June 12, 2024 • 53 mins
Legendary campaign manager Stuart Stevens stops by to talk to us about how he thinks Biden’s voters will come home to him as the campaign season heats up. Former pollster Adam Carlson gives his analysis of 2024 polls. The Washington Post’s Sarah Ellison explains how disinformation circulates through our media.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discuss the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds, and an appeals court judge has declared
DeSantis's band on transgender care to be unconstitutional. We have
such a great joke for you today. Recovering polster Adam
Carlson stops by to talk about his analysis of the
(00:24):
twenty twenty four polls. Don't worry, It's not terrible. Then
we'll talk to the Washington Post Sarah Ellison about how
disinformation circles affect our media. But first we have legendary
campaign manager and emotional support pundant, the author of the
(00:45):
conspiracy to in America Five Ways my old Party is
driving our democracy to autocracy. The Lincoln Projects owned Stuart Stevens.
Welcome back to Fast Politics. Stuart Stevens.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Hidekra me to a party.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
I'm such a fan of yours. I was thinking about
it because I was thinking, like, now we can talk
campaign with someone who has done many campaigns but also
has a sort of nice, not too crazy way about him.
I feel like campaigns make a person a little unhinged.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
They do, and most people work in campaigns and then
they grow up and they do something else. As my
long time partner Rush Street for and I used to say,
we'd look around after every cycle and we go like,
what's wrong with us? We still want to do campaigns.
But you know, I think I probably in a lot
of ways represented the worst of the American political system
because I just like campaign I was never really interested
(01:44):
in that thing called government, and it gave me a
very simplistic and shallow and what proved to be ultimately
dangerous value system, which is I was happy if I
won and I was sad if I lost, And you know,
that worked all great up until Trump. Then I had
asked self, like, how is it that I didn't see this?
There's not, unfortunately, any good answer I've come up with.
(02:07):
And I think it's absurd to think that Trump hijacked
the party. Nobody made anybody vote for Donald Trump, and
Donald Trump is so popular in the Republican Party, and
the party has become Donald Trump because it's what the
party wants. Let's quit pretending, you know that there's some
party that we're gonna go.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Let you it's interesting to me. One of the things
that I think a lot of us spend probably way
too much time thinking about is why is Donald Trump
so popular? Like still and again he's not so popular, right,
he's not, but he has a certain thing that people
still like about him, despite the fact that he's a
(02:44):
convicted felon and out on bail for three other cases.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
You can't get hung up on these little details, right exactly.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
But the question is, like, I think that some of
this just comes down to, like, charismatic politicians do better
with the electorate. I mean, is that possible? Is it
just that simple?
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Listen, I'm pretty harsh about this, but I think I've
earned a right to be harsh because I know these people,
and I dealt with the Republican electorate. I don't think
there's anything flattering that you can say about the Republican electorate.
We can't blame this on Fox. At any given moment,
the most watching Fox are three million and seventy plus
(03:22):
million voted for Trump. There's more information available to voters
today in America than any time or any place in history.
I mean an actual true statement. It's not North Korea.
You know, it's not Mississippi in nineteen sixty five, when
there was people referred to being behind the Magnolia curtain
because one family owned all the newspapers, and it's not
that way. I think at the heart of Trump is race.
(03:45):
And Trump's coalition is eighty five percent white in a
country that is sixty fifty nine percent white less. So
the time we finished this and I think that ultimately
that is the reality of what happened to the Republican Party.
And now I get in this argument with my still
Republican friends and they go, well, so let me get
(04:09):
this stressory. You think everybody voted for Trump is a racist,
and it's just no. But I think everybody who voted
for Trump pretty much thought something was more important to
them than having a racist as president, because you can't
deny that Donald Trump is a racist. And sixty percent
of the electorate was non college educated whites. That's now
forty percent and dropping. It's the fastest shrinking demographic in America,
(04:33):
and I think that is at the fear of what
drives so much of trump Ism. And they're right, they
are losing control and America's headed to become a majority
minority country, and in many ways it already has. If
you're sixteen years and younger, in America, the majority are
non white, you know, and odds look really really good
they're going to be non white when they turn eighteen.
(04:54):
And that is at the root of all of this.
I think, you know, I do not understand these CEOs
who support Donald Trump. I think it's shameful. I think
they should be shamed. I think to Steve Schwartzman, of
the world, would you rather be a CEO in Russia?
You have a pretty good year.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
It's a very short term way of thinking of the world.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
You look at Blackstone, Steve Schwartzman, So you've got a
convicted felon in New York. Blackstone is over four thousand
employees from New York. So is what Steve Schwartzman is
CEO sending a message to his employees that the rule
of law in New York State doesn't matter. That's interesting
because I imagine if you work for Blackstone, they actually
(05:33):
expect you to adhere to the laws of New York State.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
If Blackstone were hiring convicted felons, like if you want
a job at Blackstone and you owe more than one
hundred million dollars, like yes, for fraud, would you get hired?
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Absolutely not. You can go to the Blackstone Code of Ethics,
which is prominent, and I just don't understand why there
should be a higher standard for being an intern at
Blackstone than being president.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Right, all right, exactly.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
And I think that those like Steve Schwartzman and Jamie
Dimond has said nice things about Donald Trump before, famously
at the Davos. I don't know what he said about
who he's going to vote for at this stage. If
he said anything, I think a lot of people are
telling him to shut up, shut up and durabble. I
think it is foolish to think that you can have
(06:30):
the benefits of a democracy that you're enjoining now and
elect a non democratic president, someone who is going to
lead the country for four years, non wall d democratic
and Trump obviously does not support democracy. I mean, there's
no pretense of it. And if you think that Donald
(06:50):
Trump won't come after you, you're feeding the alligator hoping
he'll eat you. Last.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Well, it's the Mitch McConnell saying, right.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
It is precisely the miss McConnell thing that workout. Mitch.
I've talked about this before, you know. When I was
writing this book, it was all a lie. I stumbled
across the memoirs of friends on pathin who was a
Pressian aristocrat responsible more than anybody else for ushering Hitler
into power. So he wrote his memoir in nineteen fifty three.
Now things had gone a little sideway, I mean, a
(07:18):
one hundred million killed World War two Holocaust, and he
still was defending supporting Hitler. And there are phrases that
he uses is if memoir that are literally verbade him
of what Ms McConnell said, that we will change him.
There are more of us, He will have to adapt
to us. So I wonder how did Mitch McConnell feel, well,
his colleagues were running for their lives and their own offers.
(07:40):
How did that work out? And still mits McConnell is
afraid to say Donald Trump's name in public. So I
think it's a historic failure of a party. And ultimately,
I mean that's I said about the selection. The selection
isn't remotely about Donald Trump. It's about each of us.
We know who Donald Trump is, He's just who are we?
And I think it's a character tist. You know, I
(08:04):
am so offended by these Trump supporters that say, you know,
the system was rigged. We had to resort to what
you know, storming the Capitol and all of this. So
let me get this straight. There are Americans who actually
were prosecuted, were hunted, were tortured, were murdered to stop
them from participating in the system. And they're called black America.
(08:24):
So how did they react. They didn't storm the capital
and violence easier. They stayed in the system, They registered
more voters, they continue to believe in the system. And
yet the overwhelmingly middle class white voters that support Trump
have walked away from America. And I think it is
shameful and I have no need to understand them. I really,
(08:46):
I don't want to understand the guy in the camp
all switch sweatshirt. I just want him walk up.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Yeah. No, So let's talk about right now. We are
still in this ecosystem where we don't really know know
quite what the results from Trump's criminal conviction are going
to be, though it does seem like there is some
movement there. And I recently read something where that actually,
(09:13):
Hunter Biden's trial is not hurting Biden as much as
Trump World wanted it to. That actually people can have
two thoughts at the same time, you know, shockingly, So
I'm curious to know what you You know, we're sort
of in this weird period run up to the conventions,
(09:33):
and I'm wondering what you think that Biden world should
be doing and are they doing? What do you think?
Speaker 2 (09:40):
I am a great admirer of the Biden campaign. I
think they ran a brilliant campaign in twenty twenty that
they don't get enough credit for. You know, be the
incumbent president is incredibly difficult, and you know, nineteen seventy six,
we passed campaign financing, so each Democratic Republican nominee got
the same amount of money, and under that system, it
(10:02):
did level the playing field. Under that system, Bush lost
and Carter lost. So then in two thousand and eight
Obama walked away from that system, so he spent a
general election about three hundred and seventy million. McCain spent
eighty four million. So, as always happens, once nobody steps
out of the system, everybody steps out. So twenty twelve
(10:22):
was the first time since nineteen seventy two Nixon McGovern
the two candidates were running against each other who were
not in the federal funding system Romney Obama. Romney lost,
so Biden beat An incumbent president not in the federal
funding system, so it's fair at last, when is the
last time that happened? Well, the answer happens to be
(10:42):
Herbert Hoover and he had a bad year. So I
have tremendous respect for what the Biden campaign does. They
have this quality that is so rare in politics, which
is patience. And you know, there is this overwhelming human
tendency to day trade politics, so you have you know,
(11:05):
Biden goes out and has a lousy press conference after
this Special Council's finding, and you know, you have people
like Ezra Client writing you should get out, this is
it right, and then a few weeks later he gives
a great state of the Union space you go, well,
maybe you shouldn't get out, and politics is not for
day traders. You know. My greatest worry where i'm the
(11:25):
Biden campaign would be peaking too early strangers that may seem,
because I think there is a great narrative in American
tradition of coming from behind, and I think the greatest
danger for the Biden campaign is they're going to start
leading too early, and then they may drop back, and
then it's harder to go back again. You know, I
have no contact with the Biden campaign, so this is
(11:46):
just purely outsider. I think that they understand the rhythm
of this campaign and there is no need to win
every news cycle that I think he'll probably be behind
until the Democratic Convention, and then I think after the
Invention they'll be able to come out and prosecute a
campaign against Trump. That the elements are being laid for now.
(12:07):
And if I had to make a bet now, I
don't think the race is going to be particularly close.
I think it'll be close to about October twentieth, and
then it's going to be like nineteen eighty and when
Carter started to drop. I don't understand what you get
when you vote for Donald Trump. What do you get
when you vote for Republicans? I don't know. There's no
(12:28):
policy except Project twenty twenty five, which God knows they
don't want to talk about much because it is overwhelmingly unpopular.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
One of the things that I was struck by this
weekend was that Trump was in Nevada and he said
to the group, I will make it so you don't
have to pay taxes on tips anymore, a wildly unpopular thing.
