Pod Save America - Was Biden's "Big Boy Presser" Enough?

Episode Date: July 12, 2024

Jon and Dan break down Joe Biden's big press conference, whether he did enough to calm nervous Democrats, and whether he's making a sharp enough case against Donald Trump—or for himself—to move the numbers and create a plausible path to victory. Plus, the latest signals from the campaign about what its strategy will be going forward, and how the Trump veepstakes is playing out with only days left to go. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, the calls for Joe Biden to step aside now seem to be coming from inside the House. The Biden campaign is trying to convince Democrats that he still has a plausible path to victory with a new memo and a visit by senior campaign officials to Capitol Hill. And Donald Trump's VP pick could come at any moment, and he can't shut up about his potential running mates. But first, Dan, we are recording this right after

shut up about his potential running mates. But first, Dan, we are recording this right after President Biden wrapped up his much anticipated post-NATO press conference. His big boy press conference, as they say. His big boy press conference, as it was called. It was taken live by all the networks, and it went for about 50 minutes. It was quite late. It started at 7.30. It was supposed to start at 6.30. Here's supposed to start at 6.30. Here's some of what we heard from Biden. What concerns do you have about Vice President Harris's ability

to beat Donald Trump if she were at the top of the ticket? Look, I wouldn't have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president because I think she's not qualified to be president. So let's start there. The consideration is that I think I'm the most qualified person qualified to be president. So let's start there. The consideration is that I

think I'm the most qualified person to run for president. I beat him once and I will beat him again. You mixed up presidents Zelensky and Putin earlier today. And you now have sort of your key allies, including the British prime minister, the president of France, the German chancellor having to step in and make excuses for you on that. Officials here are saying off the record that your decline has become noticeable. Hasn't this now, frankly, become damaging for America's standing in the world? Thank you. Did you see any damage to our standing in my leading this conference? Have you seen a more successful conference?

What do you think? And the Putin piece, I was talking about Putin and I said, and now at the very end, I said, here, I mean, Putin, I said, no, I'm sorry, Zelensky. There's been reporting that you've acknowledged that you need to go to bed earlier and your evening around eight. That's not true. Look, what I said was, instead of my every day starting at 7 and going to bed at midnight, it'd be smarter for me to pace myself a little more. You earlier explained confidence in your vice president. Yes. If your team came back and showed you data that she would fare better against former President Donald Trump, would you reconsider your decision to stay in the race?

No, unless they came back and said, there's no way you can win. Me. No one's saying that. No poll says that. All right, we got the whispery voice. So you're saying there's a chance. Dan, what'd you think?

It's a tough question, John, because in some ways it felt over in the first four minutes when he misspoke and referred to Kamala Harris as Vice President Trump. Like that rocket around the internet, I'm positive that will be what the vast majority of people who engage with his press conference at all see. The rest of the press conference was good in the sense that it looked very different than debate. It was by far his best, most engaged, unscripted performance

since the debate. He answered the foreign policy questions with real substance. He seemed to relish his conversation with David Sanger, the foreign policy correspondent for The New York Times. Just enjoy talking about his engagement with China and Russia. But if you're judging it in terms of did he deliver a message against Trump or even an effective one for himself, he did okay on his economic message. And up until the very end on Trump, it was really sort of message-free, right? It was all performance, not message. Yeah.

So it's tough. Obviously, like you said, the Vice President Trump gaffe earlier when he called Zelensky Putin, right? Not good. People are going to see that, whatever. Right. Not good. People are going to see that, whatever. Those actually that does not bother me as much as he still doesn't have a message that is going to persuade people who are on the fence. You know, like he doesn't like he just couldn't frame the choice in the election. Like he's very knowledgeable about foreign policy issues. Like you don't, you watch that press conference and you're like, you know what? This guy, he can do the job right now. And he like clearly is deeply involved in these meetings. He's like remembering conversations with leaders.

So it's like, you know, I think that the pendulum swung too far in the direction of like, oh, is the guy, you know, has he lost a step? Is he forgetful? I really don't think that is, that's not what worries me. What worries me is that we don't have a presidential candidate who can communicate clearly and prosecute the case against Donald Trump clearly in a way that is going to make undecided voters, who are the voters who are going to decide this election, feel comfortable with him. And I just, I don't think, now,

it's a press conference. It's a press conference on foreign policy, right? So you got to give him that. It's hard to just pivot to your economic message when you're talking about foreign policy and being asked about foreign policy. But I do think that some of the same issues he had in the Stephanopoulos interview, which is when he's asked questions about his age or his health or his presidency or his campaign, he immediately becomes defensive. He immediately goes to his record. He immediately talks about, you know, the critics said I couldn't do this. And let me tell you about what the Nobel laureate said and this. And it's just, it is not, I don't think that's going to work very well with voters, but I don't know. Maybe, you know, if you're an average voter, maybe you tuned in and you saw him talking and going on about all that stuff. And you're like, yeah, I feel good. Who knows?

