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Hi, I'm Angie Hicks, co-founder of

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now, from the Institute of Politics at

0:38

the University of Chicago and CNN

0:40

Audio, The Axe Files, with

0:43

your host, David Axelrod. When

0:46

Ezra Klein trains his big, inquisitive

0:49

brain on a subject, any subject,

0:51

it's something to behold. You

0:53

can find an earlier episode of The

0:56

Axe Files and trace his journey from

0:58

indifferent student to blogging phenom to exacting

1:00

commentator and podcaster. Now a featured presence

1:03

on the op-ed pages of

1:05

The New York Times, Ezra has

1:07

written so many interesting pieces and

1:09

hosted so many fascinating conversations about

1:11

the unique campaign of 2024 that

1:14

I asked him to come back and talk about it

1:16

with me. Ezra

1:22

Klein, great to see you. Always

1:24

a pleasure. You know, I know from

1:27

our first conversation that we had here

1:29

years ago, and

1:31

I don't know whether we discussed it or not or whether it just

1:33

turned up in my notes, that you

1:36

were moved by a history teacher

1:38

who talked about sometimes the fists

1:40

of history tighten around your neck.

1:43

I think it was a little softer than that. I think she

1:45

said, you can feel the

1:47

fist of history clenching around you.

1:50

It wasn't specifically around my neck, thankfully. You

1:54

know, this feels like a sort of interesting, feels

1:57

like sort of a hinge moment. in

2:00

history, so I wanted to talk to

2:02

you about this

2:04

very unusual election

2:06

that we're in and that you've been writing

2:09

so incisively about.

2:13

Where do you think we are in

2:15

this race? A nice small

2:17

question. Where are we?

2:20

So we're talking today is Monday the

2:22

week before the DNC. I

2:24

feel like, I don't know if you've had this experience,

2:26

David, but I feel like now whenever I speak on

2:28

my show, I have to tell people what day it

2:30

is I'm speaking on. Yeah, of course. Absolutely. Yes, yes.

2:32

Because who knows what life is going to be like

2:35

at 48 hours. Yes,

2:37

exactly. Well, that's what

2:39

makes this such an unusual race.

2:41

There's a horridness to everything right

2:43

now. And I guess

2:46

to zoom out a

2:49

bit, one of the things

2:51

I found myself reflecting on a

2:53

lot recently is how much wider

2:55

the boundaries are of the possible

2:57

and how many more ways things

3:00

can turn out there are than

3:03

those of us in the business of

3:05

predicting things think. So I felt this

3:07

in some ways with Barack Obama in

3:09

2008, but then I very much felt

3:11

it with Donald Trump in 2015 and 2016. Everybody in politics and

3:14

in political

3:17

science told me for a while that was

3:19

impossible. And then of course it was possible.

3:21

Bernie Sanders that year, somebody who

3:23

identified as a socialist or a democratic

3:25

socialist, at least becoming a major figure

3:27

in American politics, right? That had been

3:30

unthinkable a couple of years before. And

3:32

it just kept going. I mean, the pandemic and the

3:35

lockdown of the whole world this

3:37

year, obviously Joe Biden, but

3:40

aside from Biden, I mean, I spent

3:42

a year hearing from

3:44

Democrats about how much

3:47

it would be a disaster if Kamala Harris

3:49

was the nominee, right? That was a huge

3:51

part of why Joe Biden was fortified in

3:53

running for reelection. There was a widespread, I

3:55

would say nearly universal view in the party

3:57

that that Harris was

4:00

a significantly weaker candidate than

4:02

Biden was. And overnight, the

4:05

whole party has completely rethought that. And

4:07

for me, as somebody who covers all

4:09

of this, I just feel like it is one

4:12

lesson in humility after another,

4:14

one lesson in the

4:16

reality that we don't know how things

4:18

are going to feel. We don't know how people are going to react.

4:21

The ineluctable human element of

4:23

politics needs to be

4:25

taken very, very, very seriously. Dr.

4:27

Darrell Bock I agree with you.

4:29

And I think you've written, certainly

4:32

others have as well, that

4:35

she is a different candidate than

4:37

we saw four years ago. She

4:39

clearly is someone who's more connected

4:41

to the word she's speaking. She

4:44

seems more comfortable, more confident.

