Why Democrats shouldn't worry about Biden
Why Democrats shouldn't worry about Biden
Video Transcript
RICK NEWMAN: From Yahoo Finance, this is "Electionomics." I'm Rick Newman.
ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: And I'm Alexis Christoforous. Welcome to another edition of "Electionomics." Today, we are going to talk about the convergence of the coronavirus pandemic and politics. Is President Trump's handling of this crisis causing cracks in the Republican Party?
And we are delighted to have with us Elaine Kamarck. She's a political scholar and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. She's also the author of "Primary Politics." And by the way, she's worked for a few Democratic campaigns in her day.
Elaine, good to have you here. Both Rick and I read your most recent article at Brookings. And in it, you talk about how this pandemic may have brought about what you call the first faint cracks in the Republican wall of support for Trump. Lay that out for us. How so?
ELAIN KAMARCK: OK. Well, and thank you, by the way, for having me on this morning. As you probably know, the Republican Party, particularly in the Congress, has been incredibly unified behind Donald Trump.
Even through impeachment, even in many of the things he's done that they've privately grumbled about, they've really been a unified wall. We are seeing faint cracks in that wall of support. And my guess is that if the public re-elect numbers tend to go in the direction they're going, those cracks will turn into real cracks as opposed to faint cracks.
The first place we saw these cracks was with the governors. You know, Trump, at one point, tried to say that he was in charge of the country, and that what he said, governors had to do. Well, that's not true. It's not even constitutional.
And when we looked at the governors and how they were-- whether they were following the Trump model or not, what we found is that, of the Republican governors, about 1/3 of them were kind of echoing Trump.
Another third we're giving a little lip service to Trump, but basically running their own ideas in terms of their states. And another 1/3 were simply saying, no, we're not opening. The science isn't there yet. We're not going to-- we're not doing that.
So that was the first crack, is among the governors. And the second one-- yeah?
RICK NEWMAN: Go ahead. No, just continue, please.
ELAIN KAMARCK: Yeah, no. The second one is that their House members, moderate Republican House members, are really nervous. They see themselves losing their seats. A lot of Republican House members who were moderates lost in 2018. A lot of those House members see them losing their seats.
Among the Republicans in the Senate, there's an odd business going on. First of all there's, you know, not the whole Senate is up. But the Senate campaign committee actually put out a memo suggesting to their senate candidates and their senate incumbents that, when asked about the virus, the response should focus not on defending Trump, but on China.
Now, that was a real insight as to what the professionals see in this Senate Republican races, which is, there's a sudden a lot of vulnerable Republican senators, and the Senate could flip.
Obviously, in response to this memo, the White House got very angry. The authors of the memo said, oh, no, no, no, that's not what it means. But it was one of those things that gave you a little bit of an insight into where people's heads were.
And finally, there's a group that has been always never Trumpers. They were allies of the Bush family and allies of governor John Kasich, so they were never Trump supporters.
But they have actually formed a group called the Lincoln Project, and they're running ads. And there's an ad called "Mourning in America," M-O-U-R-N-I-N-G, which, it takes its inspiration from the "Morning in America" ad that made Ronald Reagan-- was so famous in the Reagan campaign.
And that it's a pretty devastating indictment of Trump coming from Republicans. So if you look at the governors, you look at the House and the Senate, and then you look at the Republican operatives who are raising money and putting out these ads, you see a little bit of, as I said in the piece, a faint crack in the Republican support for the President.
ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Elaine, who in particular is Trump at risk of losing here? I mean, last time around, he had a strong showing with seniors, with older voters. I'm curious how they are feeling about him right now during this pandemic, which has hit their demographic group very hard.
And also, how is he doing among working class women, a group that he was able to capture last time against Hillary Clinton?
ELAIN KAMARCK: Well, you hit the two groups on the head. I mean, those are the two important groups. We are seeing a definite softening among voters aged 65 and up for Trump, and they have been some of his most loyal followers.
So there's definitely some softening there. And of course, if you think about it against the backdrop of the pandemic, voter people 65 and up are also the most vulnerable people in the population. So we see softening there.
And then even before the pandemic hit, we were seeing definite softening among white working class women. And in fact, if you look at all white women together, and of course, the reason we do this is that black women are so highly supportive of the Democrats, it skews the numbers.