Yeah. I think, you know, I agree with you that the vice president Trump, the Putin-Zelensky thing is not a big deal in the sense that it does not tell me anything or give me any concerns about his cognitive ability. Right. Yeah, me personally, for sure. Yes. But it is a political problem because every time he makes a misstatement, it rockets across the internet and therefore validates people's largest concern about him. And that feels, prior to the debate, that felt somewhat unfair. But in a post-debate world, that's where we're in, where every time the guy goes out and speaks. And he has been known, because of his stutter, because he talks a lot, to make

misstatements. That is something that's been true. That was true 15 years ago. It was true in his 1988 race. And in some ways, it's really endearing. It makes him seem like a normal person. But now there's a new context to it that just adds political weight to every single one. People are going to fly spec every single thing he does. That is a political problem, and it just is going forward. this is great. This guy should have shown up at the debate. Like, I don't actually think that guy should have shown up at the debate. I think he would have done better than he did at the debate if that guy had shown up, but I still don't think he would have prosecuted the case effectively. There was a lot of non sequiturs, half thoughts trailed off here and there. Like, it wasn't just a stutter thing, right? Like that, I don't hold against him at all, but it's just he, and he's just in such a defensive crouch, which i understand but also like i

don't know it it gave me confidence that he can be president right now it did not give me any more confidence that he can beat donald trump i think that's fair if he if that guy showed up at the debate he would have at least tied or beaten trump on points would that have mattered you know how would persuasive that had been to the people the 50 million people who watched, who are currently undecided? I don't know. But it was exponentially better than the debate. I think that's a fact. Was it great? I'm not going to say that,

but it was much better. I think it's tough now. We're just all grading them on a curve. You can tell even the reporters in the room, and especially some of the foreign reporters, Donald Trump is a threat to democracy here and all over the world. And you can feel it. You can feel the tension with even some of the foreign reporters and everyone else. Like people, people want Joe Biden to succeed.

You know, I mean, a lot of people want Joe Biden to succeed. And that's why it's like so tough to watch that because you're like, come on, man, get it out, get it out. It's just hard for him to do. It's just we're grading him on. There are two tests in each of these events. One is, does he have the capacity to be president? Is he pushing it against what we've read in a lot of his reports about what he can and can't do, the version of him that showed up at the debate, the version of him that you guys talked about seeing at that fundraiser. There is another version, and that version showed up today. And then there's the question of, is he a good communicator with that stamina, capacity, and communications chops to be able to come back from a somewhat significant deficit in

this race? And those questions are different, right? They are different, and they do, and they will interact with some, but I'm sure we'll get to it in a second, how people feel about what they should say on the ticket. Yeah. And I don't think on the second question, I don't think he did anything tonight to allay those concerns. But what do you think about the political impact of tonight? Because it does seem like his team is clearly happy with it. His strongest supporters online are like, people owe Joe Biden the apology because this is so amazing. But then even a lot of reporters sort of had the take that we did, which is he really demonstrated a command of foreign policy details and his record and what's

going on in the world. So what do you think the sort of the political impact might be? I think there's, we're really talking about small board politics. This is about the elected officials and influential people – donors and influential people in the party who may or may not call for him to get out of the race and put additional pressure on him. And I think he probably bought himself a little bit of time with that group. This is a – some of these people love Joe Biden. This is a very political fraught decision. It comes with great risk to take the bolder choice here politically for a lot of these people, not the ones who are in frontline districts who think Biden's going to bring

them down, but everyone else in the party is to undertake a risky change. And they don't want to do that. And I think he gave some people permission to hold back. Now, we'll see what happens when Hakeem Jeffries talks to more of his frontline members. We'll see what happens when Senator Schumer talks to more of his members who were very worried about losing the Senate. But I do think if he had had a bad night, something like not debate bad, but ABC interview bad, I think he would have seen a flood tomorrow. I'm not sure we'll see a flood tomorrow. And he cleverly has an interview scheduled for Monday.

So he might buy himself some time. You know, everyone in politics pulls off the band-aid as slowly as humanly possible. And so you can see this giving them some reason to slow down. We did see one member of Congress, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Jim Himes, from Connecticut, calling him to step down after this press conference. It seems like his statement was written before the press conference. There was some news before the press conference that a number of House members had their statements ready and were calling him to drop out, and they were ready to release those statements no matter how the press conference went, which should tell you something. Do you think that Jim Hines,

his press secretary, did a scheduled send and then went to a kickball match? I hope so. I hope so. All right, let's talk about where things are at the moment then. So in the hours before the press conference, we had about six more members of Congress

call on Biden to suspend his campaign, now seven with Jim Hines. That makes 18 House Democrats, one senator, And then there's a few dozen others who've openly doubted his ability to win or said they're close or some sort of statement that seems like they're going to get to calling on him to drop out, but are not sure yet. Notice also scooped that many members of the Congressional Black Caucus are saying privately that they want Biden to step down. There was news that the UAW is concerned that Joe Biden can't beat Trump and that they're

thinking about next steps. He was asked about that at the press conference as well. And he said, well, they just endorsed me. Did you know that? And yes, but he clearly was not apprised of that news. There's also a lot of speculation about what senior Democratic leaders like Nancy Pelosi and Obama are saying and doing behind the scenes. There was a CNN story right before we started recording that Pelosi and Obama have talked about this and that both of them have

been acting more as a sounding board, not just for Joe Biden, but for worried members of the party. That, of course, has been getting some angry pushback from the Biden folks, particularly with the Obama stuff. We're going to talk about that. But the biggest news of the party. That, of course, has been getting some angry pushback from the Biden folks, particularly with the Obama stuff. We're going to talk about that. But the biggest news of the day came from The New York Times reporting that, quote, longtime aides and advisors to Biden have become convinced that he will ultimately have to step aside and they're trying to figure out how to craft a message that he'll listen to. Good luck with that. The Times had a second scoop that the Biden campaign is now in the field with a poll testing Kamala Harris against Trump. Apparently that's the first time

