This podcast is all about winning in November, so how does that happen in the political climate of this volatile week? The narrative from Democrats has been evolving each day– so Former Senator Claire McCaskill and former White House Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri walk us through it. Then, The Bulwark’s managing editor Sam Stein stops by, after a week on the ground in Milwaukee for the GOP Convention. They note several strange themes that emerged from the gathering of Republicans, as well as the disconnect between JD Vance’s worldview and Trump’s. But the biggest takeaway was the importance of not losing sight of the stakes this November, as Democrats figure out a path forward.
Note: This is a rough transcript. Please excuse any typos.
Jennifer Palmieri: Hello, welcome to How to Win 2024. It’s Friday, July 19th. I’m Jennifer Palmieri and here with my co-pilot Claire McCaskill, who’s back after a week of vacation, but I feel like I’ve seen you so much that I don’t feel like you’ve been on vacation at all.
Claire McCaskill: I don’t feel like I’ve been on vacation at all. To tell you the truth, I’m flat worn out.
Jennifer Palmieri: I barely remember you being gone, but I guess you were gone. Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: I was gone and believe me, I was tempted to stay gone.
Jennifer Palmieri: I know.
Claire McCaskill: And you know, we have a conversation here every week and I think it’s really important to say at the very top of this week, how emotionally difficult it is for anybody who cares deeply about this process.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: This is really hard stuff. I mean, President Biden is my friend.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah, me too.
Claire McCaskill: And I think people that are out there screeching online one way or the other, I think we got to just take a moment to realize that the reason this is so hard is because it’s painful, emotionally painful.
Jennifer Palmieri: It’s wrenching, it’s emotionally painful, and also it’s such a close call, you know, you feel like the current option isn’t working, but you open door number one and like, what are you unleashing into the world, right? So after the debate, that first weekend when everybody was like, oh, he’s going to drop out, you know, he’s not going to drop out. He’s going to drop out 48 hours after the debate, like, nor should we want him to, like none of that, you know. It’s going to take at least three weeks to sort this out and that’s going to be painful, but that’s okay because you got to get it right and you got to make the best decision you can because of everything that’s at stake. And people talk about, there’s all this infighting of Democrats, it’s like, no, that’s not what’s happening.
Claire McCaskill: No, that’s not.
Jennifer Palmieri: No, what it is, is people are trying to figure it out. People are trying to figure out how’s he doing? Is he up to this? What’s the right thing to do? What’s the responsible thing to do given what’s at stake? And I’m just like grateful that we have the kind of leaders that we have in the House and Senate from Schumer and, you know, Leader Jeffries in the House and obviously Pelosi to kind of help navigate this with their caucuses and understand where they’re coming from and have the credibility to go to the president and tell them what they really think what’s right.
Claire McCaskill: You know, I was thinking about the name of our podcast and the reason that there is so many gut-wrenching discussions and difficult decisions to make is because of the name of this podcast.
Jennifer Palmieri: Right.
Claire McCaskill: It is just everyone is unified around the concept of winning this election.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: And it’s just people have honest disagreements about how to do it. And that shouldn’t be evil. Those that are maintaining that it’s a huge mistake for Biden to move off the ticket, I get it. Those who believe it’s absolutely horrible to think that Biden would remain at the top of the ticket, I get it. And that’s because there’s no easy or simple answer here.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: So we’re going to talk more about all of that.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: We’re also going to talk with Sam Stein, managing editor at “The Bulwark,” who was on the ground in Milwaukee this week at the Republican National Convention. We want to take a hard look at Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, what themes, if any, emerged from Trump’s official coronation other than macho, macho man, and remind people what the stakes are if he’s reelected. So let’s go gut check, if I were in the room. First, we need to acknowledge the —
Jennifer Palmieri: Well —
Claire McCaskill: — the unity the whole country has about the near assassination of Donald Trump and how —
Jennifer Palmieri: Oh, my God. I mean, I still can’t even believe that happened.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah.
Jennifer Palmieri: It’s almost so shocking that we can’t even absorb it. It’s like, you know, it was absorbed in a day. It felt like it was going to have a huge impact on the race. I think it was a very sobering, scary thing and you realize how tenuous this all is, right? You know, the democracy, how we’ve been lucky that rhetoric hasn’t provoked as much, you know, that we haven’t seen more of this, frankly, you know?
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, and listen, I recall no one being irresponsible, anybody who’s been in an elected position or is doing the kinds of things we do every day, Jen. I don’t think anybody has been irresponsible in the way they’ve talked about this. I will say that we do know that the shooter was researching on his phone, not just Trump, but also Biden and also the Democratic National Convention. So this is not somebody, I mean, who’s registered Republican.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: So I do think it’s irresponsible for anyone on the right or the left to try to ascribe to either candidate that they’re totally responsible for this. I do think that Donald Trump has gone places that presidential candidates typically have not gone in terms of how he has talked about political violence.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: And so I’m not going to sit by and accept from the Republicans that this was the Democrats trying to kill Donald Trump or that they are responsible because of their rhetoric. That is not fair. And I don’t think we have to accept that while still being very respectful of the danger that Donald Trump faced and how glad we are that he avoided serious injury.
Jennifer Palmieri: My God, yeah. Okay, because it’s just been so stunning, we’re going to talk about the evolution of the week. So that happened Saturday night, Sunday, is sort of us processing the assassination attempt. Then you have the Lester Holt interview that was on Monday, and even that feels like —
Claire McCaskill: A year ago.