It's not clear how many people actually do pay taxes
on tips. But that ability to just say whatever he
(12:59):
would any interest in the possibility of being actually able
to do it. Do you think that helps him? I mean,
I feel like that that's the thing where I'm like,
he's not bound by the truth at all.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
No, I mean, this has always been the case. He
was going to balance the budget in four years, said
so when a Washington Post interview, he was going to
make health care a beautiful plan for health care Mexico,
was going to pay for the wall, as Mark Cuban
famously said, he is the guy who will say anything
at closing time to get laid right, all right. And
(13:31):
I think that his ability to do that is reduced
every day because the difference between what he has said
he was going to do and what he does is greater,
and that includes to what he has actually done. So
he's actually taken away roe v. Eight. Okay, let's live
(13:51):
in that world. He actually is supporting putin. Let's live
in that world.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
What do you think about those polls that say people
don't believe that Trump actually was the person who took
away roe v. Wade.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
It's troubling. I think that's why if you're sitting in
a Biden campaign, you want to spend over a billion dollars,
and I think that's you know, as that old phrase goes,
campaigns matter, and I think that there are a lot
of very substantive, impressive, life affecting positive changes that have
(14:26):
been brought by the Biden administration. Unemployment at record lows,
you have stock markets at record highs. That does affect
people more than realize because of the one ks. You
have wages rising. All of this actually is a positive
underpinning to people. People who now are paying thirty three
(14:47):
dollars for insulin know that people who are going to
pay lesser than Haler's know that now it is always
difficult for any incumbent to get credit for what they've done.
In two thousand and four, were sitting focus groups in
the Bush campaign, and one of the great goals of
the Bush administration was to reduce taxes for those in
the lower income So the goal was family of four
(15:10):
making forty thousand dollars or less would pay no income tax,
which happened under Bush. So we would sit in focus
groups with people who no longer were paying income tax
and would ask them, are you paying more income tax
now under Bush or not, they say I'm paying more now,
and then you would generally point out where you're actually
not paying any income tax now, and they would say, well,
I'm paying more in taxes, and they just wouldn't believe you.
(15:34):
And that's why in two thousand and four, among other reasons,
we decided correctly, I think, really led by Carl Rowe,
who I do think is a genius, that there were
very few persuadable voters. I mean we would show people
ads that, like you know, Mark McKinnon and I had
made about women voting in Afghanistan, and people would cry,
(15:55):
I mean openly cry. Men would cry. And then they'd say,
you know, I'm never going to vote for him. That's
the best thing I've ever seen. I'm never going to
vote for And out of that strategy of what came
to be known as Fortress precincts, which the way you
could win, the path to win was very simple. Where
you got sixty percent, you needed to get sixty three percent.
(16:15):
Where you got fifty two, you needed to get fifty five.
You had to just increase your margin by just a
little in every one of these precincts and not go
after persuading voters. And I think that the Biden campaign
is in much the same reality now. So Biden won
by eight million votes, Trump lost. He needs new customers.
(16:36):
You start with the question how many Biden twenty Trump
twenty four voters are there? Some? I don't think there's
massive amounts. So what is Trump doing to get new customers?
As far as I can tell, he's saying, if you're
not a long term, devoted customer here, we don't want
your business. Which people hear that, and I think they react.
(16:58):
There was a lot of behind, you know, Nikki Haley,
and ultimately politics is more about addition and subtraction. And
you know, one of my favorite clients in Haley Barber,
you know, ran for governor Mississippi after a career in politics,
and Haley like to say, it's better to be for
the future because it's going to happen anyway. And you know,
(17:23):
the Republican Party is basically at war with the modern world,
and I think they're going to lose.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
I would literally sit here with you all day because
you just are so soothing. But I think that's a
really good point that the Republican Party is at war
with the future. Thank you so much, Stewart Stevens. I
really appreciate you. Spring is here, and I bet you
(17:51):
are trying to look fashionable, So why not pick up
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Get t shirts, hoodies, hats, and top bags. To grab some,
head to fastpolitics dot com. Adam Carlson is a former
(18:13):
and recovering Democratic polster. Adam, welcome back. I think of
you as a fan favorite.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Oh wow, that's very flattering. Well, I'm really happy to
be here. Thanks for having me back.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Because we deal with polls, right, I hate polls. You
probably don't hate poles as much as I hate poles,
since you're a recovering pollster, But I find polls to
be very annoying. But they're really the only indicator we
have ultimately, right. We can do turnout on the primaries,
but that's kind of different, so we have to sort
(18:46):
of use them. But they are sort of a blunt instrument.
And what is sort of the state of modern polling
right now?
Speaker 3 (18:52):
I think that the state of mone and polling is
in plus right now. If you're doing a phone poll,
response rates have never been lowered. This has been covered
a ton, This has been a reason to criticize polls.
You're lucky to get a one percent response rate, as in,
if you contact one hundred people, you're lucky to get
one person to actually answer and finish your holl You
have to call people on their cell phones now, which
(19:13):
is a better way of contacting them, but it's a
lot harder to get a hold of folks because you
call our ID show the unknown number. You're not really
ever sure if the people who are answering those unknown
numbers are representative of the broader population or if they're
more engaged or kind of weirdos. It's a bit imprecise,
and there's things you can do on the back end
to try and retro sit them. People you're polling to
(19:36):
be representative of the population. But again, you're making a
lot of assumptions each time you're doing that. So each
assumption that each polster makes and how much thought and
rigor they put into it can affect the accuracy and
can introduce bias. So, like you said, it's a blunk instrument.
It's never been harder to pull than it is right now,
there's online polls. Of course there's live texts, people are
trying different things, But it was a lot easier to
(19:58):
be a polster ten twenty third years ago than it
is today.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Explained to us sort of what we're seeing in these
free Biden pre Biden Trump five months out polling.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Let me step back for a second here, and I
think that the rise of the five thirty eight in
Nate Silver Next starting in two thousand and eight was
great for visibility for polling, and then by thirty eight
in particular and others as well had really good cycles
in two thousand and eight twenty twelve, and they're seen
as like these oracles, people doing these models. But historically
polling error is pretty high in one direction or another.
(20:32):
So twenty sixteen and twenty twenty eight underestimated Trump twice.
So there's this working assumption that because the polls underestimated
Trump twice in twenty sixteen and twenty twenty, that they'll
do it a third time. So to answer your question,
right now, Trump leads Biden, maybe by a point, maybe
it's tied nationally, that's depending on which aggregate you look at.
That's kind of where we're at right now. Biden got
(20:54):
a roughly two point bump after Trump's conviction or thirty
four or felony convictions, and nationally we don't have a
lot of state pulling. It's compared before and after right now,
so things are tight nationally. But people assume that because
Poles underestimated Trump in twenty sixteen and twenty twenty, that
they'll do it again in twenty twenty four. And that's
not necessarily how polling error works. That's happened in both directions.
(21:18):
In twenty twelve, underestimated Obama and this spill sally a
much closer race than it ended up being against Smith Romney.
It's tempting to say that again like Biden needs to
be ahead by a lot more because the Poles will
underestimate Trump again, But we just don't know that's the case,
especially because I would bet good money that a lot
of posters have made adjustments ince then.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
This is why I wanted to have you on this
podcast because it strikes me and you and I can
both go into this right now, that there may be
and again we don't know because we don't have algorithmic
transparency and this is obviously not an algorithm, but we
don't have the transparency for the numbers to see exactly
(21:58):
how they're waiting these numbers to try and create the
sort of this is an electorate that is very difficult
to predict, right, And so the question is they're trying to,
yet again pull to explain an electorate that there is
not a lot that you can't completely explain, right.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
Yeah, this is the challenge every year. It's always easier
in retrospect to see what the errors were, and I
think a lot of posters are trying in good faith
to figure it out and to get it right, to
learn from previous mistakes. There's also a reputational risk for
getting it wrong in the same direction a third time.
So in twenty sixteen, it was okay, we underestimated the
turnout or the Trump percentage of non college educated white voters.
(22:41):
In twenty twenty kind of underestimated the Republicans kind of
coming home to Trump. We've made it a lot closer
than the polls and anticipated as a Biden one, but
it was he's supposed to win by a lot more.
Speaker 4 (22:52):
And this time we don't really know.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
I mean, no polster is going to nor should they
reveal their secret sauce in terms of all, right, we're
going to comperment with this, but we are seeing some weirdness,
historical weirdness in the polls. We're seeing Trump winning a larger,
historically large number of people of color in the polls,
the largest in some cases since the Civil Rights Act
was passed, in which I find hard to believe. You
(23:15):
never quite know, but that could be the artifact of
them all changing their not all, but the way they're sampling,
or a way to reaching people, or maybe they're trying
something different, or maybe it's real.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
I have my doubts, right, I have.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
My doubts too, a lot of these. So let's talk
about cross tabs for truth. A lot of these numbers
look a little bit dicey. Explain to us like some
of these sort of the things you've seen in the
cross tabs. Besides this largest racial realignment since the voting
right to that.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Yeah, So every month I'm behind for May, but every
month I put together of higher quality national polls. I
dig through and manually enter all the cross that bindings
to see where the trends are releatant to twenty twenty
and what holes are showing are going to be the
biggest shifts again, we'll be, but what polls are capturing
right now? So this kind of smooths out any one
polster who's finding something super weird and also solves the
(24:06):
problem of looking at tiny sample sizes. This isn't a
perfect way of doing this, but it is better than
anything else that we have out there. So we have
a lot of regular forecasts, right I'm like, like, here's
the average of the polls. Here's real clear politics, here's
five thirty eight. This is trying to go under the service. Okay,
so Biden is down from four years ago. Where is
it happening among So every single month we're seeing black
(24:28):
voters shifting away from Biden and towards Trump by twenty
plus points compared to twenty twenty. We're still looking at
like a you know, eighty twenty type margin, but it's
above ninety ten in twenty twenty.
Speaker 4 (24:41):
That's a huge shift.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
And the polls right now are showing that Trump will
get the highest share of black voters since before nineteen
sixty four, so in a very.
Speaker 4 (24:49):
Very very long time.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
Based on why, there's a bunch of theories as to
why this is the case, one of which is that
this is real movement. This is based off of frustration
with Biden, based off of not following through on promises,
or impact of inflation or et cetera. But that doesn't
really explain why it's afecting black voters more than let's say,
Hispanic voters are non college educated white voters. I don't
find that super convinced it could be part of it.
(25:10):
But there are also other theories too, right that there
are just satisfaction with Biden is super high right now,
and so black voters are just expressing their frustration. This
is called expressive responding, where you're not really thinking about
it as a binary election. You're kind of just like,
I'm pissed at Biden, and you know what, I'm going
to say, I'm undecided, or I'm going to say I
vote for Trump, and.
Speaker 4 (25:28):
Maybe you will, maybe you won't.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
If we're using history as any guide, the base generally
comes home. This is also weird election. My personal theory,
the one I share with a few other polling nerds.
