Full Episode - The Public Is Souring On Trump 2.0 + What Swing Voters Really Think… And Why That’s BAD For Democrats - The Chuck ToddCast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, They're happy Monday, Happy Election week.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
It is.

Speaker 1 (00:05):
We are here Monday, November third. I am taping on
November second, so full disclosure on that. I just got
back from the first annual Todd Bowl as somebody, as
a friend of mine tweeted with me, was the University
of Miami playing SMU in Dallas. I have one child
at Miami, one child at SMU. Many of you know
my love for the Miami Hurricanes. I have a lot

(00:28):
to say about a lot going on in college football
and the future of the University of Miami, but I
will hold off on those comments, like every Monday to
the end of the podcast, to sort of it is
good not to react in the immediacy. That's always. It's
good in politics, it's good in sports, it's good in

(00:51):
life in general. You always want to take a breath.
So I believe, especially for my fellow Hurricane fans who
care about the program as much as I do, would
like to see another national title in our lifetime. I'd
like to think I'm looking at this with some very
sober eyes. So I encourage you, if you care about

(01:14):
that stuff, to go back. There. A few other thoughts
in general about what is turning into a coaching massacre
in college football with yet another one gone there. But
let's be honest, this is a big deal. We are
essentially at the one year mark of the election, of
the second election of Donald Trump. And what happens at
the one year mark. You get a slew of polling,

(01:36):
of good polling, particularly my favorite poll, the poll that
I helped keep around and update and up keep, and
it is still in some existence at NBC. Doesn't come
out as frequently as it used to, but it does
come out two or three times a year. The NBC
poll with hartmcinturf, the bipartisan poll that essentially still is

(01:57):
seen by everybody else as the gold standard in American
election polling. And so I've gone through it pretty deeply,
and I want to share with you sort of my
takes on it. I know you've seen. There's a few
things out there are eye popping headline. Democrats have an
eight point advantage on the generic ballot in the NBC poll.
When you see a you take that here, you see

(02:20):
that anywhere else, you think, oh, they must have had
a banded sample. We are the NBC poll, and Heart
and McInturff are so careful not to let it be volatile,
if you will, that it is a remarkable showing, especially
as the same poll shows such unpopularity for the Democratic
Party even as they have this huge lead. So this

(02:40):
is a massive, I think, new place that we are
in in American politics. We've not had a situation like
this before where you have extraordinarily unpopular president, extraordinarily unpopular
opposition party. Something's going to have to give. Come the
midterm elections, we are going to get a first taste
of where stand I think nationally for both parties, with

(03:04):
of course the elections on Tuesday, and a huge reminder,
I will be anchoring a live election night special with
my friends at Decision to s h Q, my friend
Chrysalizzo and a slew of people that I think. Let
me tease out some of the guests that we already
have confirmed. I will tell you now. We've got Jacob Rubashkin,

(03:29):
Jaron Zao, Jessica Taylor, David Wildstein, Lisa Miller, Abigail Turner,
Bill Baronihn Couvoyan Couvalleon, Sorry if I messed that up.
Kirk Beto of the Hotline, Nathaniel Rakitch, Leon Sid Adam Carlson, Lakeisha,
Jane Arminge, Thomas, John Fleisman, Garrett Heron. That's just again,

(03:50):
we're going for five hours minimum, from about six thirty
to eleven eleven thirty, so maybe four or four and
a half hours minim. We're going to go until we
call California, and of course make sure we're called every
race has been called in Virginia, New Jersey, New York City,
and California. We're not going to go to bed, but
we're going to touch on mayor's races. Is a fascinating

(04:12):
pattern that we're starting to see develop in these urban
primary fights, mostly on the left. You got those Pennsylvania
Supreme Court judges that are going to are up there
for an up or down vote, which if they go down,
then we have very partisan, important judicial elections taking place
in twenty twenty seven, which could have huge impacts on
the twenty twenty eight presidential race. Given Pennsylvania standing in

(04:36):
the battleground. There's a slew of ballot props that I
want to tease out a little bit when it comes
to Texas in particular and Maine, two sort of testing
issues that may appear local but could have some national ramifications,
So I do want to discuss that today. So I

(04:57):
think let's first start huge, huge picture here, and yes,
I'll do some Q and A. Oh, and I'm like
leaving out the main course. The main course for this
episode is my conversation with rich Tawe. Rich taw is
a survey researcher. He is basically he runs something called
the Swing Voter Project. If you take a look at it,

(05:19):
He's done some work for Axios, He's done some work
for NBC News, for Syracuse, for all sorts of places.
He does these terrific focus groups focused on the single
most important voter in American politics. Right at first we
called them the Obama Trump voters. Then we called them
the Trump Biden voters. Now we call them the Biden
to Trump voters. But it's these voters that are vacillating,

(05:40):
that are going back and forth. And he just focuses
on the seven main battleground states. We have a deep
dive some responses. He just finished up in Pennsylvania, so
we will. You'll get to see some of these focus
group clips if you're watching the video podcast, we're going
to use some of those clips his analysis. If you're

(06:02):
trying to understand the swing voter in America. I think
this conversation is exactly the conversation wants. So look, it
is election week. I am geeking out heavily. I got
rich Tau to talk about the battleground vote state voters.
I've got a brand new NBC poll that I want
to dig into and share with you my exclusive analysis.
We're going to have some preview of what's happening in

(06:23):
the last twenty four hours of campaign twenty twenty five,
the sort of the Mamdani tests that Democrats are trying
to figure out how to deal with. It's been fascinating
Barack Obama's non endorsement, but praising him for his campaign
a fascinating attempt. Is there a tight wire to walk
like that? Anyway? And of course the post all of

(06:47):
that stuff. So, like I said, a huge, a huge episode.
So let's get started, and I want to begin with
essentially the first year report card for Donald Trump. Yes,
it's yet one year into his presidency, but it's one
year since he was elected president. And I know, you know,
it's funny. I've been in this business a long time

(07:07):
where we do we always do a November polls and
we always do January polls that essentially are serving as
checks where are we one year from the election? Where
are we one year from when he took office? So
in this case, we are one year from the election,
and let's look at some basics, if you will, the
big the direction of the country. And this is one

(07:28):
of those where you can and this is a reminder
of how a partisan media person would work. Okay, so
here's right direction, wrong track. It is thirty seven sixty one,
thirty seven percent right track. That is not a great number.
That is down from forty four percent the first NBC

(07:49):
poll of the Trump presidency. So at the start of
his presidency, it was a pretty high right track number
considering we've been in a what I would call a
political recession for most of the century, where a majority
of people have consistent said we're on the wrong track.
There was just one brief period, one brief period during
the start of Obama's presidency that those two lines were
essentially dead even right track wrong track. And we've been

(08:11):
essentially on the wrong track really going back since since
I'd say about a year into the Iraq War post
nine to eleven, and it has been a consistent wrong track,
wrong track, wrong track. However, if you wanted to spind
the thirty seven percent right direction in Donald Trump's direction,
you'd say this, well, thirty seven percent of the country

(08:35):
says we're on the we're in the right direction, sixty
one percent on the wrong track. That thirty seven percent,
we haven't been that high that high since. Obviously there
was forty four percent of March, but before then, it
hasn't been as high as thirty seven since going back
to the start of COVID in March of twenty when

(08:56):
there was a bit of a of almost rally around
the president moment when everybody was trying to unify for
a very brief period on dealing with COVID, you saw
that number inch up, and then it dramatically fell down
to nineteen percent right direction seventy two percent wrong track.
And that was pretty That seventy percent plus consistent wrong

(09:16):
track essentially July of twenty was pretty consistent all the
way until the summer of twenty twenty four, and still
at election day in twenty twenty four, we were sitting
at sixty six percent wrong track. So you could make
the case if you just wanted to spin this in
Trump's direction. Hey, there's still more people say we're on

(09:37):
the right track than any time during the Biden presidency,
and that would be true. But it's the trend line
that you've got to be aware of, where the fact
is that it is now directionally going back to what
was the norm during the end of Trump's presidency, most
of Trump's presidency and going in to that. So that
is a yellow flashing yellow light. Thirty again, thirty seven

(09:59):
is still highigher than at any moment in Biden's presidency,
but it is eight points lower, excuse me, seven points
lower than it was at the start of the year.
And it does appear when you see other polling in
there that it is trending downward. Now here's my favorite
aspect of sort of trending. You know, I've pointed this
out to you before. But Donald Trump, in many ways,

(10:20):
he can't really move his numbers. The country has made
up its mind on Donald Trump. How do I know this?
So I went through our all of the polling we
did on Donald Trump. NBC News did on Donald Trump
from twenty seventeen through twenty twenty. Okay, we NBC conducted.
He keeps saying we it is not we. It's been
a long time since it's we almost a year now.

(10:42):
Thirty nine polls in his first term, all thirty nine polls,
and when you average out his job approval rating in
those thirty nine polls, just the entire just average it out,
his job approval rating was forty three point seven percent.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
What is the job.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
Approval rating in this latest NBC News poll released this weekend,
forty three percent. His number doesn't budge. His trading range
is really small. It is can get. It has gotten
as high as he got. Forty seven percent was his honeymoon.
That was March of twenty twenty five. He hit forty

(11:23):
seven percent. In October of eighteen, when he got his
tax cut passed, he hit and then he's never been
over forty seven in the NBC Player forty seven percent
in February, at the start of COVID. It's never been
north of forty seven now. His lows have all been
were super early in his presidency, at thirty nine percent

(11:45):
in April of eighteen, thirty nine percent in January of eighteen.
He was at thirty eight percent in October of seventeen.
Other than that, though he has not visited the thirties.
The last time he was in the thirties essentially was
April of eighteen. He has essentially been and I'll just
say forty four, forty five, forty six, forty four, forty four,
forty seven, forty six, forty three, forty three, forty six,

(12:07):
forty three, forty six, forty four, forty five, forty three,
forty five, forty Am I making my point here. I'm
not going to keep going and going and going. But
that is just remarkable stability. Okay, that forty three percent
there is. That's the chunk of voters that you know
are going to be with the republic Trump led Republican Party.
And I say Trump led Republican Party here because there's

(12:29):
another interesting question that again will depend on how you
want to present the question, will kind of give a
hint at your partisan perspective if you're not careful. A
few other things to note. You are starting to see
Donald Trump's favorable rating go back. He again had a
bit of a honeymoon. He had a thirty six percent

(12:49):
positive rating. It was the highest personal positive rating that
he had ever recorded. That is already backed down down
to twenty nine on very positive, which is a lot
more in line with where he was most of the
campaign year. So he's still better. He still has a

(13:10):
better very positive rating in this second term and from
the second campaign than he ever did first. And what
that is is that that's the deepest space, right the
twenty nine percent who say they have a very positive
view of him, they are with him through thick and thin.
It's another eleven percent say say somewhat positive. So you're
looking at forty percent that just feel very positively about

(13:31):
Donald Trump, and is approve ratings forty three, So it's
just really only there's only three. If you just assume
that the forty of the forty three feel very positive
about him, it means that there aren't people that approve
of that don't like them and approve of the job
he's doing. There are people that don't like them and
don't and approve of his goals of what he's trying

(13:52):
to achieve, but they don't like how he's trying to
get those goals. And again, this poll features some interesting
things that will get us there, but the big headline
of this poll really is that generic ballot number and
let me go, and it is it is astonishing that
Democrats have an eight point lead October of twenty twenty

(14:13):
five eight point lead in the generic, Democrats at fifty,
Republicans at forty two. The last time they had gaps
anywhere over five points, let alone eight nine or ten,
was in the run up to the twenty eighteen midterms.
So you're almost seeing we are in a repeat. And
in fact, Democrats are plus eight right basically one year

(14:35):
out from the midterms in the generic ballot. In October
of seventeen, this same point in time, one year out
from the twenty eighteen midterms, Democrats were up seven points
in the generic ballot. So as you can see, we
are trending in the almost it looks like in the
exact we are literally having a rerun, right, it's a
rerun of the Trump job rating forty three percent. Entire

(14:57):
first term is forty three point seven. He's sitting at
forty three percent one year before the midterms and Trump
one point zero. Democrats had a seven point le in
the generic one year before the midterms and Trump two
point zero. Democrats have an eight point lead in the generic.
So there's on one hand you think, boy history is
repeating itself, but there is one giant difference between twenty eighteen,

(15:22):
twenty seventeen, in twenty twenty six and twenty twenty five,
and it is the personal favorable rating of the Democratic
Party versus the Republican Party. The Republican Party is a
positive rating of thirty seven percent, negative rating of forty
six percent. The Democratic Party is a positive rating of
twenty eight percent in a negative rating of fifty three percent.

(15:45):
Let me say that again, a negative rating of fifty
three percent. They have a twenty five point gap, okay,
between positive rating for the Democratic Party and the negative
rating for the Democratic Party fifty three percent. In contrast,
the Republican Party's gap is less than is not even digits.
It's thirty seven percent positive, forty six percent negative, just
a nine point negative gap. Donald Trump has a larger

(16:07):
negative gap between favorable and unfavorable than the Republican Party does.
This is an important nugget here, okay, because I think
this explained the generic ballot gap quite well, and what
the voter is likely, what we're likely seeing with the
swing voter. And again this is really going to go
well what you're hearing with these polling numbers, and I'm

(16:30):
that I'm delivering to you is going to really does
sort of coincide really well with the conversations you're going
to hear from rich taw you know, the qualitative research,
focus group stuff versus the quantitative that I'm giving you
right now. But that massive gap, and just to give
you an idea of where we were in October of
twenty seventeen, Okay, at this part, the most recent numbers

(16:53):
I can look at here December of twenty seventeen, the
net favorable rating of the Democratic Party was thirty three percent.
The net negative was thirty eight percent. Okay, so just
a five point gap, Just a five point gap. It's
now again, that was a five point gap essentially one
year out from the twenty eight twenty eighteen midterms. Look,
we know the whole country is a net negative view

(17:14):
of both parties, Okay, that we know that a majority
of this country don't like either political party. But you
had a five point gap in twenty at this point
in time in twenty seventeen on the Democratic Party favorable
to unfavorable ratio, it is a twenty five point gap. Now,
now let me tell you the Republican number, so you
can get some clear clarity on that Republicans net in

(17:36):
twenty seventeen, they were sitting at twenty nine forty five. Okay,
essentially one year out twenty nine forty five, that is
a sixteen point gap. Here they are with an improved
Republican Party rating this time where their gap is only
nine points less than ten. So Donald Trump hasn't changed,

(17:56):
but the Democratic Party has changed and the Republican Party
has changed. What's interesting is that there appears to be
a group of voters that feel more favorably to the
Republican Party then they do Donald Trump. Now you would say, hmm,
that should lead to some interesting decisions by Republicans who

(18:17):
maybe want to be seeking reelection in twenty twenty six
only are going to be dealing with two more years
of Trump and maybe want to seek distance. And of course,
then you look at that base vote and the devotion
to Donald Trump that I showed you where essentially to
love Donald Trump is to approve of his job. And
they're the most important chunk of Republican primary voters. So

(18:39):
even though a majority of this country has a lot
more preference to generic Republican ideas versus generic Democratic ideas
versus Donald Trump, twenty. Right now, you can see that
the voters view the generic ballot question not as a
discussion between which party do you like better, the Democrats

(19:01):
or the Republicans. That is not the question, what Jude.
The reason the Democrats have a large eight point lead
is that the question that voters are deciding between is
do you want Donald Trump? Do you want there to
be a check on Donald Trump? And right now there
is a huge desire for a check on Donald Trump.

(19:26):
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unless they win. Here's something that was fascinating that surprises me.
The democracy issue didn't really work very well in twenty

(20:35):
didn't work very well in twenty two. I know there's
a whole bunch of Biden people that want to spin
that it did. That was not why they won in
twenty and in twenty twenty two. It is hard to
see that they won that way. It was a disastrous
democratic excuse me, Republican nominees that allowed Democrats do not
do as poorly as they ended up could have done
in a normal environment. Kamala Harris Quo closed with the

(20:58):
democracy question, and yet the swing voters weren't moved by
the democracy question because in their minds, they weren't electing
a different Donald Trump for Trump two point zero. In
their mind, they were electing a continuation of Trump one
point zero. But Trump two point zero is not popular

(21:19):
and the single Listen to this. I'm going to read
you the full question. When it comes to deciding your
vote for Congress next year, Please tell me if each
of the following is the single most important issue in
deciding how you will vote, A very important issue, or
only somewhat important. The single most important issue to hit
was protecting constitutional rights. Number two was protecting democracy. Number

(21:44):
three was cost of living and so that okay, healthcare
was number four at ten. I'm trying really hard to
find an issue that benefits Donald Trump. Okay. Number four
was healthcare premiums. Four five was dealing with the political
violence in America. Okay, maybe that's possible. That's a possible

(22:05):
net to Trump. It's possible voters on both sides of
the I'll see the other party at fault there. Immigration
and border security is also down there. Sort of healthcare,
political violence, immigration and border security all sat around the
same when you did the single most important. What's interesting

(22:26):
is that in twenty eighteen, the top two issues on
the single most important were healthcare and immigration. Here the
top two issues are protecting constitutional rights and protecting democracy,
which one might argue is the same thing. So do
you end up combining those numbers, so essentially have half
of respondents in some form or another, picking some form
of the structure of the democracy that really irritates them.

