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Hi, I wanted to ask the prices of the alcohol in the minibar. And is there like a corner screw up here?
Hello and welcome to this late night debate reaction edition of the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm coming to you from Miami, where the third Republican primary debate just wrapped up. Yes, this is our second late night pod this week. If things get weird, I don't know, don't blame it on us. Blame it on politics. Yeah, it was the third Republican primary debate.
Still, we are in a situation where Trump leads the second in polling by about 40 points or more. But it was still a fiery debate. You know, the candidates went there with something to prove and
And maybe they did prove something. Let's bring in Leah Askaranon, politics reporter and senior elections analyst, Jeff Skelly, to talk about what they might have proved. Welcome, Leah and Jeff. Good to see you. Good evening. Yes. Good night. Good evening. Good evening.
Good almost morning again. Buenas noches. Let's go. I love the Spanish, Jeff, because our producer Shane McKeon wrote into the script, at the very top of the script, a quote from a Miami voter, tonight let's enjoy life, which is a quote from Pitbull. So tonight let's enjoy life by talking about the... Dale! ...Republican debate. All right, let's keep it together, folks.
First and foremost, I don't know if this was included in the cold open or not. We'll have to determine after the fact. But there was a really sort of will-she-won't-she moment before we started recording where I was trying to decide whether or not to take some wine from the minibar because I was afraid of how much it might cost.
If my boss is listening, this is cost-conscious employee Galen Druk saying, I really did my homework before I took this Pinot Gris out of the minibar. Anyway, cheers to a late-night pod. Hopefully, after all that, I'm not the only one with a beverage. Leah, I think I saw you. Don't you worry. You are not. All right. And I see Jeff, the whiskey track voter, with his as well. I'm
I'm just going to open the floodgates to start. Leah, what was your takeaway from the night? So the first half I was pretty frustrated by. I was just kind of like, what are we doing here? Like, it just felt like it was all of the candidates trying to get their 10 seconds by saying the most bombastic thing. It was just frustrating.
But the second hour actually got into some pretty interesting debate. And I actually, I don't know if it's because the questions were different or just because they were all tired of fighting each other at that point and like sleepy. But we actually got into some good conversations about the economy and abortion. And, you know, I mean, even places where we didn't get firm answers, we know we don't have an answer, which is still helpful to know. So first half, the second half I thought was actually constructive and helpful.
It's really interesting you say that, Leah, because the whole first half of the debate was basically about foreign policy, which seemed unethical.
odd for a primary debate, but polling does suggest, if we're going to be data-driven here, that voters, Republican primary voters in particular, are increasingly concerned about foreign policy and specific to our polling with Ipsos, concerned about potential terrorist attacks. Although still, that doesn't rank as highly as the economy or immigration, which we only got to in the second half, in like the latter half of the second half.
So that was it was an interesting decision to put such a focus on foreign policy. And to your point, Leah, there are a lot of disagreements within the Republican Party over foreign policy on Ukraine, on China, on Israel, even. I think you're right that people came ready to take their gloves off.
They got to knock everyone else out if they have any chance of bringing it to Trump. But also, it started with a set of topics where the, quote, isolationists and, quote, globalists disagreed. You're hitting on something here because...
I actually think the idea of talking about foreign policy is great. Like, you know, it's timely right now and you get a sense of how different people who could potentially theoretically be president would approach this moment. But I think it just highlights how foreign policy has become such a hotspot for Republicans and kind of an opportunity for them to show their differences. And by the end, I was just frustrated with like, right?
But Ramaswamy just kind of like, I mean, he threw out there that Zelensky was like a Nazi at one point, you know, like Tim Scott's talking about like deporting college students. And it was just I felt like everybody was trying to outdo the other in foreign policy in a way that they weren't doing as much when it came to domestic issues, which is interesting now that I think about it.