So if you just look at white women, there is a big, big gender gap, maybe the biggest gender gap we have ever seen in American politics. With men being more or less split between Trump and Biden, or Trump and a Democrat, and women, overwhelmingly, sometimes as high as 63% of women are against Trump.
So what has happened is the Democratic, the college white women have always been pretty solidly Democratic. It looks like there are working class white women, non college white women, moving into the Democratic field.
RICK NEWMAN: So of that approval rating, let's call it 44%, that's, I think, 538's composite number. How much of the 44% is the Trump base? Is the whole thing the Trump base, or is there some portion-- I mean, is it only up, you know, 30% out of the 44%, or what's your best guess about that?
ELAIN KAMARCK: You know, that-- it's interesting, Rick, you should ask that. Because of course--
RICK NEWMAN: Nobody knows.
ELAIN KAMARCK: I know. For years, this has been a topic of speculation. I would guess that the Trump base is somewhere around 35% to 40%, OK? And that that-- and I think the real Trump base, the people who would go to his rallies and who will write me nasty emails after you air this program--
RICK NEWMAN: Me too.
ELAIN KAMARCK: Yeah. And you too, right? Yeah. That Trump base is probably more like, 20% to 25%. I think that, I mean, one of the things that some people think we are seeing right now is that, in 2016, there was a lot of anti Hillary voting.
People didn't like Hillary. There was Clinton fatigue. They didn't think that she should be running. There was a lot of anti Hillary voting. Biden doesn't elicit the same kind of dislike that Hillary did.
And so there's a sense that some people who voted for Trump in 2016 will actually be more open to voting for a Democrat in 2020.
RICK NEWMAN: So you know the paranoia among Democrats about Joe Biden, that that, let's call it a 6% margin he seems to have over Trump right now, that Trump has not really come out attacking Joe Biden full boar.
Joe Biden, prone to gaffes, that that 6% lead could evaporate in days or weeks. Do you think-- what do you think is most likely to happen? Do you think Biden can capitalize on that and make it bigger, or do you share the concern that some Democrats, or at least the view that this is a very fragile 6%?
ELAIN KAMARCK: I think that the Democrats who say that are ignoring one thing that we really know about politics in America, and frankly, in other democracies. Which is, elections are always about incumbents, all right? They're not about the challenger.
Now, sometimes incumbents can try to make the election about the challenger. But in this kind of situation where the incumbent, first of all, is so omnipresent on the stage and so omnipresent in the minds of the voters, and where the incumbent has been in the middle of a huge national catastrophe.
It's hard to imagine that the Republicans are going to be able to make this election about Joe Biden. It's one thing to do it when there's no incumbent. It's one thing to do when it's Trump versus Hillary and neither one of them is in office.
It's quite another thing to try to make it about your opponent when you're the incumbent. And I think that that is what the Democrats who are nervous forget. This is about Trump. This will be about Trump.
ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: You know, Elaine, you've seen the ads coming from the Trump camp already targeting Biden when it comes to his relationship with China. I mean, Trump really ran on this anti China sentiment. It's been present throughout his presidency.
And now with the virus seemingly coming from China, you know, he's digging in his heels even more. Do you think that that's a successful, I'm going to call it political strategy, because it seems like this anti China sentiment is just that, it's a strategy. Do you think it's enough to turn things around for him and give him a real fighting chance in November?
ELAIN KAMARCK: No, I don't. I think it's like a lot of the, you know, let me step back for a minute. President Trump has a problem taking advice, right? And he doesn't take advice from his own aides about what he should be doing, how he should be positioning himself, et cetera.
The China strategy strikes me as a strategy guaranteed to rev up his base and turn out his base. But it is not a strategy, I think, that will, in fact, get sort of moderate voters to come over to him.
And I want to go back for a minute to 2018. In 2018, Trump was-- Trump's strategists were, you know, standard Republican strategists, many of whom I know. They're good guys. They're smart political operatives, said to him, make this election about the economy.
The economy's great. That's your strong suit. Trump, what did he do? He made the election about immigration and the wall, OK? He turned that election into immigration, and consequently lost a lot of moderate Republicans, particularly women, in a lot of these swing seats, allowing the Democrats to take over the Congress.