(22:49):
So now when you see that that is the number
one and number two issue, I've given you the fact
that the Democratic Party is more unpopular than Donald Trump
and more unpopular than the Republican Party, and yet Democrats
are winning generic ballot by eight points. Folks don't like
how Donald Trump is running roughshot over the presidency. Let
me give you a few more questions to give you

(23:13):
a little bit more, a little bit more issues on this. So,
for instance, they did a great question here they said,
thinking about President Trump and his administration when it comes
to the following issues, is the Trump administration living up
to your expectations or has it fallen short? And they
tested six issues border security, foreign policy, changing business as
usual in Washington, the economy looking up for the middle class,

(23:35):
and inflation in the cost of living. A majority believe
that the Trump administration is so far one year from
the election, has so far fallen short. Fifty three percent
say they fallen short in foreign policy, fifty six percent
on changing business as usual in Washington, huge huge red
flag there. That's all those crypto deals and all this
sort of you know, pay to play issues. Sixty three

(23:56):
percent say he's fallen short in the economy. That is
a huge driver in here. People do not like this
economy and you can feel it in this poll. Sixty
five percent say he's falling short and looking out for
the middle classt Row rut Row, mister Trump, and sixty
six percent say that he's fallen short on inflation and
costs of living. Just one issue, do a majority believe
he has lived up to the expectations that they had

(24:18):
for his presidency. And I'm sure all of you can
guess the issue because I haven't said it yet. It
is border security and immigration. Fifty one percent say he's
lived up to expectations on that, and that, boy, does
I tell you a lot. And and to indicate how
much more trouble Trump and the Republicans are with the economy,
they did an issue tests between the two parties. Republicans

(24:39):
lead on border security by thirty one points. They lead
on dealing with crime by twenty two points. They lead
on dealing with immigration by eighteen points. On the economy,
in September of twenty twenty three, Republicans led by twenty
one points between the two parties, and now their lead
is one one point. This is the worst showing or

(25:00):
the Republicans on this issue the economy since you guessed
it twenty seventeen to twenty eighteen in the run up
to the first midterm of Donald Trump, so as you
could see. Oh more importantly, on the issue of protecting
constitutional rights eight point advantage for Democrats on this. On
the issue of protecting democracy eleven point advantage for Democrats

(25:20):
on this. We ask those same two questions in September
of twenty twenty three, Republicans had an eight point lead
on the protecting our constitutional rights issue and Republicans had
a one point lead on protecting democracy. Both of those
issues are moving towards the Democrats. Now, some of this
is natural. The party out of power is seen as
the one more likely to stand up for constitutional rights

(25:41):
than the party empower. Most people assume the party empower
is always looking for loophole or trying to erode rights.
Those that are upset feel as if the party out
of power is the one that actually cares about the Constitution.
And you could argue that we've seen this right, members
of Congress care more about the Constitution when they're in
the minority in either the House of the Senate than
they do when they're in the majority. How do we

(26:02):
know this? Just look at all the Republicans staying silent
on the unconstitutional way that Donald Trump is conducting his
war against Venezuela. Because that's what he's doing right now.
They have essentially declared war with Venezuela without going to Congress,
without getting you know, with now they claim it's not
even shouldn't even be subject to the War Powers Act.

(26:24):
The lack of interest among most of congressional Republicans in
protecting the Constitution on this issue, I think is what's happening.
It's not one issue here, it's a collection of it. Right,
they've they he keeps losing in court. So there's there's
usually a headline about once a week where the federal
courts say Trump violated the Constitution or the Trump administration

(26:47):
violated the Constitution. Maybe it's on National Guard troops, maybe
it's on what what what they've.

Speaker 2 (26:52):
Been doing.

Speaker 1 (26:54):
With tariffs. Right, But and he every it does seem
as if every week and these had these headlines. If
you look at this poll, and in some ways, do
I wish NBC News would do the Heart macin Turth
poll once a month. Yes, that was the pace with
which we did it back when when we were a

(27:14):
news organization that was a lot bigger and going a
lot big. Obviously, they're in a different all of the
legacy media companies are in a different place and don't
want to spend the money that they once did. But interestingly,
doing this poll, you know, having a six month gap,
you sort of you can see the bigger shifts, right,
They're brighter. It's not the slow erosion. You see the brighter.

(27:37):
You see the bright lines. And here's one more question.
If you're not sure, if you think I'm reading too
much into the issue of democracy and constitutional rights, let
me just show you this one last question. Compared to
past presidents, do you think Donald Trump has done more
to protect the US Constitution, done more to undermine the
US Constitution, or he's been no different than past presidents.

(27:58):
Thirty one percent said he's done more to remember that's
the super core base. Fifty two percent say he's done
more to undermine just sixteen percent say he's no different
than past precedents fifty two percent. Anytime you see a majority,
I've shown you how unpopular the Democratic Party is. To me.
Anytime I see numbers in fifty plus, it means a

(28:18):
majority of whatever that number is is what the independence
split is, and it means self described independence are uncomfortable
with this, and this, this is, this is I think,
so he's You've got an economy that isn't working for
a lot of people. Again, how do we know this?
Sixty one percent say they say their family's income is

(28:39):
falling behind when it comes to cost of living issues.
Only six percent say their incomes going up faster. Only
thirty one percent said saying they're breaking even So you
have nearly two thirds of the country say they're falling behind.
You've got a majority of the country saying the president's
undermining the constitution. It's you can now see the pick

(29:00):
sure where an unpopular opposition party can then be successful
in the midterms because we continue the same cycle we've
been in arguably since the second Obama term, which is
we continue to vote out what we don't like, and
we vote in unknowns. We're willing to try something different.

(29:23):
If something's being pitched differently, we're sometimes willing to try
the same thing again, but this time with a different face.
So instead of Speaker Pelosi, this time it may be
Speaker Jeffreys. Maybe that'll change things, right, But we continue
to vote out. We are not voting in anything. We
are not voting in ideas. We are throwing out is
That is what twenty sixteen was about. It was what

(29:43):
twenty fourteen was about, what twenty sixteen was about, what
twenty eighteen was about, what twenty twenty was about, what
twenty twenty two was about, what twenty twenty four was about. Yes,
I'm repeating all of those years to make this point
and drive it home, and here we go again. Everything
being set up here. Now, this doesn't mean Democratic success

(30:04):
in the midterms is automatically going to mean they should
be the favorite going into the general election in twenty
twenty eight. But what you see developing here is is
you have people don't like Trump's presidency. They don't like
how he's conducting himself. That is a huge issue that
is accruing to the benefit of the Democrats, even though
they don't necessarily have much confidence in the Democrats. They

(30:27):
prefer the Republicans and a lot of law and order
issue right as I was just detailing. So the challenge,
So if you're a presidential candidate and you're reading this poll,
your challenge is you're going to have to come up
with a positive vision. You can run against Trump and
be negative and succeed in a midterm. You can do
it and succeed in a California referendum in order to

(30:49):
get voter permission to redraw maps, change the constitution and
get them to do that. But it's why I don't
say this automatically translates to Gavenus and being the front
runner to be the next president, because we are going
to want you know, I think any particularly a Democratic nominee,
is going to have to demonstrate that they want to
try something different, that they're not going to be a

(31:12):
stereotype Democrat that the voter seems to have in mind.
Now it's up to you, presidential candidate x y or
z or presidential candidate Josha Perro and Shpeer Wes Moore,
whoever else is going to jump into this thing. You're
going to have to find out and this is what's
going to make the rich tile conversation I think so
fruitful here and really sort of help you take what

(31:33):
I just told you in the hard numbers here and
the quantitative research and be able to understand sort of
why these swing voters are behaving this way, and ultimately,
the best politicians know, you've got to speak to the
swing voters first. Yes, you know, in some ways, the
base is going to be easy to fire up. Donald
Trump is always taking the easy way out. So he

(31:55):
just governs to the base, caters to the base, because
it keeps a high floor, It protects him politically, right,
it keeps him just strong enough to avoid getting thrown
out of office, to avoid getting thrown out of and
ultimately because on cultural issues, the Democratic Party clearly is
just so out of sync with where the country is.
It's it's clear to me that between that and I

(32:17):
think some angry independence who blamed the Democrats for the
second Trump term, all right, you know, I certainly think
that that Joe Biden. You know, I think one of
the worst comments Gavin Newsom made recently that I think
is going to come back to bide him is when
he said that the Biden presidency was terrific, you cannot

(32:37):
You're not going to win swing voters making the case
that Biden's presidency was terrific. It may age well, but
it's going to age well the way Harry Truman's presidency
aged well. It took thirty years before people decided he
had he had a good presidency. It did not happen
in two, four or six years. Adelaie Stevenson wasn't running
on the good old days of Harry Truman. And if

(32:59):
he did, he was going to lose anyway to an
American war hero named Generalizahaower. So I would just, you know,
And so when he said that, you know, I don't
think Gavinusom understands that there's a whole bunch of middle
of the road voters who simply wanted one thing from
Joe Biden's presidency to move the country in a direction
so they didn't go back to Donald Trump. And the

(33:20):
fact that that Donald Trump is back, there's always going
to be a chunk of voters that say it's Joe
Biden's fault. His presidency wasn't good enough, he didn't leave
soon enough. Whatever it is, there's gonna be different subjective
reasons for it, but ultimately, whether it's his policies, whether
it was the way he messaged or didn't message, get it,
staying in the race too long, all of those things right,

(33:42):
And that's why I think it's it is. I don't
know if being pro Joe Biden is good in a
Democratic primary either for what it's worth. So I don't
I admire the loyalty if he just did it for
loyalty purposes. But this is not where the voters are.
This is not where the voters are at all. In fact,
I think you can thank Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, Nakim Jeffries,

(34:04):
the three of them together for the Democrats giant and
that negative problem. No, by the way, none of these
numbers are good for Jeffries and Schumer inside the Democratic
Party because even though you have a good number of
the generic ballot for Democrats, it shows Democrats. The winning
Democrats are going to be running against Washington, running against
the old leadership of the Democratic Party. And yes, Jakim Jeffries,

(34:27):
you're going to be considered part of the establishment, not
part of the new wave of leaders not unless you
figure out a way to break out of this, and
I don't know if you can. I think it's hard.
I think it's difficult, and certainly it seems as if
you've been a bit risk averse in trying to establish
yourself as different from Schumer. But there's no doubt if

(34:52):
Jeffries is going to have a chance at being seeing
as a new leader of the party, he's got to
figure out how to separate himself from Schumer, or Schumer
going to have at some point do the party a
favor and indicate that you know, he's not he doesn't
want to coach next year, to put this in coaching terms,
since that's the the coin of the realm these days.
So with that, there's to me, there's where America is at,

(35:17):
what they think of the two parties, what they think
of this presidency. Where we're at one year from the election,
second election of Donald Trump, one year in with our
off off year elections coming Tuesday, don't forget the election
night live stream on YouTube on x wherever you find me,
wherever you find Decision s HQ, wherever you find solicit
we will be in all of those places simultaneously. It's
an election live stream for true political professionals and political junkies.

(35:41):
This is where it's happening. Go check it out. In fact,
this poll is indicated more people watch YouTube than legacy television.
Now just think of that's according to an NBC News poll,
their own numbers. NBC is indicating more people are will
watch YouTube before they watch legacy TV.

Speaker 2 (36:01):
So with that, we'll.

Speaker 1 (36:01):
Sneak in a break for those of you listening the
whole thing. Fascinating conversation with rich taw some focus group
research of Biden to Trump voters. What do they think
of Donald Trump one year out, particularly in the swing
state of Pennsylvania. Well, joining me now, somebody I've known

(36:24):
for a couple of decades, rich Tawe. He is a
message guru, if you will, a market research tester. Makes
his living helping advocacy groups and trade associations test various
messages to try to appeal to certain constituencies where I
consume a lot of his work is for something called

(36:46):
the Swing Voter Project. It's something he does in conjunction
with Axios. If you are a subscriber to those Axios
newsletters and you've seen analysis of the Biden Trump voter
or the Obama Trump voter or the Obama I'm a
Trump Biden Trump voter. It's all thanks to Rich here,
and he goes state by state, sessed with him. I

(37:07):
watch she has a YouTube channel, it's there. He puts
up highlights of his monthly swing voter groups that he does.
There was one in Michigan that I spent a lot
of time. If you guys will recall those sophisticated listeners
of my podcast have already heard me taut Rich's focus

(37:29):
groups of Michigan. He's got some new ones in Pennsylvania.
But he's probably arguably talked to more Biden Trump voters
than anybody in America and probably has his pulse, his
finger on the pulse of these voters as well as anybody.

Speaker 2 (37:46):
Rich.

Speaker 1 (37:46):
Howd I do promoting you on this one? And you
know what?

Speaker 2 (37:51):
Am I leaving out ten out of ten? Perfect job?
Thank you. It's an honor to be with you, Chuck.
I really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (37:58):
And you're also doing a Decider project which is very similar. Again,
these are it's all qualitative research. It's focus groups, it's
not polling. And I want to get into sort of
those the differences in those techniques and the ability now
that you can focus we have larger and larger focus groups.
At what point does it become quantitative instead of qualitative?
We can talk about that, but you really are you

(38:23):
really are a big You feel like you get a
lot out of focus groups, don't you?

Speaker 2 (38:29):
I do.

Speaker 3 (38:30):
And the reason for that is a lot of people
in research like to count heads. I like to see
what's inside people's heads. And that's the distinction between quant
and qual For me is I want to understand why
people believe what they believe what they know, as opposed
to guessing what they know as supposed to me only saying, well,
seventy one percent believe this, twenty nine percent believe that.

Speaker 1 (38:50):
No, it's it's I always say, the single most important
question I try to answer all the time in political
analysis is the why? Right?

Speaker 2 (38:57):
Why? Why?

Speaker 1 (38:58):
Is at the core it's the single most important question
I think that we try to answer in the political space. Well,
let's just get Look, you started this. You've gone ten
years now essentially doing these I feel like you first
started doing the Obama Trump voter focus groups back in
the first Trump term.

Speaker 2 (39:19):
I did.

Speaker 1 (39:19):
So you're getting close to ten years of data.

Speaker 3 (39:22):
Now, aren't you not quite. I'm getting closing in after
March of twenty nineteen. So again because the first month
we did it in person in Appleton, Wisconsin. In fact,
for the first thirteen months from March of twenty nineteen
through March of twenty twenty, we did them in person.
I traveled between the East Coast and the Midwest month
after month, and the pandemic set in. We didn't miss

(39:43):
a month. We just kept going and did them online
and became a little bit easier to recruit because people
didn't have to physically go to a location and we
could get people from across an entire state as opposed
to merely one town or one region in a state.
So the pandemic actually tragic for so many people, actually
for us worked out well for this particular project.

Speaker 1 (40:03):
Has this totally before we get into sort of the
substance of what you've been finding over the last few months,
as the entire focus group world change to do in person,
focus groups matter anymore.

Speaker 3 (40:18):
So I think they matter a lot of the vendors
who had facilities close them permanently because people were more
than willing to do them online.

Speaker 2 (40:26):
So it's a lot of change in.

Speaker 1 (40:27):
That particular to do it online right instead of you know,
hanging out for a couple hours, even though you're getting
paid at some office park, you know, in the suburbs.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
Exactly.

Speaker 3 (40:37):
Yeah, from a respondent perspective, it definitely was less work
for them, although I should say it's more work for
my team because we have to actually, if we want
to do it right, pre qualify people not just in
terms of their demographics and psychographics, but also their Internet connectivity.
You know, literally do they have enough megabits to be

(40:57):
on a zoom call for an hour and a half
without easing up over and over again. So we actually
literally test every person with a tech check well before.
You just have to show up and sit in a
seat and you eat a turkey sandwich with some potato chips.
So it's a very different type of experience from my team.
But from the response perspective, you know they're in a
comfortable spot. I have to worry about things like dogs
barking and kids bothering people during the focus group, and

(41:22):
I enjoy the experience more in person, and I can
moderate a larger group in person. I can do ten
or twelve people in person, but ten or twelve boxes
on a screen and zoom is impossible. My max is
like seven.

Speaker 1 (41:34):
Well, look, I've conducted focus groups a few times myself.
I've observed quite a few of them in person and
virtually and count me as a skeptic of the in
person focus group. And here's why, Rich, And I'm curious
how you factor this in. I think it's a lot
easier for one person to hijack and in person focus

(41:55):
group than it is a virtual focus group. And that's
that's always the danger when you're doing this qualitative research,
is it not.

Speaker 3 (42:03):
Yeah, well, the hijacking thing, you have to be super
careful about that. So I'll give you away one of
my big secrets, Chuck. I don't think I've ever said
this publicly before. I have been trying to figure out
I had been trying to figure out for years, how
do you get the loudmouth person not to get recruited
into the focus group. And I didn't find a perfect solution,
but I found something that I think anecdotally has worked,

(42:24):
which is we have a screening question that says, do
you have any bumper stickers on your car that convey
a political message? The idea being if you want the
entire world to know what you believe politically so much
so you stuck it on the back bumper of your car.
I probably don't want you in my focus group.

Speaker 1 (42:43):
Interesting, so use that as an eliminator.

Speaker 2 (42:45):
I used that as eliminating. Absolutely, absolute love it. I
love it.

Speaker 1 (42:50):
What a great eliminator question. Yeah, so again it's not perfect.
But the other thing is what's the quality of the
moderating right? If you're a decent moderator, you know how
to put the loudmouth person who happens to show up
back in their corner, carefully, respectfully, repeatedly if necessary. And
I just find it's.