Jennifer Palmieri: — year ago, right. Well, what’s your impression of that? I mean, that was not great. It was not great.
Claire McCaskill: It was not great. I mean, he did pivot and punch a little bit about all of Trump’s lies during the debate, which was good. But —
Jennifer Palmieri: But.
Claire McCaskill: But —
Jennifer Palmieri: But they are, you know, obviously confused during parts of the interview, not following the thread of the conversation. So that happened on Monday. And then Wednesday happens, and I feel like that’s where it all starts to change. You know, Adam Schiff comes out, a close ally of Nancy Pelosi’s. And I’m going to step back to say I am not operating from independent knowledge. I’m stringing things together as someone with experience and an interested observer. I see a week ago Wednesday, Nancy Pelosi does her shot across the bow on “Morning Joe,” right? She says the president needs to make a decision, even the president’s already made a decision and time is running out.
Then Thursday, last week, there’s the press conference after NATO. After the press conference, Hakeem Jeffries goes to the White House right away to talk to the president. We know that a lot of people in the caucus have concerns about him staying. Puts out the statement Friday morning that does not endorse Biden staying in the race. And then we find out this Wednesday, after Schiff goes, we find out that Senator Schumer actually went to Rehoboth last Saturday prior to the assassination attempt to also deliver a very tough message.
And then we see it is revealed to us on Wednesday that the whole House and Senate leadership has already spoken to the president to express their very serious concerns. And obviously, if they had some conclusion other than they thought that he should stay in the race, they would have said so. But that is not what they said.
Claire McCaskill: And I think, first of all, it really is irritating to me. I’m so glad you talked about the leadership in the House and the Senate —
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: — because one of the things that’s really irritating to me is that people think that somehow there’s a room somewhere and these big elite leaders get in that room and go, oh, okay, let’s just kneecap Joe Biden. No.
Jennifer Palmieri: For better or worse —
Claire McCaskill: No.
Jennifer Palmieri: — there’s no smoke filled room, people.
Claire McCaskill: No.
Jennifer Palmieri: There’s no one actually in charge. There’s not 12 people somewhere deciding all this. That is not happening.
Claire McCaskill: And let me pull back the curtain on what has actually happened behind the scenes. Very quietly and very methodically, there was a decision made by important elected officials in our party that we needed to give Joe Biden time, space and grace, as many have said, to hopefully figure out on his own with the help of his family and close staff that maybe exiting the race was going to be a good thing. That did not happen. So I think most of the battleground state Senate candidates waited seven to 10 days before going into the field with a poll because you want to wait, Jen, as you know —
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: — at least a week after an event to begin polling to see if it’s had an impact. And they ask questions like, would it impact your vote for, let’s just say, hypothetically, Jackie Rosen if she continued to assert on the campaign trail that Joe Biden was capable of serving out another four and a half years as president. And they had those numbers.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: And all of these battleground state Senate candidates, which we have to win the Senate —
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: — they are in a position —
Jennifer Palmieri: And it’s not like self-interested, like, all I care about is my race. That’s not what’s happening.
Claire McCaskill: No, that’s not it. That’s not it.
Jennifer Palmieri: That is not it. Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: And for many of these battleground states, I will just tell you the internal polling had a significant swing. I’m not going to name which candidates, but there was internal polling, for example, that had a candidate who was two up before the debate, who’s three down after the debate. That’s five points swing. That is huge in a battleground state. And I —
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah. With a race like this where everything is so locked, that is a very big deal.
Claire McCaskill: And if you’re campaigning in a tough state, one or two points is the world.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: I mean, I used to always say in my races, 46 is easy, 49 is really hard. I can get to 46 in my sleep.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: But 49 is really like climbing 16 Mount Everest. So two points is a huge thing to these battleground state Senate candidates. And Schumer is just carrying the data. He is doing what his job is, is representing millions of Americans who have elected these senators and these senators who want to be re-elected to give this information to the president United States. It’s not any more complicated than that. And I’ve never seen, never seen the kind of swings we now have in these battleground states where there’s an average of 12 points difference between Biden’s numbers and the Senate candidate numbers. That’s crazy time. You don’t see that. That is like the house is on fire we need another fire brigade here to put it out. So I just don’t think it’s fair to these leaders to be castigated the way they have by some in our party for doing their jobs. That’s all they’re doing is their jobs. They’re representing the people in their caucus.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah. And it’s not even just their jobs as like the Democratic leaders. It’s their jobs as constitutional officers. They are, you know, particularly in the House of Representatives, it is the people’s body. And Leader Jeffries is talking with every member of his caucus and they are representing what they’re polling is showing, but also just what they’re hearing in their districts. And these leaders are going to the president United States to, you know, this is how it’s supposed to work to say not just we have political concerns, but it’s like the stake of losing to Trump, if that’s a likelihood or real possibility, the stake of not having the House of Representatives or not having the Senate when you’re going to be dealing with a Trump administration. And I think that they have handled it so well. And, you know, trying to not inflict any damage on the president.
Claire McCaskill: I also want to make this point. There is something that most, not all, but most of the people that are in elected positions that have come out full throated that Biden should not leave the ticket are in very safe seats.
Jennifer Palmieri: You’re right. They’re in very safe seats.
Claire McCaskill: They can’t imagine their wildest dreams ever being beaten by a Republican. And it is a different animal, I just tell you. All the people yelling at me doesn’t bother me because I’ve been yelled at for 40 years about half the people in my state.