they've done so. And NBC News had a big story of its own, which quoted three people involved in the Biden reelect campaign saying the president can't win. One Biden advisor said he needs to drop out. He will never recover from this. Yikes. Dan, what do you make of the Times and NBC stories? What do you think the state of play is right now? I think the state of play is that smart people in the Biden operation are looking at this and seeing where it's going, and that there are really two paths right now. Because I think even with today's press conference, we should just come to the reality that there's kind of nothing Joe Biden can do to fully address the age issue. And truly, both with that group of people within the party and the broader public. And I'm not saying he can't win despite that,

but that is just a fact. There's not a performance in his bag that is going to reach people and unring the bell of the debate, right? That just cannot be undone. And so I think to some advisors looking at this are saying there are two paths. He steps aside and helps maybe get someone to defeat Trump and preserve his legacy, or he continues on what feels like a suicide mission where most of the party runs away from him for the next four months. Donors start sending all of their money to the House and the Senate. The energy in the party is not around trying to elect Biden, which many believe is a lost cause. I'm not saying it is, but to take back the House and keep the Senate, create a bulwark

against the Trump presidency. Think about this. He wants to go to Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. That is what they see as their path. Three of the most important Senate races are there. You have Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, Alyssa Slotkin in Michigan. What are they going to do? They're going to be running away from him the entire campaign unless there's a dramatic change in events. And that is just, it is uncomfortable. It is a death march, a painful, diminishing, undignified death march to a Trump presidency.

And I think there are people who really care about Biden who are beginning to think about how we can get him to avoid that outcome, because at least that's how it felt this morning that that's where we were headed. Assuming that Times report about the poll is true true do you think they're doing it testing kamala harris against trump the biden campaign because they think it will bolster the case for him staying in or because they suspect she's running ahead of biden and this could be something to help biden reconsider which is basically what that reporter asked at the very end there. I would like to believe that it is responsible people trying to explore all options here. I am worried, however, that since the gist of most of the Biden high command thus far has been to survive at all costs, that there's nothing that some of them at least would

like more than a poll that shows her doing worse than Biden, that they can go set people. Because according to that Times story, they have been using that in discussions with donors and members of Congress and others, which is, yeah, Biden may be in trouble, but if Biden leaves, you're getting Kamala, and Kamala is definitely losing. And if they had a piece of data to prove that, I worry that some of them at least would use it. I don't think all of them, because I think some of these advisors who we just referenced are trying to find the right path here. And in trying to understand the right path, you do want to know what Kamala Harris's prospects against Trump would be. Yeah. And they do seem to be, it seems like their strategy is saying, one, if it's not Biden, it has to be Kamala.

There is no process where there's an open primary or convention or some other way for another potential candidate to win. And then, two, Kamala can't win. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, some some Biden advisers are saying that to reporters. They're pushing that around some of them as a way to sort of stop the the groundswell of Democrats wanting Biden to drop out. What do you make of the the the drip, drip, drip of of members coming out against Biden? Just it's like a very weird every couple hours. There's another statement. And like, do you think it's more do you think they think they're influencing Biden to drop out that it's part of that effort?

Or is it about their own races? Or is it about both? I think it's both right for some members who are either coming out in support of Biden or against Biden who are in safe districts. It doesn't matter what they say about. It's not going to affect their their chance of winning reelection, and Biden's not going to bring them down in their district. So it's a very safe and probably honest decision. For some of these members in competitive districts, they feel they are getting their polls back, and their polls are bad, and they are bad. And this is the exact

time, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday of this week is when you would get a poll back that you people in the party who work on elections that Joe Biden's chances of winning are quite long and that he is likely to bring down the House and the Senate with him. And they would very much like him to withdraw. Those people may be right. They may be wrong. But that is how people feel. And there has been this huge chasm between what people are saying publicly and what they believe privately. And they keep waiting for someone else to go ahead to do it because no one wants to be the one who does it. But that is sort of where we are. And as more people do it, it's like the water is warm in this pool. Hop in. I just want to... Because I'm sure that people who are following this story

or listening to us or just watching it unfold on Twitter and on their screens and on television, you know, don't quite understand this because so many of these conversations are private. But it's not just like a majority of people we're talking to in the party. It's not like an overwhelming majority. I have not had one person that I've talked to. And we have both talked to so many people of like people, different ideological backgrounds, men, women, black, Latino, gays, like literally everyone we've ever worked with in democratic politics.

I haven't had one person say to me, he should definitely stay in. What, like, come on, this is crazy. Like he's the best shot that we have. No one has said that. No one has said that. And you can tell with some of these, and a lot of people are like, hey, thanks for what, you know, I'm glad you guys are speaking

up because we, you know, a lot of us can't. And for good reason, a lot of these people have contracts, they're working, it's their jobs, right? Like they can't speak up. Like I totally get that. I had one person who's connected with the campaign, like reach out to me and I was like, uh-oh, I'm going to get in trouble. And then they're like, the polls are really bad. We got to get more of these bad polls out on television because that maybe that's the only way that Biden might reconsider because I don't think he's getting the right information from his senior advisors. And he needs to see that some of the polls are really bad. Like that's the, that's what we're hearing. So just, just so people know. And the other thing we're hearing is just like, I mean, these are rumors, but you hear them from