It has to do and this might be getting a
little in the weeds.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Please get in the weeds with us.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
There are the ways of putting guardrails demographically. When you're
sealing the poll right, you don't want to get too
many white people, you don't want to get too many
college educated people. And there are some people that are
just easier to reach when you're polling colled educated folks,
white folks, women, people who lean more democratic. And those
are people as well, whether you're doing phone or online now,
because there much more inter as savvy than they used
(26:03):
to be five ten years ago. So what happens is
you put these guardrails up called quotas, make sure you're
not getting too many of one group. So you fill
up the easy buckets first, right, you fill up white voters,
you fill up seniors you feel up called it educated
and women, and then you're left with Okay, at the end,
we're scrambling to get black, Hispanic or Republican leaning voters,
younger voters, people who are much much, much harder to reach,
(26:26):
and so then you're kind of left with this weird
group or non representative group of young conservative people of
color who are not representing population, but they're who you
have left to reach, and so you get a couple
of those to fill out your quotas. And then at
the end, because you still don't have enough of them,
because again, they're very very hard to reach, and it's
very expensive to reach them, and you may not be
(26:46):
able to hit your deadlines. If you're just keep trying to,
you know, ram your head against the ball trying to
reach them, you upweight them. So what that means is
you make them basically worth more than one of themselves
in the actual final pool. Right, you wait, but the
entire sample to be representative of whatever you're trying to
go for. Let's say Red's registered voters or likely voters
in a particular state. So not only are you getting
(27:08):
people who aren't representative, you're making them more impactful than
they normally would be otherwise and you're down waiting. So
basically early on you're getting all these like white seniors
at college, which is maybe why you're seeing Biden holding
up better among white voters and seniors and things like that,
and while you see him slipping among young voters and
people of color. The truth is it's probably somewhere in
(27:29):
the middle of all these things. It's hard for me
to believe based on that a rematch election in a
very very long time. But it's hard for me to
see like these massive, massive swings in a rematch election
where people, most normal people don't want to think or
talk about this election. People are upset with their choices.
I don't know most of the conversations I've had with
people who aren't politically engaged, or just like Okay, I
(27:51):
guess we're doing this, or don't even know who the
nominees are still in June. So in that case, you'd
expect some movement on the margins, like yeah, okay, maybe
Biden lou Is, you know, three or four percentage points
among certain groups, gains, maybe some.
Speaker 4 (28:04):
Back here or there.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
But these twenty point swings, fifteen point swings would be,
let's just say, unprecedented, especially when both candidates are such
known quantities and very unpopular.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
One of the things you said, which I thought was
very interesting, I'm doing this annoying thing that people do
where they talk about a tweet. It's a very annoying
thing when people do it. To me, I think they're stupid.
But you had a tweet that showed subthlet the effect
of so much anxiety on the left that Biden is
(28:36):
losing this saying that he should be winning by fifteen points,
but he's not actually in a terrible place right now,
is hey.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
No, he's one, I mean historically normal pulling air away
from winning fairly comfortably. But Trump's also was one pulling
away from winning fairly comfortably too. But essentially we're looking
at a I mean five thirty eight released their forecast
today basically a coin flip, Biden as a fifty three
percent chance of winning, Trump as forty seven, and that's
been tightening since the last couple of months. And they
(29:04):
incorporate fundamentals like economics, consumer sentiment in addition to polling.
You know, if you look at polls today, Trump is
likely to win. But again, polls are not this far out,
are not meant to be predictive of what's happening in November.
Thought like, okay, this is again an imperfect snapshot, but
the best toool we had, as you mentioned earlier, of
where the race is right now. But we also have
(29:24):
these eyebrow race hitting shifts right and it's like, okay,
which one of these are real? Are they canceling each
other out? You know, is Biden doing as well among
seniors as good polls are showing? Is that counteracting other stuff?
So we don't really know.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
And that was why I wanted to have you on
because the other thing I wanted you to talk about,
which I am struck by, is that in almost all
of these polls you have down ticket Democrats, namely senators
in swing states. And I'm thinking about Ohio here and
share odd is a once in a lifetime politician. But
(29:59):
also so he's running about ten points ahead of his competition.
He's running like fifteen points ahead of Biden.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
And your friends, like the NPR Maris pulled up tea
out today that had him.
Speaker 4 (30:09):
I think he was up five and.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
Biden was down seven. And that's the first poll we've
had there in a while. That's actually the neat good quality.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Yeah, this Biden down brought the rest of the ticket
up for Democrats. See that in Pennsylvania, you see that
in Wisconsin. Saw that Michigan is seems a little tighter
in the center race. But I mean, you're seeing that
in a lot of these polls. So make that make
sense for me.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
So I think there's two things going on.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
There's a lot of races and what you're referring to
in those other states, So like Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin, Right, Arizona.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
Ruben is running way ahead. Now I think Carrie Lake
is her own problem.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
Yeah, she the unique case. Yeah, so talk about Arizona first.
So that's an open seat. Here's the cinema about running
for re election Carry Lake versus Ruben Geego. So Carry
Lake is running way behind Trump and Geago is running
a couple points ahead of Biden. That's a different situation
because Carry Lake is very well known and not very
well liked, and there's even been kind of whispers among
(31:12):
Republican operatives that they might just triage that race, they
might give up on her at some point, and that's
too early to say, but the fact they're even talking
about that in a state like Arizona is very telling.
But these other races in Nevada, in Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania,
you have the Democratic candidacity incumbent running out evenly with
(31:35):
Biden a little bit more, maybe a point or two
ahead on average, but the Republican is way behind Trump.
So a lot of that might have to do with
name recognition. They're like, I don't really know this person.
I'm not going to necessarily so that they'll probably, you know,
come home and vote the Republican We don't really know yet.
We don't really know if there's going to be we're
going to see a big return to split ticket voting
this year. It's been on the decline in recent cycles.
(31:57):
We only have, I believe, two senators that represent states
said the other party one in twenty twenty. That's Susan
Collins and Maine and Ron Johnson in Wisconsin.
Speaker 4 (32:06):
That's it.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
The other ninety eight senators represent states that they're party
won at the presidential level in twenty twenty. So it's
spliticket voting is not a big thing. The poles are
showing that it might be, particularly in Ohio, where I
think Sharon Brown's winning like ten percent of Trump voters,
has a much higher favorability rating. And then there's also
John Tester in Montana running in a deep, deep red
(32:27):
state but has shown some resiliency in the past, even
more so than Shah Brown. So they face uphill battles,
particularly if split ticket voting does not increase. They need
to win a bunch of Trump voters to have a chance.
But what I'm seeing elsewhere is that it's not that
Democrats are necessarily senate. Democrats are massively outperforming Biden. It's
(32:49):
that Senate Republican candidates are massively underperforming Trump. I kind
of expect a great convergence towards the end when people
start paying attention to these races a bit more. But
how much that converges, Like does Biden's numbers go up
or did the Senate Democrats numbers go down?
Speaker 4 (33:03):
And that remains to be seen.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
I've done some light covering of these Senate candidates and
they are bad. Like you know, they tend to be
a lot of rich people who can self fund and
you know, may not be the best person for the candidate.
There's a lot of carpetbagging going on. I'm thinking about Wisconsin.
(33:25):
In Pennsylvania you have Dave McCormick, you have Eric Hovedy.
In Wisconsin you have these rich white guys who you know,
can sell fund but aren't necessarily even from the places
they want to represent.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Right.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
So in Montana you have Tim Sheehey grew up in
Minnesota and so elsewhere, came back to Montana. As you mentioned,
Dave McCormick's I still lives in Connecticut.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
Oh no, Westbark, Connecticut. Yes, we love it.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
Yeah, And running in Pennsylvania. I have Eric Hovdy in
Wisconsin who was supposed to be campaigning in Wisconsin but
instead was at the beach in the Beach in California
where he I think spill whims Or has a house there.
And even Sam Brown and Nevada ran for Congress in Texas.
I believe this a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
I'm sorry, I love this so much so.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
Their strategy Steam Days is the head of a seeing
of recruit a lot of these candidates. Yeah, like you said,
they want these self funding candidates. They think that a
first time candidates for the most part, who don't have
like a legislative baggage, which is theoretically a plus. But
they're also pretty untested as candidates, which has not gone
well for downballot Republican candidates in twenty twenty and twenty
twenty two, and they coughed up some pretty winnable races
(34:33):
with some pretty undisciplined candidates.
Speaker 4 (34:36):
I'll put it lately.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
That money is supposed to go to Trump's legal fees. Noah,
thank you so much for making this make sense a
little bit. You know, I think that it's all we have,
so we just have to make it fucking work. But
we have to realize that it really is a blunt indicator.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
Yeah, and I would say that we still have a
long way to go. I know polls are frustrating and confusing,
and I totally get that. I would not overly focus
on polls until we get to Labor Day, just for
everyone's mental sanity. I'll be following it closely, but you
all don't have to. It's okay. Things will become much
clear after the conventions.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Thank you, Thank Nally. Sarah Ellison is a reporter at
the Washington Post. Welcome too Fast Politics, Sarah.
Speaker 5 (35:25):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
So one of the things you've been writing about, which
is one of the many things that keeps me up
at night. I have a couple. It's a teared system
of things that keep me up at night. But is
Trump was found guilty and immediately pivoted to trying to
tear down the legal system, one of the last great
sort of norms in our very kind of shaky American democracy.
(35:52):
Can you explain to us sort of what that looked
like and what the consequences of it are?
Speaker 5 (35:57):
Sure he didn't even wait for the verse. What we
were watching during that entire trial is that it was.
You know, for months, his advisors expected that he would
be convicted by a New York jury, and they were
hopeful that he would not be convicted, but just in case,
(36:18):
he and his team waged an all out war against
the judicial system before the verdict even came in, hoping
to whatever that verdict was going to be, he was
going to blood the political damage and position himself as
a martyr. And you saw that day after day, Trump
attacking the judge, the judge's family, Trump attacking the gag
(36:42):
order that the judge placed on him so he wouldn't
intimidate witnesses in the case. But I think the thing
that people really were struck by is that it wasn't
just Trump. It was and it wasn't just Trump's surrogates,
you know, the people that you normally see going on
social media to repeat his attacks and amplify his attacks.
You saw a totally different branch of government. You saw
(37:06):
members of Congress show up to attack again, not just
the judge, but the jury system. Like Tommy Tuberville said,
these so called Americans who were serving on the jury, right,
and like, we don't have anything better than the jury
of our peers, Like that's as good as it gets,
Like that's all we can offer. And so you know,
(37:26):
what we were struck by is that it's all politics.
It's all for Trump and his allies. There's no institution
of our democracy that they are unafraid to attack, and
these attacks on the judiciary, Like the judiciary is the
most popular branch of government. It's something that people still
have some faith in. And every academic we talked to
(37:48):
said that this case felt a body blow to that trust.
And so we're just sort of watching it degrade before
our eyes.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
So why is it?
Speaker 5 (37:58):
A mean?
Speaker 1 (37:58):
I want you're on this straight news side, so I
don't want to make you give an opinion here, but
I'm curious. It's sort of if you try to make
it make sense to me. Why is it that when
Trump goes after a branch of government like he's doing
with the judiciary right now, but he has done with
(38:18):
Congress and with our elections are free and fair elections.
Why is it that that works? And it doesn't work
with everyone, It only works with his people. But why
does it work with his people? And why is it
why can nothing penetrate that?