Jennifer Palmieri: Democrat in Missouri, man. What are you going to do?
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, exactly. So the point is that if you are in a safe seat, it feels different to you than if you are battling out for every scrap of a vote you can get. And that’s how we make majorities. We make majorities in the middle. We don’t make majorities on the ends. We make it in swing districts in the House and we make it in states that are capable of voting for either D’s or R’s in the Senate. And that’s why this is also important. I mean, if we were in the room, obviously, the campaign —
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: — still needs to be doing contrast constantly. And they’re doing that —
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Claire McCaskill: — because we have to keep pushing how bad Trump is, because even if it is not Joe Biden, that message is universal to our party at this point.
Jennifer Palmieri: And the thing is, the big thing I think that comes if I were in the room, the Republican convention started strong, but it ended with one conclusion. Wow, this guy is beatable, right? I mean, it was just Trump was so low energy, unfocused, if he can’t attack Biden, he has nothing to say. And you come out of it thinking like, wow, these guys offered nothing.
He is unfocused and very beatable and just go after them hard on Project 2025, abortion and democracy. And, you know, the vice president, frankly, has been very effective in doing that. She could do that and the degree to which the president is if the president is staying in, just do that. Just talk about that. Make this a referendum on Trump. Yes, the Biden campaign has got a lot to be proud of, but like we don’t have time to do that anymore about accomplishments. It’s like go, go, go on the referendum on him.
Claire McCaskill: Exactly. So we’re going to take a quick break here. When we’re back, Sam Stein, managing editor at “The Bulwark” joins us from Milwaukee to give his impressions of where this convention began and where it wound up. Back with Sam in a moment.
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Jennifer Palmieri: Welcome back. This week, the 2024 Republican National Convention was in full swing in Milwaukee. But what a difference a week makes. Republicans now have a vice presidential nominee, J.D. Vance, and a very unified Republican Party that rallied around Trump as their guy and MAGA as their platform just days after the shocking attempt on his life.
Claire McCaskill: So how did it wind up? Sam Stein has been on the ground in Milwaukee this week. I really feel like we don’t even need to introduce Sam Stein. Most of you know who he is. He is somebody who likes to talk about this stuff like we do and is very, very good at it. He had a front row seat at the convention and he joins us now. He is managing editor at “The Bulwark” and formerly “Politico’s” deputy managing editor for politics. He is also a fellow MSNBC contributor. So he knows why I have no makeup on today, because I have been up for “Morning Joe” and at 30 Rock until after midnight for several days in a row and I just went on strike this morning and said not an ounce of makeup is going to touch my face.
Sam Stein: No, you look great, Claire.
Jennifer Palmieri: You look great.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, okay. So, let’s talk about the convention. First of all, I want to start by quoting George Bush. That was some weird shit. George Bush from Trump’s 2020 or —
Sam Stein: 2016.
Jennifer Palmieri: 2017 inaugural.
Sam Stein: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: — inaugural, exactly.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yes.
Claire McCaskill: So what was it like inside the hall? Did it feel as unified as it looked?
Sam Stein: Yeah. I mean, yes, I can confirm it was weird shit, but in the hall it was a very unifying element to it. I mean, they adore the guy, right? Like it’s not just politics. There’s like, you know, there’s a culty element to it. And then obviously in the in the wake of this assassination attempt, there’s a religious element to it now in a way that really, you know, there had been some of that, but it’s been taken to a new level.
And throughout the convention over the last three days, especially, you’ve seen people talk about Trump in these sort of providential tones, and which is ironic because the entire convention prior to the assassination attempt was structured to be very secular. Like they had pushed aside the social conservative agenda. They had very few speakers who were from the religious faiths. It was a really secular agenda. And then because of this, it became different. In terms of the mood inside the hall, I think, to a person, they basically are of the belief that he will win.
The confidence level was oozing through the attendees. I spent a good chunk of yesterday just talking to delegates around the floor, asking them a very sort of simple, unscientific survey on a scale of one to ten, one being convinced he will lose and ten having the utmost certainty that he will win, where do you stand? Here’s some of the results. New York delegation. I got four 10s, one 12. Alabama delegation, two 10s, three 11s. Illinois delegation, a 12. Pennsylvania, three 10s and 11. I got a nine there. That was one of the two nines. Colorado, a nine, but only because they were worried it might be stolen. I mean, this is the stuff you’re talking about.
And so, you know, it sets up the situation where basically people were having an incredibly joyous time. There were conga lines, dancing, things like that. Does that mean they’re overconfident? Maybe. Does it set up a situation where if they do lose that we have, you know, an incredibly suspicious and maybe angry electorate on that side? Yeah, it does. You know, I think Trump’s obviously the favorite candidate here, but I don’t think it’s out of the realm of reason that he could still lose this election.
Jennifer Palmieri: And what about, I mean, it’s interesting to see what they presented and what they had planned to present, right? After the shooting, they said that they were going to have a, you know, a unity agenda. What’s his face? Who’s the doofus that’s like, yeah, they loaded my old speech.
Sam Stein: Ron Johnson, yeah.
Jennifer Palmieri: Senator Ron Johnson from Wisconsin had a fiery speech.
Claire McCaskill: By the way, a really intellectual heavyweight. I can speak from serving with him. I mean, the saying, not the brightest light in the marquee was designed for him.
Sam Stein: Yeah.