everyone, which, and I think it's sort of borne out by some of how Biden's approached this, is he's not talking to people who think he should drop out. Yes. You're not allowed to bring him bad information right now. Yes. He did not go to the House or the Senate caucus. He has not brought the House and the Senate down to meet with them, which is a huge flag because if there was one thing that Joe Biden we know loves to do, it's talk to members of Congress. Pick up a phone. He'd call them. He'd have them down. That is his superpower. And he has not done that. He is not seeing the polls. He's clearly seeing different polls. And he doesn't seem to believe polls anyway, as he said in this press conference today. polls anyway, as he said in this press conference today. And so that is sort of the situation that we are in, but we've been in the staring match for two weeks and we're still in this staring match where ultimately it's up to Joe Biden. Well, let's talk about the timing here because

so we have the Republican convention next week. A lot of media attention will turn to that. Starts on Monday. Like you said, Biden does have a sit down interview Monday night with Lester Holt. And then we've got the Republican convention. We've got Trump will name his VP candidate then, if not before then, right? Like we could have it Friday, we can have it Monday, Tuesday. And then after the Republican convention, then we're getting pretty close to when the DNC wants to schedule this virtual roll call vote so that Joe Biden can get on the ballot in Ohio, which seems like even though they scheduled that before the debate, it does seem like convenient for them that they can officially nominate him well before the August convention so

that they can finally close this conversation once and for all. Like, do you think that Joe Biden can just run out the clock here? I do. I do think he can run out the clock. Absent a mass public revolt from elected Democrats, including the leaders of the House and the Senate, no one can force him to do this. There is no mechanism to do it. Right. Oh, definitely. Yeah. And so if he is committed under all scenarios to winning, if he needs to be proven that he can't win, which is what he said in the press conference, that is a test that cannot be met. People are going to say it's unlikely you can win. People can bring data to him to say it looks like from the data that Kamala Harris has a better chance to win or Gretchenchen Whitmer or whoever else Josh Shapiro they can show him all that data but no one's going to show him data that says you can't win because he can't right

because he like it of course it's possible for him to win of course yeah I mean anything's anything's possible and so I like we'll see what happens I in the press conference he did make a slight pivot where he in in the previous interviews, he said this conversation is over. The very pugnacious, I think pretty arrogant letter that they sent to Congress that addressed no concerns. That was like, this is over. Shut up.

Get on board. He did imply here, and it is, you know, it's hard to know like what is really sending a signal and what's just an answer, but that he believed he still had more concerns to a switch, right? And so it seemed like maybe that process was, and he got asked a follow-up that Scripps reporter at the end asked great questions, I would say. Really great questions. And one of them was, does that mean the conversation is not over? And he didn't really answer it, but it was not as, he did not sound as definitive as he had before. So I don't know whether that's a shift in his mentality or just a shift in his public attitude about it.

Because many people have pointed out, I mean, you guys talked about this a lot on Tuesday's pod, that that sort of attitude was turning off members of Congress. It was making the problem worse because it was angering them in how it was approaching. And so maybe he's, I don't know whether he's changed his attitude or he's changed his language around it. So Joe Scarborough said this morning on Joe Biden's favorite television show, Morning Joe, that the Biden campaign told him that they think our old boss, Barack Obama, is orchestrating the push to get Biden to drop out. He also said Joe Biden is, quote, deeply resentful of his treatment under the Obama staff. And the New York Times wrote that Mr. Biden's advisors think that David Axelrod and the Pod Save America bros are, quote,

operatives who worked for a cerebral cool guy president and never understood the world, according to the scrappy kid from Scranton. Care to respond, my fellow elitist pod bro? Bond, my fellow elitist pod bro? I would say I have tried to maintain a very even temper through this process. I have not been fighting people on Twitter. I have stopped looking. Yeah, you've been the best of all of us. You've been very- Or the worst, one of the two.

But I've been the most offline of us, at least in terms of my public- Yes, you have, for sure. So I've tried not to do that because I find this situation very personally uncomfortable because we know all the people who work on those campaigns. They are friends of ours. We are still staffers at heart. I still, to this day, and I always check in my head, I always think, how is what I'm saying... It doesn't change what I say, but I think about it. Was what I'm going to say make the job of the people who used to have my jobs harder, right? So to anger them, upset them the way people did that to me. But this, that New York

Times piece just pissed me off to no end. Because the idea that we are doing this, that we are raising questions about whether Joe Biden can win purely out of personal animus is so fucking infuriating because I love Joe Biden. I grew up in Delaware. My first political experience in my life was meeting Joe Biden in second grade at a fair, right? Because I'm a fucking nerd. When I was 12, I followed his primary campaign because I thought it was really cool that someone from my state that I had met could be president of the United States. When I went to college in Washington, you know what first thing I did? Go intern for Joe Biden, right?