4:47

And there's more to this moment than

4:49

that. There was this incredible

4:52

sense of just relief

4:54

that sort of transformed

4:56

the mood of Democrats

4:59

almost overnight when

5:01

Biden left the race. The structure

5:04

of feeling has been such a

5:06

remarkable thing to be

5:09

in the middle of here. It's a reminder,

5:12

to keep using that word, that of

5:16

course elections aren't all about candidates.

5:18

I mean, we're so candidate centric in the

5:20

way we think about things, but elections

5:23

are about the movements and the

5:25

people behind candidates. Elections

5:27

are about what they are

5:29

able to project onto the candidate. Candidates

5:31

are able to create a union of

5:34

who they are and

5:36

who the public is at

5:40

that moment. I mean, they're a vessel. And

5:44

something about Harris in this moment and

5:46

the absolute

5:49

explosion of relief,

5:52

anger, determination, excitement,

5:55

fury, disappointment, right? All these emotions that

5:57

were pent up in the Democratic coalition.

6:00

that have had expression since she's

6:02

emerged as the presumptive and then,

6:04

you know, actual nominee, they're

6:08

not really just about her. We keep saying

6:10

how Harris has changed. But

6:12

it actually just also reflects how the

6:14

Democratic coalition has changed. It reflects who

6:16

they are now. And what's I think

6:18

really clear is it

6:20

a lot about who Democrats

6:22

are now was being

6:24

suppressed by what kind of vessel, and

6:26

I don't blame him for this. Joe

6:29

Biden could and could not be, right? So

6:32

for a year, I was

6:35

hearing Democrats telling me, well, how

6:37

young voters are acting in these polls, I can't

6:39

possibly be true. These polls are wrong in some

6:41

way, right? No way Joe Biden is losing young

6:43

voters like this. I would hear Democrats telling me

6:46

the TikTok algorithm was biased, right? The

6:48

TikTok algorithm is biased against Joe Biden.

6:51

It's a Chinese Communist Party trying

6:53

to throw the election, I guess, to Donald

6:55

Trump for some reason. They've tampered with their

6:57

algorithms because she seems to be doing pretty

7:00

well on TikTok these

7:02

days. This was an argument I made some months back,

7:04

and I think it held up very well, is

7:06

that a problem that Joe

7:08

Biden was having in the election

7:11

was not just that there were these

7:13

bad moments, these moments that were sometimes

7:16

badly edited, but sometimes quite real, where

7:18

he looked very aged

7:20

and diminished flying around social media, but

7:23

it was the absence of good moments. It

7:25

was the absence of that sort

7:27

of raw material that

7:30

modern communicators remix and

7:32

meme and build

7:34

as the kernel around which a lot

7:36

of online communication happens. And

7:39

for different reasons, Kamala Harris and Tim

7:41

Walz are very remixable, very clippable, very

7:43

memeable. And so it's allowed,

7:45

again, the sort of creativity of

7:48

this part of the Democratic coalition, which

7:50

is a quite young coalition in many

7:52

ways and quite digitally native, to

7:55

express itself. So I mean, I think there's

7:57

a lot of focus on who Kamala Harris

7:59

became that changed. But

8:01

I think it misses in a way who her

8:04

supporters had become and

8:06

how, you know, having her

8:08

as a vessel and Wallace as a vessel has allowed

8:11

them to express who they are. It's not

8:13

all about the candidate. It's also about the

8:15

candidate as a sort of

8:17

a channeling force for their

8:19

supporters. You mentioned

8:21

the projection of aspirations onto a

8:23

candidate, and we experienced that obviously

8:25

you sort of referenced this with

8:27

Obama in 2007 and early 2008.

