July 23, 2024 • 36 mins
Biden’s out of the race! Matt Glassman joins Nate to talk about what the consolidation behind Kamala Harris reveals about party politics and who she might pick for a running mate.
Further Reading:
Why Biden Finally Quit from Politico
Can Harris Beat Trump? from New York Magazine
What a Kamala Harris Presidency Might Look Like from Semafor
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Silver Bulletin from Nate Silver
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
better decisions. I'm Nate Silver. Marie is out today, but
my friend and fellow politics slash poker slash degenerate enthusiast
Matt Glasman is here to talk about Joe Biden dropping
(00:37):
out and Kamala Harris stepping in. How are you, Matt, come,
I'm doing great.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
I'm so happy to be here. This is sort of
the Wheelhouse podcast for me, and hopefully I'll be able
to contribute in a meaningful way.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Yeah. Matt is a friend of the pod and a
senior fellow at the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University.
He's been on and around the Hill for a decade,
getting up close and personal with the inner workings of
the legislature for the Congressional Research Service and the House
Appropriations Committee. Basically, he knows his stuff and I'm excited
to have him on. So anything I missed any other
key context?
Speaker 2 (01:10):
No, I love talking politics, I love talking poker, and
here we are at the perfect intersection of the two.
Let's get into it.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
So we're going to kind of go when chronological order here. First,
talk about what it took for Joe Biden to make
his decision, then why the party consolidated around Kamala Harris
so quickly, and then look forward to what Kamala Harris's chances,
advantages and my abilities might be in the general election
against Donald Trump. Matt, Where were you when you when
you first heard the news on Sunday?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
I was stuck in traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike
down between Exit two and three, heading south on ninety five.
It was one of those moments where like I knew
I was gonna remember where I was forever in this spot,
and here I am stuck in traffic in New Jersey.
Just came across like the radio and now I'm just
like stewing in the traffic with time to think. Unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Where were you? Yeah, we were in upstate New York
and Hudson, New York, kind of gradually driving back to
the city. I thought we had a nice relaxing day,
stop for some lunch and go to all the you
know whatever fruit freu antique stuff up there and things
like that. I meanwhile, I was trying to run the
model run for the day. We update the model almost
every day, even weekends, And I text Eli my fabulous
(02:23):
assistant elections analyst the newsletter and I'm like, okay, here,
the numbers are ready for you. He produces the graphics
and he texts back just Joe Biden's tweet. It was
kind of hard to decipher at first. It was a
very long tweet, right, It didn't say I'm dropping out.
You have to like read a like the fourth paragraph.
And I went to poly market and it's like Biden's
dropping out ninety eight percent or whatever. But yeah, I
(02:45):
mean it's never like it's never like, you know, usually
made a poker tournament with something like this happens. But yeah, yeah,
I was kind of stuck up there with not very
much Wi Fi signal.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
I was in a World Series event during the debate,
and so I was sitting in one of those rooms
at the Horseshoe and no one is watching the bait.
It's not in the TV anywhere, and all I'm getting
these furious texts like, oh my god, this can't be happening.
What is happening? What is happening? And yeah, there's sort
of like a helpless feeling to it. Right, We're just
stuck in traffick in New Jersey and all I want
to do is like ask people things and tell people things,
and know here I am staring at the Delam World
(03:16):
Bridge for half an hour.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
It's it's a bunch of moments, right. It's the assassination
attempt against Trump, which the winds playing a different direction
and we're in a very different world. Right. It's the
it's the debate. It's the fact that it was only
a month ago or something that Trump was convicted I
guess more than a month ago, now, like six weeks ago,
seven weeks ago he was convicted on various felony counts.
And the fact that, like there's been this consolidation around
(03:39):
Kamala Harris, we may soon have the first, uh first
woman of color, everybody nominated by a major presidential ticket. Yeah,
they packed a lot. They packed a lot in here,
I think. But but putting on more of a political
science government institutional observer hat, if you were making bets
(03:59):
on prediction markets and we would have bought dropout stock, Matt,
can you tell me more of the thinking behind that
and kind of what this says about political parties, or
at least the Democratic Party.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Sure, I mean, I think the main thing to take
away from this is that you know, parties matter, and
that individual candidates for office, be it the president United States,
a member of Congress, someone running for the PTA, aren't
just sort of these individuals up there with authority. They
have these coalitions underneath them. And you exist because you
have a coalition of voters and interest groups and money
(04:32):
people and other politicians who support you. And if they
withdraw their support, right, it really collapses on you, almost
like a sand castle underneath you. And this was sort
of an open question because presidents have become so powerful
and when we think about them in terms of parties,
often we think the president controls the party.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Right.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
In the nineteenth century, we knew that wasn't true. The
party was dominant. In the twentieth century it was sort
of a battle between parties and presidents. But now we think, well,
the president controls the party and he reshapes the party, right.
You see this with Clinton or with Trump, like the
party just reshapes under them. They pick the DNC heads,
they pick all the sort of the people. But when
push comes to shove, it turns out parties are still
important actor And you could see as soon as elite
(05:10):
actors and the populace start to withdraw their support of Biden.
It just collapsed on them.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah, and Joe Biden in particular is a politician who
was dependent on the support of his party. Right, I mean,
look at think about twenty twenty was not quite like
Biden dropping out moment. But you kind of have like
the super friends get together and they flew, am I
getting this remember in this right, Like Pete Buha, Jude
and Amy Klomachar like all flew to like the same
(05:36):
rally to like endorse Biden after Jim Clyburn had endorsed
him in South Carolina. So this is two elections in
a row where the Democratic Party made a really strong move.
And yeah, I mean because if you read the reporting,
Nancy Pelosi say we can do this the easy way
or do it the hard way. And apparently people in
(06:00):
his inner circle were at least willing to level with
him about about the polling being very bad about I mean,
apparently they hadn't actually done very much pulling in the
past couple of months. It's the fact that Biden hadn't
been polling the White House, had not been pulling the
swing States was probably a bad sign. But something got
through to him. But play it out what had happened.
(06:20):
What would the next week, Matt, do you think have
looked like if Biden remained obstinate and said I don't
want to go.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Yeah, I mean, I think they're playing this game of
chicken where it's quite obvious that the party actors want
him go on, and it's quite obvious that he is
resistant to that idea, and lurking in the background is
the idea of like, are you willing to sort of
wreck the party to get your way here? And that
made it precare us for everyone, because I think no
one sort of thought of this as a situation where
(06:48):
you could credibly commit to sort of the game of
chicken like we would in game theory, right, Whether the
key to the game of chicken, if two cars are
sort of heading at each other, is to just credibly
commit that you're not going to swerve, throw the steering
ro out the window, improve you can't swerve to make
their payoffs have to be better to swerve than to
keep going, and hope you swerve. You can't anymore. Now,
I think what was going to happen in the next
week was they're going to ramp up the game of
(07:08):
chicken to the point where maybe it was going to
hurt his chances of winning the presidency if he did
hold on. Essentially, they were going to sort of credibly
commit it to say, look, you can be the nominee
if you don't want to deal with us, but you're
going to lose the election. And that's sort of like
the extreme version, but it was headed that direction. Everyone
was circling around him, and I think the writing's on
the wall and sort of, you know, Biden then takes
the sort of obvious way out right, which is do
(07:31):
the quote unquote right thing for the party, which is
what it's ended up going to be presented as, like
the party is not stupid, Like the message's going to
be here, a huge celebration of Biden passing the torch, doesn't.
I can't imagine what this convention is going to look like, right,
It's gonna's a huge celebration of Biden's career and his
presidency and always accomplished. And then they're going to hand
it over to Harris and it's all going to look like, well,
Biden did this noble thing, which I don't buy for
(07:51):
a second. They shoved him out, and this is why
parties pass those things up. I mean, one thing I
wanted to go back to is this this idea of
how parties think people started to get worried about their
own re elections, and and that's an important piece of parties.
