October 31, 2024 • 38 mins
In this conversation, Lisa and Tom Bevan discuss the current state of the election as it approaches Election Day. They analyze polling dynamics, Trump's public perception, and the challenges faced by Kamala Harris. The discussion also covers the impact of media endorsements, early voting trends, and the long-term political realignment in the U.S. The Truth with Lisa Boothe is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Monday & Thursday.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I want to take a moment to encourage you to
get out and vote early, and to get out and
vote early for Donald Trump and JD Vans. This is
absolutely the most important election we have seen todate. I
truly do not believe that our country can handle another
four years of what we have seen under Joe Biden
and Kamala Harris. I really do believe that they hate
(00:20):
this country. They hate you and me. Joe Biden called
us garbage recently. We know that Hillary Clinton called us deplorables. Previously,
we saw Joe Biden in the midterm elections take the
stage in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and essentially label every Trump voter
as an enemy of the state. We've seen what they've
tried to do to Donald Trump. They've tried to jail
(00:42):
him on four different occasions. They've tried to bankrupt him.
They tried removing him from the ballot, which shows what
little respect they have for you as a voter. They
think the power should be in their hands, not yours.
They've tried to bankrupt him as well. He's faced two
assassination attempts. Who knows how many more that we're unaware of.
So that's what they think of their political enemies. Donald
Trump has said time and time again that he is
(01:05):
only standing in the way of you and what they
want to do to you. So if they think so
little of us, if they call Donald Trump Nazis, if
they call Trump supporters Nazis like they have, what do
they want to do to us as Trump supporters in
the country. And then even beyond that, you look at
what they've done on inflation, with sky high inflation under
Joe Biden and Kamal Harris. You look at what they've
(01:26):
done with open borders as well, and then suing the
state of Virginia who tried to remove non citizen voters
from their voter rules. We've seen chaos around the world
with wars in the Middle East as well as in Europe.
So what do you think the next four years will
look like? And if all of that doesn't get you
to want to get up and get motivated to go
(01:47):
and vote, I don't know what does. This is a
really important election. We can't take anything to chance. So
I just I encourage you if you can get out
and vote early. I've already done so in the state
of Florida. I went out and voted for Donald Trump. Also,
if you're in the state of Florida, I voted against
Amendment three, against Amendment four, but really important election. So
today's episode beyond all that with what I just wanted
(02:09):
to share with you, and I encourage you to get
and vote. You know, we've got such a side by
side comparison. I just I don't know how anyone could
think that the country would be better off under Kamala Harris.
You know, what are the numbers showing should we be
reading into early vote totals or not where to independent
voters stand. We'll also take a look at the fact
that you know, Kamala Harris is outspent Donald Trump four
(02:30):
to one on political ads. How does that impact the race?
So we're going to get into the data. We're to
get into the numbers. We're going to try to read
the tea leaves a little bit with someone who does
it for a living and who's quite good at it,
Tom Bevan. He is the co founder and president of
Real Clear Politics. He always brings smart analysis to the show.
Real Clear Politics does really important work. So stay tuned
(02:51):
for Tom Bevan. Tom Bevan, it's great to have you
back in the show. Hoping we can try to make
sense of what we're seeing as we head into election day.
So appreciate you coming on absolutely Well. I wanted to
start off by did you know that Kamala Harris comes
(03:11):
from a middle class family?
Speaker 2 (03:15):
You know, I've heard something about that. I don't know, Yeah,
I heard.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
I heard that the other day, so I thought that
was interesting. Yes, But on a more serious note, I guess,
big picture, where does this thing stand today?
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Well, I mean it's close, obviously, and I think Trump
has the edge at the moment. You know, based on
the numbers that we're seeing. I mean, he's he's ahead
in the national polls by less than half a percentage point,
which you know, if the polls are accurate, means that
he's he's A he's in a much better position than
he was four years ago or eight years ago. And
(03:52):
B he's got an electoral college advantage, so you have
to believe that that. And he's ahead about nine tenths
of a percent in the swing states right now, those
big seven battleground states. But they're close, I mean they're
absolutely close. And so you know, is it possible he
could win the popular vote and lose the electoral College,
it seems really unlikely, but you know, I don't rule
(04:16):
anything out at this point. I think the I think
the sort of the range of outcomes for this election
is Harris wins narrowly, Trump wins narrowly, or Trump wins
sort of in a landslide, meaning he overperforms his polls
as he did in twenty sixteen twenty twenty, and he
(04:37):
wins all of these seven battleground states, and maybe even
if the bottom sort of falls out for Harris over
the next you know, few days that he could pick
off a state like Minnesota or Virginia or New Hampshire
or something, and he'd be in a you know, three
three sixteen three twenty electoral college range win, which in
(04:59):
this day and age is a pretty go thumping, you know.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
And I found it interesting that we saw as sort
of in the closing arguments, you know, Bob Casey out
of Pennsylvania and Tammy Baldwin and Wisconsin sort of tying
their wagons to Trump in closing advertising. Does that tell
you anything about his standing in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin or
how do you read that?
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Yeah? I mean, look, there's there's they're the polls, which
again and I think people are right to sort of
be skeptical of the polls, given what happened in twenty
sixteen and twenty twenty, wonder whether they're accurate or how
accurate they might be. And then there's and then there's
this sort of anecdotal stuff, right, It's like and the
and the atmospherics, and part of that is, oh, crowd
(05:41):
sizes and yard signs and and all of that. But
then there's also the Okay, where are they, where are
they advertising, where the campaign's advertising? You know, what what
are the down ticket races doing? And then also you
know these these stories like what's going on in the press.
Do you see the stories about you know, one side's
(06:04):
nervous or one side's feeling confident, or you're getting leaks
to the press about you know, the campaign screwing this
up or they didn't do this, or you know, is
there some sort of preemptive backbiting or blame laying that's
happening out there and all of those see, all of
those things seem to be in my estimation, reading sort
(06:28):
of the tea leaves that the Trump campaign has the
upper hand. The Hairs campaign is the ones feeling sort
of I don't want to say desperate, but there's a
lot of anxiety there. You're seeing some of these stories
about you know, questions about the campaign and what they're
doing and do they have the right message? Is it
moving the needle? Is it not? And at least that's
what it was up until the Madison Square Garden rally,
(06:50):
when you know, Tony Hinchcliffe made his joke and then
the press basically spent forty eight hours, you know, focusing
exclusively on that, and now that's you know, sort of
changed the shoes on the other foot, and now the
Biden campaign is running around trying to clean up over
garbage Gate.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
You know, it seems to me that you know, basically
her argument is that, you know, Donald Trump's awful. I'm
a woman, and I'm a minority, and I come from
a middle class family. And outside of that, you know,
she hasn't really given people much of a reason to
vote for her. But I but I think that, you know,
Donald Trump's evil thing doesn't work as well when you know,
(07:30):
we've seen polling recently, you know with CNN where majority
of Americans actually view Donald Trump's presidency as a positive,
and you know, he's not as toxic as he perhaps
was in twenty twenty to voter. So it's like, I
wonder how much that lands intoday's environment. And you even
see kind of like more people proud to support Trump publicly,
(07:51):
you know, so it just doesn't kind of have that
same same toxicity that it may have had in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Yeah, it's it is kind of ironic that given everything
that has been thrown at Trump and you know, January
sixth and then all the lawfair stuff and the assassination
attempts and everything, he has emerged even stronger and in
some ways more like his favorable ratings are higher than
(08:20):
they've been you know ever. And that's really interesting, and
it's I think there are two pieces to it. One
is what you mentioned, folks are kind of desensitized to,
you know, claims that he's just this this. It's hard
for I think the public to take seriously the idea
that Trump is going to round up journalists and his
political enemies and have them killed or put in camps
(08:42):
or whatever, or that women are going to be hauled off,
like Mika Brazinski seems to think that, you know, women
are literally going to be dying if Donald Trump gets elected,
because we've already lived through four years of Donald Trump
and none of that bad stuff happened, even if folks,
you know, didn't like Trump or some of the policies
or some of his baggage. The fact that we've lived
(09:04):
through that and then now we've lived through four years
of Biden Harris, and people are looking back on Trump's time,
particularly as it relates to the economy and saying, you
know what, it wasn't that bad. Actually it was kind
of good, and it was better than it is now.