Jeff, what was your takeaway? I mean, I did think it was a pretty substantive debate. Perhaps that was also down to the fact that it seemed like the moderators had a fair bit of control over this debate, which has not necessarily been the case in some previous editions. It may also have been helped out by the fact that there were just five candidates and there were five candidates who are
let's just say, a bit more capable politically at this point. Even Chris Christie, who has basically zero percent chance of winning the Republican nomination for president, he at least has some interesting things to say and does provide a contrast on some issues, particularly anything related to Trump. I would say the other thing actually that is interesting when we get down to it is that there was not a lot of talk about Trump at this debate.
even though it was brought up initially by the moderators. But kind of after that, you didn't hear a lot about him. And even Christie, who, of course, has made his bones as sort of the chief anti-Trump candidate in the Republican field, he didn't talk about Trump much at all. So and maybe he was helped out by the fact that the topics were things like foreign policy in particular at the opening and then moving on to things like immigration that he didn't really. You're not talking about
believing in election results or January 6th or what have you, topics where there might be more of an opportunity for someone like Christie to take a shot at Trump. So you didn't hear that from him. But throughout the debate, all the candidates largely did not take
take a ton of shots at Trump, but it was mostly because he just didn't come up as much as I would have thought. Yeah, and actually, we have some data to back that up from our intern, Jayla Everett. She was counting mentions of both Trump and Biden. Trump was mentioned 10 times. Biden was mentioned 13 times. One of the other things we were keeping track of was people mentioning electability, their electability, Trump's electability, to put those other numbers in some context. That's
the topic of electability was brought up 20 times. So, yeah, there wasn't a lot of talking about Trump by name. Speaking of data and something that you said, Leah, about the first half of the debate where the candidates were being pretty bombastic, we almost can't avoid mentioning the start of the debate where Vivek Ramaswamy basically trashed the Republican Party, you know, like the RNC itself, trashed
Ronna McDaniel and said, like, come up on stage and defend yourself. The party keeps losing. Trashed NBC, the host of the debate and the mainstream media in general, attacked Kristen Welker, one of the moderators of the debate. It was quite the performance. And I was sitting in the media filing room and all the reporters were just
looking at each other, mouths open, like, what the hell is going on here? Not to be a cliche, but I was following the Google Trends data throughout the debate. And one thing that stuck out to me was in the first debate, every time Vivek Ramaswamy did one of his bombastic diatribes, he would shoot to the top of Google searches. This time, that was not the case. I think, and we see it reflected in the polling as well, I think Americans now know the shtick
aren't super into it, don't really need to Google him to find out more about it. And he just kind of, he keeps saying crazy sh**
and keeps his Google searches remain, you know, they, they peak a little bit, but it's nothing compared to moments that like DeSantis or Haley had tonight. And also we've seen in the polling that he's in the middle single digits. He's fallen from that 9% peak that he had when he was getting all that attention. So yes, it's bombastic, but I don't think it's, he's reaping benefits from the attention anymore. No, I don't think so either. And it's,
Just another data point that shows how unique Trump is in his ability to kind of manipulate attention. I mean, Vivek was supposed to be like the next, like he has been, he has been able to get attention and probably like help himself in the polls just by being talked about, just by saying the crazy thing. But for most people, that shtick runs out pretty quickly. For Trump, that's been going on for decades.
What, like eight, almost eight years now, and he still is able to manipulate the media cycle or manipulate people's attention. So he's he's not Trump. Yeah, this reminds me a little bit of a sort of a variation on the line from the movie Tropic Thunder, which is a very funny movie. I don't know if it's aged well in some ways, but it is a very funny movie.
Vivek Ramaswamy went full a**hole. And I don't know, unless you're Donald Trump, if you can go, you know, you never go full a**hole. And he really did that tonight. So...
I think, you know, in particular, I'm thinking of his attack, like talking about like Nikki Haley's daughter's TikTok use like an adult woman. Oh, my gosh. I mean, the whole thing was just very, very strange. And, you know, honestly, it reeks a bit of desperation. I mean, at the end of the day for Ramaswamy, because he has he had this bump. Things were going better. He was sick.
He was shooting up the polls. I wrote a story. I mean, just as an example, I wrote a story about him. Like, what's going on with Vivek Ramaswamy? Because clearly he's like surging.