His tendency is to turn down an expert advice and always play to his base. Well, the problem with always playing to his base is that there is no evidence that his base is sufficient to win an election without having included in the base sort of what I call a normal Republican vote, and a vote against somebody else.
So I don't think the China strategy-- I think the China strategy is one strategy. I don't think it's sufficient.
RICK NEWMAN: Elaine, you read political atmospherics probably better than we do. What do you see Trump's strategy being, especially as we get into the home stretch in the fall? Is it going to be-- I mean, he can't run, really, on the economy at all.
Is it going to be his excellent, unprecedented, beautiful handling of the coronavirus crisis, or do you think he'll just retreat to immigration because that's safe ground for him, or what?
ELAIN KAMARCK: I think he'll do two things. I think we already see him doing, day after day, saying things that are palpably untrue about the coronavirus. And the big one, I think it was yesterday, maybe the day before, was when he appeared in the rose garden with that huge sign behind him saying, America is, you know, winning at testing, testing more than anybody else.
And of course, yes, we are testing in numbers more than anybody else. But that's because we're a really big country. And per capita, we are not testing more than anybody else. So it's a little sleight of hand.
He is incredibly defensive about his handling of the coronavirus. I expect that this will make it into ads. And look, let's face it. He does it every single day. He is trying to promote an alternative story, an alternative narrative about his handling of the crisis.
So I think he'll continue to do that, try to convince Americans that he's handled it correctly. And I think he will, as we were talking a minute ago, I think he will continue to try to mobilize his base.
So he will try to stir up anti China resentments, he will try to bring immigration back in here and say, look, I saved us from hordes of disease immigrants coming across the borders. I mean, he'll do that kind of thing.
But his fatal flaw as a political thinker is that he has always played only to his base. When push comes to shove, he just plays to his base. And with approval ratings below 50%, and a crisis going on, and weakness in key demographic groups and key states, I think he has to expand his base.
And he's never shown an inclination to do so, which is different, by the way, than every other president we have known in the modern era. He's always played only to his base. When push comes to shove, he just plays to his base.
And with approval ratings below 50%, in a crisis going on, and weakness in key demographic groups and key states, I think he has to expand his base. And he's never shown an inclination to do so, which is different, by the way, than every other president we have known in the modern era.
ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Elaine, what are the odds that the general election doesn't even happen in November? I mean, I know Trump has talked about likening himself to being a president during wartime in this pandemic.
Might make the argument, look, during this time of super uncertainty, we can't have an election right now and I just need to remain president? How likely is that?
ELAIN KAMARCK: Extremely unlikely. First of all, the Constitution says you must have electors chosen at a certain time in the fall. So if there's a constitutional issue. And the date of the election is actually set by a law that calls for the first Tuesday in November.
This law was passed in 1845. We have had presidential elections in the middle of a civil war, first World War, Second World War, we have always held presidential elections. The only way to change that would be to have the Democratic House of Representatives change the law.
And you would still, then, have a constitutional mandate to dealing with the selection of electors. So this is not going to happen. I mean, it's not going to happen.
Now, the second thing to bear in mind is that one of the interesting things happening in America is that, before this pandemic, we were moving to a situation where most people did not vote at the polling place.
In fact, what most people did is they vote-- what a lot of people did was they voted from home. So let me give you one interesting statistic. In 2018, only 62% of Americans voted in-person at a polling place.
Isn't that interesting? That means that 38% were voting either absentee, in an all paper ballot state, or they were voting at an early voting place. So even before the pandemic, the trend was for people to vote not at the polling places.
And of course, what we've seen in recent months is that trend is picking up in a big way. California now gives counties the option to have an all-male ballot, which everybody gets an absentee ballot. You don't have to remember to request it.
So we're going to be able to have an election in November without putting people at risk. And I can say absolutely categorically, we will have an election.
RICK NEWMAN: So Joe Biden is playing defense right now. I mean, it's probably the prudent thing to do. He's abiding by the stay home procedures in Delaware. He's going to have to come out at some point in some form.
But as a general principle, do you think he can win by playing defense, or does he have to go on the attack more, or outline his own agenda more? And how would he do that when you can't really get close to voters, which is kind of a Biden strength?
ELAIN KAMARCK: Well, you know, there's an old saying among political operatives, which is, never get in the way when your opponent is committing suicide. So that's kind of where people are right now.