Speaker 5 (38:34):
I mean, one of the things. I just did a
piece on the effort post January sixth, twenty twenty one,
to keep Trump's voice off of social media, right, like,
there is this effort across the board Twitter, Facebook, YouTube
after January sixth. The idea was that Trump's message needed
to be curtailed because it caused violence right the IDAAE
(38:58):
and violated you know, all these social media platforms had
laid around with different standards and trust in safety teams
and efforts to make their platforms quote unquote safer and
more reliable, and then after January sixth, there was this
across the board fear that Trump had used his platform
to encourage violence, and that is a clear violation of
(39:22):
everybody's policies. So he was taken off of social media
and it was like banning him from a twenty first
century town square. And the idea was, this is going
to protect people from these harmful messages. And what we
looked at was that three years later that had been
an abject failure because Trump's message was as strong as effort.
(39:44):
More people believe that January sixth was a peaceful protest
than they did immediately in the aftermath of that case.
And so Trump is a potent political force. His messages
get out even though all he's doing is posting on
true social And what we sort of dug into there
was why is that This is a long way of
(40:05):
answering your question, but why is that message so crucial
for people to continue to get out there? It feels
very obvious in some ways, but there are both political
advantages to mimicking his messages. You see that with Elie Stephonic,
you see that with Jim Jordan. There's a tremendous amount
you can get out of Donald Trump if you are
(40:27):
a Republican trying to advance your career. There are also
great financial benefits for people people who have spread his
messages and created mini media empires out of doing that.
And that is you know, when Trump went to war
with Fox News after the twenty twenty election, there was
(40:47):
a whole outpouring of new conservative voices who were finding
their way to make money off of election denialism and
Donald Trump, and Steve Bannon told me for a story
that I did recently that that's what the economy of
the Internet relies on the Trumps of the world and
(41:09):
the mini Trumps of the world to get that message
out and to create clickbit content, to create viral content.
So there's a real financial benefit to doing that, and
then there's just the community benefit of you're with Trump.
And a very strong message that I think people genuinely
believe is that the federal government has been weaponized against
(41:30):
Donald Trump. In all of these cases, whether they're state
cases or federal cases, are being kind of manipulated by
Joe Biden. I mean, this is the message and being
weaponized against an opposition leader. And that is a strong
message that Donald Trump has seeded, and he's done it
(41:50):
with his allies, and people genuinely believe that. And now
we're dealing Marco Rubio, who used to attack Trump pretty
strongly in the twenty sixteen election, is sending a message
to his followers on X that watching Donald Trump's trial
(42:10):
was like watching a show trial in Cuba.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
Right.
Speaker 5 (42:13):
That was insane, right, I mean, you can call it
say a lot of things about that case, and I
know a lot of people about the hush money case
and their different views on the strength of the case
and whether it should have been brought, But it wasn't
a show trial.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
Right right?
Speaker 2 (42:27):
Right?
Speaker 1 (42:28):
No? No, I mean here's a question for you though,
if you were looking at this sort of like, I mean,
how much of Americans are in that information bubble? Right this?
You know? I mean what seventy seven million, eighty million
Americans voted for Donald Trump? When you look at there's
all sorts of polling that came out last week about
(42:49):
how like if you read the newspaper, you're like eighty
percent more likely you vote for Biden, right if you
just read any newspaper, right except possibly the New York Post.
So is it, Joss? This information bubble is a just
tech companies giving us sort of this pableum that isn't
actual verified news sources. I mean, is that where this
(43:12):
where the sort of echo chamber is being built?
Speaker 5 (43:15):
Or is there something I'm missing here? It's such a
good question, and I've actually talked to a bunch of
misinformation researchers about this, who say themselves that we have
wildly over credited the power of social media.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Oh good, thank you. You know, I ask everyone this
question and most people either like, don't answer it or
tell me I'm dumb. So to hear someone actually like
address this is like probably the best interview I've ever done.
So explain to me why we're overestimating it because I
love to hear it.
Speaker 5 (43:51):
Yeah, I mean, this is like I shouldn't be answering
because I only really have half the answer, but I
was fine. It's brilliant researcher from Harvard. His name is Johailer,
he has one I mean, he's just so well regarded
in the world of online disinformation, and he has been
studying it for a quarter of a century. And he
said to me in a relatively brief interview, although I've
(44:14):
read his book and was asking about it, he was
the person who said, we have focused too much on
the impact of social media. And he's like, now I'm
going to after a quarter of a century, I'm turning
my research efforts into looking at the political economy of
this country and the way that it has created. And
he didn't use this term exactly, but I think it's
(44:35):
such a relevant way for us to think about this.
We talk about the supply of disinformation constantly and how
to stem the supply of disinformation. We don't talk as
much about the demand for it and how hotent that is.
And I think that, I mean, it's that's more than like,
let's not go sit in anymore diners and talk to
(44:57):
people about why they might believe conspirac theories. But I'm
going to piece together a few interviews that I've done
with different people about this, which is that during COVID,
there was a time where people felt like they were
being fed information that turned out to not be true
later right like at the beginning of COVID, Anthony Fauchu
was saying, don't wear a mask. You don't need to
(45:18):
wear a mask, and then the you know, the advice
changed and people can find sort of real reasons in
that moment to think that the authorities are telling you
the truth, even though with such a fluid moment, people
didn't really know what the truth was. Where did the
virus come from?
Speaker 2 (45:38):
What?
Speaker 5 (45:38):
You know, the whole world was turned upside down, so
that kind of put people in a frame of mind
that you didn't know what to believe. And then on
that year was just so nuts because then you had
the election and you had the conspiracies about the election.
And I think during that period the notion of when
I talk to people about who know way more than
(45:59):
I do and have studied this, they say that that
was sort of the stew that led us it was
such a disruption in society about what people believed was
true and what they could rely upon that now we're
in this moment where the demand for answers is so
great and the supply of like definitive answers are sort
(46:22):
of they're scarcer than the demand, so people sort of
fill in the gaps in their own way. If that
makes sense.
Speaker 1 (46:30):
No, it actually does. This is like I have to
tell you sometimes I have a question and I just
can't fucking get anyone to answer it. And this idea
of and one of the reasons why I love having
a podcast is because I get to ask people questions
that I need to answer to, and you know, different
kinds of people, et cetera. But this idea that the
(46:52):
information we needed was not available and so bad information
filled the void makes so much sense.
Speaker 5 (47:00):
Yeah, and I'll add one other like data point into
this from again people whose job it is to study
bad information and how it travels. And I think everybody
understands this a lot better now. But we've we focused
so much on like top down bad information, like what
does the Russian government want to do? What does Iran
(47:21):
want to do? What does China want to do? And
that's all there still. But what these researchers have told
me is that there's a much because we've established this
and there's now a narrative and it's like the government
is weaponized, or you know, the government is weaponized against
its enemies, or the government is lying to you about COVID,
(47:41):
the election was stolen. Those are big, big narratives. And
you can have any random person on Twitter can take
a photograph of, you know, a ballot in a trash
can and say what is this? It looks like X
is happening and then and that's like a bottom up
(48:02):
effort as opposed to a top down effort. And you
don't even need to want to be creating a different narrative,
but that one data point of a random user on
Twitter can get picked up and just spread around in
a way that is sort of entirely divorced from the
initial intent of that poster. But the idea being that, like,
(48:25):
it's not just someone is feeding you a line of
a created narrative. It is that the narrative is there
and you can bottom up contribute to that. It's the
old thing of like I'm just asking questions, what is
this ballot? Doing here on the street, and then like, boy,
are there going to be you know, ten other people
who are going to pick that up and have their
own answer, And then Gateway Pundit is going to come
(48:48):
in and write a story about it, and then that's
a headline that then can be picked up and kind
of taken and done something else with. So these are
I think it's it's people who study what we call
dissem information and misinformation are moving away from those terms
because they're totally ineffective. You can't ever convince anybody that
they've fallen for a piece of bad information. It's just
(49:10):
like a completely losing exercise, right, And it's also like
it moves faster than you ever could try to tamp
it down. So we talked to secretaries of State's office
who say, well, last time we tried to have a
strong social media policy where we would like knock down
these false rumors, they don't even try to do it
anymore because it doesn't work. And so I think that
(49:32):
we're kind of moving into I don't know, is this
like two point zero bad information studies where people are
really realizing there's no putting the toothpaste back in the
bottle or whatever, like the election was stolen in twenty
twenty is a narrative that is out there. It doesn't
matter how many court cases or how many Donald Trump
appointed judges say that that wasn't the case. Like, it's there.
(49:54):
And so the question is, now, what does society do
with that information? And it all comes back to the
original Donald Trump verdict story, which is that there are
a lot of people. I mean, you can have that
that is a fact that had happened. There was a
guilty verdict thirty four counts, a jury of his peers.
Speaker 1 (50:18):
And if you want to you know, if you do
crimes in New York, you got to sit in front
of a New York jury. If you do crimes in Mississippi,
maybe they don't necessarily care. If you do crimes or
Palm Beach. Maybe he'd get a better, more partisan jury
that would let him off in Palm Beach. But look,
Hunter Biden just got found guilty, and he had a
(50:39):
jury of his peers in the state of Delaware where
his father is pretty much Elvis, and he got found
guilty too, which means the law is the law for
everyone and is a real win for our justice system,
and we should all be celebrating it because this is
what we want, is a blind justice system that looks
(51:00):
set the facts and that does what it's supposed to do.
Speaker 5 (51:03):
Yeah, I mean, your weight is very apt here, and
it was, you know, I was talking to people before
the Hunter verdict came down, obviously because it just happened.
But the lesson there was exactly what you just said,
which is that the justice system is not captured because
the president's own son was just found guilty of felonies.
(51:25):
So the justice system itself is sort of standing standing
up for democracy. And that was the sort of split
headline that we had the day after Trump's hush money
verdict was the justice system worked, and it's been really
harmed by all of the attacks. And the vast majority
(51:46):
of Republicans felt that that jury was corrupt and that
the case was wrongly decided, and that is due to
Donald Trump's very concerted effort to discredit that jury and
that entire proceeding. But if you look at the facts,
the justice system sort of did its job, and it
did its job again with Hunter Biden. And so it
takes a long time to have these verdicts come out,
(52:09):
but they do, and just to add one other thought,
which is when you talk about you know, that's why
Jack Smith brought his case in Florida, and he didn't
even want to fight over the venue. He just went
directly to Donald Trump's backyard to bring that case and.
Speaker 1 (52:23):
It happened to work out very well for Donald Trump.
Thank you so much, Sarah. Really appreciate you. Really great
to have you. Thank you, thank you for having me.
Speaker 5 (52:34):
It was a pleasure a moment.
Speaker 3 (52:40):
Jesse Cannon by John Fest I got to tell you,
after hearing these recordings of mister and Missus Alito, I
don't want to hang out.
Speaker 1 (52:47):
With them, Alito, no go. There were some recordings of
Missus Alito, mister Alito and also Justice Roberts. They were
done by a woman who that's sort of her thing.
She does these tapes. I thought that they said pretty
much what we thought they would say, but you know,
(53:10):
it's still kind of striking. The woman who recorded her
as a woman called Lauren windsor Missus Alito. I want
a sacred Heart of Jesus flag because I have to
look across the lagoon at the Pride flag next month.