Speaker 3 (43:10):
It takes practice, there are techniques for doing it, and
if you're a crummy moderator, you can't do it, and
the person dominates the conversation and that's.

Speaker 1 (43:17):
No, and then you've ruined the focus grip. I ruined
the fo I've seen that. Look, it's why, frankly, a
professional like yourself, Peter I, you know what, I the
person I observe the most over the years was Peter Hart.
Other than yourself, I I there's there's another prominent person
out there who I think is a bit too leading
in his focus group moderating at times, mister Luncen, I

(43:40):
I'm very friendly with him. You are too. We like Frank.
He is in some ways made focus groups great, right,
made more people aware of them sometimes, I think, and
and I actually wonder can you be an effective focus
group moderator if people know who you are before it starts.

Speaker 3 (43:59):
So I don't want to disparage Frank. I've done him
again thirty plus years.

Speaker 1 (44:04):
No, and he was arguably a pioneer in helping to
make this a mainstream idea to study political.

Speaker 3 (44:09):
Habits and dial testing which he popularized, which is a
kind of key thing I do in my message testing work,
very important. I think one reason why I have generally
flown below the radar is that I want to be
anonymous right to the people who who sit sit.

Speaker 2 (44:26):
Down in a focus group.

Speaker 3 (44:27):
And I've I've had focused group respondents come up to
me and say that I'm somehow different from Frank Luntz
who were had where they had been responded in his
group prior to being in mind and offline.

Speaker 2 (44:39):
I'll tell you a very funny story. I don't want
to repeat it public.

Speaker 1 (44:41):
No, and again I don't. I'm not We're not trying
to pick on Frank here. But look, I found this
difficult myself, right I And you know, in the in
the world of network news, you know, they want you know,
you want Chuck Todd and they're talking to voters, right
and you tucked independent voters. It was really hard sometimes
to get them to to, you know, not feel like

(45:02):
they were talking to Chuck Todd and feeling like they
were trying to make an answer that I might have
in their own heads that I might quote unquote approve
of or and it's just like no, no, no, no, it's like
you don't you know, I'm trying to you know, I'm
trying to, you know, pretend I'm not here type of mindset.
And that's why I asked that. And I've wondered if Frank,
in some ways you can't make the focus group about

(45:24):
the moderator. That's my point, and I think that's where
I have failed, and I'm guessing that Frank struggles sometimes
with that.

Speaker 2 (45:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (45:30):
I think for me, I'm a boring ass, late middle
aged white guy, and I am as vanilla as I
can possibly be in the focus groups.

Speaker 2 (45:41):
I am very good at giving a.

Speaker 1 (45:44):
Failure, not very vanilla, But yes, you play vanilla well
on TV.

Speaker 2 (45:48):
Well, I do, because that's how you get the right answer.

Speaker 3 (45:50):
And also that's how you don't get accused of being biased, right,
And I really do everything I can to try to
again throw the pitch straight down the middle of the plate.

Speaker 1 (46:00):
Is how do you verify? You know everybody wants to
say they're a swing voter? Do you go to the
voter file to verify these folks? So I know you've
got a recruiting team, is it, Sego? I think, does
your recruiting for all of your focus group projects? Do
you do voter file verification on these people?

Speaker 2 (46:16):
So I do not.

Speaker 3 (46:17):
Let me tell you what we do do. So this
is an imperfect process. I am the first person to
admit it. It is impossible to know who voted for
whom or whether they voted. It's possible to know whether
they voted, it's impossible to know for whom they voted.
No one was in the voting booth or sitting at
the kitchen table with them if they voted at home. Right,
So two parts of the recruiting process. Part one, Sego

(46:38):
recruits them and does not ask them.

Speaker 2 (46:41):
Are you a swing voter?

Speaker 3 (46:42):
They ask who'd you vote for in twenty twenty four,
and then four years earlier, who'd you vote for in
twenty twenty. If they happen to say Trump in twenty
four Biden in twenty, then they immediately make the first cut.
But that's not enough for me. I have a person
on my team. His name is Matt and one of
his jobs is to personally interview every single one of
these swing voters before the focus group and say, okay,

(47:04):
you said you've voted for Trump and twenty four, why
did you vote for Trump and twenty four? Why did
you vote for Biden in twenty twenty? And if they
can't give a plausible answer to those questions, they're not
invited into the group.

Speaker 2 (47:15):
We toss them overboard.

Speaker 1 (47:17):
You don't try because another screening question I've heard is
how did you vote in twenty twenty? Not who did
you vote for? But do you remember how you voted
and where you went to vote. I've heard sometimes that
can be an effective screener question to find out if
people are bs and you're not.

Speaker 3 (47:33):
It could be, and maybe we'll start doing it now
that you suggested it. I mean, I think it's there's
no again, there's no perfect way of doing this, and note,
and what happens is people's memories fate. I mean last
year we did focus groups in twenty twenty four we
were asking about their voting patterns in twenty sixteen and
twenty twenty. You know, I don't remember what I had
for breakfast two days ago.

Speaker 1 (47:51):
Lot well and well, especially with COVID brain rich, we've
all liked none. I can't remember anything in twenty nineteen
and twenty fourteen are the same year to me. Sometimes, right,
anything pre COVID is just a blurer.

Speaker 2 (48:02):
That's it.

Speaker 3 (48:03):
Absolutely, and so again, no perfect way of doing this.
The thing is people, well, I think it enables us
to get at least something that I think is close
to the most truthful answer that's out there. Is the
fact that people don't know who or what category we're
looking for. If they knew we were looking for Trump voters,
are looking for consistent Democratic voters, they would answer that
way to get their one hundred and twenty five bucks.

(48:24):
But not knowing what we're looking for, it gives them
no reason to lie to us.

Speaker 1 (48:28):
One hundred and twenty five bucks a session, right, and
that's what the time commitment is. What three hours, two hours.

Speaker 3 (48:33):
What no, no, no, no, no, it's in total an
hour and forty five minutes, a fifteen minutes sort of
warm up, and then ninety minutes of conversation.

Speaker 1 (48:40):
Rich, you are going to have a whole bunch of
my listeners are going to really one hundred twenty five
bucks for less than two hours of work. Count me in.

Speaker 2 (48:47):
It's a good deal.

Speaker 1 (48:48):
Yeah, it's not a bad deal. Eighty bucks an hour? Huh?
Not quite yeah, pretty close now, not quite that. What
are we looking at? Sixty bucks an hour? But so yeah,
not been a good money.

Speaker 2 (48:58):
Yeah, it's good.

Speaker 1 (49:00):
All right, let's dig in. You just did Pennsylvania and
you're just doing the seven battleground states and you're literally
going into a rotation every month.

Speaker 2 (49:09):
So yeah, it's not quite a.

Speaker 3 (49:10):
Rotation, but it's where we were hitting each state at
least once and most of them twice in the year.

Speaker 2 (49:15):
Got it.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
So Michigan was the one you flagged a few to
me there that was fascinating, And I keep talking about
this one before we get into Pennsylvania, where we're going
to play some clips for you folks, so get ready
for that. The Michigan group from September what stood out

(49:36):
to me, there was there was this one gentleman who
was really concerned about the consolidation of power, the lack
of checks on Trump, all of these things, thought he
was being power hungry and wasn't ready to change their vote.
Has that been a consistent finding? Are you starting to
see that? Was there a consistency between Michigan and Pennsylvania

(49:57):
on that issue?

Speaker 3 (49:58):
So what's consistent is that not every month, but I've
come across a number of those people who are giving
very anti Trump comments but basically would not take Harris
if they had.

Speaker 2 (50:14):
To redo the vote.

Speaker 3 (50:16):
And it happened again this month in Pennsylvania. I send
you a clip on that where I had a woman
who said she disapproved of Trump.

Speaker 2 (50:27):
I don't hear.

Speaker 1 (50:28):
Actually, I have it here, and I want to get
into this a second, and let's let's you dove into it.
But we're going to play the clip for folks.

Speaker 4 (50:38):
I disapprove because number one, he's a felon. I don't
think a fellain should be president of the United States.
He's a pathological liar. This ice thing is getting out
of control. If you is getting out of control, the
government is shut down, and I don't think that he's
doing enough for the people. Prices or sky high like

(51:03):
insurance premiums are going to be going up, and I
think that he could do something about it.

Speaker 3 (51:12):
Okay, Brenda, my part of my job is to play
devil's advocate. So if you love me in a second,
just let me ask you a question. So you mentioned
that he's a convicted felon. He was a convicted felon
before the election. What you voted for him knowing he
was a convicted felon? So why are you holding that
against him now?

Speaker 5 (51:29):
I guess, well, he there should have been something in
place in the Constitution.

Speaker 4 (51:35):
I know what you're asking me, but I don't know.

Speaker 5 (51:39):
It didn't bother me then, but now it is because
there's so many things coming out, like you know, with
the Maxwell files and all these things. So I think
the Constitution should have done a better job by saying
number one, that he had no political experience at all,
and that the other thing is conct Brenda.

Speaker 3 (52:01):
I'm sorry, I'm me to be argumentative at all, but
he'd been president for four years. He had experience when
you voted for him again last November, right, Yeah, I'm
I'm I'm some a bit confused, like, why did you
choose him over Kamala Harris?

Speaker 5 (52:18):
Because I thought the heme was better that I didn't
particularly like her, so between the two, it was like
I had to go with him because I didn't like her.

Speaker 1 (52:30):
You insert yourself and say, you know, he was a
convicted felon before you voted for him in twenty twenty four,
and then Rich she goes through this hammin and Han
and she basically like, I just couldn't vote for Kamala Hair.

Speaker 2 (52:45):
Yeah, now, Brenda was awesome. That was quite an exchange.

Speaker 3 (52:51):
She really had a lot of reasons why she didn't approve,
and some of them had nothing to do with her vote,
because she was complaining also, he didn't have experience, and
I said, well, he served for four years as president.
You can't say in twenty twenty four he didn't have experience.
So but really, what it came down to for her
was she couldn't vote for Harris. And what I keep
encountering to your earlier point is that there are folks

(53:14):
who twist themselves into pretzels to justify not choosing Harris
then and not choosing Harris now if they could revote,
they just for a variety of reasons cannot abide her
and will take anything from Trump.

Speaker 1 (53:29):
Richard, are we going to talk around the elephant in
the room?

Speaker 2 (53:32):
Right?

Speaker 1 (53:32):
I mean, it's hard not to wonder if this had
to do with her being a black woman.

Speaker 3 (53:36):
Well, so you've got multiple issues there, right, You've got
woman of color, person of color, and female. So I've
come across in the course of the last year plus
people who wouldn't vote for her because she was female,
who told me explicitly that they wouldn't vote for it
because she was female, People who danced around the race issue,
but certainly I suspected from the comments that they that

(53:59):
was the reason.

Speaker 1 (54:00):
Well, that's so funny, Like, look, Brenda's it's one of
those she says, I thought he was better than I
didn't particularly like her, so between the two, it was
like I had to go with him because I didn't
like her like she doesn't. She can't can't articulate why
she doesn't like her.

Speaker 3 (54:18):
Yeah, and keep in mind, Brenda's a woman of color,
so super super interesting, and I've got.

Speaker 1 (54:23):
I don't know what to make of that. That's fair. Yeah,
well but I can tell.

Speaker 2 (54:27):
You what make of it.

Speaker 3 (54:27):
To me, it's fractually pretty straightforward. For some of these
folks I spoke to, they are either deeply religious or
deeply conservative socially, they think that men should be in control,
men should be in power, women should not.

Speaker 1 (54:40):
And Biden was somebody they could vote for. But Clinton
and Harris may have been literally simply their gender may
have been the disqualifier for these voters.

Speaker 3 (54:48):
It would have been a large part of the consideration,
along with by the way, a lot of these folks
thought that Biden failed and she was part of a
failed administration, and they didn't want to have their fingerprints
on that for the next four years.

Speaker 1 (55:06):
I look at the twenty twenty four campaign, you know,
and there's different ways people want to interpret it. I
was actually relieved to know that voting was normal. It
is normal to me that people simply vote against and
vote on the economy like that has been you know,
that's how you and I were professionally raised in politics,
right Rich, Like that was that is how it worked

(55:28):
in the eighties and the nineties and the odds, Like
that's just how it worked. Only recently have we made
all these other issues in there, and you're like, oh,
wait a minute, post COVID voters are starting to behave
we're more normally again. It's about finances, it's about competency.

Speaker 3 (55:45):
It is and I will say on whether you have
to clip on this also. But one thing that we
uncover month after month is that the dissatisfaction with Trump
among these Biden to Trump voters, among those who are
dissatisfied with him now, it's mostly tied exclusively, but mostly
tied to the state of the economy and how they're struggling,
and how they see a billionaire who doesn't need to

(56:08):
have to worry about these things, not addressing the concern
that most matters to them.

Speaker 6 (56:13):
Inflation doesn't affect him, simple, He's not feeling the effects
of it. So when you're not direkly impacted by something,
even if it's going on around you, you tend not
to worry about it. He's to busy playing hopscotch in Russia.
I don't know, he's just not worried about anything over here.

Speaker 7 (56:32):
Well, I think that he's more focused overall on the
economy as a whole. He's focused on using tariffs and
carpet bombing with tariffs to try to force deals which
he hopes eventually will address inflation, but it's not. He
thinks he's going to bring jobs back by forcing these tariffs.

(56:53):
It's almost an unforced error. If he was focusing on
one place than another with his tariff, it wouldn't hurt
as bad. But it he just has to hit everybody
all once, all at the same time with them, and
it's causing mayhem with prices of goods and services.

Speaker 1 (57:10):
Overall. What I find remarkable is how much they're following
the day to day on tariffs like these. Weren't uninformed
voters about the current state of the economy, which if
I were in the Trump white House that would really
make me nervous. They're following this tariff stuff fairly closely.

Speaker 3 (57:27):
So one of the great fascinations I have with the
project now compared to a year ago when I was
doing then Trump to Biden voters as supposed to now
Biden to Trump voters, was that I would ask Biden
voters people vote for him in twenty twenty, please name,
if you could, one thing that President Biden has achieved

(57:48):
in office that he himself would call an achievement. So
I didn't want a snarky answer like, oh, he achieved
high inflation. I didn't want so, okay, So the people
would stop, and roughly each time I ask it could
not name a single thing that Biden had achieved in
office that he himself would call an achievement. And among
those who could name something, way disproportionately it was the

(58:11):
same topic.

Speaker 2 (58:12):
Student loan debt relief.

Speaker 1 (58:14):
No kidding now, infrastructure, which was actually probably the best
achievement he got.

Speaker 3 (58:19):
You know, Chuck It says, though infrastructure never happened, chips
never happened, Relief Act never happened, in Flacy Reduction Act
never happened. So for them, I want you to imagine
the mind of a swing voter. Now I'll get to
the Trump point about it in a second. The comparison.
So you're thinking about President Biden, you're thinking, okay, so
he's basically slept through the last three and a half years.

(58:43):
One time they came to him with an executive order,
he signed it trying to relieve student debt, and that's
all he did, and that's your conception of him. Trump
comes in and suddenly he's in the news constantly, He's
in your social media feed constantly. And if you have
voted for him and be like, finally someone is doing something.

Speaker 2 (59:03):
So it's the.

Speaker 3 (59:04):
Bias toward action versus the disapproval of inertia, which is
what they associated with Biden. And I can't tell you
how many times this year I've heard about Trump at
least he's doing something.

Speaker 2 (59:16):
Whether they like it or not.

Speaker 3 (59:18):
They still like the fact that there's action as opposed
to Biden's inertia.

Speaker 1 (59:22):
No, I've always said that what's interesting, there's always motion
with Trump. The question is is their movement? Like I
have always said, I feel like life with Trump, covering
him is literally like being on a roller coaster because
you get on and off in the same place.

Speaker 3 (59:40):
Well, but that's from your perspective, getting as close to
the process as you are. You see that. I think
that nuance is lost with the folks that I'm talking to. So,
you know, Trump's his flair for the dramatic, His ability
to sign his name in huge bowld letters with a
big sharpie and to hold it up. That looks like

(01:00:00):
action to someone who didn't happen to see Biden signing
these multi trillion dollar bills into law, and Trump's doing
it repeatedly.

Speaker 2 (01:00:09):
The image of him.

Speaker 3 (01:00:09):
Theleville office is him holding up some leather binder with
his big signature on it and then boasting about it.

Speaker 2 (01:00:15):
And for people I talked to, that's action.

Speaker 1 (01:00:19):
You know, It's interesting rich us take a step back here.
Biden really was an outlier of the last thirty years
in how they conducted that presidency. When I think about
the image management of the you know, Michael Deaver and
Ronald Reagan right when when I was, you know, and
how you know, I basically in college we studied Michael

(01:00:40):
Deaver as image management in my political science classes. Bill
Clinton was clearly always you know, some you know people
say he was. We would borrow some of Reagan's gestures
and stuff, and he had he was always performing. George W. Bush,
they were very image conscious and ended up biting them
in the butt with the mission accomplished thing at one point.

(01:01:00):
But again, it was about the visuals. It was about always,
you know, showing, showing him and what they wanted to
put him in the best possible light. Barack Obama was
really very much engaged that way. Trump too. Biden was
the outlier. And I guess it's a combination of old COVID, right,
you sort of put all those together. And you know,

(01:01:24):
I wonder if if the Democrats are overrating their problems. Basically,
they just had a nominee that just wasn't built for
the modern media age.