That has withered. And at this point, he is trying to stay relevant. And, you know, at this point, he will stay relevant in some ways. I mean, he's already qualified for the fourth debate based on polling data and his donor numbers. In that way, he may have more longevity than, say, Tim Scott, who might not make the next debate. But in terms of sort of that surge and that, you know, that moment he was having, that has not lasted. And I think some of his behavior on stage reflected that.
Trump is able to get away with it because he goes, he doesn't go full a**hole. He like, he just peppers in a little bit of humor throughout the entire thing. I was just going to say the same thing, Leah. He has like a little bit of levity in there, right? Yeah. He's more fun. There's a wink when Trump does it. There's a wink and a smile and he says, I love you. And there's some...
you know, in some ways I like hate to get into all of this of like, yeah, yes. But like, he's also very funny and he's also charming and like, whatever, like,
He's clearly a complicated character who has been the subject of so much of our work over the past eight years, let alone the focus of American attention. And there was a lot of intensity and a lot of negative intensity from Vivek Ramaswamy tonight. Nothing along the lines of like...
ha ha ha, you got a small d***, Marco. Like, it wasn't that. It was like, I'm going to go after your daughter in like a weird way. I mean, I don't know. Trump did similar things in 2016, which was like, go after Ted Cruz's wife for, you know, struggling with mental illness or whatever it may be. But he might be the exception that proves the rule in that because most people can't get away with it. Yeah.
And for whatever reason, Trump – well, get away with it might be the wrong way of looking at it. For whatever reason, it is this part of Trump's personality that people have lashed onto, people who like him, a lot of Republicans who support him. But people who try to imitate him tend to fail because they cannot –
And I think for Ramaswamy, he comes across, you know, just like the jerk in your or the guy who talked too much in your in your college discussion section. I mean, frankly, that that's what it is. Let's not start lumping all those people into the same bucket. Look, I set a rule for how much I talked in discussion sections. All right. Early on, I was like, I got to I got to tone it down. Let me not talk too much.
He's like the guy who attacks you during the discussion during class a whole bunch and then afterward asks you to hang out or asks you on a date. You know, it's like that kind of like, oh, like this wasn't fun. We weren't having fun. Okay. And since we weren't having fun, let's move on and talk about some of the other people on stage.
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Going into tonight, the expectation was basically Nikki Haley has been rising in the polls nationally and in some of the early states. In our polling average right now, she's at 9%, which is her all-time high so far. DeSantis has been falling. He's at 14% now. Of course, he was in the mid-30s when we launched the polling averages. Recently, in a Des Moines Register poll, Haley and DeSantis were tied, but
And so the idea was, are the gloves really going to come off tonight? And are the two DeSantis and Haley going to go at it in a way that might help winnow down the field to just one alternative to Trump? Did that happen tonight?
It could have. I mean, I think it's like it was very clear DeSantis, Haley and everyone else, which I wasn't expecting to see as kind of starkly as we saw. I think the question, my big question is.
Does anyone drop out? And if so, who do they endorse? Because I was just like, I mean, Galen, you were there. Like, I don't know what you saw. But like, it seems like to me, Chris Christie looked very interested in what Nikki Haley had to say. It seemed like they had some sort of rapport between them. I was kind of wondering throughout. I was like, you know, at some point, there's like...
Christy drop out and endorse Haley? Because if so, then yeah, Haley had a really good night because she won him over. Again, really good being probably still can't catch up at this point. I do think that there were a few moments where that popped up.
One that comes to mind is when DeSantis found himself defending not allowing drilling in the Everglades. And Nikki Haley was trying to make that out as he opposed fracking. There were a few moments between the two of them where one was sort of trying to hit the other. There was some back and forth about it.
about China. Yeah, I know what moment you're talking about. So DeSantis has been going after Haley over basically business investments in South Carolina when she was governor. I think Ramaswamy had also been going after Haley for talking about China as a friend based on negotiations when she was ambassador at the UN. Haley, of course, would say that this is BS, whatever. We hadn't really...
seeing her pull out all of her ammunition sort of to go against them. And she started attacking DeSantis for business dealings in Florida of Chinese companies. And then it just became a back and forth over who has been friendlier in a business sense with China, which is kind of amazing because...