So Missus Alito, she wants to let her freak flag
fly and for that she is our moment of Buckray.
(53:35):
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds
in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you
enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discuss the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds, and an appeals court judge has declared
DeSantis's band on transgender care to be unconstitutional. We have
such a great joke for you today. Recovering polster Adam
Carlson stops by to talk about his analysis of the
(00:24):
twenty twenty four polls. Don't worry, It's not terrible. Then
we'll talk to the Washington Post Sarah Ellison about how
disinformation circles affect our media. But first we have legendary
campaign manager and emotional support pundant, the author of the
(00:45):
conspiracy to in America Five Ways my old Party is
driving our democracy to autocracy. The Lincoln Projects owned Stuart Stevens.
Welcome back to Fast Politics. Stuart Stevens.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Hidekra me to a party.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
I'm such a fan of yours. I was thinking about
it because I was thinking, like, now we can talk
campaign with someone who has done many campaigns but also
has a sort of nice, not too crazy way about him.
I feel like campaigns make a person a little unhinged.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
They do, and most people work in campaigns and then
they grow up and they do something else. As my
long time partner Rush Street for and I used to say,
we'd look around after every cycle and we go like,
what's wrong with us? We still want to do campaigns.
But you know, I think I probably in a lot
of ways represented the worst of the American political system
because I just like campaign I was never really interested
(01:44):
in that thing called government, and it gave me a
very simplistic and shallow and what proved to be ultimately
dangerous value system, which is I was happy if I
won and I was sad if I lost, And you know,
that worked all great up until Trump. Then I had
asked self, like, how is it that I didn't see this?
There's not, unfortunately, any good answer I've come up with.
(02:07):
And I think it's absurd to think that Trump hijacked
the party. Nobody made anybody vote for Donald Trump, and
Donald Trump is so popular in the Republican Party, and
the party has become Donald Trump because it's what the
party wants. Let's quit pretending, you know that there's some
party that we're gonna go.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Let you it's interesting to me. One of the things
that I think a lot of us spend probably way
too much time thinking about is why is Donald Trump
so popular? Like still and again he's not so popular, right,
he's not, but he has a certain thing that people
still like about him, despite the fact that he's a
(02:44):
convicted felon and out on bail for three other cases.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
You can't get hung up on these little details, right exactly.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
But the question is, like, I think that some of
this just comes down to, like, charismatic politicians do better
with the electorate. I mean, is that possible? Is it
just that simple?
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Listen, I'm pretty harsh about this, but I think I've
earned a right to be harsh because I know these people,
and I dealt with the Republican electorate. I don't think
there's anything flattering that you can say about the Republican electorate.
We can't blame this on Fox. At any given moment,
the most watching Fox are three million and seventy plus
(03:22):
million voted for Trump. There's more information available to voters
today in America than any time or any place in history.
I mean an actual true statement. It's not North Korea.
You know, it's not Mississippi in nineteen sixty five, when
there was people referred to being behind the Magnolia curtain
because one family owned all the newspapers, and it's not
that way. I think at the heart of Trump is race.
(03:45):
And Trump's coalition is eighty five percent white in a
country that is sixty fifty nine percent white less. So
the time we finished this and I think that ultimately
that is the reality of what happened to the Republican Party.
And now I get in this argument with my still
Republican friends and they go, well, so let me get
(04:09):
this stressory. You think everybody voted for Trump is a racist,
and it's just no. But I think everybody who voted
for Trump pretty much thought something was more important to
them than having a racist as president, because you can't
deny that Donald Trump is a racist. And sixty percent
of the electorate was non college educated whites. That's now
forty percent and dropping. It's the fastest shrinking demographic in America,
(04:33):
and I think that is at the fear of what
drives so much of trump Ism. And they're right, they
are losing control and America's headed to become a majority
minority country, and in many ways it already has. If
you're sixteen years and younger, in America, the majority are
non white, you know, and odds look really really good
they're going to be non white when they turn eighteen.
(04:54):
And that is at the root of all of this.
I think, you know, I do not understand these CEOs
who support Donald Trump. I think it's shameful. I think
they should be shamed. I think to Steve Schwartzman, of
the world, would you rather be a CEO in Russia?
You have a pretty good year.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
It's a very short term way of thinking of the world.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
You look at Blackstone, Steve Schwartzman, So you've got a
convicted felon in New York. Blackstone is over four thousand
employees from New York. So is what Steve Schwartzman is
CEO sending a message to his employees that the rule
of law in New York State doesn't matter. That's interesting
because I imagine if you work for Blackstone, they actually
(05:33):
expect you to adhere to the laws of New York State.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
If Blackstone were hiring convicted felons, like if you want
a job at Blackstone and you owe more than one
hundred million dollars, like yes, for fraud, would you get hired?
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Absolutely not. You can go to the Blackstone Code of Ethics,
which is prominent, and I just don't understand why there
should be a higher standard for being an intern at
Blackstone than being president.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Right, all right, exactly.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
And I think that those like Steve Schwartzman and Jamie
Dimond has said nice things about Donald Trump before, famously
at the Davos. I don't know what he said about
who he's going to vote for at this stage. If
he said anything, I think a lot of people are
telling him to shut up, shut up and durabble. I
think it is foolish to think that you can have
(06:30):
the benefits of a democracy that you're enjoining now and
elect a non democratic president, someone who is going to
lead the country for four years, non wall d democratic
and Trump obviously does not support democracy. I mean, there's
no pretense of it. And if you think that Donald
(06:50):
Trump won't come after you, you're feeding the alligator hoping
he'll eat you. Last.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Well, it's the Mitch McConnell saying, right.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
It is precisely the miss McConnell thing that workout. Mitch.
I've talked about this before, you know. When I was
writing this book, it was all a lie. I stumbled
across the memoirs of friends on pathin who was a
Pressian aristocrat responsible more than anybody else for ushering Hitler
into power. So he wrote his memoir in nineteen fifty three.
Now things had gone a little sideway, I mean, a
(07:18):
one hundred million killed World War two Holocaust, and he
still was defending supporting Hitler. And there are phrases that
he uses is if memoir that are literally verbade him
of what Ms McConnell said, that we will change him.
There are more of us, He will have to adapt
to us. So I wonder how did Mitch McConnell feel, well,
his colleagues were running for their lives and their own offers.
(07:40):
How did that work out? And still mits McConnell is
afraid to say Donald Trump's name in public. So I
think it's a historic failure of a party. And ultimately,
I mean that's I said about the selection. The selection
isn't remotely about Donald Trump. It's about each of us.
We know who Donald Trump is, He's just who are we?
And I think it's a character tist. You know, I
(08:04):
am so offended by these Trump supporters that say, you know,
the system was rigged. We had to resort to what
you know, storming the Capitol and all of this. So
let me get this straight. There are Americans who actually
were prosecuted, were hunted, were tortured, were murdered to stop
them from participating in the system. And they're called black America.
(08:24):
So how did they react. They didn't storm the capital
and violence easier. They stayed in the system, They registered
more voters, they continue to believe in the system. And
yet the overwhelmingly middle class white voters that support Trump
have walked away from America. And I think it is
shameful and I have no need to understand them. I really,
(08:46):
I don't want to understand the guy in the camp
all switch sweatshirt. I just want him walk up.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Yeah. No, So let's talk about right now. We are
still in this ecosystem where we don't really know know
quite what the results from Trump's criminal conviction are going
to be, though it does seem like there is some
movement there. And I recently read something where that actually,
(09:13):
Hunter Biden's trial is not hurting Biden as much as
Trump World wanted it to. That actually people can have
two thoughts at the same time, you know, shockingly, So
I'm curious to know what you You know, we're sort
of in this weird period run up to the conventions,
(09:33):
and I'm wondering what you think that Biden world should
be doing and are they doing? What do you think?
Speaker 2 (09:40):
I am a great admirer of the Biden campaign. I
think they ran a brilliant campaign in twenty twenty that
they don't get enough credit for. You know, be the
incumbent president is incredibly difficult, and you know, nineteen seventy six,
we passed campaign financing, so each Democratic Republican nominee got
the same amount of money, and under that system, it
(10:02):
did level the playing field. Under that system, Bush lost
and Carter lost. So then in two thousand and eight
Obama walked away from that system, so he spent a
general election about three hundred and seventy million. McCain spent
eighty four million. So, as always happens, once nobody steps
out of the system, everybody steps out. So twenty twelve
(10:22):
was the first time since nineteen seventy two Nixon McGovern
the two candidates were running against each other who were
not in the federal funding system Romney Obama. Romney lost,
so Biden beat An incumbent president not in the federal
funding system, so it's fair at last, when is the
last time that happened? Well, the answer happens to be
(10:42):
Herbert Hoover and he had a bad year. So I
have tremendous respect for what the Biden campaign does. They
have this quality that is so rare in politics, which
is patience. And you know, there is this overwhelming human
tendency to day trade politics, so you have you know,
(11:05):
Biden goes out and has a lousy press conference after
this Special Council's finding, and you know, you have people
like Ezra Client writing you should get out, this is
it right, and then a few weeks later he gives
a great state of the Union space you go, well,
maybe you shouldn't get out, and politics is not for
day traders. You know. My greatest worry where i'm the
(11:25):
Biden campaign would be peaking too early strangers that may seem,
because I think there is a great narrative in American
tradition of coming from behind, and I think the greatest
danger for the Biden campaign is they're going to start
leading too early, and then they may drop back, and
then it's harder to go back again. You know, I
have no contact with the Biden campaign, so this is
(11:46):
just purely outsider. I think that they understand the rhythm
of this campaign and there is no need to win
every news cycle that I think he'll probably be behind
until the Democratic Convention, and then I think after the
Invention they'll be able to come out and prosecute a
campaign against Trump. That the elements are being laid for now.
(12:07):
And if I had to make a bet now, I
don't think the race is going to be particularly close.
I think it'll be close to about October twentieth, and
then it's going to be like nineteen eighty and when
Carter started to drop. I don't understand what you get
when you vote for Donald Trump. What do you get
when you vote for Republicans? I don't know. There's no
(12:28):
policy except Project twenty twenty five, which God knows they
don't want to talk about much because it is overwhelmingly unpopular.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
One of the things that I was struck by this
weekend was that Trump was in Nevada and he said
to the group, I will make it so you don't
have to pay taxes on tips anymore, a wildly unpopular thing.