Their group decisions and the people in the parties have
all different goals and they don't even have to have
the same goal to arrive at the same conclusion. Like
(08:12):
a lot of House members and swing districts might have
start worried about their own reelection. As you point out,
party leaders or members of the House might start worried
about control of the chamber right and might be like, well,
we can lose with anyone, but let's not go down
and flames here. Let's hold onto the House. Other people
might have been concerned about policies. They might decided, well,
Biden's old and honestly Harris will be better on this issue,
or that it should have been an agenda that's more
comftabed with me. And you know, others might think Harris
(08:34):
just actually has a better chance, and they're worried about
controlling the presidency, and all these things come together and
ultimately like it congeals into a decision, but it's not
like everyone made this decision for the same reason within
the party. The party output spits out in some way
that you hope is rational, But it's a collection of
individuals who all thinking differently, And this isn't like a
surprise anyone, Like if you've ever been at a PTA
(08:55):
meeting or an HOA meeting, or just decide where to
go to dinner with your family, Like, group decisions are
not sort of like necessarily meta rational, but each individual
might be acting rational to create sort of the endpoint.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
I mean, apparently, according to reporting like this was a
relatively recent decision. By the way, we have not actually
heard from Maybe by the time you listen to this
you will have right. We haven't heard from Biden directly
beyond these initial statements on Twitter and other social media networks,
which is a little bit strange, I suppose. But as
someone who has spent more time in and around the
(09:28):
halls of power and more time in DC and mesanity
than I have, what do you think the inner circle
of the White House was thinking? I mean, there's been
reporting that the Biden campaign was in some form of
denial about what the polls said. Do you think they
knew deep down that this wasn't working. Do you think
(09:48):
they were drinking the kool aid? Do you think they
felt like they had like a professional obligation to play
out the string for Biden or what I mean?
Speaker 2 (09:56):
I think that it's very easy when you're a campaign
staffer or a staffer to an elected official, to talk
yourself into the reasons why they're indispensable. One thing is
that the incentives of the staffers are a little different
and the incentives of the principles in these spots. If
you know, if a staffer gives up on Biden and
(10:16):
says it's time to throw in the towel, they're probably
out of a job on the campaign, especially at the
top senior levels. They're probably out of our future job
in a different administration in the White House. And it
doesn't surprise me at all that the people close to
the Biden would be the people most resistant to this.
I mean, it's almost just human nature, right. This is
their guy, and of course he's going to beat Trump.
He's beat Trump in the past, and like this isn't
(10:36):
just talking points, Like you can actually believe this. And
I don't think it like was lost on them that
they probably don't think much or as much as other
people do, of sort of like Harris's chances.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
I mean, we're gonna talk about Harris in a second,
including the complex dynamics of like why the White House
seemed to lack confidence in her. Maybe let me ask
one more question, though, Is this evidence that Democrats are
more rational than Republicans or is that not a fair conclusion.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
I don't know if it's. I mean, it's certainly evident.
It's one piece of evidence that way. And I do
think sort of Trump and sort of populous like Trump
tend to produce these cults of personality. I'm proud of
them party for doing this right. This is not an
easy thing for a party to do. And if you've
ever been in a room trying to make a decision
with ten people, you can imagine how hard it is
to turn around in that decision. And so I think
(11:30):
they did really well here for themselves. I don't think
it says anything about them relatively Republicans, except in this
current instance. It's hard to picture Trump being pushed out
this way, but again that's Trump's a different type of leader,
a different person. If the Republicans were faced with, you know,
sort of our mirror image of Biden. I can imagine
them doing the same thing.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
We're going to take a quick break. When we return,
Matt and I will talk about Kamala Harris. So, Matt,
if you go to Polymarket or other betting markets, Kamala
(12:15):
Harra says about an eighty three percent chance when I
looked fifteen minutes ago to be the Democratic nominee for president.
Is eighty three percent too high or too low?
Speaker 2 (12:27):
I'm buying at eighty three. I think, I really think
she's at the point where what you're talking about is
sort of the three to five to seven percent whatever
it is of sort of like black swan event keeping
her from the nomination. That could be some undisclosed piece
of information, or she could be sick, knock on wood
or whatever and something go wrong. But I think she's
virtually a lock at this point. The way the Democrats
(12:50):
have consolidated around her is remarkable. Everybody just flew out
from across the spectrum. You had the CBC, you had
various House and Senate members, you had her opponents, and
basically what they did was they said, you know, this
is a done deal. What those endorsements mean. Starting with
the President and then it keeps any sort of potential challenge.
And now I see every possible challenger to her has
(13:12):
basically endorsed her, So the field has been cleared.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Yeah, do you think this just like guaranteed to happen
and we're just discovering that now, or do you think
it's a situation where like it's kind of an unstable equilibrium.
Once the herd starts to move one way, then the
outcome becomes inevitable. Therefore you want to jump on the bandwagon.
How many metaphors am I mixing here? But like, do
you think there's a world in which this doesn't happen
(13:36):
that's adjacent to the actual world that we live in?
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Only if sort of she thought that her stepping aside
would help the party too in some sort of altruistic way.
I think the issue here is that the big danger
for the party in Biden stepping aside was that they
weren't gonna be able to put the coalition back together,
like the big Coalition was going to crack, and that
it was never gonna be able to clean up by anyone,
And you're gonna have people who were bitter and vindictive
(14:01):
about what happened and looks like they've minimized that. But
passing over her would have been the most obvious way
to create that sity situation where you're not gonna be
able to put the coalition back together for any number
of reasons. Her and her people directly sort of the
people who support her interests, sort of a script of
representation groups if you anger sort of African Americans and
(14:21):
you skip over her for you know, Whitmer or whatever.
And so I think this was the most obvious way
to go it least party tension and best chance to
make sure the coalition comes back together, which there is
no guarantee anyway, Like there's still that one group that
you worry about, which is sort of like the hardcore
inner circle. Biden Knight's not playing nice and I don't
think that's gonna happen, but they're still sort of out there.
(14:44):
The advance for Harris in terms of information reveal over
any other candidate is also there. She's been vetted in
a national election before, which is not nothing. If we
had gone with Whitmer, like great year governor of state,
We've seen plenty of governors of states have stuff revealed
about them in national elections and national primaries that cause
problems from a vetting point of view, and so she's
a safe candidate in that sense. But the most important
(15:06):
thing is that she's the vice president of United States.
She's the obvious there parent. Biden picked her to be
second in command, and now you're stepping aside. You better
come up with a damn good reason to pass over
her if you want to keep party harmony.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
And probably the way it could have been done would
be to have this kind of mini primary where you
have somehow public forums voter participation like that might have
been tenable, But it also seemed like not very many
of the people were that interested in the job because
Joe Biden has been wobbling for how w was debate
almost a month ago now right. If you were Gavin
(15:37):
Newsome and you were really interested in the nomination, I mean,
you would probably have floated something sooner or like tried
to start some momentum running and there was like no
other obvious alternative. But like, but look, let me ask
you this, based on reporting, the White House itself is
not that confident about Kamala Harris's chances against Trump. She
(16:01):
is down in the polls currently against Trump. That might change.
Poles sometimes change when you go from being a hypothetical
to an actual candidate. But but for the time being,
her polling looks maybe a point better than Biden's. But
Biden's polling was pretty bad, so that's not saying very much.
Why would a can who we've just been were a
party rather who we've just been praising for being hyper rational?
(16:26):
Why would they worry about not wanting to offend X
or Y in group or outgroup if they can increase
their chances of beating Trump from say thirty five percent,
which is roughly what prediction markets assumed about hair As
to like fifty or fifty five percent with the hypothetical
perfect you know, Gretchen Whitmer, I don't know who else
(16:47):
ticket I've.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Put Whitmer and Shapiro on a ticket and just be like, well,
now we're coming after Michigan and Pennsylvania, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
I think.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
I think that the parties are probably a little too
risk averse in situations like this, but the fear of
party crack up always looms over any sort of coalition,
and I think they thought that, you know, if we're
pushing Biden out because he's too old and he can't
do this anymore. Then we're not saying he ran a
(17:16):
bad administration. We're not saying there's any wrong with the administration.
There's not anything wrong with his record. And so what
is your reasoning for going around Harris except that you're saying, oh, well,
other people pull better. Maybe maybe they do. But again,
I think the party crack up aspect of this looms
so large, and I think the only way to get
around Harris was to have that open competition. And I
don't think the party wanted an open competition. I don't
(17:38):
think parties ever want that situation, right, because that is
what creates sort of bad blood. And what happens if
you end up in a situation where an open competition
and you have a narrow victory, right, where does that
leave everybody? What does that clean up? You're just asking
people to back the party, and I think this is
sort of the safest route.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Right.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Again, there's a variance issue here. They may be thinking
about variance incorrectly. They may need variants right now. I
think that's the point you've made in the past. But
there's a huge variance issue. And if you're thinking about
protecting the House representatives, for instance, and your best chance
to take control of the House all of a sudden
losing with Harris keeping the coalition intact, It's not the
worst thing in the world. We know where we'll get.