It's always been incredibly decent and good to me. Like called me when I got my first job in the White House. Visited me when I got promoted once. Just great to my family. Love the guy. And it's just the way that the idea that this is somehow some personal attack on Joe Biden because he didn't go to an Ivy League school or I don't understand Scranton or we don't

understand Scranton is just so infuriating. It's infuriating personally, but it's more infuriating because it explains why they have fucked up the response to this debate so bad. Because it's not about Joe Biden. It is not. Everything is now about Joe Biden. It's people are mad at him. They don't get him. Me, me, me, me, me, me, me. And it's about this election, which Joe Biden himself has said is the most important election of our time, the democracy at stake. And we can have a good faith disagreement without doing this. And then just as a political operative, it's just the incompetence of spending your time fighting Patsy of America, David axelrod george clooney and the most popular figure and the most popular figure in the democratic party at a time when you are

struggling with black voters is fucking insane and again and i don't and i don't know who's doing it in the white house and like i i believe firmly that it's not the people that that we know they're friends with not just because they wouldn't do that to us but because i think they're smarter than this because this is this is just like really stupid shit and the reason we're bringing it up in the new york times is we know because reporters are reaching out to us that the biden white house is is just pushing around stuff on us i had multiple calls from reporters today asking uh saying that two white house sources told them that um i wrote george clooney's op-ed. That's the rumor out there that a bunch of outlets

were ready to go with until they finally reached out for me. They think that I was writing George Clooney's op-ed. I mean, it was a very well-written op-ed, so it's kind of a compliment. I know, I probably should have just taken credit for it. But I'm like, guys, just don't, but my thing is, do whatever you want to us, it's fine. Like, you have bigger fucking fish to fry.

That's the point. Like, this is not, what are you, like, why are you spending time on us for go fucking just beat donald trump or like help your candidate be on message and deliver a message and all it's also like oh we're all cerebral blah blah if he was the scrappy kid from scranton i'd be fucking thrilled we've been advocating that for a couple years now every time he does scranton versus park ave and he talks about like you know fighting for middle class folks and working class folks i love that joe biden the joe biden i don't love is talking about fucking nato all the time domestic nato yeah and just like doing doing like the ethereal democracy stuff that's all like you know rhetoric

and nothing else or he's just always talking about foreign policy like i want him to talk about middle class stuff he's good at that that's who he is the idea that like they're doing this fucking trump grievance bullshit that like everyone's counting joe biden now but it's just so silly it's so silly it's just and it's so counterproductive they're so focused on remaining the nominee that they've lost the thread that the goal here is to be re-elected president they're just mad and i get it i'd be mad too yeah i would hate us i'd be very mad at us too i'd be very mad at us too i would try to prevent myself from doing something politically counterproductive for the campaign and the candidate through my anger like i might like i might tp our house right or put a flaming bag of dog shit on your front step but i wouldn't

make it a core part of our message to the New York Times. Yeah. No, I don't think taking on podcasters and elites. To mourning, Joe. Again. Again. The elites on their side are okay. Alright, two quick things before we go to break. Exciting

announcement. Next week we'll have five straight episodes of Pod Save America. That's a new episode every day, Tuesday through Saturday. We'll be doing a rap show for every night of the Republican Convention. Fun. Posting overnight. And then on Friday the 19th, we will be live in Madison, Wisconsin, for the Democracy or Else tour with our pal Ben Wickler, chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. Head to Crooked.com slash events to grab tickets now. Also, in case you haven't listened yet, Killing Justice from Crooked Media and The Branch

follows the reporting and legal fallout from the death of a prominent Indian judge. Host Ravi Gupta, our old friend and colleague, examines the conflicting evidence to answer how one man's death has become a magnet for the increasingly polarized politics in India and what this means for the future of the world's largest democracy.

You can binge all eight episodes now on Apple or Spotify. For ad-free episodes, you can join Friends of the Pod at crooked.com slash friends. Okay, when we come back, we're going to talk about the Biden campaign's strategy to weather the storm and the latest with Trump's VP search. Let's give the Biden campaign its due here and talk about their case that the president can still win. On Thursday morning, the campaign circulated a memo laying out Biden's path to victory. So they also sent three of Biden's closest advisers, Jen O'Malley Dillon, campaign manager, Steve Reschetti and Mike Donilon, two of Biden's longest serving aides, to Capitol Hill to meet with Senate Democrats. Must have been a fun meeting for them. And former Biden chief of staff Ron Klain sat down for an interview with Greg Sargent on his New Republic podcast. So in the memo, the campaign acknowledges, quote, real movement in their polling, including some movement from undecided

voters to Trump. But they say most of the movement was driven by historically Democratic constituencies moving to undecided. They argue in the memo that Biden can get those voters back, that they still have a path to 70, though they're pretty much focused on Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. They said the Sunbelt states are not out of reach, but they think that the blue wall is the path now. And they also say there's no indication from the data that any other candidate would do better than Biden against Trump. And they maintain that the battlegrounds remain, quote, margin of error races, though they didn't cite any specific data. This also came up in Ron Klain's interview with Greg Sargent. Let's listen.

Look, I think the data would be if we were ahead and we aren't. I don't think this is something about like, oh, I'm going to show you a bunch of numbers and the numbers are going to tell you I'm right. I'll say the piece of data that is on the president's side is he cares about people like me, shares my values, all those things. He's doing very well in those metrics. I think that really matters in the end. I think we live in an era of identity politics, character politics. I think though, Ron, what people want to hear is something a little more like this. We know we're down. We know we're struggling in particular with these voter groups, and here's how we're going to get them back. Can you give us something more like that?

I think that we need to win the voters who have doubts about both candidates. And what I'd say is in that respect, Trump is more like the incumbent, where if you're at this stage in the game and you're not a Trump voter, we have doubts about voting. But I think if you're not a Trump voter, you're going to come home to Joe Biden. So we don't know exactly what Jen and Steve and Mike said to the Democratic senators today, but Punchbowl reported that things got, quote, heated in the room with senators saying they're, quote, being put in an untenable position defending something that so many of their constituents felt was obvious. Dick Blumenthal, senator from Connecticut, was the only one to give a readout. The rest of them said they weren't supposed to talk.