And so I think there they may still have reservations
about him on a bunch of different levels, but they're
(09:25):
certainly much more open to the idea of putting him
back in office because of what they experienced when he
on the economy in particular.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Do you read it into anything with the Washington Post
and the La Times in USA today refusing to endorse
Kamala Harris, Does that mean anything in terms of maybe
what they're saying.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
That's a good question. I don't know. I don't. I mean,
it certainly seems that there was some you know, the
Post Bezos clearly made the call didn't want that to happen.
It didn't happen. Same thing the owner of the La Times,
although there was you know, some drama with his daughter
apparently and their her viewpoint. I think it's a good
(10:11):
thing actually that that because I think Bezo's Bezos actually wrote.
I thought I thought his column that he wrote in
the in the Post was was pretty good in terms
of stating, look, these these endorsements, they don't sway anybody.
Number one. Number two, they they they give the perception
of bias, whether we are or we're not. It gives
(10:33):
that perception, and that's not a good thing for our newspaper.
It's not a good thing for the business of if
you're in the business of trying to be sort of
even handed and objective to have, you know, be issuing
these endorsements. And so I thought he made a pretty
strong case for why they didn't and he said, of course,
you know, we should have done this earlier. And the
(10:54):
fact that they did it as close to the election
as they did, you know, leaves leave some people to
believe that they're where other motives involved in I mean,
you saw it today. They you know, the Washington Post
did it basically like a an investigative piece on their
owner in Blue Origin and his contacts with you know,
the government and all that stuff, which was which was
pretty interesting. He got a colonoscopy from his staff on
(11:17):
some of those issues. But I don't know. I think
it's a good thing in general for the news business
to get out of the endorsement business. But I'm not
sure beyond that, whether I'm you know, it means that
all these folks think that Trump's going to win, and
that's the reason they decided to do what they did,
right right.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Well, I think if you Trump ends up winning, we'll
kind of look back on his media strategy, you know,
and and sort of using these podcasters, whether it's you know,
Joe Rogan with his fourteen point five million you know
followers on Spotify or I think it's like seventeen point
five million on YouTube or whatever, and the you know,
doing the X interview with Ela, and of being able
to sort of bypass this eighty five percent negative media
(11:58):
coverage that he's gotten. We've got more with Tom. But
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I don't know, my gut's telling me he does.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
You know, who knows? But I think he's going to win.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
But you know, she's outspent him four to one in
political ads, and he's also received eighty five percent negative
media coverage to her seventy eight percent positive media coverage,
which means the voters are almost universally saying positive things
about her and negative things about him, Yet, as you
pointed out, his approval ratings have never been this strong.
He's up in the real clear politics, you know, battleground
(13:27):
states and in the popular votes, and a majority of
Americans look back on his administration with nostalgia.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
So that's pretty remarkable. It is it is, you know,
he has We've never looked, We've never seen anything like
Donald Trump, and we may never see anything like him
again in our lifetimes for sure, because he has managed
to He's such a unique figure, and he has managed
to be almost impervious to the laws traditional laws of
(13:55):
politics in terms of what you can say and do
and get away with, in terms of being impervious to
the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been spent
against him by his own party, Republicans and primaries, and
not to mention the Democrats. And then get into office
and he's fighting with the media and the Democrats and
the Republicans, the never Trumpers and just manages to sort
(14:17):
of plow through it all. And he seems to be
doing that again in this election. And as I said,
he's in a way better position than he was four
years ago or eight years ago by any metric. You
want to look at whether there's favorability or any of
these battleground state polls or national polls. He's just he
has managed to he's managed to change the party fundamentally
(14:39):
into a working class, more diverse party. I mean, he's probably,
if you believe the polls and the polls are accurate,
he's going to get the most non white votes for
Republican candidates since nineteen sixty. He'll get the most black votes,
He'll get the most Hispanic votes. We'll see whether that
comes to pass or not. But there's no question that
he's going to get more than he did in twenty twenty.
(15:00):
And he's probably he may end upsetting records. And so
that's just it's been remarkable to watch the parties basically
trade places over that. Since he came on the scene
in twenty fifteen, Democrats have given up on the working
class and are now a class now the party of
sort of the well educated, upper class white vote and
folks on Wall Street and Trump, you know, Republicans are
(15:23):
now the sort of working class factory floor, you know,
the people who wear hard hats and work with their hands.
I mean, it's been pretty pretty amazing to watch and
it's happened pretty darn rapidly over the last few years.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
It's interesting a lot of discussions about early voting. You know,
what does it mean? Does it mean anything? Can we
read into anything? And you look at the state of
Nevada and John Ralston has been reporting about how Republicans
have turned out and bigger numbers than of registered Democrats
by pretty significant margins. I think as of recently forty
thousand even places in reliable you know, Clark County. The
(16:00):
dem firewall has evaporated and so on and so forth.
I mean, I guess, do you make anything out of
some of these early voting numbers. I think Nevada is
more significant than some of the other states.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Yeah, I guess sort of what's you read on all that?
So Sean Trendy, our senior elections analyst who's super super
smart on all this stuff, just wrote something for us
and which we ran on the site the other day
and basically, and we have this conversation often and you
can this happens every cycle, and it happened a lot
(16:37):
in twenty twenty and it's happening again. Is that you've
got these folks who analyze that early vote data, and
everybody wants to read the tea leaves and try and
figure out and what it means for the final outcome.
And you can pretty quickly go down a rabbit hole
on any of these states and try and decipher the data,
and it just doesn't. It usually leads to bad outcomes. Right,
(17:00):
you're not going to get the kind of information that
you think you're going to get. With the one exception,
and Sean Benson mentions this in his piece is Nevada
because of the way they conduct their elections. Because John
Ralston is as good as he is at doing what
he does, they you know, Nevada is the one place
where you can actually look at the data and say, okay,
you know, this gives us an indication of where this
(17:21):
thing is headed. But in the other states, it's really
really hard, and it's usually sort of a fruitless exercise,
and so Sean recommends everybody kind of just chill, and
I agree with them on that. I find that, you know,
people are so desperate to try and figure out ahead
of time who's going to win this thing and find
some sort of secret, secret metric or something that's going
(17:43):
to give them the inside track. But at the end
of the day, you just got to wait and let
the votes get counted and see, you know, who turns
out and how it goes. It's good, I think, as
I said earlier, I mean, well, I think it's clear
though that we're going to have huge turnout. I mean,
people are turning out in big numbers. Be shocked if
we don't beat twenty twenty's numbers. But yeah, we're just
(18:06):
gonna have to wait and see kind of what the
final tallies are.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Well, because there's in an argument to me, it made
that you know, Republicans are early voting more than you
know we saw in twenty twenty, and so does that
mean that less people are going to turn out an
election day or does that just mean that more people
are voting republic you know. So it's like we're all
kind of trying to figure out.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Well, that's the thing. I mean, you can't tell how
many of these voters are. If you've got one hundred
thousand Republicans and you know, normally ninety thousand of them
vote in election day and ten thousand of them vote early,
and suddenly, because the party has pushed them, suddenly you've
got fifty thousand voting early. Does that mean you're still
going to get ninety thousand on election day? Or does
that just mean you're going to get fifty thousand on
election day and you still end up with one hundred thousand.