Jennifer Palmieri: It’s like, yeah, I had a toned down speech, but they didn’t load it into the teleprompter —
Sam Stein: They just put the wrong one in there. Yeah.
Jennifer Palmieri: They put the wrong one in there. Yeah.
Sam Stein: Yeah.
Jennifer Palmieri: Okay. So, what do you? They had a plan to do. Did they change it? And what actually happened? Because it kind of like, I’m not sure that anything emerged from this, any sort of compelling narrative emerged —
Sam Stein: Oh, no.
Claire McCaskill: — from this convention other than Trump was saved by the hand of God.
Sam Stein: God, yeah.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Sam Stein: No, I totally agree with you, not just about Ron Johnson. I was struck by how little narrative there was or narrative arc there was. I mean, if you watch J.D. Vance’s speech, you know —
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Sam Stein: — I don’t know who put it together. It was disjointed. It went back and forth between his bio and random issues. And in Trump’s speech last night was long. There wasn’t really a credible thematic underpinning to it.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah.
Sam Stein: I mean, this convention basically was, it was reshuffled because of what happened. The whole idea that it was a unity convention, I think is silly. The unity was —
Claire McCaskill: Yeah.
Sam Stein: — let’s unify as Republicans and be Democrats.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah.
Sam Stein: That was the unity. Oh, the other unity was let’s drop these investigations and probes into my conduct for the good of the country. But if you had to pick out a couple of themes, I guess one was, you know, Trump is here to save us and the other was immigrants are bad. And —
Claire McCaskill: Yeah.
Sam Stein: — the entire speech last night, he kept coming back to immigrants. Like it didn’t matter the topic, you know, social security, immigrants are going to steal it from you. Jobs, immigrants are going to steal it from you. Fentanyl, immigrants are going to bring it to you. I mean, it was just a very nativist anti-immigrant speech. I think that’s, if you’re talking just pure policy, that is the one main through line for all of this stuff is we got to close the borders and we got to drill more oil. That’s it.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah. And, you know, it’s fascinating to me because maybe this is cause I’m a, I’m a woman that I felt this, and maybe I’m looking too carefully, but it felt like also there was a theme that, you know, let’s celebrate men.
Sam Stein: Oh yeah.
Jennifer Palmieri: Oh, yeah.
Claire McCaskill: You know, when Trump came out night before last to the theme, it’s a man’s world. And then that Hulk Hogan shit. Oh my God. And you know, it’s really hard for me, Sam, because I think of the Republican party conventions. I mean, I’ve gone to a lot of conventions, right? And I think frankly, mostly they’re a leftover artifice from another time that is unnecessary. And by the way, the numbers for this convention were not good in terms of people watching it.
Sam Stein: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: I mean, they thought they were getting young men by all of this macho shit. Young men weren’t watching. I got news for him. I looked at the numbers from the night J.D. Vance gave his speech. First of all, 5 million fewer viewers watched J.D. Vance than watched Pence in 2016. And secondly, the demographic, I mean, I think it was 14 million people for J.D. Vance and of that 14 million, 12 million of them were over 65.
Sam Stein: Right.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah. Right.
Claire McCaskill: So it gives you how skewed the audience that he was looking for was to older. And, you know, you would think they’d want to appeal to women at this point in some way, but instead —
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: — they are all in, and this has always been him, right? That I just need more MAGA. I don’t need to worry about suburban women. There’s two things that they didn’t want to talk about at this convention, Mike Pence and abortion.
Sam Stein: Right.
Jennifer Palmieri: Right.
Sam Stein: So, no, it’s such an astute observation. We had a story up yesterday from my colleague, Mark Caputo, and basically, you know, for like weeks and months, we’ve been consuming these stories that the Trump campaign is, you know, trying to win over African-Americans and Hispanics, and they’re making inroads into the coalition, but Mark’s piece was sort of a course corrector, and it was saying, no, in fact, they’re trying to juice white male turnout, like they think they can just absolutely juice white male turnout, and they had lost a little bit of the white male margins from 2016 to 2020, and they felt like that’s why Biden won, and maybe so.
Claire McCaskill: Right.
Sam Stein: And so they wanted to win those back. And this convention was essentially designed around that. Now, of course, don’t talk about abortion because you don’t want to cause harm to your campaign. But if you look at just the speaker lineup, Kid Rock, Hulk Hogan, Dana White, I mean, this is just let’s get like men to like salivate over this.
The issues are what you point out, which is it’s not just white men. It’s sort of generationally how you divide those white men, right? Like older white men, younger white men. And if you’re banking a lot on younger white men to come out and vote for you, you have to be able to reach them. And that’s not always sure because young people don’t really pay attention to the stuff. The one place where I might add a caveat to what you said, Claire is on viewership. Yes, the numbers are down and I, you know, that’s clear. And yes, this is a relic of the past, but their sense, the Trump people sense is that people will view small, shorter packaged clips of this.
The reason you have Hulk Hogan do the intro speak is not because you’re reaching people through TV and they’re going to see him. It’s because someone will package Hulk Hogan ripping his shirt on the convention floor to reveal Trump-Vance. And that will be shared in the mediums that younger white men get their news from as opposed to TV. And so that’s what they’re banking on. I do think there’s a little risk in saying, hey, we can reach these younger voters and turn them out. As you and Jen know, it’s like they don’t always vote.
Claire McCaskill: It’s harder than it looks.
Sam Stein: Yeah.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: It’s harder than it looks. We’re going to make you stick around for another segment here in a minute —
Sam Stein: Love it.