8:30

Barack Obama had

8:34

not really run anything before he ran

8:36

for president of the United States. One

8:39

of the things that persuaded people, I'm

8:41

convinced, and we heard it in groups over

8:43

the course of the two years that he

8:45

was running that persuaded them

8:48

that he could do this, was

8:50

the campaign itself. One

8:52

thing that I think actually has impacted

8:54

on people is the

8:57

proficiency with which she gathered

8:59

the nomination, you

9:01

know, in a matter of, you know, hours,

9:03

really, and the kind

9:05

of flawless nature of the

9:07

rollout. That matters. I

9:10

think all those things matter. I mean, I it's

9:12

a little hard for me to imagine the

9:14

voter who is unsold on Kamala Harris and

9:16

then looked at how quickly she rolled

9:19

up the Democratic Party's machinery and

9:21

key endorsements and says, okay, I was wrong

9:23

about her. She can really run this kind

9:25

of thing. I don't fully

9:28

buy that. I do think though

9:30

that people absorb a lot from

9:33

intuition about candidates. I think a

9:35

very important thing about Kamala Harris is actually also I think

9:38

a very important thing about Barack Obama is they

9:40

both have a way of holding

9:43

the camera of seeming serene,

9:45

strong, grounded, tough. She can

9:47

really show steel like in

9:49

that moment where she shut

9:51

down the Gaza

9:53

protesters at her rally. I mean, that almost

9:56

looks like a written moment, the way she

9:58

held that, the way she held that. held

10:00

that moment, the way she sort of, the

10:02

ice on, I mean, it wasn't her first

10:04

time kind of telling them, we

10:06

hear you, you know, chill out, like I'm

10:09

speaking now, but by the time she got annoyed, like

10:11

she really was able to deliver that. And I've seen

10:13

that kind of thing from her a couple of times.

10:16

So I think that matters. I mean, the fact that

10:18

she has been vice president matters, it all matters. There's

10:21

been this strange inversion where now Trump

10:23

feels like the incumbent, and she feels

10:25

like the insurgent, whereas

10:28

the whole race was

10:30

coming down to a

10:33

referendum on Biden, which

10:35

is the kind of race that Trump was counting

10:37

on and no longer

10:39

can count on. So she's

10:41

become the turn the page candidate, which

10:45

is an interesting place for a sitting

10:47

vice president in an administration

10:49

that has not been that popular to

10:52

be. It's all very

10:54

surprising. Some of these questions of incumbent

10:56

and non incumbent have been genuinely hard

10:58

for me to think through this year

11:00

because you had Trump running as both

11:02

an incumbent and as a change candidate.

11:04

Biden running as both an incumbent and

11:06

in a weird way as the underdog.

11:08

Now Kamala Harris is the sitting vice

11:10

president, but maybe also the change candidate.

11:13

I'm not sure that at

11:15

this exact moment, our

11:18

political metaphors are up to the

11:20

task. The

11:22

categories we are used to

11:24

applying to elections are accurate.

11:28

I find myself thinking a lot more about the

11:31

WWE and world wrestling entertainment, which of

11:33

course, Donald Trump inviting me to do

11:35

by having Hulk Hogan give by far

11:37

what was the best speech of the

11:39

Republican National Convention, the one that was

11:41

the most straightforward that I think articulated

11:43

the message most directly. It

11:45

has this very kind of combat like

11:48

dimension, the way Harris

11:50

presents herself now, you

11:52

know, come say it to my face, right? Like

11:54

when I saw that moment of Harris challenging Trump

11:56

to the debate, say it to my face, I

11:59

saw every WWE match I watched

12:01

as a kid, right? Which is not

12:03

to say we should treat this just

12:05

as entertainment. It is not

12:08

just entertainment. I'd love actually to talk about

12:10

Kamala Harris on the policy dimension and Trump

12:12

on that. But I think that

12:14

one thing people were not ready for and

12:16

Donald Trump was absolutely not ready for, was

12:19

for Harris to challenge Trump on

12:22

the ground Biden had largely seated. Which

12:25

is the ground of entertainment, the

12:27

ground of attention, the ground of

12:29

media. For a very long time the matchup

12:31

had been, and this was true in 2022, Joe

12:35

Biden with his much more low key held

12:37

back campaigning style, where he wanted Donald Trump

12:39

to be the center of attention. He and

12:42

his team wanted the election to be about

12:44

Donald Trump and how dangerous he is and

12:46

how threatening he is. And Donald Trump also

12:48

wants elections to be about Donald Trump. So

12:50

in a way they actually agreed on

12:52

the dynamics, the

12:55

attentional dynamics of the race in 2020. That

12:58

was a good match for Joe Biden in 2024. It

13:01

was not that way. Harris came in and

13:04

she is challenging Trump. And I think

13:06

at this point winning on

13:08

what is his natural field, which is

13:10

attention, which is running

13:13

the best show in politics. And

13:15

I think that more than anything else really

13:18

has discombobulated him. They were not ready for

13:20

somebody else to play the entertainment card against

13:22

them. No, I thought you were going a

13:25

slightly different place, but it's related to

13:27

this point, which somebody wrote a piece

13:29

about sort of the how professional

13:32

wrestling, which isn't

13:34

sports but entertainment works.