Blumenthal said, in part, some of my concerns have been allayed. Some have been deepened. said in part, some of my concerns have been allayed, some have been deepened. And he also said, quote, I need to see more data and analytics that show a path to victory. So I know you did a whole polo coaster on Biden's polling that just dropped because I listened this morning. What do you make of the campaign's argument about the state of the race and why they can still win it? I think the memo was very telling because they admit that they are behind. They admit that they have lost voters to Trump. And when you say the races in the battleground states and the three you need are in margin of error, it means you're behind

within the margin of error. Because if they were winning, they would say it. Of course, yeah. And I think that's just important because so much of the conversation about what Joe Biden should do has to be based on a shared fundamental understanding of the state of the race. And for the first 10 days or so of this long conversation we've been a part of, there have been the people saying that the race is still a toss-up, the race is still a toss-up. This is the Biden campaign telling you that while they believe they have a path to victory, they are behind and that they have most likely an incredibly narrow path to get to 270. They may think they can still get there, but they are behind in every single battleground state.

And that is what these senators are seeing. And I think the Biden campaign polls, and they could very well be more correct, but they are better than in these battleground states than a lot of the internal polls we're seeing. We have heard about polls with Biden down 10 in Pennsylvania, right? There was a public poll that has Biden down six in Wisconsin. These would be outside of the margin of error, unless it's a very small sample. And so, yeah, they're in a tough spot. Can they get there? What I think the memo and Ron's interview is lacking, and I'm going to get back to Ron in a second, but is a path of how Biden actually does the persuasion. Right? Like, yes, these are the voters you need. Yes, many of them are double haters. They don't like Trump, but they also don't like Biden. they don't like Trump, but they also don't like Biden. Historically, and this is a historical election, but historically, the undecided voters tend to break against the incumbent. I don't know that I buy that this time necessarily because Biden and Trump have 100% name ID and

they're kind of both incumbents. Two incumbents. Two incumbents. But to Ron's point, if you weren't for Trump before, but if you weren't for Biden before, right, if you hadn't decided to vote against Trump already, you know, what's going to make you do it? And also, if you weren't for Trump before, it doesn't really fit with everything we've heard in focus groups of voters. Like, we have heard focus groups of Trump-Biden voters, they voted for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 20, who say, I think I'm going to go back to Trump. I think if you were never for Trump, it would be hard to imagine you being for Trump for the first time, though I'm sure there's still some of those voters. But there was a good chunk of Trump-Biden voters in 2020. And I think from all the focus groups and all the polls, Biden's having some real trouble with those voters. I think the other thing that was telling in that memo is, so they acknowledge that they're behind. They acknowledge that some of the voters have

moved from undecided to Trump. And then some traditional democratic constituencies have moved from Biden to undecided, right? And they think they can get those back. So let's say, so those are probably younger voters, Latino voters, probably some younger black men, right? These are some of the constituencies that they've been having trouble with. Even if they have a plan to consolidate those voters, as they say is possible, give them that they can do this. They're still behind and they have still lost some of those voters to Trump post-debate. And so like a lot of the memo was talking about how to get those traditional Democratic constituencies back.

But even if you get them back, I think you still have a couple points to make up. It kind of depends on how, what you believe the voter universe to be. If you think it is going to be a lower turnout election, then you may not need to do that. Then you can get there. Like this is why the likely voter screen

matters so much in these polls. How tight is that screen? And the tighter it gets, we know the better it is for Biden. But it's also the other way to think about this is people don't have to vote. They're not required to. So moving to undecided, even if they're never going to Trump, the other option is not vote. A Biden voter who doesn't vote is a net gain of one for Trump. And so that's still a loss for Biden.

And so- Who is ahead. Right, right. It is, but Trump was ahead before. Trump was ahead by more now. Impressions of Biden in the public polling are worse before. Like in that New York Times-Siena poll that came out after the debate, percentage of voters who thought he would,

and I think it's always smart the way the New York Times asks the question, too old to be an effective president has gone up five points to 74% of voters think that. And so he's just in a very, very tough position. And if we're being just, Brian said something in the press conference about how some, I think he said like four or five incumbent presidents had had numbers worse than his at this point in the campaign. I didn't know what he was talking about. I mean, someone gave him that piece of information, I assume. I'd be curious to know what it is.

To my knowledge, there's not- Couldn't be in modern times. Well, I mean- I mean- The polling's only been around for so long. If you go through the president, it's kind of hard to see what it is. But in my mind, I cannot think of a incumbent president

in modern times who'd ever come back from being behind at this point in the race. Yeah, I mean, the incumbent presidents that had approval ratings around Biden, approval ratings are Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush, who went on to lose both of them. And both of their approval ratings were higher than Biden's. That's a little bit of an apple star just because of polarization. Right. But so let's get back to your uh point about like so what what would biden have to do how does biden turn it around right like what because

if they're if these impressions of biden are worse than they were before the debate if trump is ahead you get the campaign has spent all of june running tens of millions of dollars of ads in the swing states, largely unchallenged by Trump. Trump, they've outspent Trump through most of June. That will not happen for the next couple of months. It's worse than that. They've outspent him since January. Trump has spent almost no money on air. So their spending advantage on ads will disappear soon and they might actually be outspent by the Trump campaign. And that has not moved the needle. We have talked a million times about the central challenge of this campaign is getting voters attention. And now that this first debate happened, certainly got people's attention, not in a great way. Now they have the democratic

convention, which as we said before, is watched largely by partisans or people who have decided already. So I and then Biden mentioned something about it the next at the press conference tonight. He mentioned something about the next debate. And I'm like, I don't you know, Donald Trump has already said, I don't want to put Joe through that again, which is, of course, that's what you would do if you were Donald Trump. That is the smarter play for him. which is, of course, that's what you would do if you were Donald Trump. That is the smarter play for him. So I don't understand how Biden is...