Claire McCaskill: — but we need to talk a little bit about J.D. Vance and you know, there is a, such a disconnect between Donald Trump doing an interview with “Business Insider” and the days before the convention, promising more corporate tax cuts, wanting to put a sign of Wall Street, the Secretary of Treasury, you know, speaking just to CEOs. I mean, he loves, he has always longed to be among those guys and he wants those guys, by and large, they are guys, to love him, the business community. And then you have J.D. Vance getting up there and basically saying, we are going to come and mesh you up Wall Street. We are in your face and you are done. I mean, how in the world do they sell? How does J.D. Vance get around the fact that what Trump talks about more than anything else is making sure he once again, lowers the corporate tax rate?
Sam Stein: Yeah.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Sam Stein: I don’t know. It’s been interesting to see them try to do this economic populist stuff while also keeping a foothold in the CEO world. As has been reported, CEOs, Fox News were not on the Vance train. They did not want him as the pick. They liked Doug Burgum. I think there’s obvious reasons why Vance doesn’t speak their language or at least doesn’t pretend to speak their language, but you know, Trump’s —
Claire McCaskill: He doesn’t pretend to speak their language is correct.
Sam Stein: — Trump is also like done this for eight years, right? He presents himself as the champion of the working man, but he doesn’t actually put together a policy portfolio that would suggest that’s what he wants. Of all the speakers this week that were intriguing to me, I thought it wasn’t Vance. It wasn’t Trump. It was Sean O’Brien. It was the Teamsters president who got up there and was talking about, you know, in roads with Republicans on working class issues.
Every single Republican, including Vance, they don’t support the PRO Act. They didn’t support the bill, the COVID relief bill that included the massive pension relief for the Teamsters. I mean, I understand why Vance and Trump try to have it both ways. That’s sometimes what politicians do. And you try to win coalitions and try to bridge people together. What I don’t understand is how union leaders could pretend that that’s not happening.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah. And most of them aren’t. I mean, and even Sean O’Brien may end up endorsing the democratic ticket —
Sam Stein: Right.
Claire McCaskill: — whatever it may be.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah. And I think people are underestimating how much Sean O’Brien is playing inside politics within the Teamsters.
Sam Stein: Interesting.
Claire McCaskill: Sean O’Brien is trying to hold onto the presidency. I mean, once you get one of those jobs, man, you want to hold on to it tightly. And he has watched and he knows. The way you keep your membership supportive of you is to pay attention to the fact that he’s got a whole shitload of members who are Trumpers —
Sam Stein: Who like Trump.
Claire McCaskill: — who are Trumpers.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: And I think that was just a play for his membership, but ultimately I would be shocked if he endorses that ticket. Especially if we have a different ticket.
Sam Stein: We’ll see.
Claire McCaskill: We’ll see, right?
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: All right. So we’re going to take a quick pause here, but Sam Stein is going to stick around. When we’re back, more on what the Republican convention reveals about the goals of the party and how the race is shaping up against what I want to charitably call the somewhat big mess on our side of the aisle. Back in a moment.
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Jennifer Palmieri: Welcome back. Sam Stein is still with us. Okay, Sam. So we are post-convention. It’s Friday morning. Beyond all of the unity and Kumbaya, there are some real issues in front of the voters this fall. So let’s talk through a few. Project 2025, abortion, and there seemed to be a full embrace of Trump’s criminal convictions painted both as a fighter and a victim. And then there’s the question of democracy. And would this coalition accept the results? So that’s kind of a little menu for us to dive through Project 2025. Did you feel like you saw an embrace of that, an attempt to distance it? Also, I don’t think, I mean, it matters to some degree, but the Democrats are definitely going to make them own Project 2025. And certainly the J.D. Vance pick sort of cements that. What’s your take?
Sam Stein: There’s an obvious attempt to pretend as if that thing didn’t exist, right?
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah, right.
Sam Stein: Complete disavowal prior to the convention, which of course had the, what is it, the Streisand effect or whatever it is, where you like just draw more attention to it. But, you know, I think the, the instructive case here is like how they put together their platform, which tells you everything about how they feel about policy. The platform was just completely shaved down into a page and a half or whatever.
Jennifer Palmieri: That was pre-assassination attempt, right?
Sam Stein: Yes, exactly.
Jennifer Palmieri: Okay.
Sam Stein: And you know, there was no mention of any of the social conservative issues. The abortion stuff was more or less put to the side. No, you can make the case that like Trump is acting astutely, right? That’s what you do when you want to win is you try to just hide —
Jennifer Palmieri: Right.
Sam Stein: — everything that’s bad and you tell your people to like go pound sand.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Sam Stein: And that’s what happened. And I was a little surprised at how little dissension was evident on ideological grounds here over the weekend, right?
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Sam Stein: You know, obviously different times and different eras, but you know, 2016 convention Republican side was defined by people literally trying to stage, not a coup, but an insurrection against his nomination on the convention floor, right? And 2020 was defined by COVID, so that was totally weird, but you would expect to a degree that, you know, the pro-lifers here would have put up more of a fuss or that the hawks would have said, hey, why are we picking J.D. Vance? The guy basically wants to get out of, you know, and stop the fighting against Russia and Ukraine. None of that. And this just goes to show you that everything in this moment in time for Republican parties not have built around any sort of cohesive ideology. It’s built around, you know, appreciation for a personality.
Jennifer Palmieri: And particularly since it was his third nomination —
Sam Stein: Right.