13:37

And how individual

13:39

wrestlers get boosted. And Donald Trump

13:42

is a huge aficionado of all

13:44

of this. A Hall of Famer.

13:46

And that it's all about measures

13:49

of heat. In other words, what

13:51

is getting an audience response? And

13:53

so the wrestlers who

13:55

generate the most heat get advanced

13:58

and ultimately the wrestler. who generates

14:01

the most heat among the audience,

14:03

the most reactivity, positive reactivity

14:05

ends up being the champion,

14:08

and that's how they cast wrestling, and that's how Donald

14:10

Trump, of course, thinks about the

14:12

world. The thing that has shifted this

14:14

race, in my view, Donald Trump has

14:16

a hugely committed base, but that base

14:19

isn't enough to get him elected president,

14:21

and among the rest of the electorate,

14:24

there is, obviously on the Democratic side,

14:26

deep loathing in some ways of

14:28

him, among

14:31

voters who are sort of

14:33

open to him, and there are swing

14:35

voters in this race, it's a myth to

14:38

say that there are just two sides, and

14:40

if you can galvanize your side to a

14:43

greater degree than the other side, you'll win.

14:45

That's the Bannon thought, but

14:47

I don't think that's the truth.

14:49

There are swing voters in this race, and they

14:51

don't particularly like Trump, they think

14:53

he's an asshole, they think he's dishonest,

14:55

they think all those things, but they

14:57

do think that he is competent, particularly

14:59

on the economy, which is an issue

15:02

that a lot of people are feeling

15:05

in their lives, and there was a

15:07

general sense of disorder under Biden, you

15:09

know, the Republican message was, the world's

15:12

out of control, and Biden's not

15:14

in command, Trump is strong, and

15:17

inflation was a part of that, of

15:19

course, Biden's weak vote for Trump, and

15:21

their whole campaign was built around that,

15:23

and now that has gone away, the

15:26

rationale for that has gone away, and

15:28

now they've got a new candidate who

15:30

has the qualities that you're suggesting, who's

15:33

hit no false note so far,

15:36

and it's now become a referendum on

15:38

Trump, he is the incumbent in

15:40

some ways in this race. This

15:42

convention that we're gonna see in a week

15:45

is gonna be much different than what we

15:47

would have seen had Biden been the nominee.

15:49

I think that 80% of that convention

15:51

would have had to have been an assault

15:53

on Trump, because

15:56

Biden needed to make Trump

15:58

more of a threat. Hi,

20:32

I'm Angie Hicks, co-founder of Angie, and one

20:34

thing I've learned is that you buy a

20:36

house, but you make it a home. Because

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becomes a little more your own. So

20:43

you need all your jobs done well.

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For nearly 30 years, Angie has helped

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the projects that matter. From

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So leave it to the pros who will

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get your jobs done well. Hire

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high-quality, certified pros at angie.com.

38:00

which I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on though. I

38:03

often think Democrats run against Donald Trump

38:05

with their own aesthetic

38:07

repulsion to Trump front

38:09

and center. Like they want other people

38:11

to dislike Donald Trump for the

38:14

reasons they dislike Donald Trump. And the Democrats

38:16

and liberals and so on really dislike a

38:18

lot about Donald Trump. I dislike personally a

38:20

lot about Donald Trump. But as

38:22

somebody who has family members who I adore and

38:25

am really close to who are Trump supporters and

38:27

tries to like take Trump's appeal for what it

38:29

is, I often find

38:32

Democrats do not always make

38:34

the arguments that somebody unsure about Donald

38:36

Trump would believe. They make the argument

38:38

somebody who's sure about Donald Trump believes.

38:41

Like they have the quality of sort

38:43

of speaking like to somebody

38:45

who doesn't speak their language and just saying

38:48

what they're already saying louder and slower

38:51

as if they didn't hear them the first time. You

38:54

have to be careful not to, and I

38:56

think Waltz has made this point, disqualify

38:59

people from voting for you

39:01

by disqualifying them by

39:04

denigrating their intelligence or their character

39:06

because they might vote for Donald

39:09

Trump for

39:11

the reasons that you suggest because they think he might

39:14

help them. So you want a message

39:16

that allows room for them to move.