It's not clear how many people actually do pay taxes
on tips. But that ability to just say whatever he
(12:59):
would any interest in the possibility of being actually able
to do it. Do you think that helps him? I mean,
I feel like that that's the thing where I'm like,
he's not bound by the truth at all.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
No, I mean, this has always been the case. He
was going to balance the budget in four years, said
so when a Washington Post interview, he was going to
make health care a beautiful plan for health care Mexico,
was going to pay for the wall, as Mark Cuban
famously said, he is the guy who will say anything
at closing time to get laid right, all right. And
(13:31):
I think that his ability to do that is reduced
every day because the difference between what he has said
he was going to do and what he does is greater,
and that includes to what he has actually done. So
he's actually taken away roe v. Eight. Okay, let's live
(13:51):
in that world. He actually is supporting putin. Let's live
in that world.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
What do you think about those polls that say people
don't believe that Trump actually was the person who took
away roe v. Wade.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
It's troubling. I think that's why if you're sitting in
a Biden campaign, you want to spend over a billion dollars,
and I think that's you know, as that old phrase goes,
campaigns matter, and I think that there are a lot
of very substantive, impressive, life affecting positive changes that have
(14:26):
been brought by the Biden administration. Unemployment at record lows,
you have stock markets at record highs. That does affect
people more than realize because of the one ks. You
have wages rising. All of this actually is a positive
underpinning to people. People who now are paying thirty three
(14:47):
dollars for insulin know that people who are going to
pay lesser than Haler's know that now it is always
difficult for any incumbent to get credit for what they've done.
In two thousand and four, were sitting focus groups in
the Bush campaign, and one of the great goals of
the Bush administration was to reduce taxes for those in
the lower income So the goal was family of four
(15:10):
making forty thousand dollars or less would pay no income tax,
which happened under Bush. So we would sit in focus
groups with people who no longer were paying income tax
and would ask them, are you paying more income tax
now under Bush or not, they say I'm paying more now,
and then you would generally point out where you're actually
not paying any income tax now, and they would say, well,
I'm paying more in taxes, and they just wouldn't believe you.
(15:34):
And that's why in two thousand and four, among other reasons,
we decided correctly, I think, really led by Carl Rowe,
who I do think is a genius, that there were
very few persuadable voters. I mean we would show people
ads that, like you know, Mark McKinnon and I had
made about women voting in Afghanistan, and people would cry,
(15:55):
I mean openly cry. Men would cry. And then they'd say,
you know, I'm never going to vote for him. That's
the best thing I've ever seen. I'm never going to
vote for And out of that strategy of what came
to be known as Fortress precincts, which the way you
could win, the path to win was very simple. Where
you got sixty percent, you needed to get sixty three percent.
(16:15):
Where you got fifty two, you needed to get fifty five.
You had to just increase your margin by just a
little in every one of these precincts and not go
after persuading voters. And I think that the Biden campaign
is in much the same reality now. So Biden won
by eight million votes, Trump lost. He needs new customers.
(16:36):
You start with the question how many Biden twenty Trump
twenty four voters are there? Some? I don't think there's
massive amounts. So what is Trump doing to get new customers?
As far as I can tell, he's saying, if you're
not a long term, devoted customer here, we don't want
your business. Which people hear that, and I think they react.
(16:58):
There was a lot of behind, you know, Nikki Haley,
and ultimately politics is more about addition and subtraction. And
you know, one of my favorite clients in Haley Barber,
you know, ran for governor Mississippi after a career in politics,
and Haley like to say, it's better to be for
the future because it's going to happen anyway. And you know,
(17:23):
the Republican Party is basically at war with the modern world,
and I think they're going to lose.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
I would literally sit here with you all day because
you just are so soothing. But I think that's a
really good point that the Republican Party is at war
with the future. Thank you so much, Stewart Stevens. I
really appreciate you. Spring is here, and I bet you
(17:51):
are trying to look fashionable, So why not pick up
some fashionable all new Fast Politics merchandise. We just opened
a news store with all new designs just for you.
Get t shirts, hoodies, hats, and top bags. To grab some,
head to fastpolitics dot com. Adam Carlson is a former
(18:13):
and recovering Democratic polster. Adam, welcome back. I think of
you as a fan favorite.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Oh wow, that's very flattering. Well, I'm really happy to
be here. Thanks for having me back.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Because we deal with polls, right, I hate polls. You
probably don't hate poles as much as I hate poles,
since you're a recovering pollster, But I find polls to
be very annoying. But they're really the only indicator we
have ultimately, right. We can do turnout on the primaries,
but that's kind of different, so we have to sort
(18:46):
of use them. But they are sort of a blunt instrument.
And what is sort of the state of modern polling
right now?
Speaker 3 (18:52):
I think that the state of mone and polling is
in plus right now. If you're doing a phone poll,
response rates have never been lowered. This has been covered
a ton, This has been a reason to criticize polls.
You're lucky to get a one percent response rate, as in,
if you contact one hundred people, you're lucky to get
one person to actually answer and finish your holl You
have to call people on their cell phones now, which
(19:13):
is a better way of contacting them, but it's a
lot harder to get a hold of folks because you
call our ID show the unknown number. You're not really
ever sure if the people who are answering those unknown
numbers are representative of the broader population or if they're
more engaged or kind of weirdos. It's a bit imprecise,
and there's things you can do on the back end
to try and retro sit them. People you're polling to
(19:36):
be representative of the population. But again, you're making a
lot of assumptions each time you're doing that. So each
assumption that each polster makes and how much thought and
rigor they put into it can affect the accuracy and
can introduce bias. So, like you said, it's a blunk instrument.
It's never been harder to pull than it is right now,
there's online polls. Of course there's live texts, people are
trying different things, But it was a lot easier to
(19:58):
be a polster ten twenty third years ago than it
is today.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Explained to us sort of what we're seeing in these
free Biden pre Biden Trump five months out polling.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Let me step back for a second here, and I
think that the rise of the five thirty eight in
Nate Silver Next starting in two thousand and eight was
great for visibility for polling, and then by thirty eight
in particular and others as well had really good cycles
in two thousand and eight twenty twelve, and they're seen
as like these oracles, people doing these models. But historically
polling error is pretty high in one direction or another.
(20:32):
So twenty sixteen and twenty twenty eight underestimated Trump twice.
So there's this working assumption that because the polls underestimated
Trump twice in twenty sixteen and twenty twenty, that they'll
do it a third time. So to answer your question,
right now, Trump leads Biden, maybe by a point, maybe
it's tied nationally, that's depending on which aggregate you look at.
That's kind of where we're at right now. Biden got
(20:54):
a roughly two point bump after Trump's conviction or thirty
four or felony convictions, and nationally we don't have a
lot of state pulling. It's compared before and after right now,
so things are tight nationally. But people assume that because
Poles underestimated Trump in twenty sixteen and twenty twenty, that
they'll do it again in twenty twenty four. And that's
not necessarily how polling error works. That's happened in both directions.
(21:18):
In twenty twelve, underestimated Obama and this spill sally a
much closer race than it ended up being against Smith Romney.
It's tempting to say that again like Biden needs to
be ahead by a lot more because the Poles will
underestimate Trump again, But we just don't know that's the case,
especially because I would bet good money that a lot
of posters have made adjustments ince then.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
This is why I wanted to have you on this
podcast because it strikes me and you and I can
both go into this right now, that there may be
and again we don't know because we don't have algorithmic
transparency and this is obviously not an algorithm, but we
don't have the transparency for the numbers to see exactly
(21:58):
how they're waiting these numbers to try and create the
sort of this is an electorate that is very difficult
to predict, right, And so the question is they're trying to,
yet again pull to explain an electorate that there is
not a lot that you can't completely explain, right.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
Yeah, this is the challenge every year. It's always easier
in retrospect to see what the errors were, and I
think a lot of posters are trying in good faith
to figure it out and to get it right, to
learn from previous mistakes. There's also a reputational risk for
getting it wrong in the same direction a third time.
So in twenty sixteen, it was okay, we underestimated the
turnout or the Trump percentage of non college educated white voters.
(22:41):
In twenty twenty kind of underestimated the Republicans kind of
coming home to Trump. We've made it a lot closer
than the polls and anticipated as a Biden one, but
it was he's supposed to win by a lot more.
Speaker 4 (22:52):
And this time we don't really know.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
I mean, no polster is going to nor should they
reveal their secret sauce in terms of all, right, we're
going to comperment with this, but we are seeing some weirdness,
historical weirdness in the polls. We're seeing Trump winning a larger,
historically large number of people of color in the polls,
the largest in some cases since the Civil Rights Act
was passed, in which I find hard to believe. You
(23:15):
never quite know, but that could be the artifact of
them all changing their not all, but the way they're sampling,
or a way to reaching people, or maybe they're trying
something different, or maybe it's real.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
I have my doubts, right, I have.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
My doubts too, a lot of these. So let's talk
about cross tabs for truth. A lot of these numbers
look a little bit dicey. Explain to us like some
of these sort of the things you've seen in the
cross tabs. Besides this largest racial realignment since the voting
right to that.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Yeah, So every month I'm behind for May, but every
month I put together of higher quality national polls. I
dig through and manually enter all the cross that bindings
to see where the trends are releatant to twenty twenty
and what holes are showing are going to be the
biggest shifts again, we'll be, but what polls are capturing
right now? So this kind of smooths out any one
polster who's finding something super weird and also solves the
(24:06):
problem of looking at tiny sample sizes. This isn't a
perfect way of doing this, but it is better than
anything else that we have out there. So we have
a lot of regular forecasts, right I'm like, like, here's
the average of the polls. Here's real clear politics, here's
five thirty eight. This is trying to go under the service. Okay,
so Biden is down from four years ago. Where is
it happening among So every single month we're seeing black
(24:28):
voters shifting away from Biden and towards Trump by twenty
plus points compared to twenty twenty. We're still looking at
like a you know, eighty twenty type margin, but it's
above ninety ten in twenty twenty.
Speaker 4 (24:41):
That's a huge shift.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
And the polls right now are showing that Trump will
get the highest share of black voters since before nineteen
sixty four, so in a very.
Speaker 4 (24:49):
Very very long time.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
Based on why, there's a bunch of theories as to
why this is the case, one of which is that
this is real movement. This is based off of frustration
with Biden, based off of not following through on promises,
or impact of inflation or et cetera. But that doesn't
really explain why it's afecting black voters more than let's say,
Hispanic voters are non college educated white voters. I don't
find that super convinced it could be part of it.
(25:10):
But there are also other theories too, right that there
are just satisfaction with Biden is super high right now,
and so black voters are just expressing their frustration. This
is called expressive responding, where you're not really thinking about
it as a binary election. You're kind of just like,
I'm pissed at Biden, and you know what, I'm going
to say, I'm undecided, or I'm going to say I
vote for Trump, and.
Speaker 4 (25:28):
Maybe you will, maybe you won't.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
If we're using history as any guide, the base generally
comes home. This is also weird election. My personal theory,
the one I share with a few other polling nerds.