Three years ago, states would have wanted China to invest in their businesses, but things are different now. So that was one of the big moments. And I'll actually say that was when TikTok came up. That was when Nikki Haley's daughter came up. That was when Nikki Haley called Vivek Ramaswamy scum. And...
Up until the internet started to wonder if they saw Tim Scott's girlfriend on stage, that was the biggest peak of the night in terms of Google searches. So it was for Nikki Haley, and it was during that sort of back-and-forth China TikTok scum, Nikki Haley's daughter on TikTok moment. And then, all of a sudden, a woman that no one knew came out on stage to greet Tim Scott after the debate. And...
Tim Scott peaked on the internet like no one else because that's all anyone cares about now. So the takeaway from the night really was Tim Scott has a girlfriend. But does he? I can't...
It was confirmed. Yeah, he confirmed it. OK. OK. So I just want to make sure we're being responsible here. That was that's big. Yes. Yes. But I think the problem for Tim Scott is that that's not going to necessarily help his polling numbers and qualify him for the fourth debate in December. So if he wants his presidential campaign to survive, your girlfriend doesn't just automatically qualify you for the Republican. No. What is it with this country? I think actually it's interesting based on.
Spoken Time, it looks like both the New York Times and CNN found that Scott spoke the most.
Now, he does have a bit of a more deliberative style in terms of how he speaks, a little bit like Mike Pence. So it's like a little – he's not – like the words per minute is not super high, which is probably good because if you're Ramaswamy, maybe you have too many words per minute and it's harder to follow sometimes. But the amount of time on stage spoken by each candidate was pretty similar with five candidates on the stage. But to me, it's like Tim Scott didn't really do anything to break out, and he's the person who probably needed it the most, right?
It already sounds like he's putting all of his chips in on Iowa. And he still has some money left in his campaign account. But it seems like that's sort of his strategy at this point. It sort of is one that speaks to I might not be here that much longer. And so just thinking about there's going to be all this talk about the girlfriend walking up on stage or whatever with Tim Scott. But if I'm thinking about his campaign, it's more that he might not make the next debate. And that might be kind of it.
You know, the moment that stuck with me with Scott was actually his, was the abortion question. I felt like that was one where he actually managed to stand out from the crowd in a way that part of me was like, well, you're the only one saying like specifically exactly what you want the law of the land to be around abortion. You want a 15 week ban and, you know, challenged everyone else on stage, basically calling them out for not being as specific. So part of me was like, oh, that's,
like clearly a play for, you know, some sort of like the evangelical base, maybe, maybe a play for Iowa, or at least having like a carving out a section of the vote that nobody else has. But I was also like, that is not gonna play in a general election. So is that
Was that a moment of him, like, realizing that he's not going to be the nominee? Or was that or am I just over? I mean, I know Republicans in general right now. I should...
think that 15 weeks generally is the compromise number, right? Like in polling, that's what they think. And that's what has come up in conversation over and over again since election night last night. But I think last night's results showed us that maybe 15 weeks isn't what people want.
It's the classic dilemma of issue polling says this, like, if you actually look at Gallup polling, there are relatively few people on either end of the extreme, which is that abortion should always be legal during any point in the gestational period or abortion should never be legal under any circumstance. And the fat part of that bell curve, so to speak,
is that it should be legal through the first trimester and like basically a little bit into the second trimester if we're getting specific here. And that's what Gallup will show you. Like 60 some percent of Americans say that it should be legal then. But
there's a difference between that kind of polling and just who do you trust on abortion. And people probably hear 15-week ban or restrictions beyond 15 weeks. And especially in today's environment, in a post-Roe world, there's not necessarily... I mean, we can see it in the polling. Voters en masse say that they trust Democrats more on the issue of abortion than they trust Republicans. And so...