39:19

I do think people believe that

39:21

Trump is ultimately self-interested, that he's

39:23

motivated by his own interests and

39:26

that he's obsessed by this whole

39:28

revenge and retribution thing

39:31

that has nothing to do with them

39:33

and their lives. I always think one

39:35

of the most salient things about Donald

39:37

Trump, the most fundamental thing

39:40

you need to understand to understand him

39:43

is that he views a world as purely zero

39:45

sum, that he views every interaction as zero sum.

39:47

The world's the hunger games for him. It's the

39:49

hunger games. And I

39:52

have, look, like you need

39:54

very capable candidates to make

39:56

these kinds of arguments, but maybe Harris is

39:58

that kind of candidate. Obama was that was

40:00

this kind of candidate. I

40:03

do think people understand on some level that

40:06

Trump's completely doggy dog understanding

40:08

of the entire world is

40:11

like a little unusual, a little dangerous

40:14

can go a lot too far. And

40:17

one of the things that is just sort

40:19

of true about the economy now and true

40:21

about the way the world works is that

40:23

not everything is zero sum like

40:26

collision where they're trying to pick

40:28

your pocket. And these

40:30

questions about Ukraine, these questions about our

40:32

alliances, but also this question

40:34

about like the global economy, we want to

40:37

make America good at exporting things because actually

40:39

we are good at exporting things. We are

40:41

great at making things and we want to

40:43

be woven in with the world. We don't

40:45

want an endless escalatory series of trade wars

40:47

with everybody else. Trump's dynamic,

40:50

I actually think it is one

40:52

of the things that is most

40:54

dangerous about him as a leader.

40:56

His intuitive gut sense, which many

40:58

people share that all

41:00

deals are zero sum and you're either the winner

41:02

or the loser is really a

41:04

problem. I just did a show with Nancy

41:06

Pelosi on my podcast

41:08

and she was talking about this. I

41:11

was saying to her, like what does, you know, tell me what it's

41:13

like trying to make a deal with the guy who wrote the art

41:15

of the deal. And she was saying that

41:18

he just never enters a deal acting

41:20

like there is something in it for both sides. He

41:22

just doesn't want you to get anything and

41:25

that he could have gotten so much more

41:27

of his own agenda done when he

41:29

was president. If he had

41:31

believed more in deal making, and I feel

41:33

like this is a continuous thing with him

41:35

that it is the lie of

41:37

Donald Trump. Like he is the person I

41:40

think who actually least understands

41:42

deals. He understands fights. He

41:44

understands on some level winning where another people

41:47

person is gonna lose. He understands contests,

41:51

but he doesn't actually understand deals. He

41:53

doesn't actually understand cooperation. We're gonna take

41:55

a short break and we'll be right

41:57

back with more of the ax fun.

43:13

For J.D. Power 2023 award information, visit

43:17

jdpower.com/awards. Only

43:19

at a Sleep Number store or sleepnumber.com. It

43:22

took a lifetime to find the person you

43:24

want to marry. Finding the perfect engagement ring

43:26

is a lot easier. And

44:03

now back to the show. One

44:10

of the elements that I

44:12

think was true in 2008 that is

44:15

true here is that people

44:17

really do want to turn the page on

44:19

that. I think they do believe that, hey,

44:23

we got to figure out a way to get

44:26

things done and we got to figure

44:28

out a way to get along with

44:30

each other enough so that we can

44:32

find some common ground and move some

44:34

of these things. I think people do

44:36

believe that. And the sad

44:38

thing for Biden is he

44:41

actually did that pretty well in this rancid

44:44

environment in which he, where

44:46

the country was roiled by the pandemic,

44:49

all this stuff was happening that

44:54

was disconcerting people.

