaining the national
the Biden level of support among whites from twenty twenty,
that leaves you in a much stronger position in Michigan
and Pennsylvania, where whites were about eighty percent of the
vote in twenty twenty, and in Wisconsin where they were
ninety percent. I mean, the paradox that Biden faced is
still kind of true. Even though Harris has improved a
(34:49):
lot with non white voters and become much more competitive
than he was in the Sun Belt, the reality is
is that her best states are still the ones that
are older and less diverse. Right, So one last point
about all this, imagine a world in which Harris doesn't
run as well among non white voters as Biden did
(35:10):
and way below what Clinton did in twenty sixteen, because
she ran even better.
Speaker 8 (35:15):
Among non white voters or does a color than Biden did.
Speaker 11 (35:17):
Imagine where Harris doesn't run as well as Clinton did
among voters of color, but she runs significantly better among
white voters, which is what she's backed to do.
Speaker 8 (35:25):
I mean, by holding.
Speaker 11 (35:27):
Biden's support among whites, she is locking in the improvement
that Biden made over Clinton from sixteen to twenty among whites.
So if you're down among non whites and up among whitest,
your net margin follow me here in the national popular
vote may be about the same.
Speaker 8 (35:46):
As Clinton's, which was only two points.
Speaker 11 (35:48):
Your national popular vote may not be any better than Clinton's,
but you would be better positioned than her to win Michigan, Pennsylvania,
and was. As the political scientists say, it is a
more efficient political coalition. Democrats have become accustomed to the
idea they have to win the popular vote by a
lot in order to squeeze out an electoral college majority,
and no one, no one would prefer to try to
(36:10):
win as a Democrat with a two point lead in
the popular vote rather than Biden's four and a half,
but it is not out of reach for her. She
may fall short in at least one of those three states,
but it is not hard for me to imagine a
world where the same popular vote national margin as Clinton
had can translate into two hundred and seventy Electoral College
(36:31):
votes for Harris in a way that it could not
for Clinton.
Speaker 7 (36:34):
Okay, now I have two questions.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
One is I want you to talk about what happened
last night at Madison Square Garden. The comedian whose name
is Tony Hinchcliff made a number of racist jokes.
Speaker 7 (36:46):
And also misogynistics jokes.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
He made a joke about oj Simpson, but the joke
that may have really cost the campaign the most votes
was his joke about how Puerto Rico was a floating
pile of garbage, almost.
Speaker 7 (37:00):
Like a mirror.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Hour later, we had j Lo, we had bad Bunny,
Mark Anthony did a video today, but Ricky Martin. So
we've had a number of Puerto Rican celebrities indors Harris,
and it reminds me a lot of You'll remember that
when Donald Trump was tweeting out these or retweeting these
fake Taylor Swift endorsements. That led to Taylor Swift endorsing Harris.
(37:26):
And remember when Trump said that Jamie Diamond was going
to endorse him. That led to Jamie Diamond saying that
actually he would take a cabinet position in the Harris administration.
But yes, so Donald Trump helped get a lot of
endorsements for Harris.
Speaker 7 (37:41):
Is it too late for something like that to move
the needle?
Speaker 11 (37:44):
Someone showed me a private Democratic poll that had Pennsylvania
within half a point, you know. So the answer is
there are five hundred thousand Puerto Rican citizens in Pennsylvania,
and I believe you. John Fetterman tweeted today that four
hundred thousand, roughly four hunred thousand of them can vote.
So Trump was counting on improvements with those voters as
(38:04):
part of his winning coalition. And first of all, the
tenor of the overall rally I think was a signal,
like everything else we're watching, that Trump thinks he has won,
that America is on board for a full scale kind
of cultural purge and racial purge, that they can just
kind of, you know, let it go. And also, I
(38:25):
mean they also believe that the more extreme and outrageous
you get, the more likely you are to activate rarely
voting conservative men, younger men, non college men, all of that.
So it's it's like they turn up the volume because
they think that's the only way they can reach these
people who are disconnected from the political system.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Right, but that they then very likely take a chance
to really alienate.
Speaker 8 (38:48):
That's the thing.
Speaker 11 (38:48):
The way I've been phrasing it is that for the
final week.
Speaker 8 (38:52):
To me, the question is what is the question?