It won't be the disaster of old man Biden, like
(18:20):
falling asleep on the campaign trail sometime in the next
two months. I mean, that was the real disaster that
was looming, is that Biden would completely self destruct in
October and the entire Democratic Party were from crashing down
with him. That won't happen with Harris to lose. Maybe
she's a bad candidate, right or whatever reason, Like she
doesn't do well. Trump wins, but it doesn't feel like
she's gonna go out there and just bring the Democratic
(18:41):
Party down with her, and the crackup could cause that.
Now again, you may be looking for variants. You may
be looking for Josh Shapiro to shake things up, or
Gretchen Whitmer. I think Whitmer is probably the only other
realistic option. The Democrat Party is a collection of interest in.
One of those interests is that we have wide representation
of both mind maority groups and women, and to pass
(19:02):
over to Harris and then pass over Whitmer and be like, oh, look, dude,
we got this white guy in Pennsylvania. It's gonna be perfect.
I think that would have caused enough tension in the part.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Right. I think came the closest anyone actually saying he
wanted it. It's like the Biden campaign was, like, among
other things, for Democrats, extremely demoralizing, where every day you
wake up and there are these polls showing Biden losing
and he's either not giving public remarks or when he
does it's embarrassing half the time. It was very disheartening
for Democrats. And I think just having like the semblance
(19:34):
of a normal campaign I think is a potent lever
for Harris and for Democrats here. I mean, do you
think they'll come to regret not having a mini primary
or is it like it just wasn't going to fly,
and once it's not going to fly, then it's better
to be unified than not.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Yeah, I mean I think largely allowed to Look, you know,
when Harris loses, we're gonna hear every sort of idiotic
take we can about this decision because the results oriented
thinking it's going to come back of this, So like oh,
Biden could have won, right, Whitmer could have won. All
of the things are going to come out, and of
course that's you know, as a poker a bridge player
would say that that's ridiculous. Right. You make the decision
(20:15):
with the best information you have and sort of whatever
happens with the rolls of the dice you can't control.
I do think that you know one thing going with
Harris now, does is it? Lets sort of the sort
of the thing move forward quicker. Right. We saw this
massive fundraising haul for the Democrats yesterday, right, and this
wave of sort of popular enthusiasm and who knows how
(20:37):
on in this last But if you say, oh, we're
going to set up a process now for the next
two weeks, people are going to bicker with each other
about who should be their nominee, and then at the
convention in August, we'll deal with this. You're waiting a
long time to sort of get to that point, and
I think that the time running short aspect of this
shouldn't be underestimated. You know, either we have Harris coming
in now and she's gonna be the candidate today. There's
(20:57):
logistical issues transferring her the money from from the Biden
campaign was easier than anyone else. And so there's all
these things sort of build up for different people, I think,
and you get to the point where it's like, well,
does Whitmer even want to run for president?
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Right now?
Speaker 2 (21:10):
Right? That's the other question hiding behind all this is,
like all these candidates they backed the way real quick.
When they decide to coordinate on Harris, a lot of
them might not have been interested anyway. So we're gonna
hold them any primary who's going to show up? Right,
Harris will show up, probably maybe a couple of themill
show up, but as soon as a couple of other
show up, the rest are going to drop out. Like,
it's not clearly what a many primary would've even look
like in terms of which candidates want to get in
(21:31):
one hundred days before the election to try and get
the Democratic nomination in a precarious situation where they're going
to be an underdog.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
How seamless is a transition between Biden and Harris? Are
like all the Biden people like running her campaign? Now
will she want to replace them with her own staff?
There is lots of talk about, by the way, internal
tension between the Biden staff and the Harris staff. How
does that actually like physically work.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Yeah, I mean this is a huge issue because you know,
the campaign staff are notoriously sort of territorial, and even
on campaigns that are sort of normal and get started
in the primaries and roll forward, you have internal tensions
between different staffers on the campaign, you know, and you know,
whether the campaign manager gets along with the candidate's spouse
(22:23):
is always sort of like a classic crack up in Congress, right,
And all of these things now have to sort of
be dealt with in faster than normal real time for politics.
I think I saw that the Biden staffers from the
campaign said they were all going to you know, flip
over and help Harris for now, right, And that seems
sort of normal. But I don't think you know that
the Biden campaign is the set of staffers, the set
(22:46):
of strategies, the set of money people, and the set
of get out the vote operations that Harris would have
set up had she just won the primary right now,
and sort of an opens thing Biden said, I'm not
going to run Harrison's the primary. She would have set
up an entirely different apparatus, and so the friction there
is real and I think there's no doubt she's going
to change some of the people, particularly the top, the
senior levels or the places where you know, probably the
(23:07):
biggest change will happen. But just sort of she is
going to be forced to run, at least for a while,
on an apparatus that she didn't build and she didn't direct,
and her people and people she's comforted with and her
allies didn't build and direct. And that's a challenge. It's
not insurmountable, but it certainly is different than what she
would have done otherwise. And I suspect we're going to
have a lot of changes in the campaigns and even
(23:30):
right down to sort of you know, the surrogates that
they use for on television, on cable news and here,
and there are going to be a different set of
people surrounding you know, Kamala Harris the coalition than Joe
Biden the coalition. Right, they're linked together, but they are
different coalitions.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
We're going to take one more break here and then
be back to talk a little bit about Kamala Harris's
odds and what we have to look forward to between
now and November. So, if you go to prediction markets,
(24:12):
I know, we're spending a lot of time on them,
but it's a time when there's a lot of uncertainty,
there's not really enough polling. Yet they basically imply that
Kamala Harris has about a thirty five percent chance of
beating Trump conditional upon winning the nomination, which we both
expect her to do. Interestingly, in my model, thirty five
(24:32):
percent was a chance that Biden had before the debate.
So in some ways you're resetting to the pre debate
moment where we thought Joe Biden would run, or maybe
Matt and I didn't think that, but most people assume
that Joe Biden would run kind of this normal democratic
campaign under slightly difficult circumstances. You know, I asked you
to buy or sell before on Harris's nomination chances. Do
(24:54):
you think thirty five percent is in the right general
vicinity or do you want to kind of wait for
more info before you make an assessment.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Yeah, I'm not buying or selling for more info because
I think the key question we have here, and I
think this is kind of funny actually, is thatocrats need
to really hope the problem was Biden's age, right, Like
if the problem was Biden's age and not inflation and
not sort of the policy's administration. Right, then you're looking great, right,
like relatively speaking, right, And so I would like to
(25:24):
wait because I think the Polley is going to be
really important. And obviously, like I am the total layman here,
you're the expert, but in the coming weeks about whether
sort of that is an explanation and if Harris instantly
has sort of like a exogenous shock of you know,
three or four or five points relative to Biden a
relative to where she was before, that's a big deal.
(25:45):
And you know, well, you know, people won't be able
to figure that out definitively. But if you see a
jump for her, then maybe the Biden old thing was
really dragging down a set of Democrats or a set
of swing voters right, who are now like much more
comfortable coming back to Harris. Now, I don't know if
that's true, and she's got her own negatives, but I
am definitely in wait and see mode. I certainly think
the Democrats who all of a sudden think they have
(26:06):
the answer are crazy. I think it is complete nonsense
to be like, oh, now we've solved this and now
we're favorites to win this. I can't even imagine that.
And you know, and they have a long road ahead
uphill with in my view, a less than perfect candidate,
but someone that's improved their situation from where they were,
(26:28):
at least on the extreme margin.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Yeah. I don't know what the poker analogy is, but
maybe it's like that you hit like a hit, like
a four outer, like chop the pot. This is getting
very esoteric, right, but like you find some way to
like salvage be able to continue gambling. And if you
kind of read read accounts of like gambling addicts, then
not that democratsic gamle adics are probably too risk averse
on average. They just want to win to continue to play, right,
(26:53):
not winning for winning's sake, but winning winning to play
and like they're and they're in the game now at least.