(18:46):
You can't tell how many of these people are new
voters that are additive. You can't tell that if it
means that turnout's going to be up or down. It
just doesn't give you that kind of clarity. Even though
people desperately try and read into these numbers, you know,
for those kinds of those kinds of those kinds of insights,
they're just not there.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Although I would say, you know, Republicans have done a
good job of eating into democrats advantages and the registration
numbers like in Pennsylvania, and you know, or if you
look at a state like Nevada the last test time
I went read for I think of two thousand and
four or so, if Republicans are up there, that is
a good sign potentially for the rest of these battleground states.
So but you know, again it's you know, you don't
(19:28):
want to you don't want to get over your skis
and then end up with egg on your face.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
On No, totally not totally not. Now. The one thing
that you know, democrats argue and I do agree with this. Now,
the thing about early voting. One of the reasons that
early voting is they like it and they think it's
good is because it allows you because once people have voted,
they can look and see who's voted, so they it
offers efficiency. They don't have to send them mailers, they
don't have to go knock on doors of people who
(19:53):
have already voted. It allows them to focus on the
people who haven't voted and work to get those lower pensity.
You know, all of these campaigns have identified voters and
they'll say, well, these guys are you know, the people
who live at this house are an eight, nine or
a ten, you know voter for us, right, they're a
hard D okay. And then you know there's people that
(20:16):
are you know, five, six, seven, so they're kind of
like middle ds. And then there's like the two three fourths,
they're like the soft d's right, and so you obviously
you know your eight nines and tens are probably going
to vote early, and they're going to vote. You know,
you don't have to worry about them. But then you
can work, you know, you're working on getting your four
fives and sixes to the polls, and once you know,
(20:37):
once you can see, okay, I've gotten fifty percent of
my four fives and sixes, I can you know, I
don't have to send them. I don't have to waste
any more time or effort or resources trying to find
those people and urge them to get to the polls.
I can focus on these other ones, and you can
work your way down to the lower you know, the twos, threes,
and fours. These are people who who may not even
turn out at all. But if you can get to them,
(20:58):
and you can get them, you know, you can harve
that ballot. That gives you an advantage. And so I
think from that perspective, Republicans are playing that game now,
and if to the extent that they do it well,
they could also see some efficiencies in reaching those lower
propensity voters, which traditionally. Trump has done well with those people.
He's brought disaffected voters and people who have been out
(21:21):
of the process for a while into his camp. And
the more of those that the Republicans can get, I
think the better his odds are going to be.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Well and would also be interesting depending on what happens
this election and where different demographics go, do those demographics
hold in the next election? Right with whoever the Republicans.
You know, it's like, how much of this realignment in
American politics is just because of Trump versus you know,
a more permanent alignment, realignment you know, moving forward electorally.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Well I have a theory on that, or I thought
I'd love to hear it. Well, it's just look, I
think the people who think, you know, the sort of
never Trump crowd who wants Trump to lose because they think,
you know, once he's off the scene, that they can
the party can like reset or the fever or break
or whatever, and they can get it back to being
more the party of their you know, country club Republicans
(22:13):
or whatever. I think that's just a fantasy. I just
don't think that that's I think that the die has
been cast in the sense of the party now. That
isn't say you couldn't have a figure whoever ends up
leading the Republican Party after Donald Trump, And it could
be you know, it could be in eight days they're
going to be looking for the new person if Trump loses,
(22:34):
or it could be four years from now or whatever,
but they're going to His policies are popular and sort
of firmly embedded now in the Republican Party, and I
don't think there's any going back, just like I think
the Democrats again, they've they've kind of cast their die
(22:55):
with when you look at their options, the people that
the people that ran in twenty twenty and that I'm
sorry in twenty well, twenty sixteen, I'm sorry in the
twenty nineteen primary, ran in twenty twenty. You know, the
choice of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete bootageedge right. There
(23:16):
was no option there other than Biden, and even he
turned out to be not much of a centrist. Right
that if Kamala Harris loses and they're looking forward to
the next standard bearer of their party, it doesn't seem
to me that they're going to have someone who's going
to come in and you know, you look at the
bright lights in the party, it's like, you know, Gavin
Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer. I mean, these are not people
(23:38):
that are going to suddenly reconnect Democrats with the working
class in this country and be able to sort of
They're still going to be participating in ideology or identity
politics and that sort of thing. And likewise, on the
Republican side, I mean, I don't you know, you look
at Jade Vance and you look at some of these
other folks. Are they going to go back and really
advocate for, you know, just unfettered free trade or democracy abroad,
(24:01):
like the George W. Bush democracy agenda. No, it's not
going to happen. And so I do think these parties
have settled into this. This shift is long term. Nothing's
permanent in American politics, and obviously there will be in
the future, maybe not in the near term future, but
maybe in the midterm or longer term future. You know,
(24:23):
people who come up through the ranks who are able to,
you know, recraft that message in a way that reaches
you know, the traditional Republicans and Independents and like. But
I think some of the stuff that we're seeing now,
like the shift among minority voters in particular, I think
that's going to continue. I don't think that's going to
just snap back once Donald Trump leaves the scene.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
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part of her challenge is, you know, Harriet and then
(25:47):
with CNN pointed out that Trump wins. The signs were
there all along talking about how no incumbent party is
won another term with so few voters, saying the country
is on the wrong track. I believe it's twenty eight
percent today, and when the president's net approval rating is
as low as Joe Biden's it, I think she bears
the weight of incumbency because she's not done enough to
separate herself from Joe Biden. And then even when asked,
(26:10):
she has refused to separate herself from Joe Biden. Do
you think that's fair or do you think she will
be able to distance herself enough to not bear the
weight of a negative incumbency.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Think I think she's done well. Look to be fair
to Kamala Harris. Okay, it would be difficult for even
most skilled politician. I think Jada Vance could do it.
He's pretty talented.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
But anyways, I digress.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
To be dropped into the situation, situation that she's been
dropped into, and to try and simultaneously to take credit
for the things that the progressives love about the Biden
administration and also distance herself from the failures and try
and reach the middle. That would be really hard for
even a very skilled politician. And Kamala Harris is not
a skilled politician, and so and she wasn't totally prepared
(26:57):
to do it. You could see that she didn't, you know,
she just didn't spend a lot of time thinking about
how to do it and how to come up with
answers that would be satisfactory to do it. So, yeah,
that's been a challenge from the beginning, and it's one
that she has really struggled to, you know, achieve in
a in a legitimate way, just by saying, look, of
(27:19):
course I'm not Joe Biden because I you know, I'm
a woman and I'm a you know, minority. I mean,
that's not really good enough, right. And the second thing
that she failed to do, and if you go back
and you just think how different this campaign would have
been if if I don't know how many weeks ago
it was now, like you know, July twenty second, so
three months ago when she first when she first became
(27:45):
the de facto nominee, and again she avoided the press
for like a month, so maybe two months ago. She
sits down and obviously, you know, she gets the first question, like,
would you do anything differently if she had said at
that time, you know, yeah, I don't. I don't. I
feel like we, you know, we had the best of
intentions on immigration. We felt Trump's policies were cruel. We
(28:06):
wanted to reverse those and really put in place a
immigration system that we thought was humane and fair and
you know, but also secured the border, and it just
didn't work out that way. I think we got that wrong.
We could have done that different, we could have done
it better. That would have been the public would have
accepted that, I think as a legitimate answer, as an
(28:29):
actual honest answer about a policy. Instead, she just decided
to go with no, we did everything right. There's nothing
I would change. And that also has made it very
difficult for her to separate herself from the failures of
this administration and the things that the public dislikes the
most about about what the Biden administration has done on
(28:51):
immigration and inflation and the like. And so she's, you know,
she's in a tough spot. But she did not help
herself in any way. And I think that's why with
a week to go in the campaign, eight days to
go in the campaign, she's still giving the same answer.