44:58

He managed to do

45:01

some of the biggest deals we've seen, most

45:03

productive deals we've seen with

45:06

Republicans in a very long

45:08

time. But

45:11

I think people hunger for this

45:13

idea that we can be opponents,

45:16

we don't have to be enemies,

45:21

and we certainly don't have

45:23

to be so hostile to

45:25

each other that the possibility of actually

45:27

working together to solve problems on stuff

45:29

that affects my life and the lives

45:31

of my kids can happen. And

45:35

I do think that's part of the

45:37

dynamic that's part of the turn the

45:39

page thing. Let me ask you

45:41

about Waltz because I

45:43

listened to one of your

45:46

essays and you were

45:48

talking about Waltz and you talked about this

45:50

debate you had with Nate Silver about

45:53

the VP thing, about what

45:56

the bold move would be. And

45:58

you argue that... Picking Waltz was

46:00

a bold choice. He

46:03

argued that the bold

46:05

choice would have been to pick Shapiro because you need to

46:07

win the state of Pennsylvania, which I agree with. You

46:09

and I have talked about this as well. And

46:12

he would have helped you do that because

46:15

you can't win without it. And

46:18

yes, it would have irritated some. There

46:21

would have been some turbulence among

46:26

some on the left in the party, but that would

46:28

have been okay too because it would have certified her

46:31

as an independent thinker for people in

46:33

the middle who are still making up

46:35

their minds. And I said the night

46:37

before the pick that if she picked

46:40

Waltz, she would get the Safe Driver

46:42

Award. But tell me why you

46:44

think it was a bold choice and

46:46

does the math not concern you? The

46:49

math always concerns me. Let's put that

46:51

first, right? I don't wanna

46:53

get us too caught up on the bold

46:55

versus safe because what I'm really objecting to

46:57

here in that argument is

46:59

that language. Shapiro might've been the

47:02

right choice. And we should note that it seems

47:04

like a lot of the reason that she

47:06

didn't pick him had to do with chemistry between

47:08

them with his own concerns about being vice

47:11

president, which is kind of a weird job.

47:13

I think that's exactly what happened. The governor of Pennsylvania

47:15

is definitely a better job than being vice president. That

47:18

said, I am a cautious safety

47:20

oriented person. And because

47:23

I'm a cautious safety oriented person, if

47:25

you probably put me in Kamala Harris'

47:27

shoes, I would have picked Josh Shapiro

47:29

because Josh Shapiro is obviously the safe

47:31

choice. Look, Pennsylvania is

47:33

the tipping point state to the extent

47:35

any state is a tipping point state.

47:37

When you run the models, the state

47:39

you're most likely to win the election,

47:41

if you win it is Pennsylvania. To

47:44

get to 270, yeah. So if you

47:46

lose the election losing Pennsylvania and you

47:48

didn't pick Josh Shapiro, everybody's gonna be

47:50

blaming you, right? They will say you

47:52

missed and messed up the most obvious

47:54

central strategic decision of the campaign, which

47:56

is pick the popular governor of the

47:58

state you most. needed to win, which

48:01

is simply to say Josh Shapiro was, I

48:03

think, in any reasonable definition, the safe pick,

48:05

which is also why people who

48:08

run odds on this and are political consultants almost

48:10

universally wanted her to pick Shapiro, as I think

48:12

it sounds to me like you did, as Nate

48:15

Silver did, as a lot of people did. Maybe she

48:17

should have picked Shapiro. I always said on this for

48:19

me that my head's at Shapiro and my

48:21

heart's at Walls. The reason to me

48:23

that Walls was the bolder pick is one I don't

48:25

buy at all, that she doesn't

48:27

pick Shapiro because of Gaza. I just don't

48:30

buy that. I don't think it was what

48:32

was there. So that's what

48:34

I think people are talking about when they say

48:36

that picking Shapiro was bold was that you would

48:38

have been allowing some friction, but Harris is completely

48:40

comfortable in her ability to signal

48:43

and talk through that issue. And she does come from

48:45

a different place on that than Joe Biden. I don't

48:48

think that built in. Walls,

48:51

the theory of Walls, I think, and this goes

48:53

to what I was saying to you earlier, that

48:55

I sometimes think attention is poorly theorized in the

48:57

way a lot of us think about American politics,

49:01

is Walls demonstrated instantly.