It has to do and this might be getting a
little in the weeds.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Please get in the weeds with us.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
There are the ways of putting guardrails demographically. When you're
sealing the poll right, you don't want to get too
many white people, you don't want to get too many
college educated people. And there are some people that are
just easier to reach when you're polling colled educated folks,
white folks, women, people who lean more democratic. And those
are people as well, whether you're doing phone or online now,
because there much more inter as savvy than they used
(26:03):
to be five ten years ago. So what happens is
you put these guardrails up called quotas, make sure you're
not getting too many of one group. So you fill
up the easy buckets first, right, you fill up white voters,
you fill up seniors you feel up called it educated
and women, and then you're left with Okay, at the end,
we're scrambling to get black, Hispanic or Republican leaning voters,
younger voters, people who are much much, much harder to reach,
(26:26):
and so then you're kind of left with this weird
group or non representative group of young conservative people of
color who are not representing population, but they're who you
have left to reach, and so you get a couple
of those to fill out your quotas. And then at
the end, because you still don't have enough of them,
because again, they're very very hard to reach, and it's
very expensive to reach them, and you may not be
(26:46):
able to hit your deadlines. If you're just keep trying to,
you know, ram your head against the ball trying to
reach them, you upweight them. So what that means is
you make them basically worth more than one of themselves
in the actual final pool. Right, you wait, but the
entire sample to be representative of whatever you're trying to
go for. Let's say Red's registered voters or likely voters
in a particular state. So not only are you getting
(27:08):
people who aren't representative, you're making them more impactful than
they normally would be otherwise and you're down waiting. So
basically early on you're getting all these like white seniors
at college, which is maybe why you're seeing Biden holding
up better among white voters and seniors and things like that,
and while you see him slipping among young voters and
people of color. The truth is it's probably somewhere in
(27:29):
the middle of all these things. It's hard for me
to believe based on that a rematch election in a
very very long time. But it's hard for me to
see like these massive, massive swings in a rematch election
where people, most normal people don't want to think or
talk about this election. People are upset with their choices.
I don't know most of the conversations I've had with
people who aren't politically engaged, or just like Okay, I
(27:51):
guess we're doing this, or don't even know who the
nominees are still in June. So in that case, you'd
expect some movement on the margins, like yeah, okay, maybe
Biden lou Is, you know, three or four percentage points
among certain groups, gains, maybe some.
Speaker 4 (28:04):
Back here or there.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
But these twenty point swings, fifteen point swings would be,
let's just say, unprecedented, especially when both candidates are such
known quantities and very unpopular.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
One of the things you said, which I thought was
very interesting, I'm doing this annoying thing that people do
where they talk about a tweet. It's a very annoying
thing when people do it. To me, I think they're stupid.
But you had a tweet that showed subthlet the effect
of so much anxiety on the left that Biden is
(28:36):
losing this saying that he should be winning by fifteen points,
but he's not actually in a terrible place right now,
is hey.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
No, he's one, I mean historically normal pulling air away
from winning fairly comfortably. But Trump's also was one pulling
away from winning fairly comfortably too. But essentially we're looking
at a I mean five thirty eight released their forecast
today basically a coin flip, Biden as a fifty three
percent chance of winning, Trump as forty seven, and that's
been tightening since the last couple of months. And they
(29:04):
incorporate fundamentals like economics, consumer sentiment in addition to polling.
You know, if you look at polls today, Trump is
likely to win. But again, polls are not this far out,
are not meant to be predictive of what's happening in November.
Thought like, okay, this is again an imperfect snapshot, but
the best toool we had, as you mentioned earlier, of
where the race is right now. But we also have
(29:24):
these eyebrow race hitting shifts right and it's like, okay,
which one of these are real? Are they canceling each
other out? You know, is Biden doing as well among
seniors as good polls are showing? Is that counteracting other stuff?
So we don't really know.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
And that was why I wanted to have you on
because the other thing I wanted you to talk about,
which I am struck by, is that in almost all
of these polls you have down ticket Democrats, namely senators
in swing states. And I'm thinking about Ohio here and
share odd is a once in a lifetime politician. But
(29:59):
also so he's running about ten points ahead of his competition.
He's running like fifteen points ahead of Biden.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
And your friends, like the NPR Maris pulled up tea
out today that had him.
Speaker 4 (30:09):
I think he was up five and.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
Biden was down seven. And that's the first poll we've
had there in a while. That's actually the neat good quality.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Yeah, this Biden down brought the rest of the ticket
up for Democrats. See that in Pennsylvania, you see that
in Wisconsin. Saw that Michigan is seems a little tighter
in the center race. But I mean, you're seeing that
in a lot of these polls. So make that make
sense for me.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
So I think there's two things going on.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
There's a lot of races and what you're referring to
in those other states, So like Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin, Right, Arizona.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
Ruben is running way ahead. Now I think Carrie Lake
is her own problem.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
Yeah, she the unique case. Yeah, so talk about Arizona first.
So that's an open seat. Here's the cinema about running
for re election Carry Lake versus Ruben Geego. So Carry
Lake is running way behind Trump and Geago is running
a couple points ahead of Biden. That's a different situation
because Carry Lake is very well known and not very
well liked, and there's even been kind of whispers among
(31:12):
Republican operatives that they might just triage that race, they
might give up on her at some point, and that's
too early to say, but the fact they're even talking
about that in a state like Arizona is very telling.
But these other races in Nevada, in Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania,
you have the Democratic candidacity incumbent running out evenly with
(31:35):
Biden a little bit more, maybe a point or two
ahead on average, but the Republican is way behind Trump.
So a lot of that might have to do with
name recognition. They're like, I don't really know this person.
I'm not going to necessarily so that they'll probably, you know,
come home and vote the Republican We don't really know yet.
We don't really know if there's going to be we're
going to see a big return to split ticket voting
this year. It's been on the decline in recent cycles.
(31:57):
We only have, I believe, two senators that represent states
said the other party one in twenty twenty. That's Susan
Collins and Maine and Ron Johnson in Wisconsin.
Speaker 4 (32:06):
That's it.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
The other ninety eight senators represent states that they're party
won at the presidential level in twenty twenty. So it's
spliticket voting is not a big thing. The poles are
showing that it might be, particularly in Ohio, where I
think Sharon Brown's winning like ten percent of Trump voters,
has a much higher favorability rating. And then there's also
John Tester in Montana running in a deep, deep red
(32:27):
state but has shown some resiliency in the past, even
more so than Shah Brown. So they face uphill battles,
particularly if split ticket voting does not increase. They need
to win a bunch of Trump voters to have a chance.
But what I'm seeing elsewhere is that it's not that
Democrats are necessarily senate. Democrats are massively outperforming Biden. It's
(32:49):
that Senate Republican candidates are massively underperforming Trump. I kind
of expect a great convergence towards the end when people
start paying attention to these races a bit more. But
how much that converges, Like does Biden's numbers go up
or did the Senate Democrats numbers go down?
Speaker 4 (33:03):
And that remains to be seen.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
I've done some light covering of these Senate candidates and
they are bad. Like you know, they tend to be
a lot of rich people who can self fund and
you know, may not be the best person for the candidate.
There's a lot of carpetbagging going on. I'm thinking about Wisconsin.
(33:25):
In Pennsylvania you have Dave McCormick, you have Eric Hovedy.
In Wisconsin you have these rich white guys who you know,
can sell fund but aren't necessarily even from the places
they want to represent.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Right.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
So in Montana you have Tim Sheehey grew up in
Minnesota and so elsewhere, came back to Montana. As you mentioned,
Dave McCormick's I still lives in Connecticut.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
Oh no, Westbark, Connecticut. Yes, we love it.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
Yeah, And running in Pennsylvania. I have Eric Hovdy in
Wisconsin who was supposed to be campaigning in Wisconsin but
instead was at the beach in the Beach in California
where he I think spill whims Or has a house there.
And even Sam Brown and Nevada ran for Congress in Texas.
I believe this a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
I'm sorry, I love this so much so.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
Their strategy Steam Days is the head of a seeing
of recruit a lot of these candidates. Yeah, like you said,
they want these self funding candidates. They think that a
first time candidates for the most part, who don't have
like a legislative baggage, which is theoretically a plus. But
they're also pretty untested as candidates, which has not gone
well for downballot Republican candidates in twenty twenty and twenty
twenty two, and they coughed up some pretty winnable races
(34:33):
with some pretty undisciplined candidates.
Speaker 4 (34:36):
I'll put it lately.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
That money is supposed to go to Trump's legal fees. Noah,
thank you so much for making this make sense a
little bit. You know, I think that it's all we have,
so we just have to make it fucking work. But
we have to realize that it really is a blunt indicator.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
Yeah, and I would say that we still have a
long way to go. I know polls are frustrating and confusing,
and I totally get that. I would not overly focus
on polls until we get to Labor Day, just for
everyone's mental sanity. I'll be following it closely, but you
all don't have to. It's okay. Things will become much
clear after the conventions.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Thank you, Thank Nally. Sarah Ellison is a reporter at
the Washington Post. Welcome too Fast Politics, Sarah.
Speaker 5 (35:25):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
So one of the things you've been writing about, which
is one of the many things that keeps me up
at night. I have a couple. It's a teared system
of things that keep me up at night. But is
Trump was found guilty and immediately pivoted to trying to
tear down the legal system, one of the last great
sort of norms in our very kind of shaky American democracy.
(35:52):
Can you explain to us sort of what that looked
like and what the consequences of it are?
Speaker 5 (35:57):
Sure he didn't even wait for the verse. What we
were watching during that entire trial is that it was.
You know, for months, his advisors expected that he would
be convicted by a New York jury, and they were
hopeful that he would not be convicted, but just in case,
(36:18):
he and his team waged an all out war against
the judicial system before the verdict even came in, hoping
to whatever that verdict was going to be, he was
going to blood the political damage and position himself as
a martyr. And you saw that day after day, Trump
attacking the judge, the judge's family, Trump attacking the gag
(36:42):
order that the judge placed on him so he wouldn't
intimidate witnesses in the case. But I think the thing
that people really were struck by is that it wasn't
just Trump. It was and it wasn't just Trump's surrogates,
you know, the people that you normally see going on
social media to repeat his attacks and amplify his attacks.
You saw a totally different branch of government. You saw
(37:06):
members of Congress show up to attack again, not just
the judge, but the jury system. Like Tommy Tuberville said,
these so called Americans who were serving on the jury, right,
and like, we don't have anything better than the jury
of our peers, Like that's as good as it gets,
Like that's all we can offer. And so you know,
(37:26):
what we were struck by is that it's all politics.
It's all for Trump and his allies. There's no institution
of our democracy that they are unafraid to attack, and
these attacks on the judiciary, Like the judiciary is the
most popular branch of government. It's something that people still
have some faith in. And every academic we talked to
(37:48):
said that this case felt a body blow to that trust.
And so we're just sort of watching it degrade before
our eyes.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
So why is it?
Speaker 5 (37:58):
A mean?
Speaker 1 (37:58):
I want you're on this straight news side, so I
don't want to make you give an opinion here, but
I'm curious. It's sort of if you try to make
it make sense to me. Why is it that when
Trump goes after a branch of government like he's doing
with the judiciary right now, but he has done with
(38:18):
Congress and with our elections are free and fair elections.
Why is it that that works? And it doesn't work
with everyone, It only works with his people. But why
does it work with his people? And why is it
why can nothing penetrate that?