She just got asked it the other day, what would
you do to bring prices down? And she said, I'm
(29:11):
from a middle class family. It's it became sort of
a caricature, and she's still doing it. Makes no sense
to me. And so yeah, it's it's been a struggle
for her, and I'll be as I said, I think
that's one of the reasons she's she's not doing as
well as as she could be doing in this campaign.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Well, especially with independent voters as well. You know absolutely
who Joe Biden won by nearly thirteen points, So it'll
I mean, it seems like she's kind of struggling with
almost every key part of Biden's coalition outside of with
women voters. But even her numbers with women voters, I
don't think. I can't remember. I'm trying to remember exactly
(29:54):
what Trump lost women voters to Hillary Clinton by, but
I think it's like roughly the same and he still
was able to win in twenty sixteen, So I don't know.
I think maybe more is being made about that then
it should or do you think they have it right
in terms of, uh, you know, sort of the gender gap,
because I think he lost pretty substantially in twenty sixteen
with female voters.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
I'll try to find them he did. Yeah, yeah, no,
it was like twenty something points to gender gap and
it was a little less than twenty twenty. And it's
it's back about where it was in twenty sixteen, maybe
a little bit even a little bit less. And that's
in average of polls. I mean, if some of these
poles have it, you know, thirty points or more.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
Well, yeah, then it's to eat statespecific, you know.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
But but yeah, large, you know, it's large. Yeah, so
it's roughly as big as it was in twenty sixteen.
And I but I do think, you know, they have
focused so heavily on women, and their efforts to reach
out to men have been so inept. I mean, they've
just been really really these white dudes for Harris and
the ads and all this stuff has been really again
(30:59):
almost like a pair, and so it's really been for them.
They haven't it's been sort of almost I don't want
to say almost zero sum. Right. So the more they
focus on women, the more they talk about abortion, the
more the more they sort of alienate and lose men.
And then they go and try and you know, win
over men, and it doesn't work. So they have focused
(31:21):
on women because that's the group she's strongest with. Abortion
is on the ballot in Arizona, Michigan, Florida, a couple
other places, and it has been a winning issue for them.
In the past, you know, post Dobbs in some of
these races, and so their theory of the cases they
can really use that to motivate women and particularly younger women.
(31:42):
I think there's some evidence that that's the case, but
by focusing so exclusively on that issue, they just haven't
been able to really reach men. And her efforts have
been you know, when she just came out, she came
out a couple of weeks ago with this agenda for
black men, right, and it was like like and they
made a big deal of vote for about two days
(32:03):
and then it went away and you never heard about
it again. And it was you know, it was legalized marijuana,
it was extra like training, you know, education, there was
a healthcare component to it or whatever, and it was
just like, you know, it was a two day thing
and then it was gone. So they just really struggled
with trying to to get men into the into the fold,
(32:24):
and it hasn't worked at all.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Well, I also think and I'll let you go, so
I've taken a lot of time also. I mean it's
hard to really quantify it, but I feel like the
surviving the first assassination and his response to it with
like standing up and saying fight, fight, fight. I think
that was kind of like game over with mail voters
after that point. You know, we've even seen critics like
(32:48):
The Rock call him afterwards or even Mark Zuckerberg I'll
publicly say that it was badass, you know. So I
think that sort of like solidified the mail vote with
just sort of that auto of responding with such strength.
It's just like a very masculine alpha, you know response.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
Doesn't that feel like it was like two years ago? Well?
Speaker 1 (33:08):
Also also the media and social media trying to memory
hole it is pretty remarkable as well. Or you know,
I think there was that axious article about how photographers
were worried it would help them just like just wild.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Yeah, no, it's this has been a I think that's right.
I mean, I think that moment is well, it's one
of the iconic moments of the campaign for sure, and
it did. I think even to your point, even people
who don't like him had to had to sort of
admit that that was a that was a you know,
pretty pretty ridiculous moment, spontaneous reaction to getting shot and
(33:46):
almost dying. But you're right, I mean it went away
pretty quickly, as did the second one. I mean someone
had someone on Twitter had joked the other day about
how like we've the media spent more time on this
Tony Hinchcliff joke, this comedian's joke at Madison Square Garden,
and they spent on both assassination attempts combined, which might
(34:07):
be a bit of an exaggeration, but not by a lot.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
Actually, well, yeah, it is pretty wild that somehow comedians,
you know, joke receive them, which also kind of to
me shows that I think the left is losing. I
just I just think if you kind of like go
through all the like checking all the boxes, there's more
boxes checked for you know, Trump in these final days
(34:32):
heading in then for her. But you know, we'll see, right,
because I thought twenty is going to be a bigger
red wave based off of you know, historical data, and
it wasn't.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
I always remind people of that, I mean, by every
metric that we would we use to judge historically used
to judge you know, midterm elections, whether it was I mean,
inflation was eight and a half percent, gas was four
and a half dollars a gallon. Biden's job approval rating
was in the low forties, even in the thirties and
some of these swing states, I mean, you know, right track,
(35:05):
wrong track, I mean, all that stuff. By every metric,
Democrats should have paid dearly in twenty twenty two, and
they didn't. You know, there's a variety of reasons for that.
But certainly, even though all of the lights are sort
of flashing red for the Democrats in this election as well,
that does not mean that, you know, she's automatically going
to lose. And like I said, I think a lot
of these states are if you believe the polls, they
(35:27):
are very very close. And I think there's good reason
to believe that a lot of these states will end
up being close. And you know, but again we'll have
to wait and see.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
We'll have to wait and see tom before we go.
And what are you looking for? Sort of in these
final days, are just kind of hoping it ends right.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Yes, the sweet media of death or whatever you call it,
right too much? Yes for us. Look, I'm just sort
of in survival mode for the next six days and
keep up with the polls and all this stuff. I mean,
I think election night for me, first of all, Election
day is like my least favorite day because everybody wants
you just kind of sit around and hurry up and
(36:07):
wait all day long, and everybody wants to You're reading
reports about, oh, turnout, it's big over here, there's an
election problem here or whatever, and it's just it's just
miserable for like ten hours and then the results start
coming in and then it gets exciting for a few
hours and maybe a few days after that. Look, I
think Virginia's the I mean, Indiana and Kentucky are the
(36:28):
first closes. But I'm not sure how much we'll be
able to glean from that. Right does if Trump performs
two points better or worse in Indiana, as I can
really tell you much, I don't think so. Virginia is
one of the early states to close, and that is
a state that Biden was losing to Donald Trump before
he dropped out of the race. There has been you know,
(36:50):
recent polling Kama Harris's has brought that state back to
to you know about it's a five point eight percent lead.
But the most recent poll was Harassmus and pull Head
and Harris up two points in Virginia. That's a state
Joe Biden won by ten points. And so if some
of those hey, if that state's too close to call.
When the polls close, or you start seeing numbers in
(37:12):
some of these house races in Virginia that look good
for Republicans, that could signal a good night for Republicans
or vice versa. I mean, if it's a blowout of
Virginia for Harris and the Democrats and they then they,
you know, take some of these house seats as well,
then I would expect that that's a harbinger of a
very very good night for Kamalin Harris. I would think
she would do really, really well and probably win the presidency.
(37:34):
So keep an eye for me. I'm watching Virginia. That's
a great point.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
Tom Bevan, co founder and president of Real Clear Politics,
you guys do really important work. Obviously, Avaron's a waste
sighting your averages as a way to kind of get
a better look at at the overall race. So we
appreciate your work, Appreciate you coming on the show. You
always bring really smart insights, so I appreciate your time.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
Thanks Lisa.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
It was Tom Bevan, co founder and president of Real
Clear Politics. He always brings really smart insight to the show,
so appreciate him making the time. Appreciate you guys at
home for listening every Monday and Thursday, but you can
listen throughout the week. I want to thank John Cassio
and my producer for putting the show together.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
Until next time.