Jennifer Palmieri: — you know. I don’t think we appreciate that. I don’t know that that’s ever happened before that somebody has gotten three nominations in a row of a major political party.
Sam Stein: There’s been Richard Nixon who had three conventions. I don’t think it was in a row.
Jennifer Palmieri: But that you’d be like, okay, we have another shot at this. What’s the big agenda that we want to get through? The only speech that I felt hung together sort of thematically was Eric Trump’s.
Sam Stein: Interesting.
Jennifer Palmieri: Because Eric Trump gave the grievance speech.
Sam Stein: Right, right.
Jennifer Palmieri: Eric Trump gave the speech they normally would give, but I think they probably, because J.D. Vance’s speech didn’t hang together at all either.
Sam Stein: Right.
Jennifer Palmieri: Trump’s speech was like, not just a normal rally speech, but one of the lower energy rally speeches I’ve ever seen him give. And then J.D., I think maybe it was because they were trying to thread the needle of like not being too partisan and sowing too much division, but they don’t know how to do that. Like they have two speeds.
Sam Stein: Right.
Jennifer Palmieri: Like low energy Trump or grievance Trump.
Sam Stein: And the sort of other maybe slightly more charitable explanation is that they just didn’t want to rock the boat, right.
Jennifer Palmieri: Right.
Sam Stein: They’re up. Don’t do anything provocative. Don’t like rail against political prosecutions, although that came up frequently, just play it safe.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Sam Stein: And when I was watching J.D.’s speech, that’s the first thing that came to my mind, you know, it’s like a football team playing sort of pre-event defense, right. It’s like —
Jennifer Palmieri: Right.
Sam Stein: — just don’t do something that might screw you up because we’re winning this thing. All we have to do is just let the conversation be about Biden. We don’t have to, you know, push any buttons. I mean, J.D.’s pick itself was not really an effort to expand the coalition.
Claire McCaskill: No, not at all.
Sam Stein: Right. So like, just keep doing what you’re doing. If you don’t make any major screw ups, you’ll be okay.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah. I actually think that J.D. Vance was picked because it was the only person that Trump saw the kind of ability to do the rhetorical flamethrowing that has been the essence of his appeal to voters. His willingness to say out loud things that a typical presidential candidate would never say out loud is really what catapulted him into the initial nomination. And I think he sees that capability in J.D. Vance and all the rest of it, even though, you know, he hates the facial hair and probably is not really thrilled about the fact that he is married to the daughter of an immigrant, even though he happens to be married to the daughter of an immigrant. It really is interesting to me that this is more about him finding a personality that he thinks can eventually carry the personality driven nature of the new, not Republican party, but Trump party.
Sam Stein: Right. And there’s also the grievance politics —
Claire McCaskill: Yes.
Sam Stein: — the anti-immigration politics.
Claire McCaskill: The anger, the total anger.
Sam Stein: Yes.
Claire McCaskill: I mean, J.D. Vance is just a pissed off guy.
Sam Stein: Yeah. He wasn’t always this way. I mean, this changed, obviously —
Claire McCaskill: No. Oh, no.
Sam Stein: Yeah, yeah.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, no.
Sam Stein: And Vance also is really close with Trump’s kids. I mean, he’s gotten really tight with Don, Jr. He’s kind of come up in this new conservative media ecosystem. He’s not a Fox News person. He’s more of like a Charlie Kirk, Turning Point USA person. I don’t know if that makes sense, but this is the other thing that was really striking about it, and I’ll bring it back to Vance here, is that the vestiges of the Republican party were evident. Like Fox News was not really the main media channel for this week, and it was a bunch of different influencers. You didn’t have George W. Bush. You didn’t have Dick Cheney. You didn’t have Paul Ryan. You didn’t have Mike Pence. They say it’s unity here, but it’s not. It’s been a purge.
Claire McCaskill: Totally.
Sam Stein: And Trump has remade this party. And in that context, the Vance pick makes a lot of sense. He’s not really like a classic Republican. He’s part of this new breed of Republicans who’ve been, in this case, opportunistically aligned himself with, but who have been influenced by Trump and Trump’s politics. And he doesn’t really wreak of establishment favor. And I think Trump was drawn to that.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah. Doug Burgum is definitely more of an establishment figure than J.D. Vance.
Sam Stein: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: And, you know, it’s fascinating to me, and this is something that we maybe even ought to spend some time on in a future episode, but Peter Thiel. I think it’s really important for people to understand the invisible hand of Peter Thiel in this convention and in this man that is running to be president of the United States. I mean, Peter Thiel was really the first of now many bro brothers, tech billionaires that got on board with Trump. I mean, he actually spoke at the convention, I think, in ‘16 or —
Sam Stein: Yes, in ‘16.
Claire McCaskill: — I think he spoke in ‘16, right?
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Sam Stein: Yes, he did.
Claire McCaskill: And J.D. Vance is a creature. No, I should say it this way. J.D. Vance was created by Peter Thiel.
Jennifer Palmieri: In his current incarnation.
Claire McCaskill: Right.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah. Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: After “Hillbilly Elegy” on, it’s been all Peter Thiel. Every job he’s had, every office he’s won, he was 100 percent got into the Senate because of Peter Thiel. He got Trump’s endorsement because of Peter Thiel. You know, look at Hulk Hogan. That’s a Peter Thiel guy. He funded Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker. Peter Thiel is everywhere in this. And, you know, for a party that wants to talk about populism, to have a billionaire behind the curtain pulling the levers of power like this is stunning to me. And there needs to be more exposure about Peter Thiel. People need to understand this guy has really got some juice.