I'm just trying to see a path for him to go change people's impressions of him in the next several months. You're going to have to get really lucky, right? The plan here is hold on, make some improvements, have Joe Biden pitch a perfect game the rest of the way, and have Trump implode in some way, shape or form. Plus some good economic news, right? You're going to theoretically get a rate cut in September, as Biden pointed out, inflation actually came down, prices came down for the first time since the pandemic. But yeah, it's very, very hard to see how you do that. These impressions have been locked in. One thing I would say is, it's sort of funny because

yesterday when it seemed like Biden had this thing locked up, he was going to be the nominee, I was like, you know what? I'm going to try to be constructive. I'm going to write a whole message box about what the path is for. Because I think Democrats are, we're in a death spiral right now with Biden in the race, which is Democrats said, convince us that you've got what it takes to win and you can stay in the race. But then he didn't convince them and he stayed in the race anyway. And so now he's in the race and the Democrats are running away from him. So it's like this death spiral. So I decided to write a message box about how should we get out of this death spiral? What should Biden do? And then I woke up this morning and then George

Clinton had an op-ed and it all fell apart. But one of the points I think we have to recognize is- That I spent a lot of time on. Yeah, that you worked. I mean, give me a fucking heads up, buddy. It's like anyone who fucking knows me knows I can't write anything longer than a fucking tweet. John, John, you wrote a book. It just came out last month. I did. I did. I needed three other people to do that. That's right. One of the things is he's needed three other people to do that. That's right. One of the things is he's never going to solve the age problem.

It's an unsolvable problem. Nothing is solved. It's been the same this whole time. They spent all this money on ads. He had this great state of the union. He's managed national crises. He's got a lot of attention like Ukraine and Gaza, even if they have turned, especially Gaza has turned out to be a huge political problem.

And it's never changed. It's just gotten worse over time. And you can't convince people that you shouldn't be concerned about an 82-year-old signing up for four more years. So I think what you're going to have to do, and with the one that you probably can't do, and this is a suboptimal approach. I want to be very clear about that. Yeah, no, no. We're trying to be constructive and make the best case because if he stays in, we're all making it, right?, we're going to have to, we're all making it right. We're all going to have to try our hardest.

Is he's going to have to run a Rose garden campaign of sorts, right? He's like this idea that he should go out and like campaign 17 times a day and do these like huge press conferences and like restart the straight talk express. Like he's John McCain. That's a disaster because he can, that's a test. He will fail.

Can't do that. He cannot do that. And the more he works on these, like in North Carolina and Wisconsin, he can do these like energetic rally prompter speeches where he's better on prompter than he is just sort of taking questions and sitting down for interviews but i don't know how well those get covered right like i don't know how those how like low info voters who is the exact people that he needs to consolidate are going to like catch those events and to do if you're going to undertake that strategy a couple things one

biden and his team have to be much smarter about getting attention like this they have shied away a lot of times for sort of they've gotten better in recent months about trying like seeking out conflict that's how like seeking out that debate oops Oops. But it's like, like you're not. But this is the problem is like, they have a lot of creative, smart ideas about how to get attention, but all those ideas require Joe Biden and they don't want to use Joe Biden because they are worried that what happened at the debate will happen again. This is, but this has been their problem the whole time. Okay. So that's one. I think two is Kamala Harris has to be everywhere. Yeah. Right. They have resisted putting her out there,

I think for some ego reasons there. The traditional VP candidate is off-Broadway. They're in the secondary markets. They're not doing the big interviews. Kamala Harris should be everywhere because even though the VP happens on the margins, in terms of how people think about it, people are going to think very seriously about what role Kamala Harris is going to play over the next four years if Joe Biden's reelected. And she's the best messenger on the ticket by a factor of 1 million. And so she- And especially recently, she's been great. Her events, if you've caught clips of her events, they're fantastic. And what is she best at talking about? Abortion, democracy,

the rule of law with a convicted felon on the other side, and the Supreme Court. The rule of law with a convicted felon on the other side and the Supreme Court. The issues that do that. And then the other thing just – and I'll leave some of it for the message box I'll write one day when this conversation is over – but is admit you're behind. Become the underdog. The campaign – I think this is Biden, not the campaign – refuses to admit that. Because what you want people to do is you want them to focus like a laser on the idea that Donald Trump could be president of the United States. And that even if you don't like Biden, even if he's too old, you got these two choices and the other one is

fucking scary. And so you have to put that in people's mind. But if you keep saying, I'm going to win, I'm going to win, like it's a toss-up race, then that's not going to... You need people who don't love you, don't think you should be president to vote for you because they're so fucking scared of the other guy. And until you center in their mind that he could win,

you're going to fail at that task. Listen to the experts. The experts say that my economic plan is the best. Listen to the experts. Not experts. 16 Nobel Prize winning economists. Yeah, you can do it.