49:03

From the moment he gave that first morning

49:05

Joe interview when he was not really a

49:07

candidate in the Veepstakes, but clearly

49:09

wanted to become one, he demonstrated

49:12

an ability to create attentional

49:15

momentum and shift the way

49:18

Democrats were talking and

49:20

notice weak spots on the other side

49:22

that nobody else did. There was a

49:24

clear sort of Veepstakes

49:26

primary happening in different ways. Shapiro was

49:28

competing through

49:30

campaign stops. Walls and Buttigieg

49:33

and to some degree Cooper were

49:35

out there in the media until

49:37

Cooper pulled out. Bashir was very

49:39

much out there in the media

49:41

trying to show it. And what

49:43

Walls showed he brought to the

49:45

ticket was the ability to keep

49:47

generating this enthusiasm, this momentum, this

49:49

almost desperation Democrats suddenly had to

49:51

see clips and videos and content

49:54

from these people. Walls was

49:56

at bat, I would call it, on the intangibles

49:59

that little

1:02:00

bit. And we also, I think, have a

1:02:03

fairly good reason to believe that

1:02:05

our organization, the Democratic organization,

1:02:07

is much more at this point on

1:02:09

a GeoTV level sophisticated in these states,

1:02:11

given that they've been winning

1:02:13

them recently, given that most

1:02:15

of them have actually Democratic leadership, and also

1:02:18

given that as a condition

1:02:20

of his complete

1:02:22

dominance over the Republican Party, Trump made them

1:02:25

defund their get out the vote operation in

1:02:27

order to fund more, quote unquote, election

1:02:30

integrity efforts. I could totally imagine the

1:02:32

argument that says she's

1:02:34

in a honeymoon period. She's going to have her

1:02:36

time in the barrel. She's going to get you

1:02:38

have tougher news cycles. The issue is losing altitude.

1:02:40

But right now, I feel like if you made

1:02:42

me bet today, right,

1:02:45

like I would say, if you held it today, Harris,

1:02:47

why do you say if you held it today, Trump?

1:02:50

Just because I see a whole bunch

1:02:52

of research and polling, and

1:02:55

some of which is, you

1:02:57

know, pretty sophisticated off of voter

1:02:59

lists. And, and the

1:03:03

preponderance of it tells

1:03:05

me she is, you

1:03:09

know, slightly behind in

1:03:12

a couple of those northern tier

1:03:14

states, including Pennsylvania, probably

1:03:16

more, you know, more than

1:03:19

slightly behind in in Arizona,

1:03:21

slightly behind in Georgia, you

1:03:24

know, slightly behind in Nevada. And

1:03:27

so it could be that all the

1:03:29

all those, you know, factors that you

1:03:31

mentioned could push her across the finish

1:03:33

line in some or I guess all

1:03:36

of those states. For example, I mean,

1:03:38

if you look at the polling averages,

1:03:41

she's as

1:03:45

far ahead as Biden was

1:03:48

when he won in 2020 nationally, and

1:03:50

you have to be past a certain

1:03:52

threshold nationally, to for

1:03:54

it to translate into the

1:03:57

margins that you need in battlegrounds.

1:04:00

States. This is not a

1:04:02

race that's won. This is a race that

1:04:04

can be won. And the

1:04:06

convention should help her. I think she has

1:04:08

a great opportunity in the debate, despite

1:04:10

the fact that Donald Trump doubts her intelligence.

1:04:15

I think she's shown herself to be

1:04:17

plenty good and

1:04:19

plenty smart. And I think

1:04:22

voters actually believe that. But you're

1:04:24

still in a two thirds wrong track

1:04:26

country. People are still down

1:04:30

about the economy. They

1:04:32

still ascribe qualities to Trump

1:04:34

of strength, mastery of the

1:04:37

economy, and so on that

1:04:39

are assets. And just

1:04:42

as a political professional,

1:04:46

I look at it and say, this

1:04:48

is a dogfight. Today, it may be

1:04:50

a coin flip in his favor, but

1:04:52

it's pretty much of a toss up

1:04:54

race and it should be treated as

1:04:56

such. Oh, I don't think there's any doubt

1:04:58

about that. Well, it's going to be interesting,

1:05:00

Ezra. I look forward to speaking with you along

1:05:03

the way. It's going to be one for the

1:05:05

books. Maybe you'll write one one

1:05:07

way or the other, but it

1:05:10

is something that a month

1:05:12

ago seemed impossible. It is wild

1:05:14

to live through this election. It is. It is.

1:05:17

I think as with any

1:05:19

kind of profound experience, I think it's actually no

1:05:21

matter how it turns out going to take time

1:05:23

to process on the other side. I think

1:05:27

that the realization a

1:05:30

lot of us should have that we

1:05:32

should not believe the clay

1:05:34

of any particular moment in

1:05:36

politics is too set. How

1:05:39

do you really feel that in your bones? I

1:05:41

have to do some real thinking about that after this. Ezra,

1:05:44

great to be with you. And you. Thank you

1:05:46

so much for having me. Thank

1:05:51

you for listening to the Axe files

1:05:53

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1:05:55

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