I want to take a moment to encourage you to
get out and vote early, and to get out and
vote early for Donald Trump and JD Vans. This is
absolutely the most important election we have seen todate. I
truly do not believe that our country can handle another
four years of what we have seen under Joe Biden
and Kamala Harris. I really do believe that they hate
(00:20):
this country. They hate you and me. Joe Biden called
us garbage recently. We know that Hillary Clinton called us deplorables. Previously,
we saw Joe Biden in the midterm elections take the
stage in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and essentially label every Trump voter
as an enemy of the state. We've seen what they've
tried to do to Donald Trump. They've tried to jail
(00:42):
him on four different occasions. They've tried to bankrupt him.
They tried removing him from the ballot, which shows what
little respect they have for you as a voter. They
think the power should be in their hands, not yours.
They've tried to bankrupt him as well. He's faced two
assassination attempts. Who knows how many more that we're unaware of.
So that's what they think of their political enemies. Donald
Trump has said time and time again that he is
(01:05):
only standing in the way of you and what they
want to do to you. So if they think so
little of us, if they call Donald Trump Nazis, if
they call Trump supporters Nazis like they have, what do
they want to do to us as Trump supporters in
the country. And then even beyond that, you look at
what they've done on inflation, with sky high inflation under
Joe Biden and Kamal Harris. You look at what they've
(01:26):
done with open borders as well, and then suing the
state of Virginia who tried to remove non citizen voters
from their voter rules. We've seen chaos around the world
with wars in the Middle East as well as in Europe.
So what do you think the next four years will
look like? And if all of that doesn't get you
to want to get up and get motivated to go
(01:47):
and vote, I don't know what does. This is a
really important election. We can't take anything to chance. So
I just I encourage you if you can get out
and vote early. I've already done so in the state
of Florida. I went out and voted for Donald Trump. Also,
if you're in the state of Florida, I voted against
Amendment three, against Amendment four, but really important election. So
today's episode beyond all that with what I just wanted
(02:09):
to share with you, and I encourage you to get
and vote. You know, we've got such a side by
side comparison. I just I don't know how anyone could
think that the country would be better off under Kamala Harris.
You know, what are the numbers showing should we be
reading into early vote totals or not where to independent
voters stand. We'll also take a look at the fact
that you know, Kamala Harris is outspent Donald Trump four
(02:30):
to one on political ads. How does that impact the race?
So we're going to get into the data. We're to
get into the numbers. We're going to try to read
the tea leaves a little bit with someone who does
it for a living and who's quite good at it,
Tom Bevan. He is the co founder and president of
Real Clear Politics. He always brings smart analysis to the show.
Real Clear Politics does really important work. So stay tuned
(02:51):
for Tom Bevan. Tom Bevan, it's great to have you
back in the show. Hoping we can try to make
sense of what we're seeing as we head into election day.
So appreciate you coming on absolutely Well. I wanted to
start off by did you know that Kamala Harris comes
(03:11):
from a middle class family?
Speaker 2 (03:15):
You know, I've heard something about that. I don't know, Yeah,
I heard.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
I heard that the other day, so I thought that
was interesting. Yes, But on a more serious note, I guess,
big picture, where does this thing stand today?
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Well, I mean it's close, obviously, and I think Trump
has the edge at the moment. You know, based on
the numbers that we're seeing. I mean, he's he's ahead
in the national polls by less than half a percentage point,
which you know, if the polls are accurate, means that
he's he's A he's in a much better position than
he was four years ago or eight years ago. And
(03:52):
B he's got an electoral college advantage, so you have
to believe that that. And he's ahead about nine tenths
of a percent in the swing states right now, those
big seven battleground states. But they're close, I mean they're
absolutely close. And so you know, is it possible he
could win the popular vote and lose the electoral College,
it seems really unlikely, but you know, I don't rule
(04:16):
anything out at this point. I think the I think
the sort of the range of outcomes for this election
is Harris wins narrowly, Trump wins narrowly, or Trump wins
sort of in a landslide, meaning he overperforms his polls
as he did in twenty sixteen twenty twenty, and he
(04:37):
wins all of these seven battleground states, and maybe even
if the bottom sort of falls out for Harris over
the next you know, few days that he could pick
off a state like Minnesota or Virginia or New Hampshire
or something, and he'd be in a you know, three
three sixteen three twenty electoral college range win, which in
(04:59):
this day and age is a pretty go thumping, you know.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
And I found it interesting that we saw as sort
of in the closing arguments, you know, Bob Casey out
of Pennsylvania and Tammy Baldwin and Wisconsin sort of tying
their wagons to Trump in closing advertising. Does that tell
you anything about his standing in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin or
how do you read that?
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Yeah? I mean, look, there's there's they're the polls, which
again and I think people are right to sort of
be skeptical of the polls, given what happened in twenty
sixteen and twenty twenty, wonder whether they're accurate or how
accurate they might be. And then there's and then there's
this sort of anecdotal stuff, right, It's like and the
and the atmospherics, and part of that is, oh, crowd
(05:41):
sizes and yard signs and and all of that. But
then there's also the Okay, where are they, where are
they advertising, where the campaign's advertising? You know, what what
are the down ticket races doing? And then also you
know these these stories like what's going on in the press.
Do you see the stories about you know, one side's
(06:04):
nervous or one side's feeling confident, or you're getting leaks
to the press about you know, the campaign screwing this
up or they didn't do this, or you know, is
there some sort of preemptive backbiting or blame laying that's
happening out there and all of those see, all of
those things seem to be in my estimation, reading sort
(06:28):
of the tea leaves that the Trump campaign has the
upper hand. The Hairs campaign is the ones feeling sort
of I don't want to say desperate, but there's a
lot of anxiety there. You're seeing some of these stories
about you know, questions about the campaign and what they're
doing and do they have the right message? Is it
moving the needle? Is it not? And at least that's
what it was up until the Madison Square Garden rally,
(06:50):
when you know, Tony Hinchcliffe made his joke and then
the press basically spent forty eight hours, you know, focusing
exclusively on that, and now that's you know, sort of
changed the shoes on the other foot, and now the
Biden campaign is running around trying to clean up over
garbage Gate.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
You know, it seems to me that you know, basically
her argument is that, you know, Donald Trump's awful. I'm
a woman, and I'm a minority, and I come from
a middle class family. And outside of that, you know,
she hasn't really given people much of a reason to
vote for her. But I but I think that, you know,
Donald Trump's evil thing doesn't work as well when you know,
(07:30):
we've seen polling recently, you know with CNN where majority
of Americans actually view Donald Trump's presidency as a positive,
and you know, he's not as toxic as he perhaps
was in twenty twenty to voter. So it's like, I
wonder how much that lands intoday's environment. And you even
see kind of like more people proud to support Trump publicly,
(07:51):
you know, so it just doesn't kind of have that
same same toxicity that it may have had in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Yeah, it's it is kind of ironic that given everything
that has been thrown at Trump and you know, January
sixth and then all the lawfair stuff and the assassination
attempts and everything, he has emerged even stronger and in
some ways more like his favorable ratings are higher than
(08:20):
they've been you know ever. And that's really interesting, and
it's I think there are two pieces to it. One
is what you mentioned, folks are kind of desensitized to,
you know, claims that he's just this this. It's hard
for I think the public to take seriously the idea
that Trump is going to round up journalists and his
political enemies and have them killed or put in camps
(08:42):
or whatever, or that women are going to be hauled off,
like Mika Brazinski seems to think that, you know, women
are literally going to be dying if Donald Trump gets elected,
because we've already lived through four years of Donald Trump
and none of that bad stuff happened, even if folks,
you know, didn't like Trump or some of the policies
or some of his baggage. The fact that we've lived
(09:04):
through that and then now we've lived through four years
of Biden Harris, and people are looking back on Trump's time,
particularly as it relates to the economy and saying, you
know what, it wasn't that bad. Actually it was kind
of good, and it was better than it is now.