You know what he should be he should be the scrappy kid from scranton yeah and i would realize that's a very cerebral thing to say but i i think that's that would be the that's his best bet all right speaking of the uh the convention coming up uh as we were preparing to record this podcast we got word that the rnc adopted a new rule that says trump can announce his running mate at the last absolute minute basically up to an hour before the delegates officially vote. So we may have to wait a bit longer, but who knows when he's going to announce that. On Wednesday, Trump went on Brian Kilmeade's Fox News radio show to talk about the

leading contenders in depth. Let's listen. On your vice president's candidate, word is that you won't pick J.D. Vance because of his facial hair. Is that true? No. I've never heard that one. Number two, Doug Burgum, the thing that hurts... He looks like a young Abraham Lincoln. He's a handsome man. Doug Burgum

on abortion in North Dakota. He signed something legislation handed him. Does that hurt him? It's an issue. And lastly, Marco Rubio. Everything's an issue. Marco Rubio, being from Florida, would that stop you from picking him? No, but it does make it more complicated.

You know, you do that, and it makes it more complicated. There are people that don't have that complication. Now, it's fairly easily fixed, but you have to do something with delegates or there has to be a resignation, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Care to do any tea leaf reading from Mr. Trump's comments?

I mean, the best part of that by far is when Brian Kilmeade says that J.D. Vance is a handsome man and then Trump rejects the notion and says, ah, he's a nice guy. Like he'll accept the beard. That might have just killed J.D. Vance's chances right there. That's right. He'll accept the idea that his beard is okay, but he will not accept the idea

that he might be handsome, which he's not in Trump's defense. No, no, that is true. That is true. So really, listen to this. It seems like Doug Burgum, who I have always had as the leading contender, is a no-go. If you spend as much time and energy as Republicans doing trying to lie about your abortion record with this absurd stuff in the platform, it seems like a weird choice to then pick someone who signed one of the most oppressive abortion bans in the country. And so the Marco Rubio thing doesn't sound like he's picking them. But then if you, as I know you did, there was this incredible

story by Tim Alberta and the Atlantic where he had an ungodly amount of access to Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, the Trump campaign honchos. And they just really unburdened themselves in a way that really should motivate all of us to defeat Donald Trump because that will be a fun fucking read afterwards because they are cocky as hell about how Trump's going to easily win. fucking read afterwards because they are cocky as hell about how Trump's going to easily win. They're very cocky. Yeah, I alternated between terrified and also like, this is pretty cocky. Yeah, I think terrified is the right approach, but these people are also huge narcissists. But if you read that and what their targets are and how they're thinking about this election,

it really would... Based on that alone, it seems like that they would lean towards someone like Marco Rubio, because they seem to be going for the kill shot. Their targets are young Black men and Latinos. And so if Marco Rubio is truly there, that would do it. Now, Don Jr. gave an interview somewhere that I heard, excerpted on Hacks on Tap, where he basically came out against Marco Rubio because he thought he was an establishment figure that would be undermining Trump and would basically be like working back channels with the rhinos to try to undermine the MAGA agenda. We also learned from Axios today that Don Jr. will now be speaking at the convention right before the VP nominee and that his favorite is J.D. Vance. J.D. Vance is like the MAGA favorite, right? Like true MAGA. He's going to be the next

one to lead the movement he he is a more articulate spokesperson for the like the maga ideology if you will then certainly than donald trump anyone's more articulate spokesman for for anything than donald trump but i thought that bergen would be like the safer pick the abortion thing is interesting i thought he would be the safer pick. The abortion thing is interesting. I thought he would be the safer pick just because it's like guy who won't overshadow Trump. He, you know, like the Wall Street Journal editorial board is fine with them. Some of the Republicans that you were worried, that's probably the Haley Republicans are fine with Doug Burgum. He's rich. He could cut a check. Now that Donald Trump and his campaign think they are headed for a landslide,

which they do, according to that Tim Alberta piece. The piece, by the way, is called Joe Biden is a gift. They said they say that Joe Biden is a gift and they're like worried that he will drop out of the race because they have organized their entire campaign around beating him and think that they can do so soundly. Now that they think that they are heading for a big win, you could see them want to maybe we'll take a chance on the vp and we'll pick jd vance and uh you know and we'll make it an all maga ticket or all super maga ticket ultra maga whatever

you want to call it and we'll go with who don jr in the in the crew like i don't know i could see that yeah i just i don't jd vance brings nothing to me politically absolutely nothing yeah i agree i think he's the worst choice politically of all that group other than I imagine he would probably survive a debate. Yeah.

I think the MAGA faithful like him too. Yeah, but he doesn't need that, right? Like he needed Pence for like he needed Pence as validation of the evangelicals. He does not need J.D. Vance to validate him with MAGA voters.

The smarter choice would be Rubio. You're right. It would be the smarter choice. But I don't know if they'll, they're feeling good right now. It's right. Are they going to be risk adverse because they're up

or are they going to put the, are they going to really, yeah. Push it. That's exactly right. Well, we shall see. Could happen any moment now. That's our show for today. Next week's the Republican Convention.

Again, we're going to be taping the show every night. Get ready, Dan. It's going to be fun. I will be live. We will be live together every single night. Not live. We will be in person together every single night. Thank goodness. And then we'll be flying to beautiful Milwaukee and Madison. It's going to be great. Everyone have

a great weekend and we will talk to you next week. Bye, everyone. If you want to get ad-free episodes, exclusive content, and more, consider joining our Friends of the Pod subscription community at crooked.com slash friends. And if you're already doom-scrolling, don't forget to follow us at Pod Save America on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube for access to full episodes, bonus content, and more. Plus, if you're as opinionated as we are,

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