Sam Stein: Yeah. To your point, there’s also the tech bro culture that’s coming around to Trump. I mean, David Sacks. Like who knew —
Claire McCaskill: Yeah.
Sam Stein: — who David Sacks was six months ago? He got a speaking gig from the floor and yet they didn’t have like Mitt Romney or George Bush there, but David Sacks. And then, of course, what happened over the weekend was Elon Musk coming out and fully endorsing Trump and then reports emerging that he’s going to give $45 million a month to a super PAC supporting Trump. That’s real money, right? Like, so what does that mean for policy? What does that mean for the future of the country? We have not really fully comprehended what comes with that cash, basically.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, and Marc Andreessen.
Sam Stein: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: I mean, you know, people don’t know these names, but if you were from Silicon Valley and you understand where a lot of the money is in Silicon Valley, I mean, you can look around, whether it’s PayPal or Palantir or Facebook or, you know, any of the big names in tech, the big money, a lot of it now is totally on Trump. And it is fascinating to me.
Jennifer Palmieri: I mean, not all of it. Not like, you know, like Apple and LinkedIn and, you know, Google and like —
Claire McCaskill: No, but you’re talking about a lot.
Jennifer Palmieri: — but like a lot. It’s the bro-y side. It’s the disruptors, the people like the Bitcoin people, the crypto people. It’s that crowd that like, you know, the Musk’s, those people.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah.
Sam Stein: Right. But they see in Trump also kind of like, and this is such a classic 2016 trope, because this is what happened in 2016. They see in Trump kind of this empty vessel into which they can push their agenda.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah.
Sam Stein: And we know this because they had Trump on that podcast that they all do. And then I think it was like a couple of days later, he comes out and he’s like, I’m fine with, you know, certain types of visas for immigrants because I talk to these guys and that’s what they want.
Jennifer Palmieri: And he changed his position on crypto.
Sam Stein: Exactly. And for them, you know, what a wonderful investment, right?
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah, right.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, right. Why not?
Sam Stein: You get to have the potential president. And frankly, you know, you watch Trump and he’s more likely than not to win. You hedge your bets, right?
Jennifer Palmieri: Right. Yeah.
Sam Stein: You say, okay, maybe two years ago, they probably wouldn’t have done this because it was uncertain if Trump could win and they would have been socially cascaded and also been politically problematic to them. But now you can get your foot in the door.
Jennifer Palmieri: Right.
Claire McCaskill: Okay. So let’s turn.
Jennifer Palmieri: Okay.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah. Go, Jen. It’s time for him to weigh in on what’s going to happen.
Jennifer Palmieri: I’m going to use a listener question to do this.
Sam Stein: Okay.
Jennifer Palmieri: Michelle, her question was just wondering if the concerns are more about Joe Biden not being able to win by a big enough margin than him not winning at all. I could see the logic being, quote, “We have to win big to rebuild trust in the elections,” end quote. So I think probably what’s embedded in Michelle’s question is like confusion that, you know, people are hearing Democrats, you know, very senior Democrats in the party thinking that Biden really needs to drop out and seeming that it’s likely that he will, or at least possible that he will, I should say.
Sam Stein: Your feelings changed by the hour.
Jennifer Palmieri: I’m just so wrecked by this whole like drama from the last three weeks because there’s sort of this dichotomy of like people who all they want to do is beat Trump and win the house and win the Senate thinking that he can’t win and then seeing polls that show, you know, the like percentile, like, oh, Biden’s got a 53% chance of winning. I think people are not saying like, I don’t understand why they’re so eager to push Biden out the door if the polls that I’m seeing in the public domain show that the race is still really close. And then what you think is going to happen? I mean —
Sam Stein: Well, let’s just set the stage for when we’re talking because it’s so dynamic that, you know, it could be outdated —
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Sam Stein: — in like 20 minutes. We’re sitting here Friday. It’s like 9:40 a.m., okay. I’m watching as I’m recording this, that Jen O’Malley Dillon’s on “Morning Joe” and she’s giving a forceful case that he’s not going anywhere. I mean, she has to give that case because as soon as you say, well, he’s open to it, then it’s done. But anyways, let’s put that aside. It’s been a very weird experience here in Milwaukee because obviously everyone’s following what’s happening on the Republican side. There’s a whole convention going on in the city.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Sam Stein: But to a person, every journalist here is riveted by what’s happening on the Democratic side. And half of the reporters here are actually here in Milwaukee reporting on Democratic politics and I’m among them. I’ve been spending the last three days just calling people in the party. And look, to a person, people are freaked out.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Sam Stein: They think that this is not going to end well. They think there’s different degrees of not ending well, right? Like most people I talk to in high ranks and Democratic circles think Biden will likely lose. They don’t think it’s a certainty that he will lose, but it’s like fairly certain.
Jennifer Palmieri: And explain why they think that because of the, the internal polling in the battleground states —
Sam Stein: Right.
Jennifer Palmieri: — because I think that we don’t get to this level of discussion on cable, frankly.
Sam Stein: Right. So there’s a two reasons, right? Like, so you see these national polls, you’re like, oh, well, he’s got a fighter’s chance. You see these FiveThirtyEight models. You’re like, well —
Jennifer Palmieri: Right.