Speaker 3 (01:01:33):
Now to me, he delt with the media the way
Jerry Ford dealt with the media, which is seriously, I
mean it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:39):
Was after making Jerry Ford reference, you're probably losing.

Speaker 3 (01:01:41):
Right, yeah, exactly that I'll sign a bill, have a ceremonial, Well,
invite the three major networks and everybody will know about it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:49):
And lo and behold, they didn't.

Speaker 3 (01:01:51):
And I have a whole montage I can show it
to you someday of swing voters in during Biden's term
having no idea what was going on in terms of
process in Washington, achievements that, no idea he worked on
climate change, no idea about infrastructure, No, didn't know it.
Who served on the January sixth committee. I mean, just
go down the list of stuff they just didn't pay
attention to. And so the challenge it really is, obviously

(01:02:14):
we're dancing around the term. It's the attention economy we're
living in that Trump has mastered it. Biden never mastered it.
And I would argue if the Democrats have any chance
of winning anything again, they have to learn how to
master it because that's the world we're living in where
people are distracted constantly and Trump manages to break through.

Speaker 1 (01:02:31):
It, and you've got to You know, it's interesting because
I'll have my friends in the left say it's you
people in the media didn't do enough to showcase Biden,
and I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm like, you know,
if you actually do all your Google search it up,
there's plenty of coverage of everything he did. What was
missing was Biden trying to amplify the coverage himself. And

(01:02:52):
I think, what, you know, what just about everybody in
corporate America is doing. I assume you have a for
profit client list these days who are thinking the same thing,
which is you've got to take it. You've got to
do your own communicating. You can't rely on legacy media,
free media anymore. And if you are, you're losing. Right,
anybody that does that, whether you're a politician or your
Coca cola right, you've got you know, Bud Light found

(01:03:15):
out the hard way, right, You've got to be take advantage.
You've got to proactively do your own communicating. This is
not all the media's job, is this or this? We're
all the media at including the communication shop of the
White House. And I think in that this is where
Biden's entire operation was a relic.

Speaker 3 (01:03:35):
Yeah, I mean, you're personally way more entrepreneurial about this
than the entire White House was in the last administration.
So I mean that's that's the difference. And I think
people have to understand that. And the thing was a
lot of people follow the Swing Voter project, people on
the left, people on the right. There are folks in
the Biden administration I know, paid attention to what I
was producing each month, and it was abundantly clear from

(01:03:58):
these highlights videos I put out that the message wasn't
getting through. And I was always mystified by this. It
wasn't just me, Obviously, I'm just one guy out there.
I'm not tied to the administration. I mean Republicans like
what I do too, But my god, Like, really, month
after month, I'm discovering that no one knows about your
multi trillion dollar legislative achievements. How is that not something

(01:04:18):
that you're solving for? I was, again just a question
I'm asking let's put it that.

Speaker 2 (01:04:23):
Way, all right.

Speaker 1 (01:04:24):
I want to do another excerpt here because this is
a little counterintuitive to what I think conventional wisdom is
these days, is whether Trump is exercising more executive power
trying to consolidate the presidency. We've had the no King's rally, right?
Is this penetrating? Is this an issue? So let's play
this exchange. You have Kailana h Anthony d Jim b

(01:04:47):
All responding here on this question of the simple question
you asked, was you know, do you see Trump exercising
more power than Biden, Obama and Bush? So let's litten
know those answers.

Speaker 8 (01:04:59):
I mean, they've all deported people, They've all, you know,
done different things. But I mean maybe not in the
same towards the same topic, but I think generally as
a whole, he's about the same with executive power.

Speaker 2 (01:05:21):
Okay, Anthy, what about you?

Speaker 9 (01:05:25):
Similar to what was said, I think that, but being
in the president, he has ultimate authority similar to what
the other roles were as well with the other previous presidents.
Maybe he's more vocal saying it, but I think I
don't see any difference with what they were able to
do and what they've done.

Speaker 10 (01:05:41):
Barack Obama and Joe Biden had more executive orders than
any president by numbers. I'm sorry, George Bush and Barack
Obama had more executive orders than anyone they had. I mean,
George Bush used the nine to eleven bombing to push
consolidate power in the presidency. Barack Obama did it because

(01:06:06):
he had pretty much everyone behind him for whatever he did.
So those two definitely, I mean, if not more the
same amount.

Speaker 1 (01:06:17):
I'll tell you what's interesting here, Rich, is that they
they all think it's no different than Obama or Bush
in particular, and even Biden to an extent.

Speaker 2 (01:06:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:06:27):
So the thirteen people I had in Pennsylvania, about half
of them thought he was exercising more, but about half
of them thought it was the same amount as these
prior presidents. And as just noted in these clips, they're
basically saying, well, you know, Obama did this executive thing
and Biden did this thing, and they're comparing what they

(01:06:50):
see Trump doing to what these prior presidents doing, and
they don't detect a qualitative difference. And to me, that
was so fascinating is that the media is constantly talking
about how Trump is breaking all these these norms, but
they don't see that. They see Trump as just being
part of a continuum of presidents doing things they shouldn't
be doing.

Speaker 1 (01:07:07):
Let me let me posit something here for you to
take in, which is whether it was amplifying. I'm going
to connect something here from the one thing Biden that
you said voters took away from what they thought Biden
accomplished with student loans. What's interesting about that topic that
happens to be a topic that the right also amplified
when he did it. When I look at executive power

(01:07:31):
with Bush, Obama and Biden and Trump, the party out
of power would amplify anytime that they thought they were
over using their power. Bush with FISA and all of that,
Obama with his executive orders, Biden with what he did.
You know, it seems as if the only way these

(01:07:52):
swing voters actually get an idea of what a president
does is not only how they amplify it, but how
the opponents amplify it. And this strikes me as while
maybe we as sort of more neutral Washington pros and
understand how executive power works, and yeah, Trump really is
consolidating power in a way we haven't seen before, because

(01:08:16):
that accusation has been out there about, you know, from
the right on Obama and Biden and from the left
on Bush and Trump. It is not unusual to the
average swing voter, is it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:27):
It's not. I think that's a brilliant observation.

Speaker 3 (01:08:29):
And having your actions defined by your enemies means that
you don't.

Speaker 2 (01:08:38):
Necessarily have control of that narrative.

Speaker 3 (01:08:39):
It's obviously it's coming from the people who disagree with you,
And it could easily be the case that the people
who I talk to who are unhappy with Trump's executive
actions are getting their news from sources that are amplifying
that in a way that the people who aren't bothered
by his actions.

Speaker 1 (01:08:55):
Yeah, yeah, reactually are you seeing is that a pattern
that you noticed when you started this back in twenty nineteen,
that in some way what breaks through is not just
what is what the opponents are also talking about. That
that's ultimately what breaks through is when you actually engage,

(01:09:16):
when you get both positive coverage and negative coverage.

Speaker 3 (01:09:20):
Yeah, it's hard to chuck because the the I ask
people every month where they get their news from traditional media,
whether they get it from social media, and this splintering
and the splintering has been around since the beginning of
the project. People get their news from a variety of sources,
but more and more of them are telling me they're
getting in the news mostly or exclusively from social media sources.

(01:09:41):
So I'm finding that the universe that they're in is
just totally different from the news consumption that you may
have or I may have. And the idea that someone
never looks at a traditional media outlet ever, and they
get their news from TikTok.

Speaker 2 (01:10:00):
For war broke out, my first inclination.

Speaker 3 (01:10:02):
Would be, let's go and see how NBC or CNN
is covering it or Fox. Why how could you just
be looking at TikTok videos if the United States is attacked?

Speaker 1 (01:10:16):
Let me realis tell you about something. Actually. I was
involved with a conference called Trust in Media and where
it's more about trust in the entire information ecosystem, working
with a group of folks who come actually from the
National security space, people that worked in the first Trump term,
who were worried about the health of the information ecosystem. Right,
this is bigger than just journalism, and so we had

(01:10:37):
a presentation John Delavope, who's done a lot of gen
Z and millennial work one of the notations and Adelman
also did a presentation that when there is breaking news,
when there is a huge story, that there is still
a desire to go to a main a legacy news source,
and that even among Gen Z or millennials, the only

(01:11:00):
almost the one time that they will check into those
sources is if something big is happening, right, a big moment,
They think, oh, I better go check that out. Right,
there's a shooting or there's a storm or something like that.
So it's not all TikTok yet, right, I mean I was.
I was oddly reassured that younger folks who are almost

(01:11:24):
mostly getting their stuff and essentially curating their own media
is what I call it, it's self curation. Some of
it is legacy, but they don't know that it's legacy, right.
They follow somebody specifically who just happens to work at
a legacy media company.

Speaker 4 (01:11:38):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:11:38):
But I thought that was interesting, So I take your
point there. But it does feel like when the chips
are down, they think, oh, those big companies have the
resources to do live reporting right now. Right, there's still
that perception out there.

Speaker 3 (01:11:52):
Yeah, I guess that question is how often does that
happen given their lack of knowledge of all the things
that Biden did for four years that were widely covered
when they have that's why, and particularly Chuck, the things
that get missed by my swing voters are process related things,
legislation getting passed in Congress, things being signed into law,
and emotional hearings. That's as though they never happened for

(01:12:14):
most of these folks. All right, well, here's I'm gonna
the last clip we're going to play. Here is a
it's a this is this?

Speaker 1 (01:12:22):
To me? Is the probably one of your favorite questions
because you just find out what is breaking through? You
asked this each month? What question would you ask President Trump?
If you could ask him anything? So let's play all
the responses here.

Speaker 4 (01:12:37):
But ask why so many lies about everything?

Speaker 1 (01:12:42):
I would ask him what he's doing for the economy.

Speaker 10 (01:12:45):
That was a big part of his campaign promise, and
I don't see any difference seen files.

Speaker 2 (01:12:52):
What about the Epstein files? What would you want to know?

Speaker 1 (01:12:54):
Why aren't they released?

Speaker 7 (01:12:56):
Might ask them how much controlled donors have over his decisions.

Speaker 4 (01:13:00):
I'd ask him how he managed to get the hostages
out of Gaza.

Speaker 9 (01:13:04):
But ask what he thinks is the biggest threat to
the United States right now?

Speaker 1 (01:13:09):
Why do you love Russia so much?

Speaker 4 (01:13:12):
Are you in the Epstein files?

Speaker 1 (01:13:14):
I would ask if you would handle January sixth different
if he had the chance to, do.

Speaker 2 (01:13:21):
You really care about people and everything we're going through?

Speaker 10 (01:13:24):
Will he ever learn to not attack every person that
disagrees with him?

Speaker 6 (01:13:29):
Is there a way to benefit financially him and his
billionaire buddies without attacking the poor?

Speaker 1 (01:13:37):
All right, let's see Epstein shows up once twice, three times?
That's interesting. What breaks through that Epstein broke through a
little bit of Russia campaign donor stuff? What shocked you?

Speaker 3 (01:13:58):
So here's what I take away from this exercise. This
has been happening month over a month. So I in
this group, I think I mentioned six basically approve of
Trump's actions in office.

Speaker 2 (01:14:08):
Seven disapproved.

Speaker 1 (01:14:09):
It's about the ratio we're on, right, It's about that, right,
it's like a forty five fifty five ratio, depending on
the all you use exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:14:18):
But among the people who approve of what he is doing,
they still made a number of very negative comments or
ask negative questions when I asked them to come up
with a question for the president so they could have
asked questions like what makes you such an effective leader?
Or how did you broker such an amazing deal in
the Middle East? Go down all these lists of questions

(01:14:40):
that would have been indicative of an appreciation and advertis one,
I mean one, Carolyn m I'd ask him how he
managed to get the hostages out of Gaza.

Speaker 1 (01:14:49):
Feels like a supportive type of question.

Speaker 3 (01:14:51):
That's one, But the rest of them are all basically negative.
And to me, what it suggests is that while they
approve of his performance in office, among those who approve,
there are still very significant lingering doubts and it's almost
like a make me a bee line to their psyche
when it comes to how they feel about Trump. Well,

(01:15:12):
what question would you ask him?

Speaker 1 (01:15:19):
If I were a Democratic strategy, you're trying to figure
out how do I win over these voters. I sit
here and I look at these questions, and I'm sure
I think I can do this with every one of
your proofs, and I'd be like, oh my god. They
know everything I would use against him. They know he's
kind of in the hands of Russia, they know he's
kind of in the hands of big rich people. They
know all these things, and they vote for him anyway,

(01:15:40):
What would you tell a client that thought, well, these
people must not know these things, and it's like, oh, no,
they do, and they don't approve of them either, but
they still voted for him. What do you take away
from that?

Speaker 3 (01:15:55):
Well, what I take away from that is that a
lot of their focus is on things that they say
when you ask them about it matters somewhat, but don't
get to the nub of what really is bothering them
and what is bothering them the most right now, if
I had to broadly generalize among those people who are struggling,

(01:16:18):
is his performance on the economy and the idea that
he is a billionaire who promised to get inflation under
control and they're still struggling to make ends meet.

Speaker 2 (01:16:30):
Go back to the thing we were talking.

Speaker 3 (01:16:31):
About earlier, on the economy and how that is sort
of the traditional issue that regulates how people feel the
economy comes up organically in the conversations. Chuck when I
ask them, what issue the.

Speaker 1 (01:16:44):
Only issue that comes up organically?

Speaker 2 (01:16:47):
It's not the only one.

Speaker 3 (01:16:49):
Immigration comes up, mostly in an approving way, but sort
of often at times, I like what he's doing, I
don't like how he's doing it.

Speaker 1 (01:16:57):
That is the theme of most of these groups. For me,
that's what I always take away, and I'm always very careful.
I'm like, you know, what democrats don't understand is voters
like his goals. They don't like his execution.

Speaker 2 (01:17:09):
Yeah, they don't.

Speaker 3 (01:17:11):
The way I try to analogize Trump, people who have
struggled to understand why people like him or approve of him,
I should I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:17:18):
Just going to say, these people don't like them, but
vote for him. This is different, right, we don't like them,
and yet you know, it's like Aaron Sorkin wrote, you
want me on that wall in deep dark corners at
the parties you don't want to admit to your friends, right,
Like it's the Jack Nicholson monologue from a Few good Men.

Speaker 2 (01:17:38):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:17:39):
And so the analogy I use is a little bit different,
is like a medical analogy. So the reputation that surgeons have,
for example, of not being warm and fuzzy.

Speaker 1 (01:17:47):
Kind of jerky. Yeah, I know it all, it's god complex, etc.

Speaker 2 (01:17:50):
Exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:17:51):
But at the end of the day, if they know
how to take out that infected whatever it's in your body,
and they do that, right, who cares if they're you
know what, I just I just want to make sure
they can do the job that I hired them to do,
which is in this case, for example, get illegal aliens
out of the country, or push back on unfair trade

(01:18:11):
practices from other countries. Those are the kinds of things
that they're willing to tower rate a lot of his
behavior in order to get the ends.

Speaker 2 (01:18:20):
That they want.

Speaker 3 (01:18:21):
And so that's why you get this response. But to me,
you know, for a lot of the folks I'm talking to,
the vote between Trump and Harris last year, to draw
another analogy out, was like being a thirsty person who
has to choose between drinking wheat grass juice and castor oil.
You have to drink something because you're really thirsty, but

(01:18:43):
whatever you choose is going to be unpleasant. It tastes
like blah, right blah, and afterwards, having drunk it, you're
going to think that I really have to drink that.
And that's how they feel. It's not that they one
was highly preferable to tell. It was two unpleasant choices.

Speaker 1 (01:18:58):
And the outcome is like to leave you in the bathroom. Now,
where do we take this?

Speaker 2 (01:19:04):
Going? All the way? We stopping this right now yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
hit the stop fun.

Speaker 1 (01:19:08):
Yeah. Let me ask one other question about these groups
this year, and I assume any Democrats breaking through in
a positive way to these voters.

Speaker 2 (01:19:20):
No.

Speaker 3 (01:19:21):
And I have to tell you if you if we
were doing a little thesaurus dot com right now and
typed in the word contempt and ask for every synonym
for the word contempt, those are the adjectives these folks
used to describe how they feel about the Democratic Party.
Not only that, to your question directly, there's no Democrat

(01:19:41):
on the horizon that gets them excited. Uh, they're not
paying a lot of attention to the to the presidential race.

Speaker 2 (01:19:47):
In twenty twenty eight.

Speaker 3 (01:19:49):
I did show them a Gavin Newsom social media post
mocking the president's style.

Speaker 2 (01:19:57):
They they thought it was not genuine.

Speaker 3 (01:20:00):
In other words, they thought it was real, like he
had done it, but they thought he was basically.

Speaker 2 (01:20:05):
Taking the.

Speaker 1 (01:20:07):
Trying too hard.

Speaker 3 (01:20:08):
It was trying too hard. But also that only Trump
knows how to do this well. Newsom is kind of
faking it by doing it, by taking on the Trump style.

Speaker 2 (01:20:15):
And they saw right through it.

Speaker 1 (01:20:16):
So I think that's a great warning for people. I
think the because I have some sources on the left
to think, hey, I want to find my own Trump.
I'm like, do you are you sure? I don't know
if Americans want Trump light, and I don't know if
they want to. Sometimes you don't want more a derivative
of something you maybe only wanted to have once.