But yeah, look, it's ironic that like you would get
yelled at for suggesting that Biden's age is the problem,
because there are other issues too. I mean, incumbent parties
all around the world have have been struggling. You know. Look,
(27:14):
one thing that I think goes too often overlooked is
that Democrats are still at a disadvantage in the electoral College.
If anything, Biden's disadvantage might have narrowed a little bit
because he was doing well. I wasn't doing better among anyone, right,
but he was holding his numbers up better relatively speaking,
with like older white voters versus any voters of color
(27:34):
and any younger voters. So older states like Michigan, Pennsylvania
that are pretty white Wisconsin were holding up comparatively well
versus Georgia, for instance. Harris may do better overall. I
think she probably will, but she may actually expand back
out that electoral college popular vote gap, and that's tricky.
(27:57):
I mean, you might bet she might be the favorite
to win the popular vote. I don't know if she's
the favorite to win the electoral college, unfortunately for Democrats.
But let's give let's give, like a more optimistic version
of it. It's November sixth, and Kamala Harris has one,
let's say, by a compable enough margin where we're not
(28:18):
still counting. The vote wasn't huge, but she won the
popular vote by three points, and she won the Midwestern states,
and say Nevada or something, tell me the story where
this happened.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
I think the story where this happens is the Democratic
Party unites behind her. Of course, that's a baseline must
have her campaign gets off the ground without any sort
of sputtering, which we could see. She turns out to
be something of a better campaigner slash candidate slash charismatic
leader than we observed in the primaries. She probably moderates
(28:51):
her position successfully. I think this is gonna be the
tough one for the Democrats to swallow, is that she
really needs to move to the center from where she's been.
She's grown up her entire career in politics and sort
of the liberal sort of bastions and running up through
California's system is like that proves some thing, like you're
you're good at something, but it doesn't really challenge you
(29:12):
to look for sort of swing voters nationally, and so
she'll have to sort of figure out how to do that,
and then I think after that the Biden age thing
will have had to be sort of important, and then
she will successfully, in my view, present a campaign that
is forward looking versus backward looking. And I think that's
the one thing she has going for her, is that
(29:32):
if she wants to push this campaign into like Donald
Trump's the past and I represent the future. That's a
very strong sell in America, and it will be a
contrast that might sort of pick her up the swing
voters who have decided that not was Biden too old,
and that when Biden represent the past, he's a silent
generation dude, but that Trump is too uh, and that
Trump is sort of clinging to a backwards looking old
(29:56):
man thing. And look, I think you know, I don't.
I don't think it's sort of like you. I don't
think you just turn around and be like, well, our
guy was too old, so we dumped him, and now
you're guys too old, you are the problem. I don't
think that quite works. Yeah out loud.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
People have to be a little bit careful about about yeah.
And you've seen these happen a couple You've had Republicans
say so some of the Biden I call them dead enders.
We're saying, well, fourtune million people voted in the Democratic primaries.
You know, actually in the state where I am, New York,
every candidate but Driiden had already dropped out right by
the time the Democrat New York would have had the
opportunity to vote. And so it's it's kind of a
(30:27):
BS talking point, but that got recycled by Republicans, and likewise,
this point about oh, you can't have someone who's going
to be eighty years old during the presidential term run
has now been used by Democrats. I mean, people voters
have some type of memories, right, They actually are more
resistant to hypocrisy than you might think. So give those
arguments a little bit of time to dry out before
(30:48):
you try to recycle them or whatever.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Yeah, good, no, no, you got mat. I mean, I
you know. One thing that for me personally has always
been a problem here is that my main concern is
about the age of Biden and Trump have never really
been electoral concerns. Partisan voters will look past a lot
of stuff, right like how far Biden and head of
decline before the voters really started to sort of be
(31:12):
concerned about it. My concern has always been that these
guys are too old to do the governance job. And
that's something that I think is really important. That we
want someone who's competent twenty four to seven on call
in the White House and energetic in a management capacity
and a leadership quality. And I just don't think eighty
year olds have it that said, that's not how must
voters think. Most voters are cross pressured by their opinions
(31:34):
on abortion and their views on taxes, and their ties
sentimental ties to parties, and that's not how they think.
And so I don't think there's anything that prevents a
candidate who's going to be in their eighties like Trump
or like Biden was four years ago, from winning an election.
Voters are more than willing to overlook that stuff in
the name of parsonship or ideology. And so you know,
(31:54):
it's not sort of the definitive way to beat Trump.
He's old. But I amused yesterday that Harris could run
a campaign of something like he's too old, he's too extreme,
he's too incompetent, and he's too dangerous, and make it
part of the campaign, which would be sort of this
forward looking campaign. Again, that's the optimistic I have for her.
I'm not particularly optimistic about Harris. I think there's every
chance in the world that she loses, and loses badly here.
(32:16):
But the bigger point, and this isn't isn't news to you,
is that you take your least worst options, and in
a game thiry sense, when one path is foreclosed for you,
and you are not going to win, you try another.
The poker analogy is this, if you're at the river
and you know you can't win by calling because you're
holding six high, well then you stop thinking about calling,
(32:38):
and you ever decide what's better folding or raising. And
Biden at this point was the call with six high
in some ways not exactly, but it was the call
with a very weekend.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
I mean to sound like a little sports talk radio
Bill Simmonsy. You know one reason I can imagine Harris winning,
And again, I think we'll have our model out in
a week or so. Thirty five percent seems like a
sensible biggest line for now. She kind of has in
a weird way. And I know people are gonna get
mad because of the stakes and an election, but psychologically
(33:13):
there's a little bit of like having nothing to lose.
But let's talk about the VP. How much do you
think the VP pick matters? And do you agree with
conventional wisdom that you know the names that are better
about the most, not bettered about better at about the
most are like Shapiro, Andy Basher in Kentucky, who else?
(33:33):
Whitmer a little bit, although it seemed people seem to
think that you'd rather have at least one man on
the ticket, Roy Cooper, do you have a preference between
and among those and how much difference would you expect
a VP pick to make well?
Speaker 2 (33:45):
In general, I would not expect a VP pick to
make much difference at all in any sort of electoral sense.
That's sort of the guiding history.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Now.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
That's often because you know, people at pick sort of
like competent, traditionally sort of qualified vice presidents.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Right.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
The one place we do see I think in the
polling some drop off was with the plent pick. Right.
If you make a terrible pick, right, like, it could
go back for on you. But I think it's pretty
hard to make a terrible pick. I think sort of
internal party politics are just as important as anything else
in a VP pick. It seems like the conventional wisdom
is sort of like moderate white guy governor is the
way to go here, sort of like this balancing of
(34:21):
a scriptive representation, which is something that the parties are
obsessed with. But I also think that the voters like,
so I think it's okay. I think that Whitmer might
be a good candidate, except that I think parties are
very risk averse about things like putting two women in
the ticket, both for like reasonable reasons. I think historically
parties have always sort of run sort of like white
Protestant dudes for a president because they're very worried that
(34:43):
even if it only costs you half a point from
someone who doesn't like Catholics or whatever, like half a
point matters in elections like this is planned for keeps,
and so they've been very risk averse about heading off
into sort of minority group risk representation. And I think,
right or wrong, the view would be that two women
would potentially hurt you on the margins when the margins
really matter. I think a lot of people also seeing
(35:04):
ghosts from Clinton in twenty sixteen when they think that way,
it's probably not that big a deal. But I think
it is a deal, and so yeah, I think, you know,
I think the conventional wisdom now is that like Basher
or Cooper North Carolina are like sort of people you
might pick because there can you know, moderate white guys
who have proven records and sort of reddish states. Shapiro
(35:25):
is sort of more of a well, this guy could
help us win Pennsylvania type pick. I think the the
you know, the political science evidence is that maybe the
VP could give you a point or two in their
home state potentially, and that's not nothing in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
We're gonna leave it there. Thank you so much for
pinch hitting today, Matt.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
All right, Nate, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
This is awesome for listeners. This is probably our early
episode of the week, but we've said that before. There's
world series of poker controversies to talk about, so expect
back next week with a mix of poker, politics and
everything else. But thank you for listening. Risky Business is
hosted by me, Nate Silver and my co host Maria Kannakova.
(36:07):
The show is a co production of Push Industries and iHeartMedia.