Sam Stein: — that’s really interesting. He’s actually favored.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Sam Stein: And then you have to step back and say, okay, the national polls are pretty relevant. We don’t choose presidents by a national popular vote.
Jennifer Palmieri: Right.
Sam Stein: The FiveThirtyEight model takes into account things like historical incumbency advantages and macroeconomic conditions, which, fine, great. Like that’s helpful, but it’s not going to be determinative. Professor Alan Lichtman, who I’ve seen a lot thrown around —
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Sam Stein: — like he’s got 13 principles for the presidency and yet they’ve lined up most of the time, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be tried and true. So the real sort of bread and butter that I come back to are two things. One is state polls. They’re bad. They’re just bad for Biden —
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Sam Stein: — and they’ve gotten worse. And I think people need to understand when you’re talking about like three degree, three percentage points worse in state polls, that’s not nothing. That’s a lot, especially in a polarized country.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah. That’s why Hillary lost. With three percentage points in polls across the board, like everything dropped by three points.
Sam Stein: And so if you started pre-debate already slightly down and you’re now three percentage points, even more down, it just means you have to make up more ground. And here’s where number two comes in, which is there would be more confidence that he could make up ground if not for the fact that the debate was a disaster. And since then, he’s had decent episodes, but he’s also had bad episodes.
Jennifer Palmieri: He’s had some bad episodes.
Sam Stein: Yeah. And if you’re playing with a hand, that’s not great. The question is, do you change your hand? And so when everyone’s like, well, you know, the vice president doesn’t pull that much better. True. But she’s also got more tools and toolkit. And secondarily, this is what I’m hearing a lot more of is the psychic relief that you would get throughout the party in having that change, having a more deft candidate at the top of the ticket. And then being also able to say this argument about, you know, old candidates who are feeble and can’t handle the job. Like, we can now win this argument. I mean, look at Trump’s speech last night. Like, why can’t we have someone who’s like, actually, no–
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Sam Stein: — we’ve made the tough choices. We have a younger candidate who’s generationally more attuned to modern America, and it’s their side that has the candidate who is meandering and out of touch and just gave an hour and a half speech on the convention that made no sense at times. And like, yeah, that’s the case for making the switch. I can also understand the case for not making the switch, but I think it’s less compelling.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah. And I do think people, you know, the emotional narrative, even if you are 100% in favor of Biden staying at the top of the ticket, you are holding your breath. And what our party has this cycle that we’ve not had in previous cycles is we have Donald Trump on the other side. And I truly believe that if Biden does step down, I truly believe that the emotional relief that people who hate Donald Trump will feel about having a candidate they’re more confident of, even if they are still angry that Biden’s not there, I actually believe that, assuming it’s Kamala Harris, which it should be, would come out of the convention ahead, and I think she’d stay there.
Sam Stein: And not only that. I’ve been talking to donors and operatives who work with donors. Biden’s money troubles are about to be very pronounced.
Claire McCaskill: Done. Done.
Sam Stein: I mean, there are some serious problems there. Conversely, they say if, you know, they made a switch and it was Harris and I’m with you, Claire —
Claire McCaskill: It’s going to rain.
Sam Stein: — the amount of cash that would come in in those first three days would be astronomical.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah.
Sam Stein: And not that cash is everything, but it matters a lot.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah.
Sam Stein: It really does. And look, the party’s in a really tough spot. None of us have experienced anything like this.
Jennifer Palmieri: None.
Claire McCaskill: No.
Sam Stein: And you wake up, I don’t know if this is for you, but I wake up, I’m like, Biden’s going to stick it out. And every night I go to bed, I’m like, there’s no way he’s going to stick it out.
Claire McCaskill: I know.
Jennifer Palmieri: Well, or whatever it is every day, I mean, it’s been humbling for certain, you know, to like not make predictions, to not, you know —
Sam Stein: Yeah.
Jennifer Palmieri: — understand like we’re living in unprecedented times —
Sam Stein: Yeah.
Jennifer Palmieri: — and like you can’t know and it’s up to one person and it’s a very tough call.
Sam Stein: That convention will be truly interesting. I’m —
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Sam Stein: — somewhat excited for it.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah. That will matter.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, I was dreading going and now I’m, you know —
Sam Stein: No, no, no. You got to go.
Claire McCaskill: I’m excited.
Jennifer Palmieri: I wasn’t going to go. Now I’m going to go.
Sam Stein: Hell yeah.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah, yeah.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah. All right. Well, listen, you’re the best, Sam. We are grateful for you to come and hang out with us for a while. Hopefully you can get a chance —
Sam Stein: Anytime. Invite me back. Please.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, no, we will for sure.
Sam Stein: All right.
Claire McCaskill: We will for sure.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah, thank you.
Claire McCaskill: You’re the best.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
Claire McCaskill: Thanks so much, Sam. Sam Stein is the managing editor at “The Bulwark” and an MSNBC contributor.
Jennifer Palmieri: Thanks so much for listening. If you have a question for us, send it to howtowinquestions@nbcuni.com or you can leave us a voicemail at 646-974-4194.
Claire McCaskill: This show is produced by Vicki Vergolina. Janmaris Perez is our associate producer. Katie Lau is our audio engineer. Our head of audio production is Bryson Barnes. Aisha Turner is the executive producer for MSNBC audio. And Rebecca Kutler is the senior vice president for content strategy at MSNBC.
Jennifer Palmieri: Search for “How to Win 2024” wherever you get your podcasts and follow the series.