Speaker 3 (01:20:36):
Anyway, Well, and some would argue that Governor DeSantis found
that out the hard way the Republican primary, Right, No,
you know it.

Speaker 1 (01:20:46):
What people want is Trump's personality more than the policies. Yeah,
And I think that's the that's the probably the hard
the hardest thing for political strategists to accept in this
in this current conversation.

Speaker 3 (01:21:00):
I gotta tell you, Chuck, I've been at the focus
group business now for twenty four years. I've moderated well
more than a thousand focus groups in the course of
my career, and going back well before Trump was ever
a nominee, ever on the political scene at all. I'm
talking about two thousand and eight, twenty twelve.

Speaker 2 (01:21:18):
Whatever.

Speaker 3 (01:21:19):
I kept turing over and over again from people center right,
we want somebody who fights. Republicans don't fight. They give
up too easily. The Democrats are constantly all over them.
The Democrats know how to fight. Republicans don't know how
to fight, and Trump scratched an itch. He scratched the
itch of somebody who's willing to fight for them.

Speaker 1 (01:21:40):
Well, now are the left that's that? Now it's the
left that's complaining that Democrats don't know how to fight exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:21:46):
That's the thing I always found hilarious is that Democrats
think that Republicans fight better. Republicans think the Democrats fight better.
And I've heard this in groups, separate groups and over
the course of years, and it's always amazed me that
neither one has an appreciation for their own ability to
fight and an overestimation of the other side's ability to fight.

Speaker 1 (01:22:02):
That's always so true. And ultimately, you know, it's whichever
side is presiding over a better economy is the better fighter.
It's funny that it works, right, It's it's it's sometimes
that simple. Does anybody else pop positively forget Democrats? I mean,
when you know, you know, is there is there admiration

(01:22:23):
for Silicon Valley or skepticism?

Speaker 2 (01:22:25):
Is there?

Speaker 1 (01:22:26):
You know, is this rise in sort of you know,
Steve Bannon and I had a I had interviewed Banned
a few months ago. And you know, so he said.
You know, I was asking him why he and Lena
Khan have something in common, and his his thesis was, well,
we're both skeptical when of consolidated power. And I thought

(01:22:48):
that that was a pretty fair that that is what
what ignites the Sanders voter and the Trump voter, is that, right,
a bit of skepticism of the powerful institutions. Are these
voters that are Are they the skeptics or are they
something else?

Speaker 3 (01:23:04):
I wouldn't describe them as being They're definitely skeptical, so
yes to that question, no doubt that they'll.

Speaker 1 (01:23:10):
Vote against They're not vote for us, right, they vote
against there are? They feel like people that decided who
not who they couldn't stomach as president, not necessarily voting
for who they preferred.

Speaker 2 (01:23:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:23:22):
I like to describe them as serial presidential monogamous. You know,
but the terms serial data serial monogamous, you date one person.

Speaker 1 (01:23:31):
I was accused of that over the years. Okay, well
I never could date multiple I never understood my friends
who could do that. I'm like, I don't know, I
can't do it. So I was a serial monogamous.

Speaker 3 (01:23:41):
Yeah, so these are serial presidential monogamous, meaning they dated
George W. Bush, they got sick of him, they chose Obama,
they got sick of Obama, they chose Trump, they got
sick of Trump, they got they chose Biden. And then
they some of them were so sick of Biden they
actually went back to Trump again.

Speaker 2 (01:23:56):
Gave them a second chance. But they are there.

Speaker 3 (01:24:00):
Their loyalty to any presidential candidate or president is as
shallow as as a tip of a pin.

Speaker 1 (01:24:09):
And it sounds like they're always looking for something.

Speaker 3 (01:24:10):
New, always, that's absolutely what they want. They are they're
easily dissatisfied, easily put off. And then the thing that
amazed me back in twenty twenty one was how quickly
they bailed on Biden. You know, when I asked them
how they felt about Biden. In the first three or
four months, I feel, I'm feeling relief, I'm feeling proud,
I'm feeling calm. And then within a few months it

(01:24:31):
was like, yeah, I mean they just one thing, obviously,
it is Afghanistan, the Delta variant, and then they were done.
And for three and a half years he could not
win them back. So they were merciless toward him. Some
could argue that that was basically an unforced error on
Biden's part. But these folks did never went back. This
year very different every month. The number of people who

(01:24:52):
are approving or disapproving of Trump is fluctuating endlessly, and
there's no consistency from.

Speaker 2 (01:24:56):
Month to month.

Speaker 3 (01:24:57):
And I'll have some higher levels of approval one month,
month lower levels, and next there's no seeming pattern in
terms of what direction it's going. I can tell you roughly,
since February, just under sixty percent say they still approve
of the job he's doing. But that's again February's responds
versus aprils, versus July versus now. So it's the timing

(01:25:18):
when I asked it. I didn't ask all of.

Speaker 1 (01:25:20):
Them just in the last year anything consistent about people
in his orbit. Kennedy, Vance, Rubio, and hag Seth are
arguably the most prominent members in Trump's orbit. Christy Nome,
maybe Stephen Miller. Do any of these folks pop in
these groups?

Speaker 3 (01:25:38):
Most of these folks are not familiar with. Most of
these people. I've asked about Robert Kennedy Junior a couple
of times, and healthcare policy. They were split between approve
of Kennedy, disapprove of Kennedy, don't know what he's doing,
so it was kind of shallow. For those who do
support they want to see America be healthy you again,

(01:26:00):
so the MAHA theme is important to them, but they
get very sketchy when you start talking about making it
harder to get vaccinations and those types of things. They
they're they're willing to go along, but just not as
far as Trump is going.

Speaker 1 (01:26:14):
So if I were watching these focus groups and I
wanted to help Bill McRaven become president, and when the
presidency is an independent what would I what? What? What?
What would my advance? What would your advice be to
a I say Bill McRaven because he's my avatar of
what a what a potential you know sort of uh,

(01:26:35):
you know, mythical independent figure that that might be able
to break through. I think somebody with a military background. YadA, YadA, YadA.
That's my thesis. Whether true or not, it's a whole
nother story. But if you were thinking about trying to
run outside the two party system right now, because there's
such deep sort of distrust of is there something to
glean from these voters or are they are?

Speaker 3 (01:26:58):
They?

Speaker 2 (01:27:00):
Are?

Speaker 1 (01:27:00):
They just not gonna They're just not going to be
They're just going to keep picking between the two parties.

Speaker 2 (01:27:06):
That's a great question.

Speaker 3 (01:27:07):
I'm not sure necessarily that they are rushing to have
a third party alternative. When I asked about no labels
a couple of years ago, when that was still part
of the conversation, there was a hesitation there to get
involved in those kinds of things, thinking that you'd be
tossing the vote away. But you know, for me, I

(01:27:28):
think they What I would encourage people who want to
break through center independent like you're describing left or right,
is I would try to be raising some issues that
I know matter to people that are not part of
the conversation right now. So, for example, when I asked
about Biden's age, people would tell me, and I asked

(01:27:49):
two questions, what is the ideal age for someone to
be president and what's the oldest acceptable age for someone
to be president? The ideal age was basically early the
mid fifties. The oldest acceptable age was in the mid
sixties on average. When I asked that, rarely do I
get an age above seventy as being oldest acceptable. We
now have a president who's almost eighty years old. We

(01:28:10):
just had one who ended at eighty two. I would
be talking about things like setting age limits for presidents
as part of a constitutional amendment. I think that would
be an important thing to do.

Speaker 1 (01:28:24):
You can break through with these with you that actually
might connect with voters, I think after having process. I
asked that skeptically because as much as I there's a
lot of process things I'd like to fix about our democracy,
it's hard to get mass interest in some of these things.

Speaker 3 (01:28:41):
I would say generally yes, and in the absence of
having very old presidents for what for us could easily
be twelve years of presidents over the age of seventy
five or seventy seventy five, it's remarkable. I think in
that context people might be you know what I'm done,
and I think and the other thing I would say is,

(01:29:02):
and again I'm going to ask this. I haven't gone
that deep into it yet, but I plan to. Is
the whole issue of pardons and having the president have
unfettered pardoning power. I can tell you that the pardons
from Biden as he left office and the pardon that
Trump has has has given people since he took office,
have enraged a number of these swing voters.

Speaker 1 (01:29:22):
You know, it's interesting. Corruption is always when you look
at big swings that we've had in midterm elections in particular,
corruption has actually always been one of the through lines.
There's like be an economy and you know, because it's
a way to Hey, they're so worried about their friends.
They're not focused on your bottom line. They're so worried
about this, Right, there's this you know, you so a

(01:29:43):
through line of to me, if you're going to have
a successful midterm, if you're the out party, you need
a little bit of corruption messaging against the party in
power in order to have some success. But I've had
this thesis that the reason it doesn't work again to
Trump is these voters already think the whole system is corrupt. Yeah,

(01:30:05):
he's corrupt, but the entire systems corrupt. Every president does
is a little bit corrupt, So they don't have the
same gag reflex maybe that some of us do watching
what Trump does.

Speaker 3 (01:30:21):
Yeah, I just wonder whether at the end of a
second Trump term, folks who constantly tell me how mistrustful
they are of politicians exactly as you just described, whether
at some point something happens where they say, you know what, this,
what we've just had in the last twelve years has
not worked for us, and they react to it viscerally

(01:30:45):
to the point where someone who's able to make this
case is able to make it meaningfully and wants to
actually put it at the top of the national agenda.
I don't again, to me, this is going We need
to see the polling on it. We have to see
after the polling shifts and moves more in this direction
of the course of Trump's second term. But to me,
I'm getting a sense that if, if what Trump has

(01:31:06):
promised doesn't come to pass for the people who voted
for him, and that what Biden promised didn't come to
pass for them when they voted for him and saw
what happened in his four years, does that create an
opening for your independent candidate or some reform minded R
or D to say, you know what, it's time for
a generational shift.

Speaker 2 (01:31:27):
I mean, you know what's going to happen.

Speaker 3 (01:31:28):
We're not going to have We're not going to elect
another eighty year old president in twenty eight.

Speaker 1 (01:31:33):
We may elect our you know, youngest president ever type
of mindset. Yeah, we have our first millennial president. We'll
skip over gen X altogether. Right, let's start it on that.
I know, yeah, but that's crude, Jenny.

Speaker 2 (01:31:45):
That's but the thing.

Speaker 3 (01:31:46):
But I guess the point is with that comes the
opportunity to make changes and the other thing we're overdue.

Speaker 2 (01:31:52):
For if you really know, I just haven't started yet.
Jill O.

Speaker 3 (01:31:55):
Lpor's new book on the Constitution is that you know,
you know, constitutional change just happened in spurts.

Speaker 2 (01:32:02):
They they're clustered together.

Speaker 3 (01:32:03):
There are a few short periods of time where you
get three or four amendments all at once, and we
haven't had one of these in a very long time.

Speaker 1 (01:32:16):
And in fact, I mean this is sort of my people.
You know, people ask me. I'm always say I'm short
term pessimistic, long term optimistic. And this is the reason
if you I think we're loosely in the in you know,
in the in the repeat, you know, sort of repeating
the early twentieth century, and you know, our response to
consolidated power, big business, robber barons getting too close with

(01:32:41):
government was women's suffrage, giving women the right to vote,
direct election of senators, and the income tax. All of
that was designed essentially to start to tackle this sort
of you know, industrial barons that were sort of dominating
our lives then, and arguably it's the last time we
really did a lot of constitutional maintenance. Right. Yeah, we

(01:33:04):
did the twenty second Amendment, you know, after FDR, and
we gave we lowered the voting aged eighteen, but those
weren't sort of societal ills type of thing, right versus that.
I mean, you're right, we basically we've only really had
three big periods of amending the constitution. This the beginning
the Civil War and essentially right before the New Deal.

Speaker 3 (01:33:24):
Yeah, and I think if the frustrations that people are
feeling need an outlet, and we can identify the things
that are most angering and frustrating people, that we could
easily see another one of those periods coming up.

Speaker 1 (01:33:39):
And you know, it's funny it, you know, we may
be stumbling upon it. It's like if you're going to
try to run outside the system, right, if you're going
to run against both parties in some form, right, and
you may do it within one of the two parties,
or you run as a third party independent calling for
this constitutional convention so that we can you know, keep
seventy year olds out of the White House and you know,

(01:33:59):
do campaign you know, you know, put campaign finance guardrails
in here, maybe undoe presidential pardons. Create a pardon board,
right so that there isn't you know, essentially we've decided
it turns out that the founders were wrong on this one.
Presidential pardon was a mistake, and here's a better way
to do it. And you create almost a pardon board

(01:34:20):
where you still allow for executive pardons, but they actually
have to pass through a committee. It isn't just a
singular person, which many states do. By the way, where
we've especially where there have been scandals, there's a famous
Fred Thompson became an actor because of a pardon scandal
in the state of Tennessee in the seventies. They couldn't
find the guy to play Fred Thompson, so they asked

(01:34:42):
Fred Thompson to play himself, and his acting career took
off from there. It's one of my favorite little little
pieces of Hollywood political trivia. But boy, you know, talking
with you on this it reform and corruption. You know,
you still got to talk about the economy, but you
might be able to break through a little bit with

(01:35:02):
reforming and corruption. It sounds like at least that's what
you're thinking.

Speaker 3 (01:35:05):
I'm thinking that and also tying the two together. Right,
why are people struggling? It's because these vested interests are
holding you back, They're charging you too much, They're making
your life miserable in terms of customer service. I mean
we haven't, Chuck, Chuck, We've talked for an hour now,
we still having talked about AI, right, And.

Speaker 1 (01:35:20):
So it's so funny this is And maybe I'm going
to give you a few ideas, or maybe you've already
done this. So one of my favorite when I have
an audience, I'll you know, when I start talking about
people ask a question about AI, I'll quickly ask is
I'll say, how many of you would pay extra to
have a human handle customer service? And literally two thirds

(01:35:42):
of the room, Well, I've done this now for the
last few months, and there's always a majority of the
room raises their hand. That a willingness to pay extra
for a human being? It actually is. I am weirdly
optimistic about the aiifification of the Internet because it may
be the thing that gets us outside of our screens.
The more online is artificial, the more we're going to

(01:36:06):
crave humanity. We already are craving it in the customer
service by my anecdotal, you know, And I imagine if
you started to ask this in all your focus scripts,
I imagine you get the same response. We hate some
computer or robot thinking they know what we're talking about, right,
like it just it just drives us nuts, even if
the robot might have the better answer, right, It just

(01:36:28):
we're human beings. So no, I'm convinced that you can't
run for president in twenty eight without an answer to
the fear of AI displacement.

Speaker 2 (01:36:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:36:38):
I read your recent post about this. I thought it
was brilliant in terms of how it's getting politicized. Analysis
was absolutely spot on. Anybody who hasn't read it, I
would ask you to post it with your show notes
here because I think it's a great piece, really important,
and I think whichever party figures this out first is
going to have a huge advantage because the frustration. And
I got to tell you, Chuck, I asked Swing voters

(01:36:58):
about AI couple months ago. Yeah, and the thing that
came up was the loss of humanity exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:37:04):
You're that's the biggest thing that scares.

Speaker 1 (01:37:05):
Them it, which again, that to me is gives me
hope because we're going to crave in person. I think
it's going to put a premium on in person again,
it's going to put a premium on seeing things for yourself.
In fact, I almost wondering, are we gonna have retail

(01:37:26):
stores back where you don't necessarily buy the product there,
but you want to see and touch the product before
you order it online and have it delivered to your house.

Speaker 2 (01:37:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:37:36):
Well, you're seeing this touch grass movement, right, people getting
kids out and outdoors and touching the grass because touching
their screens isn't real. Yeah, there's a lot of this
stuff going on. I just to me, the question is,
does how far is it AI able to penetrate the
population because it's so useful to the people that they
give up some of these more tangible things in reality,

(01:37:56):
and that time will tell how that plays out.

Speaker 1 (01:37:59):
All right, let me get you out of here on this.
One of my One of the things I lament is
the loss of regionalism, meaning the suburb of Grand Rapids
is no different than a suburb of Roanoak.

Speaker 2 (01:38:12):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:38:12):
You know, people in Atlanta have more in common with
people in Milwaukee than people in Atlanta have in North
with people in Northwest Georgia et cetera, et cetera, did
O world Wisconsin versus Milwaukee, et cetera. You are the
seven swing states, you have the three Midwesterns, you have
the two Western, and you have the essentially the two

(01:38:34):
sun Belt. Any regionalism, you're just there anymore, Or are
all these voters in somewhat you know, homogenized American suburbanites.

Speaker 3 (01:38:47):
Uh, They're mostly homogenized, with odd flavors that will come
out at odd moments.

Speaker 2 (01:38:56):
So with Arizona swing voters, you'll still get a little
bit of the Barry gold Water Ish.

Speaker 1 (01:39:04):
Arizona's got a little libertarian, a little more libertarian in
them than most of the other states.

Speaker 3 (01:39:09):
Right, Yes, so you have more more of that with
the Pennsylvanians, particularly the southeastern Pennsylvanians.

Speaker 2 (01:39:15):
Just a very low.

Speaker 3 (01:39:17):
Level of trust and belief in anything that anyone says, Wow,
I've I've found that over the years in this region
it's super super skeptical.

Speaker 2 (01:39:26):
I mean even more so.