This episode was produced by Isabel Carter and edited by
Sarah Nix. Our associate producer is Gabriel Hunter Chang. Our
executive producer is Jacob Goldstein. If you want to listen
to an ad free version, sign up for pushkin Plus.
For six hundy nine a month, you get access to
ad free listening. Thanks for tuning in.
Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
better decisions. I'm Nate Silver. Marie is out today, but
my friend and fellow politics slash poker slash degenerate enthusiast
Matt Glasman is here to talk about Joe Biden dropping
(00:37):
out and Kamala Harris stepping in. How are you, Matt, come,
I'm doing great.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
I'm so happy to be here. This is sort of
the Wheelhouse podcast for me, and hopefully I'll be able
to contribute in a meaningful way.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Yeah. Matt is a friend of the pod and a
senior fellow at the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University.
He's been on and around the Hill for a decade,
getting up close and personal with the inner workings of
the legislature for the Congressional Research Service and the House
Appropriations Committee. Basically, he knows his stuff and I'm excited
to have him on. So anything I missed any other
key context?
Speaker 2 (01:10):
No, I love talking politics, I love talking poker, and
here we are at the perfect intersection of the two.
Let's get into it.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
So we're going to kind of go when chronological order here. First,
talk about what it took for Joe Biden to make
his decision, then why the party consolidated around Kamala Harris
so quickly, and then look forward to what Kamala Harris's chances,
advantages and my abilities might be in the general election
against Donald Trump. Matt, Where were you when you when
you first heard the news on Sunday?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
I was stuck in traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike
down between Exit two and three, heading south on ninety five.
It was one of those moments where like I knew
I was gonna remember where I was forever in this spot,
and here I am stuck in traffic in New Jersey.
Just came across like the radio and now I'm just
like stewing in the traffic with time to think. Unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Where were you? Yeah, we were in upstate New York
and Hudson, New York, kind of gradually driving back to
the city. I thought we had a nice relaxing day,
stop for some lunch and go to all the you
know whatever fruit freu antique stuff up there and things
like that. I meanwhile, I was trying to run the
model run for the day. We update the model almost
every day, even weekends, And I text Eli my fabulous
(02:23):
assistant elections analyst the newsletter and I'm like, okay, here,
the numbers are ready for you. He produces the graphics
and he texts back just Joe Biden's tweet. It was
kind of hard to decipher at first. It was a
very long tweet, right, It didn't say I'm dropping out.
You have to like read a like the fourth paragraph.
And I went to poly market and it's like Biden's
dropping out ninety eight percent or whatever. But yeah, I
(02:45):
mean it's never like it's never like, you know, usually
made a poker tournament with something like this happens. But yeah, yeah,
I was kind of stuck up there with not very
much Wi Fi signal.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
I was in a World Series event during the debate,
and so I was sitting in one of those rooms
at the Horseshoe and no one is watching the bait.
It's not in the TV anywhere, and all I'm getting
these furious texts like, oh my god, this can't be happening.
What is happening? What is happening? And yeah, there's sort
of like a helpless feeling to it. Right, We're just
stuck in traffick in New Jersey and all I want
to do is like ask people things and tell people things,
and know here I am staring at the Delam World
(03:16):
Bridge for half an hour.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
It's it's a bunch of moments, right. It's the assassination
attempt against Trump, which the winds playing a different direction
and we're in a very different world. Right. It's the
it's the debate. It's the fact that it was only
a month ago or something that Trump was convicted I
guess more than a month ago, now, like six weeks ago,
seven weeks ago he was convicted on various felony counts.
And the fact that, like there's been this consolidation around
(03:39):
Kamala Harris, we may soon have the first, uh first
woman of color, everybody nominated by a major presidential ticket. Yeah,
they packed a lot. They packed a lot in here,
I think. But but putting on more of a political
science government institutional observer hat, if you were making bets
(03:59):
on prediction markets and we would have bought dropout stock, Matt,
can you tell me more of the thinking behind that
and kind of what this says about political parties, or
at least the Democratic Party.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Sure, I mean, I think the main thing to take
away from this is that you know, parties matter, and
that individual candidates for office, be it the president United States,
a member of Congress, someone running for the PTA, aren't
just sort of these individuals up there with authority. They
have these coalitions underneath them. And you exist because you
have a coalition of voters and interest groups and money
(04:32):
people and other politicians who support you. And if they
withdraw their support, right, it really collapses on you, almost
like a sand castle underneath you. And this was sort
of an open question because presidents have become so powerful
and when we think about them in terms of parties,
often we think the president controls the party.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Right.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
In the nineteenth century, we knew that wasn't true. The
party was dominant. In the twentieth century it was sort
of a battle between parties and presidents. But now we think, well,
the president controls the party and he reshapes the party, right.
You see this with Clinton or with Trump, like the
party just reshapes under them. They pick the DNC heads,
they pick all the sort of the people. But when
push comes to shove, it turns out parties are still
important actor And you could see as soon as elite
(05:10):
actors and the populace start to withdraw their support of Biden.
It just collapsed on them.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah, and Joe Biden in particular is a politician who
was dependent on the support of his party. Right, I mean,
look at think about twenty twenty was not quite like
Biden dropping out moment. But you kind of have like
the super friends get together and they flew, am I
getting this remember in this right, Like Pete Buha, Jude
and Amy Klomachar like all flew to like the same
(05:36):
rally to like endorse Biden after Jim Clyburn had endorsed
him in South Carolina. So this is two elections in
a row where the Democratic Party made a really strong move.
And yeah, I mean because if you read the reporting,
Nancy Pelosi say we can do this the easy way
or do it the hard way. And apparently people in
(06:00):
his inner circle were at least willing to level with
him about about the polling being very bad about I mean,
apparently they hadn't actually done very much pulling in the
past couple of months. It's the fact that Biden hadn't
been polling the White House, had not been pulling the
swing States was probably a bad sign. But something got
through to him. But play it out what had happened.
(06:20):
What would the next week, Matt, do you think have
looked like if Biden remained obstinate and said I don't
want to go.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Yeah, I mean, I think they're playing this game of
chicken where it's quite obvious that the party actors want
him go on, and it's quite obvious that he is
resistant to that idea, and lurking in the background is
the idea of like, are you willing to sort of
wreck the party to get your way here? And that
made it precare us for everyone, because I think no
one sort of thought of this as a situation where
(06:48):
you could credibly commit to sort of the game of
chicken like we would in game theory, right, Whether the
key to the game of chicken, if two cars are
sort of heading at each other, is to just credibly
commit that you're not going to swerve, throw the steering
ro out the window, improve you can't swerve to make
their payoffs have to be better to swerve than to
keep going, and hope you swerve. You can't anymore. Now,
I think what was going to happen in the next
week was they're going to ramp up the game of
(07:08):
chicken to the point where maybe it was going to
hurt his chances of winning the presidency if he did
hold on. Essentially, they were going to sort of credibly
commit it to say, look, you can be the nominee
if you don't want to deal with us, but you're
going to lose the election. And that's sort of like
the extreme version, but it was headed that direction. Everyone
was circling around him, and I think the writing's on
the wall and sort of, you know, Biden then takes
the sort of obvious way out right, which is do
(07:31):
the quote unquote right thing for the party, which is
what it's ended up going to be presented as, like
the party is not stupid, Like the message's going to
be here, a huge celebration of Biden passing the torch, doesn't.
I can't imagine what this convention is going to look like, right,
It's gonna's a huge celebration of Biden's career and his
presidency and always accomplished. And then they're going to hand
it over to Harris and it's all going to look like, well,
Biden did this noble thing, which I don't buy for
(07:51):
a second. They shoved him out, and this is why
parties pass those things up. I mean, one thing I
wanted to go back to is this this idea of
how parties think people started to get worried about their
own re elections, and and that's an important piece of parties.