And so I think there they may still have reservations
about him on a bunch of different levels, but they're
(09:25):
certainly much more open to the idea of putting him
back in office because of what they experienced when he
on the economy in particular.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Do you read it into anything with the Washington Post
and the La Times in USA today refusing to endorse
Kamala Harris, Does that mean anything in terms of maybe
what they're saying.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
That's a good question. I don't know. I don't. I mean,
it certainly seems that there was some you know, the
Post Bezos clearly made the call didn't want that to happen.
It didn't happen. Same thing the owner of the La Times,
although there was you know, some drama with his daughter
apparently and their her viewpoint. I think it's a good
(10:11):
thing actually that that because I think Bezo's Bezos actually wrote.
I thought I thought his column that he wrote in
the in the Post was was pretty good in terms
of stating, look, these these endorsements, they don't sway anybody.
Number one. Number two, they they they give the perception
of bias, whether we are or we're not. It gives
(10:33):
that perception, and that's not a good thing for our newspaper.
It's not a good thing for the business of if
you're in the business of trying to be sort of
even handed and objective to have, you know, be issuing
these endorsements. And so I thought he made a pretty
strong case for why they didn't and he said, of course,
you know, we should have done this earlier. And the
(10:54):
fact that they did it as close to the election
as they did, you know, leaves leave some people to
believe that they're where other motives involved in I mean,
you saw it today. They you know, the Washington Post
did it basically like a an investigative piece on their
owner in Blue Origin and his contacts with you know,
the government and all that stuff, which was which was
pretty interesting. He got a colonoscopy from his staff on
(11:17):
some of those issues. But I don't know. I think
it's a good thing in general for the news business
to get out of the endorsement business. But I'm not
sure beyond that, whether I'm you know, it means that
all these folks think that Trump's going to win, and
that's the reason they decided to do what they did,
right right.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Well, I think if you Trump ends up winning, we'll
kind of look back on his media strategy, you know,
and and sort of using these podcasters, whether it's you know,
Joe Rogan with his fourteen point five million you know
followers on Spotify or I think it's like seventeen point
five million on YouTube or whatever, and the you know,
doing the X interview with Ela, and of being able
to sort of bypass this eighty five percent negative media
(11:58):
coverage that he's gotten. We've got more with Tom. But
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I don't know, my gut's telling me he does.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
You know, who knows? But I think he's going to win.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
But you know, she's outspent him four to one in
political ads, and he's also received eighty five percent negative
media coverage to her seventy eight percent positive media coverage,
which means the voters are almost universally saying positive things
about her and negative things about him, Yet, as you
pointed out, his approval ratings have never been this strong.
He's up in the real clear politics, you know, battleground
(13:27):
states and in the popular votes, and a majority of
Americans look back on his administration with nostalgia.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
So that's pretty remarkable. It is it is, you know,
he has We've never looked, We've never seen anything like
Donald Trump, and we may never see anything like him
again in our lifetimes for sure, because he has managed
to He's such a unique figure, and he has managed
to be almost impervious to the laws traditional laws of
(13:55):
politics in terms of what you can say and do
and get away with, in terms of being impervious to
the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been spent
against him by his own party, Republicans and primaries, and
not to mention the Democrats. And then get into office
and he's fighting with the media and the Democrats and
the Republicans, the never Trumpers and just manages to sort
(14:17):
of plow through it all. And he seems to be
doing that again in this election. And as I said,
he's in a way better position than he was four
years ago or eight years ago by any metric. You
want to look at whether there's favorability or any of
these battleground state polls or national polls. He's just he
has managed to he's managed to change the party fundamentally
(14:39):
into a working class, more diverse party. I mean, he's probably,
if you believe the polls and the polls are accurate,
he's going to get the most non white votes for
Republican candidates since nineteen sixty. He'll get the most black votes,
He'll get the most Hispanic votes. We'll see whether that
comes to pass or not. But there's no question that
he's going to get more than he did in twenty twenty.
(15:00):
And he's probably he may end upsetting records. And so
that's just it's been remarkable to watch the parties basically
trade places over that. Since he came on the scene
in twenty fifteen, Democrats have given up on the working
class and are now a class now the party of
sort of the well educated, upper class white vote and
folks on Wall Street and Trump, you know, Republicans are
(15:23):
now the sort of working class factory floor, you know,
the people who wear hard hats and work with their hands.
I mean, it's been pretty pretty amazing to watch and
it's happened pretty darn rapidly over the last few years.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
It's interesting a lot of discussions about early voting. You know,
what does it mean? Does it mean anything? Can we
read into anything? And you look at the state of
Nevada and John Ralston has been reporting about how Republicans
have turned out and bigger numbers than of registered Democrats
by pretty significant margins. I think as of recently forty
thousand even places in reliable you know, Clark County. The
(16:00):
dem firewall has evaporated and so on and so forth.
I mean, I guess, do you make anything out of
some of these early voting numbers. I think Nevada is
more significant than some of the other states.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Yeah, I guess sort of what's you read on all that?
So Sean Trendy, our senior elections analyst who's super super
smart on all this stuff, just wrote something for us
and which we ran on the site the other day
and basically, and we have this conversation often and you
can this happens every cycle, and it happened a lot
(16:37):
in twenty twenty and it's happening again. Is that you've
got these folks who analyze that early vote data, and
everybody wants to read the tea leaves and try and
figure out and what it means for the final outcome.
And you can pretty quickly go down a rabbit hole
on any of these states and try and decipher the data,
and it just doesn't. It usually leads to bad outcomes. Right,
(17:00):
you're not going to get the kind of information that
you think you're going to get. With the one exception,
and Sean Benson mentions this in his piece is Nevada
because of the way they conduct their elections. Because John
Ralston is as good as he is at doing what
he does, they you know, Nevada is the one place
where you can actually look at the data and say, okay,
you know, this gives us an indication of where this
(17:21):
thing is headed. But in the other states, it's really
really hard, and it's usually sort of a fruitless exercise,
and so Sean recommends everybody kind of just chill, and
I agree with them on that. I find that, you know,
people are so desperate to try and figure out ahead
of time who's going to win this thing and find
some sort of secret, secret metric or something that's going
(17:43):
to give them the inside track. But at the end
of the day, you just got to wait and let
the votes get counted and see, you know, who turns
out and how it goes. It's good, I think, as
I said earlier, I mean, well, I think it's clear
though that we're going to have huge turnout. I mean,
people are turning out in big numbers. Be shocked if
we don't beat twenty twenty's numbers. But yeah, we're just
(18:06):
gonna have to wait and see kind of what the
final tallies are.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Well, because there's in an argument to me, it made
that you know, Republicans are early voting more than you
know we saw in twenty twenty, and so does that
mean that less people are going to turn out an
election day or does that just mean that more people
are voting republic you know. So it's like we're all
kind of trying to figure out.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Well, that's the thing. I mean, you can't tell how
many of these voters are. If you've got one hundred
thousand Republicans and you know, normally ninety thousand of them
vote in election day and ten thousand of them vote early,
and suddenly, because the party has pushed them, suddenly you've
got fifty thousand voting early. Does that mean you're still
going to get ninety thousand on election day? Or does
that just mean you're going to get fifty thousand on
election day and you still end up with one hundred thousand.