Speaker 3 (01:39:28):
And I just think the Upper Midwest folks, particularly you know,
the michigan the Michiganders, there's just more of a salt
of the Earth type of conversation with them, they just everything. Well,
they were not happy with Trump in March when I
spoke to them about trade. Boy, I was shocked. At
seven weeks into his administration, they were excoriating him on

(01:39:50):
that topic.

Speaker 1 (01:39:51):
But Michigan of all places, right, which with when we
were professionally growing up, you'd have thought, well, one state's
gonna like tariffs, it's fish.

Speaker 3 (01:39:59):
Can Yeah, but I went back there and we did
those in September and twelve out and thirteen approved of
the job he was doing. So you know again, it's
it's this odd shift. There's no consistency month to month.
But to answer your question about geography, Yeah, it's just
you get it's the flavoring.

Speaker 2 (01:40:15):
That's just a little bit. It's the seasoning.

Speaker 3 (01:40:16):
It's like pizza tastes different in different parts of the country,
but it's still basically pizza wherever you go, and that's
kind of the difference.

Speaker 1 (01:40:24):
Rich, I am such a geek for this stuff. I
could keep going. This is terrific. I where could I know?
You have a YouTube channel? Tell people where they can
find these, because you do. You do put up monthly reports.

Speaker 2 (01:40:37):
Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:40:38):
So the the easiest place to find us is a
Swing Voter Project dot com. On that page you will
find each month's highlight and that reel is on YouTube,
so if you quick it, we'll just play within YouTube
and I would encourage you to just watch those videos.
And you can also sign up for a monthly update
on the Swing Voter Project dot com page. So just

(01:40:59):
go there, give us your email address. We will not
sell you anything. There's nothing for sale. We don't charge
for this stuff, and just join us on Swing Voter
Project dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:41:09):
I'm telling you a whole bunch of them are going
to be like kick, I want one hundred and twenty
five bucks to give you my opinion.

Speaker 3 (01:41:14):
They're probably not swing voters though, but if they are,
you know they can go to Sego by way, go
to sago dot com if you want to register to
participate in focus groups.

Speaker 1 (01:41:23):
Yeah, oh well that's nice. Do you do you still
do uh quantitative polling as much? And you know how
much does the focus group influence your questionnaire? Now?

Speaker 2 (01:41:36):
Yeah, I don't. I really I don't. Personally don't do
a huge amount of it.

Speaker 3 (01:41:39):
I'm actually associated with a remarkable company called Alpha Rock.
Do you and I could talk about offline that has
transforming the polling process and looking at longitudinality in questions
in a way that point of time polling doesn't quick
turnaround in polling. They have a tool called Ockham Gotckham's
Razor that is just remarkable that a lot of trade

(01:42:00):
associations and others in DC are using. So I've been
working with them to try to get some quant around
some of my focus grouping. But basically, uh, that world
is getting up ended in a way that is well,
deeply needed and well deserved.

Speaker 1 (01:42:17):
I feel like the best of you know, Like my
favorite thing that our polsters at NBC when I was
working with them used to do was I loved a
good open end right where because to me, what that
was was about helping you formulate a better question down
the road. Absolutely, and that and that to me is
you know, I've we've for for for years, would would

(01:42:39):
would reword questions based on stuff we'd see in focus
groups like yours.

Speaker 3 (01:42:43):
Yeah, Well, the thing's happening now You're alluded to at
the very beginning so well and where we started, which
is that this Oupham tool is able to do qual
at scale. Yeah, and so they able to do basically
one on one interviews not yet in a focus group,
and one on ones an AI.

Speaker 2 (01:43:00):
Yeah, well well I thought about.

Speaker 1 (01:43:02):
It, but I know somebody who's trying it.

Speaker 3 (01:43:05):
Yeah, no, it's I think it's an important thing to
try to do because if you can do this at scale,
the insights will be so much richer than what I
can find obviously with twelve people.

Speaker 1 (01:43:14):
So much so much more a thousand that are focus
grouped rather than just you know, multiple choice.

Speaker 3 (01:43:20):
Yeah, it's remarkable and also be able to interpret the answers,
ask meaningful follow ups, categorize the answers, which is what
this tool can do.

Speaker 2 (01:43:29):
So this whole world is getting up ended.

Speaker 3 (01:43:32):
I've been joking that I'll be replaced by a bot,
and my respondents will be replaced by bots, and it'll
be one AI asking other AI questions and kicking out
a report in ten seconds.

Speaker 1 (01:43:41):
And that's going to mean you know what, you're gonna
end up doing creat bullshit correct, And then you're going
to be going to an actual event in order to
talk to actual people again, like we're probably about five
years away from that. Let's go back to shopping malls
and survey people that way, right, like in person with
the clipboard. Yeah, everything old will be new again if

(01:44:02):
we're not, if we ai AI it up too much,
that's right, exactly Rich, this was fantastic.

Speaker 2 (01:44:08):
Thank you, my friend, Thank you chucking onor to do
it all?

Speaker 10 (01:44:18):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:44:19):
Are you public opinioned out? You might be a little
bit So this is a perfect time to take a
pause and let's go into the podcast time machine. Sorry,
I always want to say there's some sort of blue
It's sort of an old Scooby Doo thing in my head, right,

(01:44:39):
you know where there was who anyway, But here's the
subject matter. If you want to understand why US relationships
across the Western hemisphere remained so uneasy, you have to
go back to nineteen o three. That's right, We are
going back to nineteen o three because it was this
week in ninety three that the United States of America

(01:45:03):
helped create a country called Panama. So, in fact, the
title of this time cast toodcast time Machine segment, there's
only one title you can come up with, if you know,
if you know me at all, And I'll do a
little shout out there to d Jones. A man a

(01:45:26):
planed Panama. It's everyone's favorite palindrome. And in some ways.
It's America's favorite myth, right. It's the story of bold leadership,
big machinery, and destiny carved through jungle and rock. But
underneath this heroic narrative is something darker. It's the birth
of a pattern that has defined US relations with Latin
America for more than a century. It's the moment when

(01:45:48):
America learned how to build nations, the way we build infrastructure,
engineered to serve our needs first, and there's later. And
if you look at our posture towards Venezuela, the moment
the mix of moral intent and strategic control. It's hard
not to feel like we have seen this movie before.

(01:46:08):
But let's go back. Let's go through the podcast history
lesson of the day. At the dawn of the twentieth century,
the United States, of course, was emerging from being a
new nation to an empire. The Spanish American War. It
turned us into a global superpower, and global powers always
are looking to expand their power, to flex their muscle,

(01:46:29):
if you will. Two potential routes, and at the time,
we really really wanted to dominate shipping, and we needed
a route through essentially from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
There were two potential routes to create a canal. There
was the Nicaragua and Panama. The French under Ferdinand de
les SEPs He's the guy that did the Suez Canal.

(01:46:51):
He tried Panama first, and he failed spectacularly. There was disease, corruption,
bankruptcy killed twenty thousand workers. The dream itself seemed but
the French company that he had that did this still
held the rights to this little strip of land in Panama.
Writes that a smooth talking engineer named Philippe Buna Verilla

(01:47:12):
was determined to sell, so he lobbied Washington relentlessly and
found a willing buyer in President Theodore Roosevelt. Let's just say,
you know, we love Teddy, but he was one enthusiastic imperialist.
In nineteen oh three, the Roosevelt administration cut a deal
with Colombia, which then governed the territory now known as Panama.

(01:47:36):
That deal, which was known as the Hey Haran Treaty,
was named after the two negotiators of the said treaty,
the Secretary of State at the time, John Hay and
Colombia's envoy Toomas Haran, and the deal was this the
US offered Columbia ten million dollars up front it's a
lot of money at that time, right, and an additional
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year for a

(01:47:58):
very narrow strip of land to build the now. But
the Colombian Senate refused to ratify this treaty. They wanted
a better price, and they wanted more control of the land.
While Roosevelt didn't like it. He didn't like that answer.
He called the Colombians foolish and homicidal, and he muttered
that he was being dealt with by bandits. So then

(01:48:20):
Buna Verrilla, the French engineer salesman, whispered a different idea. Hey,
mister President, what if Panama just stopped being part of Colombia.
So November third, nineteen oh three, Okay, see where we're
going here. It's this week, November three, today, actually, as
this podcast is first airing, the anniversary of a small

(01:48:43):
group of Panamanian separatists declared independence. Within hours, US warships
appeared in the harbor, coincidentally blocking Colombian troops from landing,
and by November sixth, the United States recognized the new
Republic of Panama. In less than two later, Roosevelt got
the treaty he wanted all along, But this time the
treaty was called the Hey b Now Verilla Treaty, signed

(01:49:06):
by you guessed it, Bunwverilla himself, a Frenchman acting as
Panama's representative. Remember he was just a businessman that seemed
to own the rights to build this canal, and he
signs the treaty on behalf of this new nation. The
treaty gave the US sovereign control over a ten mile
wide canal zone in perpetuity, which, of course, eventually, during

(01:49:27):
the Jimmy Carter presidency, we would hand back. And Roosevelt
couldn't help but brag about it, right, he said, I
took the Smiths. It was at once a great feet
of engineering in human history, probably the greatest, and one
of the clearest examples of America using its muscle to
redraw someone else's map. The Panama Canal opened in nineteen fourteen.

(01:49:48):
The world applauded. Latin America took notes. Now, this is
a little interlude I thought I would include Is this where,
Because I'll be honest, I was conflating the following Is
this where? The term banana republic came from sort of,
but not quite certainly the era, So a quick history lesson.
The term banana republic actually comes from Honduras, not Panama.

(01:50:10):
It was coined by American writer oh Henry in nineteen
oh four, and it was in a short story collection
called Cabbages and Kings. He had fled to Honduras to
avoid an embezzlement charge himself, and he used the phrase
to describe a fictional country on Churia that was small, unstable,
and entirely dependent on American fruit companies. Well, the United
Fruit Company, the Banana Company, if you will, a real

(01:50:31):
US corporation, basically ran parts of Central America back then,
the so called banana republics. That's how this all came from.
This United Fruit Company built railroads, built ports, even influenced coups.
The governments were nominally independent, but the real power lay
with the investors themselves. So Panama didn't coin the term,
but in many ways it embodied the idea because what

(01:50:52):
happened in Panama, local elite seeking power, foreign capital providing muscle,
and Washington enforcing the deal was the same exist three
step model that would define all of our interventions for
the next century. In Latin America, Panama was the first
republic built to order, not for its citizens, but for
American commerce. Now you must you may be asking yourself, well, jeez,

(01:51:16):
now I know why half of a Latin American ever
trust the United States. You know you do, don't you?
So from that point on the region's politics became a
pendulum swing between dependents and defiance. You'd have one generation
strong man was the next generation's nationalists. You can trace
this oscillation back and forth, pro us anti us, pro
us anti us. We see it right now in Columbia.

(01:51:36):
Right now we have a president who won by being
a bit more distant from the US. The previous president
won because he was pro us. And it goes back
and forth. We saw it in Cuba in the twentieth century, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil.
Each cycle shaped by how America's good intentions collided with
its control instincts. It's the defining political rhythm of this hemisphere.

(01:51:59):
You know, are we the bad guys? Are we the
good guys? Do we care about the people or do
we just care about the resources? Right? If you trust Washington,
your country may prosper a little bit. If you resent Washington,
you revolt, but you may suffer economically. So the Canal itself,
in many ways, right was both the symbol and the
seed of this pattern. So let's fast forward twenty twenty five,

(01:52:23):
same story, sort of right, playing out right now with
different props. Venezuela, once one of the richest democracies in
Latin America, spent two decades spiraling under authoritarian rule, corruption,
economic collapse. Millions have fled. It's part of the huge,
the largest diaspora outside of any Right, there are more
Venezuelan refugees lately than any other country creating refugees. People

(01:52:45):
are just fleeing this country. And yes, the desire to
help restore democracy is a real, legitimate and even moral goal.
But how we pursue this goal is going to be
a real test. We've used sanctions, covid AID, diplomatic pressure,
lethal strikes off the Venezuelan coast justified. We're calling it
this anti narcotics missions when it's increasingly clear we simply

(01:53:07):
are trying to remove Maduro. The voters tried to remove
him and they couldn't do it. But we're not making
this the reason why we're doing it right, we're sort
of we're trumps. He's creating, he's creating. We have a
drug problem in this country. We have a federal problem
in this country, but it's not from Venezuela. So he's
using what we really a real problem that we have
that's a derivative of Mexico and China, and instead using

(01:53:29):
that as the pretext to go after Venezuela because maybe
he thinks politically he could never just sell democracy as
the reason to go help and get rid of Maduro.
So we do say it at times, right, our motives
or democracy, human rights, stability, it all sounds noble, but
our methods, unilateral enforcement, economic coercion. It reminds the region

(01:53:50):
of every time we've claimed to build something for them
that it mostly was about serving us. Right, And how
does Venezuela end? Right? Does it end with us? Is
simply wanting more access to the oil? Look at how
we go back and forth. We just want that oil,
more access to their resources. Are we in it for
the long haul to just actually provide independent democracy, not

(01:54:12):
democracy dependent on the United States, but true independence, true
independent democracy. But right now I do fear how we're
going about. This is only reigniting the same cycle of
resentment that develops right and it forms these nationalist movements

(01:54:32):
that push out people that are pro democracy. So we're
here the same one hundred year oscillation is back. Leaders
run as reformers, they become populous, they start pro us,
they end a skeptics, every demagogue, every strong man from
Havana to Caracas, they've all learned to weaponize this history
to tell their citizens, you may not like me, but
at least I'm not them. I'm standing in between them

(01:54:56):
truly taking over this country. Right at least I'm one
of you. And that's something that I think we've got
to be careful of as we essentially try to play
try to play be cop here and how we're doing it.
If we're essentially lying about why we're there, which right
now we are with this drug pretext, it is not

(01:55:17):
going to allow for this to be as stable as
I think we think it is. So maybe here's the
Palin Drum's other meeting. A man a planed Panama, One
man's plan Teddy Roosevelt's built a canal and built a
century of contradictions. It opened the world to trade and
it opened a wound in the hemisphere that still hasn't
fully healed. So if we want a different legacy in
Venezuela or anywhere else south of the Rio Grand, we

(01:55:40):
have to show that our plans serve the region's needs,
not just our needs, because until we do, Latin America
will keep reading our policies backward and they will still
see a man a plan Panama. There's your history lesson
for today and how the past is so connected to

(01:56:01):
the present. All right, and now let's get to questions,
Ask Chuck. First question comes from Damien B. Chambersburg, Pennsylvania,
and Damien asks, I know we all hope that the

(01:56:21):
old guard of the GOP will show a backbone to Mega.
Do you think the recent comment by Ted Cruz and
Mitch McConnell condemning anti Semitism in the party and actually
addressing an issue we all knew was there since twenty
seventeen might be a catalyst for others to stand up
for more of the values and norms we know they support.
You know, most of these members better than their constituents.
Just curious if you think this is a blipper trend. Also,

(01:56:41):
hearing your Ojeron. Impression made me think of the TV
show Young Rock and the scenes where he was at
the U. If you haven't seen it, you need to
watch the one where he spends Christmas with Coach Ojeron.
It's hilarious. I can only imagine. And that look. You
now know why I have such a soft spot for Ojeron,
because I consider my mind. I'm a boy. He's our Cajun.
He's our Cajun Caine. If you will, I haven't seen

(01:57:05):
Young Rock, I should I should be more loyal to
the Rock because of his kingdom. I do have you
know there is a rookie. The rookie card for the
Rock is a Bumblebee. Was a Bumblebee set of Tuna
cards was brought to you by Bumblebee Tuna and it
was in a perforated sheet and you had like I think,

(01:57:27):
I'm staring at it right now of the ninety one team,
and there were nine cards in it. And I finally
bought one for about three hundred bucks. I didn't have
a Rock rookie. And the reason was only about three
hundred bucks because these things go up really high. I
was going to grade it. I was all excited and
there was these scratch like light scratches that you couldn't
see in the eBay picture, but you could see in there.
So I have it. It's sort of my one homage

(01:57:49):
to the Rock, but it's the Rock in his university
of my uniform. It is the Rock rookie card, if
you will, before is wrestling cards for anything else. The
first actual card and these bumblebee cards used to come
in the programs that you bought when you went to
the football games. They'd do him as inserts, and I
have the one with Mario Christabal. I never actually had
the one forever reason. My mother would go to every

(01:58:10):
game when I was in college and she'd save the programs.
But for whatever reason, I misplaced the program that had
the Rock sheet in it. But I do have the
one with Mario Christball in it. Okay, but I digress.
You asked the more serious question, which is are we
going to start to see The answer is yes, And
the thing is is that you know, I actually think
we're seeing similar trends that we saw on the first term.

(01:58:32):
Now I know that there are people out there going
I can't believe more people aren't outraged about X, Y
or Z. But if you look at guys like Roger Wicker, Okay,
he's Chairman of Senate Armed Services, Mississippi Republican, nobody is
more you know he this is a guy who's who
is a conservative all right, definitely defines himself as a conservative,

(01:58:53):
and he's very uncomfortable with the way the Pentagon is
mistreating Congress. He's got a good relationship with the ranking
member and Armed Services. It's just that is not how
that they've he's ever operated. He knows that that isn't
the way they operate, and he's you know, he will
put out joint statements with the ranking members saying the
Pentagon should be doing this and should be doing that.