People aren't hearing, oh, this is a grand compromise. People are hearing Republicans want to put more restrictions on abortion. That's what they're hearing. I mean, that is exactly it. In the election in Virginia, there was a lot of talk about Glenn Youngkin, the governor there, who has said that he's not running, by the way, just to get that out there. We're not going to have a last minute run from Glenn Youngkin, which was always probably the most likely thing. But, uh,
you know, getting back to the 15 week thing, that was sort of the Republican line in the Virginia elections there. And it didn't pan out for them. Now, to be fair to them, it was a close election. And, and,
They performed maybe decently considering like the maps and other things. Like I don't want to sort of overstate what happened there. But the fact of the matter is it did not work out for them using that line. And I think it's – and there were some – I saw Republican pollsters and other people on Twitter and like Republican – like conservative writers being like frustrated about this.
And I think what it comes down to is that you will if you have Republicans now trying to shift to talking about 15 weeks as some sort of compromise point. The problem is everything that has happened before that and all the Republican controlled states that have that have restricted abortion much more than 15 weeks, like much shorter time periods.
You can't take all that back. You know, it like it happened. And so now voters are responding because of all that stuff that happened before they tried to make this sort of like this compromise line. And so the compromise line isn't isn't really reaching people in the same way, because what they're what they're thinking about is all the restrictions that have happened and could happen.
if Republicans have control of, say, state government or if they vote to reject, you know, a constitutional amendment in Ohio and what have you. And all of the other candidates on stage,
seemed very aware of that kind of moving target. And, you know, Nikki Haley, I think like hers is probably like the most slippery. It's, well, I would love to sign a 15-week abortion ban, but I can't do that. So like, I'm not saying I support 15 weeks, but whatever Congress gives me, you know, but, you know, Congress won't give us 15 weeks. And she, I mean, she did cite legislation that like didn't go anywhere. Like she was, that was accurate. The Lindsey Graham proposal was,
And everybody else was like, well, choose your own adventure. I was different from New Hampshire. And Tim Scott was the only one who was like 15 weeks across the board, which I just can imagine Democrats blasting out in an ad in a general election. Tim Scott's not going to be the nominee. Sorry. Like, he's not. But like, you know, and saying like, this election has become a referendum on 15 weeks.
I will say that you might be right that I over like maybe I've overlooked that that moment because that is a moment for Scott to differentiate himself. Right. And the problem for him is being able to differentiate himself in any substantial way. I think it's also worth mentioning that Haley gave an answer that I think would work very well in a general election. And the question is how do Republican primary voters respond to it? She talked about her husband's adoption as sort of one of the things that that made her
pro-life and and you know opposed to abortion and uh but also couching in fact she didn't want to judge people who were in favor of abortion rights and like
I wonder about sort of an exercise in rhetoric here and that being like a better, a stronger line on how to approach this issue from a Republican standpoint. But I'm not sure that it's something that Republican primary voters are going to be like gung ho about, I guess some from like an electability standpoint. So maybe she's thinking about, oh, I could maybe capture some DeSantis supporters who still view him as the best alternative to Trump.
Maybe she can capture some of them who are worried about Trump being a potential liability in a general election. But at the same time, I feel like a lot of Trump's base – I'm thinking about evangelical voters in particular who are very in favor of Trump –
they're probably not going to be too receptive to what she was saying. Yeah, but I mean, it's tricky, right? Because Trump has also moderated on abortion. But he's in a position to do that, right? He's like, he's got all the buy-in. He's got all that buy-in to work with, I guess, at the end of the day. He did it. And he, yeah.
Yeah, I appointed those Supreme Court justices. They overturned Roe v. Wade. Case closed. Vote for me. The politics of this are obviously, you know, to say the absolute most basic thing I can, complicated right now for the Republican Party. And it was maybe witnessed by... I mean, you had even DeSantis, who earlier this year signed a six-week abortion ban into law, saying...