Their group decisions and the people in the parties have
all different goals and they don't even have to have
the same goal to arrive at the same conclusion. Like
(08:12):
a lot of House members and swing districts might have
start worried about their own reelection. As you point out,
party leaders or members of the House might start worried
about control of the chamber right and might be like, well,
we can lose with anyone, but let's not go down
and flames here. Let's hold onto the House. Other people
might have been concerned about policies. They might decided, well,
Biden's old and honestly Harris will be better on this issue,
or that it should have been an agenda that's more
comftabed with me. And you know, others might think Harris
(08:34):
just actually has a better chance, and they're worried about
controlling the presidency, and all these things come together and
ultimately like it congeals into a decision, but it's not
like everyone made this decision for the same reason within
the party. The party output spits out in some way
that you hope is rational, But it's a collection of
individuals who all thinking differently, And this isn't like a
surprise anyone, Like if you've ever been at a PTA
(08:55):
meeting or an HOA meeting, or just decide where to
go to dinner with your family, Like, group decisions are
not sort of like necessarily meta rational, but each individual
might be acting rational to create sort of the endpoint.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
I mean, apparently, according to reporting like this was a
relatively recent decision. By the way, we have not actually
heard from Maybe by the time you listen to this
you will have right. We haven't heard from Biden directly
beyond these initial statements on Twitter and other social media networks,
which is a little bit strange, I suppose. But as
someone who has spent more time in and around the
(09:28):
halls of power and more time in DC and mesanity
than I have, what do you think the inner circle
of the White House was thinking? I mean, there's been
reporting that the Biden campaign was in some form of
denial about what the polls said. Do you think they
knew deep down that this wasn't working. Do you think
(09:48):
they were drinking the kool aid? Do you think they
felt like they had like a professional obligation to play
out the string for Biden or what I mean?
Speaker 2 (09:56):
I think that it's very easy when you're a campaign
staffer or a staffer to an elected official, to talk
yourself into the reasons why they're indispensable. One thing is
that the incentives of the staffers are a little different
and the incentives of the principles in these spots. If
you know, if a staffer gives up on Biden and
(10:16):
says it's time to throw in the towel, they're probably
out of a job on the campaign, especially at the
top senior levels. They're probably out of our future job
in a different administration in the White House. And it
doesn't surprise me at all that the people close to
the Biden would be the people most resistant to this.
I mean, it's almost just human nature, right. This is
their guy, and of course he's going to beat Trump.
He's beat Trump in the past, and like this isn't
(10:36):
just talking points, Like you can actually believe this. And
I don't think it like was lost on them that
they probably don't think much or as much as other
people do, of sort of like Harris's chances.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
I mean, we're gonna talk about Harris in a second,
including the complex dynamics of like why the White House
seemed to lack confidence in her. Maybe let me ask
one more question, though, Is this evidence that Democrats are
more rational than Republicans or is that not a fair conclusion.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
I don't know if it's. I mean, it's certainly evident.
It's one piece of evidence that way. And I do
think sort of Trump and sort of populous like Trump
tend to produce these cults of personality. I'm proud of
them party for doing this right. This is not an
easy thing for a party to do. And if you've
ever been in a room trying to make a decision
with ten people, you can imagine how hard it is
to turn around in that decision. And so I think
(11:30):
they did really well here for themselves. I don't think
it says anything about them relatively Republicans, except in this
current instance. It's hard to picture Trump being pushed out
this way, but again that's Trump's a different type of leader,
a different person. If the Republicans were faced with, you know,
sort of our mirror image of Biden. I can imagine
them doing the same thing.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
We're going to take a quick break. When we return,
Matt and I will talk about Kamala Harris. So, Matt,
if you go to Polymarket or other betting markets, Kamala
(12:15):
Harra says about an eighty three percent chance when I
looked fifteen minutes ago to be the Democratic nominee for president.
Is eighty three percent too high or too low?
Speaker 2 (12:27):
I'm buying at eighty three. I think, I really think
she's at the point where what you're talking about is
sort of the three to five to seven percent whatever
it is of sort of like black swan event keeping
her from the nomination. That could be some undisclosed piece
of information, or she could be sick, knock on wood
or whatever and something go wrong. But I think she's
virtually a lock at this point. The way the Democrats
(12:50):
have consolidated around her is remarkable. Everybody just flew out
from across the spectrum. You had the CBC, you had
various House and Senate members, you had her opponents, and
basically what they did was they said, you know, this
is a done deal. What those endorsements mean. Starting with
the President and then it keeps any sort of potential challenge.
And now I see every possible challenger to her has
(13:12):
basically endorsed her, So the field has been cleared.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Yeah, do you think this just like guaranteed to happen
and we're just discovering that now, or do you think
it's a situation where like it's kind of an unstable equilibrium.
Once the herd starts to move one way, then the
outcome becomes inevitable. Therefore you want to jump on the bandwagon.
How many metaphors am I mixing here? But like, do
you think there's a world in which this doesn't happen
(13:36):
that's adjacent to the actual world that we live in?
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Only if sort of she thought that her stepping aside
would help the party too in some sort of altruistic way.
I think the issue here is that the big danger
for the party in Biden stepping aside was that they
weren't gonna be able to put the coalition back together,
like the big Coalition was going to crack, and that
it was never gonna be able to clean up by anyone,
And you're gonna have people who were bitter and vindictive
(14:01):
about what happened and looks like they've minimized that. But
passing over her would have been the most obvious way
to create that sity situation where you're not gonna be
able to put the coalition back together for any number
of reasons. Her and her people directly sort of the
people who support her interests, sort of a script of
representation groups if you anger sort of African Americans and
(14:21):
you skip over her for you know, Whitmer or whatever.
And so I think this was the most obvious way
to go it least party tension and best chance to
make sure the coalition comes back together, which there is
no guarantee anyway, Like there's still that one group that
you worry about, which is sort of like the hardcore
inner circle. Biden Knight's not playing nice and I don't
think that's gonna happen, but they're still sort of out there.
(14:44):
The advance for Harris in terms of information reveal over
any other candidate is also there. She's been vetted in
a national election before, which is not nothing. If we
had gone with Whitmer, like great year governor of state,
We've seen plenty of governors of states have stuff revealed
about them in national elections and national primaries that cause
problems from a vetting point of view, and so she's
a safe candidate in that sense. But the most important
(15:06):
thing is that she's the vice president of United States.
She's the obvious there parent. Biden picked her to be
second in command, and now you're stepping aside. You better
come up with a damn good reason to pass over
her if you want to keep party harmony.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
And probably the way it could have been done would
be to have this kind of mini primary where you
have somehow public forums voter participation like that might have
been tenable, But it also seemed like not very many
of the people were that interested in the job because
Joe Biden has been wobbling for how w was debate
almost a month ago now right. If you were Gavin
(15:37):
Newsome and you were really interested in the nomination, I mean,
you would probably have floated something sooner or like tried
to start some momentum running and there was like no
other obvious alternative. But like, but look, let me ask
you this, based on reporting, the White House itself is
not that confident about Kamala Harris's chances against Trump. She
(16:01):
is down in the polls currently against Trump. That might change.
Poles sometimes change when you go from being a hypothetical
to an actual candidate. But but for the time being,
her polling looks maybe a point better than Biden's. But
Biden's polling was pretty bad, so that's not saying very much.
Why would a can who we've just been were a
party rather who we've just been praising for being hyper rational?
(16:26):
Why would they worry about not wanting to offend X
or Y in group or outgroup if they can increase
their chances of beating Trump from say thirty five percent,
which is roughly what prediction markets assumed about hair As
to like fifty or fifty five percent with the hypothetical
perfect you know, Gretchen Whitmer, I don't know who else
(16:47):
ticket I've.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Put Whitmer and Shapiro on a ticket and just be like, well,
now we're coming after Michigan and Pennsylvania, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
I think.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
I think that the parties are probably a little too
risk averse in situations like this, but the fear of
party crack up always looms over any sort of coalition,
and I think they thought that, you know, if we're
pushing Biden out because he's too old and he can't
do this anymore. Then we're not saying he ran a
(17:16):
bad administration. We're not saying there's any wrong with the administration.
There's not anything wrong with his record. And so what
is your reasoning for going around Harris except that you're saying, oh, well,
other people pull better. Maybe maybe they do. But again,
I think the party crack up aspect of this looms
so large, and I think the only way to get
around Harris was to have that open competition. And I
don't think the party wanted an open competition. I don't
(17:38):
think parties ever want that situation, right, because that is
what creates sort of bad blood. And what happens if
you end up in a situation where an open competition
and you have a narrow victory, right, where does that
leave everybody? What does that clean up? You're just asking
people to back the party, and I think this is
sort of the safest route.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Right.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Again, there's a variance issue here. They may be thinking
about variance incorrectly. They may need variants right now. I
think that's the point you've made in the past. But
there's a huge variance issue. And if you're thinking about
protecting the House representatives, for instance, and your best chance
to take control of the House all of a sudden
losing with Harris keeping the coalition intact, It's not the
worst thing in the world. We know where we'll get.