(01:59:14):
You've had Mike Brownd, the Republican centator from South Dakota
not named John Thune, who's also done this every time
and then and look at the small group of Republicans
that said no to the to the filibusters. So it's
you know what I always want to remind people if
if if you're looking for Republicans to take up your
issues and you come from the left or left of center,

(01:59:34):
that you're probably not going to find. But if you're
looking up for Republicans that are uncomfortable with how far
Trump's taken things. You're going to find quite a bit right.
Ted Cruz didn't like what Brendan Carr did on Kimmelin's
speech and how he threatened used Mafio soo terms to
do that. You've seen this, this appeasement by the way,
Heritage is now appeasing the anti Semitic wing of the MAGA.

(01:59:55):
And the thing is is this It is interesting to
see the condemnation. Those of us who are not stuck
in the hard left or hard right unfortunately, are very
aware that these anti semitism wings of both parties have
existed for some time. I love it. I have a
friend of mine who said, I didn't realize how much
of it was on the right. I knew it was
on the left. And this person was a conser, is

(02:00:16):
a conservative, and he goes, I'm now starting to see
it on the right, and I'm like, dude, I was
getting it from the right and the left anti Semites
from the very beginning. I saw it during the rise
of Occupy Wall Street and during the rise of MEGA
and when Donald Trump came down that you know again
I hear the words populism and the first thing I
think of is here come the attacks on the Jews.
And it doesn't matter if it's right wing populism or

(02:00:38):
left wing populism, they all target the Jews first. It's
almost like it's like in the populist playbook at times.
And so you know, I am I think, and especially
as the second term sets in and he sits there.
It's what I said at the top, he said, sitting
at forty three percent, you have growing numbers of independence.

(02:01:00):
Don't like what he's doing with the democracy and thwarting
the constitution. I just think that it's again, some of
it may feel like soft pushback, not hard pushback, some
of it, you know, all of those things. But it's
it is happening. And I actually think this will just
be a slow increase, especially from a guy like Ted Cruz,

(02:01:21):
who himself would like to run for president and carve
out and I think you'll you know what it'll be
really interesting is when you know, I know that jd Vance,
you know, is sort of vary. He's only one layer
removed from the Tucker wing of the anti Semitic wing
of of that party, and and he's you know, a
bit more of an isolationist than Trump ever was, and

(02:01:42):
all of those things right. Somebody said something that I
actually agree with, which is the irony is the least
Maga of the MEGA people are? Is Donald Trump? Right?
In some ways the Mega is more pure than Trump
ever was with MEGA, but it also is why he
can move more than anybody else, and and Mega doesn't
get upset as upset with him. It'll be interesting to
see when you start to see Ted Cruz will go

(02:02:02):
after Vance on things that he won't go after Trump on.
And that's what I would expect to start to see
more of in the next You're going to see more
of that, I think in the next few months, not
less of it next. And it's particularly over the next
year or two, especially because Vance is going to be
the guy they all want to knock down a peck.
Next question comes from Bill as anyone conducted a focus

(02:02:24):
group just on independent voters on how they are feeling
about Trump. Johnson Congressional Democrats are Republicans. I really am
enjoying your podcast and looking forward to them between now
and November twenty twenty eight. Well, Bill, we stuck your
question in here because now I look like I'm some
sort of prescient person. But the fact is, I'm answering
your question. Hopefully you've just listened to the episode with
Rich Daal. This very episode that I answer your question.

(02:02:44):
We feature not quite what you were looking for, but
I would argue a focus group of voters that voted
Biden in twenty and Trump in twenty twenty four, and
the conversation I had with Rich here. These are I
just so you know, my goal is to have Rich
on once a quarter. Is the way Mark Zandy helps
I think helps me and the rest of my listeners

(02:03:05):
understand where the economy isn't headed. I think he's the
least partisan voice you can find out there. He's just
a data numbers guy. He sees it. He's got, you know,
a consistency about him. Rich Tile's got the same he's
sort of built the same way. He sees this through
a prism of what is not what he wishes it
would be. And Rich is going to become a regular

(02:03:25):
contributor and a regular guest here, and we're going to
feature these these more of these focus groups. So I
hope I'm excited about it. Rich is excited about it,
and I you know, we didn't we sort of hinted
at it in our conversation there at the end, but
we're we're going to try to put together something a
bit more formal. Michael T from Chicago Rights always appreciate

(02:03:45):
your insight. Almost all of my national political news I
get from you. Now that's a little bit of pressure, Michael,
I'm going to have to make sure I'm I'm not
leaving too much stuff out right. Question for you on
shutdown strategies, of them say they need a deal on
ACA subsidies, but before they open the government, and Republicans
they open the government and we'll talk. Why don't the
Democrats agree to open the government for a week to
give Republicans a chance to prove they will negotiate in

(02:04:07):
good faith. If the Republicans then refuse to move on
health care, the Democrats can refuse another bunch of votes. Michael,
I would argue that's been sitting on the table for
Democrats to do for a while. Republicans were only trying
to keep the government open through the third week of November.
This is why I think they've sort of made their
point by the way government shutdown. The one polling question
I didn't include in the top polling there from the beginning,

(02:04:31):
So this is a good time to make note of this.
In that poll on the shutdown. This is one of
those instances where how you report the number will confuse.
You may have seen the NBC News polls say a
majority blame Republicans more than they blame Democrats. That is
not how the question was asked by the NBC News pollsters.

(02:04:53):
Let me read you exactly how the question was asked,
and then you'll realize why. I think there's a little
bit of you're gonna have to let's be careful out
there and how you interpret the shutdown numbers. As you
may know, President Trump and the Democrats, this is the
exact question, and I think this will this is a

(02:05:14):
good time to talk about the shutdown question. And I
know that some of you may be listening to this
now as a standalone quick little post either on Instagram
or and sort of who's winning the shutdown? Is it
the Republican the Democrats. Here's what we do know. Everybody's losing.
We are losing the shutdown. America is losing on the shutdown,

(02:05:35):
and essentially we're mad at everybody. Okay, but here's the
exact warding of this question, which is why you can
be very careful in how you report this question out.
It has already been misinterpreted out there on social media.
You've probably seen numbers that say, hey, more people blame
Republicans for the shutdown than Democrats. Well, you can make
that case because of the way NBC asked this question,

(02:05:56):
which I think is a fair way to ask the question,
And who do you think is more to blame for
this partial shutdown? President Trump is a separate punch demot
Republicans in Congress is a separate punts or Democrats in Congress,
and then people volunteered President Trump and Republicans. So if
you add up all the Republican numbers, you get fifty
two twenty five percent say Republicans in Congress are to blame,
twenty four percent say President Trump is to blame, and

(02:06:18):
three percent volunteer did its President Trump and the Republicans
are to blame. That adds up to fifty two forty
two percent pick Democrats in Congress. So, as you see here,
some people know it is. It is one of those
cases where yes, you can say there are more people
blame a Republican entity collectively Republican entities are taking more

(02:06:39):
blame than the Democrats, but it is this is not
apples to apples, and you have to be careful this.
We didn't ask is it a two way on this?
And perhaps maybe they should have asked a two way?
Do you blame Republicans more for this? Democrats? But it
is hard because the president is his own entity and
not just this president. Every president in some ways of
their own entity on this. Maybe if you asked a

(02:07:01):
fourth if I added a fourth punch here, I might
add progressives in the Democratic Party right, because there are
some on the right, just like there's some on the right.
I believe Trump is the cause of left. Trump is
the cause of this some of the right, I think
believe progressives have pressured Schumer to do this. So if
I were to add a fourth punch, it would be
that it would be interesting to do that so you

(02:07:24):
could see is it an additional group of people that
would do that, or is it within the forty two
percent that blame Democrats that then would blame the progressive
wing of the party for pressuring the leadership to do this.
Bottom line is at some point, you know, I do
think this debate over snap benefits Democrats are on the wrong.

(02:07:44):
Are they actually have the power to get snap benefits
going tomorrow? Just open the government up for a couple
of weeks and make sure snap benefits go through. That
would be good PR two. You know it certainly would
improve prove that. So look, I think your suggestion is
a terrific one. That's exactly the way, And weirdly, the

(02:08:05):
Republicans offered them this exit ramp. Now we're getting so
close to that end day. But either way, I still
think that's their best way of essentially trying to have
their cake and eat it too for the short term.
All Right, one more question and then I'm going to
get into my Actually, I'm gonna do two more questions
and then I'm going to get into my college football rant.

(02:08:28):
This comes from Forrest Listen with some interest to your
thoughts on the dysfunction and weaponization of the Oversight Committee.
Your idea of having the minority party in charge is interesting,
but would that fix the weaponization or make it worse?
Toochee instead, how about this. The committee is always fifty
to fifty party split, but the members are selected by
the opposing party, So Democrats would nominate a sign Republican
members and vice versa. Thoughts, Hey, that's a This is

(02:08:51):
exactly the type of ideas that I would love to
see more of we need to have. This was a
terrific idea for us. I think it's a fascinating one.

Speaker 2 (02:09:00):
Right.

Speaker 1 (02:09:00):
Let Republicans appoint the Democrats, Democrats appoint the Republicans, and
then they decide who the ranking and it's an even number,
so you can't do party line subpoenas, so that anytime
there's a subpoena, there's always a bipartisan vote for a subpoena.
I think this is a terrific idea. This is one
of those that, you know, when we're thinking of how

(02:09:22):
we all want to improve trust, you know, it's sort
of the trust but verifying mindset of government. I don't
trust anybody I want to, but I want to trust people.
I want to have a system where I can find
out if they're trustworthy, an accountability system. This is a
good one. You know, you're right. Maybe if it's always
a minority party that they get pressured to be weaponizers

(02:09:42):
all the time, this fix is a great one. I'm
sitting here trying to poke a hole through it on
my initial mind. Look at it. I can't. There's not
a that's hard to poke a hole through that one.
That's a good one. Look, I think we need to
start putting together a list. And you know, if I
had the ambition to run for office myself and lead

(02:10:04):
this sort of we need to you know, we need
to rehab America, essentially the American democracy, This would be
on my list of you know, you're looking for my
platform and how to rehab the American democracy. This would
be one of the ways, you know, because it doesn't
have to be this exact idea, but putting it out there,
here's the model. If you've got a better model, great,
but right now, this is the best model of this

(02:10:27):
is I'd like to see a similar version of how
we dealt with the Justice Department and how we appointed
people to the Justice Department. All right, last question for
the episode, Andrew, Hey, I grew up watching Me to
Press with Tim after eight thirty Mass every Sunday with
my dad, and it's become one of my favorite weekly traditions.
My father got very sick about fifteen years ago and
passed away three years ago. My wife and I are
in the process of fortidity treatments, and as excited as

(02:10:49):
I am, I am also terrified. I apologize for this
deep question, but I've often found some sense of contentment
when you talk about history, how things have been bad before,
how this is a repeat of the late nineteenth and
early twentieth century of the Robert barons, or how the
fever of McCarthyism finally broke. I guess my question is,
as a father of college age kids, do you worry
about the future as well? And as someone with a

(02:11:10):
deeper knowledge of Washington in history than myself, what gives
you hope that we find our way back? Thank you, Andrew. Well,
it is why I make all the historical comparisons, and
in fact, I you know, even today, you know, I'm
reminded thinking of Teddy Roosevelt's aggressive imperialism. You know, we
line on It's essentially Teddy Roosevelt's one of those presidents

(02:11:31):
that's above partisanship, and yet Donald Trump's a huge imperialist.
Teddy Roosevelt would be all four going after Greenland, would
be all four trying to figure out how to have
more influence in Latin America. I don't know if he'd
go about it the same way Trump's going about it.
But the point is is that I think you had
I go back to this. Every election, the voters are

(02:11:55):
telling us something, and if you don't like the outcome,
it doesn't mean the election's rigged. It means the voters,
the voters have a deeper issue, and I think it's
I have optimism, and I hope you listen to the
last episode. I have optimism for a variety of reasons.
One is our history. We go through these moments and
we get out of it. The American voter, you know,

(02:12:16):
sometimes doesn't act as fast as maybe you or I want,
but they eventually do the right thing. That's why I
like to quote Churchill. You know, the Americans will eventually
be there after they've exhausted every other pat that prevents
them from being there. I think I butchered it, but
I butcher it all the time to the point of everyone.
So while I might stumble on the exact way he
says it. So there's that. The second reason I actually

(02:12:38):
have some hope is what I said last week at
the startup, which is with the the the event I
was at where there was some people trying to figure
out is there a movement can we break up the
duopoly and the person noting, you know, instead of looking
at Donald Trump's elections as this horror show. If you're

(02:13:01):
on the left or worried about where democracy is, you
actually should give the voters a lot more credit. If
the voters arguably going back to Obama then the election
of Trump, even the election of Biden in between, they're
telling us something. They want something, they want some radical change.
They want this system to work differently, not the same.
They're not looking for repair. Barack Obama doesn't win. Hillary

(02:13:24):
Clinton would have won if they were looking for repair.
They were looking for reconstruction, to borrow a word, you know,
start over, knock it down and rebuild. Donald Trump knock
it down and rebuild. These are not folks that were
looking for you know. You know, Biden arguably was a president.
We were like, oh, let's restore a little bit of order,
so we can try to go back to a more

(02:13:45):
sensible way for some form of restoration. But I don't
know if this is restoration anymore. But the point is
make a compelling argument for reform. And I think you
have a voter's electorate that has a heavy appetite for this.
So I am in a So that's why I'm long
term optimistic. This is not going to be easy. The

(02:14:06):
next two or three years are going to test us
a lot. But you know, the federal courts have been
beaten Trump up so much. The public's paying attention. You know,
if if this stuff were popular, then I think we'd
all feel differently. This stuff's not popular. The Constitution is
still more popular than Donald Trump. Democracy is more popular
than what he's been doing. So that's what gives me hope.

(02:14:31):
And man, you know what else gives me hope are
these college students. I teach at USC every other semester.
I've had some, and I see it in my own kids.
I see it with their friends and I get to
know them. They're they're these this next generation of college leaders.
They're pretty sophisticated. They're they're they're totally aware of how

(02:14:53):
screwed up the information ecosystem is. They haven't been brainwashed.
You know, we're all worried in our generation this somehow,
Oh my god, because we know people of our older
folks who are getting kind of brainwashed by the cable
new silliness or what they're seeing and on social media.
But younger folks aren't. They're taking matters in their own hands.
So you know, it's it might be louder and messier

(02:15:16):
than we've been used to, but I think directionally we're
going in the right direction. It's just gonna feel bumpy.
It's gonna be bumpy. I'm not gonna but that's that's
my story. I'm sticking to it, Andrew. But that's why.
And and in fact, don't you know, don't let this
discourage you from bringing another generation in. Let it encourage you. Now,

(02:15:46):
let's talk some college football. As I said, it's the
first annual Toddbowle, right, have a daughter Miami, a daughter
at sen It's not an SNU. So we made it.
You know, the whole family gathered. I Mom wore SMU gear,
Dad wore Miami gear. Sister wore her Miami Jersey son

(02:16:08):
wore his SMU gear. So we were you know, and
we actually our seats weren't two of us were together
to we rotated and all that stuff. We ran into
a few sets of parents that had a similar situation.
One kid at one school, one kid at the other.
So that was that was that was fun for us
to learn and find and run into more more folks

(02:16:30):
like that. But here we go again with Miami. My
son stormed the field. He told me, he warned me.
He said, he's got a really close friend who's on
the scout team, and so he was giving he was
he was telling me they had confidence all week that
they you know, this was an important game to SMU,
And it's just a reminder, right they SMU was prepared

(02:16:52):
to play Miami. Miami was not prepared to play SMU.
Miami might have been prepared to play a generic football team,
but they did not prepare to play SMU. They prepared
to play a generic football team. SMU prepared to play Miami.
So that's sort of coaching coaching distinction one, if you
wanted to go into those two things. The second I

(02:17:14):
think situation you know here is it is obviously with Miami,
this is this is fitting a pattern. But let me
rant about the game, the entire game, the offensive game
plan and coach Crystal Ball's decision making. We're all about
avoiding catastrophe. Everything was risk averse. Early on. There was
a short fourth and one. I think we were on

(02:17:36):
our own forty forty one. But we you know, we
just we chose to punt mistake. You know, they got
done to punt and then that led to the interception
that gave them the cheap scot. I mean they had
something like negative three arts rushing at halftime, and yet
we were only up ten to seven. We couldn't score
in the red zone every time we were It felt
like every time we were there, we could move the

(02:17:58):
ball when we wanted to. Beck had so much time
it was ridiculous. That wasn't an issue at all. But
there was a lot of risk averse play calls. You
could see it the whole time it was checked down Carson. Now.
A big issue was his favorite receiver was injured, CJ. Daniels.
He's the guy if you don't know the names of

(02:18:19):
the Miami players, he's the guy that had that catching
in the Notre Dame game that became that went viral,
the one handed catch where he grabbed it and went down.
It is been Beck's favorite receiver is the one he
trusts the most. I think it's the one he worked
with the most all summer because even though our best
receiver is Tony, Tony is a true freshman. He was

(02:18:39):
seventeen and for the Notre Dame game. He just turned eighteen,
but he was only there for fall camp. Beck was
working with CJ. Daniels basically the second he could start throwing,
so he developed a real rapport with him. Him not
being there. I could tell that was a problem. That's
the receiver when he's in trouble, when he wants to
go down the field, he wants to go to first,
even though Tony's the guy you should want to always
get the ball in the hand right. Look at what

(02:19:01):
happened when Tony returned the punt boy when he didn't score.
I was worried we wouldn't know how to punch it in,
and sure enough we didn't punch it in at the
end of the half. But again a risk averse decision.
We settle for a field goal. We could have kicked
a fifty four yard field goal. It was sprinkling for
about the first quarter and a half of the game,
and so it was a wet field and a wet ball,

(02:19:23):
and it seemed like Mario was nervous about seeing if
his kicker could hit a fifty It would have been
about a fifty four yarder, so he took a delay
a game and instead punted but that's been the whenever
Mario was in doubt, he chooses the path of least risk,
and the most egregious decision that he made was the

(02:19:44):
decision with twenty five. So here's the scenario. It's a
tie game, SMU kicks the tying field goal, Miami has
the ball, gets the ball back with twenty five seconds
left in the game in one time out. The SMU
kicker kicks it out of the end zone. So we're
getting the ball at the twenty and Mario takes a knee.