Speaker 11 (38:55):
Like Trump started his speech yesterday, I believe with the
question that we're Republicans want to be the question are
you better off than you were four years ago?
Speaker 8 (39:03):
Now? It may not be fair.
Speaker 11 (39:05):
Given all the growth in the job market and all
the billions of dollars hundreds of abilities osma vet right.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
But a straight economic message you could see delivering for
a Republican right.
Speaker 11 (39:15):
But you know, most people, because of inflation, say they're
not better off than they were four years ago. And
that's especially true among families living paycheck to paycheck, which
include a lot of you know, in black families.
Speaker 7 (39:24):
The irony, though, is that four years ago we were
in the middle of a pandemic.
Speaker 11 (39:29):
Right that lead that aside, If that's the question it's
a hard road for Paris, but there is no reason
that has to be the question. I mean, the other
question that America is grappling with, that could be the
dominant question in the final days, is are you willing
to risk returning this Donald Trump? Who is this overtly racist, xenophobic,
misogynist and authoritarian.
Speaker 8 (39:50):
Are you willing to return him to the White House.
Speaker 11 (39:52):
The answer is yes for a lot of people, but
there are certainly some voters who might be dissatisfied with
the economy, might trust more on the economy, who simply
are not willing to.
Speaker 8 (40:02):
Take that risk. And this is not a theoretical proposition.
Speaker 11 (40:05):
We saw it in twenty twenty two when Democrats won
an unusually high percentage of voters who disapproved of Biden
or disapproved to the economy and still would not vote
for Republican alternatives.
Speaker 7 (40:16):
Right than Nicki Haley voters.
Speaker 11 (40:18):
Part of Nicki Haley voters, but you know, even probably
some blue collar white women and some black and Hispanic men.
In the end, I mean, I think Trump is trying
to execute and maybe appropriately enough, after this rally with
its nineteen thirty nine echoes, he is trying to execute
a pincer movement. I think it is highly likely, given
the way they portrayed Harris as his out of touch
(40:39):
coastal liberal, that he will run even better than he
did in Trump country, small town, rural e serban America,
mostly non college white. It's a lot of conservative Christians,
you know, very resonant with the social issues. And I
think primarily because of inflation, it's likely that he will
make at least.
Speaker 8 (40:57):
Some progress at crack these.
Speaker 11 (41:00):
Towering traditional Democratic advantages in the central cities among voters
of color.
Speaker 8 (41:06):
So where does she go to offset that?
Speaker 11 (41:08):
Well, partially she starts with a cushion because Biden won
the states that she has to win. But where does
she go. She goes to the inner suburb. She goes
to the racially diverse, well educated, generally doing pretty well.
Like inflation is kind of a pain, but it's not
really an existential crisis for people in Montgomery and Delaware
County and Oakland County and Kent County and Gaine and
(41:28):
the Wow Counties, Waukesha and so forth. And there are
the voters who could say, yeah, I don't think the
last four years have worked out that well, but I
am not willing to take the risk of going to Trump,
and if you ask me today, she can, and she
probably must do a little better than Biden did in
all of the places I just mentioned, the four suburban
(41:49):
counties outside Philly. Biden won them by two hundred ninety
thousand votes, which was itself one hundred and fifteen thousand
more than Hillary. She may have to do better yet
Oakland County he doubled the margin of Hillary.
Speaker 8 (42:00):
She might have to do it better.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
Yet.
Speaker 11 (42:01):
Dane County, it just keeps growing, turnout keeps going up,
and the Democratic margins keep going up. She's probably going
to have to max out there to squeeze out Wisconsin.
Not a simple path, no guarantee that she can do it,
but not an impossible one at all. I mean, really
within the margin of effort, as people say, for her
to generate enough of the vote she needs in all
(42:24):
of those three states to squeeze them out, even if
the national popular vote is much closer than it was
in twenty twenty, and maybe as close or even closer
than it was in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 7 (42:33):
All right, so now go along with me on this.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
What if the polls are just wrong, What if she's
doing better what if they're just waiting them to are heavy,
to try to not underestimate Trump yet again, could be sure?
Speaker 11 (42:50):
I mean yes, I mean you only find out the
polls are wrong after I mean, maybe that's right, but
I kind of feel like, you know, in some ways
that were like past that question.