It won't be the disaster of old man Biden, like
(18:20):
falling asleep on the campaign trail sometime in the next
two months. I mean, that was the real disaster that
was looming, is that Biden would completely self destruct in
October and the entire Democratic Party were from crashing down
with him. That won't happen with Harris to lose. Maybe
she's a bad candidate, right or whatever reason, Like she
doesn't do well. Trump wins, but it doesn't feel like
she's gonna go out there and just bring the Democratic
(18:41):
Party down with her, and the crackup could cause that.
Now again, you may be looking for variants. You may
be looking for Josh Shapiro to shake things up, or
Gretchen Whitmer. I think Whitmer is probably the only other
realistic option. The Democrat Party is a collection of interest in.
One of those interests is that we have wide representation
of both mind maority groups and women, and to pass
(19:02):
over to Harris and then pass over Whitmer and be like, oh, look, dude,
we got this white guy in Pennsylvania. It's gonna be perfect.
I think that would have caused enough tension in the part.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Right. I think came the closest anyone actually saying he
wanted it. It's like the Biden campaign was, like, among
other things, for Democrats, extremely demoralizing, where every day you
wake up and there are these polls showing Biden losing
and he's either not giving public remarks or when he
does it's embarrassing half the time. It was very disheartening
for Democrats. And I think just having like the semblance
(19:34):
of a normal campaign I think is a potent lever
for Harris and for Democrats here. I mean, do you
think they'll come to regret not having a mini primary
or is it like it just wasn't going to fly,
and once it's not going to fly, then it's better
to be unified than not.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Yeah, I mean I think largely allowed to Look, you know,
when Harris loses, we're gonna hear every sort of idiotic
take we can about this decision because the results oriented
thinking it's going to come back of this, So like oh,
Biden could have won, right, Whitmer could have won. All
of the things are going to come out, and of
course that's you know, as a poker a bridge player
would say that that's ridiculous. Right. You make the decision
(20:15):
with the best information you have and sort of whatever
happens with the rolls of the dice you can't control.
I do think that you know one thing going with
Harris now, does is it? Lets sort of the sort
of the thing move forward quicker. Right. We saw this
massive fundraising haul for the Democrats yesterday, right, and this
wave of sort of popular enthusiasm and who knows how
(20:37):
on in this last But if you say, oh, we're
going to set up a process now for the next
two weeks, people are going to bicker with each other
about who should be their nominee, and then at the
convention in August, we'll deal with this. You're waiting a
long time to sort of get to that point, and
I think that the time running short aspect of this
shouldn't be underestimated. You know, either we have Harris coming
in now and she's gonna be the candidate today. There's
(20:57):
logistical issues transferring her the money from from the Biden
campaign was easier than anyone else. And so there's all
these things sort of build up for different people, I think,
and you get to the point where it's like, well,
does Whitmer even want to run for president?
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Right now?
Speaker 2 (21:10):
Right? That's the other question hiding behind all this is,
like all these candidates they backed the way real quick.
When they decide to coordinate on Harris, a lot of
them might not have been interested anyway. So we're gonna
hold them any primary who's going to show up? Right,
Harris will show up, probably maybe a couple of themill
show up, but as soon as a couple of other
show up, the rest are going to drop out. Like,
it's not clearly what a many primary would've even look
like in terms of which candidates want to get in
(21:31):
one hundred days before the election to try and get
the Democratic nomination in a precarious situation where they're going
to be an underdog.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
How seamless is a transition between Biden and Harris? Are
like all the Biden people like running her campaign? Now
will she want to replace them with her own staff?
There is lots of talk about, by the way, internal
tension between the Biden staff and the Harris staff. How
does that actually like physically work.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Yeah, I mean this is a huge issue because you know,
the campaign staff are notoriously sort of territorial, and even
on campaigns that are sort of normal and get started
in the primaries and roll forward, you have internal tensions
between different staffers on the campaign, you know, and you know,
whether the campaign manager gets along with the candidate's spouse
(22:23):
is always sort of like a classic crack up in Congress, right,
And all of these things now have to sort of
be dealt with in faster than normal real time for politics.
I think I saw that the Biden staffers from the
campaign said they were all going to you know, flip
over and help Harris for now, right, And that seems
sort of normal. But I don't think you know that
the Biden campaign is the set of staffers, the set
(22:46):
of strategies, the set of money people, and the set
of get out the vote operations that Harris would have
set up had she just won the primary right now,
and sort of an opens thing Biden said, I'm not
going to run Harrison's the primary. She would have set
up an entirely different apparatus, and so the friction there
is real and I think there's no doubt she's going
to change some of the people, particularly the top, the
senior levels or the places where you know, probably the
(23:07):
biggest change will happen. But just sort of she is
going to be forced to run, at least for a while,
on an apparatus that she didn't build and she didn't direct,
and her people and people she's comforted with and her
allies didn't build and direct. And that's a challenge. It's
not insurmountable, but it certainly is different than what she
would have done otherwise. And I suspect we're going to
have a lot of changes in the campaigns and even
(23:30):
right down to sort of you know, the surrogates that
they use for on television, on cable news and here,
and there are going to be a different set of
people surrounding you know, Kamala Harris the coalition than Joe
Biden the coalition. Right, they're linked together, but they are
different coalitions.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
We're going to take one more break here and then
be back to talk a little bit about Kamala Harris's
odds and what we have to look forward to between
now and November. So, if you go to prediction markets,
(24:12):
I know, we're spending a lot of time on them,
but it's a time when there's a lot of uncertainty,
there's not really enough polling. Yet they basically imply that
Kamala Harris has about a thirty five percent chance of
beating Trump conditional upon winning the nomination, which we both
expect her to do. Interestingly, in my model, thirty five
(24:32):
percent was a chance that Biden had before the debate.
So in some ways you're resetting to the pre debate
moment where we thought Joe Biden would run, or maybe
Matt and I didn't think that, but most people assume
that Joe Biden would run kind of this normal democratic
campaign under slightly difficult circumstances. You know, I asked you
to buy or sell before on Harris's nomination chances. Do
(24:54):
you think thirty five percent is in the right general
vicinity or do you want to kind of wait for
more info before you make an assessment.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Yeah, I'm not buying or selling for more info because
I think the key question we have here, and I
think this is kind of funny actually, is thatocrats need
to really hope the problem was Biden's age, right, Like
if the problem was Biden's age and not inflation and
not sort of the policy's administration. Right, then you're looking great, right,
like relatively speaking, right, And so I would like to
(25:24):
wait because I think the Polley is going to be
really important. And obviously, like I am the total layman here,
you're the expert, but in the coming weeks about whether
sort of that is an explanation and if Harris instantly
has sort of like a exogenous shock of you know,
three or four or five points relative to Biden a
relative to where she was before, that's a big deal.
(25:45):
And you know, well, you know, people won't be able
to figure that out definitively. But if you see a
jump for her, then maybe the Biden old thing was
really dragging down a set of Democrats or a set
of swing voters right, who are now like much more
comfortable coming back to Harris. Now, I don't know if
that's true, and she's got her own negatives, but I
am definitely in wait and see mode. I certainly think
the Democrats who all of a sudden think they have
(26:06):
the answer are crazy. I think it is complete nonsense
to be like, oh, now we've solved this and now
we're favorites to win this. I can't even imagine that.
And you know, and they have a long road ahead
uphill with in my view, a less than perfect candidate,
but someone that's improved their situation from where they were,
(26:28):
at least on the extreme margin.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Yeah. I don't know what the poker analogy is, but
maybe it's like that you hit like a hit, like
a four outer, like chop the pot. This is getting
very esoteric, right, but like you find some way to
like salvage be able to continue gambling. And if you
kind of read read accounts of like gambling addicts, then
not that democratsic gamle adics are probably too risk averse
on average. They just want to win to continue to play, right,
(26:53):
not winning for winning's sake, but winning winning to play
and like they're and they're in the game now at least.
But yeah, look, it's ironic that like you would get
yelled at for suggesting that Biden's age is the problem,
because there are other issues too. I mean, incumbent parties
all around the world have have been struggling. You know. Look,
(27:14):
one thing that I think goes too often overlooked is
that Democrats are still at a disadvantage in the electoral College.