(18:46):
You can't tell how many of these people are new
voters that are additive. You can't tell that if it
means that turnout's going to be up or down. It
just doesn't give you that kind of clarity. Even though
people desperately try and read into these numbers, you know,
for those kinds of those kinds of those kinds of insights,
they're just not there.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Although I would say, you know, Republicans have done a
good job of eating into democrats advantages and the registration
numbers like in Pennsylvania, and you know, or if you
look at a state like Nevada the last test time
I went read for I think of two thousand and
four or so, if Republicans are up there, that is
a good sign potentially for the rest of these battleground states.
So but you know, again it's you know, you don't
(19:28):
want to you don't want to get over your skis
and then end up with egg on your face.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
On No, totally not totally not. Now. The one thing
that you know, democrats argue and I do agree with this. Now,
the thing about early voting. One of the reasons that
early voting is they like it and they think it's
good is because it allows you because once people have voted,
they can look and see who's voted, so they it
offers efficiency. They don't have to send them mailers, they
don't have to go knock on doors of people who
(19:53):
have already voted. It allows them to focus on the
people who haven't voted and work to get those lower pensity.
You know, all of these campaigns have identified voters and
they'll say, well, these guys are you know, the people
who live at this house are an eight, nine or
a ten, you know voter for us, right, they're a
hard D okay. And then you know there's people that
(20:16):
are you know, five, six, seven, so they're kind of
like middle ds. And then there's like the two three fourths,
they're like the soft d's right, and so you obviously
you know your eight nines and tens are probably going
to vote early, and they're going to vote. You know,
you don't have to worry about them. But then you
can work, you know, you're working on getting your four
fives and sixes to the polls, and once you know,
(20:37):
once you can see, okay, I've gotten fifty percent of
my four fives and sixes, I can you know, I
don't have to send them. I don't have to waste
any more time or effort or resources trying to find
those people and urge them to get to the polls.
I can focus on these other ones, and you can
work your way down to the lower you know, the twos, threes,
and fours. These are people who who may not even
turn out at all. But if you can get to them,
(20:58):
and you can get them, you know, you can harve
that ballot. That gives you an advantage. And so I
think from that perspective, Republicans are playing that game now,
and if to the extent that they do it well,
they could also see some efficiencies in reaching those lower
propensity voters, which traditionally. Trump has done well with those people.
He's brought disaffected voters and people who have been out
(21:21):
of the process for a while into his camp. And
the more of those that the Republicans can get, I
think the better his odds are going to be.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Well and would also be interesting depending on what happens
this election and where different demographics go, do those demographics
hold in the next election? Right with whoever the Republicans.
You know, it's like, how much of this realignment in
American politics is just because of Trump versus you know,
a more permanent alignment, realignment you know, moving forward electorally.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Well I have a theory on that, or I thought
I'd love to hear it. Well, it's just look, I
think the people who think, you know, the sort of
never Trump crowd who wants Trump to lose because they think,
you know, once he's off the scene, that they can
the party can like reset or the fever or break
or whatever, and they can get it back to being
more the party of their you know, country club Republicans
(22:13):
or whatever. I think that's just a fantasy. I just
don't think that that's I think that the die has
been cast in the sense of the party now. That
isn't say you couldn't have a figure whoever ends up
leading the Republican Party after Donald Trump, And it could
be you know, it could be in eight days they're
going to be looking for the new person if Trump loses,
(22:34):
or it could be four years from now or whatever,
but they're going to His policies are popular and sort
of firmly embedded now in the Republican Party, and I
don't think there's any going back, just like I think
the Democrats again, they've they've kind of cast their die
(22:55):
with when you look at their options, the people that
the people that ran in twenty twenty and that I'm
sorry in twenty well, twenty sixteen, I'm sorry in the
twenty nineteen primary, ran in twenty twenty. You know, the
choice of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete bootageedge right. There
(23:16):
was no option there other than Biden, and even he
turned out to be not much of a centrist. Right
that if Kamala Harris loses and they're looking forward to
the next standard bearer of their party, it doesn't seem
to me that they're going to have someone who's going
to come in and you know, you look at the
bright lights in the party, it's like, you know, Gavin
Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer. I mean, these are not people
(23:38):
that are going to suddenly reconnect Democrats with the working
class in this country and be able to sort of
They're still going to be participating in ideology or identity
politics and that sort of thing. And likewise, on the
Republican side, I mean, I don't you know, you look
at Jade Vance and you look at some of these
other folks. Are they going to go back and really
advocate for, you know, just unfettered free trade or democracy abroad,
(24:01):
like the George W. Bush democracy agenda. No, it's not
going to happen. And so I do think these parties
have settled into this. This shift is long term. Nothing's
permanent in American politics, and obviously there will be in
the future, maybe not in the near term future, but
maybe in the midterm or longer term future. You know,
(24:23):
people who come up through the ranks who are able to,
you know, recraft that message in a way that reaches
you know, the traditional Republicans and Independents and like. But
I think some of the stuff that we're seeing now,
like the shift among minority voters in particular, I think
that's going to continue. I don't think that's going to
just snap back once Donald Trump leaves the scene.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
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That's Sabre Radio dot com. You know, I feel like
part of her challenge is, you know, Harriet and then
(25:47):
with CNN pointed out that Trump wins. The signs were
there all along talking about how no incumbent party is
won another term with so few voters, saying the country
is on the wrong track. I believe it's twenty eight
percent today, and when the president's net approval rating is
as low as Joe Biden's it, I think she bears
the weight of incumbency because she's not done enough to
separate herself from Joe Biden. And then even when asked,
(26:10):
she has refused to separate herself from Joe Biden. Do
you think that's fair or do you think she will
be able to distance herself enough to not bear the
weight of a negative incumbency.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Think I think she's done well. Look to be fair
to Kamala Harris. Okay, it would be difficult for even
most skilled politician. I think Jada Vance could do it.
He's pretty talented.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
But anyways, I digress.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
To be dropped into the situation, situation that she's been
dropped into, and to try and simultaneously to take credit
for the things that the progressives love about the Biden
administration and also distance herself from the failures and try
and reach the middle. That would be really hard for
even a very skilled politician. And Kamala Harris is not
a skilled politician, and so and she wasn't totally prepared
(26:57):
to do it. You could see that she didn't, you know,
she just didn't spend a lot of time thinking about
how to do it and how to come up with
answers that would be satisfactory to do it. So, yeah,
that's been a challenge from the beginning, and it's one
that she has really struggled to, you know, achieve in
a in a legitimate way, just by saying, look, of
(27:19):
course I'm not Joe Biden because I you know, I'm
a woman and I'm a you know, minority. I mean,
that's not really good enough, right. And the second thing
that she failed to do, and if you go back
and you just think how different this campaign would have
been if if I don't know how many weeks ago
it was now, like you know, July twenty second, so
three months ago when she first when she first became
(27:45):
the de facto nominee, and again she avoided the press
for like a month, so maybe two months ago. She
sits down and obviously, you know, she gets the first question, like,
would you do anything differently if she had said at
that time, you know, yeah, I don't. I don't. I
feel like we, you know, we had the best of
intentions on immigration. We felt Trump's policies were cruel. We
(28:06):
wanted to reverse those and really put in place a
immigration system that we thought was humane and fair and
you know, but also secured the border, and it just
didn't work out that way. I think we got that wrong.
We could have done that different, we could have done
it better. That would have been the public would have
accepted that, I think as a legitimate answer, as an
(28:29):
actual honest answer about a policy. Instead, she just decided
to go with no, we did everything right. There's nothing
I would change. And that also has made it very
difficult for her to separate herself from the failures of
this administration and the things that the public dislikes the
most about about what the Biden administration has done on
(28:51):
immigration and inflation and the like. And so she's, you know,
she's in a tough spot. But she did not help
herself in any way. And I think that's why with
a week to go in the campaign, eight days to
go in the campaign, she's still giving the same answer.