It seems like we've screwed the pooch on message, you know, like so hardcore partisans will always say that, oh, we have a messaging problem, not a policy position problem on both sides of the aisle, like by a mile. Both parties do this. It's kind of funny and whatever annoying. It's bizarre from the perspective of looking at polling all the time and being like, no, actually, it's just unpopular. Like it's not a messaging problem. It's a conversation.
content problem. But, you know, he did the whole, yeah, we're not getting this right kind of thing. To bring data into this, abortion was the number one most talked about issue or had the most time dedicated to it of any one issue. I mentioned that the first half of the
I was going to say podcast, but it was a debate, not a podcast. You should consider a podcast. The first half of the debate was about foreign policy, but it was broken down into Ukraine, China, national security, Iran. Also, anti-Semitism was in there. But abortion as a standalone issue was number one. Economy was number two. Ukraine, number three. Fentanyl was number four. China, number five.
Antisemitism, number six. Entitlements, number seven. Then national security, then Israel-Hamas war, then TikTok.
I'm surprised abortion got the most time. Well, it's just because it took them so long to get to the issue. Well, it was buried. We were tired by the time they got to it. In fact, I was in transit listening in my AirPod no longer in the media filing room when it was all going down. Yeah, it was almost like the last major topic, you know? I mean, that's the thing. And they waited until the last 20, 25 minutes or whatever to talk about it. So far.
foreign policy was a big part of this debate i mean you talk about ukraine and china were like the third and fifth and the national security was in there and so at the end of the day like a really substantial section of this of this debate touched on these issues it's interesting foreign policy day-to-day is not something that registers to a large extent with a lot of americans and you see this in like gallup's most important problem polling
like 2% mentioned like foreign policy or overseas or whatnot as most important. Now that's a little simplistic because people can have multiple things that they're worried about, right? The most important problem, they might say that there's like three things and they have to pick one kind of. But I did think it was interesting 'cause you do see some really large differences between how someone like Ramaswamy and Haley view Ukraine. I mean, you had Ramaswamy up there
i don't know attacking zielinski and ukraine is like anti-democratic because they banned some pro he didn't mention this part but they banned a bunch of pro-russian parties in a country that obviously has like an existential threat from russia um i'm not saying that that's like the solution that you should go with but i i'm just saying that it's hard to understand
when you're a country that doesn't have an actual existential threat next door, right? But to have someone like Ramaswamy talking about, like, I don't want to waste our money and all this debt we've accrued going into Ukraine, and then someone like Haley saying that, like, we absolutely need to defend Ukraine. We, like, Putin is a thug. Like, this is a very clear, we've seen this debate after debate, but it showed up here once again, right? These very, very strong differences. And then that
led to more foreign policy discussion, national security talk about things like TikTok,
and China. So the foreign policy focus made a lot of sense because there's a lot going on in the world. Obviously, Israel, Palestine, which they also talked about anti-Semitism a lot, but it also produced probably the most clear sort of friction within the party. And so I think that was another reason why it was a substantive debate at the end of the day. Can you guys guess what... I'm really leaning hard into Google. Can you guys guess what was the most...
searched topic during that whole first hour that was on basically foreign policy.
I feel like this might be a trick question. There were so many things discussed. It was DeSantis talking about his service in Iraq and how he would respond to threats from Iraq. Never would have guessed that. It was a good answer. It was a good answer. It was a good answer, but it also was, you could see him throughout the evening leaning into biographical storytelling. Because I think that he felt like he needs to humanize himself.
And so he talked about, you know, growing up as a blue collar kid, working minimum wage jobs. And that moment when he talked about, you know, serving in Iraq, I think a lot of people thought, oh, you served in Iraq? Like, I want to learn more about what your life was like or what your story is.
And he went on to say, you know, he doesn't want to get into all of these entanglements, but if Iran harms a hair on an American soldier, he would go after them or something like, you know, I'm very much paraphrasing. Please don't quote me on any of this. That was that sort of moment for him that got the most attention of any of the moments in the first episode.
Our first 45 minutes or so of the debate. So Galen, this actually brings me to a natural question in a debate pod, which is who won the debate? Because I would be tempted to say DeSantis because I thought he was very sort of smooth all night in terms of what he referring back to.
either sort of pivoting to things that he knew voters cared about a lot. Like he would pivot to references to immigration, the economy concerns about, you know, cost of living and talking about, uh, maybe, maybe humanizing himself a bit more to, to, to use your phrasing, like talking more about his background, uh, a little bit. And so I actually felt he might've actually won the debate. Uh,
And maybe he was comfortable on home turf, you know? Like, it was Florida. I think we have had, actually, maybe three debates now where Nikki Haley is the best debater from a performance perspective.