If anything, Biden's disadvantage might have narrowed a little bit
because he was doing well. I wasn't doing better among anyone, right,
but he was holding his numbers up better relatively speaking,
with like older white voters versus any voters of color
(27:34):
and any younger voters. So older states like Michigan, Pennsylvania
that are pretty white Wisconsin were holding up comparatively well
versus Georgia, for instance. Harris may do better overall. I
think she probably will, but she may actually expand back
out that electoral college popular vote gap, and that's tricky.
(27:57):
I mean, you might bet she might be the favorite
to win the popular vote. I don't know if she's
the favorite to win the electoral college, unfortunately for Democrats.
But let's give let's give, like a more optimistic version
of it. It's November sixth, and Kamala Harris has one,
let's say, by a compable enough margin where we're not
(28:18):
still counting. The vote wasn't huge, but she won the
popular vote by three points, and she won the Midwestern states,
and say Nevada or something, tell me the story where
this happened.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
I think the story where this happens is the Democratic
Party unites behind her. Of course, that's a baseline must
have her campaign gets off the ground without any sort
of sputtering, which we could see. She turns out to
be something of a better campaigner slash candidate slash charismatic
leader than we observed in the primaries. She probably moderates
(28:51):
her position successfully. I think this is gonna be the
tough one for the Democrats to swallow, is that she
really needs to move to the center from where she's been.
She's grown up her entire career in politics and sort
of the liberal sort of bastions and running up through
California's system is like that proves some thing, like you're
you're good at something, but it doesn't really challenge you
(29:12):
to look for sort of swing voters nationally, and so
she'll have to sort of figure out how to do that,
and then I think after that the Biden age thing
will have had to be sort of important, and then
she will successfully, in my view, present a campaign that
is forward looking versus backward looking. And I think that's
the one thing she has going for her, is that
(29:32):
if she wants to push this campaign into like Donald
Trump's the past and I represent the future. That's a
very strong sell in America, and it will be a
contrast that might sort of pick her up the swing
voters who have decided that not was Biden too old,
and that when Biden represent the past, he's a silent
generation dude, but that Trump is too uh, and that
Trump is sort of clinging to a backwards looking old
(29:56):
man thing. And look, I think you know, I don't.
I don't think it's sort of like you. I don't
think you just turn around and be like, well, our
guy was too old, so we dumped him, and now
you're guys too old, you are the problem. I don't
think that quite works. Yeah out loud.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
People have to be a little bit careful about about yeah.
And you've seen these happen a couple You've had Republicans
say so some of the Biden I call them dead enders.
We're saying, well, fourtune million people voted in the Democratic primaries.
You know, actually in the state where I am, New York,
every candidate but Driiden had already dropped out right by
the time the Democrat New York would have had the
opportunity to vote. And so it's it's kind of a
(30:27):
BS talking point, but that got recycled by Republicans, and likewise,
this point about oh, you can't have someone who's going
to be eighty years old during the presidential term run
has now been used by Democrats. I mean, people voters
have some type of memories, right, They actually are more
resistant to hypocrisy than you might think. So give those
arguments a little bit of time to dry out before
(30:48):
you try to recycle them or whatever.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Yeah, good, no, no, you got mat. I mean, I
you know. One thing that for me personally has always
been a problem here is that my main concern is
about the age of Biden and Trump have never really
been electoral concerns. Partisan voters will look past a lot
of stuff, right like how far Biden and head of
decline before the voters really started to sort of be
(31:12):
concerned about it. My concern has always been that these
guys are too old to do the governance job. And
that's something that I think is really important. That we
want someone who's competent twenty four to seven on call
in the White House and energetic in a management capacity
and a leadership quality. And I just don't think eighty
year olds have it that said, that's not how must
voters think. Most voters are cross pressured by their opinions
(31:34):
on abortion and their views on taxes, and their ties
sentimental ties to parties, and that's not how they think.
And so I don't think there's anything that prevents a
candidate who's going to be in their eighties like Trump
or like Biden was four years ago, from winning an election.
Voters are more than willing to overlook that stuff in
the name of parsonship or ideology. And so you know,
(31:54):
it's not sort of the definitive way to beat Trump.
He's old. But I amused yesterday that Harris could run
a campaign of something like he's too old, he's too extreme,
he's too incompetent, and he's too dangerous, and make it
part of the campaign, which would be sort of this
forward looking campaign. Again, that's the optimistic I have for her.
I'm not particularly optimistic about Harris. I think there's every
chance in the world that she loses, and loses badly here.
(32:16):
But the bigger point, and this isn't isn't news to you,
is that you take your least worst options, and in
a game thiry sense, when one path is foreclosed for you,
and you are not going to win, you try another.
The poker analogy is this, if you're at the river
and you know you can't win by calling because you're
holding six high, well then you stop thinking about calling,
(32:38):
and you ever decide what's better folding or raising. And
Biden at this point was the call with six high
in some ways not exactly, but it was the call
with a very weekend.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
I mean to sound like a little sports talk radio
Bill Simmonsy. You know one reason I can imagine Harris winning,
And again, I think we'll have our model out in
a week or so. Thirty five percent seems like a
sensible biggest line for now. She kind of has in
a weird way. And I know people are gonna get
mad because of the stakes and an election, but psychologically
(33:13):
there's a little bit of like having nothing to lose.
But let's talk about the VP. How much do you
think the VP pick matters? And do you agree with
conventional wisdom that you know the names that are better
about the most, not bettered about better at about the
most are like Shapiro, Andy Basher in Kentucky, who else?
(33:33):
Whitmer a little bit, although it seemed people seem to
think that you'd rather have at least one man on
the ticket, Roy Cooper, do you have a preference between
and among those and how much difference would you expect
a VP pick to make well?
Speaker 2 (33:45):
In general, I would not expect a VP pick to
make much difference at all in any sort of electoral sense.
That's sort of the guiding history.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Now.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
That's often because you know, people at pick sort of
like competent, traditionally sort of qualified vice presidents.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Right.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
The one place we do see I think in the
polling some drop off was with the plent pick. Right.
If you make a terrible pick, right, like, it could
go back for on you. But I think it's pretty
hard to make a terrible pick. I think sort of
internal party politics are just as important as anything else
in a VP pick. It seems like the conventional wisdom
is sort of like moderate white guy governor is the
way to go here, sort of like this balancing of
(34:21):
a scriptive representation, which is something that the parties are
obsessed with. But I also think that the voters like,
so I think it's okay. I think that Whitmer might
be a good candidate, except that I think parties are
very risk averse about things like putting two women in
the ticket, both for like reasonable reasons. I think historically
parties have always sort of run sort of like white
Protestant dudes for a president because they're very worried that
(34:43):
even if it only costs you half a point from
someone who doesn't like Catholics or whatever, like half a
point matters in elections like this is planned for keeps,
and so they've been very risk averse about heading off
into sort of minority group risk representation. And I think,
right or wrong, the view would be that two women
would potentially hurt you on the margins when the margins
really matter. I think a lot of people also seeing
(35:04):
ghosts from Clinton in twenty sixteen when they think that way,
it's probably not that big a deal. But I think
it is a deal, and so yeah, I think, you know,
I think the conventional wisdom now is that like Basher
or Cooper North Carolina are like sort of people you
might pick because there can you know, moderate white guys
who have proven records and sort of reddish states. Shapiro
(35:25):
is sort of more of a well, this guy could
help us win Pennsylvania type pick. I think the the
you know, the political science evidence is that maybe the
VP could give you a point or two in their
home state potentially, and that's not nothing in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
We're gonna leave it there. Thank you so much for
pinch hitting today, Matt.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
All right, Nate, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
This is awesome for listeners. This is probably our early
episode of the week, but we've said that before. There's
world series of poker controversies to talk about, so expect
back next week with a mix of poker, politics and
everything else. But thank you for listening. Risky Business is
hosted by me, Nate Silver and my co host Maria Kannakova.
(36:07):
The show is a co production of Push Industries and iHeartMedia.
This episode was produced by Isabel Carter and edited by
Sarah Nix. Our associate producer is Gabriel Hunter Chang. Our
executive producer is Jacob Goldstein. If you want to listen
to an ad free version, sign up for pushkin Plus.
For six hundy nine a month, you get access to
ad free listening. Thanks for tuning in.
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