Speaker 5 (38:34):
I mean, one of the things. I just did a
piece on the effort post January sixth, twenty twenty one,
to keep Trump's voice off of social media, right, like,
there is this effort across the board Twitter, Facebook, YouTube
after January sixth. The idea was that Trump's message needed
to be curtailed because it caused violence right the IDAAE
(38:58):
and violated you know, all these social media platforms had
laid around with different standards and trust in safety teams
and efforts to make their platforms quote unquote safer and
more reliable, and then after January sixth, there was this
across the board fear that Trump had used his platform
to encourage violence, and that is a clear violation of
(39:22):
everybody's policies. So he was taken off of social media
and it was like banning him from a twenty first
century town square. And the idea was, this is going
to protect people from these harmful messages. And what we
looked at was that three years later that had been
an abject failure because Trump's message was as strong as effort.
(39:44):
More people believe that January sixth was a peaceful protest
than they did immediately in the aftermath of that case.
And so Trump is a potent political force. His messages
get out even though all he's doing is posting on
true social And what we sort of dug into there
was why is that This is a long way of
(40:05):
answering your question, but why is that message so crucial
for people to continue to get out there? It feels
very obvious in some ways, but there are both political
advantages to mimicking his messages. You see that with Elie Stephonic,
you see that with Jim Jordan. There's a tremendous amount
you can get out of Donald Trump if you are
(40:27):
a Republican trying to advance your career. There are also
great financial benefits for people people who have spread his
messages and created mini media empires out of doing that.
And that is you know, when Trump went to war
with Fox News after the twenty twenty election, there was
(40:47):
a whole outpouring of new conservative voices who were finding
their way to make money off of election denialism and
Donald Trump, and Steve Bannon told me for a story
that I did recently that that's what the economy of
the Internet relies on the Trumps of the world and
(41:09):
the mini Trumps of the world to get that message
out and to create clickbit content, to create viral content.
So there's a real financial benefit to doing that, and
then there's just the community benefit of you're with Trump.
And a very strong message that I think people genuinely
believe is that the federal government has been weaponized against
(41:30):
Donald Trump. In all of these cases, whether they're state
cases or federal cases, are being kind of manipulated by
Joe Biden. I mean, this is the message and being
weaponized against an opposition leader. And that is a strong
message that Donald Trump has seeded, and he's done it
(41:50):
with his allies, and people genuinely believe that. And now
we're dealing Marco Rubio, who used to attack Trump pretty
strongly in the twenty sixteen election, is sending a message
to his followers on X that watching Donald Trump's trial
(42:10):
was like watching a show trial in Cuba.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
Right.
Speaker 5 (42:13):
That was insane, right, I mean, you can call it
say a lot of things about that case, and I
know a lot of people about the hush money case
and their different views on the strength of the case
and whether it should have been brought, But it wasn't
a show trial.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
Right right?
Speaker 2 (42:27):
Right?
Speaker 1 (42:28):
No? No, I mean here's a question for you though,
if you were looking at this sort of like, I mean,
how much of Americans are in that information bubble? Right this?
You know? I mean what seventy seven million, eighty million
Americans voted for Donald Trump? When you look at there's
all sorts of polling that came out last week about
(42:49):
how like if you read the newspaper, you're like eighty
percent more likely you vote for Biden, right if you
just read any newspaper, right except possibly the New York Post.
So is it, Joss? This information bubble is a just
tech companies giving us sort of this pableum that isn't
actual verified news sources. I mean, is that where this
(43:12):
where the sort of echo chamber is being built?
Speaker 5 (43:15):
Or is there something I'm missing here? It's such a
good question, and I've actually talked to a bunch of
misinformation researchers about this, who say themselves that we have
wildly over credited the power of social media.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Oh good, thank you. You know, I ask everyone this
question and most people either like, don't answer it or
tell me I'm dumb. So to hear someone actually like
address this is like probably the best interview I've ever done.
So explain to me why we're overestimating it because I
love to hear it.
Speaker 5 (43:51):
Yeah, I mean, this is like I shouldn't be answering
because I only really have half the answer, but I
was fine. It's brilliant researcher from Harvard. His name is Johailer,
he has one I mean, he's just so well regarded
in the world of online disinformation, and he has been
studying it for a quarter of a century. And he
said to me in a relatively brief interview, although I've
(44:14):
read his book and was asking about it, he was
the person who said, we have focused too much on
the impact of social media. And he's like, now I'm
going to after a quarter of a century, I'm turning
my research efforts into looking at the political economy of
this country and the way that it has created. And
he didn't use this term exactly, but I think it's
(44:35):
such a relevant way for us to think about this.
We talk about the supply of disinformation constantly and how
to stem the supply of disinformation. We don't talk as
much about the demand for it and how hotent that is.
And I think that, I mean, it's that's more than like,
let's not go sit in anymore diners and talk to
(44:57):
people about why they might believe conspirac theories. But I'm
going to piece together a few interviews that I've done
with different people about this, which is that during COVID,
there was a time where people felt like they were
being fed information that turned out to not be true
later right like at the beginning of COVID, Anthony Fauchu
was saying, don't wear a mask. You don't need to
(45:18):
wear a mask, and then the you know, the advice
changed and people can find sort of real reasons in
that moment to think that the authorities are telling you
the truth, even though with such a fluid moment, people
didn't really know what the truth was. Where did the
virus come from?
Speaker 2 (45:38):
What?
Speaker 5 (45:38):
You know, the whole world was turned upside down, so
that kind of put people in a frame of mind
that you didn't know what to believe. And then on
that year was just so nuts because then you had
the election and you had the conspiracies about the election.
And I think during that period the notion of when
I talk to people about who know way more than
(45:59):
I do and have studied this, they say that that
was sort of the stew that led us it was
such a disruption in society about what people believed was
true and what they could rely upon that now we're
in this moment where the demand for answers is so
great and the supply of like definitive answers are sort
(46:22):
of they're scarcer than the demand, so people sort of
fill in the gaps in their own way. If that
makes sense.
Speaker 1 (46:30):
No, it actually does. This is like I have to
tell you sometimes I have a question and I just
can't fucking get anyone to answer it. And this idea
of and one of the reasons why I love having
a podcast is because I get to ask people questions
that I need to answer to, and you know, different
kinds of people, et cetera. But this idea that the
(46:52):
information we needed was not available and so bad information
filled the void makes so much sense.
Speaker 5 (47:00):
Yeah, and I'll add one other like data point into
this from again people whose job it is to study
bad information and how it travels. And I think everybody
understands this a lot better now. But we've we focused
so much on like top down bad information, like what
does the Russian government want to do? What does Iran
(47:21):
want to do? What does China want to do? And
that's all there still. But what these researchers have told
me is that there's a much because we've established this
and there's now a narrative and it's like the government
is weaponized, or you know, the government is weaponized against
its enemies, or the government is lying to you about COVID,
(47:41):
the election was stolen. Those are big, big narratives. And
you can have any random person on Twitter can take
a photograph of, you know, a ballot in a trash
can and say what is this? It looks like X
is happening and then and that's like a bottom up
(48:02):
effort as opposed to a top down effort. And you
don't even need to want to be creating a different narrative,
but that one data point of a random user on
Twitter can get picked up and just spread around in
a way that is sort of entirely divorced from the
initial intent of that poster. But the idea being that, like,
(48:25):
it's not just someone is feeding you a line of
a created narrative. It is that the narrative is there
and you can bottom up contribute to that. It's the
old thing of like I'm just asking questions, what is
this ballot? Doing here on the street, and then like, boy,
are there going to be you know, ten other people
who are going to pick that up and have their
own answer, And then Gateway Pundit is going to come
(48:48):
in and write a story about it, and then that's
a headline that then can be picked up and kind
of taken and done something else with. So these are
I think it's it's people who study what we call
dissem information and misinformation are moving away from those terms
because they're totally ineffective. You can't ever convince anybody that
they've fallen for a piece of bad information. It's just
(49:10):
like a completely losing exercise, right, And it's also like
it moves faster than you ever could try to tamp
it down. So we talked to secretaries of State's office
who say, well, last time we tried to have a
strong social media policy where we would like knock down
these false rumors, they don't even try to do it
anymore because it doesn't work. And so I think that
(49:32):
we're kind of moving into I don't know, is this
like two point zero bad information studies where people are
really realizing there's no putting the toothpaste back in the
bottle or whatever, like the election was stolen in twenty
twenty is a narrative that is out there. It doesn't
matter how many court cases or how many Donald Trump
appointed judges say that that wasn't the case. Like, it's there.
(49:54):
And so the question is, now, what does society do
with that information? And it all comes back to the
original Donald Trump verdict story, which is that there are
a lot of people. I mean, you can have that
that is a fact that had happened. There was a
guilty verdict thirty four counts, a jury of his peers.
Speaker 1 (50:18):
And if you want to you know, if you do
crimes in New York, you got to sit in front
of a New York jury. If you do crimes in Mississippi,
maybe they don't necessarily care. If you do crimes or
Palm Beach. Maybe he'd get a better, more partisan jury
that would let him off in Palm Beach. But look,
Hunter Biden just got found guilty, and he had a
(50:39):
jury of his peers in the state of Delaware where
his father is pretty much Elvis, and he got found
guilty too, which means the law is the law for
everyone and is a real win for our justice system,
and we should all be celebrating it because this is
what we want, is a blind justice system that looks
(51:00):
set the facts and that does what it's supposed to do.
Speaker 5 (51:03):
Yeah, I mean, your weight is very apt here, and
it was, you know, I was talking to people before
the Hunter verdict came down, obviously because it just happened.
But the lesson there was exactly what you just said,
which is that the justice system is not captured because
the president's own son was just found guilty of felonies.
(51:25):
So the justice system itself is sort of standing standing
up for democracy. And that was the sort of split
headline that we had the day after Trump's hush money
verdict was the justice system worked, and it's been really
harmed by all of the attacks. And the vast majority
(51:46):
of Republicans felt that that jury was corrupt and that
the case was wrongly decided, and that is due to
Donald Trump's very concerted effort to discredit that jury and
that entire proceeding. But if you look at the facts,
the justice system sort of did its job, and it
did its job again with Hunter Biden. And so it
takes a long time to have these verdicts come out,
(52:09):
but they do, and just to add one other thought,
which is when you talk about you know, that's why
Jack Smith brought his case in Florida, and he didn't
even want to fight over the venue. He just went
directly to Donald Trump's backyard to bring that case and.
Speaker 1 (52:23):
It happened to work out very well for Donald Trump.
Thank you so much, Sarah. Really appreciate you. Really great
to have you. Thank you, thank you for having me.
Speaker 5 (52:34):
It was a pleasure a moment.
Speaker 3 (52:40):
Jesse Cannon by John Fest I got to tell you,
after hearing these recordings of mister and Missus Alito, I
don't want to hang out.
Speaker 1 (52:47):
With them, Alito, no go. There were some recordings of
Missus Alito, mister Alito and also Justice Roberts. They were
done by a woman who that's sort of her thing.
She does these tapes. I thought that they said pretty
much what we thought they would say, but you know,
(53:10):
it's still kind of striking. The woman who recorded her
as a woman called Lauren windsor Missus Alito. I want
a sacred Heart of Jesus flag because I have to
look across the lagoon at the Pride flag next month.
So Missus Alito, she wants to let her freak flag
fly and for that she is our moment of Buckray.
(53:35):
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds
in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you
enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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