As long as President Trump seems to stumble around and have press conferences suggesting that we drink Clorox to prevent the virus, you know, Biden doesn't have to do anything.
Now, what he has been doing, which I think they're learning, everybody's learning as they go along, he's been doing lots and lots of local press in states. And in fact, they even do what's called Google travel days, where they fill up the day on Zoom, or whatever, as we are, talking to local reporters, local TV, local radio, local interest groups, and leaders in the community.
So there is a campaign going on. I think that they hope, as do all Americans, that maybe by August, things will loosen up a little bit and they can start campaigning again.
And I think that that-- if that happens, I think you'll see Biden out there. You'll see him with voters, et cetera. But you've got to think about this for a minute. It's not just Biden. It's Trump that's affected, and it's all the Senate candidates, everybody.
The old fashioned stand on a rope line and shake hands close by and hug, you know, 500 voters after a rally or after a town hall, I can't see any candidates doing that. That is a very high risk strategy.
I can see them maybe going back to doing speeches and rallies and things like that. But the touchy feely politics that we have known and politicians have become familiar with, I can't see that happening in this election cycle in any event.
RICK NEWMAN: I just want to go back where we started. I've been thinking about this a bit more. So you talk about this-- kind of these small fissures in the GOP. I want-- and I wanted to-- I'm just thinking about how big those might get.
There are not many Republicans who will outright criticize President Trump right now. I mean, it's single digits, really. It's Mitt Romney and maybe you can name one or two others. Do you think more Republicans, let's say in Congress, running for re-election, will actually openly criticize Trump because they think it is safe and perhaps even advisable to do so, or is that a bridge too far?
ELAIN KAMARCK: It depends on how unpopular he gets, right? It depends on how unpopular he is in some of these states. And I don't think they will outright criticize Trump, because they still want to keep the Trump voters, that hardcore. They still want to keep them in their camp.
But I think it's-- what's more likely is that they will simply distance themselves from Trump. And the distancing will come in their rhetoric. They'll have policies that are non Trumpian, they will highlight the fact that they work well with Democrats.
I think that they'll distance themselves. You know, in 2018, Trump was not invited to campaign with many Republican members of Congress. He was pretty scarce on the campaign trail.
They didn't-- the vulnerable members of Congress did not want him out there. And I think if the trends continue as they are, what you'll see is the Senate candidates, especially these vulnerable Senate candidates, and there's four at least, and possibly some of these moderate House members will say, please, Mr. President, don't come campaign with us.
RICK NEWMAN: Just real quickly, what is a red alert for Trump in terms of approval rating or re-election rate? Would it be some approval rating below 40%? Would it be 8% Joe Biden lead, 10% Joe Biden lead? What becomes insurmountable to your mind?
ELAIN KAMARCK: I think that his approval ratings have put him in trouble for re-election for the last 3 and 1/2 years. I mean, this is a president who's-- it's pretty unprecedented. He has never gotten to 50%. He cannot get out of the low to mid 40s.
So I think that's already put him in trouble. If he has, at times, dipped to 38%. I think if he starts dipping below 40%, the trouble is even more serious than it is now.
And I think the Biden lead, again, we have to realize that this is an electoral college thing and an electoral college decision, and it's state by state. So California alone, given how Democratic it is, for instance, California had a four million vote advantage for Hillary, and she won nationally by three million votes.
So you can see how California distorts, in a funny way, you know, the national picture. So I think what we have to do is we have to look at swing states. And there, I think, to get Biden up over the hump, he probably needs to be five to 10 points ahead of Donald Trump.
ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: All right, we're going to leave it there. Elaine Kamarck, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of "Primary Politics," great conversation and thanks for stopping by our humble "Electionomics" podcast.
ELAIN KAMARCK: Well, thank you for having me, and be safe, everyone.
ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: All right, you too. And before you go, we just want to make sure folks follow us. I'm @AlexisTVNews. Rick?
RICK NEWMAN: I'm @RickJNewman. And Elaine, if you want to put your Twitter out there so you can get love notes from our many viewers and listeners, feel free.
ELAIN KAMARCK: It's just @ElaineKamarck. That's all, and it gets to me.
ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: That's all she wrote. All right, everybody. Thanks for being with us. Stay safe, and we'll see you next time.