She can command the stage. And I mean, she was at one point taking it from both Ramaswamy and DeSantis. And I think you could argue that she came out on top in sort of a dynamic where if I think of this happened in a Democratic primary, everyone would be talking about like the sexism and like the dynamics of
the woman on stage is being attacked. They're making fun, they're calling her Dick Cheney in heels. She's being attacked from men on both sides and whatever. But she very, I think, clearly won that dynamic.
Or maybe, you know, I say that we would be talking about it in a Democratic primary context because Democrats focus more on these things, but we in the media can still talk about them whenever they come up. I think from a performance perspective, if this were a debate competition, Nikki Haley won. But is DeSantis closest to the median voter in the Republican primary? Yes. And so when he gives voice to his platform, I think he comes closer to what people want to hear.
And I think we've seen this dynamic repeated throughout the three debates that we've seen so far. Is this complicated by the fact that the candidate...
Who is most dominant in the field is not on stage, and therefore it is difficult to interpret. Or it's made more difficult to interpret what's going on. Ding, ding, ding, ding. That this whole thing, like, what are we doing here? What are we doing here? What is the point of this? Why am I in Miami alone with a mini bar full of $35 Pinot Gris? The whole, like...
Who won the debate to be what? Number two. The 2028 nominee. So, okay. So if we think, okay, 2028 nominee, sure. I think like for all we know, it's Tim Scott because he's just figuring out how to do some great debate prep. I literally messaged this to Nathaniel on Slack today. I was like, is this like a 2028 thing? Like, what are we doing here? Oh, of course it is. 2028 is one thing. But okay, if we're focused on 2024, I think that...
Haley had the most to lose tonight, partially because, largely because Ron DeSantis got that Kim Reynolds endorsement, the Republican governor of Iowa, which is a big one. Not enough.
to make him necessarily the nominee, but enough to kind of make him the alternative, right? Like it's a big name. And also we have so few major Republicans taking sides or so few major Republicans who are involved in the day-to-day of 2024.
Taking sides. Taking a side against Trump in particular. You just don't see it. Or even like with somebody like Pence, he's taken kind of a side kind of against Trump, but like hasn't chosen an alternative yet. You know, like so I think she had the potential to become less relevant and she did not. She didn't.
held her own and I think maintained her spot as kind of like equal to DeSantis. And so...
none of this matters because they're both going to be pulling like what and like like she's she's going to get to 12 percent like you know like what are we really doing here but i think she had the most to lose and i think she pulled off a strong debate night and i really think um desantis capitalized on that endorsement here um i know it's like the wrong state to do it but like
I don't know. He mentioned it. Could he have leveraged that more? If I recall correctly, he mentioned it once, I believe, during it. So, you know, it's a it's a extremely challenging position and it's been this way for months and it has only gotten worse because Trump's national polling numbers have actually improved somewhat. And in terms of the early states, he's better.
consistently leading in the like 40s to 50s and what do you do uh how do you how do you break through this uh it's it's not clear it's never been clear and going after him directly has not worked very well so
You're just, you know, trying to rock in a hard place. And that remains the case. So we went into tonight with Trump leading by more than 40 points and DeSantis and Haley being the alternatives. And we are now in Thursday. And that is still the case. So we're going to leave it there. Thank you, Leah and Jeff, for having fun with me tonight. So fun. Thanks, Galen. Hey, Galen. Thanks for having us. It was fun.
I can't tell whether or not that was sarcastic, but I had fun. I can't tell either. I can't tell either anymore. My name is Galen Druk. Tony Chow is in the control room. Our producers are Shane McKeon and Cameron Trotavian, and our intern is Jayla Everett. You can get in touch by emailing us at podcasts at 538.com. You can also, of course, tweet at us with any questions or comments. If you're a fan of the show, leave us a rating or review in the Apple Podcast Store or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you soon.
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