Speaker 8 (42:59):
If after all of this, the polls.
Speaker 11 (43:01):
Are telling you it's within one point either way, they're
telling you that either side can win these states, and
their polling probably can't predict which one it will be
because it isn't surgical precision to that extent where you
can look at it and say, well, you know, she's
up at half a point in Wisconsin, so she's going
to win, and you don't know.
Speaker 8 (43:17):
I mean.
Speaker 11 (43:18):
One thing Democrats do have to worry about is that
in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, the next circle of irregular voters
does tend to lean more toward non college whites who
are probably going to vote for Trump, you know, sixty
to forty. But there are also a lot of high
propensity Republican leaning voters, women in particular, but maybe even
some men who are not going to go along with
him in the way they did last time. Because of
(43:39):
the two things the two big things that have happened
since then January sixth and Doc and also just this
you know, turn toward ever more overt kind of authoritarian
and racist. By the way, I can I just make
one point on that it always gets a lot of
focus when Trump says things that are outrageous or you know,
just patently offensive. In John Kelly's interviews, we focus on
(44:01):
the fact that he had praised Hitler and said he
wanted Hitler's generals from yesterday's rally. We're focusing on these
remarks about Puerto Rico. But I think it's really important
for people to understand that it's not just rhetoric. There
is policy attached to this in each case. I mean
what John Kelly, The most important part of John Kelly's
interview was not that Hitler, you know, Trump said ad
Myron things about Hiller. It's that John Kelly said, Trump
(44:23):
repeatedly as president wanted to use the military against American
citizens on US Street, and as I've written, he has
multiple specific proposals to do that. And similarly, at the
same time this rally was happening in Madison Square Garden,
one of Trump's top immigration divisors was on sixty minutes,
and he said something that was so incendiary that I
(44:47):
am astonished for we're not talking.
Speaker 8 (44:48):
About it more.
Speaker 11 (44:49):
Today he was asked, how would you avoid family separation
in madics deportation, He said, no, we want to separate
them at all.
Speaker 8 (44:55):
We'll deport the kids too.
Speaker 11 (44:56):
There are four million US c citizen children Latino US
citizen children who have at least one parent who is undocumented.
So the Trump administration is now openly talking about deporting
potentially millions of US citizen Latino children as part of
(45:17):
the mass deportation.
Speaker 8 (45:18):
I have not heard that before yesterday. And maybe the
courts would stop.
Speaker 11 (45:22):
Them, though I'm not sure John Roberts would stop Donald
Trump from anything that he wants to do in the end.
But when you were talking about deporting not only undocumented
people but millions of citizens, you are starting to veer
deeper into the realm of ethnic cleansing. And again, you know,
the paradox and all of this is that Trump is
not only hoping for he is counting on significantly improved
(45:45):
performance with Latino voters, especially men, even as they are
now talking openly about deporting potentially millions of US born
citizen Latino kids, We just kind of wrap your head
around that, you know, their expectation that they can get
away with this, you know, kind of stereo broadcasting that
kind of message white yes and counting on Latinos to
(46:08):
move for them on the economy.
Speaker 7 (46:09):
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
Ron No Moon, Jesse Cannon, Molly.
Speaker 4 (46:18):
The fallout continues from Tony Hinchcliff's really stupid joke about
Puerto Rico. What are you seeing here?
Speaker 2 (46:24):
So, Puerto Rico's Republican party chairman has threatened to withhold
his support from Donald Trump unless he issues an apology
for the offensive remarks that Tony Henchcliff made on Sunday
at Madison Square Garden. He called the island a floating
island of garbage. The comments sparked a lot of condemnation,
(46:46):
but we haven't seen an apology. And if I know
anything about Trump, and I know a little bit, unfortunately
for me, it's that I would be very surprised if
you get an apology for this. You'll remember that Donald
Trump still hasn't dissape out North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson.
Speaker 3 (47:05):
So I think it's very.
Speaker 2 (47:06):
Unlikely we're going to see an apology here, since what
we saw in Chady Vance say was that everyone should
suck it up and be okay with racism because we're
all too politically correct.
Speaker 3 (47:19):
That, my friends, is our moment of book.
Speaker 1 (47:23):
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best
minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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