(02:20:06):
It is I mean, here's the guy who at the
Georgia Tech game last year didn't know or two years ago,
didn't take the knee and ends up in this ridiculous
situation where it costs him the game. But in case
here the game is tied, he's is he worried Carson
Beck's going to throw a pick six in twenty five seconds?
And if that's what you're worried about, then we don't
have a championship team, noror a championship quarterback. And that's

(02:20:30):
that's what's buried underneath this. This coaching staff doesn't trust
Carson Beck. If you're very carefully watched this offense, and
I do whenever the chips were down, the play calls
are much more conservative, their quick passes, if their passes
or their run plays. So there's it's clear that either

(02:20:51):
one or two things are true with the offensive coordinator,
and I have I'm not giving up on Mario and
I'll explain in a minute, but I have given up
on Shannon Dawson because here's a reality check. With Shannon
Dawson's offense. The more film, the more the offense is
on film, the more our opponents are able to stop
the offense and slow us down. Pure and simple. We
have the better athletes, we have the bigger offensive line,

(02:21:13):
but we're calling the same essentially. You know, we have
about ten ten RPOs and it feels like they we
just rotate through the ten RPOs in some form or another,
and it's the same set of ten RPOs. There's no
there's whatever we ran in game two, like we added
some things from game one to game two, but whatever

(02:21:35):
we started running in game two is the same thing
we've been running in game six, games seven, gamemame. And
it's clear that there's no innovation on this offense. This
is not a visionary offense. You have a head coach
who's thinks this is the nineteen eighties, and you just
it's all about Jimmy's and Joe's, not x's and O's.
What do I mean by that? Jimmy's and Joe's. The
Miami teams of the eighties and nineties were simply bigger, faster,

(02:21:56):
and stronger and so even, and they actually still had
some better coaching offensive innovation for that time period. Miami
was a more innovative offense when they were winning their titles.
It was because Miami threw the ball more than anybody
else did. Mimi was running a pro style offense for
anybody in college was doing that. Miami ran a weird
RPO during the Dennis Ericson years, and I wasn't crazy

(02:22:17):
about the offense, but it was highly effective. Teams had
a hard time stopping it. And oh, by the way,
he won not one but two national titles and produced
a Heisman Trophy winner in Gino Terretta because of how
prolific that offense was. And so Miami in the eighties
and nineties was on the cutting edge of offensive play
calling in college football. Even by twenty oh one, there

(02:22:41):
was some evidence of that that we had a pretty
pretty you know, but it was a combination of Jimmy's
and Joe's and we had half decent x's and o's.
Over the last twenty five years, we've had a few
great x's and o's, guys. Jed Fish was an offensive coordinary.
He's now the head coach of the University of Washington.
Do some of us wish he were still play caller?

Speaker 2 (02:23:00):
I do.

Speaker 1 (02:23:01):
Rhet Lashley was a terrific play caller at the University
of Miami. Do some of us wish he were still
our play caller and maybe head coach? Well now he's
at SMU. Shannon Dawson, I think cam Ward made it
seem as if Shannon Dawson knew was an innovative play caller.
Cam Ward was an innovator, and I realized that watching
Carson back yesterday and Kevin Jennings, the quarterback of SMU.

(02:23:22):
Kevin Jennings was a poor man's cam Ward, except he
was as good as I saw. Kevin Jennings had as
good of a game as cam Ward had in any
game last year with the University of Miami. He had
that side arm. He was accurate as how he didn't
miss it open receiver. He threw in some tight windows.
He was terrific. And it is a reminder I think

(02:23:43):
now when you're looking at the broad top fifty of
college football, now, they're all spending about the same amount
of money. Trust me, SMU spent a ton of money
on their roster construction as Miami. Do we have better
Jimmy's and Joe's right now than SMU does. Yeah, damn right,
we do. But when you're within, but when you're not
that far apart, right, So the true differentiators are do

(02:24:05):
you have the good coach on the field, which is
a quarterback, and do you have a good play caller
and good on in game coaching and game in sort
of second half adjusted, SMU had the better prepared team,
better game plan, better adjustments that were made. They also
had the better quarterback. We had the better everything else.

(02:24:28):
And it didn't matter if you have the better quarterback
than the better coach. And even if you're if you're
if you only have forty percent of the athletes that
the team you're you're playing does, if you have the
better quarterback and coach, you're going to win fifty percent.
You're gonna win half the time, you're going to overperform
and you're going to win a lot. And it's if
you look at Miami's two losses, it is to Brahm

(02:24:50):
of Louisville, a better play caller and a better game
prep prepare game coach prepare than Mario Christobal and right
Lashy another one who just prepares for one game better
better than Mario Christball. That's just a fact. Now, why
am I not ready to give up a Mario Christaball? Well, look,
I live in the real world and I can tell

(02:25:10):
you this, and this is my message to University of
Miami fan football fans out there who are frustrated with
coach Crystal Ball. I struggle with this question because I
think this is a man who loves this program, loves
the school, loves the kids that he recruits, and really cares.
He does everything off the field as well, if not

(02:25:30):
better than most coaches in the country. He's highly organized,
great relationships with high school coaches. He does all of
this extraordinarily well. Again, much better than some of these
coaches that have had better performances than him. The problem
with Mario is he doesn't have He's a risk averse guy,

(02:25:54):
and he hires game planners that fit his philosophy. And
the fact is, Miami, you know, scared money, don't make money.
That's one of my favorite expressions. Right, This is why
you do have to split eights when you play black check, Right,
no matter what, you just do it because it's the
right way. You know, it's the only way you're going
to make real money. It's only way you're actually going

(02:26:16):
to have an edge when you're playing these things. The
only way you're going to have an edge in college
football is you got to be the guy that goes
forward on fourth to one just about every time unless
you're inside your own thirty I would if I only
if I was, you know, maybe thirty five. But if
you're north of the thirty five, you should always be
going for an on fourth to one, especially you have
an offensive line like Miami's. But he's extraordinarily risk averse,

(02:26:38):
and he hires game planners that are risk averse. And
we saw it. He did this to take a knee
with twenty five seconds left. I just I had lost it.
I did, I was in the stands. I lost it.
I screamed. I was like, That's when I tweeted Mario
takes years off of my life. But there's one other
reality check that University of Miami supporters need to understand.

(02:26:59):
In every other instance where a frustrated football program has
gotten the coach fired, Hugh Freese at Auburn is the latest.
But you've got Brian Kelly, you got James Franklin, You've
got Billy Napier. We can go on and on. None
of those coaches were responsible for bringing the investment to
the program. Mario Cristobal, you know, Manny Diaz, who a

(02:27:20):
lot of people have noted, has a better winning percentage
as an ACC coach at Duke than Mario has at Miami.
By the way, Mario is seven to five in his
last twelve games. His ACC record is putrid. I mean
it's Miami seasons continue to be screwed once they get
into conference play, And I go back to the lack

(02:27:40):
of innovation. I think the more Miami tape, more Miami
tape that teams see and can game plan too, and
can scout, the more likely they find ways to slow
the offensive down and beat our defense. We're just too
easy to prepare for. As the season moves on, right,
we do really well the first five or six games,

(02:28:01):
and this has been a consistent pattern until we have
enough on tape and teams that face us more often
your conference opponents all seem to have no problems figuring
out how to You know it is you know when
we knew we had to get when when Manny got
rid of the offensive coordinator had before Rhet Lashley, it
was because we all could predict the game, the play

(02:28:22):
calls before they actually happened, and you just knew them
every time. Rahd Lashley was the first offensive coordinator Miami
had since shed Fish. And that goes back away where
I could where I didn't always predict the call run
versus pass, let alone, left versus right, et cetera, et cetera.
That's the sign of an innovative play caller. Shannon Dawson's
not an innovative play caller. And I think that Cam

(02:28:45):
Word's success masked a very vanilla offense. He makes it
easy for quarterbacks to learn because there's not many decisions
to make. But there was, There's just been no innovator.

Speaker 2 (02:28:55):
It is.

Speaker 1 (02:28:56):
Miami's offense is now super predictable, and that's why SMU
was so prepared to essentially play prevent They just prevented
Miami from doing explosive plays and they just kept Miami.
You know, Miami is struggling to score touchdowns when they're
in the red zone. They're more likely to score a

(02:29:17):
touchdown when they're outside the twenty than when they're inside
the twenty. And that's just the lack of innovative play calling.
It's very predictable. The run schemes are all up the middle,
up the middle, and Shannon Dawson got his back up
when he was criticized about this last week, and sure
enough it hit again. Here we are. So look, the

(02:29:38):
team was sloppy, made a lot of penalties. By the way,
these refs were atrocious to pick up a flag that
would have essentially given Miami another shot at getting a
first down and ending the game and not having to
get the ball back where there was a holding and
there was obvious passitor affairs. We all saw it. The
referee that was closest to us saw it through the flag,
and then they just picked up the flag with no

(02:29:58):
good explanation other than and these refs did not want
to give Miami another down. It was absolutely egregious and
the second most egregious call was the roughing the passer
penalty when the player clearly it was a mess of
a whistle situation that the ref screwed up. And because
the ref screwed up, they punished the player, and they
punished Miami, and they caught, and they essentially gifted the

(02:30:19):
game to SMU. Except the reason why I'm not going
to sit here and absolve the Crystal Ball and the
coaching staff or the or the or the or the
team itself is they they put themselves in a position
where where bad ref calls could make a difference, and
they never should have been in that situation in the

(02:30:39):
first place. So, yes, the ACEC has a problem. This
is the worst officiating since that since the SEC's that
Florida excuse me, that George Auburn game, which you know,
Hugh Freeze is going to be muttering to himself that
if it wasn't for those SEC officials, he beat Georgia
and he's not fired today, and I think he's right.
And these acc college football officiating is atrocious. It's not

(02:31:02):
just not as good as the NFL. It is unprofessional.
You see these refs out there, some of them are pros,
some of them are idiots, and we need if you're
going to allow college betting, if you're going to professionalize
college football, then every conference needs to spend a hell
of a lot more unofficiating and improve the quality of officials.

(02:31:22):
Pure and simple, that was a s show of officiating.
It was terrible, and it's been terrible all year. Anybody,
any ACC fan, and it doesn't matter what team here,
they're not good. They're just bad at their job. Period. Okay,
but this is no. It does not get to be
the excuse. And I do, like I said, I am.

(02:31:45):
I think Mario Cristabaal is the reason why money is
being invested in the University of Miami. So he's not
getting fired, but he needs to find a better offensive
coordinator and he needs to own up to his that
his philosophy is too risk averse that you can't be
in major college football. You don't have you will never

(02:32:09):
have the jimmies and Joe's to play that kind of
of of coaching schemes anymore. And there's a reason Miami
sucks in November. The more film that a team has
on Miami, the easier time they have to game plan.
It's obvious it's the obvious answer. This is what this

(02:32:31):
is me do an Okham's raiser here. I'm not a
football coach. I've done my level of pee week coaching
and kid coaching. I'm not going to sit here and
say I'm an expert at this. But when you know,
you know, and I'm and I'm well aware when you
know you know, and I'm well aware that this is

(02:32:52):
a very predictable offense. Again, I watch a ton of it.
So what needs to happen is there needs to be
a new offensive. We're gonna have to have a new offense.
I do worry that you know, you get you know
over time, you know, Mark. If you look at the
history of college football in the twenty first century, there's
only been three coaches who were tenured longer than five

(02:33:15):
years and won their first national title. Jim Harbaugh won
it in his eighth year, Dabo Swiney won it in
his eighth year, and Mac Brown won it in his
seventh year. Every other first time national championship coach in
the twenty first century all won it in either year
four or less. Mario Christo Baal this was year four,

(02:33:36):
next year's year five. He basically he's not in the
hot seat this year, but he's now in the hot
seat next year. If there's not a playoff run next year,
it's going to be time to move on. Because what
you worry about is that this becomes a virus, right,
which players are going, oh yeah, christa ball never wins.
It just sort of starts to feed on itself, and

(02:33:57):
it will cost you that one five star recruit that
you're need. You'll still get the great four star recruits
and you still get to be maybe as good as
Penn State. But Penn State never could break through. Right.
You know, the joke is crystal Ball is Spanish for
James Franklin, and that that's one of the running jokes

(02:34:18):
in Miami Twitter. But there's that's what he has to avoid.
He's and then you know, Oregon fans love to troll
Miami fans about this, right They they think they upgraded
when they lost Mario for Dan Lanning. They certainly have
better records to show for it. But I will say this,

(02:34:38):
Mario does have a small test for the rest of
the season. I am. I assume Miami is eight and
four nine, They're going to lose one or two more
games because Now that it's over, we know two lost
teams don't a SEC teams aren't gonna make it. Miami
was example at a right, if last year's Miami team
didn't get in the playoff as a tenant two team,
this one isn't. Last year's had the best offense in

(02:35:00):
the country and didn't get in. This team's not going
to get in as as a tenant two at large bid.
Seven thousand things have to happen for them to get
in the a SEC Championship game. While it's possible, it's
it's not probable. We're going to find out what kind
of what kind of motivator crystal Ball is, what kind
of coach he is, and whether these coordinators can be

(02:35:23):
better game planners with the rest of the season. If
we can go ten and two, then I think there
there there is some hope for next year. This is
nine and three, eight and four, which means say a
loss to pitt lost to Virginia Tech on the road,
something like that, then I think, you know, the hot

(02:35:44):
seat begins immediately. Crystal Ball will get one more year
for sure, because again he's responsible for this money. Right,
if they kept Mannidaz the investment that came in, wasn't
going to be there. There was a whole bunch of
people who love Mario in Miami Cuban community, in the
Miami business community who decided they said they're going to
give Mario every resource he can to succeed at Miami.

(02:36:05):
So he has every resource he has. The only way
Mario goes is if the people spending the money in
the program decide Mario should go. And that is why
you will not see any movement this year on that front.
Maybe next year, but certainly.

Speaker 2 (02:36:23):
Not this year.

Speaker 1 (02:36:26):
But I'll be honest, if I was Mario's boss and
he does not report the athletic director, he reports to
the people that write the checks, I would struggle with
this because the man loves the university. He's done, He's
rebuilt every other part of the program that needed rebuilding.
The problem is his game day coaching and his game
day plaguate game planning. If he needs to come up

(02:36:48):
with a better plan and a better result. Look, he
improved coordinators on the defensive side, so he deserves a
shot at improving for a coordinator on the offensive side.
But he's probably got one year, all right. I didn't
watch a lot of other college football. I went from

(02:37:09):
that drowning my sorrows in terrific barbecue at ten fifty Barbecue.
That place was amazing that we went to in Dallas.
So yeah, I wanted to give him a shout out.
My daughter thinks the only reason Minimi lost is that
the hotel we stayed at we actually stayed on the
thirteenth floor. They actually had a thirteenth floor. I didn't

(02:37:29):
think about it, but the minute she got into town,
she goes, Dad, why are we staying on the thirteenth floor.
This is terrible, lucked. We're in real trouble on Halloween night.
We're on thirteenth floor. What are you thinking. I'm not
a very superstitious guy. I'm not even a little stitious,
and neither's my wife or my son.

Speaker 2 (02:37:45):
But my daughter was.

Speaker 1 (02:37:46):
And now let's just say, after this debacle of a weekend,
she will be that person that if she gets to
sign the thirteenth Florida Hotel, she'll say, you know what,
I'd like to change rooms. And given how badly Miami
played this weekend and totally destroying, you know, perhaps getting
in the way of Miami's homecoming plans next week, I
am going to the Miami game next week. It is homecoming.

(02:38:08):
My daughter's really involved in it. I can't wait to
cheer her on on that she gets to do the smoke.
I'm very excited, you know. I will say this. I
know this, She's now more than a little stitious when
it comes to the third number thirteen and staying in
a hotel with the thirteenth floor. All right, So with that,
I'd love for you to share stories about whether you

(02:38:28):
would have stayed if you'd have been assigned a room
on floor thirteen and they actually had a thirteenth floor.
The Double Tree in Dallas actually allows for third. You know,
a lot of hotels go from twelve to fourteen. They
don't even have the thirteen. So I'll admit I have
not been on a thirteenth floor. Would you have changed rooms?
Share with that with me when you get a chance.
And with that, I will see you in twenty four

(02:38:50):
hours for our live election stream. It'll start two six
thirty pm Eastern Time on Tuesday. I'll see you that, Hey,

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