She just got asked it the other day, what would
you do to bring prices down? And she said, I'm
(29:11):
from a middle class family. It's it became sort of
a caricature, and she's still doing it. Makes no sense
to me. And so yeah, it's it's been a struggle
for her, and I'll be as I said, I think
that's one of the reasons she's she's not doing as
well as as she could be doing in this campaign.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Well, especially with independent voters as well. You know absolutely
who Joe Biden won by nearly thirteen points, So it'll
I mean, it seems like she's kind of struggling with
almost every key part of Biden's coalition outside of with
women voters. But even her numbers with women voters, I
don't think. I can't remember. I'm trying to remember exactly
(29:54):
what Trump lost women voters to Hillary Clinton by, but
I think it's like roughly the same and he still
was able to win in twenty sixteen, So I don't know.
I think maybe more is being made about that then
it should or do you think they have it right
in terms of, uh, you know, sort of the gender gap,
because I think he lost pretty substantially in twenty sixteen
with female voters.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
I'll try to find them he did. Yeah, yeah, no,
it was like twenty something points to gender gap and
it was a little less than twenty twenty. And it's
it's back about where it was in twenty sixteen, maybe
a little bit even a little bit less. And that's
in average of polls. I mean, if some of these
poles have it, you know, thirty points or more.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
Well, yeah, then it's to eat statespecific, you know.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
But but yeah, large, you know, it's large. Yeah, so
it's roughly as big as it was in twenty sixteen.
And I but I do think, you know, they have
focused so heavily on women, and their efforts to reach
out to men have been so inept. I mean, they've
just been really really these white dudes for Harris and
the ads and all this stuff has been really again
(30:59):
almost like a pair, and so it's really been for them.
They haven't it's been sort of almost I don't want
to say almost zero sum. Right. So the more they
focus on women, the more they talk about abortion, the
more the more they sort of alienate and lose men.
And then they go and try and you know, win
over men, and it doesn't work. So they have focused
(31:21):
on women because that's the group she's strongest with. Abortion
is on the ballot in Arizona, Michigan, Florida, a couple
other places, and it has been a winning issue for them.
In the past, you know, post Dobbs in some of
these races, and so their theory of the cases they
can really use that to motivate women and particularly younger women.
(31:42):
I think there's some evidence that that's the case, but
by focusing so exclusively on that issue, they just haven't
been able to really reach men. And her efforts have
been you know, when she just came out, she came
out a couple of weeks ago with this agenda for
black men, right, and it was like like and they
made a big deal of vote for about two days
(32:03):
and then it went away and you never heard about
it again. And it was you know, it was legalized marijuana,
it was extra like training, you know, education, there was
a healthcare component to it or whatever, and it was
just like, you know, it was a two day thing
and then it was gone. So they just really struggled
with trying to to get men into the into the fold,
(32:24):
and it hasn't worked at all.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Well, I also think and I'll let you go, so
I've taken a lot of time also. I mean it's
hard to really quantify it, but I feel like the
surviving the first assassination and his response to it with
like standing up and saying fight, fight, fight. I think
that was kind of like game over with mail voters
after that point. You know, we've even seen critics like
(32:48):
The Rock call him afterwards or even Mark Zuckerberg I'll
publicly say that it was badass, you know. So I
think that sort of like solidified the mail vote with
just sort of that auto of responding with such strength.
It's just like a very masculine alpha, you know response.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
Doesn't that feel like it was like two years ago? Well?
Speaker 1 (33:08):
Also also the media and social media trying to memory
hole it is pretty remarkable as well. Or you know,
I think there was that axious article about how photographers
were worried it would help them just like just wild.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Yeah, no, it's this has been a I think that's right.
I mean, I think that moment is well, it's one
of the iconic moments of the campaign for sure, and
it did. I think even to your point, even people
who don't like him had to had to sort of
admit that that was a that was a you know,
pretty pretty ridiculous moment, spontaneous reaction to getting shot and
(33:46):
almost dying. But you're right, I mean it went away
pretty quickly, as did the second one. I mean someone
had someone on Twitter had joked the other day about
how like we've the media spent more time on this
Tony Hinchcliff joke, this comedian's joke at Madison Square Garden,
and they spent on both assassination attempts combined, which might
(34:07):
be a bit of an exaggeration, but not by a lot.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
Actually, well, yeah, it is pretty wild that somehow comedians,
you know, joke receive them, which also kind of to
me shows that I think the left is losing. I
just I just think if you kind of like go
through all the like checking all the boxes, there's more
boxes checked for you know, Trump in these final days
(34:32):
heading in then for her. But you know, we'll see, right,
because I thought twenty is going to be a bigger
red wave based off of you know, historical data, and
it wasn't.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
I always remind people of that, I mean, by every
metric that we would we use to judge historically used
to judge you know, midterm elections, whether it was I mean,
inflation was eight and a half percent, gas was four
and a half dollars a gallon. Biden's job approval rating
was in the low forties, even in the thirties and
some of these swing states, I mean, you know, right track,
(35:05):
wrong track, I mean, all that stuff. By every metric,
Democrats should have paid dearly in twenty twenty two, and
they didn't. You know, there's a variety of reasons for that.
But certainly, even though all of the lights are sort
of flashing red for the Democrats in this election as well,
that does not mean that, you know, she's automatically going
to lose. And like I said, I think a lot
of these states are if you believe the polls, they
(35:27):
are very very close. And I think there's good reason
to believe that a lot of these states will end
up being close. And you know, but again we'll have
to wait and see.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
We'll have to wait and see tom before we go.
And what are you looking for? Sort of in these
final days, are just kind of hoping it ends right.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Yes, the sweet media of death or whatever you call it,
right too much? Yes for us. Look, I'm just sort
of in survival mode for the next six days and
keep up with the polls and all this stuff. I mean,
I think election night for me, first of all, Election
day is like my least favorite day because everybody wants
you just kind of sit around and hurry up and
(36:07):
wait all day long, and everybody wants to You're reading
reports about, oh, turnout, it's big over here, there's an
election problem here or whatever, and it's just it's just
miserable for like ten hours and then the results start
coming in and then it gets exciting for a few
hours and maybe a few days after that. Look, I
think Virginia's the I mean, Indiana and Kentucky are the
(36:28):
first closes. But I'm not sure how much we'll be
able to glean from that. Right does if Trump performs
two points better or worse in Indiana, as I can
really tell you much, I don't think so. Virginia is
one of the early states to close, and that is
a state that Biden was losing to Donald Trump before
he dropped out of the race. There has been you know,
(36:50):
recent polling Kama Harris's has brought that state back to
to you know about it's a five point eight percent lead.
But the most recent poll was Harassmus and pull Head
and Harris up two points in Virginia. That's a state
Joe Biden won by ten points. And so if some
of those hey, if that state's too close to call.
When the polls close, or you start seeing numbers in
(37:12):
some of these house races in Virginia that look good
for Republicans, that could signal a good night for Republicans
or vice versa. I mean, if it's a blowout of
Virginia for Harris and the Democrats and they then they,
you know, take some of these house seats as well,
then I would expect that that's a harbinger of a
very very good night for Kamalin Harris. I would think
she would do really, really well and probably win the presidency.
(37:34):
So keep an eye for me. I'm watching Virginia. That's
a great point.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
Tom Bevan, co founder and president of Real Clear Politics,
you guys do really important work. Obviously, Avaron's a waste
sighting your averages as a way to kind of get
a better look at at the overall race. So we
appreciate your work, Appreciate you coming on the show. You
always bring really smart insights, so I appreciate your time.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
Thanks Lisa.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
It was Tom Bevan, co founder and president of Real
Clear Politics. He always brings really smart insight to the show,
so appreciate him making the time. Appreciate you guys at
home for listening every Monday and Thursday, but you can
listen throughout the week. I want to thank John Cassio
and my producer for putting the show together.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
Until next time.
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